Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens

by Tanya Boteju

  “Oh, Nima . . .” She lifted her arms toward mine again, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her touching me at that moment. I stomped away from her, past Jill into the kitchen, and out to the backyard. The screen door thwacked behind me and I found the sound extremely satisfying.

  As soon as I stepped foot outside, Gus was at my feet. He must’ve been snoozing in the sunny grass like he does at home. He nipped at my heels as I marched past him to the back fence and climbed onto the picnic table where Jill displayed her gnomes.

  One such gnome—a fireman holding a ladder—toppled from the bench seat as the table shook with my weight. It thudded to the grass below, still intact. I wished it had cracked, but it just stared at me with its glassy eyes instead. Screw you, gnome.

  I heard the screen door bang shut again and caught Jill’s lanky figure approaching from my side view. Gus barked once from where he’d stretched out next to the gnome.

  She paused a short distance from me. “Another statue bites the dust, huh?” She crouched to pick up the fireman gnome and soberly declared, “Serves you right, gnome.” Then she dumped him off to the side and stood up.

  “This isn’t funny, Jill.”

  “I know, hon.”

  “Why’d she really come? If she’s not even staying?” My voice sounded distant.

  Jill sighed. “I guess when she didn’t hear from either of us, she decided this was the only way to see you.”

  “Me? Or you?”

  “You, Nima. Definitely you.” But her voice didn’t sound definite.

  “You mean there’s nothing between you two anymore?” I searched her face for an answer before she could make something up. The hand she wiped down her face said it all. “I knew it.”

  “You don’t know, Nima.” She stepped closer. “I can’t lie and tell you there’s nothing there anymore, but I can tell you that your mom came here for you. That she’s as lost as you are.”

  “I’m not lost! And I definitely don’t need her to find me. And I’m not interested in finding her, either.” These were partly untrue, I knew, but I wanted to believe them. I folded my arms in my lap and tucked my head down on top of them. “She left, Jill. She just left.”

  “I know, babe. But you have to understand—she wasn’t leaving you. This wasn’t about you. You”—she placed a hand on my shoulder—“are infinitely lovable. Your mom’s missing something inside her. Something no one else but she can find. But you can’t just ignore her. She’s your mom, whether you like it or not. And she’s here. So come on back inside and let’s figure this out. Okay?” Her hand slipped off my shoulder and spread open in front of me.

  I stared at it for a while, thinking about Jill’s words. The thought of my mom missing something, feeling empty somehow, filled me with sadness for her. I knew that emptiness.

  A sigh escaped my lips. Ignoring Jill’s unwavering hand, I hopped off the table and walked back toward the house, Gus bounding along next to me. Before I opened the screen door, I took a deep breath. Jill squeezed my shoulder and followed me in. We walked back through the kitchen and into the front room. The carnage of my earlier blitz lay strewn about the floor, as though cacti and statues had engaged in some secret battle while we were gone and stopped just as we entered. Gus dug his nose around in the wreckage.

  “Mom?” I breathed into the obviously empty room. Jill checked inside the storage room, but her face revealed it was empty as well.

  “Where’d she go?” I asked, more to myself.

  “Maybe she just needed some air too,” Jill offered, a tremble in her voice. “I’ll check if her car is still here.” She walked out through the front door and came back in only moments later, her face ashen. “Nima . . .”

  The look on my own face stopped her from finishing whatever feeble sentence she was about to attempt.

  My eyes didn’t know where to go, so I let them land on a collection of shovels resting against the wall. The smell of soil and clay pervading the room reminded me of something, some memory puffing up in my mind like smoke.

  I’m digging in the meager garden at the Biddy Park house. My mom is settled in beside me on a piece of old carpet, reading a book while I lift dusty clumps of dirt with my spade and pile them around us, like a small village of dome houses. I stand across from her and look for her approval, proud of this orderly town I’ve built for us. But she’s not looking. She’s not reading. She’s staring into the forested land beyond our property and fingering the three leaves at her neck. I call her several times, but it’s not until I crawl into her lap and start to play with the pendant myself that she breaks out of her reverie and hugs me tight.

