Jump

by Terra Little

  She is tight now. Uptight, upright and tense in the driver’s seat. Fixated on every detail of the single-story building across the street from where we are parked at the curb. She describes to me what I can see with my own eyes, like I am blind and she is my sight. I see brick and glass, an entrance and an exit door, and cars in the parking lot. As an afterthought, I glance at flowers and shrubs because she makes such a point of mentioning the million different colors some gardener has mixed together.

  I tell her that I don’t give a shit about flowers, and she makes herself smile. “What are you going to do while I’m in there?” Fifteen minutes from now I will be inside the building, meeting with a counselor for the first time in my life. I’m worried about how things will go and curious to find out what I have to say to someone I don’t know, but I am even more worried about the look on Vicky’s face.

  She ignores my question and asks one of her own. “What are you going to do in there?”

  “Stella says I need to get some stuff off my chest, so I guess I’ll do that.”

  “What does Stella know, Leenie? I mean, who is she to say you need therapy? What makes her think that?”

  “I think she’s a closet alcoholic,” I say and silently apologize to Stella for setting her business out on front street.

  Vicky throws her hands up and rolls her eyes to the roof of the car. “Oh, well, of course she’s qualified to judge your mental state. God knows she’s got her shit together.”

  “You don’t understand. She—”

  “I understand you’re taking mental health advice from an alcoholic ex-convict, Leenie. I understand that perfectly. What I don’t understand is why you’re even stooping to her level.”

  She goes on and on and doesn’t realize what she has just said. I watch her face shift and wrap itself around every emotion she feels, let her run out of steam slowly. “I’m an ex-con too, Vicky. Did you forget that?”

  “Your situation is different from hers,” she snaps.

  “How?”

  “You know how, Leenie. Look, I don’t want to argue about this. I just don’t think you need to be telling all your business to some stranger who doesn’t have a fucking clue, okay?”

  “What if something is really wrong with me?” I put up a hand when she grips the steering wheel and grits her teeth. “Just listen for a minute. What if I do need to talk to someone about some of the stuff going on in my life?”

  “Like what? What’s going on in your life that isn’t going on in anybody else’s?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “I think that’s the point. I hardly ever leave the house if I’m not going to work or with you or Beige.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Except for Stella, I have no friends.”

  “Neither do I. And Stella is suspect, if you ask me. You can do better.”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore, Vicky. I don’t even know where to begin looking for myself.”

  “None of us really knows who we are. That’s why life is such a bitch. You don’t start knowing yourself until it’s time to die, and by then, what’s the point?”

  “I’m scared damn near all the time and I don’t know why.” The admission takes a lot out of me and puts a lot in me at the same time. Until now I haven’t given a name to a large part of what I feel on a day to day basis. Finally, I face it and call it what it is: Fear.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Living. I’ve been away for eight years, and everything is new and strange. Everything feels different, like I’m supposed to be doing something, but I don’t know what.”

  “You need to give yourself time to adjust, Leenie. I tried to tell you that before you moved out, but you wouldn’t listen to me. You had to—”

  I cut her off. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what? Speak the truth?”

  “Don’t minimize what I feel. Don’t try to make everything have a nice, neat explanation, because it doesn’t. What’s going on with me doesn’t have shit to do with me moving out of your dungeon and you know it. My shit goes way deeper than that, Vicky. And you are the last person I should have to say that to.”

  “Oh, so that’s it,” she says, flopping back in her seat and staring at me. She looks at me as if she has finally figured out the mystery and doesn’t like the conclusion. “That’s what you’re going in there to tell those folks? All our family business?”

  “Have you ever told anyone about what happened?”

  “Hell no, and why would I?” She looks at me like I am crazy.

  “Why wouldn’t you? It wasn’t your fault. Mine, either.”

  “I don’t need people looking at me like I’m some kind of freak, whispering and giggling about my business and thinking, poor, poor Victoria. Did you hear what happened to her? I don’t need that shit, Leenie. And neither do you. The old bitch is dead. Let the shit stay dead with her.”

  I look at Vicky long and hard. Give her time to get her emotions under control before I say, “You don’t have friends, either.”

  “How in the hell do you know what I have? I have friends all over the place. Work and everyplace else.”

  “Beige says the phone hardly rings, and when it does, it’s mainly Mama.”

  “Beige talks too damn much.”

  “You don’t socialize the way you should.”

  “Now you’re Oprah?”

  “Why aren’t you dating anyone?”

  “Lord,” Vicky drawls sarcastically. “Please don’t tell me you’re about to suggest hooking me up with one of your butchie girlfriends?”

  “You think I’m a lesbo?” I almost laugh out loud.

  “Shit, don’t you think you’re a lesbo? What’s with all the scruffy jeans and tee shirts? No makeup, no nail polish, no nothing. You don’t even wear earrings.”

  “Beige stole them again and she won’t give them back.”

  “Well, here.” She snatches diamond cut hoops from her ears and pushes them into my hands. “Put these on.”

