by Terra Little
“All you gotta do is call.”
“Well, I’m calling now. Can’t you hear the phone ringing? Ring, ring, ring. You hear that shit?” I fall back against my seat and laugh long and hard.
Kimmick is a sneaky bastard. He gets me to talking and I don’t even realize he’s done it until it is too late and he is in my space. Always, he begins our sessions with a question that he says has been on his mind since the last time we met. Something I have said in the previous session makes him think of the question, he claims, and he presents me with it as soon as I walk into his office and lie down on his beat-up leather couch.
There is a pattern to the way we do things. He makes fun of the fact that I lie down, says I am being theatrical and melodramatic, influenced by too many television movies. I tell him that it is easier for me to look at the ceiling rather than at his funny-looking mug, and we laugh a little bit. And then he puts it to me, the question that has been on his mind all week.
This week I flip the script though. There is something that has been on my mind all week, and I don’t want to be distracted, so I come out with it as soon as I cross the threshold into his universe.
“I want to talk about my family,” I say as I kick off my shoes and swing my feet up on the couch.
He lays a peanut butter cup on his tongue and eases back in his chair. “You want one of these before I put ’em up?”
“No, thanks.” We finished off a whole bag last week and I figured out then that he is bad for my diet. “Did you hear me? I said I want to talk about my family. You asked about them once before.”
“And you told me you came to Earth on a space ship from Krypton,” he reminds me, tongue in cheek. “Said you were a stowaway on the same ship that brought Superman here.” “It wasn’t Krypton.” I find a water spot on the ceiling and stare at it without blinking.
“It was another planet. One where women rule and there are no men. One woman makes the rules, and everybody else falls in line. Disobedience is punishable by death. A bunch of crazy bitches with penis envy and fucked-up levels of consciousness.”
“There had to have been some men around,” he speculates around a mouthful of chocolate. “Babies were born.”
“I think they broke into sperm banks and stole sperm to procreate. I never had a father and I never thought I needed one. Never thought the absence of one was strange.”
“You think it’s strange now?”
“Now I’m too old to give a damn.”
He is quiet for several seconds. And then, “So . . . no men. What else?”
“The women in my family don’t need men. We are a self-contained unit, like an evil sorority.”
“Do you count yourself as an active member of the sorority?”
“I count myself as the black sheep of the family. The one who would not conform. I went to prison because I refused to repeat the chant and fall in line.”
“I thought you went to prison because you killed your grandmother.”
Kimmick gives it to me straight, no chaser, and the force of his words snakes through my body and bounces around inside my head. When I can speak, I look at him and say, “It amounts to the same thing.”
“I’m confused.”
“So am I.”
“Your grandmother led the evil sorority?”
“She had to be stopped.”
“By any means necessary?”
“By me,” I say and go back to the ceiling. “I didn’t have a plan to kill her. She was in my way and she wouldn’t budge. Wouldn’t admit to me that she was wrong. Wouldn’t say she was sorry or even fix her lips to accept the part she played in everything.”
“So you shot her.”
“So I shot her,” I confirm gravely. “She wouldn’t move.”
“You say she wouldn’t move. What was she standing in the way of, Lena? What was she hiding?”
“A black heart.”
“Elaborate?”
“No. I want to talk about my family.”
“Who were we just talking about?”
“People from the place in outer space. My family of origin. I have another family that I don’t belong to anymore.”
“Who are they?”
I smile as I remember. “Lou and Denny, my parents. Pigpen and White Girl Julie, my sisters. And Anna. She was my lover. Does that shock you?”
Kimmick braces his elbows on his knees and tilts his head to one side. “The price of gasoline is what shocks me, if you want to know the truth. Do you fancy yourself the only woman who’s ever taken another woman as a lover, in prison or anywhere else?”
“Hardly. Do you have any idea what goes on in the sanctuary while church services are supposed to be going on?”
“I’m Catholic. Spare me the details.” We laugh. “Are you trying to shock me?”
