by Janet Mock
Chapter Two
I learned to ride a bike without training wheels atop a hill in an Oakland-area park. I was just seven years old and terrified of Dad’s accelerated cycling method. Chad stared Dad’s challenge in the face and excelled.
“There you go!” Dad applauded. “That’s how you do it right there.”
Hovering over my seat, I watched Dad clapping and smiling his starry smile as Chad made that steep hill his bitch. He was pedaling fast while our father’s gold-toothed grin broadened, as if those pedals were a jack that lifted Dad’s entire pleasure and pride system.
“Hit the brakes, baby!” he shouted when Chad reached the bottom of that grassy mount, conquering his first solo ride.
Placing his hands on my handlebars, Dad leveled his face to mine. I could see him rummaging his mind for the words to coax me down that hill, something he never had to do with Chad. There was a natural ease in my father’s interactions with my brother that was nonexistent in our relationship.
“Just start off slow. And once you feel yourself going faster, press this right here,” he said, pointing to the hand brakes that controlled my back tires. “You got it?”
I didn’t hear much of what he said because I was lost in his tooth. The artistry of it, that is. I wondered how the dentist had cut the gold to fashion the shape of a star, an ode to the Dallas Cowboys, whose plays and wins and losses were discussed like philosophy, Chad being Aristotle to Dad’s Plato.
I shook my head.
“What?” he asked, stunned by my refusal. “You just saw your brother do it. It ain’t that hard.”
“I’m not scared or anything like that,” I lied. “I just think I will fall.”
“You think I’d put you in danger?” he asked. I wondered if this was a trick question. It had been only a few months since I’d moved from Hawaii, and already I had been forced to swim, throw a spiral football, share a house with strangers, and now ride this bike that I hadn’t even asked for.
“Boy, answer my question,” he continued. “Do you think I’d put you in danger?”
I shook my head.
“Well, stop being a sissy and get your ass down that hill!” he said as Chad rolled his bike up to where we stood. I could see the excitement drain from his face as he traced Dad’s speech. I hated that I took the fun out of things for him. I often imagine what Chad’s childhood would have been like if our parents had kept us separated. He probably would have had a ball: baseball, basketball, dodgeball, and the holy grail of football. I can see Chad and Dad being heckled by Raiders fans when the Cowboys came to town; Dad studying Chad’s form as they played catch; and Dad teaching Chad flamboyant ways to triumphantly slam a domino. Instead, Chad dealt with reality: his older sibling breaking down during an afternoon bicycle ride because he was such a sissy.
Sissy became one of the first epithets thrown at me with regularity. My father would say “Stop being a sissy” with the same ease as he’d say “I love you, baby!” Sissy ’s presence in my life helped numb me early on to harsher words that would soon be hurled at my body, from freak and faggot to nigger and tranny. When I was younger, I would protect myself by rebutting with the playground mantra, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” As my adoration for words deepened in adolescence, I grew to feel that mantra was a well-meaning lie, a pacifier meant to temporarily soothe the hurt and pain of such violent words. I now know that epithets say more about the user than the target, and I believe Maya Angelou, who says that “words are things” and that “someday we’ll be able to measure the power of words.” Words have the power to encourage and inspire but also to demean and dehumanize. I know now that epithets are meant to shame us into not being ourselves, to encourage us to perform lies and to be silent about our truths.
To my father, I was a sissy, and he tried his hardest to squash my femininity the only ways he knew how: intimidation and fear. He seemed to believe that if Chad enjoyed the bike ride, then I should also enjoy it. Chad was held as the standard of acceptable boy behavior; I grew aware of the fact that I negated that standard, and I internalized that on a deep level. I thought that something must be wrong with me because I didn’t enjoy the things Chad did, the activities that Chad took on with such ease and little debate. The constant friction between my father and me led me to not like him. I would focus on the loudness of his voice, the aggressiveness of his actions, the argumentative nature of our conversations. As he compared me to Chad, I found myself comparing him to my mother, whose gentle, calm presence was in sharp contrast to his. The crux of our conflict lay in the fact that we each couldn’t be who we wanted the other to be.
“If you don’t go down that hill, I swear I’ll buzz your hair when we get home,” Dad said.
