Mrs. Dalby was waiting for me in the front yard. Sarah was standing in front of her, arms in the air, hips circling rapidly, spinning a Hula-Hoop around her tiny waist. We got out of the car; Raelyn and Sophie ran to greet Sarah.
“Jane, I have some great news,” Mrs. Dalby said. She held a folded paper out to me. “I took the liberty of sending a selection of your poems and essays to the California Institute of the Arts. My friend works in admissions there and she has been known to grant early admission to exceptional students. I wrote to her recommending you, sent her your writing, and let her know you have always made good grades, and that you would be happy to send your transcripts should she be interested. Well, she is! This is the letter I received from her today. You’re all but accepted, Jane. You just need to fill in the application and send it in with your transcripts. There are applications for scholarships and funding in here as well, which you will definitely qualify for.” Her face was flushed. I felt Gram standing behind me.
“When does she leave?” Gram asked. I turned to face her.
“You want me to go?
“I’m telling you to go!”
“What about Sophie and Rae?” I looked at them, doing Hula-Hoop contests with Sarah in the yard.
“They’ll be fine here with me. Your mom will be home in a few weeks.” Mrs. Dalby thrust the letter into my side. I folded it and put it in my back pocket.
“When will I have to leave? How will I get there?” I asked.
“I’ll buy you a ticket.” Gram said.
“You’ll leave in a few weeks; you’ll have to send in your paperwork right away,” Mrs. Dalby said.
“But we have to move, we have to pack.” I turned to Gram.
“No, we don’t. Your mom called Jake an’ talked ‘im into bringin’ the rent here current. He paid. But he couldn’t keep you girls in that school. Turns out your girlfriend’s dad complained to Father John. He called me an’ told me somethin’ about havin’ to put you both back on the waiting list, the permanent waiting list,” she said.
“What did he say about Stacy?” My face burned red.
“That her father influenced his decision and that she would be going to a boarding school in Tennessee,” she said. I felt dizzy. I had to talk to her.
I took a bus and the train and walked seven blocks to her house. I stood on the street and watched. No cars were in the driveway, no movement in the windows. I walked around to the back of the house and stared up at her bedroom window on the second floor. I considered leaving and coming back later, when I could hide in darkness. I thought about going to that coffee shop, our coffee shop. Maybe she would be there.
A row of tall evergreen trees lined the back yard. I climbed under the two with the lowest branches, providing perfect cover. I had a good view of her window and I would be able to wait until she came home, watch for her bedroom light to turn on. I crouched until my legs went numb, then I sat back and stretched them out in front of me. Feeling slowly began to seep back in; a million little invisible needles pricked and pricked the skin. I never took my eyes off of her window.
I remembered that moment she talked about when we were kids. I remembered the strange feeling that came over me when she took her clothes off, how I didn’t know what that was. I thought about going to school in California, Stacy going to school in Tennessee. I thought about my mom. The weeping apology. I thought about her frailty, the feeling of holding her in my arms when she was broken. I had never seen her come apart before, not even when my dad died. I pulled my legs under to sit on my heels; my knees and toes pressed against the earth, hard, dry pine needles poking through the fabric of my jeans. I clasped my hands together and bowed my head.
I’m not sure if I prayed. I know I thought about my mom, I wished that she would get better, that she would somehow be OK. What I remember the most is my posture, the smell of pine, and the sound of the wind from under the branches. When I opened my eyes, the sky was dark and the light was on. I scrambled to my feet and toward the back of the house. I saw a figure moving through the glass sliding doors of the kitchen and ducked. I looked up at her window and saw her shadow against the walls. My heart beat faster. I looked around for something to throw. Desperate, I raked my fingers against the ground and picked up a clump of grass and dirt. I threw it into the air toward her window where it arced down, way short of its target. I broke off a long branch from the evergreen tree that had been my shelter. Carefully I approached the back of the house. I reached up and tapped on the window with the tip of the branch.
A face appeared in the window. It was Stacy’s dad. I threw the branch and ran.
The morning I left for California was the morning after my mom came home from treatment. Raelyn and Sophie wanted to make her a cake but she insisted on no fanfare. We should act as if it were any other day. Gram made dinner and we all ate together. She was so quiet at the table, almost nervous. She even looked different. Her hair was down and brushed out. Her eyes were clearer than any of us had ever seen them. Her face was relaxed and thin. After dinner she left. Said she had to go to a meeting. Sophie and Raelyn were fine; they watched TV and ate ice cream for dessert. I didn’t believe her. Why would she have to leave on her first night home from treatment to go to a meeting? I asked Gram.
“She has to go to a meeting every day; they told ‘er so,” Gram said, hours after she left. “She’ll be home soon; you’ll see.”
“Why would she be gone this long if she went to a meeting? How long is a meeting? Doesn’t she know I’m leaving in the morning?” I asked.
“Who’s she meeting with?” Sophie asked.
“It’s an AA meeting,” I said. Raelyn was asleep across Sophie’s lap. They were on the couch. “Let’s go to bed; we’ll see Mom in the morning.”
“When’ll she be home?” Sophie asked.
“Soon, Honey,” Gram said. She walked into the kitchen mumbling, “She better be here soon.”
I stayed up as long as I could to listen for her. After an hour or so, I gave up hope and fell asleep.
The next morning I woke up to Sophie and Raelyn screaming from the living room. I leaped from my bed and ran. It was a Christmas tree, complete with lights and ornaments. Packages with our names on them were beneath and around it. Three stockings hung on the wall next to it, stuffed with candy.
“That’s for you” Sophie pointed to an envelope perched on a branch with Jane written across the front in my mother’s hand. I took the envelope back to my room and laid it on my bed while I packed. I heard my mom get up and go to the living room. I heard Gram joining them. I smelled coffee brewing and breakfast cooking, eggs and bacon. I heard their voices coming from the living room, laughing and talking. When I finished packing I sat down on my bed and opened the envelope.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
I Like Cheese on My Hotdogs
“Hi,” she said, standing in my doorway. I opened my mouth to greet her, but found I couldn’t speak. She looked so beautiful.
“Well, hello there,” Gram said, opening the door to let her in, “you must be Jane’s girlfriend, Stacy!” she exclaimed.
“Gram!” I barked, feeling the hot blush of mortification rise. Stacy had no idea, likely taking the term “girlfriend” to mean friend who is a girl. She shot a startled glance at me as she shook Gram’s hand, then Gram pulled her into a hug. I felt awkward for being so flustered. I took a few steps back and leaned against the wall.
“So nice to meet you, Honey!” Gram sang sweetly.
“Nice to meet you, too, thanks,” Stacy said. “Hey,” she said, turning toward me. “Oh, Jane! What happened?” she asked, stepping close to me and touching the lump on my forehead.
“Hey―oh, that―I’ll tell you later,” I said, clasping my sweaty palms behind my back, tapping my toe rhythmically against the floor.
“Can you come out with me for awhile? I have the car,” she said, pointing behind her toward the street with her thumb. I looked at Gram for approval. She nodded and waved her hand at us in a shooing gesture.
“Sure, yes, go on. Have fun, girls. Don’t be too late,” she said.
“Thanks, we won’t!” I said, unintentionally practically shouting. I grabbed my jacket and followed her outside.
She got in the driver’s seat of a gray Toyota Camry. I slid into the passenger’s side, entering the warm car filled with the smell of her hair—clean and sweet. She started up the car and pulled away from the curb. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. I felt an excitement so intense it was painful in my gut. A savage yearning came alive in me, without choice, against my will, and I couldn’t catch my breath from the force of it. She turned up the volume of the radio. Van Halen was blaring: “How do you know when it’s love―”
She sang along with the verse, smiling at me, opening the moon roof to let in the cool night breeze. I rode along, trying to free myself enough to sing or speak, sitting in a swirling center of secret thoughts, questions, imaginings, all unmentionable.
She pulled up to a spot right at the lakefront; the only light was from the moon and nobody was around.
“Where are we?” I asked. She turned off the ignition and the radio, drowning us in abrupt silence.
“We’re just inside Evanston. This is actually private property, but my cousins live over there and their house is empty right now,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and turning to face me.
“Why are we here?” I asked, feeling the heat in the car rise, the air too intense to breathe.
“I just want to talk.” She took my hand and held it between her palms.
“What happened to your head?” she asked.
“I had a fight with my mom today when I got home. She heard from Father John and she was waiting for me. I told her the truth about everything; it just got ugly from there,” I said, not wanting to go into detail.
“I told my dad everything, too,” she said, squeezing my hand. “He did not take it well at all, but I’m glad I told him.” Her gaze dropped to our entwined hands, I leaned in closer to her.
“That’s crazy! I can’t believe you told him. You were so scared!” I squeezed her thigh with my free hand and she looked up, blushing.
“Jane, can I ask you something?”
I gulped and nodded; uneasy about a question so serious it needed a preface.
“Do you know the difference between love and in love? I mean, is there a distinction for you between them?”
“I guess. I’ve never really thought about it before. Why?”
“Well, love is something deep between two people, two friends perhaps. And that’s how I feel about my good friends, including you. That’s love, right?”
“Sure, OK.”
“So then there’s in love, which I guess means that there’s something extra there, something special, magical even. Like, take a hotdog for instance.”
I laughed, nervous laughter. She made me nervous. She liked that, I could tell.
“There’s a plain hotdog, and that’s great just the way it is. Then you add something. Cheese, you add cheese to it, and then it’s a whole new thing, a whole different experience, right?” Her eyebrows raised, she was waiting for me to answer.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, laughing, even though I did. I wanted to tease her. She slumped back, a frustrated, yet good-humored look on her face.
“Let’s go for a walk down there,” she said, pointing toward the beach. She opened her door without waiting for my agreement, so I followed. We headed down to the beach to walk along the wet part of the sand. I stopped to remove my shoes and socks and roll up my pants. When I stood up, Stacy was sitting on a rock, watching me. I crouched in front of her. I untied her shoes and pulled them off, revealing her inside-out mismatched socks, which I instantly decided to love. Laughing, she inquired why she should care if they match; her shoes cover them after all. I pulled them off and rolled up her pants to her knees. Each time my fingers touched the bare skin of her legs, there was an invisible spark lighting up the dark.
We walked the smooth surface with bared feet, feeling the raw, wet sand squishing up between our toes. Feeling its warmth and its broken openness; grainy, soggy impressions of our soles trailing behind.
“Who was that at your house? Was that your mom?” Stacy asked. Our arms brushed against each other as we walked.
“No, that was my Grandmother.”
“What about your dad?” she asked, brushing my hand with her fingers. I stopped walking and turned to look out at the blackness of the water; the surface was reflecting the stars like oil.
“My dad died when I was 8,” I said.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing my hand, lacing her fingers though mine.
“Wait. Isn’t that when we met? When we were eight years old, right?” she asked.
“Yes, it happened after I met you,” I said. I dropped her hand and walked up on the beach to dry sand. I sat down and hugged my knees to my chest.
“How did he die?” She sat next to me.
“He had a heart attack,” I said. It was the first thing I thought to say.
“Oh, that’s terrible. My mom died of lymphoma when I was 9. I was in Paris when she died,” she said. I picked up a stick and started drawing triangles and circles in the sand.
“That had to be a big loss for you. I’m sorry,” I said.
“You had your loss right around the same time,” she said, putting an arm around me.
“I lost my dog, too.” A minute of silence stretched out between us. The waves laid themselves to rest one after the other just beyond our feet.
“Thank God you had your mom,” she said.
“Sometimes I feel that way. Other times I feel that she’s just been a series of smaller losses,” I said, tracing the shapes in the sand over again, deepening the grooves. “I guess I’ve always had expectations of her, over and over, which is my fault. So every time she lied, every time she let us down, another loss.” The words came out very matter-of-factly, without forethought. I felt the truth of them like an impact to my gut. Another silence followed. “I do love my mom, though. She really has been through a lot. Losing my dad, losing her son. All under the age of 25,” I said. My gut ached. She moved closer and wrapped her arm further around me. I wound my free arm around her leg.
“Since we lost my mom, my dad and I haven’t gotten along. He has expectations of me that I can’t fulfill. He wants me to be just like her, but I’m not. I don’t want to go to law school and become a patent attorney. I don’t want to date the boys he introduces me to,” she said. My head rested on her shoulder.
“What do you want to be?” I stretched out my legs and lay down in the sand, adjusting my position so I could rest my head in her lap, looking up at her face. It looked pale, almost glowing against the night sky, her blond hair framing it like a halo.
“An actress,” she said, laughing.
“What’s funny?” I asked. She gazed down at me, playing with my hair; twirling it gently in her fingers.
“It’s just funny to say it out loud. I want to act in plays on stage, I also want to write and direct. I’ve already written a few and one might be turned into a production at school,” she said.
“That’s great. Congratulations!” I said. She looked at me with soft eyes.
“Thanks. I wish my dad felt that way. He thinks it’s a waste of time. A nice hobby, maybe, but nothing more.”
“I think it’s perfect. You should go for it. I can definitely see you in the spotlight,” I said. I reached up and caressed her cheek with my hand, traced the soft curve of her jaw line, her chin, her lips. She shivered and closed her eyes when my fingers brushed her lips. I wanted so badly to kiss her.
“Let’s walk back to the car. I’m getting cold,” she said. She stood and offered me her hand. I took it and pulled myself up. She held onto my hand and pulled me close to her.
“Jane, I have to tell you something.” She looked down at our intertwined fingers and started walking, pulling me along by the hand.
“I think about you all the time, day and night. I think I’m in love with you. I think I have been ever since I met you nine years ago when we were just kids. I didn’t understand what it was then, but I do now. I’m in love with you, Jane.” She said it quickly, the words running together in one breathless confession. I exhaled, smiled, and looked at my feet. I squeezed her hand.
“Well?” she said when we reached the car. I was still smiling.
“I like cheese on my hotdogs,” I said. She laughed and playfully swatted my shoulder. I leaned and kissed her. She moved close and opened her mouth. We stood there, limbs pressed hard together, in the dark, tongues, kissing passionately, imperfectly, and for those moments I forgot everything, everyone but her. She ran her hands along my sides and up under my shirt. I shrugged off my jacket and raised my arms; she lifted the shirt over my head and off. Fear began to creep in. I stood there against her, topless and vulnerable, the cool night air biting my skin with mischief. She quickly opened the back car door and pulled me toward it, pulling off her own shirt, unbuttoning her jeans, kissing as we went.
She climbed up on the back seat and I lay between her legs, my head on her chest. I let go of fear and cradled her body in my arms, stretched my chest along her torso, and placed my cheek against hers. In that moment I turned self-conscious. I needed to do something else, maybe with my hands.
I felt for her, followed the curved outline of her skin, past the unbuttoned waistband of her jeans and down to where my fingers slipped. I stopped breathing. Her hips elevated to a supple motion; an undulating welcome of my touch. I pressed gently and her soft flesh gave, drawing my finger inside. I pressed my face to her neck, bit the skin there, felt her hammering pulse, a soft rushing tide of blood through veins, like fast ascending mist from sheer, gleaming puddles, air stirring, quiet murmuring, only breath and heat, my skin dissolving into hers. I wrapped my legs tightly around her thighs and moved my hips to the rhythm of my hand. Her lips, parted and soft against my eyelids, began moving.
“Do you love me?” her voice broken, a half whisper into my hot eyes.
“Yes,” I answered, sensing a change in degrees of motion. I slowed to the pace of her body and held my hand still, waiting. She thrust her hips up, claiming my whole hand hard against her, coming in, going out, until with a rush of air like a waterfall in rewind and play, we tumbled, breathing, over the cliff and down. On her hips, I rested my motion, breathing stillness from her faster-beating heart.
There she was, beneath me, a whole world. Smooth curves, angles, latitudes and longitudes; my gaze was a journey from point to point. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Her lips were red, so red against her pale face, which seemed to beam; to glow like the moon. I kissed her softly, then harder. The pressure of her mouth started the moving of my hips astride her leg again. I felt her body moving under me.
The car had grown so hot the windows had steamed over and sweat ran down the slope of my back, beaded on my brow and pearled in my hair. She fumbled with my jeans until she had them undone then thrust her hand down. Small, untamed cries escaped me unconsciously; it was over too soon, too soon. I lay panting, heavy and spent on top of her, heat rising from our bodies like smolder.
“I love you, love you,” she gasped, wrapping her arms tightly around me, clutching me hard and flat against her, so hard it wrung the breath from my lungs. I swathed her head in my arms and kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Tears slipped down her cheeks and I put my mouth to them, I whispered that I loved her too.
“Are you in love with me? Are you?” she cried softly.
“Yes, yes,” I answered, stroking her damp hair.
“Say it; I need to hear it,” she begged.
I lifted my head and looked intently into her gleaming wet eyes. I held her face gently between my palms.
“I am in love with you.” I said it slowly, spoke it boldly. I meant it with all of me. Her eyes were bright with relief, satisfaction, love. She shivered all over.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“A little,” she said. I picked up her shirt and helped her put it back on. I nestled my face against her chest and closed my eyes, listening to her beating heart. I thought of the song by Van Morrison and I sang out the words in poor melody: I can hear her heartbeat for a thousand miles…
She squeezed her arms around me and giggled. I wrapped around her like armor, holding on as close as I could.
“Well, hello there,” Gram said, opening the door to let her in, “you must be Jane’s girlfriend, Stacy!” she exclaimed.
“Gram!” I barked, feeling the hot blush of mortification rise. Stacy had no idea, likely taking the term “girlfriend” to mean friend who is a girl. She shot a startled glance at me as she shook Gram’s hand, then Gram pulled her into a hug. I felt awkward for being so flustered. I took a few steps back and leaned against the wall.
“So nice to meet you, Honey!” Gram sang sweetly.
“Nice to meet you, too, thanks,” Stacy said. “Hey,” she said, turning toward me. “Oh, Jane! What happened?” she asked, stepping close to me and touching the lump on my forehead.
“Hey―oh, that―I’ll tell you later,” I said, clasping my sweaty palms behind my back, tapping my toe rhythmically against the floor.
