The Warmest December

by Bernice L. McFadden

The summer of ’79 would be a season of discovery for me and I would, during those eight sultry weeks, discover the sweet mouth and solid touch of a boy whose youth had abandoned him years before his sixteenth birthday.

  I did not worry about the others being interested in him. He was not beautiful and sleek. He was long and lanky; his hands were clumsy and oversized, weighing down his already thin arms. His nose was bent at an angle that ruined any immediate attractive qualities his face held. You had to look long and deep to see the beauty of his brown eyes, the thick supple lids that shone smooth as copper beneath the sun, and the weighty lashes that curled upward eternally praising the sky.

  There would be no contest between the Donnelly girls, Hillary, Glenna, and me; they did not have the patience or the maturity to consider him with such intensity. So they just dusted him with their gazes and decided right then and there that he was not anything they wanted.

  He and his mother moved into the apartment building across the street from me beneath the backdrop of a Fourth of July evening while the sound of firecrackers and cherry bombs consumed the night and fireworks painted the sky in brilliant blues, reds, and yellows.

  His name was Jonas and he was miles ahead of his sixteen years. A full-time student in the daytime and a gas station attendant at night. He had been thrust into adulthood when his father, a two-bit drug dealer, was found shot to death in Tompkins Square Park.

  I kissed him the first time we met, because I had missed out on that small intimacy with Mousy and had longed for it ever since. It was a quick and easy kiss that reminded me of his smile and melted my insides and curled my toes around the edges of my sandals.

  It was his smile that had turned me around the first day I met him. Not the baritone hello or the feel of his fingertips on my forearm as he reached out for me when I passed him. I didn’t even notice his eyes, the odd angled nose, or the beauty mark that sat on his left cheek like a speck of dirt. Just his smile, wide and bright.

  Before I knew it I smelled the motor oil that was ground into the grooves of his hands and beneath his fingernails.

  “Hi,” he said as he waved his hand back and forth in my face, fracturing the spell his lips had on me.

  “Hi,” I responded. My experience with boys was minimal but I did not feel nervous speaking to him out in the open like that. Right on the corner of Montgomery and Nostrand avenues where everyone could see, including Hy-Lo, Delia, and the old man who owned the pharmacy on the corner.

  He smiled and his words were soothing. They sounded as familiar as a bedtime story my mother had read over and over to me as a child.

  I walked with him to his apartment building and even stepped inside its cream-colored halls. We remained there in the cool darkness, hidden from the eyes of our neighbors and the scorching rays of the sun, talking about anything and everything, and for moments, nothing at all.

  “I can’t give you my number,” I said when he finally asked.

  “Can I give you mine?”

  “Yes.”

  I wrote his number in red ink on my palm. The seven digits seemed to sear my hand and I made a fist to contain the fire.

  A woman came down the marble staircase that led up to the apartments. She was singing to herself, loud and off-key. Her shoes clicked hard against the stone, running competition with her clamorous melody.

  I made a face and snickered. Jonas said nothing. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and dropped his head.

  The woman’s hair was cut so short you could see her scalp and the thin scraggly scars that covered the left side of her head above her ear. Her eyes bulged and the whites looked like aged parchment, yellow and dim. She was short, the color of pancake mix, with a belly that rounded out before her and jiggled beneath her T-shirt when she moved. To me she looked like a bullfrog, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “J,” the woman said coming to stand before us. “J, listen, go on down to that liquor store, get me a pint of …” she slurred and lost her words.

  I looked at Jonas. He had extended his hand out to retrieve the crumpled money. His head remained bent but I could see the shame in his eyes and the resemblance he bore to the woman.

  “Ahhhhhhhh …” She was still struggling to find the words to finish her sentence. She snapped her fingers and looked to the cream-colored walls for the answer.

  “Gin,” Jonas said quietly and slowly took the money from the woman’s hand.