That threat, one Dad often wielded to put me in my place, gave me all the courage I needed to ride that bike. An actual haircut would cause irreparable damage, cutting the girl right out of me. With the sound of clippers buzzing in my head, I took a deep breath, rested my feet in the pedal loops, and began riding downhill.
“You can do it!” Chad said.
This isn’t so bad, I thought as I descended. I didn’t know what I’d been so afraid of. It was a nice day in Oakland, in the seventies, the same warmth of Hawaii without the humidity. I had been with Dad for a few months, and my memories of Mom were fading and enlarging and being replaced all at the same time. She was like a dream. I had fantasies of her picking me up from school and taking me back to Hawaii or even just to a movie, something like Look Who’s Talking or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It all seemed unlikely, since she barely called after the first few months. I blamed her new baby, her boyfriend, and the Pacific Ocean that separated us.
My maternal thoughts couldn’t keep up with the pace of my ride. The acceleration made me flustered and fearful, and Dad’s instructions about the brakes left me. In a panic, I began to cry and kicked my feet out of the pedal loops and spread my legs wide, hoping they’d keep me balanced and reduce my speed. I was sure Chad and Dad had lost sight of me from their mount. Soon I was approaching a busy intersection outside the perimeter of the park. I whipped into a sharp turn on the sidewalk and crashed into a mailbox. I was shaking with fear that I would get whipped, fear that I had ruined my new bike, and fear that my father would cut my hair.
“Boy, you damn near gave me a heart attack,” Dad panted, picking me up from the cement. “You could’ve run straight into traffic. You all right?”
I nodded, burrowing my wet face into his neck. Chad reached his arms around me from behind, which sandwiched me between the guys who were now home.
• • •
We lived on the top floor of a yellow two-story house on a hill. The house was shielded by trees that shut out the sight and sound of patrons from the strip mall across the street. Our backyard was trimmed with some kind of wild berry bushes along the far gate. Chad and I would eat the warm red berries, which tasted like sugar and bitters and a hint of dirt. We’d pop them in our mouths until our lips and tongues and lazily brushed gum lines were stained pink and our stomachs ached from the acidic sweetness.
It was at this same gate that Chad and I lit a bunch of ants on fire. I put a lollipop in a cereal bowl to attract an army of ants, and as they worked their way around the stick, I lit matches, one by one, striking and throwing them into the bowl. We watched the ants scurry around the melting red lollipop. Chad held a cup of water nervously while standing watch to make sure no one caught us. I initially wanted to fill the bowl with alcohol but couldn’t reach the bottle in the medicine cabinet, and figured the ants would drown before I could burn them. Unfortunately, our downstairs neighbor caught me with the matchbook and told our father what we were up to, prompting Dad to give us our first whipping, which involved Chad and me stripping down to our underwear.
Dad punctuated each of his words with a lashing of his belt: “What’d (SMACK) I (SMACK) tell (SMACK) y’all (SMACK) ’bout (SMACK) playing (SMACK) with (SMACK) fire (SMACK
)?”
I refused to cry during my whipping because I felt it gave Dad satisfaction to see me whimpering from his lashing. It was the same satisfaction I felt when I saw the ants scurrying away from my matchstick, an exhibition of my own power. My refusal to acknowledge the pain only made my whipping longer. My brother anticipated the pain, crying before the belt even struck his light-skinned behind. Afterward, I told Chad that I hated Dad, clutching my tear-soaked pillow. “You shouldn’t say that,” he said in between his own sniffles.
When I wasn’t playing with fire, Chad and I watched television from the moment we got up until we lay back down on our bunk beds. We fixed our attention on cartoons (Doug, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Rugrats), sitcoms (Clarissa Explains It All, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters), and late-night fare (from reruns of I Love Lucy and Diff’rent Strokes to The Arsenio Hall Show and In Living Color). The kids’ shows we watched were filled with precocity and sentimentality, which I was equally attracted to and disgusted by. If Clarissa, the babies on Rugrats, or Steve Urkel got reprimanded, there was always a lesson that tied up conveniently at the end of the show. Unlike a sitcom, life’s lessons weren’t always clear-cut, and discovering them often took longer than thirty minutes.
