Rion Scott - Insurrections

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?