“Can you come out with me for awhile? I have the car,” she said, pointing behind her toward the street with her thumb. I looked at Gram for approval. She nodded and waved her hand at us in a shooing gesture.
“Sure, yes, go on. Have fun, girls. Don’t be too late,” she said.
“Thanks, we won’t!” I said, unintentionally practically shouting. I grabbed my jacket and followed her outside.
She got in the driver’s seat of a gray Toyota Camry. I slid into the passenger’s side, entering the warm car filled with the smell of her hair—clean and sweet. She started up the car and pulled away from the curb. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. I felt an excitement so intense it was painful in my gut. A savage yearning came alive in me, without choice, against my will, and I couldn’t catch my breath from the force of it. She turned up the volume of the radio. Van Halen was blaring: “How do you know when it’s love―”
She sang along with the verse, smiling at me, opening the moon roof to let in the cool night breeze. I rode along, trying to free myself enough to sing or speak, sitting in a swirling center of secret thoughts, questions, imaginings, all unmentionable.
She pulled up to a spot right at the lakefront; the only light was from the moon and nobody was around.
“Where are we?” I asked. She turned off the ignition and the radio, drowning us in abrupt silence.
“We’re just inside Evanston. This is actually private property, but my cousins live over there and their house is empty right now,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and turning to face me.
“Why are we here?” I asked, feeling the heat in the car rise, the air too intense to breathe.
“I just want to talk.” She took my hand and held it between her palms.
“What happened to your head?” she asked.
“I had a fight with my mom today when I got home. She heard from Father John and she was waiting for me. I told her the truth about everything; it just got ugly from there,” I said, not wanting to go into detail.
“I told my dad everything, too,” she said, squeezing my hand. “He did not take it well at all, but I’m glad I told him.” Her gaze dropped to our entwined hands, I leaned in closer to her.
“That’s crazy! I can’t believe you told him. You were so scared!” I squeezed her thigh with my free hand and she looked up, blushing.
“Jane, can I ask you something?”
I gulped and nodded; uneasy about a question so serious it needed a preface.
“Do you know the difference between love and in love? I mean, is there a distinction for you between them?”
“I guess. I’ve never really thought about it before. Why?”
“Well, love is something deep between two people, two friends perhaps. And that’s how I feel about my good friends, including you. That’s love, right?”
“Sure, OK.”
“So then there’s in love, which I guess means that there’s something extra there, something special, magical even. Like, take a hotdog for instance.”
I laughed, nervous laughter. She made me nervous. She liked that, I could tell.
“There’s a plain hotdog, and that’s great just the way it is. Then you add something. Cheese, you add cheese to it, and then it’s a whole new thing, a whole different experience, right?” Her eyebrows raised, she was waiting for me to answer.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, laughing, even though I did. I wanted to tease her. She slumped back, a frustrated, yet good-humored look on her face.
“Let’s go for a walk down there,” she said, pointing toward the beach. She opened her door without waiting for my agreement, so I followed. We headed down to the beach to walk along the wet part of the sand. I stopped to remove my shoes and socks and roll up my pants. When I stood up, Stacy was sitting on a rock, watching me. I crouched in front of her. I untied her shoes and pulled them off, revealing her inside-out mismatched socks, which I instantly decided to love. Laughing, she inquired why she should care if they match; her shoes cover them after all. I pulled them off and rolled up her pants to her knees. Each time my fingers touched the bare skin of her legs, there was an invisible spark lighting up the dark.
We walked the smooth surface with bared feet, feeling the raw, wet sand squishing up between our toes. Feeling its warmth and its broken openness; grainy, soggy impressions of our soles trailing behind.
“Who was that at your house? Was that your mom?” Stacy asked. Our arms brushed against each other as we walked.
“No, that was my Grandmother.”
“What about your dad?” she asked, brushing my hand with her fingers. I stopped walking and turned to look out at the blackness of the water; the surface was reflecting the stars like oil.
“My dad died when I was 8,” I said.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing my hand, lacing her fingers though mine.
“Wait. Isn’t that when we met? When we were eight years old, right?” she asked.
“Yes, it happened after I met you,” I said. I dropped her hand and walked up on the beach to dry sand. I sat down and hugged my knees to my chest.
“How did he die?” She sat next to me.
“He had a heart attack,” I said. It was the first thing I thought to say.
“Oh, that’s terrible. My mom died of lymphoma when I was 9. I was in Paris when she died,” she said. I picked up a stick and started drawing triangles and circles in the sand.
“That had to be a big loss for you. I’m sorry,” I said.
“You had your loss right around the same time,” she said, putting an arm around me.
“I lost my dog, too.” A minute of silence stretched out between us. The waves laid themselves to rest one after the other just beyond our feet.
“Thank God you had your mom,” she said.
“Sometimes I feel that way. Other times I feel that she’s just been a series of smaller losses,” I said, tracing the shapes in the sand over again, deepening the grooves. “I guess I’ve always had expectations of her, over and over, which is my fault. So every time she lied, every time she let us down, another loss.” The words came out very matter-of-factly, without forethought. I felt the truth of them like an impact to my gut. Another silence followed. “I do love my mom, though. She really has been through a lot. Losing my dad, losing her son. All under the age of 25,” I said. My gut ached. She moved closer and wrapped her arm further around me. I wound my free arm around her leg.
“Since we lost my mom, my dad and I haven’t gotten along. He has expectations of me that I can’t fulfill. He wants me to be just like her, but I’m not. I don’t want to go to law school and become a patent attorney. I don’t want to date the boys he introduces me to,” she said. My head rested on her shoulder.
“What do you want to be?” I stretched out my legs and lay down in the sand, adjusting my position so I could rest my head in her lap, looking up at her face. It looked pale, almost glowing against the night sky, her blond hair framing it like a halo.
“An actress,” she said, laughing.
“What’s funny?” I asked. She gazed down at me, playing with my hair; twirling it gently in her fingers.
“It’s just funny to say it out loud. I want to act in plays on stage, I also want to write and direct. I’ve already written a few and one might be turned into a production at school,” she said.
“That’s great. Congratulations!” I said. She looked at me with soft eyes.
“Thanks. I wish my dad felt that way. He thinks it’s a waste of time. A nice hobby, maybe, but nothing more.”
“I think it’s perfect. You should go for it. I can definitely see you in the spotlight,” I said. I reached up and caressed her cheek with my hand, traced the soft curve of her jaw line, her chin, her lips. She shivered and closed her eyes when my fingers brushed her lips. I wanted so badly to kiss her.
“Let’s walk back to the car. I’m getting cold,” she said. She stood and offered me her hand. I took it and pulled myself up. She held onto my hand and pulled me close to her.
“Jane, I have to tell you something.” She looked down at our intertwined fingers and started walking, pulling me along by the hand.
“I think about you all the time, day and night. I think I’m in love with you. I think I have been ever since I met you nine years ago when we were just kids. I didn’t understand what it was then, but I do now. I’m in love with you, Jane.” She said it quickly, the words running together in one breathless confession. I exhaled, smiled, and looked at my feet. I squeezed her hand.
“Well?” she said when we reached the car. I was still smiling.
“I like cheese on my hotdogs,” I said. She laughed and playfully swatted my shoulder. I leaned and kissed her. She moved close and opened her mouth. We stood there, limbs pressed hard together, in the dark, tongues, kissing passionately, imperfectly, and for those moments I forgot everything, everyone but her. She ran her hands along my sides and up under my shirt. I shrugged off my jacket and raised my arms; she lifted the shirt over my head and off. Fear began to creep in. I stood there against her, topless and vulnerable, the cool night air biting my skin with mischief. She quickly opened the back car door and pulled me toward it, pulling off her own shirt, unbuttoning her jeans, kissing as we went.
She climbed up on the back seat and I lay between her legs, my head on her chest. I let go of fear and cradled her body in my arms, stretched my chest along her torso, and placed my cheek against hers. In that moment I turned self-conscious. I needed to do something else, maybe with my hands.
I felt for her, followed the curved outline of her skin, past the unbuttoned waistband of her jeans and down to where my fingers slipped. I stopped breathing. Her hips elevated to a supple motion; an undulating welcome of my touch. I pressed gently and her soft flesh gave, drawing my finger inside. I pressed my face to her neck, bit the skin there, felt her hammering pulse, a soft rushing tide of blood through veins, like fast ascending mist from sheer, gleaming puddles, air stirring, quiet murmuring, only breath and heat, my skin dissolving into hers. I wrapped my legs tightly around her thighs and moved my hips to the rhythm of my hand. Her lips, parted and soft against my eyelids, began moving.
“Do you love me?” her voice broken, a half whisper into my hot eyes.
“Yes,” I answered, sensing a change in degrees of motion. I slowed to the pace of her body and held my hand still, waiting. She thrust her hips up, claiming my whole hand hard against her, coming in, going out, until with a rush of air like a waterfall in rewind and play, we tumbled, breathing, over the cliff and down. On her hips, I rested my motion, breathing stillness from her faster-beating heart.
There she was, beneath me, a whole world. Smooth curves, angles, latitudes and longitudes; my gaze was a journey from point to point. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Her lips were red, so red against her pale face, which seemed to beam; to glow like the moon. I kissed her softly, then harder. The pressure of her mouth started the moving of my hips astride her leg again. I felt her body moving under me.
The car had grown so hot the windows had steamed over and sweat ran down the slope of my back, beaded on my brow and pearled in my hair. She fumbled with my jeans until she had them undone then thrust her hand down. Small, untamed cries escaped me unconsciously; it was over too soon, too soon. I lay panting, heavy and spent on top of her, heat rising from our bodies like smolder.
“I love you, love you,” she gasped, wrapping her arms tightly around me, clutching me hard and flat against her, so hard it wrung the breath from my lungs. I swathed her head in my arms and kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Tears slipped down her cheeks and I put my mouth to them, I whispered that I loved her too.
“Are you in love with me? Are you?” she cried softly.
“Yes, yes,” I answered, stroking her damp hair.
“Say it; I need to hear it,” she begged.
I lifted my head and looked intently into her gleaming wet eyes. I held her face gently between my palms.
“I am in love with you.” I said it slowly, spoke it boldly. I meant it with all of me. Her eyes were bright with relief, satisfaction, love. She shivered all over.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“A little,” she said. I picked up her shirt and helped her put it back on. I nestled my face against her chest and closed my eyes, listening to her beating heart. I thought of the song by Van Morrison and I sang out the words in poor melody: I can hear her heartbeat for a thousand miles…
She squeezed her arms around me and giggled. I wrapped around her like armor, holding on as close as I could.
Friday, December 17, 2010
The Silhouettes We Were
I arrived home to find Gram making dinner and my sisters watching TV. The house was filled with the aroma of bacon and onions frying and tomato soup. She was making us “Polish Spaghetti,” a recipe she claimed to have gotten from the old Polish woman at the butcher, the same one who had given her the prayer that cleared restless spirits from dwellings. It was simply spaghetti with tomato soup, bacon, and sautéed onions. There was no sign of my mother.
“Jane!” Sophie yelled when she saw me and came running, jumping on me, wrapping her legs and arms with a clinging hug. I staggered back and braced myself with one hand on the wall while hugging her back with the other.
“Hi, Jane!” squeaked Raelyn’s little voice. “Look at!” she squealed, holding up a colorful scribbling she had just drawn with crayons on the back of a paper plate.
“Wow, Rae, it’s beautiful!” I yelled, feeling tears well with a deep gratitude for my sisters, for their simple joy. Sophie dropped down and looked at me, then frowned, leaned close, and inspected my forehead.
“What happened?” she asked loudly, concern and shock in her voice. I opened my mouth before realizing I didn’t know how to tell her exactly what had happened.
“Jane fell,” Gram said, coming in to give me a hug, “tripped over the kitchen chair and went straight down, right, Honey?” she said, gently probing the welt, winking at me.
“Gram came and picked us up from Aunt Gracie’s,” Sophie said. “She put mom in the hospital for drunks.”
My eyes popped open wide; I looked to Gram for confirmation.
“That’s right; she’s gonna get better now. I took her to a treatment center. She’ll be there six months or so, but we can go visit her,” Gram said, walking back toward the kitchen. I followed her, wanting to ask more questions but not knowing what to ask.
“I do have to tell you a bit of bad news, though, girls. We’re gonna have to move. Your mom hasn’t paid rent here too long, got an eviction notice. We have a week to move out, so we need to work together.”
She scowled as she said it, pulling on a big pink oven mitt, lifting the lid, and stirring the big pot of steaming pasta.
“Where will we go?” My stomach sank; all the hunger that had been awakened by the aroma of Gram’s cooking was dashed away at the thought of moving.
“Will we still get to go to the Acadamy?” I asked.
“No, I’m afraid not, Baby,” Gram said. “We’ll have to go stay with Grace and Ron for awhile till we find another place and yer mom gets out and can pay for it. That ol’ ex-husband a hers won’t pay no more, an’ he won’t help out with you goin’ to that big expensive school no more neither,” she said, her brow wrinkled, her hair frizzing in the humid, unmoving air of the kitchen.
Although sad, I was surprised at my near indifference to the news. Not going to that school meant not seeing Stacy every day. But it also meant not having to serve the detention and write the letters of apology, surely the most humiliating act I would have ever had to perform. I did feel something die away inside, however, contemplating the loss of Stacy, the starting over at a new school mid-year, the feeling of walking into a room of strangers where everybody knows everybody and all eyes are on me.
The doorbell rang. It was Jamie. I hadn’t seen him since the day he tried to kiss me and I told him I was gay, the day his dad, who wasn’t his dad, raped his little sister. He looked tired and thin, his jeans too loose and his sweatshirt too big. His eyes revealed what I needed to know. They were the usual crystal sun; the light of him shooting out jagged and beautiful, like loose shards of colored glass constantly dividing and shuffling, reflecting bits of myself brilliantly in an endless variety of patterns. I saw my reflection in them, smiling, having missed him without knowing it. Together, we were matchless in function, like a painting of a pastoral scene suggesting a mood of peace and contentment, the canvas scribbled over with a narrative poem treating an epic, romantic, and tragic theme, all together depicting a lighthearted, carefree episode of comic drama. And his wildly sober eyes always danced.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door and hugging him fiercely.
“Are you OK?” he asked, knocked back a few steps by my fervent embrace.
“You wouldn’t believe my day,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.
“Jamie!” Sophie yelled and came running. I stepped back and let her hug him, watching his face transform into a toothy smile.
“Where’s Heather?” she asked, taking his hand and pulling him into the house.
“She’s at home, but you should go see her,” he said, dropping his lanky
frame onto the couch. “Smells good; what’s cookin’, Polish spaghetti?”
“Gram, Jane’s boyfriend is here; can he stay for dinner?” Sophie shouted into the kitchen.
“Shut up, Sohie, he’s not my boyfriend, you know that!” I said. It came out much harsher than I intended and both of them looked a bit hurt. I forced a laugh to turn it around, rustled her hair and said, “Sick, he’s like our brother; how gross would that be?” That made her laugh; she playfully hopped on the couch next to him.
“Jamie, hi! We’re just about to have dinner; can you join us?” Gram said, walking in from the kitchen, patting his shoulder and leaning down to kiss his cheek.
“Thanks. I’ll stay but I’m really not hungry,” he said.
“Like hell!” Gram said. “You’re a growing young man and you’re too damn skinny. Get in here an’ eat!” she demanded, walking back into the kitchen. I picked up Raelyn from her chair; she had fallen asleep watching the Smurfs. She draped against me with her head on my shoulder and her limbs hanging dead weight. I bounced her gently to wake her and she opened her eyes. Seeing Jamie, she became shy, clinging closer and burying her face in my neck. She started whimpering.
“Hey, now, none of that, Rae, it’s me, Jamie, your big brother. What’s this?” He grabbed her foot playfully and shook it. She looked at him and smiled, then buried her face again giggling.
“Come on, baby girl, let’s eat!” he said, tickling her side, throwing an arm around my neck, and walking with me into the kitchen. I put Raelyn in her booster chair and pulled out some place settings. Jamie sat down across from Gram, waiting to be served.
“So, how’s your family doin?” Gram asked Jamie. He gave the detached,
“They’re fine” answer and attempted to change the subject. “How’s everyone in Lodi?”
“Well, everyone’s ’, that’s how, ‘bout your family and what that sick man did to your sister, how you went in and saved ‘er.” I dropped a helping of spaghetti on her plate and handed her a fork. “Thank you, Honey,” she said. I did the same for Jamie.
“Thanks, Jane,” he said. I winked at him and patted his shoulder, served Sophie some food, then sat down to feed Raelyn.
“I don’t want to talk about it, really,” Jamie said, forking steaming red noodles into his mouth.
“All right, don’t. Go take a walk with Jane after y’eat and talk to her. She’s got some ’ to do herself.” She winked at me, then shoveled a forkful into her mouth. Sauce dripped on her chin; ends of noodles drooped out of her closed mouth. She leaned her face over her plate and sucked them in, wiping her chin with her sleeve. I handed her a small stack of napkins.
“Oh, my. Thank you, Honey,” she said, spreading a napkin across her lap and taking another big bite. She had a tendency to breathe loudly through her nose while she chewed.
“Gram, is it ok if you finish feeding her and we go out for a walk now? I can eat later, if you don’t mind,” I said, already getting up and moving Raelyn to sit next to her.
“Well, let the boy finish first, won’t you?” she said, mouth half full.
“No, no, I’m full, really. Thanks so much.” He stood up and put his plate, which was already close to clean, in the sink. We walked out without waiting for an answer.
“Don’t be too long,” Gram called from the kitchen.
“I won’t,” I called back, letting the door slam closed behind me.
Random voices and passing cars seemed to crescendo as we descended from the porch to the street, the coming and going of public space, the artful purpose of sidewalks. There were times when our dialogue demonstrated the recesses of our guts, like blood spewing over a black enamel sink to then be sucked down the drain, like the sweet suction of time taking the pain away. This was one of those times. The sun was wandering down, an impressive performance, the majesty of the sky hovering and gathering to a horizon painted in pinks and blues.
“What happened to him?” I asked, crunching leaves under my shoes with each step.
