Ours, p.51
Ours, page 51
Then she opens her eyes after touching the orb she thought was empty, the one that looks like a ball of water, and wakes up inside the body of a teenage boy. She has never been inside a boy before and immediately wants to go back to the orb garden. The room is dark. A small clock near the bed reads 11:47 in glowing red numerals. Selah knows she will be with Him for a long time and prepares herself for the worst.
What happens is much different from before. She can smell what He smells, taste what He tastes, and feel what He feels emotionally and sometimes physically: the fried whiting placed over a bowl of grits, His piss stinging dark yellow into the toilet, the sneakers with the worn-out insole soring His feet as He rushes through games of football. When He brushes His hair, waves take over His scalp and the feel of the hard bristles against His head are hard bristles against hers, delivering a satisfying chill down her back. When He sees a girl He likes and hardens, her stomach roils, and the sensation overwhelms. She isn’t merely inhabiting His body. Selah has merged with Him and the luster of His life illuminates and challenges her own.
The boy somehow moves throughout the day without hearing His birth name. He is lovingly called Boy, Nigga, G, the homie, son, Deazy, which is the closest thing to His name she hears. When He brushes His teeth, He does not look at Himself in the mirror, focusing on parts of Himself that keep His face in disconnected fragments. It takes her days to see what this descendant looks like.
When He showers, she feels a nervousness when He washes His behind, a reticence to soap near His asshole, but He does it and she can’t understand why this act of cleaning Himself brings the boy so much shame. He takes His time getting into the shower and rushes to get out. His own body seems to repulse Him. His big hands. The hair on his thighs. The dark of his elbows. He doesn’t want to know them at all, and it disrupts her desire to see and know Him.
One morning, He goes downstairs before the rest of the family wakes, to look at the photos over a mantel in the living room. Selah’s heart races, which is the boy’s heart racing, as she sees through His eyes the same woman who voted decades ago, the photo in black and white and her mother beside her. The handsome man with the afro appears in another photo kissing the pregnant woman Selah had been in on the forehead. The woman holds the hand of a young boy, no older than five. The photo that He focuses on is one of an older woman holding a baby in her lap. He tears up and Selah’s own eyes grow wet from their shared sorrow.
At the dining room table, His mother says, “Fix your face. I’m not gone tell you again. You too big for that soft shit,” and the feeling inside of Selah is a new pain that doesn’t sting but throws open every hidden window in the body. His body is soft, but strong, and Selah’s confusion sits in the hurt because He sits in the hurt. She wants Him to look at His mother, to read her face and body language for clarity, but He keeps His head in His plate of food. She cannot stop looking at His beautiful hands.
His mother washes dishes and kisses Him on the forehead when she leaves the room. He looks up finally, letting Selah see her face. His mother looks nothing like Selah’s people, and she frowns at the surprise of her freckled cheeks.
Later that day, when His father comes home from work after a security night shift, He is playing Mortal Kombat 11 on the Xbox in the basement. His father grabs the second controller and plays along, smelling like Irish Spring soap. Selah sees that it’s His father who is the earlier descendant and the sadness in his eyes angers her. He and His father play the game for almost two hours, Selah wondering how they don’t speak but between them exists a bond that moves from them into her, one that makes Him smile on the inside as He decapitates His father’s character with a bladed hat. His father rubs Him on the head, then climbs up the stairs and into bed. She does not know what His father’s voice sounds like.
At night, He reads a short story in a Playboy He had stolen from His father. When He finishes, He stares at the nipples of one of the models, rubbing His balls, then slides the journal between His mattress and the bed frame, His imagination too stunted to get Him hard. Selah can’t sense what He thinks but watches the streetlights paint the inside of the bedroom a dirty yellow as He looks at the one tree on the block until He dozes off.
He has a few friends. His mother likes none of them. His father doesn’t care. They smell like cooking grease, onions at the armpits of their shirts, and cheap Avon cream. His mother knows they are clean of body, but their clothes are never clean, and she tells Him this with disdain, hateful of the boys’ mothers, never mentioning the fathers. Selah wonders why. When He goes to his room, He mumbles under His breath, “Blessings don’t come even.” Selah agrees.
