Black Silk

by Retha Powers

  Without argument we left the condom in its wrapper. I inhaled sharply as you guided yourself inside me. We used pressure and counterpressure. Pauses and jerks. Belly rolls and hip rocking. We were inventing new motion. The air beat against us in furious waves. Suddenly I was impatient to see your face. I rolled over and touched your cheek. I remember how your eyes burned as they held me. I remember thinking there was no other place for me. Nowhere on this earth. I pushed you onto your back. Your face was so serious. I planted a moist kiss on your forehead and I placed my feet on both sides of your hips. We locked hands and stared into each other’s eyes. You grunted and pushed your jaw against the pillow. I arched away from you and drew closer. We were alone together. Lost in the currents crackling through our pelvises. I erupted into convulsions. You came inside me. I dropped, panting, against your chest.

  Minutes later I was sitting on the toilet, grumbling about pregnancy and responsibility. I heard your voice reaching toward me from the bed. You didn’t want to stop, did you? you asked knowingly. I lowered my head without answering. The next morning, you patted my belly and said, I hope it grows. I’m lucky it didn’t, I say to the empty room and slip on my black dress. My cells know the truth. That night, me forgetting barriers and precautions, your seed shooting into my womb—those seconds were the sexiest of my life. It is a restless secret germinating inside me. You live here in my flesh. When I touch myself, we are together again. No protection, no regret, no hesitation.

  Through the veil of memory, I imagine I hear you calling me from the street. I’m already running down the hall when the doorbell rings. Before it rings again, I’m on the balcony. You are there below. Smiling up at me. Clapping, spreading your arms to welcome me. Come up, I yell. Then I run down the stairs. I don’t care about cockroaches tonight. Fuck the mosquitoes and the spiders. This moment is ours. We make the most of it in a dark curved stairway with narrow stairs and no light. Your eyes are moist. I believe I am crying. My face aches with joy. We crush each other as if force can convey our feelings. There is nothing to be said. No words. The answers lie in the press of flesh, the meeting of breath.

  Revelation

  _________________

  by Elissa G. Perry

  Shelley reached for Darla’s hand to soothe the wild this woman had sparked in Darla’s eyes. Darla recoiled. Spinning her way to the edge of Shelley’s orbital, finding the charged attraction of the outside world much more appealing. Fish continued to hug his beer and stare at the jukebox as if it held the key to the night’s unfolding. He was consciously oblivious. Choosing blindness over uncertainty he did not look when Darla walked out and Shelley followed. He did not have the answers. He did not yet have the questions.

  Darla stood with no thought or rather too many to distinguish just one. She had been splayed open by the tip of this woman’s tongue. Her entrails were shiny on the edge of the stranger’s wit. She had been branded by the handprint—the brief touch on her back—seared by the certain furtive glance. Her glass, drained of liquid, still held chunks of ice. She had not yet learned the superiority of neat.

  As she moved toward the door, Glenlivet-given confidence strengthened and lengthened her gait. She swung open the door making an entrance to the world and was met with the receding red lights of some classically finned auto. They blended well with the decor of her movie’s set.

  Red-light district. Perception of light. There was sound and motion everywhere jagged and curved. Musicians were examining linear chronology with instruments and random perceptions of distance. There were odd synchopations of jazzical reality. Wild relationships with time and timing. Lightning and burnout were neighbors with slow and methodical but there was no interdependency required for definition. Differing and contradicting realities in the same plane of existence. Corpuscles pulsing—singing constant within random. Pattern within chaos. There was life and for the first time Darla did not feel dead. Darla was on the brink of something new.

  Darla wished she was her own culture, but she had not been housed in a consistent nutrient-filled media. She had never known if she was leaving or going to or the requisite piece of time for anything. Her nutrient media had been sharp and leaned toward gin. Shelley came out of the door behind her.

  Darla sighed at the remnants of a high summer dusk reflected in the storefront window across the street. She spun around to face Shelley and her brother. She felt the slight ellipse in her move taking note then ignoring her hint of imbalance.

  Darla was surprised not to see the tall frame of Fish standing behind his sister. Their mass number was always three. Yet she was still jealous of Fish and Shelley. She herself had never shared spontaneous homophonic utterances with another. When two people share the same tone, rhythm, and time, there are tingles and smiles and hairs stand on end.

  At first, Darla wanted to make Fish jealous, but that was a quicksilver thought that slivered down the back of her throat in a hard swallow. She knew that this was not possible. He was what some people called evolved. Darla had subscribed to that theory of evolution in the beginning, finding his defiance of category mysterious. He seemed to be all contradictions perfectly wed—chaos perfectly ordered—a confounding balance in one being. Now two years into marriage, she found faith in anything elusive.

  “Dancing. I want to dance.”

  “Dancing, huh.” Shelley drew her shoulders toward her ears putting her hands in her pockets. There were these periods of time where being with Darla and Fish was a little uneasy. Shelley didn’t feel danger or fear but it was clear that they were each uncomfortable and sought Shelley for comfort of some sort. There was always that possibility though that the discomfort did not just signal time for one of them to roll over but time to get out of bed and leave the room all together.

