Something She Can Feel

by Grace Octavia

  “Thank you,” I whispered into his ear. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Something was happening. At some point between the dance beneath the blue lights at Fat Albert’s and Dame and I giggling as if we were drunk as we stumbled out to the truck, I’d lost my barrier. I was laughing at nothing at all. I was just happy to be out in the night air, in the world, feeling and hearing and smelling it all around me. It was as if I’d never been in this part of the world. At least not in a long time. Not like this. And all I really wanted was someone to be there to remind me that this was really happening. And that was funny because nothing had actually happened. Not something someone there could see. But it just was.

  The white moon was hanging low in front of the truck. A crescent shaped upward, it looked like a smiley face was bearing down on us.

  Sitting in the truck beside Dame as we drove along University Boulevard through downtown’s crowds of beer-sipping blondes and frat boys waiting to get lucky, I rolled the window all the way down and sunk low in my seat to let the breeze come in all around me. My neck, my shoulders, around my ears, and through my scalp. I thought to slide off my right shoe and stick my foot out the window and then without considering anything else, I just did it. I just wanted to feel the air press against my foot and dare me to keep on coming toward it.

  Dame turned the music up high and leaned to the side in his seat, too, looking over at me and laughing every few minutes. In this dark night, he looked brilliant, exciting, and familiar like the stars above us. Every few feet, someone would look, and then look at him again, and then whisper to the person beside them. It seemed that I noticed each of these heavy stares, but Dame just kept on rolling.

  I knew that what was happening to me in that car was also happening to us. And I was happy about it. Happy to have a new friend—I could even call him that now—who could sit so close to me and ask nothing. He seemed to only want to give. And while something inside of me was saying this was dangerous, another side was tired of being afraid of what was dangerous.

  “I had a good time,” I said, not looking at Dame.

  “I knew you would,” he said. “Man, ain’t nobody allowed to have a bad time at Fat Albert’s. That’s certified.”

  “Certified?” I laughed and looked at him.

  “Hell yeah. I’ve been all over the world and I’ll tell you, ain’t no place that gets down like that. A bunch of old, fat ladies that can outdrink the ex-cons sitting next to them.... That’s a damn party.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said as we both laughed. “And there were no ex-cons in there.”

  “What? Fat Albert’s not even an ex-con. I think that fool is still supposed to be in prison. He escaped the chain gang in like 1901 or something.”

  “Not true,” I said, slapping his hand and feeling it raise slightly, as if he’d wanted me to keep my hand there. I jumped and pulled my leg back into the window.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I just, um ... need to get ready for ...”

  “Oh, Baby Barack,” he said as we turned onto the road that led back to the school where my car was parked. “It’s not even 1 a.m. Just tell him you were out with your girls.”

  “Out with my girls? You just made that sound so easy. I can hear it now, ‘Hey, I was just out with my girls!’ That might work if I had girls and we ever went out.”

  “You expect me to believe that you don’t go out?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ever?” he added.

  “Ever.”

  “But you’re grown and you have a job. And you’re married. You deserve to go out and have a good time every once in a while.” He looked at me and touched my hair.

  “It’s not that simple,” I said, pulling away.

  “It’s as simple as you make it.”

  The light ahead of us turned red and Dame pulled to a stop.

  “Like these folk over here, they’re out having a good time. Enjoying a fun Friday night in Tuscaloosa,” he said jokingly and pointing to a car on the other side of the truck that I couldn’t see. “Oh, never mind. It’s just a woman by herself. Looking really crazy ... probably like you do on Friday night.”

  “Not funny,” I said. I pushed up on my knuckles to look to the other side through his window. Right away, I noticed that it was Jethro Jr’s old Buick, the car May drove. Both of the windows were rolled all the way down and May was sitting in the driver’s seat with both hands tight on the wheel.

  “She looks like she’s about run a nigga down for something.” Dame laughed.

  “Shh,” I said. “May?” She didn’t answer. She just loosened her grip to wipe a tear I saw fall from her eye. “May?” I hollered again.

  Just after I called her name the second time, the car scurried up the road and I looked to see that the light in front of us changed.

  “You know her?” Dame asked, taking off behind May.

  “She’s my sister-in-law. Could you catch up?”

  Dame sat up in his seat and pushed the gas as we chased the tail of the Buick. May was swerving slightly and then she ran a red light. Dame, without so much as blinking, followed suit, and a block later I was poking my head out the window hollering out, “May!”

  If it was anyone else at any other time of day, I might have thought it was better to mind my own business. But May? Something had to be wrong, and whatever it was, May was leading us to it.

  “You know where she’s going?” Dame asked.

  “No clue. It’s just not like her,” I said as we hit a bump and the seat bounced me up in the air.

  “Does she live on the east side?” Dame asked, and I realized that was where we were headed. It was the neighborhood I grew up in. While we’d moved to another side of Tuscaloosa when I was in middle school, we still kept the old, three-bedroom house and Jr rented it out to church members in need of low-cost housing. May turned onto the avenue that led to that house.

  “No,” I said, cautiously reaching for my cell phone now. “She lives north of the river.... I think I need to call my brother.... Tell him what’s going on.”

