From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (6 page)

“You're a dyke! A dyke! A dyke! You and that stupid white lady. Nobody wants you. Nobody. That's why my father disappeared and even the ugly guys didn't come back. Nobody.” My words were hot and loud right in her face like tiny knives being thrown one right after the other, right into her eyes and instead of blood, there were tears.

“Melanin, listen. You have to listen. You have to understand.” Tiny fragments of words, sentences I didn't want to hear but she was holding tight to my wrists so I couldn't break away.

“Let me go, Mama! Just let me go!” But at the same time I was falling right onto her chest and blubbering like a baby because I knew everybody was going to know. Everyone. Then I was begging her, crying and begging, “Please, Mama. Please, Mama, be anything. But
please
don't be a dyke.”

Chapter Eight

Kristin called at eight o'clock
that night. I could tell it was her by her voice, all high and breathy and white. When she asked to speak to Mama, I told her to hold on. Then I hung up.

I dialed Angie's number. I was so angry, I couldn't even feel myself being scared. But as soon as a woman answered, I hung up.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again. I let it ring until Mama came out of her bedroom, where she'd been since we got back from the beach. Her eyes were puffy. I heard her say, “Hi,” her voice melting, then she was taking the phone into her bedroom, closing the door between us.

I lay back on my bed, put my hands behind my head, and stared up at the ceiling. The dodo couldn't fly. It was easy to catch that bird. Why couldn't it fly? How come its bones were so heavy that it couldn't lift off, away from predators? I wanted to fly, lift off away from everything. Away from dykes.

When I was real little, if you wanted to make somebody mad you'd say something like, “Your mama wears combat boots.” And maybe that person would want to kick your behind. I never knew why that made a person so mad, just because his mother preferred certain kinds of shoes. I was dumb as a tree trunk when I was little. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

I wish everybody's mother was a dyke.

I heard Mama murmuring softly to that Kristin woman. Then I heard her laugh. Kristin makes her laugh, I guess. I heard her say
This is going to be hard
and I felt my own self getting hard. Stupid, stupid me. It hurts sometimes when I get hard, like I'm going to explode down there. Angie. I think about her sometimes when I'm, you know. Her chest is pretty big. My thing started pushing against my bathing trunks. I tried to stop thinking about Angie's breasts. Ralphael flashed across my brain. Stupid, stupid Ralphael. How come I'm thinking about him?
Faggot. Angie. Angie. Angie. Mama and Kristin. Angie.
If only my tongue hadn't gotten all thick when that woman answered, maybe I'd be on my way over there now. Never even kissed a girl. I heard Mama cough and I moved my thing so that it no longer made my bathing trunks stick out. Girls can hide it. Sometimes, at lunch or something, I'll get a hard-on and I can't hide it. It feels like everybody is looking at it. I try to think about stuff that'll make it go away. Sometimes I think about birds. Sometimes I think about the homework I didn't do and the teacher that's going to scream holy murder because I didn't do it. That usually makes it go away. In the future, I'll probably think of this day with Mama and how she tried to ruin the rest of my life.

I watched the sun go down. First it ducked behind a cloud, then it came back out again. The house was growing dark. Mama was still talking to Kristin. I thought about getting up and making some dinner, then changed my mind. My stomach was filled up with something already. I didn't know what that something was, but it felt like it was all over me, filling me and crawling on me and making me itch. I heard Mama sniff. Then she coughed and sniffed again. I heard her say
I love you,
and something inside of me shut down, went stone-cold. Goose bumps broke out over my arms and legs. I shivered, turned to the window, and pressed my head against the windowpane. Maybe Mama hated men. Maybe she hated me.

People say Ms. Brown, the girls' gym teacher, is a dyke. She wears running clothes all the time and her hair is pretty short. She kind of looks like a guy, if you ask me, which makes me think Mama is different. She doesn't look anything like Ms. Brown. Mama's pretty. She was making a mistake about Kristin. They were just friends, that's all. And maybe 'cause she hadn't had a good friend in a long time, she got it all confused.

The sun moved a little, then dropped, and the sky went all orange before it faded. Then all the shadows that had been dancing on my wall melted into a big gray one. I heard Mama moving around and I knew she was in there getting ready for bed. I climbed under the sheet and closed my eyes. Maybe I'd wake up tomorrow and this would be a dumb dream. Maybe it never really happened like this.

Mama,
I wanted to say.
Can you please open your door so we can be a family again?

SOUND

Chapter Nine

On Saturday, Mama left the house early
, without so much as saying good-bye. I lay in bed with my hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling until her footsteps faded down the stairs. It was raining again. In the distance, I could hear thunder rolling low.

In the bathroom, I left the lights off, stepping into the shower in the darkness. A thin stream of gray light filtered in through the tiny window above the bathtub. After a while, I could begin to see the outline of my arms. They seemed skinnier.

I dressed quickly and left the house. It was too empty in there these days. All the silence was beginning to make me nauseous.

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:

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:

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.