Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns

by J. California Cooper

  Futila didn’t like to hear any romantic love songs, or even see romantic people together now. Thought women were dumb to believe in such things. Thought every man was a liar. But still, she lied too. Everyone is a liar, sometimes. But some are dangerous. You’re supposed to have sense enough to recognize which is which as often as possible. Then you can build your life better.

  Futila always answered, “I ain’t never gonna give him no divorce so he can go off with them bitches and they get what’s s’posed to be mine!!” One close old friend, from the drugstore days, said, “Well, they gettin it anyway, so evidently it ain’t yours. You ain’t got no education and you ain’t got him. Let him go! Let that man go so you can be free to find you some happiness. You killin yourself and every year that passes, you don’t look as good as you did yesterday. Leave while you have a chance! God is good, chile! He made the heart be able to love more than once or twice or even three times.”

  But Futila held to her thoughts. “I’ll never give him no divorce. I’ll never give him that satisfaction! He ain’t never gonna get rid of me!” And so she built her prison, and was locking her own self in!

  Dante never really got to know his wife, but his sureness of her constant, constant presence had changed any passion he could have had for her long ago. You can smother love, chile. Besides, she never showed him much. Her thoughts were all about him, and so were his. That interested him, but there is more to life, even to him.

  He loved “strange, new pieces” of sex. Let me tell you, I bet he had a strange piece at home in his wife he never got to.

  Now, in what he thought of as his fruitful life, his drab living lay out in front of him full of sex moments and boredom, just like his past. Except for his children. His life wasn’t as good as Futila thought it was. What he was, was a lonely man looking for love all in one place: between his legs. He thought he was having fun, and maybe he was, but any fool can have some fun; why not have some sense, too.

  At the same time, Futila didn’t know her husband. The love Futila thought she felt for Dante long ago, was fed by wanting someone she thought others wanted. Then, in time, jealousy, jeopardy, the dread of loss, and her pride in him instead of in herself, became her life and a symbol of her love. And all that time, Time was going by. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. And I have to try to think because I am poor. Thinking is free! and it can work!

  Finally one day, tired of hearing the same complaints from Futila, one of her friends told her, “Hell, Futila, you ain’t gonna get what you want from Dante either. You ain’t nothin but a spy; you ain’t no wife, and you ain’t much woman either. You ain’t free from your own fears! Don’t nobody know what’s going to happen in their life, but don’t just stand there and cry about life! do something about it!”

  About that time Willa came home to visit and introduce her parents to her new husband, a doctor of anthropology with a minor in geology. He was very attentive to Willa. Futila was jealous. When they were alone, Futila told her sister, “He may be a doctor and everything, but he still ain’t nothin but a man!”

  Willa smiled, saying, “He can’t help that. I’m glad there are men on this earth, Futila. But they are not all the same, just like women are not all the same. It was up to me to choose carefully which one I want to deal with and love. He asked me to marry him and I was free to ask, seek, pay attention to everything about him I could. To learn, as much as possible, what kind of life we might have together. I was interested in his faults first, after I grew to love him, because I wanted to know if I could live with them. I decided I could.”

  Futila laughed a short, ugly laugh. “That don’t mean it’s gonna turn out right!”

  “No.” Willa shook her head. “You’re right. That is up to my husband and me. And when, if ever, something becomes too large for me to handle, when I am only fifty-five or sixty-five percent happy in our life, then I will not be happy enough. Then I will have to recognize my love does not mean enough to him and I will have to let him get on with the business of making his life better. Fifty-fifty is not good enough for me. I’m better off than that when I am alone. It will have to be around seventy-five percent good for us. It’s not that hard to make someone happy, or satisfied, if you love them and they love you. It’s the love that does the work or works the magic. We love each other and I don’t think either one of us, my husband or I, is a fool. I wanted kindness, honesty, manners, and cleanliness of body, mind, and spirit, as much as possible. I’ve learned in all my studying. Spiritual matters are very important; they constitute the values of a person. I know we are human. But I didn’t want anyone with an overstuffed ego or too much ambition or an atheist, because I want peace in my life. And my husband . . . had to love me, first. Remember, the love is the magic part of the formula. Then, when you have a good thing, you do your best to keep it.”

  Futila frowned. “Well, I don’t care what nobody says, I ain’t, am not, going to give Dante what he wants! Let him suffer.”

  Willa placed her hand on her sister’s bent, tired shoulder, saying, “Well . . . that is your business, Futila, but Dante obviously does not know he is suffering. But you do know you are.” She turned to lock a suitcase. “Well, we have to leave the family now. We have an appointment at the Louvre in Paris.”

  When Futila went to her empty bed that night, as on most nights, she wept. Crying hard into her pillow as she thought, “I don’t care. I ain’t never gonna let that bastard get away from me and run to one of them women and give them what rightfully b’longs to me. Oh God, give me some wisdom to know what to do with this man you gave me.”

  But Heaven’s advice was already in the Bible. “Consider carefully and choose wisely. The heart can be treacherous.” I don’t say the Bible says it in that way, but I know it says it.

