Let me ask you something. There’s this girl named Alana in confirmation class—
Aww, little Bobby’s getting into girls. Proud of you, man.
Stop playing. Tell me what I need to say to her.
Little brother, I taught you nothing before I left. I’m a bad big sister. Now puberty is upon you.
Never mind. I see you won’t be serious.
All right, all right, I’ll be serious. Bobby, there aren’t any magical words. Guys who think they need to sound all Billy Dee smooth annoy me. Just make conversation with her like she’s a human being. Any ol’ human being. That’s all she is anyway. She’s not Jesus. She can’t raise the dead. No need to get all tongue-tied. If you talk to her and she still seems like she’s worth talking to, ask for her phone number or ask to meet up somewhere. It’s not a big deal, Bobby. Now put Mommy or Daddy on the phone.
That night I sat in my room doing my homework, but really listening to my parents’ end of the conversation with my sister, when it dawned on me: In just six days I would be a man.
I stopped doing my work and rested in my uncomfortable bed that featured wooden slats in lieu of springs. I had it since I was three. Some outdated theory once said this system was good for a child’s spinal development, but in practice it turned me into an insomniac with stray back pains. I imagined my parents would rush to replace the bed once I became a man instead of ignoring my complaints.
I fell asleep with that thought and woke the next morning still in my clothes; my bedroom lights shined in my face and my mouth had a raw, unbrushed taste. For a moment I thought it was Saturday and lay there in a dazed state. My eyes felt scratchy and unrested. I turned to enjoy several more hours of sleep when I realized it was Tuesday. How was it that no one yelled at me to change my clothes and brush my teeth? At least someone usually slipped in while I slept and turned off the lights. Was this a taste of manhood? How everything would be after Sunday? All responsibilities now resting on my shoulders. No one to chase me out the door.
I found it hard to focus that week. I was at school, but I was also elsewhere, mostly with Alana. Teachers, particularly Ms. Baker, would call on me and I would flub my responses to wild laughter from classmates. No matter. I couldn’t help imagining different combinations of words to win Alana’s attention. It was like cracking a locker combination, seemingly impossible. I threw together random words like the random numbers I pulled together that one time I guessed Edward Covington’s combination after three days and hundreds of tries. Seemingly impossible, but I did it.
Wednesday afternoon I arrived home just after the mailman’s visit and noticed that my mother held the day’s envelopes, postcards, and circulars in her hand. Later, while she cooked dinner, I spotted two notices from the school on my father’s dresser. The famed yellow envelopes of interim deficiency reports. My mother had slit them open and read that I was failing math and science, but said nothing. She just prepared the spaghetti like it was a normal day. If I hadn’t dawdled by the bus stop, I could have snatched them and discarded them. Though after the rare beating my sister once received for that crime, I was always reluctant to toss them. My only option now was to read the half-truths and attempt to devise broad strokes to fill in the incomplete picture painted by my teachers’ reports.
Sitting through dinner, my left elbow nearly touching my father’s, I said nothing of the interim reports and neither did he. My gut quivered during the silences, waiting for the lecture on taking my work seriously. The exasperated screams. Accusations of wanting to be a ne’er-do-well. But none of that happened. I wondered if I should preempt my father, apologize for the poor showing and promise to do better, but I shot that down. I knew my father well enough to know it would be taken as a sign of weakness.
After dinner I retired to my room, nominally to do my homework, but really I sat at my desk, threw my head back, and imagined what I’d say to Alana come Sunday. Perhaps there was a song that encapsulated everything I felt and I could quote it to her. After all, hadn’t everything that ever needed to be said about love been said in an R&B song? From the first time, Alana, that I saw your brown eyes…
Three hard knocks on my door startled me. No one ever knocked. Knocking is nonsense when you own the house, my father said once.
Come in, I called.
There stood my father in the doorway. I breathed deeply. I had practiced what I’d say about the interims all day since I had seen them waiting for my father on his dresser. The mental rehearsal was limited, though, interspersed with thoughts of Sunday’s wooing of Alana. I fumbled with my words in my mind.
Bobby, he said. I opened my mouth to offer a blubbery explanation, but he cut me off. Tomorrow, I’m gonna come home early so we can go down to the mall and get you a suit for Sunday. You can’t be looking like just anybody during your confirmation.
I thought of Alana so much on Thursday that my head pounded by the time school let out. When my father came home to take me suit shopping, I was lying on the living room couch, hoping my closed eyelids would make the throbbing in my head dissipate.
Boy, you not ready? my father called. Didn’t I tell you to be ready when I got home?
The boom of his voice vibrated against the ache on the right side of my head. I moved slowly through the motions of changing into my going-out clothes, fearing that sharp, quick movements would rupture my brain or, at least, cause a sudden pulsing.
My father stood by my door grumbling and complaining as I changed. But when we finally went out to the car and the radio got to cranking, he put on a big grin, singing along with Teddy Pendergrass. The key to everything, son, is to calm down, he said. Don’t let too much move you. So much depends on a million things that are out of your control. Took me a long time, too long, to figure that out.
I said nothing, distracted by the streaks of sun that beamed down from space to stab themselves into my eyes and stir my headache. I screwed up my brow and must have looked angry or confused. To tell the truth, I was a bit confused, as my father, quick to anger and judgment for most of my life, was always being moved by petty annoyances. I often wondered if and when the old monster I loved and feared would return.
Why you frowning? he said. You still upset that your old dad wanted you to move with purpose?
Naw, Dad. I’m fine.
The sun now caused the pain in my head to slowly throb.
Something’s wrong, my father said. People don’t just frown for no reason at all.
Dad, could you let it drop?
We exchanged not two more words all the way to the store. My father didn’t even bother to sing when Al Green came across the radio, and I felt I had ruined his good mood. But once we got into the store, it only took the sight of a few fine suits to rekindle it. He pulled a gray one with thin brown lines from the rack and danced like James Brown with it against his chest.
I’m gonna have you looking sharp, he said. I don’t care how much it costs me. A man got to have one of these. Two when you really become a man. But one is good now. You like this?
I shrugged, not from indifference, but rather from the fact that the suits all had a sameness to me. I was becoming a man, but my sense of fashion was far from refined. Sure, I could tell that the three-piece number in yellow and black plaid was a clown suit, and I could also marvel at the $500 Italians, but everything else had a uniform quality. I lacked the visual vocabulary, the key to the code that all men were reliably expected to crack.
My father pulled suit after suit from the rack. Try this one!
I gazed at myself in the mirror wearing a black striped suit that came with a vest. It made me look like a banker or a gangster from the 1920s. I stood on a raised part of the floor and for once I was higher than my father and everyone around me. I looked sharp. There’s no way I could deny that. Or at least I would look sharp once the tailor went to work.