Chameleon (26 page)

Smitty snapped the sheet and placed it over me and tied the neck in the back.

Dad chimed in, “What’s that, Smitty? A Caesar? A quo vadis? A DA?”

“Naw, Flash, that was your time. This is a whole different time, and different times call for different cuts. I’m a trim it down and style it nice — you’ll see. You gonna be beating the girls off with a stick, Junior.”

The clippers whirred, and my hair started falling in fat clumps. I hoped he wouldn’t give me a baldy like he has. I kept my eyes closed and head down. I didn’t see any results until Smitty held up the mirror for me to look at the end. And when he finally did, I felt a smile grace my face and I heard my voice say, “Cool.”

Smitty was right. The first thing I saw was the pencil-thin sideburns curving down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I had enough hair for sideburns. The hair on top was cut in half and shaped to my head. It took a while before I even glanced at my eye. It felt much better and looked much better than yesterday, but you could still tell somebody punched me.

As Smitty moved the mirror around my head, I stepped outside of myself, and for the first time in my life, I saw me: Shawn Christopher Williams. I saw my father’s jawbone announcing its presence. I saw my mother’s nose, flaring, as I admired my cut. I saw eyes staring back at me that belonged to someone who has seen a few things in life — less than a man, but more than a kid.

Images of the past replayed themselves in Technicolor 3-D, subtitled with words flashing across my mental movie screen: me rushing in after Lorenzo —
COURAGEOUS
. Me slapping Trent’s back —
FRIEND
. Me helping Andre off the blacktop —
TEAMMATE
. Me laughing with the fellas —
BROTHER
. Me making a basket —
CHAMPION
. Me listening to Randy —
DREAMER
. Me reading books —
INTELLIGENT
. Me helping Auntie off the floor —
COMPASSIONATE
. Me talking to Marisol —
LOVER
.

Yeah, I nodded to Smitty, I liked the cut. But now I admired the face it framed.

“Nice, huh?” Smitty said, smiling with me in the mirror. He dusted me off, slapped me on the back, took Dad’s cash, and sent me on my way.

Dad was already waiting at the door, his goatee not as scraggly as when we walked in. A wave from our hands, a doorbell clang, and another episode at the barbershop was done until next time.

“IT’S GETTING CLOSE to lunchtime, and I know you’re probably hungry, so why don’t we head down to the pier,” Dad said in the car, looking at his watch.

“Sounds good.”

The mirror had my full attention again as I reinspected my new sideburns. They were very fine and framed my face like a picture. I turned my head this way and that, keeping my eyes glued to the mirror. I looked closer at my upper lip and noticed a wispy patch of fuzz.

“I’m growing a mustache.”

“You are not.”

“You can’t see it. But it’s there.”

“Whatever you say, Shawn. Just try not to look at yourself so much. Girls like it when you look at them.”

I flipped up the mirror and stared out the window, taking in the street sights as we wound our way through Hollywood. The oldies station played Dad’s favorite Earth, Wind and Fire song, but when a commercial came on after, he said, “Umm, Shawn . . . your mother wanted me to talk to you about something.”

My belly rumbled as we passed an In-N-Out burger. My eyes darted from the yellow letters on the sign to Dad’s mellow face in the car.

“About what?”

If it has something to do with Mama, it could be anything.

He flicked the radio off.

Uh-oh, this is serious. He never turns the radio off. He may change the station, but he never turns it off.

I sat up straight.

“You remember waking up with wet sheets recently?”

Wet sheets? Of course I remember that. It was just yesterday. How could I forget?

“Yeah, why?”

“Your mother wanted me talk to you about what happened.”

“I know, Dad. . . . It was an accident. I drank a lot of water before bed that night and . . .”

“I know it was an accident, but . . . it wasn’t what you think it was.”

What other kind of accident is there? I guess number two, but that’s just nasty.

His left hand scratched his goatee as he said, “It’s kind of weird having this conversation again because we had it just a couple of years ago.”

