Black Silk (6 page)

Some days I get all confused, don’t know if I want to be her or be with her. I picture us together—two girl-boys, all straight
edges and sharp lines. Mercy says she feels some of that about Denzel Washington—especially when he walks on to the screen
like he did in
Devil in a Blue Dress
—wearing just an undershirt and those khaki pants.
Denzel’s no joke,
Mercy says.
I’d rather have him over anybody. But him and Kiwi got cut from the same bolt of fabric.

Saturday night we go over there, bring our clothes underneath dry-cleaning bags; Mercy’s got her makeup in a case. Kiwi lives
on the East Side, Lower East Side, way over near the river where the people walk right up to you and ask what kind of dope
you looking for. Mercy tells the first guy that comes up to us she’s got someone who’ll show him what kind of dope we looking
for, he don’t watch what he’s saying. The boy walks away backwards, holding his stuff and cussing at us. Mercy doesn’t play
that—been clean for nearly ten years and can’t even stand the smell of pot. Me, I get nice every once in a while when the
mood hits me or someone’s offering something to take the edge off my day. Most days I’m temping for the All Call Agency. They’re
good about sending me on long-term gigs. Nights, I practice my singing. Once in a while I get a gig with some fellas playing
the clubs. I sing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and people sway side to side and nod like they’re remembering something from
their way past. On a night when I’m feeling brave, I’ll do Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer.” That song makes me sad, though.
Makes me think of all the nights I slow-dance naked in front of the mirror, watching my own body move with just the dim light
from the living room coming into my bedroom. Sometimes, if the moon’s out and coming in through my window, my skin looks goldlike
and I find myself running my hands slow over my breasts and down between my legs.

With my eyes closed, I can imagine it’s Kiwi’s hands, her fingers pushing my thighs apart and moving slowly up inside of me.
Then the music stops and I’m back in my own apartment, alone. And if the moon’s gone on behind a cloud, my skin doesn’t even
look goldlike anymore. Loneliness can eat you whole and leave you standing. Some mornings heading to work, I feel a sadness
so deep I want to moan. If I have a gig the evening after one of those mirror dances, I usually see tears in my audience’s
eyes.

I pull my bag of clothes tight to my chest and follow a step behind Mercy. She’s tall and broad shouldered, brown and pretty.
Says the next person that uses some sort of food to describe her skin coloring is looking to have their head pulled off. Brothers
always saying “Hey, Sweet Chocolate” and “Brown Sugar” and “Miss Truffle.” Mercy say she can’t stand how people don’t have
any sense about description. Look in the mirror, she says to me one evening. I look. See my same self staring back at me.
Big eyes. Hair pulled back into a braid. Nose is just a nose and lips Kiwi once called
juicy
in a way that made my insides dance around. Teeth white and straight and strong—a gift from my mother’s family. One dimple
when I smile. People always surprised by it. Some say “Oh!” and nod—like they’re seeing me for the first time when it creeps
into my cheek. It’s right below my left eye. My mama had a dimple there and her mama and so on all the way back, I hear. Mercy
says, “What color would you call yourself?”

“Brown.”

“What kind of brown?”

“Caramel.”

“See, that’s the problem,” Mercy says. “If it wasn’t for food, Negroes wouldn’t have no idea how to talk about themselves.”

Mercy always finds a way to say something to make me laugh; then that dimple comes out and she says Pretty Girl Ray, which
makes me smile even more. Ray from Raylene from my father Raylen. My family’s from the South—near Anderson, South Carolina.
When I was in school there, there were three other Raylenes in my class. One of them was my half sister. When we figured it
out, we thought it’d be like that movie
The Parent Trap,
when those twins discover each other after years going without knowing the other existed. But it wasn’t like that. The other
Raylene had heard my mama was trash and I’d heard the same thing about her mama and after that first day of sitting in the
schoolyard eating our lunch together then walking everywhere all hugged up, smiling like we’d won a million dollars, we couldn’t
stand each other’s guts. Didn’t go a single day after that first one without getting into a fight. Raylene’s mama finally
pulled her out of that school. Some evenings I wonder what became of her—the other Raylene Tyler walking through this world.

