So We Can Glow

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  He didn’t cry, telling me, but I kind of wanted him to. I’d never known him to be overly emotional and wanted a peek. I felt dirty for it, using some tragic thing that was hurting him in an attempt to get to know him better, but he trusted me enough to tell me, to come over, to tell me everything. The Tom Petty, the hammering, the heaven-smelling bathroom and the intimacy of Rafa sharing his secrets with me—all of that sounded and smelled and felt like something important enough to let in. To remember. To file away for later, when I needed it. Like a first-aid kit or something, just in case.

  I went to Rafa and sat in his lap, kissed him, let him pet my hair like I was a cat.

  “It does smell really good in here,” I said.

  “It does,” he said.

  * * *

  Rafa hung out for a while, even played a round with my brothers. Afterward, I told the boys it was time to take a video game break and they disappeared outside with their shorts and ratty sneakers and their friends from next door and across the street and down the street. I told them to be back in like, two hours. I told them to remember to take their water bottles. I told them to be careful.

  Rafa and I usually had crackly-electric sexual tension, but now it was kind of sad too because of the stuff with his mom and dad and because we weren’t in the bathroom anymore. The powerful pleasant smell had gone away, but the perfume was in my hair, on my wrists. We were sitting in the living room, staring at the TV, neither of us paying too much attention. He finally kissed me and I was relieved. The guys out back were working and listening to music and Rafa and I were on the couch, not even hot-and-heavy making out, but kissing and being close and quiet together. Everything was quiet and peaceful and good-smelling inside, but it got loud out front as the guys started loading up their things. The clang-slip of metal, the clap-smack of wood. I heard a woman’s voice too. I was jealous; it was probably Jordan’s girlfriend and there I was jealous of Jordan’s girlfriend while I was underneath Rafa on the couch and I loved him. Probably.

  I sat up and went to the window, looked out. There was a woman, standing with the deck guys. Jordan seemed to be ignoring her. That made me feel better. She was talking to the Mark one. No, there wasn’t a Mark one, right? Pete. She was talking to Pete. The other guys were getting in their trucks, ready to leave and Jordan was leaning against his.

  “What’s up?” Rafa asked me.

  “I don’t know. Some woman is out here talking to the deck dudes,” I said and quickly realized they were arguing. Jordan was looking at his phone and Pete and the woman were cursing at one another and she was pointing in his face. He moved her hand away.

  Rafa stood and came to the window to look out with me. Jordan wasn’t turning around, wasn’t paying any attention to Pete and the woman fighting. How did she find our house? Did he ask her to come over? As soon as I knew the deal, I’d text my parents about it because whatever was happening was way weird.

  The woman put her hand in Pete’s face again and this time he hit her hand and swatted it away.

  Rafa took a deep breath in and let out a groan. He went over to the door, snatched it open.

  “Don’t put your hands on a woman like that,” Rafa said. Loud. My blood jumped. I asked what was going on.

  “Nothing,” Pete snapped.

  Jordan put his phone away and held both hands up.

  “This is what they do. We’ll leave. We were just leaving,” he said.

  “Don’t touch her,” Rafa said, walking toward them.

  “It’s his wife,” Jordan said at exactly the same time Pete said, “It’s my wife.”

  “I don’t care. You put your hands on her in front of me, you may as well put your hands on me. Piece of shit,” Rafa said, standing right in front of them.

  “Rafael. Don’t,” I said. I didn’t want him getting beat up! I didn’t want him getting in a fight at all! Everything had been so perfect and good-smelling before and now everything was turning awful! A sudden drop in pressure, everything upside down.

  “Get the hell out of here.” Pete made a dismissive swipe with his hand and the woman stepped away. All I saw was Rafa’s black hair jump forward and back like a fussy-winged fruit bat taking flight as he punched Pete in the face. Jordan grabbed Rafa’s arms in an instant, held them behind his back. The boys were sweaty and breathing hard and smashed together and it should’ve been kind of hot, but I was annoyed and freaked out. The woman sat in the grass by the driveway and put her face in her hands. I jumped off the porch to be closer to them, but not too close. I was scared to get in the middle of it. I went to the woman and asked if she was okay and she said yes.

  “Why can’t men ever calm the fuck down?!” I said to her. She laughed a little. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Rafa! Stop!” I said. Loud. We were being so damn common and country in the front yard with the trucks and the fighting and the hollering, like none of us had any home training.

