by Diane Munier
“That’s kind of terrible,” I said, not able to believe he had been with such perfection as Tahlila and not loved every minute of it.
“It’s not her fault. I kept trying to be a good boyfriend. I mean I said…how would Rickey Nelson handle this?”
We laughed some more.
When we got quiet again he said, “You’ve never had a boyfriend…right?”
“Um…no.”
“Too stuck up,” he said smiling, moving my hair behind my ear. “Ever kissed anybody?”
“Naomi,” I whispered and he laughed some, but not enough to break this intense eye contact we had going on.
He moved closer and I lifted my lips and he pressed his lips against mine. It only lasted for a few seconds, but when he pulled back he smiled at me. “I want to keep going,” he said.
I grabbed onto him and pulled him forward and rolled onto my back. I was looking at him and him at me and we weren’t laughing at all now, just breathing.
“You know I’m leaving,” he said.
“You run away from me. You always have.”
He shook his head and his hands gripped my shoulders hard. “You’re my only reason to stay.”
“Then stay.”
He was shaking his head. “I only took this job to keep the peace at home for Mom. Sukey is coming back out in January. He’ll watch over things…if he doesn’t fuck up too much and land in jail. They’ll call me up before then probably.”
“You can’t be so passive about this!” I said hysterical. “You can’t do that! You could die over there! You can’t throw yourself away!”
“Shh, shh,” he said smoothing over my hair.
“We could go to Canada,” I said, unable to stop the words.
“I’m not the type to run, Hilly, even if you say I am. This is my country. It’s where I want to live.”
“Register for school. It’s all you have to do. Get into school.”
“Hilly…no. I’m done with school. I don’t want school. I turned down a scholarship. I’m done.”
“It won’t be like you think over there. Listen to the guys coming back. It’s a hopeless war. That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying we don’t belong there. We’re not heroes there. They are saying not to go.”
“And there’s plenty of guys who are coming back proud they did their duty.”
“That’s part of their bullshit. It’s propaganda. You can’t go. You can’t…die. You can’t die. I won’t be able to bear it…all those miles between us. You can’t….” I was crying now. Really crying about everything. I turned away from him, flung myself away. I was sobbing into the ground, wishing I could die and dissolve into the turf.
He was trying to console me, pulling on me, lifting me. He was carrying me. All the while I was limp, crying against him.
Somehow we were in his car. He held me like the baby I was. When I was cried out, he rubbed my arm and spoke softly to me. “Hilly…I can’t stay here and work for some asshole like Lonnie. I’ve got reasons.”
I kept my face buried in my hair.
“I wasn’t ignoring you all those years just to be an asshole. I decided it was better. Hilly…is Naomi…is she just…who is she to you?”
I lifted my head and looked at him. “Why?”
“I just…I’ve never understood how your family sets up.”
I pushed my hair off my face. “Why does it matter?”
He taps on the steering wheel. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
“I know what goes around about me, Danny.”
“And you know that’s not me. I’m asking. Me.”
I take a deep breath. It’s just…I’m touchy on it. “Years back Granma let Naomi work for days-pay. And they got close and she moved in back. She had a husband and a son but they died.”
He nodded. “Well…I don’t know if you ever heard it…but Sukey…it bothered him that I had a different dad. He wanted us to be blood and if anyone said anything about my skin he’d nearly kill ‘em. That’s what he got sent up for…fighting.”
“I know he hates me.”
“Because of the rumors,” he said. “About Naomi being part of your family.”
“I know the rumors, Danny. And I don’t give a shit about it. And if you do….”
“No.”
“If you do then forget it. I mean it. Take me home and don’t ever….”
“Sukey,” he says loudly over me, “he knew back then…me and you. He was jealous. He…sees me as his.”
“You’re not going to defend him, I hope.”
“I’m not. I’m not defending him. I’m just telling you.”
“So Tahlila being a blond must have been a great relief for him.”
Danny didn’t argue that.
“He insisted I was Italian and not African. It’s been his mission to defend me from the color of my skin.”
“That’s pretty sick. How could you be in that world…with all of them….”
“It’s not like that. No one gives me shit.”
“But they think it and they hurt people….”
“Not me.”
“What…did he worry I was black and I made you what…more black?”
“My family’s been so fucked up. That day when we were kids and I walked in there and he had you…I’m all he’s got and he’s got a twist. I know that. But he’s my family. So I made it my goal to not see you…not look at you…not talk to you…until it was habit. Once I forgot about you…he did. I…was protecting you.”
“Please.”
“But…I never forgot you. I saw you around,” he says more loudly. “I knew…when you were around. I just knew.”
“But you weren’t looking,” I said. “You were protecting Sukey.”
He lets out a big sigh and hits the steering wheel.
My head is spinning. My mouth tastes sour.
“When Paul said he’d talked to Lonnie…that was to punish me for breaking with…everything. Everyone knows Lonnie is an asshole. But I was curious…after all this time. I didn’t know if you’d be around. But that first day you were there. And I don’t know…I just saw you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. What I said. It means just what I said.”
“Danny…are you going to Vietnam to get away from Sukey?”
