Open Water, Caleb Nelson [best summer books txt] 📗

beautiful dreaded hair framing his face like open curtains, and how he wanted to be seen and heard, and what led him to want to be seen and heard. What led him here? What led him to outlet his anger into another? That anger which is the result of things unspoken from now and then, of unresolved grief, large and small, of others assuming that he, beautiful Black person in gorgeous Black body, was born violent and dangerous; this assumption, impossible to hide, manifesting in every word and glance and action, and every word and glance and action ingested and internalized, and it’s unfair and unjust, this sort of ­death – being asked to live so constrained is a death of ­sorts – so you don’t blame him for the anger, but why did his anger have to find a home in another who looked just like him?

Let’s ask: which came first, the violence or the pain? This was more than you could comprehend, so you wrote the question down, inserted it at various points in the text, and hoped others would not ask why the boy with the beautiful dreads wielded sharp blade in dark hand, piercing Black skin; they would not ask why the event happened, but what the root was.

You read it to her, a few weeks after you met. It wasn’t the first piece you read but it was more honest, it was more you. It was trauma, yes, but it was you and you were OK with her consuming it. You handed her the work and that was sufficient. You didn’t need to explain to her that you felt joy too, that you were angry, you were scared, that walking home in the night worried you sometimes, because you didn’t know which fate would meet you, the one who looked like you or the one who couldn’t see you, or couldn’t see you as you were meant to be seen, or whether you would arrive home without incident, and live to fear another day.

It’s summer now. You have freedom in her presence and it means you don’t have to hide. When your voice wavers, it is because you’re struggling with the weight of the reality you speak of. Tucked together on her sofa, you read from a work in progress, this passage:

Policemen give each other a warning, like in this video, whereby on seeing an object in a young Black man’s hand, one of a pair screams to the other, ‘Gun, gun, gun!’ before they both unload, twenty shots in all, four connecting with a body that is no longer his own, perhaps never was, after all, it’s not a sudden loss of rights that enables a pair of men to destroy another’s body on suspicion, no, it’s not sudden; the perception of a young Black male existed long before this moment, before he fit a description, before two policemen and a helicopter deemed him to be the person smashing the windows of cars, despite not having proof, despite only being told ‘someone’ in the area was smashing the windows of cars, no, it’s not sudden, this moment has been building for years, many years longer than any of these men have been alive, this moment is older than us all, it’s longer than the 1:47 clip which shows me a ­murder –

She grips your foot with slender fingers, anchoring you in this moment as your voice falters and you begin to slip away. Just a few minutes ago, you had been seated on her balcony, the air cool as she smoked into the night, a slight flutter of her eyes with every inhale. She suggested you read to her. It had been a while. You pretended to deliberate, scrolling through the document on your phone, despite knowing where your finger would stop the page. You began to read in that clear voice which you think resembles an old friend telling you a story. You began to read and you were taken back to the moment the video appeared from across the Atlantic, transferred by the sturdy boat of the Internet. How his body crumpled, and he fell onto his hands and knees, as if crawling. When your voice wavers, it is because you’re struggling with the weight of the reality you speak of. You’re mad too, because policemen give each other a warning, like in this video, whereby on seeing an object in a young Black man’s hand, one of a pair screams to the other, ‘Gun, gun, gun!’ before they both unload, twenty shots in all. You’re mad because Stephen and Alton and Michael and you, you too, received a warning but you didn’t know where or when or how the danger would arrive. You just knew you were in danger.

You’re not in danger here, but the tears fall all the same.

‘Drunk,’ you lie.

‘It’s OK. You’re safe here.’

15

‘Why did you ask me to hang out today?’

‘That’s a strange question to ask your friend,’ you reply.

Golden hour swarms your senses. Colour tears through the sky in haphazard strokes. Your hand is bleeding and you’re sucking the spillage from your thumb; you tried to open a bottle of cider with a key and the jagged edge sliced shallow through your skin. You’ve both been touched by the heat and the alcohol, but it makes this meeting no less honest.

‘Usually, we just, you know, bump into each other or link up on the day. This felt kinda . . . formal?’

You shrug. ‘I just wanted to carve out some time for you.’

‘I appreciate that.’ She takes a sip of her drink and comes up empty. ‘Shall we get moving?’

When the day started, she was angry at you, and you didn’t know why. You had an inkling and pushed apologies towards her in the way one would do when diffusing a bomb in the ­movies: one eye closed, snip at the wire and hope for the best.

She asked you to take her portrait. You placed her against the brickwork fencing her balcony and