Playing Hard To Get

—Pamela Sneed

The Freedom Project—this was plainly written in thick black ink on a sign, which looked like a stretched-out piece of loose-leaf paper. It was literally tacked above the new doorway of an old building at the middle of a slender street a few blocks south of the Apollo Theatre.

Stepping out of a gypsy cab she had to get at the foot of the Harlem River Bridge after the yellow and black she’d rode through midtown refused to go any farther, Tamia looked from the words above the doorway to those on the card she was holding to confirm that this was the place. She stepped back and looked again, this time at the entire building and then back at the card. THE FREEDOM PROJECT.

While she hadn’t really thought of what the place might look like, somehow the haphazard sign and dated brick exterior seemed like less than they should be. The name made it sound like it would be tall and slender like an arrow headed toward heaven, demanding freedom, but it was actually shorter and wider than the other buildings on the street. Sunk between two brownstones, it looked like a pudgy child standing with its parents.

A thick brown-skinned girl with a short, fire-red Afro walked out of the door and held it open.

“You going inside, sister?” she asked and Tamia looked to see that the girl, who might’ve been fifteen or sixteen years old, was wearing a too-tight black T-shirt that read DAUGHTER OF A FIELD SLAVE in bold white letters.

“Yes,” Tamia said, reading the words a second and then third time before the girl passed off the open door to her.

“It’s hot, right?” the girl said, smiling as the sets of wooden hoops in her ears clacked together.

“What?”

“My T-shirt.” The girl held out the bottom of her shirt. “I want people to know who I am. No joke. Right?”

“Sure. It’s no joke.” Tamia smiled, but really she was thinking the shirt was maybe two sizes too small and the words just too…much. Distasteful. Everybody knew her ancestors were slaves; why did she need to remind them as she walked down the street?

“Peace, my sister,” the girl said brightly, walking to the curb to cross the street.

“Goodbye,” Tamia responded.

Inside, Tamia found what was set up as a front room or maybe a gift shop, empty of everyone, but full of everything possible. A recording of a woman singing in a different language above African drums provided a soundtrack for a dizzying mishmash of African face masks and statues, books with red, black, and green spines, dashikis, koffis, a vat of shea butter, and racks of incense and vials of Muslim oils. Toward the back, Tamia saw that the girl outside must’ve gotten her T-shirt inside, because tacked to a wall was black fabric reading in white letters SON OF A FIELD SLAVE, DAUGHTER OF A HOUSE SLAVE, WARNING: EDUCATED BLACK MAN, and 1/10 OF THE TALENTED. There was even one with a picture of Malcolm X standing at a window and one of two black men Tamia didn’t know were Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising gloved Black-Power fists on the podium of the 1968 Olympics. A sign revealed that the shirts were $10 apiece and Tamia thought the whole bunch of them were cheaper than her purse. If only midtown fashion was so simple. And either everyone inside of the Freedom Project was wearing Malik’s cologne or wherever he was in the building, it was just that strong that Tamia could smell it where she was standing. The scent of frankincense and myrrh was so heavy, Tamia now thought it smelled more like a piece of wood burning in a stove.

“Can I help you, sister?” Tamia heard and she turned from the shirts to a woman who’d appeared behind a makeshift counter that was really a jewelry case. While she might’ve been lighter than Troy, her hair was just as red as the girl’s outside, but it was locked and long; the edges brushed against her elbows. Tamia never cared for natural hair; to her it always looked dirty, wild, and just unkempt. But she was in awe of how long black women’s hair grew when it was locked. No matter what she did, hers simply wouldn’t go past her shoulders without an additional Indian track, but she’d seen locked hair dangling at ankles and tied up in massive buns.

“I’m looking for Richard Holder.”

“Richard Holder? Ain’t no Richard Holder here…” The woman looked vacant, as if she hadn’t heard the name before and maybe Tamia was speaking another language. She adjusted the fitted red and yellow African dress she was wearing.

“He’s the director—the…” Tamia looked down at the card and then at the same time the woman said, “Malik?!

“Oh, you mean Brother Malik. Why didn’t you say that? He’s upstairs teaching.”

“Well, his name is,” Tamia started as the woman, who was maybe ten or twelve years her senior, stepped from behind the counter, presenting shoeless feet, “Richard—”

“I’m Sister Kali,” she said, shooing the card away and extending her arms.

Tamia thought she was trying to shake her hand, so she put her hand out, but Kali’s arms went wider and pulled Tamia into her.

“I’m…Tamia…Tamia Dinkins,” she said awkwardly with her arms at her sides in Kali’s tight embrace. She looked at Kali’s ear and beneath it was a tattoo of a cross with a loop at the top. Later, Tamia would notice that a golden earring of the same symbol was in her nose.

“Welcome, Sister Tamia. I can take you to him.”

By the time Kali managed to lead Tamia to where Malik was finishing teaching a capoeira class to a room full of bony, brown-skinned boys, Tamia was carrying a cup of organic carrot and ginseng juice she originally had turned down and was wearing a tiny bracelet of crimson and cream beads Kali told her came from Ghana. Her hand held tight as they walked through the people-filled hallways of the building, Tamia thought of how familiar Kali seemed with her. They’d met less than fifteen minutes ago, but she’d called Tamia “sister” at least a dozen times and smiled so pointedly that Tamia saw in her eyes a reflection of herself that looked like an old friend, a neighbor. Her ener

gy was intrusive and annoying, almost like an old lady’s, but in her voice Tamia heard kindness, a well-meaning she almost never heard beyond the 3Ts.

“Look at the king,” Kali said. They were standing in the doorway of Malik’s classroom. In the middle of a circle of topless boys, who were wearing white martial arts trousers, was Malik, wielding a long oak stick so slowly, it seemed as if he was dancing with it. He crouched down to the floor and flipped it over his shoulders, jabbing it into the air so forcefully, Tamia could see every muscle in his arm puckering out in submission to the movement. As he came up slowly, like moving pictures stapled together, the sweat puddled at his brown throat ran down his chest. And while Tamia looked most dignified in her dignity-filled suit, her thoughts were far from it. Her open mouth and hardened nipples told her that she shared the thoughts that every woman who ever stood in that doorway thought of the capoeira teacher.

The excitement Tamia was ignoring for professional purposes was thwarted when two students who’d been excused to carry a set of books they’d been reading before class to the library in the basement pushed past her and Kali. She smiled at them before hearing a bang that pulled her attention back to the center of the room.

Malik had clacked his stick against the floor and everyone was looking back at the doorway. Quickly, the boys stopped and turned back around.

“Excuse us, queens,” they said to Tamia and Kali before bowing.