“I think you should be,” I say. “You might as well get shock and repulsion out of your system now.”
“As opposed to later?”
“Later gets ugly. Later could have you running out of here without your peanut butter cups.”
“Will you still be here after I run out?”
“I have nowhere else to go, so where else would I be but lying right here?”
“Then I’ll come back,” he says. “Assuming I run out, which I doubt I will. You don’t scare me, Lena.”
“I should.”
I issue the same ominous warning to Aaron, and he laughs in my ear. He listens to my tale of an evil sorority and asks many of the same questions that Kimmick asks. But the second time around, I am expecting them, and they are easier to answer. Kimmick breaks the ice and makes me wade into water that is freezing cold. Then I climb out of the whirlpool and Aaron is waiting, ready to wrap me in a warm towel, and after I stop shivering, I leave him with the wet towel that is Lucky, so the two of them can become better acquainted.
There is a process by which what happens between Aaron and me happens. I am still getting used to the ways he has of getting me to talk, so different from Kimmick’s ways but just as effective. I am still wrapping the concept of unforced and undemanding intimacy around my mind, sinking into it and letting myself speak from my mouth what I feel in my heart. There is no mulling over and censuring. What comes to my mind is what comes out of my mouth, and he rolls with my flow and takes it as I give it to him. He tells me that what I give him is priceless and makes me wonder if he is the one who should be consulting with a shrink.
He slides an arm around my waist and pulls me back against his chest, makes a pillow for my head with his elbow and kisses the back of my neck softly. This, too, is a process, the one we go through when it is time for sleeping, and we are making our way there together.
He eases his knee between mine and makes me think about what it would be like to cross the line we have not crossed, to experience all of him. I wonder what he would say if I peeled off my tank top and pressed my bare chest against his bare chest. If I offered him a cradle for his sex, without cotton tap pants as a barrier between us. If I asked him to remove his underwear and meet me halfway.
He is hard and he does not want me to know it. He puts space between us from the waist down and drops a hand on my waist when I try to fill the space. His breath backs up in his throat and he chuckles.
“I want to be closer to you too,” I say.
“This is enough for me, Lena.”
I don’t believe him, and I have to see his eyes. I roll over on my back and search his face in the darkness. “What if it’s not enough for me? You know it’s been ten years since . . .”
“Are a few more months going to make a difference?”
“Months?” My voice goes high and tight with shock. He throws his head back and laughs. “How much longer do I have to wait for you to kiss me?”
“We kiss all the time.” He proves his point by warming my belly with his palm and dropping a kiss on my lips. “See?”
“You think I’m a child?”
“I think you deserve all the space you need
to move around in. I’m not trying to put pressure on you to do what I want to do, Lena. It’s your world, baby. We do what you want to do and when you want to do it.”
“What do you do?”
“Become accustomed to cold showers.”
“Shit.” The darkness is my friend, and Aaron does not see me coming until it is too late. I pull his face to mine and push my tongue in his mouth before he knows what hit him. He gasps and I go deeper, make him kiss me back. He doesn’t need much provocation, and a few seconds into it, we are breathing hard and competing to see which one of us can open our mouths the widest, who can swallow who whole.
“You taste good to me,” I tell him after we pull apart. “I love the way you kiss.”
“Love the way you kiss too. Knew I would though. Goodnight, Lena.”
“Goodnight.” It takes me a few minutes of tossing and turning, and then I fall asleep.
When I do, I dream of Yo-Yo. She is so clear and so real to me that I can smell the bergamot she uses in her hair and bubble gum on her breath as she hovers over my shoulder, irritating the hell out of me. She is the only person in the world who can make me want to do harm to a computer. Make me want to pick it up and toss it out the nearest window and send her flying out after it.
She works my nerves.
