A Taste of Honey

by Jabari Asim

  A faint scurrying in the dining room. What was that? Mice? Insects? Giant winged beasts from hell? I looked frantically all over the kitchen. No camera. It had to be upstairs.

  I stomped up the stairs, so as to avoid sneaking up on any creatures/robbers/ghosts that may have been skulking/stealing/relaxing up there. My bladder got heavier and heavier as I climbed. There was no getting around a pit stop. I went to the bathroom and urinated with one eye on the open door, prepared to stop in midstream, yell, and run for my life.

  The camera was in my mom’s bedroom on the nightstand next to an unopened pack of Belairs. I grabbed it: Mission accomplished. In my mind’s eye I saw myself reentering the Grandmother’s party to uproarious applause, beaming and waving while handing over Mom’s Instamatic with a triumphant flourish. I swaggered down the stairs to the front door, thinking about my famous namesake and the courage we had in common. He had faced down angry Redcoats and I had strolled casually past a gho—Wait a second, didn’t my famous namesake die?

  In that terrible moment of recognition, I felt his eyes on me. I knew he was there in the dark living room. Sitting on the couch in his little knickers and boots, watching me and saying nothing. Slowly, carefully, I reached for the doorknob. That’s when I heard it with awful, unmistakable clarity: a sigh. A big, long, loud one, full of tension and release, an exhalation so substantial that I imagined I felt a breeze. Instantly sweat bubbled up from every pore, then turned to ice when it touched the air. Tears welled up in my eyes, blinding me. My lungs tightened. I reached for the doorknob and missed. Instead I hit the bottom of the shade that covered the pane on the door. It flew all the way up, wrapping around the roller with a loud flapping sound. I got the knob with my second grab and flung open the door. I rushed onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind me. That white boy was going to have to make it through several inches of solid wood if he wanted to get his hands on me. Of course that might not be so hard, I realized, if he could walk through walls. I looked around for potential witnesses. The Collinses were no longer on their porch. The streetlight was still out.

  I crossed my fingers, thought of Polly, and took a leap of faith. The darkness never felt so good.

  A Taste of Honey

  ed was rubbing on his good-luck charm when he heard the front door open. Damn! He thought he’d locked it. He kept one long arm wrapped around Charlotte and gently touched a finger to her lips. Slowly, quietly, he craned his neck and stole a look around the corner.

  “Anybody here? It’s just me, Crispus!”

  Charlotte wiggled a little, and Ed held her tighter. He leaned into her and whispered a gentle “Shh.” They stood in the shadowy silence of the dining room, listening as Crispus headed to the kitchen. When the little interloper began to stomp up the stairs, Ed licked Charlotte’s neck. She jumped and squealed, but Ed kept her clamped against him. “Be still,” he cooed. “He’s looking for something. He’ll be gone in a minute.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me,” Ed said. He rubbed Charlotte’s belly, nuzzled her dark, delicious neck.

  “Mmm,” Charlotte murmured.

  Emboldened, Ed worked his hand in circles, down to her softest spot.

  Crispus descended the stairs.

  Ed held Charlotte in the shadows, steadily rubbing.

  Crispus looked intently at the door. He reached for the knob.

  Charlotte felt herself dissolving. She sighed, in spite of herself.

  After a frenzied false start, Crispus tore out the door, slammed it, and took off.

  Ed listened for the sound of sneakers slapping the sidewalk. He let Charlotte go, went to the door, and pulled down the shade.

  Charlotte breathed deep, then hugged herself. She turned to Ed. “You naughty boy,” she teased. “You said there wouldn’t be anyone else here.”

  “And there isn’t,” Ed said. “Not anymore. And you’re the one who’s naughty. You nearly scared my little brother out of his skin.”

  Charlotte looked up at Ed and batted her eyes. She put a finger between her perfect teeth and nibbled on it gently. “You’re right. I’m a baaad girl.”

  Ed reached out and took both her hands in his. “Then I guess you’ll have to be punished.”

  Charlotte giggled. “Lead the way,” she said.

