White Noise (short story)

The sun shined differently in Harlem.

I couldn’t place what it was. It was the same star it had always been, same number of miles away from me (something like 93 million; it had been two years since I took the SAT but I remembered that fact because I had a crush on my tutor), serving the same function it always had. Yet here, in Harlem, it felt like the sun had a different attitude.

It used to pour into our Bed-Stuy windows gently, gradually; growing with intensity as we grew more awake. By the time I’d got my eyes fully open and had snoozed my alarm for the fifth time, I was ready to welcome the light. But whatever sun they had here didn’t pour in gradually, it just opened the window once it was ready and made itself right at home. And it wasn’t the silent sun I always knew. This one brought sound effects as soon as it rose and made its unwelcome entry into my bedroom, so did the chatter of the men who hung out on the block and the glaring horns of morning traffic and the bouncing of a basketball on the pavement and the yelling of a girl cursing her boyfriend out over the phone (and his voice too, since they’re always on speaker). The sun then became no longer a gentle recommendation to start my day, but rather a violently sudden awareness of being awake and a reminder that despite whether I was ready or not, Harlem’s day had already started.

So my eyes were open.

I laid in bed with my head facing the wall, away from the window. We finally got curtains so the light wasn’t as bad this morning, but I preferred staring at the little dents I’d made in the wall over the past two months of living here and scratching the paint with my acrylic nail every day than looking at those curtains. My father called them ‘vintage,’ which meant they were hideous. They’re burgundy-andbeige paisley curtains from an old decor store he discovered on a walk around the neighborhood; I saw them from the window and just had to pop in. So many little things to discover when you just explore around here, Jayna.

I didn’t want to discover or explore. I wanted to go home.

“Next week is too damn late, P. Run me my money yesterday!” A familiar voice was shouting outside loud enough to travel up two stories and into my room. I’d never seen her face but I always heard her: experiencing the same emotion, at the same volume. Different problems, always P.

I turned over to look at the window and found one of the curtains was still open. I stomped over to close it, stomped back to my bed, and threw the covers over my head. If I could not have quiet, I was going to have darkness.

Then another sound entered, this one from one story down. It was a pounding coming from the floor, which meant Ms. Leary was knocking her ceiling with her broom again. I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh that felt like it lasted minutes.

This time when I got out of bed, I threw the covers off with a force that sent them across the room. I walked to the door, swung it open, and was already taking steps into the hall when I saw my dad standing there.

“Oh, I was just coming to get you. I made something.” He said this with a mischievous smile on his face and a wooden spoon in hand, glancing from it to me and back.

I sighed. “I’m not hungry, Dad.”

“How do you know if you’re hungry or not? You just woke up.”

“So how about I wait and take a second to find out first?”

“By the time you start feeling hungry you’ve already waited too long, Jay.” He spoke these words like I’d never heard them before, but I had, and several times. His mother used to say it to him when he was little and defiant (“much like you now”) and he’d say it to me when I would lock myself in my room on mornings when he and mom were arguing. I think he felt like it was easier for them to be at least a little nice to each other when I was in the room, but it just made things silent and awkward.

“And weren’t you just heading out of your room anyway?” He continued.

“Yeah. I was,” I paused and pointed downstairs, “about to follow up on a noise complaint.”

My dad smiled and nodded silently, then dropped his voice to a low whisper. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. I’ll blame it on me—say I was hopping around your room because I couldn’t contain my excitement about how good these…”

He glanced at the spoon again, then back to me, his face covered with the grin of a child waiting to be found in a game of hide and seek.

“Pancakes?”

“Pancakes! Whew, girl, you better come down and get some of these pancakes before they disappear.” He started down the hallway. “How’d you guess? You smell ‘em from up here?”

I followed behind him, laughing. “There’s literally batter on the spoon.”

He looked at the spoon and shook his head. “My baby is too sharp. Can’t nothing get past you.”

“Doesn’t take a Harvard degree to figure that one out,” I mumbled.

“Speaking of that,” he started while we walked down the steps.

“Can we not?”

“What, speak of it? I try not to most of the time, JJ, but I’m just holding you to your goals. If you don’t start sending some applications soon, one gap year will turn into two and two years ain’t a gap. It’s a change of plans.”

“Good morning.”

