There You Are

by Morais, Mathea

  “It’s not that bad,” Octavian said.

  “Bones has a first aid kit in his office,” Mina said.

  Octavian turned to Brendon. “Can I borrow your keys?”

  Brendon looked hard at Octavian and then at Mina. He looked at Octavian again. “For real?” he said. Octavian nodded and Mina lit a cigarette.

  Brendon dug in his pants and pulled out his keys. “You know what you’re doing, Tave?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to get a fucking Band-Aid, Brendon,” Octavian said and took the keys.

  “I guess I’ll go help out Ivy,” Evan said giving a round of pounds and turning his shoulders into the wind.

  “Let’s go, Riss,” Brendon said.

  Clarissa gave Mina a quick kiss on the cheek and ran after Brendon, who walked away without saying goodbye.

  Mina was unlocking the back door of Rahsaan’s when Octavian felt the fingers of cold sweat on his back. “Hold up,” he said. He pulled a crumpled pack of Craven A’s out of his pocket with shaking hands. He felt his breath start to come in short bursts and when he tried to light his cigarette, he dropped the lighter. He bent to pick it up, but he knew he might as well just surrender right there and sat down on the mottled sidewalk. “Just a second,” he managed to say. He put his head between his knees and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Mina knelt down next to him and wrapped her hand around his. “You still doing this, huh Tave?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I remember back at Delmar Harvard when this would happen. You’d squeeze my hand so hard I’d think you were going to break my fingers, and I’d sit there and read to you from whatever comic until your breathing would slow down, like it’s doing now.”

  Octavian hadn’t thought she would remember.

  “Does it still happen a lot?” she asked.

  “Not as much as it did back then,” he said. He lifted his head and brushed the sharp pieces of gravel from his palms. There was something about not having to explain his attacks to her, about not having to explain what they were like when he was little, that made his heart begin to unfurl. Made it easy for Octavian to open his eyes and look at her. “Now, they usually happen when I drink too much.” He paused to light the cigarette with steadier hands. “And when Francis is tripping.”

  “Makes sense it would happen now.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not supposed to happen when I’m trying to impress a girl,” he said and pushed himself to stand up.

  “You can’t fool me, Octavian Munroe,” she said standing up to face him. “I know you’re not as cool as you think you are.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “I’m the coolest.” He reached out and took a slow hold of her front pocket and pulled her toward him. Mina’s stone-gray eyes danced in the streetlight and, without letting himself think on it long, Octavian bent his head and kissed her.

  Beneath the alcohol, the cigarettes and weed, the soap she used on her face, the detergent to wash her clothes, he remembered her smell from back then. He saw himself put his own little-boy hands to his face after they’d said goodbye to see if he smelled like her. Could that be real? He wasn’t sure. Now it made him far drunker than the whiskey and weed. He stopped to catch his still fragile breath and kept his forehead pressed against hers.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for the longest time,” he said.

  Mina’s generous smile showed those same crooked teeth, and Octavian was glad she never had them fixed. “You got a lot of game,” she said.

  He laughed. “I’m not running game on you.”

  “C’mon now. You ain’t been wantin’ to kiss me for no long time,” she said and began to walk into the store.

  He followed her. “When’d you get so city, Mina girl?” Octavian said. “Don’t forget, I knew you back then, too. You’re not any cooler than me. You were one freckled-faced, stringy-haired white girl. You ain’t been wantin’ to kiss me for no long time,” he mocked her.

  She turned and walked backwards so she faced him. He smiled and backed her up into a shelf in the Metal section and kissed her again.

  “The records,” she murmured.

  “Fuck those records. No one listens to that shit anyway.”

  He didn’t rush this time. This time, he inhaled her smell so deeply he wanted to name it. They were twisted arms and legs, tongues deep within each other’s mouths, lips soft, deep and full. His hands were under her shirt, her leg wrapped around his waist, eyes closed, then opened, watching, being watched. He reached down to unbutton her pants but she stopped him.

  “Hold up,” she said.