  I’ll tell you this, too. It looked like Dante had the best life in this marriage, but he didn’t. They were both losers. Sex is one of the keenest, greatest pleasures in life. But it has rules like everything in life has rules; you heard of the laws of nature, haven’t you? When a person violates the rules of love it is as if they were stealing from themself. If a person could make a sport of sex, multiple partners and all, life might be gayer, but experience has taught a multitude of people that a lotta sex and gaiety does not make life happier. Sometimes it makes life lonelier. And you cannot have a real marriage when you break the laws of marriage. The very act, the privacy, the personal warmth, the intimacy shared with the special one in your life, cannot be topped by a million different burning moments with a person passing through your life and hands. The flame is quick, but not bright and does not burn long; there is no long sustaining warmth that goes to the bones of your body! The pleasure of sex is an inside job. It’s a large part of the stuff you furnish your house of marriage with. You can’t leave your furniture out in the street and expect to find it there like you left it when you return, again and again. And Time is always going by.

  Love, and sex, is the bridge that two people cross, together, in a marriage. Love, the strength of that bridge, is what makes a marriage secure and good; for a true, shared satisfaction and as much happiness as you can expect in this world. Dante never took the time to have an enjoyable union . . . with anyone. Sex and money were his desires. Just sex and money was what he got. Both are good, but not half as good as Love. Both slip through your life and disappear just like Time slips through.

  Futila was not happy, but, Dante was not happy, either.

  I wonder if you think he was.

  As for me, I know Time is going by. So now, it’s time for me to go somewhere else. I’ve got to go; Time is passing by.

  The Eye of the Beholder

  The longer I live the more I can see how people, the world, will never have things right. They label everything so they can remember what they think. Right—wrong, black—white, too big—too little, pretty—ugly, and on and on.

  I know they are trying to map their way to some satisfactory end, but if the labels are wrong, the
map will be wrong. A person may not reach their destination. Or, usually, they confuse someone else.

  And, that is the point.

  Do you know, strange as it may seem, everybody on this earth looks good to somebody? But a person who goes by this world’s lying rules can suffer a lot of pain in their life. Unnecessary pain and confusion in the heart of their soul.

  Tell you what I mean. There was a good-sized family, the Kneeds, who lived in a rented house close to me. The last child born in that family was a girl named Lily Bea. Lily Bea came to be a friend of mine. I was older, but what difference does that make. The mother, Sorty Kneed, was, or had been, a good-looking woman, and all that got her was a husband she played around on, and four or five kids was all I could see she got out of it. All her children were assorted pretty, cute, and handsome, if you see what I mean. When Lily Bea was born to Sorty, she was not a “pretty” baby. No, she wasn’t.

  Even her own family made fun of Lily Bea. As she grew, she turned out to be really sweet, a nice child, but she remained “uncomely,” as they say in the Bible. She was teased and talked about enough to know she was different. She knew she was not cute or pretty like her sisters or her peers anywhere, neighborhood, church, or school. But her sweetness and manners made her an attractive child to me. I don’t know why those people, her own family, didn’t seem to like that child.

  Now, she wasn’t the kind of ugly that made other people always laugh at her. But just ugly enough, to her, for her to try to make herself invisible when others stared a few extra moments. Her mother made her think ugly was also dumb. So Lily’s thoughts were a mixture of light and dark. Outdoors, around people, her thoughts were dark.

  She always placed herself in the back of any crowd, the back of any room, the back of everything, behind all eyes that should be looking the other way. She grew up a very serious young woman, very quiet. She spoke only when she was spoken to. That’s a shame because she had a voice lovely to hear. A sweet, tender sound made words she spoke into a soft melody.

  They told her she was built funny, too. Square. And said her face was too long, her eyes too small. But her eyes were not too wide apart or too close together, they were just not set evenly in her face. One eye, you could hardly notice it, was set just a little higher than the other.

  Her mouth was not small, it had substance. The lower lip was full, the upper lip was thin. It just seemed nothing matched. Her teeth stuck out a bit, but not much, and they were even teeth and flashing white. Clean. But they teased her anyway, adding to her shame of what wasn’t really anything; or something almost everybody has.

  Her nose was not huge, but it was too big for her face. Her skin was a chestnut brown. All the girls in her family had a bumpy skin condition and Lily Bea’s was worst of all. I told her just keep keeping it clean, see what time and Mother Nature would do. But she wouldn’t have ever put any makeup on anyway. Call attention to her face!? No, Lord. She just kept it clean and used Vaseline on it till they called her “greasy-face.” Then she only used the Vaseline at night.

  She had a head of thick, brown hair because her mother made her keep it braided. Her arms and legs were round and slim. They called them skinny. Her hands were narrow with long fingers with a fine shape and color. Her neck and back had a fine line, which made her movements smooth. Her waist was extra small, so her hips flared, like they were supposed to. I listened to them laugh at her, but I know what looks good.

  They laughed, and said she looked funny. But, I knew she was just incomplete; nature wasn’t finished with her. I could see she was going to be very well built when nature was through building her. And best of all, the intelligence on her face was sunshine inside her body. But she believed them. She loved her mother, believed everything she said, whether mother was drunk or sober. She did everything her mother told her to do.