  Without a word, I walked out of Jill’s front door—no clue as to where I was going or what I’d do when I got there.

  Sometime later, I found myself in the quad at the high school. Gus had managed to slip out Jill’s door behind me and followed as I paced aimlessly. No one hung out in the quad during the summer—somehow, it was okay to spend time in the dugouts and on the baseball field, but only losers hung out in the quad when school was out.

  I was in the right place, then.

  I perched myself on top of Charles’s and my table beneath the cottonwood tree, resting my feet on the bench. It hadn’t been our table for a few years now—not since we were in grade nine and doling out nerdy descriptions of our classmates. The tree had never perked up from its original abject state—its branches still drooped, its leaves still provided only sporadic shade at best. But it was still here.

  Gus bounded off to chase butterflies, and I was left to flounder in my self-pity and resentment. Did all that really just happen? Part of me was terrified that it had all been the result of my dizzying last few days. That I’d merely imagined it—my mind making me pay for trying to ignore the issue in the first place. Staring down at my sneakers, though, traces of clay dust and soil reminded me that my rampage had been real, and that my mom had only been able to spend a few minutes with me before leaving again.

  Soil, dust, clay. Nothing like a few natural elements to remind us that’s all we are—lone particles floating through space or laying under foot.

  Gus’s head popped up next to my feet, his paws scraping at the bench seat, his tongue in full pant.

  I tucked my thumbs under his little doggy armpits and yanked him up onto my lap, which wasn’t easy with his legs flinging out every which way. Once he was settled into a seated position, I hugged him tight to me and let him lick the bottom of my chin. He licked and licked and I could hear Charles say, You two are re-PUL-sive, in fake, drawn-out disgust as he peered down his nose at us.

  I missed him. I missed his social awkwardness and his casual contempt of most things. I missed our quiet moments together.

  Six minutes later I found myself outside his house.

  I crept around to the back and tapped on his bedroom window, not wanting to disturb his parents if they were home. I saw a shadowy movement behind the curtains, and then they slowly drew open. When Charles saw me, he didn’t look surprised (who else would it be?). He didn’t look anything. His face was best described as perfectly neutral. I noticed he’d buzzed the sides of his Afro into a fade, though. It looked pretty rad. He slid open the window and placed his hands in his pockets. “Yes?” Ice.

  “Hi. Sorry. I just . . . I didn’t really know where else to go.” I could feel my throat closing. I focused squarely on the window frame.

  His next words were laced with skepticism. “And you chose here?”

  I peered up at him. “Of course I chose here.” We held eyes for a second. Then: “I chose someone I trust.”

  “Where’re all your other friends? I’m sure Gordon would love to be your shoulder to lean on.”

  Yeesh. “Charles, I wasn’t choosing them over you. It’s just—so much happened all at once, and I got caught up in it. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I’m sorry that I did.” I could feel my face flush.

  “What all happened? Or can’t you tell me?” he asked, more uncertain than
skeptical now.

  I rubbed my eyes. There was so much to say. I didn’t even know where to begin.

  Seeing my difficulty, he offered, “I guess you can come in . . . if you want.”

  He walked away from the window and I dragged over the milk crate we used to get in and out of his bedroom in order to sneak out if we needed to. It hadn’t been used for a while. I told Gus to stay put and heaved myself up onto the ledge.

  Once inside, I just stood aimlessly in front of the window. Charles had flopped onto his bed and was propped on his elbows, staring at his open book, not reading. We stayed like this for a few moments or so.

  Finally I tried, “The faucet steadily dripped guilt—plop, plop, plop—until the sink drowned in watery despair. Who would pull the plug and send all wrongdoing where it belonged—into the sewers?”

  He turned the page of his book. Then: “And would sewage treatment effectively extricate the organic detritus of human frailty anyway?”

