Jericho Diggs, the preacher's son, falls in love with another boy during his first year of Junior High School, a sissy-or so he had expected-with imaginary breasts. Surely, he doesn't fall in love on purpose-neglecting to anticipate the imminent chaos-the hate, abuse, or shame it will bring. He wouldn't choose a life that would send him running forever, living for the approval of a father he hates. To be Loved traces the lives of two black boys from their childhood friendship and later, tragic love affair in Vicksburg, a small town in Mississippi. The story follows them through their divergent paths to adulthood in search of love, acceptance, happiness, and normalcy. It leads ultimately to a confrontation in Atlanta, Georgia that teaches them lessons they learn far too late.

To Be Loved

Because It was forbiddenBy J. R. Dewesse

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 J. R. Dewesse
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-7632-6

Contents

Chapter One

Death

April 21, 2007 10:40 AM

I'm gonna die ... I'm gonna ... die. Jericho gazed through the windshield, somewhere past the passing highway and beyond the empty fields, intensely aware of the violent pounding in his chest-thumping increasingly harder with each passing second-and the sweat between his hands and the steering wheel. The thought of death had never consumed him in such a way before, and now it seemed to stare ominously from some place very close, like a hidden predator waiting to attack. He had thought about it before, at funerals, envisioned it at church many times when his father had rasped and growled a sermon full of fire and brimstone. Many nights as a child he had lain in the bed staring into the darkness praying that the morning would come, with the words "If I should die before I wake" weighing heavily on his young mind-but never like this. And even in the midst of it all, it seemed to him that what he feared might be worse than death. And though the sun lay beautifully behind the clouds over the passing highway, and the lyrics of Sade's "Paradise" floated like wind through the open windows of the car, on this particularly beautiful day, the clouds were flung carelessly into the blue-and-orange sky in vain. Likewise, the melodies that would have usually pacified him did nothing more than plunge him deeper and deeper into darkness. The wind wasn't soothing; instead, it was rough and heavy. Like the lines on the highway, his mind raced. How in the hell did I let this happen, he thought. Lord ... Lord ... Lord. Unable to find any other words that matched what he felt, he fought back tears. "Dear Lord ... I know I'm no saint. Lord, I know I haven't always done right. I know ... I know ... I know ...," he whispered more to himself than to God. "Please save me, Lord ... please save me." He stopped, chest rising and falling deeply. "Lord, I promise I'll change." The wind smeared a single tear across his cheek.

Soon, his eyes blurred with tears. His mind became a movie projector on which the last several years played over and over-reexamining every decision he had made, every thought, every intention, every option. He felt he had been stalked, chased, pursued by some creature or thing that he had tried to outrun, but had always caught him, and brought him back to the same place. Tears flowed; his breath caught. He cranked the music high trying to escape to someplace deeper where he could hide ... disappear. In the sound, his stomach turned; he wanted to ball himself into a knot and explode. "I don't know why I'm tripping." He took a deep breath trying to calm himself, then he stopped. "Have faith ... have faith," he told himself. "Lord, please ...," he pleaded.

He had almost convinced himself that everything would be all right, and the squeezing in his chest had almost become butterflies when the blue-and-white lights of a police car snatched him back to reality. He pulled over and waited.

Staring through the rearview mirror, he remembered the bar-it had been his refuge, an escape, but now there was none. He remembered the stranger at the bar. He had been so intriguing-sweet eye-candy, lust personified-but now he was tortured by his memory. He remembered the wink that had lured him in and left him with more than he could handle; remembered all the songs that played on all the different occasions that had led here. He remembered the bliss-unrestrained, careless bliss that made him close his eyes and forget ... curtains that flailed in the night wind out onto the balcony, and the bed beside which they flew. He remembered, vividly, the blinding euphoria that made him see stars ... that arched his back and curled his toes. He saw breasts. He remembered how soft they were. Why, why, why, he asked himself, and then he saw the legs-bowed and hairy-ones he would never forget though he had tried so many times. He remembered "accidentally" rubbing his legs across them just so he could feel the tickle of his hair and warmth of his flesh after he came in through the window and lay under the fan; remembered his father; heard the rasp and growl from the pulpit again. The words burned deeply in his memory, and then he felt the fire well up in his throat. Hate. More tears came. He must've been right, he thought to himself, remembering all the things his father hadn't said but had made very clear by his actions. And now the police.

Jericho stared at the officer's shoes in the rearview mirror as he approached the car. He studied the shoe string on the left shoe that needed to be tied. Mindlessly, he gazed, not noticing when the officer reached his window, slightly startled when he began to talk. "Sir, do you have any idea how fast you were going?" Still in a daze, he half responded, his face tear soaked, eyes red. Sitting in his car on this beautiful day, now emotionless, speechless, in another world, and with no recollection of the last ten minutes of driving let alone how fast he had been going, he looked briefly at the officer, who, disturbed by Jericho's appearance, lost his breath. And by the time Jericho realized the officer had let him off, driven away, and he was about to drive off himself, he prayed God, too, would spare him.

