Instructions for Repairing a Robot Black Boy

[1. TROUBLESHOOTING]

Recently, I’ve been distracted by the fact that all the Black men in my family are gone. I’m the last one. And these dead guys won’t leave me alone. Every essay, poem, and cryptic Facebook update for the past five months has veered into my obsession with them. 

What a joke it is to be haunted. 

I tell this to Josie, and she stares at me. I suspect half of her therapy schooling was spent honing this stare. It’s dreadfully effective at getting me to run my mouth.

I cave and eventually say, “It was either commitment issues, suicide, or white women.”

“You need to unmute, Mar.”

New-fashioned therapy. I was so excited for a virtual platform because—and Josie would love that I’m admitting this—it’s much easier to be vulnerable with the shield of an unstable connection, non-working camera, and therapist who isn’t technically licensed in your state.

Unmuting, I say, “Oh, my bad. I was saying that these family members either died by killing themselves, or abandoning their family, and—well, my great-grandfather was actually shot because he was having an affair with this white woman.” 

I leave a dollop of quiet after I say that, trying my hand at the therapy stare. 

. . .

I cave again. “It must run in the family. Claire is white.”

. . .

. . .

Damn, she’s good. 

. . .

“And maybe there’s something real to that. Maybe I’m afraid—”

“Mhm?”

“Well, yeah, you can probably guess what I’m thinking.”

“I can guess, sure. But mind-reading isn’t my gig.”

I tell her how these Black family men keep coming up for me. First, I call them distractions, then generational curses, then, “I wonder what they were like.”

Josie gives me a Buddhist anecdote before telling me, “Being the lone anything in your family can be a lot. When do these distractions happen?”

. . .

My computer desk sits in front of an open window. I’m cold. No, frigid—that’s a better word. I often gaze at this same tree. Well, he’s not much of a tree now. He looks like a map of a city’s roads, his branches crisscrossing each other, with shrivels of pink flowers dotted about his wooden hands like sleeping butterflies—oh, I see it now. My special tree looks like one of the online interactive maps I used while researching for essays. There are spatterings of pink dots along backroads, and if your cursor hovers over those spots, a picture of a hanged Black body, or a burned Black body, or beaten Black— 

“Mar?” Josie is still with me.

“Sorry. I get flashes of my great-grandfather’s face. I don’t see him literally,” I say. “I’m not seeing things—no need to worry.”

“I’m not worried at this particular point,” Josie says.

I tell her my Granny kept a portrait of her father, “Lefty,” atop her shelf collection of porcelain cows. It’s been thirteen years since I’ve been in the same room with that photo of Lefty, but I can envision him perfectly. In the picture, Lefty has a leather army jacket and motorcycle cap. He has pretty eyes, and I hate that I remember them. In 1954, he snuck around on my great grandma with a white woman. The white woman’s brother gathered a few buddies to shoot Lefty at the end of his workday. I still can’t find his pink dot on the map.

 “Maybe I’m so obsessed with this dude because I’m dating a white woman,” I say. “Think I’m onto something?”

“There’s probably a reason this idea is coming up.”

More staring. Only this time, I don’t cave.

“I’d like to try something I hardly ever do,” she finally says. “There’s something called writing therapy.” 

I perk up. 

“We can try this out if you’re willing. Here’s a prompt: Keep a diary—or it could be one of your stories—where you write your life in third person.”

“Mar is afraid that’ll make his head bigger than it already is,” I say.

“Mar shouldn’t feel forced to try this. But if he did feel comfortable, Josie thinks he’ll enjoy it. And this might stir up some different writing, so you won’t have to keep—”

“Beating dead horses,” I interrupt.

“That wouldn’t have been my choice of phrasing.”

[2. HAVE MOMMA SLAP-TEST THE BATTERIES]

Dear diary that only Josie reads, I tried telling my mom

On a Facebook video call, Mar tells Momma he’s been officially diagnosed with depression. Mar has battle plans depending on her reaction. He could tell her this was only cooked up by his therapist to screw over the insurance company.

First, Momma says, “But what about all your accomplishments?”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Mar responds. “It’s more like I don’t like myself.”

“Oh, baby. But you’re an amazing man. And I’m so proud of you—your Momma is so, so proud.”

“Thank you, Momma.”

. . .     

