by J. J. Murray
Jenny’s dollhouse is like a good mystery novel. The more I dig through the layers and the dirt, the more mysteries I solve. I feel more like a detective than a tenant, gradually revealing the secrets of the house.
I spent the better part of spring break hacking, carving, and digging until a parking area appeared. Then I trimmed and cleared bushes, saplings, and tree branches from the worst section of the long driveway. I was sweaty and sticky, bugs dive-bombing me as the sun started to set, but I felt wonderful.
But Juan Carlos wasn’t havin’ it.
“Why did you not wait for me to help you?”
“I had nothing better to do,” I said as we ate some grilled cheese sandwiches, our first meal together in my new house. Besides, I had thought, if I waited on his ass (or Roger’s or Karl’s), nothing would get done.
He didn’t ask to move in with me, but I didn’t think he would. What would his mama say about that? However, I have to entertain the possibility that Karl or Roger may ask me that very question. I already know my answer: No.
How would they react? Hmm. Karl would probably shrug it off. Yeah, Karl’s a roughneck. He wouldn’t care. He would just ask to ask, you know? To be polite. Roger … Hmm. Roger is more of an enigma. He would probably go away hurt, hardly saying a word, and that would hurt me the most, since we have the best conversations. But then … then he’d be back as if nothing had happened.
At least I hope he’d come back.
I was so happy and unparanoid that first day—I finally had one of my men visit me at my new house, far from Roanoke—that I did something stupid. I promised Juan Carlos that I’d cook for him whenever he visited, and I regretted it once school began again. I was too tired to cook anything special, since I was also going to football practice for the Revenge after school. I made hot ham-and-cheese sandwiches and home fries one night and baked spaghetti another night. But no matter what I cooked, Juan Carlos rarely said anything positive about the meal.
“Is there something burning?” he’d say as he walked into the kitchen.
“No.”
I found myself talking to the pots and pans on the stove. I hoped they wouldn’t take it personally.
He did the same thing each day he visited. First, he commented on what he wanted for dinner, always something he knew I didn’t have, like steak or rice. Then his nose detected some stench that only he could smell. After that, he’d lounge in front of the TV, flipping back and forth between the only two channels that came in clearly because I didn’t have an antenna. After watching or finding nothing on the “stupid TV,” he’d share that information with me and bellow, “I am hungry!” from the top of the stairs.
Meanwhile in the kitchen, I slammed cabinet doors and cursed the walls. We didn’t eat like a proper couple—in the kitchen—but instead used TV trays upstairs. After the meal, finished without my receiving so much as a “thank you,” I descended to the kitchen, washed and dried the dishes, straightened up, and tried to read some of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God while he cursed the TV in Spanish.
I had become Juan Carlos’s other mother in a matter of days. My “love shack” was fast becoming Juan Carlos’s “snack shack.”
If I wasn’t interested in the “nothing” he found on TV, I’d sit in the easy chair reading about Janie Crawford, Hurston’s magnificent heroine, and the three men in her life. Juan Carlos was beginning to sound and act more and more like Jody Starks, Janie’s second husband, who treated her just a tiny bit better than a slave. I feel you, Janie Crawford, I thought as I read. I know what you’re going through because I have a man over here commanding my sofa, waiting, on purpose, until I’m in the middle of an interesting passage to announce things.
“I will be working double shifts until June starting next Thursday.”
I ignored him.
“Lana?” He hit the mute.
“Huh?”
“I said that I will be working double shifts until June starting next Thursday.”
“Oh.”
“It will be difficult for me to see you.”
I shrugged. “We’ll find a way.” I put down my book. “Why don’t we do something special while we have the time?”
“Like what?”
“Like … let’s go to the movies and then come back here to mess around.”
“We do that all the time. It is not special.” He nodded. “We will go dancing Friday night. I know a good place to go.”
“Where?”
“In Roanoke. It is a small club run by my friend.”
