Love Rules

by Marilyn Reynolds

  He laughs. “It was Guy, from Sojourner.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Frankie says. “He said he was a teacher from Sojourner, and he wanted to remind me of my enrollment appointment. I kept running my thumb over that small pocket, feeling the outline of the waiting razors. He told me he’d see me in the morning. I said ‘okay’ but I thought ‘Right. Drop by the morgue.’ But then he said he wanted me to know I would be safe at Sojourner—that they were the safest school in the whole county, in spite of what people thought about them. He said people were treated with respect at Sojourner. I kept feeling the razors in my pocket. I hung up and went back outside, assumed the position and lined up the razors. But I kept thinking about what Guy had said. A tiny voice within me said, ‘What’s another day? Try it.’ So I did.”

  “If Guy had waited five more minutes to call . . .” I say.

  “I wouldn’t be here.”

  “How did he know to tell you you’d be safe there? He didn’t even know you then,” Kit says.

  “I asked him about that once, after I got to know him. He said Mr. Cordova had called and said he suspected I was afraid to come there, and that I’d probably had some bad experiences at Hamilton High. So Guy called to reassure me.”

  Frankie gives Kit a long look.

  “When I heard what those assholes had done to you today . . . it brought back so many memories. When nobody knew where you were . . . I got scared. Then when I saw you sitting against the tree in that kind of yoga position, I thought . . .”

  Kit nods like she understands, then asks, “Do you think you would really have made the cut?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Have you ever thought about it since then?” I ask.

  “Some,” he says.

  He takes a package of razors from his pocket, sits in a yoga

  position, and takes the cellophane off the package.

  I jump up, grab the package, and throw it on the dirt. Kit’s on her feet too, stomping and grinding the package into the ground.

  “Hey! I wasn’t going to do anything!” Frankie says.

  “That’s sick, carrying those around with you!” I say.

  “It’s security,” he says.

  “What’s that mean?” Kit says.

  “It means if things get unbearable, there’s always somewhere else to go.”

  “How unbearable are things?” I ask.

  “They’re not. I got stronger at Sojourner. GSA helped a lot. Before that, I had no idea anyone else had some of the same problems. It was hard coming back to Hamilton High, but I wanted to be involved in music and drama, and there was none of that at Sojourner.”

  “Were those same guys at Hamilton when you came back?”

  “The worst of them, the ones that got me after school that day, were two years older, so they’d gone. Some of my old tormentors are still here, but mostly it’s just words. And I have friends now. Things are pretty cool. Except I never, ever go to the bathroom at school. Why press my luck?”

  I figure Frankie has to go more than seven hours without a bathroom break if he never uses the facilities at school.

  “That’s not even healthy,” I tell him.

  “Says the nurse,” Kit smiles.

  “For me it’s healthier than being caught in the boys’ room,” Frankie says.

  “But how can you even stand it?”

  “No liquids from midnight until I get home from school. No breakfast. A small container of yogurt for lunch.”

  “That sucks!” Kit says.

  “As long as it doesn’t poop . . .” Frankie answers.

  We laugh.

  “Enough of my bathroom practices,” Frankie says, “You want to know the end of the almost suicide story?”

  Kit and I both nod.

  “The next evening, after I was home from my first day at Sojourner, I’m sitting at the table with a glass of milk. Guy’d already talked with me about the GSA group, and the kids were cool. It’s like, everybody’s weird there, so nobody’s weird. So I’m sitting there, feeling pretty good, and my dad comes stomp­ing into the kitchen. He slams the paper bag and the cellophane wrapper down on the table, hard enough to make my glass jump. He yells ‘What’s this? You think I’ve got nothing to do but clean up your shit?”’

  Frankie laughs. “He didn’t know how lucky he was. Think about what he almost had to clean up.”

  We all laugh then. Laugh and laugh, silly with relief. Then, slowly, our laughter fades and we become quiet and thoughtful.

  After a while, Kit says, “I promised I’d talk things through with you if I ever got really down.”

  Frankie nods.

  “I want a promise in return.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to promise not to replace the razor blades.”

  Frankie is silent for a long time, looking at the bent up stomped package that sits half-buried in the dirt.

  “I don’t take promises lightly,” Frankie says.

  “Neither do I,” Kit says. “Promise?”

  Frankie looks from Kit to me and back to Kit again.

  “Yeah. Okay. I promise.”

  “Link hands,” Kit says, reaching for my hand on one side and Frankie’s on the other.

  Frankie and I grab hands, too, so we make a circle of three.

  “I promise to talk things through,” Kit says.

  “I promise not to replace the razor blades,” Frankie says.

  They both look at me. “I promise not to stand silently by while people are being mistreated, or picked on, or called names.”

  We stay connected, no one wanting to be the first to let go. Finally, Wilma pushes her way into the circle and drops her

  frisbee in the center, breaking the spell.

  We laugh then, and drop hands. Kit throws the frisbee one more time, then gathers up the thermos and cups. I get the blankets and Frankie and Wilma and I walk back through my gate to his car. I watch as he backs out my driveway, then take Wilma and the blankets inside. There is still only the one message on the machine. I wonder about Conan. I wonder about the title of Alice Walker’s book. I hope there’s another way forward, besides with a broken heart.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Conan is waiting for me when I get out of my Saturday morning medical careers class. He’s smiling, like everything’s okay with us. Maybe it is.

