by Terra Little
She makes her way over to me, and I keep my eyes on the man. He watches her the way men watch women, and it makes the underside of my skin burn, right next to my bones. He feels my eyes on his face and looks up just in time for me to silently tell him that I will slit his throat and sacrifice him to the gods. That I will go back to prison with more blood on my hands and more hate in my heart. He is nothing and no one to me, but Beige is everything to me. It doesn’t take him long to do the math in his head and find something else to look at. Smart man, my eyes tell him.
Grown men have no business lusting after little girls, no matter how well developed their bodies are. They should be able to look in a little girl’s eyes and see that she is not ready to enter the world of adult sadism, no matter how round and juicy her ass is, and regardless of how tight and succulent her breasts are. Everything is tight and succulent at one time, like fruit on the vine that is pleasing to the eye but left on the vine until it is mature enough to be consumed. We know enough to let nature take its course where fruit is concerned, but we don’t know shit about kids.
Beige and I get looks as we join the line at the concession stand. People study us and wonder if we are a couple because her arm is draped around my shoulders and mine hugs her waist. We whisper silly things to each other and share giggles that don’t include the rest of the world. For a while, I forget that I am unsettled and feeling threatened. I think she does what she does on purpose, knowing that I am not entirely human and that I am still part crouching tiger, hidden dragon. In her own way, she offers me her protection, and I can’t help thinking that it should be the other way around. That it was the other way around.
“You want to be at home, don’t you?” She orders nachos and a jumbo Icee, and leans against the counter with one side of her mouth tipped up at the corner.
I order popcorn and a large soda and tell her, “I want to be wherever you are.”
We are seeing a movie called U Got Money, which is supposed to be funny, and I think I am the only person in the theater who isn’t laughing. I am too preoccupied with the fact that the person sitting next to me has claimed the armrest. Her arm is pressed into my side and her cologne is overpowering. She crunches popcorn and crosses and uncrosses her legs so many times that I lose count. I am transfixed by the fact that I can hear the conversation she is having with the man on the other side of her.
In the row behind us there is an elderly woman doing her best to corral three children into behaving. I hear her tell them to shush, to hush and then to flat out shut up when nothing else works. I know she is Big Mama because one of them calls her constantly, says he has to pee and makes her curse under her breath. They stand to leave the aisle and sweep my locks off the back of my neck as they pass. It takes me ten minutes to regulate my breathing.
Two rows down, in front of us, a group of teenage boys are tossing kernels of popcorn across the theater at unsuspecting people. They think it is funny to watch people squirm in their seats, scratching places that do not itch. It is hilarious to them to see their targets turn in their seats and verbally abuse the people behind them, instead of the true culprits. They sit there and hold their breath, impatient for the inevitable outbursts, while I sit in my seat and count the seconds until someone starts shooting. This is how simple nonsense escalates into complete chaos.
I am like a child with ADHD. My mind is so polluted with extraneous stimuli that I cannot focus on the task at hand, the movie I have paid to see and enjoy. Beige laughs and lets herself be seduced by the big screen, but I cannot be seduced while I am being violated. I talk myself out of claustrophobia by staring at her profile and stealing some of her innocence for myself. I keep myself from screaming by choosing a cheesesoaked nacho from the tray she holds and stuffing it in my mouth. I count the minutes until I can escape.
At some point I do laugh at what I see on the screen. A large part of the movie is about parody. Making fun of people and exposing their ridiculous behaviors for what they really are.
An actress is confronted by two men who are unaware that she is PMS’ing, and they push her buttons until her eyes roll back in her head and she turns into a monster. The fight scene is comical, and I almost forget that I shouldn’t be laughing. PMS is nothing to play with.
The noisy kids behind me are back. They shuffle past and locate their seats just about the time popcorn kernels start coming our way. Something flies past my head, and then Beige swats the air in front of her face.
“Are they stupid or what?” she whispers, irritated.
“I think so,” I say. “You want me to go down there and knock some heads together?”
“Mom, please . . .”
“I’m serious, I’ll—”
“It’s cool, sista,” the man two seats down from me cuts in. He is talking loud and sounding angry. “You ain’t gotta go down there and do nothing, ’cause in a minute I’ma put some fire in somebody’s ass. Let another piece of popcorn come up here.”
Instantly, the popcorn tossing stops and peace is restored. Even the noisy kids behind us settle down, and I am reminded that men do serve a useful purpose, after all. I don’t stop to think that I will be the next unwanted distraction.
It happens before I have time to prepare myself. What is a parody turns into a disgrace, and it is nowhere near funny to me. I grip my knees and watch four men trap a woman in a dark alley. I suck in my breath, hold it, and watch the woman’s clothes being torn away from her body. I think she is saying something, maybe screaming for help, but the buzzing in my ears keeps me from hearing her. She is thrown to the ground, still begging and pleading, and the men start beating her.
“What is this shit?” I ask no one in particular. “How is this shit funny?” I look at the people around me, waiting for someone to explain it to me, but no one says anything. Beside me, Beige goes still and looks at me like she is worried that I will flip out at any minute.
