We stood by the side of the road, staring at the off-white house.

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be,” he chuckled. “They’ll love you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I love you,” he smiled and kissed me on the cheek.

I rolled my eyes as my stomach warmed from the butterflies.

We started towards the house. Weeds crept into the cracks of the walkway, having already consumed the lawn.

“They weren’t too keen on me the first time,” I said as we reached the porch.

He laughed out loud. “It was a funeral. No one was keen that day.”

The steps groaned under our feet, as if we were disturbing their peace. Ceramic pots dotted the porch. All but one had their gnarled brown stems reaching for the sun. In the outlier, there were a dozen or so cigarette butts shoved into the soil, tombstones in an ashen graveyard.

A dog roared as we opened the frayed screen door. A jolt of lightning ran through me, tightening the muscles from my jaw to my calves. A senseless reaction—animals loved me—but I was raised to never be overconfident. He ran up to me, a scraggly mutt with patchy brown fur and tired eyes. A chorus of voices erupted in the house. “Get back!” they shouted at the mutt, but I let him sniff me. He sank into my personal space and proceeded to lick my hand as I rubbed his face.

We shuffled into the house. His whole family had poured into the little living room; they stood like a wall, welcoming or standing guard, I couldn’t yet tell. They smiled and held open their arms. Their voices bellowed as they greeted us.

“This is my mom and dad.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, using the proper honorifics along with their last name.

“Oh no,” they laughed.

“My parents are divorced, but they’re best friends.”

“I’ve never met divorced parents who lived together,” I said.

They laughed again. “We don’t live together.”

A stout woman stepped forward.

“This is my sister.” She was orbited by two bouncy kids. “These are my nieces,” he said, gesturing towards the little moons. He pointed at his sister’s belly, “And that’s my soon-to-be nephew.”

“Nice to meet all of you,” I said. One of the kids beamed at me, the other hid behind her mother’s leg.

“They live here with my dad.”

“Oh—” I replied.

“I’m his brother,” said a thunderous voice. He was stocky and only a head taller than his sister. He shook my hand, clutching my lean fingers in a meaty grip. “This is my fiancé,” said the brother, pointing to a lanky woman behind him. She grinned and said hi.

“My brother and his fiancé live with my mom.”

I knitted my brow and tried to follow the chart I had drawn in my head.

“Come in and make yourself at home!” someone said, interrupting my concentration.

I declined the invitation to sit down. I told them it was easier to speak to everyone while standing, but the truth was I had already scanned the room: pillars of dust clung to the ceiling fan, and black stains peppered the carpet intercut with crisscross vacuum tracks. I coyly wiped the tears from the corner of my eye and held my breath whenever I felt a sneeze coming on.

Still, I was popular. I was a celebrity. I got the impression he didn’t bring boys home very often. I felt a pang of guilt for questioning their intentions.

"Hey Johnnie,” said his brother, “How do you starve a black person?”

“I uh— I— don’t know,” I said, my eyes wide and my face flushed.

“Put their food stamp card under their work boots!”

The room exploded with laughter. If anyone protested, I couldn’t hear them. I tittered and forced a smile.

“Ahhh, don’t worry,” continued his brother, “I’m not racist. Racism is a crime. And crime is for black people.”

More laughter, myself included.

His father leaned forward in his rocking chair. His brother puffed his chest and gazed at me with hazy eyes.

“Why can’t black people play in the sandbox?” said his dad, “Because cats keep burying them.”

I laughed.

“What did God say when he made the first black man?” asked his brother. “Damn, I burnt one.”

I laughed.

I found myself in a bidding war between brother and father, and my approving laughs were the prize.

“What’s faster than a black kid running down the street with your T.V.? His brother with your Xbox.”

“How do you get a black kid to stop jumping on the bed? Put Velcro on the ceiling. How do you get him down? Tell a Mexican he’s a piñata.”

“What do black people and sperm have in common? Only one in a million work.”

“What’s the difference between Batman and a black man? Batman can go into a convenience store without Robin.”

“What’s the difference between a black dad and a boomerang? A boomerang comes back.”

“What’s the best thing about dating black girls? You never have to meet their father.”

“What’s the difference between a black father and an elevator? An elevator can raise a family of four.”

“What’s the difference between a couch and a black guy? A couch can support a wife and kids.”

“What do Nike and the KKK have in common? They both make black guys run faster.”

“How do you get a black man out of a tree? Cut the rope.”

Out of breath and riding high, his father sat back in his rocker. His brother smiled, rapt with euphoria as if he’d actually fucked me.

