For once, the street was empty as though the rain had scared everyone, even the women forever in their windows, back inside. I walked slowly. At the corner, a slug that someone had sprinkled with salt was writhing. I stepped on it, wanting to put it out of its pain. A drop of rain trickled down my cheek. Maybe it was a tear.
Chapter Ten
Last night I dreamed I was being chased by this white woman. Only thing is, we were on bicycles and I was way ahead of her for a long time. She was pedaling and I was pedaling and I kept looking over my shoulder to see how far behind me she was. When she started catching up, I hopped off my bicycle and ducked inside this building. Then I had to pee. I started looking around for a men’s room and instead I found a room with a sign that said:
BOYS & WISHES
I knew it was a bathroom but I was afraid to go inside that one, afraid what I wished for wouldn’t come true. Then I saw another sign:
TALL BOYS
Next thing I knew this black kid, couldn’t be no less than seven feet tall, walked past me, said, “Excuse me,” and ducked into the Tall Boys’ room.
So I was standing there, starting to believe in that Boys & Wishes room. Next thing I knew, Mama was shaking me awake and slowly, slowly, the Boys & Wishes room melted away.
“We have to talk,” she said, standing above me. Her voice sounded unfamiliar. We had said so little to each other in the past weeks. I was beginning to get used to the silence and her absence, which seemed to be more and more—a couple of times not even coming home the whole night. On those nights, she would call but I’d let the answering machine pick up and keep watching TV until I heard her voice, sounding like a bad recording, on the other end of the line. Then it was okay to fall asleep. I pulled away from her now, halfway between the dream and being awake. I could feel Mama’s fingers pressing into my bare shoulder. I didn’t want her to be touching me, not now, not ever again.
“Don’t want to talk,” I said, pushing myself against the wall. “Don’t have anything to say.”
Mama pulled me toward her, making me feel even smaller. I always forget how strong she is. Last year, she built a six-foot-by-eight-foot bookcase in the living room. Every book we own is on those shelves. All kinds of books, about everything. I wondered if any gay books were on that shelf and thought of Zami, by this woman named Audre Lorde. I remembered telling Mama I liked it because the woman grew up in the city and had gone to my high school. Now it was dawning on me that Lorde was a dyke. Duh. Mama must have known all along. And I had said I liked it. Stupid, stupid me. Later on, when Audre Lorde died, there was a big memorial service for her at this church called St. John the Divine, and Mama and I went. There must have been ten thousand women there. Maybe all of those women were dykes. I closed my eyes again. What if? I kept thinking. What if?
We used to sit and read a lot, just the two of us, not saying anything, our heads deep inside of stories about some other body’s life. Quiet. Not bothering each other. Sometimes we’d drink tea or lemonade or hot chocolate while we read. Sometimes Mama would make quesadillas, melting cheese between tortillas and pouring salsa over the top, and we’d sit munching and reading like there wasn’t anything else in the world or any other way. You ever hear people talk about how those were the days? It’s usually old people saying that stuff but when I’m remembering who the two of us were then, I start feeling old. Old and wrinkly and weak like a raisin man.
Mama got up and started pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, like those guys on dd TV shows always do when they’re waiting for their babies to be born.
“You can’t just drop stuff on people,” I said. I was half thinking about Mama and half thinking about the boy in the dream. He was so tall. Had he gone into the Boys & Wishes room and made a wish to be tall? Was he supposed to be me? Who am I, anyway? Who cares?
Mama paced over to the window above my bed and pulled the curtains apart. It was hot again. Rays of sun hit the place on the sheet that covered my feet and I wiggled my toes, feeling them grow warm all of a sudden. My shoulders felt warm, too, even though I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I pulled the sheet up over them, not wanting Mama to see. Not wanting her to see any part of me even though she’d seen my shoulders and chest and stomach a hundred thousand times before.
“I’ve been waiting,” Mama began.
