Fade into the Heavy Downpour

by Zuwa Collins

Honorable Mention, Neutrino Short-Short Prize, selected by jj peña

And the boy didn’t tell his mother he was gay, so when he went off in that white van with that guy, his mother’s first thought was “he must know this man.”

And how could she have known? She was shuffling two jobs as a nurse and as a small businesswoman selling necklaces out of the trunk of her car. And she had always wanted to let her children be free, to be protective but not too protective, so when she saw him go off, her best thought was to let him be. When she watched him from the edge of her window, silently she prayed for him.

And the boy’s brother could have asked him where he was going, but he knew that it was probably somewhere with his loser friends who never knew how to fit in. They were probably going where the sissies go, to some theatre club or fashion competition, and he really couldn’t be bothered. The match was on, and the rain was falling, and he had better things to do than watch his brother who didn’t know the language of what it meant to be a man.

And the boy had many words for intimacy, so many that he couldn’t say it. And sometimes intimacy felt like holding someone’s hand behind the school’s parking lot hoping that no one sees you and sometimes it feels like washing over your fingers over the rain that falls, wet and sharp and tight. But he always knew that intimacy meant secrecy, that love for him meant hiding, and he knew that he would often have to lie and deceive and distract. And sometimes intimacy felt like that car that day, belonging to a random number on a random app who promised to take care of him, and he did, and he was never seen again.

And where did the boy go? If you asked another of the boy’s hook-ups, covertly, he would tell you that he didn’t know, but the boy had the softest hands that melted in his, and even though he said it with such nostalgia in his face it would never feel appropriate because the man was a man and the boy was a boy.

And the boy didn’t want to be that boy—he wanted a normal life where he could play chess and watch action movies with his brother and fight over who got the TV remote. But all that changed when the boy turned 12, and his heart fluttered at the sight of men near him, and he tried to cage in the butterflies in his chest, because he knew what it meant.

And because these boys, not just this boy, always know what it means, that first time, to have the wave of experiencing abnormality in a country where it is illegal to feel, to be. And they cry when they realise, they say what is a boy, they scream and shout in their room, they say not me not me please God not me, but it doesn’t matter because it’s always them and they always end up at the end of someone else’s punch.

And because the boy was called many names at school—like No, like Not Especially that, Like We Will Not Say That Here, and some days he just wanted to swing off on an umbrella and fly away from the world. The boy had always loved old surrealist movies, mystery and Broadway, perfect scenes in black and white that descended into nonsensical absurdity, and so when he watched films on his mothers’ VHS in their old house when he was five, he just smiled and smiled.

And the boy’s father will whisper at the dinner table that maybe the car was a good thing years from now, that we all suspected what he was, and the brother will pound his fist on the table, and he will lie awake in bed. And the brother sometimes wishes he asked the boy what happened, how he came to be, everyday since that event, but the car was so far away now, and there was no one to blame but the boy. He couldn’t blame himself. They said, “don’t talk to strangers.” They said, “don’t go off with strange men.” But children will never hear word and the family never spoke about it anymore after that day at the dinner table, ever again.

And because there will be many boys, on many news reports, found in gutters, dead at the bottom of the river, stoned to death and torn aflame. There will be boys who will be turned to mockeries just for being boys, and they will be laughed at on the news station as a thing of the past. Because let’s face it, these boys are not remembered. We simply mourn them and move on.

And because the boy knew that to love was a thing of secrecy at a young age, and because he knew that his love was meant to be private, he had to escape. And because he always loved detective movies, he knew how to lie, deceive, distract. And so the boy did not die, and the car was something else. Because the boy and the boy at the back of their school had carved out their haven, and had sworn that by God, they must fly, and so they stole a white van, and the two boys, they got in.

And sometimes intimacy and freedom looks like riding at warp speed at the edge of the world, nothing but half a tank of fuel and meatpie breath as you live on days without food, and you’re struggling to find a meal. But it doesn’t matter because the wind is on your face and you can go hours lounging in that afternoon sun and there’s a warm, calm hand next to you. Because sometimes intimacy looks like watching the rain outside, that soft pitter patter, the fall of the Heavens, and saying fuck all, thank God, I am alive.

Zuwa Collins is a Nigerian writer of revolutionary fiction. He tweets sometimes @zuwa1560.