Insurrections (18 page)

I found myself again along this path of thought in confirmation class as the rector spoke. I looked at Alana. She glanced over at me.

You okay? Tomás asked.

What?

Like you want something, but you're afraid to ask. His brother laughed the laugh of a sidekick. Tomás continued: You keep staring over at my cousin.

Tomás! Alana called. Her brown turned a reddish color. I felt a shudder or something in my core. I didn't speak. I wanted to punch Tomás in his gut.

Are you all paying attention? the rector asked. My life had made me a master in the art of misdirection, and there was the rector making himself a target.

Yes. Yes, we are, Your Supreme Highness, I said, giving him a salute and a slight bow. Not a single classmate offered even a chuckle.

If you're done, Robert, we can go on, the rector said.

Wait, I replied. I have a question. A serious question. You said when we reach the altar, you'll ask us a series of questions to answer in front of the congregation, right?

Yes.
Do you accept Christ? Do you believe in His Father?
That sort of thing.

What if I say
no
?

Well. The rector paused. Well. Um. You. Ahh. I mean, it's . . . Robert, do you plan to say no?

No, I said. I'm just curious.

Because if you plan to say no, we can talk after—

Your Highness. Rector. I'm just wondering—

At that moment the rector called for a bathroom break and we all shuffled outside.

It would be my moment, I figured. If I could just get Alana alone. She stood in the hallway underneath White Jesus with her cousins on either side of her like holy bodyguards. I felt like cracking Tomás in the face and whisking off with his cousin. That's how my father said his father met my grandmother. Granny said that was untrue, an exaggeration, but her smile told all. My grandfather was some kind of gangster, and his son hated gangsters. Gangsters leave nothing for their families but hurt and bullshit, my father once told me. I didn't know if that was true, but goddamn they get the girls. There was none of my grandfather in me—I had never met him—and too much of my father. I wondered what he would do to pull a girl like Alana. Probably sink into himself and hope she noticed the quiet dignity of his hard work. Sink too deep and you find the path of destructiveness my father walked and then wrenched himself from with nothing but the force of his own will and Jesus's hand.

I was paralyzed. Had no clue how to proceed. What would Jesus do? Earlier we had gotten the rector to admit that Jesus ran with whores. Jesus got bitches! Tomás said, and then grew quiet and embarrassed when his cousin frowned at him. Standing there watching Alana from the corner of my eye, I tried to imagine what Jesus had said to woo that young slut, the first nun. Which witty parable he spouted. I had no parables.

When the rector called us back in, he reopened the session with a prayer. Everybody bowed their heads. I kept mine raised and focused on Alana.

The wispy hairs that curled on the back of her neck. That was the first image I recalled when I was in bed that Sunday after my parents turned off the hallway light. I always waited for darkness beneath my door before I eased down my pajama pants and pulled up the image of Alana's hair and some from Cinemax and an imaginary one of Alana straddling me and a hug I experienced in the school hallway and the feeling of a butt I grabbed at school that last week, the girl, my friend, yelping in shock and then chasing me through the halls, squealing in a laughter that was more
embarrassment than pleasure, but at the time I had the formula flipped and I laughed and ran with joy, looking back to see the movements of her breasts beneath her T-shirt and the girl became Alana and Alana became as naked as a woman on Cinemax and all became as white as Jesus up there on his high cross looking down at me in pure disgust and judgment and I closed my eyes; I was drowsy and disoriented as if his blood had mixed with mine, and soon all became black, Jesus black.

Teachers called during dinnertime. Or just before it. Or just after it. There was a time I didn't think I'd make it three consecutive dinners without the sharp trill of the phone stopping time. Ms. Baker had a way of fooling me. She used a sweet voice for the phone, not that buzzard voice she spoke with in class. And she would call my parents by their first names, no Mr. or Mrs.
Is Robert there?
she'd say. So I would then happily hand the phone over to my father not knowing it was all a setup. And there would be laughter causing me to ease back into a state of relaxation and calm. In the old days, as soon as the phone returned to the cradle, the smile on my father's face would fall away, replaced with a sneer, and he'd speak in his deep rageful monotone: Go to your room and take off your pants. And I'd sit in my room shaking and sweating, waiting for my father to turn up with an old, ratty belt in hand.

