From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (5 page)

“I would've messed those white boys up,” Ralphael had said when I told him and Sean what had happened.

“No, you wouldn't have,” Sean said quietly. “You would have kept on walking just like Mel did.”

We got all quiet then because we knew it was true. If it happened all over again—five or six white boys on a mostly white beach and one sorry black kid—we wouldn't have said anything. Simple. We would have been outnumbered. Outnumbered and mute as glass.

But the amount of hate seemed to have more power to it than anything else. And that's what we held on to when people got ugly with us. The hate—it's like it kept us whole. But it's not the kind of hate you wear on the outside. That would just make us go crazy. It's the inside kind, that sinks so deep you can forget about it until something comes along.

Walking along the beach now, I checked out the scene. It seemed too quiet, as though something was waiting around the edge of the day to happen. Kristin popped into my head. When she was leaving that night, she had said,
“I like who you are, Mel. I really like you.”
I didn't say anything.
You have no idea who I am,
I should have said.

A kid was crying somewhere. And further off, I could hear seagulls calling out over the ocean. A spray of salty air washed across my face. A man was fishing off a pile of graffitied boulders. I climbed up a few feet away from him, sat down, and started to write.

BEACHES

Chapter Six

When I got back to the blanket
, Mama was chomping on a chicken sandwich. I reached into her bag and got one.

“There's some bottled water on the side,” she said. “How'd your walk go?”

“Good. I wrote some.”

Mama smiled. “Are you ever going to let me read anything in those notebooks?”

I shook my head. “Maybe when I die.”

Mama rolled her eyes.

“It's not for you, Mama. It's for me. The stuff I write down is about
my
life.”

“All thirteen years of it, huh?”

“Almost fourteen,” I said.

Mama looked thoughtful. “I remember when it used to be
our
life.” She looked sad when she said this. “It seems like a long time ago.”

“C'mon, Ma. It's still our life. Look, we're here together, right? And you keep stuff from me, don't you? I mean I don't know
everything
about you.” I took a bite of my sandwich and watched this look creep across Mama's face. Vague and distant. “What's wrong?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just thinking.” She took a long swallow of water and looked out over the beach. “I wish we had a house on the beach,” she said.

“If you get one of those bad high-paying corporate law jobs . . .” I said.

Mama shook her head. “I guess there's no harm in wishing.”

“Whoever gets rich first,” I said, “has to get the other a beach house.”

Mama stuck out her hand and we shook on it. Then we lay back, the tops of our heads touching, and Mama hummed me to sleep.

 

 

It was starting to get dark when we finally packed up and left. Mama was silent for a long time on the way home and I thought maybe she was just thinking about work, so I didn't say much about anything.

“It was nice, huh?”

We lapsed into silence for a while.

“Melanin Sun,” Mama said, after a long time had passed. When she called my name, I couldn't remember what I was thinking about but I'm sure it was something important. There is a sand crab that's dying off because of people letting their dogs dump on the beach. I might have been thinking about finding one and digging a hole so that it could burrow deeper, away from the dogs, away from the crowds.

“Huh?” We passed an accident and I leaned past Mama's shoulders to see. A truck with “Wise” written on its side was stranded on the island separating east- and westbound traffic.

Once, on our way to do Thanksgiving with some bup pie friends of Mama's in East Hampton, our car spun three hundred and sixty degrees. It had snowed through the night and the next morning it was still snowing. Even though Mama had been driving carefully, the car still skidded and spun out, spewing snow up past the windows on all four sides of the car. Mama and I ended up in the middle of the divider. It took a while before we could figure out which direction we had been heading. I was more shaken up than Mama but when I looked at her, it was as if I could read her mind and it was saying
I'm so happy you're okay.
Leaning past her now, I grazed her shoulder with my own. It was my way of hugging her, of saying
I'm glad you're alive, too, Mama.

When I leaned back, Mama glanced over at me. “Your friends ever talk about . . . gay people?”

“What? Faggots?”
I'm not a faggot,
I wanted to say.

“I don't like that word, Mel.”

I swallowed. I wanted to explain my faggot theory to her. I wanted to let her know she didn't have to worry about me, that just 'cause I liked collecting stamps and stuff I wasn't going to be one of the
real
faggots. After all, there was Angie, wasn't there?

“Sometimes Ralphael gets all bent out of shape about me caring about extinction and stuff. Then he says . . . you know, that maybe I should think about doing stuff that's not . . . faggot stuff. But I know he's only kidding. That's about how close we get to talking about . . . gay people. Why?”

“Do you know any?”

“I don't really think about them much.”

“Ummmm . . .” Mama nodded. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Her face was all closed in a way she has of doing when she doesn't want me to try to read her thoughts.

