My True Self

FICTION My True Self Richard Sears I'm the most normal member of my family. What am I saying? I mean, I'm the only normal one of the whole shebang. My mother's the worst, although she doesn't think so because she's so tolerant: she bends over backward for everything that's weird, like my brother and sister. She's an old hippie, you see, a real old-fashioned hippie. She still irons her hair, which reaches below her waist even though it's gray, and bakes foul-tasting brownies with pot in them. She buys her stash from the same dealer she had when she was in high school; every two weeks, regular as clockwork. She thinks I'm really a sad case because I don't enjoy getting stoned. All the rest of the Connelly family will take a hit now and then, but I'm a real disappointment to her. Something about marijuana kinda makes me sick. Nothing moral or anything like that, but whenever I smoke-just a few times-I get this feeling like I'm floating out over a big canyon and when my high's over I'm going to fall, fall forever maybe in this thick, sickly sweet haze-and never, never see anything definite again. My mom has stayed a hippie so long she's about lost all her costumes and equipment. She broke the string on her love beads and they fell into the garbage disposal, where they made a godawful sound every time you turned the damn thing on for weeks. Else she'd stillbe wearing them and her bellbottoms, seventeen pairs, which she had made into a quilt when they started to turn to rags. But you don't need beads or the peace symbol or the head bands or anything to keep your tolerance. And she's done that. Laid all the way back, for everyone but me. For a big example, she puts up with my sister, who is just plain crazy, except when she's in the house in neutral. Let me explain: my sister Jane has had this identity crisis going on for several years now, so she keeps trying interesting new selves. When she came home and told my mother she was becoming a nun, Mom was pretty happy at first, because she loves having her tolerance tested. Then it turns out my sister meant she was becoming a Buddhist nun, with a shaved head and Richard Sears teaches English at Berea College and has had several books published about early blacks at Berea and their connections with the college. 47 a saffron sheet to wrap around; then she had to go down to the bus depot and the train station and stand barefoot outside the main entrance in all kinds of weather. So she gave that up. Then she became a topless dancer at this all-night sex joint for the raincoat brigade; she was real popular at first because with her shaved head she looked like that Irish singer that denounced the Pope on tv. Only with bigger breasts. The customers thought that was really sexy, I guess. But she gave that up too, because she said it wasn't her true self. I think her true self is when she's staying at home, where I've never seen her do anything but sleep and eat and lie on the couch barking orders about the tv because she's too lazy to reach for the remote. But Mom tolerates it all. She even applauds it. She says Jane is on the only worthwhile mission in life. "What's that, Mom?" I was once fool enough to ask. "Why, searching for your true self, J. H." "Mom," I said, "Jane ain't searching; she's laying there like any other couch potato." "Searching for your true self, Jimi Hendrix Connelly," Mom said, all in a huff. So I dropped it-she's pretty upset whenever she uses my full name like that. Anyway, Mom also sponsored my big brother's trip out of the closet. He's gay, and I guess I knew it before he told everybody...