by Tayari Jones
I should have been over it by then, but I cringed, jumping back the way I did whenever Marcus raised his hand, even if he was just reaching for the light switch to give us some privacy. “Don’t be scared of me,” he had said just the day before, when I ducked as he was adjusting the light in the top of his car. I told him I wasn’t scared. I didn’t want to get into it al over again. It wasn’t like it happened al the time, and when it did, people had been drinking.
Twitching like that in front of James shamed me as much as the keyhole in the shirt. It wasn’t normal, this aversion to being touched. Marcus let me know that other girls didn’t behave like this, which only aggravated the situation. This flinching had become worse than a reflex; it was a stammer of the body.
I let my head hang heavy on my neck and said, “I’l change my clothes before I go. I wasn’t going to wear this, anyway.” I got up and I glanced at the clock, careful y, not wanting to draw attention to my nervousness.
“Sit back down,” James said. “Sit back down. What time is he picking you up? I want to meet him.”
“Nobody is coming to pick me up,” I said. “I am meeting the people over at their house. It’s not a date. It’s not just one person I’m going out with.”
“So you wearing that top with al your business hanging out just to see what you can catch?”
“Aw, Jimmy,” Raleigh said. “It’s not fair to talk to her like that.”
“I’m fair,” James said. “I would be the same way with Chaurisse. I’m fair. Evenhanded. Fifty-fifty in everything.”
Raleigh said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Speak for yourself,” James said. “I am trying to talk to my child here. It’s my duty.”
I touched my earlobes, disturbing my earrings. My mother’s mother had given them to her when she was born and when I was born, my mother gave them to me. She told me to give them to my daughter. I asked what would happen if I didn’t have one, what if I had only a son, or no children at al . “In that case,” my mother said. “You get to keep them and wear them in your coffin.”
James wet his finger again and aimed for my brow bone. Again, I jerked away.
“Dana?” Raleigh said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Reflexes. Nothing.” I kept repeating the last word, unable to stop myself.
“Dana,” Raleigh said again.
“Are you scared of me?” James said.
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” James said softly. “You’re scared of me. I’ve been a good father to you. You have no cause to be scared of me like that.”’
“I’m not scared,” I said, pleading now. I knew the feeling was cal ed déjà vu. “I’m not scared,” I’d said to Marcus in the dark of his parent’s bedroom. “I’m not,” I’d said, bal ing my shaking hands into fists and stuffing them under my thighs.
THAT HAD BEEN only two weeks earlier. I’d taken the 66 Lynhurst bus to Marcus’s house. When the bus passed right in front of my father’s house with its orange-sherbet bricks, I opened my mouth and swal owed air. The address was written out in cursive letters, SEVEN THIRTY-NINE, instead of just numbers like regular people. The sign staked in the yard read CHAURISSE’S PINK FOX. After West Manor Elementary, I pul ed the cord and the driver let me off. Marcus’s parents, whom I had never seen, were away at a bridge tournament. The house was stuffed with kids, some of them from other schools. I went into the bedroom looking for Marcus but found only Angie, a wild girl who wore keyhole tops even to school. She lay on his bed, talking on the telephone, looking up at the poster of Jayne Kennedy mounted on the ceiling. When I lay on Marcus’s bed, I always closed my eyes against the beautiful woman spread above me.
Wandering back into the living room, I found Ronalda who asked me what was wrong.
“Angie’s in his room.”
She corrected her eyeliner with her finger and frowned. “Are you going to leave?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Ronalda gave a deep sigh like she had already seen everything in the world. “You know what my mama says? ‘Your pride or your man. You can’t have them both.’”
The guys came in then from the backyard, where they had been working on the barbecue gril .
“The coals are hot,” Marcus said. He smel ed dangerous, like lighter fluid.
“Hi, Marcus,” I said, and waved. Maybe I sounded a bit too eager, because he tensed.
“Don’t get carried away,” he said. “It’s not that serious, babygirl.”
Everyone in the room laughed, except Ronalda.
