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GREENER
PASTURES
Stacey Allure
Copyright © 2013 Steam Books Erotica & Romance
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
“Alright, now if you can please do a turnabout at the next street.”
Trina’s brow furrowed at the driving instructor’s request. A turnabout? What the fuck was a turnabout?
“Um, sure,” Trina told him.
Her hands momentarily left the ten-and-two position they held on the steering wheel in order to make the turn. She put on her right turn signal, whose click-click-click seemed to only underscore the awkwardness of the driving test, not distract from it, and the signal and its corresponding clicks ran continually as Trina made her maneuver: she slowly spun the wheel to the right and turned slightly into the perpendicular side street, but then immediately—but as smoothly as she could—turned the wheel the opposite direction in order to get the car facing back the way they had come, using the extra space of the perpendicular road to perform the long turn smoothly. There were U-turns, but this was an O-turn.
Voila! A turnabout.
Right?
The driving instructor chuckled. He was a jolly middle-aged white guy with glasses and a closely trimmed beard wearing a sweater vest over a long-sleeve collared shirt. He was obviously a friendly guy and Trina could tell he was doing his best to make sure he sounded like he was ‘laughing with’ instead of ‘laughing at’ her, but his chuckles still crushed her nonetheless.
Trina smiled awkwardly. “So what’s a roundabout?”
The instructor was still smiling and Trina couldn’t tell if it was out of politeness or if he was still amused by her maneuver. “A turnabout,” he explained, “is a turn where you back into the side street and then turn to the left to turn around.”
“Oh!” Trina let out. “Well, I could give it a try.”
The instructor shook his head. “That’s something I think you’ll need some practice with first.” He made a gesture to the windshield. “If you could turn right here and bring us back to the parking lot…”
“Alright…” Trina said in a tone that couldn’t mask her disappointment.
She brought her car to the parking lot and when she parked she wound up stalling the engine.
“Shit!” Trina exclaimed, and immediately caught herself. “I mean—excuse me.”
Trina was good at driving a stick shift—she had a certain pride in it, in fact, since she knew not all young people could drive manuals—and the fact that she stalled the car embarrassed her. Knowing she had flunked the test had stressed her out and caused her to get sloppy.
The instructor, jolly guy he was, was still smiling as he unhooked his seat belt and got out of the car. Trina, though, just sat there for a moment, her head resting in her left arm, whose elbow was likewise resting on the side of the door.
Damn.
Trina sighed and then got out of the car.
Uncle Marvin got up from the bench he was waiting at and approached Trina and the instructor, and Trina could see the look on Marvin’s face fade from optimism to disappointment very gradually.
“What’s the story?” Marvin asked.
“Well, she’s definitely getting there. She needs to practice the turnabout but I say in due time she’ll pass this test with flying colors.” The instructor shifted his glance to Trina, “I’ll be looking forward to your next visit, young lady.”
The instructor tore off the score sheet from his clipboard and handed it to Trina, who didn’t even give it a good look. She just held it in her hand as she crossed her arms and tried not to look at either the instructor or Uncle Marvin in the eyes.
“Thank you,” Marvin told the instructor.
“You folks have a good day now,” the instructor said back, and off he went.
Trina and Uncle Marvin just stood there in the parking lot for a second. Trina still had her arms crossed and she was looking away at nothing in particular while Marvin had a stern expression—Trina could tell even without looking at him directly—while he had his hands on his hips.
Finally Marvin said, “Well, ain’t nothin’ we can do now but just practice some more. Come on, let’s get you back to Gramma’s. You still want to drive?”
“Yeah,” Trina told him, and they both got into her car, a Dodge Neon from the late 90s.
When Trina started the car and headed back, she felt like she was driving better right then than she had during the test, which frustrated her.
She willfully allowed herself to laugh at herself, and said, “So nobody ever told me about this roundabout…or turnabout, or whatever you call it.”
“Yeah, I suppose they don’t have those in Chicago, do they?” Marvin said. “Forgot all about that. I’ll be there for you to practice, but I’m not sure when we’re gonna find the time right now, the business needs me.”
Marvin, a dark-skinned slightly overweight man in his mid-40s, was referring to the hardware store he owned downtown. Trina didn’t really know him all that well, really: they mostly had just met every other summer when Mom and Dad would visit the extended family here in Bowling Green. But at the moment Marvin was the really the only adult Trina knew that could help her practice driving: there was Gramma, but last year she had some kind of health scare and she was put on oxygen and it wasn’t really recommended for her to be going out too much.
Nope, Marvin was it, and that sucked because Trina was starting school at the university on Monday and she wasn’t going to have a license by then, and she wasn’t even sure when she’d even be able to get one.