  On the third floor, Ed blocked his windows with a navy bedspread. He turned to Charlotte, who was staring at his new mural. He admired Charlotte while she admired the art, a giant skull with daisies splattered across its crown. “It’s from the latest Archie Shepp,” he explained. The Magic of Ju-Ju.

  Charlotte reached out and traced the skull’s outline, her finger barely touching the wall. “You are some kind of talented, Ed Jones.”

  Ed chuckled. “Tell that to my old man. He didn’t have much to say about it, except I should have asked his permission before doing anything to his walls. His walls.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with it? It’s my room, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

  Charlotte smiled. Those perfect teeth. “You didn’t tell me you paid rent.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You pay for your meals.”

  “That neither.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Then it’s not your room. And it’s not your house.”

  Ed frowned and started to protest, but Charlotte hushed him.

  “I didn’t come here to argue,” she said. She kissed him softly, slowly, then pulled back and licked her lips. “Mm,” she purred. “That’s good.”

  Ed had to have Charlotte. Had to have her before he lost his natural mind. Charlotte knew it. And she sure didn’t want him to lose his mind.

  He had lied. Told his parents he had to work and would be late to the birthday party. He’d met Charlotte at the bus stop and walked her over. Now she was here and looking so ready, so willing. But he didn’t want to rush things, act too eager.

  No disrespect to Big Mama, but she’d have plenty of people at her party, piling it on, singing her praises, kissing her ring. Hail to Big Mama, she who knows what’s best for everybody. The whole family was one big cult of personality. His own father had bought into it, and he wasn’t even a Warford.

  Ed figured that he couldn’t be the only person who saw the way she treated Crispus. Clearly something about the kid just rubbed her the wrong way. When was someone going to call her on it, the pointed insults and the casual slights? Pristine wasn’t going to do it. When Big Mama came back from Florida and brought that one stupid yo-yo with her, the one shaped like two slices of orange, she handed it to Shom like it was made of gold. Left Crisp standing there sad-eyed and empty-handed. Mom told her if she couldn’t bring a souvenir for both of them then she shouldn’t bring any at all. Big Mama said fine, no more souvenirs. That was the strongest resistance Pristine ever mounted, and it was weak at that. Wasn’t Big Mama still bringing Shom presents on the sly? And Reuben, he was too busy breaking Ed’s balls to even notice.

  Nana and Granddad had a soft spot for Crisp, but they lived out in the country now, too far away to be of much help. Ed tried to do what he could. He used to read comic books with him nearly every weekend, taking time to pore over back issues of Spider-Man and Fantastic Four while sharing some ice-cold Tahitian Treat. But Ed had a job now, and there was college to think about, and Charlotte too …

  Big Daddy, now there was a man who loved him some Crispus. He was old-school, so he dug Crisp’s paleness. He liked to say that when Crisp was born he looked just like a paper doll. He was not much darker than beige now, but that hair, it was all the way African. In fact, it was just like Big Daddy’s. What would Big Daddy think of this Black Is Beautiful stuff?

  What would he say to Big Mama’s doing so wrong by Crisp? She’s always going on about Roderick Bates. Has she ever noticed how smart Crisp is? He’s already picked up a lot of French and Spanish from the Genius, makes the both of them stand out. Forget about foreign tongues, people around here don’t even spe
ak English anymore—at least the standard kind. It’s gotten too white, folks say. It’s the Man’s language, forced on us when they took away our names and our drums. Hard to figure what’s too white and what’s not. Some of the kids in the Black Heritage Club had given him grief just for carrying around a Harvard catalog. He was just looking at it, damn.

  All his life Ed had been taught that black folks had to be twice as good to be considered half as good. Now some people—well, a lot of people—were saying that we shouldn’t measure ourselves by white folks’ low standards. They were saying that folks who use dogs and firehoses and billy clubs and broomsticks wrapped in barbed wire and homemade bombs to hurt defenseless little children don’t know the first thing about good. As comforting and wonderful as this new blackness was, it was also confusing.

  Confusing or not, I have some decisions to make before Pop concludes that he can make them for me. Since I’m eating his food and painting his walls and breathing his air. Shoving all this Ivy League crap down my throat, telling me to think about my future. He’s one to talk. Who ever heard of a Negro with a college degree opening up a sign shop? True, it was a successful operation, but still. A black man with that all-important piece of paper and what does he do with it? Push a paintbrush.