We stopped at the second floor and saw Ms. Leary standing in her doorway, waiting. Tight-lipped, gray-haired, death-glaring little old lady. Annoying as they usually were.

I returned the greeting without looking at her and proceeded downstairs while my father chatted with her for a bit, probably listening to her complaints about me and reminding her that she’ll get the rent next Monday on time as always. I tried to exchange as few words with her as possible; she was generally unpleasant and, to be fair, so was I. But my father was the kind of person who could melt the unpleasantness in anyone with a few goofy jokes and an equally as goofy smile. (Except my mother.)

Downstairs there were indeed pancakes sitting on the kitchen table, and suddenly I confirmed that I was hungry. I grabbed syrup from the refrigerator and decided to wait for him at the table, listening to the sounds of Lenny Kravitz’s music coming from the record player. My father was also the kind of person who, if you knew him already or even met him a few times and you found out he listened to Lenny Kravitz, you’d go ‘Oh. That makes a lot of sense.’

He came downstairs finally and into the kitchen. “You didn’t have to wait.”

I shrugged. “You handled it?”

Dad smiled and nodded toward upstairs. “Ball of joy, that one.”

He sat across from me at the table and we started digging in. With a full mouth, he started again: “Like I was saying, Jay, it’s no pressure,” he stopped to sip some water and swallow, “but you graduated high school at the top of your class. You’re too intelligent to not be continuing your studies.”

I kept my eyes on my plate. “The plan was always to take a gap year after graduation.”

“Yeah, but then, you know. Things changed.”

Oh, right, you mean when you and mom got a divorce and she left us for Europe and a white man. This thought was true but the words didn’t need to be said, so I kept them.

“I just needed some time to recoup. It would’ve been pretty hard starting a semester while everything in my life was so…unsettled.”

“And I get that, Jay. But look!” He opened his arms and gestured around us, at the kitchen we sat in and the living room behind us and everything in this dusty old brownstone that, excluding decor, was prettier on the outside than the inside. “We can settle now. We’re settled. We got this place, I should be getting a better job soon, you could even apply to Columbia. There’s only one Ivy in this city and it’s closer to you now than where we lived before. Ain’t that perfect?”

“No, Dad. It is not.”

“Okay, fine, then it doesn’t have to be Columbia. Where’s better? You can get in anywhere you want.”

I shrugged and kept looking down. “I don’t know. Oxford.”

There was just the sound of Lenny Kravitz and silence. When I looked up my father was twisting the fork around his plate. It was rare that something bothered him or hurt his feelings, which is why it was always so obvious. He’d always get quiet and start fidgeting with something, acting like he didn’t even hear whatever was said.

I sighed. “Okay, dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t wanna go to England and be with mom and that guy and his speedboat. But I also don’t want to be here. And going to school near here will just make me have to stay here longer, and then I’ll get comfortable and end up spending the rest of my life here and I’ll be bitter and aggravated by the end of it, like,” I gestured toward upstairs where Ms. Leary lived. “I don’t want that for me.”

Dad nodded slowly and then tilted his head slightly to the side. “I see. Sounds like you’re scared you’re going to end up liking it here.”

“No, I’m scared to end up stuck here,” I said. Here or anywhere, really. That was the whole point of taking a gap year; I wanted to explore life for a bit, enrich myself with experiences, travel a little, figure out what I wanted to do. Besides the fact that we couldn’t even afford to do any of that anymore, I also didn’t feel like it. And there was no time.

So while my friends from high school were experiencing their freshman year of college, I was pretending to be enjoying a restful hiatus. In reality, I was listening to my parents argue every day waiting for them to realize they needed a divorce, then watching our money deplete from said divorce, then dealing with my mother who’d found a love strong enough to bring her to a different continent while mine and my father’s wasn’t enough to keep her on this one. Then I watched my father go through the process of selling a house we could no longer afford, finding a new place, begging and pleading with him not to drag me all the way uptown.

Obviously, I didn’t beg hard enough.

“Jay, stuck is a mindset.” As soon as the words left his lips, I was already rolling my eyes. “No, really. I mean, sometimes you’re stuck somewhere, and sometimes it just feels like you’re stuck because you think you would rather be somewhere else.”

“I would rather be in our old place.”

