Crave

by Laurie Jean Cannady

  Earlier that year, we prideful Prexies filed into school, ready to celebrate our winning football team. The buzz of “the graffiti” hit me and other students before we’d exited the bus. Like most gossip being passed from one person to another, the story matured in front of my face before I could imagine what the matter was. As I walked to the entrance of my school, I looked into the windows I often stared out of while dreaming of a life better than the one I had in Lincoln Park, better than the one I had with Sanford. I was mesmerized by the black lines and curves etched across the front of the building, shining against the wall that held what was Wilson High together. The word “nigger” and drawings of Swastikas were scrawled across the front of the wall as if on a scrolling news ticker, flashing brighter than the sun against midnight, causing more wind to whoosh my way than even the leaves on the trees.

  We never learned who wrote those obscenities, but we all imagined it was students, we hoped, from the high school our team had defeated. Mr. Gatlin, the school principal, quickly arranged for a cleanup crew to scrub the words off the building. There were no provisions made to scrub them from our minds. Even after the front of the building was free of the darkness, the words and figures strangling it, the stain remained; I could still see it until the day I left Wilson High for the last time.

  However, during the year of Sanford’s graduation, none of that mattered. Hilarity replaced what had been written. The anticipation of the seniors—our personal superstars—performing occupied us all. I sat in the Willet Hall auditorium surrounded by rows of chattering students, stifled, anchored by Sanford’s letter jacket, the one I’d taken to wearing in order to hide the bite marks on my wrists and shoulders. The hum of the talking and laughing lulled me as I waited for the show to begin. Word had gotten around that Sanford had a surprise for the whole school and he’d be performing some secret skit that would steal the show. It had gotten around to me as if I weren’t his girlfriend, as if his secrets no longer belonged to me as mine belonged to him.

  Once the spotlight pressed against the stage curtain and the MC emerged on stage, the crowd quieted. Several of the football players ran on stage wearing headbands and cheerleader uniforms, clapping, skipping, singing cadence after cadence, “Go, go, let’s go, beat Norcom.” They flipped, twirled, even attempted splits as the entire auditorium shook in laughter. The end of their performance was marked by a pyramid that barely rose above the third level. Then they fell, clumsily, thunking against the stage floor, laughing and cheering as the audience cheered along with them. “Our team is what?” “Red hot!” “Our team is what?” “Red hot.” The show was off to a great start.

  Next was Dana, Wilson’s resident Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. impersonator. Whenever February rolled around or there was a pep rally, Dana stood on stage, intermixing parts of King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” with declarations of our football team’s ability. “I have a dream,” he’d begin, “that the Woodrow Wilson Presidents, the Prexies, will win that game today. I have a dream, I say.”

  Despite its inappropriate usage of King’s words, that skit, too, earned the seniors many laughs. There were other skits, each funnier than the next, until it was time for Sanford and the surprise everyone had been waiting for. The lights dimmed, hushing the audience as they went lower and lower.

  The spotlight slammed against the stage curtain, highlighting the empty space. Once the curtains opened, the crowd spewed merriment. There stood Sanford wearing a two-ponytail wig. He wore a bikini top that barely covered his dark nipples, biking shorts, covered by a skirt, with yellow neon stripes running against his thighs and tube socks pulled past his knees. There he stood, parodying Jim Carrey’s Vera de Milo from the comedy show In Living Color. Sanford’s arms were lowered in front of his body as he assumed the position of a body builder, flexing for the judges. “Hi, I’m Vera de Milo.” The audience shook in laughter. I even laughed a little myself.

  His muscles looked like mountains and valleys in contrast to the bikini top and biking shorts. Sanford’s lips jutted from his teeth and he whinnied like a stallion calling its mare. He erupted into an impromptu body building instruction class, flexing the muscles in his arms, his legs, craning his neck in order to highlight his trapezius and deltoid muscles. He whinnied and neighed throughout the skit, throwing a Fire Marshall Bill “Lemme show you something” in between each move he executed. As his performance drew to an end, he offered the audience advice, “If you want to be beautiful and strong like me, then you just need to take your medicine.” He then picked up a jar of skittles, with the word steroids written on a white label, and poured the candies into his mouth. They covered his face, toppled down his chest, and ran over his back onto the stage floor. The crowd erupted, stood for him, called encore even before he’d exited. Sanford remained on the stage, flexing, turning, basking in the audience’s applause.

