Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  They agreed then that they wouldn’t pry themselves from the softness of the sheets, of each other, to get up and go to church. And Johnson nestled again into his delusion. It had been a long week for both of them they agreed and they would just sleep in this smoky Sunday morning and turn the forced hot-air heat to high and open the window about a quarter of the way because they liked the sensation of the cold and hot air mixing at their heads. They would snuggle this morning, they agreed, and listen to the intermittent bursts of traffic down on Walnut Street along with the mellow sounds crackling like a slow-burning fire from the radio. Roberta Flack was singing “Our Ages or Our Hearts” and they watched the fog push through the window and settle in over the bedroom and take the edge off of things.

  That’s when Verdi quoted Rowe, something benign and meaningless about never being able to really catch up on sleep you’ve missed. But just the fact that she was quoting him at all turned Johnson’s mood from the soft delusion that everything would be fine, to biting, prickly, and he lit in right then to insult Rowe, tried to cloak the insult, his sarcasm, his insecurities in a joke. Said, “Yeah well, that Negro looks like he don’t lose no sleep with his corny argyle-vested ass. I know he’s probably ’sleep by nine. Probably sleeps in starched pajamas too stiff as he is.”

  He laughed to hide his bitterness, but Verdi could see it all through the misty-colored air: his bitterness, his sarcasm, his insecurities dangling as a group from his smile that hung on his face like a weak crescent moon. She’d been feeling Johnson’s insecurities a lot lately whenever he’d start in on Rowe. She wondered where it was coming from. Was beginning to fathom that Johnson was actually jealous of Rowe.

  So she changed the subject from Rowe. Started talking about herself and Johnson as a couple instead. “I looove love love you, Johnson” she said as they faced each other on the twin-sized dorm bed, the covers pulled up over their chins so that their words were streams of heat bouncing between them. “All my love is just for you, no one, no one but you.”

  “Yeah right,” he said, half-jokingly, wanting, needing to hear the confirmation of her love for him. “You can just tell me anything because you know you put a trick on my mind, you know you got me under your spell.”

  “Wrong. My auntie and cousin are always teasing me about how much in love I am.”

  He thought about Bug’s orange vinyl couch when she said the part about her cousin and her auntie. Wondered if they’d seen through his weak promises by now that he would never touch that stuff again. Wondered if they’d tell Verdi and unspill her from his life. He cleared his throat and stiffened under the covers.

  She circled her arms around to the small of his back when she felt him tighten like that. “Johnson, baby, please tell me what is it?” she asked as she breathed into his chest.

  “I just feel like I’m losing you.” He only said it so that when she told him it was over for real, he’d be able to point to this moment, and say, see I told you you would leave me. He thought this even as he struggled to get Bug’s couch out of his mind because then he wouldn’t have to think about the contents of the miniature wax-paper Baggie that he had hidden in the inner lining of his pea coat. But now he did think about it and his insides were responding to the thought with a jittering that he fought to keep at bay. So he blended the truth of how he did feel about Verdi with the lie of what he’d been doing, stirred them around in his words so only streaks of truth showed through. “You know, Verdi, even if you’re getting ready to split on me, part of your mind, you know it’s like it’s not linked to my mind anymore, like take for instance that joker, that mf-ing history Joe you always quoting, it’s like he’s serving up a little brainwashing along with the history lesson. You know. As if he’s locked onto some part of you that I don’t reach anymore. It’s disturbing, baby. Just the thought is messing over me. I can’t even think straight when that thought takes ahold of my mind.”

  “Johnson, how can you say that?” she asked in a voice markedly louder as she propped herself on her elbow. “Rowe is, I mean, he’s you know, he’s a damn professor is what he is.”

  “No, he’s more than that,” he said as he drew his finger along the outline of her chin. “He’s got a prominence in your head that you don’t even realize. That’s what bothers me the most, how subtly he’s trying to get a lock on your mind, my baby’s mind. I’d rather die and go straight to hell than lose any part of my sweet, sweet, southern baby—” His words went low and crackled from the top of his throat so that he sounded as if he were moaning.

