by L. B. Dunbar
“Mommy,” I said louder. She rolled her head and muttered, “Five more minutes, Katie.” Her voice was gruff. Her hand shot out from under the pillow and hit the clock again. She was tired, I assumed. She went out often, after my dad came home and before I went to bed. She’d return in the early hours of the morning, sometimes waking me up. Daddy had been in college at the time. He had an internship coming up the year after he graduated. It hadn’t been ideal that I was born, I’d been told.
“Katie, I said, five more minutes,” she grumbled into the pillow, suffocating what sounded like a scream.
“It’s was five minutes, five minutes ago,” I whined. A new episode of the singing purple dinosaur was about to begin.
“Fine,” my mom growled and begrudgingly rolled out of bed.
I imagine my mother stumbling to the kitchen in a fog of sleepy confusion, much like I do when I’m woken too early. She dramatically tugged open the cereal cabinet. She slammed the cabinet door after removing a bowl. She pulled too hard on the refrigerator door and it shook. She slapped the bowl in front of me.
I flinched. I’m sure I did. Loud noises made me start.
Pouring milk, the cereal spilled out with a splash. I started to cry. I could sense her anger.
“Stop crying, Katie,” she urged. “Stop crying.” She swore. I’d heard the words before and only knew they were bad because my dad would correct her. He’d say she shouldn’t use those words in front of me. Her voice rose as she told me to stop crying again.
The sobs came harder. My little body shook as I tried to control them. The struggle to suppress the tears was an unwinnable battle. A slap came across my face. The sting imprinted on my tiny cheek.
“I said. Stop. It,” she yelled at me, her hands on my shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled between heaping gulps for air.
“Just shut up.” She shook me. “Stop crying. Stop talking,” she screamed in my face, the face that stung from her hand then her words. And so, I did what she asked. I stopped talking, for years.
The memory roared back at me, real and raw. I could feel the sting on my cheek as if it were yesterday. Cool tears slid down my hot face. At two years old, I hardly remembered the strike, but bruises developed and the doctor surmised I’d been struck. This portion of the story was told to me years later. The instant I heard it, the sting returned, the memory real, the notion unbelievable. I’d come to Chicago hoping for answers. All I found were dead ends.
Levi
She finished her tale, and I stared at her chin, quivering for control of her emotions. She was stronger than she knew, if she’d closed herself off enough to seal her lips and lock away her words for years.
“I was six years old,” she said. “That’s when I finally broke. It was my mother who helped me.”
I shifted on her thigh, my brows pinching. “You just said your mother frightened you into silence.”
“My mother abandoned me. Emily adopted me. She’s the only mother I’ve ever known.”
“Emily’s perfect.” It was said perfunctory, not sarcastically. Emily Carter was wife to one Jess Carter, a well-known, well-respected man in Elk Rapids. His history came to me with Katie’s words, and more memories of her as a child returned. She was the little blonde beauty racing around with others from the Carter brood, until one day, she no longer appeared like a child. Too much drink blurred my judgment then, as it blinded me now.
“She is, but it still doesn’t mean I don’t want to know why my mother left me.” She was reflective a moment, lost in her memories.
“I have blurred memories of what she looked like. I’m told I look like her, but my family hates the comparison. Even though I have my father’s blue eyes and his straw-blonde hair. He stares at me sometimes, knowing that it’s true. I do look like her with only hints of him. He doesn’t like the reminder, but I know he loves me unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally,” she repeated with a mutter as her eyes pierced mine. “How can any parent do such a thing as leave a child?”
“I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t really think I could give AJ away.”
She stared at me thoughtfully for a long moment. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again,” she admonished, a rush of emotion stealing from her lips with the warning. I nodded like a petulant child understanding his punishment. Her lake-colored eyes watered, threatening to drown me with her pain. “I’m sorry,” I said, but she ignored me, lost to her thoughts of abandonment. I should have shared my story. The one where my mother left me at age three. Tired of her drunk husband taking out his sorry life on her, she walked out. One day her closet was empty, her car gone. When she said good-bye to me that morning, she meant forever.
