His grades and conduct improved, and he went out for the school basketball team and found that he was quite good.
But his fears bubbled in his throat when it came to the locker room. Donovan was careful about where his eyes fell when he disrobed, vigilant about keeping his head focused on his hands and the soap he held when he showered. Laughed at the dirty jokes that got tossed around in the steam, but never let his eyes move far from the white-tiled walls and silver showerhead.
The girls started to pay more attention to him. Batting their eyes when he was nearby, slapping his arm and laughing, even though he knew he hadn’t said anything funny.
His friend Brian McCall gave Donovan’s number to a few girls who inquired about him. When they called and asked for Donovan—Don as he was known in school—Grammy’s mouth would twist up, and she would make sure she banged the phone down on the table a few times before calling him to the phone.
“Girls at that age are the worst. They get boys into a whole heap of trouble, ya hear? You watch yourself and keep your thing in your pants,” Grammy said even before Donovan had a chance to cover the receiver with his palm.
Grammy made sure she remained close by, pretending to clean or knit while she eavesdropped on what he was saying on the phone. “Okay, boy,” she’d interrupt soon after Donovan said hello and how ya doing? “Don’t be tying up my phone line, hear? You got ten minutes left.”
She wouldn’t lose Donovan the way she lost Homer and Solomon.
No way, no how.
AGES SIXTEEN TO EIGHTEEN
He still hadn’t done it. Slept with a girl. “Popped their cherry,” as Brian put it. Brian had done it all: “Finger fucked, doggy-style, sixty-nine.” He listed them out for Donovan as they sat on the floor in his room at Grammy’s, watching the Celtics take the Hornets.
They were both dressed in T-shirts and sweatpants and cradled half-empty Sprite bottles in their hands. A box with four cold slices of pizza lay open on top of the bed, and the room smelled, “God-awful,” Grammy had said when she peeked in to check on them. “Feet, funk, and sweat. Pee-u!” She laughed and slammed the door.
“Sadeena sucked my dick,” Brian said between gulps of soda.
Donovan grabbed the basketball and began tossing it up into the air. He’d never even kissed a girl, and he was going on sixteen. “Dang,” he muttered.
“Almost sucked it clean off.” Brian laughed and slapped the ball from Donovan’s reach.
The basketball hit the wall over the dresser and dropped onto the clutter of schoolbooks and magazines piled there.
“No ball-playing in the house!” Grammy screamed up from below them.
The two boys just rolled their eyes.
Donovan wasn’t quite sure he believed everything Brian told him. Some of his stories seemed far-fetched for a fifteen-year-old. He claimed his first sexual experience was when he was ten, with his babysitter. “Big titties, fat ass.” That’s how Brian described her.
“How about you, man, when was your first time?”
With me, Cappy. Tell him that your first time was with me.
Donovan shook his head vehemently, clearing his mind of Clyde’s voice and the dark time in the basement.
“Same thing, man,” he lied, and shifted his eyes down to his sneaker. “’Cept my babysitter had small titties and a big ass.”
They’d laughed long and hard about it.
By junior year Donovan had become quite popular. His arms and legs had grown muscular, a thin mustache settled above his top lip and a thatch of dark hair at his chin. His voice cavernous, and the girls had much to say about his close-cut curls. “Good hair,” they whispered, and sometimes even got close enough to touch it.
He was now the top scorer on the basketball team, was maintaining a straight-A average in four of his seven classes, and someone had even suggested he go out for senior class president the following year.
The girls flocked to him during lunch and after school. They enjoyed his earnestness, the kindness he showed to both the pretty and not-so-pretty girls. Donovan was just an all-around nice guy.
The phone calls increased, and so did Grammy’s frustration. “You got a lot going for you; don’t let none of these little hot-ass girls ruin it for you,” Grammy screeched each time Donovan dashed to the phone, yelling, “It’s for me!”
Collegiate scouts came to watch him play. Him and his best friend Brian, the hottest things on the court. They were written up in Amsterdam News and dubbed MVP by their coach.
Brian used his small fame to his advantage. “Tail, tail, and more tail,” is what Brian would whisper in his ears whenever they left a game and a throng of young women rushed them at the player’s entrance.
Donovan didn’t take advantage of any of it. Grammy had warned him good and even nodded over at his father, who sat slumped and sad on the couch. “See what can happen if you’re not careful,” she said, not caring that she was talking about Donovan’s mother.
Some girls, the bold ones, the type Donovan was sure Grammy was always referring to, would show up on his front stoop and ring the bell. Grammy always got to the door before he did. Donovan was never expecting anyone.
“Yes?” Grammy would say, and smile sweetly.
“Hello, may I please speak to Donovan?” the girl would say with a large bright smile plastered across her face.
“Who are you?” Grammy would ask, and cock her head to one side. Still smiling, still sweet.
The names tumbled forth, and Grammy kept smiling, all the while noticing the nail polish, makeup, the clothing—too tight, too revealing, and too loud in color.
She summed them up right there on her stoop, summed them up and decided that they were not good enough for her grandson, not at all.