I started humming, covering my ears with my hands. I knew this was babyish but I didn’t care. What made her think I cared?
Mama swallowed. I watched the motion her throat made and felt my own throat filling up. We used to have such good times. Everybody used to be so happy.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to be this happy,” Mama said. Her voice was so soft, I had to uncover my ears a little bit to hear. I stopped humming and glared at her.
“We were happy.”
Mama shook her head. “I have you, Mel. But I need more. I need grown-ups around, people who speak a grown-up language, who’ve lived a long time. I need friends my age and a lover.”
“You think just because Kristin’s white, she’s the world. Well, she’s not. She’s just some stupid white lady out to mess with your mind.” I rolled away from her and faced the wall.
“Don’t give me that white guilt, Mel. We’re both smarter than that. Since when did you start seeing the world in black and white, anyway?”
“What? You think I’ve had blinders on for fourteen years? How am I supposed to be in it and see it any other way? I’m gifted, remember? Remember they discovered I wasn’t slow after all, that it was the complete opposite? Gifted, not blind? You think this is about you? Well, it’s not.”
“Then who is it about?” Mama asked. “Is my life about you now?”
“It’s about both of us. Sometimes you act like a stupid little selfish kid. Sometimes I hate to think that you’re my mother.”
“Well, I am. So you better start thinking it. A lot may change between us, but that won’t.”
“You should find a man, Ma. The real thing. I guess you can’t, huh? I guess no man wants you.”
“I guess,” Mama said, walking back toward her room. “I guess we have nothing more to talk about.”
Chapter Eleven
Mama could plead temporary insanity for thinking I didn’t see the world in black and white.
Before Kristin, there weren’t tears in our house, just small daily frustrations—the kind that ebb and flow.
One day, before Kristin, Mama came home from a temp job with a bag of clothes a coworker had given her. The woman, a white lady, told Mama maybe I could use these. She went on to say that she remembered the day she met me and I was dressed in a pair of ragged jeans. Mama told me all of this as she spilled the bag into the bathtub, sprinkled the clothes with torn newspaper, then set them on fire. I couldn’t help but wonder, as the small dark pile swelled with smoke and flame, who in the world this white woman thought we were.
Another time, when Sean, Ralph, and I took a hike out of the neighborhood just for the sake of adventure, each and every white woman we passed either clutched her purse or crossed to the other side of the street. “I feel like snatching her bag,” Ralphy said, scowling. “Just to prove them right.”
Over the years, other frustrations infiltrated. Every television show seemed to feature some black person in jail or committing a crime. Every news show talked about violence in black communities. It got so Mama and I only watched cartoons and corny sitcoms.
I didn’t think about white people. They were a different species, living a different life in some other place. At school, where most of the teachers were white, we were indifferent to their color. We didn’t think about our teachers’ private lives, where they went at night or who they went with, or if they even had lives outside of the classrooms. We didn’t imagine their pale bodies showering each morning, thin-toothed combs raking through their bone-straight hair. We didn’t contemplate what they ate or how they ate it. White, before Kristin, didn’t matter at all.
Now it seemed to be everywhere. Krist
in and Mama were in every single thought I had. I wondered if they talked about me, planned ways of getting rid of me. I wondered what they did together. How did Mama hold her? What did they see in each other? Why? Why? Why?
THIRTEEN·GOING· ON·FOUTREEN
I am tired now, of being thirteen. Tired of having to figure stuff out by myself. What matters is the people in your life, I think. Who they are and how they treat you. Mama matters. The Mama I used to know. The me I used to know. Now everybody in my life is unfamiliar. My moms pulling the car to the side of the highway to tell me she’s queer is unfamiliar.
The world turns upside down when you are thirteen-going-on-fourteen. I want to ask someone right now—when will it right itself again?
