The Truth Is

by Nonieqa Ramos

  “By the way,” Danny calls over his/her/their shoulder, “you were incredible center stage!”

  ……

  My moms is headed into the shower before she heads to work, and I’m about to jump in bed. The hum of her toothbrush chills me out. All I need is my white noise app on my phone to block out the questions. Did Danny come to see me? Or to raid the janitor’s closet? And for what?

  Ugh, forget the white noise app. I’mma just turn on the vacuum and set it by my bed. Crossing the kitchen to my room, I catch the old-fashioned Presto ringtone of my mother’s phone.

  I plop down on a chair at the table and stretch my back muscles. Cradle the phone on my shoulder like a pillow. “Yeah.” The buttons I accidentally press with my cheek beep.

  “That’s how you answer the phone?”

  “Papi? I thought it was one of Ma’s bosses.” My spine straightens, dragging me with it.

  “Did your mom tell you I been calling?”

  A Mariana Trench-sized yawn rounds my mouth.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  I lean back, finger combing the tangles of my hair. All this hair that I spend hours and hours trying to make perfect, but it never freakin is. Blanca told me once I went cross-eyed, staring so long at my ends. “We been busy.”

  “Well, I’m glad I caught you then.” He clears his throat. “I want to explain my absence today. Veronica, your sister—”

  “My sister? Say what?”

  “My daughter—”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Your stepsister. Stop interrupting and hear me out. Look. It’s been tough—”

  “Yeah.” In theory, my dad is all about atonement and used to take me to church for confession even before I was old enough for communion. “Forgive me Padre for I have sinned . . . I think a stole a cookie from a cookie jar?” But when was the last time my dad asked for my forgiveness?

  “Is your mom there?”

  “She’s getting ready for work.”

  “So you’re gonna be alone.”

  “I’m gonna be asleep.” Okay, I’m gonna be in bed.

  “You’re alone too much, mija.”

  “And you’re trying to pin that on Ma?”

  “She doesn’t have to work that much. She could be there—”

  “She is here. You’re there.”

  “Listen. Maybe we could get together some time. Maybe next weekend? Wait, no. Wait. How about—”

  “No. No more waiting. I’m not a middle schooler anymore, waiting on the stoop for a car that never comes.”

  Shit. I said it. When you lose someone, you learn to say what needs to be said before you don’t get the chance again.

  SIGH-lence on his end.

  Mami’s shower turns on, the running water my favorite lullaby. “I gotta go.” Before I fall asleep in this chair, slide onto the floor, and get a contusion. Again, I can sleep anywhere but in a bed.

  “Okay. I understand.” Long pause. “I get it. I sowed nothing, so I can’t complain nothing was reaped. I been served. No question. But, I’m still your father. For better or worse, you’re still my daughter. I’ve made mistakes, but you were never one of them.”

  The biggest mistake here is me picking up the phone. “I’m tired, Papi.”

  “Verdad, we need to talk. How about I surprise you sometime? Just out of the blue. Show up.”

  “Surprise? That would be a cardiac arrest.”

  “Okay. Maybe you could surprise me.”

  My left eye pops open.

  “You just call a cab and come over. Anytime. I’ll pay for it when it arrives.”

  “Yeah, okay. And if you’re not there when it arrives? How’s that gonna work? Listen, thanks for calling. I gotta go.” I hang up.

  I’m so tired, I almost brush my teeth with my mother’s tube of acne cream. I collapse into bed.

  Of course, this is where I’m most awake. I seriously think I should put a school desk in my bedroom and a bed in my classroom. Now my mind has a mind of its own and pops the trunk. Nelly’s words escape: Dónde está tu abuela? Why didn’t I ask Blanca what this meant? Because I was embarrassed. Embarrassed at not knowing? Embarrassed at looking like a racist?

  I wiggle out of my cocoon and head to my desk. Pray to the Google god. Get my answer from Puerto Rican poet (there are PR poets?) Fernando Fortunato Vizcarrondo:

  Yesterday you called me Negro, And today I will respond to thee: My mom sits in the living room, And your grandma, where is she?

  My hair is kinky, Yours is like silk, Your father’s hair is straight, And your grandma, where is she?