That wasn’t going to happen. That couldn’t happen. I mean, just going to a movie, where I insist that we sit in the last row, is hard enough. I have to first find out where the other two are so we can see a movie where they aren’t. Even so, half the time I spend more time watching the folks around us than the movie.
“Yes,” he said with a smile, “we are going dancing.”
I like a decisive man, but I had to think quickly. I hadn’t been dancing in so long. I really like dancing, and with tall, sexy Juan Carlos as my partner, I envisioned having his long, strong hands around me, grabbing my ass … looking up into his sexy unshaven face, his dark eyes … grinding on him all night long.
But not in Roanoke. Roanoke likes to talk. Roanoke has no life, so it sucks the life out of others’ lives by running its mouth. Roanoke is a gossip, a perpetual Nosy Parker at the beauty salon of southwest Virginia.
“Why don’t we go down to Greensboro? They have better clubs than Roanoke.” For black folks, that is, and Juan Carlos is just dark enough to pass for black. “And the Revenge doesn’t play this weekend, so …”
“I do not understand why you must play football,” he said. “It is not for a lady to do.”
It is for this lady. Only Roger has ever seen me play football, and the massages he gives me after my games are heavenly. In fact, only Roger and I have ever sat down and watched football together, making all sorts of silly, um, sexual bets. If my team makes a first down, he has to go down on me. If my team scores, I score. I always pick the team with the best offense, and he always seems to choose the team with the worst defense for some reason.
I, um, I really like it when my team scores lots of points, and Roger doesn’t seem to mind if his team gets shut out.
I guess if I really think about it, I play a little football in bed, too. For me, either a man is going to pop me with a kiss or he’s gone. Either we’re going to be tackling each other or he’s going to be stepping. If I don’t sweat or end up dirty, bruised, or cut, we aren’t trying hard enough. If afterwards I don’t ache, the love didn’t take and I might not be awake. If a man gets with me, he had better like to shake and bake all the way into my end zone.
Juan Carlos used to think he might break me in two during sex. “That’s not going to happen, Juan Carlos,” I told him. “You can shake and bake me, but you’re not going to break me.”
I can’t say the same thing to Karl. He really knows how to party in my end zone.
Juan Carlos and I often argued about my “hobby,” as he called it, and that night was no different.
“You know I want to stay in shape for you, Juan Carlos,” I had said. “You like me to be athletic in bed, right?”
“In bed, yes.” He smiled.
“So I’m just trying to stay in shape for you.” And Karl. And Roger.
“But you will grow out of this.”
“I am not a child, Juan Carlos.”
“You will grow out of this,” he repeated.
Nope. “Look, I want to go dancing with you, but only in Greensboro, okay?”
“But why do we have to drive all the way to North Carolina to go dancing?”
It took a lot of convincing—and several condoms— but Juan Carlos gave in after lots of horizontal dancing.
On Friday, I prepared for our night of dancing. I picked out an electric blue, backless, one-piece short set. The neckline plunged, revealing the top of what cleavage I had, and my long sexy l
egs smoldered out of my shorts. I modeled in front of the mirror and said, “Girl, I see a whole lot of you leaking out all over.”
Juan Carlos didn’t like what he saw at all. “You are wearing that?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It is too revealing. I want you to change.”
I rolled my eyes and neck. “No.”
“No?”
“No.” I can be decisive, too.
He said nothing for two straight hours, until we got to a club in Greensboro, where I discovered that Juan Carlos could not dance a lick. Not a lick. He was too stiff, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he couldn’t keep up with the hip-hop beat. Meanwhile, I jiggled, undulating smoothly in rhythm to the music. A couple of black guys with a whole lot more rhythm than Juan Carlos bounced and shook their way between us, and for a moment, Juan Carlos disappeared.
And I didn’t give a shit.
Four songs later, I looked around, located Juan Carlos at a table, and walked over. “Did I wear you out already?”
“No. I disappeared, and you did not notice.”
