by Retha Powers
“Brown.”
“What kind of brown?”
“Caramel.”
“See, that’s the problem,” Mercy says. “If it wasn’t for food, Negroes wouldn’t have no idea how to talk about themselves.”
Mercy always finds a way to say something to make me laugh; then that dimple comes out and she says Pretty Girl Ray, which makes me smile even more. Ray from Raylene from my father Raylen. My family’s from the South—near Anderson, South Carolina. When I was in school there, there were three other Raylenes in my class. One of them was my half sister. When we figured it out, we thought it’d be like that movie The Parent Trap, when those twins discover each other after years going without knowing the other existed. But it wasn’t like that. The other Raylene had heard my mama was trash and I’d heard the same thing about her mama and after that first day of sitting in the schoolyard eating our lunch together then walking everywhere all hugged up, smiling like we’d won a million dollars, we couldn’t stand each other’s guts. Didn’t go a single day after that first one without getting into a fight. Raylene’s mama finally pulled her out of that school. Some evenings I wonder what became of her—the other Raylene Tyler walking through this world.
By the time we get to Kiwi’s building I’m already out of breath, and then there’s five flights of stairs to climb on top of everything else. Mercy takes them two at a time because she runs six miles a day and stairs aren’t anything to her. I hear her up above me knocking on Kiwi’s door; then I hear her and Kiwi talking and laughing and carrying on. By the time I get up to the top Kiwi’s standing there, that one-sided smile she has on her face, shaking her head. My stomach gives a little leap up into my throat and I nod hello, trying to breathe through my nose so I don’t seem so tired.
“Work out much?” Kiwi says, holding the door open for me. I shrug and smile, stepping past her into her apartment.
“Can’t breathe enough to even talk,” Kiwi says. She takes the clothes I’m carrying and points me toward the couch.
Kiwi’s wearing a suit—black with a black shirt underneath it and patent-leather shoes. She has a bit of eye makeup on—some liner, that’s all, and a tiny gold dot of an earring in her nose. Her hair’s short and curly. She’s put some gel or something in it to make it look wet. Her hair’s blacker than anything and she says it’s probably gonna stay that way. Says her Indian—straight from India and not some fake Native-American relative—grandmother had jet-black hair till the day she died at ninety-two. Kiwi gives me another half smile, pours me a glass of water and Mercy a Coke, then sits down on the couch.
“This club might not be as tight as Dixie,” she says. “I hear it’s all right, though. You ready to kick it, Birthday Girl?”
I take a sip of water. “I guess so.”
So far all I know about twenty-three is that it’s as trifling as twenty-one. Inside, I still feel lost half the time—like the world is happening over there to my left somewhere. I want to be thirty—like Kiwi and Mercy—know where I’m going and all, have a bit of life behind me. In the corner of the living room Kiwi’s police officer uniform is draped neatly over the back of a chair. Even though I can’t see it, I know there’s a badge that says WINCHELL right above the breast pocket. Officer Winchell. Kiwi Winchell. Kiwi catches me staring at her uniform and a slow smile spreads over her face. I look away from her, not smiling but not frowning either.
I met Mercy two years ago on the corner of Seventeenth Street and Fifth Avenue. One morning I was coming from a temp gig and she was going to one. When I stepped out into the street, she pulled me back just as a cab raced by, saying, “Hey Lil’ Sister, you too pretty to be killing yourself this early in the morning.” We walked a ways together after that, and by the end of the walk we were friends. I’d been in the city for six months then and didn’t know many people. Turned out Mercy lived just a few blocks from me. Turned out, too, her family was from Charlotte, and she threw out a couple of names I recognized. Felt like home.
Kiwi came along later. I’d gone over to Mercy’s to see if she wanted to walk some. It was August. The city was hot and my small top-floor apartment was hotter. Kiwi was sitting on Mercy’s couch. What I remember was her left hand palm up in the air, those long fingers the first part of her I ever met. Later on I found out she was showing Mercy a cut on her palm, a tiny nick of a thing she’d gotten cutting a bagel. Narrow but deep. Three stitches like tiny black crosses across the pale peach of her hand. Then she turned full toward me, and her eyes caught me hard. Figure none of that day’s anything I need to tell Mercy. And Kiwi, figure she must already know.
