AMARILLO BOULEVARD

When Jean and her fiancé arrived at the Jamesons’, the Juneteenth goings on were already in full swing.

- David Wright Faladé

The back yard brimmed with raucous laughter and talk of high-school sporting successes and the tribulations of the Dallas Cowboys. Old-school R. & B. groaned from speakers in a propped-open window, Bill Withers’s lament about the absence of sun at odds with the big Texas sky and the garish heat.

Mrs. Jameson—Miss Sammie to all—a pitcher of Red Drink in hand, called over the music, “Jean! You bring that boy over here right this instant and introduce us.”

Crossing the yard, Jean and Wole were greeted with fist bumps and back claps as they wended their way through the crowd. Miss Sammie hugged Jean then pushed past Wole’s outstretched hand and hugged him, too. Jean's mama, in a kente-print muumuu (as much out of self-consciousness about middle-aged weight gain, Jean figured, as in celebration of the day), hovered nearby, smiling on.

Since Wole’s arrival, the day before, Jean’s father had been probing him in the methodical manner of his engineer's training, but Pops Jamal—Mr. Jameson—now grilled him in earnest. “So you aim to be a doctor, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

Others congregated, eyeballing the cross-examination.

“Medicine ain't a career for the faint of character, or so I’m told.”

“No, sir,” Wole said, his smile tight, his gaze focussed on Pops Jamal’s face. He understood this to be, essentially, a “meet the fiancé” party, and Jean imagined that he was doing his best to keep any signs of New York City snark at bay.

She escaped unnoticed into the house and sat on the couch, counting the minutes until they could get out of there.