  “You know that was a low blow, right?” I flip the visor mirror down and check myself out after I put on the earrings. “You were wrong for that butchie crack.”

  “Am I right though? Are you attracted to women, Leenie?”

  “Would you blame me if I was?” I catch her eyes and raise my eyebrows. “I mean, with all the shit we’ve been through, odds are one of us would turn left. Would it be so strange if I was the one who did? Would it really?”

  Vicky snaps her mouth shut and her eyes dance away from mine. “Are you going in there or not?”

  I reach over and squeeze her hand to bring her eyes back to mine. “You should come with me.” My words make her snatch her hand away and use it to massage the wrinkles out of her forehead. She closes her eyes on a long hiss and shakes her head.

  “No, Leenie. You’re not the only who can be scared and that”—she points out the window and shakes her head again—“scares the shit out of me. Stay out here with me. Will you do that?”

  I don’t have to think about my response. I have been saying it for so long that it comes automatically and it feels at home on my lips. “Don’t I always stay with you?” I ask softly.

  For the third time in a week I stand on Aaron’s doorstep at the crack of dawn, with my pillow bunched under my arm and thick sweat socks hanging off my feet. He hears my knock and opens the door without bothering to look through the peephole. He knows it is me and he knows what I want.

  We don’t speak as he stands back from the door, making ugly faces as he stretches, and I tip over to his sofa to spread out. He locks the door and walks back into his bedroom to resume what I have disturbed. He is a night owl, and knowing him, he hasn’t been asleep long. Probably just long enough for the sleep to get good and then I show up, dragging my pillow behind me.

  There is a blanket folded over the back of the sofa waiting for me, and I reach for it instinctively. I am too lazy to sit up and shake it open, so I kick it open with my feet and curl up underneath it,
sighing when my head hits the pillow. His space settles around me in a way that mine will not when I am having trouble sleeping. I hear the kitchen clock ticking and his fax machine click on and go into receive mode. Feel my lips becoming slack and my eyelids gaining weight.

  I am asleep in minutes, and Aaron’s voice rips me out of my silent void the way a baby is ripped from the womb.

  “Lena.” He stands in his bedroom doorway, wearing gray boxers and scratching his bare chest.

  I wipe saliva from the rim of my mouth and wait for my eyes to uncross. “What?” He moves away from the doorway and leaves me wondering, and it doesn’t take me long to find my way to his room. I stand at the edge of his bed and tug on my locks. “What did you want?”

  Aaron doesn’t say anything, just shifts around in bed and tosses the covers back. He creates a space for me and pounds the pillow under his head. It bunches into submission and he nestles the side of his face into it and stares at me, waiting. I look at him and then at the bed, at the bed and then at him. Then I turn around and walk out of his bedroom.

  I come back ten seconds later with my pillow.

  “There’s an extra pillow,” he says, yawning.

  “I know. I need mine too.” I give him my back, pull the covers up to my waist and hug a pillow to my chest. I push my arm underneath the pillow on loan from him and close my eyes. I take a deep breath and scratch the tip of my nose. Try not to move too much as I bend my arm back and search for the spot between my shoulder blades that is itching. He becomes still and clears his throat.

  “Right here?” His nails scrape over the surface of my tee shirt and land in one spot.

  “Lower.” I sigh as he scratches lightly. “Harder.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Better?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “No problem.” His breathing evens out and I know he is drifting off. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “Little bit.”

  “Scale of one to ten, how bad?”

  “Seventeen and a half.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” And then, “I heard the screams again.”

  “Hers or yours?”

  I am silent for several seconds. He knows what he is asking me, and I do too. “Mine.”

  “How many times, Lena?”

  “Once.” I hug my pillow tighter and squeeze my eyelids shut. “Can’t sleep sometimes.”

  He scoots across the mattress and curls his body around mine, parts his calves for my feet and then crosses his ankles around them. His arm is like a weight around my waist, solid and strong, and I don’t worry about being yanked out of bed if I don’t want to be. I know I won’t be attacked and sleep is safe.

  But just in case I don’t know, he says, “Sleep now.”

  I lose contact with the world and sleep.

  Aaron is still snoring when I open my eyes again. It is almost one o’clock in the afternoon, time for any sane person to be up and about. I move away from him slowly and ease off the mattress. He is sleeping so hard that he doesn’t even realize I’m missing. I cross the living room, look at the blanket I abandoned on the sofa, and go into the kitchen.

  The smell of sizzling bacon does what missing body heat couldn’t. It wakes Aaron up and brings him stumbling into the kitchen, sniffing the air. I pass him a mug of Colombian blend and watch him take a seat at the table. I flip bacon over in the skillet and get my thoughts together.

  I gather my courage and open my mouth. Something has been on my mind for the longest, and I am finally ready to satisfy my curiosity. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend? Or a wife?”

  His mug stops halfway to his mouth and he eyes me warily. “Broke up with the last woman I was seeing not too long before you moved in.”

  “How long before?”

  “About two weeks.” He takes a sip and shakes his head sadly. “Couldn’t deal with her son. He’s sixteen and so out of control it isn’t even funny. Had to keep asking myself if I was sleeping with her or if he was. I’m too old for pissing contests.”

