We stopped in front of Pancho’s. Sean threw the ball to me and ran inside.
Ralphael grinned, throwing his arm over my shoulder. “Mel, you think your moms might be a little bit off the wall? I was just wondering. Who would name a kid Melanin Sun? I swear, I never ever never!”
I jerked away from him, scared all of a sudden. What if Mama and Kristin came back downstairs and were hanging out outside the building? What if they were holding hands or something?
“I gotta go,” I said quickly.
Ralph looked puzzled.
“I just got to go,” I said again, heading back toward my building. “I’ll catch you later.”
I got back in time to see them climbing into Kristin’s car. When Mama saw me, she got out again.
“Do you want to go for a drive, maybe get some dinner?”
“I got things to do,” I said, shaking my head.
“I miss you,” Mama said, touching my cheek.
I shrugged. After a little bit of time had passed in silence, Mama sighed, touched my cheek again, then climbed back into the car.
Chapter Thirteen
I was sitting at my desk going through my frog stamps when the phone rang a few hours later.
“Can I speak to Melanin Sun?” a girl’s voice said.
“This is Mel.”
“Well, this is Angie.”
“What’s up, Angie?” I said, then immediately regretted it. It sounded rehearsed because it was. I had dreamed this moment a million times and now here it was. And she was calling me. Maybe that made me lame, though, ’cause I should have been the man about it.
Angie laughed nervously.
Breathe, Mel. Start all over. “So what’s up?” “Nothing,” Angie said. “I was just calling to say hey.” We were silent for a few moments. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Stupid.
“Oh, well,” Angie said. “I just wanted to say hello. It’s hard to talk to you in person since you’re always with your friends.”
“Sometimes I’m not.”
“Like when?”
I thought for a moment. “When I’m in the house.”
I looked out the kitchen window. It was cloudy again. Would Angie run screaming from here if she knew about Mama? Would she ever speak to me again? What was the use of even talking to her, I wondered, if the minute she found out, she wouldn’t even pick up the phone to dial my number?
“What are you doing?” Angie asked.
“Nothing.” Breathe, Mel. Breathe. “Collecting stamps and stuff . . . of endangered species. I’m holding one of a corroboree.” Stupid, stupid me.
“S’cuse me?”
“Corroboree, bufo bufo, golden toad . . .”
“You sound like a crazy person.”
I smiled, embarrassed. She had a nice voice. “Frogs. I know you probably don’t think of them as animals. . . .”
“They’re amphibians.”
“They’re vanishing,” I said.
“Oh.” The line grew silent again. I wondered if Angie was thinking I was crazy. I didn’t care. If she didn’t like the way I thought about things, she didn’t have to call anymore. The heck with her. The heck with everyone.
“I like all the insects and animals and amphibians that are almost extinct or already extinct,” I said, kind of giving up on everything.
“Oh,” Angie said again. This time it was a different “oh,” like maybe she understood a little better. “Save the world stuff.”
I swallowed. What would you say, Angie? Tell me what you’d say if you knew. “Not saving it,” I said, twisting the phone cord around my thumb. “I don’t think anybody can do that ’cause it’s already over the edge.”
“Yeah,” Angie said. “Isn’t that messed up?”
We talked for a while longer but it was hard to think of anything except Angie finding out about Mama.
“We should hang out sometimes,” Angie said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was gonna call you. Ask you if you wanted to hang out.”
“Yeah?” Angie said. “That’d be cool.”
After we hung up, I went back into my room and raised the window. It was gray out now, and quiet. Sitting down on the window ledge, I looked up at the cloudy sky. The amphibians are vanishing, I kept thinking. Angie. Angie. Angie. I felt like throwing up. I wanted to kiss her. What would it feel like? What would I feel like? Would we fall in love? Maybe. Maybe it could happen.
