Even If You Blink You Won’t Miss It Part II

Ed  Eugene & the white waitress

“Even though the office is so close I never think to come here for lunch. It’s such a, a lively neighborhood isn’t it? So many people on the streets! The last time I was here I think it was when I took Dontelle here. She wanted to get to her hair braided or weaved is it? Anyway, I brought her here. I can’t believe how much work goes into it. We came in the morning and she, she shooed me off and I came back to pick her up at around six or seven. She looked like a completely different person when I picked her up. Anyway that was when we were dating and she was still talking to me. I guess I, I really messed that one up. I can’t really blame her for not talking to me. Anyway what’s good here? Cape Africa! What’s the uh, what kind of food do they serve here? Obviously Africa’s not a country. I know that, but which country, what’s the specialty?”
“I don’t know. I just know the food’s good here. I usually get mix deux.”
“You don’t know? Really? You never asked?”
“A friend brought me here and I liked it and I, I just never, I guess I never asked. It’s good. That’s all I know.”
“That’s funny. I can’t believe you don’t know what kind of food it is. I guess it’s Congolese. Never been to Congo. Did you eat food like this, similar to this when you were growing up?”
“We kinda ate everything. My mom cooked all kinds of things.”
“But I mean, did, did your parents, your mum… what kind of food, what was the uh, the house specialty?”
“Uh, my mom cooked a lot of things for us. She made a lot stuff with, with fish. She grew up in Portugal and, yeah we ate a lot of stuff with sigh, in English it’s uh, codfish. Cod.”
“So your mum’s Portuguese? I didn’t know you were Portuguese. Wait, does that mean you’re, are you mixed raced? Is that where your eyes come from?”
“Um… no. Uh, my mother’s not Portuguese. She’s, she’s got the Belgian nationality but, she grew up there. She was born and raised there. It’s a long, long story. But she always, she always cooked a lot of things. Food and making food for us and for family and friends, it was like another baby for her.”
“But your mum, she’s, she is Black?”
“Ha.”
“What? What’s so funny?”
“Sigh. Yeah my mom, my mom’s Black.”
“So you’re not mixed?”
“I don’t know… um, I guess, I guess my dad is but I don’t really, I don’t really think about it too much.”
“I’m sure people ask you about your eyes all the time.It’s like you’ve got two little olives for eyes.”
“Do people ask you about your eyes?”
“Me? No, why would they?”
“Are you ready for me to take your order?”
“Oh! We were so busy talking about your family, I, ha ha, didn’t even really look at the menu. Eugene what are you gonna have?”
“Tsch. I’m… I. Think. I’m. Gonna. Get… May I have the fish and the attike?”
“Attike? What’s that?”
“The attike is made with, you know cassava and it’s…”
“It reminds me of couscous a little…”
“Um, no it’s not couscous…”
“I was just gonna say it, it’s kind of in that family.”
“It’s very different from a couscous and it’s how do you say it in English… it’s.”
“It’s kind of got a sour taste, like a, it’s tangy. It’s fermented.”
“Hm. I’m not feeling that adventurous today. I’m already trying something new.”
“Go for the mix deux.”
“What does that come with? Where is that? I don’t see it.”
“It’s here. It’s with um, fried chicken and…”
“Fried chicken? In an African restaurant?”
“...yeah. Fried chicken, goat, rice, white rice, and plantains.”
“You know what, I’ll have that.”
“Okay, so the mix deux and fish and attike? Something to drink?”
“A bottle of water for the table please?”
“No, no, let’s get something else. Something… oh this looks nice. We’ll have the mojito pitcher.”
“Huff. We have two more meetings left.”
“Aw, come on Turner. We’ll make it.”
“The mojito pitcher, yes?”
“And a bottle of water. Please.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Mojito pitcher?”
“Ha ha ha ha ha. You should’ve seen your face! Come on Turner. Live a little!”
“Man, you, you… you’re gonna have to drink most of that by yourself. I don’t really drink. Maybe once every… I don’t know, but just here and there. In Berlin I was always the, kind of like the driver for everybody else.”
