OneUncle Wendell and the Ring
Am I about to do this?
I close my bedroom door and press my back against it, shutting out the smell of baking crust, the sound of Mom’s humming. And the stress of faking it with her all day. Warm light from my bedside lamp spills over the art supplies scattered on my quilt. It’s maybe the fifth time I’ve come up here today, just to make sure what’s real is real. And there it is, the edge of the plastic bin I shoved under the bed, peeking out like a promise. Nervous excitement sizzles from my stomach to my face. It’s real.
I’m doing this.
I squat down and reach for the bin. Inside, under my winter boots, are two envelopes. I grab them, stand up, and empty the thicker one onto the quilt. Out comes a four-by-six photo, unframed. And a ring, emerald in a bronze setting
First, I pick up the photo and give it a kiss. Some people would think it’s a sad picture, a middle-aged Black man standing by a cart in the mostly empty parking lot of the Stop & Shop. His arms hang loose, his hands too big for his wrists. A confused crease splits the middle of his forehead, and a shy smile bends his lips. My uncle Wendell, who people called slow, not all there—but who was there for me. Who was mostly not sad, at least when I was with him. Who was the only for-sure uncle I’ve ever had. My uncle Wendell, who gave me the emerald-and-bronze ring just two weeks ago. Right before he died.
The metal’s cool to the touch as I scoop up the ring in my palm. An old, cold secret. Raised writing surrounds the dull green stone. JM Smith High School, Bklyn NY: NEA ONNIM NO SUA A, OHU. I know from the internet this means “He who does not know can know from learning,” in some West African language. Inside the ring, the word river is inscribed. I have no idea what that means. But I know why Uncle Wendell gave me this ring. It was my dad’s. It had to be.
My final treasure is in the other envelope. I touch it for reassurance. No need to actually read the letter inside, because I memorized it in the eight hours since I nabbed it from the mailbox. Dear Ms. Mitchell . . . excited to welcome you to New York City! And in the last line . . . check enclosed.
Soon, I will be going to New York. Where Uncle Wendell is leading me. Where my dad used to live. Where there are answers.
My phone buzzes. It’s Roxy, who should be getting here any minute for one of Mom’s famous dessert parties.
Roxy: Leaving now. Tell your mom sorry I’m late.
I write back:
Me: No worries. Pie’s still in the oven.
Relieved to have a few more minutes, I put down the photo, grab my sketchbook off the desk, and rip out the used pages so it’s as if it was brand-new. Now there’s time to get started on my idea. My sketchbook’s about to become an art project, vision board, and evidence wall, all in one. A way to make it all make sense.
Carefully, I tape the photo of Uncle Wendell on the first page of the sketchbook. This is, after all, thanks to him. He was in a talking mood that day in the parking lot. That whole visit, really. And the simplest thing led to a story.
“So, Uncle Wendell,” I said, when he got excited about all the things in the store. “You don’t have big grocery stores where you live?”
“Uh-uh,” he said, emphasis on the first uh. And he broke into a story about the general store, back when he and Mom were kids in Virginia. He painted a picture with his soft drawl, making me see wooden rocking chairs on the porch of the store and old Black men smoking pipes. One of those old men could have been my grandpa, I imagined. And Uncle Wendell might’ve told me about him, except that Mom can’t deal with the past. Even the part before my deadbeat dad. She’d turn up, like some kind of bat, feeling her way to the story and gobbling it up halfway out of Uncle Wendell’s mouth.
“How would you know, Wendell?” she’d say. “All you ever did was watch television
all day.”
Uncle Wendell would say, “That’s true, too. You ever looked at Family Matters?” And he’d tell that story, as if he’d been right there, inside the episodes.
He was our only relative, Mom and me. He hadn’t just grown up with her in Virginia, he’d even lived in New York when my mom and dad met. He knew things, Uncle Wendell—things I needed to know.
I flip the page and add a heading:
Uncle Wendell and the Ring.
I want to capture the story so I never forget. Mom tried to warn me what cancer did to people. But I didn’t get it till I saw Uncle Wendell being wheeled through the airport, his skin hanging off his long bones. The word I thought of was spent, like he’d binge-shopped with all his life points during some crazy day at the mall. And there was only enough left to get him home.
We gave him my room. I’d been sitting by the bed one day, ready with his lunch, when he woke up. That crease left his brow when he was sleeping, making him look even more like Mom: high cheekbones, warm brown skin, and those narrow, turned-down eyes. The opposite of me, with my darker skin, flat cheeks, and eyes that turn up at the edges. For the zillionth time, I thought, I’ve gotta look like my dad’s side. And right then, Uncle Wendell started talking. Out of nowhere. Out of his dying all-over-the-place mind.
