Delta Belles

by Penelope J. Stokes

  Lauren was on fire now, pulsing with desire. He felt it too, even in the hazy world of sleep. She could see his arousal, and it inflamed her all the more.

  His eyes snapped open, wide and darkly dilated. “What are you doing?”

  “Giving you what Lacy can’t—or won’t.” She gazed at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t want it.”

  He bit his lip but said nothing.

  “I know my prude of a sister,” she went on. “She’s given you this—” She kissed him, fluttering her tongue inside his parted lips. “And maybe even this—” She took his hand and slid it inside her blouse. “But never this—” She guided his hand down between her thighs and pressed her legs together.

  Trip let out a groan. “I can’t do this.”

  “You can,” she countered, her voice husky with emotion. “You want to.” She pushed closer to him. “My sister is in love with the notion of being in love,” she whispered. “She has no idea what it’s all about. But I know. I can give you what you want.”

  She shifted a leg over him, felt him stiffen, felt her own craving ignite even further. He was still murmuring “No, no,” as he arched toward her. His mouth closed over hers, his tongue probing, his hands reaching for her. Locked in his arms now, she rolled over onto her back, bringing him with her.

  His hand went inside her blouse, inside her bra, around her breast. He writhed against her, as if desperate to get closer, closer. Her body responded to his movements, the sensuous dance of passion driving them on, propelling them toward the point of no return.

  “God, no,” he breathed as his hands touched bare flesh. He pulled her nearer, caressing her, impelling her hunger with lips and fingers and tongue. A fumbled moment with zippers and underwear, and then—

  She’d had sex before, plenty of times. But it had never been like this. This joyous ache, this exquisite pain, this soaring, this flying…

  A dazzling light, a pounding crescendo like nothing she had ever known. Her breath caught in her throat, and she let it out in a burst. “Ah!”

  Trip’s eyes snapped open. “Yes!” he cried, then shuddered and collapsed in Lauren’s arms.

  IF LAUREN HAD THOUGHT watching Trip and Lacy together made her jealous before, it was nothing compared to the way she felt now. The last two days of break she could barely stand to see them together. Trip turned out to be the consummate actor, smiling and laughing and pretending everything was normal, but casting sidelong glances at Lauren every chance he got.

  Lustful glances, or regretful ones? Lauren hadn’t been sure until Friday, when they were packing Trip’s car. They had decided to leave a day early and break up the long drive with an overnight stop at a motel along the way. Lauren was already entertaining fantasies of sneaking out of her and Lacy’s room and into Trip’s.

  Alone in the garage, he had pressed her up against the side of the car and kissed her, one eye on the garage door and one hand sliding down inside her shorts.

  “We’ll have to be careful,” he warned, his deft fingers stroking her. “Lacy can never know.”

  How they would manage to keep such a thing hidden, Lauren had no idea. But at the time, distracted by his caress, she had merely nodded.

  Shortly after they got on the road, it began to rain—a dull gray drizzle that suited Lauren’s mood perfectly. Lacy sat in the front seat, fawning over Trip, laughing at his jokes, holding his hand on top of the gearshift.

  Trip Jenkins was everything Lauren had always longed for, everything her other boyfriends were not. And even while she burned with resentment toward Lacy, she clutched the precious secret to her breast. She was the one Trip wanted. The one he had made love to. She had won.

  All during the drive, she replayed it in her mind. The way his eyelashes lay in dark feathers across his cheeks. The way his lips and tongue moved against hers. The sensation of his hands on her flesh, his weight pressing down upon her, the tenderness, the virility. The explosion of intensity and power at the moment of climax.

  The feelings rushed into her on a warm wind, remembered passion giving way to fresh fire. She ought to feel remorse, Lauren thought. She’d had sex with her sister’s boyfriend and was planning to do it again at the first opportunity. But all she could think of was Trip. The way he looked at her, the way he touched her.

  She drew her knees up to her chest and huddled uncomfortably in the back seat as the leak in the convertible’s roof dripped water on her head. But even the thrumming of the rain could not stem the tide of her desire.

