Orange （1976） #3
As I stood in the yard, waiting for him, I watched my brothers and my grandfather tossing around a football.
I had no desire to join them. None. But I did watch with wonder at their easy camaraderie, at their commonality.
My brothers look like our grandfather. I’ve noticed their resemblance before, but today, it really struck me how much my brothers look like him.
With their short, wide faces and prominent chins, they look like Cro-Magnons.
Like him, they are short but powerfully built.
Also like him, their skin is ashy from farm work and neglect, and their perpetually unbrushed hair resembles peas scattered across a kitchen floor. How, I wondered again, are we related?
Watching them, though, I couldn’t help but marvel at their sheer physicality, brutish as it is, and at their easy machismo that seems enough to make my grandfather favor them over me.
Today, Jackson and I were going to the Fourth of July parade in the next county over.
It is America’s 200th birthday, and the entire country has contracted bicentennial fever.
Never before have the stars and stripes been so widely used and abused.
There is fevered talk seeing tall masted celebratory ships.
Even Reverend Jack has succumbed, wearing a red, white, and blue stole this morning as he prayed for “God’s great country,” then dismissed us early so we could enjoy the nation’s great birthday celebration.
So, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when Jackson drove up wearing a stars-and-stripes neckerchief. But I was flummoxed when he reached into the glovebox and pulled out a matching neckerchief for me.
Wednesday, July 14, 1976, Locust Hollow—Today being Wednesday, Jackson’s mother and Reverend Jack had Bible Study, so we had his house to ourselves.
We had intercourse for the first time tonight.
For months we’ve been afraid, convincing ourselves we were satisfied with just kissing and being able to sit shoulder to shoulder or touch each other’s arm or leg without risking being called a faggot or accused of unauthorized invasion of personal space.
There have been, of course, hand jobs, and we’ve given each other head, but we felt there was more, that we were ready for more.
We just weren’t sure what that more was.
I thought back over the confusing irrelevance that passed for sex education in the hinterlands, for a moment passing back into that overheated darkened classroom, the students a mix of perplexed—I was one of them—and embarrassed; the teacher red-faced at the front of the room, Reverend Jack pacing and scowling at the back.
I tried to remember what I’d learned, while Jackson peered anxiously at me.
Then I remembered. There seemed to be two inescapable consequences of sex: pregnancy and syphilis.
As I knew I couldn’t get pregnant—I’d gleaned that much from sex ed—I’d believed I had syphilis for a whole year after Juan.
I am sure of Jackson, sure that I love him.
Everything else, though, is unknown, a crapshoot.
I was thinking about all this when Jackson suddenly said, “I think I want to fuck you.”
“OK,” I said, relieved we’d at least figured out what to do.
When spit and persuasion proved itself an unsuitable means of lubrication, we swiped butter from a churn.
When my orgasm shot from my body, Jackson expressed his astonishment that the one “being done” could feel pleasure.
He’d assumed we’d need to take turns “doing” each other.
Nope, I was good. Feeling him moving inside me felt amazing, and I recognized on some level that is what I’d always wanted, even though I wasn’t sure it was possible.
“Why’s your navel sunken?” Jackson asked, propping up on his elbows and tracing the edge of my navel with his finger, tickling me. With a tissue, he mopped up the little puddle of come pooled there.
“Most people’s are,” I said.
He peered closely at my now-clean navel. “It looks like every picture I’ve ever seen of the man in the moon,” he said.
“I know,” I responded. “When I was little, I thought it was the man in the moon. I’d spend all day puffing out my stomach to return him to the sky before night came and it was discovered he was missing, that I had him.”
He laughed. “You’re silly.”
“I was four,” I said indignantly.
“You’re still silly,” he reassured me. He stuck his tongue in my navel.
I pushed his head away. “And you still have an outie!”
Sunday, September 5, 1976, Locust Hollow—I’ve poured everything that loving Rio—and to an extent, Juan—had roused in me at Jackson’s feet.
As my love seems to flow over and around him, he seems to float in it as if he is bathing in the Dead Sea.
And he is radiant. For his part, he has pulled me into those waters beside him.
For the first time, I know joy and carelessness.
So, I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when today he said, “I love you, O.”
“And I, you,” I responded.
Now, lying in bed alone, thinking of him, I can hear our words rushing through the air and across the dark and separating miles between us. I love you, O. And I, you. The words echo around the valley’s basin and in our hearts like a lullaby, sending us both separately but happily to sleep.
Saturday, September 25, 1976, Locust Hollow—“Where are you going?” my grandfather demanded.
“To meet Jackson.”
“You’d better watch yourself!”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t know? You think I’m a fool?”
When I said nothing, my grandfather continued, “First it was that wetback up at the orchard. You following him around all picking season like a lost puppy. And now you’re trying to poison Reverend Jack’s son with your filth.
Don’t think you’re fooling anybody. Your schoolmates all know and are telling everyone you’re freaks. ”
I remained silent, though I was trembling. I thought it was ironic that our classmates had insisted Jackson, the preacher’s kid, was a spy for Jesus when, as it turned out, he was the one being spied on and reported. God, the great jokester in the sky!
“You need to stay away from that boy, or you’re going straight to hell.”
“I’m already there. If this town isn’t hell, I don’t know—”
His slap was swift and hard; I swear I felt my teeth rattle in my head. I quickly ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth. No loose teeth.
“I will not have an invert under my roof. I will not have everyone laughing behind my back. I raised you—”
“Reared. You raise chickens. You rear children.”
“You think you’re so damned smart. That’s why no one likes you. That’s why everyone thinks you’re an invert,” he snapped astonishingly, as if speaking proper English was suspect, proof of sin.