“He’s back in jail. Been skipping parole violations left and right for the past 17 years. He’ll serve a pile a time just for that, even more for Heather,” he said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, casting his gaze toward his footsteps. “My mom and Heather are going to a counselor. They want me to go, too, but I’m not interested.”
“You should go,” I said, slightly breathless from our brisk pace. The air felt clean and cold, odorless.
“Don’t want to.” He shook his head, hunched his shoulders forward.
“Can’t hurt.”
He kicked a rock and scowled. The smell of urine and garbage hit us as we turned down an alley.
“What happened to your head?” he asked, looking toward the horizon. We were walking east, toward the lake, into the sunset.
“‘Bout time. I thought you didn’t notice,” I said, punching his arm gently. “I’ll tell you later; don’t change the subject.” His closed lips curved down into a deep frown.
“I feel so mad, like I hate her.” His hands balled up in fists.
“She said she didn’t know, but how could she not know?”
The alley dumped us out into a busy intersection. We waited for the light to turn then crossed to the open fields of the park. Vendor carts dotted the perimeter selling snow cones, ice cream, and elotes, a Mexican delicacy of corn on the cob smothered in butter, mayonnaise, salt, and paprika.
“Did you know?” I asked, leaning down to pick up a big maple leaf the color of old blood edged in gold lying in the grass.
“No, I didn’t know!” he exploded, jolting me into an awkward, bent hop forward, nearly falling over before I made it upright.
“Don’t you think I would’ve done something about it? Don’t you think I would’ve killed him?” he shrieked. Tears sprang to his eyes. I reached out for him, mumbling a “sorry.” He jerked away and broke into a run. I darted after him across the field and into a baseball diamond, the maple leaf trailing kite-like in the air behind us. I closed in and jumped for a tackle, we both went down, tumbling and flailing over each other in a cloud of fine dirt like powder. I pinned him down and saw his tears making mud streaks down his dusty face. I laid my cheek on his chest and squeezed him tight. I felt his arms close around me, heard him softly weeping. We lay there that way for some time in stormy silence until the tears subsided. Slowly I got to my feet, brushed the dirt from my pants. I held my hand out to help him up. He clasped it and was hoisted up.
Standing in the middle of the empty field covered in dust with crumpled clothes and disarranged hair, we broke into spontaneous laughter.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still giggling.
“Forget it.” He started walking, still laughing in short bursts, holding his side. I trotted to catch up, threw an arm around his waist.
“What was your big day?” he asked.
“I skipped school with Stacy and got in trouble,” I said. I looked at him, wanting to gauge his reaction before continuing. He smiled and laughed. Leaves floated past his face, stirring down from the trees.
“You did not!” he said in a shocked high pitch.
“I did. She took me to this old junk yard on the north side. I kissed her.”
He looked astounded and favorably impressed.
“Whoa! That’s huge! Tell me everything.” He seemed genuinely excited for me.
“All I can say is I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was like everything else disappeared; I just let it happen.” I could sense him tensing up as I spoke.
“Is this OK to tell you?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m a little jealous, of course. Partly of her and partly of you, ‘cause I’ve never had that. It was never like that with Jessie.”
“Don’t worry, you will. Give it time,” I said, patting his back.
“Where’s your mom? What happened with her?” he asked.
“She flipped out. I came home; she got rough. I told her what I did, that I was with Stacy making out. Told her I’m gay.” I looked at Jamie; he was staring back at me, his jaw slack, dumbfounded.
“She hit you?” he asked, appalled.
“No, no, she didn’t. More the other way around,” I said. He turned in front of me, stopping me.
“What?” He placed his hand on my shoulder and looked at me, his eyes showing both concern and amusement.
“I leapt at her, knocked her down, my forehead cracked her in the face, right between her eyes,” I said, feeling queasy again recalling it.
“Oh my God, what’d she say to you?”
I shook my head and pushed past him; he grabbed my arm and turned me around.
“Talk to me,” he pleaded.
“Jamie, I can’t. Let me go,” I said, wrenching my arm away. He backed off, raised his hands in the air palms out, a gesture of surrender.
“Hey, hey, it’s OK. You don’t have to tell me,” he said gently. I felt the familiar sting behind my eyes then the warm, salty drops breaking and spilling again.
“She said my dad would’ve never approved,” I told him.
He wrapped his arms around me; I pulled away.
“Let’s walk,” I said, pulling him along. I laced my arm through his and we walked for a while in silence.
The darkening horizon, now less bright, now like a loom loaded with threads of light that glow and spark or blaze like sunflowers in Wisconsin fields, like symbols of the devotion shown by God, or whatever has made so much sky, whatever has made the silhouettes we were against it, the ones each of us had come to need the most, our solid forms having long been towers that stand out dark and strong against that sky, whose magnificence is observable only by way of contrast, shadowy dim form blurry-edged and glowing against clear brilliant bright.
“Jane!” Sophie yelled when she saw me and came running, jumping on me, wrapping her legs and arms with a clinging hug. I staggered back and braced myself with one hand on the wall while hugging her back with the other.
“Hi, Jane!” squeaked Raelyn’s little voice. “Look at!” she squealed, holding up a colorful scribbling she had just drawn with crayons on the back of a paper plate.
“Wow, Rae, it’s beautiful!” I yelled, feeling tears well with a deep gratitude for my sisters, for their simple joy. Sophie dropped down and looked at me, then frowned, leaned close, and inspected my forehead.
“What happened?” she asked loudly, concern and shock in her voice. I opened my mouth before realizing I didn’t know how to tell her exactly what had happened.
“Jane fell,” Gram said, coming in to give me a hug, “tripped over the kitchen chair and went straight down, right, Honey?” she said, gently probing the welt, winking at me.
“Gram came and picked us up from Aunt Gracie’s,” Sophie said. “She put mom in the hospital for drunks.”
My eyes popped open wide; I looked to Gram for confirmation.
“That’s right; she’s gonna get better now. I took her to a treatment center. She’ll be there six months or so, but we can go visit her,” Gram said, walking back toward the kitchen. I followed her, wanting to ask more questions but not knowing what to ask.
“I do have to tell you a bit of bad news, though, girls. We’re gonna have to move. Your mom hasn’t paid rent here too long, got an eviction notice. We have a week to move out, so we need to work together.”
She scowled as she said it, pulling on a big pink oven mitt, lifting the lid, and stirring the big pot of steaming pasta.
“Where will we go?” My stomach sank; all the hunger that had been awakened by the aroma of Gram’s cooking was dashed away at the thought of moving.
“Will we still get to go to the Acadamy?” I asked.
“No, I’m afraid not, Baby,” Gram said. “We’ll have to go stay with Grace and Ron for awhile till we find another place and yer mom gets out and can pay for it. That ol’ ex-husband a hers won’t pay no more, an’ he won’t help out with you goin’ to that big expensive school no more neither,” she said, her brow wrinkled, her hair frizzing in the humid, unmoving air of the kitchen.
Although sad, I was surprised at my near indifference to the news. Not going to that school meant not seeing Stacy every day. But it also meant not having to serve the detention and write the letters of apology, surely the most humiliating act I would have ever had to perform. I did feel something die away inside, however, contemplating the loss of Stacy, the starting over at a new school mid-year, the feeling of walking into a room of strangers where everybody knows everybody and all eyes are on me.
The doorbell rang. It was Jamie. I hadn’t seen him since the day he tried to kiss me and I told him I was gay, the day his dad, who wasn’t his dad, raped his little sister. He looked tired and thin, his jeans too loose and his sweatshirt too big. His eyes revealed what I needed to know. They were the usual crystal sun; the light of him shooting out jagged and beautiful, like loose shards of colored glass constantly dividing and shuffling, reflecting bits of myself brilliantly in an endless variety of patterns. I saw my reflection in them, smiling, having missed him without knowing it. Together, we were matchless in function, like a painting of a pastoral scene suggesting a mood of peace and contentment, the canvas scribbled over with a narrative poem treating an epic, romantic, and tragic theme, all together depicting a lighthearted, carefree episode of comic drama. And his wildly sober eyes always danced.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door and hugging him fiercely.
“Are you OK?” he asked, knocked back a few steps by my fervent embrace.
“You wouldn’t believe my day,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.
“Jamie!” Sophie yelled and came running. I stepped back and let her hug him, watching his face transform into a toothy smile.
“Where’s Heather?” she asked, taking his hand and pulling him into the house.
“She’s at home, but you should go see her,” he said, dropping his lanky
frame onto the couch. “Smells good; what’s cookin’, Polish spaghetti?”
“Gram, Jane’s boyfriend is here; can he stay for dinner?” Sophie shouted into the kitchen.
“Shut up, Sohie, he’s not my boyfriend, you know that!” I said. It came out much harsher than I intended and both of them looked a bit hurt. I forced a laugh to turn it around, rustled her hair and said, “Sick, he’s like our brother; how gross would that be?” That made her laugh; she playfully hopped on the couch next to him.
“Jamie, hi! We’re just about to have dinner; can you join us?” Gram said, walking in from the kitchen, patting his shoulder and leaning down to kiss his cheek.
“Thanks. I’ll stay but I’m really not hungry,” he said.
“Like hell!” Gram said. “You’re a growing young man and you’re too damn skinny. Get in here an’ eat!” she demanded, walking back into the kitchen. I picked up Raelyn from her chair; she had fallen asleep watching the Smurfs. She draped against me with her head on my shoulder and her limbs hanging dead weight. I bounced her gently to wake her and she opened her eyes. Seeing Jamie, she became shy, clinging closer and burying her face in my neck. She started whimpering.
“Hey, now, none of that, Rae, it’s me, Jamie, your big brother. What’s this?” He grabbed her foot playfully and shook it. She looked at him and smiled, then buried her face again giggling.
“Come on, baby girl, let’s eat!” he said, tickling her side, throwing an arm around my neck, and walking with me into the kitchen. I put Raelyn in her booster chair and pulled out some place settings. Jamie sat down across from Gram, waiting to be served.
“So, how’s your family doin?” Gram asked Jamie. He gave the detached,
“They’re fine” answer and attempted to change the subject. “How’s everyone in Lodi?”
“Well, everyone’s ’, that’s how, ‘bout your family and what that sick man did to your sister, how you went in and saved ‘er.” I dropped a helping of spaghetti on her plate and handed her a fork. “Thank you, Honey,” she said. I did the same for Jamie.
“Thanks, Jane,” he said. I winked at him and patted his shoulder, served Sophie some food, then sat down to feed Raelyn.
“I don’t want to talk about it, really,” Jamie said, forking steaming red noodles into his mouth.
“All right, don’t. Go take a walk with Jane after y’eat and talk to her. She’s got some ’ to do herself.” She winked at me, then shoveled a forkful into her mouth. Sauce dripped on her chin; ends of noodles drooped out of her closed mouth. She leaned her face over her plate and sucked them in, wiping her chin with her sleeve. I handed her a small stack of napkins.
“Oh, my. Thank you, Honey,” she said, spreading a napkin across her lap and taking another big bite. She had a tendency to breathe loudly through her nose while she chewed.
“Gram, is it ok if you finish feeding her and we go out for a walk now? I can eat later, if you don’t mind,” I said, already getting up and moving Raelyn to sit next to her.
“Well, let the boy finish first, won’t you?” she said, mouth half full.
“No, no, I’m full, really. Thanks so much.” He stood up and put his plate, which was already close to clean, in the sink. We walked out without waiting for an answer.
“Don’t be too long,” Gram called from the kitchen.
“I won’t,” I called back, letting the door slam closed behind me.
Random voices and passing cars seemed to crescendo as we descended from the porch to the street, the coming and going of public space, the artful purpose of sidewalks. There were times when our dialogue demonstrated the recesses of our guts, like blood spewing over a black enamel sink to then be sucked down the drain, like the sweet suction of time taking the pain away. This was one of those times. The sun was wandering down, an impressive performance, the majesty of the sky hovering and gathering to a horizon painted in pinks and blues.
“What happened to him?” I asked, crunching leaves under my shoes with each step.
“He’s back in jail. Been skipping parole violations left and right for the past 17 years. He’ll serve a pile a time just for that, even more for Heather,” he said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, casting his gaze toward his footsteps. “My mom and Heather are going to a counselor. They want me to go, too, but I’m not interested.”
“You should go,” I said, slightly breathless from our brisk pace. The air felt clean and cold, odorless.
“Don’t want to.” He shook his head, hunched his shoulders forward.
“Can’t hurt.”
He kicked a rock and scowled. The smell of urine and garbage hit us as we turned down an alley.
“What happened to your head?” he asked, looking toward the horizon. We were walking east, toward the lake, into the sunset.
“‘Bout time. I thought you didn’t notice,” I said, punching his arm gently. “I’ll tell you later; don’t change the subject.” His closed lips curved down into a deep frown.
“I feel so mad, like I hate her.” His hands balled up in fists.
“She said she didn’t know, but how could she not know?”
The alley dumped us out into a busy intersection. We waited for the light to turn then crossed to the open fields of the park. Vendor carts dotted the perimeter selling snow cones, ice cream, and elotes, a Mexican delicacy of corn on the cob smothered in butter, mayonnaise, salt, and paprika.
“Did you know?” I asked, leaning down to pick up a big maple leaf the color of old blood edged in gold lying in the grass.
“No, I didn’t know!” he exploded, jolting me into an awkward, bent hop forward, nearly falling over before I made it upright.
“Don’t you think I would’ve done something about it? Don’t you think I would’ve killed him?” he shrieked. Tears sprang to his eyes. I reached out for him, mumbling a “sorry.” He jerked away and broke into a run. I darted after him across the field and into a baseball diamond, the maple leaf trailing kite-like in the air behind us. I closed in and jumped for a tackle, we both went down, tumbling and flailing over each other in a cloud of fine dirt like powder. I pinned him down and saw his tears making mud streaks down his dusty face. I laid my cheek on his chest and squeezed him tight. I felt his arms close around me, heard him softly weeping. We lay there that way for some time in stormy silence until the tears subsided. Slowly I got to my feet, brushed the dirt from my pants. I held my hand out to help him up. He clasped it and was hoisted up.
Standing in the middle of the empty field covered in dust with crumpled clothes and disarranged hair, we broke into spontaneous laughter.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still giggling.
“Forget it.” He started walking, still laughing in short bursts, holding his side. I trotted to catch up, threw an arm around his waist.
“What was your big day?” he asked.
“I skipped school with Stacy and got in trouble,” I said. I looked at him, wanting to gauge his reaction before continuing. He smiled and laughed. Leaves floated past his face, stirring down from the trees.
“You did not!” he said in a shocked high pitch.
“I did. She took me to this old junk yard on the north side. I kissed her.”
He looked astounded and favorably impressed.
“Whoa! That’s huge! Tell me everything.” He seemed genuinely excited for me.
“All I can say is I’ve never felt anything like that before. It was like everything else disappeared; I just let it happen.” I could sense him tensing up as I spoke.
“Is this OK to tell you?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m a little jealous, of course. Partly of her and partly of you, ‘cause I’ve never had that. It was never like that with Jessie.”
“Don’t worry, you will. Give it time,” I said, patting his back.
“Where’s your mom? What happened with her?” he asked.
“She flipped out. I came home; she got rough. I told her what I did, that I was with Stacy making out. Told her I’m gay.” I looked at Jamie; he was staring back at me, his jaw slack, dumbfounded.
“She hit you?” he asked, appalled.
“No, no, she didn’t. More the other way around,” I said. He turned in front of me, stopping me.
“What?” He placed his hand on my shoulder and looked at me, his eyes showing both concern and amusement.
“I leapt at her, knocked her down, my forehead cracked her in the face, right between her eyes,” I said, feeling queasy again recalling it.
“Oh my God, what’d she say to you?”
I shook my head and pushed past him; he grabbed my arm and turned me around.
“Talk to me,” he pleaded.
“Jamie, I can’t. Let me go,” I said, wrenching my arm away. He backed off, raised his hands in the air palms out, a gesture of surrender.
“Hey, hey, it’s OK. You don’t have to tell me,” he said gently. I felt the familiar sting behind my eyes then the warm, salty drops breaking and spilling again.
“She said my dad would’ve never approved,” I told him.
He wrapped his arms around me; I pulled away.
“Let’s walk,” I said, pulling him along. I laced my arm through his and we walked for a while in silence.
The darkening horizon, now less bright, now like a loom loaded with threads of light that glow and spark or blaze like sunflowers in Wisconsin fields, like symbols of the devotion shown by God, or whatever has made so much sky, whatever has made the silhouettes we were against it, the ones each of us had come to need the most, our solid forms having long been towers that stand out dark and strong against that sky, whose magnificence is observable only by way of contrast, shadowy dim form blurry-edged and glowing against clear brilliant bright.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
A Name Unnecessary
When I arrived home my mom was there waiting for me. She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and threw me against the wall.
“I should take you outside and beat your ass, skipping school. What are you thinking? Who were you with? Where were you?”
With each question she jerked me forward and banged me against the wall again. I twisted away from her and started for my room. She grabbed my arm and squeezed hard, spinning me around.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me!”
“What, you happen to be around for once when something happens and now you suddenly give a shit?”
She slapped me hard and fast on the side of the head. I stumbled back.
“Sit down and start talking. Now!” she ordered.
I glared at her, rage building.
“I was with my girlfriend. We were making out all day. I’m gay.” I spit the words at her like insults. Her face transformed from angry, hard lines to wide and stunned arches. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled.
“It’s my fault.” She shook her head. Sat on the couch and dropped her face in her hands. Her reaction overwhelmed me with anger. I stomped across the room to face her.
“What?” I demanded.
“I should have told you.” She flopped back on the couch.
“Told me what?”
“I don’t know, Jane. I was knocked out, I don’t remember.” She pressed her thumbs to her temples and squeezed her eyes shut.
“What, Mom?” My heart beating in my temples, I burned to slap her hard.
“You were born with both male and female, I had to choose. I must have chosen wrong,” she said, shaking her head, eyes still smashed shut, teardrops seeping through.
