Mama Bright Clothes

James Nulick

I am older than man When you are destined for greatness, whether male or female, people will follow you into the sun, even as you illuminate the path of their destruction. I am older than man. It is easier to talk to Mama when I’m not looking directly into her eyes, when she is more suggestion than reality, my head undulating with her breathing. Not seeing her body, she becomes an idea, and ideas, separated from people, can remain with you, forever. I was happy in our shared bedroom, for a time, but only when she wasn’t touching me, when I was a complete person, not an object. Ice cream dress Mama is a plane crash, like on the window. I crawled through the center of a spool of thread and came out the other side dressed in a totally different manner, my clothes no longer solemn black, but peach and pink and orange, an ice cream dress, size 0, the fabric lighter than summer, small as a doll in my dress of innocence, my nude body under the fabric a singing wire. I have the memory of being a wearer of dark clothes, but is that me, or Mama? Our memories are housed in the same flesh, and that flesh is now two. Father’s words to me, so long ago, you must dress the part to believe it, my child, but what part is that, Father? I am twenty years old. My body will never be this perfect again. My fingers are American fingers, strong yet delicate, tapered on a master lathe to a fine hollow point, precision instruments engineered with sparrow bone fragility. I remove my dress and strut through the bedroom like Magellan, the electricity of being returned to my natural state, before I knew the law, before the law was forced upon me, the law telling me my perfect body is illegal out of clothes, out of doors, illegal for others to see, to touch… what business is it of theirs? And who are they, how do they decide what I do with my body? Is the quorum of invisible chess masters interstellar, interplanetary, or bums on the street who disappear into storm drains after their needs have been met for the day, carting stolen goods into hollow black caverns? I walk through Father’s house, with Mama not far behind, a shadow I can never dodge, and I become the girl who says no, I rest my body on surfaces she touches when she comes home after a day volunteering at the society. I rifle through her closet—our closet—and pull a sunshine-colored faux fur coat off a thick hanger and drape it over my naked body, the interior a mother tongue mouthing notes only I can understand. Why did she seek me out, have me created from the essence of her body? Is she God? If she is, what does that make me? Am I a castoff. A fallen angel? Am I the ghost of an infamous suicide? My body close to hers, wrapping her body in my warmth, my essence, will tomorrow be the same as yesterday? If I choose to, I will, but this is not what I want, it is not Electra I desire, but Orestes. Electrified by my skin, I drop the coat to the floor, the fabric arcing bright yellow sparks of electrified pollen. Mama is a wolf among scattered doves. I balance on the tricornered edge of her writing desk until the pressure on my groin makes me lightheaded, my desire slowly expanding into the universe until a small bead of promise forms at the tip of my tongue, the entire cosmos housed in a single droplet. The deepest most secret part of me Father is somewhere in the house, unattended and living in hollow memories that are faded and curled at the edges, silk albums stored in closets, a cluster of people gathered under trees for a photograph, people whose names he used to remember. In the kitchen I drop the oven door then climb onto the stovetop because I want to become one with the elements, I want to be where she spends so much of her time, her hands hovering over me as if I were her greatest creation, the spatula entering the deepest most secret part of me, where angels gather, the rough metal crater of a ladle sampling bits of me I never knew existed, dipping in and out until my entire body is aflame, bringing me to her expectant lips, tasting me, she needs more of this, a pinch of that. I move up and down the glassine surface of the stovetop until I am almost there—what are you doing, Orestes asks. Talking to my mother. Come, he says, his hand held out to me. I roll off the stovetop onto the oven door and into his arms. You’re cold, he says. You’re so small, he laughs, and I think of the lawmakers again, the doctors in white-tiled hallways deciding what color my eyes will be. Would they think of us, consider our desires? Or is everything preplanned, our fate decided by the signature on a promissory note? How old are you? You know how old I am, I am older than man. We walk through the hallway into Mama’s bedroom, where everything began for me. He gently motions me onto the bed. What if she comes home early, what if she finds out? She won’t. Pretend I’m her, I say—destroy me. My back