Jump

by Terra Little

  My fingers curl around the butter knife beside my plate and I wait for her to say something inflammatory. I will use the knife if I have to, will force the dull blade through someone’s skin without a moment’s hesitation. All she has to do is give the word and we will be like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. I see her lips open and hold my breath.

  “I have to pee,” Vicky says, and my mother frowns in disapproval. The boys giggle, and Deirdre sends them a hooded look. Vicky has just committed a cardinal sin. Pee is not a word children should say. They can say dick and pussy, fuck and suck, but not pee. What is she thinking?

  Vicky doesn’t wait for permission to leave the table, and neither do I. I scramble out of my chair and follow her out of the dining room. “Sit down, Leenie,” my grandmother barks. “She doesn’t need you to wipe her behind, does she?” I stare at my grandmother and she stares at me. We hate each other, and it shows on our faces. Ten seconds pass and I am still not in my chair. “Did you hear me, girl? I said sit down. There’s still food on your plate.”

  She thinks I come back to the table to resume my seat, but sitting down is the furthest thing from my mind. I come back to knock my plate to the floor and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces, to see food smear across the floor and drip from the tablecloth to the chair cushion. I come back to pick up a butter knife, toss it back down, and pick up a fork instead. It is sharper and will do the most damage, if it comes down to that.

  At the other end of the table, she stands and glares at me with her mouth open. I grip the fork and never look away from her. I dare her to come. The air at my side shifts, and then Vicky is there. She looks from one face to the other, and she wants to keep her eyes on Vicky because Vicky is the lesser of two evils, but she can’t. She cannot help being drawn back to me. Vicky still has good left in her face, and I don’t. Like recognizes like.

  The memory leaves me feeling cold and angry. To get away from it and warm up a little, I blink, roll my head to the side, and look at Kimmick’s face. I wait a beat and then ask him the question that is on the tip of my tongue. “Do you think my grandmother could see her death in my eyes?”

  “You mean like a premonition?” he says.

  “Yes, like a premonition.” I relax the muscles in my shoulders and ass, and cross my ankles at the other end of the couch. “Do you think she knew that I’d be the one to exorcise her?”

  “But you said you didn’t plan to kill her, Lena.”

  “God threw Lucifer out of heaven,” I say. “I don’t think He planned to do it; He just knew it had to be done. You do what has to be done.”

  “How are you like God?”

  “The whole scene, it was like the Last Supper.” Needing to make my point has me sitting up and swinging my feet to the floor, facing Kimmick and talking with my hands. “I’m Jesus, right? Vicky and my mama are the other dudes sitting at the table. Seems like Aunt Deirdre is Mary Magdelene . . .”

  “Who?”

  “The woman sitting at Jesus’s right. Don’t act like you haven’t read The DaVinci Code.” A smile curves my lips. “Own your truth, Kimmick. This is a safe place.”

  “Now we’re about to get into a discussion on religion?”

  “No, we’re about to discuss the fact that the remains of the first human being were found in Africa and Jesus was a black man, or at the very least, Middle Eastern. He didn’t look shit like you, but that’s neither here nor there. Why do you think Mary Magdelene smiles at me?”

  “Mary Magdelene is Deirdre, correct?” I nod. “And she smiled at you?”

  “Yeah, she smiled. Why do you think she did that?”

  “I’m more interested in why you think she smiled at you.”

  “How come you never answer my questions?”

  “How come you never answer mine? You always answer a question with a question. So who, I ask, has issues with owning the truth? You or me?”

  “My truth is the truth,” I say.

  “And what is that? Why does Deirdre smile and who is your grandmother? We’re talking about the Last Supper, aren’t we?” Kimmick uses his fingers to tick off names as he calls them. “There’s Peter, Paul and What’s-his-face. Doohickey and Whatchamacallit. You say there’s Mary Magdelene—”

  “I don’t say, I know,” I cut in.

  “Wasn’t there a Lancelot or a Michael or a Job or something? And then there was—”

  “Judas.” I am triumphant. “Deirdre smiles because I have called Judas out. I still get nailed to the cross though.”

  Kimmick watches me crack up at my own joke, and I look so funny to him that he joins me. “You’re killing me, Lena,” he says, shaking his head.

  “You wouldn’t be the first.” That makes him laugh even harder.

  I recreate the scene for Aaron, thinking that he will laugh the way Kimmick and I do, but he doesn’t. He looks at me like I am crazy and drops a metal strainer in the sink irritably. I see him truly angry for the first time, and it intrigues me.

  “It was a joke, Aaron,” I say for the second time. He pretends not to hear me. He checks the marinara sauce bubbling on the stove, shreds a little more Parmesan cheese and then drops pasta in a pot of boiling water. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

  “I guess I’m not in the habit of playing with God, Lena.”

  “Oh, and the joke you told me about the priest, the rabbi and the—”

  “That was a stupid joke, baby, and it wasn’t even that damn funny. This shit is not a joke and it’s not funny at all. What happened to you had nothing to do with God.” He wipes his hands on a dishtowel and goes to the refrigerator. “We’re talking about a couple of sick motherfuckers fucking with people’s lives, and to me, that’s not a laughing matter.”

