So We Can Glow

by Leesa Cross-Smith

  Out of the Strong,

  Something Sweet

  Always, the three of us. One black girl, two white girls in the sun—those clicky striped vinyl lawn chairs from 1985ish that Claire’s dad still had in their garage for whatever reason. We were in the backyard, not the front. Last time we were out front, Mandy’s asshole brother stopped in his red Stang and asked us if we knew what a pussy was before skeeing off and running the stop sign at the end of our street. Hannah had sat up and pushed her sunglasses atop her head. Of course we know what a pussy is, asshole. We were fourteen. Mandy’s asshole brother was seventeen and thought he knew the world because his dad gave him that car. Because next year he’d be a senior. Like it mattered. What mattered is that he’d scared Claire and Claire had told her mom and Claire’s mom had told Claire’s dad and Claire’s dad had walked over to Mandy’s house and told Mandy’s parents what her asshole brother had said to us. Claire’s dad told Mandy’s parents he’d better never catch her asshole brother ever talking to us again. Claire’s dad could be scary. He always had a knife in his pocket, he rode a motorcycle, he looked like he’d done everything at least once. Claire’s mom told us to lay out in the backyard instead. Never the front. So we did. And none of us were friends with Mandy anyway.

  I wasn’t trying to get tan the same way the white girls tried to get tan. How they’d hold their arms up to mine and say I’m almost as dark as you and I wouldn’t say anything because everyone knows white people want to be black and no white person wants to be black. It’s hard to understand because it’s both. I liked how hot my skin could get out there. How good it felt to spritz water all over my arms and legs and lie there and smell like coconuts and think about boys and the stack of romance paperbacks I had waiting for me when I got back home. And Hannah and Claire and I actually liked each other, which my mom had told me was very rare, ever since the three of us met in elementary school.

  My mom actually liked both of their moms too and my mom didn’t really like any of the other moms because she said they were the kind of women who grew up only wanting to be moms, they don’t want anything else. “There’s nothing else up here,” she’d said, tapping the side of her head. When I grew up I wanted to be a mom like my mom and not like the other moms. Not like the moms with nothing else up there. I pictured empty rooms filled with empty cribs and empty milk bottles rolling against one another—a creepy, dirty mobile sputtering out a slow “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on almost-dead batteries.

  Hannah had a black boyfriend. Claire’s boyfriend was from Mexico. I liked a white boy called Milo because his name was Milo. I didn’t know where he was from. He was friends with their boyfriends. Our plan was to sneak out of Claire’s bedroom window once her parents had gone to bed and meet the boys by the railroad tracks. We wanted to be out when the moon was full and high. Midnight. We weren’t allowed to stay out past eleven. We’d been feeling dreamy all day, drunk on summer sun and tart strawberries and fizzy water. It was July and the day was dangerous; the words twenty-second made my mouth move like a kiss and a bite. Claire’s house was big and her parents never woke up until morning. We’d showered and sat on her bed listening to music and watching the clock until it was time to leave.

  Window open.

  Climb out.

  Reach back inside.

  “Quiet.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Seriously, shut UP.”

  Window closed.

  “Where is Milo from?” Hannah asked quietly as we walked through Claire’s neighbor’s wet grass.

  “Shh,” Claire said.

  “I’m whispering,” Hannah snapped.

  “It’s not a question you need to know the answer to right this second. You can never chill,” Claire said.

  I laughed.

  “Shh,” Claire said again.

  “Your shushing is louder than our laughing and whispering,” Hannah said.

  Claire laughed too. We were at the end of the street and finally Claire felt free. We all felt free. Somehow, her face was even frecklier by moonlight and I stood there looking at her, her purple hood pulled up, the little black-and-white shorts we passed between the three of us like an accidental Sisterhood of the Traveling Black-and-White Shorts. I loved Claire. I loved her so much. I loved Hannah too. I felt blessed by them and felt blessed to know it. I was one thing when I was alone. I was another, better thing when the three of us were together. We were walking quick, but I still prayed all lit up under the streetlight that we’d be friends forever. I was thinking amen when I heard Hannah’s boyfriend psst us in the darkness. Apsstmen. We’d hung out so much, I even recognized his psst.

  “Baby girl,” Claire’s boyfriend said. I saw him reach for Claire when we were in the light. I heard the chain fence rattle next to me. Milo’s black hair, full moon-white skin. Hannah had already smashed herself into her boyfriend’s arms.

  “Hey,” Milo said.

  “Where are you from?” Hannah asked him immediately.

  “Spearfish, South Dakota,” he said.

  “Who’s from South Dakota?” Hannah asked, laughing.

  “Me,” he said plainly.

  I decided I was in love with him.

  He cupped his hand and lit his cigarette. His hair twitched across his face. I begged for mercy. He whipped his head back to adjust it. Mercy denied. I decided I would die for him—slit my neck and bleed out on top of him. Soak him like some Shakespearean tragedy. You know, if he wanted me to. Like, for love.

  “Come up here,” Claire said from the train tracks stage. The moon, a spotlight.