  Verdi pressed herself against him, convinced now that Johnson was somehow ascribing to Rowe’s grossly diminished view of him. That he was internalizing Rowe’s opinions about all the ways that Johnson was unfit to be a student here, certainly not measuring up to be a suitable object of her affection. She wondered right now if Johnson was beginning to think less of himself as a result. Hadn’t she studied the looking-glass theory in ed psych? And not just Rowe either, what about the other professors, the administrators, even his white classmates, what about all the people with whom he interacted in a single day, how many of them made Johnson see a lesser image of himself, that he was less than them, less bright, less capable, less industrious, less honest, less clean, less worthy? When she thought about it now, even his walk seemed less deliberate on some days, it was either erratic, as if he were in a hurry but not quite sure where he was even headed, or reduced to a stride that was more the shuffle of the downtrodden, not the purposeful gait of her Johnson, the one who taught her things, put new dimensions on definitions she’d taken for granted. Right now it was as if she could feel Johnson’s insecurities as a whir of circles in her own stomach. But not her too. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow Johnson to feel insecure about her love for him, her passion.

  She pushed back down under the covers, her voice dropped to a whisper. “As God is my witness,” she said. “Rowe, or no other man for that matter, has any part of me that’s not already dedicated to you; even if you haven’t gotten there yet, it’s waiting for you, baby.” She worked her hands then to draw him out, to consummate this moment, this declaration, so that there would be no doubt in his mind. His manhood was slow to rise though. Had been slow lately she’d noticed. So she worked her words right along with her hands. “Just a flash in my mind of our togetherness and a smile hints at even my most serious face,” she said as she tickled the bulge in his neck. “You know, I have to shift in my seat, or if I’m standing I’ve got to squeeze my thighs together, fold my arms tightly in front of me so that the sudden erectness in my chest doesn’t show. Look down, got to look down, baby, because if anyone looks in my eyes at that instant they might see what I’m seeing too.”

  She talked slowly and easily as their bodies entwined under the covers and they whispered sonnets to one another of everlasting adoration. And she was able to draw him out, finally. He throbbed against her and slid in and out and gurgled and pulsed and finally came in a stream that sputtered more than it gushed.

  She was on her elbow again looking down at him as his breaths settled back to normal. He looked so tired to her right now, dusty and ashy the way he looked when he’d fallen through the door last night, as if even his virility was seeping away right before her eyes, and at the same time something about the way he lay there wasn’t relaxed in a drained and satisfied way, but it seemed to her as though he wanted to jump out of his skin. She knew that part had nothing to do with Rowe. She wondered now if any of it had anything to do with Rowe. She asked him then if he was okay. “For all your talk about losing a part of me, it’s like I can almost see you disappearing in chunky, definable segments,” she said.

  “What are you talking about, baby?” he asked softly, seriously, not wanting to lose her concern that had just swathed him and held him and made him feel reborn. His breaths quickened though at her question, and he started to cough.

  “What am I talking about?” she asked as her voice cracked, suddenly, unable to carry the revelation that
had made the brick come in her chest the night before and made her cry, that she now knew meant that she’d been closing her eyes to something, she didn’t know for sure what, only that it must be significant. And now as she watched his chest heave in and out so that he seemed to be gasping, her memory was racing like a silver ball in a pinball machine, scoring, flashing lights and jingle bells, landing in the clown’s mouth racking up points, hitting on image after image of Johnson over the past few months, always late, always exhausted, broke, broken, dragging, always dragging.

  “What am I talking about?” she said again, louder, voice filling with irritation. “You tell me what I’m talking about. Something about you is not right, so you better tell me just what the hell am I talking about?”

  “Verdi—”

  “You been lying to me, Johnson.” She cut him off as she sat all the way up in the bed. Now she was out of the bed, naked and unashamed standing up over him. “What is it, Johnson? Some other woman tying up all your energy? Is that why you have excuse after excuse over why you can’t half get here?”

