Man Gone Down (2 page)

I tap the glass and remember aquarium visits and classroom fish tanks. There was always a sign or a person in charge warning not to touch the glass. Thomas swims over to me, and while he examines my fingertip, I sneak the net in behind him. I scoop him out of the water. He wriggles and then goes limp. He does this every time, and every time I think I've killed him. I let him out into his temporary lodgings. He darts out of the net, back to life, and swims around the much smaller confines of the cereal bowl. I clean his bowl in the bathroom sink and refill it with the tepid water I believe he likes. I go back to the desk. He's stopped circling. I slowly pour him back in. I wonder if his stillness in the net is because of shock or if he's playing possum. The latter of the two ideas suggests the possibility of a fishy consciousness. Since school begins for the boys in two weeks and I haven't found an apartment, a job, or paid tuition, I let it go.

I wonder if I'm too damaged. Baldwin somewhere once wrote about someone who had
“a wound that he would never recover from,”
but I don't remember where. He also wrote about a missing member that was lost but still aching. Maybe something inside of me was no longer intact. Perhaps something had been cut off or broken down—collateral damage of the diaspora. Marco seems to be intact. Perhaps he was damaged, too. Perhaps whatever he'd had was completely lost, or never there. I wonder if I'm too damaged. Thomas Strawberry puckers at me. I tap the glass. He swims away.

I had a girlfriend in high school named Sally, and one day I told her everything. How at the age of six I'd been treed by an angry mob of adults who hadn't liked the idea of Boston busing. They threw rocks up at me, yelling,
“Nigger go home!”
And how the policeman who rescued me called me
“Sammy.”
How I'd been sodomized in the bathroom of the Brighton Boys Club when I was seven, and how later that year, my mother, divorced and broke, began telling me that she should've flushed me down the toilet when she'd had the chance. I told Sally that from the day we met, I'd been writing poems about it all, for her, which I then gave to her. She held the book of words like it was a cold brick, with a glassy film, not tears, forming in front of her eyes. I fear, perhaps, that I'm too damaged. In the margins of the yellow pad I write down titles for the story—unholy trinities:
Drunk, Black, and Stupid. Black, Broke, and Stupid. Drunk, Black, and Blue.
The last seems the best—the most melodic, the least concrete. Whether or not it was a mystery remained to be seen.

The phone rings. It's Claire.

“Happy almost birthday.”

“Thanks.”

It's been three weeks since I've seen my family. Three weeks of over-the-phone progress reports. We've used up all the platitudes we know. Neither of us can stand it.

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

It's a setup. She knows I can't afford the fare.

“Do you have something lined up for tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I answer. As of now it's a lie, but it's nine. I have till Labor Day to come up with several thousand dollars for a new apartment and long overdue bills, plus an extra fifty for the bus. It's unlikely, but not unreasonable.

“Did you get the security check from Marta?” she asks, excited for a moment that someone owes us money.

“No.”

“Fuck.” She breathes. Claire's never been convincing when she curses. She sighs purposefully into the receiver. “Do you have a plan?”

“I'll make a plan.”

“Will you let me know?”

“I'll let you know.”

“I dropped my mother at the airport this morning.”

“It's her house. I like your mother.” It's a lie, but I've never, in the twelve years we've been together, shown any evidence of my contempt.

“I think C wants a Ronaldo shirt.” She stops. “Not the club team. He wants a Brazil one.” Silence again. “Is that possible?”

“I'll try.” More silence. “How's your nose?”

“It's fine.” She sighs. She waits. I can tell she's crunching numbers in her head. She turns her voice up to sound excited. “We'd all love to see you,” then turns it back down—soft, caring, to pad the directive. “Make a plan.”

The last time I saw them was late July at Edith's. The boys and I were in the kitchen. X was naked and broad-jumping tiles, trying to clear at least three at once. C had stopped stirring his potion, put down his makeshift magic wand and was pumping up a soccer ball. I was sipping coffee, watching them. We were listening to the Beatles. C was mouthing the words, X was singing aloud while in the air. As he jumped, he alternated between the lyrics and dinosaur names: Thump. “Dilophosaurus.” Jump.
“She's got a ticket to ride
. . .” Thump. “Parasaurolophus.” His muscles flexed and elongated—too much mass and too well defined for a boy, even a man-boy, especially one with such a tiny, lispy voice. He vaulted up onto the round table. It rocked. I braced it. He stood up and flashed a toothy smile.

