Floating

Floating

Arniecea Johnson | Fiction

The lake was Nair’s idea.

Ideas like that always seemed to be hers, and for once in Robby’s young life, he didn’t feel he was failing or unimportant. He didn’t feel the brunt of his arrest earlier that year nor the rhythmic chime of an ending childhood.

In a gap among the evergreens near the edge of the deep lake, Robby and the older kids lay. The waters rippled with mild excitement and trees outlined the long lake stretch amid the still and stunning day. The scratchy taste of tobacco stuck to Robby’s tongue as he sat, hunched, trying to press weed into a Swisher.

Across from him, Lexi peeled potatoes over a big white bowl. T pushed fat, fragrant drumsticks and rounded patties, not yet sizzled to burgers, on the short charcoal grill. Jackson stirred conversation and drowned out the serious-ass rap music that played from the round speaker. (Robby called it unknown and serious because it wasn’t Rich the Kid, or Lil Pump, or at least some damn Migos.)

By the dock, Robby’s sister, Mini, rolled on her pink bubbled float. A Robby! loosened from her glossed, pursed lips. The float was garnished with a print of slate-mouthed, funny-looking frogs. Her curly hair, a softer grade than his, was pushed up in a neat bun. Two tendrils fell to the side of her pale-honey skin. Big bubbled pink glasses—the same as her float—covered most of her small face, and a compacted light pink umbrella rested on her shoulders, blocking the sun as she avoided work. Robby rolled his eyes.

And there. Where his attention wandered in curious spurts, down the dock and past his older sister, was Nair. She half-floated, half-backstroked around in small pools, her chocolate arms swooping. Her pretty, big legs bobbed in and out of the water. Her bright yellow two-piece popped out of thick blue. Long, thin braids every so often tangled around her graceful arms.

Weed was all Robby could offer the college kids, his specialty extendos: two blunts rolled in one long thin one that you had to hold with both hands. But his fingers were sticky, temper metering—the picnic table beneath him too cluttered with seasonings, tobacco stuffings, red cups of whisky, tubs of dollar lemonades, uncapped, nagging flies, and other moving hands.

It was also jitters. Robby had never been to a lake. Certainly not Parks and Martys, a dying lakefront accompanied by toothless fishing men or families that didn’t know a more reputable lakefront was just up the road. If we go early enough, no one will care, Nair had said.

Robby put down the blunt and stretched out his limbs. He grabbed the fullest whiskey cocktail on the table, not caring about its true owner.

“Are we sure we can smoke out here?” Lexi, the psych major, said. She split a skinned potato into three chunks. Her elongated blue nails frightened Robby more than her mean gaze.

“And who gone beat our ass? Boy scouts? The grill smoke will mask it,” said T. He twisted his lips at Lexi.

Lexi lifted eyes shaded by thick, artificial lashes toward Robby. This time the look held and swept up a light air of shame.

Towards the end of his junior year of high school, Robby got busted smoking in an abandoned building on Penne Street. Two cops found him in a warehouse. Glocks clicked back and keened, and Robby—light-skinned, freckled-faced, with nappy brown kinks—sat holding a blunt the length of his thumb. The holes of the pistols, like bottomless eyes. The last thing he remembered.

After a night in jail, a five-hundred dollar bond, and a note on his record that permanently marked him as somehow violent—all the things Robby’s mother worked hard to prevent—she decided it was best for Robby to move in with his sister.

Tired. Mother worked for her four girls and two boys, but she couldn’t get to Robby. He was nothing like his siblings. But who was he?

Kansas City wasn’t for Robby. The city was big, and Robby’s friends were looking for trouble. Distractions and danger filled the cracks. There was nothing more Mother could do. She was done with his friends and thought a small town with no trouble to get into would do him good. A few phone calls between Mini and Mother, and Robby was sent off to live with his sister in her one-bedroom apartment five minutes from campus.

Mini was always warm; the move might even have been her idea. She wasn’t intrusive or controlling. She had a green couch the color of mold. The extra teal sheepskin pillows irritated Robby’s allergies, and his long legs extended well past the armrest. And when friends came over, Robby slept on the floor beside Mini’s bed. They were siblings and used to oversharing. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, she’d bring him to his busser job at Red Lobster. Sometimes he didn’t say a word his whole shift. Any party Mini went to, she’d take Robby. Since it was summer and very few students were in town, that usually meant Nair and Jackson’s apartment.