“Because you knew and loved that place.” He took a moment to glance out the window. “I knew I wanted to end things with your mom maybe a year before the divorce. You know that?”

I sat up for this. He never liked talking about it. “It wasn’t hard to tell. You guys used to get along well and then you just started fighting all the time.”

“Yeah, it was rough. And I knew something wasn’t working. But I didn’t just up and leave. I stayed in the marriage and tried to re-explore it. I wanted to discover what was wrong—was I really stuck, or did I just feel stuck?”

“And I’m guessing it wasn’t the latter.”

He nodded. “Of course. But I wouldn’t have known that if I just left the minute things felt wrong, instead of sticking around to find out what feels wrong and why.”

“I feel like you’re trying to make a point.”

“I feel like you know what it is.” He smiled.

“What, that I need to give Harlem a chance?”

“Let Harlem give you a chance,” he said. “I was going to take you out today, plan a fun Saturday with Dad. But I think maybe you should go out today—and I don’t mean running downtown with your little friends. Stay in the area, walk around, let it inspire you. Give it a couple hours.”

It sounded like the very last thing I wanted to do. But I was curious that he was giving me a free get-out-of-hanging-out-with-dad card. “And if I don’t like it, then what?”

“If you come back here still feeling the same, I’ll never bring up college again. And I’ll start looking for places in Brooklyn, too.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“No BS. But you gotta really do it. It’s not about where we are, it’s about learning how to be open to the circumstances. Or giving the circumstances a chance to grow into something you know and love.” He spoke these words in a tone more serious than his usual playful one. “All you’ve gotten to know since we’ve been here is that bedroom.”

Yeah, and I still don’t love that, either. Again, true but unnecessary, so I stayed silent.

Despite not loving my room or anything about this house, I still wanted to stay in it instead of walking around all day. But the deal was too sweet to pass up, and I could tell he wasn’t bluffing.

“Fine,” I put out my hand for him to shake. “I’ll do your little experiment. But we both already know what’s going to happen.”

I started getting ready to go upstairs. “Give the future a chance, Jay,” he called to me. “Give it a chance to happen before you start predicting it.”

I didn’t answer this. But I did pause on the steps, ruminating over what he said earlier.

“Dad?”

“What’s up?”

“Do you regret it?”

He stopped tidying the table and looked up. “What?”

“Waiting,” I said. “You said you knew you wanted to leave a year before the divorce. Do you regret wasting a year to end up at the same conclusion that you already knew?”

I didn’t know if it would be an uncomfortable question, but I knew he’d answer it anyway. He placed a hand on his hip and then smiled at me.

“Nah,” he said. “I never regret the scenic route.”

It was early summer but outside felt like a mid-August day. I’d thrown two bottles of water in a tote bag along with some other miscellaneous items and came outside with no real intentions. The assignment was a passive one; I just had to let life happen to me for a few hours and come back home.

I started by turning left instead of right. Almost every other time I left our house I’d turn right towards the train, but my father would probably say there’s a whole world to the left waiting to be explored. And if I was going to get what I wanted most—to go back to Brooklyn and for him to shut up about college forever—the least I could do was give the experiment a full effort.

The left was boring at first. Lively, in the way the area usually was, but unengaging. It was different hearing the sounds of the city when you were among them; from indoors, each voice or horn or siren was an individual instrument played abruptly and out-of-tune. Out here, though, everything blended together like an orchestra—so smoothly that it became white noise; almost nothing at all.

“Mama, I love your hair.”

The voice that cut through the noise came from a man waiting at the bus stop behind me. I turned around, taken aback by the reminder that I was present and perceptible, and flashed a smile. “Thank you.”

I’d already started turning to walk away when he said, “No, thank you for having it that way!”

I looked back to smile again and saw two other ladies at the bus stop smiling at me too.

After that, something about the walk changed. It felt different now—of course, now I was stealing glances at my hair in store windows and had swiped some lip gloss on to confirm that I at least looked presentable to the world I was attempting to explore. But I decided to take another left to follow the pattern I’d started, and this left was different from the first. Not boring, but quieter. So quiet that I was curious what the source of the silence was and why there wasn’t any of it on our block.