Now I must have looked hurt, because Marcus approached me from behind, touching my waist and saying hel o into my hair. He greeted me like my father greeted my mother, except we were in front of other people. “You look good,” he said, pressing himself against my backside. I wanted to melt into him, but the laughter of his friends stil hung in the air.
“It was a joke,” Marcus said softly, stil directing his words into my scalp. “A joke. Why do you have to be so serious al the time?”
“I’m not mad,” I said.
“It wasn’t funny,” Ronalda spoke up from the couch.
Now al his friends laughed at him, although Ronalda hadn’t even made a joke.
“Bald-headed bitch,” Marcus said, but if Ronalda heard him, she didn’t react.
IT WASN’T LIKE on television. It wasn’t The Burning Bed. I wouldn’t even cal it violence, real y. Sometimes it was like a shove with a bit of a shake. Yes, there were slaps, but with a slap, the shock was in the sound more than anything else. It scared me, that was al . And I shouldn’t have asked him about Angie. The two of them had known each other forever. They went to the same church. Their houses had identical floor plans. They were bathed together as babies. I needed to learn how to trust people.
My mother says that if a man hits you once, leave. But the truth is this — my father smacked my mother across the jaw when I was six months old.
She stumbled out of the room, and he sat in front of my crib and cried. She says that was the first and only time. So it happens. But you can’t go around saying that.
I went into the kitchen to pour myself some cucumber water. James and Raleigh fol owed me like bodyguards. According to the clock on the microwave oven, Marcus was ten minutes late already; for once I was grateful for his habit of rarely keeping his promises. There was even the possibility that he wouldn’t show up at al . His life was busy, and he had many friends and obligations. That was just the way things were. Love didn’t always look and act the way you expected it to.
“So who’s the boyfriend?” my father wanted to know. He turned to Raleigh. “She’s too young to be going out this late at night, right?”
Raleigh picked up his camera and aimed it at my father’s face. When James repeated himself, I heard the click of the shutter. Raleigh turned the camera toward me, and I felt myself straighten, improve my posture.
“Not looking like that, Raleigh. Don’t take her picture,” James said. “What’s wrong with you?”
Raleigh lowered the camera.
I said, “I didn’t even say I had a boyfriend.” The lie reminded me of what Marcus had said on the night of the barbecue. I am not your boyfriend.
The memory made my left arm tingle. It wasn’t right for Marcus to talk to me like that, not in front of people, but I knew my father was a man to care only about what Marcus did to me, what I did with Marcus, or the things we did together. James stood before me with his fist throbbing like a human heart. He wanted to hit something. I took a step back.
“What?” James said.
“Nothing,” I said.
James returned to the living room, sat on the couch and the pil ows gave a sigh. “Where is your mama?” he wanted to know. “Why didn’t Gwen tel me about this boyfriend?”
I didn’t respond, and the room was quiet except for the pop of Raleigh’s knuckles. He was also a person longing to use his hands. I could te
l that he wanted to turn the camera on James again. My father was sitting on the sofa hunched over like a mourning bear. “I would have thought your mother was raising you a little better than this.”
“Don’t talk about my mother,” I said.
“He didn’t say anything about Gwen,” Raleigh said. “Dana, simmer down.”
“My mother’s at work. Not everybody can have a beauty parlor right in their own house. Not everybody can wear a fox-fur coat. Some people have to work.”
This was the kind of thing Mother said late at night when we were here alone, when she was drinking. I used the tone she used at the best part of the night, when she played her Simon and Garfunkel and sang “Sail on, silver girl” until her voice grew tough and textured. This was the way she sounded just before she started to cry.
“She is a good mother,” I said.
Raleigh murmured, “We know that.”
James said, “Don’t change the subject. Who is the boyfriend? How old is he?” He paced around the living room with heavy steps, making the picture frames rattle on the wal . Raleigh’s fingers stil fluttered on the shel of the camera, and I looked at the clock, not sure now if Marcus would show up at al and not sure if I wanted him to.