“For one of them college girls, you sure is dumb, Lucky. You ain’t even looking in the most obvious places,” she says for the fiftieth time. It makes perfect sense that she is at the Sentinel with me, in my tiny office. She sits on my desk, next to the computer monitor, and helps herself to the jar of M&M’s there.
I look at her and roll my eyes. “I’m looking everywhere I know to look, Yo, damn. Point both of your eyes in the same direction and shut up talking to me, okay?” She knows that I have been searching for Stella’s daughter during my lunch breaks. Knows that not being able to find her is driving me crazy, and she thinks riding my ass about it helps.
“Oh, now you want me to shut up? You came looking for me; I didn’t come looking for your ass. You always was a pain in somebody’s booty hole, Lucky. But you know what? I’ma forgive you ’cause I know you love me.”
“I don’t love you,” I say and shake my head.
“You can’t say that shit to save your life, can you? If somebody offered your ass a million bucks to say it, you’d take your ass home broke as a joke, wouldn’t you?”
“Kiss my ass. Oh, wait, you’d have to be able to see it to kiss it, so forget it.”
“You got jokes?”
“Shhh.” I motion for her to be quiet and concentrate on the search results lining up on the screen. One of them might lead me to Stella’s missing daughter. Yo-Yo crunches candy by the handful and cranes her neck so she can see the screen too. I catch a whiff of hair grease and swallow the lump in my throat. “I miss you, Yo. I don’t know why, but I miss you all the time.”
“I feel you missing me, Lucky,” she says. “I been telling them about you up here too. Making sure they have your back, like I used to. Told ’em about how you helped me find my babies and got you a few brownie points.”
I cut her a sharp glance, and she winks at me with a shitty grin on her face. She knows I hate brownies and she knows why. “I wish I could find them for you now. Wish you could see them again.”
“I see ’em all the time. They doing real good, too, Lucky. Don’t worry ’bout me, girl. It’s all good now, you feel me? You just do your do and do it right. You got to represent for all the ex-cons coming along after you. Let ’em know we people too.”
“I wish you were here to help me represent.”
“Shit, you don’t need me no more.” She hops down from my desk and empties the last of the M&M’s into her hand. “Speaking of which, I gotta go. They calling me. I’ll be around though, looking out for you. Meantime, you need to open your eyes and look around you. Been a snake, it would’ve bit you right on your ass. And you say I can’t see.”
“Don’t go, Yo. Stay with me a little longer.” I reach for her, but she slips through my fingers like air, grinning like a fool and chomping on candy. “You have to go right this minute?”
“Right this minute, sweetstuff. They make you earn your keep up here, but it’s cool. The food is extra special. Way better than what we had in the joint.”
“I love you,” I say.
“I know you do. Just wanted to hear you say it.” She blows me a kiss and then she is gone.
I run out of my office and look up and down the hallway. I want to catch her before she can get away because there are things I want to ask her. Things I need to tell her. I don’t see her, and I call her name over and over, but she doesn’t come. Then I start to cry.
I wake up crying, but I am not in pain, not grieving. What I feel has nothing to do with sorrow and death and everything to do with living. There is pleasure so sweet that I cannot help my tears. I find Aaron’s hand where it rests against my core, run my fingers along his arm, and cradle his head against my chest. Let myself feel his sensual touch.
Aaron takes his hand away a little at a time, presses his lips to my mouth, and then to my forehead, where there is dampness. “Shhh.” The storm he created in me while I was sleeping is over. He tugs my tank top down and over my breasts, kisses a spot low on my stomach as he finds my panties and rights the wrong I have done to them. I have twisted and turned so much that they are riding my thighs. “Better?”
“Better,” I whisper, drifting off again. My vagina is still pulsing. “What about you?”
“Doesn’t matter. Relax and get some sleep.”
“It felt like I was flying.” I think I can feel wind beneath my wings, carrying me back to the clouds. Think I hear Yo-Yo asking somebody why she can’t have her damn wings yet, and I giggle when I hear the response she receives. The voice is like velvet, smooth and soothing, and it tells her that she still has work to do on her mouth.
