Colour Blind

“You ought to kick him outta your house, boy,” Stanley had told me one night as we sat drinking whisky at the back of his store. His cheeks had been flushed red with heat and his words were slightly muddled together, his breath reeking of alcohol as he continuously took swigs from the bottle. “That black boy. You’re gettin’ too old to be puttin’ up with folk like him.”

“Don’t make no difference to me,” I’d told him earnestly. “Lyle ain’t been nothin’ but a good friend to me my whole life.”

His eyes had flickered with disgust as he looked at me, raising the bottle to his lips and taking another swig of whisky. “People been talkin’ about ya, boy. Wonderin’ why you’re hanging about with his type. Ain’t gonna cause you nothin’ but pain. That boy ain’t no friend to you. He’s scum.”

“Naw,” I had told him. I knew that if Pa had been there he would’ve slapped me on the back of his head, but the familiar childish sense of frustration had built up inside of me until I’d burst. “He ain’t scum. Lyle’s my favourite person in the world. He ain’t nothing like you say he is.”

He had spat at me then. Short and sharp — his eyes uglier than anything I’d ever seen. “Should’a known you were queer,” he muttered furiously. “Get the hell outta my store, boy. And don’t you think about comin’ back.”

———————————————————

It had happened in the middle of the night. The sound of cars pulling up outside the building, the echo of voices filling the cold and quiet house, loud and angry. I had heard shouting; it had woken me up from my slumber, and I had raced out of bed and down the stairs right away.

“What are you doing?” I had asked Stanley when I found him outside, and he had simply shoved me to the side with a furious glare.

“You stay outta it, boy, or you’ll end up like him.”

Fear had started to build up inside of me, my chest tight with panic, my thoughts becoming frantic as I watched him shove past. “What are you doing?” I had asked again when the next few men passed me, only to receive more ugly glares as they shoved their way past, one of them spitting at my feet.

I think a part of me had known what was happening before I heard it; had known what they were there for, what they were going to do. And I had stood there — shaking in the cold breeze, unable to move and unable to make a sound, only beginning to cry when I heard him shout.

He had called my name. Quickly and loudly, followed by the sound of his yelps, echoing across the night, in my ears over and over again, never ending, the loudest thing that I had ever heard in my life.

“Armand.”

“Armand.”

“Armand.”

Eventually the sound had disappeared. I could feel the breeze frigid against my skin, the tears as they dribbled down my cheeks, the fierce thumping of my heart inside my chest. I had realised then what I’d seen in his eyes that night; the same resignation that I’d felt when Stanley had told me to stay out of it, the acceptance that it would never be okay — not for us. That my hand on his was a promise of death. That I’d lead him there myself.

My lower lip had trembled. I’d never felt so numb in my life, so empty and so cold. I could hear them descending the stairs, knew that it was over, and yet I still couldn’t move. Not even when they passed me, blood on each of their knuckles, not even when they’d spat at my feet. I had just stared at the house that I’d grown up in, knowing that what lay inside of it was the thing that I should have feared all along.

An hour must have passed. My lips were blue and my hands were still trembling. Eventually I had sat down on the floor, my legs crumbling out from beneath me, my hands crashing against the gravel so fiercely that I began to bleed. When I had looked down at my hands, they were covered in blood, and I imagined that it was his.

I had as good as killed him myself.

I thought of his dad walking down the driveway and realised that I’d walked away from him too. Felt my head lolling to the side, wanting to rest it against his shoulder, seeing the fear in his eyes like a bullet, the watch yourself, boy, the knowledge that he was gone. I had thrown up all over the pavement, the taste in my mouth disgusting, and as I reached up to wipe away the spit I’d brushed blood against my lip. It made me vomit all over again, until I was numb and dizzy and alarmingly alone on the gravel.

I had looked up at the sky, but I couldn’t see either of them.

“World ain’t gonna like you two,” I had felt Pa saying in my ear.

I’d never hated myself more in my life; it bubbled like lead in my stomach and lead me into oblivion.

———————————————————

“Ain’t nothing wrong with you, Lyle Webber,” I’d said for the last time in my life. “People gotta realise that morality ain’t black and white.”

I’d spoken the words just as I’d laid him down on the grass, tears of self hatred mingling with his blood, dripping onto the grass where we’d once watched the stars. His body was bruised and covered in cuts, hand marks around his neck, his coffee-coloured eyes wide open and lifeless. I imagined him in his room, listening to them storming up the stairs — heard his shout of Armand, recognised his resignation to his own death. It had made me cry harder, knowing that he wouldn’t have fought back — knowing it because I’d seen it in his eyes, seen him give up; had placed it there myself.

I hoped more than anything that he knew that I loved him. That as they had stormed up the stairs, when he had realised that I wasn’t going to save him, he had known it as well as ever. That he had recognised something in my eyes that night, just like I’d recognised something in his, recognised that I was dumb and I was selfish but he was my favourite person in the world and I had nothing else. I never would have nothing else.

He would have saved me but I hadn’t moved. Maybe that was why he had been scared all along.

I hadn’t wanted to bury him. For a moment or two, I had sat down beside him, pretending that his eyes weren’t lifeless, that we were children again, and he was beside me as real as ever. “World ain’t all that pretty,” I had spoken out loud.

This time he didn’t fight back.