Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

In her house, and I’m not certain how she got me in there, the teacher put her mouth on my penis and sucked on it. My eyes rolled back into my head, and I recalled the long, drawn-out, luxurious days of my youth. I was lying in the backyard, staring up at the forever cloudless blue California sky, except that it was brown. I could hear my mother in her study by the open window, dictating into her recorder her ideas about politics and the culture. I was alone, as I was always alone. No one would play with me, the freak. But somehow I loved the moments in the backyard, my mother’s ranting a kind of white noise from the house and the sounds of boys playing elsewhere a comfort because that meant they had no interest in torturing me. I lay there and identified the birds, my trusty Peterson guide beside me. I was enjoying the memory of a Rufous-sided Towhee when sharp pain brought me back.

I did have some idea what fellatio was, but I hadn’t known the extent to which teeth were involved. I was contemplating this while sitting in the garden at home. Ted joined me.

“When I was a boy I always wanted to collect me a jar full of fireflies, but I never did,” Ted said.

“Have you ever been seduced?” I asked.

“Once or twice,” he chuckled. “When I was younger. What about you? And why are you sitting like that?”

“Do you know what fellatio is?”

“Why, yes, Nu’ott, I do. It’s when one person wraps his or her lips around the penis of another and either sucks it or rubs it with the tongue, sometimes causing ejaculation. It’s also referred to as giving head, a hummer, or a blow job, though blow seems antithetical to the actual action employed. Why do you ask?”

“Someone did it to me,” I said.

“Who?”

“My history teacher.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, a woman,” I said.

“An attractive woman?”

“I guess.”

“Well, you know, that doesn’t sound too bad on the face of it, but it seems a little inappropriate.” Ted folded a stick of gum into his mouth. “Gum? It’s Juicy Fruit.” When I shook my head, he looked back at my part of the house. “Do you get lonely living here all by yourself?”

“Not really.”

“These are Italian shoes. I’ve often wondered why those Italians should be so good at making shoes. They don’t walk more than other people. When I was a boy I read this story about a man who lost his arm in an accident. Scared me so much I taught myself to tie my shoes with one hand.”

“But wait. Ted, how do you get to choose which arm you’ll lose in an accident?” I asked.

Ted stopped working his gum for a second. “That’s a very good question, Nu’ott. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess it had better be my left. So, are you going to turn this teacher in?”

“Do what?”

“Report your teacher for making improper advances to you, a minor. Did you like it?” he asked.

“Not terribly,” I said. “It did feel kind of good before the biting.”

“It’s up to you, but I say report her. She’s contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And apparently giving defective blow jobs.”

“I don’t think I’ll tell on her,” I said. “She seems kind of sad.”

“Everybody is always maligning the granny knot, but I think it’s every bit as good as a square knot. Left over right and right over left. Who the hell cares? What do you think?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, I miss that Betty.” Ted looked down at the peonies near where we sat. “She was a smart young woman.”

“She’s in Ohio with some minister dude with dreadlocks. She sends me postcards.”

“Minister dude? God save us. Are you going back to the history teacher’s house?” Ted asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said.

“Is that fatherly advice?” I didn’t mean what I said in any snide way, but I could imagine him hearing it like that. But he didn’t.

“No, this is just advice from a fellow penis owner,” he said. “These things don’t come with a manual. As far as I can see, nothing of any importance comes with a manual.”

“And so that’s why we have television,” I said.

Ted looked at me blankly for a second, then said, “I guess so, Nu’ott. I guess that’s right. Everybody should have a headstone. You know what I want written on my headstone when I die? I want it to read, I have nothing more to say. ”

I nodded. “What does my mother’s headstone say?”

“I don’t know, son. I never actually saw her grave. I learned of her death because she had named me executor of her will. I suppose her stone gives the dates of her birth and death and maybe says something like Loving Mother. I think that’s kind of standard.”

I didn’t say it to Ted, but I wanted to see my mother’s grave. I wanted also to come up with something fitting for her headstone.

“I remember your mother’s cookies. Damn, they were good.”

I thought about the cookies and didn’t remember them being so tasty, however, they were remarkably uniform in size and color.

“This teacher, does she have full lips? Does she wear makeup? How short are her skirts? Just trying to get a picture of the whole thing.”

Hormones and a weak spine conspired to put me again at the split-level ranch home of Miss Hancock. I hadn’t during my previous visit been able to take in the décor, but a quick glance around made me appreciate in what a confused state I’d been and to conclude that Miss Hancock was not like most people. Three of the walls of the living room were tiled with patterned mirrors, allowing broken reflections of everything and nothing in particular, and on every surface — the mantel of the fireplace, the coffee table, the top of the television — were little dinner bells, the size of a shot glass and smaller, from the fifty states, from amusement parks, from funeral homes, from hotels and motels and hostels, county and state fairs. I walked around the front two rooms while she went into the kitchen for iced tea.

“Why all the bells?” I asked.

She handed me an already sweating glass of tea. “I like bells,” she said. “You can ring any one you like. All, if you want to. I want you to ring my bell.” She laughed at that.

I sipped the too-sweet tea. I searched for something to say to her, anything. “Which one is your favorite?”

“That’s easy.” She walked across the room. I watched her legs beneath her short, pleated skirt. She wore knee socks. She picked up a little blue porcelain bell from the top of the television. “This bell is from a motel in Sparta, Mississippi, the Tibbs Inn. In the restaurant they had barbecue, Tibbs Ribs.”

“Why was that so special?” I asked.

“It wasn’t really, but the bell is blue. It’s periwinkle. It’s the only periwinkle one I have. Take off your pants.”

“I don’t know about this, Miss Hancock.” I took a step back. If I had only added a “gee” in front of my statement, I could have been completely the cliché I felt like — Beaver Cleaver getting a hummer.

“Call me Beatrice when we’re here.”

Her name caught me off guard and I had a notion to laugh, but I suppressed the deeply buried tickle.

“I really don’t know about this,” I said.

“Of course you know, Not Sidney. Didn’t it feel good last time? I was sure you liked it.”

“Well, sort of.”

“Okay, take off those pants and we’ll try it again. We do it until we get it right. How does that sound?”

I backed into a large-wheeled tea cart and set a rack of tiny bells swinging and dinging.