His friends are poor and underfed, and this makes Him love them harder, especially His friend Torrance. His mother shakes her head and sends Torrance home immediately after he’s eaten at her house. “Wash your clothes, Torrance. If you need to do that hur, let me know. Use dish soap if you need to,” she says. “You hur me, lil nigga?” she asks, and Torrance says, “Yes, ma’am, I hur you.” “Aight, get going.” “Thank you for the food.” “You know I got you,” she says, then disappears upstairs.
Soon after, He walks Torrance to the door and Torrance says, “My mama ain’t gone let me wash my shit over hur. She’d cuss me the fuck out if I came home with clothes smelling better than urbody else’s. She a goofy gal.” They dap up and plan to meet the next day to play football. Selah thinks Torrance’s voice sounds like fire.
* * *
He sits on the porch. A young woman named Candice walks up to Him and sits on the porch, her body heat adding to the hot summer. “What’s the sitch, Deazy?” she asks, rubs His knee. He doesn’t want her. He doesn’t have language to say no to her because He doesn’t want to be called funny. “You funny boy?” He’s been asked a few times since Selah arrived. He shuts them up on the field, using His body to devastate the boys who try to talk shit about Him as He steamrolls into them. They call Him funny, and He lands His full weight onto them. He catches the football and folks don’t even try to stop Him. Selah thinks this power is what makes them call Him funny, because she laughs when they can’t stop Him. But today, she learns funny doesn’t mean laughter. He shakes His head at Candice’s advance. She says, “I knew you was funny,” but Selah notices no one has laughed. She notices that she feels anger and her head fills up with blood.
“Sit yo stupid ass down,” He says.
“Who you calling stupid? You tweakin,” Candice says, but it’s half-hearted.
“You. Who the fuck else hur?”
Candice pushes His head hard with the tips of her fingers. He grabs Her arm and forces her to the porch. Selah is breathing hard. She doesn’t know why they are fighting. Why they hardly smile at each other. They tussle for a little bit more until He says, “Come on,” and goes into the house.
Selah learns that she can stop feeling what He feels with his body if she closes her eyes and huddles into a ball inside her own mind. She does this whenever He touches Himself in ways that bring pleasure. The first time it happened, Selah didn’t know boys did that and when the white, sticky fluid shot out from His dick she screamed and closed her eyes. Every feeling went away then, as though she had fallen asleep inside Him.
When she opens her eyes and unfolds her body, Candice is putting on her clothes. “You going to the party tomorrow?” she asks.
“I might. Ain’t thought about it,” He says. Selah has never felt this feeling He feels now and for the first time she tries to impart her will to Him. When Candice finally leaves, she kisses Him on the lips and proceeds down the street. The feeling fills Him up. He goes to the bathroom and looks into His eyes for the first time. The mirror is speckled with toothpaste and missing a piece of glass on the bottom right-hand corner, the black backing with old glue darkening the space where glass should’ve been.
He opens the medicine cabinet and takes out a bottle of Tylenol, pours half the bottle into His hands. He looks into His own eyes and steals Selah’s heart. “O Deazy, you got Naima’s eyes,” she says, and the overwhelming, unnamable feeling in Him relaxes, as if He hears her for the first time. He doesn’t hear her. She knows this. He has calmed down. He puts the pills back into the bottle. This is the fourth time He has done this, but the first time Selah felt as though He might go through with it. Selah knows what this would do to Him if He does it, had seen in 1974 the aftermath of a handful of pills on a lover. Her descendant was able to save her lover, but would this descendant always be able to stop Himself?
