Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  “You already got me,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know how it’s ever gonna work.”

  “It never has worked. But it’s right.”

  “You got an answer for everything?”

  “It’s Naomi. She’s in the answer business and…I guess it rubbed off. But really? I don’t know shit.”

  “That’s okay…I’ll do what I want.”

  “See?”

  He laughed some and then he moved his beautiful face toward me and kissed my lips, his hands still on my face.

  The horn honked and we sprang apart like we’d been squirted with a hose.

  “When we gonna eat?” Dickens yelled from where Danny had parked the car.

  Finding My Thunder 17

  We went to a market and got bread and lunchmeat and chips and Cokes and went back to the river and ate our food and Danny and Dickens had a contest skipping rocks on the water.

  Danny said if he could skip a rock all the way across he could get a kiss. Dickens said, “What about me?”

  I said any time they got one across they got a kiss.

  Danny worked to perfect it and pretty soon he was getting every other one all the way across.

  Dickens said, “Oh man.” And he worked and he worked and finally he got one and then he got too shy to come and get his kiss so I got up and chased him. He ran all over and I never could catch him. Then when I sat back down he ran by and pulled on my hair and I took off after him again and this time I outsmarted him and doubled around the table and got him and he pretty well let me and I wrestled him enough, with Danny near warning him not to hurt me. I pecked his cheek.

  He jumped up and said “Ew,” with his hand on his cheek. But he was pretty much mine after that.

  When we were back in the car and on the highway he sat behind and I felt him tugging on my braid again. Then his face was right there and his salami breath pretty much in my face and he wanted to know about my book and I told him the story some, him hanging over the seat and touching my little hoop earring, and Danny said, “Sit back now.”

  He did and pretty soon he was asleep again.

  And Danny pulled me across the seat again and I sat close to him until I slid down and laid on the seat on my side and put my head on his thigh for a pillow and he kept his hand on my shoulder, then he slid his hand slow up and down my arm and it settled on my wrist but that was pretty close to my breast, so I looked down without moving my head and his wrist was across my breast so he was kind of getting a feel. And I thought of Tahlila’s breasts, bigger than mine, and I guessed he probably felt those and I hoped he wasn’t disappointed in mine but I didn’t know how he couldn’t be even though I’d never waved them at everyone during every athletic event. I didn’t think mine could wave. They couldn’t. So this is what I had to offer and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I couldn’t sleep, I was lying on Danny’s leg and I loved him so much I could feel it in myself like a flower opening wide or a wound kind of raw, like life and death, breathing and weeping filling me.

  No wonder every song was about love. There was so much you could say about it. Even the bible. Love always protects. That was my favorite. It spoke so well about Danny. Except when it came to hitchhikers. Then he kind of lost his mind.

  Finding My Thunder 18

  Danny woke me up, and I was surprised I had gone to sleep. His thigh was flexing beneath my cheek. “Hilly…could you talk to me?”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “How much farther?” I asked, not because I wanted the trip to be over…but because I didn’t.

  “Another twenty minutes.”

  I was starting to recognize things.

  “Did you have a good nap?” he asked smiling.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said working his arm around me. “I like your sleepy eyes. Just talk to me a little bit so I stay awake.”

  I settled against him. “You never did tell me about Tahlila…when you left the shop and all.” My love had awakened with me. I had the hand closest to him twisted in his t-shirt right over his heart.

  “Is that little monkey still asleep?”

  I looked back at Dickens and his face was plastered against the seat, his mouth open. He was out.

  “Yeah. Look at him.”

  Danny moved his arm away and readjusted the rearview. He laughed when he saw him. “He’ll sleep through anything.” He put his arm back around me.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?” I looked at him…all the way in to his brain. He didn’t want to tell me.

  “You know that story you told me at the river…about someone goin’ into the yard with the biting dog?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well…sometimes you just got to go for the dog.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Like Mama did for me…with Lonnie. I mean…I noticed that…recently.” I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “How about the night with the chairs? The night we took her to the hospital?” he reminded me in a soft voice.

  “Yeah…I got between them a few times. I guess getting older…it was going to be more that way.”

  “Same with me. Mom and Paul…or Sukey and Paul,” he said. “Or Sukey and half the town.”

  We were quiet for a while.

  “I told her we were friends…you and me…and she almost cost me my job. She apologized, but she went on…you know about what she thinks I gave up…and I told her it was over…again…and she doesn’t get why. And I told her again I was wrong to let it go as far as it did. She says…can we at least be friends. And I said yes…so she’d back off you.” He looked at me.

  There was a lot I could say, but Naomi always told me, ask yourself before you speak…will it help? I didn’t know.

  “I mean, she needs to apologize to you, but that’s not going to happen. And her word don’t mean shit anyway. All I’m wanting is her to leave you alone. So we have to be careful about being seen. Once I’m gone you should be alright. She’ll have moved on to the next guy, the next game, the next party.”

  I was thinking it all over, but that made him nervous. “Say something,” he said.

  “I was wondering…you won’t ever lead me on like that…will you?”