“It’s all right,” she says. “Look . . . nothing’s happening to her.”
I take my eyes back to the screen and I see that the woman has turned into a female version of the Incredible Hulk, complete with a string bikini and generous breasts. She tosses her attackers every which way and laughs as each one of them meets gruesome fates. A few people laugh with her, but I don’t. I am still frozen.
“That’s not the way it happens in real life,” I blurt out. “That’s not real life. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know, Mom. Are you okay? Do you want to leave?” I am embarrassing her without meaning to. Her eyes beg me to settle down, and I make a concerted effort to do so, for her sake.
“No . . . I’m good. It’s just . . . who thinks shit like that is funny?”
I think that maybe I have played my hand to Beige, given her a first peek inside the fractured and fucked-up life I’ve lived. She doesn’t tell me this, but I see something shift in her face, a look come over her features that confirms it for me. She realizes that I am damaged goods, that I am a little bit coo-coo and slightly crooked in the head. She wants to know what prison is like and I show her, though I want nothing more than to keep the reality of it as far away from her as I can. But she cannot be around me for any length of time without the stench of it rubbing off on her.
Her nostrils are full of the stench as she grips my hand in hers and laces our fingers together. She squeezes my palm to hers until there isn’t room for air to pass through them, mixes the sweat in my palm with the sweat in hers, and shifts in her seat so she can lay her head on my shoulder. She pities me.
“It’s okay, Mom,” she says.
“No, it’s not,” I say back. She has no idea that it will never be okay. That I will never be okay. “No, it’s not.”
My grandmother spends extra time wrapping my scarf around my neck and tucking the ends. Next, she helps me separate my fingers inside my gloves and pull them on snugly. It is one of the few memories I have stored away that brings a feeling of warmth with it when it comes to me. Most of the other ones brin
g along with them anger and numbing cold.
She is hardly ever doting, but she is today because she senses that her hold on me is loosening, that she is losing my allegiance. Rebellion is written all over my face, and she is smart enough, cunning enough, to know that she needs to do something to assure my continued cooperation. I am a loose end that she cannot afford to leave hanging.
She zips my coat and then tries to kiss me on my cheek, but I spin away and leave her kissing air. Leave her wishing she had the right to put her lips on my skin in love and affection. I hate her, and I think she can smell the hate wafting from my armpits like musk. She thinks kissing me will neutralize the odor, but she is wrong.
“All right now, Leenie. That’s enough of your foolishness, you hear?”
I pretend I don’t hear, and I keep staring at the door and counting the seconds until a car horn sounds. My mother is always punctual. She drops Vicky and me off at seven every morning and picks us up at four-thirty every evening. It is four-twenty-nine, and we know to be wrapped and ready to run out the door at the sound of her car horn. She never comes inside.
I wish she would come inside, just once, so she can see what we do all day, while she is working. Mothers are supposed to be psychic, and I just know that if she comes inside she will sniff the air and know. She can save us if she comes inside.
The horn sounds, and Vicky rushes over to the door like she expects Santa Claus to be on the other side of it. The way she wobbles in her coat would be funny if there wasn’t something so desperate about her need to escape. She, too, is wrapped as snug as a bug in a rug, and her mittens slip off the doorknob many times before she is able to grab hold of it and turn it.
My grandmother’s hand is weighting my shoulder down, and as I go to follow Vicky out the door, it clenches tight enough to keep me in place. She puts her face in mine and forces my chin up with a finger, makes me look in her eyes.
“You fix your face, Leenie. Ain’t nothing in the world that bad you gotta look like that,” she says.
“I hate you.” To my grandmother’s face, I say this. And I feel like I have lost twenty pounds afterward. It is finally off my chest, out there for her to look at and to consider the ramifications.
I expect her to apologize, to say that she knows she is wrong, to ask me what she can do to make me stop hating her, but she doesn’t. What she says is this: “I hate you too.”
And I never look at the world the same again.
My mother answers on the fourth ring. She is in the middle of a nap and my call wakes her up. I hear low levels of irritation in her voice, and I clear my throat, clamp the receiver to the side of my face with a trembling hand. If I cannot sleep, then neither will she.
“Why didn’t you ever come inside?” I say as soon as she says hello.
She says nothing for long seconds, and then she releases a strong breath. “Is that what you called to ask me, Helena?”
“Yes. Why didn’t you?”
“This is ridiculous, you know that?”
“Ridiculous like it was ridiculous when I told you what was going on inside that goddamn house?”
“You were a child and you liked to make things up. You—”
“Vicky backed me up. She said the same thing I did.”
“Vicky was always easily influenced. You could always talk her into doing or saying whatever you told her to say and do. What is this about?”
“It’s about you never coming inside.” I’m pissed and she hears it in my voice. “If everything was a figment of my imagination, why didn’t you ever come inside?”
“Because I had worked all day and I was tired. Okay? What else do you want to know?”
“How could you do it?”