  FIFTEEN

  FACING THE DRAGON

  Rae Dawn lay across the bed in her dorm room and stared at the tree outside her window. The spring green leaves stirred on a breath, cutting the light into lace and spreading it in moving patterns across her pillow.

  She had not even considered leaving the college for spring break. The mere idea of returning to Picayune, even for a day or two, was unthinkable. Everything she owned was here, everything she was. Delta and Lacy and Lauren were her family And Dr. Gottlieb, of course. This was home.

  Rae missed her friends and would be glad for their return, but she had needed this week alone, this time to think.

  Since that cataclysmic moment, that flash of jealousy over Lacy and Trip and the insight that followed, her entire world had changed. She had—finally—admitted the truth to herself, and there was no going back.

  All her life Rae Dawn had assumed she felt different, an outsider, because her family was poor, because she wore hand-me down clothes, because her father was a notorious drunk. But that had been only part of the reason. There was more.

  Far more.

  The hard lessons of childhood experience had taught her not to get too close to people, not to allow herself too much hope. She had never dated much, never been particularly interested in boys. She had watched from the sidelines as girls her age underwent the sea change of puberty and became obsessed with the idea of love and sex and (eventually) marriage. They talked about it constantly—not to Rae, certainly, but to each other. In the hallway and at lunch and in the locker rooms as they dressed for gym. Who had kissed whom. How far this girl or that one was willing to go—first base, second base, all the way. The baseball metaphor always seemed a bit odd to Rae Dawn, and it took her a long time to figure out what the bases represented. But every time she overheard such conversations, she felt a nervous flitting in her stomach, that you-don’t-fit feeling that had become so familiar to her.

  One experience stood out in Rae’s mind, a long-ago memory now marked in her mind with a flapping red flag. She had been in junior high—eighth grade, she thought, fourteen or so. Everyone was in the dressing room after P.E., and a girl named Maria Curtis, an extroverted life-of-the-party type, was holding center stage. “Look, everybody!” she called. “I’m preg-nant!”

  Minimally dressed in bra and panties and half slip, Maria had pulled the elastic of her slip up over her breasts and thrust out her belly so that she looked as if she were wearing a maternity dress.

  Rae stared at her, curious. All the other girls were crowding around, imitating her, chattering like squirrels about how they all couldn’t wait to be in love, to be married, have babies. About what they would do with—or to—the boys who were smart enough to choose them. As far as Rae was concerned, they might as well have been speaking Swahili. She couldn’t identify with a word they were saying.

  Then Marias best friend, Kate Killian, stepped into the little drama, adopting the part of a man. She swaggered up to Maria and put an arm around her. “Oh, baby,” Kate said in a low, growling voice, “you make me so hot.” With that, Kate yanked Maria into a mimicry of a passionate embrace, ground her pelvis lustfully into Marias, and kissed her full on the lips.

  In that moment the world stopped dead. Everyone else was laughing, clapping, cheering the performance. Rae Dawn stood rooted to the spot, breathless. Something warm and fizzy moved through her veins, spreading into her chest and down into her crotch, and she gave an involuntary gasp. The sight of
two girls kissing, even in mocking play, roused a response in her that had never been awakened by all the constant talk of boys and body parts and fumbling experimental sex.

  She should have known, Rae thought. Should have realized. All her childhood crushes had been on women teachers, all her adolescent longings centered around having a girlfriend. A best friend, she had rationalized at the time. But now she knew better. Not just a best friend. A girlfriend.

  How many nights during those teenage years had she lain on the sofa bed in the cramped living room of the Airstream, listening to make sure her parents were asleep, sinking into a half dream with her hand under her nightgown, fondling herself until she thought she’d go mad with a desire she didn’t understand? How many times had she dreamed of someone falling in love with her, taking her away from Picayune and Hobo Creek and the perpetual depression that was her life? And when the fantasies came—those romantic scenarios of being swept away, kissed, touched, made love to, adored—the person who aroused her and loved her, who took her hand and led her into their new life was … a woman.

