Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  I wanted to die. I wasn’t trying to do something, so I folded my arms over the points, I did that at least. He just kept staring at me. “What are you doing?” I said, not about the staring…but about everything.

  “I need a haircut.”

  “Are you high or something?”

  He burped quietly. “No. Just had a few beers.”

  Then I noticed he didn’t have a vehicle. “Did you walk here?”

  He burped again. “Yeah. Not like it’s far. Well, I was in a car…but I got out.”

  “Where’s Sukey?” He was Danny’s ride.

  “You don’t know?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “The boy’s farm,” he said.

  The boy’s farm was over a hundred miles away. It was like a reform school, only on a farm, of course. I didn’t ask what Sukey did to get there. I could figure it out. But this was one reason why Danny might be coming around.

  “How long?” I said.

  “January.”

  He looked at me and motioned to the stairs, then he shuffled there and sat in the middle, and I sat behind, careful to keep my legs together and off to the side. Even this near I was almost frozen. My heart was pounding so loud, and he sat there waiting for me to touch him. “We could do this in your room where there’s some light,” he said, and I stared at the back of his thick glossy hair, and I was about to faint from this whole thing.

  “I can see,” I said, but I was panting so I had to catch myself. Did he really think I could casually sneak him upstairs? Didn’t he know I would die?

  “You’ve got a lot of hair,” I said, and my voice trembled a little and I was so glad he was turned away.

  “Might as well get used to getting it cut. I go in the army they’ll shave me bald.” He stretched his legs out then, groaning like an old man.

  “You have to hold still,” I said.

  “Well do something,” he said.

  So I put my hand up there and took hold of some and held it straight up and it felt so soft and thick and I let it go but I didn’t mean to so I had to get another hold and my heart was flopping like a seal on a griddle. I mean I could not breathe.

  “Just do it, Grunier,” he said.

  So I made my first cut, but I barely took it off.

  “I go in the army they’ll buzz it off,” he said.

  “What are you thinking?” I said. “You can’t go to Vietnam. You have to go to college. You had a scholarship is what I heard.”

  “I’ve had enough of school,” he said.

  “You can’t work for Lonnie. They’ll pick you off quick. Surely you don’t believe in this war.” Now I had no trouble facing him for I was desperate to say this. I moved around him enough that when he turned we were up close.

  He was more beautiful than anyone had a right to be. No wonder I lived in a perpetual state of heartache for these long years. All at once my concern for him doubled. “You are not going to Vietnam,” I said.

  Well he looked at me.

  “What do you care?” he said.

  I was shaking my head and taking refuge behind him once again. “Johnson plans a big push in the next two years. They’re going to draft everyone they can get their hands on. We don’t belong in that war. They don’t want us over there. We aren’t going to be able to do any good. The North Vietnamese can disappear over the border anytime they want. Our soldiers are picked off or blown up and they can’t see what’s coming. They are shooting villagers…children, too. Someone might cut your hair in the morning and slit your throat before supper. It’s horrible over there. And even if you come back you’ll be ruined…like Lonnie was…well is. You’ll see.”

  My hand was on his shoulder now. I was gripping hard. “You can’t go,” I said. “You have to get into college. It can’t be anywhere as bad as Vietnam.”

  He turned toward me now, his hand on his knee. “Grunier…you’re not natural.”

  “What’s that mean? Just because I don’t want you to go to Vietnam?”

  “You sound more like some kid in college than a sophomore in high school.”

  “I’ll be a junior,” I reminded him case he forgot since he hadn’t been looking.

  “Same difference.”

  “Not really,” I mumbled. So we stared at one another for a bit.

  “You’re a really pretty girl,” he said. “Hard to believe you were such a little monkey.”

  He turned back again. “You gonna cut this or what?”

  I swallowed a good sized lump of emotion. He had me stirred.

  So I pulled up another clump and I cut it a little deeper this time. But I didn’t want to throw that hair away so I laid it by me on the stair. And when I couldn’t cut anymore in back out of fear of butchering him too badly, I had to move around him on the stairs, on my knees or bent over, I was crawling all around him before I was done, his eyes on me, and I was trying to get the hair in front even and I’d been working on it, and studying it and trying not to get lost just being by him and having permission to look and touch some, when it dawned on me he was looking straight down my shirt and me with no bra, and him sitting so still all that time getting a peep show, and I gasped and stood straight and held the scissors against my chest. “You big pervert,” I said, truly feeling violated.

  He laughed, then fell back on the stairs laughing some more, the heels of his hands digging in his eyes for a minute, “Grunier…I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…but there they were…but it’s dark I didn’t see anything…but yeah, I tried a little, but you’ve got all that long hair.”

  I hit him on the shoulder, first one way then another. And I meant it, but I was smiling a little, but mortified too.

  “You promise? You promise you didn’t see?”

  He rolled on his side, away from me, laughing all goofy, but too goofy, like excited and silly or something. Then he sat back up in a minute and was giving me this smile that was making me so self-conscious I could melt and run to the gutter, but it was so cute, and horrible. “I didn’t see nothin’,” he said. “I didn’t. So don’t you sic Miss Blue on me.” He was laughing again. “Her little baby…that woman is scary.”