“Can you do something that makes you happy? Are they going to get you meds for it?” Momma’s voice starts buffering.

“It’s really not that big a deal. I just feel cold sometimes.”

“Cold?”

“Yes—maybe not cold, but numb, you know? Like a robot. I need to think about feeling before acting it out. Does that make sense?” Mar says (Josie, the third-person thing feels off. It’s not my kind of dorky. Can I go by Robotman after the Doom Patrol comics?).

“Yes, Momma gets that way from time to time, too.” She stills. “What about your writing? Isn’t that going well?”

“My writing is—to be honest, I’m not sure anymore. Weirder,” Robotman says (No, that doesn’t feel right either).

“Ain’t nothing wrong with weird, baby,” Momma says.

“Very true,” Gizmo (now we’re onto something) becomes closemouthed.

Gizmo sees Momma contemplating. She sighs, puffs, jitters, and grits her teeth. It’s like watching an electron avalanche. Gizmo doesn’t wish to say it, but her anxiousness peer pressures him. “This is probably all coming out of my situation with Claire,” he beeps.

“Are y’all going through a rough patch?” Momma calms. Now she has her answer.

“Yeah, kind of. I told her I wanted to break up.”

“Ah. That’s a rough patch, alright.”

. . .

Momma says, “Do you think you’re dating the right sex—are you gay, honey?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Gizmo proceeds to giggle. He wonders how long she has suspected her little machine was gay. He wonders why she didn’t ask a more helpful question—or maybe that question was helpful. What had he done to be so unknown to his own mother? Gizmo’s last book was about Momma: learning grace from her and all other Black mothers across the country. It wasn’t the best researched, it seems.

As he stops his giggle fit, he realizes this conversation will make its way into a future essay: She’s the motherboard that keeps giving.

. . .

“Did you hear me, Mar?” Momma’s question cuts through.

Gizmo wasn’t paying attention. Again. “What’s that, Momma?” 

“Maybe you need to get some more Black friends. Remember you’re still Black.” 

Something crumples within Gizmo’s chest. Gizmo squeezes his eyes in—pain? Maybe Gizmo can feel.

“Mar, I’m for real; you’re all the way up there. And white people make everyone feel lonely.”

“Sorry,” Gizmo says. “You know, there’s only two other Black students in my grad program, and we’re each separated by genre, so I never see them.”

“That’s alright, baby. There’s got to be someplace close to D.C. with some Black folk. Because you got to remember you’re a Black man. And—I know you love white girls—but maybe look for a Black girl next time.” Momma snickers, and Gizmo files the sound of it away. 

Local Disk (D:) Internal Storage>>Essays>>>forFam|

Her_laugh_like_sweet_neighing.mp3| 

[3. RENEW ANTIVIRUS SUBSCRIPTION]

Claire does not want to break up with Gizmo. She asks him to give their relationship a chance, to fight for it. “After we moved here, we stopped going on dates—that’s the problem.” Claire is sure about this. “This happens all the time to couples. Let’s try dating again.            Please.              Please.             Mar, I love you. Say something,           please.”

. . .

Gizmo accepts the terms of the agreement.

Six days later, Gizmo is on a Smithsonian date with Claire. After a selfie with C-3PO and R2, Gizmo and Claire’s silhouettes hold hands under a Barnum and Bailey banner with elephants balanced on beachballs. Each elephant’s eye is too honest. Gizmo can’t bear looking into those dots of ink that form their irises. He imagines the elephants whispering, “Yes, we really were whipped until our trunks flourished convincingly for the crowd. Yes, humans, we really were true.”

Claire disrupts Gizmo’s trance to say, “I can’t believe we did this to those animals. Let them get away with doing this.”

Gizmo’s teeth grind with desperation. He wants to tell her so many things at once, like: This section of the museum really is hilarious; only nine paces away from here—from Prince’s guitar and a circus poster—there is a room no one stays in for long where recordings of famous minstrel performances loop. And also: Isn’t it funny you just said “we.” And also: What’s the hard part to believe—that the We had the idea or that the We were able to realize their fantasy? All so that the We could cackle and awe at what can be made possible with a master, slave, and bullwhip. 

But those words would come across far more combative than Gizmo would hope, and it’s so damn difficult to be articulate when he looks into her eyes. So, instead, Gizmo says, “I know. Shit was wild.” 

