Love (16 page)

“No big deal?”

“Well, it did get, you know. Rough, I guess you’d say. Know what I mean?” He pushed—no, slammed—her against the wall after she squeezed his privates—and she had groaned happily instead of crying out when he bit her nipple, hard. It shifted then. From black to red. It was as though outside, looking on, he could see himself clearly in the dark—his bruised sweaty skin, his glittering teeth and half-closed eyes.

“What did you do, Romen? Out with it.”

“Not me. Her.”

“Will you just say it, boy?”

“She plays hard, that’s all. I mean she likes being hurt.”

Sandler braked at an intersection. It was a moment before he realized he had stopped at a green light. Romen was looking through the passenger window, waiting for some response, some grown-man comment worthy of his trust, his confidence, an answer to the question coiled in his confession. A chuckle from his grandfather would mean one thing. Reproach would mean another thing. Was there anything else? The traffic light changed.

“What do you think about that?” Sandler drove slowly through the red light pretending to be searching for an address.

“Weird. Wack.” She didn’t just like it. She preferred it. But the rush was in him as well. Standing next to himself, cold, unsmiling, watching himself inflict and suffer pain above scream level where a fresh kind of joy lay, the Romen who could not bear mittens laced to a bedpost, purple polish on bitten nails, the mud and vegetable smell of pulling bodies—that Romen evaporated. Never to be seen again, he was certain. Not in full, anyway. Just a faded version who, afterwards, felt annoyance instead of shame. Driving away from the hotel, he complained (“Chill, girl. Stop it. You going to make me have a wreck”) about her leg banging his, the tip of her tongue on his neck, nipples pushed into his ear. Then there was the other thing. For the first time Junior had taken off her boots
and
her socks. When they had undressed back in the kitchen, as usual she kept her socks on. In the attic she removed them, tying one tightly around his neck. He was halfway down the attic ladder when he looked up. Junior, sitting in the opening, had the other one on. He couldn’t be sure—light in the hall was scarce—but the foot she slipped into the sock looked to him like a hoof.

“Whack, huh? Well, I never believed much in free will. It ain’t nothing if there’s nothing you can control.” Sandler parked in front of a pale blue house. The grass in front was patchy, starved for rain. “But of the few things you do have some say over, who you choose to hang out with is one. Looks like you hooked yourself up with somebody who bothers you, makes you feel uneasy. That kind of feeling is more than instinct; it’s information, information you can count on. You can’t always pay attention to what other people say, but you should pay attention to that. Don’t worry about whether backing off means you a wimp. It can save your life. You not helpless, Romen. Don’t ever think that. Sometimes it takes more guts to quit than to keep on. Some friends you know better than to bring home. There’s a good reason for that, you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. I hear you.”

“A woman is an important somebody and sometimes you win the triple crown: good food, good sex, and good talk. Most men settle for any one, happy as a clam if they get two. But listen, let me tell you something. A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don’t matter. You find one, stay there. You see a scary one, make tracks.”

“I got you,” said Romen.

The platters were cold but still savory and Sandler’s mood was cheerful as they completed the deliveries. Romen was eager to help, jumping out first at each stop, lifting trays like a waiter as he trotted to the doors. Vida would be pleased. Don’t fret, he’d tell her. Relax. He glanced at his grandson, who had not turned on the radio, just lay back on the headrest, asleep.

Romen, eyes closed, swallowed the saliva gathering in his mouth in anticipation of Junior’s. Just talking about her turned him on. No matter what bothered him, she knocked him out. More than at first, when she was the starter. Now with the tender mixed with the rough, the trite language of desire smithereened by obscenities, he was the one in charge. He could beat her up if he wanted to and she would still go down. Funny. She was like a gorgeous pet. Feed it or whip it—it lapped you anyway.

