Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  “Hey, beautiful woman.” He leaned over and kissed Blanche’s cheek.

  “Miss Ann,” he said, nodding toward the cat.

  Blanche chuckled at that old nickname for a white woman. The cat jumped from Thelvin’s arms and strutted away, her bushy tail held high.

  “Who takes care of her when you’re out of town?”

  “Oh, Miss Ann’s got the run of the place. She thinks the couple upstairs belong to her as much as I do. A real lady of the plantation.” He took Blanche’s hand and led her through the house to the kitchen.

  Thelvin had the whole first floor, which was filled with dappled light shining through the trees outside his windows. Red and orange throw rugs and pale-yellow walls brightened the place. The living-room sofa was the long, plump kind that whispered, “Fall on me.” Blanche gave it a regretful look as she passed by, only to notice a chair big enough even for someone her size to curl up in; a pile of cushions on a window seat that looked like a nap; a rocker with a plump hassock in front of it. The whole place was an invitation to relax, settle in. Everything in it seemed to want to be touched, caressed, leaned on. Another gold star in Thelvin’s crown.

  Miss Ann reappeared in the kitchen. She sniffed around Blanche’s ankles, looked up at her with a haughty squint, then shifted her gaze to something only she could see, just to the right of Blanche’s shoulder.

  Thelvin leaned down and gave Blanche a real kiss. “She likes you, too.”

  “How can you tell?” She put the newspaper on the table.

  “She didn’t nip you on the ankle.”

  “She bites?!”

  Thelvin nodded. “Only people she don’t like. She just ignores the ones she does, the way she’s doing us right now.” Thelvin ran his hand down Blanche’s back. “Of course, how any living creature could ignore you…” He lowered his head to hers again. Blanche was jolted as much by her own eagerness as she was by the feel of his lips—soft, yet determined to hold her, draw her even closer to him. And closeness was what she craved: arms around her to dispel the chill of so much time spent thinking about David Palmer, to soothe the achy place where loneliness sometimes lurked. She stood up and leaned into him. He tightened his arms around her.

  Later, Blanche wondered how they’d made it to the bedroom with their bodies glued together.

  With his hands, his tongue, his penis, and his talk, Thelvin flowed in and over Blanche while she breathed him in, sucked and licked, kissed and touched him everywhere she could reach, savoring all his textures and tastes. When he pulled her on top of him, she matched her rocking hips to his until they moved together as though they had always been doing this. Without a word, she opened up to him in ways that pushed her deeper into and out of herself until she was as naked and wide open as a cloudless, star-filled night. And she could tell from the pleasure and surprise spilling from Thelvin’s eyes, from the way he touched her face, and said her name, as though it were the source of all goodness just discovered, that he, too, was feeling the delicious shock of a closeness that was more than expected. Blanche’s pleasure was so intense, the longing it answered so strong, she couldn’t resist the urge to lean down and bite his shoulder. His soft moan of minor pain and major pleasure came just as she did—the first time. Five orgasms later, she lay beside him, damp and limp and slightly light-headed, her crotch still throbbing. She admired their complementary blacknesses—her skin full of shades of plum and deep blues, his red-tinged and rosy. Thelvin rolled onto his side toward her. He leaned his elbow on the bed and propped his head up on his hand. His face was relaxed, but his eyes were questioning.

  “No regrets?”

  Blanche laid her hand on his thigh. “It was wonderful. I mean it.”

  Thelvin grinned. “For me, too. But that’s not enough.”

  “What else?” She held her breath, uncertain whether she really wanted to know.

  “No regrets,” he said.

  “Oh.” Blanche looked away, then made to rise. Thelvin stretched his arm across her waist and stopped her. His smile was mischievous. “You’re a runner.”

  Blanche relaxed against the pillow, relieved by the change of subject. “I used to be. I loved it when I was a kid. I still remember running just to be running.”

  Thelvin rocked her gently. “I don’t mean when you were a kid, Blanche. I don’t mean that kind of running.”

