Jamel Brinkley, “Wolf and Rhonda”
“The reunion happened in the party room of the Tavern on Bruckner. Balloons floated to the low ceiling above the heads of St. Paul’s Class of 1991. The elderly priest sat in a corner, nodding helplessly at his lap. Old rap songs from twenty years ago, when they were in high school, played from the wall-mounted speakers. The frosted white cake would have stripes of pineapple filling between its layers. It was always this way at their reunions. Maritza Lopez was again wearing her formal, brightly colored dress. She had organized these gatherings from the start and treated them like reenactments for her quinceañera. Wolf admired her consistency, the sheer force of her determination.”
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“During my breaks, I ate the lunches my father made me and looked out the window. This was to avoid looking at my phone, to which I had become a slave. The window was my liberation. My phone held the time that passed so interminably, access to the few people I communicated with, photos I had taken, Instagram, Candy Crush, and nearly everything my work computer held but in smaller, more discreet form. It, too, was a window of sorts, but I considered its endlessly changing view more dangerous than the simple view from my desk. My window overlooked a narrow alley. There wasn’t much to see. Maybe a beer can or coffee cup someone had let drop, single sheets of newspaper blowing alongside crumpled snack wrappers. Once, someone threw an old TV out their window, and it sat there for days, the dark screen a window to a dead world. We were in a warehouse district. The building across from ours was divided into live-work spaces, many of which were occupied by artists. While I occasionally spied someone typing on a laptop or painting directly on a wall, I rarely saw anyone coming or going. I imagined the artists painted and drank wine and made love all night and then slept all day, while I sat at my desk copyediting travel guides.”
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“Jay and I were pioneering through the snow. It was one of those endless winters when we spent weeks sleeping over at each other’s houses. There wasn’t much to do indoors so we’d trek out into Leakin Park and hike the frozen trails and ice rivers and dare each other to walk out onto the frozen water and talk about fightin’ and feelin’ titties. Violence and sex were always there, and even though it was shit neither of us had any experience with, we were nonetheless experts.”
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“Leah and Abbie go into the woods and pretend to be boys all afternoon. Later, Abbie will go to college for three years before she gets pregnant with her first son, while Leah will get pregnant with a daughter at fifteen. They build a bridge by dragging fallen tree trunks over the stream and then cross, arms out for balance.”
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“I think of Jerrie Cobb and how she got robbed of her chance at becoming the first female astronaut, even though the Russians beat the Americans with the whole woman in space thing a whole twenty years before Sally Ride. I think this while waiting outside the Space Needle during Christmas break. Dad had been so excited, he took an entire week off work. He’d thought—partially hoping I’d go to college for astrophysics—that I’d like to see the Space Needle, too. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I don’t really want to be an astrophysicist, that I don’t know what I want at all, and I didn’t bother explaining the differences to him.”
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“When we arrive in Jayuya, at Campamento Espiritual Jesús es el Señor, Brother Fidel leads us straight into the mess hall. Inside, there are four more Brothers sitting at a table. They’re all from Spain, conquistadores to the bone, white as Cristóbal Colón, and each has an impossibly black beard and chest hair protruding from his guayabera like a bush. In the middle of the table, there’s a bag of Chips Ahoy! ‘Bienvenidos,’ says Brother Fidel. ‘Before we start, please put down your things and help yourselves to a nice snack.’ He gestures at the bag. One Family-Size bag and there are sixty-five of us in the graduating class. We attack.”
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