Crave

by Laurie Jean Cannady

  “What’s taking him so long?” I mumbled as I searched the hotel parking lot for the purple Legend. One car after another pulled around the corner, but no Reggie. People left rooms, carrying suitcases, large purses, and whatever secrets they could fit in their bags, and still no Reggie. After the thirtieth traffic light cycle, I’d stopped counting all together. Then I just looked around, silently fretting Reggie had left me.

  The sun that had seemed so welcoming before now made the back of my neck itch and my cheeks burn. I could smell the burgers on the grill at Hardee’s as the joint readied for lunch service. Maybe Reggie had gone to get something to eat, I thought. Maybe something had happened to him, like he’d been robbed or arrested as he checked out of the room. I was willing to believe all sorts of catastrophic things, just not that he’d left me there. I could have gone down to the lobby, and asked if he’d checked out, but I couldn’t leave the position of waiting. I couldn’t make my feet go when my mind kept saying, “You are practicing what will be your life. It comes with staying.” So I continued to wait, contemplating how long it would take me to walk home. Wondering if my spongy wedge shoes would wear off once I’d walked a mile, two, even three.

  I wanted the darkness of the night again, the walls of the room holding my dreams intact. The sun, daylight, made promises it couldn’t always keep. Night made no promises. It was darkness all the time. I considered retreating back into the room, pulling the curtains closed, returning to a self-imposed darkness, but the door had locked behind me, and I could never really go back anyway.

  By the time the purple Legend rounded the corner, I no longer leaned on the banister. I clung to it. I slowly descended the stairs. All of me felt heavy, filled with sludge. I had slept well that night, but I immediately grew tired as I slid into the front seat of the car.

  “Where were you?” I asked, stifling tears.

  “Man, they were giving us a hard time about the rooms. Trying to make us pay double because Tony was partying last night.” Reggie explained as I stared at my knees and fiddled with a string dangling from the side of my shirt.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, finally seeing me.

  “You were just gone so long,” I said, almost in tears.

  “You didn’t think I was going to leave you, did you? Man, you crazy,” he said this as he shifted the car into drive and pulled into the street. “I wouldn’t do you like that. What kinda man do you think I am?”

  I smiled at that, touched his hand, leaned into the seat with my eyes closed until he pulled in front of my house. Reggie kissed me on the cheek as I exited the car. I wanted to ask if I’d see him that night, but I didn’t feel like being lied to. I wanted to say we were over and that I didn’t want to see him again, but I didn’t feel like lying either. He grabbed my hand, looked into my eyes, but his features were not as distinct as they had been the night before as we were engulfed in darkness.

  “What are you doing later?” he asked. “I got some running around to do, but I can probably stop over when I’m finished.”

  “I’ll be here,” I replied.

  Only the sun was between us as I stood on the sidewalk and he sat in the car looking up at me, explaining what he’d have to do before he came back. His white teeth shone brightly, and his waves, the ones I’d rubbed the night before, shined under daylight. He looked at his watch, “I should be back around eight. Think you can wait that long?” he asked with a wide smile. I nodded my head again, returned his smile, and reached out to him.

  “I’ll see you then,” I said and held on a little longer, even though I knew it was time to let go.

  “I’m falling for you, hard. You know that, right?” he said. I did, but what did it matter? “I’ll see you later tonight,” he promised, but he did not follow through. I was still one of many, too hungry to fill him, too full to wait for him to fill me. And the waiting, I realized there wasn’t enough in Reggie or anyone else in Lincoln Park, Portsmouth, or Virginia for me to continue waiting for.

  On the Next Bus

  The week before boarding the bus to the MEPS station, life slowed to a crawl. Momma made me pack a little every day. I procrastinated, knowing leaving was the right thing to do, but wondering whether the Army was the way to do it. I often lay in bed, worried about whether I’d miss the walls, the floor, and even the roaches when I left Lincoln Park. I knew I’d get three meals a day, but there was something to be said about hunger. It kept me moving, searching for something else, which was enough to help living make sense.