“You mean the . . .”

“Yeah, that one. We talked about it in general before, but now it’s time to get specific.”

“Specific?”

He hesitated, but the confused look on my face made him push on.

“I had a hard time talking to you about this last time, and I’m having a hard time now,” he said more to himself than to me.

Both hands clenched tight on the steering wheel, and his eyes stared straight ahead at the road. Red light.

“There’s no easy way to do this, so I’ll just say what I have to say.”

He inhaled, exhaled, then spoke easier. “What you had the other night was called a wet dream.”

I turned my head. “A what?”

“A wet dream,” he said loud and clear.

I knew I was too old to pee my bed.

“The medical word is —
ahem
— ‘ejaculation,’ but plain and simple it means”— his eyes searched outside for the right words —“now you can make a baby.”

A baby? I don’t want to make a baby. At least not for a bunch of years . . . a whole bunch of years!

He exhaled another deep breath. “You remember our talk right?”

“The Talk.” Even though it was a couple of years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday. More than anything, I remember Dad tripping and stumbling over his words before he caught his footing. We had the talk because he wanted to find out what I knew. I had heard some things in school, so we started with that. He laughed half the time and shook his head the other half, then broke down what was true and what wasn’t:

No, you couldn’t get a girl pregnant by rubbing her behind all night.

No, you couldn’t make your thing longer by pulling on it.

No, malt liquor didn’t make your thing longer either.

No, you couldn’t get a disease from kissing a girl.

No, you couldn’t get a disease by sitting on the toilet.

Yes, girls have a separate hole for peeing and pushing out babies.

Yes, it takes two people to make a baby.

Yes, there were things you could do to not make a baby. But, no, having the girl wash herself afterward was not one of them.

Stuff like that. I can’t even remember all the stuff I believed or told him, but I do remember thinking that the guys who gave me the info in the first place — namely, Lorenzo and his brothers — didn’t know as much as they thought they knew.

“A wet dream is one of the first times semen comes out. That’s what fertilizes the woman’s egg to make a baby.” He looked from the road to me. “Remember?”

I remembered a few things, but that wasn’t one of them. After we talked about what I’d heard, we talked about what different parts on the man and woman were called, where stuff was, what did what. It was all kinda . . . scientific . . . and boring. I know I missed a few things, because after a while my mind wandered off.

“If you don’t remember anything else, remember this: your pistol is now loaded. So be careful.” His head nodded in the direction of my lap as if a gun were resting on it.

I laughed. “Why you call it a pistol?”

“’Cause a pistol ain’t a toy, and it can be dangerous if used in the wrong way,” he said, looking me in the eye. “Understand?”

“I think so.”

I was just getting used to my sideburns. Then Dad tells me I can make a baby. Now all I could think about was the gun in my pants.

My lap felt heavy while a baby’s voice bounced through my skull: screeching, screaming, crying — loud. I tried to shut it off but couldn’t find the switch. It disappeared when Dad said, “Your mother brought it up to me the other day. She thought I should be the one to talk to you about it”— he looked me in the eye again —“not her.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I looked out the window and noticed mothers pushing babies in strollers. Some were older. Most were young. I tried to imagine me and Marisol walking on the pier pushing a stroller, but that was one image that didn’t want to appear. Thank goodness.

The street sights were replaced by parked cars as we searched for a spot in a garage.

“So what happened in your dream?”

“Huh?”

“Your dream? Wet dreams usually happen when you’re dreaming about a girl, and you’re . . . you know . . .”— he bumped my shoulder —“doing your thing.”

“Oh . . . I don’t remember.”

“Come on, Shawn, you can tell me.”

“It’s not that. I wish I could remember what happened, but I can’t. I spent all day yesterday trying to piece it together, but the harder I tried, the more it disappeared. The only thing I remember is that Marisol and Janine were in it.”

“Janine?”