I sat across from him. “This place is jamming! Do you mind if I dance some more?”
“Yes, I mind if my girlfriend dances with other men.”
He was one-third right, anyway. Each one of my men thinks he’s my boyfriend, which means, I guess, that I’m not duplicitous, but “tri-plicitous,” and it definitely makes me trip sometimes.
I took his hand. “Come out and dance, then, Juan Carlos. You asked me out to go dancing, so do some dancing with me.”
He tried to pull his hand away from mine. “I cannot compete.”
He had that right. I dropped his hand. “Well, if you hear a slow song, come on out.”
That club didn’t play a single slow song that night, most likely to keep people sweaty and drinking their overpriced drinks. Juan Carlos had bought us Cokes, and the ice cubes in my glass had all melted by the time I came over for a rest.
“You’re not having fun, are you?” I asked.
“I am having the time of my life sipping a flat Coke in a smoky room while black men make moves on my girlfriend.”
Two of my dance partners came over to our table. Both of them were tall, black, and sharply dressed. “Yo, girl, you comin’ back out?” the one with the gold earring asked.
I looked at Juan Carlos and raised my eyebrows. “Can I?”
“No. It is not all right.”
“What you askin’ him for?” Golden Earring asked, putting his butt in Juan Carlos’s face.
I looked at Golden Earring with eyes that said “I’d remove that booty from his face if I were you.”
I focused on my hands. I started to speak and stopped. I looked at Juan Carlos quickly, then back down at my hands. “I’m tired, fellas.”
“What’s your number?” the other one asked. “We’ll hook up sometime.”
Juan Carlos stood. “My girlfriend is tired.”
Golden Earring turned and frowned at Juan Carlos. “Yeah, right.” He leaned in toward me. “So how about that number?”
Juan Carlos grabbed me by the wrist. “Come on, Lana. It is time to go.”
I looked at them and stood. “I have to go,” I said, and I squeezed by them, my eyes on the floor all the way to the exit.
Juan Carlos didn’t speak to me all the way back to Jenny’s dollhouse, another silent two-hour ride, and when I asked if he wanted to fool around when we got there, he said, “You must be too tired from all that dancing.”
“I’m not tired, Juan Carlos.”
“Well, I am. What was that about back there, Lana?”
“What was what about?”
“Those two guys. You did not say I was your boyfriend.”
I shook my head. “We shouldn’t have gone.”
“Because you think I cannot dance?”
I stared holes in his head. “We just shouldn’t have gone. And anyway, why’d you take me dancing if you can’t dance?”
“I can dance. Just not like them.”
Not like anyone I’ve ever seen, actually. “So they were good dancers, Juan Carlos. You know I’d never hook up with them.” Unless they moved to Roanoke, but Roanoke has no good dance clubs. Hmm. Maybe I should start one. I’ll call it “The Spot,” and then people will say, “See you at The Spot.” Golden Earring can come, and then maybe he can hit my G-spot at The Spot—
“Maybe you moved far away to get far away from me.”
I hated having a fantasy interrupted. So, though he was right—sort of—I stood silently in front of him for a few moments. It was almost as if we were on a blind date, and though he was one of my friends with benefits, I didn’t recognize him at all.
“Look, I moved out here to get away from Roanoke, to get a little solitude.” To have my men come to me, to keep y’all separated, to keep this good thing going good. I touched his hand. “I didn’t move here to get away from you. I moved here so that we could have more time together alone.”
He pulled his hand away from my hand. “Then why did you flirt with the black boys?”
Because they were fo-ine! “I wasn’t flirting. I was dancing. There’s a difference.” Though from the way I dance, I’m more than just flirting. Teacher’s aides who play professional women’s football don’t get out much, you know.
“We are not going dancing ever again,” he said.
“Okay, we won’t go dancing ever again.”
“That is right.”
He started to undress, and at that moment, I didn’t want to do anything with him. “Juan Carlos?”
“What?”
“Put your clothes back on.”
“What?”