They skip the Jim Crow show to marvel at Captain America’s shield. In person, its white stripe is gunmetal grey. The Handmaid’s Tale dress stares down at Claire like a weeping angel. 

“Realer every day with Roe v. Wade,” she says. 

Gizmo likes Claire’s speech. She is accidentally musical when she’s bleak. They make their way to a shrine of PBS heroes. Claire maraca-bounces her head and sings along to the “won’t you be my neighbor” coming from the speakers. In a photograph above a red, hand-knit cardigan, they see Mr. Rogers dipping his toes in a kiddie pool with Officer Clemmons. Claire catches Gizmo lingering on this photo longer than he should. “There are so many Black cops on TV,” he says. Gizmo is not sure why he says this out loud, but kudos to Claire for the respectful nod in response. 

As they *click click* past Dorothy’s slippers, Gizmo is startled that he can’t wipe Officer Clemmons’s face from his vision. There was something about his face— 

(There I go again, Josie. My distractions.) 

Officer Clemmons bears a resemblance to Gizmo’s great-grandfather: the bountiful glean on his cheeks, the sepia pupils. Though Lefty was lynched before he could grow grey hairs.

“You hungry?” Claire speaks. “Not sure if we should eat here. It’s probably the most expensive cafeteria food you’ll ever see in your life.” 

And Gizmo is glad Claire said something, because, “You’re so right, and there’s this awesome place called Busboys and Poets on 5^th.” 

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. Didn’t Uncle Pete write poetry? The one who shot himself in his bedroom. His momma’s shotgun. Never realized the Hemingway connection.]

“Busboys and Poets?” Claire asks.

“Yeah—they have books. And food.”

Leaving the museum, Gizmo and Claire pass a street performer bludgeoning a steaming-hot tempo against the winter air. He’s a paint pail riot thudding from the sidewalk. 

“Fuck me—he’s amazing.” Oddly erotic phrasing, but Gizmo couldn’t have gathered more truthful words. “I have a ten. I feel bad he’s beating his hands that hard in the cold.” 

Gizmo gives Claire the bill, and she bows after placing it in the performer’s hat. She bows like this is her performance. The drummer starts howling a thank you song—fiddling the spellbound chords within his throat. He’s so young and yet he sounds like a medieval war siren. His voice is so graveled and textured that you could touch the rivulets it leaves in the air—run your fingers over the sound as one flips through albums in a record store. 

Gizmo says, “Otis Redding. That’s who he sounds like.”

Claire says, “Ah, I love Otis Redding—grew up listening to him with Dad.” 

The drummer’s song bellows behind the two as they walk up the sidewalk.

“Really?” Gizmo can’t hide his shock.

“Yes!” Claire’s voice heightens over the drummer. “Didn’t expect a white girl to have grown up on Otis, did you?”

“I’m starting to expect the unexpected with you.” 

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. When I was a boy, I imagined all the disappeared Black men in my family would have voices like Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and Marvin Gaye.]

“Ha. What a writer thing to say. You’re also unexpected.”

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. Grandma told me her brother, my Uncle Rat, was killed by a log truck. He was driving too fast behind the truck when the trucker hit the brakes. The log sawed through his Impala, and parts of him. Granny said Rat was funny, so I gave him the voice of James Brown in the stories she’d share.]

 “Being a writer is definitely unexpected,” Claire says.

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. Such a dramatic way to die. Why couldn’t he have been like Mr. Perkins and simply left his family in the middle of the afternoon? Our family loves its flair for dramatics. Then, there’s what happened with Uncle Rat’s son: my cousin Derek. He overdosed on—what was it again?]

The paint pails are still thrumming.

“Did you find something in there to write about?” Claire’s eyes hook into Gizmo.

“Mm. Yes, yes, I think so. I might try my hand at non-fiction,” Gizmo says.

Paint pails thrumming. 

“Oh, really? How will you manage not to lie?” Claire pokes his arm in a delightful way. [disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. I remember thumbing through the box of Lefty’s vinyl stored in Granny’s closet to recover a trove of the unsung and unscratched.]

“I’ve been writing about my family, but I know so little that it might as well be fiction, you know? I basically only know how they died.” 

Paint pails thrumming.

“Could I read some?” 

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. My great-grandfather was shot nine times for dating a white woman. He’s still thrumming. My uncles wanted to die and did something about it. Thrumming. Thrumming. Lonely little Black boy, Truth is the executioner’s blade kissing your nape.]