“How could I do what, Helena?” She is out of sorts and patting around on the nightstand for her cigarettes and lighter. She pauses to fit a cancer stick between her lips, and then the flicker of death ignited comes through loud and clear. “How could I do what?”
“Be in such a state of denial that you didn’t even hear your own children’s cries for help?”
“Look, I don’t have to listen to this. It’s been peaceful while you were gone, and now that you’re back, don’t think you’re about to turn my life upside down just because you messed yours up. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You could’ve saved us. You could’ve kept us away from that place and saved us.”
“And then did what with you? Neither of you cows had sense enough to stay your asses inside the house like I told you, so what was I supposed to do with you? All I needed was somebody calling the police because my kids was running the streets and at home by themselves. If you had listened to me and stayed inside, you could’ve saved yourselves. So how is this my fault?”
“You made me kill her. You did nothing, so I had to do something.”
“Oh my God”—like she is in a state of disbelief—“Leenie . . .”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Girl, you have lost the last little piece of your mind you still had. I knew something wasn’t quite right about you the last time I saw you, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Are you insane?”
“It’s the truth. You made me kill her because you didn’t do anything to stop me from wanting to. You knew.” She tries to interrupt me, but I roll right over her words and keep going. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking, Mother. You knew about the sick shit going on in that house and you can’t tell me you didn’t. That’s why you never came in. You sent us in there day after day, but you wouldn’t do what you were making us do. How are you looking at yourself in the mirror every day?”
“The same way you manage to look at yourself, Leenie.”
“Oh, is that so, Ellie?” I use her childhood nickname and stop her flow with a gasp. She knows that I know. “Are you still there, Ellie? Are you listening, Ellie?”
“You’re crazy,” she hisses into the phone. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Hang up then, Ellie.”
“Good-bye, Leenie.”
“Good-bye, Ellie. And thanks for nothing.” I give her the click first.
Aaron and I are testing out the hypothesis that a man’s hands grow a woman’s hair. He shows up on my doorstep, claiming to be in the throes of writer’s block and aggravated because of it, so I put him to work moisturizing my scalp. I hand him a bottle of prewarmed hot oil treatment and curl up on the floor between his knees. Twenty minutes after he finishes, I am in no hurry to leave the cave his long legs provide, and he likes the way my fingernails scratch through the hair on his calves. It is a mutually satisfying compromise, a safe coven to take shelter in, in exchange for endless minutes of scalp massage and follicle stimulation.
He leans back against the futon and purrs like a big cat, but I’m not sure if he is responding to what I am doing or what I am saying. With him, it is hard to tell what’s going on inside his head.
“I think about her sometimes,” I say after several minutes of thick silence. Our conversation is heavy, and it makes the air in the room heavy too. I feel my voice pushing through the density of it, ignoring the signals to remain trapped inside me and struggling to be heard. I think it wants to be heard even though what I am saying is not fit for human consumption. “I don’t think I’m saying it right. I don’t really think about her, don’t feel sorry for her as an individual, but I think about her. About what happened to her. Does that make sense?”
“Does it make sense to you?”
“I guess it does, yeah. You really had to be there to know what I’m saying. It’s like laughing at a joke that goes right over your head, if you weren’t there.”
“Now, that makes sense to me,” he says. He leans forward and stretches an arm around me. His hand is shiny with oil, and I catch the hot oil bottle before it falls to the coffee table and makes a mess. I smell peppermint gum on his breath as he retreats back into his reclining pose.
“Did you know her?”
“Only by sight. She was one of
the aggressives. A chick named Nicky.”
“Aggressives?”
“What they call a woman who is more like a man than a woman.” I look over my shoulder and catch his eyes. “You know what I mean—a woman who might as well be a man.”
Aaron chuckles under his breath. “Oh, like a woman who could kick my ass?”
“And take your woman.”
“That’s pushing it a little bit, but I see what you’re saying. So Nicky was a man’s man. What did she do and who did she do it to?”
“I can’t remember now, but it seems like it was something really silly.”
“But you can remember what happened to her?”
“At least twice a week.” My fingers leave his calves and find his toes in his slides. I pluck at the hair on the tops of his big toes and release a shaky breath. “I can still hear her screaming all the way over on D block, where I am. She’s on A block, but I can hear her like she’s in the cell next to me. I remember thinking, where the hell are the guards when you need them? Why don’t they come and help her?”
“They pretended like they didn’t hear her?”
“I don’t know how they couldn’t have heard her, when I can still hear her right now.”
“That tickles.”
“What?”
“Playing with my feet,” he says softly. “Tickles.”
“I’ll stop.” I discover the skin on the undersides of his knees and linger. “She was this big, ugly woman. Her voice was deep and rough, like a chainsmoking man, and she was always hacking and spitting like a damn thug all the time. But you know what? She screamed like a woman.”
We sit with the quiet for a while. He lets me get lost in my thoughts and doesn’t interrupt me as I navigate through them, find my way out and back into the room. His fingers get twisted up in my locks, and my scalp is putty in his hands. He is working my demons loose and coaxing them out of my mouth.