Then, that night, while He is asleep, she finds that she can see His memories in a similar way she can see the orbs of the future. His memories float about like fireflies, and she wonders how memory is connected to time since they both look the same when up close: orbs of light, the future orbs big as a head and frozen in place; memory orbs were insect-small and fleeting. She reaches for one and it moves away from her fingers. They mostly escape her, but she eventually finds one she can grab. Touching it does not send her into the memory; rather it puts the memory inside her. It is a memory of his grandmother holding Him in her lap. He is five years old. She is telling Him stories. Another memory is of an uncle teaching Him how to fish. And another of His father giving Him a piggyback ride. Memory after memory of love, intentional and effortless, care that she had seen from previous futures of her descendants. It challenges what she thought was His sad life. She searches through many of His memories but can’t pinpoint the source of what He has become. She wonders if He even knows why He is so sad, or if He is under the hold of a conjure.
By the tenth day of her settling inside of Him, she learned to love the taste of hot chips and grape Vess. She recognizes that Torrance makes Him laugh the loudest of His friends and cheers Him up when he notices the lamp in His eyes has gone out. The two remind her of Luther-Philip and Justice, and this thought makes Selah miss her old life, until she hears a clock tick or a mouth pop or when He habitually knocks on the desk in His room, making beats—all of which brings back images of Saint and her staff.
Selah is shocked to hear His mother cracking up at a television show that she invites Him to sit next to her and watch. He does. On the television, a man dressed up as a woman rolls her eyes and pushes her long-nailed fingers into the other women’s faces. He and His mother laugh. Selah worries she is missing something because she doesn’t find this funny, but is happy that He is happy, feels His happiness fill her up. She wants more of this for Him. Tired, He leans on His mother, holding most of His imposing weight. She doesn’t push Him off. She holds Him and they laugh for three episodes straight until time for dinner.
Something has changed. His father comes through the door from a morning shift, smells the meat loaf, and shouts, “Oh, we EATING eating tonight.” This is the first time Selah has heard his voice. It is booming and edgeless, how she imagines smoke would sound if it had a voice. He is not a large man, but his voice takes over the space with its warm quality. And this, too, makes Him happy.
They eat together, tell stories, shit talk, gossip about ole dude at the corner store who was shot in the foot by Azrael for feeling on his sister booty. Shot in the foot and dared to say something. “ ‘Make it worth my time, then, nigga, or shut the fuck up,’ ” His father quotes Azrael, and He shakes His head while His mother says, “He be doing too much.”
In the basement, His mother decides she wants to learn how to play Mortal Kombat. She plays against His father and wins, pulling off a fatality. “Last time I play with you,” His father says. Outside, a storm takes out the electricity. They light a few candles. His father tells a story about His’s great-grandfather and how he used to salt the thresholds of his house.
“This was back when granddad lived in Gary, Indiana, and his sister stayed with him. She had stepped out, right, and my granddad, the night before, salted the thresholds of the house. I’m talking sea salt at every doorstep, in the windowsills and shit.
“So, this woman comes by to see my grandaunt for lunch. Granddad knew of her but wasn’t friends with her, but he knew his sister got along with her well, so it was cool. He greeted her and she was like, ‘Is Beetle in?’ They used to call my grandaunt Beetle. And he tells her, ‘Naw she stepped out but you can wait inside. Hot out there. Come on in.’ So tell me why she look like she about to step in but then stop like it’s a glass wall in front of her. Kid you not! She gone say, ‘Naw, I’ll wait out here.’ He invite her in again, says, ‘Beetle be back real soon. She just went down the road,’ and the woman getting nervous, crinkling her dress in her hands. ‘Naw, just tell her I came through,’ and the chick walks off.” His father laughs, “She don’t ever visit again. My grandaunt got to go to her raggedy friend’s house from then on cause the woman wouldn’t step foot into my granddad house.” The air is spiced with fear and anticipation. His mother laughs nervously while He sits stuck in the images He’s created in His mind: a thin woman wearing a large, brimmed hat and a cream-colored dress with matching shoes and stockings, her eyes all blacked out and wide with spite when she turns her back to His great-grandfather, who smiles knowingly at what he’s done and who he’s done it to.
