A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  “Yes.I’m fine,”Daniel says.

  ”I heard you in here,”she says.

  ”I’m okay.”

  “I was going to check on the kids,”she says.A little exhaust comes out ofher mouth as she speaks.

  He steps into the corridor and they walk to Nelson’s room.Daniel turns offhis flashlight, relying on hers.He is right behind her, with the dog at his side.The dog loves him, he feels this working in his favor.

  Iris stops short, forcing contact.They collide softly, his toes on her heel, his chest against her shoulder blades.

  She doesn’t so much step back as shift her weight slightly toward him, increasing the contact.Contact displaces the still water between them, and in the splash ofit intimacy rises in the wake.

  Daniel lowers his forehead so it touches the back ofher head.They are still.He breathes her in.She notches backward.His lips find her nape.She lifts her chin, exhales.He wraps his arms around her.

  They have crossed a line, but it seems to him they have not ventured too far, not yet, they can still go back, no one will be the wiser.

  Iris takes a step forward and Daniel releases her.They go to Nelson’s room.Nelson is in the upper bunk;he has flung offthe covers, his legs stick out over the side ofthe mattress.Ruby is on the bottom, a slowly dimming flashlight poking from the bedclothes and casting upon her sleeping face a cold white light, like the shine ofa dying moon.

  “I want to tell you something,”Iris says, barely whispering.It’s as if she is willing to wake the children.

  “Let’s go,”Daniel says, pulling softly on her.“We don’t want to wakethem.”

  In the hallway, she pulls the door to Nelson’s room three-quarters closed.“They’re really sleeping deeply,”she says.“They’re so cold, the poor babies.”

  “Ruby always sleeps soundly.”

  “I can’t sleep at all,”she says.“I never can.I doze, I go in and out.I think sleep is too much ofa commitment for me.”She laughs.

  “Maybe you have too much on your mind,”he says.Is that it?She is suddenly exotic to him, opaque and unknown.No, that’s not it.He just doesn’tgether, he lacks that little snap ofinstant understanding.He must concentrate, she is something he mustworkat.

  Daniel remains silent.It is like sitting quietly in the woods, things come to you, the life ofthe forest forgets about you and resumes.After a few moments, his silence draws her out, she comes softly to the edge ofit like a deer.

  “I’m going to tell you the truth right now,”she says.

  She sees alarm in his eyes and she places a comforting hand on the side ofhis face.

  “I’m not going to say anythingbad.”

  “Okay.”

  She is puzzled, she tilts her head, regards this strange creature.

  ”When I first saw you,”Iris says,“I liked you so much.I mean right away.It was a very strange experience.You seemed perfect.”

  “That’s me, all right.”

  “I’m serious.It was sort offrightening.First ofall, you were taken and so was I.”

  She’s talking about it in the past tense,thinks Daniel.As if now we were free.

  ”And second, I mean the thing that was even more frightening was sensing that ifwe were to get together and something happened, ifyou turned out not to even like me, or ifyou took advantage ofme, I would never recover from it.I just knew from the start it would be fatal.”

  “I would never hurtyou,”he says.He hears his voice in the strange dead air ofthat house.

  “You wouldn’t mean to,”she says.She moves her hand away from him, but he catches her, presses his lips against her palm.The kiss goes to the pit ofher stomach.

  Ruby awakens.Their voices have found her in her sleep, carried her toward them.She calls for Daniel, her voice dry, cracked, and low.

  Daniel goes back into the children’s bedroom, sits on the edge ofher bed.He feels something poking at him, at his ear, the side ofhis head.He realizes it’s Nelson’s foot, waving back and forth, though Nelson is still asleep.

  “Are you all right?”Daniel whispers to Ruby.

  ”Yes,”she says.“I have to go to the bathroom.”She raises her arms, as ifit’s a matter ofcourse that he will lift her, carry her.

  When Ruby is finished, Daniel carries her back to Nelson’s bedroom.

  Daniel carefully places Ruby onto the bed, she is practically asleep, but somehow the touch ofthe cold pillow awakens her.Her eyes are sud-denly large, curious.

  “We’re staying here all night.Right?”

  “That’s right, Monkey,”he says.

  She is silent.A minute passes;he imagines her asleep.But then her cold fingers come to rest on the top ofhis hand.“I love you the most of everyone,”she says.