“Only if you want to share, of course,” she says.

Gizmo never shared his essays with Claire, because he thought they’d be a healthier couple without those hard conversations about race dominating their time together (which is why I’m not sure this essay will help me, Josie. Writing has always been my hiding place).

This would be a fair time for Gizmo to dig into why he broke up with Claire, why he—out of the blue—saw her more as a friend than a future wife. But if Gizmo wants this to be non-fiction, the truer question—the non-rhetorical question—would be about the drumming. Gizmo has honest questions about the drumming. So let’s go back to that afternoon, with the paint pail man and that sound. What if it wasn’t really paint buckets? What if it were hooves? What if Gizmo turned around to see the street drummer on a horse? What if he would see a lynching rope in one hand of the drummer? Then, Gizmo might have seen the eyes he hadn’t noticed before. His eyes were sepia and glossy-burned. What if it was a daymare, and the drummer started galloping toward Gizmo, howling a strange laughter. Would this have been too obvious?

[4. SCAN FOR MALWARE]

Auntie called young Gizmo “little nigga” and “white boy” depending on the situation. Mixed inputs scrabbled his mind. Before his mother came back into Gizmo’s life, Auntie raised him. Momma, then Granny, then Auntie, then Momma’s second go—three Black women he’d trot between. All the hurt these women endured, and they’d never tried therapy. Gizmo wants to recommend it to them, but he’s fearful about Auntie’s reaction.

Gizmo admits he was hesitant, too. He never considered therapy an option until Claire proposed it. Claire convinced Gizmo therapy could overwrite his decision to leave 28 days after they moved in together, 28 days after they U-Hauled from Texas to start grad school together. Normal people don’t change their minds that quickly. Gizmo was malfunctioning. After all, he only applied to George Mason—was only here—because it was near Claire’s dream university. They had been together for nearly two years. What switched inside Gizmo? 

Claire pulled up “Zocdoc: Find a Doctor” on Gizmo’s desktop one evening after his writing center training. On the intake form, it asked something to the effect of, “Do you have any idea what’s wrong with you?”

“Why yes, I think I do, Doctor Zoc,” Gizmo typed.

Gizmo remembers (and you already know this, Josie) putting that he felt like a robot. For his whole life, people have seemed too . . . fleshy. Gizmo doesn’t understand how people can feel so deeply. After he told Claire about “his feelings” that they’d be better as friends, she cried in such a red-faced way. She was crying for them both. He couldn’t even well up one dry eye. 

Claire asked Gizmo when he last cried. He said, “Elementary school. I fell playing kickball.”

“That’s not normal, Mar. That’s not normal.”

A list of Black men Gizmo has seen cry: Barack Obama, Idris Elba on Hot Ones, Michael Jordan in that meme, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther after his father was bombed, Will Smith in situations involving Jada Pinkett Smith.

When Gizmo searches “How to cry as a Black man” on TikTok, he finds a video with 1.3 million views of a groom seeing his bride for the first time. The title: “Black Man Trying Not to Cry.” The groom’s tuxedo is made of pearls, and his lineup is devastatingly gorgeous—it’s one of those hall-of-fame cuts the barber would put on their wall. There is a warning that this video is “very emotional.” The groom cries so profusely at the sight of his wife that his neck glistens. Gizmo recalls that he and Claire would watch Burn Notice back when the love was mutual, and she’d mimic a tactic from the dangerous woman dating the stoic man on screen: She’d threaten with a smile. “You better cry at our wedding,” she’d say.

He’d play his part. “Of course I will. Even if it’s only one tear. It’ll be one big tear.”

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. Do you think they cried? All the disappeared Black men who share my round cheeks and songful eyes. Or do you think they swigged their lives down like Irish car bombs with stoney faces? According to my family’s women, they’d often leave in autumn when even the trees were indecisive about what direction to die in. I have this fantasy where our family’s men are free-range horses: one of two expressions, engineered for running, heartbeats so strong they’d strip skin off the palm of anyone who put a hand to their chest. In the fantasy, there’s only the simplicity of what we are, not what we’ve been trained for.]                                                        

[SYSTEM ERROR] 

Josie, Gizmo is getting uncomfortable. Gizmo is getting uncomfortable with sleeping. He takes caffeine pills to stay up all night to write this essay or doom scroll for instructions. [SYSTEM COLLAPSE] He can feel his heart now. He wants to [Esc] with humor; how will he [Fn] with a disease his body has no willingness to fight? 