  “Yeah, uh-huh.” She patted him on the back, twice. “Good boy, my good boy.” She never acknowledged me; maybe she thought I was an impression on the wall or a shadow. Whatever the case, she turned and stumbled her way back up the staircase.

  I looked at Jonas, this person I’d just met but felt like I’d known forever, and realized that we shared the same pain. I took his chin in my hand and tilted his head up and turned it toward me. I wanted to say something grown, something I’d seen in a movie or read in a book, but nothing would come to me. I pulled him to me and pressed my lips against his until I felt I had kissed that moment away, and then we walked, side by side, to the Beehive liquor store.

  We spoke on the phone in the evenings when Hy-Lo was at work and Delia had closed herself behind her bedroom door. I stole time with him at the gas station in the small metal box he called his office. I was more than happy to sit surrounded by grease and grime, as long as I could be near him, hear him, touch him.

  We shared stories, about our parents and their problems, as if we were both veterans of some long-ago battle now able to laugh.

  I was never really able to talk about things like that, not even to Glenna, much less laugh about it. But now I did, we did, laughed until our sides ached and tears streamed down our faces. And then we held each other and kissed the pain away.

  * * *

  “Where you been, Kenzie?” Delia’s face was screwed up. She was standing over the stove scrubbing the chrome with Brillo. Her hair was relaxed now and hung long and black just touching her shoulders. The kitchen smelled of salmon cakes and french fries. Malcolm sat at the table greedily shoving food into his mouth, but he stopped to throw me a warning look when I walked in.

  “I—I—” The words were stuck in my throat. Her question had taken me by surprise.

  “Don’t come in here with a lie up your ass, Kenzie. Where were you?” It was obvious she had been ranting and raving for some time before I got in. I looked at the clock on the wall; it was after ten.

  “I was at Glenna’s,” I said and dropped my eyes.

  “You were where?” Delia took a step away from the stove.

  “Glenna’s.” I repeated the lie and stepped backward. My back hit the wall.

  “Kenzie.” My name sounded like shit in her mouth when she said it. “You lying little—” She stopped herself and reached for her pack of Newports. “You wanna come again?” she said as she lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “What?” I would have to stick to the lie; I was in too deep.

  “Glenna called here looking for you not more than ten minutes ago. So where the hell were you!” She yelled so loud my ears rang and Malcolm got up from the table, leaving his half-eaten plate of food behind. He brushed past me and went to sit in the living room. It was just Delia and me now.

  The cigarette smoke filled the kitchen and hung around us like a gray net. I wanted to move but I was afraid any movement I made would be interpreted as insolent. So I remained perfectly still, my head bowed, hands clasped behind my back, and the taste of Jonas on my tongue.

  “Do I look like I have ‘stupid’ scratched across my forehead? Do I!” She was moving closer now. The cigarette smoke she exhaled tickled my nose and I stifled a sneeze. “Answer me, Kenzie, goddamnit!”

  “No,” I almost yelled. “No, I don’t think you’re stupid,” I said lowering my voice.

  “So where the hell were you?” She was in my face now. I could see the brown tops of her bare feet, the chipped polish on her toenails, and the corn on her pinky toe.

 
“I—I was—” I couldn’t say it. The words were there, but they were caught in my throat.

  “I—I,” she mocked me and then turned and walked back into the kitchen.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and slowly raised my eyes to meet hers when she turned around.

  “I’ll tell you where the hell you was. Your ass was across the street in that building with that nappy-headed boy!” She crossed her arms across her chest in triumph and glared at me, daring me to deny it.

  I said nothing. My body slumped.

  “Let me tell you something. If you think you are going to screw up my life because you couldn’t keep your legs closed, you better think again, ’cause I’m raising my children, I ain’t raising no more than that!”

  It was out, she’d said it. She thought I was doing things I knew I wasn’t ready for yet. Sex. Jonas and I kissed and petted, but that was it. I was wounded by her accusation and my eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, please!” she said in disgust when the first tear streaked down my check. “Those tears do not move me, Kenzie, not one damn bit!” She slammed the half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and then immediately lit another one.