Selah listens to the story and recognizes Saint’s ways in the great-grandfather; not the invitation, but the salt, its effectiveness against evil and unlikable Negroes, whatever that difference might’ve been. At least with this story, she knows that conjure has made it this far into the future, well respected and intimate. For the first time she feels protected inside of Him.
* * *
But something in the air clenches shut the following day. The summer sun drops onto everybody and angers them with its relentless heat. Selah feels His anger as He fixates on what happened moments ago. Torrance showed up for football in the park and halfway through the game he picked a fight with one of the other boys and all twelve of them ended up rumbling in the hard grass. Selah thinks back to how it was so easy to rile up Torrance by calling him a “musty nigga,” when they all were musty as hell out there. But the temporary and changeable stink on some of the boys was assumed a permanent stink on Torrance, and because he knew they believed he was filthy and that his filth was an unchangeable reality, Torrance swung on dude, and He had to get involved to defend His homie from folks He thought was all homies.
Selah wants Him to stop fighting. Her heart breaks with each punch. Her fists throb with His. Someone screams, “Gun!” and they all scatter, not knowing who had the gun or if there even was one.
The two boys stop at a corner store. Torrance steals a honey bun while He distracts the cashier by buying an orange Fanta and some double-A batteries. Outside, He sees Torrance’s honey bun and asks where His at. Torrance breaks far more than half of the honey bun off and hands the little bit left to Him, who shakes His head and walks off.
Selah feels His anger rise up in her as the boys walk home in the middle of the street, Torrance flipping out again, swearing on his mama grave he was “bout to beat that nigga ass. On my mama, he fucked with the wrong one. Come see me! Bitch ass niggas, P the fuck up,” Torrance shouting at nobody nearby cause the boys back at the park are four blocks away. And He says nothing, moves faster, wanting to get away from Torrance, who is hopping up and down, his shirt pulled up over one shoulder as he punches his hand harder than he punched the dudes at the park, cappin like he hard, which only pisses Him off more. They live on a quiet set of blocks in a dangerous city. When the two realities meet, He gets nervous, wants to disappear.
“Dead it, T,” He says. “F’you was gone do something, you woulda done it back thur.”
“Drove as fuck,” Torrance said.
“Say less. Say less.” They are close to His house. He sees His father sitting on the bottom stair of the porch, drinking a glass of water. Quiet night. Torrance seems to notice the quiet and silences his rage. But His father has already heard.
“What was all the noise about?” His father asks. “I heard y’all all the way down the street.”
Annoyed, He points to Torrance and shakes His head.
“Get on in the house, then. Food ready. Torrance, call your mama when you get inside and let her know where you are. I know you ain’t told her.”
After dinner, the two boys sit in the basement. Torrance was quiet throughout dinner. Afterward, he took a shower while His mother washed the boys’ clothes. Torrance is wearing an old shirt and some shorts of His. Everything is too big, the shorts’ drawstring tied as tight as it can go.
“Aight, so why you get so mad over dude calling you musty when we all was musty as fuck?”
“We ain’t all shit. He said it to me cause he think that about me regardless,” Torrance said. “And I’m sick of niggas thinking I’m dirty. I shower just like errbody else.”
“It be your clothes, man.”
“I know. Shit.”
“Wash them hur.”
“Naw my mom would be shamed.”
“You already eat hur. She shamed about that?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, let her sometimes be shamed about you washing clothes hur. Y’all can split being shamed.”
Torrance laughs and thanks Him. Selah wonders how often Torrance allows himself to have this soft look on his face like he does now. She likes it on him and likes how He brings this out of somebody who she thought only knew anger.
The mood shifts a bit after He asks about the gun, if Torrance had seen it himself and Torrance says no. Neither of the boys saw the gun but both ran, just like everyone else.
“It wasn’t even that serious,” He says. Torrance nods. “Folks ain’t shot around hur since last summer after . . .” but He doesn’t finish. Selah wants to know what happened last summer that has made it chilly inside Him. She holds herself, the cold coming on strong and the look on Torrance’s face like he is being drained of blood. “I didn’t mean to—”
