Brizzles Basket

When I was 8 years old, my mom caught me playing with her makeup and jewelry. Arms loaded with boy’s white socks and underwear, Mom kicked open the door to my room. “Honey, I need to put . . . ”

She was stunned to see me in eye shadow and lipstick and wearing several of her beautiful necklaces. I’d also clipped on some blue and green earrings that looked like sparkling dragonflies.

In an instant, Mom’s face went angry and hateful. She dropped the clean and folded laundry and before I knew what was happening, pounced on me.

“GODDAMN YOU!” she screamed. She hit me hard on the side of my head an earring skipped across the polished wood floor. “You little fuckin’…”

I cried out when she tore the other dragonfly off my ear and yanked the necklaces off my neck. Colored beads splashed and bounced around us. Then my mother pulled me by the hair down a long hallway and into the bathroom.

“You goddamn little . . . fuckin’ GIRL!” she screamed. “I will not have this! DO YOU HEAR ME? I will not raise a goddamn queer! I WON’T!”

Surprised and scared, I tried to pry her hand out of my hair. I’d seen my mother mad, but I’d never witnessed — and certainly never inspired — this kind of fury.

Mom threw the hot water tap on and shoved my head under a near scalding stream. I was crying now. Mom pulled me from under the horribly hot water and slung me into a peach-colored tile wall. Through confused tears, I watched as she angrily soaped up, not a rag, but a brush, a stiff-bristled brush that she used on the dirty floor sometimes.

“Mom! No! . . . please Mom! . . . I won’t . . . ”

Like a demented and snarling animal she advanced toward me.

“COME HERE TO ME! Goddamn you again!” Mom grabbed my hair again and started scrubbing my face. She went after me harder than she’d ever gone after any floor. I screamed and begged and fought her but she kept on scrubbing. She lost her hold on me and then backhanded me and I hit the wall again.

“Goddamn you . . . Goddamn you . . . I’ll die and go to hell before I raise . . . a goddamn . . . fuckin’ . . . little . . . pansy-ass . . . FAGGOT!” Mom put the brush in her other hand and leapt on me again.

When she finally fell to the floor, spent and exhausted, I ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to my room. A room I shared with three brothers who thankfully weren’t home. My face was stinging and my mind raced. I slammed the door and pulled a chest in front of it. It would buy me enough time to climb out a window and get away if she came after me again, I thought.

Moments passed and I calmed a little. My face felt like it was on fire. I touched my cheek and looked at my fingers. I made my way over to a mirror. My forehead and both my cheeks were bleeding. I picked up one of the clean white Tee shirts my mom dropped earlier and pressed it to my face.

A half-hour passed and then an hour. I picked up and put away the laundry. I located and gathered all the beads and jewels and put them in an empty shoebox that I had in my closet.

When I couldn’t find anymore of the scattered beads I sat down on my bed and heard a soft knock on my door.

Mom tried the door, easily pushed it and the chest into the room. She walked up to me and lifted her hands in a “come to momma” move that I misinterpreted. I flinched, and she burst into hysterical tears.

“God, Almighty, help me, if one of my babies is so afraid to come to me . . . ” She backed away a couple of steps. “Look what I’ve done to my boy! Lord-Jesus-God forgive me.”

Mom was crying hard now and after surprise-rushing me again she gathered me into her arms. Though I was near as big as she was, she lifted me up, turned and sat on the bed and her frantic arms urged me into a tight ball.

“Baby . . . I’m sorry, Billy, honey, I’m so sorry . . . but I was also . . . Oh God . . . scared when I saw you like that! I’m afraid you’re tryin’ to be something that . . . oh, JESUS-LORD, help me!

Help this little boy!” she wailed at the ceiling. “What you’re trying to be, Baby, is a really hard thing to be.”

I started crying, too, mostly because my mom was crying.

“Oh baby, your face is bleeding again . . . Billy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” she said. And then we both just cried. Mom rocked me, and after what seemed like a long, nice while she released her hold me and let me climb to the floor.