Instead, I turned my head and pressed my face into Katie’s lower abdomen. The comfort of her fingers crawling over my scalp soothed me. I should have also told her the real reason for my emotions on this day, but I didn’t wish to recall in words what haunted my mind. I honored this day each year by drinking heavily in hopes of paying homage and forgetting what happened. My eyes closed as I rubbed my nose just below her waist. My fingers were thick, weighed down by the amount of alcohol I had consumed, but I wasn’t drunk enough to not be aware of my intentions. I needed to get closer to Katie on a different level. Lifting the hem of her sweater, I pressed upward on my shoulder to kiss the warm skin of her belly. Her breath hitched as it had the night at the museum, and I took that sound as approval of my attention.
My mouth opened and sucked at the skin of her waistline before nudging upward. Shifting to my elbow crossed over her thighs, my position heightened me enough to raise her sweater and press kisses below the pink satin of her bra. My hand pressed upward, wandering under the heavy material and covering the softer fabric with my palm. My name ground out of Katie, creeping from the back of her throat in both warning and encouragement. As my heavy hand worked over the smooth satin, my fingers dipped into the cup of her bra and pinched her already peaked nipple. I hitched myself to a fully seated position, facing Katie awkwardly as she sat pressed to the wall under my bay window. My hand still kneaded the heavy globe within my grasp while my other hand covered her cheek and pulled her mouth to me.
Hungry and hurried, I captured her lips, drawing them deep between mine, latching on to her as if I were I man starved. The connection was what I needed—to lose myself in someone else other than me on this day. Katie whimpered at the roughness of my mouth over hers, but I selfishly ignored her as she didn’t stop me. Her sweet lips molded to the heat of mine, melting against me. My fingers dug deeper at the weight of her breast and I tugged the cup down to allow me full exposure. Dipping my head, I dragged the round form into my mouth, lapping and sucking with greed. Her hands returned to the back of my head, tenderly scratching, holding me to her.
Hastily, I freed one breast to pay homage to the other, latching on tight enough to leave a mark from sucking or to scratch the skin with my growing scruff. Katie didn’t seem to mind as her soft moans filled my ears, drowning out other sounds in my head. I needed this, I reminded myself. I needed her. Releasing her softly, a popping noise followed, and I sat up to take her eager mouth again. My fingers returned to tweaking those nubby peaks while my tongue traced the hill of her top lip and curled the valley of the bottom before plowing ahead. Her tongue met mine with equal force, spurring me on to take what I wanted. My fingers slipped to the waist of her jeans, and AJ cried.
Neither of us moved for a moment, our mouths frozen to one another. Slowly, she pulled back and her eyes drifted down her body. She tugged at her sweater, righting her breasts under the material. Her hands moved methodically, her eyes avoiding mine.
“I’ll get him,” she offered, shifting her legs to move.
“No,” I barked, fiercer than I intended. “I owe my son an apology.” I stood and then remembered I was wearing shorts. My head swung to Katie as her eyes drifted to my leg. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t help herself. Her eye was drawn to
it as so many were. Everyone wanted to ask, the inevitable question on the tip of their tongue: what happened? Out of sympathetic politeness or an awkward sense of how improper it would be to inquire, they fought the words and struggled to keep their gaze from shifting.
Katie, however, didn’t bother to remove her eyes. She blatantly gawked as I rose, my knee locking for a moment, my leg outstretched with its awkward-looking plastic parts. It looked “normal” in the physical sense, but a camo wrap over the metal joint hinted at the mechanics of something other than flesh and bone. My foot clanked as I stood and I walked with a limp she would notice from now on and never question. Katie stared, but she didn’t ask. Her eyes expectant, she waited for me to offer the truth, but with the cry of AJ, I didn’t have time to explain a memory more painful than the abandonment of a parent.