“Are you ever going to let me read anything in those notebooks?” Mama had asked. And I should have said, No! Maybe, Hell, no! I should have said, These are the only things I have that are mine, all mine. The only things I have that won’t mess my life up by being gay. The only things that won’t stop calling me if they find out.
Angie. Angie. Angie. I didn’t want to hope too much. She was going to find out some way sooner or later. But she had called me. And she hadn’t laughed when I told her about the amphibians. Maybe, I couldn’t help thinking. Maybe.
I picked up the phone and dialed. She answered after the first ring.
“Angie,” I said. “Maybe we could hang out now.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was raining again and cold, so the park was empty. Angie pulled her jacket closed, over those breasts, hiding those breasts. I remembered something stupid Mama had said—It’s okay to be nice to women—so I wiped the bench dry with my jacket before we sat down. Angie moved closer to me. So close, our shoulders were touching. Then I was shivering. Not from the cold but from something—shivering from the inside out. We didn’t say anything for a long time. Watching the rain. Watching the empty park. Trying hard not to look at each other.
“I always thought you were cool, Mel,” Angie said.
“Yeah,” I said, kind of glancing at her but mostly looking straight ahead. Sitting on my hands and looking straight ahead. “I thought that about you.” I tried to sound calm, but the words came out shaky, like they were barely on the tip of something in the back of my throat. I know it sounds like a lie, but I leaned over and kissed her then, quick so that I wouldn’t be thinking about it. So fast my teeth bumped her lips. Stupid, stupid me.
Angie laughed. She closed her eyes when she laughed and I had never seen anybody laugh like that. It made me smile, from someplace deep that I had forgotten about.
“You never kissed anybody before?”
“I kissed lots of people,” I said, sitting up straighter, looking off.
“No you haven’t,” Angie said. When I glanced at her again she was looking at me, straight on. She knew I was lying.
“I been kissing girls since I was ten,” I said.
“Lie number two,” Angie said, laughing.
I swallowed. No, Angie. Lie number three. There’s another one. Bigger and worse.
We didn’t say anything for a long time, looking off, watching the drizzle, slick against gray-black ground. Rain dripped from the hoops. I thought of the hollow bounce of a basketball and the sound repeated itself in my head—over and over. And the silence filled us up.
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” Angie said quietly, after a long time had passed. “You mad at me for teasing you?”
I shook my head. “It’s nothing.” I felt lame making her think I was mad.
“Sometimes I don’t know the right things to say,” Angie said. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand. “I talk to myself a lot. You don’t have to worry about saying the wrong things to yourself.” She smiled a little bit, the corners of her mouth turning up, but nothing else about her face changed. I wanted to hold her hand. I wanted to know what it would feel like to have her fingers against my palm. “I’m kind of to myself mostly,” she said. “It’s better that way.”
I nodded, taking my hands from beneath my legs and staring at them. I can palm a basketball, almost. Ralphy says it’s about control and muscle. Maybe I had weak hands.
If I was a real liar I would say I took Angie’s hand then, that I leaned over and kissed her again. But it didn’t happ
en that way. She kissed me. Maybe that was okay because only for a little while did I think about Mama and Kristin kissing and then, after that, it was Angie, all Angie. Beautiful, beautiful Angie.
We kissed for a long time. When we stopped, we just sat there, a little bit embarrassed. It was like all of the words went out of us. Maybe we didn’t need any right then.
The rain had started coming down harder, but it didn’t seem as though Angie was in any hurry to get out of it. Something about her sitting there, like nothing mattered, like it wasn’t even raining, made me want to tell her everything. But I just shivered and continued looking straight ahead.
“I don’t have a lot going on,” I said. “I, you know, collect my stamps and watch some TV and write . . .”
“Poetry?”
I shook my head.
“I write some poetry sometimes,” she said softly. “Stuff about life and my family.” When I looked at her, she was smiling. Looking at me and smiling.
“What’s your family like?” Maybe she had a dyke mother, too. Maybe this was the perfect ending.