I’d stumbled onto a block with brick row houses running from end to end: on the right the houses were all yellow with white limestone trim, and on the left they were red with brown or green trim. All the houses were back-to-back, stuck together like one big, long mansion on either side. In between the yellow and red, a sense of calm sat in the middle that lulled everything to a stillness. The leaves on the trees didn’t move, no cars came down the block, even I had unknowingly stopped in front of one of the yellow houses to stare. They all had to have been built long before this era, back when there was still architectural detail from the designs around the trim to the floral pattern of the front stoop railings.

As if someone had heard my thoughts, a voice cut through the silence this time from behind me. Once I heard it, as if it popped the bubble the calm had encased me in, I slowly became aware of other sounds. There were voices coming from the house that I stood watching in a reverie, another person’s loafers were clicking down the block and headed toward the house, and that person paused to nod at the person behind me before going inside.

I don’t know why I expected to see someone older; possibly because an older man had complimented me earlier and something about this block made me feel like everything within it held an ancient mystery. But he couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than me; he certainly wasn’t all that much taller. Still, I didn’t hear whatever the question he’d asked was, but I knew the inquiry was delivered with confidence. I could see it in his stance, the tilt of his head while he looked at me like he was watching a movie and trying to recall the actress’ name, the half-step closer he took to me to repeat the question.

“Are you here for the exhibit?”

“Oh, uh, no. I didn’t know there was an exhibit.”

“Oh. So then what brings you by, uh…” he gestured toward me with an inquiring eye.

“Jayna.”

He smirked. “So like, Jane but black?”

I frowned and fought against a laugh. “That one’s a first, I guess.”

This made him laugh; or maybe he was laughing at himself. “Okay, Jayna, what brings you by?”

“Um…” I looked around me at the houses, glued together in unity like they were standing for a shared cause. Immovably committed to a purpose; still, yet moving together. These houses had a presence, an aim, a goal.

What did I have?

“Nothing really,” I told him. “I was just taking a walk.”

“Well, this definitely isn’t the worst place to accidentally stumble upon.”

His eyes scanned around us and I followed his gaze. At the end of the block, near the last house there was a gated alleyway with a sign on the brick that read Private Road: Walk Your Horses.

“Yeah, what is this place?”

“This is Striver’s Row,” he announced with a smile. “That is my grandpa’s old house. The exhibition is called Soul of the Row—it features a bunch of his never-released paintings.”

I nodded. “And you?”

“Oh, I’m Divine.” He gave me a warm, firm hand to shake.

“So like the word, but a name?”

Divine nodded with a close-lipped smile as if he was impressed. “Jayna got jokes.”

I shrugged and chuckled with him.

“You can call me Vine, though. I prefer it.”

“Well it’s nice meeting you Vine.” Behind us, two women were walking out of the house. One of them stopped to give Vine a warm smile and a thank you, and after them a man walking in paused near the house and then proceeded once Vine nodded to confirm he was indeed at the right place.

“I gotta get back inside. I’m working the exhibit today so, you know—answering questions, walk-through tours, the works,” he said to me. “Would you like one?”

“What, a tour?”

He nodded. I hesitated, looking inside at the people perusing the art who were clearly the types tasteful enough to have even heard about something like this in the first place. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a museum.

“Say yes before that lady asks me,” Vine said, gesturing with his eyes toward an older woman up the block that was headed for the house. “I’d rather give you the tour than her.”

I laughed. “Yes.”

______________________________________________

Inside was a townhouse transformed into a gallery. Because all the houses’ exteriors were identical, I wasn't expecting inside to have so much character and detail and space. There was a chandelier at the foyer, four brown rosewood pillars leading into the main room downstairs, and a fireplace in that room with a large portrait of Vine’s grandfather above it. It sat next to a poster with the title of the exhibit, his name (Max Wailer), and a blurb describing the work. As Vine led me toward the spiral staircase and up the stairs, he was giving me the information that was on the sign and more.

“So my grandpa was born and raised in the Bahamas. His father worked as a handyman but had the skills of an architect. He got a job opportunity helping with the development of Striver’s Row when they first started, so they moved up to Harlem. My grandpa’s mother would watch him and the developers’ kids during the day while the men worked, and she eventually became really close with the family that hired her and her husband. So they all remained friends even after the houses were built, and by the time my grandpa was older and well-known for his paintings, the owners of this house were old and on their way out. In their will, they left the house to my grandpa since they knew him since he was a kid fresh to this country, and they knew he’d make good use of the space for his art.” Vine explained all of this with the smooth brevity of a trained tour guide, but with sincerity in each detail.

