My Sister's Boyfriend

I knew the minute my sister said she was going to the bathroom that she wasn't coming back. A whole episode of Fresh Prince had gone off, as her boyfriend and I sat in the living room, waiting patiently for her return. After several minutes, we stared at one another, then towards the empty hallway. There was a bottle of Jose Cuervo on the coffee table. He grabbed it and tapped the bottom with the palm of his hand and then poured two shots. "Come on, Big Time," he said as he handed me the shot glass. I took it in my fingers and tilted the rim towards him.

That was my first mistake, thinking I wasn't doing anything wrong with my future brother-in-law. Still in my day clothes, I wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I was barefoot and aware that I was the sister from out of town—the one unlike the others because of different moms and different moons. I knew my sister was too tired to play hostess. She had just pulled off my dad's surprise party, and got me to fly out here to see him after seven years. A big part of me wanted nothing to do with my birthplace. My mother moved my sisters and me out of this town when I was three years old. She said she never wanted to raise children here. This was one of those vortex truck stop townships, damning you with a mentality the size of a broken fingernail. Everyone was close enough to hate each other, to kill each other.

The plan for that night was to get drunk in the living room and fall asleep once we got tired. I didn't complain. The moment I got off the plane I had agreed that for forty-eight hours I would go and be my father's daughter, pretend to like Hennessy, and sit under clouds of smoke to store the memories. He'd served almost fifteen years in prison and missed out on the earlier part of my life. But I was grateful, knowing he'd lived to see fifty.

At first, the conversation with my sister's boyfriend was careful. He asked me about New York, wanting to know about my life. Then he told me about his first visit to the big city.

"That shit was amazing, don't nobody sleep. People was up out in the street at like three in the morning." There was a child stuck between his dark brown eyes. I could feel the excitement from across the room as he told me about his small hotel room in Astoria, and the man who sold him a bag of weed in Times Square. I nodded along, knowing my city, its colors and muses. Everyone knows that Times Square is not the root of the city, and if I had known him then I could have helped him discover the lasting personality of the island I call home.

He sat on the opposite couch in basketball shorts and a black shirt; the youth in his brown skin looked faded, like a cloud had hugged him for too long. I could tell by his ashy knuckles and his bare feet that the cold Michigan air had hijacked the oils in his skin. He still had a complexion that probably bronzed in the summer light. I could smell copper, Kush and the burning scent of an apple on fire. Seconds later he was reaching for a bag from the table.

"I left before. I ain't been here all my life like these other niggas."

"Where'd you go?" I asked.

"I went away for school and played football on scholarship," he crushed the weed inside the wrap paper, "I was good too, shit, really good. I played three years and a semester."

"What position?"

"DT."

"My ex-boyfriend played DE."

"Oh, he must be big as hell," he laughed.

"He is." I said, grabbing the bottle off the table.

My sister had told me that he used to play football, but hearing it from...