  I justified staying in different ways. What if Lincoln Park wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in a life? What if the drugs, the killing, the catcalling were safety and the outside world was where the real war began? If I just accepted Lincoln Park as my whole life, as so many others had done, maybe my stomach wouldn’t twist and turn when I imagined forever there.

  But Momma, as obstructionist, would not let me rest. She’d gotten a gigantic suitcase from the Goodwill for my journey to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. It was as red as the stripes on a candy cane, with hard wrinkles that looked like the legs of an elephant.

  Since I’d raised my hand and said my oath at the MEPS station in Richmond, I hadn’t thought about my grandmother much anymore. I hadn’t thought much about Carl either. True, I’d imagined he was in the back of Willet Hall when I’d walked across the stage and received my diploma, but that fancy quickly passed once I settled on the whites of Momma’s eyes, shining out at me from the audience. She sat with two-dozen red roses, roses she would have bought if she’d had the money. She hadn’t, so she confiscated the ones sent to me by Jim, my McDonald’s co-worker, who’d crushed on me since my first day at the restaurant. Momma sat with those roses in her lap as if she’d forked over the money in order to present me with that gift, and I didn’t even mind. I felt as if God had sent them as a gift to her too.

  I packed the two pairs of jeans I owned, the catch-me-if-you-can spandex dress with fake rhinestones on the front, and the four T-shirts I switched out from day to day. I almost regretted leaving Lincoln Park, leaving Momma and my brothers and sister in a place I’d been running from since that truck ride to Lexington Drive.

  I surveyed my bedroom. My bed was unmade as it often was and Mary’s was meticulously tucked, flat, waveless, the opposite of my thoughts. There were waves crashing around me. What would basic training be like? Could I make it, and if I didn’t could I come back to Lincoln Park? On the dresser sat the radio Momma had given me for Christmas. She’d worked overtime to buy that radio with a digital turn and double cassette decks. It had two large speakers, which often got me slapped when Momma had to tell me more than once to turn it down. Next to the radio sat my typewriter and one of Stephen King’s longest works, The Stand. After reading The Bachman Books, Pet Sematary, The Shining, and The Dead Zone, it was a book I’d vowed to finish before I went into the Army. Pat and Reggie had slowed that process, but I read whenever I got a chance. After my last meeting with Reggie, there was time to read, time to allow the letters to sink in, to frame worlds I could once again slip into. I’d finished that book, but there was more to start, life, and I was scared.

  Finally, September 15, 1992, arrived. It was a sunny day and the light seemed to bounce off of the gray dirt in my backyard. I’d made my rounds the week before, bidding farewell to people that weren’t really my friends. They were my family, my Lincoln Park family, even if I didn’t want them to be. I’d leave my room as I’d always left it, disheveled, everything in its place, which meant nothing actually had a place of its own. Momma, Mary, Vel, and Vel’s onetime boyfriend, Bobby, would go to the Greyhound bus station with me. My journey would begin in Portsmouth to Richmond by bus and from Richmond to South Carolina by plane. I’d never ridden a plane before, never even seen one up close. I felt as if I should have been afraid of flying, but there were more pressing things to fear. I’d stuffed the red suitcase to capacity with everything I imagined I’d need for the next two months. Clothes to relax in,
clothes to party in, hundreds of tampons, lotion, soap, toothpaste—I intended to be the most prepared soldier the Army had ever seen.

  Vel and Bobby came over an hour before it was time to leave. Momma had cooked a feast the night before, but that morning there was no breakfast. Momma seemed too busy, too excited to get me out of there.

  “Can’t believe you’re going, Laurie,” she laughed. And it wasn’t a snicker or a polite laugh. It was one that made her grab her stomach, double over, and cough out a thunderous roar. She did that all morning, each time she saw me.

  “You got the lotion you need?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good, because you’re getting out of here.” Laughter followed.

  “What you want me to do with your radio?”

  “Mary can use it while I’m gone.”

  “Good, cause you won’t be using it anymore.” Laughter again.