  “I oughta tell your father, that’s what I should do!”

  I shook at the thought. “But Mom—” I began, but her hand came up, cutting my words into shreds of air.

  “You know I wasn’t all for this boarding school thing, but now, now I’m all for it.” She set her eyes on me and gave me a look that I’d seen passed between women on crowded buses when hips collided and tempers flared. “Get outta my face, Kenzie, and—oh, you are not to leave this house for the next week and no phone calls either.”

  I stood there with my mouth open. What had I done? What crime had I committed?

  I stalked into my room and remained there until the next day.

  She must have said something to Hy-Lo, maybe in passing or early in the day when he’d just come in from work, his mind still clear and the seal still unbroken on the bottle of vodka. They were able to converse then, like married couples on television, easy unhurried speech that was sprinkled with light laughter and calm interludes. Or maybe she’d spoken in her sleep, mumbling her anger into the softness of her pillow. Whatever the case, he found out and began to watch me.

  The questions didn’t begin for a few days, although I knew they were lingering there on the tip of his tongue. And then the day came when the words toppled out of his mouth, sending me reeling.

  “Are you still a virgin?” He asked it as if he’d practiced the question in front of his bedroom mirror.

  “What?” I said blinking in shock.

  “Don’t what me. Are you still a virgin?” he repeated.

  I was wounded. What the hell was with them and this sex thing? I was thirteen years old and didn’t know anyone who had actually done it. Glenna almost did, but then she chickened out. At least she’d actually seen a penis; I hadn’t seen one since Malcolm had been potty-trained. “What—I mean, excuse me?” I said stupidly, not quite sure how to answer him and make him believe me.

  “Are you hard of hearing now?” He was sitting on the sofa, his cup on the floor beside his foot, a cigarette burning in the ashtray on the end table by the couch.

  “Um, no, I just—um. Yes, I’m still a virgin,” I blurted. My mouth went dry as the heat of embarrassment spread through my body.

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to take you to the doctor to make sure.” His eyes searched my face for any tick or shift that would indicate a lie.

  My face was a stone block and I turned and walked away. “I will do it, Kenzie. I will,” he said to my back and laughed.

  The towels came two days after his threat. Large bodyconsuming towels that were blinding white. Seven of them, one for each day of the week. I was to use only those towels and no one else in the house was to touch them.

  He brought them in two large plastic bags that had the name SEARS in black letters on the sides. “Here,” he said and shoved the bags at me.

  Delia was there, ironing and folding Hy-Lo’s clothes. The only piece of his clothing she didn’t iron was his socks. “Oh, those are nice.” She was speaking with a lisp; her lip was swollen.

  I didn’t even ask her why he’d gone and bought those towels for me. We had too many towels in the house as it was. The cedar chest bulged with towels and face cloths. It was an obsession for him: linens and liquor.

  I followed the rules and used one towel every day, until a lightbulb finally went off in my head as I stood drying myself.

  I was on the sixth set of towels by then. The others had either begun to fray around the edges or go yellow from extensive washing and overbleaching. These seven were brand new, I could tell by how they felt against my skin and the easy anxious way the fibers absorbed the water beads.

  Hy-Lo just replaced them every year. Threw out the old ones, didn’t even shred them for dusting rags like he did everything else, just packed them into one of those large black hefty bags and set them out by the trash.

  I wiped at my skin and sang along to a song that played softly from my radio. I wiped at the water beneath my breasts and off my stomach, slowly moving down my thighs and then finally between my legs.

  I lifted the towel to mop off some forgotten water from my shoulder and saw the red streaks of blood there. I remembered being more disgusted at having gotten my period just as I was about to go to the beach than at the bloodstains that ruined the snow-white appearance of my towel.

  Maybe it was the combination of disappointment and the crimson streaks that finally delivered the answer to a question I had never asked, but I knew then why he had bought me those white towels: that was his calendar, his way of keeping tabs on my monthly.