  Octavian took two steps back and Mina carefully climbed off the records. “You know that shit your brother said about me, it’s not true,” she said.

  “I know,” Octavian said. Octavian had asked around enough to know that Mina wasn’t like that. The only thing anyone ever had to say about her was that she dressed kinda weird and only hung around black people.

  Mina checked to see if there was any damage to the records. “Bones is going to kill us,” she said, and held up a crumpled Quiet Riot record.

  “I doubt that,” Octavian said. “I mean, he probably would care a little about the record, but I bet he wouldn’t be that mad cause it’s you and me. You know he loves us best of all.”

  Octavian walked over and switched on the stereo system, dropped a record on the turntable and lowered the needle. A high falsetto harmony filled the store.

  “I love this song,” Mina said.

  “You don’t know nothing about The Congos.”

  “Please,” she said. “You didn’t know me in the seventh grade when I went through my crazy roots reggae phase. I was worse than Evan. I started making these mix tapes for anyone who would listen. My mom still has one, she was playing it the other day. I’m pretty sure this song is on it.”

  Octavian shook his head and sat down in a chair next to where she leaned against the wall. “This shit is pretty wild,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “I’m sure I made a mix tape with this song on it,” he said. “I know I did.”

  “Seriously?”

  Octavian nodded. “Where the hell have you been all this time?”

  “I don’t know. Alone in my room making mix tapes for my mom.” Mina laughed.

  “What’s your mom like? Is she cool?”

  “She’s alright, but she’s weird. She thinks I should be my own person, so I don’t have any curfew, she doesn’t really care how I do in school, I couldn’t get in trouble if I tried. It’s kinda like she cares about me, but she doesn’t care.”

  Octavian nodded. “What about your father?”

  Mina shrugged and lit a cigarette, ignoring the no smoking in the store rule. “Don’t know,” she said. “I never met him. Kanta said the stars got her pregnant.”

  “Oh boy,” Octavian said. “Do you call her by her first name?”

  “Yeah, always have. Like I said, she’s weird.”

  “My mom passed away,” Octavian said and took the cigarette from Mina.

  “I was wondering about that,” Mina said.

  “You were?”

  “Yeah, the day I left Delmar Harvard you told me she was dying. I remember I’d never met anyone whose mom was dying or who had died. Back then, the idea of your mom dying really flipped me out, because if my mom died, if she was even sick enough to die, I wouldn’t have anyone.” Mina remembered the way his scared eyes looked that day. She took the cigarette back from him. “Tell me about your dad. He’s cool, right? I mean, he was that day I saw him. Miles Davis and all that.”

  Octavian smiled thinking about how to describe his father to Mina. “He’s like Furious Styles from Boyz n the Hood with a PhD.”

  “I’ve never seen that movie.”

  “What? City-ass Mina hasn’t seen Boyz n the Hood? I don’t know, girl, you may have your I’m-down-with-black-folks pass revoked.”

 
“There’s a pass?” She smiled at him.

  Octavian put out the cigarette and took ahold of her hips with both hands. He pressed his face into her soft abdomen and didn’t even recognize himself. He was never bold with girls. He couldn’t talk fast enough, couldn’t lie on the spot and make it sound like the God’s-honest truth the way Frankie did. And as far as he could tell, that’s what they wanted, to be lied to. But he didn’t have to lie to Mina—he couldn’t. She’d known him when he was a snot-crusted, terrified ten-year old. And still, she was here. He met her dark eyes. “Want to take me home?” he said.

  TRACK 4

  Little Girl Blue

  MINA’S HOUSE IN CLAYTON had a wild front lawn and a short, crumbling brick porch. Inside, it was warm and dusty and smelled like Nag Champa incense. On the walls, African masks, Chinese Buddhas, and oil paintings of white men in wigs followed Octavian up the three flights of stairs to Mina’s bedroom, where different, familiar eyes greeted him. Miles Davis’s wild eyes, and the sad eyes of Billie Holiday. Prince with his eyes curved and lined in charcoal, and Mick Jagger, his eyes closed.