  I began to think my leaving was pure entertainment for Momma and I couldn’t understand what I’d done so wrong to make her happy I was leaving forever. I wanted to ask if she would miss me, if parts of her body would ache because what had once been inside was no longer with her, but there was no point. She smiled so wildly, her eyes all aglow, and she flittered around the house as if she were losing the one-hundred-and-twenty-five pounds that was me.

  I wrestled together the last of my things and loaded them into the trunk of Bobby’s car. Momma helped by hoisting the large suitcase and shoving it into the trunk. “There we go. Come on. We don’t want to be late.” And there was that laugh again. Its sound, which had begun to make me cringe, felt like razors being shoved against my eardrums.

  Momma talked the whole ride to the bus station. “So glad we’re finally at this day.” Laughter. “You gonna do all right. You got to because you ain’t coming back here.” More laughter, louder, longer. I wished Momma, like my radio, had a mute button or at least a volume I could turn all the way down. But she did not, so I listened to the tires rolling on the ground, the wind pressing against the windows, the sun shining on my knee. The fifteen-minute ride to the bus station felt like hours. Secretly, I hoped the bus would be there when we arrived, so I could hop on and leave behind the talking, leave behind the laughter, leave behind Momma. I could barely contain my tears as I accepted that revelation.

  Momma’s skin glowed under the covering of the dimly lit Greyhound station. The buses exhaled and inhaled puffs of gray smoke, like that flowing from a man sucking a pipe. The letters R-I-C-H-M-O-N-D flashed across the top. The hum of the engine beckoned me aboard, promising it would be warmer, quieter, darker once inside. Through the tinted windows I could see heads bowed down reading books, the lines on their hands, or praying. I would soon be traveling with them, the bus becoming our cocoon and we butterflies, soaring away from it.

  The gray dog stretched across the side of the bus appeared to be in constant motion, hurling himself into space where bus and air collided. He would never make his destination. This I knew as the white background held him petrified. I stood petrified too, sucking in the Portsmouth air, tasting not with my tongue, but my soul, rubbing my feet against its dirt, feeling its grit scratching against the walls of my veins. It would be the last time Portsmouth would be mine, that I would breathe in its air, taste it, and know it was tasting me back. Carl, Pee Wee, Mr. Todd, Sanford, Greg, Pat, Reggie, and their counterparts, all who had taken much and given much, had gotten off before the stop that had me standing in front of that Greyhound. Years separated each of them and yet they were minutes, seconds apart in my mind, still with me, feeding me, even as I refused to eat.

  I hugged Vel and Bobby first. They were safe. Hearts did not crack, bleed, and then ooze for those who had not always been. But seeing Vel’s face hurt all the same, as I said goodbye to the friend who had become half of me. Then Mary, the oozing had already begun. I said goodbye to my little sister, the one I’d tortured loudly and adored silently as I listened to her breathing while she slept. My tears mixed with her tears, my living mixed with hers, so disconnected that day we still work to make it fit as it did when we fought over room space, tussled over who would sleep next to Momma, and wrestled over who would be fed first.

  I hoped her curls would always have their bounce, and her smile would always begin at her feet, tornado through her stomach, and radiate through her face, a replica of our mother’s, more Momma than herself. I hugged her hard, pulled her to me, inhaled the miracle grease in her hair and promised I would write.

  Last, Momma. She stood smiling, hands outstretched, but telling me to go. I curled into her, placed my head on her chest, heard her heart beat, as I had when I was inside her, where my hunger was her worry, where her beating heart was mine. She held me, but she did not cry. She whispered to me, but I did not hear. That moment hung in air, between dirt on the cement ground and the soot on the ceiling. That moment did not last long, rushed by another bout of laughter and a “You better get on that bus before they leave,” followed by a back pat, which felt disingenuous, like strangers saying goodbye for the first time.

  I boarded the bus, sat next to the window, looked out at my world as they waved me away. I did not look down at my hands. I did not want to become a bowing head. I wanted them, Momma especially, to know who I was through the tint. More importantly, I wanted to see if she was still laughing.