Chapter Twelve
After Mama left, I got dressed and took a walk to try to clear some of the stupid things that were racing around in my head. Like the minke whale. They’ve started hunting them again in Norway. The paper says they use them to make cosmetics and candles and stuff like that. It seems like nobody even cares that the world is falling apart. Not just my world, everybody’s. People all the time talk about recycling this and preserving that, but nobody really cares. I don’t think people even think about stuff. Not the people hunting minke whales. Not the rats eating bird eggs. Not Mama.
There’s a tortoise—the star-shelled tortoise. It has these beautiful raised diamond shapes on its back. Somewhere in Sri Lanka, it’s dying off. Slowly, it seems, everything and everybody and every way that used to be is dying.
“Yo, Melly Mel. Wait up!” I turned. Sean and Ralphael were running toward me, dribbling a basketball between them.
“Guess who’s still asking after your surly butt?” Ralph asked, grinning.
“Who?”
“Angie Baby,” Sean sang.
Ralphy shook his head. “You sure can’t sing.”
“Don’t want to be a singer anyway,” Sean said. He dribbled the ball through his legs, then swept it up onto his fingers and spun it.
“She’s down the block,” Ralphael said, pointing over his shoulder. “She’s pretty hot for you, Mel. Let’s ’bout face and make-believe we were headed in that direction anyway.”
I turned and fell into step with them, my heart pounding all the way up in my neck. Then Kristin came into my head—just shot through it like a bullet. What was the use of even giving Angie the eye anymore? It would have been hard enough to call her if things were normal. But now? There was no way I was going to bring her home to my messed-up house.
“What you been up to?” Sean was asking. His voice sounded far away, like it was floating down another block. “Earth calling Melanin Sun,” Sean yelled. When I looked at him, he repeated the question.
“Not much.” I shrugged.
“Yeah,” Ralphael said, squinting down the block. “This has been one boring summer.”
“I guess,” I said, trying to steady my voice and sound cool. “How you know Angie really likes me?” I asked. I fingered her now-faded number, still on a piece of paper in my pocket. I had memorized it a while back, but I still carried the paper around. For luck.
They both grinned.
“Well,” Ralphael began, his voice dropping even though we were still a long way from the group of girls sitting on the stoop at the end of the block, “yesterday, Sean and I were hanging out outside Pancho’s and Angie and her posse came by, making-believe they had to buy something.”
Sean laughed. “They went inside and came out just as empty-handed. . . .”
“Not even a candy bar or a pack of gum,” Ralphael cut in.
“They won’t be getting an Oscar anytime soon with that.”
They laughed.
“Anyway,” Ralphael continued, “they sort of stood there awhile not saying anything, then Angie asks, ‘Where’s Melanin Sun?’ She tried to sound all brave and grown up, but I knew she was scared reckless asking.”
“What’d you say?” I asked.
Ralphael smirked. “I told her you were around, somewhere.”
Yeah, I thought. Hanging with my queer mother.
“He said you were probably somewhere sticking harbor seal stamps in a book.”
They doubled over, laughing.
“You didn’t.”
Ralphael bumped my shoulder. “There she is,” he said, pointing with his chin.
I scanned the group of girls. Angie looked up and half smiled at me.
“Oh.”
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?” Ralphael said out of the side of his mouth. “Say something.” He shoved me towards her.
I waved at Angie, trying to look cool. I must have dialed her number and hung up twenty times this summer. She has nice teeth—straight and white—and a ponytail of braids with bangs that curl like tiny corkscrews down past her eyebrows.
I took the basketball from Sean and turned. Like two robots, Ralph and Sean turned with me.
“What’s up?” Ralph asked.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t you think she’s cute?” Sean took the ball from me and bounced it a couple of times.
“Yeah, she’s okay. But I’m not going to talk to her with you all at my shoulder.”
We walked back to the corner. The sprinkler was on and a bunch of little kids were running back and forth underneath. I ran my hand through the water, then rubbed my face. The water was cool, soothing.
“You want to shoot a couple hoops?” Sean asked.
I shook my head. “Going back inside.”
I heard Sean mumble homebody.