He looked away from me then. “I’m going because I have a low number.”
“You’re going somewhere he can’t follow.”
“He needs to learn to live without me. I can’t keep….”
I nodded. “And what about…what are we? I mean…are you trying to make it right before you go? Like a clear conscience move for the poor little darkie because I didn’t appease them like you did? Because I wouldn’t answer their questions or their attacks on my grandmother? Cause I could have. I could have appeased them. I mean I don’t have a shit’s worth of athletic ability and I can’t tap dance, but maybe if I got a test of some kind to see if there’s any African lurking….”
He grabs onto me and crushes me against him. “Stop it. Hilly, stop it. You hear me? No more.”
He’s rocking us back and forth, and it’s not comfortable. It hurts. And my head from Lonnie’s booze. I have to keep my eyes closed. But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel him holding it in, holding all of it in. So when it starts to leak out, and I know he’s trying so hard to keep it where he’s always kept it, I don’t do anything at all but let him cling to me.
It takes a long, long time. He holds me that long and he cries and gasps. And I don’t do a thing but allow it, just like he did for me.
But I have never been confused about him.
“I just…I don’t know where I’ll end up. I’m going away. And I’m already hurting you.” He says this. His nose is clogged and he’s sniffing, but still I don’t look.
“I’d have to ask you to wait. That’s not fair. You don’t even agree with what I’m going to do. I’m afraid you’ve already waited for me. I…I don’t want to
know. Don’t tell me.”
“It’s always been you. Always,” I say, my eyes still closed.
His head presses against mine. His arms haven’t eased up. He’s smothering me. “Hilly….”
“Seeing you…everyday seeing you. You were with her and I knew…I always knew…and you wouldn’t even look at me…and I knew…I loved you. I love you now. I will always love you.”
Finding My Thunder 12
Lonnie had not come home at all on Thursday night. I had barely made it home myself before the sun came up. I had sat with Danny in the purple car, wrapped in ourselves in this painful aftermath that somehow, in all of its messed up truths and messed up lies felt comforting. I felt sorrow for how we had been. I felt joy to finally say the words I thought I would take to my grave. I’d told Danny I loved him.
And it was like Naomi said to me so many times, there could be joy and sadness together. One did not obliterate the other. Well she was right. I knew that now. I felt them both.
Friday morning Danny had wanted to pick me up for work but I said no. I wanted to walk, to try and slip in the shop after they were busy. I did not know how it would be with Lonnie but I was determined to pick up where I’d left off.
I fed Sooner and started to walk, tried to get used to not having the pull I always felt, the tether to Mama and my responsibility for her. To think she did not exist, that I did not have to hurry, that no one waited, that no one breathed in that house, it was such a foreign notion.
I nearly walked into the street without looking I was so deep in thought. A car slammed on its brakes right in front of me. Before that could settle there was the screaming voice and the driver out of her car. The passenger, Lauren, glared at me through the window.
Tahlila crossed the front of her blue Mustang and charged up to me.
I heard Danny’s name but I couldn’t understand the words. Then she spit in my face and I hated spit more than anything. I wiped at it with my hand and felt the wet and pulled the bandana off my hair and wiped my face and hand. She was still yelling, her teeth so straight and white, her eyes filled with contempt. She slapped me and then she hit me and more words. I backed away.
Lauren was out of the car holding Tahlila and trying to calm her down. Pain was making its way through and my cheek stung and my arm ached. I started to hear then, hear words and I realized she was accusing me of taking Danny.
Lauren comforted Tahlila, who was now sobbing and collapsing. Lauren was cursing me too in-between. Another car pulled behind Tahlila’s then sped around them and laid on the horn. A woman came out on her porch and told us to stop fighting and get in that car and go or she was calling the police.
Tahlila was pretty much slumped in the gutter with Lauren trying to get her up. They wore their matching summer cheerleading suits. I just stood there trying to take a breath and believe it was happening.
Finally Lauren got Tahlila onto her feet and put her in the passenger’s seat. She walked to the other side and before she got in the car she said, “You’re gonna pay for this, bitch.”
They pulled off, Tahlila bent over, all that blond hair pressed against the window. I looked after them, glaring tail lights speeding away.
Then I remembered to cross the street. I stumbled along and slowly came back to myself as I got closer to the shop. I threw my bandana away. I didn’t want it now. I smoothed over my braided hair and took a breath finally, before I went in the shop door.
They were all working. Lonnie was explaining something to Robert. He looked at me then back to what he was doing.
Danny hadn’t noticed yet, his back was to me. I went to the desk and sat down. My legs felt weak. I was so tired all of a sudden, I didn’t know if I could think. The careful piles I’d left were rummaged through and it looked like a big paper bird had been murdered and plucked on this desk.
I felt through all the mess and found the ledger sheets I’d tallied the accounts on. I set these aside then started to re-segregate the piles.
Before long I felt a tug on my braid. It was Robert. “Hey Miss Hilly…how you doin’ this mornin’ darlin’?”
I didn’t know. I saw his eyes go to my cheek.
“I…I need my time card,” he said.