“Mother, father, sister, sister, brother, brother, brother,” Angie was saying. I felt myself closing up, switching off—like a light with a dimmer switch. She would run screaming if she knew. Screaming, screaming, back to her big, big family. Back to her normal life.
Chapter Fifteen
Toward the middle of August, it got cold suddenly, and me and Sean and Ralphy ended up walking the neighborhood with heavy jean jackets hanging like capes from our heads. Ralph said seasons changing depressed the hell out of him. Sean was quiet, too quiet, and Ralph and I kept nudging him with our elbows trying to get him to say something.
We finally gave up and the three of us fell silent for about four blocks. When we passed Angie, I smiled at her.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey yourself,” Angie said back, falling in step with us.
I hadn’t called her since that day in the park. Maybe she thought I didn’t like her.
“Rasta woman,” Ralph said.
Angie rolled her eyes at Ralph. “Stupid. You’re the one with locks.”
“Who you calling stupid?” Ralph raised one eyebrow.
“I’m calling you stupid,” Angie said over her shoulder.
“Leave her alone, Ralph,” I said.
Ralph was frowning. “She’s trying to be cute in front of you. I’ll show her who’s stupid.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever.”
Angie and I walked bumping shoulders. Ralph and Sean gave us glances but didn’t say anything. Sean was glaring. Maybe he was jealous.
I took my jacket off my head and put it on. It was too big. Everything we owned was too big. “You planning on doing a lot of growing?” Mama asked last time she took me shopping.
“It’s the style,” I told her, but she just pulled her lips to the side of her face and paid for everything.
Now I pulled the pants up a bit and stole a look at Angie. I could tell she was still mad from Ralphy messing with her.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said softly.
“Oh, I’m not even hearing it,” Angie said.
We walked along silently for a while, Ralphy and Sean a few paces behind us.
“I guess we should double-date sometimes, huh?” Ralphy said. I knew this was his way of apologizing, so I smiled. Angie said she guessed it would be fun.
“Yeah,” Sean said. “Why don’t you take her out on a double date with your mama and that dyke she’s seeing.”
I turned. Please, God. Please let me be imagining this.
“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” he said. “Everybody knows.”
“Knows what?” Ralph was asking, but I didn’t wait to hear Sean’s answer before I swung hard and landed a punch across his jaw. Something snapped and Sean seemed to move toward me in slow motion. I caught him around the neck, feeling my fist connect with his nose. Someone was trying to pull us apart and in the distance I could hear Angie telling me to stop. Sean’s knee landed hard in my stomach and I felt myself falling backwards.
“Stop it,” Ralph was saying. Someone was pulling Sean off of me. I kicked into the air and connected.
Pancho, the guy who owned the store we were standing in front of, was holding Sean’s arms, but Sean was struggling against him.
“Your mother’s a dyke,” Sean yelled. Angie, I kept thinking, looking around for her. She was standing in front of the store, where a small group had gathered. She looked confused and angry. Now she knew. Now everyone in the whole stupid world knew.
“Stop talking junk,” Ralph said.
I swallowed, breathing hard to keep from crying.
“No fighting here,” Pancho was saying. “You want to fight, go back to where you live.”
“Don’t worry, Pancho,” Ralph said. “They won’t be throwing down anymore.” He looked around at the crowd. “Did someone die?” he asked sarcastically, and reluctantly, the group began to scatter. “Man. This is one nosey hood.”
Pancho disappeared back inside his store and Ralph loosened his grip on me but didn’t let go.
“I’ve seen her with that white lady,” Sean said. “I saw them sitting in her car last night. Your mama touching her like they were in love or something.” He spit. Someone else said something, but I couldn’t hear anything anymore.
I was backing away, then I was turning and running fast and hard as hell away from there. Away from everyone. I hated her. I hated her.
EC
What is this? What makes life so crazy? How come it’s her of all the mothers in the world that has to be a dyke? How come it can’t be Ralph’s mom? Or Sean’s? Or even Angie’s?