  I stuffed all seven towels in a big plastic hefty bag and set them out by the garbage.

  I would never use another white towel, ever.

  My week of imprisonment seemed to take a million years to pass. I spent hours staring out my window, running my hand up and down my forearm imagining it was Jonas’s fingers, not mine, that gently stroked my skin.

  I was in love for the first time and it pained and pleasured me in equal measure. Over that week I decided I did not want to leave Jonas. What would I do without his tender kisses and his soothing words?

  We were the same, he and I, and it had taken me my whole young life to find him. I would not let him go so easily.

  “Mom.” I approached Delia as she walked through the door from work.

  “Yes, Kenzie,” she responded as she glanced at the clock.

  I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. I waited while my nerves took hold of themselves.

  “Yes, Kenzie,” she said again and looked directly into my eyes. We had not spoken for the majority of the week. No idle chitchat about her job or the people on the block. She had nothing to say to me outside of “Turn down that music” or “Wash that cup.”

  The mood between us was frigid and Malcolm steered clear to avoid the icy edges that surrounded us.

  “I—I was thinking that maybe I—uh, well, I don’t think that I—” I was stammering, struggling to pull the right words from within.

  “Spit it out, Kenzie, I have to get dinner started.” She glanced at the clock again and looked at me in frustration. “C’mon, girl, say it.”

  “I don’t want to go away to school.” I blurted it out and my legs turned to Jell-O.

  Delia hadn’t even flinched at my announcement. She just smiled and shook her head. “And why is that?” she asked.

  Something inside told me she knew what I was going to say. “I just don’t,” I said quietly.

  “Hmmm,” Delia responded and walked into the kitchen. I heard the strike of the match and then the open and close of the refrigerator door. Cigarette smoke sailed out into the living room and circled my head before fading into the darkness. “Come here, Kenzie,” Delia called to me after ten minutes or so.

  When I walked into the kitchen she was seated at the table smoking
. Two pots boiled and bubbled behind her on the stove and a head of lettuce sat glistening in the sink. She motioned for me to take the seat across from her.

  “I was your age not too long ago. I had very few opportunities. Very few.” She inhaled on her cigarette and I could tell she was thinking back. “Anyway,” she said and shook her head as if trying to shake those memories away. “You have an opportunity to go away to school, to be exposed to something other than what these streets have to offer.”

  She said the streets, but I knew she meant Jonas.

  “You may feel something for that boy, but there will be a hundred other boys in your life that will make you feel the same way. You are only thirteen, you’re still a baby.”

  Delia’s words were soft and her eyes shone with understanding, but with every word she spoke, my heart hardened against her.

  “It has nothing to do with any boys, Mom.” My voice was filled with impatience. “I just want to stay here and go to school with my friends,” I lied.

  “Uh-huh, well, I’m sorry, Kenzie, you can’t do that.” Her voice was still soft but there was an unmistakable hardness around the edges.

  “But it’s my decision,” I said. My whole body stiffened with anger.

  “Not anymore, Kenzie.”

  Our eyes locked and I fought to control the tears that threatened to come like floodwaters.

  Jonas and I continued, as though our lives depended on our being together. There was two weeks left to the summer and then I would be gone.

  “What kind of school is it?” he asked as we lazed beneath a grand oak in Prospect Park. My head rested in his lap and he stroked my eyebrows with the tip of his forefinger.

  I don’t know why I lay my head there. Maybe because dozens of couples around me were doing it and I felt a need to imitate it. At first I felt awkward having my face so close to his crotch, but then his words began to fill my ears, and the clouds, soft and full, moved across the sky, and I forgot all about the member that lurked there.

  “Private. Girls,” I said. I did not want to talk about it; the novelty of it had worn off a long time ago.

  “My mom’s giving a party on the fifth. Her birthday. You should come, it’ll be like a going-away party for you.”