Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums Page A

stood my ground on the bed that morning as our own battle was joined. “Do it and I promise-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die I’ll never call you a girl again,” he said, sounding not like a father at all with that cross-my-heart silliness.
    I remained completely still, completely silent until he began to shake me again, this time much more violently. “No! Stop!” I shouted. “You’re hurting me!”
    My mother flipped over at the sound of my distress. “Are you proud of yourself now?” she asked with an exaggerated sob. “You’ve hurt us both.”
    My father let me go and fell to his knees. “Please, Nan. Please. I’m sorry. I love you,” he said, his voice cracking. He reached for her but she jumped at his touch, scurrying to the other side of the as yet unmade bed.
    â€œDon’t hurt her!” I yelled, and tried to slap him across his face like he had slapped her earlier. He swung his arm up in self-defense but I dived for the floor before he could land a blow.
    â€œHoward! Stop it! Howard!” my mother screamed.
    My father rose and grabbed the Big Black Belt from his closet. “That’s it,” he said, raising it toward me. “I’ve had enough of this.” I ran from the room as my mother reached across and slammed the door shut behind me. The bottom half of the leather strap, which he had swung for the first time my way, caught in the slammed door and lay in the hallway at my feet. The door then cracked open for a second and the Big Black Belt was slurped back inside like the tongue of a panting chow. I put my little ear up to the suddenly locked door andheard my own parents’ own panting now behind it, the sound of the belt’s buckle falling to the floor, my father’s muffled voice softening from “sorry” to “shh-shh-shh” to “shit, Nan, oh, shit . . . Nan . . . Nan . . . shit . . . oh, shit . . .”
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    I watched Nan—as I often referred to my mother in my thoughts when my father wasn’t around—return from that bedroom of theirs after my urine-soaked adventure in the deserted dugout. She had taken off her bathing suit and was parading around the house now in her bra and panties as she, humming to herself, straightened pillows and dusted surfaces and ran water over an ice tray and poured three glasses of her overly sweetened tea—one for her, one for the football coach’s wife who was about to arrive any minute, and one for me. Kim and Karole insisted on cherry Kool-Aid. She asked me to stand up on the couch and help her fashion about her whippet-thin body the toga she had made from an old bedsheet as she prepared herself for the final rehearsal she and Coach Kirby’s wife were going to have before the big talent show. “Remember now. This is our little secret,” she said when the doorbell rang and Miz Kirby—a Donna Reed look-alike—came giggling inside, the two women giddy with their plans, pleased with themselves for having found this diversion from the boredom that dulled so many of their days. They weren’t much more than girls, barely past thirty and stuck in a small Mississippi town with husbands that hadn’t taken them out to eat on a Friday night since the men had put the word Coach in front of their names and the two women had to live their lives feigning interest while seated on the backless bleachers of muddy ball fields and half-filled gymnasiums. Like my mother, Miz Kirby quickly stripped down to her bra and panties. She pulled her own toga out of a Jitney Jungle grocery sack.
    â€œThese don’t look right for ancient Rome,” said my mother between sips of tea and snapping her brassiere straps with her fingers, then snapping Miz Kirby’s. “Tell you what, I’m not going to wear a bra,” she claimed, her eyes widening at what she heard herself saying. She began to