Insurrections (19 page)

Two figures passed behind me; I could see them clearly in the mirror. The twins from confirmation class. They were with a tall oaken-skinned man. He had Alana's cheeks and nose, so I assumed he was her father and that she must also be around. Here I was standing in a baggy whale of a suit that swallowed me whole, accentuating every outward thing that was still childlike in my appearance. I wanted to become small. Not small in the way that I was, but a tiny thing so I could spy on Alana when she happened by.

Maurice spotted me and chuckled, pointing. Tomás grunted but otherwise ignored me, even when I waved. Maurice turned from me and
glanced through the suits. When Alana walked up behind her cousins, my hand was still in the air. I shouted a
Hey!
that sounded to me like the flat bark of a seal. She responded with a pursed-lipped smile before turning to help Maurice choose a suit. The tailor returned to tug at the ends of my pants. My hand hung in the air, a frozen wave. I realized I had been holding it above my head as if I were now some kind of black Statue of Liberty. My father arrived with two more suits. Son, he said, the one you got on looks good, but you'll look like my little superstar in one of these. Maurice and Tomás pointed and snorted once more. I thought I saw Alana smirk, but whatever passed across her lips was too brief for me to place. I pretended not to see Alana and her cousins walking about below me as I glanced at them out of the corners of my eyes. Soon they disappeared into a dark-hued maze of haberdashery. I took solace, standing there in the mirror, in the fact that my voice hadn't cracked, but on my way home I realized that what actually did transpire was no better or worse than my voice momentarily dancing off into a higher register. In fact, that could be explained away as the uncontrollable whims of my malfunctioning hormones. What excuse could I ever make for such a bizarre display?

The Friday before confirmation Sunday I spent much of the day wondering about the strange mechanism of the mind that made seconds slow in anticipation of major events. It's still a mysterious thing to me, especially since it no longer happens much now that I'm older. Nowadays a minute is a minute and a day is a day and the ones leading up to something exciting feel no longer than any other minute or day. Perhaps I had experienced so few days and minutes as a young man that my sense of wonder could stretch time until it felt misshapen. Perhaps when I'm old, all of life will feel like little more than an instant, and maybe that's why God's day is a thousand years. What's a minute to the man who has all the time?

At home, I did no homework but instead slept, watched music videos, and masturbated to make time move faster. In class I slept, and it was perhaps to Ms. Baker's delight, because it gave her another opportunity to call my parents, which she took advantage of Friday night.

My mind was so cloudy and loopy, floating through a haze somewhere far from earth, that I neglected to properly monitor the early evening phone calls. What kind of person has nothing better to do on a
Friday night than call parents, anyway? I picked up and didn't recognize Ms. Baker's voice until after I had screamed through the house, alerting my mother that she had a phone call.

I paced about while she was on the phone. I heard my mother giggling as if she were talking to one of her girlfriends. If my sister were here, we could huddle and develop a strategy. At the very least she would make me smile through my anxiety. I felt sweat pooling at the seat of my pants. My testicles shriveled. I wondered about the evolutionary function of testicle shriveling. Ms. Baker had said every action of our bodies evolved to ensure survival in a brutal and dangerous world. Perhaps a man can flee predators faster once his testicles have shriveled up into his body. I don't know. Funny time to recall Ms. Baker's lessons. Though I never listened and I failed the tests, some of what she said had gotten through. But the Jesus I was about to confirm my dedication to never mentioned evolutionary functions.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and then I retired to bed. It was early, but I figured my parents wouldn't bother me in my sleep.

Baby, my mother said as the door creaked open. Baby, wake up. Ms. Baker just called. I saw you open your eyes. Don't shut those things again. I know you're awake.

I turned a little bit and wiped my eyes.

Sleeping in class? All you do is sleep here.

Ms. Baker's class is boring.

Don't you want to be a doctor?