  Trees, homes, roads smothered in grass, blurred as the bus barreled down the road to Richmond. The flight from Richmond to South Carolina was also a blur. I could not tell where the sky and earth met from 30,000 feet up. All was a bustle when I arrived at reception. Days were filled with lines of soldiers, screaming drill sergeants, and cadencing cadets. “Hurry up and wait,” a phenomenon I’d lived all my life, now had a name. Pushups melted into runs, melted into sit-ups, and what separated each of them was screaming as Drill Sergeant “smoked” our bodies.

  “Come here, soldier. Drop, soldier. Run, soldier,” was the language we all mastered. The screaming didn’t bother me. I did not contract into balled muscles, as most soldiers did when Drill Sergeant walked my way. The screaming drowned out Momma’s laughter, which was all I heard when there was silence. So, I dropped slowly, ran slowly, did sit-ups at my leisure just so my drill sergeant could scream, and press his voice into the places where Momma’s laugh rang loudest.

  Three days after landing at reception, we were transported to our company. I hadn’t called Momma yet, and I really didn’t want to. I feared she’d still be laughing. But on the second day of Fort Jackson, a day filled with long classes, screaming drill sergeants demanding we stuff all our suitcases into a large closet, we were ordered to call home or get the “smoking” of our lives.

  I dialed the numbers, afraid of what I’d say, afraid of what I’d hear. Momma had been so happy to see me go, I feared she’d be sad to know I could reach out and touch her from hundreds of miles away. The phone rang five times before anyone answered. I hoped Mary would be on the other end, telling me how much bigger our room seemed now that I was gone, and how much cleaner her area was since she didn’t have to pick up after me, and how despite all of that, she’d thrown some of her clothes on the floor just so they’d remind her of me. But it wasn’t Mary’s voice that greeted me on the other end. Heavier than Mary’s, slower than Mary’s, Momma’s words lilted through the phone.

  “Hey, Momma,” I sighed, relieved she wasn’t laughing, but perplexed by the sluggishness in her voice.

  “Laurie?” she asked and paused.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I pushed the words out of me quickly, hoping I could finish speaking before the incessant laughter began again. “My drill sergeant, his name’s Drill Sergeant Fuller, said I had to call to let you know I was okay. So, I’m okay. Okay?”

  Momma did not respond.

  In that moment of silence, the three days of running, pushups, missing my bed, drill sergeants screaming in my ears, girls staring at me that didn’t look like Mary or Vel, straddled my shoulders. Words I didn’t want to say sat heavily on
my tongue. I wanted to tell Momma how tired I was, to say, “I want to go home,” to ask her to pray for me, to save me, but I couldn’t produce words. I waited for the static in the phone to die.

  “Are you okay, Laurie?” she asked. “Laurie?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s good.” I said as I began to cry, shielding my sniffles from the mouthpiece. I turned my face away from the phone, unable to hear if Momma said anything else. When I listened again, there was still silence on Momma’s side. Only my heavy breathing and stifled sniffles were audible.

  “You know, Laurie,” Momma began, “the craziest thing happened when I got home after you left.” I rolled my eyes, certain she would say things were great without me and the laughter had continued, even though I could no longer hear it.

  “Yes, ma’am?” I whispered.

  “Well, I was home cooking after we got back from the bus station. Your brothers and sister were in their rooms and Bryan was upstairs watching TV.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to catch a hold of the tears, as I smelled that food and saw my brothers and sister.

  “After I finished cooking, I went up stairs. You know, to use the bathroom.”

  I could see those stairs vividly, the cinderblock walls Momma made us wash. The baseboards and steps we swept every day. By then I had wrapped my arms around my stomach and doubled over, trying to hold in my sobs.

  “So, I went into the bathroom and, Laurie,” she paused, sounding like she was holding something in too. “I cried. I cried like a baby, like I’d lost something I’d never be able to find again. I cried so hard and so long, I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to stop.”

  By then, I was using both of my hands to hold up the phone. It had become as heavy as an anvil with Momma’s words in the cold black plastic. “Laurie, I didn’t even know why I was crying like that. I felt like I should’ve known, but I just didn’t.”