Call Me by My Name

by John Ed Bradley

  In the light from the dash she looked years younger, like a little kid.

  “They don’t need to worry, do they?” she said. “I’ve already made them worry enough.”

  We were back on Dunbar Street now, crossing the bridge over the bayou. “You’re right they’d worry,” I said. “And who knows, Angie? This time Pops might really stop you from ever seeing Tater again.”

  She let out a sob from deep inside. I thought I knew everything about her, but this was a sound I’d never heard before. “That too,” she whispered.

  Nothing else passed between us, but I stopped talking to her, and she stopped talking to me.

  We couldn’t very well avoid each other at home, and yet we did somehow. When I had an errand to run in town, I no longer invited her to join me. We didn’t visit the Little Chef or go to mass together, and she stopped coming to me with her drawings and paintings for approval. Our Oreo shirts, still new, went unworn. I drove her to school in the morning, but the only voice in the cab came from the deejay on the radio. Our seating order in class changed. I let the two of them sit together, while I found a desk on the other side of the room.

  There was turmoil in my head like I’d never known. Even with football to keep me occupied, I thought I was losing it.

  I decided he didn’t love her the way she loved him. Yes, he loved her, but it was another kind. I did believe she was in love with him, and desirous of him, desperately so. I believed she wanted to be his girlfriend. Because she could be so serious and single-minded, she probably also dreamed about a future with him after they graduated and left town. But I never got the same from him. Angie offered something else—the family he never had, maybe the sister he’d lost. If he was in love with her, why didn’t he look at her the way other guys looked at the girls they wanted?

  He had a phone at home, but he rarely called. Was he afraid Pops would answer? I supposed it could’ve been Pops, but I’d always had the impression that Tater wasn’t afraid of anyone.

  I didn’t want to believe she’d given her virginity to him that night by the bayou, but in my weak moments, despite piles of evidence to the contrary, I couldn’t help myself. I revisited their words and actions and became convinced that they’d made love on a quilt only a few feet away from me while I was sleeping off a drunk. “I don’t want to get in trouble,” she’d said shortly before leaving. Had she been talking about Pops and the Comet or about getting pregnant?

  It was also possible that they’d had their moment earlier, with leeches devouring them, in that vat of cow waste. If this was true, they deserved the leeches. She had always promised to wait until she got married, as I had promised. Mama instilled this in both of us, indoctrinated us with its importance and sold us on its virtue.

  And he was black. More than everything else, Tater Henry was black.

  These thoughts banged around my head at practice when I should’ve been focused on becoming a better football player.

  We were in team drills going against the number one defense. I was faced off against Rubin Lazarus, a man who had the power to hurt me, and I kept obsessing about my sister. I saw her dancing with Tater to “Layla.” I watched her pick leeches off his chest. The play was a dropback pass, and Rubin came at me hard, and I slammed my headgear into the breastplate of his shoulder pads and knocked him back a step. He staggered, then charged again. I hit him a second time.

  Why didn’t she talk to me anymore? Did she really think I was a racist? What made me a racist? I had black friends, didn’t I? What about Rubin here? And would Tater be such a great player without me blocking for him, protecting him from harm when he set up to pass, clearing the way when he ran with the ball?

  If I was such a racist, why did I get along so well with black people?

  And why did I like so many of the ones I knew?

  Everybody loved him because he was gifted. They loved her because she was beautiful. The two of them understood each other better than I understood either of them, and I’d by lying if I said that didn’t bother me. She’d always said we were “one and the same and nobody without each other.” Now we didn’t even talk.

  Another pass play began. Rubin charged, and this time I caught him under his birdcage and popped his chinstrap off. His head jerked back; his helmet tumbled away. It looked like a head ripped from its body, rolling until it finally stopped at Coach Valentine’s feet.

  Would I be decapitating people if I were such a lousy human being?

  In the locker room after practice a kid laughed at me. “What’s funny?” I asked.

  I knew it was because of Angie. Word had gotten around: She’d made it with a brother. The prettiest girl in the school—Rodney Boulet’s twin sister—and she had gone with the opposite race.

  That’s right. The opposite race.

  I got out of my pads. I stripped off my hip girdle and jock strap and sweat-wet socks. Then I showered and returned to my locker, a towel around my waist. The kid started up again. Now he was pointing at me, and I pointed back before uncorking a roar and running to the other side of the room. I should’ve grabbed him by the neck the way that unhappy dad had grabbed Tater at the swim meet. But instead I bumped him with my chest and drove him back into the wall, pinning him there. “Not another word about it,” I said. “Not another, you hear?”

  I might’ve crushed him had Jasper Bacquet and some others not pulled me away. The kid fell to the ground, gasping for air. “The way you gave Big Rube jelly legs, man,” he said, struggling to breathe. “You blew him up, Rodney. On account of that, my brother. Jesus. What is wrong with you, Rodney? You made that dude look weak.”

  And then he reached out and put his hand on the top of my foot. He started to pet me the way you’d pet a dog or a cat, his hand massaging me from my ankle down to my toes. It was such a weird thing to do, and so pathetic that I suddenly felt sorry for him.