  “You like the Rolling Stones?” Octavian asked.

  She blushed. “I love the Rolling Stones.”

  “Frankie used to love them, too,” Octavian said, looking at her bookshelf. “Francis used to be a real classic rock head.”

  “He’s not anymore?”

  “Nah, Frankie stopped listening to music a long time ago.” Octavian walked slowly around the attic room. Mina could tell he was taking it in, saw it with his eyes—the candles on the windowsill, the bowl of dried flowers on her desk, the moth-eaten quilt on her four poster bed. She knew what he was looking for.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  Mina pointed to the corner. “Over there.”

  Octavian walked over and sat down at the desk that was right next to her bed. “Mina Rose’s personal record collection,” he said and smiled at her. “Watch out.”

  It would have been easier for Mina to stand in front of him naked than to watch his hands—strong and slender, with clear nails and a long scar on his left hand in the shape of a V—flip through her records. Octavian pulled out Kanta’s battered copy of I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! and smiled his wide Octavian smile.

  “This is an original,” he said.

  “It was Kanta’s,” Mina said.

  “Where’s she at?”

  “Kanta? She’s asleep, or out, I don’t know.”

  “She won’t care that I’m here?”

  “Like I said, she doesn’t care about anything.”

  Octavian blew on the end of the needle, and gently lowered it onto the record. The static crackled and he leaned back and closed his eyes. Janis sang into the room. Sang to Mina. Told her she was never going to be able to count on anything but the raindrops. Mina swallowed the feeling that it might be dangerous that Octavian could see into the barren place where she was still the little girl whose lunch fell apart in her backpack because the bread was so hard it broke. She wondered if maybe she should tell him to go home. But she told herself, she could see into that part of him too—where he was still a little boy, his hands dry and cold, his heart confused.

  “I just realized something,” Mina said. Octavian looked up. From under her bed, she dragged a brown metal box and began looking through it. She pulled out yellowed pieces of paper, a string of pearls, some broken sea shells, and a small stack of birthday cards held together with a rubber band.

  A ticket stub fell on the floor and Octavian picked it up. “This is from the Bobby Brown, New Edition, Salt-N-Pepa show. I went to that show. Did you go to the Rock Box concert?”

  “No. I wanted to, but Kanta wouldn’t let me.”

  “So she does care about some things,” Octavian said.

  “I guess,” Mina said, still looking through the box. “Here it is.” She handed Octavian a thin, folded piece of paper.

  “What is this?”

  “Open it,” she said. She smiled and her dark eyes shimmered.

  Octavian took it and unfolded the creases carefully until his first drawing of Wolverine stared back at him. The fangs still dripping. He swallowed. “I can’t believe you kept this,” he said. He turned it over. On the other side of the drawing, Octavian saw his ragged handwriting, the handwriting of a child whose mother was still alive.

  The song ended and he quickly folded the drawing back up and handed it to Mina. He started to look through the records again. He held up Love’s Forever Changes. “I’ve never heard of them,” he said.

  “Jesus, you and Kanta should hang out,” Mina said. “That’s another one of hers.”

  “Not often there’s a band I’ve never even heard of.”

  “Imagine that,” Mina said. “I’ve educated the one and only Octavian Munroe.”

  He laughed and put the record on. A soft guitar blended with voices, and then trumpets entered the room. “I like this.”

  “It’s one of my favorites,” she said and smiled at him.

  “Just so you know, Mina girl,” Octavian said and looked directly into Mina’s eyes, “I can sit here all night and play records and be fine.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  Octavian reached over and ran his thumb across one of her thick eyebrows. “No,” he said. “But just because I’m here, doesn’t mean it has to be that kind of night.”

  She nodded and smiled. “For a quiet kid, you sure do got some game, Octavian.”

