by Sonia Saikaley
There is a white hole in the wall, a mirror. It is a trap. Billy knows he is going to let himself be caught in it but he turns and walks out of his room and into his mother’s bedroom instead. He now stands in front of her full-length mirror; it is very old, something his mother inherited from her grandmother Abigail and it is made of beautiful dark, mahogany wood and looks as if it belongs in an ancient Scottish castle with gargoyles instead of a bedroom in a downtown Toronto apartment, where the fluorescent sign from the twenty-four hour deli flickers in the night and bounces off the mirror’s reflection onto Billy’s pale face when he sleeps with his mother after having a nightmare. On those nights, he crawls into his mother’s bed, without squeezing between two bodies because he doesn’t have a father, and his mother puts her arms around him and soothes him back to sleep.
Billy has no memories of his father except a tattered picture he sometimes pulls out of a shoebox his mother keeps under her bed. Besides that photograph, he has never seen his father and has only heard about him through his mother’s stories. Billy now turns around and examines his thirteen-year-old body in his great-grandmother Abigail’s mirror. He likes standing in front of it. He is thin and his high cheek-boned face gives him the appearance of a young girl. He pinches his cheeks until his pale skin turns red. Turning around again, he looks at his flat bum and wishes he could look like the beautiful, robust angels carved in the mahogany mirror. Little, fat angels with big fluffy wings live in the wooden frame. At the bottom of the border, skinny, demon-like monsters raise pitchforks toward the fat angels while on the right-hand side of the mirror, a child gazes up at the angels. The other side has both men and women dressed in nothing but brassieres and garter belts. The women kneel in front of the men while the men hold the back of their heads. Billy tries to remember seeing such a thing on his school trips to the Art Gallery but he can’t.
There is a white hole in the wall, a mirror. It is a trap. Billy knows he is going to let himself be caught in it but he turns and walks out of his room and into his mother’s bedroom instead. He now stands in front of her full-length mirror; it is very old, something his mother inherited from her grandmother Abigail and it is made of beautiful dark, mahogany wood and looks as if it belongs in an ancient Scottish castle with gargoyles instead of a bedroom in a downtown Toronto apartment, where the fluorescent sign from the twenty-four hour deli flickers in the night and bounces off the mirror’s reflection onto Billy’s pale face when he sleeps with his mother after having a nightmare. On those nights, he crawls into his mother’s bed, without squeezing between two bodies because he doesn’t have a father, and his mother puts her arms around him and soothes him back to sleep.
Billy has no memories of his father except a tattered picture he sometimes pulls out of a shoebox his mother keeps under her bed. Besides that photograph, he has never seen his father and has only heard about him through his mother’s stories. Billy now turns around and examines his thirteen-year-old body in his great-grandmother Abigail’s mirror. He likes standing in front of it. He is thin and his high cheek-boned face gives him the appearance of a young girl. He pinches his cheeks until his pale skin turns red. Turning around again, he looks at his flat bum and wishes he could look like the beautiful, robust angels carved in the mahogany mirror. Little, fat angels with big fluffy wings live in the wooden frame. At the bottom of the border, skinny, demon-like monsters raise pitchforks toward the fat angels while on the right-hand side of the mirror, a child gazes up at the angels. The other side has both men and women dressed in nothing but brassieres and garter belts. The women kneel in front of the men while the men hold the back of their heads. Billy tries to remember seeing such a thing on his school trips to the Art Gallery but he can’t.
A few weeks ago, he had invited some of his classmates to see the mirror. “Look at what they’re doing,” Caleb said. Caleb is the oldest in the group. He has broad-shoulders and a muscular body. After gym class, he parades around in the boys’ change room, shows off his biceps, massages his flat abdomen, and brags about his wonderful physique. He is fourteen and has lots of experience with girls. He knows how their breasts feel, how they giggle if you touch them down there, how they love having his tongue in their mouths. He knows all about that. “Fuck, man,” Caleb laughed. “Your mom has pornography in her own bedroom.”