  I mean, who pets your foot?

  We opened our senior season with the Jamboree. The three teams on the round-robin schedule took turns playing one another over six fifteen-minute periods, so we actually had to face two opponents—Port Barre to start and then Ville Platte to end the evening. Even though the Jamboree was really just a scrimmage, it held great importance to my teammates and me because we were beginning a new year filled with the usual dream of winning every game and claiming the state title. Other schools had come from nowhere to do it. Why couldn’t we?

  For Tater and Rubin and me, the Jamboree also was the beginning of recruiting. College coaches would be on hand to evaluate our every move, and we needed to impress them.

  “This one sets the tone for all the rest to come,” Coach Cadet told us on the bus ride from school to the stadium. “You can’t win them all without winning the first one, and that’s our mandate tonight. It starts here and it starts now.”

  Coach had been using the word “mandate” since two-a-days, dropping it in pep talks, writing it on the grease board followed by exclamation points. I’d asked Pops what it meant, and he’d shrugged his shoulders and said, “Isn’t that a tropical fruit with a big nut in the middle?” Things had been stressful at home, but he still was good for an occasional laugh. I checked the dictionary. “All right, then,” Pops said after I read him the definition. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  As Tater and I were leading the team in stretches beforehand, I noticed him looking off in the direction of the cheerleaders. Angie’s hair was pulled back and held in a ponytail, and she wore a garter on her right thigh. Because she was my sister I didn’t always see her the way others did. But to them Angie was the type who made the world speed up while she moved through it in slow motion. Tater could make all the long runs and throws he wanted tonight. And I could pile-drive any number of defensive linemen into the dirt. For most people in the stadium nothing we did would be halfway as exciting as the sight of her standing on the sideline with pom-poms at her hips.
/>   We finished loosening up and started for the sideline, and Coach Valentine came up behind me and tapped the back of my shoulder pads. “Must be hard, huh, Rodney?”

  “What’s that, Coach?”

  “Having a sister look like Angie. I wouldn’t want her out of my sight either.”

  Until this moment I hadn’t realized I was staring.

  “She still dating Tater?” he asked.

  “She never dated him.”

  “Really?” His face flashed surprise, and I knew he wasn’t kidding.

  “No, Coach.”

  He extended a hand for me to shake. “I’m counting on big things from you tonight.”

  He meant to be nice, but the conversation set off a burn in my gut. Angie dating Tater? Where on earth had he heard that? Was that what people were saying?

  Before kickoff there was a ceremony on the field, recognizing Marco Miller’s father, the banker who’d donated money to help stage the event. As Mr. and Mrs. Miller were walking out to midfield to receive a plaque, I broke with team protocol and left the end zone and ran over to where Angie was standing. “Coach Valentine just told me he heard you were dating Tater. Crazy, huh?”

  “Coach Valentine said what, Rodney?”

  “That the two of you were dating?”

  I knew her face. I knew its expressions. The one she was wearing now said: “Get away from me, you moron.”

  I ran back to my teammates. “Coach Valentine thinks Angie’s exclusive with Tater,” I said to T-Boy Bertrand, who, like everybody else, was waiting for Marco Miller’s parents to get off the field.

  “I heard that too,” he said.

  “You heard that?”

  He had taken a knee with his helmet on the ground by his side, and he was propping himself up by the helmet’s face mask.

  “You really heard that?” I asked. “Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know, Rodney. I just heard it around.”

  “They might be very good friends, but I’m not sure it’s anything more than that.”

  “Well . . . sure, man. Yeah. They’re friends.”

  Moments before kickoff, the players for Port Barre jumped around and slapped helmets and gave an appearance of wanting to give us a contest, but it was clear from our first offensive play that they were outmatched. I barely bumped their defensive tackle, and he fell over on his back, eyes clamped shut to the horror of it all.

  Tater, meanwhile, faked a sweep to the weak side, then ran around end for sixty-three yards and a touchdown. He jogged past the cheerleaders on his way to the bench, and Angie jumped and fell against him, forcing him to take her in his arms. It was a clumsy gesture that was repeated by yet more girls. We kicked the PAT, and I approached Tater on the sideline.

  “Listen,” I said, “I have to know. What happened the night we went camping?”

  “The night we went camping? Which night?”

  “The night Angie stayed with us. When you got the leeches.”

  He removed his helmet and stepped up to within inches of my face. He seemed to be trying to find words to respond. But after a while he shook his head and walked away.

  “Did something happen while I was sleeping?” I yelled after him.

  The crowd went up suddenly; our defense had intercepted the ball. Coach Valentine was calling for the offense to get back out on the field.

  It had been drilled into me since junior high that the huddle was the quarterback’s domain and only he had the authority to speak in it. Linemen kept their mouths shut until the play was called and the count given. Only then, as you were approaching the line, did you have permission to say anything. Now, instead of making calls based on my reading of the defensive front, I addressed my quarterback again.

  “What happened, Tater? Tell me, man. Get it off your chest.”