  Octavian got up and went to sit next to Mina on the soft quilt. “I told you,” he said. “I’m not running game.” She leaned into him and he kissed her, carefully pushing away the upended memories still spread across the bed. She helped him pull off her t-shirt, and unhooked her bra. Octavian had only seen two girls naked in real life. One had large breasts the color of mahogany, the other had copper skin and barely any breasts at all. He had wondered whether there would be something strange about seeing the bare, white skin of Mina’s naked body, but as he wrapped her in his arms, he felt a gathering of pieces of himself that had scattered since the time when he hadn’t known pain so intimately. He pressed them together into his own box of memories and closed the lid. It frightened him, but it didn’t stop him, and he lowered himself into her lifting hips.

  When it was over, he fell onto those same breasts and willed his racing heart to slow the hell down.

  Mina put her hand on his back and asked, “Are you okay?”

  He could only nod.

  “Do you think your dad is wondering where you are?” she asked.

  He swallowed and found his voice. “Probably. Why, do you want me to leave?”

  In the darkness he saw Mina shake her head. He didn’t want to leave, but he couldn’t say so. Even with her soft legs wrapped around his, he couldn’t. Instead he cleared his throat and said, “You got cable?”

  She made a face at the small, dark TV at the end of her bed. “No,” she said, “and I only get like three channels.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Nine, eleven, and sometimes thirty.”

  “Shit, you don’t need anything else,” he said. Octavian got out of bed and turned the dial through the black-and-gray static until a picture appeared. He knew that his naked silhouette was backlit by the television, but he stood there and didn’t worry about his broad shoulders, his high waist and his long legs. He liked the way it felt to be naked and in the dark of Mina’s room, like he was worlds away from anything that would harm him.

  A young, long-haired Arnold Schwarzenegger clad in wolf pelts and massive steroid glory galloped across the clearing static on the screen. “Conan the Barbarian,” Mina said. “I love this movie.”

  “See,” he said. “I knew you were cool, Mina girl. This is one of my favorite movies.”

  He lay back down and Mina picked up his scarred hand. “How’d you get this?”

  “Francis,” Octavian said.

  “He cut yo
u like that?”

  “No. Got it trying to stop him from cutting up some other dude with a broken bottle.”

  “Shit,” she said quietly.

  Octavian felt the invisible and pervasive presence of Francis. Able to reach him even in Mina’s attic bedroom.

  “You think he’s alright?” Mina asked.

  Octavian shrugged. “Francis is always alright,” he said.

  They stayed up until nearly sunrise watching Conan the Barbarian and then Octopussy, and fell asleep naked, legs and fingers intertwined.

  TRACK 5

  Joy in

  Repetition

  A WEEK AFTER OCTAVIAN SLEPT over at Mina’s house, Mina stood looking up at Octavian’s apartment building, which sat at the top of a long stone stairway. She pulled the oversize sweatshirt she wore over her cold hands and started up the long stairs. With every step she questioned whether being there was a good idea. It wasn’t that she’d never skipped school before. She and Clarissa spent more time skipping classes and smoking cigarettes in the outside “smoking lounge” at Clayton than she did in class, but she had never skipped school to go to a boy’s house before. Since that night, she’d seen Octavian twice at work and they’d stayed up talking on the phone until they fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing, but neither had acknowledged being together again until Octavian asked Mina if she wanted to come over the next day.

  At the top, she blew on her fingers and pressed the buzzer for apartment five. Octavian came down to open the door wearing faded flannel pajama bottoms and a torn Rahsaan’s Records staff t-shirt from 1990. When Mina saw him, she was no longer nervous. Mina had always struggled with feeling self-conscious around guys she liked—trying to figure out what they wanted and whether or not she knew how to be that girl. But not Octavian. With him there was no way she could pretend to be someone she wasn’t. And the fact that he still wanted her there made her stomach flutter.

  Mina followed him to his room, where it was her turn to take in the giant Kenmore speakers, the worn wooden desk with silver handles, the unfinished painting of Hendrix, and the framed photograph of a dark-skinned woman with a high forehead and eyes that were like Octavian’s, wide and smiling.