Our home belonged to Dad’s girlfriend, Janine, and her teenage son, Derek. Janine seemed to be built of bird bones that looked incapable of having once carried Derek. She was a slow-moving woman who slid her feet, spreading her coconut-oil scent throughout the house. She had large eyes, similar to Diana Ross’s, that were childlike, making her look all the more vulnerable. She lived with diabetes and underwent a strict dialysis routine that shuffled her in and out of doctors’ offices and clinics. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Janine to be away from the house for chunks of time and for Chad and me to be left with Derek as Dad slept with Janine in the hospital.
When Janine’s health was stable, I clung to her as a stand-in mother figure who handled me with care, giving me the nurturing and feminine influence I craved in Mom’s absence. I sought solace in Janine’s gentleness and her demure smile and her hair routine. I’d spend evenings seated atop the back of our sofa, she on the cushions in between my short legs. I’d part her hair with a fishtail comb and lather her khaki-colored scalp with herb-infused conditioning oil. If Dad was around, he’d sit in judgment of my femininity with a clenched jaw as I greased Janine’s scalp to the comforting, sweet sounds of Anita Baker singing, “Don’t you ever go away, it’ll always be this way . . .”
Derek’s father had left when he was just a baby. This house was the only home he’d ever had, and he’d shared it with his mother up until two years before, when Dad and Chad moved in. Derek and Dad seemed to stay out of each other’s way, having only Janine in common. You’d think something as intimate as living together would have bonded the five of us. Instead, I always felt like the yellow house was Derek and Janine’s home and that Dad, Chad, and I were temporary boarders, squatters. A sense of homelessness looms over my memories there.
Dad had a home in his heart with Janine, and Chad, Derek, and I merely cohabitated because our parents had a bond, though we had independent relationships with one another. Dad and Chad and I were family. Janine and Derek were family. Dad and Janine were romantic partners. Chad and Derek were Nintendo competitors. Janine and I were feminine comrades. Derek and I went unformed for months, but we found our way through the darkness.
Derek had a high-top fade, like Kid in Kid ’n Play, and usually paid us no mind because of our age. Chad soaked up any attention Derek threw his way. They played Nintendo together and watched basketball games on TV. Derek was a guard on his freshman basketball team and wore Karl Kani and Cross Colours. I gave him props for style but disliked him when his friend Rob came over. Rob had a belly that hung over his saggy jeans, and he wore a herringbone necklace that was supposed to be gold but was turning silver and green from rubbing against his neck-fat folds. Rob enjoyed barking orders at me and nicknamed me “The Fag One.”
The first time he said it, Chad looked at me all wide-eyed to see what I’d say. I said nothing, nodding to him that it was okay. He continued to play Mario Bros. with Derek, and soon we became desensitized to “The Fag One.” I took the name-calling with ease because 1) I was under the illusion that I deserved it because it was probably true; and 2) part of me felt guilty for not being a better big brother to Chad. He liked boy things, and I did not, but Derek and Rob did. They were the stand-in big brothers Chad deserved, the kind I couldn’t be. While the guys played games or watched sports, I’d sit in the room quietly, trying my best to go unnoticed.
At the time, Dad drove a city bus, the only job I remember him having. I beamed when he’d sit next to me at the kitchen table wearing his AC Transit uniform, mirroring the childhood photos I have of our family, which show Dad in his Navy fatigues and Chad and me with our diapers on; surely Mom was behind the camera. He looked like a man with a plan and purpose.
He brought that sense of order to the kitchen table every weekday afternoon, helping us with our homework, the first thing we were required to do when we got home from school. With an Oreo in my mouth, a pencil in my hand, and Dad serving as what I believed to be an all-knowing source to my second-grade assignments, I basked in the ease of our interactions. Homework became neutral territory for my father and me. We were allies there, in the same way that he and Chad seemed to be teammates.
“You always gotta be a step ahead,” he would say to me with a wink after explaining long division when my class was just learning basic division.
I believe Dad’s diligence with my homework was his means of bonding with me, and his coaching took me beyond the classroom’s agenda, helping me excel in school while instilling a sense of structure and discipline and confidence. With Dad teaching me to do the work every day, I felt that nothing in a classroom could conquer or deter me except my talkative manner and undying need to be told I was exceptional.
