Can't Get Enough of Your Love

by J. J. Murray

  “And I’ll make those nachos you like….”

  She doesn’t play fair. She melts a pound of Velveeta and adds a jar of hot salsa, serving it on some big blue tortilla chips with freshly cut jalapeños.

  “I’ll keep them in mind.”

  The timer goes off, I stand, and she rinses the conditioner from my hair. I towel dry my hair while walking to the bathroom, where I fire up the blow-dryer. My hair has gotten so long!

  “You need your ends done, girl,” Mama says.

  They are looking pretty ragged.

  “You want me to trim them?”

  But my hair is wild and free, and suddenly I don’t even want to comb it. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She sighs. “Suit yourself.”

  Another miracle has just happened. I turn to see her facial expression, but she’s already out of the bathroom. Suit myself? She has never said that to me. All those years she experimented on my head with straws and extensions and Shirley Temple curls, and she says, “Suit yourself?”

  I look at the wild thing in the mirror.

  This suits me.

  Chapter 26

  Once I get my wild self back to Jenny’s dollhouse, I ask myself one simple question:

  Who the hell am I? Who is Erlana “Lana” “Peanut” Joy Cole?

  Okay, two questions. I was never any good at math.

  I let my daddy define me until I was eight, and he turned me into a Smurfs-loving, football-playing, tenacious tomboy. Then I came to Roanoke and tried to become what Mama wanted me to be—a girl. At least I let her think I was trying to be a girl. I wasn’t. I was a tomboy in a dress, still tenacious, replacing the Smurfs with boys but never giving up football. My peers helped redefine me through middle school, mainly with me doing the exact opposite of what they were doing, and reverse peer pressure or something made me “me” during high school. But since high school, I have had four crummy breakups, and for nine months, I let three different men define and redefine “me.” Does that make the real “me” beyond definition? Is there any hope for “me”?

  I have strange thoughts while I fish.

  I’m not exactly fishing. I’m just standing on the dock at high noon on a scorching July day casting a sinker into the reeds, probably knocking some poor bass in the head. I had left a container of worms out on the dock after doing a little fishing last night—not a nibble. I think my wild hair scared all the fish away. And by the time I woke up this morning, all the worms were, um, toasted flat from the sun. I know I’m dehydrated, too. My scalp is turning darker black (if that’s possible), my wild hair is on fire, and even my eyes are probably sunburned. As for the rest of me, I’m looking pretty damn good—sweaty, but slim and trim.

  Damn, I’m lonely.

  No, Lana. Don’t you sink into the green, mucky, moss-covered pond of despair and think that another person has to define or complete you. Your development has been arrested, you’re just incomplete, you’re just … you’re just a damn tadpole that still has its tail. You’ll never be a bullfrog if you don’t lose your tail.

  I look at my own tail. If I come out here every day this month, I’ll have a white girl’s booty. Where did my booty go? I pull out my shirt to look at my girls. Damn, y’all have shrunk, too.

  I’m melting, I’m melting …

  I think all my pores are draining at once. Maybe this is what withdrawal feels like. Maybe this is the rehab I need to rid me of the memories. Maybe I can just sweat these men out of my mind—

  They all made me sweat like this.

  They all made me ooze.

  Nasty.

  I made them ooze, too….

  Nastier.

  But I didn’t collect any of it.

  Nastiest.

  Change the subject.

  I need to get a satellite dish or something. Yeah. Then I’ll get all the sports packages, all the NFL and college games. I would be any man’s dream girl, though I need a bigger TV, one of those wide-screen ones I’ll never be able to afford. Maybe I can rent-to-own one. Yeah. But could they get a wide-screen TV into Jenny’s dollhouse? Hmm.

  But wait. If I get all that, a man might love me for my TV and not for me. Hmm. Knowing my budget, I’ll probably go to Radio Shack and get an antenna. That should be enough. I need to keep things simple. I don’t need the Outdoor Channel when the outdoors is right outside my window. I don’t need any of those shopping channels. I’ll just go shop … at Wal-Mart, since my funds are pretty low until the end of September. And why would anyone watch a cooking show? Go cook! No wonder Americans are so obese. We sit and watch what we used to do! We watch what we could be doing! Crazy!