My legs buckled and fear rose in my throat. I bent forward, my hands on my knees. I reached out for the TV to steady myself. I thought I would throw up or faint. My mom touched my arm and I jumped, snapping away from her.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” I snarled.
“Jane, calm down.” She stood up, reaching toward me. I backed away.
“How could you not tell me?” I roared.
“I wasn’t sure! I wanted to!” she whimpered, advancing toward with arms outstretched like a mummy.
“Get away from me!” I had backed myself into the kitchen. She came through the threshold. I grabbed the back of a wooden chair and threw it down in front of her path. She looked stunned, then grabbed it and whipped it violently upright.
“Don’t you get wild; this is your problem, not mine. I’m the one who should be angry―”
“At what? Are you crazy? You’re never around! Raelyn thinks I’m her mother! You’re high, drunk, sleeping, out somewhere, gone! I’m so sick of you, I hate you!” Spit flew out of my mouth, my fists clenched at my sides, my face like lava, molten red.
“If your dad was alive, he would never approve of this, this—it’s sick!”
My face went from red to white to gray; my stomach lurched, my mouth filled with metallic juices. Without thinking, I leaped at her, crashing into her with a bear hug around the waist and taking her down. I heard the “thunk” of her skull against the linoleum and my forehead smashed into her nose, between her eyes, knocking me dizzy. I pushed up on my hands and knees to see her. Her nose seemed to swell before my eyes; shadows grew out from its slope stretching under her eyes. I slapped my hand over my mouth feeling a sob rise to my throat.
“Jane!” a familiar voice shouted. The door slammed. Gram appeared in the kitchen. I looked up at her with my hand still pressed tight against my mouth. She gasped. Tears exploded out of my eyes.
“Oh, Jane. Oh, dear!” she moaned, pulling me up off of my mother.
“The hell?” my mom slurred from the floor, half conscious.
I ran toward the bathroom but didn’t make it. I fell on the floor gripping my stomach, my body shuddering, senses dulling, vision blurring, heart exploding, guts wrenching and spilling out onto the floor, drenching my body and the carpet in color and pain.
My gram’s hand appeared on my damp forehead; she smoothed back my hair, and I vomited.
“Shsh, it’s OK. Where are your sisters?” she said, patting the top of my head.
“I don’t know,” I said, pushing myself up.
“OK, OK—” She helped me up, putting my arm around her neck. She walked me into the bathroom where she turned on the shower and peeled off my soiled clothes. I stood under the water and turned the temperature toward hot, stopping at a near scald. The stench on my skin could be removed but the one deeper than skin, the one I felt but couldn’t reach could not. I stepped out of the shower and sat down on the edge of the tub, feeling weak. My gram was scrubbing the carpet, cleaning my mess. She saw me and came to me, toweled me off and wrapped me in a warm oversized robe that had been my dad’s, then walked me toward my room. On the way, I saw the sloped shape of my mom in a chair at the kitchen table.
“I’m OK, really.” I pulled away from her, walking into my room and flopping onto my bed.
“Where’s Sophie and Raelyn?” I asked.
“They’re with your Aunt Grace and Uncle Ron.” She sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand.
“OK, Honey, I’m going to call for an ambulance now,” she said.
“Why? Who needs an ambulance?” I asked, feeling faint. I reached up and felt a welt on my forehead where my head cracked my mom’s face. My head was pounding.
“Trust me, Jane. I have a plan. Stay put,” she said sternly, patting my hand before standing up.
“Gram, wait. I need to ask you a question,” I said, reaching for her hand.
“What is it, Sweetie?” She sat back down.
“Mom said I was born a hermaphrodite,” I said, gripping her hand, biting my lip to stifle the tears.
“A hermada what?”
“She said I had both male and female parts.”
“She’s full a shit!” she said, wrinkling up her brow. “I was there, I know. You were a baby girl.”
“Why would she say that then?”
“Don’t you listen to a word a that bullshit. I don’t know why. She’s sick is why and I’m gonna get her help. Don’t you worry, Baby, just sit tight,” she said, getting up and walking out. The whole bed seemed to float up at the release of her weight. I closed my eyes and concentrated on steady, calm. After a few minutes I opened them again. I thought of Sophie and Raelyn and remembered they were safe with Aunt Grace. I got up slowly, grabbed a sweater and jeans, pulled them on, and quietly made my way down the hall toward the door. Yiya was hunched over with my mom in the kitchen, embracing her and talking quietly. They didn’t notice me walk out of the house.
I left with the idea that I was going to be with my sisters, but my feet were taking me somewhere else. It wasn’t until I passed the 7/11 and turned right that I realized where. My pace quickened then broke into a trot, advancing quickly through a run into a flat sprint. Head down, arms pumping, I blasted forward with a might and at a speed that could only end in collapse.
I fell against her front door, heaving and coughing, my stomach twisted in painful knots, and pounded a weak fist three times against it before it opened. I fell through the threshold into her. She caught me and held me upright against her. The strength of her unabashed embrace and the presence of her care, so potent it was nearly palpable in the air around her, instantly quieted the loud clamor in my head and in my lungs and made way for great, moaning sobs. She stood there and held me in a firm hug while I cried, wilted against her. I don’t know how long we remained that way, with the front door standing open, my lanky frame hanging on her soft yet physically powerful one, the evening breeze blowing my hair into her eyes and hers into mine. When it subsided, she gently released me and held me steady by my shoulders in front of her.
“Jane,” she said.
I didn’t say anything, only imagined how I must look and hung my head, hiding my face in my hands. She closed the door and guided me to the couch. I sat down, continued to weep, to hide my face. She sat next to me, put an arm around me, and remained silent. An hour might have passed that way in near silence. There is never any silence. There are always birds and their languages, rustle and breath, wind over orifice. Sound that seeps through walls, scorns all concentration, lunges, uninvited, into ears. And when she took my hand or embraced me, I thought my heart should be just a little less rapidly metrical, my pelvis should loosen its congested clump of nerves, the fall of my breath could be just a whisper less firm.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked.
I got up and paced the room, suddenly too agitated to sit so close to her, to have her comfort me.
“I had a fight with my mom. I told her I’m gay.” I watched carefully to gauge her reaction. Her expression relaxed from concern to something softer; she exhaled as if in relief.
“Well, first of all, let me give you a hug,” she said, rising with arms outstretched. I went to her and let her hug me, then quickly pulled away and continued pacing.
“She didn’t take it well?” she asked, pulling her hair back and knotting it behind her head.
“Not really, no,” I said and laughed. I blushed at my laughter, surprised and embarrassed by it. I looked at her and she was smiling.
“Come with me, Jane,” she said, walking out of the room toward the back of the house. I followed her, noticing on the way that the kitchen had new, hand-painted tiles hung above the stove. She disappeared into her bedroom. I stopped and stood still in the hallway. I had never seen her bedroom before; it seemed forbidden for me to enter it.
“Jane?” she called.
I walked in cautiously, intrigued. She was seated in front of an easel in the corner of the room, beyond the foot of her bed. She was painting a kind of self-portrait on a large canvas. The image was of a younger version of her, child-like but savage, crouching, naked in a desert with wild hair, holding a spear. The eyes of the child were what struck me first: so real and penetrating.
“I was in the middle of this and I don’t want to stop. Make yourself comfortable and talk to me while I paint,” she said, facing the canvas. I sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. She glanced back at me, her brush poised before the canvas as she turned.
“You can sit on the bed,” she said, returning her gaze to her painting. She added small shadows to the face with delicate strokes. Her back was straight; her legs straddled a stool atop a paint-splattered drop cloth. She wore an oversized blue shirt buttoned in the front that fell off her left shoulder, exposing a white tank top underneath. A loose knot held her hair high on the back of her head, revealing the bare slope of neck as it disappeared behind blue collar. Dark coils fell haphazardly about her face.
“I’m fine here,” I said.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Very much.”
“I call it Wild Child. She’s the aspect of me that’s predatory and primal. She fights and she survives. I see the same thing in you,” she said.
I related so completely to what she said it was as if I felt a change occur within me right then. A sudden bravery was available to me that had not been there before, a feeling that I could say anything.
“I skipped school because I was making out with Stacy in an old junked-car lot,” I said.
“Wow,” she said, not looking away from her painting, “who’s Stacy?”
“A girl from school, a girl I’ve known for awhile.”
“Was this a first for you and Stacy?” she asked, putting her brush down and squeezing a dot of brown paint onto her palate.
“Yes, it was. For me, anyway. I don’t know about her. We kissed for hours. I have never felt anything like that before.”
I saw the bend of her smile from behind when she tilted her head a bit to the left.
“Tell me about Anne,” I said.
She sighed loudly and painted broad, brown strokes from beneath the wild child’s feet straight down to the bottom of the canvas.
“Anne was my first love, my only real love. I was young and too afraid to be myself, to have what I wanted.” She turned to face me while she cleaned the brown from the brush with a rag.
“We started out as friends, or at least we thought we were friends.” She swirled the tip of the brush in a cup of water then swiped it up and down her sleeve. Her brow was furrowed, one corner of her mouth curved down.
“But we were really in love. She was a free spirit. Strong, unafraid, reckless even. You remind me a lot of her in that way,” she smiled at me and winked. My legs went numb. I crossed and uncrossed my ankles. A dog barked outside.
“Why were you afraid?”
“My parents, my church, everyone thought it was wrong. I was afraid they were right.” She picked up her palate and faced the canvas again. She dipped the brush in black, mixed it with a bit of red on the edge of the palate.
“She told me it felt right, so that was how we could know it wasn’t wrong. That love so genuine and good could never be wrong. She said that if she were a man, we would have been married. She was right.”
“When did it end? What happened?” I flattened my back against the wall, hugged my knees to my chest, ran my fingertips across the carpeted floor.
“We were in college. We both knew Josh. He was in one of our classes. He also went to my church and had a big crush on me. Anne knew and would joke about it. She never took him seriously or was the least bit threatened until I started spending time with him.” She painted a crack in the earth between the child’s bare feet, accenting the edges with dark maroon.
“She asked me if I was in love with him. I lied and said yes. She asked me how I could be in love with both him and her at the same time. I told her that I couldn’t be and I wasn’t.”
“Why did you lie to her?”
“Because I couldn’t be with her anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She walked away.” She leaned back and cleaned the brush again. On the canvas, the earth opened beneath the wild child threatening to swallow her. She straddled the dark abyss with a brave face, holding her spear as if in victory.
“And you never spoke again?” I asked.
“She wrote me a letter; I never replied. I married Josh. Twenty months later she died in a car accident.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, cleaned the brush with the rag.
“In the letter, she asked me to give her heart back to her because she needed to be
free. I guess she didn’t know that she still had mine.” She rubbed out the shadows on the painting with a malleable piece of rubber.
“Tell me about Stacy,” she said.
“She’s confusing,” I said.
“You mean you’re confused about how you feel?”
“No, I mean she is. She acts like she likes me one day, then changes, treats me like a stranger.”
“Ah, come close go away,” she said, dabbing her brush in blue.
“I had a dream about you last night,” I said, the beat of my heart growing louder, the warmth in my cheeks deeper.
“You did?” she asked, glancing back with raised eyebrows.
I hadn’t dreamed of her the night before, but I had dreamed of her. Only I had been a man in the dream, and she had been without clothes. The memory of it was vivid and exciting. The fact that I had just said something to her about it was terrifying. I looked again into the Wild Child’s eyes, reclaiming the bravery there as a quality within myself.
“What about?” she asked, gliding the brush in curved lines of blue across the top of the canvas.
“About being with you. You were―” Gravity came alive; a low, modest torch lighting up. I could feel it on my arms and shoulders, pulling me into the floor. I told her whatever I felt, spurred to truthfulness by an idiosyncratic enchantment.
“I think a part of me is in love with you,” I said. Her back squarely facing me, suddenly dark and quiet, the words floated in the air and I longed to catch them and draw them back in, wanted the floor to open and let me tumble in, into the black rift, over the cliff and down.
“Well, if you were just 15 years older, Jane, we would have something here,” she laughed, turned her head and winked at me.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I snapped, the skin on the back of my neck pricking with a mix of humiliation and relief.
“Oh, Jane, I’m not laughing at you,” she said, turning on her stool to face me. Her eyes, her hair, her neck and face became a visual clamor―one I would look at until my restraint becomes a caress, holding me until I evolve to where the room loses its walls and furniture, the whole becomes deformed in the act of grasping the part, thoughts are loosed which have no shape.
“There is a part of me that wants to laugh at you, to pat you on the head and tell you how flattered I am, treat you like a sweet little girl who has a crush on me. The truth is, I want to do that because there’s a part of me that’s in love with you too.”
I raised my eyes to meet her gaze and smiled in spite of my effort not to.
“You are something special, Jane. You’re wise beyond your years and there is a knowing energy about you, a kind of maturity. I feel a kinship with you. And I want you to know that you can feel safe here with me.”
“I do,” I said.
“You can say anything to me, too, and know that I will listen without judgment. It’s a very natural thing that you feel. I think there is a measure of erotic energy in all attractions between two people, be it a friendship or a business relationship, or even a student-teacher situation. That it exists between us is a very natural thing. That doesn’t mean we ever have to do anything with it.” She spoke with her hands. They were strong and graceful; her fingers were long and tapered like candles.
“I never thought about it that way,” I said, feeling my embarrassment ebb.
“I will never do anything to hurt you, Jane. I will never laugh at you,” she said, tapping the handle of her paintbrush against the base of her palm for emphasis.
I looked away from her and picked at the carpet, gratitude rising in my chest like a balloon.
“I should take you outside and beat your ass, skipping school. What are you thinking? Who were you with? Where were you?”
With each question she jerked me forward and banged me against the wall again. I twisted away from her and started for my room. She grabbed my arm and squeezed hard, spinning me around.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me!”
“What, you happen to be around for once when something happens and now you suddenly give a shit?”
She slapped me hard and fast on the side of the head. I stumbled back.
“Sit down and start talking. Now!” she ordered.
I glared at her, rage building.
“I was with my girlfriend. We were making out all day. I’m gay.” I spit the words at her like insults. Her face transformed from angry, hard lines to wide and stunned arches. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled.
“It’s my fault.” She shook her head. Sat on the couch and dropped her face in her hands. Her reaction overwhelmed me with anger. I stomped across the room to face her.
“What?” I demanded.
“I should have told you.” She flopped back on the couch.
“Told me what?”
“I don’t know, Jane. I was knocked out, I don’t remember.” She pressed her thumbs to her temples and squeezed her eyes shut.
“What, Mom?” My heart beating in my temples, I burned to slap her hard.
“You were born with both male and female, I had to choose. I must have chosen wrong,” she said, shaking her head, eyes still smashed shut, teardrops seeping through.
My legs buckled and fear rose in my throat. I bent forward, my hands on my knees. I reached out for the TV to steady myself. I thought I would throw up or faint. My mom touched my arm and I jumped, snapping away from her.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” I snarled.
“Jane, calm down.” She stood up, reaching toward me. I backed away.
“How could you not tell me?” I roared.
“I wasn’t sure! I wanted to!” she whimpered, advancing toward with arms outstretched like a mummy.
“Get away from me!” I had backed myself into the kitchen. She came through the threshold. I grabbed the back of a wooden chair and threw it down in front of her path. She looked stunned, then grabbed it and whipped it violently upright.
“Don’t you get wild; this is your problem, not mine. I’m the one who should be angry―”
“At what? Are you crazy? You’re never around! Raelyn thinks I’m her mother! You’re high, drunk, sleeping, out somewhere, gone! I’m so sick of you, I hate you!” Spit flew out of my mouth, my fists clenched at my sides, my face like lava, molten red.
“If your dad was alive, he would never approve of this, this—it’s sick!”
My face went from red to white to gray; my stomach lurched, my mouth filled with metallic juices. Without thinking, I leaped at her, crashing into her with a bear hug around the waist and taking her down. I heard the “thunk” of her skull against the linoleum and my forehead smashed into her nose, between her eyes, knocking me dizzy. I pushed up on my hands and knees to see her. Her nose seemed to swell before my eyes; shadows grew out from its slope stretching under her eyes. I slapped my hand over my mouth feeling a sob rise to my throat.
“Jane!” a familiar voice shouted. The door slammed. Gram appeared in the kitchen. I looked up at her with my hand still pressed tight against my mouth. She gasped. Tears exploded out of my eyes.
“Oh, Jane. Oh, dear!” she moaned, pulling me up off of my mother.
“The hell?” my mom slurred from the floor, half conscious.
I ran toward the bathroom but didn’t make it. I fell on the floor gripping my stomach, my body shuddering, senses dulling, vision blurring, heart exploding, guts wrenching and spilling out onto the floor, drenching my body and the carpet in color and pain.
My gram’s hand appeared on my damp forehead; she smoothed back my hair, and I vomited.
“Shsh, it’s OK. Where are your sisters?” she said, patting the top of my head.
“I don’t know,” I said, pushing myself up.
“OK, OK—” She helped me up, putting my arm around her neck. She walked me into the bathroom where she turned on the shower and peeled off my soiled clothes. I stood under the water and turned the temperature toward hot, stopping at a near scald. The stench on my skin could be removed but the one deeper than skin, the one I felt but couldn’t reach could not. I stepped out of the shower and sat down on the edge of the tub, feeling weak. My gram was scrubbing the carpet, cleaning my mess. She saw me and came to me, toweled me off and wrapped me in a warm oversized robe that had been my dad’s, then walked me toward my room. On the way, I saw the sloped shape of my mom in a chair at the kitchen table.
“I’m OK, really.” I pulled away from her, walking into my room and flopping onto my bed.
“Where’s Sophie and Raelyn?” I asked.
“They’re with your Aunt Grace and Uncle Ron.” She sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand.
“OK, Honey, I’m going to call for an ambulance now,” she said.
“Why? Who needs an ambulance?” I asked, feeling faint. I reached up and felt a welt on my forehead where my head cracked my mom’s face. My head was pounding.
“Trust me, Jane. I have a plan. Stay put,” she said sternly, patting my hand before standing up.
“Gram, wait. I need to ask you a question,” I said, reaching for her hand.
