by Don Bajema
In the next instant she saw herself getting into her brother’s car on the way to town to sing. She heard the farmboys hollering again for another song. She remembered the way she felt. How it had been the best feeling, and the most dreadful feeling at the same time. How late that night beneath the trees next door she had spread out the blanket stolen from her sleeping house with a final sense of determination to make sure the feelings from that stage would last up inside of her until morning. And they had, and then some. She didn’t think she would like it, but she did. She was as good at it as she was at singing. Almost like there was no difference. Just take a deep breath and let what was going to happen, happen. Just find the power you’re born with, and then stay out of the way. She knew when she felt his body stretching into a hard panting straining animal that he was going to let loose inside her. And she didn’t care. And she cried at the knowledge that she didn’t care, that she had finally left herself behind. And become something else. A woman. It was time. That’s all. It didn’t turn out so bad. She looked at Eddie.
“Eddie, the boys were telling me this morning that you could jump across this room.”
“How big’s the room?”
“I don’t know.”
Eddie stands against the far wall and begins counting, measuring one foot in front of the other.
“I find this a little hard to believe.”
Eddie stops and looks up saying, “I get a running start.” “Well, yes. I know that Eddie. I didn’t think you were from Mars.”
“Oklahoma.”
“I thought you were born in El Paso.”
“I was, but that’s not where I come from.”
“What does he mean by that?” thought Wanda. “15 . . . 16 . . . 17 . . . 18 . . . ”
“What’d ya jump?”
“Twenty-one feet.”
“19 . . . 20 . . . 21 . . . Yeah, guess so.”
Eddie looked at Wanda and tried not to be reminded of Sherry when he caught the look on Wanda’s face. He refused to believe that the look was nearly the same as the look Sherry had just before she pulled him close to her. He knew it was the same look.
“Looks pretty far in here. Kinda hard for me to believe, too.” He noticed that his voice had a strange quivering sound around its edges. Wanda started to get up with an empty coffee cup.
“Another kid jumped 22. Here, I’ll get it.” Eddie takes the empty coffee cup and walks into the kitchen. Wanda calls over her shoulder to Eddie, who rattles the coffee pot on the stove and runs fresh water from the sink.
“The boys are going to the beach tomorrow, you going?” “Yeah, storm surf — huge. Still ‘red tide,’ though.”
Red tide, thought Wanda. “What’s red tide?”
“I dunno — some kinda plankton, I think. Makes the water smell kinda funny. It gets dark-colored. When you get out you feel sticky. Most people don’t like it. At night when the surf breaks, it shines. It glows in the dark. Really beautiful.”
“Never heard of it. Glows in the dark?”
“Yep.”
Wanda saw Eddie standing at the foot of her bed glowing in the dark, and the blood on her skin and blanket under the tree in Oklahoma.
“If you don’t get going, you’re gonna miss the game. Sherry’ll be fit to be tied.”
Eddie returns to the living room and stands behind Wanda. He is thinking of Sherry’s father and his own father sitting there in the stands cheering away. He wishes they would outlaw parents at these games. If she could, though, he’d like his mother to come. But that would be too much. His father only acts worse when she’s there.
“I wish it was just a game, not this big show. It just doesn’t matter. Even Sherry doesn’t get it. She always wants me to see things like everyone else. Sometimes I get sick of Sherry.”
“Really, I thought you guys were in love.”
Wanda draws out “in love” in a Gomer Pyle imitation. When she sees Eddie’s expression she drops the teasing and states seriously, “The boys say you’re crazy about her, and I think she’s real cute . . . sweet.”
“That’s right. She is. Perfect.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Wanda couldn’t miss the sense of frustration in Eddie’s voice. Wanda knows Sherry comes from a family that aspires to be above the rest of the neighborhood. She’s always thought it romantic that Sherry and Eddie were together. It seemed so natural and so absolutely wrong at the same time.
