Ty hated it when his mother plucked her beard. She always did it at the kitchen table, sitting at his father’s place under the old cuckoo clock. She set up a makeup mirror and turned the little round lights on bright. At ten years old, Ty knew makeup mirrors were supposed to be for makeup; he never knew women had beards to pluck until his mother announced what she did from time to time, at the table. The worst part was when she waited until he had his head buried in the fridge and then she yelled, “Oh, wow, Ty! Look at this one! I musta missed it before!” When he looked over, she straightened out a long curly hair, holding it between her two hands the way a fisherman holds a prize catch. The really long ones usually came from her neck.
He always stuck his head back in the fridge and held it there, hoping the cold air would freeze the image of his mother, tweezers to her chin, and he could smash her with a hammer into little tiny ice shards. The beard-plucking was gross and it made his stomach feel funny. He hated her when she did that and hated her worse when she made him a part of it.
He hated his name too. Ty. Short for Tyler, which wasn’t so bad, except no one ever called him that. At school, he was dubbed Tynee, NeckTy, Tyed-Up-In-Knots. He hated those, but at least he could figure them out, but then a new name showed up when a bigger boy grinned and said to a girl bent over the water fountain, “Hey, Amber, wanna tie one on?” The girl blushed almost as red as Ty himself. He didn’t know what the boy meant, but everyone else howled and started calling him Ty-One-On. Amber smiled at him before he ran away.
Girls seemed to like his name, like the way they could drawl, “Hiiii, Tyyyy,” as he went by. He never answered, but when he tried to scowl, he felt his face automatically lift in a grin. So the girls wouldn’t stop. They “Hi, Tyed” him wherever he went and he couldn’t stop them and he blushed and grinned. Like a dork, he told himself. Like a fucking dork, using the new word that was too dangerous to say aloud. He used it silently and often, trying to take the gloss off it, make it an ordinary word that slid naturally into his vocabulary. Fucking cereal, fucking toothpaste. Fucking hot dog. Fucking cuckoo clock, fucking makeup mirror. He admired how it sounded, low and sharp, within the walls of his brain. He thought it would sound better shouted out loud, echoing down the halls at school, ricocheting against the gun metal lockers.
Ty looked at the girls and wondered if they plucked beards as soft and downy as the hair on his arm. He wondered why men shaved and women plucked. He knew his own father shaved, though he never watched. His father spent a lot of time in the bathroom with the door closed. There was always a disposable razor stuck in the toothbrush holder. The razor had a plastic handle and varied in color from blue to black to a blue/black combination. His mother kept a pink razor in the shower and Ty knew she used it on her arms and legs. Why tweezers on her face and a razor on her limbs? Ty imagined how dangerous shaving was, how easy it could be to cut your own throat. He touched his father’s razor once or twice, ran his fingers over the blade and was stunned by so much blood at so little hurt. He could die without knowing it.
The day he became Ty-One-On, Ty pulled his best friend Barry over to their favorite rock by the side of the street. The big rock looked like a baked potato and Ty’s mother said that whoever owned that house deliberately stuck the rock there as an oddity. Ty just thought it was cool and he and Barry liked to sit on it and watch the cars go by. “Did you hear what that guy called me today?” Ty asked. “Ty-One-On.”
Barry nodded.
“So what does Ty-One-On mean?” Ty scuffed his shoe against the potato’s skin.
“Damned if I know,” Barry said. He looked at Ty and grinned, then licked his lips over the swear word. “Damned if I know.”
Ty laughed and smacked his hands against his thighs. “Well, damned if I know either!”
They smiled and sat next to each other, bumping their shoulders together.
“Fuck,” Ty said softly, bravely, trying it out.
Barry’s eyes widened, then he frowned and brought his big front teeth to his lower lip. “Fuck,” he said too, drawing out every letter.
Ty jumped down and walked away, dragging his backpack on the ground. Barry followed. “Does your mom have a makeup mirror?” Ty asked.
“A mirror where she puts on makeup?” Barry asked. “Yeah, she’s got one. Doesn’t call it that though. It’s in her room and it’s like a table, and there’s lots of lights in a big circle. She calls it a vanity. You know, you’ve seen it.”
Ty had. It was pretty, in a way, when the lights glowed bright and reflected off the oval mirror. It looked like a movie star. “My mom sits at the kitchen table with hers. It’s little…she keeps it under the sink in the bathroom.” They were getting close to home, so Ty put his backpack over his shoulders again. His mom yelled if she caught him dragging it. “Does your mom have…” He motioned in the air, bringing his thumb and forefinger together and apart. “Tweezers?”
Barry nodded. “Yeah, she pulls out her eyebrows with them.”
Ty stopped, fingering the dark short hairs that he knew arched above his eyes. “Her eyebrows?”
“Yeah. She makes them real thin.” Barry grinned. “It’s weird.”
“Yeah.” They got to the intersection where Barry had to go right and Ty left. “Barry, does your mom pull out a beard?”
Barry laughed. “Women don’t have beards!”
Ty touched his own chin. No hair yet. “My mom does. She plucks out her beard, she says. I saw her and everything.”