  He stood behind center as his linemen calculated their splits and formed the no man’s land between the offense and defense. He’d called a pass play, a quick slant over the middle to T-Boy, and I set up now with my left hand planted on the ground. On this play you wanted to sell the defense on the run, then surprise them with the pass, and I leaned forward to give the impression that I was ready to sprint out of my stance. Tater started calling signals.

  “What happened?” I shouted, waiting until the moment before the ball was snapped.

  To my immediate left I felt T-Boy come out fast and chip the man in front of me with a forearm shiver. He cut across the middle just behind the linebackers who’d charged the line hard in response to Tater’s belly fake to Jasper, and now T-Boy was wide open with only the safety to beat. Tater usually jumped off his feet to make this pass and threw it over the center, but tonight he pivoted a notch to his left and aimed the ball at me, firing it as hard as he could into the back of my helmet. The ball hit right on target and careened to the ground, prompting whistles from the officials who signaled the play dead.

  “You think that lets you off the hook?” I said on my way back to the huddle.

  “Get your head in the game, Rodney.”

  “What happened with Angie?”

  “Will you let it go?”

  “Let it go?” I shouted. “Let it go? What happened with Angie, Tater?”

  We huddled and he called the same play, and once again he threw the ball at my helmet. Except for the impact, which whipped my head forward a bit, shooting a small, dull charge into my neck, I really didn’t feel much of anything. But now I could hear the coaches shouting and the fans hurling insults.

  Louie Boudreaux ran in from the sideline with the next play, and we gathered for Tater’s third-down call. It was the same pass to T-Boy. I glanced at the sideline and spotted Coach Cadet standing among my teammates with his arms crossed, earphones pulled off his head and wrapped around his neck. Under the stadium lights his pink face had the polished texture of marble. His teeth gnashed what everybody assumed was gum; I knew it was Rolaids. Curly Trussell stood next to him, as if waiting to be put in. Coach had also pulled Rubin Lazarus by his side. Rubin was our best defensive player, but he also was my backup on offense.

  “Let’s try it one more time,” Tater said in the huddle. He usually made eye contact with each of us, but he was looking at only me now. “T-Boy, break off my pump fake and take it straight up the field, will you?”

  One of the disadvantages of playing my position was being unable to see the action develop behind me. But when I glimpsed the ball sail over center, I knew Tater was finally running the play according to design. He would’ve pretended to take aim at my helmet again, and that would explain why Port Barre’s linebackers and strong safety crashed the line of scrimmage and left T-Boy alone to run his route. T-Boy was wide open in space now, and Tater timed the pass perfectly, laying the ball a step in front of him. T-Boy pulled it in without breaking stride and ran untouched for a touchdown.

  After the PAT, Coach Cadet grabbed my jersey as I was moving past him toward the bench. “What was that about?”

  “Ask Tater, Coach.”

  “What happened out there?” Coach said when Tater reached the sideline.

  “Ball slipped out of my hand. Sorry, Coach.”

  “You run the play as I call it, you hear me, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tater said.

  “No more, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I grabbed a cup of water and plopped down on the bench. Tater sat next to me.

  “I might not be good enough for your sister,” he said, “but it’s not because I’m black. I’m not good enough because she’s Angie, do you hear me?”

  I dropped the empty cup between my feet and put my helmet back on. I should’ve apologized. I should’ve told him I didn’t want to be the way I was. But Port Barre had turned the ball over again, and the coaches were calling us back onto the field.

  I could never
sleep after games, and tonight was no different. In the locker room earlier I’d swallowed a handful of salt tablets to fight cramps, but they weren’t working. My hamstrings kept seizing up on me, and the muscles in my neck bunched up in knots and pulled against my skull. As I lay in bed trying to get my body to relax, I could hear Angie through the wall behind my head. She was playing records in the living room—not loud, but loud enough to let me know she was there.

  I finally got up. Still wearing her cheerleader uniform, garter hanging loose at her ankle, she was sitting on the sofa in the dark. Mama had been working on a collection of bridesmaid dresses, and the cranberry-red outfits covering the furniture made the room look like Christmas had come early.

  “I don’t know how to do that with a boy,” Angie said. She’d obviously been waiting for me. “How am I supposed to know how to do that, Rodney?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “I’ve never even had a date—not a real one. But I have notions about how things should be when I do give myself to someone. And these notions, you should know, don’t have me covered with mosquito repellant on a hot night next to a bayou crawling with water moccasins and my dumb, drunk brother snoring on a blanket a few feet away. They don’t have me giving away something so precious in a cow pond, either, with leeches sucking on me.”

  “He shouldn’t have said anything,” I said.

  “I’m good.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’ll always be good. This doesn’t mean I don’t have carnal thoughts. But I haven’t acted on them. Still, though—and this is important, Rodney: Wouldn’t I still be me? Wouldn’t I still be good?”

  “Angie?” I walked over and stood in front of her. “Forgive me, Angie. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.”

  “I never touched him that way. And he never touched me. But what if I had? And what if he had?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do we know a better person than Tater Henry? Do we have a better friend? And who is more handsome and down-to-earth? Who’s more popular?”