“Her father kicked me out of the house two weeks ago. Tonight he’s my best friend.”
“Well, I’ve kicked you out of my house a couple times as I remember and tonight I’m your best friend.”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is. . . . ”
“Eddie, we’re all just people you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re fallible. Sometimes, we do things we know we shouldn’t because something tells us we have to.”
Eddie felt his feet lifting off the floor. The room began to pound and he was afraid. He couldn’t move. Wanda’s eyes were looking right through him again like they did during the heat wave last summer.
Eddie looked like he was hypnotized. Wanda’s voice was softer and lower, “You’re going to need fallible people your whole life, Eddie, because there aren’t any other kind . . . and you are the kind of person who will need to have people. It’s hard to explain. In fact it is something you learn that can’t be explained . . . you have to learn it by yourself, with someone else.”
The street lamp over the Monroes’ front yard popped on, casting a striped shadow from the venetian blinds across the floor, and over Wanda’s legs. Eddie stood in the center of the room in the dark looking toward Wanda’s shadowy figure in the rocking chair. She finished her coffee. Eddie walked to the screen door.
“Eddie, will you turn on the sprinkler?” The screen door swung open and Eddie walked out. Wanda smiled to herself and made her decision. If the boy left for the game, then fine. If he came back in here, then fine. It was up to him.
The rain-bird began its staccato blasts. Reversed itself and repeated its blasts. Reversed itself and repeated its blasts, again. Brenda Lee came up on the radio. Eddie walked through the screen door.
“Eddie, have you and Sherry gone all the way?” Her voice had the same quivering sound Eddie’s had had earlier. He remembered Wanda’s voice saying, fallible.
“No, we haven’t.”
“Have you ever wanted to?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to?” He watched the rocking chair shift forward and saw Wanda’s figure looming in the dark. He was frozen. He felt like he was getting sick. She moved closer toward him, until he could see her face clearly inches away. She looked like she was summoning up courage. The moment it scared Eddie to see her under that kind of strain, her face relaxed into a smile. Her fingers touched Eddie’s rigid hands, hanging stiffly at his side. The touch felt like an electrical storm. Her hair brushed the side of his face, her cheek pressed against his jaw. Her voice joined Brenda Lee’s “. . . please accept my a-pol-ogy . . . I was too young . . . and I was to blind to see. . . .” The song ended. Wanda’s arms were around Eddie’s chest, her breasts pressing lightly against his shirt.
The inside of one of her legs bumped the outside of his thigh. She smiled up at him and said, “Thanks for the dance, Eddie.” Eddie who felt as though he had gotten older and stronger in the past two minutes said, “You’re welcome, Wanda.” She didn’t move. Eddie couldn’t stop thinking that a woman was holding him, a woman he had always desired and had always thought was above and beyond him. He couldn’t understand what was happening, but her dark face and easy smile were guiding him someplace. He fought off thoughts of the boys, and her husband, and tried desperately to
find some type of omen, some sense that the time here was right, and the consequences would not destroy him. A hot breeze from the desert rattled the screen door and blew over them. “Santa Ana,” thought Eddie.
“I love this time of day, Eddie. Don’t you? I’ve always thought this was the best time of day.”
“It is.”
“I’m going to kiss you, Eddie. Is that alright?”
“Yes.”