“What is it, Sweetie?” She sat back down.
“Mom said I was born a hermaphrodite,” I said, gripping her hand, biting my lip to stifle the tears.
“A hermada what?”
“She said I had both male and female parts.”
“She’s full a shit!” she said, wrinkling up her brow. “I was there, I know. You were a baby girl.”
“Why would she say that then?”
“Don’t you listen to a word a that bullshit. I don’t know why. She’s sick is why and I’m gonna get her help. Don’t you worry, Baby, just sit tight,” she said, getting up and walking out. The whole bed seemed to float up at the release of her weight. I closed my eyes and concentrated on steady, calm. After a few minutes I opened them again. I thought of Sophie and Raelyn and remembered they were safe with Aunt Grace. I got up slowly, grabbed a sweater and jeans, pulled them on, and quietly made my way down the hall toward the door. Yiya was hunched over with my mom in the kitchen, embracing her and talking quietly. They didn’t notice me walk out of the house.
I left with the idea that I was going to be with my sisters, but my feet were taking me somewhere else. It wasn’t until I passed the 7/11 and turned right that I realized where. My pace quickened then broke into a trot, advancing quickly through a run into a flat sprint. Head down, arms pumping, I blasted forward with a might and at a speed that could only end in collapse.
I fell against her front door, heaving and coughing, my stomach twisted in painful knots, and pounded a weak fist three times against it before it opened. I fell through the threshold into her. She caught me and held me upright against her. The strength of her unabashed embrace and the presence of her care, so potent it was nearly palpable in the air around her, instantly quieted the loud clamor in my head and in my lungs and made way for great, moaning sobs. She stood there and held me in a firm hug while I cried, wilted against her. I don’t know how long we remained that way, with the front door standing open, my lanky frame hanging on her soft yet physically powerful one, the evening breeze blowing my hair into her eyes and hers into mine. When it subsided, she gently released me and held me steady by my shoulders in front of her.
“Jane,” she said.
I didn’t say anything, only imagined how I must look and hung my head, hiding my face in my hands. She closed the door and guided me to the couch. I sat down, continued to weep, to hide my face. She sat next to me, put an arm around me, and remained silent. An hour might have passed that way in near silence. There is never any silence. There are always birds and their languages, rustle and breath, wind over orifice. Sound that seeps through walls, scorns all concentration, lunges, uninvited, into ears. And when she took my hand or embraced me, I thought my heart should be just a little less rapidly metrical, my pelvis should loosen its congested clump of nerves, the fall of my breath could be just a whisper less firm.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked.
I got up and paced the room, suddenly too agitated to sit so close to her, to have her comfort me.
“I had a fight with my mom. I told her I’m gay.” I watched carefully to gauge her reaction. Her expression relaxed from concern to something softer; she exhaled as if in relief.
“Well, first of all, let me give you a hug,” she said, rising with arms outstretched. I went to her and let her hug me, then quickly pulled away and continued pacing.
“She didn’t take it well?” she asked, pulling her hair back and knotting it behind her head.
“Not really, no,” I said and laughed. I blushed at my laughter, surprised and embarrassed by it. I looked at her and she was smiling.
“Come with me, Jane,” she said, walking out of the room toward the back of the house. I followed her, noticing on the way that the kitchen had new, hand-painted tiles hung above the stove. She disappeared into her bedroom. I stopped and stood still in the hallway. I had never seen her bedroom before; it seemed forbidden for me to enter it.
“Jane?” she called.
I walked in cautiously, intrigued. She was seated in front of an easel in the corner of the room, beyond the foot of her bed. She was painting a kind of self-portrait on a large canvas. The image was of a younger version of her, child-like but savage, crouching, naked in a desert with wild hair, holding a spear. The eyes of the child were what struck me first: so real and penetrating.
“I was in the middle of this and I don’t want to stop. Make yourself comfortable and talk to me while I paint,” she said, facing the canvas. I sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. She glanced back at me, her brush poised before the canvas as she turned.
“You can sit on the bed,” she said, returning her gaze to her painting. She added small shadows to the face with delicate strokes. Her back was straight; her legs straddled a stool atop a paint-splattered drop cloth. She wore an oversized blue shirt buttoned in the front that fell off her left shoulder, exposing a white tank top underneath. A loose knot held her hair high on the back of her head, revealing the bare slope of neck as it disappeared behind blue collar. Dark coils fell haphazardly about her face.
“I’m fine here,” I said.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Very much.”
“I call it Wild Child. She’s the aspect of me that’s predatory and primal. She fights and she survives. I see the same thing in you,” she said.
I related so completely to what she said it was as if I felt a change occur within me right then. A sudden bravery was available to me that had not been there before, a feeling that I could say anything.
“I skipped school because I was making out with Stacy in an old junked-car lot,” I said.
“Wow,” she said, not looking away from her painting, “who’s Stacy?”
“A girl from school, a girl I’ve known for awhile.”
“Was this a first for you and Stacy?” she asked, putting her brush down and squeezing a dot of brown paint onto her palate.
“Yes, it was. For me, anyway. I don’t know about her. We kissed for hours. I have never felt anything like that before.”
I saw the bend of her smile from behind when she tilted her head a bit to the left.
“Tell me about Anne,” I said.
She sighed loudly and painted broad, brown strokes from beneath the wild child’s feet straight down to the bottom of the canvas.
“Anne was my first love, my only real love. I was young and too afraid to be myself, to have what I wanted.” She turned to face me while she cleaned the brown from the brush with a rag.
“We started out as friends, or at least we thought we were friends.” She swirled the tip of the brush in a cup of water then swiped it up and down her sleeve. Her brow was furrowed, one corner of her mouth curved down.
“But we were really in love. She was a free spirit. Strong, unafraid, reckless even. You remind me a lot of her in that way,” she smiled at me and winked. My legs went numb. I crossed and uncrossed my ankles. A dog barked outside.
“Why were you afraid?”
“My parents, my church, everyone thought it was wrong. I was afraid they were right.” She picked up her palate and faced the canvas again. She dipped the brush in black, mixed it with a bit of red on the edge of the palate.
“She told me it felt right, so that was how we could know it wasn’t wrong. That love so genuine and good could never be wrong. She said that if she were a man, we would have been married. She was right.”
“When did it end? What happened?” I flattened my back against the wall, hugged my knees to my chest, ran my fingertips across the carpeted floor.
“We were in college. We both knew Josh. He was in one of our classes. He also went to my church and had a big crush on me. Anne knew and would joke about it. She never took him seriously or was the least bit threatened until I started spending time with him.” She painted a crack in the earth between the child’s bare feet, accenting the edges with dark maroon.
“She asked me if I was in love with him. I lied and said yes. She asked me how I could be in love with both him and her at the same time. I told her that I couldn’t be and I wasn’t.”
“Why did you lie to her?”
“Because I couldn’t be with her anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. She walked away.” She leaned back and cleaned the brush again. On the canvas, the earth opened beneath the wild child threatening to swallow her. She straddled the dark abyss with a brave face, holding her spear as if in victory.
“And you never spoke again?” I asked.
“She wrote me a letter; I never replied. I married Josh. Twenty months later she died in a car accident.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, cleaned the brush with the rag.
“In the letter, she asked me to give her heart back to her because she needed to be
free. I guess she didn’t know that she still had mine.” She rubbed out the shadows on the painting with a malleable piece of rubber.
“Tell me about Stacy,” she said.
“She’s confusing,” I said.
“You mean you’re confused about how you feel?”
“No, I mean she is. She acts like she likes me one day, then changes, treats me like a stranger.”
“Ah, come close go away,” she said, dabbing her brush in blue.
“I had a dream about you last night,” I said, the beat of my heart growing louder, the warmth in my cheeks deeper.
“You did?” she asked, glancing back with raised eyebrows.
I hadn’t dreamed of her the night before, but I had dreamed of her. Only I had been a man in the dream, and she had been without clothes. The memory of it was vivid and exciting. The fact that I had just said something to her about it was terrifying. I looked again into the Wild Child’s eyes, reclaiming the bravery there as a quality within myself.
“What about?” she asked, gliding the brush in curved lines of blue across the top of the canvas.
“About being with you. You were―” Gravity came alive; a low, modest torch lighting up. I could feel it on my arms and shoulders, pulling me into the floor. I told her whatever I felt, spurred to truthfulness by an idiosyncratic enchantment.
“I think a part of me is in love with you,” I said. Her back squarely facing me, suddenly dark and quiet, the words floated in the air and I longed to catch them and draw them back in, wanted the floor to open and let me tumble in, into the black rift, over the cliff and down.
“Well, if you were just 15 years older, Jane, we would have something here,” she laughed, turned her head and winked at me.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I snapped, the skin on the back of my neck pricking with a mix of humiliation and relief.
“Oh, Jane, I’m not laughing at you,” she said, turning on her stool to face me. Her eyes, her hair, her neck and face became a visual clamor―one I would look at until my restraint becomes a caress, holding me until I evolve to where the room loses its walls and furniture, the whole becomes deformed in the act of grasping the part, thoughts are loosed which have no shape.
“There is a part of me that wants to laugh at you, to pat you on the head and tell you how flattered I am, treat you like a sweet little girl who has a crush on me. The truth is, I want to do that because there’s a part of me that’s in love with you too.”
I raised my eyes to meet her gaze and smiled in spite of my effort not to.
“You are something special, Jane. You’re wise beyond your years and there is a knowing energy about you, a kind of maturity. I feel a kinship with you. And I want you to know that you can feel safe here with me.”
“I do,” I said.
“You can say anything to me, too, and know that I will listen without judgment. It’s a very natural thing that you feel. I think there is a measure of erotic energy in all attractions between two people, be it a friendship or a business relationship, or even a student-teacher situation. That it exists between us is a very natural thing. That doesn’t mean we ever have to do anything with it.” She spoke with her hands. They were strong and graceful; her fingers were long and tapered like candles.
“I never thought about it that way,” I said, feeling my embarrassment ebb.
“I will never do anything to hurt you, Jane. I will never laugh at you,” she said, tapping the handle of her paintbrush against the base of her palm for emphasis.
I looked away from her and picked at the carpet, gratitude rising in my chest like a balloon.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Bent Metal Kisses
“Jane?” Sophie sat down next to me. “Mom’s been out all night again.” She sniffled, her head fell forward. I put my arm around her and hugged her to me.
“I’m so sorry, Soph. I won’t leave you like that again. Did you stay at Aunt Nancy’s?” She nodded.
“I thought mom would be home by now. If not her, then you for sure.”
“Come on, we’re calling Gram.” I pulled her up with me and led her by the arm to the phone. An answering machine greeted me.
“Gram, it’s Jane and Sophie. You have to come home. You have to do something. Mom’s bad.”
“Come home, Gram!” Sophie yelled.
“Don’t call back, just get here as soon as you can.” I hung up the phone. Raelyn was screaming from the floor, still in her car seat. I picked her up. Her heart was beating fast and hard against me. I pressed her closer and rocked her. I looked down at Sophie and noticed she was crying too. I took them both into our bedroom and shut the door. I made a bed of blankets for us on the floor and lay down. Raelyn, snug between Sophie and me, smiled with gleaming, wet eyes. We didn’t talk, just held still. We were waiting. I counted in my mind how long it would take for Gram to get home from wherever she was, hear our message, and drive the three hours to pick us up and take us back with her. Wisconsin. The only place in the world I wanted to be.
My thoughts traveled then. From the park where I met Jamie to my Gram’s hands shuffling the deck of Uno cards. From the age of the milk in the fridge to my kindergarten teacher’s hairdo. From Mrs. Dalby, the way her mouth is shaped, to paper clips to cotton balls to the Great Lakes and Canada back to Wisconsin to settle finally on Stacy. There was insatiableness to thoughts of her. Her face was tattooed in my mind’s eye, my mind’s stomach, grumbling to feed this new and growing appetite. I fell asleep holding those thoughts in my mind. When Monday came and I was getting ready for school, they were still there.
There was an area out in front of school property where kids assembled each morning to talk and smoke, hang out, and look cool. Stacy was there among them most days. I braced myself before rounding the corner to where she was, where I knew she would be. I slowed, hesitated, leaned against the brick wall, filled my lungs, straightened my spine, and went.
All the people standing around her, smoking cigarettes, somehow resembled a Greek tragedy chorus. Their inhaling and exhaling punctuated with thinly nebulous smoke tendrils riding the air with breath and moisture, dust and odor, expressing a collective mental state of awkwardness, discord―a dull lowering pang, like a pinched nerve or a pulled muscle, an ankle blister rubbing against the tough leather edge of my boot.
She looked at me. The intense look in her eyes felt painful, like rabid snarling dogs, snorting and spitting and insisting that I bleed. The whole scene dried my mouth. I strode by, unaffected, indifferent, nodding casually, bleeding.
I went directly to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall, breathing heavily, a thin film of cold sweat on my forehead. Something inside twisted up and ached; each breath stabbed the spot gently, driving it deeper into my chest. I lowered my head and planted my palms against the sides of the stall.
Footsteps. Someone had walked in. I leaned down to see the shoes and recognized the heavy-soled black boots similar to mine, the kind that looked especially hot with the catholic school uniforms we had to wear.
“Jane.”
I held my breath.
“I know you’re in here.”
“Give me a little time.” I struggled to keep my voice even.
“You have study hall now, right?” Her voice sounded normal, even excited. No trace of the shame or anger it held the last time I heard it.
“After homeroom, yes,” I said, flushing the toilet, straightening my jacket, preparing to face her.
“Forget homeroom; let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You trust me?”
I opened the stall door and stepped out. She was standing closer than I expected, a sly, closed-lipped smirk on her face.
“Not really, no.”
She laughed, open mouthed. She ran her fingers through her hair and smiled wide. One of her two front teeth was slightly longer than the other, something I had noticed for the first time at the coffee shop. Without realizing it, I was smiling back, nodding yes.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the restroom and out of the building. We walked to the bus stop and found a bus waiting there. She stepped on ahead of me and paid both fares. She sat in a single chair along the side of the bus and I took the seat behind her. We exited some time later at the far north end of the city on Western Avenue. There was nobody around. The shops were either boarded up or closed, the buildings empty. She started walking toward a large lot filled with crashed, junked cars and trucks. I looked up at the sign on the warehouse building next to it: “Brown’s Auto Construction.”
“It’s my uncle’s car shop. They’re closed on Sundays and Mondays.” I continued following her into the lot. We made our way deep in among the auto corpses to a small clearing between one very old green pickup truck with a smashed windshield and a concrete-block wall. She stopped and looked at me.
“You’re so intense,” I said, shaking my head.
“What? I didn’t say anything,” she smiled.
“Exactly. Why don’t you say something, do something…”
She laughed softly. “If you only knew what I want to do…”
I walked to the truck, my neck and face burning, put a shaky palm to the bent metal hood. I felt her behind me and turned. I stared at her, releasing whatever inhibitions I had been harboring, determined to match her, to top her. She gazed back. We stood there in silence, our unbroken stare like a magnet, pulling us closer together. Her face was centimeters from mine; I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against hers.
“Open your eyes,” she whispered. I opened my eyes.
“One eye,” she said, and I saw what she meant. From that angle, with my forehead resting against hers, her eyes came together into one epic marbled-gray eye staring back at me. I laughed, falling forward into her. She fell back against the truck and put her arms around my waist, laughing and pulling me closer. We were both in hysterics then, fed by the tension. My stomach tightened with silent laughter, doubled and breathless, my head on her shoulder. Slowly the laughter subsided, leaving us again in silence.
She leaned against the side of the truck; I was pressed against her, her arms tight around my waist. I lifted my face to hers, so close that my lips brushed against her cheek, her chin, her mouth, activating a latent ache in the center of my chest to jump and whirl, rushing up, down, inside my tube throat, battering lightly my cage of ribs. Suspended there with our mouths barely touching, our lips lightly brushing together, I leaned back slightly, focused on her slender sloping neck, traced it with my finger, brought it to my mouth, tasted its warm sweetness on my tongue, orange peels mixed with roses and honey. Her skin prickled under my mouth, her breath in my ear entering my body; transforming it to a parallel series of minute channels, traveling dark and light striations of muscle and tissue through my legs, out the top of my head and hands and mouth all at once. My mouth, unhurried, ascended her neck, the ledge of jaw, the supple curve of cheek, connecting with her breath, shallow, swift little puffs for air. She was silent, motionless. The kiss: deep and hungry, inner oceans thrashing and roaring like mass applause, cheering us on from everywhere, a raging river, spraying billions of awards of white water to splash their wet approval on everything firm, like pure, glueless stickers, liquids hitting solids with a hiss.
Her body firmly against mine. Her breath hot, anxious. My mouth open, accepting, soft, moving. I closed my eyes and leaned all my weight against her, held her face in my hands, opened wider, pressed my pelvis against hers. Her hands slipped beneath my shirt and across my back, pulling me tight against her, pressing back with her hips. The space around us spread, dispersed, as the space between us disappeared.
Back at school, we walked side by side to the principal’s office. Having passed much more of the day than first period making out in the car graveyard, we didn’t know what else to do but tell the truth. Neither of us had so blatantly skipped school before, and this was high school, which made things seem much more serious. I didn’t care what would happen. I had never felt so happy, giddy, intoxicated. Stacy, with a smile on her face and the same faraway look in her eyes, didn’t seem to care either. We walked into the office and approached the secretary, Mrs. Nash.
“What can I do for you, girls?” she asked skeptically, seeing our exceedingly happy faces stroll in.
“We’re just getting here for the day,” Stacy said, still smiling.
“You have notes from your parents?”
“No,” Stacy replied, unashamed.
Mrs. Nash looked at me, eyebrows narrowed, contempt in her eyes. I shook my head and tried to look sullen.
“So you are admitting that you skipped almost the entire day of school?”
“Yes, Mrs. Nash, that’s right. We did skip almost the whole day of school.” Stacy laughed as she said it. Any trace of kindness immediately drained from Mrs. Nash’s face.
“Smart ass, you are. Have a seat. Both of you.” She tilted her furrowed brow toward the principal’s office and picked up her phone. We sat, stifled laughter, leaned against one another, a wall of crossed arms, bowed heads, and red faces.
