A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Gary

Once, when I was twelve, Gary was visiting us when a huge family fight erupted. It started with Dad and Mark at the dinner table. Mom tried to stop it and then Matt got involved too. Dad didn’t like it when Matt voiced his opinion about family matters. He would sometimes try to mute Matt’s presence by saying, “He’s not even my kid.”

Then Mark and Matt began arguing and eventually ended up outside, ready to fight. Mark called Matt a nigger and then it was a blur of arms and legs tumbling over in the middle of the yard.

Something broke in my naïve brain at that moment. I obviously knew Matt was different, but we never really voiced it. It was probably for my comfort that we ignored the difference of our skin. I thought if we talked about this difference it would create a distance and awkwardness between us. I wanted to think that other people were accepting of Matt without thinking about it too much. But in our small-town reality, he was the only black student at Kennewick High School. When he was a kid, there were signs on the bridge to Pasco that said all blacks had to be back in Pasco before a certain time. We never lived in Pasco.

I was totally unfamiliar and ignorant of what he had to deal with because of his skin color. I knew the word nigger though, and I knew I never wanted it anywhere near my lips, though there were surely times when I was angry enough to use it. But it would be a knife I’d never be able to pull out. A bullet that would spike his heart and stay there.

Mark scrambled up and ran off somewhere down the alley. Matt walked away in the other direction. Gary came outside then and found me, stunned and alone in the yard. He spoke to me calmly but in a tone of voice that said he was leaving. “If you ever want to get out of here, you can always come and stay with me,” he said. I wasn’t even sure where that was—North Carolina or Ohio maybe—but I could tell he totally understood my situation, as if he had lived through it himself. I let his words calm me. I let them give me hope for some kind of escape. And though I never took advantage of his offer, I still remember those words.