Invisible Boy, page 13
Surveying my new digs, I thought of the padded cell at Arkham Asylum where they keep the Joker until he escapes.
The bed was made with a black blanket, still wrinkled from its plastic packaging.
It’s a reversible comforter, my mother explained. The other side is tan. And what do you think of these? She pointed to a rainbow curtain set in the kids’ bedroom section of the latest IKEA catalogue. I thought they looked fun—we could get them for you if you wanted to brighten the room up a bit.
The curtains were hardly my style. I thought they looked tacky. What’s more, they were so age-inappropriate that the suggestion struck me as thoughtless, and I was bruised by my mother’s outdated view of me.
I tried to mask my agitation. A room of my own was a milestone; I should have been happier about it. But I did not appreciate being displaced without my consultation or consent, especially after fourteen years in one place. It was almost as if my input didn’t matter at all. So why even bother asking me about the stupid curtains? Just put them up.
And that’s what I said.
My mother got mad. You’re so ungrateful, she said. You’re so selfish.
I just wish you would have included me, I said, retreating.
Well we could move you back, she sneered, but it’s been a whole week, so your brothers are already used to the change.
Casting about for a safe response, I spotted Mike, who was ten, on his way to the Big Room. He carried a bottle of Windex. My brother was cleaning the house.
That was my job.
When I was little, we had a housecleaner. Bobby was a pack-a-day smoker. I used to sit with her on the front steps, on her break between floors. But then she died suddenly—lung cancer, my mother said, never smoke—and when a suitable replacement could not be found, the job fell to Ben and me. We were each paid fifteen dollars a week. But when Ben got a real job, the whole house became my responsibility.
It was a tall task, especially for a boy with the brilliance, and what took Bobby two hours often took me two days, even after my mother tried to motivate me by banning trampoline time until I could get the job done. Mike and Tom should have to help, I argued more than once, frustrated to hear them playing outside when I couldn’t. But my mother countered that thirty dollars, split three ways, meant a pay cut for me, and then I would have less to spend on books and Christian music at the House of James. So I backed off and, for years, I worked alone.
Mike and Tom took over the housecleaning while you were away, my mother said. Just this week. They started yesterday and they’re finishing today.
It sounded reasonable enough. I was glad for a week’s reprieve anyhow. But something seemed off, so I asked: Fifteen dollars each?
And Tom said: Thirty.
I was instantly aggrieved. That’s sixty dollars! I shouted. What, are Mike and Tom worth twice as much as me?
Now my mother was furious, and she came at me with such ferocity that I hit the empty bookshelf backing away.
You made thirty dollars too, so it’s the same rate, she said, jabbing the air before me like a one-finger typist until her fingernail clicked against the bridge of my glasses, surprising us both. You always have such a nasty little attitude when you come home. Did you even miss your family? Where’s your shoe, Harry?
Then she went to her room and slammed the door.
I sat cross-legged on my new bed and tried to make sense of what had happened. The sun was shining through the window, lighting every airborne bit of dust, and when it settled, the black blanket showed it all.
Maybe I overreacted, I thought. Maybe if I say I’m sorry, she’ll see where I’m coming from.
Soon she was back. Here, my mother said, coldly, flinging a clear package into the room.
It was the rainbow curtain set: 100 per cent polyester, cold-water wash, hang to dry.
Her door slammed again.
I crawled into bed, but drawing back the comforter revealed a technicolor top sheet made to match the polyester panels.
* * *
—
Maybe if I put up the curtains.
I set my mind to making the new room feel mine, and I was still working on it the next day around lunchtime when my mother shouted at me from the kitchen. I rushed downstairs to answer her, hoping there were sandwiches or something.
Where’s your shoe, Harry?
I’d forgotten all about that, and I was still not ready to admit I came home without it, so I lied. Upstairs, I said.
You’re so full of crap your eyes are brown, she said. Your little buddy Joel has it.
