“I can’t,” was all I could get out.
“I need you more now than ever. I just found out my momma is in the hospital. They say she could die.” Tears covered his face, as he pulled my hand to his eyes. “Don’t you see my eyes are crying?” I slowly pulled my hand from his, wiping his tears on my pants.
I wanted to be there for him, to stop the pain, to dry the tears. Beneath the swears, punches, and bites resided a funny, sweet boy who loved Michael Jordan. I wondered many nights whether that boy had witnessed or experienced assaults similar to ones the adult Sanford inflicted upon me.
He had fed me, had bought me clothes and shoes when I had none. It didn’t matter when I was with him that I’d starved more than I had been full. And the clothes he’d purchased no longer fit because I shrank inside them. And those baby-blue Filas I’d sniffed were wrought with holes and the soles had separated from the toecap, so they flapped when I walked. None of that had ever mattered, as forgiveness always prompted me to remain.
Other students were filing into class and I could hear Mr. Hinton assigning workstations.
“Laurie, you’re at the sanding table today. I want that lamp finished by the end of the week.”
“I have to go, Sanford,” I whispered, as he grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m sorry about your mother, but I have to go.”
I turned away from him and walked toward my locker. I expected him to run behind me, grab my hair, and push my head onto one of the table saws. I fumbled with my combination lock and pulled out my unfinished lamp. I had barely sanded it, had barely glued the blocks of wood straight during the assembly stage. But I intended to finish my lamp, to scrape away the splinters, to smooth away its coarseness. As I made my way to the table, I didn’t look back for Sanford. I listened and breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the classroom door close.
EYES BIGGER THAN YOUR STOMACH
Life Rang On
After Sanford, I found myself in books, spending hours dissecting Stephen King’s masterpieces, examining the ways in which his dysfunction loomed less functional than my own. Machines that targeted people, planes that landed in dead worlds, and aliens unearthed in tiny towns provided evidence my kind of crazy wasn’t the worst crazy in the world. During that period, there should have been time for healing, an understanding of Laurie without the pressure of being Sanford’s girl, but that healing never came. There was just the knowing that without a man I was untethered, like a seatbelt flopping outside a car door. Flying in the wind, I looked free, but I was, in fact, trapped, unable to control my flickering. I, so fragile, so flimsy, proved easily caught by another man, Greg.
Having grown up in Cavalier Manor, Greg was what we considered an outsider, somebody who didn’t live in the Park, didn’t slang in the Park, wasn’t dating in the Park, and still he cruised Deep Creek Boulevard daily. He and his best friend, Ricky, would park their Honda Preludes, Ricky’s burgundy and Greg’s gray, at the corner store and turn their radios to the same song at the highest decibel possible. They’d sit in their cars, bopping their heads, sipping a little something, watching us in Lincoln Park, like we were in concert, performing just for them. Once they’d had their fill, they’d disappear into their cars, speeding off to homes where quiet reigned once the shipyard sounded the nine o’clock bomb. For us, in Lincoln, the night had just begun.
I encountered Greg one day, walking to the store to get my favorite Cheese on Wheat crackers and orange soda. Since I was walking to be seen, I shook a little harder, stretched my legs longer when I saw him looking my way.
“Hey, young’un,” he called as I crossed the street. “What’s yo name?”
“I’m Laurie,” I said shyly, barely looking into his steel eyes. He was a manila-colored man, with red hair, speckled with blond or gray strands throughout. With his hair thinning at the top, I eyed a shine glistening across his scalp. He had a goatee with those same blonde or gray strands and he wasn’t GQ like New Edition’s Ralph Tresvant, but he looked good enough with plaid shirt, stone washed jeans, and rugged boots, for me to answer. If I’d have been wearing heels, I’m certain I would have been taller than him, and he was chunkier than my normal type, but my standards had lowered exponentially after Sanford, so I didn’t mind.
As he shrugged his shoulders, rubbed his hands together, and cooed, “Oh, you’re a young’un. You’re gonna be my sweet young thang,” I smiled. Not because of the bass in his car, the way his rims shined, or the fact that he looked at me as if he already owned me, but because he was right. It wouldn’t be hard for me to be his sweet young thang. I wanted to be gotten.