Now Barry stopped and his mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. God,” he said, each word a sentence all its own.
That’s what Ty was afraid of, that reaction. That was exactly it. “Not your mom?” he asked one more time, hoping maybe Barry was lying, maybe he’d break down and tell the truth.
“No.” Barry shook his head. “No, Ty, not ever.”
Ty sighed and slouched. His backpack fell to the ground. “Great,” he said. “My mom’s a freak.”
Barry nodded.
“Fuck,” Ty said. “A fucking freak.”
The next time Ty found his mother in front of her makeup mirror, he didn’t dive into the fridge. He stood by the table and watched. His mother pulled her face this way and that, putting the tweezers to her skin and yanking out hairs that Ty could barely see. The underside of her chin became blotchy with red. Finally, she put the tweezers down and looked at him. “Is there something you need?” she asked.
“Why do you do that?” He pointed to the mirror, the tweezers, her face.
“Pluck my beard, you mean?” She shrugged. “To get rid of the hair. See?” She picked up his hand, put his palm under her chin. It felt smooth and the red spots weren’t even warm. “Like a baby’s behind,” she said and smiled.
“But why do you have a beard? You’re a girl.” Ty took his hand back.
She laughed. “Well, yeah, I am, but when girls get older, sometimes they get hair where they don’t want it. And then it has to be pulled out if they still want to look like a lady.”
“Like eyebrows?”
“Yeah, some ladies do their eyebrows. I like mine the way they are.”
“So…” He reached out and touched the tweezers. They were cold and the edges looked sharp. “All old ladies have beards?”
“Yep.” She nodded and turned off her mirror. “It’s a fact of life.” Then she stopped and blinked. “Though I’m not old.”
Liar! he wanted to yell. Not Barry’s mom! It’s just eyebrows for Barry’s mom! But he turned and walked away without saying a word, until he got to the kitchen entryway. The cuckoo clock went off, the bird flickering in and out like a bizarre snake tongue, and, thinking he wouldn’t be heard over the raucous chirping, Ty muttered, “Fucking freak.”
“Ty-ler!” His mother was at his side in a second, shaking his shoulder. “Did you just say what I think you said?”
He thought he said it soft.
She dragged him to the sink. “Don’t you ever talk like that!” She looked all around the counter and in the cabinets. Then she grabbed the plastic bottle of dish soap and pointed it at him like a gun. “Open your mouth!” she demanded.
Ty didn’t know what to do, so he stuck out his tongue, then sucked it back in like the cuckoo bird. In, out, in, out, and his mother snatched and pounced and then she finally caught it between her fingers. She squirted the soap all over until he gagged. “Now rinse your mouth out and go to your room until supper! No video games!”
Ty spat and spat, but the taste just wouldn’t go away. His mouth kept foaming, the bubbles going up the back of his throat and out his nose where they popped and got into his eyes. It was funny, in a way, but he couldn’t hold back the tears and he cried in earnest as he swirled cup after cup of water around in his mouth. Then he ran to his room and slammed the door.
All because his mother was a freak. All because of a beard. “Damn,” he said softly into his pillow. “Shit. Fuck.” But in the walls of his brain, he screamed the words as loud as he could.
The next day, Barry was absent from school so Ty had to walk home by himself. He wandered down the couple blocks and paused for a moment by the baked potato rock. He wondered if Barry told the truth when they talked about beards; maybe he just didn’t want to admit his mother plucked too. Though he told that bit about the eyebrows. Ty’s mom’s eyebrows were bushy and full, prone to collapsing into a vicious V over her nose.
Ty was just about to make his left turn when he heard a soft, “Pssst!” He looked around. Amy Sue Dander waved at him, her head poking out of a bush at the edge of her yard. “Ty!” she whispered. “C’mere!” She ducked back inside, then popped out again and Ty smiled, thinking she was like the cuckoo bird at home. In, out, in, out.
He carefully spread the leaves and followed her. The bush was all hollowed out, like a cave, within the spindly branches. He dropped his backpack and breathed out in appreciation. “Wow, Amy Sue, this is cool! Did you make this?”
She shook her head. “Hi, Ty,” she said, her voice low. “I just found it this way. It’s my favorite private place.”
He sat down on the ground, noticing the way the branches spread clear to the grass so nobody could see their feet from the outside.
Amy Sue smiled at him. She waggled her eyebrows, which he noticed were blonde, like her curls, though a little darker. “So you wanna see something really cool?”
“Sure. What?”
Amy Sue’s smile spread wider and her hands reached for her waist. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she said, her voice suddenly full and throaty.
“Show you my—” Ty’s tongue caught on the roof of his mouth as in one swift motion, Amy Sue pulled down her jeans and underpants. They bunched around her ankles and then she pulled her shirt up high, almost to her chin.
She was so smooth, pink and smooth all over. He felt his eyes move of their own accord from her chin to below her belly button. Between her legs, there were two fat rolls of skin, joined in the middle by a crease. He found himself being pulled there, up on his hands and knees, and he crawled over to her and stared at her crotch, just a few inches away from his nose.