Wanda’s lips had more weight, more depth, more demand than any lips Eddie had ever felt. Wanda felt Eddie’s lips hesitate, and then join hers. She pulled away slowly, and then kissed him again. There was less hesitation this time. They met, and the intensity increased. She pulled slowly away again. In the next instant their lips touched, her tongue ran over his lips, and his mouth parted slightly. Eddie leaned back, a thin silver thread hung suspended between their lips, snapped and slapped wet against Eddie’s chin. Wanda’s fingers reached up and wiped his lip and chin, whispering, “Sometimes it’s hard to keep our dignity at times like these.” Eddie smiled, “What are we gonna do, Wanda?” “I think we’re going to go to bed, Eddie.” Eddie’s heart pounded so hard he thought he’d faint. “What are we gonna do after that?” “I’m going to drive you to the game.” “And after that.” “You’re gonna play football.” They smiled in unison. “And after that?” “Nothing, because the first time is just once. This is your first time. . . .” Wanda’s words faded as Eddie realized it was his first time, and that he was in the beginning of his first time, and they were not going to stop here, and that soon he would be lying naked in bed with this woman, and he would be inside of her, and all the images he had ever had would become images he would never forget. “. . . Eddie . . . it is your first time isn’t it?” “Yes.” “It should be with someone you care a lot about, and someone who cares a lot about you, someone you trust . . . the first time is only. . . .” She lifted her face and kissed him again, her mouth warmer and somehow more pliable, as though it were more alive. “. . . Just once, and that is all. I promise you, once. Once. And we’ll never mention it. We’ll never let on that it ever happened, not in front of anyone, and not even when we are alone. I promise. Do you promise?” Eddie couldn’t believe that it could be happening. A hotter breeze blew in the door spinning the newspaper along the floor, dogs started barking. “It’s the only way it could be, Wanda.” Wanda breathed the words “That’s right” into his face. She took his hand and led him in the dark toward her bedroom.
The phone rang. Wanda reached over the rocking chair, still holding Eddie’s hand and picked up the receiver. Eddie knew it was his mother. “Well, hi. Yeah, he’s here. Couldn’t hook up for a ride. I thought I’d take him.” Her voice sounded exactly like it always did, nothing hidden, nothing deceptive, natural, comfortable. Eddie felt her squeeze his hand as she said, “Why don’t we pick you up in about an hour? . . . Yeah, you do? Oh, great, I’d like to take a shower and change and we’ll pick you up at quarter to eight. Great. I know Eddie will be glad you’re going. You want to speak to him? Alright.” Eddie heard the electrical duplication of his mother’s voice in the telephone saying “See ya” as Wanda put the phone on the hook. “OK, Eddie?” Her eyes looked bright, at their easy-going, good-natured best. Eddie put his hand in her hair and let the black strands untangle slowly as he slid them from her forehead, over her ear, and down the back of her neck. It had been something he had wanted to do every time he saw her loving hands caressing one of the boys. The tender expression her face held as she touched her children was now on her face and he had brought it to her. His whole body responded, his groin pounded and began to ache. The black eyes closed and her body arched like a cat. Eddie shuddered slightly, and Wanda sensing it, opened her eyes. “C’mon Eddie.” Her voice had a final tone, a purpose, a warm determination. As they walked by the rocker Eddie put one hand on the chair and pushed it gently. They disappeared into the shadow toward her room. As the rocker tilted back and forth, back and forth, in and out of the striped shadows of the venetian blinds, to the music of the rain-bird, the rattling screen door, the hot wind outside and a woman’s voice singing on the radio.
A T-SHIRT, PHEROMONES, AND GRIEF
“Well, it’s up to you, always was. . . .” The boy could hear the drawling voice hanging in the air. The big man had been dead now for almost two months. The boy was crying, not from the beating he had just endured as much as from the aching in his chest. The boy felt he could never get the air he needed again, as though he would never breathe free like he could a couple of months ago.
He kept hearing the adage “rug pulled out from under him.” He felt ashamed. He hadn’t been able to put up more than a half-hearted effort at the defense of the big man’s name. He had put on a show of fighting back, but his heart wasn’t in it and it made him feel like a liar. The jeering and the laughing and the names he was called were still echoing in his head as he started to cry again. He hid his face in his elbow and watched the spit and tears congeal and drip from his open, sobbing mouth, landing on the gray cement, making patterns as it dropped and shook from his sobbing chest.
“. . . Always will be,” continued the big man’s drawl. The boy could see the invisible smile following the remembered words. He cried harder. The sobbing sounded deep and foreign, a shaking, breaking call to a couple of months ago.