“You need a ride?” he asked.
I tried not to laugh since he’d seen me walk from my house across the street to the store. He laughed himself, as he said, “Oh, you live right there.”
I knew not to talk to Greg too long. Momma might run out of the house and embarrass me if she saw me talking to somebody at least ten years older than me, so I acted quickly.
“Maybe later, you got a number?” I asked. He thrust his hands into his pocket and produced a pen and paper, prepared for what he might find in Lincoln Park.
“What’s your number?” he asked.
Our phone had been disconnected and I was too embarrassed to say I didn’t have a phone, so I told him my momma didn’t allow guys to call my house. He nodded as if he’d dealt with mothers like that before. “You a pretty young thang. A real red bone. You gonna be mine,” he repeated as he handed me his number.
Our first night out, I settled into Greg’s passenger seat, allowed its velvety skin to massage my spine. The smell of his cologne pressed against the dash, the electric window, and the sunroof. The dashboard was lit in reds, greens, and whites that reflected off of his eyes and made them sparkle as he looked at me.
“Look at my pretty red young’un,” he slurred as if drunk off my presence. I could hear the saliva collecting in his mouth. “We’re going to have a real good time.” And we did. He took me to the movies and not to Tower Mall, where most teenagers in Portsmouth went. He took me to Greenbrier Mall, all the way in Chesapeake, where the rich people who had cars and money went so they wouldn’t have to sit next to people like us. We saw the movie Juice with Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur. He held my hand—even after I dug toward the bottom of the popcorn, even after it was wrapped around a cold cup of soda—which I thoroughly appreciated. Afterward, we went through the McDonald’s drive-thru, where I ordered a quarter pounder meal without worrying about how much it would cost and who’d pay for it. After we pulled into Greg’s apartment complex, he threw our McDonald’s trash in the dumpster parked next to his car.
“Oh shit, my keys,” he whispered as he fingered his pockets, patted his butt and his hips.
Greg said he’d thrown the keys in the dumpster, that he’d heard them clang against the steel bottom. “Can you climb in and get them for me?” he’d asked.
I did not want to climb in that dumpster. Even I knew only trash belonged there, but I was already his “sweet young thang” and he had bought me a quarter pounder. At the least, I owed him for that. So, I placed my foot in the cradle of his hands and allowed him to hoist me over the steel rim. Grime and slime crawled in between my fingers, as I gripped the edge. The gummed stench clung to my palm’s lifeline. The smell of crabs left on a burning sidewalk wafted around me in a mini tornado fueled by my breathing. I smelled flies even though I couldn’t hear them or feel the wind of their wings beating against my skin. The stench of feces, aged, like crumbled blue cheese, smacked, pungent against my pinched nostrils. With my leg hurled over the lip, I felt the thick layer of sludge soaking through my jeans, the ones I’d slid on hours before, wondering if Greg would attempt to slide them off later that night.
I let go, flung myself into the darkness, plunked onto the steel floor, thankful he couldn’t see my face.
“Are you okay?” his voice traveled from outside of the dank.
I did not reply, afraid something lurking would lodge i
tself in my opened mouth. I searched within the dumpster, surprised at how vacant it was. Must have been emptied today, I thought, thankful for gifts I wasn’t sure I deserved. I wouldn’t allow myself to wonder why I was there, couldn’t think, this shouldn’t be. Thinking and dumpster didn’t go together. Nothing went together in that moment, so I searched the crevices, devoid of light. I wished the glow from the light pole could shine through the darkness, that it could help me find what I was searching for.
Through the steel cave in which I descended, I heard a noise, not a scurrying rat, as I’d expected or the squish of gunk sucking at the heel of my shoe. The noise was outside, jingling, a subtle clamoring in the form of metal against metal.
“Man, shit,” he swore from the other side of the steel wall, “You’re going to be mad,” he said with a giggle. I was already dirty, swimming in grime, so I didn’t think twice when I gripped the edge, peeked over to the other side, waiting to see what would offend me more than where I was and what I was doing. There he stood, keys in hand, swaying, attempting to hide the smile on his face. “I’m so sorry. They were in my pocket.” He spoke those words, but his smile said something else.