“Sorry, Daddy.”

X looks exactly like me. Not me at three years old, me as a man. He has a man's body and a man's head, square jawed, no fat or softness. He has everything except the stubble, scars, and age lines. X looks exactly like me except he's white. He has bright blue-gray eyes that at times fade to green. They're the only part of him that at times looks young, wild, and unfocused, looking at you but spinning everywhere. In the summer he's blond and bronze—colored. He looks like a tan elf on steroids. It would seem fitting to tie a sword to his waist and strap a shield on his back.

X could pass. It was too soon to tell about his sister, but it was obvious that C could not. I sometimes see the arcs of each boy's life based solely on the reactions from strangers, friends, and family—the reaction to their colors. They've already assigned my boys qualities: C is
quiet and moody. X is eccentric. X, who from the age of two has believed he is a carnivorous dinosaur, who leaps, claws, and bites, who speaks to no one outside his immediate family, who regards interlopers with a cool, reptilian smirk, is charming. His blue eyes somehow signify a grace and virtue and respect that needn't be earned—privilege—something that his brother will never possess, even if he puts down the paintbrush, the soccer ball, and smiles at people in the same impish way. But they are my boys. They both call me Daddy in the same soft way; C with his husky snarl, X with his baby lisp. What will it take to make them not brothers?

X was poised on the table as though he was waiting in ambush. C had finished pumping and was testing the ball against one of the four-by-four wooden mullions for the picture window that looked out on the back lawn. Claire came in, holding the girl, and turned the music down.

“Honey, get down, please.” X remained poised, unlistening, as though acknowledging that his mother would ruin his chance of making a successful kill.

“He's a raptor,” said his brother without looking up.

“Get down.” She didn't wait. She put down the girl, who shrieked in protest, grabbed X, who squawked like a bird, and put him down on the floor. He bolted as soon as his feet touched the ground and disappeared around the corner, growling as he ran.

“They'll be here soon,” said Claire. “Can everyone be ready?”

“Who'll be here?” mumbled C. His rasp made him sound like a junior bluesman.

“The Whites.” His shot missed the post and smacked into the glass. Claire inhaled sharply.

“Put that ball outside.”

C looked at me. I pointed to the door. He ran out.

“No,” Claire called after him. “Just the ball.” The girl screeched and pulled on her mother's legs, begging to be picked up. Claire obliged, then looked to me.

“
‘Look what the new world hath wrought,'”
I said.

She looked at the table, the ring from my coffee cup, the slop in the bowl C had been mixing, and the gooey, discarded wand.

I shrugged my shoulders. “To fight evil?”

“Just go get him and get dressed. I'll deal with the other two.”

I put my cup down and stood up at attention. “The Whites are coming. The Whites are coming!” When we moved out of Boston to the near suburbs, my cousins had helped. I'd ridden in the back of their pickup with Frankie, who had just gotten out of Concord Correctional. We'd sat on a couch speeding through the new town, following the trail of white flight with Frankie shouting,
“The niggers are coming! The niggers are coming!”

I snapped off a salute. My girl, happy to be in her mother's arms, giggled. I blew her a kiss. She reciprocated. I saluted again. The Whites were some long-lost Brahmin family friends of Edith's. As a girl Claire had been paired with the daughter. They were of Boston and Newport but had gone west some time ago. They were coming to stay for the week. I was to go back to Brooklyn the next day and continue my search for a place to work and live. “The Whites are coming.” Claire wasn't amused. She rolled her eyes like a teenager, flipped me the bird, and headed for the bedroom.

I went outside. It was cool for July and gray, no good for the beach. We'd be stuck entertaining them in the house all day. C was under the branches of a ring of cedars. He was working on step-overs, foxing imaginary defenders in his homemade Ronaldo shirt. We'd made it the summer before—yellow dye, stenciled, green indelible marker. I'd done the letters, he'd done the number nine. It was a bit off center and tilted because we'd aligned the form a bit a-whack. It hadn't been a problem at first because the shirt had been so baggy that you couldn't detect the error, but he'd grown so much over the year, and filled it out, that it looked somewhat ridiculous.

