I want to ask how he categorizes a tsunami that sweeps babies from the arms of their mothers and kills enough to populate a large city, or a five-hundred-pound GPS-guided bomb that hits the wrong target and kills seven innocent children. I want to ask because I do not know.
I want to ask because if things are predetermined, then I can rationalize Kenya.
I can say what we have done was meant to be, it was written.
I can say that I have no accountability for my actions.
I can be absolved.
Genevieve leans forward, her expression trenchant and doughty, her eyes on Kenya, says, “Deuce, heard him say he was just getting here from Atlanta.”
Kenya does not respond. Genevieve sits back, shaking her head. She knows that Deuce was not on the other side of Kenya’s bedroom door inducing screams of passion.
Deuce stalks twenty yards behind the Town Car, his Fat Boy idling at another pump. He has gone into his dual saddlebags and taken out yellow rain gear, put it on. He is prepared. He is intense but he is patient. Rain falls on him and he wipes away that useless water. He revs up his Harley. Makes it sing. He will not waver. He is determined to go wherever she leads.
I want to know what secrets and lies are concealed in that U-Haul.
And at the same time part of me tells me that I don’t want to know.
Not all knowledge is good knowledge.
The insatiable desire to know is what brought me to Odenville.
Genevieve’s ghosts are doing pirouettes inside my head. The things Kenya revealed haunt me as well. This insufferable world is part of my mind now, an indelible part of my memory.
Mile after mile I see the same thing over and over. I keep seeing a young girl hurrying up the highway, undeterred by the rain, grocery bag under her arm, her thumb out. Mile after mile I see her again. Like in The Twilight Zone, where the driver keeps passing by the same hitchhiker, Death, we pass the same girl a hundred times. Sometimes she is walking fast; sometimes she is running, never looking back. Always a face painted with fear, always with her thumb extended.
Genevieve squeezes my hand. The illusion of the girl dissolves like sugar in water.
But I think about Willie Esther. She tried to reinvent herself, failed miserably.
All of these apples are from the same tree, one that wants to discard its branches.
Deuce shadows us up the two-lane Interstate, a slow and easy drive from Odenville back into the city of Branchville and all of its churches and American flags. The windshield wipers are working overtime. Kenya spies back every few seconds, the sky sobbing harder.
Genevieve says, “Kenya, explain to me why you need a ride if you drove to Odenville.”
No reply from the woman with six-thousand-dollar breasts.
Genevieve’s tone is stiff; she asks, “What does Deuce do for a living?”
Kenya folds her arms, crosses and uncrosses her legs. “He’s a writer.”
“Last night you said he was an actor.”
“Same difference.”
“And the moon is blue.”
Halfway through the city of Moody the skies open up, visibility bad. Kenya smiles, hopes that Deuce will stop his pursuit because f the weather. But the conditions force Bubba Smith to slow down as well. I look back and Deuce is no longer there. Kenya relaxes.
Genevieve asks Kenya, “When did you graduate from Sarah Lawrence?”
“Why?”
“That’s a simple question. When did you get your degree in literature?”
Thunder and lightning are in the distance, the wind becoming a howling wolf.
Genevieve says, “Grandpa Fred told me you dropped out two years ago. Told me he had to send you money to get out of New York. Says you’ve been in Atlanta ever since.”
“Whatever.”
“Didhe lie?”
“Well, I’m modeling now.”
“And the moon is blue.”
“Holly Golightly.”
“Last time, Kenya. Last time I’ll allow you to call me out of my name.”
“Or what, LaKeisha Shauna Smith? Or what?”
Animosity rises between them.
Genevieve says, “Look at the way you’ve mutilated yourself. The way you mutilate your body. Crying out for attention the only way you know how. Acting out your pain.”
“I have pain.” Kenya glares out the window. “I sure do. At least I can feel.”
My chest tightens, but I sit on that anxiety. Refuse to go back to Pasadena.
Blood. I see my mother’s blood. Feel its warmth dripping on my cold skin. I see her face. First young and beautiful, her smile withers away until nothing is left but gray ashes.
Genevieve touches my hand. “You okay?”
I jerk back to this reality. I nod. My breathing is short. Heartbeat fast.
Kenya’s eyes are on me. I’m embarrassed.
Genevieve says, “Uncle Bubba, could you slow down, maybe pull over.”
He asks, “Need me to pull over again? I promise I can do it quicker this time.”
I straighten up and tap the back of his seat, say, “I’m okay. Keep driving.”
Genevieve returns to her own thoughts, staring out at the road she is familiar with.
I look at the truckers. My mind moves from Pasadena to a foul and dark place.
