Rion Scott - Insurrections

I asked again: Where’s my brother?

He’s paying some of his debts, the man with the lopsided Afro said.

I’m gonna miss the little guy, the balding man with the dreadlocks said.

Yeah, the man with the lopsided Afro said. That guy always had a story. Say, jackson, you remember the one about the squirrel?

The balding man with the dreadlocks laughed.

Yeah, the man with the lopsided Afro said. That dude in the story went through all kinds of shit and then zap, he plum turns himself into a squirrel and don’t have to deal with none of that shit no more. I wish I was a squirrel. That’s how I’m gonna remember your brother, as a squirrel. Yeah, man, it would be cool to be a squirrel. Call me Buck Buck Squirrel.

You a damn fool, Buck Buck, the balding man with the dreadlocks said. How being a squirrel gon’ get you out this mess?

I guess it wouldn’t, he replied. Maybe if I was a flying squirrel. They say it’s gonna rain again.

Who say that? the balding man with the dreadlocks asked. It’s only the three of us here. You got the Weather Channel beamed into your knotty head?

You think anyone’s coming for us?

Naw, man, don’t nobody give a fuck about us down here.

Can you believe it? That nigga Stephen used to be my social worker. Then he was my taxi driver. Then my drug dealer. Ha!

And you was gonna sell him out for a few dollars?

Can’t trust nobody these days, right?

The men started laughing and then they shut their mouths, but the laughter wouldn’t stop. What a sound. A deep full-throated open-mouthed laughter. Though they looked silent and stoic like wood carvings, they weren’t silent or stoic. They were laughing.

Say, jackson, the man with the dreadlocks said to me, you all right? You looking all fucked up.

Even as he spoke, he competed with his own laughter. His words and the laughter were a chorus simultaneously singing different parts of the same composition. I turned onto my side and vomited. I shivered. Sweat poured down my skin, though a cool breeze kept blowing. This must have been how it was for Stephen every blessed time he tried to kick the stuff.

I lay on my back, coughing up the saliva and bile that had caught in my throat. The men stood over me. I heard them through the persistent laughter.

He not looking good.

I’d be surprised if he make it through the night.

Shit, he ain’t no good no more.

What you think we can get for him?

I said he ain’t no good no more.

But he look enough like his brother; we could still get some money.

He ain’t no good. He spoiled. Rotten. Won’t no one pay us nothing for that. Help me with him.

Man, I ain’t touching this dude. I’m not letting no sickness jump from him to me.

You don’t want him to make you sick? Then help me flip him into the water.

I tried to scream out, but the only sound I could make was a donkey-like neighing, which just made the men’s laughter more pronounced. Water touched my skin. Soaked into my clothes.

Again everything turned black.

I awoke to the rocking of a boat and the watery sound of oars thrusting through the water. The putrid sulfur smell of the filthy muck below filled my nostrils. I coughed. A voice called my name. It sounded like my brother. I glanced upward at the figure who stroked the oars back and forth. The person was hunched and cloaked in all black. I became convinced that it was my brother; he had survived and, in turn, had come to rescue me.

It’s nearly morning, a voice said. You were out for some time.

The voice was a feminine one. I wanted to respond, but still I couldn’t speak. It took all my strength to pull myself up. What I saw, though it was not my brother, filled me with joy. First, the dazzling eyes, two burning brown and green sparks dancing on her face. Then the veil.

She told me to lean back, to relax. Still unable to speak, I muttered a horrible sound over and over until I became frustrated.

You were out there clinging to a piece of wood, she said. I don’t know if you remember. But you’re safe now. We gotta get you to a hospital.

I started to mutter again, but it was no use. My face hurt and I could form no words. I tried to ask her all the pertinent questions. Tried to tell her about my brother, who I knew I would never see again, but my brain felt tired. I couldn’t even remember his name, though I could see his face, which brought such shame welling up in my heart that I nearly began to cry. I wanted to tell her about myself, about my mother who would soon be bawling. I wanted to tell this mythical woman that I loved her, that she was beautiful.

She reached her slender arm back to me and took my right hand in hers, telling me to rest. The woman reassured me that everything would be okay. And it was only then that I noticed how warm it had become and how the light from the expanding sun had taken over the whole sky and how it made the ripples in the dirty water shimmer.

I

Every day, twice a day, Joan Santi bathed her son in lavender, from the soft spot on his head with its wispy hairs to his tiny light brown toes. You could always smell it emanating from every crevice of baby Phil. Consequently, Joan’s hands carried the smell. This was back in the eighties when she was a new mother. That’s what she became known for. That beautiful purple smell. This pudgy woman, occasionally with slight acne and neatly pressed hair or carefully chosen wigs. Who didn’t gravitate toward her in those days?

II

It was only after the boys had played their last game of basketball that Casey noticed the woman. He was a bit lightheaded from the workout, and he breathed briskly through his mouth. He bent forward, rested his hands on his knees, and looked up. She was in the distance at first, appearing very briefly like a hallucination, walking round and round, speaking gibberish to herself loudly and animatedly.

Her shirt was dirt-caked and dotted with black smudges. It stopped just above her navel so that her belly flopped over her waistband and hung low. The woman paused and watched Casey and his three friends for a few minutes before moving again in a circle round the perimeter of the ball court.

At first they ignored her, making small talk and jokes, and then Casey said, What she want?

A new shirt, Richard replied.

She ain’t bothering us, Wayne said.

When she strode closer, Casey noticed a bulbous pus-filled sac just above the right corner of her upper lip. Curly whiskers grew out of it. Wild crabgrass patches of hair dotted her chin and cheeks. She parted her lips and the boys watched the gray and black strays that surrounded her mouth.

Fillafil. Fillafil… Fillafil… Fillafil, she called. Then she walked.

The boys screwed their faces in disgust, chuckling between short breaths. Kwayku was the first to get a hold of his breathing and in a husky, wheezy growl he said: Look, Casey, there go your mother.

Everyone laughed except Casey, who twisted his brow. If only he had taken more shots instead of listening to Wayne and passing the ball, he could’ve shut Kwayku up by gloating over a victory, but after a loss, or a series of them, there is very little the loser can tell the victor.

The conversation moved along to girls in general, then it turned specific, the boys tossing off names of girls they’d sleep with if ever given the chance — or, in Kwayku’s case, boasting of girls he slept with or came damn close. Casey, through everything, stayed fixed on the woman; he studied her as she passed. The boys swatted at gnats and dabbed sweat from their foreheads while they discussed female body parts, particular body parts they were all familiar with and had glimpsed through clothing at one time or another: a left breast, a thigh, a few particularly thick butt cheeks, some puffy cleavage that recurred day after day. Marcy’s breasts. More to the point, her ass. It was an outsize thing. An impressive thing. A jutting-outward-and-still-rounded thing. A disproportionate thing when compared to the rest of her. A special and jean-warping thing. Twin planets divided by a crack of slender outer space. And much to the pleasure of boys everywhere, it was unable to be hidden beneath sweaters tied round her waist or any other type of thick clothing no matter how she tried.