Just Make Him Beautiful (4 page)

B
y the beginning of the third month,
the school had sent a letter home via sn
ail mail
.
 
M
y mother went off on me.
“Cameron, bring your bony ass here
!
”
she
yelled.

“Ok
ay,
Mo
ther
,” I said
,
not knowing what I had done for her to sound so mad.

“Hurry up
,
boy!
” she continued to yell.

“Yes
,
m
a
’am
,” I replied as I stood in front of her.

She shook what appeared to be a letter all in my face.
“What’s the meaning of this?”

“I don’t know,” I replied timidly.

“This is a letter from your school letting me know that you’ve missed more than
fifteen
days this semester from school
. Have your lost your everlasting mind?”

“No
,
m
a
’am
,” I said softly
.
I lowered my head down and looked at the floor.

“Now
,
I have to lose time from work and take you up to the school in the morning because they wanna meet with me. Take your
skinny,
high
-
yella ass
to
your room
.
I’ll be there in a minute.

I began to cry as I ran to my room because when m
other
sa
id,
“G
o to your room
.
I’ll be there in a minute
,”
t
hat meant she was coming to beat that ass. 

The worst part was the waiting. Sometimes she would make
us
wait for up to an hour or so. You see, I’m the type of person who wants to get it done and over with
.
I don’t like having time to think about what I did wrong and think how bad that ass
-
whipping
is
going to be
. I’m a do
-
it
-
and
-
get
-
it
-
over
-
with kinda
girl
.

Any
who
,
she wore my ass out that day
,
and I never played hooky
ever
again.

*

W
hen we were younger
,
my little sister and I used to play house. She was the daughter
,
and I was the mother. We lived in a two
-
bedroom apartment
.
 
M
y sister slept in
M
other’s room
,
and my big brother Ray
and I
shared a room
.
B
ut
since
he was always out
,
hanging with his friends
,
I pretty much had the room to myself
.
T
hat’s why we would always play house in my room.

I didn’t like having a baby sister because she
thought
that just because she
wa
s the only girl
and the baby,
she ought to get her way.

M
other didn’t help the situation
,
because
she always
babied her. In essence, she was mommy’s little girl.

Humph, if anything I could be more of a girl th
a
n her
.
B
esides, I was older and already had a teenage girl
’
s shape
,
even though I was only eleven.

*

“Cameron!
”
M
other yelled as she stood in my bedroom doorway
,
jolting me from my thoughts.

I was so embarrass
ed
as I stood there with one of her dresses on looking and admiring myself in the floor
-
length mirror.

“What are you doing?”
M
other asked
,
sounding angry
.

M
y baby sister
,
smiling and extending her tongue out at me,
stood behind
Mother
.

“Nothing,” I replied
,
not knowing what else to say
.

“Why are you wearing my dress?” she asked in a disappointing tone.

I started to stutter,
“I
-
I
-
I thought it was pretty
.
W
e w
ere
playing house
,
and Keshia got mad because she couldn’t fit your dress and I could
.
S
o that’s the only reason why she went
and told you
.
” I s
tarted
crying.

“Take my dress off and put it where you found it,”
M
other said
,
shaking her head as she left my room.

From
the look
on M
other
’s
face,
at that moment
she knew I
was
gay. As I think back, I believe that’s when I honestly knew as well.
Unf
ortunately,
M
other did treat me different
th
a
n my other two siblings. There were many times
, suffering from
the middle
-
child syndrome,
I felt like Jan Brady.

M
other absolutely adored my older brother Ray,
who
was sixteen and the spitting image of his father
.
Ray
could do no wrong. I also believed that
M
other was still in love with Ray’s father
,
who
was in the military and
had
left when Ray was born and never came back
,
or so the story goes.

We all had different fathers
.
I
wasn’t
sure who my father was
,
except I knew he was white
.
T
hat’s why I was so light and ha
d,
as they say,
“
good hair.
”

My
baby sister’s father was a wan
nabe
drug hustler and thug. He would come by and give my mother money to have sex with him. She didn’t think I knew
,
but I was up late one night and I heard them arguing
.
I heard him tell
her that the only reason he gave her money was because she was a good fuck. 

The only
reason I enjoyed having
a
baby sister
wa
s because she had the toys I wanted to play with
,
such as
dolls, tea cup settings, pink doll houses,
and
doll clothing
.
A
s a boy
,
M
other wouldn’t
dare
buy
girly things like that
for me
,
so I played with
Keshia’s
.

My sister and I always got into arguments because she never wanted me to play with her toys
,
but yet she always wanted to play house. What kinda shit was that? Like I said, I was older
.
S
he was six
,
and I was eleven. And
,
of course, when she didn’t get her way
,
she would run to
M
other.

I finally stop
ped
playing with her and started playing with my big brother.
Hmmm
!
M
y brotha
,
Lawd Jesus
.

*

I
’d
just turned twelve
when
I
snuck
into
M
other’s
bedroom
and took one of her dresses and
a pair of
her
high
-
heel
ed
shoes and ran back to my room to try them on.
M
other had taken Keshia out shopping
,
and Ray was out hang
ing with his boys or whatever.
I took all my clothes off and stood in the full
-
length mirror and realized I had a really nice little body. I had a better shape
than
M
other
,
to be honest. I had
begun
puberty
,
so
hair
had
beg
u
n to grow in my private area
,
and my but
t
was forming into a nice
,
smooth apple shape. I stood less than
five
feet tall and weighed less than
eighty
pounds.

I slowly put my mother’s dress over my head
,
and the feeling I felt as the dress fell down and hugged my naked body excited me. At the time
,
I didn’t know whether the dress was made of silk or rayon or what
,
but it felt good against my skin.
I didn’t get aroused like most boys I had noticed in the shower whose little dicks would get hard. Instead, m
y excitement
was
a
tingling sensation of a surge that went through my entire body.

I stepped into my mother’s high
-
heel
ed
shoes
,
which
fit perfectly
,
and nobody couldn’t tell me shit as I stood there admiring myself with my light
,
smooth skin,
thick,
pink lips, long eyelashes
,
and
curly,
black hair
.

I was better looking than any girl I knew
.
E
ven my brother’s girlfriend
, w
ho
he
thought was all that. Humph, she didn’t have anything on me.

I turned on my brother’s stereo system and popped in Patti Labelle’s CD and
lip
-
synched
the words as I looked in the mirror and ma
de
up steps as though I was performing.

“Dayum
,
b
aby
boy
!
W
hatchoo doing?” Ray asked, catching me off guard.

Ray
always called me
“
b
aby
boy
.
”
I don’t know why
.
I guess he started calling me that since I was born
,
and since I was the baby
at the time
, he just called me
b
aby
boy.

“Ah
,
nothing,” I replied
,
feeling embarrass
ed
and ashamed.

“
Does your
m
o
ther
know you going around here wearing her shit?” he asked
,
changing his clothes.

That’s
another t
hing about Ray I didn’t understand
.
W
e had the same mother
,
but he always referred to her as
“
your mother,
”
as though she wasn’t his as well.