When the phone rang the Monday night before confirmation, I was on guard. It was sometime after dinner. I snatched the phone from the cradle and played with the tangled cord. I breathed deeply and took on the heaviest voice I could manage.

Brooks residence.

Who do you think you're fooling, big head? It was my sister.

Ms. Baker be calling here like she got nothing better to do with her time. She don't like me. I got to protect myself.

How about protecting yourself by doing your work and not causing any trouble? That too hard?

Shut up.

I'm tired of you already. Put Daddy or Mommy on the phone.

What if they don't want to talk to you?

Boy!

Hold on.

I took the phone from my ear and made to find one of my parents, but
Alana flashed before me, a bright blinding vision. I had just been reading about angels appearing before Jesus, Mary, the disciples. Illuminated messengers spurring the ordinary to take their place among a heavenly pantheon. They came with solutions to impossible problems. I put the phone to my ear. Hey, Big Sis—

You again? I thought you were getting Mommy or Daddy.

Let me ask you something. There's this girl named Alana in confirmation class—

Aww, little Bobby's getting into girls. Proud of you, man.

Stop playing. Tell me what I need to say to her.

Little brother, I taught you nothing before I left. I'm a bad big sister. Now puberty is upon you.

Never mind. I see you won't be serious.

All right, all right, I'll be serious. Bobby, there aren't any magical words. Guys who think they need to sound all Billy Dee smooth annoy me. Just make conversation with her like she's a human being. Any ol' human being. That's all she is anyway. She's not Jesus. She can't raise the dead. No need to get all tongue-tied. If you talk to her and she still seems like she's worth talking to, ask for her phone number or ask to meet up somewhere. It's not a big deal, Bobby. Now put Mommy or Daddy on the phone.

That night I sat in my room doing my homework, but really listening to my parents' end of the conversation with my sister, when it dawned on me: In just six days I would be a man.

I stopped doing my work and rested in my uncomfortable bed that featured wooden slats in lieu of springs. I had it since I was three. Some outdated theory once said this system was good for a child's spinal development, but in practice it turned me into an insomniac with stray back pains. I imagined my parents would rush to replace the bed once I became a man instead of ignoring my complaints.

I fell asleep with that thought and woke the next morning still in my clothes; my bedroom lights shined in my face and my mouth had a raw, unbrushed taste. For a moment I thought it was Saturday and lay there in a dazed state. My eyes felt scratchy and unrested. I turned to enjoy several more hours of sleep when I realized it was Tuesday. How was it that no one yelled at me to change my clothes and brush my teeth? At least someone
usually slipped in while I slept and turned off the lights. Was this a taste of manhood? How everything would be after Sunday? All responsibilities now resting on my shoulders. No one to chase me out the door.

I found it hard to focus that week. I was at school, but I was also elsewhere, mostly with Alana. Teachers, particularly Ms. Baker, would call on me and I would flub my responses to wild laughter from classmates. No matter. I couldn't help imagining different combinations of words to win Alana's attention. It was like cracking a locker combination, seemingly impossible. I threw together random words like the random numbers I pulled together that one time I guessed Edward Covington's combination after three days and hundreds of tries. Seemingly impossible, but I did it.

Wednesday afternoon I arrived home just after the mailman's visit and noticed that my mother held the day's envelopes, postcards, and circulars in her hand. Later, while she cooked dinner, I spotted two notices from the school on my father's dresser. The famed yellow envelopes of interim deficiency reports. My mother had slit them open and read that I was failing math and science, but said nothing. She just prepared the spaghetti like it was a normal day. If I hadn't dawdled by the bus stop, I could have snatched them and discarded them. Though after the rare beating my sister once received for that crime, I was always reluctant to toss them. My only option now was to read the half-truths and attempt to devise broad strokes to fill in the incomplete picture painted by my teachers' reports.