“Wait, question. What is Striver’s Row?”

He paused in front of me when we were halfway up the steps. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I’m from Brooklyn. My dad and I just moved to this area.”

“And let me guess: you didn’t get past 110th Street that much before, huh?” Vine chuckled at this, knowing he didn’t have to wait for my response. “A lot of people don’t know what it is, even in Harlem. But this is a historical district that was first designed in the late 19th century. This developer had the idea to create a perfect, secluded neighborhood for white people with money to isolate themselves from the world.”

“That’s what your great grandfather was helping to build?”

Vine nodded as we reached the top of the stairs. “See, when Harlem started getting too black for the whites, they left and the houses weren’t selling. They were empty for a while, until the developer finally gave in and started selling them to black people.”

“But your grandpa got this house for free.”

Vine waved to someone passing by and placed his hand on my shoulder gently, barely, to lead me through the space. There were maybe ten people moving around, gazing at the paintings and pausing to a slower stroll when they were near Vine to listen in on what he was telling me.

“Yeah,” he continued once we settled near the back wall. “The only black people at the time who could afford to buy on these blocks were the uppity ones, so this became a district of black politicians, musicians, artists, professionals. And Max Wailer.”

He pointed at the painting across from us: the scene looked like this house, on this block, with a skinny young man in green pants sitting on the front stoop while people walked on the sidewalk in front of him. The title card next to it read self-portrait.

“He was from a different country. Then he started living here, on a block he’d seen develop since he was a kid, and now felt unfamiliar in the community. Everybody on Striver’s Row was somebody, and my grandpa was…still striving.” A few people had gathered around me now, listening to his story. “So he wanted to build a presence—not only a name for his art, but he wanted to contribute something to the Row. He turned this house into a gallery space where he would showcase his work and invite the neighbors for drinks and refreshments. Then that turned into people coming by to have their portrait painted by him. Then families started coming by, and before you knew it almost every black person of some importance in New York City had sat for a portrait from him. So my grandfather became important too.”

As Vine explained this, I looked over the paintings on the walls with new curiosity. They were beautiful from what I could see before, but now they felt alive. Emotional. Tangible.

I saw the faces of mothers and fathers, congressmen, saxophonists, surgeons. Every one of them portrayed with a gaze that seemed to follow you around the room; like they were painted not to be frozen in time, but to feel and appear immortal.

“When my grandpa died, he left his family this home and requested that we continue to use it how he did—to offer something to the Row,” Vine spoke to the room now, as most people had now gathered around us in the space. “So The Wailer House has been a center for black arts and community programming for the past fifteen years. This exhibit focuses on the portraits you may know and love by my grandpa, and some of his rarer work that I personally love. I think some of these pieces really prove why he was affectionately known as the Soul of the Row. Thank you for coming to support and please, continue enjoying the art.”

Vine was met with claps and thanks, and people scattered around the space with their newfound context and inspiration. He followed behind me as I walked from one painting to the next, studying the ones that weren’t portraits. Like the self-portrait they were all scenic, involving several characters and different points of action, and the scene was always the Striver’s Row houses. The paintings depicted familiar slices of African-American life in the 20th century, set to the backdrop of yellow, red, or brown row houses. The houses in the paintings stood united as they do today, a solid foundation for the strivers’ worlds to unfold.

“So you like these pieces more than the portraits?” I turned around to ask Vine.

“I don’t know if I like them more,” he took a step closer to the one I was looking at, two girls eating melting ice cream cones on the stoop of one of the houses. “I like the portraits too, but I think they reveal how he saw people. And pieces like this show how he saw the world, and everything in it. Including himself.”

He nodded toward the self-portrait before continuing: “And like I said, the portraits were kind of a means to an end. They were beautiful and he enjoyed doing them, mostly for what they did for other people, and they gave him status in this community. But the other pieces had no function to serve. He created them because he simply wanted to, so much that he never even bothered to officially release them.”

Vine spoke of his grandfather like he was speaking of himself, with a certainty about his thoughts and intentions as though he was the one who lived them. Or he’d studied them enough to feel they were his own.