The radio and tape player was for herself. The short-handled sponge mop was for Heed. So was the hairbrush with bristles finer than Heed’s other one. Junior spread the purchases on the dining room table. Heed might not appreciate the brush, but she would love the convenience of the little mop for personal hygiene. It even had a wrist loop so it wouldn’t slip from hands that don’t work properly. The best thing, thought Junior, was to convince her to get out of that tub and into a shower. Have a little seat put in there. Safer. Easier. Get her to have two showers installed—one for the second floor as well. All that cash and nothing to spend it on. Locking herself in at night, going nowhere in the day. Now she wanted to be driven out to the hotel, in secret. Neither Heed nor Christine paid any attention to the rest of the house—what was needed in it. The dining room, big, never used, should be done over. Get rid of the ceiling fan, the ugly table. Put in some sofas, chairs, a television. Junior smiled, realizing she was turning the space into Correctional’s Rec Room. Well, why not? And the living room, too, needed help. It had a rerun look, like a house in an old TV show with loud rich kids and talky parents. She walked across the hall and sat on the living room sofa. A sectional, turquoise on once-white carpeting. The glittery pear-shaped lamps on the end tables were both cracked. Two panels of striped drapes sagged from their rods; others were ripped. Battle signs, she thought. Before they got too old or tired to do it anymore and settled for unsmashable silence.

Sitting there, Junior felt the kick of being, living, in a house, a real house, her first. A place with different reasons for each room and different things to put in them. She wondered what her Good Man liked. Velvet? Wicker? Had he picked this stuff? Did he even care? You didn’t like it here, did you? Who broke the lamps? Who glued them back—Christine? Was it Heed who grabbed the drapes? She talks about you all the time. About how she adored you, but she’s faking it, right? And Christine hates you. Your eyes are smiling in your picture but your mouth looks hungry. You married an eleven-year-old girl. I ran away when I was eleven. They brought me back, then put me in Correctional. I had a G.I. Joe but they took it. If you’d known me then, nobody would have messed with me. You’d have taken care of me because you understand me and everything and won’t let anybody get me. Did you marry Heed to protect her? Was that the only way? An Old Man tried to make me do things. Force me. I didn’t, though. If you’d been there you’d have killed him. They said I tried to, but I didn’t. Try to, I mean. I know you called me here. I read the ad in a paper I found in the bus station. It was lying right next to me on the bench. A long shot. I took two twenties from a woman’s wallet. She left her purse on the sink when she went to the other end of the bathroom to dry her hands. I knocked her purse over and apologized. She didn’t check. Terry loaned me some of her clothes. Kind of. I mean she would’ve loaned them if I’d asked her to. I met her in the Red Moon. Correctional gave me one hundred dollars for three years’ work. I spent it in movies and restaurants. Terry waitressed at the Red Moon. We got on; laughed a lot. She invited me to stay over when I told her I was sleeping in daylight. Church pews, movies, in the sand near the piers. Moving all the time so Cops wouldn’t see me and think I was drunk or on something. I never drink or do dope. It feels good but you miss a lot when your head is fucked. I don’t want to miss anything, anything at all. Being locked away all those years. My fault, I guess. I was fifteen and on my way out. I should have known. But I only knew Boys, not Men. Do you like my Boyfriend? He’s beautiful, isn’t he? So nice and mean. Who has legs like that? His shoulders are a mile wide and they don’t move when he walks. God. I want to keep him, okay? He was late today because he had to be with his Grandfather. It was ice cold in the garage, but we fucked anyway eating barbecue. You should have seen us. But you did, didn’t you? You go wherever you want and I know you liked the hotel better than here. I can tell when me and my Boyfriend go there. I feel you all over the place. Heed wants me to do something in there. She won’t tell me what, but I know it’s something to fix Christine for good. Dream on. The game they’re playing? Both lose. I just have to make sure it’s not me. Or you. I don’t know why I said that. Sorry. I’m still not used to it. Sometimes I forget you’re my Good Man.

8

FATHER

The hiking boots, purchased with Anna Krieg’s instruction, are what she needs. The road to the hotel is treacherous for a hysterical pedestrian on a chilly night in tennis shoes and no socks. The tough-minded Anna Krieg would have been prepared: rucksack, water, flashlight,
brot,
dried fish, nuts. Christine had learned how to cook from her while they both, wives of American soldiers, were stationed in Germany. Barely twenty, devoted to the PX, Anna was adept with fresh vegetables, varieties of potatoes, seafood, but especially voluptuous desserts. Cooking lessons and beer made the evenings cheery and postponed the collapse of Christine’s marriage into a desolation exactly like the quarters they lived in. In return for the friendship, Christine agreed one day to hike with Anna. She bought the good boots and rucksack Anna recommended and early one morning they set out. Halfway to the halfway point, Christine stopped and begged to cancel, to hitch back to the base. Her feet were on fire; her lungs hyphenating. Anna’s face registered extreme disappointment but understanding too. “Poor, soft American, no stamina, no will.” They turned back in silence.