Sitting through dinner, my left elbow nearly touching my father's, I said nothing of the interim reports and neither did he. My gut quivered during the silences, waiting for the lecture on taking my work seriously. The exasperated screams. Accusations of wanting to be a ne'er-do-well. But none of that happened. I wondered if I should preempt my father, apologize for the poor showing and promise to do better, but I shot that down. I knew my father well enough to know it would be taken as a sign of weakness.

After dinner I retired to my room, nominally to do my homework, but really I sat at my desk, threw my head back, and imagined what I'd say to Alana come Sunday. Perhaps there was a song that encapsulated everything I felt and I could quote it to her. After all, hadn't everything that ever needed to be said about love been said in an R&B song?
From the first time, Alana, that I saw your brown eyes
 . . .

Three hard knocks on my door startled me. No one ever knocked. Knocking is nonsense when you own the house, my father said once.

Come in, I called.

There stood my father in the doorway. I breathed deeply. I had practiced what I'd say about the interims all day since I had seen them waiting for my father on his dresser. The mental rehearsal was limited, though, interspersed with thoughts of Sunday's wooing of Alana. I fumbled with my words in my mind.

Bobby, he said. I opened my mouth to offer a blubbery explanation, but he cut me off. Tomorrow, I'm gonna come home early so we can go down to the mall and get you a suit for Sunday. You can't be looking like just anybody during your confirmation.

I thought of Alana so much on Thursday that my head pounded by the time school let out. When my father came home to take me suit shopping, I was lying on the living room couch, hoping my closed eyelids would make the throbbing in my head dissipate.

Boy, you not ready? my father called. Didn't I tell you to be ready when I got home?

The boom of his voice vibrated against the ache on the right side of my head. I moved slowly through the motions of changing into my going-out clothes, fearing that sharp, quick movements would rupture my brain or, at least, cause a sudden pulsing.

My father stood by my door grumbling and complaining as I changed. But when we finally went out to the car and the radio got to cranking, he put on a big grin, singing along with Teddy Pendergrass. The key to everything, son, is to calm down, he said. Don't let too much move you. So much depends on a million things that are out of your control. Took me a long time, too long, to figure that out.

I said nothing, distracted by the streaks of sun that beamed down from space to stab themselves into my eyes and stir my headache. I screwed up my brow and must have looked angry or confused. To tell the truth, I was a bit confused, as my father, quick to anger and judgment for most of my life, was always being moved by petty annoyances. I often wondered if and when the old monster I loved and feared would return.

Why you frowning? he said. You still upset that your old dad wanted you to move with purpose?

Naw, Dad. I'm fine.

The sun now caused the pain in my head to slowly throb.

Something's wrong, my father said. People don't just frown for no reason at all.

Dad, could you let it drop?

We exchanged not two more words all the way to the store. My father didn't even bother to sing when Al Green came across the radio, and I felt I had ruined his good mood. But once we got into the store, it only took the sight of a few fine suits to rekindle it. He pulled a gray one with thin brown lines from the rack and danced like James Brown with it against his chest.

I'm gonna have you looking sharp, he said. I don't care how much it costs me. A man got to have one of these. Two when you really become a man. But one is good now. You like this?

I shrugged, not from indifference, but rather from the fact that the suits all had a sameness to me. I was becoming a man, but my sense of fashion was far from refined. Sure, I could tell that the three-piece number in yellow and black plaid was a clown suit, and I could also marvel at the $500 Italians, but everything else had a uniform quality. I lacked the visual vocabulary, the key to the code that all men were reliably expected to crack.

My father pulled suit after suit from the rack. Try this one!

I gazed at myself in the mirror wearing a black striped suit that came with a vest. It made me look like a banker or a gangster from the 1920s. I stood on a raised part of the floor and for once I was higher than my father and everyone around me. I looked sharp. There's no way I could deny that. Or at least I would look sharp once the tailor went to work.