“You said this has been The Wailer House since your grandpa died, for the last fifteen years. So you’ve been working here ever since?”

“Yup. Since I was nine,” he let out a light laugh. “It wasn’t real work. My whole family is involved with managing it, and the adults handle all the programming stuff while the young people got to do things like reception, walk-throughs, cooking, tidying up, handing out flyers. They’d just give us busy-work in between what we were really there to do, which is study art and become little experts of black art history.”

“Ah, so you’re an expert.”

Vine scoffed. “I wouldn’t claim that, no. My family just made sure that we grew up with an awareness and understanding of art, enough to have a creative perspective that we could use to offer something to the world. Like my grandfather did. The coming of age, if you wanna call it that, in my family is when you’re given the chance to curate an exhibition at the House. That’s when you graduate to actually working.”

I looked around the paintings in the space and back at Vine. “Wait—so you curated this?”

“Yeah, this is my first one.”

I laughed at how humbly he said it, at how poorly he hid his true enthusiasm. “Congratulations, curator. This is so amazing. I can’t believe your family has such a rich connection to the arts.”

“What about you? Tell me about your family.”

“Talking about mine would be a lot less interesting.”

Vine stood beside me and leaned his shoulder against the wall, locking us into the space and the conversation. “Humor me.”

I sighed. “My parents met while they were in college in Chicago and had me in New York when they moved back here after graduation. They got divorced last year. My mom went to England to live with her new boo. My dad sold his place in Bed-Stuy in March. And now we’re here.”

“That is definitely interesting,” Vine said. “Have you been enjoying Harlem so far?”

I paused on the question, thinking about what my father said. It was the first time he, or the mission he sent me on, even crossed my mind since getting here.

“It’s…okay,” I said. Vine gave me a probing look. “I guess I’m still finding my rhythm out here. What do you like to do for fun, besides curate?”

“Eat.” He answered without hesitation, and was surprised when I started laughing. “I’m for real!”

“Everyone has to eat. Food can be delicious but, like, eating isn’t an activity you do for fun.”

Vine grinned at me like I’d just given him a challenge. “It is in Harlem.”

————————————————————

I’d only been out to eat in Harlem twice—both times with my father. The outings were his idea and the restaurants were selected by him, so they were of course the kinds of low-lit, obscure spots with niche cuisine and tiny portions that he used to frequent in Brooklyn.

I had a feeling that Vine had different tastes from my father, though. (And that was interesting to me since, on our walk from the Row while he talked about his grandfather’s life with a charming admiration, I couldn’t help but think of how much he reminded me of my father’s favorite musician; somehow, that connection made him feel easier to talk to than he already was.)

My suspicions were confirmed when Vine stopped in front of a place I would’ve thought was a party venue if I didn’t know any better. A big green-and-white The Swing sign out front had me looking for swings, until I focused on the music glaring from the outdoor speakers and recognized the genre.

“They have performances here every Saturday,” Vine leaned down and spoke these words into my ear and I still barely heard him. It was loud, but I was really lost in gazing at the band of women performing. There were three of them, all wearing red lipstick and poplin dresses, singing and dancing to their song with enough flair for Broadway. The tables and chairs in the outdoor seating area where they were performing were all pushed up toward the front, forming a mini-crowd in front of the women. The middle one flashed a bright smile in my direction, probably as part of her performance, but I chose to think she was looking at me and smiled back.

A woman tapped my shoulder and I turned around to see the hostess holding up two fingers to Vine and I. He nodded and gestured inside, so she led us through the doors to a table right against the window. We were mere feet away from the action; the glass separating us from the performance dulled the noise enough for us to use our inside voices.

Vine exhaled. “I hope this wasn’t too long of a walk from the gallery.”

“No, I’m not lazy,” I laughed. “I hope I’m not taking you away from working the exhibit.”

He shook his head and waved the idea away with his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not the only one working there today. And I would’ve come here even if I didn’t see you today anyway.” I nodded, and he quickly added with a grin: “No offense.”

“None taken.” I was looking out the window at the women who were performing another song, jumping into and away from the microphone in unison on pace with the rhythm. “This place seems like a good time.”

I expected to hear Vine’s mellow voice, but when the sound didn’t come I turned from the window to find him holding a camera over his eye, aimed at me. He released the shutter as soon as I faced him.