Mercy’s been in love more times than I can count. Men act stupid around her, and in return she pays them some attention every now and then, then gets bone tired of them before they can think of something clever to say. Some evenings, when me and Mercy are just sitting on the fire escape drinking Cokes and watching the city pass beneath us, she starts talking about what she’d like—a good man, a nice home. Maybe a kid or two. I look down at the people moving around on the sidewalk and wonder how many of them got someplace good to be, somebody to love when they get there. Mercy’s eyes hollow out and I think she thinks she’s never gonna get what she needs. When she gets that look, I tell her—don’t get sentimental; the love she’s looking for is out there somewhere. She’s a good woman, Mercy is.
“What do you want, girl?” Mercy asked me one night.
I shrugged, took a sip of my Coke. Stared down at all the people moving by us. All different colors and loving every which way.
“To sing,” I said.
“You do sing already,” Mercy said. We were sitting close and she nudged my shoulder with her own. “You sing like a bird, girl.”
“To really sing,” I said. “From way deep. Hurt people with my singing. Knock them down with it and lift them back up again.”
Mercy nodded. “That’d be some singing.”
The first time somebody told me I had a voice was when I was ten and singing in my church’s choir. Even then I knew I was only about seventy-five percent holy. The rest of me wanted more than Jesus and “This Little Light of Mine.” The rest of me wanted to fly. But more than that—even at ten, I wanted to know something, someone. And love them deep.
When we get to the club, it’s loud and smoky but the music is pumping. All around us brothers and sisters are getting tight at the bar or loose on the floor. Mercy’s wearing a long red dress that cuts halfway across her breasts and promises more with a high split up the back. She dances in ahead of us and gets scooped up by a pretty dark-skinned brother in leather pants. He doesn’t look anything like Denzel, but Mercy’s smile is saying Denzel who?
The DJ throws TLC’s “Unpretty” on and I am taken right back to my bedroom mirror when I feel Kiwi’s hand pulling me onto the dance floor.
“Pretty girl,” she whispers, leaning into my ear. The mirror disappears. The loneliness lifts up off of me. Kiwi moves slower than the music and still it’s like the music is moving her. No hips to speak of but the place where hips should be is swaying around me and I find my own self moving closer to her, scared of the lead my body’s taking over my mind. I know once she and Mercy were close like this, but then Mercy decided she was more into men than women. I know Kiwi was so hurt, they didn’t speak for years, and then they were speaking again but it was different, strained sometimes, like ex-lovers but most times like family, like sisters. Different but connected nonetheless, all but choking on their spit when someone brings up them being together once. And then Kiwi fell in love and stayed in love for a long time. Then that love thing ended and Kiwi went back to just being a cop. A different Kiwi. Sadder, Mercy says. Quieter. A Kiwi that was waiting for something. That was a year ago.
I look across the dance floor and see Mercy’s got her arms around that brother and her eyes closed, that red dress flashing. And something about the flash of that dress makes me feel brave enough to pull Kiwi into me. She looks surprised, then laughs, presses her hand again
st my mouth and says, “We got seven years between us, sweet girl. Seven years is seven years.” She lets her hand move around to the back of my neck and down into the collar of my shirt—a navy button-down tucked into black pants. A wide black belt with a silver buckle—a birthday gift to myself. My hair is pulled back into one braid so from far away maybe we look like two slender men on the dance floor—Kiwi’s the beautiful one.
Kiwi once told me her parents didn’t name her for three days. “They wanted to see who I was first,” she said. “And they came to realize that I was sweet and sour as their favorite fruit. I don’t mind—it’s easy to spell and easy to say.”
Now, she slips her hand out of my shirt and smiles again. I feel the smile spread over my body.
