Black Boys Bloom Thorns First: Volume 2 (A Black Panther Fanfic)

Black Boys Bloom Thorns First Vol. 2 Chapter 1

"It's the butterflies, and the fireflies, fighting in my stomach
(the light between their wings)
Scared to fly,
I might come down,
Think I'm ready now,
Getting back in line..."

Tank and the Bangas- "Rollercoasters"

Warning: If you haven't read Vol. 1, none of this will make sense!

Califia Stevens found the air chilly when the open ferry crossed the Vineyard Sound. They were approaching the ferry dock, and Califia could feel the cool air kissing her legs and fluttering the hem of her summer skirt. She and her longtime bestie Bakari Dunduza dragged their luggage off the exit ramp and were greeted by Bakari's childhood island friend Albert Pettigrew.

Califia found the term friend bandied about loosely from Bakari's mouth. From what she had known of Bakari's annual excursions to the "Yard" (as he called it), the childhood "friends" were simply children of other wealthy accomplished Black Americans, -the true strivers in their circles-who wanted their offspring to only associate with their kind of Black people, the talented tenth, the Black elites who looked at Black American lineage often the same way white Mayflower descendants took on pedigree as a sign of being exceptional. Special. In Califia's mind, these ferociously upwardly mobile negroes reveled in being "the only ones". The only Black person in a corporate office. The only Black person in an expensive gated community. The only Black member of an exclusive country club. The only Black person to vacation in an exotic locale. The only Black person to belong to certain white spaces historically off-limits to the darkies.

Califia really tried to check herself when she stepped off the boat and saw Albert in person waiting for them with a bright smile on his face. Things could be different. People could change. Her one and only visit to this place was ten years previous when she was fifteen and feeling herself, and she knew immediately, from the chilly reception she received from that breed of Vineyarder negritude, that this was not the social class for her. They let her know right from jump that she would be tolerated for the length of her stay. It was her first time experiencing that type of intragroup prejudice on an overt level. They abhorred the uncultured, unlettered, and untethered lower Black masses. The poors. Them.

What she did remember most was how much cognitive dissonance Bakari went through back then since he came from these people. Her fifteen year-old-mind tried to fathom how Bakari could be so cool and down-to-earth, and open to all types of Black people, but the rest of his extended family wasn't.

Part of it had to do with his own parents. His mother Vivian was a fifth-generation member of a well-known and respected family who had distant ties to the first Black family to ever own property in Oak Bluffs. Her family had been vacationing there every summer since the 1900s. They were hardcore Vineyarders and let everyone know it. His father Otis met and socialized with his mother there for years, his own family a fourth generation Oak Bluffs clan filled with doctors, lawyers, bankers, and one raunchy soul singer from the 70s whom no one claimed because it was uncouth and not very civilized in their eyes.

Bakari's parents must've agreed to change their destiny and relocated to the West Coast before Bakari was born, settling in Oakland, both breaking tradition and bypassing the usual Ivy League and historically Black colleges and universities of their foremothers and fathers. They were the eclectic New Age hippy Blacks who practiced yoga, alternative healing, and became vegans. They started Bakari on a plant-based diet until he had his first taste of shrimp and grits dripping with bacon and butter at Califia's grandmother's house in elementary school.