Stateway's Garden Page 19

  “Maybe I should turn the TV up,” I said.

  “Well, I’m going to show you and then you show me.” Savanna put those aggressive thumbs into the front of the lace, pulled, and released the elastic with a pluck that snapped like a rubber band.

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Yes, you did!”

  “You moved too fast.”

  Then everything slowed down. She used those eyes to find some spot on my forehead convincing her I was trustworthy, maybe it was the dark skin she complimented, or the pimples I sometimes tried to hide with Band-Aids. By then my right hand was resting on her thigh and there were none of the stretch marks I noticed on Mother when she dressed for work. I began watching Savanna’s chest as she exhaled, inhaled, exhaled.

  “Tracy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really like me?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m a li’l nervous.”

  “Me too.”

  I then removed my hand from her leg like I’d been touching a stove. We both sat another few moments quietly, with music videos ringing from the television in the background.

  “I do like you,” I began in an attempt to break the silence. “Always have.” And Savanna’s hands moved back to me with such speed I barely caught the shadow. She grabbed my face on both sides, palms open, and spread her fingers to my temples. Our mouths were getting soggy as we kissed; we were all over the place. Savanna began moaning, pulling me closer, moaning loudly, pulling, moaning. “Your father will hear us,” I mumbled through our lips. She removed her hands from my face. The separation was audible. She eased herself back into position, reinserted her thumb to the lace along the front of her underwear. Those eyes of hers lifted, lively little birds on a pond.

  “I’ll do it right this time,” she said. “I promise you.” I didn’t know she could whisper that way. Her shoulders lowered as she used that thumb to peel the lace from below her belly button. She then pulled the underwear forward an intsy-tintsy bit and looked down. “Trace?”

  “Yeah?” My eyes didn’t move from her body.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to like it.”

  Her skin was a shade lighter down there. I counted thirteen hairs that curled into one another like barbed wire. She continued pulling her underwear forward, stretching the elastic of the lace to its limits.

  “You still want to see mine?” My voice wavered.

  “I don’t know. You don’t really have to.” As she said that, she moved closer. “I have to tell you something, though.”

  “Okay…”

  “I lied to you.”

  “I know.”

  “I never did nothing like this before.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Nobody’s ever been over here.”

  “I know.”

  “I said it ’cause I thought you wanted to hear that. Girls at school said you have to act calm and cool, so I was trying. I didn’t think you liked me anyway. Just really wanted you to like me.”

  “I do.”

  Never had I unbuttoned my pants with so little effort. I followed her pattern of pulling my briefs forward and Savanna peeked without saying another word.

  She leaned in farther and began kissing me with orchestrated movements along my face, lifted my shirt; her fingers seemed to party across my stomach before entering my underwear. We continued kissing at least an hour, maybe three, like our mouths were the elements of a chemistry class we never attended, like my hands under her shirt with no bra belonged there; in our minds we were a black couple married and standing proudly in front of our parents, or maybe on a majestic honeymoon cruise to some remarkable place we couldn’t even spell, but at that moment we didn’t notice that our seventeen-floor project building being destroyed by rocks was truly floating inside a moat.

  Nah.

  We didn’t go any further than that. The tornado told me not to.

  The echo of keys entering the thick front door of Savanna’s apartment made her yank from me.

  “That’s my ma,” she said with force. She turned into a Decepticon, transforming into the version of herself I’d always known. There was even enough time left after she dressed that she assisted me.

  “Savanna!” her mother yelled from the living room.

  “Yes, Ma?” Savanna stood. Her body was stiff.

  I had no idea what position to place myself on the mattress: Should I lie down? The tornado predicted it a bad idea, that it would look too comfortable, but I disagreed because it’d show I’m not hiding anything. I shifted to another spot. I’ll sit with my back against the wall, yeah, that will make it look, but maybe I shouldn’t…

  Her mother pushed that bedroom door like she was rescuing someone from a fire. She was wide standing in the hall and filled the entire doorway. Wore one of those work blazers with shoulder pads that could’ve protected a goalie. Savanna’s mother had thin lips that clobbered each other as she viewed me. I guess I didn’t predict the right position.

  “What the hell y’all doing? How long y’all been in here together?” Her head rose up and down as she talked.

  “Not that long” was Savanna’s reply.

  “Stand up, boy.”

  “Ma, this is Tracy.” Savanna spoke for me. I extended my hand. It hung there.