  Rae had known nothing about lesbian sex back then, not even enough to fantasize about. To tell the truth, she didn’t understand much more as a senior in college. Now that she was exploring the past more objectively, she did admit to occasional attractions, but the self-protection she had learned so well in her early years had served to keep her from pursuing any of them.

  This was an aspect of sexuality that no one ever talked about, except in obscene jokes punctuated by nasty words like fag and dyke. And if she had talked about it, she supposed that most people—even her best friends—would likely tell her that since she’d never acted on those feelings, she couldn’t possibly be… that way.

  But as little as she comprehended about the matter, Rae Dawn was certain of one thing: It wasn’t exclusively about sex, any more than being straight was only about who you slept with. It was about connection, about love and romance and attraction and how you felt on the inside. It was about being yourself and being accepted for who you were.

  Rae had never known true acceptance until she had come to college, and her friendships with Lacy and Lauren and Delta— especially Delta—had made life worth living for the first time. She had to tell them, had to be honest with them. Yet she worried how they might take it. This wasn’t just a confession that she was poor and hadn’t really grown up in New Orleans. Would she lose the only friends she had ever known? Would they be concerned that she might be attracted to one of them, an attraction that could not be reciprocated?

  She sighed and sat up on the bed. Well, she’d just have to deal with that when it came. In the meantime, she knew—or thought she knew—two people who could help her work this out.

  Frankie Bowen and Suzanne Hart.

  “TO TELL THE TRUTH,” Dr. Bowen said when Rae Dawn had finished telling her story, “we wondered when you might be coming to see us.” She grinned over at Dr. Hart, who was throwing a tennis ball for Bilbo and Frodo.

  Rae gazed out over the lawn as Frodo came loping back to the patio carrying a ball lopsidedly in his mouth. Against the far wall a pink dogwood tree bloomed, and beds of irises and daffodils blossomed purple and yellow in a sunny bed in the corner. It was a peaceful place. A safe place.

  “You knew?” she asked. “How? I wasn’t even sure, until recently.”

  Dr. Hart shrugged, took the slobbery ball, and tossed it into the yard again. “We get a sense about these things,” she said. “But we would never have asked. It’s not our place to pry. Still, it might help you to know that you’re not the first student who has come to us with a similar tale.”

  Rae Dawn took a sip of her iced tea and reached down to pet Bilbo, who had abandoned the game and now sat next to her with his curly muzzle propped on her knee. “I don’t know quite what to do with all this,” she admitted. “I haven’t met anyone. I’m not in love.”

  “But you’d like to be.” Dr. Hart reached over and squeezed Dr. Bowen’s hand, and they both smiled.

  “Well, sure.” Rae Dawn felt herself blush. “But people never talk about this stuff. How am I supposed to find the right person? Nobody wears a sign.”

  Dr. Bowen chuckled. “Some do. But knowing you, I doubt if you’d hit it off with any of them.”

  “There are places more open and accepting,” Dr. Hart interjected. “California, New York.” She pointed a finger in Rae Dawn’s direction. “New Orleans. You’re going back to New Orleans after graduation?”

  “Yes. At least I’m going to try.”

  “Good place, New Orleans. We have a couple of friends down there who might be able to introduce you around.”

  “That would be great.” Rae fell silent for a minute. “What’s it like, being …” She paused. “Being a lesbian couple?”

  Lesbian. Rae Dawn was pretty sure it was the first time she had ever said the word aloud, and it felt good. Rebellious. Liberating. Just hearing the word roll off her own tongue gave her the sensation of stepping out of a dank, moldy basement into sunlight and fresh air.

  “It’s absolutely wonderful, when you’ve found the right person,” Dr. Bowen said. “But it can also be hard to live with the rejection and condemnation. Critics talk about the moral issues—you know, that it’s a choice against nature and against God. Absurd. This is nature. No one would choose to be part of a maligned and censured minority.”

