How It Comes Back

by Tayo Basquiat

I graduated class valedictorian. My speech was about becoming a plumber, just like my dad. My dad was not a plumber.

I brought birthday pennies. The plastic church bank clanked and Sunday school kids counted one-two-three-four-five-six and then clapped. I was seven.

I gave myself arm hickies.

I finished reading Charlotte’s Web. I hid myself behind the classroom’s gray vinyl curtains and cried. I stopped killing spiders.

I had a secret friend who sent little gifts and notes signed “Your Secret Friend, D L,” and I thought this meant Dean and Leah, two church people. It was actually my mom and sister. I didn’t know my mom had a name.

I learned during Sunday school that the world’s end was near. Four horsemen would come, bringing plagues and death. Bad boys and girls would go to hell. I asked Mom if I could go to hell. She said sure.

I wrote Santa a nice, flattering Christmas letter, but Santa got confused and gave Monte next door my Millennium Falcon. I got some other kid’s gunslinger figures.

I caught a brown-and-black-striped woolly caterpillar and gave him a caterkeeper home. Later, when the monarch seemed stuck, I helped break open the cocoon. It died.

I filled a box with rags so our garage kitty, Kizzy, could be warm. One morning, Kizzy filled the box with kittens. The next morning it was full of bloody rags and dead kittens.

I called a girl “hippopotamus” and she cried. She wasn’t fat or grey-colored and her teeth were normal-looking, but she was wearing a hippopotamus shirt.

I watched a Colgate toothpaste commercial featuring a white chalk stick dipped into red liquid and then snapped in half, revealing a red ring around a white center. So I stole Miss Einerson’s chalk, dipped it in Kool-Aid and ate it.

I lived in a trashcan like Oscar the Grouch. The floor’s curved sides were like a racetrack. I raced my Matchbox cars and ran my little plastic horses around and around. I squatted inside and popped my head up occasionally, yelling “Scram!”

I came home from school and saw my house on the curb. I lifted the lid. Empty. Wrong house.

I collected Nesquik barcodes because I wanted a Quik Bunny mug. His ears were the handles, his big head held the chocolate milk. I dipped my toast and studied his face. Then I bit his nose until all the red paint was gone.

I practiced pedaling fast while wearing my green blankie tied around my neck. E.T. might need another ride home.

I played with my sister’s Bubblecut brunette Barbie. She always wanted a long blond-haired Barbie because they are prettier. I bit her Barbie’s nose off. My sister cried and I gave her the nose bit back. And some tape.

I played cards with my oldest sister sometimes when she took a long poop.

I held the bag and Dad filled it with hedge clippings. He yelled a lot. Holding the bag is very hard.

I started playing the clarinet because my sisters both played clarinet so that was the instrument laying around. I played the M.A.S.H. theme song over and over again. One day all my reeds went missing.

I sang the Lite Brite and Inchworm jingles repeatedly as Christmas present hints. I didn’t get either one.

I drew Garfield and horses. Stacy drew hot rods and monsters. There was a fierce competition worth a $5 prize for the best fire-prevention poster. We both lost to a girl who drew really good cigarettes.

I rolled baking soda in paper, lit the end and said, “Suck and blow.” This is how my friends and I became smokers.

I was watching television when Reagan got shot.

I heard Mom tell Dad, "Remember that hitchhiker we picked up and put in the trunk? Maybe we should stop and let him out.” Dad pulled over and popped the trunk. I watched Mom come back with a box. Inside was a Baby Tender Love doll and a car trip “medical kit” Mom made me. Inside her old Valium bottles were red hots, others contained the round, multi-colored cookie sprinkles that looked like the insides of Mom’s Contac capsules. I smoked candy cigarettes like a doctor during Baby Tender Love’s exams.

I wanted the colorfully beaded safety pins all the girls were making. The girls traded the pins and put them on their shoelaces’ straight-bars and that made the girls “friends forever.” After everyone changed into their snow boots and went out for recess, I dawdled in the coatroom and started stealing friends.

I worried our school principal wouldn’t get the TV antennae adjusted. He said, “Get ready boys and girls for the first teacher in space!” The picture was fuzzy but we all knew she didn’t make it.

I saw Trina lean over the railing. She leaned too far, fell and smashed her head on the cement below. We didn’t get gym (crab ball!) that day.

I pretended I took drugs, acting like the ABC Afterschool Special druggies. Sewing needle track marks, drooling, and corner-slumping, all party performance props. I ran off a friend’s second story balcony screaming “the bugs, the bugs!” and that scared me straight.