  Pete held his fingers to his bleeding lip and said who are you to Rafa. Pete looked like his feelings got hurt more than his face.

  “We’re leaving,” Jordan said to me, holding Rafa’s arms. And it was sweet how he said it. Like, he knew it was what I wanted. “Pete, let’s get out of here,” he said, still not letting Rafa go.

  “He’s my boyfriend,” I said to them about Rafa. I said it to Rafa too. This was a perfect time to show off and it felt good with the sun lighting us up. I felt bad for the woman and I didn’t want Pete treating her like that. Maybe I could be a decent distraction from it?

  Rafa softened his eyes and smiled.

  “You’re so damn beautiful. You smell so good,” he said. “Te amo,” he said to me right there for the first time. Right there with Pete holding an old white, dirty T-shirt to his bloody, busted lip and Jordan holding Rafa’s arms and Pete’s wife breaking sticks at my feet.

  “Aw, I love you too. Te amo,” I said with the top of my head warming up with passion and adrenaline and the summer heat. I smelled the inside of my wrist. I smelled so good. I stepped closer to Rafa so he could smell me too. Held out my wrist so he could take a big sniff and a bee zip-buzzed right onto my bare shoulder like I was a flower.

  Knock Out the Heart Lights So We Can Glow

  Exie roamed the aisles of the twenty-four-hour grocery store when she got lonely—touching things and gently placing cans and paper cartons in her little basket, only to make a loop and put them back on the shelves. She liked the music they played. Songs about trusting Jesus and boys driving around with girls and first kisses on front porches. She was drawn to the dusty items no one else seemed to love. A long, crinkly-packaged stripy jump rope on a crooked rack in the cereal aisle. Weird, local homemade sauces in the condiment aisle. Her favorite jar was Eula’s Egg Sauce. The drawing of Eula was sweet-smiley and big-busted. Exie had never met either of her grandmothers, but she liked to think that they were like Eula. She bought the sauce and went to her car. Locked the doors, opened the jar, stuck her tongue in and licked. The sauce was goopy pudding-thick and yellow, but Exie thought it tasted purple. At home, her husband, in his sleepiest blanket-voice, asked her where she’d been. “Do you remember when I was eating pineapple and started to cry because I was alive and some people weren’t?” she asked. Reminded him of that morning after church when her hair was baptism-wet. How she sat at the kitchen table, born again, drowning in the sunlight. Her husband was a good man and she loved him, but he didn’t know how to be special, how to glow. She said it was pretty simple and she’d teach him. There was no big secret. You just had to let the things in your heart get real dark first.

  Get Rowdy

  I told every one of those guys I could do some things to make them forget how much Rowdy owed them. As long as they promised not to kill Rowdy or put him in the hospital. They had to leave him alone for good. I gave them all the same speech, every time.

  “I know he’s a fuck-up. Trust me. I’ve known him since high school. Our daddies used to work together up until his daddy died in his sleep couple years ba
ck. Everybody knows he’s no good. I’m just trying to help him out.”

  Rowdy’s daddy’s soul had slipped right out of his body real easy, like oil; Rowdy had a hard time wiping that oil off his hands. You think it’s gone but when you get your hands wet, you see it. Beading up, streaking off. We weren’t exactly together and we hadn’t had sex yet and I didn’t know why. Figured he might’ve looked at me like I was a sister or something, but no. We kissed sometimes and made our dinners together. And sometimes I’d go over to his house in the middle of the night and climb into bed with him. We’d sleep.

  I was in love with Rowdy and always had been. Big-time. I loved how he talked to me, how he said things. So plain. And I liked how most times he put his warm, rough hand on the back of my neck when he kissed me. He was no good, but I loved him anyway. He always had his gun, was always getting in fights down at the bar, always owed somebody money. We’d be at the bar and somebody would holler JACK and he wouldn’t turn around. They’d holler JACK BOONE and he still wouldn’t turn around. They’d say ROWDY because that’s what everyone called him. And finally he’d tap some cigarette ash into an empty beer can, turn around and ask what the hell they wanted. That right there was what he was like.

  One night, we wandered around under his neighborhood’s sodium street lights, drinking beer, smacking creek cattails against the hot metal guardrails. When we got back to his place, Rowdy was half-drunk, half-asleep, and I asked him to tell me who he owed money to. He closed his eyes, mumbled them off. Six guys, six crazy names.