  Daniel lies next to her, and Iris cannot sleep.Her thoughts skip like stones over water.Nelson, the storm, a Japanese maple her father planted in their front yard, which she was always convinced irritated the white neighbors with its unseasonable purple leaves…Irishas never been able to fall asleep next to someone with whom she was in bed for the first time;choosing someone always meant giving up a night’s sleep.

  Making love as a teenager was easier—she had to end up in her own bed, alone, and she could sink into sleep as ifit were a kind ofinnocence.

  Even in college—and why why why did she allow her parents to talk her into attending Spelman, more than ninety percent black, a hundred per-cent female, a vast poaching ground for the men ofMorehouse, brother-sister schools conceived, it seemed, for conception—even at college she developed a small reputation as the girl who always had to end up in her own safe little bed, the girl who says she has to get home because her teddy bear misses her.

  It’s been years since she has slept with anyone but Hampton.She has a moment ofintense pining for him as ifhe were oceans away, irretrievable, dead.She misses the ease and comfort ofbeing with a man who has seen her body week after week, year after year, and who is, as far as she can tell, blind to its small deteriorations.It has all happened gradually, and he has failed to notice.Hampton’s criticisms ofher are intellectual, spiritual, practical;he is more distressed by her forgetfulness than by her having grown older.He would rather her finish her doctorate—or junk it—than get a boob job.Even when it seems to her that Hampton holds her in con-tempt, his voraciousness for her body seldom varies.I love your body,he has said over and over, so many times and with such suddenness and dis-regard for her mood ofthe moment or what has been passing between them that she has come to find it an affront.It’s all he seems to praise, his entire celebration ofher is confined to that simple statement.He does not sayI need your adviceand he doesn’t sayYou fascinate me,he surely doesn’t ask her what is on her mind.He has little interest in her thoughts and sometimes she can barely blame him.But ifher life is a little dull, then she sees no reason why that must be held against her, this life and her role in it is, after all, something they both made, it’s a joint project.And when she has the emotional energy to refuse to be silenced, to speak up no matter what, she can see himpretendingto pay attention, while it is heart-freezingly, face-slappingly clear that his thoughts are elsewhere.

  And after so disrespecting her, for him to look up and say how beautiful she is, how fucking hot she makes him:he may as well be saying,Too bad you’re not operating on my level.Too bad you’re an idiot.

  Daniel seems to want to know everything about her.It’s his nature, there is nothing he can do about it.He will want to know ifshe has ever been unfaithful to Hampton before, and ifshe tells him she has, then it’s her guess that he will eventually want to know with whom, when, where, the reasons, and the results, and even ifshe says no, he will ask why not.

  He will ask her what she dreams, how the day was spent, what she had for lunch, where she buys her clothes, the names ofher relatives, the route she takes from her house to school.He will devour her with love bites, he will lick the surface ofher as ifshe were a scoop ofice cream until she gets smaller and smaller, until she disappears.

  Iris
reaches over Daniel’s sprawled body, with its deep sonorous buzz and smell ofsleep, and she gropes for the flashlight on the night table.But it’s been knocked over in the commotion, it has tumbled onto the carpet, rolled onto the bare floor.She finally finds it, halfway under the bed.She hurries back to the nest ofquilts and blankets, willing to awaken Daniel with the bounce ofthe mattress, but he sleeps through it all.

  She switches on the flashlight.She puts her hand over its broad face to cut down on the silvery glare, and she points the beam oflight at Daniel to inspect what she can see ofhis naked body.

  The most puzzling thing is that he is naked at all.She wonders at the thermodynamics ofthis, how such white skin, which she imagines to be porous, diaphanous, and through which would pass all heat and light, how such pigmentless tissue could conceivably hold enough heat to al-low him to sleep.

  She moves the beam closer to him.A circle oflight illuminates his chest.A sleek dark wave ofhair rushes between his pectoral muscles.

  That ivory-white skin and that dark body hair.She stares at it, struck at how barbaric it looks.It makes her think ofthe stooped figures in school-books, emigrating across ancient tundra two steps ahead ofthe glaciers.