  Ed got up and put on a record. He lowered the tonearm of the humble hi-fi that was passed on to him by his uncle Orville. The needle kissed the groove.

  “You are too beautiful, my dear, to be true.”

  Johnny Hartman. Yeah, that’s right, baby, I can be smooth too. I can do more than grunt and sweat and breathe heavy. I got a touch of class. Isn’t a touch of class worth a taste of honey?

  Ed watched Charlotte as she wandered around his room, picking up objects and putting them down, swaying a little as she let the music get into her. She approached him again and put her hands around his waist. Stood on tiptoes and pressed her center against his.

  He’d known he wanted her—no, needed her—the moment he saw her. When she poked her head confidently into the classroom and said she was looking for the Black Heritage Club. Those plump purple lips. Eyes like Lena Horne’s. Perfect teeth and—uh-oh!—a behind to match. A man could lose his natural mind.

  Brother Vaughn was quicker that day. He took hold of her arm and escorted her to a seat, grinning like Stepin Fetchit the whole damn time. Ed wasn’t worried. He made sure she’d see right away that he was different. Everybody could say a word or two about Martin or Malcolm, maybe even Elijah or Garvey. But who else had read The Souls of Black Folk or “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”? Yeah, he gets into Doc Savage and Spider-Man, but that isn’t all he reads.

  I let the sister know that if she failed to notice me then she was a failure. No getting around it. I spoke up in the meetings, made my uniqueness clear. Talked to her about Nina Simone and Cannonball and Trane while all the knuckleheads were nattering about the Bop, the Deal, or some other dance step. Dance step my ass. Charlotte had to know I was past that jive, that I was down for the serious and nothing else.

  Ed and Charlotte took long walks. Held hands and tossed stones into the lake at Fairgrounds Park. Stayed on the phone late at night talking about Vietnam, LBJ, those four little girls in Birmingham. Whether the Devil was Bull Connor or J. Edgar Hoover. Whether or not God had given up on his earthly gig, up and turned his back on us for a while. Charlotte thought he had. Ed wasn’t sure.

  Remember, be smooth, Ed reminded himself. Kissing her, touching her this way, sliding his hands into her slacks, it was difficult to be patient. Go slow, Ed. Slow.

  I want/I need/I must impress her with my power, stun her with my strength, make a storm break between her thighs. I want to make her scratch my back and scream for Jesus even though she doesn’t believe in Him anymore. I want to bump and grind her back to sweet, ferocious belief, fuck her into faith and our Father who art in heaven push push baby oh oh oh you are so delicious.

  But I need to be gentle.

  Even as she peels off her pants. Slides her panties down those legs. Tugs that top over her lovely head. Five feet, four inches of chocolate. Just for me.

  I wish I could sleep with her afterward. Hold her like a rock against my dreams.

  Sometimes Ed dreams of Curly, sees him falling and falling and falling until thunk! his head hits the curb. Other times he dreams he is Curly. He’s staggering in the street and wearing Curly’s red glasses, but unlike the real Curly he can see. Can see Mortimer the cop smiling as he brings his baton down and sends Curly/Ed toppling out of control, hurtling helplessly until Ed sits up in bed and the juju skull lets him know that none of it had been real. None of it had been real except Mortimer’s smirk, which said to him: Despite your good grades and your clean fingernails and your faultless Negro work ethic and incomparable home training and your uppity vocabulary, I can bring you to your knees. Whenever and wherever I want. Ed remembers standing petrified on Vandeventer with Brother Charles and Brother Vaughn while Mortimer smirked under the streetlamp less than fifty yards from his house. He remembers thinking, I might die here and I’m so close to home. Pop wants him to go to Harvard after all that?

  Charlotte was naked now. The sight of her was itself well worth the lie or two he’d told to make this moment happen. For the touch of her he’d kill, he was sure. Damn, what would he do for a taste?

  She motioned for him to take off his clothes. He started peeling them.