My eyes are brown because I’m Black, I said.
Oh, don’t play the race card with me, my mother scowled. Just find out where your friend lives. Then she put the cordless phone down on the counter and stood there, her arms crossed, impatient.
Joel lived so close I couldn’t believe it. If you got lost on the way to my house, you might have knocked on his door for directions. My mother drove me over, but you could stumble coming down the hill and tumble right into his driveway. In a sense, that’s exactly what happened.
As soon as we left, we were there.
Joel was sitting on the front steps in his shiny blue basketball shorts, rubbing my sneaker like the lamp in Aladdin. To make him laugh, I jumped out of the van with just the one shoe on and I hopped toward him and said: Pardon me, sah, but you seem to be holding my ground!
He laughed. Then he invited me to stay and go swimming in the neighbour’s pool.
I looked back to the van. So soon after camp, this was certain to trigger the Fun Limiter. My mother was not going to go for this, and I didn’t have a bathing suit—a ready-made excuse. But it was a sorely needed, nearly miraculous opportunity to make a real friend of a camp friend and she was already mad at me, so I approached the driver’s side to ask anyhow.
When she wouldn’t roll down the window, I waited. Eventually, she granted me a sliver—just enough to hear.
Joel invited me to stay, I said. I can walk home. Can I stay?
No, she said. You just got back from camp.
I asked what else we were doing.
And she said: Is he Saved?
Well I met him at Bible camp, I said.
There’s that attitude again, she said, putting the Aerostar into reverse. Whatever, Harry. If your camp friend matters more than your family, do whatever you want and walk back.
Then she left.
So I followed my new friend inside, hiding hurt feelings behind a fake smile.
Joel was a young Jack Nicholson, right down to the arch grin and devilish eyebrows, and to me he seemed like the same brand of natural leading man. He had that It Factor: he was so charming, and just so good to look at, the type of boy you see and have to sigh. I was utterly spellbound by him.
Joel took me upstairs to the master bedroom and began rifling through the dresser like a burglar. My stepdad has some shorts that you can borrow, he said. Here we go: black shorts for the Black kid. He threw a pair of faded trunks behind him, blind. I caught them and laughed to give permission for the joke.
I couldn’t believe it when Courage told everyone I wasn’t really Black, I said.
He shrugged. Pfft. Courage isn’t Black either, he’s African. Now help me with this.
Joel handed me a stack of pornography, one of two stacks he’d just unearthed from the dresser’s bottom drawer, and we lugged the whole collection across the hall to his room—save for one issue of Asian Fever, which he left on his mother’s bed.
Maybe she’ll kick him out, he said, grinning like the Clown Prince of Crime.
Joel sat down with a Hustler and encouraged me to help myself to whatever, so I sat down cross-legged with the Best of Beaver Hunt, volume 22, a special expanded edition promising a beaver bonanza. I opened to a random page and there I saw a fully nude woman for the first time ever—Mia, according to the magazine. Whatever youthful lust I felt was quickly overcome by shame, and then disgust, which only deepened when I realized that Mia’s page was stuck to the page behind it.
That was enough porn for the moment.
Let’s go swimming, I insisted.
We cut through an alley that led to a block where the houses were larger, and soon we stood before a six-foot cedar gate with a keypad lock. Joel knew the code. He punched a couple numbers, and we followed a cobblestone path to a massive swimming pool around the back.
You can change in there, he said, pointing to a Rubbermaid storage shed the size of a small house.
The shed was full of unpainted Star Wars ceramics—spaceships and robots, mostly, displayed along handcrafted, wraparound shelving—and I would have asked about this, but there wasn’t time. I was still tying my trunks when Joel came in, snatched a stark-white R2-D2 from a shelf, and smashed it on the concrete outside.
I threw my hands up in horror.
Don’t worry, this guy sucks, Joel said. Now help me throw the barbecue into the pool.
I didn’t understand why Joel wanted to throw the barbecue into the pool, and as we watched the big red grill sink into the deep end, I wondered why I’d helped.
