Doppelgangbanger

by Cortney Lamar Charleston

  wept, as has every newborn and toddler. To her, I resembled

  water—fit for washing hands in, or a conscience, or whatever

  she shot straight through me that didn’t draw a lick of blood,

  though it did bring its pains: very thin, very sharp. They felt

  almost like nails, if a Christian’s eyes can conjure such things.

  The Ballad of Addy Walker: An African-American Girl Story

  for C. Janai

  I’ve been warned I shouldn’t repeat it but, in a song hard on

  the subwoofer, I’ve heard it referred to as a box before and

  she came fresh out: brown, bubble-headed in the cutest way

  with eyes like hazelnuts in pools of milk, tossed into a dress

  so fast you’d have thought the doctor delivered her already

  wearing designer. My mom wept to finally have her firmly

  in her possession, her long-awaited first, wanted to keep that

  little thing pretty, if not pristine, but in my case I had—have—

  no idea what a boy like me does with such a doll other than

  refuse to carry it in the company of other boys, avoiding the

  need to explain it, where it came from. The title of brother

  provides its own easy excuse, but it also brings the burden

  of boxing, protecting her body and accessories from damage,

  which I do dutifully and every day; but for all the strangers

  who stumble upon her in my absence, there’s always a book

  companion to read and her own skin as well, a thin garment

  told in careful stitches. Maybe Mom should’ve known better

  than to lend her to that school down the street, to spoiled kids

  with oily hands and LeapFrog machines meant to keep them

  ahead of everyone else. The issue here isn’t that slave is part

  of her story, but that suburban schoolgirls learned the word

  by sight alone before they could spell their own names, and

  even past that, the fact that I couldn’t put her back in the box

  again when we got her home. It would have been so useless:

  her value had basically been reduced to zero; all I could do

  was recycle the whole episode, box brick walls, and be sorry.

  Still Life with Torso of Cornrowed Neo-Soul Sanger

  The video rolls: first the chords, and then, there he is. A spotlight

  skims him from the head down, creating a sheen on chocolate

  every shea-butter believer must praise, and I’m tantalized to the

  point of hard staring, my bottom lip quivering with a lyric, I think.

  I’m not old enough for anybody around me to know certainly if I’m

  straight or not: how to diagnose my eyes’ fixation. I’m still coming

  into my own, another potential Mandingo bred to drip off the bone

  and as curious as any swallower of sound and light can possibly be.

  On the TV: a man, stripped to bare skin. Humanoid drum—a tight

  hide beat with many a homegirl’s wet-mouthed wanting: this boy,

  as church-going mamas chide, standing there buck naked, chest

  all out likely firm enough to dead a punch, abdominals in flex

  as he sets that falsetto aflutter from his throat like a caged dove.

  His pelvic bone leads eyelines into a tease at the bottom of the screen,

  black fading in, a point being made in that mental darkness. I know

  what every man has between his legs, but I don’t know exactly what

  every man has. I know what I have between my own, and what I’d

  like to, and what a textbook says I’m going to get that I didn’t ask for.

  I know soul music comes from the pit of the stomach; my soul lived

  before my body had a name. It whispers prayer that a coffee-colored

  woman flours the bird of my spirit with lenient hands: call it a nappyheaded

  dream, call it a pitied-fool’s fallacy—unless I twisted my roots.

  Maybe if I had them tilled, split like a cotton field into rows, if I could

  really sang like chicken grease in a cast iron skillet or were a prime cut

  of meat and mystery, then she would come to me, take me with her

  into a humbler past, our sincere luxury our closeness when sleeping.

  Yeah, I’m old enough to know no black boy should ever want to travel

  backwards in time, but I recognize love is strange voodoo; there’s no

  other way to explain the pin needles, how anatomies of mine move with

  a shadow mind at the thought of holding her. Look, I’m telling you, this

  is how it feels: like I’m a man with hands, like I’m a man with a mouth.

  Hip-Hop Introspective

  Ninth grader, and I’m still very unsure if sex is

  the act or the idea. It’s pitch black in my bedroom,

  aside from 2:00 a.m. blinking in red digital spine

  and BET Uncut on the TV screen.

  I have the volume on mute, but my stomach

  is audible, groaning with a new kind of empty,

  watching her mocha skin oscillate

  at the thigh like hot coffee skimmed

  by the blowing of an eager thirst.

  Video after video, every Saturday and next,

  my head is in the thick of her, of women, of sex,

  maybe; the credit card swipes straight down

  her thong-line, and I think to myself:

  booty don’t lie, jo.

  Homies can lie about it sometimes, though. Even in

  ninth grade, act: build personas on the firmness of it

  like they got mixtapes to sell out the ass of a car.

  But I know a rapper ain’t always who he says he is;

  a wrapper ain’t always used with who he claims it is.