  Suppose he was foolish enough to go off to Harvard. What if he wandered too far off-campus and right into a gang of rabid Southies? He’d read about the Irish up there, about the famine they ran from and the hatred they ran into once they reached the brave New World. Like every other group of newcomers, they seized on despising blacks as their ticket to membership in that elusive American fantasy. One nation under God, except for the colored.

  Hardly anyone said colored anymore. Not even the good folks at the NAACP, who were stuck on Negro. Nana’s generation used a shorthand that he appreciated. They just said “us.” No further elaboration necessary. Talking about the west county neighborhood where they both did backbreaking work for a rich white family, Nana and Granddaddy would say, “Not many of us out there. Only ones of us you see are on their way to clean toilets and cut grass.” If a heat wave threatened the city’s power supply, they’d say, “Guess who’s gonna have to deal with dark streets and alleys tonight? Us.”

  People like to say that we young blacks are obsessed with conspiracy theories; that we see the pale hand of the Man in everything. But where do we get such ideas? Old folks don’t merely suspect that electric meters tick faster in the houses of North Gateway, resulting in higher bills; they know it. They know that the grocers in North Gateway charge twice as much for meat discarded by stores in South Gateway because it had been deemed too old to eat. They know that the basement ward of the city’s most prestigious hospital is where they conduct ungodly experiments on “us.” The old folks would leave us half-suspecting that white folks dug up the potholes from South Gateway’s streets and deposited them all over our side of town before dawn. That is, if they had potholes over there. Even Pop said that you could tell when you crossed over to the South Side because your tires stopped whining. The rock-strewn gully you had been driving on had turned into a street as smooth as a baby’s hind part. “Better make sure you can state your business,” Pop said, “in case Officer Friendly asks you what you’re doing so far from home. And don’t let it be night. Ooh, then your goose is cooked fo’ sho.”

  Ask old folks for evidence to support their claims and they’d say, “Just keep on living. You’ll see.”

  Ed had every intention of continuing to live. For him living had been concentrated and distilled, in essence reduced to an all-encompassing desire that warmed the air, rippled his sheets, and lightly grazed the dark beauty stretched out on his bed. She shivered under his gaze.

  He hesitated a minute—but only for a minute—and savored every inch of Charlotte. He wanted to commit to memory everything his eyes took
in: the glossy ringlets framing her flawless forehead, the ripe lips sheltering the bright teeth and moist tongue, the round, raisin-tipped breasts, the delicate slope of her belly, the glistening vortex just visible between her sleek thighs. Phenomenal, Ed thought. He lowered himself to the bed, eased his lips next to hers.

  “Am I everything you imagined?” Charlotte was coy and confident, a woman aware of her powers.

  Ed found it difficult to talk, had no interest in talking. After all this longing, he was down for the serious and nothing else. He forced his lips to part but remained speechless. For once he was all out of adjectives.

  Charlotte laughed, satisfied. His dumbstruck stare was answer enough. She reached for him, leaned back, and spread her legs. Ed became pure hunger. Need hummed in his ears as he held her small head in his hands and gulped her mouth. He moved to her neck, licked and devoured as Charlotte moaned her encouragement. His tongue painted a path between her breasts. He reached under her and wrapped his hands around her rear. It was hot to the touch, slick and graced with a luminous sheen.

  Across the room, the album spun on the old hi-fi, forgotten now. Johnny Hartman was still around but preparing to leave, coolly ringing the last changes of “Autumn Serenade.” Trane had stretched out on this one, his wistful tenor perfectly matching Hartman’s melancholy yearning.

  I’ll still feel the glow that time cannot fade …

  Repeat, fade. The tonearm slid across the label and skidded uneasily against the spindle. Bump. Bump. Bump. In uncanny sync with the rhythm being pounded out on the narrow bed, the kiss and crush of loins. Charlotte was the singer now, a soprano grown husky with ardor. Her jazz was a ballad of urgent, liquid lust.

  Ed didn’t hear Charlotte or the hi-fi, nor did he hear his own ecstatic harmonies. He was immersed in noiseless darkness, lost to all but the wet charms of Charlotte’s world. His mind and body rejoicing in the hot wonder of oneness. Briefly, a cogent thought penetrated his celebration of heat. What was that about old folks and living? Never mind all that, I am dying here and happy to go. Leaving Earth now …