Next, we had to sneak Andy and Kevin into the house without Grandma knowing. Now, Grandma was always in her rocking chair, and she had to get out of it in order to see the door. So we knew that we would have a fighting chance to sneak the boys up the stairs while Grandma was working up enough momentum to propel her ass out of the chair. Even better, we knew she couldn’t go upstairs because of her knees.
But as the wine cooler situation makes clear, Kenyatta and I were dumb as fuck. We ran in, pushing the boys in front of us and yelling, “Hi, Grandma! Bye, Grandma!” as we raced up the stairs. My grandma was slow and her knees were shit, but she wasn’t deaf. She kept yelling, “Who all is in here?” because you can surely tell the difference between two sets of feet and four heading up the stairs. Especially boys racing to get alcohol.
So, Grandma simply refused to go to sleep. She got up from her chair and she sat in the couch next to the front door. She knew whoever we’d snuck in eventually had to come down because there was no bathroom upstairs. Somebody’s gotta pee. Someone’s gotta leave. And she was gonna be there to see it.
Of course, she also knew we were smoking weed up there. We were making this big attempt to hide it, blowing the smoke through the window screens. But you couldn’t open the screens, and the mesh was so small that the smoke just stayed in the room. So our play to hide our business didn’t work at all.
Between the wine coolers and the Mickey’s big mouth they gallantly brought, the boys had to pee soon enough. They filled the empty bottles, but then had to go again. So then they had the bright idea to pour the bottled pee out through the screen. All that weed smoke not making it through the tiny mesh should have shown us that this was not a good idea. Between kid logic and the weed, it made perfect sense at the time. The piss just pooled in the gutter of the window. Hot urine in the windowsill—ah, the romance and brilliance of the teenage years.
When Grandma finally relented and went to bed in what felt like nine hours, the boys left.
“I know you had boys up there,” she said to us the next morning. “I know you were smoking that weed.”
“No we didn’t,” I said.
Aunt Joanne kept saying, “And I know you took my wine coolers!”
“No, we didn’t,” I said.
“Did Grandma take them?” offered Kenyatta.
“You know,” I said, “other people come over here.”
It’s one of my greatest shames that some of my last memories of my grandmother when she was cognizant were just bald-faced lies. In a short while, she would have dementia and not know who I was. But I have to tell you, I would have done anything for Kevin Marshall. My parents let me go back to Omaha that Christmas, and the only reason I went was to have a chance to see Kevin Marshall and get a real kiss.
And I got it. Kevin Marshall tongue-kissed me on the corner of Forty-ninth and Fort, right by the bus stop.
I’m pretty, I thought. Kevin Marshall, this light-skinned boy with green eyes who is not supposed to find me attractive, found me pretty enough to kiss. On the level playing field of Omaha, a guy like Kevin was a huge get, having his pick of the pecking order of skin color that is in place in black and brown communities across the world. And he had picked a chocolate girl like me.
Then I thought, Maybe black boys like me.
THE NEXT SUMMER, WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN, I EASED BACK INTO MY BLACKNESS even more quickly. But North Omaha had changed more, too. It was no longer the Disney version of gang culture, it was real. The buzz in the air now seemed more scary than exhilarating. Boys would pick Kenyatta and me up to go for a ride, and we’d end up going over the bridge to Council Bluffs because they needed to pick up some money or deliver a package. It continually felt like the beginning of a bad movie. These were not bad people. These were regular kids who got swept up in the frenzy of having to be in a gang and do gang shit to impress each other. Drive-by shootings started happening, and kids began to get killed. Something very bad was coming.
My cousin was dating this guy named Ryan. He and his friend Lucky were always around. Lucky always had cornrows that never appeared freshly braided. They drove vintage El Caminos, restored status symbols they called “Old Schools.” You saw these cars, lovingly and expensively restored by masters, and knew these guys had money. One night Ryan did a drive-by, shooting someone in the neck and paralyzing him. We saw a police sketch on the news and my grandma said, “Doesn’t that look like your friend Ryan?”