Mornings, they ate breakfast: his frosted flakes and her avocado toast. And evenings, after Mini returned home from her internship, they’d smoke blunts in her car and giggle up rememberings. “Member’ that time Melindie got that bead stuck in her nose,” Robby would start. “No, member’ that time you almost set the house on fire by putting paper on top of that Mary candle,” Mini said. Her Missouri accent thickened with each hit. “I was tryna show Melindie a trick. The paper kept only burning up in holes.

Didn’t expect it to burst in flames.”

“I miss that. I miss that.” And then a pause, and then an inhale, and then for the first time since his arrest, an acknowledgment in her ole’ Mini way. “You’ll figure it out, Robby. You will. We all do.” She gripped the steering wheel. Her eyes always reddened so easily. And from there, it looked as if she was driving, and he liked that. He wanted her to drive, keep going, keep going, let’s go nowhere, let’s just run. But Mini’s hands dropped. “There’s really no choice,” she said.

Robby remembered the last words his mother said before he left. She folded his clothes and tucked them in a duffle bag. Take care of yourself. Don’t be a burden. Clean your room, wash your sister’s dishes, wake up early, find hobbies to do besides sitting around smoking that damn weed. Routine, we hate it, but it's good for us, Robby. She still had on her tight bun and nurse scrubs.

As the burgers browned and chicken finished, Mini returned from the dock. The college kids filled the afternoon with dialogue of which he could never be a part.

T said, “Soon as I announce a BSU cookout coming or 90s Throwback Party— Rob boy, hand me that pepper—everybody in, everybody down. But once the Black Hair Appreciation Rally came, all of a sudden ain’t nobody around. I ain’t seen that many Black people missing from school since the day after Trump’s election.” T tasted his whiskey, then placed it down, spatula still in hand.

Jackson had the big arms of a strapping athlete. “All I’m saying, T, does that really bring people out? You lectured them about it for a whole hour. Talking about what Black people do and don’t do on campus. Who Black and ain’t Black enough. Doing all that fussing isn’t going to bring a single person to the Black Student Union meetings. I mean... Robby, would you want to hear all that shit?” Jackson took another hit before handing the blunt to Lexi, who frowned and gave it to T.

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t recall you being at the rally either,” T said.

“Well. Uh. I had football practice.”

“Master wasn’t gonna let you go anyway—he already shut that kneeling-for-theflag-shit down.”

“Now, T!” Lexi said.

T twisted his lips again. “All I’m saying is what made you think you’d be storming the halls of Vanderland Food Court in a durag?”

“I was down for the rally and all, but the bonnets? I couldn’t do that.” Mini studied her green nails and leaned back on her green folding chair. “Do you know how many fine brothers are on our campus?”

“Now, I was there, T,” Lexi said. “But it was the durags and bonnets for me? Black women can’t afford that type of attention.”

“And we can?” Jackson always fed off of a debate.

“Yes, the politics of Black hair weighs more on the Black woman than the Black man.” Nair eased up behind Robby. “Is this seat taken?” She plopped down and aimed a playful smile towards Jackson. Her braids hung in her face, and despite the towel wrapped around her, her limbs dripped.

Robby shuffled toward the end of the table and indistinguishably muttered. He tried not to gaze at Nair gathering her braids by a bundle and releasing it of water— the bones in her bare shoulders tucking out. “Hmmhmm,” Mini agreed. Nair went on, “... Black women’s hair, Black women’s features, our bodies, our skin type—all experience more scrutiny.”

“We were trying to make a statement,” T said. “To start a conversation on race relations, since Mr. Anderson singled out Darrel in physics, calling his durag inappropriate, and management told Tonya she would have to straighten her hair to work in the damn cafeteria. And only a handful showed up—and only half of them in a durag and gotdamn bonnet! Had us looking crazy as hell in that cafeteria!”

They laughed. Robby grinned.

“Scared the shit out of all of em.”

Robby’s head bounced from one end of the conversation to the other. While the word “college” set off a shiver of shame and indifference in Robby, these college kids would go off to be engineers, business owners, psychiatrists. They were going somewhere that wouldn’t be here nor the hick town. And where would Robby go? He hadn’t decided.