Then Mom reached out and took both my hands in hers. Her red, swollen eyes looked into mine. “I got some money hid, Billy. Nobody knows about it. It’s quite a bit of money. I’m gonna let you stay home from school tomorrow and I’m thinking we’ll take a cab up to the K-Mart. Baby, I’m gonna buy you every coloring book in the place . . . ” she busted out crying again “ . . . and the big box of crayons.”

Mom was crying so hard she could barely talk. “The really — oh Heaven, help me — the big, big box of crayons, Baby. The one with the sharpener in the back and I swear to you, Son, listen to me, I swear to you, I’ll never lay an ungentle hand on you again. I might yell at you, and I might cuss you some, but I won’t ever touch you mad and crazy like that no more. Okay?”

“Okay, Mom, but . . . I don’t need no coloring books,” I said. “I got one I ain’t finished yet.”

“Well after tomorrow, you’ll have about a hundred of them. And if anybody asks you how you got ‘em, you just tell ‘em it ain’t none of their fuckin’ business, you hear? Better yet, you refer ‘em to me, and I’ll tell ‘em.” My mom smiled and real weary-like she stood. I went to my dresser and picked up the shoebox.

“I’m sorry your necklaces got broke . . . ”

Mom acted like she didn’t want to take the box. She started crying again. “I need to start supper,” she said, and taking the rattling box, she left the room.

I walked to my bedroom window. I hoped all the crying was over. Tears make a burning face sting worse. Out the corner of my eye I see my mom standing in the doorway again.

“I want to tell you something else, Billy.”

I waited.

“If you want to play with my makeup and jewelry and things, you can, honey. I don’t mind. But . . . you gotta be careful. Just do it when they ain’t nobody here, okay?”

“I don’t need to play with that stuff anymore, Mom,” I said. “I should have asked you first,” I said.

“It’s okay. You was just being curious a way a boy like you is curious. Nothin’ wrong with it. Nothin’ at all. I just don’t want you to . . . well . . . only do it when it’s just you and me here. Secret-like.”

“I don’t want to play with that stuff no more,” I said again, and I didn’t.

“Well, if you change your mind you can but when no one’s around, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

Mom didn’t scrub away my “gay” that day, just my skin. I stayed home for two weeks. My mom told the school it was none of their goddamn business why I was out. And she kept her word about K-Mart and bought me seven coloring books and a gigantic box of crayons. She also bought me some colored markers and drawing paper and a red belt just because I liked it.

Three days after those terrible moments in the bathroom, Mom came out to the backyard where I was playing. Thinking I was in some sort of trouble again I worriedly watched her approach.

Mom stops a few feet in front of me. She’s wearing a pink housedress and she smells nice. “Billy, honey, I wanted to talk to you with nobody around.”

I shield my eyes from the sun and wait for her to talk.

“Baby, sometimes moms don’t know what to say or they say the wrong things and then after they have a little while to think . . . They figure out things to say that are more right.” Mom looks back toward the house.

“Honey, I told you that you could play with my things but you should only do it when no one’s around. . . . Well, listen, you do it anytime you want. Ya here? Even if your daddy and brothers are home. I don’t have to hide or live in fear and as long as there’s a breath in my body you don’t have to either. You dress up or make yourself up anytime you want and if any of them bastards say one cross word to you, and I hear about it, I’ll chew their goddamn balls off.” Mom smiled.

She actually looked kind of pretty standing there in the sun. I didn’t know if “chew their balls off” was one of those figures of speech or something she might really try to do, but either way, it conjured pictures in my head I didn’t want there.

I broke off a piece of willow and fiddled with it. “I don’t want to play with your stuff anymore, Mom,” I said.

My mom stood there for a while just studying my face. “Well, suit yourself, Baby. I’m just saying, you ain’t never got to hide. Not in your own house. Them fuckers in there get to be themselves and you get to be you too. Okay? Got it?”

I nodded.

“Talk to me, Baby. What are you feeling right now?”