  We went up there and the boys talked about some other places we could go. They creeped us out talking about the Pope Lick Monster that haunted the railroad trestle bridge on the other side of town. Made people fall to their death.

  “But that’s not real,” Hannah said.

  “Trust me, it’s real,” her boyfriend said.

  They started kissing. Claire’s boyfriend asked her if she was scared of the monster and she said yes. Milo ignored them and told me he liked my watch. I pushed the little button on the side so he could see it light up. The blue of it, coloring the tip of his nose.

  * * *

  If we were feeling bold, but not bold enough to challenge the Pope Lick Monster, we could hop the next train. Maybe we’d make it and disappear. I’d start calling Milo Moon and I’d change my name too. I’d be Dakota so I could always remind him who he was, where he came from. He’d grow his black hair out and I’d braid it down his back, find a thin ribbon and tie it there. We’d get matching tattoos, some inside joke we hadn’t even dreamt up yet, but when we got to the tattoo place it would come to us and the tattoo would always remind us of that night, that summer, that year, that specific gauzy feeling watering our eyes and warming our cheeks and numbing our tongues and tingling our faces when we were together.

  If we were feeling violent, we could go to Mandy’s house and beat the shit out of her asshole brother. Ask him if he knew what a pussy was. Take him to the bathroom mirror and tell him he was looking right at it. That’s what a pussy was.

  If we were feeling sad, we could sit in the rocky grass by the tracks and ask questions about God and why the world was the way it was. We could talk about evil. How it’s inescapable and endless. How it’s like death.

  I could kiss Milo’s neck or ask him to kiss mine. Have sex with him and get pregnant and be one of those moms I never wanted to be.

  I could watch Hannah and Claire kiss their boyfriends and wish I had one. I could ask Hannah and Claire and their boyfriends if they wanted to kiss me. I could tell Milo I thought about him once in my bed. Under the covers. Okay, twice. Okay, three times. Fine, every night.

  I could do it. I could do anything. We could do anything. Anyone could do anything. We didn’t need to escape from anything in order to escape. Escape for escape’s sake. We could run and run and run and run and run. We could be running. We should always be running.

  * * *

&nb
sp; The train was coming when we saw Claire’s dad walking toward us through the grass. The train was coming when I heard Hannah say shit and when Milo put out his second cigarette and kissed me on the mouth before hopping the fence. The boyfriends were running right behind him. Claire’s dad didn’t seem angry. His face was calm. He looked like an oil painting, the colors around him both bold and dark—the amber glow of the lamps lining the road, the pitchy midnight sky, his beaming white T-shirt and whatever color pajama pants. The orange tip of the cigarette he was smoking. That moon, that full moon, bewitching us. I even thought I saw him smiling. Or maybe it was the train making the lights flash his face. I was between the girls and we were holding hands. Claire was crying; Claire was always the first to cry. Her dad motioned for us to come toward him. His arm, a wing spread wide for us to hide under. We felt most like sisters with Claire’s dad. He treated the three of us like a one-hearted girl. The boys were probably halfway across the neighborhood already; boys were always running. Claire said, Daddy. Hannah said shit again. Claire shushed Hannah and I resisted the urge to tell Claire it was too late to shush us. It didn’t matter anymore. Claire’s dad’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The train was too loud, too violent.

  The Lengths

  Kieran was bottle green in her mouth—the taste of wilted, salted kale. Sometimes she convinced herself she could still hear the popping Morse code braille of his tap dancing, a kaleidoscopic map of sound leading the way back to him. Even when he was home in Ireland. Even when he had shows in New York. Even when he had shows in New Zealand and she was in her American bed alone with a steamy mug of tea and clover honey, reading historical fiction about dashing warriors thundering the ground on leviathan, shadow-black horses.

  They were a romance novel come to life, only Kieran usually wore a too-big sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. God bless the sexy superhero mysteriousness of a half-covered face. He also danced on street corners, in Irish pubs, restaurants, places where people sat down for foamy black-brown pints of Guinness, fried fish and chips with thick wedges of lemon. Cottage pie, bangers and mash. Cheese and chive fritters, beef stew. Irish whiskey steak, soda bread, butter. Sticky toffee pudding.

  The first time she saw him, someone at the table next to them said Kieran’s quick feet cast a spell. Hypnotized. His legs, his muscular, wood-strong thighs—they were magic wands. Her friend snorted, she blushed. They Beavis and Butt-Head laughed.

  Heh. Magic wand. Abraca-effing-dabra. Girrl, he can use his magic wand on me.

  That first night, first kiss after the pub closed, Kieran handed her a frosty, pocket-sized bottle of bourbon. They passed it back and forth, draining it in the white winter night. The snow-pink sky was so pretty, it worried her. She ached. She could feel it in her back, the upper muscles of her arms.

  What they became: muscle ache and massage, spoon and spoon rest. Relying on one another as much as snowflakes and Narnia lamppost light, helium balloon and string.

