Melvin in the Sixth Grade

MELVIN IN THE SIXTH GRADE/Dana Johnson MAYBE IT WAS AROUND the time that the Crips sUced up my brother's arm for refusing to join their gang. Or it could have been after the Crips and the Bloods shot up the neighborhood one Halloween so we couldn't go trick-or-treating. It could have even been when my brother's friend Anthony got shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever the reason, 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 down the events that spurred the move, I know that one and a half months after I climbed into my father's rusted-out Buick Wildcat and said good-bye to 110th Street and heUo to Verdugo Street, with its lawns and no sidewalks, I feU 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, I was struck by Melvin Bukeford, in his stiffjeans, 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 sported a crew cut when everybody else had long, scraggly hair like the guys in White Snake or Poison. Pointed ears that stuck out Uke Halloween fake ones. The way he dragged out every single last word on account ofbeing from Oklahoma. The long, pointed nose and the freckles splattered aU over his permanently pink face. TaUer than everybody because he was thirteen. AU that and a new kid was why nobody liked him. Plus he had to be named Melvin. AU us kids, we'd never seen anything like him before, not in school, not for reals, 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 aUen from Planet Cowboy. By Melvin's second week of school, I was writing Melvin Melvin Melvin Melvin, Mrs. AveryArlington Bukeford on my Pee Chee folder. We walked the same way home every single 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 "AVry" when he thought Td said the funniest thing, squinting at me sideways and giving me that dimple in his left cheek. 42 · The Missouri Review It made me feel Uke, weU, just like I wanted to kiss my pUlow at night and call it Melvin. So I did. "Ohhh, Mellllvin," I said, making out with my pUlow every night. "Ohhh yeahh, Melvin." I was keeping him 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. "Tma tell Daddy!" I ran into my room, slammed the door and stared at my four bare walls. Daddy had made me take down the posters Td had up: all centerfolds from Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines. For one glamorous week, I had Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett looking down on me whüe I slept. But one day, Daddy passed my door, took one look at Leif Garrett, aU blond and golden tan in his tight white jeans that showed off a very big bulge, and asked me, "Avery, who in the hell are aU these white boys?" "Oh, Daddy, that's just Andy—" "Get that shit down off those waUs right now," Daddy said. He glared at Leif Garrett. I couldn't figure out why he was yelling...