I shrugged. The only thing I was feeling was a little embarrassed about how dirty my hands were.

Mom smiled and turned slowly. I watched her make her way back, up a few steps and disappear behind a door.

In a house full of testosterone-fueled brothers and uncles, home for a gay boy can be a pretty scary and confusing place. When I was that young, it was almost always the last place I wanted to be.

I was 8 years old and I was gay. Before I’d ever much feel any kind of “sexual” I was gay. There are all those people in the “It’s a choice column” who don’t believe you can be 8 years old and gay, but they’re wrong. You can be 3 years old and gay. I was. But I didn’t know what to call it and I didn’t choose it. It chose me.

That third-grade boy, watching his sight-challenged mother make her way across the violently green back yard, had characteristics and interests my slew of brothers didn’t have. They had characteristics and interests I didn’t. Like, already, I could name all of the different types of flowers and plants that grew in and around our yard and I’d already started spending a lot of time in a library near my house. All of my brothers could tell you the make and model of every car that drove down our street and they had already started spending a lot of time in garages.

I looked into the sky and wished the library was open that very moment. It was the only place in the world I felt safe, the only place where I could relax and breathe a little. I loved those shelves full of books. To me they were like jars with bits of great people’s minds in them and even if someone called you names in a library they had to whisper them.

I hated shouting when I was 8. I hate it now. Hateful, hurtful people confused me then. They confuse me now.

So, I’m standing there in the back yard. Mom’s back in the house, but two of my bothers are also home and I have to pee. I hate it but I have to go in. I open the back door off the kitchen as quietly as is humanly possible, but my mom has these bionic ears . . . “Billy? BILLY!”

I stand at the kitchen doorway. My mom is opening a can of something.

She looks up. “Honey, you know Juanita’s boy, Joe Eddie?”

I look at her and nod.

“Honey, what do you think about him?”

Joe Eddie Singleton made me feel nervous. A different kind of nervous than George and Larry, my brothers, made me feel. He was 10 years old and like my brothers, but nicer. He knew about sports and cars, too, but he was willing to like you — and not be mean to you and not make fun of you — if you didn’t know about them.

Still, even though he was nice, he made me nervous. I liked looking at him like I liked looking at flowers and plants. But just hearing his name made me nervous.

“Honey, are you okay?”

I nod again.

“So, tell me, what do you think about Joe Eddie?”

“He makes me feel nervous,” I admit softly.

It was Mom’s turn to nod. “You know, when him and Juanita was over here Wednesday I kind of picked up on that. That’s why I’m glad I invited him over tomorrow to have lunch with us.”

“You invited Joe Eddie here for lunch?” I suddenly needed to sit down.

“I sure did. Juanita needs to do something for a couple of hours tomorrow around noon, so I told her he could come over. I thought I’d make us some lunch. It’s okay, Billy. I’ll make sure it’s just the three of us.” My mom smiled and turned and rinsed her hands under the tap.

“Just the three of us?” I said weakly.

“Yeah, I know when I’m nervous around someone the best thing for me is just to be around them, until I don’t feel nervous anymore. So I thought . . . well, I told Juanita I’d start looking after Joe Eddie some for her. I think you and him could be real good friends. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I nod again.

“Come on in here, Honey. I want to show you my new slicer. I love it. I just got it in the mail.” I walk to the counter where Mom’s preparing supper. “It’s from Ronco,” she says. “It’s amazing. This thing will slice 70 tomatoes in less than a minute. Watch.”

I want to ask my mom how often she has a need to slice 70 tomatoes in a minute, but I don’t.

Mom slams the top part of the slicer down on three tomatoes. They’re mashed flat. Juice and seeds spray out all four sides of the thing. We both jump back.

“Oh this fuckin’ piece of . . . shit!” She tries prying the thing’s jaws open.

I turn and head for the bathroom. “The stuff you send off for never works, Mom,” I say over a shoulder. “Dad’s told you. I’ve told you, to just stop sending off for shit, Mom.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Rock Me, Momma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.