She wiggled a bit. “See?” she said. “Now I’ve shown you mine, you have to show me yours. It’s a game Barry showed me.”
Barry! He never said anything about this! Ty stood up unsteadily. “Show you my…?” he said and reached for his belt buckle. She nodded vigorously. Pulling at his belt and button and zipper, Ty allowed his pants to fall to his ankles, just like Amy Sue’s.
“Oh, look!” Amy Sue squealed. “It’s pointing right at me, just like Barry’s did!”
Ty looked down and sure enough, his penis was up and pointing directly at Amy Sue. He felt different too and he just didn’t know what to say. They stood there for a while, looking each other up and down. Mostly down. Amy Sue’s cheeks turned red and Ty felt his own face grow warm.
Abruptly, he reached down and pulled up his pants. Amy Sue did too. The sounds of snaps and zippers seemed impossibly loud. Ty put on his backpack. Then he followed Amy Sue out, crawling under the bush.
Standing on the sidewalk, Ty stared at Amy Sue. She smiled and looked away. Then he touched her chin. It was smooth, as smooth as the rest of her. “Amy Sue, do you ever use a tweezers on your chin?”
She frowned. “A tweezers? Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just asking.”
“My mom does sometimes. I don’t. Maybe later though. It might be a lady thing.”
Ty closed his eyes and kissed her cheek. He felt like he had to, it was right, like it was a law. Amy Sue shrieked, then ran toward her house. “Bye, Ty!” she yelled over her shoulder.
Ty walked slowly the rest of the way home, thinking about beards and tweezers and bushes and soft pink folds of skin. And about Amy Sue’s voice as she popped her head out of the bush like a cuckoo bird, saying, “Hi, Ty!” His name didn’t seem so bad now.
He got home just as the cuckoo clock chirped four, so he knew he was late. But the sound of the shower told him that his mother would never know. Throwing his backpack into a corner, he helped himself to some cookies and milk. He thought of his mother, sitting at the table the day before, her hands pulling and stretching the skin beneath her chin. He thought of her eyebrows and Amy Sue’s and Barry’s mother’s. And he thought of Amy Sue and the smooth fat place between her legs.
He wondered.
Quickly, he moved to the bathroom. He heard the water, heard his mother singing. Slowly, he opened the door. Her silhouette shimmered behind the shower curtain, her arms upraised, fingers scrubbing her head. She was washing her hair. He started taking showers by himself when he was six, but he could still remember how it felt to have her wash his hair while he sat in the warm water of the bathtub. Her fingers were strong and rough, yet he still leaned into her hands. It never felt as good with his own.
He pulled back the curtain just enough to see with one eye. His mother’s eyes were closed against the shampoo and her face was raised as she sang. He took a deep breath and he looked.
No smooth fat skin. Just a wet dark triangle of hair.
He backed away and shut the door. Her song never stopped so he knew he wasn’t caught. Going back to the kitchen, he sat down and tried to puzzle it all out.
Amy Sue’s skin was smooth; his mother’s, hairy. His mother and Barry’s plucked some hairs and left others alone. He thought about what Amy Sue said, about how her mother used tweezers and how maybe she would too, someday. A lady thing. And he thought of his father’s razor in the toothbrush holder in the bathroom.
It was all beginning to make sense, in a cuckoo sort of way. Logic dodged in, out, in, out. Women plucked, men shaved. Not all women plucked the same places. Smooth skin could grow hair on both men and women. Some kept it, some didn’t. Men grew beards, kept them or shaved them off. Women grew beards, but always plucked them. It was a lady thing. It was weird, but it seemed to work.
His mother walked into the kitchen, a towel still wrapped around her head. “Hi, honey,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Did you get your own snack?”
Ty nodded. “Mom, I’m sorry.”
She stopped by his chair. “For what?”
He lowered his eyes. “For what I said yesterday.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Oh, that. That kind of stuff happens sometimes, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
Maybe, Ty thought, looking up at the cuckoo clock, maybe swearing’s a man thing.
Barry was still sick the next day and Ty stalked the playground, looking for Amy Sue. A strange feeling tugged the right corner of his mouth; he felt a new expression on his face, a sort of sideways smile. When he saw her on the swingset with her best friend Judy, his breath caught. Then he went up to her. “Hey, Amy Sue,” he said.
Amy Sue stopped swinging. “Hi, Ty,” she said softly as Judy giggled.
He leaned toward her, the corner of his mouth turning up in that new way. “Amy Sue,” he said slowly, remembering the boy’s words a few days before. “Wanna Ty-One-On? Wanna Ty-One-On with me?” He looked in her face, then dropped his gaze down, down to her lap. He still didn’t know what those words meant, but they sounded the way he felt yesterday and he laughed when Amy Sue squealed and jumped off the swing, running away with Judy.
Spinning around, he threw his arms wide and he looked straight up, up as far as he could, into the sky. “Fuck!” he bellowed. The word roared out of his throat and it felt so good, so good, that he didn’t care who heard. He didn’t care at all.
It was just too good. It was a man thing.