'Til It Happens to You
‘TIL IT
HAPPENS
To You
‘TIL IT
HAPPENS
To You
A NOVEL
Kristofer Clarke
Second Twin Publishing
Landover, MD
ALSO BY KRISTOFER CLARKE
Less Than Perfect Circumstance
Published by Second Twin Publishing
Copyright © 2011 by Kristofer Clarke
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, business, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, place, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover and Author Photography by Emmanuel Fisher
for Photography by Emmanuel
photographybyemmanuel.com
Cover design by James Jefferson for
PlatinumPixels, LLC
Typesetting: Heir to the Throne Publications
ISBN 978-1-4507-4937-4
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
[May 2011]
First Edition
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
______________________________________________________________
God is good. I truly understand and believe that, without him, nothing is possible. I give thanks to God because HE is above all others. Thank you for blessing me with the gift of creativity, and allowing me to entertain through words.
I have been blessed with the greatest family on earth. The best love any one person can ask for is unconditional love. It is everlasting and limitless. You mean more than the world to me, and I’m always proud to call you my family.
Thank you to my mother, Paulette Clarke-Ranglin, for being my rock, the epitome of perseverance, and for always being in my corner.
To my sisters and their families: Maxine and Ian Weakly, Xenia Weakly, Shanya and Khentrell Graham, Senae Graham, Khentrell Graham, Jr., and Kason Graham for always filling our conversations with laughter. Thank you all for your unwavering love and support.
Thank you to relatives, old and new, who have supported, encouraged, guided, and loved me in your own way. It’s good to know I can always count on your love.
To my Great-grandmother, Edna May Brown (Mama), and my Great-grandfather, Wilfred Brown (Papa), we all miss you and love you very much. Your beautiful spirits live in us all, and I love seeing you in my dreams. Heaven became even brighter when we lost you, but now we have our personal angels.
Thank you to friends who always have my best interest at heart. You are like family, and I am grateful to have surrounded myself with such great beings. Thank you all for your support, for
understanding my focus, and for helping me lose focus when I needed to.
Thanks to Troy for always listening to my ideas, giving me feedback, and telling me when something just won’t work. I appreciate you, your friendship, and your honesty.
Thanks to Janice. You have some of the craziest stories, and you definitely know what to say to make me laugh. Thank you for always praying for my success. Bingo!!!!
To the greatest group of friends in the world: Maurice, Dr. Regina, Dr. James, Wyman, Auden, Marcus, Tanisha, Marimba, Elliot, Reggie, Syreetta (unofficial official personal assistance…Go Duke!!!!), Lorraine, Jonathan, Darwin, Shannon, Selena, Dwayne, Jean and James Howard, David, Jabari, Thomas “Smitty” (mentor), Ty, Matthew, Jacques, Cardell, Isaac, Kuji, Kendrick, Brian, D’Antoine, and Joseph (I know your play will be a great success. I can’t wait until the world knows who you are).
Thank you to Emmanuel Fisher, my friend and photographer, for taking great pictures and for bringing the concept for the cover to reality. Thank you for always giving me your best shot. Lookout!!! Emmanuel is making his mark one model at a time. I wish you much success.
To the models, Dominique Reece, Donlee “DonDevon” Sessoms, and Walter Redd for making the cover look so good. It was fun, wasn’t it? Don’t forget these names or the faces. They are up and definitely coming.
Thank you to a great team of professionals: Clarence Haynes, editor; Jenetha McCutchen for Quill Editorial Services, proofreader; James Jefferson for Platinum Pixels, graphic designer; and Traci Lewis, first reader/editor.
Since the release of my first novel, I have been privileged to meet some good people in the literary world. Thank you to authors
Trice Hickman, Karla Brady, Clarence Nero, and Rahiem Brooks for welcoming me, and for willingly sharing your knowledge and resources. Your guidance has been greatly appreciated. You are talented writers, with kind/humble spirits.
To Sharon Lucas and the ladies of The Reading Divas Book Club, thank you for the exposure. I am looking forward to your Annual Literary Brunch in October.
Thank you to Tanya and the ladies of Sistahs’ Literary Book Club in New Jersey for selecting my novel and supporting me.
To Susan Parsons-Ritter, Meg Storey Groves, Georgia Best, Middlebury College and fellow alums for supporting my endeavors and me.
Thank you to Thomas, Walter and the members of the DMV. Continue to help each other achieve more.
This past year has been filled with meeting new and interesting people. To everyone who purchased a copy my debut novel, I want to say thank you for trusting the artistic creativity of an unknown. I hope you will continue to support me and enjoy these characters and the journey through their fictional life. Thank you for allowing me to take you on yet another literary ride.