“What’s porno-graph-y?” Tony asked innocently. He is twelve, the youngest in Billy’s circle of friends. Caleb slapped him across the head.
“It’s a movie where people have sex.”
“Oh, I knew that.”
“Yeah, then why did you ask?” Caleb muttered.
“Was testing you, that’s all.”
“Shut up, cunt!” Caleb shouted. Tony squinted and Billy knew that he didn’t know what the c-word meant but he hoped Tony would keep his mouth shut or he’d get another thump across the head.
Leaning into the mirror frame, Caleb traced the figures of the men and women. “The women are sucking the faggots’ cocks. This is called ‘fellatio’.”
“Why do you call them ‘faggots’?” Billy asked.
“Because only fags would wear women’s clothing.”
“But they’re doing it with women,” Billy said in a low voice.
“You look confused, Billy boy. Do you try on your mother’s clothes?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well, well,” Caleb laughed. “We have a faggot in our own school. Billy the fag and his mother’s queer-looking glass! Let’s go boys. We don’t want to hang out with him.” The boys followed Caleb, racing out of the apartment. Billy leaned on the doorframe and listened to his friends’ laughter echoing down the hallway.
Now alone in his mother’s bedroom, Billy wonders if he’s gay as Caleb had said. After a few minutes, he stares at the mirror and his thoughts turn to his great-grandmother and imagines she must’ve been a very unconventional old woman. Billy guesses that’s where he gets his own eccentricity. With the afternoon sun pouring through the laced curtains, Billy studies his young, adolescent body in the mirror. He pulls his white undershirt over his head, messing his light blond hair then unzips his pants and pulls them off. He stands in his blue jockey underwear and imagines the fat angels on the mirror covering their eyes and chanting twenty Hail Marys as his fingers teases the elastic band of his underwear. In a second, his undergarment lies on the floor next to his feet. He looks at himself before turning and heading to his mother’s dresser where he slowly slides open the top drawer. It is payday today and his mother always makes a good dinner on those days. He smells the scent of garlic and allspice while he rummages through his mother’s panties until he comes upon a red, lacy one that barely has enough cloth to cover his mother’s ass. Billy laughs when he pictures his mother wearing this thing. Guiltily, he knows that he shouldn’t be thinking about his mother in this way and, after a few minutes, he stifles his laughter. He doesn’t want her to find him there or he’ll get in trouble. Quickly, he slips the red undergarment onto his body; it hangs loosely. Picking up the matching brassiere, he struggles with the hooks but eventually gets it on. Afterward, he walks back to the mirror and starts to giggle again as he prances around like a model on a catwalk. “Supper’s ready, Billy,” his mother shouts from the kitchen.
“Be there in a second, Mom,” Billy sighs, undoing the bra.
When Billy walks into the kitchen, his mother places his plate on the table, steam rises from the broccoli, mashed potatoes and slice of roast beef. Then his mother grabs him and gives him a big hug. “How was school, honey?”
“Okay,” says Billy, now sitting at the table.
“What did you learn?”
“Math.”
“Math is good. Anything else?”
Taking a spoonful of potatoes, he stuffs it into his mouth and mumbles, “Art.”
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you with your mouth full. I guess they don’t teach manners at school anymore.”
“That’s your job, Mom,” Billy says, swallowing the food down with some water.
His mom laughs. “Well, don’t speak while you’re eating, okay?”
He smiles and nods.
But, the next day, he doesn’t smile when Caleb punches him again and again until his nose bleeds. Mr. Johnson, the school principal, finally appears and pulls Caleb off of Billy. “You little cocksucker!” Caleb shouts. “He tried to touch me down there, Mr. Johnson.”
“Is this true, Billy?” Mr. Johnson asks, holding back Caleb.
“No, sir. He’s lying,” Billy answers, wiping the blood on his sleeve.