“Well you’re not drivin now are you? We’re walking back!”
“I’ll try it. I’ll have like one but…”
“Aw, you’re no fun. Say, since when did white women work in African restaurants? That’s not authentic! Are you sure the food’s good?”
“Ha ha. What? What kinda question is that?”
“Well, I mean, isn’t it obvious? What is she doing working here?”
“I don’t know? She’s here a lot. Maybe, maybe, I kinda thought that she might be related to the owner or something like that, but I didn’t really think about it.”
“She should be in the back somewhere. It’s not a good look. It’s like when I, when I used to live in L.A. and I would go to a french restaurant or something like that and most the cooks were Mexicans, but you never saw them. But at least the host, they were French or Francophone.”
“Well… most of the restaurants here in this neighborhood, I think they’re owned by white people. I know one place where I um, where I go to get product for my hair and there, they’re Indians.”
“I guess that’s not so unheard of in a… in this kind of neighborhood.”
“Here is your mojito pitcher, and the bottled water. Would you like me to pour?”
“Uh, that’s okay we…”
“Yes, please. No, let her!”
“Okay… and there.”
“Merci.”
“Thanks! So here. To you. Welcome!”
“Thanks. Cheers.”
“I mean, it’s been a couple of months. Are you feeling settled?”
“Y… yeah. I feel like I’m, like I’m getting well acquainted with how things function and um, looking forward to, looking forward to really doing the work.”
“But you’re, you’re happy with us?”
“Yeah. What’s, what’s, what’s up?”
“...I’m gonna be really direct here.”
“Okay…”
“Take what I’m saying as coming from a place of wanting you to do well and to, just fit in. That’s all. It’s just that maybe it’s a good idea to take things a bit…”
“Just say it Ed. What is it?”
“You’ve got a lot of potential here. We brought you in to do the work that you’re doing but you want to be careful about rubbing people the wrong way. You know, we know who you are, we’ve seen the work that you do and that’s why you were hired in the first place, but some of us, some people feel like… Sigh… how do I put this, it’s too much too fast? Maybe that’s it. Not everybody has this impression, but people do and I’m just here as a, think of me as a friend who’s giving you a friendly warning. You know what I mean?”
“Whoa, wait a ‘warning’? That sounds, that sounds…”
“Okay, okay… ‘a warning’, maybe that’s… maybe that’s a bit too strong but…”
“Yeah, cos when you say ‘warning’ and you tell me that, you say things like ‘some of us feel like’, that kind of sounds like my jo…”
“No, no it’s not there… not yet, but this, the point of this lunch is for me to… and really I was the one who was like, ‘Okay guys, let’s...’, uh, ‘Let’s talk to him now so we can redirect…’ So it’s more about course correcting than anything else, and I stepped up, I volunteered to have this conversation with you because, you know, you and I, we really understand each other I think! We know how it really is out there. There’s a reason, there’s a purpose and a place for the work that you do. You just, you just have to be careful and I think some of the missteps here, that just comes from you coming from the nonprofit sector. Maybe, maybe it’s also a German thing? But, you’re not, you’re not there anymore and we do things differently here and we expect you to understand that, to understand the culture here. I mean Germany’s a different, they’ve got real problems there you know with the history, but we’re not, at least I’d like to think, we’re not as bad as them or that the situation is not as critical.”
“...I, I’m trying to follow you but I’m struggling here. What is it that you’re trying to tell me?”
“Right! So the thing is, yes we are all about anti-racist policies and diversity, um, inclusivity and this is what we do. And yes we’re committed to it, but to come in and to only be here for what… two months, and to suggest, and that’s putting it lightly, but to suggest that we need to undergo training ourselves is not the best way to make friends here. You’re not doing yourself any favors, and in fact, there are people who are… they’re really put off by your way of working. We… they don’t feel like we need to divert resources for trainings like the ones you suggested. Our focus needs to be on policy and the trainings that we offer for other institutions. You follow me? We’re on the ground doing this work everyday. For you to suggest, to demand essentially, that we need to look at ourselves, well… if I’m being honest, some people thought it was a really ridiculous assumption, like, ‘Who is this guy who doesn’t know us and just got here’. And then there are others who thought that you insisting that we do this work, well, they thought it was really, um, ‘hostile’, was a word that was used. You just arrived. You know? Get to know us first. We hired you for a reason, but we hired you for a reason! We’re already there, and if we weren’t we would’t have been able to see the value of bringing you in.”