  “I think he’s about to find out.”

  “May!” I screamed out the window again. “Why is she coming here?”

  When we turned onto the street that led to the cul-de-sac where the three-bedroom house was that I’d grown up in, I knew why May was headed there.

  Jethro Jr’s new Buick was sitting in the driveway of the old house. Lights off. No Jr in sight. It was 1:30 a. m.

  “That’s your—”

  “My brother’s car,” I finished Dame’s thought as we pulled up behind May’s stopped car in the middle of the cul-de-sac.

  “He lives here?”

  “No,” I whispered as if the night would hear me. I wasn’t sure what I’d stumbled upon at that stoplight, but now I was certain it wasn’t good.

  “Ooooohhhh.” Dame gritted his teeth and gave a shrug of innocence.

  May’s car just sat there silent and dark in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Suddenly, I realized I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. But I knew May needed me there.

  “Look, I’m going to talk to her,” I said to Dame as I gathered my things and slipped on my abandoned shoe. “You can go.”

  “You sure? What about your car?”

  “I’ll get home.... I just feel like I need to handle this ... alone. And I can’t let them see—”

  “No need to explain,” Dame said, turning the truck back on. “I’ll just catch you in the breeze.”

  “Sure.” I smiled nervously and slid out of the truck.

  “May, are you okay?” I asked after approaching the car when Dame had left. “I was in that truck ... calling you.”

  “I need to get my husband,” she said caustically. Both of her hands were still on the wheel.

  “He’s in the house? Did you two have a fight?”

  “I need to get my husband,” she repeated and I noticed that while her voice was cracking not one tear was in her e
yes now. Her Bible, the one she always carried with the red leather cover case, was sitting on the seat beside her. It was open.

  “May, I can tell you’re very upset,” I said, feeling my heart begin to race. I wanted to ask her why Jr was in the house again, but I knew I shouldn’t. I was afraid of what might happen next. “I think maybe I can go get him from the house. Do you want me to do that?”

  She didn’t respond. She just nodded and kept her hands on the wheel. It seemed that she was afraid to let go. Afraid of what she might do herself.

  “You stay here,” I said. “And I’ll go get him for you. okay?”

  “Yes,” she said uneasily.

  I backed away from the car and then turned to face the house repeating, “Please don’t be doing what I think you’re doing” to myself. “Please! Please! Please!”

  I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure May wasn’t coming up behind me. Whatever it was, May was in no condition to confront Jr.

  When I got to the door, the door of the house I grew up in, I didn’t know if I should ring the bell or just walk in. I knocked lightly, holding the screen door my father had put up one hot summer back with my foot. There was no answer, so I knocked again, almost a light tap. It had to have been after 1:30 a.m. now and all of the lights were off. I looked back to the car to see that May still hadn’t moved.

  When the door finally opened, Jr was standing there looking back at me. Neither of us said anything for a second. We just stood there in the awkwardness of the situation, silent and looking at one another.

  “Your wife is here,” I said.

  “Honey,” a tired, feminine voice called from behind Jr. “Who’s here so late?” The woman’s head came poking out. She was a tall, light-skinned woman, who looked a lot like my mother had when she was much younger. I’d seen her at the church before.

  “Kim, I told you to stay in bed.”

  “Who’s this?” I looked at the woman. “Who is she?”

  “I’m Kim, Journey,” the woman said defiantly. “Would you like to come into my home?”

  “Kim, I just told you to go back to bed,” Jr repeated more forcefully, but she just stood there.

  “I ain’t going back to bed. I’m tired of hiding. This is your family.” She stepped around Jr and came closer to me with her hands folded across her chest. “I’m his fiancée.”

  “How could you do this to me?” I heard May cry out. I turned and she was right behind me, crying and shaking. “You lied to me!”

  “I told you to stay home,” Jr shouted at May. “Go home. Journey, get her back in the car.” He looked at me.

  “Ain’t nobody listening to you tonight, so you might as well just tell everybody what’s going on. Tell her,” Kim demanded, pointing her finger at Jr, and I swear in all my life I’d never heard anyone speak to him in that way. “Tell her now.”

  I reached back and grabbed May’s hand. I hadn’t processed what all was going on—how long it had been going on and how long May had been dealing with it—but this was way out there for Jr.

  He pushed Kim to the side and came charging out the door, trying to get past me so he could get to May. I stumbled back, but then I jumped and tried to get in front of him.

  “No!” May started inching back. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Leave her alone,” I said, pulling at Jr, who seemed like he was about to hit May.

  “You want to know?” he shouted. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes,” May cried and Jr broke away from me. He was standing right in May’s face.

  “This is my girlfriend,” he said as calmly as he might have had he been ordering a cup of coffee. “You don’t make me happy anymore. You’ve put on all this weight. I’m not attracted to you. I haven’t had sex with you in months. We don’t have a life. You couldn’t even give me a son.”

  Jr’s words were so cold I wasn’t sure if it was even my brother. I stood behind him, shocked and waiting for May to say something, but she just stood there. Tears started falling from her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Enough,” I said to him. “That’s enough.”

