Non-fiction / Our Little Secret (Analysis)
When I was 12, ten a.m. on a Saturday morning was when the worst cartoons came on. My favorite shows, Scooby Doo, Fat Albert, and the Smurfs had long since played, so it was time to entertain myself outside with whatever makeshift toys that I could find. This was a year after my mother sent my sister and I to live in Mississippi because she was moving away from Clarksville and was not sure what to expect outside of Chattanooga, and other than my clothing which I was quickly out growing, all of my personal belongings were stored in boxes never to be returned to me.
I guess my mother never thought that I could care less about the schools or racism known in that part of Tennessee. I guess she never thought that I wouldn’t mind being a latch key kid. She apparently never took into account, that after the divorce… if I could not have both of my parents, I at least would need my mother. But so often in those days, single parents all across the country would ship their children to grandma and grandpa for rearing. It was a nuclear family facade that they thought was needed.
And this is when I met him for the first time. Owen Watson III. We called him Tankie. To this day, I never quite understood why. He was everything I wasn’t. Tall and muscular with a smile that could melt the coldest heart. And when he sang, the girls in the church would fall over panting, and then would beg for another solo. All in all he was Mr. Black Clinton. Star wide receiver on the football team, only black member of Attaché Show Choir. The long short of it, he was Mr. Popularity. And he was my cousin.
Needless to say that I hung on his heals like a new born puppy following mother, and unlike my older brother, he never complained a minute. He welcomed the visits to his house where his father would prepare bread pudding, pecan pies, fried chicken, collard greens, black eyed peas, etc…Owen II was handicapped (one leg was longer than the other) so he would pass his time cooking soul food while serving up food for the soul. In my displacement, this was a safe haven. I felt wanted, and I was nourished as well. So Shortly after my cartoons went off, I would head up to their house to spend the better part of the afternoon until my grandmother called to tell me to come home and do some chores.
And I thought nothing of it as Tankie would talk me to his room and close and lock the door. Then he would pull a box from under his bed to show off his treasures: Penthouse, Hustler, Cherry, and countless other dirty magazines. He would educate me on what made this woman fuckable and that woman not. And I took it all in, and I must admit to adolescent fantasies about touching one of the naked women in the magazines. It was our little secret that no one was to know about. And I kept this secret faithfully for months on end.
Until one day, I do not know what possessed me, but I stole a cigarette from my granddad’s pack. I wanted to know what made him smoke the smelly things. So I grabbed a box of matches and ran to the side of the house where I thought no one would be looking. And I took a long drag. Then I spent five minutes hacking and spewing. As I was about to take another hit, up walks Tankie. He had menacing smirk on his face, and a knowing twinkle in his eye. He had caught me being bad.
“I am going to tell,” he said in a stern matter of fact voice.
Petrified of the consequences, I replied “NO! PLEASE DON’T!”
“Okay, but you remember those books?”
“Uh-huh”
“Well we are going to pretend you are one of those ladies…”
“but I am a little boy and don’t have what they do…”
“what you have will do, now come up to the house… no one’s there and my dad just cooked the bread pudding you like so much”
So blindly like a sheep to the slaughter I followed him to the trailer. Slowly and methodically he sliced a huge chunk of pudding out and placed it on a saucer. I sat down at the table where I normally sat to eat, but he motioned for me to come back to his room… I sat on the bed, apprehensive afraid.
“Now pull your pants off,” he barked
“Can’t I eat first?”
“You can eat while I am playing…”
A gulp. A pause. An eternity. a whimper, “okay”
And so I complied. He spread Vaseline on places that I thought no one was supposed to touch but me. and with me on my back, he tried a couple things, but this only pissed him off and frustrated.
“Turn over on your stomach”
“But?”
“Do it now or I am calling your granddad…”
He knew he had me with that lie. A beating for stealing and smoking a cigarette could not be so bad. But tell that to a scared child lost between devotion and revoltion.
And then he started to enter me from behind…
“This hurts, lets stop please,” I pleaded through teary eyes and a runny nose…
“Shut up fat boy,” he screamed as he shoved a huge clump of pudding down my throat. Holding his hand in place as he violated me. It must have lasted for ever… this gagging sensation, this disgust. And then he was done.
I felt the pressure leave my body in all locations at once… and then my stomach erupted… bile and bread pudding, and water, and milk all over his bed.
“Why the fuck did you do that, you asshole… go get a towel and clean your vomit up”
Obediently, I took the first of my non emotional steps. Without feeling, I cleaned up the mess. Not leaving a single drop of spittle anywhere visible. I left my underwear off and quickly replaced my pants.
“You need to finish this pudding, Tyrone. We don’t waste food…”
About that time, there was a jingling at the door. Salvation.
Owen Sr. looked at me as he walked in… boy you don’t look good. You had better head home and see Mat right now. And I obediently walked towards the door, but not before Tankie grabbed my arm in a vice lock and leaned down and whispered…
“Not a word to anyone… you hear me fat boy… not a fucking word. This will be our little secret…”
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I think that you are willing to reveal a horrible thing that happened to you, but are you willing to delve deeper and really show us the emotion, the hurt, pain, the depths the betrayal cost you? If you are going to write this, then do it right. Don’t skim the surface, it cheats your readers.
You skipped too quickly from who Tankie was and what he did. Give us more of who he is.
Good Luck!
Wow. Something like that must’ve been tough to deal with, but…that’s not what we’re here for. There’s a couple of items in there that might want to be looked at, ”...cooking soul food while serving up food…” (page 2). May want to change that second food to something else. Maybe ‘stories for the soul’ or something like that, otherwise it seems a bit redundant.
”...would talk me…” – Talk = take.
Overall, it’s good. As a small piece of a greater puzzle, I think you’ve got something good and need to continue with this. Thanks for sharing and I sincerely hope that ‘Tankie’ got what was coming to him.
Look forward to reading more.
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There are some spelling and grammatical mistakes. I think this could benefit from another read through. I really liked the beginning, your descriptions were great and it placed me in the mind of a child quite well. You did a good job of describing things the way a child would, however, there were instances I wish you would have added your adult perspective/voice. I know Glamour magazine do have features were ppl send in non-fiction pieces like this one. So I can see this published in a fashion magazine.
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