  For that matter, why do we pick up a meal to take home and then eat it in our car on the way home? Why do we have kitchen and dining room tables we never eat on? Why do we buy packaged foods to microwave instead of preparing food from scratch? Are we all that much in a hurry?

  And why is there no sinker on my line? Did a bass eat my sinker? My line is just waving in the air. Hmm. It’s kind of cool-looking, like an almost-invisible snake striking in the wind.

  This next school year, I am taking my lunch every single day. I will prepare food to microwave, and folks will smell it and ask, “What’s that wonderful smell?”

  And I am not eating out ever again. Why am I in such a rush? What’s my hurry?

  I am going to take my time, enjoy the moment, and live life like a meal that I don’t want to end.

  I’m even going to stop shaving my eyebrows. Why did I ever start doing that? I could have plucked the stray ones in between, but no, I had to shave them, and that wasn’t enough, so I had to shape the eyebrows, and then they grew back thicker, and—

  Whoo, I’m getting dizzy. I had better sit. I reel in my waving line, set down my rod, and flop my feet to the pond to cool off my toes and—

  Either my legs are getting shorter or the pond is evaporating.

  I look at the shoreline. I’ve never seen that particular rock before. Or that rusty can. Is that an old license plate? Is that a tire? And what’s that smell? It’s not me, is it?

  I smell myself.

  Nope. It’s not me this time.

  The pond is drying up.

  I wonder what’s at the bottom out there in the middle. Maybe there is no bottom. Maybe there’s a huge black hole in the muck, and if I look down it, I’ll see China. Maybe …

  Maybe I had better get what’s left of my ass inside for a couple gallons of water so my brain doesn’t boil over with ridiculous thoughts.

  Hopscotching my way across the steps to the side door, I enter and feel instantly cooler. The floor in this kitchen is always so cool no matter how hot it is outside. I wonder why that is.

  Hey, who did the dishes? Oh yeah. I did. I also did the laundry, took the trash to a big green Dumpster at Mr. Wilson’s, and dusted off all the books. I even got some Drano and a plunger, and made the tub water rush out. I also own every cleaning “ointment” available—all the spray bottles, scrubs, and powders—and have three different kinds of Brillo pads, two brooms (one for outside only), a squeegee, a cloth mop and bucket, and a vacuum. Whenever I’m especially, um, down, I get down on my hands and knees, and scour Jenny’s dollhouse. It’s beginning to smell like pine again.

  I put my head under the faucet and flip the lever. The coldest water God ever created pours out of this faucet and onto my head, and I turn back into myself.

  At least I think I do.

  Wait.

  Maybe the tub drains into the pond, and the Drano is causing the pond to shrink.

  I keep my head under the faucet until I can’t feel my earlobes.

  Now, what was that about a cup of Drano causing a pond to evaporate? As if that could ever happen. I need a nice, cold shower.

  Before I step into the tub, I examine what the sun is doing to my body. I’m black on my scalp, face, neck, shoulders, and arms, and from about my thighs down. The rest of me is so pale I can see my vein
s. My girls have veins? Gross! I need to lay out in the nude or something. Who’s going to know?

  Get in the damn shower, Lana.

  I get in the shower and brace myself. Every pore in my body is about to snap shut, I’m talking gibberish to myself, and I’m contemplating lying out in the nude to make my black self blacker.

  Yeah, I’m getting better.

  I don’t know who I’m becoming, but it’s definitely someone wild and new.

  Wait.

  Maybe Joy is trying to make an appearance.

  Maybe Joy is trying to push Erlana and Lana aside.

  I crank the knob, and streams of arctic water sting my body, making me dance in the shower.

  I think I might like Joy. She likes to take cold showers and dance.

  Erlana, Lana, step aside.