Nothing in the picture fit together. Not his prissy sister. Not the psych major and her blue nails around the paring knife. Not T, in his Jesus sandals, who would probably become both valedictorian and the best person who ever lived in Saint Joseph to fry chicken. Not Jackson and his somber rap music, who loomed over everything with a regal dominance—especially his girl Nair. And not Nair, her body an orchestra to the waves like those Olympic swimmers Robby once saw while flicking through television. Only, she wasn’t racing against the water; she was a part of it. All against the background of the lake and evergreen trees, this venture his friends at home would have called a “Caucasian activity.” This was not what Black people did in his mind. It was a commercial that ended with a white family in warm tones and smiling faces, everything looking so bright and easy in their lives. There were a few moments Robby felt close to this.

In sophomore year of high school, he made sure he was in class for the times they watched BBC Earth shows in earth science class on Fridays. He’d fold his arms and rest his head, watching keenly. The colors of the birds and bright world were stunning. He wondered if they felt like him—if they were ever bored, unamused, fussy, or indifferent. Was their duty always to do? He’d feel a tug toward the screen.

Another year, he painted a picture in art class, and it wasn’t bad, not bad at all. He liked the stroke of the brush against the page and the thick paint made smooth and streaked, spots of blue, dots of purple, specks of blackness. He mushed the colors into a deep green, and the teacher walked by and said not bad, raising her eyebrows at Robby.

“Gay,” one of his friends laughed beside him. And they snickered at lunch about his painting of the yellow-burnt sun, and blue sky, and green swamp, and they still joked about it from time to time when there was nothing to do and no one to roast. And Robby took it quietly and played light-heartedly, because that’s what Robby always did. Robby thought of the painting. He thought of birds. And the lake. The college kids ate, sipped whiskey, their chatter rising and falling. And when the eating slowed, they puffed more on blunts, the day fading into night, the music louder (now playing some rapper Robby assumed was Common). Everyone was three or four drinks in (Robby still on one). The water glowed as the sun set with a bashful pink.

Nair sat at the edge of the bench next to Robby. Her braids still dripped water onto her lap. The big blue towel she hadn’t bothered readjusting draped around her. She moved the cup to her lips.

“Let’s see who can swim out to the landing dock,” she said. Everyone looked out at the little brown square a few feet from shore, and silence settled.

Lexi spoke first, “Say what now?”

“Ain’t nobody tryna swim in that lake. Tryna catch bronchitis,” T said.

Nair said, “Do you even know what that is?”

“Nope, sounds like something you get swimming in the lake, though.”

She asked Robby, then Mini, and finally Jackson, “No one wants to swim?”

“Not in dirty lake water,” T said.

Nair stood up. “I ain’t never heard of people going to the lake and not taking a swim.”

Jackson remarked how he would’ve been fine at their place.

“We’re always at our place.”

Jackson shrugged his shoulder. “We been drinking anyways—”

“I’m going for a swim.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve been drinking.”

“Relax. I’ve only drank a cup.”

That was a lie. Robby saw Nair chug three cups of whiskey down like water.

Jackson let out a sigh. “I’ll come then.”

“No. It’s fine. You hate swimming. Robby’s coming with me; you can swim right, Robby?”

Everyone waited for an answer Robby felt too culpable to annunciate.

“Yeah, go with her.” Mini fanned her face with a hand like a tired-out mamma. Before Jackson could argue anymore, Nair dropped her towel and made her way to the lake. Robby fumbled in stupid surprise, trying to take off his grey tee.

They swam out, swooshing, bodies merging with the dense water. And when they reached the dock—Nair before Robby—they panted harshly.

They were four years apart. Nair’s beauty was mature, thoughtful. Her rounded lips, perplexed. The bigness of her shiny nose balanced the thinness of her angular brows, adding authority to her otherwise childish face.

Robby enjoyed the nights when Nair and Jackson picked him up from work when Mini couldn’t. That one time when Nair’s hand floated out the passenger window and how she looked at him from the rearview window. She asked about his school life and then something that no one had before: Are you happy? It was a big question. In the water, Nair waited. But for what? Her mouth submerged under the water. Robby said, and immediately regretted saying, something he’d heard from television or a drunk uncle.

“Trump’s gonna run this place to the ground.”

For a long time, Nair said nothing.

Onshore, their friends laughed. Something funny had occurred. Jackson, as always, was at the center of it.

“E’s not bad… ya know,” Nair said.

“Uh?”