  “Verdi—”

  “Is that why you always broke though you supposedly working so much overtime?”

  “Verdi—”

  “Is that why you can’t even come right, can’t even fucking get hard?”

  “Verdi—”

  “Is that why you gonna throw up Rowe in my face, just to deflect attention away from you and whatever you’re doing?”

  “Verdi, Verdi, please, Verdi, you’ve got it wrong.”

  “Well, you better put it to right, then. If I’ve got it wrong, you’d better put the shit to right.”

  He swung his legs over and sat on the side of the bed and hung his head in his hands. He patted the space next to him, asking her, needing her to come sit beside him as he thought about what he should do. He knew what he wanted to do right now. More than anything he wanted to get to the contents of the skinny wax-paper Baggie in the lining pocket of his navy pea coat. His insides were jumping uncontrollably now at the thought. His naked body was cold and he hugged his arms across his chest and looked up at her and begged her to please come sit next to him. If he could have her warmth against him right now maybe he’d have a chance at talking his insides into being still, maybe he wouldn’t convulse uncontrollably as he felt himself getting ready to do. “Please, Verdi, please.” He begged. His words were soupy as he tried not to cry.

  She just stood there. She was cold now too in her naked skin as the outside air was winning over the warmer gusts pushing up from the heater. She went to the window and slammed it shut, calling herself a fool as she did. “Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I see it?” she asked out loud, not sure what it was she hadn’t seen so she just assumed it was another woman especially the way Johnson sat in a heap on the side of the bed as if he were in the process of collapsing even as his words streamed out and she wanted to cover her ears, hadn’t Charity said something about a girl last night, she didn’t want to hear it, because as long as she didn’t hear it maybe it wasn’t true. So she braced herself praying that it wasn’t some woman she knew, maybe someone who smiled up in her face on a daily basis, maybe some tall, lithe, stunning beauty, maybe even a white girl, please God don’t let it be a white girl, she thought as she listened for the spaces between his words, but his words had no spaces as they gushed forward, nor did they hold some woman’s name, just Bug this, and Jones that. And what was he saying about Jones? And Bug told him how sweet it would be, and it was sweet—

  “What?”

  “It was so sweet.”

  “What tell me what?”

  “The only thing sweeter has been you.”

  “Johnson, tell me what,” she yelled. “What? Tell me what! Right now! Tell me what you’re talking about!”

  And he told her then what he’d been doing, how it had started out on Bug’s couch just to be cordial sociable, to lift his mood. And before he knew it he was popping it under his skin once a month, then twice. Always turn-ons at first though, always free, he said. Until it became a regular thing, a three-even four-times-a-month ritual and he started paying Bug good money for nodding time on his couch. He wanted to stop, every time he’d done it lately he’d sworn to himself it was his last. But it was so sweet to him, the only thing with which to even compare this incalculable sweetness was their time together.

  He was crying now, confessing to Verdi as if she wore a clergy’s robe even though she was naked and cold as she came and sat down next to him. And now he was begging her to help him. “Help me, baby,” he cried as if he were praying to a God who really could help him and since he didn’t know how to invoke the name of a real God he just called Verdi’s name over and over again and gave her the power to save him in that instant as their bare bodies shook against each other even as he broke out into a sweat.