James turned to me. “W-w-w-what’s . . .”
I waited.
He tried again, “I-I-I-I w-w-ant to know . . .”
Standing up, James folded his lips over on themselves and breathed through his nose. Deep breaths swel ed his chest inside his cotton shirt.
“The name. I’l k-k-k . . .”
I leaned forward just a little bit. He was going to do what? Kick Marcus’s ass? Kil him? My mouth twitched into a little smile.
The words gave way with a swinging of my father’s arm, and I ducked.
“I wil kil him,” my father said. “I wil kil him. What’s his name?”
“Marcus McCready,” I said, and my father’s face changed.
“I know his father,” James said.
“The tax guy,” Raleigh said.
James sat back on the sofa. “God damn it. How old is he? Isn’t he out of high school yet?”
“He didn’t get kept back,” I said. “He has a late birthday.”
Raleigh said, “Didn’t he get in some trouble?”
“Is he going to col ege?” James asked me in a way that made it sound like he knew the answer.
“He’s taking the year off,” I said. “He’s going to work and save up some money.”
Raleigh patted James’s arm. “Dana, Marcus isn’t the kind of guy you want to even know your daughter’s name, let alone . . .” He looked at the keyhole. “Let alone whatever else.”
“He’s a loser, baby,” said James. “A pervert. He got kicked out of some private school.”
“Something like that,” Raleigh said.
Now my hands were pumping like a heart. “He’s on his way here.”
“I’l kil him,” my father said again, but his voice wasn’t so determined. His hands were not ready.
“No, you won’t.”
“I’m going to kil him.”
“Who are you going to tel him that you are?” I asked. “The neighborhood watch?”
“Watch your mouth,” James said.
Raleigh was looking at the window. “Does he drive a red Jetta?”
My father answered for me. “Yeah, that’s his car. I helped his daddy pick it out.”
We heard the horn. It was a queer sound. People weren’t yet used to foreign cars.
“He’s just going to blow the horn like that?” James said.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I am not letting you leave this house,” my father said. “I’m not playing, Dana.”
I reached for my keys on their purple rabbit’s foot.
My father said, “Put those keys down.”
Marcus blew the horn again. Two toots this time.
I took my keys from the coffee table. “He’s a nice guy.”
My father took two steps after me as I headed for the front door.
“Watch out,” I said, “or he’s going to see you.”
My father froze in his place. I stood in the doorway, longer than I needed to, waiting for him to spring forward like a superhero. I tugged the hem of my keyhole shirt. I pul ed my fingers through my hair, and looked hard at myself in the oval mirror in the foyer. These were my mother’s habits before leaving the house. I tamped my lips together and used my little finger to wipe away any eyeliner that may have smeared.
“I’m leaving now,” I said to my father. “Lock the door behind you.”
“Dana,” my father said, “do not walk out of that door.”
“Bye now,” I said. I opened the door and walked through it, not closing up behind me. I was hoping to hear my father’s feet behind me, but there was no sound from the house as I walked on the cracked cement driveway where Marcus waited, in the Jetta. The backseat was crammed with what looked like four other people, but the seat beside Marcus was empty, reserved for me. I was his girl, and tonight he didn’t care who knew. I turned toward the house and made out my father’s face shadowed in the doorway. I couldn’t see his expression, but I knew he could see mine. I knew he saw the fire in my face, the chal enge in my eyes.
Save me, James. I dare you.
8
FIG LEAF
AT THE START of my junior year, without ceremony, without even a big breakup fight, Marcus gave his class ring to a girl with four names: Ruth Nicole Elizabeth Grant. She had long hair like mine but not quite as ful . Her skin was like expensive china, pale and so thin that you could see a network of lavender veins crisscrossing on her eyelids. I would know that ring anywhere — the garnet stone with the one-eighth-karat diamonds on either side. I was sitting in English when my eyes were drawn to Ruth Nicole Elizabeth’s already impressive adda-bead necklace, weighed down in the center with the hunk of gold that was Marcus’s ring. I was so distraught that I begged Ronalda to skip third period so that I could spend some time recuperating in the cool safety of her basement. As soon as we arrived, I surveil ed Marcus’s house through the slats over the corner window of Ronalda’s stepmother’s study.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ronalda said. “You want to go with me to Fort McPherson? There are a lot of guys over there.”
