With the new freedoms came new vulnerabilities. I learned to keep my gaze fixed firmly ahead anytime I passed a group of men clustered on a street corner, careful not to register their eyes roving over my chest and legs. I knew to ignore the catcalls when they came. I learned which blocks in our neighborhood were thought to be more dangerous than others. I knew never to walk alone at night.
At home, my parents made one major concession to the fact they were housing two growing teenagers, renovating the back porch off our kitchen and converting it into a bedroom for Craig, who was now a sophomore in high school. The flimsy partition that Southside had built for us years earlier came down. I moved into what had been my parents’ room, they rotated into what had been the kids’ room, and for the first time my brother and I had actual space for ourselves. My new bedroom was dreamy, complete with a blue-and-white floral bed skirt and pillow shams, a crisp navy-blue rug, and a white princess-style bed with a matching dresser and lamp—a near-exact replica of a full-page bedroom layout I’d liked in the Sears catalog and been allowed to get. Each of us was given our own phone extension, too—my phone was a light blue to match my new decor, while Craig’s was a manly black—which meant we could conduct our personal business semi-privately.
I arranged my first real kiss, in fact, over the phone. It was with a boy named Ronnell. Ronnell didn’t go to my school or live in my immediate neighborhood, but he sang in the Chicago Children’s Choir with my classmate Chiaka, and with Chiaka acting as intermediary, we somehow had decided we liked each other. Our phone calls were a little awkward, but I didn’t care. I liked the feeling of being liked. I felt a zing of anticipation every time the phone rang. Could it be Ronnell? I don’t remember which one of us proposed that we meet outside my house one afternoon to give kissing a try, but there was no nuance to it; no shy euphemisms needed to be applied. We weren’t going to “hang out” or “take a walk.” We were going to make out. And we were both all for it.
Which is how I landed on the stone bench that sat near the side door of my family’s house, in full view of the south-facing windows and surrounded by my great-aunt’s flower beds, lost in a warm splishy kiss with Ronnell. There was nothing earth-shattering or especially inspiring about it, but it was fun. Being around boys, I was slowly coming to realize, was fun. The hours I passed watching Craig’s games from the bleachers of one gym or another began to feel less like a sisterly obligation. Because what was a basketball game if not a showcase of boys? I’d wear my snuggest jeans and lay on some extra bracelets and sometimes bring one of the Gore sisters along to boost my visibility in the stands. And then I’d enjoy every minute of the sweaty spectacle before me—the leaping and charging, the rippling and roaring, the pulse of maleness and all its mysteries on full display. When a boy on the JV team smiled at me as he left the court one evening, I smiled right back. It felt like my future was just beginning to arrive.
I was slowly separating from my parents, gradually less inclined to blurt every last thought in my head. I rode in silence behind them in the backseat of the Buick as we drove home from those basketball games, my feelings too deep or too jumbled to share. I was caught up in the lonely thrill of being a teenager now, convinced that the adults around me had never been there themselves.
Sometimes in the evenings I’d emerge from brushing my teeth in the bathroom and find the apartment dark, the lights in the living room and kitchen turned off for the night, everyone settled into their own sphere. I’d see a glow beneath the door to Craig’s room and know he was doing homework. I’d catch the flicker of television light coming from my parents’ room and hear them murmuring quietly, laughing to themselves. Just as I never wondered what it was like for my mother to be a full-time, at-home mother, I never wondered then what it meant to be married. I took