“Nope,” said Kenyatta.
“No way,” I said, thinking, Yep, that’s Ryan.
He came to the door later that night, after Grandma went to sleep. Kenyatta let him in quickly, and we sat on the steps leading upstairs. Ryan had the gun, and he placed it on the ground by his feet. We all stared at it.
“Can I hold it?” Kenyatta asked.
He picked it up by the handle and she held it, aiming away from us. She looked at it with a mixture of admiration and fear. This gun had been fired and it had paralyzed someone. The whole town was looking for Ryan, and here he was.
“Can I?” I asked.
Kenyatta handed it to me, and I held it like you would a caterpillar, with my fingers splayed out not to touch anything. It was so heavy. I thought, That’s why he accidentally shot that kid. It’s probably just too big a gun for him to aim.
“Can I stay here?” asked Ryan.
It hadn’t occurred to me he would ask that, but it obviously had to Kenyatta, who nodded quickly. “We’ll put you in the basement,” she said. “Grandma won’t know.” And we did. For three weeks, we brought him food. Peanut butter sandwiches we made covertly, leftovers from dinner. Beer when we had it. We kept him company, talking about what was going on in the neighborhood. I watched some detective show where they accused this woman of “harboring a fugitive.” I felt like I had a secret. I was protecting a good guy who made a mistake.
Police knew it was Ryan who had done the shooting, and it became clear to him that this hideout plan wouldn’t last. He turned himself in. He went to prison. Lucky was killed the following summer, leading everyone to think they were the first one to say, “Guess he wasn’t so lucky.” Another friend got shot and had to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. Kevin joined a gang, then his best friend Dennis died. A girl I knew stabbed a jitney driver rather than pay him five dollars. He lived. He’d known her since she was a baby and was able to tell police exactly where she lived, who her grandfather was, hell, who her great-grandmother was. Another boy that I thought was so cute shot up a Bronco Burgers. The mom of one of our friends decided she had to get her son out of Omaha. She sent him to Denver, and he got mixed up with gangs there. He got killed, too.
None of these people changed. The environment around them did. They were all good people who made choices that ended up having insane consequences. But their hearts never changed. They were playing roles assigned to them, the same way I did in Pleasanton.
WHEN I WOULD GO BACK TO PLEASANTON AT THE END OF THOSE Nebraska summers, I didn’t share any of those stories. The kids I went to school with didn’t deserve to hear them. They were mine, and I knew I could never convince my friends of the innate goodness of Kenyatta, Kevin, and Lucky, anyway. Of Ryan, even. So I would simply become the invisible black girl again. I checked my language, the cadence of my walk, and the confidence of just being in my skin. The older I got, the more resentful I became of these reentry periods. People in California noticed my attitude was different. I was quicker to anger at slights. I wouldn’t play Buckwheat.
I especially struggled back home after the summer of hiding Ryan. I don’t know if my older sister, Kelly, noticed, or if I just got lucky, but she took me under her wing. By then she was in college, starting out at USC before transferring to San Jose State. Immediately at USC, she found a very cool group of black friends. I was so jealous. When she got away from the house, she stopped having to be my mother-sister. She was just Kelly, and our relationship changed for the better.
When I was fifteen, she took me to a
black frat party at San Jose State. It was like she gave me the keys to this kingdom of cool black people who valued education and fun. They were just worldly, and cool and dope and sexy. In the way that Omaha gave me an outlet for my Pleasanton frustration, my sister’s world of college became a new outlet. I looked around at these students and saw black excellence. I met an Alpha Phi Alpha brother named Darryl, who talked to me for a long time that night. He even gave me his number. I gave him a fake number in return because I had lied about my age and this was a man. But I held onto that piece of paper for years.
That night made me see the either/or schism I was trapped in. Between Pleasanton and Omaha, I was caught in a dual consciousness: who I had to be when I was around my own people, and who I had to be in high school. Now, it’s easy to see how caught I was in that back-and-forth mental chess match of trying to be okay in both worlds. “Two warring ideals in one dark body,” as Du Bois wrote; the dark body of a young girl. Each was me, but the constant code-switching—changing my language, demeanor, and identity expression to fit in—left me exhausted.