I ate popcorn while watching Escape to Witch Mountain. My sister and her boyfriend were stuck babysitting me. My stomach felt funny, my sister fed me Pepto-Bismol, and said, “Go to bed.” Pink popcorn vomit, stained light blue sheets, and one mad sister.

I sat next to my sister on the kitchen linoleum, not on the carpet, where we could still see the TV and watch Dallas. We each got half a root beer pop and five large Old Dutch ripple chips. My sister sucked them to make them last.

I threw Monte the baseball. Kari walked by. She yelled “Hey poopy heads!” and then walked into the power-line pole. Blood rushed into her eye from the gash on her forehead. I said, “Geez, Kari, there’s a pole.” She said, “Shut up, poopy head.”

I prayed the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” prayer every night without ever worrying about dying.

I was a North Dakota Centennial Band member. So were ninety-nine other kids. We marched in the Rose Bowl parade. Exotic California. We wore brown pants and baby blue jackets with gold piping and ropes, colors signifying soil, sky, and wheat. All summer we practiced for “The Turn,” the big TV corner turn, so everyone back home would see us and be proud. We made the corner while the network ran commercials.

I called Sean a dildo. A teacher heard. The principal asked where I’d heard that word. I told him about Jungle Jim and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and how all the dildos were extinct.

I told my first grade class about what I did that summer after Kari told them about her family’s Disneyland trip. I said I saw a unicorn. The teacher said unicorns didn’t exist. I said that one did. She said no, not that one either.

I caught a fly ball but my finger hit the pocket before the baseball. My finger swelled and turned purple. Inside the kitchen, women were helping Mom make open-faced Cheez Whiz and green olive slice sandwiches for my sister’s wedding. My sister stopped making sandwiches and took me for X-rays. As we waited she said, “It better be broken.”

I watched America Held Hostage count the days while Dad said President Carter was “about as effective as a pile of pudding.” I thought his accent was like pudding. Butterscotch.

I hated canned peas. When Mom put them in the smallest square on my Melmac plate one night I said, “Get these goddamn peas out from under my nose.” Mom glared at Dad, and Dad ate his peas.

I waited behind my mom as she paid for our groceries at the Red Owl. The man behind us reached over and put his rough hand down my shirt.

I saw Jesus floating on a cloud one day. He looked like his pictures all over our church. This is how I knew he was real. I used my sister’s orange figure skates on Monday for gym class. Monday night I sprayed them black like boys’ skates. By Wednesday, the black chipped away and I had speckled Halloween-colored skates.

I rode my sister’s purple bike with a white banana seat. The handlebar ends had plastic streamers. I cut them off. Still not a BMX.

I played with Monte in my kiddie pool. We watched the water bounce a brown turd along the blue bottom. We chased it until he stepped on it. Mom wanted to know who pooped in the pool. I said, “Jesus.”

I got on the school bus in my new snowsuit. It was slippery against the frigid vinyl seats and at the first turn, I slid into the aisle. Everyone behind me laughed. I turned around and said, “Shut up!”

I broke all Dad’s cigarettes, leaving them piled behind his TV chair, and ran outside. He bought another pack.

I rode with Monte in Kenny’s El Camino’s bed as our dads dumped lawn clippings at the sand pit. There, we took turns shooting .22s at beer cans, our cheeks stuffed with Big League Chew.

I drew notebooks full of Garfield the cat. First day, fourth grade, I wore my Garfield outfit: Garfield patches on pockets of purple pants, a white and purple plaid shirt with Garfield patches on the collar, and a purple clip-on tie, orange Garfield hanging on the end. Hard to survive that outfit.

I played marbles at noon recess, Sheldon’s silver boulder vs. my red cat-eye boulder. When he hit mine on the second throw, a disc-shaped chunk broke off. His was a steel ball bearing. I said, “You broke my marble,” and punched him. We lost all our marbles to the principal.

I waited at the kitchen table for mom to finish the dishes. She’d go to the bathroom, get a squirt of lotion and come back to the table, her wedding ring between her lips, rubbing the lotion on her hands. We’d play Crazy 8s until Little House on the Prairie came on.

I went to the little store in Park River called Northside. It smelled like mildew. An ancient lady ran the store and they had a penny candy case full of Bazooka, Tootsie Rolls, Lemonheads, bubble gum cigarettes, Laffy Taffy, and Necco Wafers. A reach-in cooler held glass bottles of Coca Cola that slid out after you deposited a quarter in the slot. This is how my teeth got full of mercury.