“Your mama know you over here looking for a boy?” she’d ask them, the smile replaced with a sneer. “You should be home with your head in a book.”
The girls, their smiles would waver and then crumble altogether before their eyes dropped down to their shoes. Some spoke up, said, “My mother know where I’m at.” Or, “Ma’am, I am a straight-A student and—”
Grammy stepped out onto the stoop and pulled the door up closed behind her. The girls, they were granted a full view of Grammy, and always took a small step backward.
“You sassing me, girl?” Grammy would exclaim, and rest her hands on her hips.
Sometimes there was a reply, other times just the quick flutter of lashes and the hurried sound of shoe soles against pavement as the girl moved double time away from the porch.
AGES EIGHTEEN TO TWENTY-ONE
What’s on his mind by the time he’s enrolled in his first year of college has replaced playing basketball.
What’s on his mind sits close by in biology and behind him in art class. He’s a first-year freshman, and she, a junior.
Her skin is dark and as smooth as glass, and try as he does, he can’t find a blemish on her. Her hair is cut close to her head, and while that could be a problem (Grammy said women should wear their hair like women, not like men), her smile makes up for it, that and the laughter that reminds him of the soca music his Antiguan roommate plays on Friday nights when he mixes up batches of rum punch.
Her name is Sylvia, and he figures it must translate into something beautiful, because that’s what she is.
When he finally gets up the nerve to talk to her, it’s close to Thanksgiving and they find that there are just two years between them, and that she is the product of a divorce and once lived in Brooklyn, but now resides in the Bronx with her father and his new wife.
They go out, and he finds that she’s easy to talk to and knows about sports and loves the Knicks, and he says he does too, even though he doesn’t.
She wears oils instead of perfume and big gold hoop earrings that bounce against her cheeks when she laughs. Her fingers are long and perfect; he knows this because she’s all of the time covering her mouth when she laughs.
He likes her teeth, and one day he re
aches for her wrist when she goes to cover her laughing mouth, and tells her so.
When he’s with her he can almost totally forget about Clyde and the basement and the bad thing that happened there.
They study together, she reads to him from Shakespeare and Faulkner, and although he doesn’t really get all of what the passages mean, he doesn’t mind because it’s the sound of her voice he craves.
Within weeks they move from library to lounge and then finally to her dorm.
There’s no place to sit but the floor or the bed, and so they end up on the bed and she ends up in his arms, her head resting against his chest, her hand pulling his arm around her shoulder.
The first few times she does it, his arm feels awkward, dislodged; he looks over at it and does not even recognize it.
“What’s wrong?” Sylvia asks, her face a mess of bewilderment.
Donovan just shrugs it off with a smile.
The first kiss is worse.
There is no warning, no licking of dry lips to ready, just her lips on his and her tongue in his mouth, and he practically pushes her down to the ground, and all the light that she’s brought to him over the past few weeks goes gray and then black.
“S-Sorry,” is all he can say when he sees the tears in her eyes and the hurt and confusion on her face.
Weeks pass and so do they, in the halls, across the campus lawn, until finally he stops her and they begin again, and this time, this time he’s ready for the kiss, poised for it and everything else that follows.
She’s done this before. He can tell because his heart is beating so fast he can hardly catch his breath. Sylvia’s face is serene, but her mouth and eyes are smiling as he fumbles with the buttons of her blouse. He’s so nervous his hands tremble and he can’t get her bra unhooked, so she does it for him.
She’s done this before.
He wants to enjoy her body, the curve of her neck, her full breasts and flat stomach, but there are brightly colored stuffed animals everywhere, on the windowsill, bookshelf, on the floor in the corner of the room. He can’t concentrate on her touch, her scent, the feel of her lips against his throat, her nipples between his fingers. He can’t concentrate because the black button eyes of the animals are staring at him, and for one strange minute he thinks that Grammy is hidden somewhere among them.
Grammy told him that sex was a beautiful thing between married people. It was nastiness any other way. And in some ways it was.
Sylvia places his hand between her legs, and Donovan almost recoils. It’s wet and warm there.
Donovan thinks he might be sick.
He doesn’t enjoy her tongue in his mouth, her nipples are okay, but her fingers taste funny, tastes the way she . . . smells.
Her mouth’s hot, and finds every bit of skin that belongs to him. He feels fire creeping down his back, spreading through his thighs, singeing his toes. His lips are moving, praying maybe or possibly begging. And when she climbs on top of him he hears Grammy in the corner of his mind reminding him to keep his thing in his pants, but Clyde’s voice tells him something different.
Sylvia rides him slowly while he grips her hips and stares deep into her eyes.
Black button eyes watching you, Cappy!
Donovan hangs on, hangs on for dear life as the heat finds its way up and into his groin. He squeezes his eyes shut, and his lips stop moving, his mouth falls open, and Sylvia whimpers and kisses him, him and the tears that are streaming down his face.
* * *
He wasn’t going back, not even for the spring semester.
“What about basketball?”
“Bum knee,” Solomon reminded her, and tapped his own knee.
“Grammy, I haven’t played since first semester, remember? I was in that soft cast for a month?” Donovan says.