  “Yes, I want to dance. Forget about the contemplative one.”

  It was not that Fish didn’t love her or that Darla thought that he didn’t. This was not a question of love. This was a question of context. Context influences all things and Darla wanted to step out of hers.

  “Take me to where the Xs are, Shelley. No Ys, only Xs.” Darla opened her wings and began to turn still talking. “Take me to the East Side, Shelley. Take me to the other side.” She faced Shelley again laughing, bringing her hands back down her beaded bag trailing light like feathers.

  Shelley exhaled and turned back to Moe’s. She pushed the door open again, taking in the transition the place had made from jazz café to swinging bar. Fish was looking at her when she found his face. She displayed the universal sign for leav-ing—a thumb out the door. Fish declined with a wave of his hand, a nod of his head, and a wink from behind a dangling dreadlock.

  Shelley shook her head and smiled. “Damn my brother is smooth.” This was not unusual, this splitting into two-thirds and one-third. Shelley knew that he was happy there in the midst of sibling madness and mayhem infused with an unspoken order—biological, social, spiritual—forming bonds, covalent, hydrogen, stable unstable—swapping electrons like crazy. He was in his scientific element. He was observer. He was delighted. In his gut this was foreplay. Darla would observe another galaxy. They would report back, each overflowing with material to analyze, ripe for postulating and considering. They would talk and fuck and make four A.M. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talk and make love and make music. It had never been discussed. It had never been conscious but still it was his desired path.

  Back outside with the impossible blue of the darkening sky reflected in the window behind her, Darla snapped her purse shut and rubbed her lips together freshly marooned. “It’s you and me, kid.” Shelley retrieved a wad of keys from her pocket and headed toward her car. Darla threaded her arm through Shelley’s and with a flip of her neck threw her wild mane of coarse curls over her shoulder.

  Shelley walked taller. She was proud to have this beautiful woman on her arm. Although she didn’t know it, Darla could stop the heart of any living thing just for being in her presence. But Shelley was not too proud. Thi
s woman was not only a friend but also her brother’s wife.

  “So where are going, Shelley?”

  Shelley knew that Darla was on some sort of journey. She also knew that she could only be transportation, not catalyst nor destination.

  “Well, my dear, there’s dancing at Babel, pool at Pat’s, or reminiscing old hags reeking of Miller Genuine Draft at the Inn; take your pick.”

  “Hmmm.” Darla pulled up her dress and rubbed her thighs considering her options in one of her moments of self-unconsciousness.

  “No Inn tonight. Dancing or pool. Oh they’re both so sexy but in entirely different ways. The thought of all that techno is ruining my high though… pool it is.”

  Shelley loved old cars and Darla felt at home in the belly of the Maverick as they crossed the river. The low raspy beat of the V-8 engine all around her like a heartbeat in a mother’s womb. Darla pulled her simple black dress back down to just above her knees. “Yeah, let’s play pool.” Satisfied with her decision, Darla turned to look at the scenery. Smokestacks, ghostly and barely discernible, towered over the riverbank.

  Darla relaxed on the plane of transition. It was a place of familiar excitement going from one place to somewhere unknown. The seams of highway had been the rhythm. Each place had always been much like the last but there was always that promise of possibility that things would be different.

  “How, how, how, how—Boom, boom, boom boom.” John Lee Hooker was on the Thursday-night blues hour of college radio. The three stars were back next to the moon again. Darla, Fish, and Shelley she had named them a year before when they were all living at Shelley’s. Three stars in the house of the rising sun. Shelley’s house had good sunrises and sunsets. Darla felt herself slipping into a melancholic remembrance and slapped her legs to wake herself.

  “Are we there yet?” As the words passed through her lips into the humid night air where they seemed to hang before dissipating, she realized that Shelley had been signaling right and was about to make her exit.

  Shelley laughed, “Why are you in such a hurry girl? What’re you running from? Or are you running to?”

  “I just need some movement, honey, some fun.” Darla ignored the main body of the question not knowing the answer or not wanting one. Her buzz was wearing thin but she ignored that fact and pretended that sobriety was not steadily creeping up her spine. She changed the radio station until she found Salt-N-Pepa and began to dance in her seat drowning out thought with sound and motion.

  “Can I have one of those?” Darla pointed at the pack of cigarettes in Shelley’s breast pocket. They both realized that Darla’s question could have been interpreted as a request for Shelley’s right breast but both were too sober to acknowledge the double meaning and find it funny.

  “You gonna smoke it or are you just gonna get it all wet and ruined like you usually do?” Darla retrieved the pack and put one in her mouth. She continued to dance until the parking brake was set in the gravel parking lot.

  The broken ground could have posed a problem with Darla’s shoes but she strode toward the door like she’d grown up natural out of rocks and broken glass. Shelley increased her stride behind her arriving at the door just in time to open it for Darla.

  The air inside was thick with smoke and noise and innuendo. Shelley added their names to the board—Shelley then Darlene under Dino and Pearl and Dusty—then moved toward the bar. Shelley was the only person besides Darla’s mother who called Darla, Darlene.