“Okay. Here’s the mix deux, that was for…”
“That’s for me.”
“Okay. And the fish and attike for you right?”
“Merci.”
“Bon appetit.”
“Merci.”
“Thanks. Oh this looks good. Fried chicken at an African restaurant! Let me get a picture of this before I massacre this plate.”

Eugene Martin & the waitress

“So that’s it. That’s what’s been goin on.”
“That’s a lot. That’s intense. So your dad… I mean, he lives here? I always pictured him in the U.S. because I knew you were American, and you never… you didn’t really talk about him that much. It was always your mother that I heard you talk about.”
“I don’t have… it’s because sometimes he disappears. He stops talking to… well, only me and Jerome talk to him but he won’t, he doesn’t answer his phone or his email sometimes. And if you go to his house, just to say ‘hello’ or to see if he’s, he’s still alive, if he’s not talking to you he doesn’t answer. You can see the light in his apartment and he doesn’t try to hide it or pretend that he’s not there he just doesn’t answer.”
“Okay. Okay. The story that I had was that he was some American and that he met your mother here and he left.”
“No. You’re, you’re right he is American, Afro-American, but he’s been here the whole time but not, not in the family or with the family. It’s complicated.”
“Was there a time when you and everybody else like your sister and your brother, when you all lived together?”
“There was but, I was real small. I don’t remember a lot about what happened at that time. What happened is that I have memories because, because my mother told me some things that happened and Jerome did too. But it’s kind of like when someone tells you that you used to do something when you were a kid or you used to like something, or say something. Do you remember it? Do you really remember it, or do you remember it because people told you that that’s what you used to like or something… they told you a story and you ‘make’ a memory from that story.”
“How old were you when he left?”
“I think maybe five, maybe six. Yeah maybe… because Jerome is, he’s five years older than me and he, he remembers everything. You know he, there was some things that happened with my mother. Things that he did, and her sisters came. I think that’s something that I really remember.”
“Shit, the family came? It must have been really bad.”
“Yeah, it was. My mother doesn’t, she doesn’t really talk about it. She still let him see us though. She would stay in the apartment and watch him from the window. I remember waving to her. She knew he wasn’t gonna, he wasn’t gonna do the things he did to her. He wasn’t gonna do that to us, so she let us see him when he did come around.”
“You never told me.”
“It’s not easy to, to tell, is it? It’s not something you want to say about your family, about your life.”
”Why? It’s not like it’s your fault. I think it’s a, it’s part of our legacy. When you grow up in families like we did.”
“Legacy?”
“This is the like, the way of all our fathers and it’s the pain that our mothers… it’s like they have to raise us and they have to, to… this is something our fathers leave behind. For them. The ones that leave. I’m glad my father left. My cousin’s father… he beat my auntie til… yeah. He beat her and then my cousin lived with us and then my mother had to send him back home to our grandfather’s. For me the question is how to escape from being like that. From being that person. To say no, I don’t want that. You keep it. You keep it. Keep it to yourself!”
“That’s not, this is not everyone’s experience with their father.”
“Eh… it’s not outside of the norm. Either he beats her, he leaves her, he cheats on her or sometimes all three, and then, maybe different, different combinations of the three. Different mixes. It’s all the same. Who do we know who doesn’t have that story? Or one of those stories?”
“Not everyone. Not everyone we know. I know… I’m sure… somebody… Adimchi’s father. He, I think he was a good, a good father. Adimchi worships his father!”
“Maybe there are some exceptions but, phew! It’s rare and, we don’t know everything about Adimchi’s mother and maybe what did or didn’t happen, maybe Adimchi doesn’t even know, but I’m convinced that all our fathers are the same. That’s one of the reasons why except for you, I don’t date Black men. I don’t wanna date my father.”