  He didn’t know a scary woman, is what I thought. But my mama….

  “Well I ain’t her little baby so don’t worry,” I said needing to move away from this embarrassing notion. “I’m done,” I sighed cause I couldn’t act casual and it was too dark to do it right. “I hope I didn’t butcher it too bad…but you deserve it.”

  He took my hand. “Oh come on little Grunier, I didn’t mean it.”

  “You didn’t mean it? That don’t make sense.”

  He kept my hand and held it against his chest. He was grinning. “Hey…if you want to show them to me though…maybe I will go to college.”

  I pulled my hand away and smacked him and he fell back laughing again.

  “It’s not a joke,” I said.

  He tried to sober up then. “I know,” he said, “I know you’re a good girl, I’m just having some fun.”

  “No…I mean about the war Danny. It’s not a joke to think you’re setting yourself up to get drafted. What does Tahlila say?”

  It’s like I knocked all the joy out of him. But she was the one he was slated to marry. Marry. They got engaged the summer of junior year.

  He had his elbows on his knees. I could see unevenness in the haircut, but with the hair off his face again his handsomeness was stronger than anything I could do to him.

  He was pursing his lips, looking at me, then looking away. “She don’t say anything now. We broke up.”

  I plopped beside him on the stair.

  “Yeah,” he said studying his boots.

  “So…the reserves?” I asked, for the plan was her daddy was trying to get Danny in the reserves.

  “Last I heard her old man hopes they send me to Nam…like straight up…no boot camp even.” He looked at me and broke out laughing again, but when I didn’t join in he stopped and sighed and ran his hand thr
ough his short hair, feeling around then and whispering, “Shit.”

  “I’ll fix it tomorrow at work,” I said confidently.

  “Better save some of that,” he said reaching over me and pointing to the pile of his hair on the steps, “we might need it.”

  I fluffed it into a pile and kept running my hand through it. And I thought of the clubhouse…that summer in the woods behind our house…him and Sukey…and me taking him the little cake I’d made for his birthday…and walking it back there with care and him not there…but Sukey…and Sukey knocking that cake into the dirt and pulling me inside and smashing down on me and how I couldn’t breathe…and Danny coming in and the way they fought, and me against the wall and trying to stay out of the way and getting out when he told me to run, but staying there and seeing it fall in from all the crashing and thrashing around they were doing. And me running home and Danny coming after, his forehead bleeding, his knuckles scraped and telling me to leave them alone and to stay away and not to come around ever again, and making me promise not to tell, making me promise. And me telling Danny I hated him…hated Sukey. And how I ran home and I held it. Like Mama taught me. Kept it in.

  And then the long years of nothing. The nothing. Until today.

  I loved him. I always had. It had started when I was young and it had been on pause ready to move forward with the littlest encouragement and as my hand closed against a fistful of his soft hair, I knew I’d never stop loving him.

  Finding My Thunder 5

  It was midnight when Danny left my house with his head of chopped black hair. But somehow his appeal had grown. Throughout high school being an athlete kept him in short hair. I guessed he’d had enough of that and had let it grow after graduation. But this cut I gave him was in between. This was more like the Beatle’s, shaped to his head with heavy bangs. And it wasn’t just the hair that had changed. He didn’t look like his old scowling self. He was smiling. For someone who just broke up with his girl and sent his brother off to juvie, he seemed kind of happy.

  So I watched him walk away and he turned and said in a loud whispery voice, “Thanks for the show…I mean haircut…Grunier.”

  And I pretended to be mad, but in my hand I clutched that hair and I smiled into the night. In my room I went to sleep listening to Sandy Denny. She sang about time…who knows where it goes. I remembered the boy, sweaty and brown, shirt in his back pocket leading me through the woods behind our houses, holding a limb to let me through, telling me to watch it, taking my hand sometimes. And tonight, my hand in his hair, on his shoulder, once again finding its way into his…all that time…all that time gone.

  Lonnie did not come home that night. Those nights were always gifts. Him gone meant no fighting. Him gone meant that once Mama got settled I could move and breathe.

  So I walked to the shop in the morning but I wasn’t far when Danny pulled alongside driving Sukey’s purple car. “Get in Grunier,” he said, his eyes on my jeans. His hair combed decent, like a punk so Lonnie would think it was shorter than it was.

  I hadn’t used my voice yet that morning. Mama had been asleep when I left. So I went around that car, that streak of purple always stabbed at me as it carried Danny away, but now I was sitting where he always sat while Sukey drove.

  It felt odd to be in here. I never imagined I would be. Sukey was picky about this car…and I didn’t go near him…or ever in a close space like this where he was.

  “You look like Elvis,” I said.

  Danny laughed at that. “I had to even it some and use some of Paul’s shit to keep it out of my face. Hell if I know,” he said pulling down the street. His eyes looked heavy from sleep. “He don’t come around much does he.” He meant Lonnie not coming home.

  “You better hope not showing up late for a haircut.”

  He laughed again. “Yeah he’d kick my ass. They say he’s a mean old bugger.”

  I didn’t offer anything. I couldn’t start.