Love, Peace, Happiness
KristoferClarke
“My heart could not think of anything better to do than love you.”
Anonymous
‘TIL IT
HAPPENS
To You
PROLOGUE
I’ve heard people say if the lines in the palm of your hands connect to form the letter “M” you’re going to be rich. I’m not sure if I believed that. I did find myself sometimes wondering what the palms of Donald Trump, Bill Gates, and Will Smith’s hands looked like.
I never lived my life by words written in red on the tiny strip of white paper found inside the fortune cookie at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I didn’t worry about analyzing dreams that woke me in the middle of the night or sometimes left me disturbed when I woke the next morning. And I was just as skeptical about palm readers who swore they could tell me about aspects of my life that were unclear to me; predicting my tomorrow when I was still trying to wrap my head around my yesterday.
“Why would I even want to know?” That was the question I asked myself as I stood at the front door of Forecast, a palm reading service in Manhattan, New York. I wasn’t sure if I just didn’t want to know, or if I was afraid she was going to confirm something I had already known. Until then, I had always frowned upon the idea of having my palms read. I’ve always thought palm-reading was a craft; I just hadn’t yet convinced myself it was a craft I believed in. What exactly could she tell me by carefully observing the three or four unconnected lines in the palm of my hand? I had been looking at my hands all of my life and they hadn’t told me anything.
So I was supposed to walk through these doors, up these steps that looked like they were borrowed from a scene in The Exorcist, hand this woman my fifty dollars, and she would be able to read me? I was supposed to extend her my left hand so she could tell me about my past, or my right so she could tell me my future
? Or was I supposed to give her my left hand so she could tell me about relationships that never worked, aren’t working, or aren’t going to work out, or my right hand so I could be told about my education or experience? Exactly! Confusing!
I sat down in the chair across from her and I was almost certain I wore skepticism like a new facemask. But there I was sitting in front of this woman, with my right hand stretched out before me, listening to her telling me the year was going to be rocky for us, but next year our love would prevail, and that there are some forces working against my relationship. How was I supposed to process this information I had received? Her revelations built a web of confusion. I wasn’t sure if the “us” she was referring to was the “us” that never really was; the situation I was walking away from. Or if she was predicting turbulence ahead in the relationship I was leaving to pursue. Either way, she gave me plenty to think about. Love is such a crazy thing - that was the one true conclusion I had as I walked back down the dimly lit stairs.
1
Goodbye’s the Saddest Word
Jackson …
“Maybe you should take him to talk to somebody.” That was my stepfather’s suggestion, and I listened, waiting for my mother to come to my defense.
“Then I would be admitting there’s something wrong with him.”
“Is that what you think?”
I stood at the window in a corner of my room listening to my mother and her husband discussing me like I was some case study. My stepfather stood holding the rake in both hands, the handle resting under his chin. My mother busied herself raking over the same spot on the lawn, stopping only to make her next statement.
“I don’t know what I think.”
I was only twelve years old, but old enough to remember if I’d told either my mother or my stepfather I needed to talk to anyone. I wasn’t confused, and I had nothing I needed to figure out, if that was what they were implying. I knew who I was. I didn’t need to engage in an hour-long conversation, sitting in a faux leather chair telling my personals to a stranger who thought he knew me from the few stolen words and one-liners he had written on a notepad, looking at me over his granny glasses saying, “hmm, hmm,” and nodding his head as if he understood me. What was he going to do, fix me like he did my mother and my father’s marriage? And where was my father now? Maybe it was my mother who needed someone to talk to, and rather than talking to my stepfather, she should have been talking to me.
I knew what spawned their discussion.
For the last three days, my mother and I had been walking around the house as if nothing happened. But something had happened. She’d walked into the house and saw what I wasn’t ready to reveal to anyone, at least, not yet.
“What in the world?” Mother said, screaming at the top of her lungs. She paused. “What’s going on in my house?”
Her abrupt presence startled me.
I was a young boy who saw nothing wrong with what I’d just done. Still, I stood there, frozen, with my adolescent hands covering my private part. Although there were more parts of me uncovered, like shame and guilt, there was nothing I could do to conceal what was just revealed, and to my mother of all people.
Words had never been more difficult for me than in that moment. I stared at her, wishing I could disappear. I stood looking at my reflection in the hallway mirror, then back at my mother, then the hallway mirror again. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
“I have to run back out,” she said. I was still frozen. “I forgot to…” she paused. She doesn’t forget easily. “I’ll be back,” she said. She turned around, quickly walked back down the hall, and almost ran back down the stairs.