“I don’t see that it’s right,” he said. Then he opened his eyes and settled them on me. “You, so lonesome.”
I tried to tell him that I was fine, but he was in his own world and kept going.
“Truth is,” he said. “You’re not alone. People should know who all they belong to.”
He reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out something. I thought it was gonna be a nasty tissue, because what else could he have in there? But he eyed the door and said, “Don’t tell your momma.”
My heart beat louder than his rasping breath as I reached for what he held. A ring. Big and bronze and heavy in my hand. A man’s ring.
“Is it something from before?” I asked. “Something to do with my dad?” The thought’s never far, but I don’t know why I asked it just then.
“Your daddy,” he said. And he closed my fingers around the ring.
“My dad!” I said. “Was this his?”
But Uncle Wendell just lay there, breathing harder, worn out. I stared from him to the ring, thinking what to ask next, until his breathing changed, and I knew he was sleeping.
Before I could talk to him again, he was gone.
Now, I touch the
ring, careful, like it’s a tiny living thing. Evidence is what it is. Evidence that there’s stuff worth knowing, even if my mom won’t talk about it. Stuff Uncle Wendell wanted me to know.
I run my finger along the word river inside the ring, then lay it on the next page of the sketchbook and carefully trace it. I write JM Smith HS in a swirly line around it, wondering again why there’s so little on the internet about it. I grab my phone and pull up the screenshot of a Wikipedia page I found that mentioned the school, and write what it says, word for word, in the scrapbook: J. M. Smith High School, started in 1970 as part of a network of Black Freedom Schools, providing educational options outside the state system.
Next to the school’s name I write: river?
I finish the page with Uncle Wendell’s words:
“People should know who all they belong to.”
I’ve already planned the next two pages in my head. I need to put down everything I’ve thought about over the years that points in the same direction as what Uncle Wendell said. I’m not alone. I have family, on my dad’s side. Somewhere in New York City.
First, I draw an open laptop—Mom’s laptop on the morning I wandered into the den a few years ago. I saw the words Big Apple Bank at the top of her screen and the word deposit over and over down the side of a screenful of transactions. Mom saw me, flinched hard, and shifted the screen—oh so casual—so I couldn’t see anymore. It was the best confirmation of what I’d suspected. Mom was getting help for the extras she always came up with that I knew we couldn’t afford on her nurse’s salary. I’d even heard her on the phone once, before my birthday, asking for “a bit more help for Clae this year.”
On the sketchbook page, under the laptop, I write those words: “A bit more help for Clae.”
Saving the best for last, I turn the page. Here I draw a picture of an oversize brown box I found behind the shoe rack in Mom’s closet. A brown cardboard box with a return address in New York City. I stared at it forever, under the flashlight on my phone: 2200 Flatlands Avenue, Apt. 22, Brooklyn, New York.
When I’d peeled back enough tape to see inside, wrapped-up Christmas presents peeked at me. More proof. Proof that the extra help was coming from New York. Proof that I must have a fairy god grandma, or maybe an uncle. At least I had a fairy god somebody.
That night, I’d written to the return address and asked them to call or message me. Crickets is what I got. But that was before Uncle Wendell and the ring. And the chance to spend a summer in New York, finding out for myself.
In the scrapbook, under “A bit more help for Clae,” I write:
Fairy God Somebody
2200 Flatlands Avenue, Apt. 22
Brooklyn, New York
I consider what else to add to the page, but the doorbell interrupts me. I don’t answer Mom’s call, let her get the door, and listen as she lets Roxy in and explains that I must be in the bathroom. It’s time. I have to tell Mom the check is here, for the full amount they promised. In just a few weeks, I’ll be gone.
I slide the ring into one back pocket and fold the letter into the other. Then I put the scrapbook in the shoe bin under my bed, and leave the room. On the narrow staircase, I pass Mom’s gallery of photographs: me at every age, interspersed with random shots from Black history, from the famous one of Malcom and Martin, to random people Mom thinks I should know but I barely notice anymore.
The smell of hot peaches and baking crust gets stronger with every step, making my mouth water. But as I get to the bottom of the stairs, it’s too hot, too much, and all I want to do is grab the front doorknob and throw myself into fresh air. There’s a not-even-subtle metaphor in there, but I ignore it and, standing in the downstairs hallway, zero in on Mom at the head of the table in our open dining room. She’s got a knife in one hand, pastry server in the other, fully focused on plating the perfect slice of the golden pie in front of her. I feel better. Mom is, after all, Mom. Asha Mitchell, perfectionist, wouldn’t have anything less for her daughter than the best journalism program in the country, even if it is out of state. That part of her is always there—I just need it to block out Asha Mitchell, lonely single mom.