  I eyed his muscular arms, traced them with my eyes, remembered tracing them with my fingers, remembered being headlocked between them. I did not join in the clapping. I could do little more than stare. I couldn’t believe how good his costume was; everyone believed a funny, generous Sanford always resided under that bikini top, biking shorts, and tube socks.

  The crowd continued to burst at the seams, but I could not hear their laughter, nor the neigh that pressed out of him. He stood, his head rotating from one shoulder to the other, in a Herculean stance. My own thoughts were not audible to me. But later that night, when all things quieted, I dedicated my thoughts to the Sanford that stood on that stage, that sweet, funny, happy being that shared a body with the person who had imprisoned me. I wondered how those two resided in the same body. I couldn’t imagine the battles they must have fought in order for Sanford to just walk straight.

  I’d like to believe I knew the real Sanford, and that the biting creature, the slapping, slamming monster was all of him. But in front of me, in front of all of Wilson, there had stood this comedian, this man-child who just wanted a laugh, who just wanted the audience to stand in ovation, to salute his talent. He was all muscle, but then he was, and I knew this even at sixteen, anti-muscle, emotional mush. There had to have been something soft in him to allow him to treat me the way that he did. I wanted to rescue that sweet part of him, but it came with the other Sanford and that one I had to protect myself from. That Sanford on the stage, the nineteen-year-old just graduating high school, the man-child basking in the wind pushed toward him by the applause, that one I felt sorry for. For that one, I prayed he’d one day escape the other that I, too, was running from.

  Put a Fork in It

  Watching Mary hand Sanford’s letter to Momma made my stomach curl into knots. I tried to suppress my anxiety, but it escaped in sweat beads racing down my back. Momma’s facial expression changed from curiosity, to shock, then anger. Up until her reading that letter, she’d believed Sanford and I ended the day I returned from the Richmond MEPS. Momma had grown too involved in the traumas of her own life to notice the change in me. Mary, on the other hand, saw everything.

  When I lied about spending the night with Veeta and came home with a black eye, Mary knew Sanford was the guilty party. When I hid bruises on my arms with long shirts, she snuck into the bedroom as I undressed and saw my war wounds in their entirety. She woke in the morning to find hair that no longer belonged to me on my pillow and asked why I let him do that to me. I had no answer.

  Mary came downstairs one day as Sanford pinned me to the chair, his hands around my neck. She ran into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and brandished it in front of him.

  “You better leave or I’ll cut you,” she said.

  “Mary, we’re just playing,” Sanford offered his signature smile.

  “What game is this?” Mary asked. Sanford giggled and inched his way to the door.

  “What are you going to do with a knife?” he shook his head and let out a hollow laugh.

  Mary was not laughing, “You want to find out?” Sanford walked to the door. As he exited, he flashed a sulle
n look, one of a two-year-old, being scolded for inappropriate behavior. I knew he’d be back. One timeout couldn’t keep him away.

  “Why do you let him do this?” she asked.

  “I love him” was all I could say. It was enough for her to keep our secret, but not enough for her to allow him in the house again.

  “If he comes back here, I’m going to tell Momma.”

  I dropped my chin to my chest in defeat. “Okay,” I said. I too felt like a child being scolded. Mary was thirteen and I was sixteen, but age didn’t matter. She had earned the authoritative role when she became my protector.

  Mary took her role seriously. Whenever I came home from school, she asked if he had touched me. When I told Momma I was spending the night with Veeta, she would remind Momma to call and make sure I was there. Her attempts offered relief, and I often used her as an excuse to stay away from Sanford. Those excuses made Sanford write the letter that Mary found on my bed and immediately gave to Momma.