“I want this,” I say, pulling her hand back to my neck. This is what twenty-three is, I’m thinking to myself. It’s the year you get brave, girl.
“Want what?”
“Whatever’s all in those seven years.”
Then Kiwi’s grinning, all the while holding me by my belt, holding tight, pulling me into her. The DJ throws Sade on, singing “Lover’s Rock,” telling the whole club that we’re the ones that she clings to. I take a step closer to Kiwi, move slowly in her arms. Sade’s voice brings up a sadness in me, a loneliness so deep, I need to swallow hard to hold it down. Kiwi moves with me, stroking my back and humming. We stay this way long after the song ends.
Fucking the Fat Man
_________________
by Breena Clarke
Her legs were soupy with drink. She laughed to herself. She had been laughing to herself much of the night. She had got tickled when he was singing and smirking and joking on the stage. She had thrown her head back and guffawed just like her mama told her never to do. And she was giggling to herself ever since. She giggled again now and her legs collapsed under her. He caught her under the armpits and supported her. Left to herself she would have sunk in a pool at his feet.
She braced herself on him and pulled herself upright. She walked ahead into the vestibule of the building, and her butt swung from right to left. Her dress, a garment of ambiguous design, was made of a material that draped and flowed. It clung only a little across her hips and across her breasts, lightly dancing around her moving body.
Her hair was looking silly now. Tufts that had been caught up behind her ears were standing out from the side of her head. The hair at the edges of her face and at her nape was frizzy from perspiration. She had stopped caring about how her hair looked several hours ago—when she’d gone into the ladies’ room and assessed the damage OLD GRANDAD was doing. It didn’t matter anymore. She knew they’d reached the point in the evening when they’d both decided to go after “it.”
He periodically tugged on her dress to keep it from riding up on her butt. He seemed concerned for how she appeared. She thought how silly it was that he was trying to keep her in her clothes until he could get her inside the door of his apartment. Soon as he got her inside he’d be pulling and hauling and working to get her out of this same dress. And for her part she was keeping up with the charade. Was she really as toasted as she seemed?
While he fumbled with his keys she fell back against him. She let herself fall and keep falling into the soft flesh of him. He caught her. His arms were everywhere. That’s what she liked most about him. His arms were so fleshy. There was a lot of him, period. She could fall back, lose her balance, fall into him, and never hit the ground.
Going through the door of his apartment he pinched her left ass cheek and said, “Sorry, baby, my hand slipped.” A laugh exploded out of her lips. He rolled his eyes around in his head to look like a cherub who had gotten his arm caught in a cookie jar. This kept her laughing long after the joke had passed.
With the door closed and locked behind them, he tossed his hat onto a chair. He said, “Let me take your coat, baby.” It was in-between weather—late March. The wrap she wore was not exactly a coat, but a jacket. She giggled again and tried to work her arms out of the jacket. He worked at it and was finally able to get her arms free.
“Plant yourself, baby,” he said, waving a hand airily toward the divan like he was Mrs. John Jacob Astor.
He ditched his coat in the closet and came around to the front of the couch. He wanted to remove her clothes slowly, but she hurried him along. They fumbled and their fingers became entwined with each other and with the buttons. They yanked one off. The button dropped and rolled under the couch. She laughed to see it roll away and thought immediately after that she’d be cursing herself tomorrow morning when it came time to have that button or go out in the street half naked.
She stood naked before him for a moment—looking at him from up under her eyelids. She batted her lashes seductively in a way that seemed right out of the movies. She teasingly unhooked her bra and came close to him, thrusting her tits in his face. He didn’t touch her breasts. He only looked at them like they were twin pools of water and he had crossed the Gobi Desert without a drink. But all he did was look.
He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her away from him, and found her spinal cord. He ran his fingers up and down the interlocking bones in her back like he was playing piano keys. He said he was trying to get a feel for her back. It seemed like he was funning with her—as if his hands didn’t know what to do, but were exploring her. He played arpeggios on her. His fingers were like little hammers pummeling her. Her body got to throbbing, her breath came short, and she grunted.