  Truth is, in high school or anywhere, a ho

  ain’t nothing but rumor, a stretch of leg to fit

  a forced rhyme scheme ’cause his tired lyrics

  couldn’t unwrap her at the seams, it seems to me.

  I mean, I don’t wrap rap. With anybody. I feel

  uncomfortable trying to grasp the supple parts

  of languages romantic or explicit, don’t know

  where to start from and still remain real.

  You know, real. Like the dopest rappers should be,

  or gold wrappers, from what she and her be chirping

  by the lockers, at the lunch table, within shot of my ear.

  And all them boys be telling me peep game.

  But I know the reel; get the idea, I think:

  of her, of women, of sex, maybe?

  Giving Dap

  is surely not the same thing as giving head with your hands—

  there’s a different word you’re looking for—but if you’re

  even thinking along these lines, I’m not sure you understand

  anything about black people, about black boys most of all.

  Head is something dudes dap dudes for, the mere suggestion

  of game gone good with a girl: the fellas can respect that.

  Them boys I know respect a rough hand, raw knuckles,

  a hint of ruckus and roughhousing to brag on. They respect

  prowesses of the body: if not mainstream athletics then

  anything requiring a little stamina and muscular endurance.

  In this alt-teen comedy, I’m typecast as the Tahj Mowry who

  uses phrases like muscular endurance but doesn’t have any,

  or hasn’t had it vetted, and that’s all the same in this scenario.

  Meaning they don’t see me out here—they think I ain’t about

  nothing but some books; think I ain’t about nothing but some

  “white” shit, not even white girls at that, eyes undressing us.

  Please don’t get me wrong, though
. I’m definitely about my

  books because I’m about my collards and black-eyed peas,

  but not like a will.i.am; I’m more of a Malcolm X-tra Small.

  Point blank: I love me some black people, black girls, and I just

  want them boys to love me back, to give me a pound of flesh and

  bone on top of flesh and bone I have extended like a nail head.

  Our fists touching, knuckles to knuckles: that’d be acceptable

  also—or a grab at the web of the hand and strong pull into one

  another as seen with the gravity of two adjacent black holes.

  But alas, homie, there I go with that smart shit again; it’s truly

  a wonder I haven’t gotten excommunicated from the lunch table

  yet, though, if I pause long enough to think instead of panic

  and posture and perform, there has to be a real reason for that.

  Pity? Perhaps the boys know that I’d have nowhere else to go

  in this school. Maybe it’s the same story for them. Maybe they’re

  smarter than they appear, are believed to be by authorities above.

  Waves

  What kinked hair do or don’t.

  Without said cap or rag of du doing work,

  it’s mighty hard to tame the motion of the ocean

  and this is what I mean by that:

  I’m a small fry, small time but smitten with a swimmer,

  swim team type, my type of iris color except all over

  her body, a novelty for our kind but not so into readers

  of novels who can’t read the signs.

  You know, signs.

  Like of hands.

  Like of stars.     I’m counting all my lucky ones for running water,

  shampoo, soft brush, and the tendency of everything

  stemming from my scalp to swerve expectations

  being enough for cosines to appear after a fresh cut.

  And it is.

  And cosigns say they’re looking right, so

  so goes something like

  Tenderoni,

  thug me tender, smack my lips

  with your lips

  like your parents don’t exist.

  Try me, I’ll try to say, or maybe

  rock the boat, baby, or I’ll work the middle

  school connect like girl, you know I been on

  you and only you since way back when, when the hair

  started coming in inappropriate places and Alicia Keys

  rocked braids in all her music videos just like she does.

  Just like that is how it all goes down, or will, I hope,

  but for once I don’t think to look

  in the mirror and ask if I’m the kind 35

  of boy destined to be shot down,

  if it will feel like I’m dying inside,

  a weight on my gut like lead’s.

  Louis Vuitton Timberlands

  If pressed, I’d say I appreciate their size above all: the ability to

  make big feet seem even bigger to the female eye, style points,

  showing out being close but secondary concerns, that classic

  LV insignia set in diamond patterns on the vulnerable brown

  leather I safeguard like the smooth skin around my elbows.

  If in desirable company, I vow not to snitch on myself as to

  their secondhand acquisition from the depths of my dad’s

  closet, a past gift from she to he that took into account the

  sheer mass of tissue and bone his foot had become after

  the accident. But in my defense, there’s no such thing as

  a thief among family. Besides, what betrays his old-school

  sensibilities simply makes me a bigger deal inside my own

  head and so much is coming down to self-confidence; height

  and weight, like in a boxing match: these boots give me both

  in two ways. Boxers over briefs? Bet on that. Belt buckled but

  below boxers’ elastic band by an inch at least, teeth and tongue

  brushed thoroughly to abate bad breath:

  I tell myself tonight.