“Woah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I just wasn’t, uh…ready for that.”

“No, I’m not sorry for taking your photo,” Vine said. I raised an eyebrow at this stranger and his matter-of-factness. “I think candids are the ones most worth taking. I’m sorry because I wasn’t entirely honest before.”

“When?”

“When you asked what I do for fun.” Vine stood up from the table now and I watched him wondering if I was supposed to stand too. He hung the camera strap over his neck, where I got a better study of it—an analog man, unsurprisingly—and tugged on it with a smile. “I don’t just come here to eat.”

Before I could question him about what he meant or why he took my photo, a waitress making her way to our table interrupted with menus and water. As she placed everything down, Vine said something to her that I couldn’t hear. She nodded, and then just as suddenly as she’d appeared he floated away, leaving me with nothing more than a squeeze on the shoulder before making his way outside. I watched him enter the crowd with his camera in hand, sliding carefully around the garden like he was tracking prey. He stopped in the middle, angled his camera over the shoulder of the person in front of him, assumed the position, and clicked.

He did this a few more times. He didn’t shoot like a predator; the singers leaned into him when his lens was on them, giving him eye contact or turning up the expressiveness of their performance. He moved around the garden with effortless precision, fitting himself into spaces in the crowd that seemed to be waiting for him, finding the perfect point-of-view to compose the moment like a renaissance painting.

“Feeling ready, sugar? I can give you some more time if you need it.”

I hadn’t realized the waitress was standing there. I picked up a menu and started trying to scan over the options. “Oh, uh…I don’t know. I guess I should wait for my friend.”

She gave a warm smile that reminded me of my mother. “Divine don’t need you waiting on him. He’ll be out there ‘til they’re done.”

“Does he come here often?”

The waitress nodded. “Ever since his mama used to bring him when he was little. That was every now and then, when the family would come by. But he comes on his own every weekend, sometimes Friday and Saturday.”

“Are there performers on Fridays too?”

“Yeah, that’s open mic night, so anyone can come in and perform. If people are really in the know, half the reason they even want to perform here is for a chance to be in one of Vine’s pictures.”

“So he’s kind of a big deal, then?”

She nodded immediately, like it was an easy question. “The Wailers have a deep history with the culture around here. Knowing that family, these people think being in one of his pictures means they might end up in the Smithsonian one day.”

She looked out the window at him and I followed her gaze, thinking about the fact that I was now in one of his pictures too. I was helpless against the permanence of that fact and I didn’t even know what it meant.

“Do you perform?”

I looked back at her. “What, like, sing?”

“Yeah, you seem like the type. You got the pretty face for it.” I blushed, and she continued: “You should sign up for open mic next Friday.”

To make the suggestion before receiving any confirmation that I actually did sing, or had any interest in doing any kind of performance, was presumptuous. But the way she said it made it sound more like a recommendation than a suggestion—based in fact, much like the way a doctor would recommend I exercise once a day. Or the way my mother would recommend that I sing at our holiday party every year because the guests “looked forward” to hearing my voice, and more importantly because it was the only thing at the parties (besides the cocktails) that would put a real smile on my father’s face.

“Jayna.”

I turned around to see Vine standing near the entrance. I hadn’t noticed him come back in. “What’s up?”

“They’re about to do their last song.”

I could tell by his face that this was an invitation, and it was not one I was going to refuse. I thanked the waitress, who placed our menus on our chairs to reserve the table, and went to follow Vine back to the garden. I didn’t know what we were doing here together or why, and it was difficult to form a real opinion on Vine or discern his opinion on me, but I knew there was something about the way he seemed to move through the world that made me want to move a little bit like that too.

On our way to the garden, I stopped at a clipboard on the hostess’ desk. There was one last available slot on the sign-up sheet for next week’s open mic; I wrote my name in it so quickly that Vine didn’t even notice.

————————————————————

By the time Vine was walking me home, the sun had just started to set. We chatted through our stroll under the sky’s pink glow, the sound of jazz still ringing in our ears. I felt like a kid coming home after the streetlights came on, the way the day seemed to have passed by me in a sudden hurry.

“So how long have you been doing photography?”