  From being so quiet, she had time to do more thinking. She preferred being alone whenever it was possible. She would look off into some space and sing softly to herself in that lovely voice. She would stop singing if anybody came within hearing. I think she didn’t want them to mess that pleasure up for her.

  Being alone so much, she learned reading and loved books. She would read about anything and everything. Whenever you saw Lily Bea, she always had a book in her hands or under her arm. Be reading! All kinds of books. As she was growing up, we talked a lot. I learned things from her I had never thought of; didn’t know enough to begin to think of them. I had got married before I finished school.

  Well, time passes and things change. They didn’t tease her about the same things; they found a new question. “Who you gonna find to marry you, Lily Bea?” Told her mother, Sorty, “You better get that girl some plastic surgery!” And laughed out of their own little ugly faces. Sometimes they even hugged Lily Bea, cause they didn’t really hate her. They just didn’t have sense enough to think about how deep those words could hurt. Deep, chile, deep.

  So Lily Bea just kept separating herself from other people. Youngsters played or gossiped in the streets or the schoolyard and she went off alone, stayed in the classroom or library at school. Or alone, if chance permitted, in the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Reading or dreaming. Thinking, reading, or dreaming.

  Now, you know that child, in all those years, had plenty sense enough to know she must be different. She got tired of being round her house with her family. And she got tired of people.

  A piano teacher, up the street, felt sorry for Lily so she gave her piano lessons for free. She practiced alone at school.

  The librarian suggested good books for her because she was just reading anything no matter what it was. The librarian was a good one and she gave Lily really good cultural and classic books to read. She read a lot of fiction, then Lily discovered and loved nonfiction. Among others, she read the biography of Coco Chanel and started learning sewing at school. School is a blessed thing. For a while Lily wanted to become a teacher. But it would take a long time, and schools were too full of people. People that might tease or laugh at you.

  Her home was full of strong, and even strange, personalities. They fought, they laughed, and they stole from each other, because none had much of anything. Her mother and father had loved and fought when he was around. But laughter pervaded the house after the tears, after the pain. The laughter covered the ugliness they didn’t want to recognize. Somehow Lily Bea developed a sense of humor that helped to carry her over her own pain.

  Well, anyway, Lily grew up and graduated high school. Her family even found a reason to laugh at her good scholarship; said, “You so ugly you ain’t got nothin to do but get good marks!”

  Her father was gone, but a new man was there, off and on. So Lily stayed home to help her mother. Her sisters were all married and gone on their own. Lily wouldn’t go anywhere too much in the public, so she didn’t go out to get a job. She would have loved to go to college, a college where no one knew her. But college was out of the question for her.

  This vexed her mother. “What am I gonna do with this grown chile layin round on me?! She is over seventeen years old! I need some money comin in this house. Ain’t no welfare here! I ain’t got nothin to give Lily! She got all them brains, she betta use um!”

  Now . . . There was a dirty old man who had an angry leg that made him crippled, Mr. Nettles, who owned the cleaners, Clean Cleaners, a block or two away from Sorty and Lily Bea’s house. He was always dragging or twisting around his shop. Sorty went over there and asked him for a job for her daughter, Lily, because she had a dress she wanted cleaned. She had intended to exchange a few hours of Lily’s work for the cleaning of the dress.

  The cleaning man, Mr. Maddy Nettles, had been sitting around in his shop, for years, watching women when they came in or passed by his place. Watching women and wishing for one of his own. He couldn’t place Lily Bea, but he agreed to the deal.

  He was hoping Lily Bea would be a good-looking woman, but when Lily Bea came to his shop, he thought her looks could make her more vuln
erable to his approaches. So he gave her a little job to do, and then extended the little job to a steady job, two or three times a week. “I ain’t got much money, don’t make much. But you need to have some little money of your own in your own pocket, girl. You just keep this job steady and we will work things out,” he said as he pinched her arm.

  In time, he took to touching and feeling in almost secret places on Lily Bea. Lily Bea was raised in a family where everything was talked about at home. She was a virgin, but sex held no mystery for her. The fact that she had no money and needed a job was the fact she thought of. She let him fool around with his fingers a bit. Not much, but a bit. Her face was serious when she told him, “I don’t want you to do anything that hurts me. You cannot put anything in me, not even your fingers.”

  He liked the way she talked kind’a proper. A strong desire for the young woman grew in him. Daily. He gave her more hours to work. He gave her more money; not too much, but a bit.

  She was able to keep her own clothes cleaned and to spend money on better material to sew. She sewed on his machines, and bought books she could keep. They were hers, belonged to her.

  Maddy Nettles had traveled a bit in his day. He told her about the many beauties of the earth and added to her dreams. But her dreams were taking her mind away from her little job, and she dreamed of a better job. A better place in life. Her dreams never included him or his shop.

  He didn’t want Lily to leave. He loved her. In his way. When he told Lily Bea, she was in a type of awe. Even at that little dry, cripple man, Maddy Nettles, anybody, loving her! She had felt other boys looking at her, many times, but she never looked back at them because she thought they were looking at her ugliness, or her skin. She thought of the money and did not answer him.