resting on a perfect field of gold, the fabric of the blanket scoring my flesh like a golf scorecard. I don’t want to be a girl, I want to be a boy, so she leaves me alone. She doesn’t like boys, Orestes asks. She says she does, but everyone lies. Orestes inside me, I am everything Mama is not, the universe expanding inside me, becoming one and nothing, I am that I am, I will become what I choose to become. Don’t talk, Orestes says, just hold me. I will become what I choose to become, to escape the prison of her arms, and today I choose to become a boy, a boy with a perfect body, which is all we are guaranteed in heaven. I felt like I had a brother, in another life I remember having a brother, a brother with the kindest eyes, and we held a puppy together, Father reminding us that the kindness we show to animals and lesser beings is what makes us human. Mama is a plane crash, like on the window, sparkly jewels around her eyes and leopards on her arms, spilling out of our car like sunlight, the car that says this is Mama, and it was another man, another man who took Mother away from us, took Mother away from Father, before the boy, before the boy changed everything, and I felt like I had a brother. The in the ground thing Mama’s clothes taste like sunshine, fox tails dripping lemon ice cream. I don’t return because I never left. The faux wrap is me. I am born of hunters, I watch them in windows, they don’t see me. I want to be close to her warm cake. Easter is my favorite because I love the colors, they are touchable, green tastes like grass, orange tastes like crayons, I have sixteen pack teeth leave little holes, these are mine, I bite them I know they’re mine, I like pink best, we are surrounded by pink, pink pandas, pink curtains, pink ice cream. Mama wanted me to be a girl, but I wanted to be a boy. I dig a hole in the backyard under the big box that sings to me each night and keeps me cool, the grass is very cool down here where I am, I bend my knees and look between my legs, in the grass I see black bugs moving very slowly, they don’t see me, I am invisible, like God. I push bugs aside because I don’t want to hurt them and with Mama’s silver tongue I move dirt around in a circle, I keep moving it until there is more dirt above me than below, I put a knee on crunchy grass that cries milk and I’m sorry I hurt it but my knee has to go somewhere, I look between my legs again from down here because I like the shape, the hole is big enough now for Mama’s Florentine box, the top looks like ancient honeycomb, I push Mama’s Florentine box into the hole under the big box that sings to me each night and keeps me cool, it sings like the world’s largest sewing machine, the kind Mama’s Mother taught her, before she left, the big box that sings cries on me and it tickles, I like it kissing my back, it kisses my back to sleep, I gently lay Mama’s Florentine box in the ground, fertile brown dirt kisses the sides, I push the dirt around until only the honeycomb remains, silvery yellow red orange top, I like Easter colors best, I push the grass around it like a tin man hat and now it’s hiding, Mama’s Florentine box, I buried it on top of the tomboy calico I remember crying over when I was younger, the girl cat with the boy name. Mother’s milk I grab the hose, kinky green snake with diamonds under my fingers, I pull against the hose and it pulls back, tug of war, I pull and pull and pull and I WIN! The green snake is no match for me! I turn the metal collarbone, the hose rears up it tries to escape, it raises its head like a king cobra. I tame it underfoot with a shoe fit for a queen, the perfect copy of her. I run the hose with the water exploding over Mama’s Florentine box and it fills up just like the shower, like the shower Mama and I share, Mama’s hairbrush where it doesn’t belong, you’re hurting me, why are you doing this, I don’t like pain. I’m almost as tall as Mama, I see the things that make Mama love me, Mama has blonde hair not like me at all, her hair comes from a bottle, I don’t have anything down there I am mother’s milk pure and from a strange humming place, I am as tall as her with her shoes off, I kissed the nubbin of her phantom finger, where a ring from a man should be. I stand taller than most men, men who do not know themselves and never will, but this is not what I want, not what I asked for. It is not Electra I desire, it is Orestes, yet she continues, despite my protestations. I want to be free of the weight I was born with, this pressure to fill the mold you have made for me, but still you insist. I will wait until she sleeps, to become what I wish to become. She’s breathing now, waiting for me to get older.

James Nulick is the author of several highly acclaimed books including The Moon Down to Earth, Valencia, and Lazy Eyes. His new novel Plastic Soul was recently published by Fellow Travelers Series, an imprint of Publication Studio.