“You’re a good girl to do that, though. Don’t know anybody who would’ve gotten in a dumpster for me.”
Until I had done it myself, I hadn’t known anyone who would have gotten into a dumpster either. Yet, I had. I had gone grimier than I’d ever imagined. I couldn’t even remember who the clean me was. So, this new person, this me, to whom I had been introduced, clung to the side of the dumpster as Greg pulled her out, held his hand with her pinky because she didn’t want her dirt on his clean, walked alongside him to his home, washed her hands, the back of her thighs, her face, any exposed part of herself, and yet she could not be cleaned.
As I watched her hours later, under Greg, feigning passion, I counted his breaths, the amount of times his body rose and fell over her. I knew what she did not, what she could not reveal to herself. It was a test. She had done everything required, followed all instructions perfectly, which meant she had failed.
I watched her, waited to see if she would spy me, listened as his lips, pressed against her shoulder, mumbled, “You’re my young red thang, ain’t you?” She nodded, moved her face away from his and then our gazes locked, off in the darkness, connected with what she had once been. Eyes wide open, lips pulled tightly to her mouth, hiding teeth clamped together, she glared at me, the part of herself that had walked away. With her nose pulled as closely to her forehead as possible, I could tell she smelled me, that I still carried the stench of the dumpster. That my scent and my knowing was as offensive as the grime and the sludge we had trudged through.
My Happy
Since I failed Greg’s first test, he promoted me to the next level. He picked me up almost every day after school, quizzed me, sexed me, and then took me home. Some days there were dinners consisting of KFC or a McDonald’s hamburger. I never asked for much, only what I believed I was worth.
Greg didn’t love me, even though he said he did, and I didn’t love him, even though I said the same. But I liked him, a little more than I liked myself. For that reason, I continued to be with him, even though the sex couldn’t be considered “good.” All my pleasure came from my ability to please him. In between sex, everything I did was under scrutiny. I recommended putting water in a half empty ice tray. That gaff entertained Greg for hours as he ridiculed my technique and said, “You’re not too bright, but you’re pretty. I can teach you what you need, my pretty new young thang.”
When I received all A’s on my report card, he reminded me of my failures with Sanford by highlighting the fact that while my current grade point average was a 4.0, my cumulative was an underwhelming 1.7. “What were you doing those other years?” he asked. “See, I’m already making you smarter.”
He peppered every conversation with hypothetical questions more real than I allowed myself to believe.
“What would you do if my daughter’s mother came to live with me? Would you be mad if I had female friends that came to see me sometime?”
Before answers left my mouth, they were wrong. If I said I wouldn’t mind, I was a pushover, much like other “young thangs” he’d used and discarded. If I said I’d mind, I cared for him more than he cared for me and that gave him leverage, the ability to toy with me longer, to see how low I would go. I should have walked away, as he often offended me with his questions. A woman would have, but I was still a girl, more broken than most girls, and Greg never hit me nor cursed at me, so his indiscretions became acceptable.
As we passed time, I watched the evening of our relationship burn into night. We lay together on schedule as if our bodies were clocking in for work. I waited for his faux spell to be broken, so I could get on with the business of settling. Often, I lay in his room’s darkness, enclosed in a house that had gone unfurnished except for a bed and a picture of a pretty, slight woman holding a little girl. I stared at the white walls hanging around the picture, too strong, too loud in contrast to the silence of darkness.
One night, the pressure of urine pressed against my bladder, my back, and stomach. I peeled Greg off of me, and shuffled my naked body with socked feet to the bathroom. I sat, teasing the fluid out of me, bidding it to make a quick exit and relieve the pressure welling within. It began with that itch on the inside urination normally causes and cures, but it heightened like the bridge of a symphony, scratching, dragging against my kidneys, bladder, and urethra. I clutched at the sides of the toilet, working to steady myself against the itch, which evolved into a scratching, a shredding, and then an inferno contained within the walls of my vagina.