  Joy is in the house.

  Chapter 27

  Joy and I are getting along famously. We even sleep together (don’t tell!). She’s fun to snuggle up to, and she looks at her hair and just laughs! She laughs.

  She’s just about the bestest friend I have, and she’s taught me so much about myself. She had me dig out Roger’s poem to me from under my mattress and told me to change it from “She Is Beautiful” to “I Am Beautiful,” leaving out any stanzas that gave me pain:

  When I wake,

  I am beautiful,

  flashing a little leg

  and yawning shyly,

  my mouth a delicate O.

  When I sing,

  I am beautiful,

  flashing teeth and singing strong,

  my neck arched as my lips

  whisper sweetness into the air.

  When I bite my lower lip,

  I am beautiful

  softening bad news to myself

  with wide eyes and a pout.

  And when I walk,

  Lord God!

  I am beautiful

  swaying with hips and legs and back

  in time to a rhythm I want

  only myself to hear.

  I don’t need a magazine

  to tell me

  I am beautiful

  because

  I am beautiful.

  And I am beautiful because I’ve let Joy back into my life, and Joy sure keeps me busy. She is never bored, and she is never boring.

  For one thing, Joy likes to walk. I have done some cross-country walking around this place as part of my self-imposed physical therapy, and I’ve discovered a “rose tree.” It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Wild red and white rose plants twist and turn all over a weeping willow, some of their flowers blooming in the sun above the willow, which has to be fifty or sixty feet high. The willow doesn’t seem to mind, even though the thorns scratch its tender bark. Beauty, pain, and life all wrapped up together in the middle of the woods in Bedford County.

  Erlana wouldn’t have noticed the rose tree. Lana would have taken a rose to put in her hair for some man to take and put in his teeth.

  Joy just takes it all in.

  Joy also likes nature.

  I’m no poet, so I can’t always put beauty into words, but … this place is beautiful. The sounds around Jenny’s dollhouse are so much purer than anywhere I’ve ever lived. I listen to cicada serenades every night and see ducks, swans, and even herons chatter to each other on the pond. Whenever a flock of birds flies over, I actually hear the beating of their wings. Even the wind has more sounds and flavors as it whips around the house carrying pine as it whines through the cattails. The sun seems different, too, with more colors and many more reflections. The clouds seem bigger, the sky bluer, the night sky clearer, more brilliant, more sparkly.

  Erlana would be annoyed with the noise. Lana would smell something and remember a man.

  Joy just puts herself in the middle of it all, sucking it all in.

  Joy thinks she can write poetry.

  On rainy days, I stay inside and try to put my feelings into words. I’m not very good at it. I barely paid attention in English class whenever we discussed poetry. I thought it was too frilly, too girly. Now, it gives me an outlet. I don’t know if any of it is poetic or not, I don’t title them very well, and all of them are short and probably unfinished, but at least some of my feelings have left my brain and hit some paper.

  1.

  They come into my dreams made of darkness Giving me kisses

  Leaving me with whispered echoes

  Leaving me to contemplate their flesh

  And my devils

  2.

  They say love lives only in poetry They say memory has no mercy They say many things about loss And they’re usually right

  3.

  I guess I’m an old shoe

  Who still dreams of being a glass slipper

  4.

  I have listened to the echo of my own voice

  While lightning flashes and rain licks my window

  I have seen darkness echoing

  While storms prowl my pond

  Echoes of distant thunder mocking me

  5.

  Even the shadows here whisper of the sun And summer stars shiver in the sky

  6.

  If I had a handful of sun Stolen from skies of blue I’d give it to you

  To still the grumbling in your heart

  Taken one at a time, my poems are depressing! Taken all at once, my poems are clinically depressing! I hope one day to write a happy poem, but until then, I’ll just take in all I see and feel, and flush my system.

  Erlana would rather do anything than write poetry. Lana would rather write erotic poetry to make people hot.

  Joy just puts her mind on paper.

  Joy also likes animals.

