An American Story by Debra J. Dickerson Page A

task I’d delegated to him, she simply called him to her and sent him indulgently on his way. As soon as she turned her back, I put him back to work. I didn’t yet understand the full extent of gender stereotyping. I understood that Daddy didn’t do housework and was never in the kitchen for longer than it took to eat and critique our labors, but I thought that was because he was Daddy. I didn’t understand that it was because he was male. At least I didn’t until he came home and found five-year-old Bobby standing on a chair placidly washing dishes with a large towel covering him from chin to Keds.
    I was cleaning the refrigerator, my back to the sink, when Daddy came in. I hadn’t even heard him.
    â€œWhat on God’s green—” It was the incredulous disbelief in Daddy’s voice that got my attention.
    â€œThis a dress? You wearing a dress, boy!” I turned and saw him holding Bobby by the shoulders, shaking him and staring in disbelief at the towel flapping around him.
    Bobby didn’t say a word, his face devoid of understanding.
    â€œBoy, whachou think you doin acting like a li’l girl! I won have it, swear fore God I kill you fore I see you like this.”
    Thank God Mama appeared from somewhere. All I could think was that I was the one who’d made him do the dishes.
    She pried Bobby loose from Daddy’s grip. Bobby still hadn’t made a sound, though he wrapped himself around her like a garden vine.
    â€œJohnnie, I won have that boy actin like a girl.” Daddy’s eyes had that narrow glint.
    I spun back around to scrub the refrigerator at top speed, terrified he’d vent his steam on me. Mad as he was now, he would fulminate for at least a half hour while I would have to stand in feigned awe and humility, praying it wouldn’t end with a whipping. Thankfully, he followed Mama and Bobby out of the kitchen, still bellowing.
    After that, I noticed Daddy eyeing Bobby quietly for long minutes, as if seeing him anew. He took him for frequent haircuts to downplay its curly voluptuousness; he growled and ground his teeth at Bobby’s lisp; he bit the head off anyone unfortunate enough to mistake him for a girl in his hearing. Bobby couldn’t play with us at all anymore; if Daddy found him even in the same room where we played with dolls or cleaned, he’d thunder at him to come away. Confused, we’d watch Bobby scamper away and disappear with Daddy to hunt or use tools. We wouldn’t even let him carry his own dishes to the sink, a mere two feet from the table, for fear Daddy wouldn’t like it.
    From the age of ten or so, at family events, I began to notice the same sort of sexual divisions: the males lounged while the females cooked and cleaned with babies on their hips. Girls got reprimanded for the most minor breaches of decorum; the boys had significantly more leeway. At one of our backyard cookouts, a gang of male cousins destroyed our backyard swimming pool with firecrackers. One of Daddy’s finds, the mangy pool was on its last legs, but still, they made it unusable. At the same time, a bunch of girl cousins were cleaning up in the kitchen. A spontaneous dish-towel volleyball game broke out. All we were doing was swatting it around and laughing; we knew better than to break anything. Mama fussed at the boys; she hit us girls. Even when we got into coed mayhem, the girls were “supposed to know better” and, at a minimum, lectured, while the boys were shooed away indulgently. I noticed all these things, but didn’t have the imagination to consciously resent them any more than I consciously resented whites or our inner-city cloister; it didn’t occur to me that these were things that could be changed.
    I thought Bobby was special, too, simply because he was a boy; I also wanted to help him stay out of trouble. I was jealous of my mother’s special affection for him, but I was just as jealous of my