  His eye is even more swollen this morning.

  “Have you been icing your eye?”

  “Umm. I did last night.”

  “This morning?”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  “You should ice it every two or three hours. That’ll help with the swelling.”

  “Thank you, nurse,” Conan says.

  I sock him, lightly, playfully, on his arm.

  “Watch it,” he says, grabbing my hand and making me hit myself in the belly. That, too, is light and playful.

  We walk to his car, laughing, lightly poking at one another along the way. It’s as if we’ve gone back to the time before we knew we loved each other, when we wanted to touch but couldn’t admit it.

  We continue this slapstick kind of stuff in the car, until I tell

  Conan we need to talk.

  “Yeah,” he says, without enthusiasm.

  “You know last night . . .”

  “Yeah . . . I’m starved,” he says. “Let’s get a bite to eat.”

  “Okay,” I say, “but we still need to talk.”

  “We will. How about Barb ‘n Edie’s?”

  So that’s where we go. We order two garbage burritos. I eat half of one and Conan eats the rest. Then he gets a large order of fries. Some old guy who I guess is a Hamilton High football fan comes up to Conan and congratulates him on last night’s game. He wants to go through it play by play and I guess Conan doesn’t mind because he gets all involved in the conversation. I open my medical careers textbook and begin highlighting terms I need to learn for next week.

  Having talke
d the game all the way through to a fumble during the last seconds, Conan’s fan finally leaves. When we go to pay our bill, Edie says it’s on her. She thanks Conan for putting Hamilton High’s football team back on the map.

  “It’s good for business,” she tells him. “The more wins, the more the community comes out for games. The more people come out for games, the more people stop here after. We were bulging at the seams last night—wall to wall people.”

  “Thanks,” he says.

  After running errands for his mom and stopping by Robert’s to pick up the jacket he forgot last night, Conan asks, “Anyone home at your house today?”

  “Just Wilma.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “Some training deal at Microdyne. She’ll be home about six.”

  We go to my house. Conan puts on some music. We stretch out on the carpet, side by side, touching. Conan moves to kiss me, but I move away. “We really have to talk,” I say.

  “We will. We will,” he says, kissing my neck, pulling me closer to him. “Just know I love you,” he whispers.

  For a while I forget about talking.

  We lie together, still sticky, but relaxed and close. I’m on my side, one leg thrown across Conan’s tree-trunk thigh, my head resting on his outstretched arm.

  “Conan.”

  “Ummm.”

  “I saw your family at the football game last night.”

  “Yeah. They were sitting down there with Antoine and Derek’s parents.”

  “They wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  Conan leans up on his elbow, jostling my head.

  “You talked to them?”

  “I tried to. Sabina was the only one who even noticed I was there, though.”

  Conan sits up, fastening his pants and pulling his shirt on over his head. We’re not so relaxed now. I fasten my bra, button my top and pull my pants back up, wondering what’s the big hurry. Usually we lie close together for a long time, after we’ve had our fun.

  “What did Sabina say?”

  “She came running to see me at half-time. Your mom acted like I was, I don’t know, trying to kidnap Sabina or something.”

  “So that was it?”

  Conan sits on the couch, putting on his size fourteen shoes.

  “Sabina was being sweet. You know, telling your mom that I have fingernails, and I have soft cheeks.”

  Conan groans.

  I’m sitting next to him on the couch, putting my shoes on, too. I look at his worried face and start getting a really uneasy feeling. I remember how, as soon as it became a regular thing, he started waiting for me down at the corner when I’d pick him up for school. And how I offered to take Sabina home for him after they’d been at my house one day. Even though he was late for a doctor’s appointment and I could have easily saved him some time, he insisted on taking her himself.

  “They don’t even know about me, do they?” I ask.

  He shakes his head no.

  “That’s cold,” I tell him, moving across the room to the other chair.

  “Come back over here beside me,” he says. I don’t move.

  “You’re practically part of my family! My mom’s always telling her friends how great you are, she knows all your favorite foods, and your favorite TV shows and your mom doesn’t even know I EXIST! You don’t even care enough about me to mention me to anyone in your family!”

  I hate that I cry when I get angry, but I’m crying. Conan comes and sits on the arm of the chair, trying to pull me toward him.

  “It’s not like that, Lynnie. I love you. How can you say I don’t care about you?”

  I move back over to the couch.

  “Right. You love me, but I’m not good enough to meet your family.”

  “No. Just listen for a minute.”

  He comes back over to the couch and sits next to me again.

  “I’ve just been waiting for the right time to talk to them . . .”

  “What’s so hard about saying you’ve got a girlfriend and you’re really happy about it?”

  “It’s just not that simple with my family. I did try to talk to my dad a month or so ago. I told him how you gave Sabina a dog license for Fluffy, and how much Sabina liked you.”

  “Sabina?? What about you???”

