by Pearl Cleage
“Since I was fourteen.”
“How come you never got married?”
“Married?” Brandi snorted at the absurdity of the question. “Ain’t no niggas around here lookin’ for no wife. Besides, all the good ones are taken, present company excepted.”
“You think I’m a good one?”
“I know you are.”
“How’s that?”
“You feedin’ me, ain’t you?”
“Is that all it takes?”
“That’s as good a place to start as any.”
“Okay, then, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Her eyes were searching for the waiter. The juice had just whetted her appetite.
“What’s your real name?”
She stiffened a little. “I told you my name.”
“I’ll bet you fifty bucks your mama didn’t name you Brandi.”
That made her smile. “That’s a sucker bet. Okay, my mama named me Sarah after her grandmother. But when I started dancin’ professionally, people kept tellin’ me that didn’t sound like no stripper. So the manager of the place where I was workin’ named me Brandi. I told him I wanted it with an i not a y because I think that’s classier.” She frowned slightly. “You not gonna start callin’ me Sarah, are you?”
General shook his head. “No.”
“Good. I don’t feel like no Sarah after all this time bein’ Brandi.”
“Brandi’s fine,” he said as the waiter emerged from the kitchen, holding aloft a tray crowded with her breakfast and a pot of fresh coffee.
For the next ten minutes, conversation was impossible. Brandi ate every last morsel of food on the plate nonstop in tiny little bites. He had never seen anyone eat so much so fast. He felt like a soldier who had rescued a starving child wandering in a war zone, seeking sustenance. Watching her didn’t make him feel sexy. It just made him sad. This girl was nothing like Juanita.
She finished the last bit of bacon with a satisfied smile and a ladylike belch that she stifled with her napkin.
“Would you like anything else?” he said, wondering where she would put it.
“No thanks.” She shook her head, then smiled seductively. “Would you?”
There was no mistaking the point of the question, but he couldn’t have felt less like having sex with her. Trying so hard to see Juanita in Brandi had just made him miss the real one more.
“I’ve got some business to take care of,” he said. “Can I drop you somewhere?”
She looked disappointed. “We didn’t talk about your friend. The one I reminded you of.”
“Next time.” General stood up and dropped the money for the check, plus a generous tip on the table. He picked up his hat.
That’s one thing about those Hamilton niggas, she thought. They always clean. In a sea of kids in baggy jeans and oversize white T-shirts, he looked like a grown man with prospects. She wasn’t prepared to let him go that easy. Who knew when he might slide back into Montre’s? Maybe tonight. Maybe never. She followed him out to the car.
“Where can I drop you?” he said again.
Brandi turned toward him. “What’s the matter, baby? Did I eat too much?”
The question made him feel bad. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t who he had wanted her to be.
“You didn’t do anything,” he said. “I’ve just got business.”
“Can you drop me at home?”
“Sure.”
She gave him the address, hoping the ride over would give her a chance to figure out a way to make him come in when they got there. She was living in one of those residence motels where you pay by the week for one room because you can’t save up enough for the deposit and the first month’s rent on an apartment. She had moved in after Madonna started acting funny about her having company at the house, like she hadn’t done her share of emergency hookin’. She hated the idea of taking a high-class john like General into that sad little room she was calling home, but she knew if she could just get him into bed, she wouldn’t have to worry about him coming back. Brandi was a highly skilled exotic dancer, but her pole dancing was nothing compared to her dizzying array of sexual tricks.
General was familiar with the place where Brandi was living. It was right off the interstate and the downtown bus to Five Points stopped outside the front entrance. No longer a stopover for families on their way to Disney World or salesmen trying to crack Atlanta’s market in one thing or another, it now housed people who were going nowhere fast. He felt sorry for her, living in a place like this. They pulled into a spot around the back and she pointed to the second floor.
“That’s me,” she said. “Number 227.”
The door to 229 was open and he could see a television flickering in the gloom.
“Will you come up for a minute?” she said. “I know you got business, but I want to show you something.”
He hesitated.
“No additional charge,” she said, smiling.
“Okay.” General knew it was probably a con, but he figured he owed her that much for trying to make her over into somebody else without her permission. He followed her up the stairs to her room, clocking the smell of curry and the sound of cooped up children.
“Excuse my mess,” she said apologetically, pushing open the door. In truth, the place was anything but messy. The bed was neatly made with a leopard-print spread that was clearly her own decorator touch. There were no clothes lying around, no half-eaten cartons of takeout, no empty soft-drink cans. On the desk was a half-pint of cheap scotch and two clean glasses. There was, over the whole room, the lingering smell of strawberry incense, probably to cover the curry, he thought. The combination made him a little queasy.
Brandi dropped her purse and coat on a rickety-looking desk chair. “Want a drink?”
“What did you want to show me?”
She looked at him for a minute, then opened the drawer in the nearest bedside table and pulled out a framed photograph. She looked at it for a minute without turning to face him.