“I’m just kidding,” said his brother, patting me on the shoulder.

I didn’t argue with white folks. It was an unspoken rule passed down for generations. I don’t remember who first taught it to me: my mother who told me to stop showing off in front of white folks, my grandmother who told me to never bow my head in front of white folks, my brother who told me that the cops I called on my step-father didn’t give a fuck about some whiny ass nigger. It was a tapestry, one I would likely add to someday.

The first time I met his brother it was brief, unofficial. We brushed shoulders standing at the back of a church, mourning the loss of the son of a mutual acquaintance. In the awkward silence that followed the service, names were exchanged but little more. I recall how he sucked down cigarette after cigarette and how he spoke to the boy I loved—impatient, angry, violent. His tone sounded like bullets. His words felt like shrapnel. He was a landmine waiting for a misstep.

In the years that followed, I learned to navigate the minefield.

Some days we’d chat about superheroes. Some days we’d laugh at silly videos. Then there were days he blindsided me. Once, I recapped a video in which Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown talked about the time he pulled shit out of her anus with his finger. “Black love,” they called it. I laughed as I repeated the phrase.

“Why does it have to be BLACK love?!” his brother erupted.

No one spoke, not the boy I loved, not his mother, not his brother’s fiancé.

“I just... I just thought it was funny,” I mumbled.

It took a while, but I learned when to stay quiet. I learned it the time his brother yelled “BLACK people sold each other into slavery!” and “the Irish had it JUST as bad and you don’t hear THEM whining!” What about me made it comfortable to say such things? Was it the day in the living room? Was it because I kept laughing?

His anger was an inheritance of which I was now the recipient, and I refused to be the Black boy who couldn’t take it.

“Wow,” I would say.

“That’s crazy,” I’d reply.

“That’s hilarious.”

Sometimes, I wondered about that day in the living room— how did they even know I was Black?

“You look white with your hair covered,” my roommate once said.

Growing up, I’d been everything from Jewish to Mediterranean, and, to the disapproval of many an abuela, a Puerto Rican who didn’t speak Spanish.

But, that day my hair had been passingly short. Yet they knew. Was it a topic of conversation prior to my arrival? Did the boy I loved tell his favorite joke about me being Black where it counts; a joke that would take him years to unlearn. I told myself it didn’t matter, that I was more than my race. I told myself it absolutely mattered, ‘cos what was I if not my race?

For years after his father’s passing, the boy I loved was fond of saying, “My father didn’t care if you were black, white, green, or purple, he only cared if you were a good person.”

“Eeeeeeeeehhhh...” I said one day, “your father was a little racist.”

“How so?!”

“Remember the time he and your brother lobbed racist jokes at me?”

“They were kidding!” he laughed.

“Still racist though,” I shrugged.

“They didn’t mean anything by it.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“No... but you laughed!”

“I laughed for you.”

We don’t talk about race anymore. Like continents, those parts of ourselves drifted apart, their coastlines the only proof that they ever touched.

Nowadays, his brother swings by when he needs to. “What's up?” he says as he hugs me.

He talks about himself for about an hour, about how “life keeps fucking him over,” and “if only he could catch a break!” I genuinely love him.

“So, how are you doing Johnnie?” he says eventually.

I wanna tell him my heart is breaking at the news of another Black boy murdered by accident. I wanna tell him how I'm shocked that my friend's six-year-old daughter was told by a classmate that she can't play with a white doll because her skin is black. I wanna tell him how I’m shaking reading comments— "They had it coming!” “They did it to themselves!” “They should've known better!” “I would’ve shot them myself!”

I wanna tell him how confused I am listening to my white friends denounce the anger of others and then berate a cashier for asking them to put a mask on. I wanna tell him how betrayed I feel by my Black friends for ghosting me because they realized we will never be Black in the same way. I wanna tell him how much I hate the sidelong glances, pitying looks, and hushed tones that follow me through a room. I wanna tell him I'm tired of apologizing for losing my cool in the presence of those with loose lips and sharp tongues.

I wanna tell him how sick I am with guilt for passing all these years when I could have been listening, learning, and fighting. I wanna tell him I hate myself for going to work and returning to my quiet suburban home. I wanna tell him I’m confused because I don’t know where I end and where politics begin. I wanna tell him how small I feel when I hear adjectives used to define me when I've said time and time again that I am a verb in constant conjugation.

I wanna tell him I’m not alright.

“I’m good,” I say.

‘Cos I don't argue with white people.