The majority of rounders that a girl meets in the nightspots figure the best way to get any pussy is to get a girl so juiced up she doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the wall. But his hands—his fingers were better than alcohol. Of course she was juiced, but she didn’t have to be. What his fingers were doing would have been enough.
He told her to lie down on the divan and close her eyes. Then he started to finger her sure enough. He ran his fingers up and down her back and front. He had her thrilling to his touch. She felt herself to be good and oiled and she started singing to the accompaniment he played on her backside and her stomach. He put his fingers in places she didn’t know were there. His fingers plunked and thumped on her and caused a whole lot of trembling and moaning.
“You want to get you some delirium tremblin’s running up and down your back, don’t you, baby!” He whooped and hollered just like he did on the stage. She laughed along with him even though she didn’t know what he was talking about.
Most of the men she’d known didn’t use their hands for pleasure. They mostly used their paws for wrestling some kind of living or shoving somebody’s face into a wall. These men had gotten out of the habit of touching things gently—if they’d ever learned it.
His touches were gentle and because of this they were shocking—surprising. It felt for all the world like he’d gotten under her skin—like he was fingering her from the inside. Because of that she got a little scared. But she wasn’t scared enough to want him to stop.
His lovemaking was like the stuff that Grandma an’em called “The Laying On of Hands.” It was like what the old people used to do if you had a bad croup or some other internal problem that was beyond them and they couldn’t get you to the doctor. “The Laying On of Hands.” They’d try it. They’d all put their hands on you and pray and rub on you. Sometimes it would work. His hands were like those old people’s hands: firm, authoritative, soothing, and digging down deeply below layers of skin—reaching the areas that needed comfort.
He took his clothes off oh so slowly. She was glad of that. She wanted to get used to the sight of all the flesh. She wanted him, but she was scared she might be scared by his bulk when she first would lay eyes on it. This slow performance increased the excitement, too. She was curious. Everybody was curious to see what was up under there—in there—what he was like under his clothes.
Actually it wasn’t as big as the rest of him. It was normal sized, but it seemed much smaller because of the way it was nestled in among so much other meat. It looked
sort of small and pitiful and sad all up in there. He’d waggled it and talked in a silly voice. He urged her to pet it and make it feel less forlorn for being lost in among his hair and all. She giggled again while she fingered the thing and it started to growing like Topsy.
After he got completely naked he went and rooted around in the closet by the door. He came out butt first—his huge ass coming out coyly like a virgin—the ass cheeks moving to a swaying, seductive melody that he hummed. She laughed despite feeling like she shouldn’t. He was acting so silly! When he turned himself upright to face her he had on a big red-and-orange turban. There he was before her: a great huge man naked except for the turban. It oughtn’t have affected her the way it did. She oughtn’t have gotten hotter and juicier and wilder between her legs. But she did.
He was the Sheik of Araby! He sat in something like a cross-legged position on the divan, and when he reared back she could see his dick was as hard as granite. The thing was pointed toward the ceiling.
“Impale yourself, baby!” he said.
Giggling again, she did her best to. She lowered herself onto his whacker and sat on his thighs and he hoisted her, pulled her ass cheeks apart, and bounced her up and down while licking her ears, saying funny things, and tickling her.
In the movies the things that make people all hot and bothered are pretty things—pretty-looking people and pretty, fragrant flowers or a moonlit beach, girls with shining eyes. But what really gets the gut bucket and gets the mouth to twisting up in the most ugly twist that feels like died and gone to heaven is—mostly ugly. It’s not so pretty as in the movies. It’s worms of sweat cascading down the center of the chest and the myriad stinky smells on your fingers that smell better than Chanel No. 5 when you got your thing on. Like Grandma say, “It’s not the beauty, it’s the booty.” It’s the funky little, greasy little things that’re caught up in the crevices of the skin.