“You were fly, dope, and amazing from birth,” I would tell that girl now. “From the second you took your first breath, you were worthwhile and valid. And I’m sorry you had to wait so long to learn that for yourself.”
two
SEX MISEDUCATION
In the fifth grade, the girls were all ushered into the school multipurpose room, where it was explained to us that WE COULD GET PREGNANT AT ANY MOMENT. Well, at least our period would strike any minute, which meant we could hypothetically conceive a child.
The problem is, Miss Brackett forgot to include the part about how we would get pregnant. She just left it at “it could just happen.” No one was brave enough to ask questions. And if you don’t know how you get pregnant, just that it MIGHT HAPPEN AT ANY MOMENT, it’s a little scary. I would lie awake at night in my room, clutching my bed-in-a-bag twin sheets to my chin and wondering what could happen to impregnate me. If you were raised Catholic like I was, you already know from Sunday school that nothing really has to happen. You could go to sleep and wake up carrying Baby Jesus. I’ve seen countless paintings of the Annunciation, where Mary “accepts” the news that she is pregnant. But my favorite is Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s at the Tate Britain in London. Mary is in bed, giving the angel Gabriel a bleary-eyed look of “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
That’s how we felt. Are you kidding me with this “at any moment you could become a mom!” stuff? We lived in a primarily Catholic and Mormon town, so our moms definitely weren’t chatting among themselves about periods. When any of my friends’ moms talked to them, it was to simply hand them some pads. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to my older sister about it, and because I could barely decode Tampax commercials, I looked for information in books. Naturally, my friends and I turned to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume’s classic 1970 menstruation how-to, disguised as a preadolescent narrative. Among us ten- and eleven-year-olds, the book became required reading, and we ferreted out dog-eared copies from the local library, big sisters, and a few progressive mothers. Some girls, like me, just skipped to the blood pages. They’d hand me a copy and I’d fan through the pages to the good parts. Then I’d pass the wisdom on to the next girl. “Here,” I’d say, pointing. “Then here.”
We needed answers because it was all so scary—the idea of bleeding randomly and accepting it as natural seemed completely unnatural. After all, when you skinned your knee, you ran for a Band-Aid. “Where’s the Bactine? I have to cover this!” But when it came to our periods, we were supposed to be celebratory? Like our moms would suddenly initiate us into their blood cult? This was a horror movie set in the leafy surroundings of Pleasanton Middle School.
It came for Melody first. In fifth grade, during homeroom. She bled right through her pants. She looked down in shock, the blood slowly blossoming in the crotch and back of her pants, and Lucas, the boy who’d called me a nigger in the second grade, saw it first and reliably pounced.
“Melody is having her period!” he yelled out, disgusted and delighted. “Let’s jump her!” He and a few of his lackeys hooted with laughter, while the rest of us looked on in horror and panic. Now an initiate into the blood cult of adult women, Melody, of course, COULD GET PREGNANT AT ANY MOMENT. (Where was the teacher? Don’t ask. Faculty lounge? Smoke break?) After a few excruciating moments, Melody unfroze and ran screaming. No one followed her.
That included me. I felt ashamed. I was her friend, but for much of the school year, it was like being friends with a leper. Nobody else got her period for the longest time, but soon enough all the girls in fifth grade became familiar with Melody’s month-to-month schedule, and when she was absent, we spoke gravely of her condition, dramatically shushing each other when a boy came within hearing range.
By seventh grade, Melody was no longer alone in her period drama, as all of us were getting picked off like flies. One of our friends would stay home from school or race to the nurse’s office, and then we would know: “It came for her.” No one I knew was excited about it. You looked forward to it the way you looked forward to food poisoning.