  Your color came out white, And your cheeks are pink; Your lips are thin, And your grandma, where is she? . . .

  Yesterday you called me Negro, Wanting to embarrass me. My grandma steps out to the living room, And yours hidden from everybody . . . And I know her very well! Her name is Mrs. Tata You hide her in the kitchen, Because Negro is really . . . she.

  Wait. Is Nelly Puerto Rican? Am I black? We black? My head hits the keyboard. I feel like a shapeshifter. Who am I?

  I crawl into bed with a stranger. Me.

  8

  I walk into homeroom on three hours of sleep and short about three hundred hairs. My scalp is sore. My brain is the closet of the room you were told to clean, the closet you crammed everything into. I’m cranky. I lean on my palm and stretch out my legs across Blanca’s chair. I’m about to catch a cat nap when the phone lights up with the homeroom group message:

  @ShutupU2: No Danny this morning. The pool is over 200 dollahs!

  @macncheesedaddy: Wow. I could buy a third of a smartphone with that.

  @blerdsneedsluv2: How many people are swimming in this pool?

  @shutupU2: Well. About 200.

  @frodown: But wait. This is a 50/50 bet. So let’s use a random number and say 100 kids think Danny is a guy and 100 a girl. Then half of us win—

  @blerdsneedluv2: 2 dollars LOLLOLOLOL

  @XoXo: He can pee next to me. #loveislove

  White Girl 3 out loud: “That’s a T-shirt. A slogan. Not reality. Your dad would pitch a fit. Assuming he has a penis, I don’t want it in my bathroom, okay. Bathrooms should be based on biology, not on personal preference.”

  My eyes pop all the way open at the sound of her voice. What the hell is that puta doing here? I straighten up and scope out the situation. White Girls 1 and 4 are back too. Nelly still isn’t here.

  White Girl 2 aka @XoXo, chipping the pink polish of her nails: “I don’t think gender is a preference. I’m sure everybody would prefer that they were born in the right body.”

  White Girl 3, who’s now wearing cornrows(?): “The right body is the body you have, not the body you have to surgically alter.”

  @blerdsneedsluv2 aka Black Guy 2: “Why can’t they just have their own damn bathroom?”

  @frodown aka Frida: “Really, Alphonse? Their own water fountain too?”

  @blerdsneedsluv2 aka Black Guy 2 aka Alphonse I guess: “That ain’t the same thing.”

  White Girl 3: “I don’t want to worry about getting raped in the bathroom. How am I supposed to know if a guy is in there because he thinks he’s a girl or a guy is in there because he’s a sicko?”

  Frida: “So you’re saying that rapists would dress up as a woman and attack you in the restroom stall?”

  White Girl 3: “Tell me your father is okay with guys being in the bathroom.”

  Frida: “Why wouldn’t rapists have dressed up as women to attack women in stalls before?”

  White Girl 3: “I’m waiting.”

  Frida, fiddling with the flower in her hair: “Okay. No. My father would not be down with brothas in the restroom.”

  @Rican_Havok: “Forget my dad. My sister goes here. If that dude steps into the bathroom, I will kick his ass.”

  Boricua 2 aka Penelope: “Excuse me. Sorry I’m late to the convo. But what if he has she parts? Then can they use the girl’s bathroom?”

  @Rican_Havok: “No. A fictional
penis is still a penis.”

  Frida: “So you’re good with him using the boys’ bathroom?”

  @Rican_Havok: “I’ll kick his ass.”

  ……

  Danny doesn’t show all morning. I head to the bathroom before lunch. I’ve brought my nail clippers today because that is more civilized than using my teeth. To make up for the three hundred hairs I pulled out, I’ll snip three hundred split ends. I sit on the toilet tank and find my rhythm.

  Knock knock knock. “I could just slip it under the door.”

  “Danny?” I jump off the toilet tank so fast, I almost step into the bowl. “Slip what under the door?”

  A banana clutched by a dry, cracked hand waves back and forth.

  I drop my nail clipper, I’m laughing so hard. Grab the banana. Gather my things: hair, backpack, nail clipper. Danny glances at all this but doesn’t question it, my sanity, etc.

  “Okay. Office hours are over.” I push open the door and grab Danny’s hand. Thank God @Rican_Havok’s sister isn’t in here. “Come with me if you want to live.”