  “Hey,” he said, knuckles lightly touching my chin.

  I looked at him. “What?”

  He pulled the bandana off my hair and held it in his hand, then he tucked it in the open v of his shirt and I had to reach in there and take it back. We were laughing and I was tying it over my hair again when he pulled into Mac’s. He had it in park before I was done tying the knot.

  “You drink coffee?”

  “Um…sure,” I didn’t, but I was about to start.

  “You want an egg sandwich?” He got out.

  Well, I was starving. “I don’t have any money.”

  “Grunier,” he said, standing outside, bent toward me, arm on the top of the door.

  “Okay…but soon as I get money I’ll pay you back.”

  He laughed and shook his head while he slammed the door. I watched him walk in and I whispered, “God,” and my hand was over my mouth cause here I sat in the purple car, me, not Tahlila, and I was waiting on Danny to buy me food and I was an asshole who didn’t know what to say or how to be cool.

  Pretty soon he was back out carrying a grease stained paper-bag under his arm and two paper-cups of coffee in his hands. I got out and walked to him and took my coffee.

  “I put lots of cream and sugar in so you can get it down,” he said smirking at me.

  “I drink coffee,” I lied again.

  “Sure you do little Miss Blue baby,” he said, another laugh.

  I wasn’t quite laughing with him but I liked the challenge. We got back in the car and he decided we’d eat there cause he handed me my sandwich wrapped in wax paper, and he took out his own. “We got five minutes,” he said, “cause Mac moves like a damn turtle.” He took a huge bite and his jaw bulged as he chewed but he was smiling at me with his buttery lips.

  Lord. I took off the top bread to take a look then slapped it back on and also took a bite.

  “So you change the world since I saw you last night?” he asked looking away out his window, his jaw working. I liked the way his hair ducktailed in the back and I felt pretty proud of myself.

  And I had changed the world last night. Well he had changed my world. But I’d had a good day yesterday with the hope moving in.

  “You think about what I said? About Vietnam?”

  He smirked at me and took another bite. “You think I don’t know I’ll get drafted? You think I’m happy about it? Don’t answer that just eat. We got two minutes.”

  I took another huge bite and he laughed. I was mimicking him, chewing like a beaver and making noise.

  “Let’s not be disgusting,” he said. “Miss Blue won’t let you come around me then.”

  “Why you keep talking about her?”

  He shrugged and ate the last. “Don’t know. It’s just funny.”

  “What’s funny about it?”

  “You gonna finish that?” I was holding the last of it. I shook my head and he took it and wadded the bread and shoved it in. When he’d swallowed it he said, “You live in my house it’s dog eat dog.”

  “Stay away from my Sooner then,” I said and he laughed.

  “You gonna have some dog meat real soon when those ten pups come.”

  I groaned. “Do not tell Lonnie about that. He don’t even know I got that dog.”

  “Why ain’t he ever around? He take care of you all?”

  He slipped that last one in and I wasn’t ready to answer. We were careful about our business. I realized folks knew stuff cause Mama and Lonnie fought loud, but I didn’t want to hear it and with Danny working close to Lonnie…it was best I just kept it.

  “You gonna drink that?” he said pointing at the coffee sitting on the dash. I shook my head and he took it cause his was already gone and he drank it half down and started the car. “Sukey don’t allow food in here,” he said looking at me and smiling.

  He didn’t allow me in here either and we both knew it.

  Hendrix poured from the radio for the half block to the shop. I told Danny to pull down the alley next to the shop and he did and Lonnie’s faded red tru
ck was there and Robert’s beat up white one. So Danny pulled in and we got out. I held our trash cause I didn’t want to leave it in there where it might accumulate. I did not want to bring the wrath of Sukey on anyone, even though I knew Danny could handle him.

  A big cement ramp led to the shop’s garage door. It was open. A big red rat ran across the ramp around ten feet in front of us. He was huge as a cat and I screamed and ran behind Danny, then I couldn’t keep my feet still and I was like running in place and I took off across the yard and down the alley and ran around to the front door and sat on the stoop and was breathing hard.

  I had heard Danny laughing behind me as I ran and now all of them laughing back in the shop. So I collected myself and stood and went in, still holding that trash. I went to the smelly can and put the trash in there, but I knew I couldn’t leave that thing full and sickening cause we had a real critter problem.

  I looked back there then and Robert lifted his hand in a wave and I waved back. Even Lonnie had a grin. “What you doing here again?” he asked and I felt ashamed in front of everyone.

  “I told you I’m going to organize this,” I said.

  “Who is watching your Ma?” he said.

  And I said, “She’s fine. I’ll call her and check. I don’t even do that when I’m at school.”

  Robert was busy, but Danny didn’t know what to do unless Lonnie showed him, and he was listening and staring at me and I felt like a fool, but he’d see it now cause I wasn’t leaving and he was in our mess. I thought of black folks facing fire hoses and boys being bused onto army bases, and I tried to stand my ground. Doctor King said it was immoral to receive the mistreatment of the oppressor. Naomi said the oppressor sought to degrade others but he first degraded himself. I bit my lip and turned away and continued to sort the piles.