“Really, wow I…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’m… I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say about that.”
“Do the math yourself.”
“I just don’t want to label all Black men as being so pr…”
“As I told you, just do the math. It’s there. Maybe, maybe Adimchi’s different but most of our friends who are Black, where are their fathers? If they were there how were they there? So many of our friends who are Black women, they’re looking for fathers. They’re looking for their father, someone to treat them like their father’s treated them and their mothers.”
“Really? I don’t know if I think it’s, it’s like that. That’s… a stretch.”
“You either decide to break the cycle or you repeat it, you just end up repeating it.”
“You talk about it like it’s a rule or it’s destiny or something.”
“A ‘rule or destiny’, explain?”
“‘Black fathers are like this’, ‘Black women want to date their fathers’, or ‘They’re looking for their fathers’, and it’s not that, that formulaic. It’s not predetermined for everybody to do the same thing or follow the same, the same path. All Black women whose fathers weren’t there, or who were violent, they’re not all looking for that. No one is looking for that. And all Black men aren’t cheating on their wives, or not being in their kids’ lives. You sound… that sounds…”
“Well I know you don’t agree, but look at the people around you and what motivates them and where they came from. I didn’t know anything about your dad except that he wasn’t there.”
“So how did that, him not being there, how does that show up in my relationships, because you said it shows up in Black women, but what about us? What about Black men.”
“I think we’re better at working on it, on suppressing it.”
“What?”
“I didn’t say that we… that all of us find some sort of resolution, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s… I’m saying that we generally suppress it, or we do something about it, we make a choice or we live and we see that we had what we needed even if we didn’t have our father’s. It’s different for men, especially gay men because children and family… that’s not what drives us. That’s not what we think about. Some of us want partners and some of just want to do what we want to do.”
“Every woman is not the same, or isn’t also doing what she wants to do or trying to have a family. And you’re not even mentioning lesbians?”
“Psh. I can’t tell you anything about that. I don’t know about them. You look… I don’t know, like you, like you’re really horrified but I’m just telling you how I see it.”
“I just think this is… I’m not used to hearing another Black person, I guess, say things like that.”
“That’s because you spend so much time talking about white people when there are things that we need to do in the Black community. Who are we without, without all of these problems? When you look at us as a group, we have our own problems. We have so many problems. Why don’t we spend more time trying to solve these problems instead of wasting time and blaming other people? I think it’s because it’s easier to look at what the other person is doing, and it takes courage to look at what you’re doing. My mother and my aunt, they weren’t victims of white people’s aggression, their enemies, the people who, who really treated them like they were nothing, were men from their own communities. Friends of our family. Big men, quiet men, men who people admire, and men who are even kind of invisible. That’s why I don’t go to all of those, those ‘events’ that you send me where we’re supposed to be proud of being Black, where we’re supposed to think about unity, and how to fight ‘the white man’. What about the Black men and the Black boys who call me a faggot or throw things at me when I’m just trying to, to walk down the street or to live?! Where is the unity there? Why doesn’t it show up when they’re raising their children and they could teach them not to be homophobes but they don’t? I’m not going to those places ever. You can stop inviting me. I refuse to go and to kumbaya and pretend that everything that’s wrong with us, is because of them. We need to take responsibility for ourselves. And somewhere I know you know that I’m right.”
“It’s, it’s really sad to hear you say some of the things you just said…”
“Yeah maybe, but I don’t want to be sad about it. I want to do something about it! Or, I just want to stop hearing about it all the time, being confronted with it. I didn’t ask to be Black, I don’t think it’s something to be proud of or, or to be ashamed of, but I can’t be proud of a culture that is fixated on the violence of another community but ignores its own issues. What it does to, to children, and women and gays and lesbians, and trans people.”
“Some of what you’re saying… I do agree with. Some of it, but… Yeah there are problems in, within the Black community, but the way you talk about it, it’s like these are “Black problems”, and that’s… it can’t, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not fair.”