“I want you to leave now.”
“What?”
“I do not want to be with you tonight.”
“What?”
I grabbed his shirt and threw it at him. “I don’t stutter, Juan Carlos. Go home.”
“Why?”
And then it all poured out. “Because you never say ‘Thank you, Lana,’ when I cook for you. You never say ‘I’m sorry, Lana,’ like tonight, when you made me feel bad for wearing what I wore, giving me the silent treatment for a total of four hours, and then making a scene at the club.”
“I did not—”
“And you never say ‘I was wrong, Lana,’” I interrupted, “especially when you know you are, like tonight. You are the most ungrateful, most demanding, and most controlling person I have ever known.”
Next to my mama, of course, but that’s her job.
“I say ‘thank you’ and ‘I am sorry,’” he said.
“Not out loud to me, you don’t. Sex is your ‘thank you.’ Saying nothing is your ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m tired of it. You weren’t put on this earth to criticize me.” Only Mama was. “And I won’t have anyone in my life hammering away at me.”
“I do not hammer away at you.”
“You do.”
“You are making no sense.”
“Okay, I’ll spell it out for you. I ain’t havin’ it no more. Not in this house. Not in my house.”
“You are only renting it, and it is only a cottage.”
I counted to three. “I’m not having any of your attitude anymore, man.”
“Not having what anymore?”
“Your attitude.”
“What attitude?”
I sighed. “You act as if you own me, and you don’t. No one owns me.”
He blinked. “Are you breaking up with me?”
I wasn’t breaking up with him. I just wanted him gone so I could get some me-time. “Just go home, Juan Carlos.”
“I am not going home. This is just an argument, and tomorrow you will think differently.” He slipped out of his pants and pulled back the covers on the bed.
This was not going well. I decided to resort to “The List,” a list of things a man is not supposed to say to a woman … only I have to flip it around some. “Juan Carlos, if you were a woman, you would always b
e on your period.”
He gasped.
“If you were a woman, Juan Carlos, you would have a terminal case of PMS.”
He jumped out of the bed.
“If you were a woman, you would be a bitch, Juan Carlos. The dictionary must have your picture next to the word ‘bitch.’”
His jaw dropped.
“No one tells me what to do in my own house, Juan Carlos. You’re … not … my … daddy!”
I have never seen Juan Carlos move so fast. He dressed, said “You … you” a couple times, eventually called me a “bitch” and a “bunta,” and tore out of the house. I watched dirt flying up from behind his mama’s rusty old Bonneville and sighed when the taillights finally disappeared.
Later, alone again with a glass of iced tea, standing at the edge of the pond, I hummed some old Bessie Smith blues as the tiny waves of the pond lapped at my feet.
The next day, Juan Carlos returned with a dozen long-stem roses and some outstanding takeout from El Rodeo. He also apologized to me all night long for his bad attitude.
I likes me some drama.
Juan Carlos is good for that.
And he dances horizontally just fo-ine.
Chapter 7
I have never almost “lost” Karl like that, mainly because Karl is so hard to find sometimes. But when I do find him, I usually have to take a day off from work and life in general afterward. We, um, we tear it up.
I’ve been with Karl the longest, about eight months. I was between men when I first met him while jogging through Washington Park on a hot August day. Our first few conversations intrigued me mainly for what he could have said but didn’t say, and for what I could have said but didn’t say.
To stay in shape for the upcoming tryouts for the Roanoke Revenge, I used to park over at the Addison Middle School track and run a loop from there through a neighborhood down to a creek and up the hill to the Washington Park pool and the field beyond, where I did some wind sprints. Thus, Karl saw me for the first time at my absolute worst that hot, humid August day. I was sweaty. I was stank. I was shiny. I was funky.
He was sitting on the hood of his Blazer wearing a white wife beater, long black baggy jean shorts, and tan Timberland boots. He had a little bling going on, but mostly he was tattooed and muscled from the neck down and he was fo-ine.