  “Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, and Smoke,” he said. I wrote them down, put question marks next to the ones I didn’t know. I didn’t want Rowdy knowing about it, so I had to ask around to find out who they were.

  Easy. All I had to do was wear a low-cut shirt and ask the bartender if he knew a guy named Coot. Or Johnny Step. And if he didn’t know, I asked the guys shooting pool and drinking by the back door. I only had to go to three different bars before I found some. Dallas and Black Ray were together.

  “So, you’re Rowdy’s girl?” Black Ray asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said. Black Ray was pretty and tall, wore a big gold chain with a ship hanging from it.

  “What’ll you give me to leave him alone?” Dallas asked.

  “How much does he owe you?” I asked.

  I gave Dallas a quick, dry hand job in the bathroom. I had full-on sex with Black Ray in his car. Twice. He was sweet to me. Real sweet. It wasn’t bad at all.

  I scratched out their names.

  Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, Smoke

  Went to Rowdy’s place and climbed into bed with him. He put his arm around me and I stared at the side of his face until my eyes got heavy and stayed closed. In the morning, I made him swear on the Bible he wouldn’t get into any more trouble. He was superstitious and I told him my Bible had been blessed by a preacher I knew from New Orleans. Spooked him enough. He swore, kissed my hand. I followed him to work to make sure he was going where he said he was going and he did. I watched him climb up on the roof and start hammering in the wavy morning sun. Sat there watching him from my car and listened to the staccato beating of all those different tools echoing up the suburban sky. It was oddly dulcet and soothing.

  Hot Knife looked like a California surfer, but he was from the Kentucky hills and sounded like it. Told me his real name was Danny even though I didn’t ask. He had blond hair thick as rope and wore a leather motorcycle club vest over a white T-shirt. Told me Rowdy owed him nine hundred dollars.

  “Danny, I don’t have nine hundred dollars,” I said, making a flirty-pouty face.

  “How much do you have?”

  I opened my purse, got my wallet out.

  “I have seventy-five dollars. That’s it,” I said.

  “You have pretty feet.”

  “Thank you.” We both looked down at them.

  He asked if he could paint my toes, so we went to the drugstore and he picked out a tropical orange bottle. I let him do a LOT of weird foot stuff and he told me to keep the seventy-five dollars. Also, he called me Theresa, but that isn’t my name. It was fine. I didn’t ask questions.

  Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, Smoke

  I made a habit out of following Rowdy to work every morning. I was taking a chance on him, believing he’d stop getting himself into crazy situations he couldn’t get out of. I never caught him lying. I was the liar now.

  Smoke worked at the tobacco shop. He said he’d seen me around a lot with Rowdy, told me Rowdy owed him some money. I gave him the speech, went down on him in the back office, and spit in the little garbage can next to the door on my way out—the slick black bag in there swished and caught the light.

  Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, Smoke

  I found Johnny Step at the minor league baseball game because it was dollar beer night and I heard he was always there on dollar beer night, never missed a game. He was shady and not nice and he scared me. I gave him the speech anyway, keeping my hand on the knife in my pocket the whole time.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re offering to fuck me so I’ll leave that asshole alone?” he asked. He pointed at nothing and said it loud. My face got hot.

  “Well, depends. How much does he owe you?” I asked.

  He looked me up and down. Made a point of sizing up my ass. I took my hand off my knife, crossed my arms and gave him a look.

  “About four hundred,” he said.

  His apartment was near the ballpark and when we went to his bedroom I turned around so I wouldn’t have to look him in the face. He called me some awful names and it was the only thing that turned me on. And you know what? He might’ve acted the toughest, but he cried when he came.

  Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, Smoke

  Coot was hard to track down. He was out of town a lot and no one knew where, but I got lucky. Sat outside his house one night and he came home to get a change of clothes.

  After I gave him the speech he got a real sad look on his face, sat on the front steps.

  “Did he put you up to this? I don’t do business like that,” he said.

  “No, he didn’t. I’m trying to help him out.”

  “He don’t need your help. He needs to be a man,” Coot said. He brushed some dirt off his boot.

  “You’re the last one on the list,” I said. I thought I might cry, but I swallowed it, made myself all right.

  “I’ll tell you what. Fuck it. This is too sad. I don’t want no part of it,” he said, standing. He reached his hand down for me, pulled me up. He gave me a hug and it surprised me so much I couldn’t help myself from crying. Coot held me and held me there against his chest, went into his pocket and handed me a piece of torn brown paper napkin.

