Matt Dube
My sister Jillian has never been able to say no to me.
Every week, she let me carry the brown paper bag that had all
her magazines in it home from the drugstore. We would sit in her bedroom with the door closed, talking about
boys and kisses and all the things our mother didn't know about. She flipped through the glossy photo
spreads in the magazines while I told her about first grade. And when she was done, I'd cut out
pictures of the teen stars, with their long thin elven faces and spiky hair,
and paste them on construction paper to make collages. Once I cut out a picture of Scott Baio
walking down Rodeo Drive and a picture of John Stamos holding hands with his
girlfriend outside the Emmys. I cut off John Stamos’ girlfriend and I glued him
next to Scott Baio and it looked like they were holding hands. It knocked the
wind out of me like a sucker punch.
My sister laughed when I showed it to her, then got serious and
said, “We won't show this one to mom,” and rolled it up and put it under her
bed. But she would always show it to me when I came to her room.
But that only happened once. Usually one celebrity was bigger
than the other or something else was wrong that made them look wrong together.
I didn’t care much. I just sat in
her room and cut up magazines and she smoked pot from this marvelous ceramic
bong in the shape of a skull. It scared me; I pretended that the eyes lit up
when my sister took a drag on the tube, like it was alive. You packed the bowl in a little metal pipe stuck in the skull's
teeth and drew the smoke into your lungs from a long plastic tube in the back
of the skull's head. My sister
smoked pot and I watched and let the smell of pot surround me. I lay back on the floor and pretended I
was in some Eastern harem with Aquaman and Captain Marvel fanning me and
incense burning in huge raised bowls.
Another time, I must have been eight and my sister was maybe
fifteen, I asked her if I could smoke from the skull. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and blew the
smoke through a toilet paper tube stuffed with dryer sheets and out the
window. I could tell she didn't
think it was a good idea, but I just wanted to try it, to pretend I was a
sultan sitting in a perfumed harem room and smoking on my hookah. I finally convinced her by offering her
my lunch money for a week, a pittance really; it wouldn't buy a single Tiger
Beat magazine, even in nineteen eighty‑three. But she couldn't say no.
She showed me how to do it, to cover the little air hole at the
base of the skull’s jaw with my finger, to hold the smoke in my lungs as long
as I could. She even offered to
hold the toilet paper tube up to the window for me to blow through. I stood by the edge of her bed because
I was too excited to sit and I did like she told me, sucked all the heavy smoke
into my lungs. It burned, I had
never imagined, and my eyes must have bugged out of my head as I looked at my
sister. I was ready to blow it out
the second after I inhaled, but she didn't know what my look meant. I nodded my head up and down at her
furiously, trying to hold my breath.
"What?" she asked, looking at me, probably having
forgotten what we'd agreed. I
opened my mouth to tell her, and a big rush of smoke came out of my mouth and I
began to cough. Cough and
cough. It sounded like I was
choking, like I might die at any moment.
Over the sound of my coughing, I could hear my mother running down the
hall from the kitchen to Jillian's room to see what was wrong. I saw the look of utter panic in Jillian's
face as she jammed the paper tube between the bed and the wall, and then the
door swung open.
I was almost done coughing, I could feel a little relief,
something like pain and not just blowing out air. I looked down and saw the
skull at my feet, the little pipe in his mouth still puffing lightly, Jillian's
scissors on the floor and ragged bits of slick paper spread everywhere. My mother stood in the doorway and
looked at us, hands on her hips, and bellowed "What's going in here?"
"Mother," I said, stepping forward to conceal the
skull behind me and impressed by the new ragged depth of my voice, “I’m gay.” I
remember thinking that somehow that would explain everything, or at least make
it okay. My mom about hit the
roof.
#
We've grown apart, and it kills me. I've got a place over in Boy's Town, and she's married
now. But some things, I don't
think they'll ever change.
"Y’know, I’m not even supposed to talk to you on the
phone,” Jillian says as she peeks over the chain that holds the door shut. “Come
inside. Quick.” She giggles, and snaps back the last lock before ducking behind
the doorway so that just her glowing face peeks around the side. A few auburn curls have fallen out of
her bun and touch her downy jaw. I’m not supposed to see my own sister because
she’s seven months pregnant and I am gay and her husband is afraid to have me
anywhere near the baby.
“Is it cold out there? It looks cold. Let me make you some tea,”
Jillian says and shuts thedoor behind me.
She pads in thick leg warmers to the stove in the little kitchen of her
apartment. Sean is a campus cop, and when he isn’t busy stopping drunks from
shitting in the elevators at DePaul, he arranges my sister’s social schedule.
When the tea is ready, Jillian sits with her chair turned out from
the table and her feet sprawled in front of her in those silly leg warmers. She
sips at her tea and the steam from the coffee cup beads in the little mustache
that’s grown up over her lip.
“Can I touch it?” I ask, twisting my teacup in its chipped china
saucer.
“No,” she snaps at me. “You’re not even supposed to be here. If
Sean knew, he’d shit. Sit back and drink your tea. Look, there’s a little
snow,” she says, pointing out the window that looks out over an alley into the
wall of the apartment on the other side.
“Please,” I say, with my best baby brother voice, and she’s
starting to say no again, but she can’t any more now than she ever could.
“All right,” she says, resigned. “Just a touch,” and she rolls
the Navy Pier t‑shirt up over her stomach. I practically jump out of my seat to
kneel on the floor beside her legs. She even pulls down the front of her canary
yellow sweat pants to let the whole bulging ball show. Her stomach is pink, and
it looks tender, and if I looked long enough I could see blue veins under the
skin. I put my hand out gently, palm first, and move it a little closer to the
baby. I can feel the heat rolling off her like it’s coming in waves. I can’t
even look, I’m so excited, so I let out my breath and look away, out the
window, and there are little snowflakes that fall past the dark window, little
white spots against all that darkness and the dirty brick wall opposite. I can
feel the hairs on Jillian’s stomach first, standing out like little tongues waiting
to be touched. And then I feel her overheated skin, almost scalding hot and
stretched tight and there is an electric shock when I rest my hand there.
“Oh my God, I think that's Sean now," Jillian says, and
pulls away from me to straighten up in her chair. I hear it too, a footfall on the stairs, but it's already
too late. With a touch, I have fouled whatever juices are inside her and
surrounding the baby.
And I know, when the baby is born, it will be a little radio, a
receiver for all the stray waves in the air. Instead of crying out in the night
in their Ukrainian Village apartment, it will play a non‑stop mix of the queer
classics of yesterday and today. “West End Girls” and “Dancing Queen” and lots
of Freddie Mercury, Soul to Soul with their post‑op diva. And when Gloria
Gaynor sings, "I should have changed the stupid lock, I should have thrown
away the key,” I will hold the baby’s little pug nose between my fingers and
playfully twist it, to change the station.
Go
to Creative Writing Home Page
Go to English
Department Home Page
This site designed and maintained by The Creative Writing
Concentration of the English Department of the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette.
To contact us by mail: Director of Creative Writing, English
Department, Box 44691, UL-Lafayette, Lafayette LA 70504-4691; by telephone,
337-482-5478;
by email, jlm8047@louisiana.edu.
Last updated: May 1, 2001.