A Love Song for Mr. Dakota by Gene Gant

Author:Gene Gant [Gant, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: young adult
ISBN: 978-1-64080-431-9
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2018-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve: Sylvia

THERE WAS no garage, not that I could see anyway, and Mr. D’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Just a red compact sporty convertible parked at the curb. I dumped my backpack on the porch and sat down on the front steps to wait.

Pretty neighborhood. Quiet. An older guy was walking his little gray dog. Two small kids were playing in a yard across the street, laughing, running, throwing autumn-painted leaves at each other. The setting sun cast the houses and trees in deep gold.

Everything was peaceful. Except me. I was so angry.

Life’s not fair. I heard that all the time growing up, from Dad, from my elementary school principal, from the counselors at summer camp. And I got it. When I was eleven, I had this friend, a white kid named David James I met in school. I spent most of that summer hanging out at his house. Dad would drop me off there on his way to work and pick me up in the afternoon on his way home. “You’re the first black friend I ever had,” he said proudly when I asked why he liked having me around so much. Then one afternoon Mom showed up instead of Dad, and happy, playful David barely cracked a smile when I introduced her.

He called me later that evening, pissed as hell. “I can’t be your friend no more.”

“Why, David?”

“Your mom’s white.”

“So?”

“I thought you were black.”

“I am.”

“Your mom is white.”

“I’m that too.”

“You can’t be both.” He hung up and never spoke to me again.

So I developed issues with Mom way before she became an alkie. That was the first time I got angry because she and Dad made me what I am.

But I loved her, loved my dad. I was black and white. I couldn’t pick a side even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to because my mom and dad were both a part of me.

Some kids made my life hell because of that. “You’re mixed,” they told me. I hated that word, “mixed,” when it was used to describe me, like I was some crazy concoction God had stirred up. But it was far from the worst. Later, as I grew older, other slurs got slapped on me. Crap like:

Half-breed.

Half-baked.

Half and half.

Halfro.

Oreo.

Cookies ‘n’ cream.

S’more.

Mutt.

Mongrel.

Zebra.

And, of course, there was the ubiquitous, all purpose, “Man, what the hell are you?”

All this from “friends.” From people who went, “Come on, dude, can’t you take a joke?”

No, I couldn’t take the goddamn jokes. Not those jokes, not from those idiots, in this supposedly post-racial age. And when they started in on Mom for showing up drunk at school, it finally pushed me over the edge. It was easy to do a giant fuck-you and cut off all the assholes around me, because I had Abel and Fawn, true friends who stood by me.

I didn’t have Fawn anymore.

Not that I could blame her for dumping me. Rod was everything I wasn’t. I was a loner trying to walk two different paths at the same time.

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