“Ladies, come right in,” Father John said. He was the head principal of the school; we had expected only to deal with his assistant. Stacy’s sense of humor about the situation we were in suddenly subsided and gave way to fear. On the way into the office, I nudged her gently with my elbow and she shot a fearful glance at me, moved away.
“Stacy, I’m surprised to see you in here. Skipping school? And so smug? Where, may I ask, have you been all day? Your father will want to know when I call him in five minutes.”
“Please, don’t call him, Father John.” Stacy looked near tears.
“There is no question. He will be called. What I say to him depends on you now. Will you choose to be truthful with me, or will you choose to lie?
Stacy looked down, her face even redder, she opened her mouth.
“It was my idea, Father,” I said.
He turned to me, eyebrows raised.
“Was it? And who might you be?” He picked up a paper on his desk, lifted a pair of reading glasses daintily to his face, leaned forward, and peered at the paper.
“Jane Morrow.” He said nothing while he silently read whatever was on the paper.
“Ah. You’re not supposed to be here, Jane. Are you?” He looked up at me, lowered his glasses.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Father.”
“Well I think you do, after all. Students at Northside Catholic Acadamy come from other private academies, not from public schools. Seems someone has pulled strings, so to speak. It takes much more than good grades to get into my learning institution, Ms. Morrow.”
I looked at my hands in my lap, straightened my spine. I felt Stacy’s eyes on my face. I shifted in my seat.
“I think you will find that it will take very little for those strings to be broken,” he said, sitting back in his chair and folding the glasses carefully before placing them on the desk and folding his hands atop the paper with all of the information about me. I looked at his glasses and wanted to smash them.
“One more infraction, regardless of its degree of seriousness, and you, along with your sister, Sophie, will be out. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded.
“You will serve a week of detention for today’s escapade. In addition, you will write a letter of apology to the teacher of each class you skipped as well as each of Ms. Wool’s teachers.”
My head shot up, my mouth dropped open. I stared at him, horrified.
“You chose to take responsibility, Ms. Morrow. And so you will. You are dismissed.” He stood up.
I walked away from her. I felt her steps quicken to catch up. I started running.
“Jane!” she called after me, running now too.
I stopped and whirled on her. She bumped right into me and I pushed her back. She stumbled to keep from falling and looked at me, shocked.
“What do you want from me?” I snapped, more as a statement than a question.
“I’m afraid, Jane.” Her voice was faint and forceful at once, as robust as it was delicate.
“What are you afraid of?”
“My Dad. Everybody. You.” She pushed her hair back with the palm of her hand. The collar of her shirt was askew; we had buttoned it back up unevenly.
“Everybody’s afraid, Stacy.”
“You’re not afraid of anything. I’m a mess.” She looked quickly down, but before she did her glance was deep and fervent. She was a particularly beautiful mess. Pockets of blackness and bowls of light, contrasting both in color and in meaning, stunning to witness.
“The only difference between you and me is that I don’t let my fear stop me.”
“My mom died. All I have is my dad,” she said, with a pleading sort of tone. There it was. This was the something more to her I had noticed but wondered about. It was what I had carried, unburdened now in the wake of it―that aching, world-weary personal loss, loss of person. And in no time, as if all the fire engines and ambulances in the world were streaking there, I rushed in to save her, or to be saved. I took her hand in mine. Something of the light, odd touch of her fingers wrapping themselves between mine breathed through established lines, stiff and rigid as they were, though with a freshness and weight lacking in the usual sensual whimsies. Her fingers shocked my center, yet I found them gentle, totally clear in their meaning on the most casual first touch, and shocking only in the sense that they were so original. The true thing, finally unaccountable and yet unmistakable.
“My dad would never understand how I feel about you. The world will never understand,” she said, dropping her hand away.
“I don’t understand,” I said, taking a step closer.
“Don’t you?” she whispered on my lips like a kiss.
I turned to walk away, not wanting to give in at that moment.
“Jane, just think about it. I’m sorry about what happened and I will make it up to you. Meet me at the old green truck on Saturday at noon.”
“I’m so sorry, Soph. I won’t leave you like that again. Did you stay at Aunt Nancy’s?” She nodded.
“I thought mom would be home by now. If not her, then you for sure.”
“Come on, we’re calling Gram.” I pulled her up with me and led her by the arm to the phone. An answering machine greeted me.
“Gram, it’s Jane and Sophie. You have to come home. You have to do something. Mom’s bad.”
“Come home, Gram!” Sophie yelled.
“Don’t call back, just get here as soon as you can.” I hung up the phone. Raelyn was screaming from the floor, still in her car seat. I picked her up. Her heart was beating fast and hard against me. I pressed her closer and rocked her. I looked down at Sophie and noticed she was crying too. I took them both into our bedroom and shut the door. I made a bed of blankets for us on the floor and lay down. Raelyn, snug between Sophie and me, smiled with gleaming, wet eyes. We didn’t talk, just held still. We were waiting. I counted in my mind how long it would take for Gram to get home from wherever she was, hear our message, and drive the three hours to pick us up and take us back with her. Wisconsin. The only place in the world I wanted to be.
My thoughts traveled then. From the park where I met Jamie to my Gram’s hands shuffling the deck of Uno cards. From the age of the milk in the fridge to my kindergarten teacher’s hairdo. From Mrs. Dalby, the way her mouth is shaped, to paper clips to cotton balls to the Great Lakes and Canada back to Wisconsin to settle finally on Stacy. There was insatiableness to thoughts of her. Her face was tattooed in my mind’s eye, my mind’s stomach, grumbling to feed this new and growing appetite. I fell asleep holding those thoughts in my mind. When Monday came and I was getting ready for school, they were still there.
There was an area out in front of school property where kids assembled each morning to talk and smoke, hang out, and look cool. Stacy was there among them most days. I braced myself before rounding the corner to where she was, where I knew she would be. I slowed, hesitated, leaned against the brick wall, filled my lungs, straightened my spine, and went.
All the people standing around her, smoking cigarettes, somehow resembled a Greek tragedy chorus. Their inhaling and exhaling punctuated with thinly nebulous smoke tendrils riding the air with breath and moisture, dust and odor, expressing a collective mental state of awkwardness, discord―a dull lowering pang, like a pinched nerve or a pulled muscle, an ankle blister rubbing against the tough leather edge of my boot.
She looked at me. The intense look in her eyes felt painful, like rabid snarling dogs, snorting and spitting and insisting that I bleed. The whole scene dried my mouth. I strode by, unaffected, indifferent, nodding casually, bleeding.
I went directly to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall, breathing heavily, a thin film of cold sweat on my forehead. Something inside twisted up and ached; each breath stabbed the spot gently, driving it deeper into my chest. I lowered my head and planted my palms against the sides of the stall.
Footsteps. Someone had walked in. I leaned down to see the shoes and recognized the heavy-soled black boots similar to mine, the kind that looked especially hot with the catholic school uniforms we had to wear.
“Jane.”
I held my breath.
“I know you’re in here.”
“Give me a little time.” I struggled to keep my voice even.
“You have study hall now, right?” Her voice sounded normal, even excited. No trace of the shame or anger it held the last time I heard it.
“After homeroom, yes,” I said, flushing the toilet, straightening my jacket, preparing to face her.
“Forget homeroom; let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You trust me?”
I opened the stall door and stepped out. She was standing closer than I expected, a sly, closed-lipped smirk on her face.
“Not really, no.”
She laughed, open mouthed. She ran her fingers through her hair and smiled wide. One of her two front teeth was slightly longer than the other, something I had noticed for the first time at the coffee shop. Without realizing it, I was smiling back, nodding yes.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the restroom and out of the building. We walked to the bus stop and found a bus waiting there. She stepped on ahead of me and paid both fares. She sat in a single chair along the side of the bus and I took the seat behind her. We exited some time later at the far north end of the city on Western Avenue. There was nobody around. The shops were either boarded up or closed, the buildings empty. She started walking toward a large lot filled with crashed, junked cars and trucks. I looked up at the sign on the warehouse building next to it: “Brown’s Auto Construction.”
“It’s my uncle’s car shop. They’re closed on Sundays and Mondays.” I continued following her into the lot. We made our way deep in among the auto corpses to a small clearing between one very old green pickup truck with a smashed windshield and a concrete-block wall. She stopped and looked at me.
“You’re so intense,” I said, shaking my head.
“What? I didn’t say anything,” she smiled.
“Exactly. Why don’t you say something, do something…”
She laughed softly. “If you only knew what I want to do…”
I walked to the truck, my neck and face burning, put a shaky palm to the bent metal hood. I felt her behind me and turned. I stared at her, releasing whatever inhibitions I had been harboring, determined to match her, to top her. She gazed back. We stood there in silence, our unbroken stare like a magnet, pulling us closer together. Her face was centimeters from mine; I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against hers.
“Open your eyes,” she whispered. I opened my eyes.
“One eye,” she said, and I saw what she meant. From that angle, with my forehead resting against hers, her eyes came together into one epic marbled-gray eye staring back at me. I laughed, falling forward into her. She fell back against the truck and put her arms around my waist, laughing and pulling me closer. We were both in hysterics then, fed by the tension. My stomach tightened with silent laughter, doubled and breathless, my head on her shoulder. Slowly the laughter subsided, leaving us again in silence.
She leaned against the side of the truck; I was pressed against her, her arms tight around my waist. I lifted my face to hers, so close that my lips brushed against her cheek, her chin, her mouth, activating a latent ache in the center of my chest to jump and whirl, rushing up, down, inside my tube throat, battering lightly my cage of ribs. Suspended there with our mouths barely touching, our lips lightly brushing together, I leaned back slightly, focused on her slender sloping neck, traced it with my finger, brought it to my mouth, tasted its warm sweetness on my tongue, orange peels mixed with roses and honey. Her skin prickled under my mouth, her breath in my ear entering my body; transforming it to a parallel series of minute channels, traveling dark and light striations of muscle and tissue through my legs, out the top of my head and hands and mouth all at once. My mouth, unhurried, ascended her neck, the ledge of jaw, the supple curve of cheek, connecting with her breath, shallow, swift little puffs for air. She was silent, motionless. The kiss: deep and hungry, inner oceans thrashing and roaring like mass applause, cheering us on from everywhere, a raging river, spraying billions of awards of white water to splash their wet approval on everything firm, like pure, glueless stickers, liquids hitting solids with a hiss.
Her body firmly against mine. Her breath hot, anxious. My mouth open, accepting, soft, moving. I closed my eyes and leaned all my weight against her, held her face in my hands, opened wider, pressed my pelvis against hers. Her hands slipped beneath my shirt and across my back, pulling me tight against her, pressing back with her hips. The space around us spread, dispersed, as the space between us disappeared.
Back at school, we walked side by side to the principal’s office. Having passed much more of the day than first period making out in the car graveyard, we didn’t know what else to do but tell the truth. Neither of us had so blatantly skipped school before, and this was high school, which made things seem much more serious. I didn’t care what would happen. I had never felt so happy, giddy, intoxicated. Stacy, with a smile on her face and the same faraway look in her eyes, didn’t seem to care either. We walked into the office and approached the secretary, Mrs. Nash.
“What can I do for you, girls?” she asked skeptically, seeing our exceedingly happy faces stroll in.
“We’re just getting here for the day,” Stacy said, still smiling.
“You have notes from your parents?”
“No,” Stacy replied, unashamed.
Mrs. Nash looked at me, eyebrows narrowed, contempt in her eyes. I shook my head and tried to look sullen.
“So you are admitting that you skipped almost the entire day of school?”
“Yes, Mrs. Nash, that’s right. We did skip almost the whole day of school.” Stacy laughed as she said it. Any trace of kindness immediately drained from Mrs. Nash’s face.
“Smart ass, you are. Have a seat. Both of you.” She tilted her furrowed brow toward the principal’s office and picked up her phone. We sat, stifled laughter, leaned against one another, a wall of crossed arms, bowed heads, and red faces.
“Ladies, come right in,” Father John said. He was the head principal of the school; we had expected only to deal with his assistant. Stacy’s sense of humor about the situation we were in suddenly subsided and gave way to fear. On the way into the office, I nudged her gently with my elbow and she shot a fearful glance at me, moved away.
“Stacy, I’m surprised to see you in here. Skipping school? And so smug? Where, may I ask, have you been all day? Your father will want to know when I call him in five minutes.”
“Please, don’t call him, Father John.” Stacy looked near tears.
“There is no question. He will be called. What I say to him depends on you now. Will you choose to be truthful with me, or will you choose to lie?
Stacy looked down, her face even redder, she opened her mouth.
“It was my idea, Father,” I said.
He turned to me, eyebrows raised.
“Was it? And who might you be?” He picked up a paper on his desk, lifted a pair of reading glasses daintily to his face, leaned forward, and peered at the paper.
“Jane Morrow.” He said nothing while he silently read whatever was on the paper.
“Ah. You’re not supposed to be here, Jane. Are you?” He looked up at me, lowered his glasses.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Father.”
“Well I think you do, after all. Students at Northside Catholic Acadamy come from other private academies, not from public schools. Seems someone has pulled strings, so to speak. It takes much more than good grades to get into my learning institution, Ms. Morrow.”
I looked at my hands in my lap, straightened my spine. I felt Stacy’s eyes on my face. I shifted in my seat.
“I think you will find that it will take very little for those strings to be broken,” he said, sitting back in his chair and folding the glasses carefully before placing them on the desk and folding his hands atop the paper with all of the information about me. I looked at his glasses and wanted to smash them.
“One more infraction, regardless of its degree of seriousness, and you, along with your sister, Sophie, will be out. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded.
“You will serve a week of detention for today’s escapade. In addition, you will write a letter of apology to the teacher of each class you skipped as well as each of Ms. Wool’s teachers.”
My head shot up, my mouth dropped open. I stared at him, horrified.
“You chose to take responsibility, Ms. Morrow. And so you will. You are dismissed.” He stood up.
I walked away from her. I felt her steps quicken to catch up. I started running.
“Jane!” she called after me, running now too.
I stopped and whirled on her. She bumped right into me and I pushed her back. She stumbled to keep from falling and looked at me, shocked.
“What do you want from me?” I snapped, more as a statement than a question.
“I’m afraid, Jane.” Her voice was faint and forceful at once, as robust as it was delicate.
“What are you afraid of?”
“My Dad. Everybody. You.” She pushed her hair back with the palm of her hand. The collar of her shirt was askew; we had buttoned it back up unevenly.
“Everybody’s afraid, Stacy.”
“You’re not afraid of anything. I’m a mess.” She looked quickly down, but before she did her glance was deep and fervent. She was a particularly beautiful mess. Pockets of blackness and bowls of light, contrasting both in color and in meaning, stunning to witness.
“The only difference between you and me is that I don’t let my fear stop me.”
“My mom died. All I have is my dad,” she said, with a pleading sort of tone. There it was. This was the something more to her I had noticed but wondered about. It was what I had carried, unburdened now in the wake of it―that aching, world-weary personal loss, loss of person. And in no time, as if all the fire engines and ambulances in the world were streaking there, I rushed in to save her, or to be saved. I took her hand in mine. Something of the light, odd touch of her fingers wrapping themselves between mine breathed through established lines, stiff and rigid as they were, though with a freshness and weight lacking in the usual sensual whimsies. Her fingers shocked my center, yet I found them gentle, totally clear in their meaning on the most casual first touch, and shocking only in the sense that they were so original. The true thing, finally unaccountable and yet unmistakable.
“My dad would never understand how I feel about you. The world will never understand,” she said, dropping her hand away.
“I don’t understand,” I said, taking a step closer.
“Don’t you?” she whispered on my lips like a kiss.
I turned to walk away, not wanting to give in at that moment.
“Jane, just think about it. I’m sorry about what happened and I will make it up to you. Meet me at the old green truck on Saturday at noon.”
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Dumb Girl
When I started 11th grade, I was reunited with Stacy. She sat in front of me in homeroom. I found her presence to be wholly distracting. Her blond hair curled soft against her shoulders and the clean, flowery scent of her shampoo lingered around her like a halo. When she walked into the room for the first time and looked around, she caught me already staring at her and her cheeks turned a redder pink. She looked fearful; she bit her lip, her eyes widened, but she smiled and walked toward me. She whispered “hi” and took the seat in front of me. The room changed. Books opened. The black letters before me turned into ants and walked away in wavering lines. Free at last, the white pages became fluttering moths. I thought about all the letters I had written to her. What was I thinking? When class ended, she turned.
“Hi, Jane,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Want to sleep over this weekend?”
“Sure!”
A long, awkward silence followed. Then she said: “Great!” And again she turned red.
When Friday finally came, I was already packed and ready to go home with her from school. We met after 9th period and walked together to the El, then took it to the Fullerton stop near her neighborhood and walked toward her house. We didn’t know what else to do, so we stopped at a coffee shop on the way and sat at a table, facing one another and sipping hot chocolate from big mugs. We talked, then sat long after there was nothing left to talk about, as if staring at each other for hours on end without talking was something normal for two teenaged girls who were friends.
That night we slept with our bodies locked together under the quilts like two pale plants with leaves folded around them, defenseless, as egoless as vegetables. When we turned over in bed, it was as if a small breeze had stirred us and not the act of human volition. I don’t remember sleeping, only listening to my beating heart, feeling the way the hairs on my arms stood on end like exposed nerve endings. Each one pulsed, it seemed, as if it had lungs and heart and blood vessels.
The next morning I woke up alone. I thought my sleepy brain made the room seem different, but then I remembered. I sat up and looked around. Stacy sat in a chair across the room looking at me. She was showered and dressed and writing in her journal; her face looked upset.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing’s wrong, Jane,” she said, her tone clipped. “I have a lot of homework to do and you should really just get going now.” I stared for a moment unable to say anything. The night before felt like a dream, the way we sat and stared at each other at that coffee shop. I thought I remembered touching her face with my fingers, even tracing the outline of her lips, thinking how beautiful she was, or did I whisper it out loud? I suddenly felt ashamed and embarrassed. I felt a knot forming in my chest; tears burned behind my eyes. I choked it down, threw off the covers, and quickly changed into my clothes. I left her house without another word. During the ride home, shame and embarrassment over my feelings burned in my gut, or rather, for expressing those feelings so freely, leaving myself open to be drawn upon and shot down, defenseless.
