Are You Sitting Down? Read Free

but it was good material for a joke whenever he started talking about it. “Whites and Blacks shouldn’t date one another,” he’d say in a twangy voice while imitating his mother. We never put our name on the outside of the house though because Mom would have thought a sign reading “The Whites” was tacky. I’d have to agree with her.
    Mr. Black shook my hand after opening his car door. I stepped back and got into my own car and watched him disa p pear inside the grocery. He had always been a big man, but it looked like he’d put on even more weight. Walking looked t e dious, and he had to steady himself against the door handle just to climb the three small steps to get inside.
    The sweet smell of the ham and turkey lingered in the car , reminding me of home. I was glad I was almost there. I closed my eyes tight to erase the thought of tears. Fishing my keys out of my pocket , I hurriedly started the car to drive away before Mr. Black came out.
     
    * * * *
     
    My mother’s entire yard was a garden. It disappeared in the winter beneath the South’s heavy ice and snow, but grew back almost effortlessly every spring. Mother pampered large ferns, poppies, roses, lilies, daffodils, and every kind of bloom imaginable as long as the warm weather would let her . T he month of December sprouted a garden of lights and plastic Christmas people . A life-size Santa waved to passersby where the birdbath had been. Neon blue i cicle lights hung from the gutters. A plastic baby Jesus lay in the rose bed with an ento u rage of colorful nativity characters that all lit up at night. With the Christ child in one corner and ole Saint Nick in the other, Justin had laughed at the Las Vegas-like menagerie the first time he saw it.
    “Is Lorraine a Baptist or a Methodist?” h e asked.
    “ Which has the better bake sale? ” I replied.
    Justin had always called my mother by her first name. She never corrected him. She was Lorraine to all of her old friends in town. I liked the idea that he was an old friend too. There was a time long ago when she would not have been so accep t ing of him because she was not accepting of me , but I had yet to meet Justin back then . Few boyfriends graced the White family holidays until Mom asked me once if I’d like to bring someone along .
    “I’m afraid the family might scare them away,” I joked, but I was secretly glad she had asked.
    My younger brother brought a different girl every year , and no one ever asked twice what happened to the last one. It seemed to be routine, and expected, that he never dated the same girl for more than a year . My older brother and sister were both married. Even my younger sister had a steady bo y friend in high school that ate dinner with us on ce . I was tired of appearing to be the only single man at the family table. I was tired of having to forget about my special someone for a day, kissing them good-bye before the 150 mile journey back home, exchanging gifts with them the night before or the day after.
    I indeed had my own personal life , and then there was my family . B ut I was old enough now that I was ready for both of them to stop being so personal and separate . Thanks to my Mom, they converged. There was Robert that first year, then Rodney the next. (At first, I seemed to have developed my younger brother’s dating habits.) Billy was only a friend I i n vited who otherwise would have spent Christmas alone that year , but Mom insisted on asking how he was doing every time we spoke on the phone for a while after. Then, I met Justin.
    Surprisingly, we’d gone to high school together right here in Ruby Dregs . He was a year behind me, and although we were both closeted questioning teenagers we never once spoke to each other. We had different friends, played different sports, and joined different clubs. I moved to Memphis for college; Justin attended the local community college after he graduated.
    Six years would pass and I was home for a week’s v a