Abruptly the boy rose to his feet. With both hands flat against his face, he smeared away the wet and slipped his fingers into his hair, combing the long strands flat. Not crying any longer, but still sobbing because his body couldn’t stop, he walked over to the big man’s tool box. He pulled it open by the chrome handle and it opened like a tackle box. The big man’s wife began playing the piano in the front room. She stopped. The boy started saying to himself, “Don’t stop, keep playing . . . keep playing.” There was a pause, and then she started playing again. He closed his eyes, wishing she would play forever. He was relieved that she wouldn’t come out and find him with the big man’s belongings.
Around the corner of the house and out in the street the boy could hear sounds. The other boys were out there arguing about something. It was the standard declaration of dominance, not a real dispute. There could be no real dispute. There could be no opposition to that voice. It belonged to the ultimate victor. The boy’s feelings weren’t as hard against the victor as they were against the victor’s friends — the boys who would egg the victor on, who would make the victor think, in his stupidity, that his show of force and brutality was admirable, who would use the boy as a sacrifice until the next time the victor felt threatened and would pound, kick, and beat his next victim.
For the past couple of months all of the victor’s anger and stupid, huge violence had been directed at the boy. The boy was tired and feeling an essential part of his coming manhood suffering and dying and cringing. He would renew his resolve daily, trying to stand upright against the demoralization of his heart, which had been breaking since the big man died. He quietly moved the tools around in the box, freeing the white T-shirt stuffed into one corner.
He held the T-shirt out at arm’s length. It stretched out in front of him and its bottom seam nearly touched the cement. He tried to see the big man inside the flat material. It was useless.
There was a time once when the boy had promised to take care of the big man’s dogs. The boy had shown up every day except one, and the big man found out somehow. The boy had taken the long way home from school winding through the canyons avoiding the route the victor and his friends might take. When he got home it was almost dark and his mother wouldn’t let him leave the house until morning. When the big man asked the boy about it, the boy lied. “Boy, I’m going to tell you something and you’d better remember it. You’ll be better off putting your faith in what you know is on earth, instead of what might be in heaven. You are on your own. Nobody gets to heaven holding hands and no one can help you get there. Most people fail to realize that what goes on up there
, is determined by what goes on down here. If you give your word, like you did to me, then you have to do everything you can to keep it. It’s hard, and you’ll have to face it every day. The devil always gives you a good reason to do wrong. Keep your word, boy. It’s one of the most important things you’ve got. And if someone loves you, and I love you, then you never have to lie to them. And if someone hates you, then never let them make you make less of yourself.”
The big man took several deep breaths, broke into a sweat and then looked at the boy and smiled. “The weight you’re willing to put on your shoulders here on earth gives you the strength to climb up to those pearly gates when the time comes.” The last thing he told him before he turned and walked into his house was “Listen to your own voice. Not your fears, or your feelings, good or bad. Listen to what’s in your heart and do what it tells you.”
The boy never really understood what the big man meant most of the time. The words seemed crazy. It was the big man who made sense, not his words. The big man always seemed to be trying to help him cross a bridge that could never be crossed. The big man always seemed to be answering, in one way or another, almost by riddles, the only question the boy ever wanted answered: How could a skinny, awkward kid ever hope to become a man? “Boy, what are you talking about? Now I have heard everything. How am I gonna become a man? Silliest shit I ever heard. You are a boy, so you are going to become a man. What kind of man? Maybe that’s the question. That’s a little more important. You’re a boy now, so you’ll be a man soon enough. You’ve been given a brain and a body and a heart, right? Well, if you’ve been given these things then they are yours to use. To use. Don’t worry about having it or not. Hell, you might have been given it by mistake. Just put it to use. Nothing else counts. Not what you or anyone else says, thinks, or even does to you. Now hand me that crescent wrench so I can put it to use and see if I can fix this damn thing before dark.”
