I

Sin-Sin

WHAT TOOK YOU so long, boy?”

Sin-Sin looked at Blue sitting on a broken piece of wood. He looked at the knife gleaming in his hand. The wood was the color of Blue’s dark skin.

“How you like it?”

“I like it fine.”

“What you looking funny for then?”

“I didn’t think you thought I was ready.”

“Well. Now what you think?”

“Can you be ready and not know it?”

“Ain’t but one way to know that, boy.”

Sin-Sin hoped Blue didn’t see the trembling that had started in his left leg. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t make his leg stay still. He remembered all Blue had told him about not showing pain or fear, how he had to keep his sorrow inside.

“What you say to my mother?” Sin-Sin asked.

“I told her she’d done a good job making a boy out of you, and asked her if I could help a bit with making you into a man.”

“She didn’t get mad?”

“She a smart woman. She ain’t gonna get mad about the truth.”

“She said what you’re doing is like what a daddy would do,” Sin-Sin said.

“Nope. She wrong about that. A daddy can’t do what I’m gonna do for you. Most daddys’d try to make you into something like them. I’m goqna help you be you.”

“I know something about my daddy.”

“Boy, you don’t know nuthin about your daddy,” Blue snorted. “If you did, you wouldn’t walk around here all the time looking sorry for yourself. First time I see you, I ask myself, who is that boy walking around here like he got a hole in his soul? Dragging your feet, head hanging down low. Couldn’t be nuthin else that made you look like that.”

Sin-Sin turned his back on Blue.

“We going down by the water like you said?” he asked.

Blue didn’t say another word, he stood and started walking, the bones on his necklace rattling.

Sin-Sin followed Blue slowly. His left leg still felt wobbly and now his right arm was feeling shaky. He wondered if he’d be able to go through with it, be able to take the knife on his skin without screaming.

Mama’s little baby...

The memory of the sound of the girls’ voices began to fill his head. He stopped walking and shook his head, violently. He had to get rid of it, it couldn’t follow him here, now, in the woods.

shortnin, shortnin...

Sin-Sin turned away from Blue as the taunting song swelled inside his head. He started running. Away from the woods, from the one who would give him what he wanted most in the world—to be a man and have a place in the world.

He heard the sound of Blue’s voice carried by the wind through the trees. “What’s wrong with you, boy?” He didn’t stop, or turn around to answer.