It was like right then, even if it was really days or something, that my mom introduced me to Cloyd Longpre. He was wearing a fake blue suit and tie. I never saw him in one ever again. Also, his hair was all pomade oil. That also would be the only time it was so neat that you could see the comb lines. I was sitting on our couch in the living room, and he sat in a chair—it was Goofy’s favorite unless she was sitting with me on the couch watching the TV—across from me, a kind of stupid but really happy stupid smile on his face. He had a silver tooth on one side, showing at the edge of his mouth. Between us was the floor where I’d been taken down. I was still feeling mad about it, so there was that. Not the cut. I didn’t care about that. It didn’t hurt no more. It didn’t really hurt even when it was supposed to, right after. My mom was sitting next to me. She was wearing a flower dress—I think roses, though I call all flowers roses—a new one, and shiny red shoes that matched. She was being too pretty like always. I loved my mom, and sometimes it scared me because I thought maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that even to myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought about it except that I was always seeing how men looked at her. When I did too, just to think about what it was about, I knew what it was about. How pretty she was in the way men are flipping through pages of dirty magazines. My mom sometimes would go around in her bra and panties in the house. You know, especially in her bedroom and bathroom and between. Nothing fucked up, she just wasn’t embarrassed. So seeing her, I really started knowing what it was about her. It made me sick when I did too. I even had some bad dreams a couple of times. One that made me the most upset was that I was going up some stairs and then I opened a door and went to the bed there to—well, you know, and when I was getting in and shit like that I saw how it was my mom and I jumped right out of that dream. It woke me up feeling messed up.
Cloyd Longpre had questions. He was trying to show he was, you know, interested in me. That I mattered to him. It was a show for my mom. He thought it would matter to her. It was hard for me to pretend back. There was nothing I could do about who my mom went out with, and mostly I didn’t say or think shit about it. But there was something else I couldn’t point to about him, and it made it even longer to sit there.
“You look a lot bigger for your age,” he said.
I should say no? I should say right?
“Built,” he went on. “Strong.” He looked at my mom, stupid smiling. “I could maybe even put him to work now.”
I looked at my mom too. She had an expression that this Cloyd was supposed to see as proud and that for me was to feel proud too. He was only flirting with her, and she was only going along with him.
“You gonna play football?”
I played street and schoolyard football a lot. My side usually won. I played for the junior high team for two games and stopped. I made more touchdowns on kickoffs than anyone, more on interceptions too, and we won, but then I stopped going. I didn’t like coaches telling me nothing, yelling. They screamed and shit and so fuck them. I didn’t like nobody getting on me, never. Pissed me off bad. I didn’t watch sports on TV, college or pro. Sports was in my head, it was just for me to play, a game to keep the brain in shape. I could play but didn’t and didn’t say any of this to him though, because I could play this game too and already I thought maybe I had to.•
Excerpted from The Flowers. Copyright © 2008 by Dagoberto Gilb. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Inc. All rights reserved.
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