  By the time we find the most isolated stairwell, I have inhaled the banana and am trying to figure out what to do with the peel. So Danny and I think we’re hilarious and set it on the stairs.

  “So where were you this morning? Your ears are pierced.” I estimate 120 dollars’ worth of piercings from a homie who may have raided the janitors’ closet. Blanca and I did the research.

  “Yeah.” He has wooden plates inserted into his ear holes. “Buddy of mine owed me a favor. Did it for free. But I had to do it this a.m.”

  “Free? Except for the cultural appropriation, I like them.”

  Danny blinks in surprise.

  “So a buddy, huh? You and Blanca. She tried to DIY a tattoo once by reading a prison blog.” Ms. Trial-and-Error was planning on piercing her nose by hand and I was like hell to the no.

  “Blanca?”

  I said her name. Out LOUD.

  “Is she in homeroom?”

  Yeah. No. Yeah. “She’s not here.” Not on the stairwell. At the moment. Mostly. “Anyway, tats and piercings were her thing.” Gonna be her thing. “She was into fashion. Costumes, actually. Girl loved petticoats. Other girls walked around in shorties and tank tops. She walked around in the summer with a parasol. She always said she didn’t belong—” to this time.

  “What’s your thing?”

  “I love the suspenders. And the hats: bowler, Panama, fedoras. I could tie a Windsor knot like nobody’s business. Britches are badass.” Wait. The correct answer was I build sets.

  “I can just see the two of you.”

  “Actually, you couldn’t. Because Blanca had the cojones to walk through the barrio with a Victorian touring hat. She wore her personality on her sleeve. My personality . . . is kind of stitched into a secret pocket.”

  “I love secrets. And pockets. But especially secret pockets.”

  I snort again. It’s on. “So do you have a secret pocket?” And are there janitor’s supplies stuffed inside?

  A bunch of gossip-girling sophomores jogging up the stairs fall dead quiet at the sight of Danny and me. One of them makes a big show of squinting at Danny like she’s trying to identify a bacterial strain. They get all whispery and then back away like they verified leprosy. Frida comes up from behind and stares them down.

  “Sorry for staring, ladies. My bad.” Frida squints. “But only two layers of makeup? I couldn’t tell who you was.”

  They suck their teeth and strut off.

  “Yeah!” I shout to their backpacks. I get a middle finger.

  I’m embarrassed and grateful all at once, thinking back to that guy shoulder-bumping Danny and me not saying a word in their defense. I SUCK. Frida didn’t flinch. The right words came out of her mouth at the right time.

  “PS, you two know there is a cafeteria, right?” Frida says.

  Danny laughs. His/their front tooth is chipped. He/they stops smiling when he/they catches me looking.

  “Speaking of the cafeteria, do you think tomorrow, I could offer you a seat? One that doesn’t have a lid. At the table?”

  Snort. “I’d—like that. But first”—deep breath—“Danny. I swear I’m not placing any bets with Rudy, but . . . pronouns, please for the love of God.”

  Danny nods. “Thank you for actually asking.” Now I feel even worse. That was all I had to do? Maybe it’s something I should do all the time. With everyone. “He/him will work.You?”

  “Me?”

  “That’s a new one. Would me come a little closer?”

  “No! I meant . . .”

  “I’m just messing with me.” He looks into my eyes and laughs.

  I laugh too.

  9

  Normally, the day is like an abacus, stones sliding from one groove to the next and back again. But the rest of the day felt like skipping those stones across a sunlit lake. Especially with the picture of Rudy slipping on a banana peel, shared on the group message courtesy of Frida.

  Is it tomorrow yet?

  In accepting Danny’s invitation, I didn’t think about my hair. Most people wouldn’t be aware of not thinking about their hair, but I’m not most people. I’m always aware of what I’m thinking, of when I’m not thinking about thinking, and where the ibuprofen is located. I wake up earlier to cut all the hairs that I wouldn’t be able to cut in the restroom at lunch.

