Break Any Woman Down

Melvin in the Sixth Grade

melvin in the sixth grade Maybe it wasaround the time that the Crips sliced up my brother's arm for refusing to join their gang. Or it could have been around the time that the Crips and the Bloods shot up the neighborhood one Halloween so we couldn't gotrick-or-treating. It could have even been the time that my brother's friend, Anthony, got shot for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But my father decided it was time to take advantage of a veteran's loan, get out of L.A., and move to the suburbs. Even if I can't quite nail the events that spurred the move, I know that one and a half months after I 1 climbed into my father's rusted-out BuickWildcat and said good-bye to 80th Street and hello to Vermillion Street with its lawns and streets without sidewalks, I fell for my first man. From the day Mrs. Campbell introduced him to the class, reprimanded us for laughing at his name, and sat him down next to me, 1 was struck by Melvin Bukeford with his stiff jeans, white creases ironed down the middle, huge bell-bottoms that rang, the kids claimed, every time the bells knocked against each other. Shiny jeans because he starched them. Melvin sporting a crew cut in 1981 when everybody else had long scraggly hair like the guys in Judas Priest or Journey. Pointed ears that stuck out like Halloween fake ones. The way he dragged out every single last word on account of being from Oklahoma. The long pointed nose and the freckles splattered all over his permanently pink face. Taller than everybody else because he was thirteen. All that and a new kid is why nobody liked him. Plus he had to be named Melvin. All us kids, we'd never seen anything like him before , not in school, not for real, not in California.And for me he was even more of a wonder because I was just getting used to the white folks in West Covina, the way they spoke, the clothes they wore. Melvin was even weirder to me than the rest of them. It was almost like he wasn't white. He was an alien of some kind. My beautiful alien from Planet Cowboy. I was writingMelvin Melvin Melvin Melvin, Mrs. Avery Arlington Bukeford on my Pee Chee folder by Melvin's second week of school. We walked the same way home everysingle school day. I fell in love with the drawl of his voice, the way he forgot the "e" in Avery; "Av'ry," he said it soft, or "AV'ry" when he thought I'd said the funniest thing, squinting at me sidewaysand giving me that dimple in his left cheek. All that made me feel like, well, just like I wanted to kiss my pillow 2 break any woman down at night and call it Melvin. So I did. "Ohhh, Mellllvin," I said, making out with my pillow every night. "Ohhh yeahh, Melvin." I was keeping all that a secret until my eighteen-year-old brother saw my folder one day and asked me who Melvin was. "None ya," I said, and he said he knew it had to be some crazy-looking white boy—or a Mexican, because that's all West Covina had. "Avery's done gone white boy crazy!" he called out. "I'ma tell Daddy!" I ran into my room and slammed the door to stare at my four bare walls because Daddy had made me take down the posters I'd had up, all centerfolds from Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines. For one glamorous week I had Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy, and Leif Garret looking down on me while I slept. But one day Daddy passed my door, took one look at Leif Garret all blonde and golden tan in his tight white jeans that showed off a very big bulge, and asked me, "Avery, who in the hell are all these white boys?" "Oh, Daddy, that's just Andy-" "Get that shit down off those walls right now," Daddy said. He glared at Leif Garret. I couldn't figure out why he was yelling at me. "But why—" "What did I say?" he demanded. "Take the posters down," I mumbled. And that's why I was staring at four blank walls. But...