Nina Simone’s voice stands like a gargoyle in each corner of this dark living room. Gizmo has lied to Claire that he needs to sleep on the couch. It’s 2am. He is writing this with music in his earbuds at his desk. Claire opens their bedroom door. He is whispering binary and dictating pop-ups when Claire catches him. She will soon give up the repair effort. She lingers through the chill melody of the room to reach him, asks for his promise to stay in therapy—to stay even after he leaves. 

[6. REBOOT]     

Two years after the breakup, they will both be much happier. Gizmo will still feel guilty. Though it will be nice to know he’s feeling. Gizmo will move in with fellow grad students: poets, who—he will come to understand—are big fans of crying. And he’ll love that. On a fall day, they will invite Gizmo to a nearby park to write. Katey will point to a tree splotched with color, and say something blissfully macabre: “In autumn, things are either dead or dying beautifully.” 

And that will lead Gizmo back to his desk, to his window, to his tree, still dotted with pink. He’ll scribble verses where kids climb it, play pirate ship.

Youth is such a scarcity for a Black child.

The pirate children will find stick swords, launch into their “en gardes,” and he will watch them from a distance. He will build an imaginary castle wall around joy to sit outside and stare through its cracks, pushing his eyeballs in like quarters slotted through a gumball machine.

Eyes again. Always the eyes. That obsession came after Gizmo’s mother swore you’d always be able to spot a lying man by their eyes.

[disk management(C:) software.exe| popup_block_fail. Except Claire. She couldn’t spot it in my eyes. And when I nightdream my younger self playing in a tree with other kids, they can’t either.]

[7. CALL SUPPORT]

Gizmo never

Josie, I never finished the essay. 

I stopped coming to therapy because I was afraid you would tell me I shouldn’t feel guilty. I was afraid of confronting defense mechanisms, and masking, and core beliefs, and pre-screenings for ASD, and moralizing, and hearing you say that there’s no instruction manual on repairing a robot Black boy. I was afraid you’d be warm when you asked me to do an imaginative exercise in which I speak to my younger self and realize it’s much easier to be kind to him because I don’t feel guilty about him—I feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for him because he’s just a lonely kid trying to survive. Because he didn’t choose any of that for himself. Then you would ask me how I’m feeling, and I would say, “I don’t know. I can’t decide if I’m better because I feel better or because I can rationally prove why I should feel better. And maybe I would finally let you read this, and let you ask, “Would a robot feel all this—”    feel all this                feel             feel    

I thought I needed to be something steel and indelicate. I’m only 22, and I’m running out of family examples of living through this. Cousin Derek and Uncle Rat didn’t make it to 24 because, under this circus tent, performing Blackness is worth more on the market than the lives of its performers. To ringmasters, even dead elephants are worth their weight in ivory. That’s why I made the decision to come back to therapy; maybe I can be an example for those not yet here.

Working on myself, I won’t want to repeat the same mistakes and lies with Rachel (my deus ex machina). Tomorrow evening, she and I will attend a “Dining with Baldwin: Culinary Homage with Jessica Harris” event at the National Museum of African American History. It will be hard chowing down in front of folk I don’t know, but Dr. Harris will remind me of Granny. Rachel has turned me on to Ethiopian jazz, which we will listen to on our drive. She will tell me these songs remind her of Sundays in her home country. I’ll let her look into my eyes, and hope she trusts me when I say the songs remind me of a family I have not met. 

Josie, you told me that writing what I’d like to witness in my dreams before going to bed may help avoid nightmares. So here goes:

Outside cookout. Not too hot. The grill whistles like a steamboat, and the kids blow bubbles in each other’s faces. Granny is showing Uncle Rat (ever the impatient one) how to sop his injera in doro wat without it falling apart. Momma is raising hell with Lefty because he’s a horrible domino partner. Derek is trying to convince Auntie and Uncle Pete that the tere siga is fine to eat raw. I’m—as always—overdoing it on the berbere, so Rachel offers to feed it to me. There is the sway of old pine. She and I go back-and-forth: She feeds me, I feed her. I look into her eyes, and she looks into mine.