When Christine opened the door she found Ernie locked in the arms of the staff sergeant’s wife. She wanted to kick his bare behind, but her feet hurt so she settled for six bottles of Spaten hurled in rapid succession at his head.

For the benefit and morale of the other wives in this newly desegregated army, she felt obliged to go through the motions of jealous rage, but she was more dumbfounded than angry. Puzzled as to who Ernie Holder thought he was, other than a raggedy Pfc. who had offered devotion, a uniform, and escape to another country in exchange for her own gorgeous well-bred self. She left him the next day, taking rucksack, cooking skills, and hiking boots with her. From Idlewild, she called her mother. May seemed relieved to hear her voice but ambivalent about her return to Silk. Her jumbled chatter held no curiosity about Christine’s situation but was spiked instead with references to the “swamp wife” and a burned “freedom” bus. Clearly she was being warned away.

Since the atmosphere May described seemed so dank and small-town-y, Christine lingered. After two nights not quite on the street (a bus station didn’t count), after being turned away from the YWCA, she moved into a Phillis Wheatley House. The country, so joyful and pleased with itself when she’d left it, was frightened now by red threats and blacklists. On looks alone she got a job in a restaurant waitressing until they discovered she could cook. It was a friendly neighborhood place where she laughed at the ways customers found to hustle free food, and where she spent years avoiding and lying to May while searching for a husband. She had found three, none her own, when she met Fruit. By then she was steeped in and bored by workplace gossip involving the owner, his wife, the cashier, and the short-order cook. The pointless malice exhausted her, as did the drift of conversation between herself and whatever married man she was attached to. She didn’t really care whether he separated from his wife or not, slept with the mother of his children or not, gave her a lesser Christmas present or not. But since they never had friends in common, there was nothing else to talk about except proofs of affection and threats of dissolution. It was an outline of a life, a doodling on a paper napkin yet to be filled in while she purposely stayed away from the home May described. Into that aimlessness came Fruit, with a canvas satchel and a flawlessly ironed work shirt.

“Don’t hide the meat. I like to see what I eat.” Christine withheld the red gravy and wondered at his clarity—which she discovered later was his habit and his gift. When she listened to him, everything was suddenly so clear she spent nine years in his company. He was a fine-boned man, intense, with large beautiful hands and a mesmerizing voice. He clarified the world for her. Her grandfather (a bourgeois traitor); her mother (a handkerchief-head); Heed (a field hand wannabe); Ernie (a sellout). They were the “chumps” Malcolm X described, acid dripping from the word. Then he outlined her own obligations. With apology for her light skin, gray eyes, and hair threatening a lethal silkiness, Christine became a dedicated helpmate, coherent and happy to serve. She changed her clothing to “motherland,” sharpened her language to activate slogans, carried a knife for defense, hid her inauthentic hair in exquisite gelés; hung cowrie shells from her earlobes, and never crossed her legs at the knees.

Her fears that she might disappoint such a man, fierce, uncorruptible, demanding, or that he might be forced to treat her like dirt were never realized because Fruit liked dirt. His view of soil, earth, crops was a romance he shared with her. A farm, he said, if we had one, it could be a base for us. Christine agreed, but events were so swift and money (collected, wheedled, extorted) was needed for other emergencies.

