NO LONGER THERE

STRAND ONE

BLACK JACK

There's no place like Texas, big on football, family and food.

I grew up in Trophy Club. My Dallas friends say that's where the bougie Black people live. We are hardly that. My parent's made a decent living, my father with his own business and my mother as an anesthesiologist. But with homes in our neighborhood a half million dollars and up, our house was the smallest on the block.

Every year, I heard them complaining about the property taxes, but we never moved. According to my mother, Lillian, Denton County boasted the best public schools so, that's where we would stay.

They love Texas. My mother and father were both born and raised here. She grew up in Waco and he was a Ft. Worth country boy. That's where he found her, in Ft. Worth, at a damn rodeo.

She, light as white bread, and him dark as the hooves of the bulls he rode.

Yes, my African American father rode bulls. That's more odd than the white bread analogy isn't? Anyway, I'm warning you like I do all my friends: Don't ask my daddy how he became a bull rider.

My God, that man has told the same story for twenty-eight years. No, not a bunch of times. It has just taken him that long to finish the detailed history of what a rodeo bull really is. Trust me, you don't want to know.

Anyway, that's where they met. My light as white bread mother and my black as a bull's hooves father. Wasn't but a year and a half later I came along, the perfect combination of this extreme spectrum. Mom swears she made my daddy 'wait' until they were married, a year and a day after their first date, so I will let you do that math. 

Anyway, daddy's rodeo days ended right before I came along. Black Jack, the bull that took him out, flung him thirty feet in the air. To hear my daddy tell it, that bull super-flexed on him, not once, but twice and cracked his neck. 

"Black motherfucker wanted all the attention. Wanted to be only nigga in the show," my daddy, Clarence, shouts at every single family gathering.

I could time it. Doorbell, grill lit, Frankie Beverly and Maze, spades, Black Jack the super-flexing bull.

My little sister, Lisa and I used to stand behind him acting out the scenes as he spoke. He didn't know. So, he carried on thinking his story was hilarious and enthralling, while my aunties and uncles peed themselves laughing  at us.

Lisa is a cute as button, most of the time. I was eight when she was born, so she was more like a doll to me than a sister. When most girls hit their teenage years, they dump their siblings for friends, not me. Lisa and I had developed a special bond. Wherever I went, so did she.

She's the reason I stayed in Texas. My first choice for college was Syracuse. Awesome journalism program, but that wasn't my top priority for the ole orange and blue. As a journalism major, I imagined myself practicing pitches in the Daily Orange and playing in some real snow, not this fluff we get in The Lone Star State.

I ended up at University of Texas, Austin. Far enough away to be independent and close enough to go home, if needed and for a while, I wasn't.

At UT Austin, I met my best friends, made a little name for myself and enjoyed being a 'normal' teenager. Up until that time, it was the best year of my life.

What happened?

This is where I grab a bottle of wine, no glass. I'm recommending you do the same. I'll wait...

Got it? Great. Here we go.

Professor Smith was a bit of a hag.

Her skin was blotchy, pale and she smelled like that slimy, gelatinous part of week-old Spam. Her hair was matted. I swear I saw a bug in it during midterms. She walked like her orthopedic shoes were two sizes too small and the clothes. Those dark, frumpy, musty  clothes were horrible. The worst part, no matter how hot, she wore long sleeves, in Austin, Texas.

You just dry heaved didn't you?

My classmates and I had our suspicions as to why she was a literal hot mess. There was spy, werewolf, a witch (like the one who ate those pitiful German kids ), or an escaped mental patient posing as an educator. It wasn't until my semester project that I realized two things. One, I lost a stupid bet and two, Professor Amelia Smith was not much different from me.