  He peered blankly into his book again. I remained a statue at the window.

  My knees began to ache, so I finally walked over and knelt by his bed. “Charles, I know that I have no right to unload on you. I just really want you to know that I’m sorry. And I’ve missed you. So much.” I laid my chin on the edge of his bed, trying to replicate the eyes Gus made when he wanted a treat. I threw in a couple of deliberate blinks for good measure.

  He scratched his nose. Licked his lips. Glanced sideways.

  Finally he closed his book and looked at me. “Don’t mistake this for forgiveness, but if you can bring yourself to actually tell me what’s going on, I guess I could listen and evaluate whether it’s truly worth casting your best friend aside like an unloved pair of corduroy pants.”

  Ouch. And only moderately fair. But I let it go. “Okay, but you’re gonna need your pants for this story, friend,” I said, climbing onto the bed next to him.

  After all was said and done, Charles did, indeed, decide there was enough in my story that most of my behavior was warranted. I had to give it to him too. Considering the magnitude of my drama—Ginny, Winnow, Gordon (I summed this up as “personal issues I couldn’t yet divulge”), Deidre, my dad and Jill and Mom—he remained relatively calm, only crinkling his nose and becoming fidgety once or twice. Mostly, he just nodded and punctuated his listening with a few “Whoas” and “Oh mans.” When I finished, he even offered me the rest of the Froot Loops he’d been snacking on, a true peace offering.

  I was still reeling from what had just occurred at Jill’s place, but sharing everything with Charles in the comfort of this familiar room restored a tiny bit of balance to my dangerously tilting brain.

  “Thanks for being so awesome,” I said, staring into my hands.

  “Thanks for trusting me with all of that . . . finally. And sorry it’s all so hard right now.” He gave me an awkward but classic “Charles-certified” pat on the back. After a few moments of silence, he said, “But, won’t this—us—be too boring for you now? I mean, I don’t think I can compete with Deidre and company. You saw what happened when you made me try.”

  I tapped the back of my hand against his. “You don’t have to compete with anyone, pal. I need you as much as I need them. And forcing you to read that poem was a shitty thing for me to do. I thought being someone you weren’t—that I wasn’t—would help us both. I’m sorry.”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose for the billionth time.

  “You know I’ll always love reading on the patio, right?” I said, leaning into him with my shoulder.

  Leaning back into me, he replied, “But will you always love buying secondhand underpants, is the real question.”

  “Always, my friend, always.”

  “Repulsive, as usual.”

  “Abrasive—typical.” I grinned down at my hands and could feel him doing the same.

  “What now?” he asked a moment later.

  Good question. I thought about the past couple of weeks, and which parts had actually felt good. Which parts had felt like something I wanted more of.

  I was surprised at the answer that flickered into view: boot camp with Deidre, my bearded face in the mirror, two or three brief moments onstage at the Lava Lounge.

  I’d told Charles all about my debacle at amateur night and about my stay at Deidre’s. “I think I want to try drag for real.”

  His fidgeting foot stilled. “Even after the ‘Dancing in the Dark’ fiasco?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  Why, indeed. I tried my best to explain, not comprehending it fully myself. “I guess—I guess it felt different from anything else I’ve done. Like . . . I had this secret double life, but it was actually my real life. And the charge I felt onstage—even though it all went horribly and was probably one of the most embarrassing experiences I’ve lived through—there was a moment or two when I really just wanted to be there. Like I felt connected . . . with the space, the audience . . . myself.” I realized I’d been kneading Charles’s bedspread like it was dough while I talked and stopped. I looked at him. “Is that weird?”