Then Bubba Smith says, “Ain’t that something? He done caught up with us again.”
Kenya looks back and curses, crosses and uncrosses her legs again.
Bubba Smith says, “I’m surprised he can see, the way it’s raining. Ain’t like he’s got no windshield wipers on his helmet. It’s coming down. Yessir, gonna be some more flooding tonight. He’s riding the heck out of that motorcycle. Hope he pulls over up here at the Interstate.”
Now Kenya’s body is tight, I feel her muscles knot up against my leg, as if she were praying for him to cross the overpass and head back toward Atlanta. Her hopes and prayers go unanswered as he trails us back to Birmingham, continues to follow Kenya in pouring rain.
Bubba Smith says, “Bet it don’t rain like this in Los Angeles.”
“Not since Noah,” I say. “Not since Noah.”
“Ain’t that something. We all family.”
I say, “I suppose we are.”
“Can’t wait ‘til I tell the missus. Yessir. We family.”
I glare at the truck stops. Frown on the eighteen-wheelers sporting Confederate flags. Scowl at the burly men getting out of those trucks, bellies hanging over their pathetic waistlines.
Again Genevieve squeezes my hand, stares out the window, the rain her tears.
My other hand touches Kenya, slips her the key I had stolen.
As she takes the key, she sighs again, her finger tracing my palm.
I ache.
EIGHTEEN
I ACHE.
She breathes through her nose as she gives me congress with her mouth, deep-throats my lingam, her head moving with smoothness as my coarse moans sound my splendid agony. She uses her right hand to stroke me at the same time, in rhythm with the rise and fall of her mouth, her grip as firm as a virgin’s vagina. She sucks me like I am candy. Works me toward the oblivion of orgasm. But she will not let me get there. I harden and strain and she slows, lets my orgasm subside. She is Tantric. I get hard, then go soft, get hard again, a highly desirable sensation, like riding a wave, bobbing up and down. Hardness and softness are two ends of the pleasure spectrum. Over and over, with her every movement, I surrender mammoth-sized moans and I die a thousand little deaths.
Thunder and lightning stand sentry outside my hotel window, but I cannot hear the noise because of the thunder and lightning in this room, can only feel the heat from her mouth, can only hear the wet and succulent sounds from her greedily gobbling up my heavy-veined erection.
She stops. I moan and cry for her to not stop. But she stops. She backs away. Leaves me writhing at the door of Nirvana. My every nerve is alive. She sits back, skin glistening with humidity, her mouth glistening wi
th traces of me, hands on her breasts, squeezing.
She watches me.
She tells me, “Get a lubricant. I want to try anal.”
“What?”
She turns around, on her knees, her delicate ass rising in the air.
“What’s gotten into you, Genevieve?”
“Fuck me in my ass.”
An empty bottle of Riesling sits on the table, next to it a single glass, lipstick on its rim. A damp towel is across the threshold of the door to our room. The do not disturb sign is on the door. Air is on. A window is cracked. Still the room reeks of ganja. Genevieve is in rare form.
She repeats, “Fuck me in my ass.”
“My penis would annihilate you.”
“Then annihilate me.”
“You okay?”
“Anything you want. I’m game. What’s your fantasy?”
I push her down, turn her over.
“Too bad we didn’t get the flight attendant’s number. We could’ve had fun.”
I tell her, “You’re loaded.”
“Not loaded enough.”
“We need to get some food.”
“I have your food right here.”
My kisses travel from her neck, linger on her breasts, the right one first, then the left, then I squeeze her nipples and kiss her stomach. Her legs float apart. I pinch her clit between my thumb and forefinger. My tongue licks where I pinch. Two fingers move inside her hollow.
She moans, “Get a lubricant. Fuck me however you want to fuck me. You want to transmogrify me into your personal whore. Here’s your chance. Make me your whore.”
I lick her until wave after wave rolls through her body, until her legs tense, until she comes, then my tongue dances, makes small circles and figure eights until she begs me to stop.
I do not remember the last time I made her come like that.
I do not remember the last time she came.
We fall away from each other.
I am still erect, throbbing, soft moans my only language.
She trembles, rides her orgasm to its end.
In between the flashes of lightning, as the room changes from darkness to light, I stare at her and what I see startles me. Her breasts are but dots on her chest. She is young. With pimples all over her skin. I see her with crooked teeth and in pigtails and hot-combed hair and skinny legs decorated with dark spots that come from being bit by a thousand mosquitoes.
I move away from her, catching my breath, my lingam softening, diminishing.
She does not see my panic, thinks the subtle choking sound I make is a prelude to my own Nirvana. The darkness hides the madness in my eyes.