  But Verdi couldn’t help him. Not even a little bit. It was unfair of him to ask; it was much too much of him to ask. She wasn’t his God, as much as she studied her Bible, went to church, knelt down on the side of her bed before she went to sleep at night; as much as he admired her apparent goodness. She was just a confused college student out of her element since she’d been here, and since she had survived here, lulled into believing that she knew what she was doing, knew how to take the appropriate action when the man she loved sat next to her naked and convulsing saying that he had a jones, asking her to take it away. “Take it away, baby, please. Please take away this jones.” And since she wasn’t old enough or wise enough to understand that she could never save him, never could save anybody, that all she could do for him right now to really help him was offer to call student health, his adviser, his mother, the Pennsylvania Institute for the Mentally Ill. Then open her dorm-room door, ask him to leave her university apartment, to leave her entire world because she couldn’t quell his cravings, nor should she, would she serve as their substitute. But she was only nineteen, only so smart. So unwise. So she did all she had the capacity to do at that moment, as her lips turned blue because she was so chilly even as Johnson leaked his sweat all over her, and he held her so closely until her chest was closing up and her breaths went thin and she started to cry and she thought the only way to help him, to save him was to understand him, understand what he was doing, had done. He could barely hear her when she said, “Show me, Johnson. Show me what you’ve gotten yourself into. Show me, Johnson. I want to do it too.”

  And had Johnson been more right-minded he would have denied her, even pushed and shoved her away if need be, he would have said no with a finality that she couldn’t beat down like the way he said no when she’d beg to go with him when he went to buy their weed because he knew he couldn’t keep her safe in some drug house. But he wasn’t in his right mind, a fog still hovered over his brain from the day before yesterday’s high and then having that high turn on him and make him sick when Tower confronted him. And now the itch was starting that was the surface of his skin warning him that it had to be soon, that this itch would spread from outside in to the next layer of his epidermis, down on through his muscles, that his brain would crawl like his skin was now if the liquid music wasn’t soon to start, that even the very core of him would cry out needing relief. So it wasn’t a decision he made with his right mind as he reached into the lining pocket of his pea coat and pulled out the wax-paper Baggie with the dull white contents, so beautiful that bag looked to him, more beautiful even than Verdi. Nor was it a decision he made with his heart, because right now he had no heart, was incapable of loving anything except the contents of that wax-paper bag.

  He was skilled and clinical as they sat together on the beanbag pillow in the center of her bedroom floor and he told his insides to be still, his turn was coming up soon. And Roberta Flack’s voice oozed from the radio and the forced hot air whirred through the vents. He didn’t talk, didn’t instruct Verdi the way he did when she’d first smoked joint, or sipped the head off of a beer, he didn’t say you put this in the bottle cap, that in the spoon, he bare
ly breathed as he traced his finger up and down Verdi’s vein and let his thumb rest against the thickest one; the one that pulsed like a heartbeat. And then he tied the rubber tourniquet tightly just above her elbow, and he extended her arm and droplets of sweat shimmered on the vein highlighting it so that it was so easy to see even under the fog of the morning sky that hung over the room and watched in horror as Johnson pierced it in. All the way in. And Verdi squeezed her eyes shut and made a sucking sound as her rich healthy blood, O-positive, the kind the Red Cross begged for because of its versatility, her blood splashed around in the needle head furiously appalled and trapped.

  And surely Hortense felt it at that instant as her breath caught at the top of her throat and made her cough and choke and spit into her lacy handkerchief even as she sat on the front pew and looked up as her husband began to pray; and Leroy felt it as a thud in the center of his chest that made him pause and clear his throat and then the words “Our Father” wouldn’t even come. Kitt felt it as a squeezing in and out around her temples so that she started undoing the rollers in her hair. And Posie felt it as a shaking in her hands that made it impossible for her to smooth on her frosted lipstick right now. Even Rowe, sitting at his kitchen table unfolding his Sunday paper this morning, could barely see through his eyes to the print on the page though he boasted often about his perfect vision. They all felt what Verdi couldn’t feel right now as she sang along with Roberta Flack that it was okay for Jesus to change her name. “Whew, shit, change it, Lord, ha, ha, ha, ha.” Then she sang some more as her head bobbed around and the air in front of her turned thick and smooth as cream, she laughed that laugh that Posie had heard in Johnson that sounded like a death rattle. She didn’t hear it as such though, didn’t hear much of anything right now except pings of metal firing one after the other in an orgasm in her head that went on and on and on even as she nodded off into the milky blue.