  She was not keeping my secret anymore. Momma stared at the letter, then looked at me with disbelief. “Why didn’t you give this to me?” she asked. “I thought you were already over.”

  “He’s not serious, Momma. He was just mad because I told him we were over.”

  “He’s not serious?” She shook the letter in front of my face, as if its breeze could transmit the severity of Sanford’s words to my brain.

  “He writes things like that sometimes. He never really does anything.”

  “What?” That was Mary’s opportunity. “Look at her arms, Momma. He bites her.”

  “Stop lying,” I screamed.

  “Take off your shirt,” Momma ordered. Purple imprints of Sanford’s bites covered my arms.

  Momma gasped, “Get yourself together. We’re going to his house.”

  I walked up the stairs saying a prayer for my family. There was no way to get us out of this. Everything Sanford had said in that letter would happen. He would shoot me, Momma, my sister, and then himself. I wanted to tell her all of this before we went to his home, but I knew it would only make her angrier, and I couldn’t allow things to get worse.

  On the way to Sanford’s house, I remembered the times he and I took the same walk, holding hands and looking at trees blowing in the wind. I thought him so handsome, so gentle and loving then. How long ago had that been? The trees had no answer.

  Momma didn’t speak during the twenty-minute walk. When she looked at me, she shook her head and clenched her fists. I hoped Sanford wouldn’t be home, that his family had moved or maybe his house had burned down. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I had a plan to get away. I was still going into the Army, even if I promised Sanford I wouldn’t. I’d leave right after graduation and he’d never be able to find me. The letter had ruined everything. I’d be lucky if I made it to graduation.

  We walked up the sidewalk that led to Sanford’s door. His brother and cousin sat on the porch. They must have felt something was about to happen because they ran into the house to get Sanford. He came to the door flashing the smile that had always convinced Momma he was a good guy.

  “Hi, Ms. Lois.”

  Momma walked up to him and stared in his eyes. “I want to talk to your grandmother.” Sanford’s expression immediately changed, but he worked to maintain his smile. He walked into the house and Momma followed. When she saw his grandmother, she pushed past Sanford.

  “Look at what Sanford wrote to Laurie.”

  Sanford’s grandmother read the letter aloud for her husband to hear. The threats floated from her lips as if she were reading the morning paper. I’ll kill you if you leave. Your sister needs to stay out of our business before I shut her up forever. Your mother is asking for trouble if she doesn’t let you come over here this weekend. I’ll kill everybody if they keep pissing me off. I’ll get my cousin’s gun and shoot them, you, and me.

  After reciting Sanford’s words so eloquently, she looked at Momma as if to ask, “Who wrote this?” Momma answered her look with force.

  “Look at my daughter’s arm.” I was standing near the chair closest to the door, praying I could melt out of existence. Momma pulled my shirt up to the bruises on my arm, inadvertently revealing my bra. Sanford’s grandmother was expressionless.

  “Sanford,” she called. He walked into the room glaring at me. “You didn’t do this? Did you?” she asked.

  “Grandma, you know I would never hit Laurie.”

  Momma stood in the middle of the floor surrounded by Sanford’s suppressed rage, his grandmother’s disbelief, and his brother and cousin’s readiness to pounce. She glared at each of them. “You are all crazy,” she hissed.

  “Crazy,” his grandmother raised her voice. “Your daughter is nothing but trouble, sneaking into my house.”

  “You raised a woman beater,” Momma flung back at her.

  As their argument continued, Sanford slipped out of the living room to the kitchen where he could get my attention and give me all of his. He stood in the doorjamb. His broad shoulders centered in the door. He pointed his finger at me as he scream-whispered, “I am going to get you.” He paced back and forth from the den to the kitchen. He banged his right fist into his open hand. He grabbed his head in between his hands. It was like watching a madman trying to stop his brain from exploding. In between his paced steps, he stopped, bent over with his hands covering his face, and silently screamed. We were both deaf to the exchange of words between Momma and his grandmother. It was me and him together again in our other world.