He passed the ball to me. I trapped it and looked up. He was standing about ten yards away, arms spread, palms turned up, and mouth agape.

“Hello.”

“The Whites are coming.”

“So.”

“So you need to change.”

“Why?”

“Because your mother said so.”

“I haven't even gotten to do anything.”

“What is it that you need to do?”

He scrunched up his face, making his big eyes slits. Then he raised one eyebrow, signaling that it was a stupid question. And with a voice like mine but two octaves higher said,
“Pass the ball.”
Slowly, as though he was speaking to a child.
“Pass the ball.”
As if he were flipping some lesson back at me.
“Pass the ball.”
Then he smiled, crooked and wide mouthed like his mother. He softened his voice—
“Pass, Dad.”

Almost everyone—friends, family, strangers—has at some time tried to place the origins of my children's body parts—this person's nose, that one's legs. C is a split between Claire and me, so in a sense, he looks like no one—a compromise between the two lines. He has light brown skin, which in the summer turns copper. He has long wavy hair, which is a blend. Hers is laser straight. I have curls. C's hair is red-brown, which makes one realize that Claire and I have the same color hair.
“Look what the new world hath wrought.”
A boy who looks like neither mommy nor daddy but has a face all his own. No schema or box for him to fit in.

“Dad, pass.” I led him with the ball toward the trees, which served as goalposts. He struck it, one time,
“Goooaaaal!”
He ran in a slight arc away from the trees with his right index finger in the air as his hero would've.
“Goal! Ronaldo! Gooooaaal!”
He blew a kiss to the imaginary crowd.

Claire knocked on the window. I turned. She was holding the naked girl in one arm. The other arm was extended, just as C's had been. X came sprinting into the kitchen and leapt at her, legs and arms extended, toes and fingers spread like raptor claws. He crashed into his mother's hip and wrapped his limbs around her waist all at once. She
stumbled from the impact, then regained her balance. She peeled him off her waist and barked something at him. He stood looking up at her, his eyes melting down at the corners, his lip quivering, ready to cry. She bent down to his level, kissed him on his forehead, and said something that made him smile. He roared, spun, and bounded off. Her shoulders sagged. She turned back to me, shot a thumb over her shoulder, and mouthed, “Get ready!” She sat on the floor and laid the girl down on her back.

C was still celebrating his goal—or perhaps a new one I'd missed. He was on his knees, appealing to the gray July morning sky.

“Yo!” I yelled to him, breaking his trance. “Inside.”

“In a minute.”

“Cecil, now!” He snapped his head around and stood up like a little soldier. C had been named Cecil, but when he was four, he asked us to call him C. He, in some ways, had always been an easy child. As a toddler you could trust him to be alone in a room. We could give him markers and paper, and he would take care of himself. He was difficult, though, in that he's always been such a private boy who so rarely asks for anything that we've always given him what he wants. “
I want you to call me C.”
Cecil had been Claire's father's and grandfather's name, but she swallowed her disappointment and coughed out an okay. I'd shrugged my shoulders. It had been a given that our first child would be named after them.

I thought, when he was born, that his eyes would be closed. I didn't know if he'd be sleeping or screaming, but that his eyes would be closed. They weren't. They were big, almond shaped, and copper—almost like mine. He stared at me. I gave him a knuckle and he gummed it—still staring. He saw everything about me: the chicken pox scar on my forehead, the keloid scar beside it, the absent-minded boozy cigarette burn my father had given me on my stomach. Insults and epithets that had been thrown like bricks out of car windows or spat like poison darts from junior high locker rows. Words and threats, which at the time they'd been uttered, hadn't seemed to cause me any injury because they'd not been strong enough or because they'd simply missed. But
holding him, the long skinny boy with the shock of dark hair and the dusky newborn skin, I realized that I had been hit by all of them and that they still hurt. My boy was silent, but I shushed him anyway—long and soft—and I promised him that I would never let them do to him what had been done to me. He would be safe with me.