I nodded despite the fact that I hadn't wanted to be a doctor since the fourth grade when I realized that it would require more math than my fragile intellect could stand.

Well, how's that going to happen with you sleeping in science class? I wouldn't want you to be my doctor. I need greater effort and focus from you. This disappoints me, because I know how smart you are. I see it every day. I know you got more brains than the average person in that big head of yours. I'm going to talk to your fath—

Wait, Mom, I cried out. This is a small thing. You don't need to—

Let me finish, Bobby. He's good at setting goals and coming up with plans. That's why we live here now and not back on the Southside. That's how we got your sister off to college. We never set too many goals with you. Not as often as we could. Maybe he'll be mad and he'll fret and stuff.
Maybe he'll yell, but you got me in your corner, Bobby. Your father too, but I'm in your corner in that mother way. In the end, talking to Daddy'll be for the best. Ms. Baker told me about the insect collection project. I haven't seen you pick up so much as an ant. Instead of sleeping, go hunt some of the roaches around here.

We don't have roaches, Mom.

I'm so used to living with those damn things back in the old apartment. Your sister had no problem with this project. This is the one time being over in that neighborhood would have helped you with your lessons. Go back to the Southside and get some roaches.

My mother started to walk from my room. At the doorway she turned and said words that hit me like a switchblade to my gut: Don't continue to disappoint me, Bobby.

When my father got home that night, he grunted toward me and disappeared into his bedroom to change from his work clothes and to chat with my mother. If she discussed Ms. Baker's call that night, I never heard anything about it. He said nothing much at the dinner table, staring off into his soup. After dinner he retired to the couch and fell asleep as if he too were trying to pass the time with slumber.

Late night Friday and Saturday blend together for me. I spent those hours in the basement watching
Desert Passion, The Bikini Car Wash Company
, and
Private Obsession
on cable. None of us could have possibly imagined the wonders of cable back when we lived on the Southside, and now I couldn't conceive of becoming a man without it. I remember each particular movie that played that weekend (though not which night each was on), as they were my favorites and I would check the cable guide weekly in an effort to never miss a late-night viewing when I could help it. These three movies were such dazzling cinema. The dizzying flashes of flesh. Somehow these pictures assured me that the future, Alana or no Alana, would be fine. Who would need Alana with the coming cavalcade of bodies like the ones on-screen?

Above in the kitchen, whenever I heard my mother or father rustling around, I lowered the volume, particularly if there was moaning and panting on-screen. But this weekend it felt as if the clouds had parted. No one came into the kitchen or shouted from the stairs ordering me to come up to bed or otherwise interrupted my cinematic education. Watching some nude woman or the other, I began to think of it all as strange. My
favorite three naked movies, as I called them, airing with no interruptions in the days before Jesus would declare me a man? At first I regarded it as a gift, a last chance at guilt-free sinfulness before I was required to take responsibility for my own sins. A kind of bachelor party. I began counting tits, and at about the seventeenth pair, I realized my gift theory was full of holes. Jesus and his obsession with chastity wouldn't even allow himself the carnal pleasures I allowed myself on that couch.

This was the temptation the devil paraded before Jesus those forty days and nights in the desert. Come to think of it, that Saturday night it was
Desert Passion
that played, and I regarded it as a joke between me and the Almighty, and also as a clear sign alerting me to what the trickster Jesus was up to. And as much as it was a joke and a sign, it was also a dare to resist lasciviousness. I imagined Black Jesus up in Heaven laughing like hell at his twisted sense of humor.

I watched the movie until the end when the half-naked women disappear into the hot, unforgiving desert, and I went upstairs to bed. I lay there staring at the dark, thinking of the trial given to me from on high. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but images of the women from the movies and thoughts of Alana passed through my head. What a cruel test, I thought as I wrenched down my pajama pants and gripped my erection. Fuck it, I whispered. I'll fail.