Caleb looks at Tony and gives him a look that says you better defend me or I’ll beat the shit out of you too.
“Mr. Johnson,” Tony pipes up. “I saw him do it. I saw Billy touch Caleb down there.”
Mr. Johnson looks at Billy disapprovingly. He drags Billy by the collar. “That’s not acceptable behaviour at my school. Come with me.” Billy briefly turns around and sees Caleb standing there with a large sneer on his face.
Billy sits quietly in Mr. Johnson’s office. The room is decorated with degrees from various universities. Mr. Johnson sits behind a large desk with a stack of folders on it, student’s names printed in bold letters. Billy sees his name on one of the folders. There is also a framed picture of Mr. Johnson’s family. His wife has long dark hair and looks like she could be on the cover of one of those fashion magazines Billy’s mother is always reading. A girl stands between Mr. Johnson and his wife. She looks pretty, Billy thinks. In the photo, Mr. Johnson stands with his shoulders back and his mouth doesn’t lift in a smile.
Mr. Johnson now sits back in his chair. “So, you like to touch other boys down there?”
Billy sits up. “No, sir.”
“Don’t lie to me. Do you like to touch boys down there?” he asks again.
“No, sir.”
“Do you like to kiss them?”
“No.” Sweat slides down Billy’s chest. His shoulders tense.
“Well, it isn’t appropriate behaviour. I think you should see one of the school counsellors. You shouldn’t be touching others down there. I’m going to have to speak with your mother about this.”
“No, sir,” he pleads, his upper lip quivering. “No, please . . . don’t tell her.”
“I’m sorry, Billy, but I have to.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t touch Caleb, honestly. He called me a ‘faggot’ and I was only defending myself.”
“You can go now, Billy,” Mr. Johnson says, scribbling something down in Billy’s file.
Billy rises to his feet and runs out of the office.
He races the four blocks home, his body trembling. When he unlocks the apartment door, he sees his mother in the kitchen.
“How was school?” his mother asks, walking into the living room now.
“Okay,” he says, sitting down on the sofa.
“Just okay?”
“Yeah.” Billy picks up the converter and flips to the wilderness channel. He loves watching animal stories.
His mother touches his forehead. He squirms so she can’t see the dried blood around his nose. “You feel a little warm. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, Mom,” he says, moving slightly so he can see the television past his mother’s body.
Sitting next to him, she cups his face in her hands and finally sees the cuts and bruises on his cheeks. “Who did this to you, Billy?” she asks, her voice rising.
“Nobody.”
“Tell me,” she demands.
Billy gets up from the sofa. His mother gently touches his wrist and guides him into her arms. “Who hurt you?”
“Nobody. Just some boy at school.”
“I’m going to call the principal right now.” She picks up the telephone receiver.
“Please don’t, Mom,” he croaks.
She puts the receiver down, pulls him closer to her and holds him tight. She rocks him in her arms like she used to do when he was a baby. After a couple minutes, she loosens her grip and combs her fingers through his hair before kissing him softly on the forehead. “Go rest before dinner.”
Billy stands in front of his great-grandmother’s mirror. He doesn’t need to pinch his cheeks now because they are still red from Caleb’s blows. Stripping off his clothes, he stands naked. He walks close to the carved angels, traces them slowly. He wishes he could melt into the mahogany and join these fat, happy angels. Walking to his mother’s dresser, he pulls out her red underwear and brassiere then puts them on and smiles. “Hey, faggot,” he calls to his reflection, swaying his hips. His small shoulders roll inward. He wipes his eyes. Through the tears, he sees the angels smiling sadly at him.
*
Sonia Saikaley lives in Ottawa, Canada and has previously taught English in Japan. She graduated from the Humber School for Writers and has had her fiction and poetry published in Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Things Japanese: A Collection of Short Stories, the anthologyLavanderia - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash and Word, Quills: Canadian Poetry Magazine, [Word]: A Journal of Canadian Poetry, and other publications.