Surrogate
By Ron Burch
You’re outside helping him light the barbecue.
He is not your father. Your father left when you
were young. This man lives down the road. His
name is Ted. He and his wife have opened their
doors to you as if you are family. You live with
your mom a few houses down.
It is a poor community. You know you are poor.
You know that your mom uses those stamps to
buy food, mostly macaroni and cheese in those
bland cardboard boxes because your mom doesn’t
know how to cook. Sometimes you almost eat
macaroni and cheese all week. You don’t mind it.
You like it except it sometimes tastes artificial to
you, leaving a faint metal taste in your mouth.
It could be worse. Your mom could be like the
moms of some of your friends. Moms who don’t
come home at night, or for a couple nights. Or
moms who drink too much red wine and fall
down the stairs. Or moms who bring in strange
men they call boyfriends but we all know they
aren’t and sometimes you can hear the mom
screaming from behind the bedroom door. Your
friends always tells you how good your mom is
even if she can’t cook.
Your mom and Ted’s wife, Anne, are good
friends. They make food together and play cards
and listen to music. Ted’s favorite musician is Sam
Cooke. He buys all Sam’s music on expensive
vintage records and says the digital recordings
don’t sound half as good. Ted thinks Sam Cooke
is the best singer in the whole world and because
you like Ted you also think Sam Cooke is the best
singer in the world.
Ted is letting you grill hamburgers on the short
black Weber out back and you listen to Sam
Cooke. Anne brings out a soda for you and a beer
for Ted and she smiles at both of you. They don’t
have kids and you think this is what a family is.
What it should be. You haven’t seen your real
father in like five years and you heard that he’s
a cop, which confuses you because you thought
cops were supposed to be good guys and if your
dad is a good guy, why haven’t you heard from
him in five years. But it doesn’t matter because
you don’t think about him when you’re around
Ted and Anne. Ted likes his beer out of a can. He
works for the post office and sometimes brings a
Playboy magazine home that has no forwarding
address. If you’re spending the night with them
sometimes, when your mom works late, he lets
you look at the magazine after they go to bed.
You throw the hamburger patties on the grill
and they sizzle. This will be the first meal you had
today even though it’s near dinner. It would not
be a far stretch to say that you
love Ted and Anne like they’re parents. You love
them maybe more, sometimes, than your mom
but you’d never tell her that because you know it
would make her cry.
The summer day’s heat is starting to die down
and the hamburgers are smelling delicious. You
could almost eat one raw. Sam’s song “Wonderful
World” comes on and Ted sings with it because
it’s Ted’s favorite song and then you and Ted are
singing together with the song. When it finishes,
you applaud and Ted says, What a great singer
even if he was black.
This is a slap to your head because you realize
he didn’t say “black,” he said the N-word, the
word your mother told you to never, ever say
because it was wrong. You’re confused. Ted’s still
smiling and drinks his beer. But, you stammer,
why do you say that if he’s your favorite singer?
‘Cause all the blacks are bad, he says, you can’t