“I know it hasn’t been easy, but that shouldn’t matter. If anything, this should have made us stronger.” I keep my voice low, not wanting an audience for this conversation. “Look, I didn’t call you to argue. There is nothing for us to discuss. I’m done. We aren’t meant to be together.”
“Monty.”
“No, Charlie. I honestly don’t need what we are doing in my life right now, and if this has taught me anything, it’s that you stillhaven’t grown up. You have made this entire experience about you, and when you got the chance to focus on me, you dropped the ball.”
“Let me just come over so we can discuss this.”
“There is nothing further to discuss. We can be friends, but we are done with the dating thing. I’m over it.”
He hangs up the phone, solidifying how childish he is. I don’t have it in me to care at this point, more relieved than anything that this whole thing is over. I kept expecting him to show up and be the person I needed him to be, but at the end of the day, I was more in love with the idea of him than the actual man. Charlie was all potential and no follow-through, and I need someone who will constantly prove my fears wrong.
Now I just need to figure out how to let myself have that.
I order us lunch before I go downstairs to wake Callahan up. In the meantime, I work to build up the courage to break down something I have only ever told a handful of people.
I don’t know how to express the thing that has defined so much of me. I can’t put into words the blocks I’ve built around my heart. It’s not that it’s hard for me to fall in love. I’ve done it before. I love Charlie. It’s just it’s not easy to get me to let someone into the part of me that only a few people hold space.
While I wait for the food, I map out the conversation. When it shows up, I walk downstairs with the understanding that there is no clear way to say this.
After we eat, we ease into a soft silence on the couch. More comfortable than I should be in his presence, I feel safe to just exist with him. Too bad I have to break the quiet.
“So,” I say, sounding awkward as hell.
“La, Ti, Do,” he finishes, like we are in a musical.
Some of the tension leaves my shoulders. “I want to try and explain to you why I wouldn’t normally date someone like you.”
“Finally,” he says, throwing his hands up. I push his chest, and he just grabs my hand, pulling me into him.
“No, I need to see you as I say this.” I pull back and turn so that I’m facing him more full-on. I take in a steady breath before looking into his eyes.
“So, my mom is white.”
He doesn’t say anything, waiting for me to continue.
“She, um, well, she was with my dad, I think, because he is Black. She thought having mixed kids would be beautiful, or she was just fetishizing him. I don’t know. I don’t think she really thought about what it would be like having Black kids, though. I don’t look anything like her, and because of that, she constantly made me feel like I was not as pretty as her. It was just very clear that she didn’t overcome her internalized racism.”
I push back my hair, trying to have something for my hands to do. I expect him to jump in at this point and say “not all white people”, but he just keeps listening.
“The things she would say and do eventually made me realize that she thought she was better than us. She also thought she could get away with saying things like the N-word, and discriminatory statements because she couldn’t possibly be racist with a Black husband and child.” I roll my eyes. “It only got worse as I got older. Still, I loved her. I wanted her approval.”
He grabs my hand and squeezes it.
“Around when I was eight, she had become a lot more conservative. Outwardly expressing these really fucked up views. When I would come home and tell her something racist happened to me, she would discredit my story and make it seem like it was my fault.”
I take a big breath.
“It got to the point where I started to hate myself.”
I look to the ground, trying to keep it together before I start crying. I know I should finish the story, get to the part that really messed me up, the part that makes me so independent, but I can’t open up about that yet, so I change my mind about telling him everything and end it here.
“Anyway, when she left, I had a lot of unlearning to do. Between dealing with her and her family, it became clear to me that white people will want Black people and still not like them.”
I pull my hand back and stare into his eyes. I need him to really hear me when I say this.
“I don’t ever want to put my kids through that. And no matter howwokesomeone thinks they are, it’s inevitable that their bias will come into play. This is why I didn’t think I could date you.”
He nods his head, his mouth pulled taut. I wait for him to try and prove to me that he is different and would never do anything like that.