What stopped me was the sounds of voices through the wall that separated my parents' room from mine. They were awake. Briefly I imagined they had heard the creaking of my old bed—as I sometimes heard the creaking of theirs—and were debating whether to bust down my door and confront me, but even I could recognize the ridiculousness in that.

Their voices became heated and loud. Mostly it sounded like muffled tuba playing, but I understood snatches.

I heard the word
stress
. I thought my father said my name and then my sister's name. The name of her school. I stopped breathing to concentrate. I felt the warmth of my shaft in my hand, but I didn't let go. If anything, I held it tighter.

My father cursed. I sat up to hear more clearly.

Look, Robert, I can take Bobby and move back to the Southside if I need to. I don't care. I've only been not-poor for a little while.

Like you can handle a boy like Bobby all on your own. Every minute
a phone call from the teachers. Like you're doing a good job getting him to do his schoolwork now.

That's not fair, and this is not about Bobby—

He shouted over her, repeating the same thing he had just said. My mother too repeated her words.

Will you shut up, Robert? This is not about Bobby. You're just trying to change the subject. Bobby's not the reason—

You're right, he's not. You are.

You're a drunk.

I haven't been drunk in years. I don't plan to ever be drunk again. I drank half a beer because the shop is stressing me and you're stressing me and Bobby's stressing me. And then I told you about it. I didn't try to hide. I confessed like Rector Byron told me to. Didn't he say I'd backslide, but that when I did, I had to tell you and tell Jesus? Well, here I am and this is what I get?

Let's pray, Robert.

After that, I heard grumbling and then silence. I rested my head back on my pillow. I wanted to rush out and ask all that was swirling my head: Is it true? Was it just half a beer? Did you tell my mother and Jesus everything? Am I really to blame? Are you praying to White Jesus or Black Jesus and do you really think he's up there making it all better?

That Sunday morning—the day of my confirmation—my mother and I went off to church and my sister met us there. My father stayed home, saying he wanted to spend the morning finishing the table and getting the house ready for the party that would follow the evening's service.

God'll understand, he said as my mother hurried me out the door.

It was the usual service. The rector told corny jokes during a generic sermon. I refused to raise my croaky voice in song, even as my mother glared. Having stayed up most of the night before, I dozed during the prayers and all the various still moments. When I dipped off, my sister kicked my ankle and my mother popped my cheek.

During the announcements, the rector asked all the confirmation candidates to assemble in the narthex at 6 p.m., no later. I was awake and alert. I even looked over at Alana and imagined we shared a moment. I'll never forget the word
narthex
or sitting there paying close attention to the announcements, thinking I was having a mundane, forgettable time. One that wouldn't define me and one I'd never think back to as I went
on to live my life. The word
narthex
was just a strange word I somehow dimly knew the meaning of. How could I ever imagine that my future would turn on the precision in defining such an odd and beautiful and gothic little word?

My mother slammed the door of the gray Oldsmobile. I sat in the back and stared out the window for the short drive home, and my sister sat up front.

First my mother started in, Couldn't you act like you care one Sunday in your life? It's your confirmation Sunday.

I know, I replied.

And got the nerve to talk back, my mother said.

Bobby, why don't you shut up and listen for once? my sister said. I was shocked by her rebuke.

You slept for the whole service, didn't pay one bit of attention, my mother said. You are the one who has to account for your soul, not me.

My mother and sister took turns going back and forth. We stopped at a red light and I thought the car would never move. The sound of my mother and sister chattering against me became an impenetrable wall. They no longer used words; it sounded to me like the muffled noises I heard between the walls when my parents prayed. I said not another word, because I could barely understand what was happening.

He's not paying you any attention, Mom, my sister said. I don't even see the point of talking to him. He's going to learn the hard way.

I don't want your brother to learn like that, so I'm going to make him damn well straighten up. Bobby, listen. You awake?

My mother pulled into the carport at the side of our house. We all exited the Oldsmobile and approached the door. I felt worn and beaten.