Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game

by Juliette Akinyi Ochieng

  “I live in anticipation,” he growled as he stole a kiss from her. “Anyway, I think that she and Malik might have something going on.”

  “You’re kidding me! I thought Miss Scarlet, uh, Miss Mandy, didn’t consort with us darkies.”

  “You’re being unfair, now. It was never that she didn’t like black people. It was just that she didn’t like you.

  “Okay, fine. So Mandy’s the second coming of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  “I’m not so sure she’d like that comparison,” he grinned. “Give the girl a break. There was some competition. You won, she lost. Be generous in your victory.”

  “Oh, now aren’t we the egomaniac, Mr. Prize?

  He smiled sweetly at her. “I’m a jock, darlin’. It comes with the territory. Back to Mandy and Malik. I think he’s good for her.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s softer now, nicer than she used to be. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Malik or not, but I think it does. As for him, I have to say this: it’s having a good effect on him, too.”

  “So how come I’m just now finding out about this?”

  “I knew you didn’t like her and with good reason, though...”

  “What?”

  “I realize that a lot of the dislike between you is my fault. I did lead her on.”

  “You made her think you were interested in her.”

  Kevin grimaced. “Yes.” He sighed. “I used her interest in me to help me with my classes.”

  Felice ran her hand through his hair. “It’s good you can admit this. And maybe...just maybe, I can also be big enough to cut her some slack. After all, if Malik likes her, she can’t be too bad.”

  “Back to Malik’s interesting effect on her: she seems much more...real.”

  “I bet her parents aren’t too happy about this.”

  “I don’t think her mother knows about it. Malik said that she isn’t...not quite as enlightened as the rest of us.”

  “Well I hope, for both their sakes that everything goes well. I might even consent to going out one evening with them. How’s that for being a generous victor?”

  “I’m proud of you, baby.”

  “So what other trouble are you going to get into while I’m gone?”

  “No trouble at all. Actually I was thinking of taking a drive. Santa Fe’s nice this time of year.”

  Felice was alarmed. “Oh, no you don’t! I told my dad that I wasn’t up to any monkey business. Please don’t make me into a liar. He’s just starting to trust me again. Please, Kevin.”

  “You can’t help it if I just happen to show up in Santa Fe on the same weekend you happen to be there.”

  “What if your dad goes to the restaurant that weekend and happens to let slip that you’re up in Santa Fe? What then, huh, genius?”

  “Easy. I’ll just take my camping gear and tell Dad that me and some of the guys are headed to the mountains to camp out for the weekend. It just so happens that some of them are doing just that.”

  “You’d lie to your father just like that?”

  “Only for an important cause like this-so we can spend some time alone together, without one or more of our parents watching us like hawks, especially your father.”

  “You have a point.”

  She cocked her head at him.

  “So, genius, what are we going to do together up there in Santa Fe all alone?”

  “Thank you for acknowledging my tremendous mental abilities, darlin’. We’ll lose your teacher and your classmates. Then we’ll...see the sights.”

  “You make sure you bring all your...gear...with you. The camping gear, I mean.”

  He stood up and gave her a snappy salute.

  “Yes, Ma’am!”

  After visiting Laura Anderson and having dinner with her classmates, Felice headed back to her room. Some of her classmates were headed out to sample Santa Fe’s rather considerable night life, which including, Felice knew all too well, drinking and smoking--cigarettes and otherwise. With her promise to Joseph in mind, she bade them goodnight, pleading that she had a test to study for.

  But there was a thought gnawing at her mind: Kevin could be here tonight. She thought of how it might be making love to him. Would it be any different from making love to a black man? Kissing was definitely different, with Kevin’s lips being thinner than she was used to. His smell was also different. Not better or worse--just different.

  Come on, LeCroix, stop avoiding it. Racial differences in love-making weren’t important and they weren’t what she

  should be thinking about. What she should be thinking about was her promise to her father. How could she make love with Kevin with that in mind? And what about Kevin? If she declined making love to him, how would he react? Would he feel as though she lead him on? Would he throw her past in her face?

  She remembered her flings. They weren’t all that they had been cracked up to be. According to all the latest literature, sex was supposed to be this phenomenal thing to be indulged in at whim, by consenting adults, “safely,” of course. But only with Calvin and Daniel had things been moderately pleasurable and with both, she had on some level, felt as though she were second choice.

  She supposed that what little pleasure she felt when having sex with either of them was tied to the fact that she had cared about them. What had her mother said? Be careful about who you let into your heart. That was the real meaning of safe sex: be in love and be sure that the other person loves you.

  She remembered watching a TV preacher expound on this subject. Felice would never watch the local Christian station with her parents around for fear that they would begin pressuring her to resume attending Mass with them.

  She still wasn’t sure how she felt about God, but watching some of the preachers on TV and thinking about what they said, had given her a sense of peace. Sure, some of them seemed to be hungry only for money, but others seemed intent on preaching the word of God and getting that message to the greatest amount of people possible. And what was money anyway, but a tool? They used their “tools” to get their message out to people like her.