* * *
I comforted AJ, changing his diaper and cooing words filled with apology in his tiny ear. I begged him to forgive thoughts he couldn’t understand. I kissed his forehead and his hair and held him close to me. Sometimes, dark, disturbing ideas flicked through my head, and I needed to fight the inclination, the haunting notions. Inhaling sharply and holding my breath, I breathed in AJ’s baby scent, wanting the fragrance of him to fill me. I would draw strength from his life to heal mine, I scolded myself.
The crack of a floorboard behind me spun me.
“You’re still here?” I asked surprised, the hurt on her face immediate.
She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “I…”
I should leave, I imagined her saying. I want you to stay, struggled behind my teeth for release.
“I need to get to work.” Her head lowered, as if hesitant to say more, but wanting to speak. I twisted my head to peer out AJ’s window. I had something I needed to share.
“AJ’s been diagnosed with acute hearing loss. It’s why he wears the hearing aids. He’ll need surgery one day for cochlear implants. I have no idea if he can hear my apology, but one day, one day I’ll tell him a million times how sorry I am.”
I turned to face Katie, uncertain why I needed her to hear me. In a way, I wanted her to know how sorry I was for what I’d said, although I didn’t feel I needed to apologize to her directly.
“I could help you.” She spoke quietly, her eyes shifting to the floor, nervous for some reason about her offer.
“I don’t need your help,” I snapped, harsher than I intended, but harsh enough that it pleased me. I didn’t mean to lash out at her, but her naïve ideas that she could help my son in any way irritated me.
“Is this why you’re upset today?” My eyes opened wide. My upset, as she casually called it, had everything to do with this date and nothing to do with the diagnosis of my son. Suddenly edgy again, I wanted to be alone.
“Why are you here?” My brows pinched, confusion muddling the last light of my thoughts. Darkness wanted to settle in again. If I’d struck her, the pain on her face might have been less than the hurt in her eyes.
“You called me.” I flinched in recollection. Images of pressing a contact on my phone occurred in my memory. Was my intention to call Katie? My head told me no, while my heart seemed to have a mind of its own. I think I intended to call Alicia, but I couldn’t remember. I don’t know why I’d call anyone on this day. It was a day I kept to myself, to wallow on my own.
“You sounded like you needed a friend,” she added tenderly, her tone full of hurt like her expression, but attempting to suppress her pain. She’d exchange hers for mine, I could see it in her face. The way she looked at me like she’d take all my secrets, if I’d only let her. We seemed to come to an impasse as our eyes held each other, and my heart beat in my throat. I wondered if it could really be that simple. Could I even be a friend where the real benefit was friendship?
“I don’t,” I lied to myself. Staring at the freckles smattered over her nose and under her eyes, the innocence of her face reminding me, she was younger than me. A friend was all Katie Carter should be, and I broke our wordless conversation first by looking away. But my heart hollered in rebellion, shouting that there was more than one benefit to Katie, and instead, I should be running toward her.
Katie
I didn’t understand what we were doing. We weren’t dating. We were kissing. His apartment, the library, the museum. It all made no sense to me. He didn’t even want to be friends with me. Again, I was reminded of a dance, the push and pull of partners drawn together and then stepping apart. I didn’t want to dance, though. The struggle for his attention and the unknown of his intentions confused me. My skin yearned for his touch as his hands and mouth took my breasts, but my heart ached at the mixed signals. Then to learn details of his son, and have Levi blatantly shun my help, left me reeling in self-doubt. Leaving his apartment after his drunken breakdown, I had nothing but puzzle pieces that didn’t match.
“We’re less than friends.” Sidonia had asked me about Levi as I stood by the register, straightening and re-straightening notepads made of recycled paper that weren’t crooked. The irony struck me, that recycled paper had history, and my emotions felt as flimsy as the thin sheets.
“Did he say that?” Her green eyes narrowed on me, the weight heavy on me without having to look up to meet them.
“Practically, plus I felt…dismissed…when I left his apartment.”