  “Oh.” As hard as she tried not to, Blanche felt herself stiffen beneath Thelvin’s arm. She couldn’t help remembering what Ardell had said about her being unwilling to let anyone get close to her. She consciously relaxed, took a deep breath, and made herself stay right where she was—and not just her body, but her mind and feelings, too.

  “Maybe sometimes,” she said, “but I’m more concerned with running toward you a little too fast than I am about running away from you. Goose bumps rose on her arms in the aftershock of her frankness.

  The look on Thelvin’s face was her reward for honesty. He laughed a soft, deep chuckle.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “I think that’s wonderful.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I think it’s wonderful that you let yourself move a little faster than usual and that I had something to do with that. I was about to bust, girl! I’m too old for that soapy-palm-in-the-shower routine.” Thelvin lay back and stretched.

  Blanche wondered how many other women and, for all she knew, men were currently satisfying him. Of course, they’d just used condoms, but if he’d spent the last ten years screwing drugged-out, needle-using prostitutes with the letters HIV tattooed on their thighs, or was infected himself, it would have been nice if she’d asked an hour or two ago. She still needed to know. She gave him a sober look. “Wanting to wait a little longer before we got this far wasn’t just about finding out if we really liked each other,” she said. “I mean, I want to get to know you better, but it’s not just about getting to know you.”

  “You mean it ain’t just my personality that you’re curious about?”

  “Well,” Blanche said, “it’s like they say, even nice people get AIDS.”

  “No joke.” Thelvin pulled himself up. Leaning against the carved wooden headboard and looking off into space, he began to speak in a barely audible voice, as though he were really mumbling to himself: “I didn’t have sex or even see a movie with another woman for four years after my wife died. We were high-school sweethearts, see? She was big, like you. A whole handful of woman. Big-hearted, too. We got married right out of school and stayed that way. She was…” Something sad happened to Thelvin’s voice. “I thought I loved her when she was alive, but when she died…it was like everything in the world turned gray. The kids kept me going, kept me busy.”

  Thelvin stopped speaking and closed his eyes. He heaved a sigh that seemed as heavy as the bed they lay on, then continued.

  “One day I woke up and Ruth’s name wasn’t the first word that popped into my mind. After that, I felt too guilty to think about another woman. Not only had Ruth died, I was forgetting her, which meant she was really and truly gone. So I decided to do everything I could to keep her memory alive. I set a place for her at the table on holidays, on all of our birthdays, and on our anniversary. I talked to her about the boys and how to raise them right. I put pictures of her everywhere, even in the bathroom and the cellar!” Thelvin moved his hands as though trying to grasp something Blanche couldn’t see. “But she kept slipping away, slipping away. First her eyes, then her voice, then the way she laughed.” Thelvin shook his head. “When the boys grew up and went off to school, every last bit of Ruth that was left walked out on me.” Blanche could see the years of misery still alive in his eyes. He turned his head away and laughed. “So I joined the church.” He laughed again. “Lord, Lord, Lord. One of the biggest singles clubs in the world! Half the women in that church were on the make for a permanent mate. And the men! Dudes who couldn’t get a date with
a donkey showed up at church knowing sisters were looking for men. I ain’t just talking kids and young people. I mean people our age!”

  Blanche had a flash fantasy of a passel of pastel-clad colored ladies of various ages and sizes in their feathered and frilled Sunday-service hats, chasing Thelvin up the front steps of the church.

  “Anyway, I went out with a couple righteous, pious sisters.” He shrugged. “It just didn’t work. It was like I was trying to punish myself by only seeing women I wasn’t all that attracted to, who I knew I couldn’t love and didn’t even want to screw.” He slid back down into the bed beside her. “There’s been a couple women since. I been real careful with the condoms, but nobody special. Until now.”

  Blanche reached over and took his hand, acutely aware of Thelvin’s deep and probably everlasting ache for his dead wife. She also had a wondrous respect for his willingness to show his feelings and was relieved that, according to what he’d said, Thelvin hadn’t been living the life of a sex dog. She wondered if his having lost someone he loved dearly had anything to do with his pushing her to say she would see him into the future.