  I’m about to slip on my jeans and T-shirt, when I consider what I’d actually like to wear for the first time. Okay, maybe I’m not ready to step out in public in britches, but how about a fedora for starters? Not just to school where everybody bumper-stickers themselves with personality. (No offense, Blanca.) But everywhere: the supermarket where the neighbors inventory each other’s kids, to church where neighbors predict your fate, best exemplified in hats for women, dresses and patent leather shoes for the girls. I face off with my screen-saver Jesus.

  “I mean, Jesus, you’re wearing a dress. So I can wear a fedora. And suspenders?” Yes. And so what if I want to dress GQ, suave and powerful.

  But in the end, despite my blasphemy with Jesus, I dress basic, because basic is my invisibility cloak.

  I canvas homeroom as I stand in the doorway, the way I do every room I enter, and instantly register there is a change in logistics.

  White Girls 1-5 are huddled up in the back of the room. Nelly’s desk has been decorated like a shrine. Kinda like the way the outside of the Dollar Theater was decorated almost a year ago for Blanca and the others, with flowers and stuffed animals. A banner across the chair reads, Nelly Should be Here. Is Nelly . . .?

  Nelly’s friends are back and talking about how Nelly’s mom unenrolled her from school. Apparently the administration wanted to expel her, even though the white girls only got suspensions. Nelly’s gonna go to the local Catholic school. Her mom refused the scholarship and is gonna take a part-time job to afford the tuition.

  Each hair on my head feels like a tentacle absorbing every minute vibration, telling me to retract, bleach, calcify, die.

  I recoil to my desk the way I’d hide under my blankets as a kid. Check my phone and see an invitation for a rally at tonight’s school board meeting. “Justice for Nelly” meets at seven tonight in front of the admin building. Crowds of people will stand two hundred feet away from the building raising signs and chanting.

  Crowds of people are unpredictable. In a school we’re regulated, monitored, herded from one class to another, from one life event to another. But outside everyone is an outlier, a variable, a powder keg. It would take only a second for someone to reach into their pocket and change the future.

  I delete the invite. I barely know Nelly anyway. Check social media and see Frida is inviting kids to her house to organize. There would be conversations to initiate, which might lead to a rapport, which might lead to a friendship. Friendships require encounters at regular intervals. Where I can’t predict the setting, the stage directions. On the other hand, if I’m not there, conversations will le
ad to bonding and relationships that will hinge on these defining moments, and I will written out of the script.

  A gentle pressure weighs on my shoulder. “Uh, Verdad,” Danny says, “the bell.”

  I lift my aching head. Homeroom is clearing out. I nod and meet Danny, who looks like he’s been spun in a blender, outside the door.

  He leans back on his heels. “Tough night?”

  My haze lifts. “No. Yeah. I mean nothing more than the usual. More like a sucky morning. Which is also the youzhe. You?” I pluck what appears to be a leaf off his shoulder, pretend to throw it on the floor, and stick it in my back pocket. I don’t know why, that’s why.

  Blanca (wrapping her arms around herself pretending she’s making out with some dude): Mwahmphmmmmmm!!!

  Danny looks in the direction I’m gazing. “I’m good. No worries. The nurse hooked me up.” He shows me a giant Wonder Woman Band-Aid across the top of his left hand. A lefty like me. I find the Band-Aid sexy. I find him being a lefty sexy. I find thinking of his hands sexy. I want to kiss his booboo.

  “You’re blushing.”

  “I am?”

  “I don’t know why. But I like it.”

  Two chicks float by, one a vintage thrift-store hippie chick, the other in an airy blouse and poofy pants, all twittery and giggly, their long, silky black hair swinging in sync. Both bat volumized eyelashes in Danny’s direction. Danny nods and looks away, hiding in his hoodie.

  I will cut them.

  I adjust my backpack. “We should go.”

  Danny fist-bumps me and I head to math. Math, the solution to all “our” problems according to my moms, but the biggest problem in my academic life.

  “English—anybody could do that. That’s not going to get you no scholarship.”

  “Really, Ma? Thoreau, Neruda? Anybody could do it?”

  “Verdad, the truth is you won’t get no respect without math. When you step in front of an employer, they’ll look at that face and they’ll make all kinds of assumptions about you. Assumptions that start with can’t. Won’t. Didn’t. Thoreau’s not gonna change that. Knowing how to do calculus will scare everyone shitless.”