I’m in an imaginary van going down an imaginary highway. There’s a motley bunch inside. A mix of brown and black and one white white person. It’s okay. You’re not a racist. I’d probably think the same thing, too: it’s some kind of correction house. And because there’s a few smaller whippersnappers and even the bigger ones look like whippersnappers in the face, it’s got to be a correction house for troubled kids. It’s what I’d probably think, too.
The older brown guy, that’s me. I’m driving. I agree I’d look a little tougher with a tattoo of a trident going down my forearm that’s hanging out the window, but I still give myself a B to a B+ in the looks-intimidating category. You gotta look intimidating if you’re driving for a correction house.
The black guy in the imaginary passenger seat with the beard who kinda resembles Common–he’s got to be the sup for the boys. He looks like he could take care of business, too, if he needed to. If you’re a sup in a correction house, you’ve gotta take care of business.
The lighter black woman in the first backseat, who’s taking care of imaginary business and boppin’ up side the shoulder one of the younger boys–she must be the imaginary sup for the girls in this imaginary van.
There’s another brown in the van. A kid who does have a tattoo who resembles me, like, a lot. He looks like he could be nearing graduation from the correction house and so does another boy, mixed, who looks to be about the same age but is closer to 27. While the driver and the Common lookalike may look like they can take care of business, this twenty-something actually can. Ask two toughs who tried jumping him once in a not-so-imaginary mini-mart.
Then the little two whippersnappin’ boys who are a hot mess. Bouncing around as much a seat belt would allow, flicking each other’s ears. It’s not imaginative at all to say these two might go on and do something very special with a basketball.
There’s two older girls who are also on the lighter side of black. They look like they’re graduates of the correction house and a living testament to just how successful the program is at this house. They might be getting shown off to the white lady in the backseat, say, an imaginary donor who hasn’t written out her imaginary check yet.
One of these girls is actually 30, can pass for 17, and is about to embark on her masters. She can explain it a lot better, this electro-convulsive therapy, but I think it has something to do with electrocuting eligible ill people. It’s legal, take it easy.
The other girl is already a mom. If you were to walk up to the van, you’d see the handsome boy in a baby seat, facing backwards. And this girl-mom? A phenom in the kitchen.
What if?
What if back in 1969, when the white woman who’s in the van now was just 15 back then and got knocked up by a frisky 14 year old brown boy, decided on a different route other than to have that kid? It so happens this woman’s grandmother, who didn’t like browns very much, had quite the influence in all of it, telling her pimple faced granddaughter: You’re having this baby, ya little shit, now go away for the next few months.
She did.
It wasn’t until my mid-30’s when I would would reunite with my mom, the woman in the imaginary backseat of the imaginary van being driven around by her actual firstborn. And the rest of my family.
So yeah, abortion?
A van’s about all I can imagine.
-tmc
Things Men Carry 