I knew my voice wasn’t the only voice Mother heard as she walked up the steps and down the hall. I had just come out of the bathroom across from my bedroom wearing nothing but the smooth skin I was born with, leaving my best friend Bradshaw Ashan Donaldson in the shower. I never told her there was an early dismissal from school that day. That was a part of the plan. I wanted to satisfy Bradshaw’s curiosity, and my own cravings. Oh, I was curious, too. I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but my mother foiled my afternoon by keeping her own half-day work schedule to herself.
Later that evening, when she came home from her great escape, ‘cause that’s exactly what it was, I was sitting in the living room where I knew she couldn’t avoid speaking. Well, she did. She looked at me, shook her head, and walked into the kitchen. In that moment, the idea that I was my mother’s perfect son vanished from my mind. I followed behind her and stood, my body framed by the kitchen doorway, watching her put away the few things she did pick up from wherever she’d gone, her place of refuge. I stood there and accepted her silent treatment for as long as I could, and then made myself disappear into my own sanctuary, my bedroom.
I stood listening to the rest of my mother’s conversation with her husband. When I couldn’t take any more of what I was hearing, I lay across my bed, staring out the window into the darkening night, their conversation becoming a faint whisper. When she came inside, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” belted from the speakers of a small stereo that sat on my dresser. I’ve always loved that song, and I thought, Hmm, how appropriate.
“Can I talk to you?” my mother asked after lightly tapping on my door.
I didn’t respond. I sat up in my bed, staring at my hands in my lap.
“I hope you know you can tell me anything.” She stood at the door as if she were waiting for an invitation to enter.
“Maybe I should go talk to Mr. Kirkwood,” I said, still not looking in her direction. “Since you think he has the answers for everything. Next time you plan on having some discussion on how you want to cure me, let me in on your plans, or at least make sure I’m some place I can’t hear you.”
“Watch your mouth, young man. What are you talking about curing you?” She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you believe I think something is wrong with you?”
“If you didn’t, why are you suggesting that I talk to someone?”
“I’m your mother, and as much as we hate to admit it, mothers always know. Sure sometimes we pray we’re wrong, and sometimes we are, but for the most part when you think we don’t already know, we’re just waiting for confirmation.”
I raised my head and caught her silken eyes. I dropped my head feeling that somehow, I had disappointed her.
“I’ve watched you grow into the little man you are now, so nothing you do surprises me…well, except for the other day. You know, that’s not the way I expected to find out.”
“That’s not the way I planned on telling you.” I looked up, again, and into my mother’s eyes. “And why would you pray to be wrong?”
“Come here,” she said, tapping her hand on a spot on the bed next to her. I eased my body down the length of the queen size bed and sat beside her. She gently cradled my head against her shoulder. “You’re my son, and I brought you on this earth because I loved you from the moment you were conceived. And no matter what you are, or whom you decide to love, I’m never going to love you any less than I love you right now. And that’s a promise.”
“I love you, too.”
“I love you more, Junior. And don’t you ever forget that. You hear me? But you have to know not everyone is going to be as accepting. There are people in this world that can be unforgiving sometimes. They can be cruel and abrasive, and I prayed because I don’t want you becoming a victim to that. Not everyone is going to understand.”
“I’m not worried about what the world thinks.”
“Maybe not right now. But sooner or later you’re going to find yourself explaining to people who shouldn’t matter, or defending your lifestyle because people think it’s just not right. You’re going to find yourself surrounded by those who say it isn’t what God intended, as if they had sat down and had their little talk with Jesus and knew His intentions personally. I just want you to be prepared.”
That was the night I stopped
keeping hardly anything from my mother. That was also the first time my mother and I had tea, with lime and honey, on the back patio, the night my mother really started listening to me. I’ve always thought she heard me, but I never thought she really listened.
Now sixteen years later and I felt like I was about to have a repeat conversation with her. I made sure my decision was final. I was no longer wavering, ultimately convincing myself this was what I needed to do, what I had to do. I now had to let her in on the change I was about to make in my life.
It was an early Sunday morning in May. Mother sat in her patio chair, her white robe tied loosely around her waist and her right leg crossed over her left with her pink house slipper dangling from her foot. Her hair was combed back into a ponytail, revealing features that didn’t stop at her high cheekbones and full lips. I always thought my mother was beautiful. She held her teacup between her palms, as if to keep her cold hands warm. She sipped her tea. She looked up. She looked back at me and smiled. I loved her smile. I smiled back at her, and I tried to hide the edgy feeling I was drowning in.
“Just in time to catch the sunrise with your mother,” she said, looking past the rooftop of our neighbor’s house to the cluster of evergreens nearby.
My relationship with my mother was built on sunrises and sunsets, early morning tea and conversations, laughs and smiles.