  “He ain’t worth this, honey, I guarantee,” he said.

  “How much money does he owe you?” I asked, sniffing. I pulled back, wiped my nose.

  “He ain’t worth it,” he said again, softly. Coot was old enough to be my daddy and I bet he would’ve been a good one.

  Dallas, Hot Knife, Black Ray, Coot, Johnny Step, Smoke

  My eyes were red from crying when I showed up at Rowdy’s. He asked what was wrong. I told him nothing. PMS, girl stuff. The microwave beeped and he took out some leftovers from the night before when we’d cooked together and made baked spaghetti with fancy cheese on top. He pulled out the chair for me and asked if I wanted a glass of wine and I said yes. He’d just gotten out of the shower and smelled so good, like hotel soap and sunshine shampoo. I wanted to eat him up. His name was written in invisible ink on my list. I hadn’t crossed it out yet but I wanted to. Bad.

  “I’ve been thinking maybe we should talk about us. Like, moving in together or something. You’re here all the damn time anyway and you know I love you, right?” Rowdy said, pouring wine and looking over at me.

  “I love you too, Jack.” My breath shivered out. I’d said I love you, Jack, over a
nd over again in my diary when I was sixteen, my looping high-school-girl handwriting sprawling across those pale blue lines. I’d said it in my head when I went away to college and again when I flunked out and moved back home to our little town and saw him working on the roof next to my parents’ house.

  I got a nervous gut, letting those words out. I picked up my fork, crossed my legs underneath the table. He put the wineglass in front of me and sat down. I knew he might find out. I was sure one of those assholes would tell him what I did. But if he ever asked me I’d lie about it. That’s what I was thinking as I sat there looking at Rowdy’s smile. You should’ve seen it. That ignorant beautiful bastard’s face lit up the whole room.

  Re: Little Doves

  We want him to. Make love. Kiss us. Touch us. All of us. He is our leader and we’ve chosen him; he is our leader and he’s chosen us. Our love overwhelms and embarrasses us but we water it, grow it, nurture it and speak to it—this garden. We smoke hand-rolled cigarettes in a circle of succulents and rub sticky sagebrush and apricot mallow under our arms. We are safe and he does not hurt us. He is gentle and we can leave whenever we want. He tells us this. You can leave whenever you want, his breath bright with cumin and tea. His shirt and pants and beard and skin and hands scented with one of us, some of us, all of us. He calls us his little birds, his little doves. We do not call him God. He tells us this. Don’t call me God. I am not God. I am a man, his breath sugar-heavy with blood-red wine and honey. He calls us his little animals, his little doves. We do not call him Daddy. He tells us this. Don’t call me Daddy. I am not your Daddy. I am your lover, his breath blooming with cannabis and sandalwood. His shirt and pants and beard and skin and hands scented with myrrh and vetiver and bergamot and basil and lemon and patchouli. A soupçon of lust-musk. Little thunders of orange, bitter and sweet. We are grown women and we want him, need him. We are birds that can fly away and come back home; we are birds with a nest to tend. We are birds with babies to feed. His mouth to our mouth to their mouth. We are birds that can escape this but we don’t want to. We want to be in the kitchen cooking for him, pregnant with seeds of him, watering them, growing them, nurturing them, speaking to them—our gardens. We wear sackcloth and pillowcase dresses and make dough with our rosemary hands. We put on our glowing nightslips and nightslip the bread into the oven, our fingers blued with berries. We close the kitchen windows to the Santa Anas—those devil winds—and we make sun tea on the back porch, waiting patiently for it, braiding each other’s hair smoked with cedar and cinnamon. The hell-orange fires dragon-rage to the north. He lifts our dresses, his hands pinked with berries. He squeezes our thighs, our full bottoms, his hands warmed with kettle water. He drinks milk from our breasts, licks our nipples and sucks, climbs inside of us and we open wide. Our drowsy eyelashes sweep him away and back again—across the white dew of morning, the navy mist of night. We press our mouths against his, slip our tongues into his heat, brush our cheeks against his soft, dark, vanilla beard, against the tender buffalo plaid he pulls on when evening cools. We beg for this, we ache for this, we want this. He gives generously, unselfishly, not unlike a god. We moan and sing in our nest until we are sirens silenced. We smell of him until we bathe in lavender rainwater, in holy hyssop and serious moonlight—rapturously captive. He tells us, You can leave whenever you want. Do you want to stay? Do you want this? Do you want? Do you? Say yes.