All over the country there were sleeping neighborhoods that needed arousing, inattentive young people needing focus. The hiking boots were broken in at marches; her rucksack simulated comfort at sit-ins. Pumped by seething exhilaration and purpose, Christine’s personal vanity became racial legitimacy and her flair for acting out became courage. She hardly remembered the quarrels now: informants galore, tainted money, random acts vs. long-range plans, underground vs. dance with the media. Theirs was a group of seventeen—eleven black, six white—an underground formed after the Till trial. Independent, autonomous, they joined other groups only when they judged the activity strong enough. She relished the work; thrived on its seriousness and was totally committed to Fruit. There, with him, she was not in the way; she was in. Not the disrupting wife, the surplus mistress, the unwanted nuisance daughter, the ignored granddaughter, the disposable friend. She was valuable. There was no reason why it could not last. The urgency planted in
1955
had blossomed in
1965
, and was ripe with fury in
1968
. By
1970
, sapped by funerals, it seemed to wane for her. Nina Simone helped delay the beginning of the end. That voice lent status to female surrender, and romance to blunt transgression. So when the end arrived, it was unrecognizable as such. A small, quite insignificant toilet flush. After a routine abortion, the last of seven, she rose, tapped the lever, and turned to watch the swirl. There, in a blur of congealed red, she thought she saw a profile. For less than a second that completely impossible image surfaced. Christine bathed and went back to bed. She had always been unsentimental about abortions, considering them as one less link in the holding chain, and she did not want to be a mother—ever. Besides, no one stopped her or suggested she do otherwise: Revolutions needed men—not fathers. So this seventh intervention did not trouble her in the least. Although she realized she had conjured up the unborn eye that had disappeared in a cloud of raspberry red, still, on occasion, she wondered who it was who looked up at her with such quiet interest. At the oddest moments—cloistered in a hospital waiting room with a shot boy’s weeping mother, dispensing bottled water and raisins to exhausted students—that noncommittal eye seemed to be there, at home in the chaos of cops and tears. Had she paid closer attention, perhaps she could have stalled, even prevented, the real end, but her grandfather died. Fruit encouraged her to attend the funeral (family is family, he said, smiling, even if they are political morons). Christine hesitated. She would have to be in Heed’s murderous company; her mother and she would continue to argue politics as they did during intermittent phone calls, screaming accusations: Why can’t you all just quiet down? Three hundred years of quiet not enough for you? We’ll lose everything! All we slaved for! SLAM.

He was dead. The dirty one who introduced her to nasty and blamed it on her.

He was dead. The powerful one who abandoned his own kin and transferred rule to her playmate.

He was dead. Well, good. She would go and view the wreck he left behind.

Nothing is watching now. It is long gone, the nonjudgmental eye, along with the rucksack and the hiking boots which she desperately needs now if she is going to stop the snake and her minion from destroying the balance of her life. The two of them, Heed and Junior, were nowhere in the house. The garage was empty, the driveway clear. Nothing could make Heed leave her room but devilment—and at night? There is only one place she could be interested in—the hotel—and there was no time to waste even if she had to run all the way.

No one could have guessed, but Fruit was eight years younger than she was, so of course he pleased himself with other women. That was the beauty, the honesty of their relationship. She of all people, queen of seduced husbands, understood, having grown up in a hotel where the tippy-toe of bare feet, the rustle behind the equipment shed, the eye-blaze of one female guest aimed at another had been everyday stuff. Hadn’t she heard her grandfather tell his wife in front of everybody, “Don’t wag your little tail at me. I don’t want it and I sure don’t need it,” and leave that wife dancing alone at the birthday party while he raced off to meet whoever it was he did need? Notwithstanding Ernie Holder and the Spaten soaring toward his head, having men meant sharing them. Get used to it and do it with grace, right? Other women’s beds were not a problem. Anyway, with all the work to be done, who had time to monitor every stray coupling? She was the designated woman, the one everybody acknowledged as such. Their names spoken in a planning meeting sounded like a candy bar: Fruit ’n’ Chris. Chris ’n’ Fruit.

The candy bar didn’t crumble until somebody raped one of the student volunteers. A Comrade had done it. The girl, too ashamed to be angry, begged Christine not to tell her father, a university dean.

“Please, please don’t.”

“What about your mother?”

“Oh no! She’ll tell
him
!”