  “I was just warming up to it. That’s all. And then Sabina comes in and starts on that she has fingernails and soft cheeks business.”

  Even though I’m mad, I have to laugh at that. It’s like Sabina is obsessed with my fingernails and soft cheeks.

  “So then my dad says, this Lynn girl. She must be white.”

  “Oh, my gosh! That’s so stupid! Like only white people have fingernails and soft cheeks?”

  “No, it’s just, I think Sabina is figuring out how we’re the same. We all have soft cheeks and fingernails. It’s not like she’s been around many white people up close.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “How many black people had you touched when you were four years old?”

  He’s got me there. I have to admit it wasn’t until I started school that I was around all different kinds of people.

  “We lived in the ‘hood,’ you know? And she’s not in school yet. You’re probably the first white person she’s ever touched.”

  “So did your dad think Sabina got cooties from me or what?” Conan gives me this patient, don’t be stupid look.

  “My dad went into this whole rage about how black boys who hang around with white girls are suicidal, and how there’s never, ever been any white blood in our family, and how it’d kill my mom if she thought I was with a white girl and I’d better not be bringing any half-breeds home so I’d better get that white meat off my mind.”

  “White meat?”

  “I’m only telling you what he said.”

  “What about you? What did you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything. When my dad gets like that there’s no talking to him.”

  “It sounds like your family is as racist as any KKK fool running around in a white sheet.”

  Conan bristles. “No, they are not racist,” he says.

  “Right. They don’t like me because of my color. I call that racist.”

  “Call it what you want. But my parents are not trying to keep you from voting, or attending school, or getting a job. They’re all for equal rights. They just don’t want to mix it up—which is about black pride, not racism.”

  “Well it feels racist to me,” I say. I go into the bathroom and clean up, taking my time.

  When I come back out Conan’s still sitting in the same place, staring off into space. I sit next to him, but not touching.

  “I’m not ashamed of you. God, I feel so lucky to be with you.

  I’ve never been close to anyone like this before. I couldn’t wait to see you, last night, after the game. And I missed you so much at the party . . .”

  “I thought you were mad.”

  “I was, at first. But then, after I got to the party . . . I could see why you wouldn’t want to be there . . . Once the beer started flowing some of the guys were all hyped, talkin’ mess . . .”

  “I don’t see why you even want to hang around with them.”

  “We’re a team, that’s all.”

  The phone rings. It’s Mom, saying she’s going to dinner with friends and won’t be home until ten or so. Conan and I decide to call out for pizza and watch videos.

  Mom’s a little nervous about me and Conan hanging out in the house when she’s not home. She says she doesn’t want us making babies. I tell her we never do anything that could make a baby, which is true. I’m not sure she believes me, though. She’s always leaving Planned Parenthood pamphlets sitting around—stuff about the pill, and condoms, and depo shots, and cervical caps. She says it’s good to be informed.

  Conan calls for pizza, then calls his mom to say he won’t be home for dinner. I can’t help hearing his side of the conversation.

  “Oh, sorry,” he says. “Can you save it
for tomorrow night?”

  “Just with some friends . . . yeah, I’ll be home by midnight . . . probably pizza. . . yeah, I know your steak’ll be better. . . maybe a movie, or video games. I’m not sure . . .”

  He hangs up and I get all sarcastic with him. “Oh, yeah. Mom, I’m having dinner with the love of my life. Her cheeks are soft and she has fingernails.”

  “Get over it. Okay?”

  “It’s just so stupid!”

  “It’s stupid for you to want to meet them. I can tell you right now, you won’t like them and they won’t like you. Why should I be fighting with them all the time about you? It wouldn’t do any good.”

  Conan walks out the door. I hear Wilma’s short bark and then the whoosh of the frisbee. I stay inside, thinking. I hate that Conan’s pretending I don’t exist as far as his family’s concerned. Then I start thinking about my dad. He’s on a month long business trip, setting up computers for a new company. But if he were coming over to visit me, I wouldn’t tell him about Conan, either. He’d get all upset over nothing, and probably be rude. So I guess I understand why I’m the mystery woman at Conan’s house.

  Maybe it shouldn’t matter. Except I can’t get over the unfair­ness of it all, that they’re judging me by the color of my skin, not by the kind of person I am. Just like my dad would do to Conan. Why are people like that?

  I go outside and join in the frisbee toss. Conan gives me a tentative smile. I smile back.

  He says, “It’s not about you. It’s about my family. I’ve got my own ideas. Their way isn’t my way. But for now, it’s best if I lay low with them.”

  The Pizza Man comes tearing up our driveway, jumps out of the car, opens the hot box and hands the giant pizza to Conan. Wilma acts like he’s a big threat, barking, growling, running up to him with her bristles up.

  “Wilma! Get over here!”

  I grab her by the collar while Conan pays for the pizza. We go back inside and set it out on the coffee table in front of the TV. I get sodas and we settle in to watch “Chicken Run.”

  During the previews Conan says, “About my family. I don’t want you to think I don’t love them. Or respect them. I do. I just see things differently is all.”

  I scoot over close to Conan. He puts his arm around me. I know everything’s going to be all right between us, no matter what other people think.