  How strange that whites ever compared black folk with apes, when it’s the whites who are covered in hair.Once, in college, Iris had entertained the idea of becoming a doctor;the notion—like so many ofher inspired plans—had a short life span:byApril she was bored with it, and by the end ofthe semester she could barely pass her finals.Still, she remembers:the der-mis, the epidermis, subcutaneous tissue, dermal papilla, adipose tissue, the subpapillary network, and good old Meissner’s corpuscle, the name ofwhich she could never forget and the function ofwhich she could never learn.Back then, she thought ofall the components ofhuman skin that are absolutely identical forAfricans, Japanese, Europeans, and how we are all so similar beneath those topmost layers.But now, in bed with a Caucasian for the first time in her life, what strikes her is the differ-ence, stranger and more unsettling than she would have expected.She rubs her fingertip across an inch or two ofDaniel’s skin, along the shoul-der where the skin is bare, and cool to the touch, with little bumps, a kind ofcottony grit.Without entirely meaning to, she slips a finger un-der his arm, feels the long silky hair, startling in its angora softness.A film ofperspiration is on her fingertip now, she rubs it against her thumb, brings it to her nose, finds Daniel’s smell within the bitterness of failed deodorant like the meat ofa pecan surrounded by its broken shell.

  She places her hand over the face ofthe flashlight more tightly so only a faint light escapes as she points it toward his face.His bushy brows, his long, somehow unsturdy-looking nose, his thin lips, the dark growth of whiskers on his chin, as ifsomeone had rubbed iron filings onto his jaw.

  His hair rises in clumps in different directions.He looks slightly mad, pleasantly ruined.

  She had been thinking about him in this way for months.How had it begun?What first drew her? She cannot remember.The quality ofhis at-tention as he listened to her?The gentle seriousness, the way an angel would hear you, not necessarily able to grant your wishes but able to know exactly why you’ve made them.Talking to him was like running a handful ofriverbed stones through one ofthose tumblers, the kind that turn pebbles into shining things, almost jewels.

  Her first time in bed with a white man.How the sweat poured offhim, how he whimpered, how the breath broke in his throat like something frozen that’s been stepped on, the copious, almost surreal amounts ofsemen that came out ofhim, the tireless frenzy ofhis fucks, his eyes staring at her, memorizing her, conquering her and surrendering at the same time.

  Iris lifts the blanket and shines the flashlight further down Daniel’s body.Am I really going to do this?But she doesn’t stop herself, lets the light settle on his penis.Who was it who referred to every white man’s penis as Pete Rose?Was that her father? No, impossible that something so naughty would come out ofhis pursed, prim mouth, a man who said sug-arplums instead ofshit.Her brothers? But they were so courtly around her—more dedicated than her parents to the exhausting, irritating proj-ect ofkeeping her the baby ofthe family.Yet someone had said it, and whenever she sees a picture ofPete Rose, with his schoolboy haircut and theWho Me? expression on his face, she invariably thinks:dick.Yet here, at last, is an actual white man’s penis and she stares at it, flaccid and pink, looking so unprotected, vulnerable, raw, and unsheathed, like something that belongs inside the body, its own body, that is, something you are not meant to see.Like the real Pete Rose, this particular member does not seem as ifhe’s going to make it into the Hall ofFame.

  Yet he has pleased her, Pete Rose or not Pete Rose.He slipped in, and somehow the gentleness ofthe entrance, the unassuming, gracious, perfect guest aspect ofhis sexual presence caused in her an explosion ofpleasure.

  Suddenly, she remembers who calls the white penis Pete Rose.Hampton.

  The thought ofhim creates a guilty nausea in her:he must never know.