  “Why didn’t you go to school, Savanna?”

  “There was too much rain.”

  “I went to work in the rain, right?”

  “But they told us a tornado was coming, Ma.”

  “Don’t make this rain-no-school shit a habit.” She turned—eyes only—to me. “Tracy, where do you live?”

  “Around the corner, ma’am.”

  “Go your ass home.”

  She disappeared from the door. Savanna and I could hear her mother and father in the next room arguing before she fully entered. She said how in the fuck you allowing some no-good-ass nigga to sit in the bedroom with our daughter and he said they’re just kids and they’re watching TV and they’re not doing nothing and she said but they’re in there alone and he said I’m studying for my test and she said your daughter’s more important than a dumbass test and he said I need to get this diploma for that job I told you about and she said Savanna’s gonna turn up pregnant and he said NO SHE WON’T.

  We stood at the front door of their apartment maybe ten minutes, giggling, listening to her parents go back and forth, giggling some more.

  “Savanna, is that damned boy gone?” her mother yelled.

  “Yeah, Ma.”

  “Clean up my kitchen!”

  Savanna unlocked the door. I stepped outside, continuing to adjust clothes as the tornado wind and rain blew onto the ramp. “I’m glad you came in today, Trace,” she said while poking her head through the door.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “We gonna do that again? Supposed to rain all week.”

  “Yeah, no school.”

  “Being trapped in the building ain’t so bad. Next time, we can do a little more if you want to. I don’t care, whatever you want.” She vanished in the vault-door before I could respond. I swear I heard seventy latches.

  “Yeah, Van,” I mouthed. “I can’t wait.”

  That was the first time the tornado ever actually yelled at me. Told me we wouldn’t do anything. Told me twice. I tried sooooooo hard not to listen. Oh, man, how I tried. Because his prediction was right as usual.

  We didn’t.

  LOVE-ABLE LIP GLOSS

  Steph loved the way I fucked her. But that wasn’t all to it because we had a real relationship. The relationship you have when you enjoy the smell of each other’s skin, even after sweaty summer sex in Chicago, and you kiss it like sweat doesn’t taste bitter or salty. She was the girl I dreamed abo
ut all throughout high school.

  Steph wanted to be taller than me and liked to wear heels, so she was sometimes much taller, and was as thin as a model on cocaine.

  She was a model on cocaine…

  …who wore elegant ensembles no matter where she went: the bar, the grocery store, the dumpster, her apartment, the bed, the bathroom. She wore expensive pumps and made sure her exaggerated and ruffled white dresses—she loved white—would be hiked up her legs high enough so no pee landed on them. I always thought she looked beautiful when she went to the bathroom for a pee. Even though she had heels Steph got on tippy-toes while sitting on the toilet, and used her hands to brace herself against the wall. The open parts of her body and her dress—dress especially—never touched the porcelain. She was always afraid of germs in a toilet.

  Once she got into her usual position and found her balance, Steph lowered her head toward the floor. Hair draped over her eyes. Her hair grew longer than most black women’s, even without the dry textured extensions, or the wigs she wore for certain photo shoots. Steph only allowed me to play with it if I made love to her really well.

  Nothing about what we did, though, if you were watching us on a film, looked anything close to love. We resembled dogs battling for food, or a black widow killing her mate; someone would be abused at the end of the ordeal. That usually wasn’t me. Hardly ever. Although I liked looking at her as she sat there on a toilet, praying, thinking, believing dreams in water, breathing, wanting whatever, I never made any motions to walk toward her or touch anything. That would have been a mistake. After the first time I’d put my hands near her when she didn’t ask me to, I saw the side of her I didn’t know existed.

  She often came to town for photo shoots or her little appearances, or just to get high and be made love to. For some reason, we would always go to this bar downtown that was on Madison and Wells. Most people don’t realize that Chicago is one of those cities you can be seen in with someone you aren’t supposed to be with and no one will know, or at least they won’t say anything. The place we went was near the end of the block and had vibrant neon lights around the door that read BAR-FOOD-DRINKS, all stacked on top of one another as if they were in a priority listing.

  I wasn’t supposed to be with Steph and she was not to be with me.

  We were going against those rules of life where you think you have control, sure, you’re in control, but when it all spreads out, you tell yourself you should never have been anywhere near the scene. She and I were nothing close to the substance abusers we pretended to be.