Christine bristled. Like a Doberman puppy in training, the girl had gone into protection mode. Good Daddy Big Man mustn’t know. Christine ignored her, told everyone, and was satisfied especially by Fruit’s response. They all took care of the girl, cursed and fumed at what the Comrade had done; promised to speak to, punish, expel him. But didn’t. The next time he showed up, it was “Hey, man, how’s it going?” When Christine cornered Fruit he reported what the Comrade had said: it wasn’t his fault the girl was all over him braless sitting sloppy he’d even patted her behind to alert her to his interest she giggled instead of breaking his jaw and asked him if he wanted a beer. Fruit shook his head, mourning human stupidity and retrograde politics. Yet mourn was all he did. Regardless of her urging, “speaking to”—not to mention “punish” or “expel”—he never got around to. Yes, Fruit thought the Comrade a menace, but he could not tell him so. Yes, he believed the Comrade jeopardized their principled cause, but he could not confront him. The girl’s violation carried no weight against the sturdier violation of male friendship. Fruit could upbraid, expel, beat up a traitor, a coward, or any jive turkey over the slightest offense. But not this one—this assault against a girl of seventeen was not even a hastily added footnote to his list of Unacceptable Behavior since the raped one did not belong to him. Christine did the racial equation: the rapee is black and the raper white; both are black; both are white. Which combination influenced Fruit’s decision? It would have helped if the other girls’ moans of sympathy for the raped one had not been laced with disturbing questions: What did
she
do? Why didn’t
she
. . . ?

Eventually Christine shut up about it and the good work of civil disobedience and personal obedience went on, interrupted only now and then by the profile, turning, offering its uncritical eye. When she got back from her grandfather’s funeral, she opened her rucksack and shook out the paper bag of engagement rings. Solitaires of all sizes. Enough to get twelve women to sign the guest book at Hotel Make-Believe. The question apparently was how comfortable is the suite? In
1973
Tremaine Avenue, with its high level of comfort, was mighty attractive. Especially since everybody, militants and moderates, wanted to be in and stay out at the same time, the good work of disobedience was merging with disguised acquiescence. The issues changed, spread, moved from streets and doorways to offices and conferences in elegant hotels. Nobody needed a street-worker-baby-sitter-cook-mimeographing-marching-nut-and-raisin-carrying woman who was too old anyway for the hip new students with complex strategies; a woman not educated enough for the college crowd, not shallow enough for television. The disinterested eye, carefully studied by the Supreme Court, had closed. She was irrelevant. Fruit sensed her despair and they parted as friends.

He was, she thinks, the last true friend she had. He would have mourned again if he knew what she had settled for: kept woman to a mimeographed copy of her bourgeois grandfather. And rightly, for after Dr. Rio threw her out there was no place like and no place but home. Hers. To hang on to and keep an insane viper from evicting her.

Christine was in a car the last time she traveled this road. Up front, too, because her wide skirts—a powder-blue heap of chiffon—need room. She is wearing a movie star’s gown, strapless with rhinestones sprinkling the top. Her mother is in the backseat; her grandfather is driving the
1939
Pontiac, which irritates him because it is already
1947
and postwar cars are still unavailable to most civilians. That is what he is saying, explaining his strange mood at a time of giddy celebration: Christine’s delayed sixteenth-birthday and graduation party. She thinks the real reason he is agitated is the same reason she and her mother are jubilant. At the family-only dinner preceding the hotel party, they have managed to eliminate Heed and have had the pleasure of watching her disciplined by her husband. At last, just the three of them. No ignorant, clinging wifelet to sully this magnificent homecoming display.

Christine, led from the car on her grandfather’s arm, makes a glamorous entrance; an Oh-so-pretty-girl-in-perfectly-beautiful gown, proof and consequence of racial uplift and proper dreams. The band plays “Happy Birthday” over the crowd’s applause, then segues into “Harbor Lights.” May beams. Christine glows. The hotel is packed with uniformed veterans, vacationing couples, and Cosey’s friends. The musicians switch to “How High the Moon,” since the future is not just bright, it is there, visible in paychecks, tangible in G.I. Bill applications, audible in the scat vocalist’s range. Just look through the wide doors beyond the open-air dance floor and see the way the stars go. Hear the waves roll; inhale the ocean’s cologne, how sweet and male it is.