“When you asked me about my birthmark, I thought… well, I thought you might like to see this.”
Brandi handed him the photograph and watched for his reaction. Putting two and two together, she figured his friend must have had a birthmark, too, and seeing hers brought back memories. Brandi wondered if the woman was dead or had just moved on. Wherever she was, if that mark had made him come back to Montre’s at six in the morning, this picture ought to put a smile back on his face.
General didn’t know what to expect, but even if he had, there was nothing he could have done to prepare himself. The photograph was a surprisingly artistic black-and-white nude shot of Brandi shaking her perfect ass at the camera and laughing over her shoulder like she knew exactly how good she looked. He could clearly see the heart-shaped mark that had first caught his eye, and his heart.
The whole ride over here, he had tried to focus on why Brandi wasn’t his Juanita so he wouldn’t have to keep remembering the one way that she was exactly like her. The one mark they had in common, same size, same shape, same place on their bodies, as if an angel had kissed them both and sent them on their way. There was no way he could continue to deny that this was the sign he’d been looking for all these years.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by his own emotions. Brandi sat down next to him and reached for his hand.
“You okay, baby?”
All he could do was nod. General didn’t know whether he was okay or going crazy. After all these years, this was it! The certainty of Juanita’s presence in the same universe he was moving around in comforted and excited him in equal measure. As if she could read his thoughts, Brandi squeezed his hand gently.
“Was she your woman?”
General nodded again. His mind was whirling. Would being inside Brandi feel like being inside Juanita? The sounds of the kids downstairs and the television next door faded away and he heard a roaring in his ears.
“Yes.” His voice cr
acked like a boy just entering manhood.
“Well, don’t you worry,” she whispered, giving his hand another squeeze and standing up to slip her jeans over her hips. “I’m gonna be your woman now.”
In the semidarkness, he let her push him back against that faux leopard’s spots and closed his eyes. Lying there, listening to the roaring in his ears, he could imagine it was Juanita’s mouth giving him so much pleasure; Juanita’s hands touching him, stroking him; Juanita’s body that welcomed him back inside where he had thought he would never be again.
Minutes later, when he called her by another woman’s name, Brandi wasn’t even surprised.
18
Baby Brother’s plan wasn’t a very good one, but preparing for the future had never been his strong suit. After the well-dressed brother in the BMW had dropped him off at Union Station with two hundred dollars in his pocket, he realized there was no reason for him to be there at all. He had no place to go and no time to get there. The day stretched out in front of him with no design he could decipher, so he decided to focus on more immediate concerns.
He hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday afternoon and the smell of eggs and fried potatoes from a coffee shop already open for business made his stomach growl. He went inside, ordered a big country breakfast, which he polished off with dispatch. As he lingered over a second cup of black coffee, his plan began to take shape. He would go to New York.
When he left Iraq, the idea of not returning to his unit at the end of his leave hadn’t even crossed his mind. He knew he didn’t want to be there, but nobody with an ounce of sense would spend time in hell by choice. He knew the fear he felt was with him twenty-four hours a day because the enemy never, ever slept and every ordinary moment might be a soldier’s last one. He remembered when they hit a mess hall a few months ago. Baby Brother had seen the pictures. Those guys were just on their way to breakfast, laughing and talking and shooting the shit and BAM! Game over, jack. No second chances.
Baby Brother sipped his coffee and made himself focus on his plan. He had showered and shaved, but he needed to get out of his uniform. If he wasn’t going back, the sooner he stopped looking like a soldier, the better. He could probably get some jeans and a big white T-shirt with the money he had left from last night. Might even find a cheap pair of sneakers. He should have made that faggot give up one of those Italian suits he had lined up in his closet, Baby Brother thought. They were about the same size, but he didn’t want to stir up a lot of questions about why he needed civilian clothes if he was on his way back to Iraq. Everybody in D.C. worked for the government one way or another. He didn’t need a stranger all up in his business who might feel it was his patriotic duty to report a runaway soldier in an Armani suit.
The waitress refilled Baby Brother’s coffee cup and gave him a dazzling smile as she bussed his table. Baby Brother smiled back, wondering if he could get her to give him a break on the check on the strength of his dimples. Her smile made him relax a little. What was he worried about? That guy was never going to report on him. He had more stake in keeping his own secrets than he did busting an army deserter he’d picked up only for sex.
The guy had requested that Baby Brother wear a condom, which was a first. None of the men he had been with for money bothered with protection, and since he wasn’t the one on his knees, he figured it was every man for himself. This guy gave him a rubber that smelled like grape soda. The funny thing was that the condom was the only part of the exchange that made Baby Brother feel like a whore. He didn’t like seeing himself as that kind of hustler, but the way things were going…
“Is this seat taken?”