“No.”
“You’re just going to wait him out?”
“He’l explain. Love is complicated.”
“Wel ,” Ronalda said with sympathy, “here go something else my mama said. ‘You like who you like and you can’t help it.’”
The next day I found Marcus in the student parking lot. He was always there when classes let out even though he supposedly worked with his father from nine to five. I snuck away before the last bel so I could talk to him before al the kids swarmed out and underclassmen would be shaking his hand like he was the president. His middle finger looked naked without his giant ring. He once let me try it on but wouldn’t let me keep it, even though I promised never to wear it to school. He had said it was too dangerous. “Evidence,” he cal ed it. It was okay for our friends to know about us, but at school, in front of adults, he had to be more careful. It made sense at the time, but Ruth Nicole was even younger than I was. If I was jailbait, she was super-jailbait.
As I explained this to him, Marcus told me to lower my voice and calm down. Was I trying to get him arrested? He told me not to worry. Ruth Nicole’s family knew his family. He rubbed my arm and spoke so gently that everything he said sounded like love. “Why do you care so much about that ring? It don’t mean nothing.”
I knew that I was supposed to be mad and I should have broken up with him. Ronalda, quoting more of her mother’s wisdom said, “You gotta decide whether half a nigger is better than no nigger at al .”
“Don’t cal him that.”
“You got it bad,” Ronalda said.
Down in the basement, we rifled through Ronalda’s father’s desk drawer and found what looked to be a nick
el bag of weed. It wasn’t the greatest quality, more seeds than anything, but we borrowed enough to rol a slender joint, which we shared in her stepmother’s office after jamming a towel under the door. Ronalda took hard pul s, trying to get buzzed quick. No one else was home, but she was paranoid that someone would walk in on us.
“If they catch me,” she said, “that’s it. They’l send me back to Indiana.”
“How can they get mad? You got it out of your father’s drawer.”
“It’s his house; he can do whatever he wants.”
“Al right,” I said, taking the smoldering wad. I put it to my mouth; it was damp from her lips. “I’l hurry up.”
She took the joint back and took a hard drag. “I’l blow you a shotgun.” I put my face next to hers and she blew the smoke right into my mouth.
“It’s not that I don’t want to go home,” Ronalda said.
“For a visit, right?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t mind going back. You know I don’t fit in here.”
“Yes you do,” I said.
“Don’t get al weird,” Ronalda said. “Al I mean is I wouldn’t mind going back home. I just don’t want to be sent back.”
“It’s the same thing,” I said. “Gone is gone.”
“No, it’s not.” She picked up the stub of the joint with her fingernails and lit it again. She held it to my lips.
“Your turn.”
I pul ed hard on the joint, trying to take enough in for the both of us. When she put her mouth to mine for the shotgun, I was going to push the words Please stay deep into her body.
“Don’t cough,” she said. “Coughing wil get you too high.”
“I can’t help it,” I said, hacking until my throat burned and tears wet my face.
BY HALLOWEEN, MARCUS had started hanging out again but only late at night and without anyone else around. A temporary arrangement, he promised. Since he was working, he had more money in his pocket. Sometimes we went to the Varsity or J.R. Crickets and he paid for everything, leaving the waitress a big tip so we wouldn’t get carded. Ronalda and I spent time together in the afternoons, doing homework, smoking dope, and watching Cinemax. It wasn’t a bad way to live. At six o’clock, I would climb aboard the 66 Lynhurst, a little bit hungry and stil a little bit high. This was why I preferred smoking to drinking. Liquor made me emotional while weed put a little daylight between me and my problems. It wasn’t that I forgot my troubles, it’s just that they didn’t trouble me quite so much.