  But what was Hampton doing talking about Caucasian sex organs? She can’t remember.Surely some rant, some long riffofdisparagement.Hamp-ton, materially so well-off, so light complexioned, so privileged, seethes against the white world as ifhe were particularly oppressed, as ifthe indig-nities visited upon him had some greater resonance because they were hap-pening to a man ofhis high quality.Even the gross misdeeds committed against less fortunate folk—the jailings, the beatings—were assaults against him, who perceived them so starkly and felt them so keenly.And so he feeds this disdain for whites into the furnace ofhimself, as ifwithout it he would cease to be fully alive.His sense ofwhite people is full ofthe feelings ofin-justice—how easy life is for them, how their power contradicts Darwin, for surely they are not the fittest—but without any great passion for justice: Hampton admires white hegemony, envies it, and he wishes it were the other way around, he wishes that the privileges were all his, and that to be born into a black family, a special black family, that is, one like his, would be-stow on you the kind ofbirthright that the spoiled white brats took for granted.Inasmuch as possible, Hampton has chosen to live in that sort of world.The people he likes to be around, the people he does business with, drinks with, jogs around the Central Park reservoir with, areAfrican-American strivers like himself, who feel all the proper respect for Hamp-ton’s pedigree—a lineage ofaccomplishment and gentility that no white person would even recognize, with fortunes based on such peculiarly Negro enterprises, such as cosmetics for dark-skinned women, Cadillac dealer-ships, weekly newspapers servicing the folks in Newark and the South Side ofChicago, radio stations at the back end ofthe dial.Wherever Hampton travels, from D.C.to Boston to Detroit to San Francisco, there are people like him, more than willing to pay their respects not only to Hampton but to his lineage, because to celebrate what it means to be aWelles, they also af-firm the importance oftheir own family names, the majesty oftheir schools and clubs and summer resorts.They bow to one another as a way ofgenu-flecting to themselves;they kiss each other like smooching with a mirror.

  Daniel murmurs something in his sleep, and Iris clicks offthe flashlight.

  She lies back in bed, rearranges her pillows, and recalls with a kind of thrilled griefthe sounds he made while they were making love, the pigeon warble ofmounting excitement, the sweet undefended cry ofsurrender.

  The night has ended, the snow has finally stopped.Vast mountain ranges of vapor have been heaved up by the storm, but between the clouds and the horizon colors appear—pale blue, slate gray, and yellow.Inside the house it is light enough to read, light enough to lift yourselfup on your elbows and look around the room and see the scatter ofclothing on the floor.

  Their noses are cold, their foreheads, their feet, the tips oftheir fingers.The furnace is still dead, the digital clocks are black.

  “Good morning,”Daniel says.“Did you even sleep for one second?”

  “I’m not much ofa sleeper anyhow,”she says.

  ”I don’t think I slept, it was more like passing
out.”

  “It seemed,”she says.

  ”Did I snore?”

  She shakes her head no.

  ”So, let me ask you,”he says.He presses himself against her.“Has the myth ofCaucasian sexual prowess been put into clearer perspective?”

  “Yes,”she says.“It has.”

  Daniel’s smile slowly fades.He looks, in fact, unnerved.A little crack ofcold air opens up between them as he shrinks back from her.

  “You were wonderful,”Iris says.“Youarewonderful.I can’t tell you how impressed I am.Seriously.Did your parents send you to sex camp?”

  “Sex camp?”

  “Don’t white folks have all these different camps for their kids—

  baseball camp, weight loss camp, computer camp.”

  He rolls next to her, gathering her closer.He is powerless not to.He has waited too long to lie next to her, he has yet to get his fill.

  “I’m sore,”she says, removing his hand.

  ”You are?”he says, smiling.

  ”Aren’t you?”

  It dawns on him.He reaches behind him, feels the small ofhis back.

  “My back doesn’t hurt, which is a sort ofClass B miracle.As for Mr.

  Johnson, he’s been waiting for this his whole life.”

  She laughs, though she doesn’t find it all that funny—what amuses her is his intention to amuse her.

  She places her hands on Daniel’s shoulder, as ifto give him a little shove.But the feel ofhis flesh fascinates her, derails her impulse to rough him up a little.She squeezes his arm and then kisses his shoulder, touches her tongue against his skin—he tastes like a wooden countertop upon which someone has not quite cleaned up a spill ofmolasses.

  He wants to make declarations.He wants to tell her how long he has dreamed oflying next to her, and he wants to tell her how the reality of actually being with her has exceeded his most fervid imaginings—but he has already said these things.He has discovered little imperfections in her body—brackish breath as she grew tired, a kind ofabdominal fullness that suggests one day she will have a belly—but, ofcourse, in the state he is in, these things have only made her more desirable:they have made her real, they have made herhis.He wants to tell her she is beautiful, but how many times can you say that in twelve hours without it becoming suspect?Yet, he must declare something.Is he, for instance, meant to go home now and pretend none ofthis has happened?