  He was quiet now. I saw that jaw thing again where he ground his back teeth, and I felt it in the arm around me, before he lifted it and took it away from me and put two hands on the wheel. I didn’t move away. I didn’t think he wanted that. I didn’t. But he was pulled into himself.

  Dickens woke up and sat up and sighed a lot and said he couldn’t believe we were that close to home. He was already working on Danny for the next thing…could he sleep in his room? In Sukey’s bed again? He shared a room with two others younger than him and they kept him up at night with bad dreams and bad behavior.

  “You can,” Danny said stern, “…and same thing we talked about.”

  I didn’t know what that was, but I guessed he’d tell me if he wanted.

  Once on our street Danny went around the block and hit the alley. He followed this to Naomi’s door. He got out of the car and held the door for me. I grabbed my bag and scooted out past the steering wheel dragging my bag off the seat. “I’ll just let her know I’m home then I’ll walk over to my house.”

  I looked at him, and he was looking back, the two of us caught in that staring we did.

  Naomi pulled the door and she spoke to him and he spoke politely to her and introduced Dickens. I knew he wanted her to see he’d kept the rules. And since I didn’t expect him to ever come over again the way he’d been so quiet, I knew some relief with my embarrassment when she said, “You all can ride with me to Temple in the morning or follow in your car.”

  “I will follow. Can Hilly ride with me?”

  “That would be fine,” she allowed pretty much beaming. He said a polite good-bye to me then and I waved and Dickens, at Danny’s urging as he got in the car, called to Naomi, “Nice to meet you Miss Naomi.�
�

  And she nodded and waved. She was looking at me ready for a full report and I said, “Naomi I am so beat. I fell asleep on the way home. I’m goin’ back to my room and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Okay,” she said wrinkling her brow some. “You gonna be okay in that big empty house?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t be empty for long. And I didn’t mean Lonnie and his new family. I didn’t mean them at all.

  Lonnie wasn’t home. I came through the back porch and the chrome set was piled there, the one she had fought against. Sleeping there that first night had been a foggy memory what with me full of illegal substances and getting in late and leaving early. But now it was a little more real, the empty quiet, not the crazy quiet that meant she brooded in some corner, but this kind of quiet that meant she was gone.

  It kept hitting me fresh. She was gone. I hurried through the shadows and got to my room and closed the door. Music was the thing I wrapped myself in. I sorted through and there was Mama’s, “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall.” I didn’t know if I had the courage. Why do it to myself? But if he didn’t come…Danny…if he didn’t…if he was through with me because I’d asked him if he was going to lead me on when he’d never even spoken love…he’d said we were more than friends…he couldn’t stay away…he needed me. But maybe he’d changed his mind. He said it didn’t work. But I said it was right. He said he was going away….

  If he didn’t come, well then I might as well wrap myself in Judy and let the tears come. Even the despair was better than nothing.

  So I put that record on and checked that the screen on the window was still unhooked, even though I knew it was, all the time now. I fell on my back on my bed, my arms spread out, my hands open to the ceiling and the sky above like I’d laid on the field.

  I had put it on “The Man Who Got Away.” I had it blasting. And oddly, I thought of Mama for the first few seconds, but once it got to the part where the brass kicked up, my mind went to Danny. It was all Danny. Until he was there, standing over me, looking at me, chewing on his lip, still winded from having run here, his chest up and down, and I sat up slow and he fell beside me and grabbed me by the arm and said, “Don’t you understand how I feel about you?”

  I was shaking my head, but I don’t think I really moved. I whimpered and put my hands on his face. She hit a high note, Judy did and I smashed my lips on his and pulled him down on my bed. Fifteen years. Nearly sixteen. But I was as much a woman as I was ever gonna be. And I wanted Danny. As Judy’s shaky voice sang that last line, “The man that got away,” I said to God above it won’t be Danny Boyd. Before he left me…I would know him, give him everything and if it wasn’t enough…if I wasn’t…then I’d have to find a way to live and breathe but that wouldn’t stop me now.

  So he kissed me wild and rolled onto me and I tore at his shirt and got my hands on his skin and pulled him into me and we rolled some and I was on top of him and his hands ran over me, the shape of me and my legs were wide and I felt him against me and I wasn’t even sure how it worked but the girls at school laughed when a girl asked in biology if you could get pregnant from kissing, so I knew more than that. And we’d been given drawings of a penis, a side-view, that looked like a big sad clown nose or something, but I pushed that out of my head because of Danny and I pushed on him and I was breathing out loud because he had lifted.

  “We’ve got to slow this down,” he panted.

  “Why?” I said, pulling him to me again and kissing him.

  He pulled back. “Because I’m about to lose my mind,” he breathed.

  “Lose it,” I said and kissed him madly. I was on top now and I was over him like a monkey and I was kissing down as I rolled up his shirt and oh my God above.

  He was going to think I was some crazy whore. And I might be. He was nearly crying sounded like as he pulled me up and our mouths got together again and he had his tongue in my mouth and I knew it was sin and the devil and oh God be praised thank you for such a thing as this.