Initially, I thought I was experiencing a delayed orgasm, like the first one I’d had with Sanford as we grinded against each other’s bodies on his couch. But that had been pure pleasure. I’d never had an orgasm with Greg, and the pressure of pinpricks stabbing my inner and outer lips would never be described as pleasure. I looked into the bowl, expecting to see my vagina hanging low, turned inside out, being rubbed against a cheese grater. I peered into the still water, searching for blood, pieces of me floating like lily pads constructed of flesh.
I traced the equator of my stomach, the straight line where skin meets pubic hair and massaged through my flesh to whatever had caused me to burn, to itch so much that the bottom of my feet were sweating. I thought if this were an orgasm that hadn’t gotten all the way through, it had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I could not deny it, but I could ignore it. Yes, it was an orgasm, I concluded, which meant Greg was that good, even better than Sanford. The pain had just been an aftershock following the earthquake of love making Greg and I shared. So, I softly patted myself with tissue and went back to bed with Greg.
After that night, sex with Greg felt like darts hurled at flesh, hitting bull’s-eyes each time. I couldn’t walk straight, couldn’t think straight either. Itching and burning during urination evolved into an inferno constantly ablaze in the seat of my underwear. The days always seemed too hot, too bright, the nights even hotter as I tossed in bed, my hand cupping my vagina, trying to massage away stab after stab of pain. Since walking straight wasn’t an option, I took to vaulting my legs side to side, ensuring the lips of my vagina did not rub together, sparking a fire that would burn for hours. I woke to nailing pains in my groin, pulsing between my legs. I believed the area in between my legs was swelling into a bubble and being popped each second. Some nights, with only the light from the moon, I held a mirror there, hoping to discover what I’d imagined: millions of bugs swarming through my pubic hair, climbing in and out of me, crossing the bridge of what made me think I was a woman, eating away the boundaries where smooth skin met hair. But there was nothing there, just me. The mirror could not reveal the churning, spewing on the inside, boiling lava, splashing against fragile skin. Then came the blood. Not the bright blood I was accustomed to when I came on my menstrual cycle, but a bark-colored drainage with the consistency of warm Jell-O. I’d taken to
wearing pads throughout the whole month. When I was on my period, even the O.B. tampons felt as if they were submarines lodged in between my legs, so I wore heavy pads that stretched from my zipper to my butt.
In between the stabbing, burning, and bleeding, I had sex with Greg, counted the pumps of his pelvis, gripped the sheets on the bed, and prayed I wouldn’t drown in the puddle of blood oozing down my crevices. Most times, I utilized tools life had supplied me with. The pain was not mine if my mind were somewhere else, and so I scratched my fingers against the sheets, rapped my toes against the footboard and danced in my head to Karyn White’s “I’m Not Your Superwoman,” and Marc Nelson’s “You Can Always Count on Me.” Sometimes, I danced with Carl, away from Pee Wee before he had ever been, with Mr. Todd from that first year, before Carmen lay writhing under his weight.
It was those nights with Greg I imagined life in the military, wondered if leaving was the best thing for my family and me. I’d already survived so many wars. Would I chance a future in a real one? Maybe Greg could save me. Maybe I wouldn’t have to leave at all. We could learn the source of the burning, fix it, and live happily ever after. I’d never seen happy before, so how did I know Greg wasn’t already it?
Still, even as I lay under him, even as I worked to mute the friction grinding between my legs, I knew he wasn’t my happy. He was probably someone else’s, maybe his daughter’s mother, but he wasn’t mine. When I allowed that reality to settle around me, against the same arms, hips, and waist Greg gripped, I sometimes cried, wondering why happy could not belong to me. My father, Carl, hadn’t been it. Pee Wee could never be it. Mr. Todd, Mr. Tony, Lenny-Pooh, Barry, and Sanford—none of them had been it. Even Momma, as much as she tried, couldn’t be her own happy, so I knew she could not be mine. But Greg was there, even if he wasn’t my happy, so with him I burned, allowing him to push deeper, allowing him to leave more than sperm, more than sweat, and not one bit of happy behind.
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