  “You never wanted kids?”

  “I always wanted kids. I want to be married first though.”

  “So you’re holding out for a ring?”

  “I’m getting too old to be holding out for anything right about now. It didn’t happen, and that’s cool with me. Can’t miss what you never had.”

  I crack eggs on the rim of a bowl and add salt, pepper and a dash of milk. “None of the women in my family ever got married, either. Guess we were all too fucked up to try living normal lives.”

  “Normal is subjective,” he says.

  “No, it’s not. There’s normal and then there’s fucked up. Two completely different things. The women in my family were fucked up. Still are.”

  “If you say so.” He bows his head over the plate I slide in front of him and prays. I watch him and wonder what his god’s name is. If his god really has his eye on the sparrow or if he only sees the good and righteous people. I wonder if I am even in his god’s peripheral vision, and then I try to picture what a sparrow looks like.

  “Stella thinks I need to talk to somebody . . . about my issues,” I blurt out. “What do you think?”

  “Do you care what I think?”

  “Yes, tell me.”

  “Truth?”

  “Truth. Slow down before you choke yourself.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I think you have a story to tell. I think it might help somebody else.”

  “You’re just saying that shit because you want a bestseller.”

  Eyebrows go to the ceiling and lips curve. “Oh, your shit has the makings of a bestseller?”

  “If you can write worth a damn, it does.”

  “So tell it to me. Let me help you tell your story.”

  “No.”

  “You chicken?”

  “Maybe.” I drop slices of bread in the toaster and turn the heat up. They can’t brown fast enough, and I waste time rooting around in the refrigerator. “Strawberry jam or apple butter?”

  “Plain butter,” he says. “And then strawberry jam. Do I scare you, Lena?”

  “You did at first.”

  “Why?”

  I think about my answer as I spread butter and then jam. I take a bite out of one of his slices and hand it to him. “Big and tall,” I tell him. “Man. Foreign object. It’s been close to ten years, Aaron.” He whistles behind his teeth and looks at me through new eyes. “Things like hairy chests and hard-ons, I don’t know anything about.”

  “You felt that, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did it scare you?”

  “A little bit.”

  “What was scary about it?”

  I surprise myself by blushing, something I haven’t done in years . . . since before. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.”

  “It might be interesting to find out.”

  We stare each other down. “It might be a nightmare too.”

  “But eventually you might be curious?”

  He chews purposefully and watches me watch him. My eyes won’t stay on his face. They go to his chest and count the hairs there. They float along the length of his arms and ride the muscles, then drop to his legs and remember the hardness there. They snap back up to his and dig in. “I already am. But I need to get things straightened out in my head before I can even think about going there with you.”

  “Then talking to somebody might help.”

  “So you think I should?”

  “I think you should think about it.”

  “And while I’m thinking about that, what will you be thinking about?”

  He catches my eyes and swallows a mouthful of coffee. Finally, he says, “You tell me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Vicky has the radio blasting so our conversation can’t be heard on the other side of our bedroom door. We finish plotting and planning, and then we sit on our beds and wait for the inevitable confrontati
on. An old Temptations cut keeps us company as we both deal with our own personal demons and search for courage. We don’t have long to ruminate, but we know this already and we are ready.

  The door flies open and my mother stomps into the room, twists the knob on the stereo and brings silence to our space. The three of us take turns staring at each other and then smoke starts pouring out of my mother’s ears. Vicky and I are still wearing our pajamas, and we are nowhere near ready to walk out the door with her. I haven’t brushed my teeth and Vicky’s hair is sticking out from her head like she stuck her finger in a light socket. My mother is beyond pissed.

  “What the hell is this?” she roars. “I thought I told you heifers to get your clothes on damn near an hour ago.”

  Vicky looks at me and I look at her. She is supposed to take the lead on this, but as always, I am the one who grabs the reins and smacks the horse on the ass. “We’re not going,” I say.

  “Excuse me?” A hand goes to a hip and her neck rolls. She dares me to repeat myself, gives me the evil eye and lets me know that an ass-whipping is in my very near future.

  “We’re not going. I’m not, anyway. Can’t speak for Vicky.”

  “I’m not going either,” Vicky finds her voice and speaks up. She tucks her feet back under the covers on her bed and lies on her back. Folds her hands on her stomach and looks at the ceiling. “I hate it over there.”

  “I have work, goddammit. I don’t have time for this shit. I need to be rolling in five minutes, and the two of you need to be rolling with me.” She snatches the covers off of Vicky and grabs her arm. “Get up and get some damn clothes on. You too, Leenie. I don’t know what the hell kind of games you’re trying to play, but making me late for work is out.”

  “Leave her alone,” I say. “We’re not going and you can’t make us.”

  “Oh, I can’t make you?” My mother pulls her shirt up and starts in on her belt. She twists it loose and eases it out of the loops, holding my eyes to make sure I see what she’s doing. “Is that what you just said? I can’t make you?”