Before he pulled back onto the highway, his phone rang. He already knew who it was.

"Where in the hell are you?" The message flashed across the screen. Jericho looked at his phone, but he didn't respond. It pissed him off, because he knew that they both knew, and why she needed to hear it from an old white man, he couldn't understand. Shame and anger set him ablaze, and, if he picked up the phone, she would pay, so he wasn't sure if he would answer.

His ringing phone broke into the silence again, and, before the passing highway, he saw the wall he had stared at a few days before when he lay back on the hospital bed, and he knew she stared at him from the other side of the bed. He could feel her gaze after the doctor left, already knowing what he knew she knew now. Again, the phone ripped him from his brief daydream, and he looked at the number again before finally answering.

"Hello," he answered-no emotion.

"Where in the hell are? You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago!" She had planned the anger. At first he didn't answer. "Hello ... hello ... Jericho!" she yelled. "You bring your ass here and now." The anger, very clear in her voice, and then he broke down again.

"Mama, I know, I already know." She could hear his tears, his gasping for air. Immediately, she became angry. She wanted to tell him to be a man, that he should have thought about the consequences beforehand-in her mind comparing him to his father, making an assumption that she just knew to be true though she had no proof. But, as he cried, she heard a baby, her only son, her only baby, and it silenced both her and her anger. "Ma, I know. I already know, Ma," he bawled-raw, uncontrolled sobs, desperate heaves for air, gargling sniffles to keep the tears under control. She still could find no words. She listened, waited-on what, she didn't know, but she waited. "Mama, I gonna die."

Finally, she spoke. "You don't know that," she said solemnly, trying to hide the shock of the statement, too, trying to gather her thoughts. "You don't know that. Don't talk crazy." She had to catch a tear that ran down her cheek. "Just come. I'll be here waiting. You just come." She hoped he could find the comfort that she wanted him to have, but she couldn't find the strength to give as she heard his labored breaths on the other end. He said nothing. "Jericho ..." He didn't answer. "Jericho, you have to come and see. I'm going to be right here waiting when you come, but you have to come. Not knowing," she stopped, choosing her words carefully, "isn't going to make it any better. And how much better would it feel to know?" Deep down, she didn't believe her own words. Jericho checked his rearview mirror for traffic and pulled his car back onto the highway.

"Okay, Mama" He replied, ending the call, not believing her words either.

Chapter Two

Epiphany

July 9, 1991 12:48 PM

Her breasts reminded him of Hershey's Kisses ... with little sausages for nipples. And the sight of them, combined with the thought of actual sausages attached to skin-all salty and greasy-made the saliva thicken and become stale in his mouth, and he almost spit on the floor. There was no lusty urge to taste them or desire to caress them. His sex didn't grow watching them jiggle, as she-Tanya, his cousin-struggled out of her shirt and into her nightgown. Something else happened.

When she climbed under the sheets, his eyes remained riveted to the place where those breasts had been. He had never seen them before; they grabbed his eyes and would not let them go, and left them there even after they were gone. And, in their absence on the blank sheet that lay hanging from the top of the bunk bed down over the bottom, he stared in a daze through it, watching breasts grow on his chest, watching hair fall past his shoulders, watching the lump between his legs disappear. And then, in the doorway behind him, appeared a boy-the light-skinned one who always came by for Tanya and made the bed bang against the wall when everyone left and only she and Jordan were there alone-a day like this one.

This time, however, Jordan had his full attention; this time, the disgust was gone; this time, he was there for Jordan ... and his breasts ... his breasts. He had to think it twice because the thought sounded so ridiculous the first time that he needed to hear it again to be sure it wasn't a mistake, but it wasn't. They (the breasts) were there and now, Jordan could go behind the door with this boy, and see everything that he had only been able to imagine before; he didn't have to sit out on the couch listening, or sneak to the door and lie on the floor with his eyes near the crack trying to see under it. The boy could lie between his legs, and he did right there on that sheet hanging down from the top bunk of that bunk bed, just as he had every other time Jordan lay on his cousin's couch listening, watching, daydreaming with his mouth closed and eyes frozen-as they were now. The girls didn't see the thoughts swimming in his mind when they talked about the men on television and how sexy they were, or the man next door who always washed his car shirtless in mesh shorts and no underwear so that his dick swung, or when they discussed how big a boy's dick had to be, how big the ones were that they had already had, and what they would and had already done with them. They didn't see the breasts grow and everything else disappear. Just like now. Tanya moved about under the sheets in the house unaware.

"Hurry up, baby," she called out in a whimsical, girly, playing-house, sort of way. Does she not feel it too? he thought.