She asks, “Do you want children?”
It takes me a moment and a thousand blinks to calm down.
She repeats her question.
I answer, “You know I do.”
“What if they hate me? What if I hate them? What if I birth what I loathe the most?”
“That’s a chance we all take.”
“What if I hate them and beat them and… what if what if… what if they drive me mad?”
Naked, sweat covering our bodies, we both stare at the ceiling.
She says, “Can’t believe they left the smoke detector hanging from the ceiling by wires.”
She crawls over me, drags herself to her wine. Sips an empty glass. Shakes the empty bottle. Then she goes to her tin can, opens it, fires up what’s left of her herbal remedy.
She puts the back of her head on my leg, inhales twice, says, “Blow me a shotgun.”
I take her medicine, put it in my mouth backward, and blow a steady stream of paradise.
She coughs, shakes it off.
Then she takes it from me, inhales. “For every beating the others took, I was beaten as well. My siblings were my responsibility. When I was in school trying to study, Willie Esther would take my books and tell me that I had six kids to keep up with and I couldn’t spend my time being lazy hanging around the library and reading all day.”
“So you hung out at the library.”
“If I could. The library was my escape. I read about places far away, places I wanted to go. France, Spain, Corsica, Malta, China, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Germany.”
“Places you’ve gone.”
“Yes. I’d educate myself after Willie Esther had her scotch and passed out.”
Again I ask, “Do you want children?”
“No. I did before I came back here. Before I saw this family again. No.”
“So, now you don’t want children.”
“Now, at this very moment, I’m totally uninterested in having children.”
“Because… what would they have to do with our children?”
“I have already raised six and they didn’t turn out that well.”
I ask, “Why did you come back?”
“To spit on Willie Esther’s grave. I’d pull up my dress and shit on it if I could.”
“You’re joking, right?”
Genevieve looks toward me. She comes to me, takes my penis in her mouth, her other hand still holding her medicinal salvation, licks me, sucks me, soothes me. She pretends she wants to stop. So I beg her to keep going. She licks the sides, base of the tip.
She sucks a good dick. Sucks a damn good dick. Right now that bothers me.
She moves away, inhales. Her mouth is still damp, the remains of semen, my jism.
She says, “I didn’t come back for the funeral. I came to see my mother’s grave. And if I have the strength, to go to jail and visit my father. Most of all, I had to come back for my own sanity. Came back so they could see that even with all they did, they didn’t break me.”
“You make it sound like you were run out of town with torches.”
“I was. But I came back in the backseat of a Town Car. I’m educated. I make more money than all of them put together. I’ve come back with an intelligent and handsome husband. A man who understands science and cares about quantum physics. A wonderful man who reads The Odyssey. The Iliad. Books on the Greek gods. I’ve been sailing, snorkeling, Jet skiing, scuba diving, surfing. I have danced at night clubs in Fiji. I’m coming back with my head held high.”
The woman I am staring at, I do not recognize.
She asks, “If you could change anything about this marriage, what would you change?”
“My hunger for affection isn’t satisfied. I’m starving.”
“We have everything. A nice home. We have everything.”
“I need reciprocity in other ways. I need more intimacy. More sex.”
She reaches to the nightstand, puts down her joint, and picks up her purple friend. It’s barely larger than the double-A battery that fits inside. Her wonderful clit stimulator. My nemesis.
She says, “Sex. Is that your primary concern?”
“A starving man always thinks of food.”
“You’re not starving.”
“I should know if my own stomach is growling.”
She lays back and I take my archrival from her, turn her stimulator on, stare down on Genevieve’s anticipation as the purple man hums. Genevieve guides my hand, shows me where to touch her with that perpetual vibration, where to hold that miserable hum so she can quiver in response. I suck her breasts, pinch her nipples. Her muscles tighten and she makes subtle sounds like she’s ascending into high heaven.
I whisper in her ear, “Lovemaking is worship. Am I wrong to want to worship you as much as I can? Am I wrong to want to explore sexuality with my wife as much as I can before the sun rises on my Viagra years? Am I wrong to want my tongue to twirl on your clitoris every day?”
I talk to her, say sweet things, say dirty things. Genevieve’s breathing speeds up as she releases involuntary wails, has orgasm after orgasm, four back-to-back, two small, two devastating. She jerks and sighs, but never sings like this under the power of my loving.
I move away from her and watch her, the ego part of me feeling unfulfilled.
Time eases by while sh
e catches her breath, while I exhale my envy.
Genevieve crawls over me, gets what’s left of her shrub, sets it on fire again, inhales.
I say, “You’re hitting it hard today.”
Genevieve Page 24