“Got some housework to do?” Ralphy grinned.
“Maybe.”
“Your mom has you doing all kinds of stuff,” Sean said. “You won’t see me do no housecleaning. That’s what I got sisters for.”
Ralphael grabbed the ball from him and dribbled. “Yeah, right! That’s why those sisters of yours had you mopping the kitchen last night when you wanted to watch wrestling!”
Sean frowned and stuffed his hands into his pockets. We had stopped at the corner and were looking across the street into the park. Every court seemed to be taken with boys two and three times our size.
“I hate the summer, man!” I said. “Nobody has anything to do but play ball. You can’t even see the rim until September.”
Ralphael dribbled the ball once and shot it through a fire escape rung hanging down about six feet off the sidewalk. The ball sailed through without touching the sides. Sean retrieved it, took the same shot, and missed.
“Yo, Sean, let me try to lower it a little for you.” Ralphael laughed. “Maybe I could bring it down about three feet.”
Sean gave him the finger and took another shot, missing again. He grabbed the ball after it bounced and came over to where Ralphael and I were leaning against a stop sign.
Mama’s car pulled up and she and Kristin got out. I held my breath.
“Hey, guys,” Mama called, smiling.
“Hey, EC,” Ralphael and Sean said at the same time.
Kristin waved but none of us waved back. I nodded slightly. She and Mama disappeared into our building and I let my breath go.
“Who’s the white woman EC’s been hanging with?” Sean asked.
“Friend of hers from law school or something,” I said quickly. I snatched the ball from Ralph and dribbled.
“Kind of tasty,” Ralphael said.
“If you like white meat,” I said, jabbing Ralphael in the side. “Me? I’d be better off with something dark and lovely.”
Sean sucked his teeth. “You’d be better off with anything you can get, man!”
We laughed.
“So, Melly, your mama find a boyfriend yet?” Sean nosed. “What about that guy from the other night? Just how ugly was he?”
Maybe they knew already. Maybe the whole stupid world knew. “Very ugly. And dumb? Man, this guy was riding the rough edge of ‘vegetable.’ You have anyone else in mind for her, Sean? Your father’s married. Least that what he’s supposed to be!”
Ralpha
el laughed and slapped me five. I waited for Sean’s answer, already knowing what it would be.
“I’m talking about me,” he said, brushing off his T-shirt. “Me and your mother would look sweet together!”
I tried to laugh, punching Sean’s arm. But the grin on my face felt like it was pasted there, like a bad Halloween mask that might fall right off and reveal the boy underneath.
Sean and I danced around in fighters’ stances, jabbing at the air.
“When it turns into a real fight, you two will be sorry!”
All three of us turned in the direction of the voice. Across the street, Mrs. Shirley was leaning out the window on a pillow.
“We’re just playing,” Sean said. He scowled. “She’s so nosey,” he whispered without moving his lips.
“Yeah, you playing now. Wait till someone hits somebody like they don’t want to be hit. You boys just stop it. No need to be showing yourselves like that!”
“I was just telling them that, Mrs. Shirley,” Ralph lied. “Just this minute I was saying no need to fight, guys. We’re all brothers on this planet.”
Mrs. Shirley smiled. “Say hi to your mama, Ralphael.”
“I will, Mrs. Shirley.”
“I will, Mrs. Shirley,” Sean mimicked.
We headed around the corner, out of Mrs. Shirley’s sight.
“Nah, man,” Ralph said. “That’s how you have to be with her. Next thing you know, she’ll be all up in my mama’s face talking about how we were fighting in the street. And Sean, you know my moms will be over to your house in a quick second. Then, that’ll be it for our summer. That’s all I need, to be on punishment for the whole summer.”
Sean and I nodded. Ralphael had a point—Mrs. Shirley had to be the biggest see-all-know-all on the block. I wondered if she had seen Kristin coming or leaving our house. Probably. Next it would be all over the neighborhood.
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun Page 5