"Okay," he replied, despite the tension in his throat and the nasty spit in his mouth that he had to swallow. Moments like this one were the ones that commenced the exposure of his dysfunction, that lay bare the backwardness of his existence. These were the moments in which everything that was supposed to be natural to him seemed distorted, awkward, and unnatural. And this feeling-this consciousness of a dysfunction-was not new; it had never been as clear as it was now-and it was still very murky-but it had always existed. Long before he knew what he felt or that it was wrong, he felt it. He felt like this, and, as unnatural and uncomfortable as it was, and though he was determined to try, he could feel no other way.

Many days he studied it-these breasts; this thing. Until now, he never quite understood what he was studying, was never able to pinpoint what it was, but it was there, just as it was now, in the space where her breasts had been-alive, only on the sheet and in his mind; clear, yet as abstract and undefined as ever. There was no denying the elephant (that's what it felt like ... how obvious it seemed now), the apparently invisible one in the room that everyone could see, but some simply chose to ignore; the one he carried with him everywhere; the secret that he was positive everyone else knew, but he needed to hide anyway; the one he needed to replace with a lie that didn't feel like this, that wasn't so obvious, that didn't need to be hidden. If he had just looked up or around, he would have seen that it wasn't an issue of people seeing or not seeing, but that most people simply didn't care enough to even be looking. If he had looked up and around, he would have seen that the elephant wasn't as big or startling as he feared, that the breasts were only a figment of his imagination, but he was too busy trying to hide them-trying to hide it-too busy looking down to see.

This wasn't the why though. This wasn't why his eyes wouldn't move, why they had stopped, why he was staring at the sheet. When he knew-really knew-that there was something wrong, when there was no longer just a feeling, but substance. When he realized how much harder it was to hide them than to deal with imagining that they were there. That was the part that messed him up, the part that made him see things the way they really were, and it wasn't that he hadn't seen before-who he was supposed to be, how he was supposed to act ... that he was a boy, and that breasts, and all that came with it was for girls ... that the two didn't match the way he had them. He knew that. That was why he was about to climb under the sheets into the house, why he was staring at the place where her breasts had been, why his heart was beating fast.

"Jordan! What are you doing?" Tanya yelled from under the sheets, snatching his eyes abruptly from the place where her breasts had been. He looked toward the opening.

"I'm coming," he said, realizing he had to pee, but he didn't move. He just stared through the opening in the hanging sheet into the bottom bunk of the bed-the bedroom of the house-and in the blankness of the white sheet again he remembered, and there they were.

He could see them-booty popping, hands swinging in and out, throwing their hips and little asses as hard as they could. Then Jordan was in a split, trying to break his back-forehead wet, back soaked-to the bass and the snare of Luke's "Birthday song," and the swirling disco lights on the skating rink that was now a dance floor. The crowd grew. Jordan's heart beat to the tempo, and as the crowd converged, he, Tanya, and Ebone, his cousins, rolled their hips and gyrated, heads rocking, eyes rolling, lips twisting, song after song until the music stopped. And, as they walked across the rink to turn in the skates that they had carried for the last twenty minutes, he found himself standing alone near the wall by the lockers where all the boys who were too cool to dance stood while everyone else danced. A few feet from him, Tanya's booty was cupped in some yellow boy's hands-Jordan imagined it was his-and Ebone's mouth flapped, and her head rolled at his friend.

"Shantaye!" Jordan heard from somewhere behind him. The boy holding Tanya's booty smiled, and Jordan noticed that he was staring at him. "Shantaye!" Jordan heard again, and now the boy Ebone was rolling her neck to turn too, and Jordan didn't understand why the boy burst into laughter or the blankness that briefly filled his cousins' faces. "Shantaye!" The voice was now loud and persistent, and now the boy who had held Tanya's booty,Tanya, the boy Ebone had rolled her neck at, and Ebone all were clearly staring at him. The boys were laughing, and Ebone and Tanya's pensive smiles confused him. "Shantaye!" the voice from behind him called again, and finally Jordan turned. "Can I have your number?" Three boys stood across the rink from him; one making his hands into a megaphone and smiling, the other holding his stomach laughing, and the other booty popping just as Jordan had. Jordan struggled to process it all; he scanned all of them. At first, he stared at the tall one in the middle with the dark face and white teeth who just laughed. "Baby, you not gon' give me yo number?" the shorter, more stocky one making a megaphone with his hand yelled again, looking toward the shortest one, who appeared to be about Jordan's age, who was now in a split "perculating"-in a split, popping his booty-imitating Jordan, and doubled over in laughter. Too shocked to move at first, Jordan just watched, and it seemed that everyone in the rink was laughing.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from To Be Lovedby J. R. Dewesse Copyright © 2009 by J. R. Dewesse. Excerpted by permission.
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