  “You’re angry with me?”

  “No, I’m angry for you. You tell me this shit and it makes me want to snap somebody’s damn neck. It hurts me to know how you were hurt.”

  “So I should stop telling you then,” I say.

  He blows out a harsh breath and massages his eyelids with stiff fingers. Looks at the floor and then gives me his eyes. “That’s not what I mean, Lena. Don’t ever stop talking to me, telling me who you are and why, okay? Just don’t expect me to find anything in it to laugh about. Right about now I’m feeling like running out and killing somebody for you.”

  “I know how that feels,” I say without thinking.

  Aaron turns down the fire under the marinara sauce and then adjusts the flame under the pasta. He points a finger at me and narrows his eyes. “You take the jokes too far,” he says and leaves me in the kitchen.

  He disappears into his office, and I wander around his living room. I turn on the stereo and find a song I remember, a slow and sensual song that is at least twenty years old, and I start my hips to swaying. I sway over to him as he crosses the room, and I lace my fingers around his neck. “Dance with me,” I say before I pull his mouth down to mine.

  We rock around the living room, bump into furniture and almost knock a lamp over, but we keep dancing. Keep kissing, too. Long, wet kisses that have my breath coming faster and harder. Greedy kisses that have him pressing me against the wall and sighing into my mouth. I stand on the tops of his feet and feel his erection in the vee of my thighs, hum low in my throat.

  “I want you inside me,” I tell him, and my voice does not sound like my own. It is hoarse and thirsty sounding, like I will die if I cannot drink from his fountain.

  “I want to be inside you,” Aaron says and kisses me again. He sucks in a breath, presses against me, and kisses the side of my neck softly. “You feel that?” He knows I do. “That’s a dragon, Lena, a greedy dragon, and I need you to be ready for it when it comes to you. I don’t want you scared or confused or hurting.” He pulls back and finds my eyes. “I need you whole and healthy and screaming because I’m making you feel so damn good that you can’t believe it. I need you crying because you don’t want it to end, not because you’re wondering what you got yourself into. I want you to be s
ure you’re ready.”

  “How much longer?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Now.”

  “You love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I love you too. Wait for me, okay? I need to be ready for you too. I like to plunder and devour, so I need to work on taking small bites because ten years is a longass time.”

  “Maybe I want to be devoured.”

  He laughs. “Oh yeah? You really are a wolf, huh?”

  “I’d probably tear you up,” I say, smiling.

  “Oh, you’re talking much shit tonight. Get on in here and make me a plate, woman. Better make yourself two while you’re at it. I think you need to start building up your endurance because your days are numbered.”

  “Beige,” Aaron says a long time later. We order scoops of ice cream to go and eat them as we walk home. He finishes his Rocky Road before I am even halfway through my Rainbow Sherbet and hooks an arm around my neck, ready to talk. “Is she still calling and hanging up?”

  “Twice yesterday,” I say, and suddenly my appetite is gone. He takes my cup and drops it in the next trashcan we pass. My arms are free, and I slip one around his waist and match my stride to his. “I miss her.”

  “Call her.”

  “And say what? I don’t feel like I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

  “How much does she know, Lena?”

  “As little as possible. Not what you know,” I say. “You think I should tell her?”

  “Up to you. But personally? No. Not yet, anyway. She’s a kid and she needs to be one as long as she can get away with it.”

  “I just want her to be okay with me, you know? I mean, I know we’re not the Partridge Family, but why can’t she just accept me for who I am and be okay with it? I fucked up; I know that. Nobody knows that better than I do.”

  “She doesn’t want to share you, which is understandable under the circumstances.”

  “She says she wants to come and live with me. I wanted her to in the first place, but she said she didn’t want to. Now she does.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “No, she did.”

  “So tell her to pack her bags and come. School’s almost out.”

  “My apartment is barely big enough for me, and I like it.” I take a deep breath and glance up at him so he can see what I’m feeling. “I like your apartment.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a house,” Aaron says slowly. “Definitely outside of the city, maybe somewhere out in the country. A horse and a dog or two would be nice too.”

  “And then what, I take your place?”

  He shakes his head and looks at me like he wants to ask me if I hear air between my ears.

  “You like the country, Lena?”

  “I never gave it much thought.”

  “Do me a favor and start thinking about it, would you?”

  Tammy turns sideways and two-steps through the door. Then she moves through the office we share like half of a wall. She is wide and round, tall, and six minutes away from a massive coronary. She sits down in her chair and scoots up to her desk like she is just finishing a marathon, breathing like she needs oxygen, and smiles at me. I smile back.

  “Can I ask you something, Tammy?”

  “Do I have to answer?” She turns her computer on and taps the mouse.

  “Um . . . I guess not, if you don’t want to. It’s just about the M&M’s I had on my desk. Did you eat them?” The jar is empty, and I know I’m not the culprit, so it has to be her.

  “Didn’t touch them.” She sees the skepticism on my face and repeats herself more forcefully. “I didn’t touch them. I know it might be hard to believe, but I’m not much of a candy eater.”

