Page 35 of I Can’t Even Think Straight
Tuesday: The Good One—After School at Granny’s
T’s taken The Twins to the park.
“You’re supposed to be the good one, Malachi.
Now me have to worry about you, too?”
asks Granny, standing over me.
I don’t answer her.
I sit silent and still
at the empty kitchen table.
Dinner’s cooked, but it won’t be served
until my cousins return.
My belly’s growling
and my head is aching.
Granny’s been yelling for half an hour already,
about how I swore at Mr. Ndour,
and threw a chair across his classroom.
Neither of which is true.
I didn’t swear directly at him.
I didn’t throw my chair: it fell over.
But Granny’s not giving me
the benefit of the doubt.
Granny’s never been angry at me, not like this.
It feels shitty and now I understand
why T has always been so envious of me.
I think of Sam whispering
something to Abdi about T.
His reputation has traveled
all the way to my school.
I’m sick of being the good one.
I never asked to be the good one.
Maybe I’m not all that good.
Maybe I just have a cousin
who people think of as bad.
I should be allowed to make mistakes, too.
I never claimed to be good,
but I’ve benefited from being
seen as better behaved than T.
Granny shouts at T like this all the time,
without listening to his side of the story.
Ms. Sarpong phoned Granny
when she couldn’t get hold of Mum.
Apparently, Mr. Ndour’s fiction
is more convincing than reality.
Mr. Ndour, the snake, phoned Ms. Sarpong
when I was walking to her office.
Ms. Sarpong wouldn’t listen to me.
Ms. Sarpong had said I could talk
to her “about anything.”
But “anything” clearly didn’t include
one of her teachers having a vendetta
against me and The Boys.
Ms. Sarpong said I had “an attitude,”
which maybe I do and maybe I did in that moment.
She cut me off with a raised hand.
“Okay, Malachi, that’s enough,” said Ms. Sarpong.
“You need to calm down now.”
Granny shows no signs of calming down,
now or anytime soon.
I know Granny feels under pressure
because the school contacted her.
I know Granny feels afraid
I’ll become another troublesome grandson.
I stay silent and still at the kitchen table.
I slump in my seat as Granny continues to shout.
I dissociate.
I leave Granny and my body behind.
I sink underwater,
and I can’t hear Granny clearly anymore,
besides the occasional swear word
in explicit and explosive plosive patois,
which hit me like big, bad bullets
piercing the surface of my swimming pool of solitude,
wounding me
even though I’m in denial
and refuse to believe
words can hurt.
I’m surrounded by red and blue,
like blood suspended in water.
I stay there until my cousins return.
All three of them laughing.
T chases The Twins into the kitchen.
Granny’s stopped shouting.
She’s plating our dinner now.
The giggling twins climb onto my lap,
where I’m still seated at the kitchen table.
The Twins bring me back into my body.
“Kai’s home base,” Olivia says to T.
“Kai’s home base.” Sophia clings to me.
T takes out his phone.
I smile for the photo
T takes of me and The Twins.
I begin our special greeting:
“Hello there, my favorite girls
in the whole wide universe.”
“It’s world, not universe,”
they say, making my day.
T smiles at me kindly
and, for the first time,
I think I see him clearly.
If all our lives
I was supposed to be
the good one,
what was T supposed to be?