“Yeah, Janine. She’s the older sister of my friend Trent, and she starts UCLA in the fall on a track scholarship.”

It felt like we were driving in circles looking for a place to park, but I was ready to get out of the car.

“You never mentioned her.”

“Yeah, that’s ’cause she’s older than me and way out of my league. The other day she came into the living room in these bright yellow short-shorts and this tank top . . .” I couldn’t even finish the sentence without getting tight in the shorts.

“She have nice co’ners?”

“Nice what?”

Dad laughed. “Corners. Hips. Most black women have nice hips; that’s how they’re built. But the real nice ones have a unique shape to them . . . like, rounded corners.”

His right hand let go of the steering wheel, and he traced a curve in the air that brought Janine’s
S
shape to mind.

“Anyway, all I remember was her and Marisol. I don’t even remember what they were wearing.”

A car pulled out and we took the spot. Dad grabbed his camera from the backseat, and we headed toward the pier.

“All I can tell you is if either one of ’em appears in your dreams again, be prepared. Put a towel down or something . . . because that was just the first time. Trust me, there’s plenty more where that came from. Just you wait. That pistol in your pants is gonna start talking to you, telling you what to do, how to act, and it’s gonna shut your brain down. Especially when you see a pretty young thing strolling down the street in a silky skirt.”

Dad directed my eyes at a beautiful dark-chocolate woman of college age standing a free throw away at the light. She was about my height, and her shoulder-length hair danced in the California breeze. A smooth peach skirt clung to her peach-shaped bottom, and her chocolate-brown legs plunged toward the gray concrete, ending in a pair of peach flip-flops that showed off her toenails painted the same color. My heart beat faster.

We crossed the intersection, my eyes glued to the skirt swaying in front of me and nothing else. The only sound that mattered was the rustling of silk brushing against her peach skirt as she swished her hips to the other side. The rhythm of her rear had me hypnotized.

On the other side of the street, Miss Chocolate Peach disappeared into a flesh parade of female bodies — tall, small, black, white, in-between, older, younger, long hair, short hair, but mostly beautiful.

My eyes bounced around the bodies like a pinball. Red bikini here — pink bikini there — polka-dotted one-piece here — tiny orange two-piece there — corners swinging this way and that. And legs. Legs, legs, legs . . . everywhere!

My mind drowned in a sea of female flesh. A million ants raced through my body, touching each nerve. Too many girls. Too many boobs. Too many butts. Too many legs. I couldn’t take it. All the blood in my body rushed to my midsection. Breathe. Breathe. With each breath my shorts got tighter, like they were taking my blood pressure.

“Shawn . . . Shawn! You there, brutha man?”
Finger snap!
Dad snapped through the haze.

“All these exposed bodies made you deaf. I been pointing out places to eat and asking where you wanna go for a few minutes now, but you haven’t said a word. Just remember: you control it; don’t let it control you.”

When it came to food, all I remember is wolfing down a couple of fish tacos in the midst of all the eye candy. It was a picture-perfect L.A. kind of day, the girls were out to play, and food was the last thing on my mind.

Dad mostly snapped pictures of the sights on the pier. He even let me take a few, but every time I pointed the camera at a particularly cheeky butt in front of me, he took it away. “What’d I say about control?”

Just minutes after he said that, I got a crash course in “gun control.” I was checking out a pack of three women, possibly fresh out of high school, all of them in tiny bikinis and popping out of their tops. I turned my head as they walked past, and they all had corners; the one in the middle especially. She was dark-skinned but not black — like a cross between black and Mexican — and she had long, thick, curly black hair that draped halfway down to her butt. I swiveled my head to watch her hips sway in a see-through blue sarong. The only thing in the world that mattered at that moment was those swinging hips — or should I say “co’ners”— swaying. Side to side. Right-left-right-left-right-left. Swing-sway. Swing-sway. The sarong rose and fell with each step, just like my heartbeat.