  Something about this place draws every critter you can imagine, and thanks to Mr. Wilson’s frequent visits, I now know what I’ve been seeing. I have at least one mink and a family of muskrats living around the pond, several gray squirrels playing tag on my roof, and an orange cat feasting daily on field mice. The cat leaves me “presents” (field-mice carcasses) on my doorstep just about every morning. I see deer drinking from the pond and hear a woodpecker pecking just about every morning. I see the eyes of a family of opossums, and hear one noisy raccoon playing with my garbage cans every night. And birds—you name it, it has probably flown in for a sip in the pond or a rest in my trees. Mr. Wilson says I should be able to see barn swallows, red-shouldered hawks, and great gray owls, but all I can see are sparrows, crows, and cardinals flashing their colors as they dive in and out of the yard.

  Erlana would look for bird poop on her windshield. Lana would collect bird feathers to use in the bedroom.

  Joy just marvels at her zoo.

  Joy likes to garden.

  I have bought every petunia of every color that exists from Home Depot. I don’t even park in the parking lot at Home Depot anymore. I just pull right up beside the flats of petunias, turn on my flashers, and get the largest cart I can find, loading it with every petunia I can find. I know I pissed off one lady about to buy some, but that’s her loss. She just wasn’t quick enough. It all barely fits in the Rabbit, and I get out at Jenny’s dollhouse smelling like petunias. The flower boxes under the front windows are bursting with flowers, and I water them daily, even if it rains. Mr. Wilson says he’ll need to put up more flower boxes to contain all the unplanted petunias I still have in their little black plastic pots all over the house.

  Erlana wouldn’t have noticed the petunias at all. Lana would have plucked a petunia and put it in her hair for some man to rub on her booty.

  Joy just takes care of them.

  Joy also likes to listen.

  Whenever Mr. Wilson visits, I ask him about Jenny. We look at old family albums filled with photographs, filled with stories, filled with love. I meet the woman who has been haunting her old house, and she’s right plump with a “twinkle in her eye and a story on the tip of her tongue.” I meet his sons: Thaddeus, the “best darn swimmer in the county” who “could have swam in the Olympics”; Junius
, the “best squirrel hunter in the county” who “does something with bonds or stocks or something like that up in Baltimore”; and Matthias, the “best cowhand I ever had” who has “the cutest children on God’s green earth.” All it takes is a name, and Mr. Wilson takes me to him or her, and to a kinder, gentler time in the past. He reserves his best thoughts for Jenny.

  “I thought she was a cute gal, right young-looking, smoothest skin, brightest smile, darkest eyes in the county. Kind. Jenny was kind. The strays around here, and I’m talking stray dogs, cats, cows, and even horses, they would come to her, and she would tend them. There might be an old bluetick hound visiting you now and then. He was just a pup twelve years ago when we were still living here. He’ll tree a few squirrels, maybe dig up a few moles, and then he’ll curl up under a tree for a nap. He was quite a stray, that one. I was a stray, too.”

  He laughs, and I laugh with him.

  “She’s still here, isn’t she?” I ask.

  “She’ll never leave this place,” he says. “Even when we moved to the bigger house, her mind was always out here, raising her boys, tending her flowers, fishing her pond. She could outfish me even on her worst day. I used to think she could coax the bass out of the reeds with just her voice. ‘Come an’ get it, come an’ get it,’ she’d whisper to the fish, and they would come an’ get it. She had a light in her that just never went off. She glowed.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Fifty-seven years. We were barely seventeen when we got married, and we spent our honeymoon over in Roanoke, which back then was the big, bad city of dreams. What did we know? I never gave her a proper honeymoon, and I told her so. Know what she said?”

  “What?”

  “Every single day I’ve known you, Mr. Wilson, has been a honeymoon.”

  Every single day I’ve known you has been a honeymoon.

  If anyone ever asks me to define love, I’ll tell the story of Jenny and Mr. Wilson.

  Erlana wouldn’t have cared. Lana might have sighed and even cried.

  Joy understands.