  “When a man and woman are joined together in matrimony,” the preacher had paraphrased from the Bible, “the two become one flesh. So, when you give yourself physically to another, you become one with that person, physically and spiritually. That’s why there’s so much pain and anguish concerning so-called love relationships these days. People are becoming ‘one flesh’ with dozens of others. And when the person they’ve given a part of themselves to leaves, and the next leaves, and the next, that person’s spirit is being chipped away just a little bit at a time. After years of this, that person is a spiritual and emotional cripple.”

  Well ain’t that the truth, she remembered thinking. How empty and stupid she had felt after her fiasco with the Taus! And after Daniel’s betrayal, she had felt as though someone had tried to rip her intestines out. She knew for

  certain that she didn’t want that to happen with her and Kevin. He was more than just a boyfriend, he was her friend. He knew nearly everything about her and he still liked her.

  No, LeCroix, he loves you. And you love him.

  She didn’t just want to have sex with him, she wanted to make love to him; she wanted to be a part of him and she wanted him to be a part of her. That’s what was missing with the others, even with Daniel and Calvin. They were using her, of course, but the fact was this: she was using them, as well. She had been using them all, not only physically, but emotionally--to make herself feel more beautiful; desirable.

  They desired, all right, but it wasn’t her they desired, not the real her. Did any of them ask about her hobbies or her plans for the future like Kevin did the first time they met? Did she ask those things of them? Did they tease her or tell her jokes? Did she do that with them? Had she talked with any of them about God? Did she even know whether they believed in God or not?

  She was just as guilty as they were of treating them like mere bodies. That’s what the
phrase “getting a piece” really meant. However, it was really a piece of one’s self, one’s soul, which one gives away when one has sex with another; when it’s cheapened or dismissed as a biological

  function, like going to the bathroom, and both parties suffer. She knew that only too well.

  Her thoughts turned back to Kevin. If he brought up the Taus, then that would tell her what she needed to know about him.

  She decided she would tell him what she had just been thinking about, in an honest and straight-forward way. That was all there was to it.

  She was awakened by a knock on the door. Still fully clothed, she jumped off of the bed, took a glance at her face and hair, and then went to look through the peep-hole on the door. There he was with flowers in hand. For a brief second, she toyed with the idea of pretending not to be there, but the impulse passed. She took a deep breath then opened the door.

  “Hi, darlin’.” Kevin stepped through the doorway.

  “Hi,” Felice answered. Kevin looked at her, sensing that something was amiss. He handed her the flowers and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Red roses,” she observed, smiling briefly and taking a whiff. “I know I saw a vase in here. There it is.” She picked

  up the vase from the dresser and went into the bathroom to fill it with water. “I wonder if there’s anything in here that I can use to cut the stems off. That with make them last longer.”

  “That’s right. Here, I have a pocket knife. I’ll do it.” He took the roses from her, cut the stems expertly and set the roses inside the vase. “Where do you want them?”

  “On the dresser to one side, so I can look at them and smell them in the morning when I’m getting ready.” Felice watched, amused, as he set the vase down and made a joking show of getting them at just the correct spot. He then turned to face her.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Kevin...I’m always happy to see you.”

  “But not here and not right now.”

  “Let’s sit down.” There was a small love seat in the room. They sat and he put his arm around her and pulled her to him. She responded in kind and then both of them relaxed and just sat still, her head on his shoulder and his chin resting lightly on her head. They were quiet for a few minutes.

  He broke the silence. “You’re not ready for this, are you?”

  “No. Please don’t be angry with me. Please.”

  He sat her up to look into her face.

  “Felice, tell me. Why do you think that I would be angry at you about not being ready to make love?”

  “Because of my past. You know that I’m not exactly a dewy-fresh, blushing virgin. You know that I have an ugly reputation.”

  “Those creeps at the dinner tried to tell me some things after they gang-blocked me out the back door.”

  Felice’s eyes got wide.

  “Calm down, baby. I told them I already knew about it because you had told me, which you had, even though you didn’t give me any details. And I told them to get the Hell out of my face. I don’t want to know the details. It has nothing to do with you and me, nothing to do with our relationship.”

  “But, I....I wouldn’t blame you if you felt as though....felt as if I were....slighting you in some way...”

  “Okay, let’s be straight about this, like we are about everything else. You thought that I would get mad if you didn’t make love with me, because you had made love with

  whomever else. You thought I would think you felt that I wasn’t good enough for you or whatever.

  “Felice. Whatever else you and I are to each other, we’re friends. If we’re going to be lovers too, it has to be the right time and the right place for both of us. And I honestly do not care what went on between you and some jackass who was too stupid to hold onto you.”

  “You know that there was more than one.”

  “So what. I ain’t no blushin’ virgin either. Do you want to hear about my adventures?”

  “No, because I couldn’t care less.”

  “And that’s exactly the way I feel about your situation.”

  She looked at him warmly. “You’re so wonderful,” she said after she kissed him gently.