  “You wanted to know,” he said with his eyes mad and still set on May. “There it is. Everything. So now you can go and get back in your car”—he started pushing her toward the car—“and drive home and wait for me to get there when I’m done.”

  “Jr,” I called, but he didn’t stop pushing her.

  “No!” May shrieked, and then she just jumped on Jr, wailing and screaming, “No!”

  I leaped to try to pull her off Jr and then I felt Kim on my back, trying to pull me off. We all fell to the ground, three women, piled on top of Jr, wrestling and crying.

  “You devil,” May cried, pounding her fists into Jr so hard that I could hear it when each one landed.

  “Get off my man,” Kim yelled, pulling at my hair.

  And I had one arm around May’s belly to try to get her up and another swinging at Kim. And then, just when we all got tired enough, I heard a little voice calling from the door.

  “Mommy! Daddy!”

  We all froze and looked up. Inside the frame of the door was a little boy, red as Jr, standing there, holding a little blue blanket.

  “Jr,” Kim said. She hopped off me and ran toward him, fixing her clothes along the way.

  My stomach flipped and turned as I struggled to get up. I felt light-headed. Like this was all too much for me. I needed my mother there. My father. Somebody to carry some of this. It was simply too much. And I couldn’t imagine what May must’ve been thinking and feeling at that point.

  Jr ran over to the boy and Kim and got on his knees.

  “Why did you get out of bed, buddy?” he asked the boy, who couldn’t have been more than three years old.

  “I heard screaming,” he said, and I stepped over just enough to see that he had my mother’s honey-colored eyes.

  “Hi,” he said softly, waving with his little fingers curled a bit.

  “Baby,” Kim said, “this is the nice woman we always see at the church sitting near Daddy. She came over to say hi to us.”

  I turned to see May looking at the boy. Heartbreak was spilling out of her eyes. I could see her chest sinking in.

  “This is your son?” She looked at Jr with clear contempt, hate in her eyes. “The son you wanted.... The son you made me ruin my body for? This is your son?”

  “Come on, Jr,” Kim said, picking the little boy up and walking into the house. As they headed down the hallway in the direction of my old bedroom, I watched as the boy’s blanket hit the floor and he waved at me one last time.

  “How could you do this?” May asked. “I haven’t done anything to you. This is evil, Jr. Evil.”

  The light came on next door and I saw Mrs. Matthews, who’d lived next door to us all my life, come outside.

  “You kids okay?” she asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” Jr said. “Just had an emergency with the tenant.”

  “Hmm,” she muttered, but it was apparent she knew what had been going on over at the house. I wondered how many other people on the block, at church, in town, had seen Jr’s car there and knew what was going on.

  “Look, it’s clear you two have a lot to talk about,” I said. “But this isn’t the place for it. Mrs. Matthews is probably calling Mama right now.”

  “Let’s go,” May said sadly. “There’s nothing here for me.”

  Every light was on in the house. They shone bright and rude in the middle of the night and I could see them before I even turned onto the driveway in May’s car. They looked angry. Almost accusatory. And as May and I parked and walked to the front door, I felt like a teenager returning home to her father after sneaking out.

  “Where have you been?” Evan said, pulling the door open with my key still in it. He had on the slacks he’d worn to work that morning, shoes, and his undershirt. His face was bright red. “I’ve been—” he charged, but then he looked at May, who was st
anding behind me and then back at me. “What’s going on?”

  “May and Jr had a fight,” I said.

  “But I’ve been calling you all night.” He held up his cell phone. “Why didn’t you answer?”

  “Evan, I apologize,” May said softly. “She was just trying to help me. Jethro and I had a fight and luckily Journey was there to help. We’re—” May’s voice waned and she lowered her head.

  “Look, let me get her situated in the guest room and I’ll come and talk to you,” I tried, both wanting to comfort May and needing more time to think of what I was going to say to Evan. I knew he’d have more questions and I didn’t want to lie to him. I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I knew that at 3 a.m., the little I said would be acceptable. Even with May there.

  Evan closed the door behind us and I patted May’s back as we walked slowly to the guest room. She was quiet, but I could tell by how she moved her lips, she was already praying.

  “Do you want me to call Jr to come—” Evan called behind me.

  “No.” I quickly cut him off. “She’s fine.”

  After making May some tea and helping her calm down enough to just lay down, I walked through the house nervously, listening for sound coming from my bedroom. There was silence. Evan was waiting for me.

  The last light, the one in the foyer before the front door, led me to my purse. I slid my cell phone out to place it on the charger and looked to see that I had twenty-seven missed calls. All were from Evan. The last two came with alert pages—PLEASE CALL HOME.

  “I was worried. Really worried,” Evan said when I walked into the bedroom.

  Anything I could say sounded flat here, so I waited for him to go on.

  “You never stay out that late. I didn’t know what happened to you. When I came home and you weren’t here, I called and you didn’t respond.”

  “The ringer was off. I had it off since I was at work. I forgot to turn it back on. I didn’t know you called.” I sat down on the bed, eased my shoes off and began undressing.

  “And then John called, saying he saw you joyriding downtown with some thug,” he said, pulling off his undershirt. John was his assistant.