  “What do you usually eat?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . pizza, pasta. A little cake here and there. But I don’t eat too much candy. It’s bad for your teeth.”

  I look at the empty candy dish again and run a hand over my head. “It’s just . . . I don’t care about the candy, I really don’t. I mean, I put it there to be eaten. I just need to know who ate it.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Tammy says. She ignores me in favor of her computer, but I can’t stop staring at her. She feels my eyes on her and looks at the ceiling. “What do you want? You want me to buy you more M&M’s or something?”

  “You really didn’t eat them?”

  “Read my lips. N-O. Maybe we’ve got ourselves a crazy ghost with a sweet tooth or something. Besides, I’m on a diet.”

  “Good luck with that,” I say and turn on my own computer. I think I know what I need to do.

  Beige is surprised to see me waiting at the curb when she finally comes out of school. She thinks I am here to rip her a new one because she plays pranks on my phone and hangs up in my ear. It takes her five minutes to cover two minutes’ worth of distance, and her eyes touch down on everything except my face. She doesn’t know which bag I will come out of.

  “Do you have something you want to say to me?” I say as soon as she stops in front of me. She looks exactly like she did when she was four and I caught her painting her fingernails. And her jeans. And the wall. And my drapes. I wanted to shake her then, and now I just want to hug her. “Do you?”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “You call and hang up on me when I answer.”

  “If you know it’s me, then why don’t you say something?”

  “I do say something. I say I love you every time.”

  “Then you hang up,” she points out and props her hands on her hips.

  I drop my head and push wrinkles out of my forehead. We are going back and forth like children, and it’s getting on my nerves. I lean back against my car and fold my arms under my breasts, spread my feet on the curb and purse my lips. “Look, I love you and I miss you.”

  “I love you and I miss you too.”

  I feel a weight lifting off my shoulders and then, a second later, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. “Who’s this little cat hanging around the fence, eyeing you like a stalker?” I point off in the distance, where a tall boy with round glasses lurks, watching my daughter hopefully and looking downright pitiful.

  “That’s Darrick. He’s um . . .” She shifts from one foot to the other and turns an impressive shade of pink.

  “Um . . . your boyfriend? Spit it out. And who said you were old enough to have a boyfriend anyway? Call him over here. I want to meet his little four-eyed ass.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Call him.” I look away and wait for Darrick to haul ass over to me. He is not little, but tall and lanky, with long hands and even longer feet. A trumpet case swings from one arm, and his glasses are tilted on his face clumsily. I look him from head to toe, stick my tongue in my cheek and grin. “What’cho name is, boy?”

  Beige goes from pink to red and throws her hands up. “Mom! Oh my God.”

  Darrick has a sense of humor. He bursts out laughing and pushes his hands in his pockets. “I’m Darrick, ma’am. Nice to meet you.”

  “Don’t try that ma’am crap on me, boy. I’ve been around the block a few times. I know the score, okay? Beige isn’t old enough to be having a boyfriend.”

  “W–We’re just friends.”

  “That’s all you better be, too. You look like a decent enough little cat. You play the horn?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Wait a minute. Either you play or you don’t. Which is it?”

  “I play.”

  “Are you in the band?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What grade are you?”

  “Freshman.”

  “You’re a little tall to be a freshman, aren’t you?”

  “Mom . . .”

  “All right, all right. My work here is done.” I wag a finger between Beige and Darrick. “Tell your . . . friend bye and get in. Two minutes.” I hop in the car and count the seconds.

  She sulks her way into the passenger seat five m
inutes later and rolls her eyes at me.

  “That’s what you’re supposed to be doing,” I tell her. “Rolling your eyes and being pissed with me because I make your life miserable, not the other way around. It’s a little late in coming, but believe me, this is the way things are supposed to be. I’m the old head and you’re the one with milk still behind your ears. You don’t get to punish me, so let’s be clear on that right now.”

  “I wasn’t trying to punish you.”

  “What were you doing then?” A red light catches me and I stop reluctantly. I reach over and turn her face toward mine. “You know I love you and you know I’ve missed the hell out of you all these years. And you know I feel like shit for having to be away from you and bringing it on myself. You can’t seriously think that us wasting time like this is healthy. I need to be with you every second I can, Beige.”

  “You have time for Aaron,” she pouts.

  “You don’t have time for both me and Darrick?” A car horn sounds and reminds me to drive. “Look . . . I love that you want me all to yourself, but you know that’s not life. I want you all to myself too, but I know you have school and friends and other stuff to do besides look at my face all day. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I think loving you too much is what started all this anyway.”

  “How can you love me too much?”

  “I would run out in front of a speeding bus to drag you to safety,” I say and flip on the blinker. “If you needed a heart and they couldn’t find a donor, I’d tell them to put me under and take mine. When you love someone the way I love you, sometimes you don’t think clearly. Like with that little cat, Darrick. I thought about punching him a few times, just because he was looking at you.”

  Beige giggles and blushes. “You embarrassed me enough for one day. He said you were tight though. Couldn’t believe you’re old enough to be my mom.”