Metion is a flicker of a memory in Dae’s mind. He doesn’t remember Metion exactly, he is a distorted figure in his mind’s eye against settings that were solidified in his memory as he got older. Metion stopped coming around by the time Randall was conceived, so in order to remember the man, Dae has to squint his mind’s eye to produce memories of Metion, and because there were no pictures in his mother’s home, he had no idea what the man looked like. Dae could never see anyone but his mother in his own features, her full lips and thin face that was smooth like her skin was delicately stretched over her cheek bones. As Dae got older, it was hard for him to even conceive of having a father. Not having one put him in rarefied company, he was practically the black Jesus, and in order to hold onto that honor for as long as possible, Dae had put thought of the man completely out of his memory.
But then he is entranced by visions of his past to create art and Dae remembers the man that he hadn’t laid eyes on in over two decades.
“What kind of name is Metion? Black man can’t be called no Metion!”
“That’s my name,” Dae imagines Metion saying defiantly. “And the last time I checked I was black as a cast iron, and proud of it. Who you supposed to be, going around telling folks what they name can be?”
Metion eyes Dae’s uncle skeptically as the young man seemingly cowers away from the intimidating frame and offense in Metion’s question.
“I ain’t mean nothing by it, I’m just saying, I ain’t never met a black man with a name like that.”
“You ever met any man called Metion before?”
“Didn’t even know it was a name,” Dae’s uncle says.
“Then shut the fuck up then! You ain’t never heard the name before, but somehow you know it can’t be a black man’s? Boy, if you don’t get yo dumbass out of my face…”
Then Dae’s mother enters, just in time to avoid a brawl, or a one-sided beating.
“Metion! Leave my brother alone! Let’s go, we already late for the party.”
“Tell him to stop talking nonsense. Let’s go.”
Dae remembers this evening because he was a fetus in his mother’s belly, overhearing the whole thing and his trances into his memory are so engrossing that he can form full pictures of the past from the tiniest shreds of recollection in his subconscious. Except for Metion’s face that never comes into focus.
“You better not drink nothing tonight,” Mention says in the car over bumpy roads.
Dae’s mother slaps Metion’s arm.
“I ain’t stupid! You think I want to hurt our baby?”
“You was drinking last week.”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant last week. I know now.”
“Good, I know you like to have fun. I like having fun with you. But you carrying my seed. You got a king in you. He gone be better than everybody else. Black excellence. The first black president.”
“We already had a black president.”
“The first fully black president then. That boy…”
“What if it’s a girl?”
“It’s a boy, I can feel it. He gone be the real living God, we gone make sure he above all the nonsense that go on around here.”
“The nonsense you get into?”
“Especially that!” Metion says emphatically. “I sell dope, it put money in my pocket and I can provide for the people I care about. But it ain’t a way to make a living, I know that. I’m poisoning everybody around me just to keep my head above water. But that baby you carrying ain’t gone live like that. He gone be something and he gone lift up everybody around him.”
Dae’s mother rolls her eyes, “You don’t have a baby to make up for all the things you did wrong in your life.”
“A good person do,” Metion says emphatically. “Not to make up for stuff, but to be everything they couldn’t be.”
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