Whenever my brother Jordan cried, someone always told him to stop acting like a girl. His streaky face and big eyes the color of almonds would look up and try to read their face. My stomach would drop, and I’d want to cry too. When we were younger, people said we were connected. If he cried, I cried, if I’m hungry, so is he, and if I want to go somewhere, he will try to follow along. I’d lay in bed next to him and try to figure out if they said he acted like a girl because he acted like me.
Jordan was sensitive. My momma called him a pretty boy. He had to have his shoes tied a certain way, his undershirts had to have sleeves, and he couldn’t go to school without a haircut. He didn’t have much of a voice, but he was loud on paper. He’d draw rocket ships and anime characters the most. His eyelashes were long and dark, and my nana was sure that his hair and eyelashes were going to pull all the girls in for him.
He never was like the boys in the books I read in second grade. He always liked to stay clean, and if he got dirt on him, he’d cry. He was also very quiet, never really speaking to people. They thought it was funny to call him “the mute.” If it seemed like someone in our immediate family was upset when he was a toddler, he’d come over and put their face onto his chest and pat their head.
Homosexuality seems to be linked to crying in the Black community. If I saw a brown young boy crying, I’d usually hear “stop acting like a girl” or “only girls cry” come directly after that. I don’t know how feeling emotion was “being gay” or the fact that gay was a feeling, but when someone would tell my brother that because they were frustrated with him crying, it made me sick. I wish I could jump in front of the words, dodge them like bullets, and protect him — except I just stood there as he got hit with everything. He’d only cry more, but he kept it inside, tried to bury with quick wipes of his tears, and blew his nose in what was near him. The idea that being gay and Black was not an option was drilled into his head young. That you could only choose one, and most likely, your parents made you choose to be Black. They treat being gay like a disease you could wash away.
My brother treated his hair like he was supposed to treat his heart. Every other night in the bathtub, I’d watch him put shampoo to his curls and massage it in. He’d thoroughly rinse and then comb through the conditioner until his hair was temporarily gray. My nana made jokes about him loving his hair so much.
“You’d think he was a girl if you saw how he treated his hair,” she’d say whenever people complimented him on how nice it smelled.
You could see how uncomfortable he felt. He cut it off the next month.
In the summertime, I’d carry Jordan along to my aunt’s pool, and even though he couldn’t swim, he’d wade in the water until the moonlight shun on him. I’d watch him and only pray that no one would ever try to take his body.