I was a ghost for Halloween every year except the year I was a pirate and the year I was a hobo and the year I was Raggedy Andy and the year I was the Tin Man and the year I was Dracula and the year I was a hanged outlaw. The costumes worked at school but for trick-or-treating I had to wear a winter jacket or snowsuit and so Mom would throw the sheet over the top of me and I was a ghost. Again.

I held my own summer and winter Olympics, matching the television version. Bicycle time trials, high hurdles, long jump, skeleton. Hockey against the Russians. I was Nadia Comaneci and nailed my floor routine. She’s the only non-American that won in my Olympics. And the only girl.

I played Little League baseball two summers. The second summer a rich potato farmer bought all four teams T-shirts: blue with white “Dodgers” lettering, orange with black “Astros,” green with yellow “A’s,” and red with blue “Cubs.” I was an Astro. Orange like Pokey my stuffed horse, orange like our Datsun, orange like Mom’s favorite pop. My favorite shirt.

I picked school cereal, two boxes, the sugar cereals like Lucky Charms and Sugar Pops. The only time Mom allowed that kind of cereal was to make summer’s end and school’s beginning not so horrible.

I wore a white T-shirt my sister painted: a black guy wearing bell bottoms and a jean jacket and clogs. He had a fro. The shirt read, “Boogie on down!”

I practiced dressing for school. I put on the new clothes and then put them away again. Mom said, “Now remember what matches.”

I watched Bozo’s grand prize game on WGN Chicago station once when we got cable. A lucky kid would throw ping-pong balls into buckets to win prizes. I practiced with a line of Folgers coffee cans. I had nightmares where clowns chased me after I missed the bucket.

I said hello to the minister that walked by our house on his way home from church each day. He and his son Danny lived two houses down. Danny played drums and spent time in a mental institution. I was watching an Atlanta Braves baseball game on TBS when I saw a police car and ambulance park in front of Danny’s house. A crowd of neighbors gathered outside. I watched through the window: two white-sheeted gurneys put inside the ambulance.

I didn’t take the required shower after gym class in seventh grade. I’d just splash water on my hair. Then coach started standing at the shower and it was either shower or fail gym.

I heard from my sister that one of her classmates freaked out on acid or something at a party and scratched his eyes out.

I gave a demonstration on gun safety for a 4H competition. I kept the muzzle pointed up at the ceiling. The judge disqualified me, saying that someone could have been on the roof. I asked if I should have pointed it down instead and he said no, there could have been someone in the basement. “Hallway?” “Definitely people out there.” “Where should I point it?” He said, “Leave.”

I was scared of the promotional commercial for K-tel’s Pure Power featuring Kiss and Alice Cooper. Mom said they were Satanists.

I sent away for the album Fonzie’s Favorites because of the advertised standup leather jacket that came with it. I didn’t get a leather jacket. The back of the album jacket had a cardboard flap to punch out so that the album with a picture of Fonzie in his leather jacket could stand up like a picture frame.

I was in the backseat of the big brown Oldsmobile when we all heard popping sounds from the trunk. It was so hot the cases of Coors beer Mom and Dad could only buy in Colorado exploded halfway through Kansas.

I grew a tumor on my knee. A doctor cut it out, and I spent six weeks on crutches. They took the stitches out too early and now I have a scar that looks like a big paramecium. This is how I remembered “paramecium” in seventh grade biology.

I rode in Jess’s ’76 Dodge Spirit cruising the loop when the train-crossing lights came on. She said, “Should I go?” I said, “Yeah, those lights are always on.” Halfway across I looked out my window and there was the train.

I sang the dressing song every morning, just like Mr. Rogers, shouting the “OneTwo” part when I put on my shoes. I looked into the camera at all the boys and girls.

I stared at my mom’s hair smashed beneath the tin foil and plastic used to set her dye job. I had a glass of milk in my hand. She turned to me and said, “Boo!” and I threw my glass of milk in her face.

I slept soundly with Pokey, my orange stuffed horse, and my green blankie and woke with eyelashes pasted together. I remember one recurring dream of standing at the top stair and something coming up toward me from the basement and me falling up and away. l

Born to its northeastern flatlands and eventually living near its western badlands, TAYO BASQUIAT recently left his North Dakota home for the University of Wyoming, where he’ll complete a master of fine arts degree in creative writing in May.