He drew in a breath at the question and looked up in the air for the answer. “Maybe…I don’t know, since I was around ten?” He paused after this, still thinking, and then: “I’ve been interested in it since the first time I saw my grandpa’s paintings.”

“His paintings made you interested in photography?”

“Of course they did. I mean, you saw the portraits. He was doing them at a time when there was access to cameras, yet he chose to paint instead. Same with the more scenic paintings—he could’ve just taken photos of the Row if he wanted to. But they called him the Soul of the Row for a reason, you know? He really was just trying to capture the soul of Harlem. The soul that spoke to him in what he saw around him every day. The paintings were his way of speaking back.”

Vine opened his arms out when he said the soul of Harlem, as if trying to hold the vastness of the summer evening streets around us. “I know a photo could never be a painting, but that’s kind of why I do it. As an experiment to see if I can create something in this medium with as much soul as my granddad had in his.”

Vine talked about his grandfather as if he were still alive, even while using past tense. I’d been thinking all day about how significant a person who no longer existed on earth was to his identity, how someone who existed in the past had so much impact on his present and his future. I often felt like I was floating aimlessly through space, prematurely severed from an invisible cord. But Vine had an ancestor to be his anchor, firmly grounding him in place.

“What about you? What speaks to your soul?”

It was as if he knew I was already pondering it in my mind, the differences between us; our disparate answers to that question probably chief among them.

“I don’t know.”

Vine frowned like he didn’t believe me. We made a turn and were now on my block, and I noticed myself slowing my pace. “Well, what do you like to do for fun?”

“A lot of things,” I said, not remembering what any of them were or the last time I did them. “I think I’m one of those people who can enjoy anything as long as it’s enjoyable. Does that make sense?”

Vine was following my pace now. “Yeah. You probably go through hobbies like phases.”

“Something like that.” We let the pause settle for a moment while we stepped one foot after another down the block, careful not to rush the time that we could feel running out. I was stirring thoughts more than savoring the moment. I continued, “I enjoy a variety of things. But I don’t know what speaks to my soul, really.”

“Have you listened?”

Vine held a stare with me after he asked the question, like he knew it would confuse me and he wanted me to find clarity in his eyes. I did understand, but I wasn’t ready to answer. I didn’t know how.

We came up to the middle of the block now and there on the front stoop of our building was my father, reading a book with an ice cup in hand. I quietly thanked him for having his attention elsewhere; the last thing I needed was for him to notice Vine and invite him in to have a glass of wine and explore his Harlem Renaissance art collection.

“This is me,” I nodded toward the house.

He nodded. “Well, it was a delightful surprise encountering you today, Jane but black.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you for showing me…everything that you did. I feel like I saw a lot today.”

Vine stood still for a moment, and then pulled me in for a hug. A gentle, one-armed, so-light-you-barely-noticed-it hug. “Focus on what you hear, too. Listen for what speaks and you’ll find it.”

He gave me the stare again, as if holding space for the thoughts that must be floating through my mind, and then started away. “You know where to find me.”

I did. And I watched him walk back in that direction, the same way I’d gone this morning without much of a second thought to where it would take me.

“Vine?”

He turned at the sound of my voice, standing a few feet from me, and nodded to me.

“Why’d you take my photo earlier?”

Vine smiled like he’d been waiting for me to ask, and then started turning around like he wasn’t going to answer. Before he fully walked away, he called to me:

“I heard something.”

And then he walked away, into the sunset and toward Striver’s Row.

I turned around and my father’s eyes were peeking at me over his book.

“Did you miss me?” I opened the gate and started climbing the steps, flashing him a cheeky smile.

“Who’s that?”

“Don’t start.”

“I’ve never seen him before.”

“I’m going upstairs, Dad.”

“So your friend can walk you to your old man’s house, but your old man can’t know who he is?”

I paused at the top of the steps, where he was seated, and sighed. The corner of his mouth curled the way it did when he felt his facetious attempts to annoy me were successful. “Actually, you can,” I said. “Come to The Swing next Friday night.”

His face took on a surprised expression. “Well, alright then.” I walked past him, up the last step and went to open the door. Just as I was about to head inside, he added: “So today worked, then? You starting to like Harlem?”

I turned around to look not at him but at the last few pink clouds left, thinking about how the sky remains the sky no matter where home is.

“I guess it’s starting to like me.”