  Thelvin hunched her with his elbow. “Now you. You know how fickle you gap-tooth girls are supposed to be.”

  Blanche told him about the men she’d gone out with in Boston over the last three years. “They were nice enough, but if they weren’t looking for a doormat in a woman’s body, they wanted a mama or a cook.”

  While she was talking, Blanche realized that, despite Thelvin’s openness with her, she didn’t want to talk to him about Leo. She didn’t mind Thelvin’s knowing about her and Leo—she’d only had sex with him once, a couple years ago, since he’d been married; she was a grown woman and it was her body. But something felt wrong about telling Leo’s business to Thelvin. “Only one other lover in all that time, and then only once,” she said.

  “Didn’t you leave somebody out?”

  She didn’t pretend she didn’t know who he meant. Some part of her was glad Thelvin hadn’t spoken Leo’s name.

  “No. Leo was the last one I mentioned.” She shrugged. “It was always an off-and-on thing.”

  Blanche could feel Thelvin tensing up. “Yeah, but since high school?!”

  “Well, for most of that time it was off. I was living in Harlem and Leo was down here. I’d see him when I came to visit Mama, and once in a while he…You met his wife.”

  “So?”

  Blanche stretched. “I’d be embarrassed to be going with a man married to that limp sister! Make me look bad!”

  Thelvin chuckled and rolled toward her. He put his arm around her waist. “Man’s a fool, no doubt about that.” He snuggled closer.

  “I haven’t had much of a love life these last few years.”

  “How could that be, a good-looking woman like you? I know it wasn’t about not having no takers.”

  “Well, you’re a man. You know who’s out here for a woman my age. Brothers think they can run any old kinda game and I’ll be so grateful they noticed me, my legs’ll spring right open.”

  “Yeah, there’s some dogs out here, all right. But a big, fine woman like you, baby…”

  Blanche leaned over and kissed him. Men were so cute. If they wanted you they figured everybody else had to want you, too. After all, wasn’t each and every he the center of the universe? She pressed her belly against him. “You hear that noise? It ain’t a thunderstorm coming. It’s my stomach. I need some of the other kind of nourishment.”

  “Coming right up.” Thelvin bounded out of bed.

  Thelvin tried to persuade her to spend the night, but Blanche explained that an overnight needed to be a planned thing, so she could bring her necessities and be comfortable. He had finally given up trying to get her to change her mind at just the moment she could feel her left nerve beginning to twitch.

  She’d expected to see Ardell when she took the car back, but Ardell wasn’t home. Blanche slipped the car keys through her mail slot. Once she was home, she immediately wished she’d stayed with Thelvin. Her desire to be back in his bed doubled when the phone rang. This was not a good time for her to be quizzed, but because she knew who it was, she didn’t even think about not answering it. That probably wouldn’t happen for another ten years after Taifa was grown and gone from home.

  “Hey, Taifa, how you doin?”

  “Great, Moms.”

  “How’s the job going?”

  “Actually, it’s getting boring! I never thought I’d get the hang of it, but now that I’ve got a routine, I can do the job in my sleep. And I’m sure glad I don’t have to do it, you know, for a living, like a career.”

  “But you’re still having fun?”

  “Most definitely having a blast! There’s a couple of girls here who…”

  Blanche half listened, although a bit of her was closely attentive to anything that smacked of fast cars, late-night parties, and college boys.

  “…and her dad took us to dinner at this really nice restaurant.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

  “Thanks, Mama Blanche.” Taifa was quiet for a few moments, then: “What about you? Still going on dates?”

  “You and Malik been talking about me, I hear.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean, well, are you?”

  “Am I what? Still seeing Thelvin?”

  “Thelvin. Yeah.”

  “I am, as a matter of fact. I really like him.” Yes, she really did like him. The thought made her smile.