On arriving home, I found Jamie waiting on my front steps, tears running openly across the plains and valleys of his face, his deep eyes black with anguish.
“Jamie, what’s going on?” I asked while rushing to his side. He looked at the ground and opened his mouth then shut it, tears spilling wildly with the effort to speak. I sat beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. He stiffened and then relaxed, cloaked his naked face in the wideness of his pink palms, the length of his fingers extending toward the top of his head, and shook. I didn’t know for several moments that he was quietly sobbing until streams of tears made their way through the betweens of his fingers like gutters, pouring through and down, dripping and congealing in the dust below.
We sat for a long while, my arm around his shuddering shoulders, tears spilling through his thick fingers. Eventually his body quieted and his hands dried. I asked again.
“What happened?” He stared forward blankly for a full minute before he answered.
“My dad. He’s not my dad,” he said dully. I listened to his ragged breathing, the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind, birds and their languages. I wasn’t surprised.
“He went to prison for assault before I was born. He was locked up for over a year, I guess. My mom had another man even before he went away. She had me with ‘im soon as my dad was locked up. I mean, not my dad, you know—” I nodded.
“So my real dad, he was a union laborer in Iowa. My mom met him on the job; she was a secretary for a union organizer back then. She started up with ‘im. He took off when he found out she was pregnant. She had me and told my dad she found me in a basket on the front porch, you know.” I nodded. I gripped his shoulder with my hand.
“How did you find out?” I asked after he was silent for a minute.
Tears started leaking from his eyes again. He took in a deep breath and answered: “I caught ‘im on top of Heather. Mom wasn’t home. I found them in her room, neither of ‘em with any clothes on, him on top of her…” He started crying harder again. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him closer.
“I ran in there and punched the back of ‘is head hard as I could. He fell off ‘er and jumped up, came at me. I picked up a chair and swung it at ‘im. It caught ‘im in the face and he went down. His face was all gashed open and bleeding. He was knocked out. Heather was screaming ‘NO, NO, DON’T HURT MY DADDY’” He started crying in his hands again. He yelled out what Heather had screamed and its echo reverberated against the neighboring houses. Sophie came outside.
“Jane?” she said quietly.
“Go back inside, Soph. I’ll be right there,” I said.
“Where were you all night?” she asked quietly. “Mom never came home; I had to call Aunt Nancy.” Anger shot through my body and my fists involuntarily clenched. I had told my mom I would be sleeping over at Stacy’s and asked her to be home. Jamie raised his wet face from his hands and looked at me, his eyes echoing her question.
“I stayed overnight with a friend,” I told them both. “Now go inside, Soph. I’ll be in soon.” She walked back in the house and closed the door. I looked at Jamie. He looked at his shoes, kicked some gravel, and started talking again.
“I didn’t know what else to do so I called 911. I told them my dad was raping my sister then came after me and I hit ‘im in the head with a chair and knocked ‘im out cold.
They told me to stay put. The next second they were just coming through the door. No knock, no warning. They appeared. They took my dad away in an ambulance and they called my mom home from work.”
He was looking down. I could see puffy swells beneath his eyes. I knew he was ashamed to lift his face, to cry. I crouched before him and placed my palm awkwardly against his cheek. He looked up at me. His pain was palpable. Tears rose and spilled on my face and I quickly embraced him. He leaned against me and wept freely. I held onto him, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and my hands grasped at his back. I felt a fierce love and loyalty for him mixed with sharp hatred for the criminal he had mistaken for a father. I wanted only to remove the pain from his body and absorb it into me. He was as close to me as a real brother and he was the only person in the world who really knew me, the only one who cared to know me.
I cried. I cried for him, the love and the hate, the anger. I cried for me and for Sophie and Raelyn. I cried for Stacy. My eyes turned to great lakes, hot tears poured from them as if driven from the soles of my feet up through my legs, traveling dark and light striations of muscle and vein, building and gaining strength, drowning out all feeling and knowing, leveling all in its path. I might have continued on this way for fifteen minutes or more but I can’t be sure. Time grows slippery and stretchy sometimes. Jamie stopped crying, his body still and his arms firmly surrounding me.
I had collapsed during my fit onto him, and was sitting on his lap, crumpled against his chest. He loosened his hold and leaned back. Bracing me up with one arm he used his free hand to wipe my tears. He wiped them gently; his calloused fingers scraping the delicate, wet skin of my face lightly, tickling me. I giggled through tears and batted his fingers away. He held my face in his hand and gazed at me. I closed my eyes because looking at him felt too intense. His lips pressed against mine, which were wet from tears, and held still there for several moments. I thought nothing of it initially; it seemed quite natural to me. Then I sensed a shift in him, a sort of eagerness. He pulled me into him and pressed his lips harder against mine.
I began pulling away when his mouth opened and his tongue probed against my sealed lips searching for an entryway. I turned my face and pushed away from him, struggling to untangle my legs from his and stand up. I looked down at him and he dropped his head.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s OK.”
“It’s obviously not OK,” he said angrily, looking up at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. He softened.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you differently than you love me,” he said.
I looked away from him and sat back down beside him. His yellow Cheerios t-shirt was wrinkled from where I had bunched it in my hands and large dark wet spots from my tears littered the front and top of its shoulder. His shoulders were broad and his back was strong. His face was sweet yet handsome, lean and friendly. His eyes were deep brown and glittery. He was beautiful and he was my best friend. I felt that I should feel the same way about him that he felt about me, but I knew that I didn’t.
“Where were you last night?”
“I was with Stacy.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you wish she would kiss you like I just tried to?”
“No, I― yes.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head and looked away. He kicked the dirt and stood up. He took three steps away and turned around. He took one step toward me and stopped.
“I think you do know. I think you want her to. I think you’re gay.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Why, am I right?”
“Yeah, I think you are.”
“Are you serious? Are you sure?”
“I would be in love with you if I weren’t.” A swift breeze blew my hair into my face.
“That doesn’t help me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He softened again. He sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned my head against him and sighed.
“So what happened then?”
“What? When?”
“Last night is when.”
“Oh, nothing happened. I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t think she feels the way I feel.”
“Well, she’s dumb then,” he said. I laughed and hugged him. He pushed me back, stood up.
“I feel like a jerk,” I said. He wiped his palms on his thighs. He didn’t look at me.
“She’s dumb,” he said, a slight, crooked smile on his face. He walked away. I stood, moved to go after him, stopped, sat back down. Dust plumed from the gravel where his white converse high-tops fell. I stared after him until he disappeared. I was fixed to the spot, unable to move or breathe. A car rumbled by as if in slow motion. The door behind me slammed.
“Hi, Jane,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Want to sleep over this weekend?”
“Sure!”
A long, awkward silence followed. Then she said: “Great!” And again she turned red.
When Friday finally came, I was already packed and ready to go home with her from school. We met after 9th period and walked together to the El, then took it to the Fullerton stop near her neighborhood and walked toward her house. We didn’t know what else to do, so we stopped at a coffee shop on the way and sat at a table, facing one another and sipping hot chocolate from big mugs. We talked, then sat long after there was nothing left to talk about, as if staring at each other for hours on end without talking was something normal for two teenaged girls who were friends.
That night we slept with our bodies locked together under the quilts like two pale plants with leaves folded around them, defenseless, as egoless as vegetables. When we turned over in bed, it was as if a small breeze had stirred us and not the act of human volition. I don’t remember sleeping, only listening to my beating heart, feeling the way the hairs on my arms stood on end like exposed nerve endings. Each one pulsed, it seemed, as if it had lungs and heart and blood vessels.
The next morning I woke up alone. I thought my sleepy brain made the room seem different, but then I remembered. I sat up and looked around. Stacy sat in a chair across the room looking at me. She was showered and dressed and writing in her journal; her face looked upset.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing’s wrong, Jane,” she said, her tone clipped. “I have a lot of homework to do and you should really just get going now.” I stared for a moment unable to say anything. The night before felt like a dream, the way we sat and stared at each other at that coffee shop. I thought I remembered touching her face with my fingers, even tracing the outline of her lips, thinking how beautiful she was, or did I whisper it out loud? I suddenly felt ashamed and embarrassed. I felt a knot forming in my chest; tears burned behind my eyes. I choked it down, threw off the covers, and quickly changed into my clothes. I left her house without another word. During the ride home, shame and embarrassment over my feelings burned in my gut, or rather, for expressing those feelings so freely, leaving myself open to be drawn upon and shot down, defenseless.
On arriving home, I found Jamie waiting on my front steps, tears running openly across the plains and valleys of his face, his deep eyes black with anguish.
“Jamie, what’s going on?” I asked while rushing to his side. He looked at the ground and opened his mouth then shut it, tears spilling wildly with the effort to speak. I sat beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. He stiffened and then relaxed, cloaked his naked face in the wideness of his pink palms, the length of his fingers extending toward the top of his head, and shook. I didn’t know for several moments that he was quietly sobbing until streams of tears made their way through the betweens of his fingers like gutters, pouring through and down, dripping and congealing in the dust below.
We sat for a long while, my arm around his shuddering shoulders, tears spilling through his thick fingers. Eventually his body quieted and his hands dried. I asked again.
“What happened?” He stared forward blankly for a full minute before he answered.
“My dad. He’s not my dad,” he said dully. I listened to his ragged breathing, the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind, birds and their languages. I wasn’t surprised.
“He went to prison for assault before I was born. He was locked up for over a year, I guess. My mom had another man even before he went away. She had me with ‘im soon as my dad was locked up. I mean, not my dad, you know—” I nodded.
“So my real dad, he was a union laborer in Iowa. My mom met him on the job; she was a secretary for a union organizer back then. She started up with ‘im. He took off when he found out she was pregnant. She had me and told my dad she found me in a basket on the front porch, you know.” I nodded. I gripped his shoulder with my hand.
“How did you find out?” I asked after he was silent for a minute.
Tears started leaking from his eyes again. He took in a deep breath and answered: “I caught ‘im on top of Heather. Mom wasn’t home. I found them in her room, neither of ‘em with any clothes on, him on top of her…” He started crying harder again. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him closer.
“I ran in there and punched the back of ‘is head hard as I could. He fell off ‘er and jumped up, came at me. I picked up a chair and swung it at ‘im. It caught ‘im in the face and he went down. His face was all gashed open and bleeding. He was knocked out. Heather was screaming ‘NO, NO, DON’T HURT MY DADDY’” He started crying in his hands again. He yelled out what Heather had screamed and its echo reverberated against the neighboring houses. Sophie came outside.
“Jane?” she said quietly.
“Go back inside, Soph. I’ll be right there,” I said.
“Where were you all night?” she asked quietly. “Mom never came home; I had to call Aunt Nancy.” Anger shot through my body and my fists involuntarily clenched. I had told my mom I would be sleeping over at Stacy’s and asked her to be home. Jamie raised his wet face from his hands and looked at me, his eyes echoing her question.
“I stayed overnight with a friend,” I told them both. “Now go inside, Soph. I’ll be in soon.” She walked back in the house and closed the door. I looked at Jamie. He looked at his shoes, kicked some gravel, and started talking again.
“I didn’t know what else to do so I called 911. I told them my dad was raping my sister then came after me and I hit ‘im in the head with a chair and knocked ‘im out cold.
They told me to stay put. The next second they were just coming through the door. No knock, no warning. They appeared. They took my dad away in an ambulance and they called my mom home from work.”
He was looking down. I could see puffy swells beneath his eyes. I knew he was ashamed to lift his face, to cry. I crouched before him and placed my palm awkwardly against his cheek. He looked up at me. His pain was palpable. Tears rose and spilled on my face and I quickly embraced him. He leaned against me and wept freely. I held onto him, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and my hands grasped at his back. I felt a fierce love and loyalty for him mixed with sharp hatred for the criminal he had mistaken for a father. I wanted only to remove the pain from his body and absorb it into me. He was as close to me as a real brother and he was the only person in the world who really knew me, the only one who cared to know me.
I cried. I cried for him, the love and the hate, the anger. I cried for me and for Sophie and Raelyn. I cried for Stacy. My eyes turned to great lakes, hot tears poured from them as if driven from the soles of my feet up through my legs, traveling dark and light striations of muscle and vein, building and gaining strength, drowning out all feeling and knowing, leveling all in its path. I might have continued on this way for fifteen minutes or more but I can’t be sure. Time grows slippery and stretchy sometimes. Jamie stopped crying, his body still and his arms firmly surrounding me.
I had collapsed during my fit onto him, and was sitting on his lap, crumpled against his chest. He loosened his hold and leaned back. Bracing me up with one arm he used his free hand to wipe my tears. He wiped them gently; his calloused fingers scraping the delicate, wet skin of my face lightly, tickling me. I giggled through tears and batted his fingers away. He held my face in his hand and gazed at me. I closed my eyes because looking at him felt too intense. His lips pressed against mine, which were wet from tears, and held still there for several moments. I thought nothing of it initially; it seemed quite natural to me. Then I sensed a shift in him, a sort of eagerness. He pulled me into him and pressed his lips harder against mine.
I began pulling away when his mouth opened and his tongue probed against my sealed lips searching for an entryway. I turned my face and pushed away from him, struggling to untangle my legs from his and stand up. I looked down at him and he dropped his head.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s OK.”
“It’s obviously not OK,” he said angrily, looking up at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. He softened.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you differently than you love me,” he said.
I looked away from him and sat back down beside him. His yellow Cheerios t-shirt was wrinkled from where I had bunched it in my hands and large dark wet spots from my tears littered the front and top of its shoulder. His shoulders were broad and his back was strong. His face was sweet yet handsome, lean and friendly. His eyes were deep brown and glittery. He was beautiful and he was my best friend. I felt that I should feel the same way about him that he felt about me, but I knew that I didn’t.
“Where were you last night?”
“I was with Stacy.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you wish she would kiss you like I just tried to?”
“No, I― yes.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t know.”
He shook his head and looked away. He kicked the dirt and stood up. He took three steps away and turned around. He took one step toward me and stopped.
“I think you do know. I think you want her to. I think you’re gay.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Why, am I right?”
“Yeah, I think you are.”
“Are you serious? Are you sure?”
“I would be in love with you if I weren’t.” A swift breeze blew my hair into my face.
“That doesn’t help me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He softened again. He sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned my head against him and sighed.
“So what happened then?”
“What? When?”
“Last night is when.”
“Oh, nothing happened. I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t think she feels the way I feel.”
“Well, she’s dumb then,” he said. I laughed and hugged him. He pushed me back, stood up.
“I feel like a jerk,” I said. He wiped his palms on his thighs. He didn’t look at me.
“She’s dumb,” he said, a slight, crooked smile on his face. He walked away. I stood, moved to go after him, stopped, sat back down. Dust plumed from the gravel where his white converse high-tops fell. I stared after him until he disappeared. I was fixed to the spot, unable to move or breathe. A car rumbled by as if in slow motion. The door behind me slammed.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Souls Worn Thin
Six months after the lost baby my mom found herself pregnant again. Every utensil she ate from was first sanitized by being soaked in bleach, and then placed in boiling water for no less than 20 minutes. She wore disposable latex gloves whenever she touched anything, and she did not drink or smoke for the duration. She was, however, completely insane and it was the top priority of both Sophie and myself to stay as far away from her as possible. Jake filed for a divorce before the baby was born. Her name was Raelyn Michelle. I delighted in her.
I applied that summer for my first job. It was the same Dunkin Donuts where Jamie worked. When I walked in to pick up an application the man there asked me to stay for an interview. I sat at one of the tables and filled in the application. When I was done he came over and sat down across from me. He glanced at the application then put it aside.
“I’m Mac,” he stuck out his hand. I shook it.
“Jane.”
“Why do you want to work here, Jane?” he asked. I had no idea.
“Because I like donuts and coffee?” I said it like a question. He stared silently at me.
“I learn fast and I’m good with people,” I said. He picked up my application again.
“This be your first job?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said.
“You honest?”
“Yes.”
He put down the application and leaned forward, elbows on the table. He sighed loudly and ran his fingers through his thin, puffy hair. “I need someone good and honest, Jane. I got too many kids come in here steal from me. You gonna steal from me, Jane?” eyebrows raised.
“No, sir. I don’t steal.”
“You’re hired. When can you start?”
I started that day and within a month had my own keys to the place. I was a hard worker, a quick learner, and I didn’t steal, all the ingredients for management material at D&D. Jamie and I worked the same shift whenever possible and passed the coffee pouring, donut packing hours in the same comfortable silence we always enjoyed in one another’s company. Sometimes, when I opened the store, I was there alone for several hours before my boss came in.
One bright morning, I was sitting on a stool by the front window reading War and Peace (which had been assigned by my advanced placement English Literature class as part of my summer reading list) when a man came in and asked for a chocolate glazed.
“That’ll be 36 cents,” I said as I set down my book and bagged the pastry for him.
“That’s some book for a girl your age,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, I guess it is.”
“Why you reading it?”
“I have to for school. But I don’t mind; it passes the time.”
“Your boss let you sit and read while you at work?”
“My boss isn’t here yet. I have the place to myself mornings.”
“That right?”
He looked around and out the window before looking back at me. I looked back at him, beginning to feel uneasy.
“36 cents?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, well― ” he pulled out his wallet and unfolded it, flipping out a $20 bill. “Can you break this?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said and popped open the register. I was counting out his change when he reached behind him and pulled a handgun from his back.
“Can you break this?” he asked, pointing it directly at my chest, just above the counter. I stood motionless, staring at the gun.
“Move back, away from the register.”
I was paralyzed, staring at his hands. I couldn’t budge. Black hairs sprung out from the back of the strong, wide hand gripping the gun. The other hand extended out toward the register. His fingernails were chewed to the quick like mine, and the tips if his fingers were almost black with dirt.