We couldn’t stick around after that, so we didn’t go swimming.
Changing back in Joel’s bathroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length vanity mirror on the back of the door. I saw a little gremlin—humanoid but not quite human, with a fat little face, a head too small for his big Black butt, an uneven smile, unmanageable hair, and glasses crooked from a week at camp. Everything I saw looked wrong to me, so preposterous it must be a joke, like a toddler in high heels or E.T. wearing people clothes. I was just as revolted by my own body as I had been by Mia’s. Was I always this ugly or was this some kind of cruel, carnival mirror? Either way, I put a towel over it.
Let’s go to Wonderland, Joel said, out of nowhere.
Wonderland was a family amusement park on the outskirts of Abbotsford, just off the Whatcom Road exit at the base of Sumas Mountain, not far from the tree where the boy Louie Sam had been lynched. It was a fifteen-minute walk from Joel’s house, which meant it was only a twenty-minute walk from mine.
I had no idea, and it made me feel dumb as a doorknob. Marooned on Glenn Mountain since boyhood, it used to seem so far away. I could have gone down every day.
Wonderland was mostly known for minigolf. The black-lit, basement courses had a theme—you chose from coral sea or jungle—and the outdoor course was built around an old medieval castle, a roadside attraction with white walls and royal blue beaver-tail shingles and spires. It was a popular destination for birthday parties, as there was little else to do in Abbotsford. Wonderland had everything: a full arcade, a go-kart track, batting cages, tables for rod hockey, air hockey, pizza, and pool, and now, a new name: Castle Fun Park.
Joel was outraged. What happened to Wonderland, he ranted, checking the coin slots for loose tokens. What happened to my childhood?
Copyright infringement. There was another Wonderland in south Ontario.
We came across a string of tickets hanging from the Pop-a-Shot and we took them to the prize wall to see what we could get. Joel rang the bell rapid-fire until the manager emerged from the kitchen.
What can I get you?
My childhood back, Joel said, still mourning the erstwhile name of a party place constructed in 1989. He punched the glass counter-top. I will not submit to the tyranny of Castle Fun Park!
How about three sour keys, the manager said, opening a jar of rainbow candy.
Deal.
But as soon as the manager left us alone, Joel reached across the counter and snatched the whole caboodle. He took off running, and I had no choice but to chase him, all the way through the long parking lot and across the street to the little block of stores with a gas station at one end and a Burger King at the other.
We went behind the strip, where the drive-thru looped around, and we sat along the chain-link fence that kept us from falling some twenty feet, fatally, into the excavated lot next door—the future home of Sumas Mountain Village.
Back then, there was nothing else around for miles. The Whatcom Road exit was an outpost, just two tiny castles at the edge of the world, one you played through, the other you drove through, and farmland as far as the eye could see. But something was coming. Across the vast cavity, the mountain rose majestically, dense with conifers except for a bald patch ascending along its spine like a shiver. Future development.
Staring up at what I did not know was stolen land, I got the sense that God himself had reached down like a shearer and shaved a strip in the earth, for in a way, He had. The strip was full of signs for Christian construction companies—a cross or fish in every logo.
There used to be another Sumas Mountain village, right where we were—a whole, entire nation even, living around a lake. But the lake was drained in 1924 to near-unanimous approval, according to recorded history. The only archived argument in opposition belongs to Sumas Chief Ned, who told the McKenna-McBride Commission: I am against the dyking because that will mean more starvation for us.
You stole! I said to Joel as soon as I caught my breath. I was scandalized and frankly frightened by my complicity, especially with my back to the abyss, so I shifted to one side.
You’re allowed to steal if you’re white, Joel said. And besides, they stole from me first. My childhood, man! I’ve been to, like, fifty birthday parties at Wonderland! So it’s not stealing. It’s justice. Why don’t you take a little justice for yourself, as a treat.