  “Still,” Dr. Hart added, “once you have found the right person, you wouldn’t go back even if you could.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s just frustrating, feeling as if you have to live a secret, to hide the most important relationship in your life in order to keep your job or protect your safety.”

  “I don’t know how the two of you do it,” Rae said. “I mean, you’ve been together how long? Ten years?”

  Dr. Bowen rolled her eyes. “Fifteen. Suze was twenty-five and a first-year instructor when we met. I was thirty-six, an associate professor.” She chuckled. “I robbed the cradle, I suppose.”

  Dr. Hart laughed. “Or I robbed the grave.”

  “And you’ve never been able to name your relationship publicly.”

  Dr. Hart shook her head. “As long as we’re not obvious about it, everything’s fine. People know, but they don’t want to know, if you get my drift. Frankie and I just go about our business, and folks perceive us as two old spinster teachers sharing our living expenses.”

  “God, that must be hard.”

  “In some ways it is,” Dr. Bowen agreed. “But we have supportive people in our lives. And we try to be careful. It would only take one phone call to bring the whole house of cards crashing in on us.”

  SIXTEEN

  WOMAN ON THE WIND

  The morning after her conversation with Dr. Bowen and Dr. Hart, Rae Dawn awoke to a chilling fear that she had made a terrible mistake. Three times she picked up the telephone to call them, to beg them not to tell anyone what she had said, to convince them—or herself—that it couldn’t possibly be true.

  After all, shed never had any kind of sexual relationship with another woman. Delta Fox was her best friend, the person Rae loved most in the world, and she wasn’t physically attracted to Delta. Not much, anyway.

  Besides, you couldn’t be a lesbian unless you had actually done something, could you? She’d never even kissed a girl.

  For hours—alone in her dorm, walking across campus, working on her senior composition in the rehearsal room—she carried on the internal debate. How could she deny what she felt? But how could it be true when she had never acted on those feelings? This argument, she now realized, had been going on inside her for years. All her life, or at least since puberty, she had been trying to figure it out. Trying to ignore it. Trying to learn to live with the anxiety that bubbled like molten lava in the subterranean crevices of her heart.

  And yet in a deeper place beyond her fear, the reality was there, inside her. Even the word lesbian conjured up images in Rae Dawn’s mind of soft, willing body parts—small attentive b
reasts and warm liquid caresses, the electrifying newness of skin on skin, the curve of a thigh, the arch of a back…

  And the liberation—no, the resurrection —that had come when she had finally said, “Yes. This is who I am.”

  She could suppress the feelings, dismiss the longings. She could live celibate for the rest of her life, stay safe, never let anyone get close enough to be a danger. But she could not deny the fresh air that had rushed into her lungs in that instant, the sun that had blazed down upon her light-starved soul. The tomb had cracked opened and could not be sealed again.

  “This is who I am,” she repeated to herself. “Come hell or high water, whatever the cost, this is who I am.”

  MUCH TO RAE DAWN’S SURPRISE and pleasure, Delta arrived back at school just before dinner on Friday evening. The dining hall was practically empty, and the two of them sat at a table alone while Delta told Rae what had happened with her parents.

  “I am so sorry,” Rae said. “Divorce is awful, no matter what the circumstances. But believe me, I can understand when you say you wonder why your parents ever got married in the first place. My folks are the same way, only I doubt they will ever split. They’re too stuck in their ways. They’ll just go on tormenting one another until one of them dies.”

  “It’s weird,” Delta said. “I don’t feel any of the things I’m supposed to feel. I just keep thinking that maybe now Daddy will be happy and maybe Mama can find a way to recover her dreams again.”

  “What dreams are those?” Rae asked.

  Delta shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “And how’s your little sister taking it? She’s pretty young to have to deal with this.”

  “Cassie will be fine,” Delta said in a voice that sounded to Rae like wishful thinking. “She’s smart, and she’s tough. She’ll adjust.” She exhaled heavily. “So, what have you been doing with yourself this week? Working on your senior composition, I suppose.”