Zuihitsu on Braiding and Wishing to be a Cricket
by Tyler McDonald
Barefoot in the midst of January, I’m thrown off a sled tied to a four-wheeler. I roll through the snow, almost tumbling into the frozen creek. Someone young runs after me. We laugh with numb, red faces. My mother storms out of the house and stuffs our small hands into grandpa’s mittens. We warm our bodies by the stove.
I wake with a headache on a Sunday morning. I stuff leftover Khmer noodles into my mouth. I did not microwave it for long enough, and the core of it is lukewarm. My boyfriend asks, Would you do this everyday? I speed down a one-way street to work.
A man at a party compliments the Saturn on my shoulder, watching me take shots in a stranger’s bedroom. Later that night in the front lawn, I ask him if he enjoys the company of men. No. His face blurs. I don’t remember walking home, but I wake up in bed alone.
Standing by the stairs on Christmas Eve, I’m being scolded once again. Every year gets worse. This time I yell back, and in the darkness of the kitchen, a fist meets my stomach. Get your ass downstairs. I wake my sister, and I burn with flames. I call the cops, running barefoot down the gravel driveway. Once I’m back inside, my throat lets out curses and threats, and I know my limit has been hit. My mother has never heard me curse until tonight. I shatter my favorite CD on the ground. When the stairs creak, I realize there is nowhere to hide.
I hear crickets in the ceiling. Summer is ending, I wish to be a cricket in the ceiling. To hear the arguments, but keep chirping along. Heat drills me as orange leaves fall.
I’m always trying to braid my life with someone else’s. There is a song I am always obsessed with, and my boyfriend always hates it. All the bad dreams that you hide, show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. He walks out of the bedroom, into the bathroom, and showers.
On Thanksgiving I bake Chai cookies. I spent the remains of my paycheck on the ingredients, and I am glum at the result. I forgot the ingredients for the icing, and left them in the oven for 10 minutes too long. My friends pretended to love them, but a year from now will confess they were dry. In a week I try again, forget the eggs, and crumbs scatter the room. I scoop them up off of the floor.
Christmas Eve is the only time I feared for my life.
Walking through Over-the-Rhine, pondering the passage of time in a sweater vest. I’m alone on a busy street, looking for a bar, when a rush of teenagers pass by me. Oh, he’s a fag. I want to say, That’s right. I am quiet as I walk by, clutching my keys. When the word was fresh, it brought me shame. The football players at the table across from me would yell to my clique, You know your friend is a faggot, right? Years of repetition will harden you. When I was younger, I said nothing. The men who taunted me would never stop. Neither of those things changed, but now I think, Call me what you want. I am not ashamed.
I want to braid my experiences to the world.
I fall down the stairs drunk, laughing. A boy I thought I loved helps me up, takes me home, and we argue for the third time that week. I take polaroids of the argument and pin them to the wall. I snicker because I find it pleasing to get under his skin. He tries to make love to me, and I say no, too drunk to say yes, but for a moment that doesn't stop him. He flips me upside down and I am staring at the ceiling, realizing I am just an object to him. Afterwards, I lay alone on the carpet and sleep.
I wake up in my lover’s bed. A tiny apartment encompasses me, and I listen to the sound of sweet snoring. We drive to a pumpkin patch, and I carve out heart eyes as I sit in his lap. His fingers gently guide the knife in my hand. Is this love?
My fingers press down on a keyboard as I sit in my boyfriend’s lap. Later tonight we plan to bake Chai cookies. He walks to the bathroom, washes his face, and pretends to talk to an audience as he circles his fingers with a cleanser. I bathe in the richness of his voice. Pablo Neruda once said, Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
My grandfather searches through my jewelry box and unearths a polaroid of a boy kissing me. Every Christmas break, I come home, and they remind me why I left. My grandma gives me a Bible lesson on homosexuality. To her, I am an abomination. I don’t attend the gift exchange party that night. The next morning, I drive to my boyfriend’s apartment, sliding on the ice, still arriving safely. Once I’m inside, I enter his bedroom and cry in his arms. I turn off the big light and breathe.
I’m thirteen in a hospital bed. My only memories of November are of squirming fevers and hallucinations of the devil. My classmates are spreading a rumor that I am dead. I feel so sick that sometimes I wish I was. My mom tells me that I have stage four Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I weep, but I’m not surprised. Don’t worry. Your odds of surviving this are high, a nurse says to me. My life has just begun.