“MOVE!” he shouted. I jumped and stumbled back against the donut display case. Several donuts tumbled from their trays to the floor where I stepped on them. Jelly and cream fillings mashed out and slipped under my shoes. I inched closer toward the back room where the phone was. He was bent over the counter pulling cash from the drawer and stuffing it in the inside pockets of his jacket.
“Stay right there!” he said pointing the gun at me.
He spilled the change on the counter and floor as he stuffed money in his pockets. There was only $40, maybe $50 in the register. When he emptied the tray he ripped it out of the drawer, sending it soaring across the store and crashing into a poster on the opposite wall that campaigned for the customer’s right to unconditional satisfaction. Realizing there was no more money, the man’s brow furrowed tightly.
“Where’s the rest of the money?” he demanded.
“It’s deposited every night. We never keep more than a day’s earnings in the store.” He jammed the gun back into his waistband and ran out the front door without another word. I stood for several minutes looking out the window, frozen in place, plastered against the display case, donut carcasses scattered around my feet. Pigeons fluttered down and perched on garbage cans and fire hydrants. Every now and then, a car passed, a person strolled by. Didn’t anyone see?
Finally, I called my boss. My voice wobbled and my breath fell heavy as I related the story as if I had just finished running up several flights of stairs. He told me to sit down and not to move; he would be there shortly. He arrived 10 minutes later, followed by the police. What I felt when I saw the bleary red and blue lights flash across the peeling wallpaper was not relief, but fear. For no logical reason, I wondered if they were there to arrest me. The police officers walked in along with my boss. He held the door for them and then locked it behind them, flipping the sign to display
“CLOSED.” I was seated in a metal folding chair in the back next to the phone.
“Did the girl leave?” a tall male police officer asked. They hadn’t spotted me from where they stood. Next to him was a hard-faced, stocky woman, who answered.
“She’s in there,” she said in a raspy voice. My boss rushed over and, to my great surprise, hugged me fiercely.
“Thank God you’re all right, are you all right?” he gasped, sighing relief.
“I’m fine, really,” I said, wiggling out of his awkward embrace.
The police questioned me for 15 minutes. They asked if I had ever seen the man before, what did he look like, sound like, what was he wearing, and how much did he weigh? The truth was, I didn’t know. As hard as I tried to conjure his complete image, I could only recall his hands. The pressure by the police to deliver a detailed description was too great to be honest, so I made things up. I told them that he had blonde hair and blue eyes, was tall and on the thin side, and was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with a stonewashed denim jeans-jacket. The part about the jeans-jacket was accurate, but I’m now certain that his hair was not blond nor were his eyes any shade of blue. And I could not say at all what he weighed; I just couldn’t remember. It was as if I didn’t even see him outside of hands, gun, and pockets.
I sat down to write my statement on the single sheet of lined, white paper the small, gruff officer gave me. I was describing how the donuts had squished under my feet when Jamie walked in. His shift started later that day but he had come in early to keep me company. After hearing from our boss what happened, he approached me, looking more shocked than I was. He hugged me tightly, pressing my face into his chest.
“Thank God you’re all right, Jane!” he gasped. He held me there for several moments, his relief audible in his breathing.
“I’m fine, Jamie.”
“I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you.”
I pulled away from him.
“Jamie, relax. I’m fine. It was just some bum who got away with maybe 50 bucks,” I said, suddenly hardened in response to the vulnerable embrace. He sat down and looked at me with the expression I used to call the mushy look. I turned away and started gathering my things to go home.
“I gotta get home, Jamie. Come by later if you want.” I walked out without waiting for an answer.
I arrived home to an empty, messy house. Sophie left me a note that she and Raelyn were with Aunt Nancy, my Uncle Joe’s wife, and would be home soon. Mom had not come home all night and I would be left to feed Raelyn and put her to bed, as I did most nights. Our mom was almost never home anymore and when she was, her presence was more of a hindrance than a help.
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of mom’s voice and a man’s voice, trying in vain to be quiet, shushing each other in loud, hoarse whispers. Sophie could sleep through anything, but I woke at the slightest off noise.
“I wanna show you my baby!” she said, guiding different strange men into Raelyn’s room night after night. She turned on the light, picked her up and started her crying, then screaming, then she placed her back in her crib and left with the man.
“Shhhh, let’s go. She’ll cry herself to sleep.”
But I didn’t let that happen. As soon as they were gone, I went in and picked her up, held her, and rocked her until she fell back asleep.
That was what I thought of the day I walked in to the empty mess of a house after being robbed at work that morning. It caught up to me all at once and I was furious. Where was she and why was she so crazy? What was she doing?
These questions combined with my anger drove me to snoop in her bedroom, first carefully, then frenzied. I opened drawers and dug through her underwear, shirts, socks, and bras. Coming up empty-handed in one drawer, I moved to the next, ripping through without concern about leaving things the way I had found them. In the bottom drawer, the last one I checked, I found a gun, black and small, discreetly tucked in the corner, wrapped in a pair of pants. I saw the robber’s hairy hands, his dirt-caked fingernails.
I smelled the sweet stench of donuts and felt the 20-dollar bill in my hand. I heard the words again, “Can you break this?” I looked. The gun, the hand, hair, dirt. I looked up. There was his face, real and sharp. It materialized before me in my mother’s bedroom. I remembered exactly what he looked like and it was a striking likeness to my father.
Why hadn’t I recognized that at first? Was I making it up? No. The dark brown hair feathered over his ears, the mustache and goatee. Even the green-gray eyes with flecks of brown were the same. Not too short but not too tall, stocky yet slender, built like a high school wrestler. Everything from the jeans jacket down to the way he moved; it was just like my father.
I picked up the gun and fitted it into my palm. I suspected my dad killed himself, but I never knew how he did it. I envisioned him with a gun just like this. What was he thinking about? How was he feeling? Was he high? He might have been sitting on the floor against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. I could see his shoes; beat up Converse with the soles worn thin, as if they were my own. I could feel the gun in my hand, see the thick hair on my arms, smell the scent (beer mixed with sweat and Old Spice) of my skin, as if I were there experiencing it as him. So disturbingly clear was this hallucination that I shook my head forcefully to come back into myself.
When I did, I was sitting with my back against the dresser and my legs stretched out in front of me. I looked down to find that I had the gun pointed at my stomach, with both my thumbs resting against the trigger. I jumped and tossed the gun away, out in front of me where it slid across the hardwood floor and disappeared under the bed, colliding with a metallic clank against something hidden from view.
I crawled across the floor to the bed and reached under. I pulled out a metal box with an open padlock hanging through a latch. I pulled out the lock and opened the box. There was money, maybe a few hundred dollars, and some papers. The name “Bobby,” written in my mother’s hand across the front of a manila envelope folded in half caught my eye. I pulled it out from under the cash and opened it. Inside I found an autopsy report. I scanned over the medical jargon until I came to the words: Cause of death: internal hemorrhaging due to the ingestion of large amounts of cocaine into the stomach.
The doctor’s hand-written notes in the space below elaborated that my father seemed to have swallowed a cellophane bag full of cocaine, and that this was determined to be a deliberate act of suicide. I read the words over and over again until they became a blur. I was surprised to see the drops of water falling on the paper in my hands. I didn’t know why I was crying; I hadn’t felt it come. The answer we had given people when they asked was that he had died of a heart attack. I had said it so often that I almost started to accept it as truth. There it was in black and white. Official proof of what I always somehow knew in my heart to be the truth; and still I wished I could believe otherwise.
I put the paper back in the envelope and returned it to the box. I closed the lid and put the lock back through the latch just as I found it. I then retrieved the gun from under the bed and gently placed it back in the bottom drawer, covering it with garments and arranging them to look naturally jumbled. I did the same with the rest of the drawers I had tossed and left her room, closing the door behind me. I never talked about the gun or the autopsy report. I never told anyone about the robbery. I suppose I thought there was nothing to tell; it merely confirmed what I always knew.
I applied that summer for my first job. It was the same Dunkin Donuts where Jamie worked. When I walked in to pick up an application the man there asked me to stay for an interview. I sat at one of the tables and filled in the application. When I was done he came over and sat down across from me. He glanced at the application then put it aside.
“I’m Mac,” he stuck out his hand. I shook it.
“Jane.”
“Why do you want to work here, Jane?” he asked. I had no idea.
“Because I like donuts and coffee?” I said it like a question. He stared silently at me.
“I learn fast and I’m good with people,” I said. He picked up my application again.
“This be your first job?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said.
“You honest?”
“Yes.”
He put down the application and leaned forward, elbows on the table. He sighed loudly and ran his fingers through his thin, puffy hair. “I need someone good and honest, Jane. I got too many kids come in here steal from me. You gonna steal from me, Jane?” eyebrows raised.
“No, sir. I don’t steal.”
“You’re hired. When can you start?”
I started that day and within a month had my own keys to the place. I was a hard worker, a quick learner, and I didn’t steal, all the ingredients for management material at D&D. Jamie and I worked the same shift whenever possible and passed the coffee pouring, donut packing hours in the same comfortable silence we always enjoyed in one another’s company. Sometimes, when I opened the store, I was there alone for several hours before my boss came in.
One bright morning, I was sitting on a stool by the front window reading War and Peace (which had been assigned by my advanced placement English Literature class as part of my summer reading list) when a man came in and asked for a chocolate glazed.
“That’ll be 36 cents,” I said as I set down my book and bagged the pastry for him.
“That’s some book for a girl your age,” he said.
“Oh, yeah, I guess it is.”
“Why you reading it?”
“I have to for school. But I don’t mind; it passes the time.”
“Your boss let you sit and read while you at work?”
“My boss isn’t here yet. I have the place to myself mornings.”
“That right?”
He looked around and out the window before looking back at me. I looked back at him, beginning to feel uneasy.
“36 cents?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, well― ” he pulled out his wallet and unfolded it, flipping out a $20 bill. “Can you break this?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said and popped open the register. I was counting out his change when he reached behind him and pulled a handgun from his back.
“Can you break this?” he asked, pointing it directly at my chest, just above the counter. I stood motionless, staring at the gun.
“Move back, away from the register.”
I was paralyzed, staring at his hands. I couldn’t budge. Black hairs sprung out from the back of the strong, wide hand gripping the gun. The other hand extended out toward the register. His fingernails were chewed to the quick like mine, and the tips if his fingers were almost black with dirt.
“MOVE!” he shouted. I jumped and stumbled back against the donut display case. Several donuts tumbled from their trays to the floor where I stepped on them. Jelly and cream fillings mashed out and slipped under my shoes. I inched closer toward the back room where the phone was. He was bent over the counter pulling cash from the drawer and stuffing it in the inside pockets of his jacket.
“Stay right there!” he said pointing the gun at me.
He spilled the change on the counter and floor as he stuffed money in his pockets. There was only $40, maybe $50 in the register. When he emptied the tray he ripped it out of the drawer, sending it soaring across the store and crashing into a poster on the opposite wall that campaigned for the customer’s right to unconditional satisfaction. Realizing there was no more money, the man’s brow furrowed tightly.
“Where’s the rest of the money?” he demanded.
“It’s deposited every night. We never keep more than a day’s earnings in the store.” He jammed the gun back into his waistband and ran out the front door without another word. I stood for several minutes looking out the window, frozen in place, plastered against the display case, donut carcasses scattered around my feet. Pigeons fluttered down and perched on garbage cans and fire hydrants. Every now and then, a car passed, a person strolled by. Didn’t anyone see?
Finally, I called my boss. My voice wobbled and my breath fell heavy as I related the story as if I had just finished running up several flights of stairs. He told me to sit down and not to move; he would be there shortly. He arrived 10 minutes later, followed by the police. What I felt when I saw the bleary red and blue lights flash across the peeling wallpaper was not relief, but fear. For no logical reason, I wondered if they were there to arrest me. The police officers walked in along with my boss. He held the door for them and then locked it behind them, flipping the sign to display
“CLOSED.” I was seated in a metal folding chair in the back next to the phone.
“Did the girl leave?” a tall male police officer asked. They hadn’t spotted me from where they stood. Next to him was a hard-faced, stocky woman, who answered.
“She’s in there,” she said in a raspy voice. My boss rushed over and, to my great surprise, hugged me fiercely.
“Thank God you’re all right, are you all right?” he gasped, sighing relief.
“I’m fine, really,” I said, wiggling out of his awkward embrace.
The police questioned me for 15 minutes. They asked if I had ever seen the man before, what did he look like, sound like, what was he wearing, and how much did he weigh? The truth was, I didn’t know. As hard as I tried to conjure his complete image, I could only recall his hands. The pressure by the police to deliver a detailed description was too great to be honest, so I made things up. I told them that he had blonde hair and blue eyes, was tall and on the thin side, and was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with a stonewashed denim jeans-jacket. The part about the jeans-jacket was accurate, but I’m now certain that his hair was not blond nor were his eyes any shade of blue. And I could not say at all what he weighed; I just couldn’t remember. It was as if I didn’t even see him outside of hands, gun, and pockets.
I sat down to write my statement on the single sheet of lined, white paper the small, gruff officer gave me. I was describing how the donuts had squished under my feet when Jamie walked in. His shift started later that day but he had come in early to keep me company. After hearing from our boss what happened, he approached me, looking more shocked than I was. He hugged me tightly, pressing my face into his chest.
“Thank God you’re all right, Jane!” he gasped. He held me there for several moments, his relief audible in his breathing.
“I’m fine, Jamie.”
“I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to you.”
I pulled away from him.
“Jamie, relax. I’m fine. It was just some bum who got away with maybe 50 bucks,” I said, suddenly hardened in response to the vulnerable embrace. He sat down and looked at me with the expression I used to call the mushy look. I turned away and started gathering my things to go home.
“I gotta get home, Jamie. Come by later if you want.” I walked out without waiting for an answer.
I arrived home to an empty, messy house. Sophie left me a note that she and Raelyn were with Aunt Nancy, my Uncle Joe’s wife, and would be home soon. Mom had not come home all night and I would be left to feed Raelyn and put her to bed, as I did most nights. Our mom was almost never home anymore and when she was, her presence was more of a hindrance than a help.
I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of mom’s voice and a man’s voice, trying in vain to be quiet, shushing each other in loud, hoarse whispers. Sophie could sleep through anything, but I woke at the slightest off noise.
“I wanna show you my baby!” she said, guiding different strange men into Raelyn’s room night after night. She turned on the light, picked her up and started her crying, then screaming, then she placed her back in her crib and left with the man.
“Shhhh, let’s go. She’ll cry herself to sleep.”
But I didn’t let that happen. As soon as they were gone, I went in and picked her up, held her, and rocked her until she fell back asleep.
That was what I thought of the day I walked in to the empty mess of a house after being robbed at work that morning. It caught up to me all at once and I was furious. Where was she and why was she so crazy? What was she doing?
These questions combined with my anger drove me to snoop in her bedroom, first carefully, then frenzied. I opened drawers and dug through her underwear, shirts, socks, and bras. Coming up empty-handed in one drawer, I moved to the next, ripping through without concern about leaving things the way I had found them. In the bottom drawer, the last one I checked, I found a gun, black and small, discreetly tucked in the corner, wrapped in a pair of pants. I saw the robber’s hairy hands, his dirt-caked fingernails.
I smelled the sweet stench of donuts and felt the 20-dollar bill in my hand. I heard the words again, “Can you break this?” I looked. The gun, the hand, hair, dirt. I looked up. There was his face, real and sharp. It materialized before me in my mother’s bedroom. I remembered exactly what he looked like and it was a striking likeness to my father.
Why hadn’t I recognized that at first? Was I making it up? No. The dark brown hair feathered over his ears, the mustache and goatee. Even the green-gray eyes with flecks of brown were the same. Not too short but not too tall, stocky yet slender, built like a high school wrestler. Everything from the jeans jacket down to the way he moved; it was just like my father.
I picked up the gun and fitted it into my palm. I suspected my dad killed himself, but I never knew how he did it. I envisioned him with a gun just like this. What was he thinking about? How was he feeling? Was he high? He might have been sitting on the floor against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. I could see his shoes; beat up Converse with the soles worn thin, as if they were my own. I could feel the gun in my hand, see the thick hair on my arms, smell the scent (beer mixed with sweat and Old Spice) of my skin, as if I were there experiencing it as him. So disturbingly clear was this hallucination that I shook my head forcefully to come back into myself.
When I did, I was sitting with my back against the dresser and my legs stretched out in front of me. I looked down to find that I had the gun pointed at my stomach, with both my thumbs resting against the trigger. I jumped and tossed the gun away, out in front of me where it slid across the hardwood floor and disappeared under the bed, colliding with a metallic clank against something hidden from view.
I crawled across the floor to the bed and reached under. I pulled out a metal box with an open padlock hanging through a latch. I pulled out the lock and opened the box. There was money, maybe a few hundred dollars, and some papers. The name “Bobby,” written in my mother’s hand across the front of a manila envelope folded in half caught my eye. I pulled it out from under the cash and opened it. Inside I found an autopsy report. I scanned over the medical jargon until I came to the words: Cause of death: internal hemorrhaging due to the ingestion of large amounts of cocaine into the stomach.
The doctor’s hand-written notes in the space below elaborated that my father seemed to have swallowed a cellophane bag full of cocaine, and that this was determined to be a deliberate act of suicide. I read the words over and over again until they became a blur. I was surprised to see the drops of water falling on the paper in my hands. I didn’t know why I was crying; I hadn’t felt it come. The answer we had given people when they asked was that he had died of a heart attack. I had said it so often that I almost started to accept it as truth. There it was in black and white. Official proof of what I always somehow knew in my heart to be the truth; and still I wished I could believe otherwise.
I put the paper back in the envelope and returned it to the box. I closed the lid and put the lock back through the latch just as I found it. I then retrieved the gun from under the bed and gently placed it back in the bottom drawer, covering it with garments and arranging them to look naturally jumbled. I did the same with the rest of the drawers I had tossed and left her room, closing the door behind me. I never talked about the gun or the autopsy report. I never told anyone about the robbery. I suppose I thought there was nothing to tell; it merely confirmed what I always knew.
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