I can’t do it. I feel so fucking sick. I’ve known I’m gay for years. I have known and I got comfortable with it—but at times like this, when I know life could be easier without my sexuality, I wish I hadn’t been born with the burden.
“Do you know a boy named Terrell?” I ask, because I don’t want to have to tell Ma that the rumors detailing my sex life with a rich white kid from school and the dealer she told me not to be friends with are true. I don’t want to weaken her heart, cause her pain.
Ma looks shocked. “You remember Terrell?” she asks.
Ma knows Terrell?
“I… know who he is, but I can’t remember him.”
She turns, putting the oven off, before moving toward our dining area and taking a seat on one of the lawn chairs. I stay where I am.
Ma looks at me. Straight at me. “I wanted you to come to me about your sexuality in your own time. After the Terrell incident, you couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to bring it up.”
My sexuality?
I rush over to the trash can in the corner and throw up. My body is finally doing what it’s threatened to do this whole time. It’s all water; I haven’t eaten today. The lawn chair scrapes against the ground and then Ma’s there, rubbing my back, over and over.
I hate this feeling so much. What does she remember that I can’t?
“We don’t have to talk if you’re not ready, Von.”
I shake my head.
It’s out there now. No turning back.
The tears mix with my running nose as I bend over, hovering above the trash, trying to breathe.
“I’m gay,” I choke out, daggers diving into my gut, shaking my entire being. I’m not sure if it was loud enough for her to hear.
“Yeah, I know,” she says, and something washes through me. I’m not sure if it’s relief. More tears mix with the nastiness that is snot. I stretch my hands out to the table next to the trash can for tissues, but Ma hands me some.
I wipe my face harshly.
“Ma, what happened with Terrell? Why c-can’t I remember him?” I ask. My throat is achy and dry as I turn to face her. She avoids my eyes, walking over to the fridge to get a bottle of water and handing it to me.
“Most things I heard were from Jack.” Ma wipes her face with her dry wrinkled hands. “What I know for certain is that you went toschool, and you came back soaking wet, with a huge bump on your forehead and blood all over.”
Goose bumps prickle my arms as the image of me engulfed by the water flashes: a little boy who looks a lot like Terrell dragging me back, screaming that cracks the walls of my brain.
“I asked Jack—about what happened, why you were wet, bloody, beaten. I don’t usually ask; I know you don’t like me to ask, but you’re my child and you were hurt.” Her voice breaks at the end, but she looks at me, hard-eyed, like she doesn’t want to show weakness. Even her back is rigid.
“Jack told me about you and a boy. Terrell Rosario. And how you kissed and got caught by the wrong guys,” she tells me. My chest squeezes.
An image appears again, all grainy in my mind, like an old home video… My old middle school playground; Terrell’s face, his hair shorter, no dreads, just curly kinks.
“Wait—” Terrell says.
I move back, scrunching my eyebrows up.
“What?” I say. I need to go home, help Ma with dinner.
He moves closer, eyes looking around cautiously.
“Remember how you told me that you sometimes think about guys—about holding their hands?” He reaches out and threads his fingers through mine. “Holding them.” He moves closer, and my breath catches, heart unsteady. “Kissing them… I just wanted to tell you that I do too. I think about doing that with you. All the time,” he finishes.
“I cried and prayed for you, Von.” Ma’s voice tears the memory apart, the brown plastic film from the videotape unraveling in my mind. “I prayed you would be okay,” she continues. “But I knew thisneighborhood and I knew that school was too poisonous, especially if what Jack said was true. After that, you didn’t want to talk about it, hid away in your room, and eventually, I assumed you forgot… blocked the memory.”
I did forget.