Chapter Sixteen
It started raining again Monday night and didn’t stop. Tuesday and Wednesday came and went without a word from Sean or Ralph—or Angie. On Thursday morning, when I pushed the plants apart to look out the living room window, I could see Mrs. Shirley was back, her damp-looking pillow propped on the sill, a yellow rain slicker draped over her head and shoulders. Once, I kept thinking, I had a life and friends, and a girlfriend named Angie. But that was a long time ago, maybe in a dream.
Two little girls walked up the block, wearing matching Mickey Mouse raincoats. Mrs. Shirley waved and the girls waved back, then linked arms and skipped around the corner.
At seven, Mama came home and started cooking silently. Three times since my fight with Sean she had tried to talk to me, and three times I had turned away from her, mumbling, “Nothing. Just leave me alone.” Now, she was finally listening.
Every night this week, the minute I heard her footsteps on the stairs, I retreated to my room and put on my music. Tonight, when she came in, I was listening to Arrested Development do their version of that song “Everyday People” and drawing pictures of breasts in one of my notebooks.
Mama stuck her head in and said something, but the music was up so loud, it seemed like her lips were moving without making any sound. I was sitting on my bed with my back against the wall. When her lips moved like that, I felt my chest go hollow. Something about her being so quiet made me think of death and for the first time I wondered what it would mean if she died.
No father. No mother. No Ralph. No Sean. No Angie. And it was all her fault, but now I couldn’t even blame her because she was all I had.
I pulled one of the earphones away from my head.
“You want green beans or peas?” Mama asked.
Dropping the earphone back against my ear, I mumbled that it didn’t matter and Mama went back into the kitchen.
If she died, I’d be alone.
I stared at my bare feet. The two smallest toes on the left one curled, the smallest one over the next one. Mama said these were her toes and once she showed me, pulling off her shoe so I could see where hers curled in the exact same way. Like twins. What if I was just like her? Even if Angie’s kiss had given me butterflies and made me so hard. . . .
These were my toes! Me, Melanin Sun, t
he part of me that didn’t have a single thing to do with any bit of her! Or Kristin. It was them and me. And if she died, our little bit of family would be gone. So we had to hold on to the little bit and maybe stretch it, even if holding on to blood meant losing friends. If she died, I would be the only thing left of us. Me and my stupid, stupid notebooks.
I would be like the beginning of something—but not really, because I’d also be the end with no connection to a past. Like a third-generation slave with no known relatives. I’d be in an in-between world.
Mama came back in. Her lips mouthed Dinner’s ready and I shrugged again. “I’ll eat later,” I said.
She pulled my headphones off me.
“You’ll eat now,” she said, standing there with her arms folded.
“I’m not hungry now.”
“Well, then, you’ll sit down with me while I eat.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want to look at you.”
Now she was frowning, looking past me, out the window.
“Maybe I’ve had enough of this. I’m sick of you sulking around this house. I’m sick of the faces, the disrespect—”
“Oh, like you respect me.”
Mama looked at me. “May I finish?”
“I’m not stopping you.”
“Kristin’s going to be around awhile, so we might as well start dealing, Mel. I’m sorry if this hurts, if it’s hard, but it is, and that’s the jump-off point.”
“What, EC? You want me to just say, ‘Okay, my mama’s a dyke and everything’s perfect’?”
Mama raised her eyebrows. “Yes. Basically, that’s what I want.”
I looked at her like she was crazy. “No! It doesn’t work like that. Who do you think I am, God?”
“I think you’re the Melanin Sun I raised to be tolerant.”
“I am tolerant. Of everybody else. But here, on this block where everybody knows everybody’s business, I don’t want to have to fight and dodge people and lie to live.”
“Who are you fighting?” she asked. When I didn’t say anything, she said, “Ralph and Sean?”
I pressed my lips together and stared out the window.
From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun Page 6