  Momma’s final words invaded, “Keep him away from my daughter or I’ll have his ass put in jail.” She snatched the letter out of his grandmother’s hand. “Come on, Laurie.” She stormed out of the door as I shrank away, feeling Sanford’s eyes burning into my back. I was happy to get out of the stifling house filled with Sanford’s rage. I rushed alongside Momma, trying to keep up with her infuriated steps. We made it to the corner when the commotion that had erupted in the house spilled onto the street. Momma and I looked back as Sanford, his brother, and cousin came barreling down the street after us. The cries I had bravely held in Sanford’s house burst out of me in a wail. I grabbed Momma.

  “Let’s run,” I screamed. We could make it home if we ran all of the way there. Momma snatched her arm away from me. She bent and began to fumble with her shoe. “Momma, please fix your shoe later,” I cried. “We have to run.”

  She grabbed my chin, looked into my eyes and said, “You are not running anymore.”

  I didn’t understand what she was saying. As far as I knew, she hadn’t known what was happening with Sanford. It took me years to understand she wasn’t just talking about me. I was shocked to see Momma rise holding a knife she had pulled from her sock. She stood up just in time for Sanford and his family to enclose us in a circle. She grabbed my arm and pulled me behind her. They attempted to reach over Momma to grab me.

  “How are you going to come to our house?” his cousin hollered.

  “You’re not getting away from me,” Sanford kept saying.

  “I’ll gut all of you. You’re never touching my daughter again,” Momma replied. The scene resembled one of those old gang fights seen on television. Our movements were so precise they looked choreographed. Sanford, his brother, and cousin moved around us, maintaining their semi-circle. Momma moved as they moved, keeping herself as a shield between them and me.

  All of a sudden, Sanford stopped, realizing he had dropped his mask of the loving, sweet Sanford. Momma had finally seen firsthand what he was. He immediately called off his posse.

  “Y’all, stop. Leave them alone. We can’t do this.” His voice was so calm, it sounded like he was trying to seduce me, to seduce us. “Ms. Lois, I’m sorry. You can go home. We’re not going to do anything. I’ll stay away from Laurie. I’m sorry.” He put up his hands and allowed us to walk away. Momma quickly grabbed me, placing me in front of her, again using herself as a shield. She held me by my arm. If she had let me go, I would have run.

>   When we got home, she called the cops. Mary stood over her as she dialed the number. Her relief showed she believed that the saga of Sanford would soon be over. I knew the true violence had just begun. When the cops came, Momma gave them the letter Sanford had written and Mary informed them of my bruises. They examined me, took pictures of my wounds, made me file a statement and assured Momma they would take care of everything. I could only sit and imagine the weight of Sanford’s anger falling on my head. He was arrested that night, but I knew that wouldn’t stop him. It would only make things worse.

  All that night, his brother called the house saying we had ruined Sanford’s life. Momma hung the phone up each time and threatened to get him arrested too. She needlessly told me to stay away from Sanford, not realizing “away” was what I had always wanted.

  The police only held Sanford for a few days. In that time, Momma secured a restraining order that demanded he stay away from me, my school, and my house. On paper I was free. In reality, I was minutes away from my death.

  On the fourth day, I walked into shop class to find Sanford sitting in the desk next to mine talking to Mr. Hinton, my teacher. When he saw me, his eyes lit up as if he were the boyfriend, surprising the girlfriend with a visit. I expected him to pull out a gun and shoot me right in front of Mr. Hinton. A whimper escaped my lips. Sanford asked Mr. Hinton if he could talk to me for a minute. I was barely able to move my feet. He guided me past the table saws to the outside. Again, I was under his control. He took my hand and began to whisper his pleas.

  “I’m sorry about what happened the other day. Did you know I got arrested?”

  When I didn’t respond he continued, “It was horrible in there. I missed you so much. I know we can work this out. You know how much I love you. Please don’t leave me.”