By the time we get to Kiwi’s building I’m already out of breath, and then there’s five flights of stairs to climb on top of
everything else. Mercy takes them two at a time because she runs six miles a day and stairs aren’t anything to her. I hear
her up above me knocking on Kiwi’s door; then I hear her and Kiwi talking and laughing and carrying on. By the time I get
up to the top Kiwi’s standing there, that one-sided smile she has on her face, shaking her head. My stomach gives a little
leap up into my throat and I nod hello, trying to breathe through my nose so I don’t seem so tired.

“Work out much?” Kiwi says, holding the door open for me. I shrug and smile, stepping past her into her apartment.

“Can’t breathe enough to even talk,” Kiwi says. She takes the clothes I’m carrying and points me toward the couch.

Kiwi’s wearing a suit—black with a black shirt underneath it and patent-leather shoes. She has a bit of eye makeup on—some
liner, that’s all, and a tiny gold dot of an earring in her nose. Her hair’s short and curly. She’s put some gel or something
in it to make it look wet. Her hair’s blacker than anything and she says it’s probably gonna stay that way. Says her Indian—straight
from India and not some fake Native-American relative—grandmother had jet-black hair till the day she died at ninety-two.
Kiwi gives me another half smile, pours me a glass of water and Mercy a Coke, then sits down on the couch.

“This club might not be as tight as Dixie,” she says. “I hear it’s all right, though. You ready to kick it, Birthday Girl?”

I take a sip of water. “I guess so.”

So far all I know about twenty-three is that it’s as trifling as twenty-one. Inside, I still feel lost half the time—like
the world is happening over there to my left somewhere. I want to be thirty—like Kiwi and Mercy—know where I’m going and all,
have a bit of life behind me. In the corner of the living room Kiwi’s police officer uniform is draped neatly over the back
of a chair. Even though I can’t see it, I know there’s a badge that says
WINCHELL
right above the breast pocket. Officer Winchell. Kiwi Winchell. Kiwi catches me staring at her uniform and a slow smile spreads
over her face. I look away from her, not smiling but not frowning either.

I met Mercy two years ago on the corner of Seventeenth Street and Fifth Avenue. One morning I was coming from a temp gig and
she was going to one. When I stepped out into the street, she pulled me back just as a cab raced by, saying, “Hey Lil’ Sister,
you too pretty to be killing yourself this early in the morning.” We walked a ways together after that, and by the end of
the walk we were friends. I’d been in the city for six months then and didn’t know many people. Turned out Mercy lived just
a few blocks from me. Turned out, too, her family was from Charlotte, and she threw out a couple of names I recognized. Felt
like home.

Kiwi came along later. I’d gone over to Mercy’s to see if she wanted to walk some. It was August. The city was hot and my
small top-floor apartment was hotter. Kiwi was sitting on Mercy’s couch. What I remember was her left hand palm up in the
air, those long fingers the first part of her I ever met. Later on I found out she was showing Mercy a cut on her palm, a
tiny nick of a thing she’d gotten cutting a bagel. Narrow but deep. Three stitches like tiny black crosses across the pale
peach of her hand. Then she turned full toward me, and her eyes caught me hard. Figure none of that day’s anything I need
to tell Mercy. And Kiwi, figure she must already know.

Mercy’s been in love more times than I can count. Men act stupid around her, and in return she pays them some attention every
now and then, then gets bone tired of them before they can think of something clever to say. Some evenings, when me and Mercy
are just sitting on the fire escape drinking Cokes and watching the city pass beneath us, she starts talking about what she’d
like—a good man, a nice home. Maybe a kid or two. I look down at the people moving around on the sidewalk and wonder how many
of them got someplace good to be, somebody to love when they get there. Mercy’s eyes hollow out and I think she thinks she’s
never gonna get what she needs. When she gets that look, I tell her—don’t get sentimental; the love she’s looking for is out
there somewhere. She’s a good woman, Mercy is.

“What do you want, girl?” Mercy asked me one night.

I shrugged, took a sip of my Coke. Stared down at all the people moving by us. All different colors and loving every which
way.

“To sing,” I said.

“You do sing already,” Mercy said. We were sitting close and she nudged my shoulder with her own. “You sing like a bird, girl.”

“To really sing,” I said. “From way deep. Hurt people with my singing. Knock them down with it and lift them back up again.”

Mercy nodded. “That’d be some singing.”