Rion Scott - Insurrections

Yes. Do you accept Christ? Do you believe in His Father? That sort of thing.

What if I say no ?

Well. The rector paused. Well. Um. You. Ahh. I mean, it’s… Robert, do you plan to say no?

No, I said. I’m just curious.

Because if you plan to say no, we can talk after—

Your Highness. Rector. I’m just wondering—

At that moment the rector called for a bathroom break and we all shuffled outside.

It would be my moment, I figured. If I could just get Alana alone. She stood in the hallway underneath White Jesus with her cousins on either side of her like holy bodyguards. I felt like cracking Tomás in the face and whisking off with his cousin. That’s how my father said his father met my grandmother. Granny said that was untrue, an exaggeration, but her smile told all. My grandfather was some kind of gangster, and his son hated gangsters. Gangsters leave nothing for their families but hurt and bullshit, my father once told me. I didn’t know if that was true, but goddamn they get the girls. There was none of my grandfather in me — I had never met him — and too much of my father. I wondered what he would do to pull a girl like Alana. Probably sink into himself and hope she noticed the quiet dignity of his hard work. Sink too deep and you find the path of destructiveness my father walked and then wrenched himself from with nothing but the force of his own will and Jesus’s hand.

I was paralyzed. Had no clue how to proceed. What would Jesus do? Earlier we had gotten the rector to admit that Jesus ran with whores. Jesus got bitches! Tomás said, and then grew quiet and embarrassed when his cousin frowned at him. Standing there watching Alana from the corner of my eye, I tried to imagine what Jesus had said to woo that young slut, the first nun. Which witty parable he spouted. I had no parables.

When the rector called us back in, he reopened the session with a prayer. Everybody bowed their heads. I kept mine raised and focused on Alana.

The wispy hairs that curled on the back of her neck. That was the first image I recalled when I was in bed that Sunday after my parents turned off the hallway light. I always waited for darkness beneath my door before I eased down my pajama pants and pulled up the image of Alana’s hair and some from Cinemax and an imaginary one of Alana straddling me and a hug I experienced in the school hallway and the feeling of a butt I grabbed at school that last week, the girl, my friend, yelping in shock and then chasing me through the halls, squealing in a laughter that was more embarrassment than pleasure, but at the time I had the formula flipped and I laughed and ran with joy, looking back to see the movements of her breasts beneath her T-shirt and the girl became Alana and Alana became as naked as a woman on Cinemax and all became as white as Jesus up there on his high cross looking down at me in pure disgust and judgment and I closed my eyes; I was drowsy and disoriented as if his blood had mixed with mine, and soon all became black, Jesus black.

Teachers called during dinnertime. Or just before it. Or just after it. There was a time I didn’t think I’d make it three consecutive dinners without the sharp trill of the phone stopping time. Ms. Baker had a way of fooling me. She used a sweet voice for the phone, not that buzzard voice she spoke with in class. And she would call my parents by their first names, no Mr. or Mrs. Is Robert there? she’d say. So I would then happily hand the phone over to my father not knowing it was all a setup. And there would be laughter causing me to ease back into a state of relaxation and calm. In the old days, as soon as the phone returned to the cradle, the smile on my father’s face would fall away, replaced with a sneer, and he’d speak in his deep rageful monotone: Go to your room and take off your pants. And I’d sit in my room shaking and sweating, waiting for my father to turn up with an old, ratty belt in hand.

When the phone rang the Monday night before confirmation, I was on guard. It was sometime after dinner. I snatched the phone from the cradle and played with the tangled cord. I breathed deeply and took on the heaviest voice I could manage.

Brooks residence.

Who do you think you’re fooling, big head? It was my sister.

Ms. Baker be calling here like she got nothing better to do with her time. She don’t like me. I got to protect myself.

How about protecting yourself by doing your work and not causing any trouble? That too hard?

Shut up.

I’m tired of you already. Put Daddy or Mommy on the phone.

What if they don’t want to talk to you?

Boy!

Hold on.

I took the phone from my ear and made to find one of my parents, but Alana flashed before me, a bright blinding vision. I had just been reading about angels appearing before Jesus, Mary, the disciples. Illuminated messengers spurring the ordinary to take their place among a heavenly pantheon. They came with solutions to impossible problems. I put the phone to my ear. Hey, Big Sis—

You again? I thought you were getting Mommy or Daddy.

Let me ask you something. There’s this girl named Alana in confirmation class—

Aww, little Bobby’s getting into girls. Proud of you, man.

Stop playing. Tell me what I need to say to her.

Little brother, I taught you nothing before I left. I’m a bad big sister. Now puberty is upon you.

Never mind. I see you won’t be serious.

All right, all right, I’ll be serious. Bobby, there aren’t any magical words. Guys who think they need to sound all Billy Dee smooth annoy me. Just make conversation with her like she’s a human being. Any ol’ human being. That’s all she is anyway. She’s not Jesus. She can’t raise the dead. No need to get all tongue-tied. If you talk to her and she still seems like she’s worth talking to, ask for her phone number or ask to meet up somewhere. It’s not a big deal, Bobby. Now put Mommy or Daddy on the phone.

That night I sat in my room doing my homework, but really listening to my parents’ end of the conversation with my sister, when it dawned on me: In just six days I would be a man.

I stopped doing my work and rested in my uncomfortable bed that featured wooden slats in lieu of springs. I had it since I was three. Some outdated theory once said this system was good for a child’s spinal development, but in practice it turned me into an insomniac with stray back pains. I imagined my parents would rush to replace the bed once I became a man instead of ignoring my complaints.

I fell asleep with that thought and woke the next morning still in my clothes; my bedroom lights shined in my face and my mouth had a raw, unbrushed taste. For a moment I thought it was Saturday and lay there in a dazed state. My eyes felt scratchy and unrested. I turned to enjoy several more hours of sleep when I realized it was Tuesday. How was it that no one yelled at me to change my clothes and brush my teeth? At least someone usually slipped in while I slept and turned off the lights. Was this a taste of manhood? How everything would be after Sunday? All responsibilities now resting on my shoulders. No one to chase me out the door.

I found it hard to focus that week. I was at school, but I was also elsewhere, mostly with Alana. Teachers, particularly Ms. Baker, would call on me and I would flub my responses to wild laughter from classmates. No matter. I couldn’t help imagining different combinations of words to win Alana’s attention. It was like cracking a locker combination, seemingly impossible. I threw together random words like the random numbers I pulled together that one time I guessed Edward Covington’s combination after three days and hundreds of tries. Seemingly impossible, but I did it.

Wednesday afternoon I arrived home just after the mailman’s visit and noticed that my mother held the day’s envelopes, postcards, and circulars in her hand. Later, while she cooked dinner, I spotted two notices from the school on my father’s dresser. The famed yellow envelopes of interim deficiency reports. My mother had slit them open and read that I was failing math and science, but said nothing. She just prepared the spaghetti like it was a normal day. If I hadn’t dawdled by the bus stop, I could have snatched them and discarded them. Though after the rare beating my sister once received for that crime, I was always reluctant to toss them. My only option now was to read the half-truths and attempt to devise broad strokes to fill in the incomplete picture painted by my teachers’ reports.