Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

I thought, when he was born, that his eyes would be closed. I didn’t know if he’d be sleeping or screaming, but that his eyes would be closed. They weren’t. They were big, almond shaped, and copper — almost like mine. He stared at me. I gave him a knuckle and he gummed it — still staring. He saw everything about me: the chicken pox scar on my forehead, the keloid scar beside it, the absent-minded boozy cigarette burn my father had given me on my stomach. Insults and epithets that had been thrown like bricks out of car windows or spat like poison darts from junior high locker rows. Words and threats, which at the time they’d been uttered, hadn’t seemed to cause me any injury because they’d not been strong enough or because they’d simply missed. But holding him, the long skinny boy with the shock of dark hair and the dusky newborn skin, I realized that I had been hit by all of them and that they still hurt. My boy was silent, but I shushed him anyway — long and soft — and I promised him that I would never let them do to him what had been done to me. He would be safe with me.

Claire was still on the floor wrestling the girl into a diaper. She turned just in time to see X leave his feet. His forehead smashed into her nose, flattening it, sending her down. C shot past me and ran into the house, past the accident scene and around the corner. The girl sat up and X, unsure of what it was that he’d done, smiled nervously. He looked down at his mother, who was lying motionless on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. Then her eyes closed. Then the blood came. It ran from her nostrils as though something inside her head had suddenly burst. Claire has a very long mouth and what she calls a bird lip. The top and bottom come together in the middle in a point, slightly off center — crooked — creating a deep valley between her mouth and her long, Anglican nose. So the blood flowed down her cheeks, over and into her ears, into her hair, down the sides of her neck, and onto the white granite floor.

C came running back in with the first aid kit and a washcloth. He opened it, got out the rubbing alcohol, and soaked the washcloth. He stood above his mother, looking at her stained face, the stained floor, contemplating where to begin. He knelt beside her and started wiping her cheeks. The smell of the alcohol brought her back, and she pushed his hand from her face. C backed away. She raised her arm into the air and began waving, as though she was offering up her surrender.

I came inside. I took the kit from C, dampened a gauze pad with saline, and began to clean her up. She still hadn’t said anything, but she began weeping. Our children stood around us in silence.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told them. “It looks a lot worse than it is.” X began to cry. C tried to hug him, but he wriggled loose and started backing out of the kitchen.

“It’s okay, buddy.” He stopped crying, wanting to believe me. “It’s not your fault.” I activated the chemical ice pack and gently placed it on her nose.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. Her lips barely moved. I wondered, if it hadn’t yet lapsed, if our insurance covered reconstructive surgery. Her chest started heaving.

“Hey, guys. Take your sister in the back and put on a video.” They wouldn’t budge. “C,” I pointed in the direction of the TV room. “Go on.” Claire was about to burst. “Go.”

They left and Claire let out a low, wounded moan, stopped, took a quick breath and moaned again. Then she let out a high whine that was the same pitch as the noise from something electrical somewhere in the house. My wife is white, I thought, as though I hadn’t considered it before. Her blood contrasted against the granite as it did on her face. I married a white woman. She stopped her whine, looked at me, and tried to manage a smile.

“Look what the new world hath wrought.”

Her face went blank; then she stared at me as though she hadn’t heard what I said, or hadn’t believed what I said. I should’ve said something soothing to make her nose stop throbbing or to halt the darkening purple rings that were forming under her eyes. I shifted the ice pack. Her nose was already twice its normal size. She closed her eyes. I slid my arms under her neck and knees and lifted.

“No.”

“No what?”

“Leave me.”

“I’m going to put you to bed.”

“Leave me.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

Although she’d been through three cesarean sections, Claire can’t take much pain. She was still crying, but only tears and the occasional snuffle. Her nose was clogged with blood. She wasn’t going to be able to get up. Claire has always been athletic. She has muscular legs and injury-free joints. It seemed ridiculous that I should need to carry her — my brown arm wrapped around her white legs — I knew there was a lynch mob forming somewhere. I laid her down on the bed. She turned on her side away from me. There was little light in the room. The air was as cool and gray inside as it was out. I left her alone.

C was waiting for me outside the door. He was shirtless, trying to ready himself to face the Whites.

“Dad, is Mom gonna be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.” He didn’t believe me. He tried another tack.

“Is it broken?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that bad?”

“She’ll be fine.” I patted his head and left my hand there. C has never been an openly affectionate boy, but he does like to be touched. I’d forgotten that until he rolled his eyes up and, against his wishes, smiled. I steered him by his head into the bathroom and began to prepare for a shower and shave.

“Have I ever broken my nose?” he asked, fiddling with the shaving cream.

“No.”

“Have you ever broken your nose?”

“Yes.”

He put the can down, stroked the imaginary whiskers on his chin, and looked at my face. I have a thick beard — red and brown and blond and gray. It makes no sense. The rest of my body is hairless. I could see him trying to connect the hair, the scars, the nose.

“Did you cry?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Did you break your nose more than once?”

“Yeah.”

“And you never cried?”

“Never.”

“What happened?” I had taken off my shirt and shorts, and he was scanning what he could see of my body, an athlete’s body, not like the bodies of other men my age he’d seen on the beach. He looked at my underwear, perhaps wondering why I’d stopped at them.

He grinned. “You’re naked.”

“No, I’m not,” I said sternly.

He tried mimicking my tone. “Yes, you are.”

“What are these?” I gestured to my boxers.

“The emperor has no clothes,” he sang.

“I’m not the emperor.”

C stopped grinning, sensing he shouldn’t take it any further.

“What happened?”

“When?”

“When you broke your nose.”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you break your nose all those times?”

“Sports and stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Sports.”

He squinted at me and curled his lips in. He fingered the shaving cream can again. His face went blank, as it always seemed to when he questioned and got no answer. I hid things from him. I always had. Perhaps I was a coward. C already seemed to know what was going to happen to him. Just as I had been watching him, he’d been watching me, making the calculations, extrapolating, charting the map of the territory that lay between us — little brown boy to big brown man.

He was already sick of it. He was sick of his extended family. He was sick of his private-school mates. He seemed world weary before the age of seven. His little friends had already made it clear to him that he was brown like poop or brown like dirt and that his father was ugly because he was brown. He was only four the first time he’d heard it and he kept silent as long as he could, but his mother had found him alone weeping. He’d begged us not to say anything to his teachers or the other children’s parents — they were his friends, he’d said. Claire wanted blood spilt. There were meetings and protests and petitions and apologies. People had gotten angry at the kids who’d ganged up on the little brown boy. One mother had dragged her wailing son to me, demanding that he apologize, and seemed perplexed when I noogied his head and told him it was okay. Other parents were even more perplexed when I refused to sign the petitions that would broaden the curriculum. Claire had been surprised.