  “What do you like about him?”

  A flutter in Blanche’s crotch reminded her of one thing she liked about him, but it wasn’t the only reason, or the most important. “He’s a gentle, affectionate person. I think he’s probably a real good person,” she added, feeling lucky to be able to say it. She admitted to herself that Thelvin was the kind of sweet, romantic man it would be easy to love, but didn’t say it. Blanche didn’t think that was what Taifa wanted to hear.

  “Has Aunt Ardell met him yet? I mean…”

  Blanche laughed. “Girl, get a grip! I promise not to get too serious about Thelvin until you meet him. Okay?”

  “Well, I’m not trying to…I, we just don’t want you to get hurt or anything.”

  Anything like laid. “Well, I appreciate that, honey, but there’s nothing to worry about. I promise.” At least not yet, she added to herself.

  “Okay, well, have a good time, but remember your promise.”

  “My promise?”

  “You know, what you just said about not getting serious until we meet him.”

  Blanche shook her head at someone young enough to think such things could be controlled.

  “Okay, sweetie, okay.”

  Poor Taifa—like most people her age, she wanted both her independence and her mommy, and she wanted her mommy on the job twenty-four/seven. Blanche took a long hot shower and went to bed to dream of trying to dance with Thelvin while Taifa kept tapping her on the shoulder to cut in.

  “You don’t even need to tell me what happened, and I wish to hell you’d stop grinning like that!” Ardell said when she opened her back door to Blanche on Monday.

  Blanche took a chair at the kitchen table. Ardell poured her a cup of tea and pushed the milk and sugar toward her. “Now.” Ardell slipped into the chair across from Blanche. “Tell me everything.” She put a teaspoon of sugar in her own cup.

  “Everything?”

  “Don’t get cute, Blanche. You know what I mean.” Ardell paused. “It was good, hunh?”

  “ ‘Good’ is not the word, girl! The man’s got magic fingers, a tongue that knows its way around a woman’s parts, and a penis that keeps perfect time to my tune!” Blanche laid her arm across the table, palm up.

  Ardell slid her own palm across Blanche’s in that amen way. “You look like you been on a month’s vacation, skin all glo
wing and shit.”

  “Yeah, but I still wish I’d had the willpower to wait a little while longer before dropping my drawers.”

  “Girl! You know damn well you didn’t have no drawers on! But it was a bit early,” Ardell added when they stopped laughing.

  Blanche rolled her eyes. “I tried to hold out, but…”

  “Yeah, I know how that is.”

  Both women were lost in reverie for a minute. Blanche was about to signify about her sexual encounter with Thelvin being proof she wasn’t afraid to let a man get close to her, as Ardell had claimed, but Clarice showed up, and they got down to the business of baking five hundred individual pastry shells.

  By the time they were done, Blanche didn’t even want to hear the words “pastry” or “oven.” She was practically out of her shoes before she was in the Miz Alice. She plopped down on the sofa. Fatigue throbbed through her body. She laid her head back and quickly relaxed into sleep.

  Her eyes were wide open almost before the broken glass hit the floor. The thing that came hurtling through the window rolled across the room and stopped inches from her feet. Something hard and tight squeezed her chest and made her gasp. She wanted to kick the round, paper-and-string-wrapped thing on the floor away from her, but she could neither feel nor move her limbs. She took a deep breath and let the air out slowly, took another breath, then rolled off the sofa and stooped low so that she couldn’t be seen from the windows. She made her way across the room in a crouch, reached up and turned off the lights. She slid to the floor, what little strength she’d had flowing from her body like sweat. “Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic!” she told herself again.

  Despite the darkness, the baseball-sized bundle on the floor glowed as if spotlighted. Shoulda expected something like this, she told herself. She wrapped her arms around her body and held on tight. Didn’t I know there’d be more than just that one phone call? she asked herself, as though she should have been, could have been prepared for this. She leaned her head back against the wall, waiting for her heart to slow, for her mind to clear and focus.