Baby Brother looked up into the face of a young woman with a cup of coffee in her hand and a beautiful smile on her strikingly sweet face. She was tall and slender with caramel skin and the kind of big, curly, old-school Afro that people always hoped to find in the box with the blowout kit. Her eyes were big and green and her full lips and square white teeth sent his mind tumbling into fantasies where condoms were not allowed.
“No,” he said, scrambling to his feet, wondering how long she’d been standing there. “Sit down if you want.”
“Thanks.” She slid into the chair across the table from him and stashed a small suitcase under her chair.
He watched her with a growing appreciation of how pretty she was. She didn’t look like a prostitute, but women this fine didn’t usually ask strangers in half-empty coffee shops if they minded company unless they were preparing to make a business transaction.
“I’m Zora,” she said, reaching across the table to shake his hand firmly.
Even her fingers were fine, he thought, releasing them slowly.
“My girlfriend is picking me up and she’s running late. I just hate to sit in restaurants by myself, even if it’s just for coffee. I don’t know why, but I thought you might be that way, too.”
This girl was no hooker. She looked more like a college student.
“I’m Wes,” he said, following her lead and providing no last name.
“Nice to meet you, Wes,” she said, tearing open four sugars and dumping them into her coffee. She followed that up with three small packets of hazelnut-flavored fake cream, and then stirred the whole thing vigorously.
Baby Brother watched her take a long swallow of this concoction and his expression must have mirrored his disapproval.
“What can I say? I like a little coffee with my sugar and cream,” she said, grinning at him. “It’s a Southern thing.”
“I see.”
From her accent, it sounded to Baby Brother like Zora was a Southern thing herself. She shrugged out of her coat and her breasts swayed under her sweater. It didn’t look to him like she was wearing a bra.
“You coming or going?” she said, taking another sip of her sugar and cream.
“I’m going to New York,” he said, immediately sorry he had told her the truth. That was the problem with fine women. They could get all your secrets out of you just by being fine! If he was going to be a fugitive, he had to learn to keep his mouth shut.
She draped her coat on the back of her chair. “What’s in New York?”
Baby Brother tried to reclaim his cool by being vague. “I need to get lost for a while. New York’s a big place.”
She nodded slowly. “Won’t your uncle be worried?”
“My uncle?”
“Your uncle Sam,” she said, pointing at his uniform with one slender finger. “That’s not a Halloween costume, is it?”
She was wearing a gauzy peasant blouse, and underneath, he could see a lacy camisole. He got so distracted, he forgot to answer her question.
“Should I put my coat back on?” she said, a little sarcastic, but kind of sweet, too. Truly fine women know what kind of effect they have on mortal men. This girl was probably used to it.
“It’s just been a while since I’ve seen a woman as fine as yourself,” he said. “Threw me off for a minute.”
She tossed her head and her earrings made a little tinkling sound. “Oh yeah?”
He gave her his best movie-star smile. “Yeah.”
“Then I’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“I want to know where you’ve been that there weren’t any fine women.” She smiled to acknowledge the flattery.
“I didn’t say there weren’t any fine women. There’s fine women everywhere. I said as fine as you.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” She smiled back at him. “Where’ve you been?”
“Iraq,” he said, watching her face for a response. “I’ve been stationed outside of Fallujah.”
Her face grew suddenly serious. “You’ve been in the war?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Are you out now?” She sounded concerned.
He shook his head. “In my dreams. I’m supposed to be on my way back in a couple of days. I just got a pass to come home for my mom’s funeral.”
A combat sol
dier, home from the war to bury his mother. It was a perfect storm as far as sympathy sex was concerned. Her eyes were full of compassion. He made his face look properly sorrowful.
“Aren’t you going back?” she said quietly.
That threw him a little and he immediately got paranoid. His eyes shifted nervously in his handsome face. “What do you mean?” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Relax,” she said quickly. “It’s just that you said, ‘I’m supposed to go back.’ ” Her voice was gentle, but he was still wary.
“Yeah, so?”
“So the way you said it, it just sounded like you might not.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you care what I do?”
She leaned toward him and crossed her arms in front of her on the table. One slender wrist held five chunky bangles and the other sported a big old Timex watch with a fake gold band that was easily four sizes too big for her. She wore no rings.
“Because we’re the same age and I know how I’d feel if they were trying to get me to fly around the world and kill people for them.”
She got that right, Baby Brother thought. “How do you know we’re the same age?”
“I’m nineteen. How old are you?”
She was right, but he just looked at her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look,” she said, “I work with a group, African American Students Against the War, and we’re always talking about what we can do about it, but we never talk to anybody who’s really been there. When I saw you sitting here by yourself, with your uniform on and everything, I just thought maybe you could help me understand.”
He looked at her lovely face and he knew she was clueless. Nothing she had ever seen or read or thought could possibly give her even an inkling of what he’d seen and done. Suddenly her innocence made him angry.
“You think I can help you understand?” he snapped. “Tell you some stories about the war to share with your girlfriends?”
She bristled at his tone. “It’s not like that. We’re just trying to help.”