  “Now, don’t try to start anything now,” he grinned. “I’m not that kinda guy.”

  “I want to tell you about what I was thinking before you got here, not about the guys, but about...love-making and....how it should be.”

  He was still grinning. “Now don’t get too graphic or you’re going to start put ideas in my head again.”

  “No, silly, I mean I was thinking about what should be going on between two people before they make love, how they should feel about each other and themselves.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, it seems to me that if the two people don’t love each other when they make love, it becomes just like eating when you’re hungry. It has no more meaning than that.

  “But when you do love the person you’re making love with, it seems like both might get more out of it than just the physical pleasure.”

  “Their spirits join together along with their bodies.”

  She looked at him. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. I don’t really know from personal experience, though.”

  “Neither do I. But I think I’ve seen two people like that before. I’ve seen it in my grandparents--my mom’s parents. They still kiss and hold hands and pat each other on the butt.”

  She laughed. “That’s so cool. I see that in my parents, too. Your grandparents must really, really love each other.” She paused and then spoke gently. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them after losing your mom.”

  “They...were...torn up. My dad told me once that he thought they were going to get a divorce. This was after almost forty years of marriage.”

  “I read somewhere that most couples do divorce after they lose a child, no matter how old that child is.”

  “Yep. But they kept it together. It’s fun now to watch two old farts act like teenagers.”

  “Kevin.”

  He nuzzled his face into her hair. “Yes, darlin’.”

  “What was your mother like?”

  Kevin lifted his head up, looked at her, then looked up into the ceiling. He began slowly.

  “She was real tall--around six feet--with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Sigourney Weaver reminds me a lot of her. Both Dad and I have a lot of trouble watching her movies.”

  He took his arm from around Felice and clasped his hands between his knees. Felice watched his face as its youth was subsumed by memory and sadness.

  “She and Dad and I used to do all sorts of things together. She couldn’t sit still. We’d camp and hunt. She and Dad were serious activists, too. Oh, she didn’t care about saving whales or deer or birds. She cared about humans, cared about things like apartheid and gang violence and

  abortion and drugs and alcohol abuse. It’s a joke that she was killed by a drunk driver...a sick one.”

  He paused, seeming to collect himself. Felice reached up to caress him on the shoulder.

  “If it’s too hard for you, we can talk about something else.”

  “No. I need to talk about her,” he said as he turned to look at her. “There’s been so much silence about Mom between me and my dad. It’s almost like she was never here and I just popped up out of the blue. I’ve tried to talk with him about it. I need to talk about her, and I know that he does, too. But I think that he’s afraid that he’ll lose control if he does. I think that he thinks that he needs to be strong for me.”

  “You two need to lean on each other.”

  “And we do in a lot of ways, but that one subject is nearly never talked about. I was totally shocked when he mentioned about my grandparents almost getting divorced after it happened, but when I tried to draw him out about it, he changed the subject.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Maybe now that you’re grown and now that a li
ttle more time has passed, he’s ready. Tell me more about her. What was her name?”

  “Carla. Carla Josephine Walker Hart. That was my mother’s name.”

  “It feels good for you to say her name. I can tell.”

  “Yes, it does.” He turned to look at her again. “It feels good to remember that she was here. And it feels good to talk about her with you.”

  The two sat talking about Carla Hart and lots of other things until two-thirty in the morning. When they both finally wore out, they stretched out on the bed, fully-clothed, and fell asleep in each others’ arms.

  They were awakened four hours later by the alarm that Felice had set before Kevin had arrived. Felice had coffee sent to the room, and they drank and laughed and joked easily while getting ready to go. Felice showered while Kevin, who had rented a room on his own, went to take his shower.

  Later, Felice walked Kevin to his car and kissed him good­bye. Her trip mates eyed the two curiously and ribbed each other lewdly, speculating on what must have went on in her room the previous night.

  Tale of the Tigers

  Chapter Eleven

  After her last class the following Monday, Felice headed home with the events of the weekend swirling in her head. What had she done to deserve a guy like Kevin? Conversely, she felt a sense of guilt, as well. What would her father say if he found out about the visit, regardless of the outcome? He’d flip out, of course. He’d never believe that she and Kevin spent a chaste evening talking about his deceased mother or that they had slept together, barely touching each other and fully clothed.

  She suddenly realized that she had turned left instead of the usual right toward Interstate 40, which would take her home. This right turn would take her toward the restaurant.

  That was it. Her only course of action was to tell her father the whole story and take the consequences. He might be angry enough to forbid her from seeing Kevin, but he couldn’t say that she had lied to him or tried to hide the truth from him. She at least owed him that.

  She pulled her car up a block down from the restaurant. She figured that, since it was about one-thirty, the lunch crowd should be thinning out. Ever since The Creole Experience had received a glowing review in the Albuquerque Mirror two years prior, the restaurant had had a steady following. Additionally, since her father and Uncle Richard had moved from its southeast location to be closer to NMU hospital and many other businesses, The Creole Experience had gotten the benefit of that clientele.