  I knew that was a mix of ideas, but this house had never known such love as was breaking forth in my room fixing to burn it down to ashes.

  “I can’t…,” he said, but I kept going and his hands were on my breasts and they might be small but they were working in ways I had no idea and when the air hit them it was shock and wrong and right and he couldn’t get his mouth on them fast enough and I cradled his head to me and rose off the bed and he pressed down, one breast to the other his soft dark hair and Naomi would say I was leaving God out of this but I was praising Him, I was.

  “Oh God,” I cried out, and Judy was still singing.

  “Girl,” he was saying when he lifted his head, “we…we should….” Then I smashed his mouth back on me and my legs wrapped around him in Mama’s skirt, my legs bare and his hands holding them and his jeans grinding into me, then push and push and I rose to meet him every time like a cave woman…just something took over like we were secret partners in a crime or something, him bringing it out, me keeping it going, and I was watching myself and so deep in myself at the same time he was everything, every feeling and touch and discovery and look, he was the room, he was the air. “I love you, I love you,” I said as my body exploded, and then him pushing into me and going still, just holding it, then gasping and his heart hammering, “Hilly,” he said, “Hilly. My God…I…I love you.”

  Finding My Thunder 19

  Later, we sat on my floor, his legs open in a V and stretched out long, and me curled on my side in between them so we could kiss so I could touch his face and he could touch me and see me. I was bare to the waistband of Mama’s skirt, but it was bunched high on my legs and he was studying each bit of me, running his hands over. He was bare to his jeans and his thick leather belt was undone. “I’m crazy about you in case you didn’t know,” he whispered as he nuzzled his face against me.

  I did know. I knew. He told me, “You don’t know how much it turns me on to see your breasts peeking through your long hair.”

  I nearly died when he said that. Then he took my hair and bunched it in his hand and he used it to angle my face for my next kiss and more kisses, some on my mouth, but some on my face, my nose and my eyes.

  “I want to see all of you,” he said and his face was unguarded and it took all of the guts I could muster to look and I couldn’t look anywhere else for I had never been the object of so much attention and then his, which was the most powerful attention in the entire world, his was like standing in the brightest sun and knowing you were an ant, a crumb, and yet you had to stand there and you looked so long into such adoration you started to believe something good about yourself.

  “You can see me,” I said and I heard him swallow, like his neck cracked.

  “Better not. Not right now. This is enough,” he said smoothing his rough hand over my breasts. “God…I could look at these the rest of my life.”

  I was a little relieved, but I would have…shown him everything. I was painfully shy usually, but not with him. With him I really felt like I could do it.

  We’d been playing the rest of Judy Garland. He liked “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and we listened and I told him, “That’s where you take me.”

  And he laughed a little. “Yeah?”

  “It’s like another world with you,” I said. “Naomi’s been trying to get me to live for heaven for years. But…you’re my heaven.” I traced his lips and they were perfect.

  I was drunk on him, and really tired and so happy…I didn’t know I could be this happy, and I knew I spoke out of that now and maybe later I’d cringe, but I wasn’t holding back.

  He hugged me so tightly. “You’re killin’ me,” he whispered. “Do you know that? You’re killing me with your sweet words…this little body like a goddess…with sweet love. I might die up here tonight holding you.”

  “If we could stop time right now…would you do it?”

  He kissed me again. “I would stay here forever if I could…with you. In m
y mind…when we’re apart…this is right where I’m gonna be. Just know that. This is what I’ll think about to get me through. This is what will get me home.”

  I sat up and looked at him, full in the face. I felt like a mermaid, my long hair over my naked breasts and the long skirt twisted around me. I felt beautiful.

  “But I got to tell you…if we were gonna stop time…I’d take it further…I’d want to be inside you,” he said bold.

  “Inside me?”

  “Yes,” he said and he kissed me full on the mouth and groaned.

  But I had to push away a minute, “Um…Danny…can I…I mean…you don’t just rub it on me? You mean…it goes in?”

  He broke out laughing. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I…it goes in?”

  “Hasn’t anyone told you? I know you had sex ed.”

  “Well it just confused me more. You got this thing like…an elephant’s trunk and it gets with the woman and makes a baby. And that’s pretty violent. We had to watch a movie of a woman having a baby in a fallout shelter and two girls fainted and two more ran out.

  “I know if the man’s thing gets together with the woman’s parts then that’s it. It’s pretty much what we just did only with clothes on. It worked for me like that. I almost…it was really great. And…I thought you seemed…like it worked.”

  His mouth was hanging open. “Hilly…Dickens knows this. I mean…how can you be fifteen….”

  “Sixteen,” I whispered.

  “Sixteen and not…didn’t your Mom or Naomi…?”

  “Naomi tried but…I was so confused when she got finished. She talked about the man’s thing and the woman and covenant and curses and you better be married. I was just…I guess I’m stupid. A stupid joke.”

  “No,” he held me to him laughing. “Wow. I’ve got my work cut out for me, I guess.”

  He laughed some more and I laughed too. “But you haven’t done it…you said.”

  “There’s a difference between not doing it and knowing how it’s done.” He laughed some more.