“Jackson… ” There was a slight slur in her words. “He’s not bad. He’s got an idea, a job opportunity in Indiana. Good money… wants us to move down there but I don’t see myself…” she rested her back against the dock, “like whut? I’m gonna work at a library, cook dinner, and wait for him on our porch. I can’t think of nothing more tasteless.” She let out a chuckle that carried into a somber laugh. “I don’t want him to run with me though; it’s like the more he tries, the less I’m able to be... I hate him for trying.” She paused. “Can I be honest with you?”

Robby nodded.

“Sometimes I’m scared that I won’t get what I want in life. I’ll settle with what I have, and it makes me so angry. There’s too much… routine… to living…” she muttered. “I wish to be a bird—cliché, yes, but there are no rules keeping them on the ground. They float in n’ out of things, no one questions them for leavin’, too.”

Robby knew the feeling. This hopelessness. He thought back to the birds on the Earth Channel and the never-ending loop of his mother’s nags and the eternal buzzing around him, and for a moment, something in his mind strung the two together and his mouth loosened. Even birds.

“What?” Nair said.

“Birds have routine.” Robby cleared his throat. “My mom was always telling me this back home. She said routine, we hate routine, but it’s good for us. I don’t know what that fucking means. But I … I don’t know... I watched this Earth video in science about these types of birds—these cool, multicolored birds. They migrate in the winters. And… I don’t know … after watching the episode and thinking about it, it makes me feel better that they have places they need to be and things to do to live and shit. They’re not just out there floating around aimlessly. I guess it’s a sort of equation.”

Nair said nothing. Robby went on, “I mean… I don’t know. Don’t birds gotta fly south or some shit? They do what they do for a reason. I guess. So when my momma said it was good for me, I can see what it means. I can see the little freedom it can give me. I can see what it might feel like to bite the bullet, but I don’t want that. I want to do nothing and everything.”

Was he happy? He had never answered her question. Every moment of euphoria was shrouded in mockery, every moment to push outside of himself. He didn’t know why he had to hold on to these moments, tuck them in the inside of his pockets like a love letter. But more than that.

It was particularly his arrest, the warehouse that smelled familiar and lost, and how the men pointed bottomless-eyed guns. But it was more how the men looked at him. Like it was expected. Like he was nothing more. Like every day, they pulled out confused, lost, and frazzled brown boys from warehouses, and it was more of a nuisance than a shame. It stuck something sour in Robby, disappointing his mother, worrying her. To be lost, so lost, so lost. To have fear and shame soil your high and feel that behind that high was nothing. Numbed, altered, but not changing. Still. And worse, how the moment soiled his high eternally, how he’s only nervous when smoking, after smoking, when about to get smoked, and he despises it and maybe even hates himself. What was worse, Robby? That the world had expectations you didn’t know if you could meet, or that they expected you to be unruly, intractable? And more. Robby floated in the water with Nair, and the magic of the lake waned, and he started to feel himself fully and loudly. He wanted to tell Nair that he could let her fly—he could be her bird. He could wait in their nest—he wouldn’t mind waiting. And when she returned, she could talk about the things she’d seen while flying, and he could feel them and also take flight. He could be that for her. He really could. But the words, they were escaping him. The words.

The shine of the sun dwindled. And Nair’s eyes were wet with something Robby could not quite read, her face shifting, lips parting—

“Nair! Robby! Come on y’all, we’re about to leave.” Jackson stood by the edge of the lake, hand to mouth. Nair popped up and swooshed into the water without another look at Robby. And for a moment, Robby drifted, staring out at the waving waters and wicked trees.

He would never forget this moment. Under the pink sky where anything could happen, where he was no longer failing and unimportant. Where Nair and Robby existed in a space together, and everything brewed with possibilities.

He would never date Nair or anyone like her. All his girlfriends and his baby mother had beauty that came with ease. They would be content with the same restaurant on payday Fridays and not swimming in dirty lakes or dreaming of flying. And if they did, he never got close enough to know. What would he be? That’s no one’s story to tell but his own, but at the lake, Robby could be anything. He could be one of the Olympic swimmers he saw as he clicked through his sister’s TV. Walk fast-paced in a suit and tie to work in skyscrapers. He could ride a bicycle down walkways and plant flowers under the sun. He could be things that made him happy.

art credit: "blue blur" (2021) by Zaynab Bobi