  “Your hair, it’s like…red clouds,” she said, handing herself over to him—vanishing into the drumming of her bourbon-flickered blood.

  Small and High Up

  I.

  Composing an email to him that I will not send: William, I would save the buttons that come in those tiny plastic bags attached to your new dress shirts. Take pleasure in releasing the pins from the collar and turn it over to unpin the back, hearing the paper crinkle inside. I want to tell William how much I love his ears. They are small and high up. I want to grab them and gently twist like I am opening a can of something. I’d let you take me away from all this. Please. When I’m having an awful day, being in your presence lifts me like a little puff of air that keeps a feather from falling to the floor. I am embarrassed to tell you about the sadness I feel when I consider all the land in every city in every country in every world that is set aside to bury the dead. How the thought of it warms my face as if I’ve just opened the oven door. That heat—fervid, orange-pulsing and stealing breath.

  II.

  I can see us in California, our future commune house and the farmhouse kitchen where I am soaking the rosemary garlic bread with extra-virgin olive oil. I gather the plum tomatoes we grow in our backyard, hammock them heavy in the hem of my sundress, staining the fabric with rainwater and dirt and rainwater and dirt and rainwater and dirt. I smell my hands before washing the tomatoes under the hard-shh flow of our kitchen sink. Before dropping them into the rolling, bubbling boil to soften and swell before I smash them between my fingers. William smells like cedar and peppermint, William smells like the Santa Anas. I won’t care what anyone says, William will be my king and I will be his little bird. After dinner, I will tie my long hair back with a thick, slick ribbon. He and I will sit on the porch and drink and talk about how full we are. How we ate too much how could we eat that much why do we always do this. His black coffee, my ginger tea and lemon because I am pregnant with his lemon-sized baby and the ginger helps the nausea.

  III.

  William, let me tell you how I feel (small and high up!) when I look at your cuffed cerulean shirtsleeves, the expensive, slippery-silver watch sliding over your wrist bones. I wonder about alllll of your pale yellow bones and if your father ever fought in a war. I daydream about a time when you will make my entire body feel like an ear, like a fallen eyelash, a fingertip, pointing. I turn on my computer, open a blank email to him. Go stand in front of the refrigerator. Hold a full can of pop to my cheek, to the back of my neck. William, you are so long. So tall. Like a monster, but not scary. I promise if you were my man, I’d let you make every part of me feel like a mouth. William, don’t you want to make me feel like a mouth?

  Some Are Dark, Some Are Light, Summer Melts

  You are scared of Nick, so you stall and tell him you have to stop by a friend’s house. You tell Nick this friend is going to ride with you to drop Nick off at his place. The friend will sit in the backseat. You know how bad Nick’s temper can be, so you say this gently, touch his shoulder when you tell him the friend is a guy. You’ve dated bad boys before, but Nick isn’t a bad boy he’s a bad guy and those are totally different things to you. You never meant for things to get this far. You should’ve gotten him out of your life the first time he grabbed your arm too hard. Or the second. Or the third. He doesn’t grab your arm when you tell him your friend is a guy and he’s going to ride with you. You are at a red light and you are staring straight ahead. You’re a steel cage, careful not to cry.

  The friend is Owen and you know Owen from the ice cream shop where you both work. Owen is kind without being flirty and maintains a boyish distance without being aloof. Owen’s sweetness and genuine kindness is hard on people. It’s almost stressful. How is he so great? Owen seems to be oblivious to how he makes girls feel, how he makes you feel comfortable and safe, like nothing could ever happen to you when he is around. When you and the other ice cream girls close up the shop at night, there are moments when you are anxious and afraid a man could show up. A brutal man, a man with a weapon, a man who would tie your hands and feet or put you in the freezer or rape you on the cold floor or kill you with a look. The ice cream girls are not anxious or afraid when Owen is there because he acts like he’s never been scared of anything. He smiles before he goes outside to sit on the bench and read. Owen is casual about his phone use and sometimes he doesn’t even take it with him. He sits there and reads. Actual books. Books like On the Road and the other Kerouacs. Kurt Vonnegut too. Once he was reading James Baldwin. Another time, a book of poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. He’d read “We Real Cool” to you as you stood there under the awning with him one day. He snapped his fingers and smiled at you, sweet. And when his shift was over he left without saying goodbye because he can do things like that without being rude.

  You can trust Owen. And you are glad he answered your text.

  Owen. Will you ride with me somewhere? I’ll explain later. Can I come pick you up?

  Yes. This sounds quite mysterious so how could I
say no? I’m at home. Come on over.

  Nick is pissed. Nick is always pissed. He’s looking out his window. You have never told Nick about Owen and it’s kismet that Nick has never been to the ice cream shop when Owen is there. Nick would’ve been immediately jealous because Owen is the kind of cute you like and Nick knows that. Nick is going to meet Owen soon and Nick will be even angrier than he is now. But this will fix it. Nick will leave you alone because something about Owen is magic. Nick doesn’t have to know Owen is asexual. You would never tell Nick. Owen trusted you enough to tell you, so you trusted him back. Hard.