“It’s not… ‘fair’ to any of us that had to deal with it. It’s not fair that sometimes I have to get an Uber home because I’m afraid of the guys in my neighborhood. It’s not about being fair or unfair. Phew… I hate even hearing that, having that be brought into this conversation. Who cares if it’s not fair. It’s reality!”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes, it was really good.”
“And yours?”
“It was good, but this is not lamb.”
“Pardon?”
“This is not lamb. I didn’t order beef. I ordered the lamb.”
“Let me see. Yes. Yes, but this is the lamb!”
“No… I know what lamb is, I know what it tastes like, this isn’t lamb. Do you want to try it?”
“No. I’m not going to eat from your plate. Sir.”
“Then you can’t really be sure that I’m wrong.”
“This is a very famous restaurant. We are very well known. The chef has been for years. You ordered lamb. It’s impossible that it’s not lamb. That’s not possible that they would put beef on your plate instead of lamb.”
“But you’re not going to try it?”
“No, I’m not going to do that. I know it has to be lamb.”
“What about the chef then?”
“Sir, I don’t know what…”
“Martin!”
“What?”
“Do you want to order the lamb? If you want it, just order it. Excuse, excuse me.”
“...”
“No, why would I want to do that, we just ate. I want what I ordered or I want it taken off the bill. I’m not paying for what I didn’t get. I’m not paying for this, it’s beef. She doesn’t want to try it but she’s so sure that she’s right and I’m wrong. But I’m the only one whose tasted it so I’m the only one who really knows!”
“What if I pay for it?”
“You can do what you want but I’m…”
“Let me, let me get it. I got it.”
“I’m sorry but if he sends it out it’s lamb.”
“It’s fine. I’ll, I’ll pay for it.”
“Okay. I’m sorry but…”
“If she was sorry she would have tried it herself or taken it off the bill. You shouldn’t have to pay for somebody else’s mistake. You don’t work here. Either she wrote down the wrong thing or he sent out beef instead of lamb.”
“Well I’m paying for it now so…”
“Hm. You’re paying for it… So what are you gonna do about Michou? How is that?”
“Huff. I guess I’m on restriction.”
“Restriction?”
“He barely says anything to me on the phone, when he answers. Just the minimum, and when I ask him if he wants to talk about it, he says he doesn’t. He says he doesn’t have time to come here or for me to come there. We get into, we disagree from time to time but, it’s never been this bad before.”
“You broke rule number one of dating white men. You don’t bring them to intimate things like dinner, unless it’s like an obligatory family dinner. You just bring them to work stuff, or, well not the events that you’re always dming me to go to. I don’t know what you expected? That’s the tax you pay. Dating a white boy. You have to know what to involve them in, what you can, what you can’t disclose…”
“Disclose? You sound like it’s a business transaction or a covenant or something.”
“You can call it all that if you want… or maybe that’s how it sounds because that’s how it is, but if you want it to work you have to pick your battles. I think you want it all. You want him to do all the work and you don’t want to compromise. That’s too much. That’s asking for too much. If you bring him to the lion’s den, you have to drag him out ‘by any means necessary’, you have to lick his wounds.”
“What about give and take?”
“You’re unequally yoked. And from the beginning, that’s how it is. You’re the giver, he takes. It’s not gonna work out if you don’t know that.”
”And that’s what, that’s how you do it?”
”I know not to try to make it something that it can’t be. I wanna live in the real world.”
”I’m the last one, the last Black guy?”
”Can’t say.”
”Really?”
”I already told you about dating my father.”
”I’m not like your father? Was I like that, like him?”
”You were… you came out of nowhere and I thought you knew that it was just, just what it was.”
“So… we never had a chance really?”
“I don’t know… I, I was… I wasn’t optimistic… but I think I was open.”
“It sounds like, it sounds… you think we’re all… Black men are all the same and you avoid them, you avoid us. But you really think white men are…”
“white men can’t hurt me. I think that’s, that’s what it is. Not like Black men can. I made up my mind, I made my decision. You know it’s do you want the needle or the knife?”

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021