High Price

was no one to whom I related. At home, Robin did her best to help me deal, but there were things about the black American experience that were foreign to her as a white woman. I also kept many of my concerns quiet, in order to avoid hurting her feelings. For example, I felt I just couldn’t tell her when I wanted to go to community events alone, knowing that black people self-censor around even the most down and well-meaning whites.
    Robin also wasn’t fully aware of how often I had to grin and bear it when I felt I had been screwed over because of a racial slight. I had been the lowest-paid postdoc within our group at Columbia, despite having done two previous postdocs, which should have given me some seniority. My wife couldn’t understand why I wasn’t visibly outraged at every instance of a slight. Of course, most black people know that if they responded to the majority of explicit and oblique insults they receive on a daily basis, they would not only be exhausted but would also be quickly labeled hypersensitive and therefore, be marginalized. Staying cool is the best defense.
    Still, the fake smile and air of detachment all wear on you. There were days when I couldn’t just keep it inside and move on. All whites were the enemy when I felt like that. To protect Robin, I didn’t express this stuff out loud and tried to suppress even the thoughts and feelings I had about it, but that itself began to eat away at me. I felt trapped and constrained by all these conflicting demands. I couldn’t help starting to resent her, even though I knew it wasn’t her fault. I know she felt the effects of this struggle.
    But when I went back home to Florida, I faced an entirely different set of challenges. I tried my best not to seem condescending. However, even the way I spoke now began to seem like an insult to my family and friends there. Having broadened my vocabulary and begun talking in the way that the mainstream considers grammatically correct, it became more difficult with each passing year to relax my pronunciation of words toward my childhood speech patterns.
    Lord knows I tried to be fluent in both street and mainstream vernacular in order to avoid being viewed as a traitor. I tried to show that I could, as Wideman put it in his classic memoir Brothers and Keepers , “chase pussy . . . fight, talk trash, hoop with the best. . . .” But now my normal speech was no longer that of the streets of South Florida. I felt like a fraud trying to pronounce words in the way that I had when I was coming up. So, I would remain relatively silent in order not to be branded an impostor or worse. That too made it harder and harder for me to connect to my siblings and cousins.
    I’d watch myself interacting with but not connecting to siblings and cousins with whom I had been through hell and back. As a child they had looked after me, had seen that I was safe, had given me pocket change. Now I didn’t even speak their language. Despite having read books by black authors describing similar phenomena, I couldn’t let go of my pride and say, “Hey bruh, sis, or coz, I’m struggling . . .” Instead I began avoiding them, and the years quickly passed. Brothers, sisters, and cousins were now grandparents, and my nieces and nephews were now mothers and fathers.
    When I was sued over the paternity of my son Tobias, the rift that had been dealt with by slowly cutting contact became overt and acute. It was most pronounced with my sister Joyce, the one I’d been closest with as a child and the person who felt most strongly that I now thought I was “better than” the rest of the family. She was the sister who most expressed the hurt and pain of our separation. She also had very strong views about Tobias.

    A photo of my mom (kneeling) and siblings. Kneeling, from left, Ray, Gary, and me. Standing, from left, Joyce, Patricia, Beverly, Brenda, and Jackie.
    At first I had denied that it was even possible that he was my child—and I told everyone as much. I just couldn’t believe it could be true. To make matters worse, Joyce insisted that he was my son, long before I could bring myself to accept it. She said she’d seen me with his mother, which I didn’t think possible since we’d been together only that one time.
    “Fuck Carl Hart,” the young man in the parking lot outside the VFW said, now distinctly. I looked up from my conversation and saw a young dark-skinned brother with dreads, wearing long jean shorts and a T-shirt.