  Darla surveyed the women present all wrapped up in whatever was their own revelry except a few. One certain She stood in the opposite corner in a nicely worn denim shirt open over a black tank top and hanging out over black jeans. Something about the way she observed, intrigued Darla.

  “Any requests?” Shelley was back from the bar with her club soda and Shelley’s Scotch. “Come on help me pick.” They headed to the jukebox, Darla taking hurried sips of her drink anxious to melt into her surroundings instead of resting outside waiting for some enzyme to usher her across the invisible membrane.

  “Natural Woman” came on as they made their selections. Darla began to sing and move. “Play some more Aretha. And mix it up with some stuff you can dance to,” she said between lines.

  She sang the words with a conviction that she didn’t recognize was a longing to feel, to savor, these symbols and spaces and notes, to roll them around in her gut and be intimate with each nuance behind them and the gaps in between. She shifted her weight enjoying the feeling of her damp thighs rubbing together.

  “Play that one”—Darla slowed to a sway briefly and pointed to Mavis Staples—“and that one”—she pointed again, to Dusty Springfield this time. “‘Son of a Preacher Man,’ that’s a good song.” Darla was feeling good again. She was not drunk but her words had a new comfort and confidence that was not all her own.

  Darla dared a larger sip of Scotch and sucked her teeth as she swallowed. The burn was good. She had started drinking Scotch because she liked the way it made her feel when she tried it with her coworkers at the restaurant where they worked. But more than the feeling she was quickly taking to the flavor, the aroma, the whole process. She took a deep breath, the smooth amber seeming almost in contrast to the bright fluorescents of the jukebox before them. In an instant Darla remembered that she had the cigarette from Shelly in her bag.

  “Shelley give me a light. Never mind.” In her rush for gratification, Darla had stepped to the bar and grabbed a book of matches, but before she could tear off a singular catalyst, She was there with a light. Darla drew back slightly at the sudden flame before her then leaned in and pushed her hair back all in one perfectly timed motion.

  Darla cocked her head to one side. “I thank you kindly.” She said it with a smile that would melt granite. She returned a slight smile and nodded in deference to the lady and turned to face the pool table again.

  Darla stepped back to the jukebox and bumped Shelley with her hip. Shelley’s eyes were still on the evening’s soundtrack choices numbered before her, but she knew what had happened. She didn’t have to look.

  “We got one more song. You want to pick it?” She did not respond to what was happening either. She would keep Darla out of physical danger but the rest was up to her. Darla’s path was her own and Shelley could not interfere or encourage. Darla punched in 3507, the number for Hendrix’s “Who Knows,” and turned around to catch up on the table action.

  “Dusty!” a large mama-looking woman called out from the board next to the pool table. There was no obvious response from the melee of conversation and movement that was Pat’s place. “Dusty going once! Dusty going—”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” She still had the hint of smile around her lips as she fished quarters out of the pocket of her snug black jeans. She had a slight round in her back and a small bend in her knees as she reached deep into her pocket.

  Men’s jeans, Darla thought. Women’s jeans don’t have pockets that deep. Darla was taking smaller sips now, wanting to maintain her loose plateau instead of ascending to falling apart.

  Darla watched lips and bodies and the two women shook hands and exchanged names. “Bar rules?” Dusty questioned from her squatting position as she retrieved the balls to rack. Pearl nodded.

  “Shelley, what are bar rules?”

  “The rules you already know, honey. All the rules you need to know, if you ask me.”

  Darla wanted to know more about the latter part of this trailing-off answer but was more interested in Dusty’s game. Dusty was a persistent challenge for Pearl whose friends interrupted the flow of euchre to harass her like they would a sibling. “What was that shot, girlfriend?”

  Later Pearl would still be annoyed and her friends would have to say “Aw you know we were just joking.” Then tomorrow things would appear to be the same again, but appearances are not everything. Darla brought her focus back to the moment at hand in time to see Dusty polish off the eight-ball with a certain grace that made her existence seem like slow motion.


  “Do you want to play first?” Shelley had been off to Darla’s side watching the watcher and the watched.

  “No you go ahead. You’re up first.” Darla swallowed hard. She was not ready to move from silent to active participant.

  “Shelley!” Dusty was calling out from the board as she wiped her own name off and slide-slapped the chalk from her hands.

  “Right here.” Shelley had a similar molasses quality. It was not bothersome or too slow but rather the way things were supposed to be it seemed. Darla decided that it was a peace they had with time—like they were actually experiencing life.

  Shelley had racked the balls. They shook hands, laughing about something, then Dusty drew back to break. The comfortable precision, the effortless beauty of the execution—the motion, speed, and texture of body, cue, and ball—made Darla draw a breath then sigh as the worn white ball spread its target in multiple trajectories. Break seemed such a simple word.

  Darla took in the shape and sinew of Dusty’s forearm as she chalked the cue stick and watched the five-ball drop into the side pocket. The sun falling off a pre-Galileo earth. Sizing up her next shot, Dusty bent her knees, one hand spread on the ledge of the table the other wrapped around her stick. She wore a thick silver band on the middle finger of her right hand and a watch with a black leather strap on her left wrist. She bent farther and leaned over to shoot. Her ass fit perfectly in her jeans.