I knew that at any moment, it would be my turn to stand up and everyone would point in my direction. I remember we all wore dark colors in case it happened. I began carrying my jean jacket with me at all times, ready for the big moment. I pinned concert buttons all over it of the Top 40 stuff I loved—Stray Cats, Def Leppard, New Edition, Billy Joel—and tied it around my waist to conceal the inevitable evidence when the time came. We asked each other so many questions, because unless we’d been struck, none of us had answers. “Like, what happens? You put this pad on, and then what? You’re just bleeding and sitting in it?”
I finally became a woman in a bathroom stall at Macy’s, halfway through seventh grade. I was at Stoneridge Mall with a few friends. I felt a little dampness down below, started silently panicking and screaming, then whispered to my friends, “Oh my God, I think it’s happening!” We speed-walked to the restroom, and my friend Becky, always prepared, handed me a pad. I went into the stall a girl and came out an adult.
When I got home, I tried to pretend as if nothing had happened. I balled up my bloody underwear and jeans and stuffed them deep in the closet of the bathroom I shared with my older sister, Kelly. I felt cramped and sore, but I just didn’t want to have the mortifying “talk” with anyone. I don’t know why I didn’t throw the clothes away. I guess it felt wasteful? Kid logic is just dumb. Weeks later, my mom found them while cleaning the house.
“I found your . . .” She paused. “Soiled underwear.” Ugh, to this day, the word “soiled” still makes me cringe. She handed me some pads—offering no instructions, no sitting on the couch and patting the cushion next to her—and that was that.
But I kept worrying about my next period, and I was terrified of being humiliated at school. Every month was a guessing game. “When will it happen? Will everyone find out? Will guys try to jump me and make me pregnant?” At first, I didn’t know how to use the pads, and for a full year I continually had accidents because my pads were riding high. Not only did I not know how pads worked, I didn’t understand how my vagina worked, either. And that’s because, dear reader, I thought my clitoris was my vagina.
I started masturbating early, at age five or six. So I knew where the fun was. I knew where my clitoris was. My vagina? Not so much. I’d lived my life thinking, Of course sex is painful, because it’s where you pee from! And of course childbirth is painful, because you pee out a baby! Even though I’d seen a number of anatomy diagrams, I knew where I masturbated, so I assumed that was my vagina.
I only discovered my vagina in the eighth grade, after a year of accidents. My girlfriend Danielle—Big D—and I were swimming at a local sports complex called AVAC, short for Amador Valley Athletic Club, and of course I got my period. In the water, I noticed a wispy trail of blood. It was coming from me. It was especially mortifying because AVAC was as f
ancy as a country club, with the best of everything. I frantically climbed out of the pool with Big D following, and locked myself in a bathroom. She talked to me through the door.
“Nick, it’s okay,” Big D said, concern in her voice but cool as ever. She had a bookie dad and was never prudish like most of the other girls I knew then.
“I have to go home!” I said, frantically.
“Oh, just put in a tampon,” said Big D.
“I’m not a whore!” I shrieked. We just assumed tampons made you break your hymen, so if you used them instead of pads, you were no longer a virgin. And at that stage, if you weren’t a virgin in Pleasanton, you were considered a whore.
“What?” said Big D. The record scratched.
“I’ve never used one,” I whispered.
“Open the door,” she said, and I did, but just a crack. She passed me a plastic-wrapped cylinder, and I took it from her, grateful.
“Now lay on the floor,” I heard her voice say, coaching me through it. “Put your knees up, and just slowly put it in.”
I did as commanded, laying out my plush AVAC towel and trying to put the tampon in what I thought was my vagina. “It’s too big,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s too big.”
“Let me in.”
I unlocked the door. She came in, like the straight man in a screwball comedy.
“Where are you trying to put it?” she asked.
I was trying to put a tampon in my urethra.
“Um, that’s not your vagina,” Big D explained, slowly.
I let that sit for a beat.
“What?” I said, as casually as I possibly could.
Now I see That’s Not Your Vagina being a great title for this little one-act play, but then I didn’t see the humor.
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