When my teacher asked our class what we wanted to be when we grew up, my classmates chose respectable occupations. There were a dozen doctors, lawyers, and basketball players, countless cops and rappers, and a few firemen and teachers, but there was only one standout. “When I grow up, I want to be a secretary,” my sassy eight-year-old self proclaimed. I knew my peers were weary of me raising my hand with the right answer, even in this subjective challenge.
Despite liking the way the word secretary rolled off my tongue and the number of syllables it boasted, proving my intellectual prowess to my peers, I chose it as my grown-up job because I understood it to be a woman’s job. In nearly all the films or series I watched, I noticed that every man of importance had a secretary, an attractive, efficient keeper of his schedule. That’s so me, I thought, attracted to the elementary hyper-feminine, submissive depiction of womanhood—a sharp contrast to the masculine world where I lived with my father. In reflection, I roll my eyes at my youthful understanding of gender roles (the man in a position of power, the woman his servant), how limited my views were. Little did I know that I actually wanted to be Clair Huxtable. It’s a testament to how pervasive these images were—accessible to even a second-grader—and how these flawed and limited views of what was expected and encouraged of men and women shaped my understanding of what was possible. Thankfully, the idea of womanhood that I reached for in adolescence and adulthood was one that came from a place of internal power and accountability to one’s own dreams as opposed to aiding a man in the pursuit of his dreams.
“Does everyone know what a secretary is?” our teacher asked the class, holding a knowing glance in my direction as my peers shook their heads. “Charles, can you please explain to the class what a secretary does?”
“A secretary sits outside an important man’s office and takes care of things for him, like what time he needs to be at a meeting or the name of his new client, or types letters for him,” I said. “So if you’re going to be a doctor or lawyer, you’re going to need a secretary.”
“Very good,
” she said. “Everybody give Charles a hand.”
As everyone applauded, I knew I was a hit. This was what made me love school: recognition. If you did well, if you excelled, then the system rewarded you, and I liked being rewarded.
That day I went home with a note for Dad. I jumped from my seat at the kitchen table when I heard him at the front door. When he came in wearing his blue uniform with his cap in hand, I handed him the note, which I was sure praised me. But Dad’s face curdled, as if Ms. Johnson’s note were sour. It was an exasperated look I had seen before. It mirrored Grandma Pearl’s expression after seeing me prancing around in that fuchsia muumuu a few years earlier.
“You want to be a secretary, is that right?” Dad said, tiredly unbuttoning the top of his starched shirt.
I knew from his tone that the right answer was no. I didn’t want to lie, so I remained silent as he lectured me not in long division or vocabulary but about what boys do in the world versus what girls do, how boys run and girls skip, how I was everything I shouldn’t be. My father’s rebukes were meant to be preventative, to stop whatever seed was growing inside of me. He looked at me quizzically, as if for the first time, because of a note from a stranger, what he had seen in me was now real. Someone else had seen it, it went beyond our own home, and he needed to stop it. I knew he wanted me to straighten my limp wrists and stiffen my hips as I walked, and lower the register of my playground wailing. Self-consciousness and shame about being different blossomed, and I learned to be more careful, more practiced, more aware.
I’ve heard parents say all they want is “the best” for their children, but the best is subjective and anchored by how they know and learned the world. The expectations my father had of me had nothing to do with me and all to do with how he understood masculinity, what it meant to be a man, a strong black man. My father welcomed two sons into the world, and one was feminine and needed fixing. Using my childlike lens, I felt Dad was against me, consistently monitoring me and policing my gender. I’ve come to realize that he simply loved me and wanted to protect me, even from myself. He was grappling with fears that involved my safety and how my outward femininity would make me a target of bullying, teasing, and other dangers that he felt lay ahead. My adult understanding of my childhood with my father doesn’t erase the effects of his policing. I felt his gaze always following me, making me feel isolated as I quietly grappled with my identity. The loneliness and self-consciousness from these exchanges made me vulnerable in a way I wasn’t able to recognize until decades later. This recognition cast a new light on one pivotal evening with Derek.