If you are not this particular Ebony Mills, my sincerest apologies.
Peter Rudolph Underhill
I hesitate a long time before clicking on the “send e-mail” button, my hands as sweaty as the day I first held Ebony’s hand. What if all this is a waste of time? “Love is never a waste of time if it’s done right,” Toni says in Ashy. But am I doing this part right? “Boy,” Bonita says in The Devil to Pay, “there ain’t really a wrong way to make a move…so make it.”
The little bell in the computer sounds, warning me that I’m about to be bounced off the Internet unless I do something.
I click the “send e-mail” button. A moment later, “Your mail has been sent” appears on the screen.
I clean out my in-box of all the junk mail, several trying to sell me Viagra at discount prices. I’m not that old yet. Then…I wait, watching to see if the little mailbox icon shows up on my screen.
Nothing happens for half an hour. What time is it? Oh, it’s only 4:30. People aren’t home from work yet. I turn off the CD player and turn up the volume on the laptop so I can hear “You’ve got mail!” I only plan to relax a few moments on the couch, settling my head deeply into a throw pillow.
And I promptly fall asleep.
5
I wake up yawning with the sunrise and casually look over at the laptop. It’s on sleep mode, the green light blinking. I reboot, set it automatically to sign on to AOL, and head to the bathroom to piss away half a gallon of Earl Grey.
I know I’m setting the unofficial world’s record for longest piss when I hear, “You’ve got mail!”
I race from the bathroom, my pants still unzipped, and click on the “get mail” button. I have twenty-seven messages!
I double-click the first one:
Fuck you! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
I get seven versions of the above, five that say “kiss my ass,” one that says “kiss my black ass,” and thirteen messages that say one way or another: “No, I’m not Ebony Mills.” All are unsigned, and only one adds: “I hope you find her.”
The last message is another “I’m not Ebony,” but it intrigues me:
I may not be who you’re looking for, but I might know the Ebony you’ve been looking for. Write back!
Destiny ([email protected])
And say what? How much more information does she need to know? And why is someone named Destiny using “Ebony” in her screen name? I reply with:
I knew Ebony Mills in Huntington from 1976-1981. We attended R.L. Simpson Junior High and Huntington High together. She used to live on Grace Lane, a couple blocks from where I lived on Preston Street.
Peter
I send the e-mail into cyberspace, then take a much-needed shower, leaving my dark hairs all over Henry’s tub. I’m only here to write, not to clean.
When I get out, I look at a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and analyze what forty years can do to a body. More salt than pepper in my hair. Wrinkles winging from my eyes to my receding hairline. Ear hair. Zits I’ve never been able to outgrow on my forehead and chin. Pores as big as pencil points. Gray nose hairs I can’t trim fast enough with a pair of fingernail clippers. Hairy legs except for my naked knees and ankles where years of pants have erased their memory. The single hair on my chest that grows up to six inches long before I notice and pluck it. The hair that grows on top of my nose. My teeth a series of root canals, caps, and cavities. Rainbow veins wherever I look. Mysterious bruises that take months to heal. Freckles that become moles. Toes gnarled from hitting bedposts late at night, one missing a nail.
I am not a pretty man.
I borrow Henry’s white bathrobe and slippers—he must go through lots of bleach—and return to the laptop.
No message yet.
Reduced to drinking instant coffee, I wolf down several slices of white bread slathered with strawberry jam. I dial Henry’s office and leave a message for him to call me immediately. When I’m writing, I don’t like any interruptions, especially the phone. The TV has to be off, only seventies music playing to inspire me.
“You’ve got mail!”
Though it’s probably my daily headlines from the Times, I rush over anyway.
But it’s from Destiny:
I know your Ebony Mills! We used to work together. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where she is right now (sorry). She’s even unlisted in the phone book. I wish I could help you more!
Since I think she’s still currently online, I try to Instant Message her using her screen name, Ebony31582:
I only have to wait a few seconds.
Seaford is just a ferry ride and half an hour in a car away from here! And Ebony still makes jewelry? She used to make dozens of those friendship bracelets, the ones you were supposed to let rot off your wrist, way back when.
I breathe a heavy sigh of relief, though I really shouldn’t. It isn’t as if I’m going to rekindle our romance twenty years after the fact. That kind of romance only happens in the movies. I feel like an awkward seventh grader asking the next question:
I stare at the screen for several minutes waiting for her reply, but Destiny is really gone. I try to IM her again, but “Ebony31582 is not currently signed on” flashes on the screen. I write her a quick e-mail:
Destiny:
Please feel free to reply or IM me anytime. I’ll probably be online off and on all day today.
Peter
Instead of painstakingly editing what I wrote yesterday—my usual procedure—I press on as rosy fingers of red sky steal across the bay.
Chapter 2
For Peter Rudolph Underhill, life with Dave and Hel Underhill was a trip, a gas, and plain outta-sight.
But Peter would be lying if he said that. Life with Hel and the Captain was a bad trip that ran out of gas long before Peter was born, and Peter spent most of his childhood playing out of sight.
By myself. Being an only child was rough. I had no one to play with or to boss around or to blame. I had no one ahead of me to take the brunt of my parents’ first attempts at parenting, no one behind to protect. If something ended up broken, I had to have done it. If something went missing, I was responsible for finding it since I had obviously lost it. There was no suspense at Christmas, no hand-me-downs, no fights over the last cookie, no giggling when a sibling got punished instead of me—and I got punished by spanking often. It wasn’t exactly spanking; it was more like lashing or flogging. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” the Captain would say, his Bible open in front of him, a thin belt in his hand. “This is where it says in the Good Book that I can hit you.” I’d bend over a chair, my buttocks exposed to the world, and I’d have to count out the lashings: ten if I had only talked back to Mom, twenty if I hadn’t done my chores to the Captain’s satisfaction, and one time thirty for “borrowing” change from his coat pocket. The Captain ran a tight ship, all right, and a major part of that ship involved God.
Out of sight mainly meant church. Peter grew up in the Methodist church that