“Hey . . . Giggles,” he curls up behind me and snatches me back from sleep. Pushes his knee between mine and fits his lips to my ear. “You listening?”
“Yeah. What did you say?”
“I said I love you.”
“Love you too.” I charge back into sleep and search for Yo-Yo. I want to tell her that I can say it, and I plan on asking her where I can collect my million dollars.
Chapter Nineteen
Family Portrait:
Who can see that a holiday celebration is really just a farce? That it is simply a gathering of people who are related by blood, but who would rather be anywhere else in the world. Anywhere that didn’t require sitting around a ceremonial table, shoveling food into their mouths and reciting preordained snippets of the family chant in installments. Who is brave enough, courageous enough, to push their plate away, to stand and speak out against the hypocrisy of celebrating a holiday linked to a man we call our holy savior, when we are all so full of satanic obedience that the smell of smoke fills our nostrils?
It is like this each and every holiday—the dreadful trek to my grandmother’s house, dressed in our finest and clutching Mama’s hand the whole way. Sometimes she cannot drive properly because her hands are shaking or else she is fumbling with her cigarettes and the ever present lighter. And sometimes she has to wrestle with either me or Vicky, whichever one of us claims the front seat, because we are constantly groping for her hand, wanting to hold it for reasons that she cannot or will not understand.
I accuse her of never coming inside the house that smells like old mothballs and shameful secrets, but that is a lie now that I sit down and think about it clearly. There are times when she can bring herself to step into the portal of hell and bear the heat for short periods. Usually on holidays and only for a few hours, the time it takes to consume a meal and to recite the chant that has no words.
The chant is really a delicate dance that we all do. Me and Vicky, my mama, my grandmother and my mother’s sister Deirdre. We do it with our eyes, and it goes something like this: Bounce your eyeballs from one person to the next, a
lways keep them in your sight and pay attention to what they do. Take your cues from them. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, don’t forget to smile when someone says something they perceive as funny, and don’t forget to say please and thank you. Absolutely no spontaneous conversation and no unnecessary fidgeting. Eat everything on your plate and say how much you enjoyed at least one thing on your plate. Above all else, children should be seen and not heard.
Dierdre’s children are heathens, a handful of nappyheaded boys who are always playing practical jokes and being left back a grade, with a few girls added to the mix to serve as guinea pigs for their brothers’ lunacy. But on these occasions they are perfect angels because they don’t have a choice in the matter. The house speaks to them, tells them that they must not take the freedom they have for granted, and it stunts their wayward nature. If that isn’t enough, Dierdre threatens them within an inch of their lives. She manages to make them afraid of something they can’t see or feel, but that she is all too aware of.
It takes me years to figure it all out, but when I do and I think back on the holidays, I realize that Deirdre knows. I see her face in my mind’s eye and I recognize the expression that lives on my face as the same one that owns hers. She does not want to know what she knows, but experience is the best teacher, the only one, really. Except for holidays, she keeps her children far away from this house, and I have always respected her for being strong enough to do at least that much for them.
We are Vicky and Leenie, but before us, they were Ellie and Dee-Dee. Before homemade caramel and brownies there was pineapple cake and lemon drop cookies.
What I cannot understand is why no one ever pushes their plates away and renounces their membership. Why anyone volunteers to be tortured and comes of their own free will. There must be a way to excommunicate from the sorority, and if street gangs allow their members to take a beating and walk away from them, then we must have some rule in the handbook for walking away from this.
Who will stand?
In the end, Vicky will. She wipes her mouth with a napkin, gets to her feet, and smoothes her dress down the front. It is her first big-girl dress, cream with a tasteful floral print and a matching three-quarter sleeve cardigan, in honor of her being fifteen. She no longer has to wear patent leather buckle shoes. She wears low-heeled pumps and sheer hose, and she looks pretty with her hair curled and lying around her shoulders.