No thank you, I said. Thou shalt not steal.
Punch buggy! Joel socked me in the shoulder. It hurt but I didn’t say anything.
I spotted the Beetle in line for the drive-thru, and my eyes followed the little red Volkswagen around to the Burger King pick-up window, then past a blinking OPEN sign I never would have noticed otherwise.
I had no idea there were businesses out back. But there was a small salon tucked away there, next to a sandwich shop. Each was about the size of a wardrobe. Haircuts were just fifteen dollars at the salon, Emotional Rescue Hair, and at the sandwich shop, footlongs were five.
Looking back, based on where it was, I’m sure it mostly serviced truckers. But the name spoke to me and I was so desperate for a sign that I saw the one behind the Burger King and imagined a portal to my own private wonderland, or perhaps a magical gift shop run by my guardian angel, special guest star Della Reese, and I would drop in, desperate to be made beautiful, and Della would say: Oh my baby, you are.
Emotional Rescue Hair? I said to Joel, with a scoff. Surely they can’t be serious!
Think it’s Narnia in there? Joel said, stuffing sour keys into his mouth.
Wouldn’t that be something.
I wanted a fade. Will Smith had a fade. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was on all the time that summer. On Thursdays, I’d watch old episodes back-to-back on WGN Chicago, then two more on TBS Superstation, before switching to the CBC for a new episode. You could tell a new episode by the new Aunt Vivian. I liked the old Aunt Vivian, personally, but she was gone now, and no one ever bothered to explain where she went.
No matter. Most of all I liked Will, who was by far the show’s coolest, Blackest character, and the only one, to my mind, worth aspiring to. Will was born and raised in West Philadelphia. He was from the streets.
I was not, and people could tell. More often I reminded them of Carlton, Will’s rich, clueless cousin, a child of such wealth and privilege that he was completely out of touch with how to be a real Black person, and that was the joke. Carlton’s entire existence was a punchline, like Steve Urkel from Family Matters, another common comparison because I wore glasses. Carlton had a dance. Come to think of it, they both had a dance. Of course they did. The whole performance was a dance. They were clowning: their ill-performed Blackness was a strange ballet; the comedy was in their movement, so their entire existence was funny, and it was humiliating and demoralizing to be told that I reminded anyone of either character.
I wanted people to see me and think of Will.
But that’s not what happened when Joel and I entered. I wasn’t touched by an angel—just a racist hairdresser, a thin white woman with no chin and no backside, blond, who saw me and immediately thought to say: Do you know who you look like? The guy from The Fresh Prince. The nerdy one.
And she asked me to do the dance, and I had so little self-respect that I agreed to before I even sat down. My heart wasn’t in it, but she didn’t notice.
You’re hilarious, the stylist said, and reigning over me, she remarked, I’d pay good money for these curls. She advanced as though she had. She grabbed a handful and fingered my 4C hair like it was bubble wrap, stimming off the texture—It’s so spongy, she cackled—and she cut me into silly shapes like a Wooly Willy, making herself laugh, wringing me dry of all hope for this haircut.
I might sweep this up and keep it in a bag and just touch it, she said to herself, although it’s probably not as good when it’s dead. What am I thinking? All hair is dead. Do you know what you should try? Dreadlocks. Like Bob Marley, mon! I bet dreadlocks keep better.
And she asked me how I felt about the N-word, and when I said it didn’t bother me, it’s just a word, she said it three times in the mirror, too eagerly, summoning something that did.
Still I stayed until the end, and when she asked, I said I liked the cut, pretending I could see without my glasses. Then I gave her the whole twenty dollars and let myself out.
Can you believe her? Joel said, laughing as we left. What a cougar.
But I ran away from there, reminded of why I rarely left home. Later, in Joel’s room, I looked at women who looked just like her but without any clothes on, and I ate sour keys for hours until my tongue began to bleed. I left around dinner, feeling disgusting, and I made my way back up the mountain on foot.