  Tonight is the night I finally body up her body to the beat,

  plant my feet into the basement’s cold cement like a weed

  while smoke gossips through the room. I’ll let her throw her

  weight around a little bit, on me, where I want it, winding

  in circular motion, her hips on swivel, one hand holding her

  arm in the air, the other where her figure curves inward like

  the top of a harp or the side of an hourglass. And that makes

  some sense as, in a way, I’m begging for time: five minutes,

  ten minutes, fifteen, praying that I don’t bowl anybody over

  when she throws it back to Juvenile or a juke mix since I’ve

  sworn off the wall’s support in order to prove something, that

  I’d found balance between the two sides of a man; like a coin

  stood on its rim, me, primed to slip into the slot of a jukebox

  and make it play whatever dirty-ass song I wish to hear, but

  I’ll be damned—what if I’m just a boy trying to dance in his

  daddy’s shoes? What if it shows even in the dark and this

  footwear doesn’t? Am I really ready to be so… naked?

  “I Like My Women Like I Like My Cars,”

  E. tells me straight up with zero hesitation—meaning whitebodied.

  Good motor. Low mileage. Grips tight to dark asphalt.

  I smell burning rubber on his breath as he laughs in my face,

  impressed with himself; my wheels spin around the axle of

  suggestion as I try making sense of the silhouettes in his words:

  slighted on height, but big hands.

  Handsome, I guess?

  I guess handsome

  enough.

  My mother says he’s a mannish one. E. makes her laugh with his

  mannerisms, his gall, gumption, and even I have to admit the kid’s

  got gravitas, the gift of gab—a girl named Gabby, a Becky, a Jackie

  OhOhOh, if you will, saved inside his flip phone that he can text for

  whatever, whenever, wherever her parents ain’t around, that coupe

  of his a coup for the come up, I swear to God: in the kissing game,

  that’s clutch. That’s how things get transmitted, I think, if auto shop

  is a classroom full of life lessons like any other, but I can’t speak on

  the accuracy of that; I’ve never spoken on what I don’t know by touch

  or been one to, honestly. And age-wise, he’s ahead by some months,

  more experienced, licensed while I’m not even eligible to register for

  Driver’s Ed yet, but in due time it’s my time, I remind myself,

  of what’s coming down the road like some cream-colored car,

  a brand new whip with a soft leather interior that graciously

  receives the odd geometries of a passenger’s body: that makes

  the ride feel good. Damn good. So good that even if the rubber

  pops meeting the road, it’d be like gliding on air—

  or so I’ve been told. Often.

  Doppelgangbanger

  Fox Valley Mall, technically in Aurora, attracts slightly

  rougher edges—ya mans right here, stoners, guapo boys

  and black. Girls bougie, beautiful and brainy, taken lightly

  by fools only. I eye her way, but he eyes mine, cop decoy

  with badge and walkie-talkie, walking up on the envoys

  of decency—Mom and me—to do the kid a “solid”:

  straighten this. Pull up that. E-NUN-CI-ATE. I peep his ploy.

  Play a historian. Home on his perfect white teeth, horrid

  contrast to his charcoal cheeks. Mom nods in that morbid

  way: told you. But I don’t ne
ed telling. If I’m a stereotype,

  I be branded Sony, Bose—not some shit Zenith did.

  I’m so damn smart with it, jo! I got all my teachers hype

  and still Mom looks like she wants to light flame to my hide;

  she don’t want me stunting as some stat been shot and died.

  Psalm for P.

  Either I’m praying, or I’m holding my hand with my hand.

  I suppose both are small beggings for favor, simply directed

  at different thrones. Across the congregation, I’m known as

  your son even before God’s—and what a pregnant admission

  that is; your voice, among the choir, is exalted, anointed a

  favorite by pastor and flock. Just as you sing of the Lord,

  you order my steps, and I follow, walking the straight and

  narrow, falling between stern lines you’ve drawn though my

  body curves as any other boy’s would when inert on sidewalk,

  skirted by chalk held in a gloved hand. Shudder to think of all

  that wasted labor, of a child lost like that, though there is grace

  in knowing, once, I was as small as a silver bullet in your belly,

  but a kind, hopefully, filling a hole in you, warmly, without pain.

  This was a time before I had a name, whether first or last, meaning

  I couldn’t yet have a father to know, to take after or take up for or

  the place of when something heavy needs to be lifted in this house

  of two stories: hers and his. In the beginning, of course, I was yours

  completely, solely, some saccharine in the fabric of your carbonating

  blood. Because gospel, by definition, requires there be good news;

  because I was born from touch until told otherwise; because touch

  can mean either life or death depending on where and how deep

  or hard: between us, let’s agree you were virgin then and virgin

  now, four kids later, whatever tenderness there was between

  you and him the ghost of a ghost of a ghost. What I am, what

  we four are in that story: higher beings, wounds and all—

  holes in our hands, but still able to hold the whole world.