Trina hated that she didn’t have a license yet, and a part of her wanted to blame her parents for her present condition: they had divorced when Trina was in middle school, and Mom got the kids while Dad moved across town. During high school Mom worked a weird second shift and that meant Trina had to stay home and watch her little brother and sister ‘til she got home, and by the time that happened it was pretty late and Mom was in no mood to teach Trina driving. After Trina graduated, Dad drove her to Bowling Green over the summer to move her in with Gramma and attend Western Kentucky University in the fall—she could receive an alumni grant there that made it much more affordable for her than any college in Illinois. Dad had bought her the Neon while he was there, and gave her a rudimentary driving lesson himself, but he had to get back to Chicago, and that meant all she had was Uncle Marvin.
So here she was: in a weird small town filled with old white people, with a car but no license, and she was starting school in just a few days.
Trina had never felt so alienated.
~ ~ ~
“You’ll do better next time, child, I know it,” Gramma told Trina reassuringly.
“I know I will,” Trina said back.
They were back at Gramma’s house. Uncle Marvin had just left, and so it was just Trina and Gramma there in the house, part of a duplex that Gramma owned. The furnishings were clean and in good condition, but they were obviously pretty old, at least from the 80s, and they gave the place a kind of time capsule look, definitely fit for an old lady.
&n
bsp; “In the meantime,” Gramma started. “Just make sure you have everything ready for when you start classes on Monday.”
“I think I’m good,” Trina told her. “But about that…”
Trina hesitated a moment. Gramma looked at her, the oxygen tube underneath her nose, and the little machine that pumped her oxygen reminding Trina of Darth Vader. Oh, the air pumping was more higher-pitched and pleasant than the bad guy from Star Wars, but as it was the only real sound in the room right now it was intimidating-sounding just the same.
Trina continued, “I was thinking I could just drive the car to campus.”
Gramma’s eyes bugged out, “Child, are you outside your mind? You know we were just talking about you not getting the license.”
“Yeah, I know, Gramma, but listen,” Trina started. “I know how to drive a car. I’m good at it, even! I have the car, it’s sitting right there with a tank of gas in it and everything. I even have the school parking pass. Everything will be fine; I can just take the car…”
“Trina,” Gramma told her. “If you get caught driving without a license you’re gonna get yourself into some big trouble that you really don’t need right now.”
“Yeah, but Gramma, I’m not gonna get caught—”
“You have your whole life ahead of you, child. Don’t start it off like this, by cheating. You have to live honestly.”
Gramma was a sweet woman, but underneath the warm southern exterior Trina could tell there was an old battle axe underneath. Gramma was old and set in her ways and mindful of authority. If it weren’t for their recent record on civil rights Trina figured Gramma would probably vote Republican.
“I…” Trina started.
She let the word hang there for a second, that awful oxygen pumping seemingly getting louder in the vacuum of any other sound.
Trina finally continued. “I guess you’re right.”
Trina’s gaze lowered and she distracted herself by petting the fluffy Pomeranian dog Gramma had named Annie. Trina liked the dog, who was given to Gramma by Uncle Marvin a few years ago to help keep her company after Gramps died, but at this moment she was mostly petting her to give her hands something to do and give her something else to look at so she wouldn’t have to face what she was sure was a judgmental glare of Gramma.
Gramma’s expression softened, though, and she reached over to the stand and picked up the remote to the TV, turning it on. “You’ll do just fine, Trina,” she assured her. “You’re used to walking and getting on buses in the city. It’s no different here in town. You can handle that for a week or two.”
Trina nodded as Gramma flipped the channels until she found her favorite game show. That was Gramma’s life right now, sitting on the couch, having the machine give her oxygen, watching game shows and soap operas on TV, only getting up to feed the dog or herself.
“I’m going to go to my room,” Trina told her as she got up from the sofa.
Trina closed the door behind her and pulled out her iPad, a graduation gift from her Aunt in Atlanta, and booted it up. She mooched off the next-door neighbor’s unsecured wireless network—Gramma wasn’t subscribed to any internet service herself—and she logged in online to see what her friends from high school were up to.
She smiled but sighed as she scrolled through the various photos and status updates. Some of her friends had stayed in Chicago, some of them had moved to other cities like Houston or Atlanta, but they all seemed to be having a blast, making the most of life.
…while Trina was here in Nowheresville, Kentucky. Population: her.
Trina tried her best to shake off the feeling. She was starting school! It was a whole new life. She’d be surrounded by like-minded young people. She’d make friends. Trina convinced herself she would make the best of this situation.
~ ~ ~
Rain.
Why did it have to be raining?
It was 7:00 in the morning, Trina had gotten dressed and gathered her supplies in her backpack, and she was staring at the window.
It was pouring.
Why did it have to be now? It was just her luck, though. Well, not really. It rained all the time here; it was how the place got to be so damn green in the first place. But it really made an awful impression on her first day of school.
Trina put on her rain coat—Gramma and Uncle Marvin made sure that was one of the first things she bought when she had arrived—and opened up her umbrella as she opened the front door and stepped out. Surprisingly she realized as she went on her way, the air wasn’t cold, not like it would be if it were raining this early in the morning in Chicago.