Grammy looks up at the ceiling and strokes her throat. “Oh yeah. I forgot about that,” she says softly. “Well, what are you going to do, then?” She bends down and peeks at the baking turkey through the clear window of the oven door.
“Work,” Donovan responds, and pulls at the end of the tablecloth.
“Work?” Solomon repeats, and leans back in the chair until it totters on two legs.
“I done told you about that, Solomon!” Grammy yells, and snaps the towel off Solomon’s head and he hurriedly brings the chair back down on all fours.
“I thought you wanted to be an engineer or something?” he says, and then picks up the newspaper and begins to thumb through it.
“Changed my mind.”
“Your cousins are all in college,” Grammy says, and then finally snatches open the oven door.
“Not all of them—some of them are in jail,” Donovan retorts.
“Your mother’s not going to like it,” Solomon says.
“Yeah, well.”
“Who cares what she thinks, anyway? If Donovan don’t want to go to college, he don’t have to go. It’s not for everyone, you know.”
“What you thinking about doing?” Solomon asks, folding the top corner of the sports section and then closing the paper.
“I dunno.”
“Well, you take all the time you need, and when you’re ready then you go out and find something. When you’re ready, no rush,” Grammy says while closing the oven door and resting her hands on her hips. “It’s Christmas. Holidays ain’t no time to be out looking for a job. Maybe in the spring, when the weather breaks.”
Solomon shakes his head, and Donovan tilts his chair backward on two legs. Grammy just smiles.
* * *
He couldn’t go back to Rutgers, not after what had gone on with Sylvia and then Lorraine.
He never really wanted them to stay. Well, it was okay for Sylvia to be there after their first time together. She held him and didn’t embarrass him by asking about his tears. It was fine the second time too. But after that he wanted to be alone afterward.
He liked waking up alone, satisfied with the scent they left lingering on his pillow, although none too happy with the wet spots on the sheets.
But they always insisted on staying, and he had to pretend to be comfortable with them pressed up against his chest, their hair in his face, and their arms curled like snakes around him, pulling him across their naked breasts.
It happened the fifth time Sylvia stayed with him. He opened his eyes to find her huddled in the corner, shaking and crying, students outside his room banging on his door and someone screaming for security.
Evidently he’d had a bad dream. A violent dream, so violent he’d sat straight up in the bed, punching at the air and kicking wildly with his feet.
It had been embarrassing. “Nightmares,” he’d laughed.
Me, Clyde’s voice rang around him.
But Sylvia was inconsolable and had gathered her things and marched off to her dormitory and the safety of her own bed.
They’d seen each other a few more times after that, but she’d finally broken it off before graduating the following spring.
Lorraine hadn’t been a girlfriend, but they always seemed to find each other after keg parties and on Friday nights when he’d smoked too much marijuana.
It had happened with her too, and she had been low enough to spread it around campus.
He couldn’t face anyone after she told. He imagined that every snicker, every guffaw or whispered conversation, was being had at his expense.
He didn’t need this, not any of it, and so packed up in the middle of the winter semester and returned home, where life was safe and predictable.
He’d always been able to talk to Daisy about things. Things that Grammy scoffed at or gave him a lecture about.
He hadn’t shared his first time with his mother, but had called her in a panic three months later when he thought he’d gotten something.
He could never share that with Grammy. In her mind he was still her sweet little virgin grandson. And Solomon was a whole different story; he’d started hitting the bottle pretty heavy over the last few years and had taken to s
pending most of his time locked away in his bedroom watching reruns.
The something turned out to be gonorrhea, and Daisy hadn’t even yelled at him. She just told him that he needed to be more selective about who he slept with and then marched him straight to the corner drugstore and bought him enough condoms to last him a year.
Now he was sitting in his mother’s spacious Harlem apartment telling her that he was quitting school.
“Well, there must be a reason why you want to drop out?”
Donovan pushed his palms across the gleaming mahogany table and allowed his eyes to focus on the plants that were lined up against the wall.
“I just don’t think it’s for me,” he mumbled.
Elaine was seated next to Donovan, picking at the nail polish on her fingernails. Daisy considered her for a moment and then turned her attention back to Donovan.
“Baby, if you don’t like the school, you can go somewhere else, you know?”
She was disappointed with him. He could tell by the slow and even way she spoke.
“Stop that, Elaine.”
Elaine immediately lowered her hands into her lap.
Donovan dropped his eyes and pushed his palm across the dining room table again. “I just don’t want to go anymore.”
Elaine, who looked so much like her mother, turned doe eyes on Daisy and stuck out her bottom lip. “He doesn’t want to go anymore, Mom.”
Daisy shook her head and stifled a laugh. This was supposed to be a serious moment.
“Well, Donovan, what are you going to do with your life, then?”
Elaine looked up at her big brother and waited.
Donovan had no idea what he was going to do after tomorrow, much less the rest of his life. “Well,” he began, and pulled his palm back across the table. “Grammy said—”
Daisy’s whole demeanor crumbled. She cocked her head to one side, leaned back in her chair, and folded her hands across her chest. Elaine just shook her head at his stupidity.
Loving Donovan Page 10