“How come you're asking?” The minute I got home, I'd call Angie. Mama didn't have to worry—I was going to grow up normal—maybe even have a wife and a couple of kids someday.

“What about in school? What happens there?”

“We
learn.
What do you mean what
happens
there? You went to school.” I laughed but when I looked at Mama, her face was so serious, I stopped laughing as quickly as I started. “Ma, you don't have to worry about me, okay? I'm not gonna turn gay on you. There's a trillion boys that still hang with their mothers and—”

Mama looked stunned a moment. Then she started laughing. It was that pretty laugh, which she doesn't use a lot. I felt myself smiling.

She laughed a bit longer, then checked her rearview mirror and changed lanes, still smiling. We didn't say anything for a while. “I'm not thinking you might be gay, honey. That never even crossed my mind. I mean, if you were, I wouldn't—”

“But I'm
not,
Ma. So you don't have to worry.”

“But I'm not wor—Okay. Let me start again. Does the topic of queerness . . . ?”

“Queerness?”

“Queerness.”

“How come you can say . . .
queer
-ness and I can't say fag—”

Mama glanced at me, then stared straight ahead again. “Because when you say the f-word, it sounds like you're spitting. It sounds like you have so much hate.”

“I don't, though, Ma. That's just the word people use.” I felt my eyes begin to fill up. I didn't hate anybody. I didn't even care. I hated when she picked on me.

Mama reached over and stroked the side of my face.

“How come it has to matter?” I asked.

“I want to know if the subject is talked about. And how?” Mama continued. “Is it talked about? Are there gay teachers at school?”

“Why would I even
care
about them? Why do you? I mean, no one's there trying to teach me to be . . . a queer.”

Mama looked at me. “I care because they're people, Melanin Sun. Because I've raised you to care.”

 

 

There is a bird dying off in the Galápagos that came to my head suddenly. It's called a perot. A man goes from nest to nest checking on the eggs because rats eat them. They're trapping the rats now and they think maybe the bird won't become extinct after all. This was what I cared about, what I wondered about. How God could make something beautiful as a bird, then create rats that kill it off.

Mama's voice faded back in and for a second I thought I wasn't hearing her right. She had pulled the car over to the shoulder, turned the ignition off, and looked at me.

“I need to tell you I'm in love, Mel,” she said softly. “I'm in love with Kristin.”

SWIMMING

Chapter Seven

I felt the air leaving my lungs
, breath by tiny breath until there was nothing.

“No, Mama,” I whispered, letting her pull me close. I couldn't stand having her touch me but if she wasn't holding me then who would I be? Where would I be? Alone. Almost fourteen and alone. No mother. No father. No nobody.

I pulled away from her and wiped my nose with my hand. “Take me home,” I said, not looking at her.

“Mel . . .”

“Take me home. Now! Take me home.” I was screaming.

Mama sniffed, and slowly pulled the car back into traffic. We were silent on the drive home. I stole a look at Mama, feeling something melting away from me. Her face was tight as a fist. I had never seen it like that, so full of pain and something that looked like anger. Swallowing, I thought,
If she touched me, her touch would burn.

If she was a dyke, then what did that make me?
I'm not a faggot. I'm not a faggot! I'm not a faggot! I'm not a faggot! I'mnotafaggotnotafaggot!!
I wanted to scream this into the tight space of our car. I wanted to run out onto the middle of the B.Q.E. and get hit by the biggest thing coming.

Mama put her hand on my shoulder. “Don't touch me!” I said, jerking away. “Don't ever touch me again.”

Then Mama drove. Silently. Miserably. Tears streaming but no sound. We could have been two strangers in the middle of the ocean, a faggot father and his son in the deepest part of the lake. And our boat had sprung a leak. And now it was sinking. Sinking.

 

 

When she pulled up to the curb in front of our house, I bounded from the car before it even came to a full stop.

Upstairs, not knowing what else to do, I started punching the walls, hard as I could until holes opened up. I couldn't breathe. I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe. After a few punches, my knuckles started to burn and bleed. It felt good almost. Like I was really alive.

Behind me, I heard Mama telling me to stop punching the walls, stop putting holes in the walls. But our house was filled with holes now and she'd put the biggest one right through the roof—a big giant hole that let in all of this darkness. Even in the daylight, darkness was coming right through our roof and she had the nerve to say, “Stop punching holes.” Holding on to my arms, trying to hold me back or up because I felt like I was going to fall right over every time I thought about what it meant that she's a dyke—a big lesbo who kisses on other women.

“A dyke!” I was screaming this right into her face because she was holding me so close I could feel her breath and she was crying like I'd never seen her cry before. I hated her so so much. I hated that I wanted to hold her. I hated her for being my mother and my friend.

“Melanin, don't . . .” Her voice was soft and broken. I wanted to wipe away the tears and punch her full in the face for ruining my life like this.