“That’s fine,” I said mildly, with a learned casualness that I knew he found maddening.
“I don’t like any of you either.” And I didn’t.
How had I ended up in this tribe of savages, ignorant and rude, complacent in their ignorance, in the smallness of their dreams—a good crop, more female chicks than male, a new transistor radio for the kitchen?
That’s when he punched me in my face. I lost vision in one eye for some minutes as the capillaries beneath my skin burst; blood poured from my split lip. I could hear my brothers’ laughter somewhere behind me.
Invert. So, there’s another word for me, for what I am.
I pulled a bag of frozen peas from the refrigerator to place over my eye.
I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror over the kitchen sink.
A black eye like a scarlet letter tattooed my face.
The skin around my eye was a reddish-purple in the corner, darkened to black below my eye, and lightened into a yellowish green at the outside edge.
For a moment, my grandfather looked shocked, almost on the verge of apologizing.
I noticed he too was trembling. He looked at me hard then walked away.
Invert. The word rang in my ears. Refraining from touching my aching face—I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much he had hurt me—I moved towards the kitchen door, my vision blurring.
Leaving the violence behind, letting it go, I got on my bike and concentrated on pedaling as fast as I could downtown where I was meeting Jackson.
The Hollow’s town center is presided over by great husks of empty buildings, in front of which gutters choked with leaves and trash overflow, damming rainwater so the streets are smooth lakes of muddy water moving pointlessly to-and-fro, wherever the aimless wind pushes them.
I love its ghostliness, its feeling of abandonment.
Most afternoons we meet there, arriving separately so as not to be seen together too often.
We run gloriously through those restless muddy waters, spraying ourselves and each other with the water’s bitter bounty, and feel free.
We often come to have sex, privacy and Vaseline being abundant.
When I arrived, Jackson was already there. He touched my face, already swelling, gently. “What happened?” he asked.
“I had a fight with my grandfather.”
“He doesn’t seem very nice.”
“He isn’t. In fact, he’s awful. I hate him.” I’d never allowed myself to think these thoughts, let alone express them to someone else. But I feel safe with Jackson.
“Don’t you have any other relatives you could live with—who would be kinder to you?”
“No. My parents were both only children, and my dad’s mom died when he was little. And Grampy Eddie died—he was murdered, actually—a few months before my mom’s mother died.”
“That’s when you moved here, right?”
“Yeah, but really, we left Springfield because of Grampy Eddie. I’m not sure what happened, but after he got killed, my dad said there were mean people who might try to hurt us now that Grampy Eddie wasn’t around to protect us, so we should make ourselves scarce for a while.
They woke me up early one morning and put me in the back of the Buick Electra Dad inherited from Grampy Eddie and drove us here.
“My parents grew up here. And they went to high school together, which is how they met. My mother was born on the farm. After my dad’s mom died, his father put him in the children’s home while he went off to Springfield to build a better life for the two of them.
My father never said much about the orphanage except that he had been taught how to clean and cook and sew—all things he taught me—so he could help take care of the younger children.
“A month after he graduated high school, Grampy Eddie sent for him to come live in Springfield. By then, Grampy Eddie was a successful numbers man, buying a new Buick every two years and never being seen outside without a fedora and one of his custom-made suits. My mother was devastated my father left but promised she would wait for him. Telling me the story, she said, ‘What else could I do? Your dad was the finest boy in Locust Hollow. All the rest were riffraff with no ambition, dirt under their nails, and bad teeth, destined to become potbellied ne’er-do-wells drinking away their Friday and Saturday nights and gambling away their earnings every other night of the week.’
“My father got drafted shortly after he moved to Springfield. By the time he returned from the army, Grampy Eddie had moved to a swanky building with a doorman on the Grand Concourse, where he rented an apartment big enough for three. My father sent for my mother, and they were married a few months later. They lived in the apartment with Grampy Eddie until a few months after I was born, when he moved into a separate suite of rooms off the kitchen that had been, during the building’s heyday, the servants’ quarters. ”
“What was your fight with your grandfather about?” Jackson asked, suddenly switching topics.
I shrugged.
“Was it about me?”
I nodded.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No,” I said. “But I learned there’s a word for what we are. Invert.” I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.
Jackson winced. “That’s an ugly word. The correct word for us is homosexual. Though a lot of us prefer the term gay.”
I was surprised Jackson seemed to know so much. It turns out having his truck gives him the freedom to go to other nearby towns with bigger libraries and a more open-minded populace. He’s read about gays in Time and Newsweek and has even read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.
Jackson handed me a towel from the back of his truck so we could towel off the water we splashed on ourselves riding my bike through the town center’s perpetual puddles.
“Shit! I forgot my lotion,” I said, knowing my dry skin would irritate me all the way home. Jackson reached into his glovebox and pulled out a small jar of Lubriderm lotion. When he handed it to me, I looked at him in surprise.
“What? I know you lotion a lot, so I thought having a jar on hand couldn’t hurt.”
I nearly cried.
“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll put your bike in back and I’ll drive you to the farm road, then you can ride home from there.
Jackson parked at the end of the road leading to the farm.
“I wish we could just keep driving and find someplace quiet and live together,” he said.
Before I could say anything, he kissed me goodbye, then he lifted my bike out of the back of his truck.
I waved at his taillights and hopped on my bike, and we each headed home. My face didn’t burn as much.
When I got to the farmhouse, it was dark. Soon enough, it would be morning, and dust would fall from the hills above and rise from the valley below, faithful as the sunrise.