  His hands, unlike mine, rested flat and still against the quilt. He turned them inward and intertwined his fingers, then rested his head on top of them. “Empirically speaking—absolutely. These are strange things for Nima Kumara-Clark to find motivating. Theoretically, however, I think you always had it in you.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “Yes.” He slid off the bed and sat down in front of his laptop, which was on the floor next to his desk. “Nima, you tried out for the basketball team even though you didn’t know the first thing about basketball. You went to a drag show by yourself . . . went after a girl you liked . . . lip-synced on stage at a gay bar. Maybe you weren’t completely comfortable doing those things, but you did them anyway. Over and over again.”

  I scratched my nose. Studied his face. Tried to think of a rebuttal, but couldn’t.

  Lifting the screen, he asked, “Music?”

  “What?”

  “What music are you going to use? I think Bruce Springsteen has been done.”

  The side of my mouth creased into a smile.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on Charles’s bedroom floor and searching through his music.

  “I feel like the eighties is a good decade to stick with,” Charles said, scrolling through his playlist.

  I rolled my eyes. “Because I’m a dork, you mean?”

  “I just can’t see you doing rap”—I laughed out loud at the thought—“or country, or some sort of croony love ballad. And yes, you’re also a dork.” He paused. “But the kind people could take seriously, if that makes sense.”

  I frowned. “It doesn’t.”

  “I just think you’d make some kind of fun but smooth eighties tune work. Fortunately, I have a lot of that kind of music, thanks to superior taste.” He peered into his laptop, the screen reflecting in his glasses.

  “Okay, I’ll trust your obvious wisdom in all things drag-related,” I said, watching him scrunch up his nose in concentration.

  “I may not know much about drag, but I know enough about you.”

  True.

  We played song after song by David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and so on. He tested my lip-syncing abilities by playing a song and making me mouth along to it. In the end, Coach Charles seemed satisfied with my performance.

  Watching him squinting into his computer, I found myself asking, “Is it okay if Gordon’s around a bit? I mean, are you okay with that?”

  “Is he still a dick?”

  “Yup.”

  He tapped a few keys. “Things are pretty hard for him, I guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  After a few moments: “I suppose I could give it a go.”

  We whittled our list down to three songs. Each would require little in the way of coordinated dance moves or complicated costuming, and each also held something appropriate in the lyrics for my current mood and
circumstances.

  “You know this is all a majorly hypothetical situation we’re planning here, right?” I said, closing the laptop.

  “Mm-hmm . . . ,” he said, nodding his head but clearly not believing me.

  Mission complete, we decided to head back to my place. I needed to change my clothes and found myself craving a grilled cheese.

  I felt a little bad leaving Gus outside this whole time, but when we rounded the corner to the backyard, he didn’t even look up from where he lay baking in the afternoon sun. I had to call him twice and start walking away for him to finally take notice and heave himself after Charles and me.

  As we made our way back to my place, an illogical dread of facing the dirty dishes in my empty kitchen again surfaced. I tried to brush the feeling away as I entered my yard.

  After the gate completed its customary squeal of indignation, I heard, “Hey, baby girl!” and looked up to see Deidre and Gordon sitting in the porch swing, sipping soda from straws poking out of cans, like two old ladies.

  Gordon raised his can at me in a mildly friendly gesture.

  “What—where’d you two come from?” I glanced at Charles, who looked like he’d just developed the stomach flu.

  “Oh, we’ve just been driving around, feeling the hot breeze on our faces, and decided to take a cool-drink break on this lovely porch of yours. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Gordon hadn’t really been on my list of people I wanted to see right now, but somehow, finding him up there sipping out of a straw with Deidre and seeing Gus bound right up to him—I felt okay about it.

  I smiled at them both. “I don’t mind.”

  Deidre rose from the swing seat and leaned over the banister, focusing her attention squarely on Charles, who had slowed to a couple of steps behind me. “And who is this debonair young brother?”

  Charles blushed, and I could tell he was trying to hide a smile by sucking in his lips. No one could resist Deidre.

  Charles lifted his arm in a floppy, ridiculous wave and I wanted to hug him. “Deidre, this is Charles. Charles, Deidre. And you know Gordon.” I tried to keep my voice airy and cheerful for that last part.