The pitter-patter of the raindrops falling on her umbrella was the dominant sound as Trina walked alongside the driveway, the curves and the round headlights of her car cruelly mocking her as she walked by.
For all of Gramma’s talk of walking to the bus not being any different than how Trina was getting around in Chicago, Trina noticed a pretty immediate difference during her trek. Chicago had sidewalks, for one. Here, Trina was either walking on the edge of the road itself or she was walking stretches of gravel alongside the sides of the road.
Trina was used to the streets of city life, but out here she was either walking through a neighborhood, which were mostly occupied by old white people that seemed friendly on the surface, but if they were anything like Gramma who knew what they were really like behind closed doors; or just walking alongside expanses of grass and trees between commercial zones. The trees were pretty when the sun was out, but they were gloomy and ominous at night or during cloudy and rainy days like this one. They looked like a damn flock of bats could just fly out and bite her or some shit. Is that what you called a group of bats, a flock?
Some trucks drove by, the cruel sight of which made even worse by the fact that Trina had to step out into the not-very-kept grass in order to avoid any splash back from their tires.
Lord, she would trade this in for the streets of Chicago any day.
When she finally made it to the bus stop, she was relieved to see a group of people her age there, though it made her a little self-conscious that it seemed she was the only one who actually walked there on her own two feet: it looked like the others had either gotten rides or driven themselves and just parked their car at the lot next to the bus stop.
Trina finally got to collapse her umbrella when she got to the overhanging shelter, and she tapped it on the ground to shake off some of the excess rain water that had collected on the material. She looked around: it was mostly white kids who were mostly trying not to look at her, a black guy with his hood up who was already eyeing her—seriously?—and there was a thick black girl who had sunglasses on even though it wasn’t bright at all outside and was glued to her phone, gossiping to some other girl named Bernice, which Trina surmised since the girl began every sentence with “Bernice this” and “Bernice that”.
The campus bus finally came, and everyone got on. After the long venture, Trina wasn’t in the mood right then to sit next to strangers, so she sat close to the back. When the bus started moving, she opened her bag and pulled out the map of the campus to make sure she knew where her stop was.
There were a couple of stops, and some people got off while others got on, and at one point the bus was getting a little on the full side. A girl—a black girl with braids and hoop earrings—stepped down the aisle and had to take a seat next to Trina due to the capacity.
“Typical!” she hollered with mock outrage. “Typical! Black girls at the back of the bus, ain’t nothin’ changed.”
The girl’s comments got a few laughs from the other passengers as well as some eye rolls, and amused with herself, the girl sat down and looked right at Trina.
“This your first day, too?” she asked.
The girl’s presence was so warm that it was already cracking through Trina’s mood. “Yeah, it is,” Trina answered. “The rain is a good omen, I think.”
The girl laughed, “You must be knew to this place altogether, I think. It ra
ins like this every other day.”
“I’ve already noticed,” Trina told her, dragging out the first syllable of ‘already’ to express her exasperation. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have to walk all the way through this from my Gramma’s house.”
“Hold up,” the girl said. “You walked to the bus?”
“Yeah,” Trina answered. “It’s awful ‘cause I have a car but I only have a learner’s permit so I can’t drive it yet.”
“No way. You know what, I don’t have my license yet, either, but I get my boyfriend to drop me off at the bus stop at least. I tell you what, how about we just pick you up in the mornings if the schedule works out. Once we get a better idea where all the classes are he can probably drop us off at the building without us taking the bus at all.”
Trina’s eyes widened. “He’d do that for us?”
“Sure!” The girl said it like it wasn’t nothing.
“Girl, you don’t even know my name!”
The girl laughed, “Well, I’m Veronica, so you know my name now. What’s yours?”
“Trina.”
~ ~ ~
That was another major thing that was different about Kentucky than what Trina was used to, one that she noticed right off the bat that first week of school: so many people were overly friendly to the point where it got a little crazy. Trina never in a million years would have accepted rides from what was essentially a complete stranger back home, but things were different here. Veronica was just so boisterous and warm that Trina couldn’t help but just go with her flow, and since Trina was desperate to cut down on the long treks she had to make to and from school, she accepted her offer to get rides whenever she could.
That southern hospitality was a real thing, Trina discovered, even if Veronica insisted Kentucky wasn’t technically the south—whatever, it was all country to Trina. Everyone was nice: the teachers were nice, the students were nice, the white folks were nice, the black folks were nice, and everybody was just a lot more chill than they were in the big city. Sometimes the town just seemed like a big ol’ warm muggy green fuzzball of niceness. People talked funny, but she liked that the accent made it seem to her ears that the black folks and white folks talked more alike than they did different.
Greener Pastures - A Sensual Interracial BWWM Romance Short Story from Steam Books Page 1