“You were at his apartment?” Sidonia asked, her tone incredulous. My eyes drifted sheepishly up to hers to find double raised eyebrows and wrinkled skin on an otherwise smooth forehead.
“He called me, and I went to his place. He seemed…out of sorts.” How could I explain what I’d seen? A drunken father, drowning in more than screams of his child. A man defeated by the sound of a baby. What was wrong with him, I cursed, and then remembered his leg and the diagnosis of AJ.
“Did he kick you out?”
I shook my head. “I had to work, plus I sensed it was time for me to leave.”
Sidonia put down a stack of clothes she’d been sorting. “Katie Kat, you can’t make assumptions. If he didn’t say go, you stay.”
“But I couldn’t assume he wanted me to stay when he didn’t say go.” My eyes narrowed at her. “Besides, why does staying make me feel like some kind of love-sick puppy? Stay. Sit. Heel. I might have a serious crush on him, and my body wants all the feels, but I’m not rolling over to play dog for him.” My voice rose as I lifted a notepad and slapped it on top of the neatly stacked pile. The feel of his hands surrounding my breasts returned and my skin tingled. Internally, I cursed myself, knowing I would have willingly allowed Levi to take me, if that was what he needed earlier. His pain was palpable, and I would have given him everything to take it away from him.
“Your body wants all the feels? Do tell?” Sidonia shimmied toward me, holding out a vintage lingerie dress, silky and satiny, and shimmering in her hands as she walked with it pressed against her body. I laughed.
“We’ve…kissed. And maybe, a few other things…” My voice dropped thinking of his fingers pinching my nipples. “But I can’t be a friend-with-benefits. It’s just not me.” And apparently, Levi already had that type of fling, probably many times over, only the most recent one settled him a bit.
“He has a child with the last woman who played that role for him, and that won’t be me.” My head lifted defiantly. No, I would not be playing sex-girl to a sexy man, risking my heart and my body, for some hero worship I’d designed of Levi Walker. Not to mention, I understood his predicament. Levi felt trapped, and I imagine that’s how my mother felt. Stuck with a child she didn’t want, in a small town where she wanted to be set free. It was one of the reasons I came to Chicago. I didn’t want to be cemented to Elk Rapids, and I hoped I’d find my mother. It was a silly thought nagging at the back of my brain. In a city of three million people, finding one person was like searching for a needle in a haystack, hidden but ready at the wait to prick when found.
“Katie, have you ever considered he might like you, for you, but he doesn’t know ho
w to show it?”
I laughed outright, without humor. Levi Walker like me? Doubtful. He had too much baggage to include me among the cases, and I didn’t want to be another bag filled with hopeless possibility. A hope-chest full of future things awaited me, and I sighed with my dreams. I was too idealistic, too naïve, and the saddest part, I knew it. I wanted to believe in happily-ever-after, and dreams-come-true, and figured why not me. My fingers combed through my loose hair and I shook my head.
“I just don’t see that as a possibility. He’s older, wiser, complicated, and I’m me.” I waved a hand down the front of me, dressed in jeans and Converse gym shoes.
“What I see is a beautiful girl discrediting herself.” Sidonia rose an eyebrow so high it wrinkled her otherwise smooth forehead. “And if he doesn’t like what he sees, he isn’t worthy of looking. Now, here. I want you to try this on.” Holding out the pale material, she dangled the dress side to side before me.
“When would I ever need to wear that?” I laughed.
“The scholarship ball.”
Another hefty sigh left me. I’d forgotten about the fall fundraiser, mandatory for scholarship recipients, as a way to mingle amongst donors and show our appreciation for their support of higher education. I internally cursed Sidonia for reminding me. Briskly swiping the soft material from her slender fingers, I stalked to the fitting room. It was more like a closet with a heavy curtain before the opening. Slipping out of my clothes with haste, and falling against the wall with a clatter, I eventually shimmied the dress over my skin, relishing the silky sensation slipping down my hips and abdomen.
