Memorial(3)

He waved them at me, asked why everything had to be so fucking hard.



* * *




? ? ?

A few months in, Mike said we could be whatever we wanted to be. Whatever that looked like.

I’m so easy, he said.

I’m not, I told him.

You will be, he said. Just give me a little time.



* * *




? ? ?

It’s past midnight when we pull onto our block. Most of the lights are out. Some kids are huddled by the curb, smoking pot, fucking around with firecrackers.

When a pop explodes behind us, the kids take off. That’s their latest thing. Mike’s mother doesn’t even flinch.

Ma, says Mike, this is home.

We live in the Third Ward, a historically Black part of Houston. Our apartment’s entirely too large. It doesn’t make any sense. At one point, the neighborhood had money, but then crack happened and the money took off, and occasionally you’ll hear gunshots or fistfights or motherfuckers driving way too fast. But the block has recently been invaded by fraternities from the college up the block. And a scattering of professor types. With pockets of rich kids playing at poverty. The Black folks who’ve lived here for decades let them do it, happy for the scientific fact that white kids keep the cops away.

Our immediate neighbors are Venezuelan. They’ve got like nine kids. Our other neighbors are these Black grandparents who’ve lived on the property forever. Every few weeks, Mike cooks for both families, sopa de pescado and yams and macaroni and rice. He’s never made a big deal about it; he just wakes up and does it, and after the first few times I asked Mike if that wasn’t patronizing.

But, after a little while, I noticed people let him linger on their porches. He’d poke at their kids, leaning all over the wood. Sometimes the Black folks invited him inside, showed him pictures of their daughter’s daughters.

Mike’s lived here for years. I left my father’s place for his. On my first night in the apartment, I couldn’t fall asleep for the noise, and Mike said I’d get used to it, but honestly I didn’t want to.



* * *





Now Mike’s mother drops her shoes by our door. She runs her hand along the wall. She taps at the counter, toeing the wood. When she steps into the foyer, Mike grins my way, the first smile in what feels like months, and that’s when we hear it: slow at first, after some hiccups, before Mike’s mother begins to cry.



* * *




? ? ?

A few years after they split, my parents took me to lunch together in Montrose. We hadn’t all sat at the same table in years. Lydia had mostly cut them off; she’d moved out, and moved on, and she’d told me to do the same, but what I did instead was order a Reuben.

The week before, my father had walked in on some guy jerking me off. It wasn’t anyone who matters. We’d met on some fucking app. My father opened the door, coughed, and actually said, I’m sorry, as he backed out of the room. The boy beside me made a face like, Should we finish or what.

That night, after he left, I waited for my father to bring it up. But he just sat on the sofa and drank his way through two six-packs. The incident dissolved in the air. Before he drove off, the guy had asked to see me again, and I told him I didn’t think so, because we probably weren’t actually going anywhere. I still hadn’t learned that there is a finite number of people who will ever be interested in you.

When our waiter, a skinny brown guy, asked if we needed anything else, I spoke a little too quickly. He smiled. Then my mother smiled.

You know you can talk to us, she said.

Both of us, she added.

My mother smelled like chocolate. My father wore his nice shirt. You’d have been hard-pressed to think that this was a man who’d thrown his wife against a wall. Or that this lady, immediately afterward, stuck a fork into his elbow.

Awesome, I said. Thank you.

About anything, said my mother, touching my hand.

When I flinched, she took hers back. My father didn’t say shit.



* * *





That night, my father dropped me off at the house. He said he’d be back in the morning.

Not even an hour later, I texted back the boy from the other day. When I opened the door, he looked a little uncertain, but then I touched his wrist and he got the biggest grin on his face.

I let him fuck me on the sofa. And then again in the kitchen. And then again in my father’s bedroom. We didn’t use protection.

He left the next morning, but not before we ate some toast. He was Filipino, with a heavy accent. He told me he wanted to be a lawyer.



* * *




? ? ?

One day, our second year in, I told Mike all of that. We were out shopping for groceries. He fondled the ginger and the cabbage and the bacon.

Halfway through my story, he stopped me to ask around for some kombu.

He said, Your folks sound like real angels.

And you, said Mike, you’re like a baby. Just a very lucky boy.



* * *





And then one morning Mike had already left our place for the restaurant. He’d forgotten his phone by the sink. I didn’t mean to touch it, but it flashed, so I did.

I did not and do not know the guy whose cock blipped across the screen.