“That pie, Mrs. Mitchell,” Roxy says, from the guest chair. “I mean . . .”
I slide into the seat next to her and thank her for coming. She shrugs, gathering her red hair over her shoulder, showing more of her pink square-jawed face. She doesn’t know she’s here so I don’t have to be alone with Mom tonight, but she wouldn’t care. She loves Mom’s baking.
“All right, we ready?” Mom asks. Pressing her lips in concentration, she sinks the knife in, lifts out a triangle, and puts it on a black dessert plate, still-bubbling peaches oozing out the sides. She holds her breath as she finishes the plate with a creamy mound of ice cream. I think how different our art is. But as she holds up the plate to examine her work, I see what’s missing. I walk straight to her spot, whip the envelope from my pocket, and hold it out to her.
“The cream on top!” I say. Weak. But at least it’s done.
With a snap, Mom’s eyes catch mine. She puts down the plate, reaching for the envelope.
“The check? It really came?” She takes it. Shock widens her eyes, and a lot of blinking happens.
I swallow as Roxy looks from one of us to the other.
“There’s a list of all the kids that got in, too,” I say. “With write-ups about us.”
I sound like a little kid, but I can’t help it. Now that it’s done, I want her to be in her pride, without the hard part. I got a full scholarship to the best summer journalism program in the country. Can it not be
about my leaving her?
Her eyebrows sink into their creases as she reads, the black edges of her pinned-up hair pulling against her warm brown skin. Finally, she looks up. “They say a lot of nice things about you,” she says. “Your grades, your extras, your application. They’re really excited you won that contest.”
In the second it takes for her to close the space between us, sadness takes over her face. But then she’s hugging me, smelling of butter and hospital cleaner. She pulls away, gives my shoulder a pat, and disappears into the kitchen.
I slump back in my seat, relief slowing my racing heartbeat. There’ll be more drama, probably, before I go, but at least I got through that part. Roxy air-elbows me.
“Only you,” she says. “Getting paid to go to New York.”
She grabs the pie, and I nod that she should go for it and keep serving. When we’ve both got plates, she checks the kitchen, where we can see Mom on her phone.
Roxy drops her voice and says, “You’ll finally get to see your dad’s family, huh?”
I glare at her. “Rox! Not now . . .”
“Well, it’s exciting,” she whispers, savoring a forkful of pie.
I turn away from her.
Through the window, I can just see the cove behind our house, a strip of silver under the dark blue sky. It’s my favorite spot in Gloucester and just looking at it helps clear my head.
I never should have told Roxy about my fairy god somebody. It’s complicated. And I only told her part of the story, because it’s hard talking to my white friend about my weird Black family, where my mom won’t even speak the name of my deadbeat dad. Mom has her little joke she tells me if I try to ask questions: You know how stereotypes have one grain of truth? Well, that’s ours: your father walked out on us—last known address Antigua—and never looked back. So, we don’t have to worry about any other Black-folks stereotypes from now on. And we definitely don’t have to talk about it.
But I do worry. What if my dad did something worse than leave his girlfriend and child? Is he dead? Or in prison? Is he some kind of serious criminal on the run, and that’s why Mom won’t tell me anything? I need to find out even though nobody answered my letter. And I’m not explaining all that to Roxy.
“It’s not a thing anymore,” I whisper, with an edge in my voice. “At least for now. They won’t be there this summer.”
I ignore how the lie—well, maybe lie, since I have no idea what I might find in New York this summer—makes my stomach squirm. Roxy studies me a minute and moves on. “Can I see what the program sent?”
I nod and she picks up the letter from where Mom left it. As she reads, the look on her face is jealous and impressed and a little irritated that I was salty with her. Just real, which is Roxy’s best thing and why I like her so much.
She moans and
tosses the letter back down. “I should have tried harder in that dumbass essay contest,” she says. “I don’t want to sell fifty-dollar travel mugs to tourists all summer.”
“Do they really pay that much?” Mom asks, coming back in and pulling the pie to her. “Maybe I’ll rent this place out and join Clae in New York for a week or so.”
We both know she can’t take the time off work, but the fact that she’s playing with me feels good. Maybe she realizes I really need this summer away, without her.
“Anyway”—she holds up her phone—“I just told Mrs. Brisbaine it’s a definite go. You’re set to stay with her this summer. Just don’t forget, you’ll abide by her rules or be on the first bus home.”
Right. Everything about this Mrs. Brisbaine—her name; the fact that Mom met her through the most boring nurse at her job, who knew her from some old-people church—irritates me. Like Mom literally found the least fun person in New York for me to stay with.
“So here for it,” I say. “I mean, the whole point is to spend time with Mrs. Brisbaine . . .”
“Don’t play like her rules are some joke, ...
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