Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson

couldn’t make things much worse.
    We had been down by the creek smoking when Gerald had first told me about sexual intercourse, though he’d used another word.
That
was when a man “puts his you-know-what between a woman’s you-know-whats,” he’d said in a tone of grave authority. Gerald’s account of coitus, which had seemed to draw on direct observation, explains how I’d come to think that a woman’s private parts resided between her breasts. This tantalizing misunderstanding had prevailed for several weeks, fascinating my seven-year-old mind until the fateful day that we got caught smoking cigarettes.
    One of the neighbors saw us down by the creek and called each of our parents. When we came home for supper, Daddy solemnly ushered us into the living room and left us there on the couch for what seemed like several months. No one ever used the living room at our house. We’d always thought it had been reserved for Sunday afternoon company, but now it appeared that it had actually been set aside for executions. Death Row at Central Prison would have been more cheerful.
Vern whispered something to me along the lines of “We’re dead,” but otherwise we sat silently, huddled under a cloud of iniquity darker than the grave, pondering our demise.
    We could hear Mama and Daddy talking in hushed tones in the kitchen. And then suddenly that huge bear of a man lumbered into the room, sat down in front of us, and so began the sermon. The voice was calm but the content was indecipherable. They knew, of course, exactly what boys talk about while smoking cigarettes down by the creek. Rather than punishing us, Daddy and Mama had decided that it was time for him to tell us about the birds and the bees. Daddy’s lips continued to move, but I had no idea what he was saying. He never even mentioned cigarettes. It seemed cruel, in a way, to burden condemned men with this prattle about God’s plan for Creation.
    Our one comfort was that as long as Daddy kept talking, he was not whipping us to death. Maybe our reprieve would last for only a few minutes, but why not make the most of it? So I nodded at what seemed appropriate times, and tried to appear alert and attentive, even as I peered into the abyss. The whole idea was to keep him talking. Daddy still hadn’t said one word about cigarettes. And then suddenly, without my having apprehended a single sentence, Daddy’s momentous speech ended. Did we have any questions? he asked us. Any questions at all? Was there anything we wanted to know about anything?
    The moment of death drew nigh. I tried to telepathically urge my brother to ask Daddy
something, anything
to save our lives for another few minutes. Perilous silence gripped the room. Seconds ticked by. If I’d only had the remotest idea what Daddy had been talking about, I would have asked him a hundred questions, as slowly as possible, like that woman in my “Arabian Nights” book who told the sultan long, interwoven stories to keep him from chopping off her head. But I couldn’t even identify the topic, let alone ask a pertinent question. Why didn’t my stupid older brother think of
something,
anything,
to ask Daddy? Finally, positive that further delay would move us straight to the End, I blurted out, “What is my front tooth made of?”
    Daddy laughed out loud and long, shook his head, and handed each of us a Christian book about where babies come from. Late that night, with a flashlight under the covers, I read both my book, which was called
Wonderfully Made,
and then
Vern’s book, which I was not supposed to see until I got older, read them cover to cover and still never found out that a woman’s vagina was between her legs. Apparently, while a man and wife lay sleeping, something horrible crawled out of him and into her—into her ear, for all I knew. Anyway, right after he gave us our books, Daddy took the whole family out for