I took care of that. He put the time he’d got there and handed it back to me. “Smile pretty girl,” he whispered and he went back to work.
Danny was looking at me now. He waved and smiled.
I noticed Lonnie busy in the back so I waved. But Danny straightened from what he was doing and raised his open hand as if asking me what was wrong.
When I turned away I could hardly concentrate. I sat there holding the next piece of paper for I don’t know how long before I caught myself doing it—seeing her face up close to me, her gnarled beauty and the hate spewing from her pink mouth. Black bitch whore, she’d called me. It’s like I heard it now, first time, on a tape in my head.
Such rage. Shiny and broken-hearted. I didn’t know if things had ever gone so wrong in her world before. She wasn’t having it. And not from me, insult to injury.
She had looked me up and down, shocked I was this, skinny and dark and dumb in her eyes. To have to face me, on her way to cheerleading practice…and I had nothing to do with what had happened between her and Danny. But now she had something…someone to blame.
They were the oppressors Naomi would tell me I had to care about. The ones whose immoral treatment I must not receive…must not reflect…lest I lower the bar for all humankind. What a burden to bear.
I turned a bit and looked at Danny grinding away on a piece of metal, sparks shooting toward the ceiling like fireworks. He was Danny Boyd. Danny Italiano. The tree in the garden I must not touch. Or else.
Sukey wasn’t the only one who thought he owned Danny. In her mind…she owned him, too.
They were a year ahead of me at school, a year behind Danny. I’d be on my own with them come fall. And Sukey. He’d be home in January. He’d finish the second half of his senior year.
And I’d crossed the line. Danny and I had been seen.
Now I was meeting the gatekeepers. They were all around me, pointing out the boundaries I’d ignored.
They were walking those lines and telling me to get back. And I would have to decide right here, right now, who I was going to be, how I was going to live. There would be a price for whatever road I took. Didn’t I know?
It was slow going at that desk. I didn’t make much progress. I couldn’t seem to keep my mind nailed to the task. I was drifting in my thoughts…so many things pulling.
It was lunch time and Lonnie left without speaking to me. Maybe he was still mad about his whiskey. Or me not telling him I’d be acting white from here on.
Soon as he was gone, Danny was there pulling up a chair as close as he could. “How you doin’?”
Robert asked if we wanted to come to Mac’s and Danny said, “No,” really quick over his shoulder, like dismissing Robert.
Robert wasn’t having it and he threw a workglove at Danny and Danny turned around and said, “We ain’t comin’, man.”
“Can’t she speak for herself?” Robert said pointing at me.
“I’m…not coming. But thank you,” I said.
He nodded then. “Want me to bring you something? You look like you could use something.”
“She’s fine,” Danny said. “I can get it.”
I looked at Danny but he paid me no mind he was in this stare-match with Robert.
I said to Robert. “I’m fine, thank you. Well, maybe a Coke.”
I stood up and dug in my pocket, but Danny stood and dug in his and tried to hand Robert fifty cents before I could get my money out. Robert looked at him and ignored his money and said, “I’ve got it,” and he left.
“Damn hippie,” Danny said. Then he sat again and pulled my chair against his open knees. “What’s wrong with your face? It looks swollen.” He turned me a little like he was seeking more light.
I put my hand there and it was tender.
“I…don’t get upset.”
“About your mom?” He whispered.
I shook my head.
“Did Danny hit you?” he looked upset.
“No. Tahlila.”
“What?”
I told him how I remembered it. I told him she spit in my face.
It’s like I punched him. He called her a bitch and kept apologizing. He had tears in his eyes from anger. He looked at my arm right away but the red was gone.
“That’s assault,” he said. “I can’t believe she did that. Don’t worry…I’m goin’ over there as soon as I’m off here. Don’t you worry. It won’t happen again. And she has to know about your mom. I can’t believe she would do this. How did she…we ain’t even had a date yet and you’re getting…!” He sprang onto his feet and started to pace.
I stood up too. “Someone saw us. Your car…well Sukey’s car…they know it.”
He kept looking at me and shaking his head. “Shit,” he whispered. “I…fuck.” He took steps away rubbing the back of his neck. He turned back to me quick. “This is my fault. You got to go to school with them. And Sukey…I won’t be here to help you. This is all my fault. I knew it. I always knew it.”
“Don’t. Don’t blame yourself.”
“It’s my fault. It’s completely my fault. You think I didn’t know this might happen? I put you in this.”
“Don’t,” I said. I didn’t like what he was saying, how it made me fill with dread. But he wouldn’t look at me so I fell into the chair.
He hurried to me and had his hands on the arms of my chair but he couldn’t hold my gaze. He tucked his chin into his shoulder and closed his eyes.
“Danny,” I said, but he wouldn’t look at me.
Finally he did. “I’m so sorry, Hilly.” His dark eyes were breaking me.
He touched my swollen cheek. “I never wanted to bring you trouble. I’ve been so careful not to. I thought….” He shook his head and pushed off and stood. He turned and went to the back of the shop and out the door.
I heard Sukey’s car start up and I ran out onto the sidewalk. He pulled out of the alley into the street and passed where I stood. He didn’t look at me.
