What I Say To Myself

It was like this: Tony D. tripped me when I was going in for an easy lay-up, real easy, no one there at all, nothing but open court, nothing but daylight, and I could already picture it happening—the last few dribbles and the jumping off the left foot and the rising up like a bird I don’t know the name of and the ball kissing off the crappy-shitty-rusted backboard and then going right into the metal net, making that ugly crunch sound—but no, no instead Tony D. came up from behind and kicked my leg tricky-like and I went flying right down on my knee, the left one, smack, no give, blacktop hitting knee, hard as fuck, and pretty much the blood started right up and my pants were ruined and I was on the ground upside down while the rest of the world was right-side up.

I grabbed my knee and rolled around some. On my back I could see the clouds in the sky were dark like maybe it was going to rain soon. They seemed to be moving faster, like they were on fast-forward speed and not regular.

Then they were over me. Tony D., Malcolm, Arturo, J.C. No one asked if I was okay. They just stood there like hey dummy, get the hell up, you’re messing up our game retard boy. But I couldn’t. My knee burned. I wanted to say something, to Tony D., like what the hell, what are you doing, you messed up my dream lay-up, it would have been beautiful. But I didn’t say anything, the words stayed stuck in my throat, maybe deeper even, all lost and scrambled, and because I could tell I was starting to maybe cry, I got up and ran home, hobbled more like it, and behind me I could hear the laughing, the jiving, the names, wimp, pussy, faggot, bitch.

I lived only a few blocks from the school, so it didn’t take me long to get home. I crossed one street and then another and tried not to think about the sting in my leg and the sucky houses in our neighborhood, speaking of which they always looked so sad and guilty, one the same as the next. Ours included. There in the driveway, on blocks, was the snot-green Buick that hadn’t been driven in over a year, and there on the porch was my old Huffy, which has been missing the seat since over two Christmases ago. The garage door was open, full of junk and tools and weights that I’d never seen anyone use. Piles of boxes and boxes reached up to the ceiling, practically. It smelled like sweat and oil. Inside, there was my mom in the kitchen, smoking, and my dad in the living room watching TV, spread out all over the sofa like a wrinkled blanket no one ever bothered moving. They were surprised. Usually I don’t come until six on the dot, or sometimes later, when I forget about the time. I like to stay out until it starts getting dark. It’s better coming home that way. Better in the dark than in the light.

“What’s wrong?” my mom yelled from the kitchen.

“What’d he do now?” my dad yelled from the living room. His words were more clear, not all slow and warbly-like, so I knew it was early.

“What’s that?” said my mom.

“Your son,” my dad said. “What’s the little genius gone and done this time?”

This was how it always was: conversations from different rooms. He: in the living room. She: in the kitchen. He: in the bathroom. She: in the bedroom. Me: somewhere else.

I ran to the bathroom and closed the door. I bunched together some toilet paper and held it to my knee. By now there was a lot of blood, more than I thought at first. Then my mom was knocking, asking what’s going on. I got up off the toilet and let her in.

“What are you doing bursting in the house like you’re on fire or something and then run in here and lock yourself up. You know I don’t like secrets in this house.”

Then she saw my knee, the toilet paper, the blood.

“Jesus, what you do.”

It wasn’t a question so much. Just a statement. All that I do. All the problems I cause just because I’m me.

“Let me see,” she said, nicer now. She took away the toilet paper. Except now little clumps of it, the toilet paper, were sticking to my skin. Some of it wouldn’t come out. She went to medicine cabinet and got some stuff to wash out the knee. Along with the toilet paper I saw tiny bits of black gravel from the basketball court. The whole mess was the size of a small pancake. Silver dollar-sized, they call them in restaurants where the menus are like way too big and covered in plastic and have pictures of the food, which always looks better than it tastes.

“This might sting a little,” she said. And of course it did.

I told her what happened, pretty much, except I left out the part about Tony D. tripping me. And the names. I didn’t want to make it a deal. I just fell down, simple as that. Kids, teenagers, they fall down. They get hurt. But she just shook her head like maybe she knew better. Or maybe she was just in one of her moods. Either way, though, just then, as she was putting the stinging stuff on my knee and then after pressing a little harder with a damp cloth, some light came through the frosted and crudded bathroom window, the day’s last spit of sun, and I could see how pretty my mom was, or maybe how pretty she once was. It was the way the light hit her face, I guess. It made her seem younger, more like she used to be, less tired, the way she was in the pictures she looks at sometimes and gets all dreamy and different in the eyes, like she was in a plane looking down at the rest of the world, all small and far away. In the pictures she is doing things: at the beach, at a party, hugging people I’ve never met. That was before. Before my father. Before me.

“Now listen Grandmaster Dunk,” she said, “don’t be picking the scab once this dries up. You’re always picking your scabs. You gotta pick, pick, pick. Leave it alone and it’ll be fine. Don’t pick.”

She placed a Band-Aid on my knee, mussed up my hair a little. It was the best she could do.

“Dinner’s in half an hour,” she said, standing. “Don’t keep your father waiting.”

The door to the bathroom stayed open. I could hear her footsteps, the sound of her shoes, the same exact pair she buys at Payless every six months or so, the ones that always come apart but she keeps buying them because they’re cheap. There was the TV too, the roar of cars racing I think, one long vroooooooom. It never ended.

But I knew I’d pick the scab. I always do. I tell myself not to. But after a while, after it dries, it almost starts to come off by itself. You push it a little and feel how easy the scab will lift away. You push a little more. Then it’s halfway off. Presto. Why not all the way? Once it’s gone, your skin underneath is pink, smooth. That’s the scar. You hold up the scab and maybe it’s weird but it seems, well, sort of beautiful in a way. It was part of you, your skin, and then it can be taken away. It’s gone forever, a part of you that’s lost.

Tony D. wouldn’t think about these kinds of things. Malcolm, J.C., Arturo, Tyler too. It’s why I get tripped, made fun of, called names. Always the names. The only thing that’s going to change that is age. Finishing junior high (soon), then high school, then after that I don’t know. My mom had me before she finished high school, so who knows, I could have my own kid by then. But whatever it is that’s going to happen, it can’t happen soon enough. And so I wish and wish and wish for the years to pile up fast, like laundry in the hallway, like the newspapers and magazines in the garage that smell like sweat and oil. Then I’ll be older, older, so much more than what I am today. I’m ready. I really am. Sometimes I look in the mirror and sometimes it’s almost like I can see my whole entire future in there, my life, everything that’ll ever happen to me. And I’m ready. I look and look and that’s what I say to myself, the person I see in the mirror: I’m ready. Let it be. Let it come. Starting now.