  In this bar, the air was filled with the smell of seven-dollar packs of cigarettes, expensive downtown beers, colognes, perfumes with foreign names, and corners where two people could stand and not be seen. Our booth was always clean and had long leather bench seats. Sometimes, I asked Steph if I could sit on the same side as her.

  “I don’t like too much of that romantic shit anymore, Jacob,” she replied while grinding a wrist into her nose. Oftentimes, she pressed with such force I thought the rounded end of her face would fall off.

  Stephanie Worthington was not your everyday beauty, well, maybe she was, but she was not the girl who would end up famous. Her modeling career would never get as far as she dreamed, even dreaming through water, or even any further than it had that last time she came home to Chicago complaining. She wore white most of the time because she said pictures of her in that color looked better, but that didn’t change her career in any way. Most of her paying jobs doled out six hundred dollars for pictures, sometimes a thousand. The flight to get wherever the job was cost three hundred fifty. Her best asset was that she was nearly tall, almost five seven, and probably weighed less than a hundred ten pounds even after dinner. She was a lighter-skinned black woman, with this weird undertone to her skin that made her seem permanently tan. Steph was an average-pretty girl walking down the street, nothing exotic or original, not Afrocentric, not mixed in ethnicity, not different. She hated being told she was beautiful. Said it was an insult. In her mind, her lips should have been fuller, her eyes were meant to round into a complete circle, her nose should point like Barbra Streisand’s. I don’t remember her nose clearly, though. By that time it was always buried in either her hands or a mirror.

  I never loved Steph. I loved who she almost was.

  After we sat on the long bench seat, she gave me the blow-off I always asked for: “No, don’t touch me. Don’t spill anything on my white blouse. Don’t kiss me too much. Don’t get too close. Sit on your side.” We’d then order drinks. Steph seemed to never care what we did, as long as we were together and I didn’t touch her unless requested.

  “What would you like to drink, Stephanie?” I’d ask. She’d simply fan her hand and gaze out the window. Steph sat with her back to the door most times, because she hated men staring as they walked in. I thought that was rather weird considering her job and all. She’d sniffle into her hand again, shifting that nose back, forth, up, and down like an uncomfortable bra. “Honey, what would you like?” I’d ask again. She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Just bring me whatever you bring me,” she’d reply.

  “Whatever?”

  “Yeah, whatever, Jacob.”

  “You know the kind of stuff I drink. You want that?”

  “Just bring it. I’m not going to drink much of it anyway.”

  I moved quickly to the bar. The bartender stood there, waiting. He was my friend. As long as I gave him a nice cash tip, he kept my spot at the bar clear and my tab somewhat respectable. Somewhat.

  Steph spent a lot of time partying in New York, Los Angeles, Miami. Places where there were big opportunities and even bigger money. Even when we were young all she ever talked about was getting to an opportunity. And she was used to being bought drinks and passed drags of the most expensive things to ever invade human blood cells. I was working as a contracted temp at an insurance agency, making what added up to thirty-seven thousand Chicago dollars. That amount at most has about sixty-eight percent of its value in those other cities. I had to figure out some way to compete. As long as I kept the drinks coming—which I did—she’d be okay. I was the only one who drank them before ice turned liquor to water and she never even noticed.

  Each time I sat down with Steph, I’d look at her closely and admire her. She pursued the dreams we always argued about and became something “different” from another girl in a CHA housing building on State Street. Her ambition was how she eventually lucked up on the chance at modeling. I had some dreams too, big ones that I never told Steph, but the only time I had the balls to do anything big was when I was slopped and pulling my pants down to lay next to her.

  I ordered champagne for Steph, or a martini stirred with two olives and the best vodka the bar stocked. She hated it with gin. Said it was outdated or something. Usually, I drank rum or whiskey. Once I got older and began drinking heavily, I learned to like the brittle taste of whiskey. Steph would sit there, peaceful, picking at the lint of whatever white ensemble she’d put together. Her head swung side to side. She was quiet at first, then mumbled words I couldn’t figure out, allowing her hair to drift toward the front of her face. That part of her was attractive to me. Made me think I was the man I dreamed of being in high school.

  When I actually went to school, we attended Dunbar High in Chicago, on the lower South Side of the city, not that many blocks from our buildings. It was a decent high school, a sort of performing arts school.

  The two of us were high-school sweethearts. Steph won prom queen our junior and senior years and was voted most likely to succeed. Most of the other students were jealous of us and rightfully so. We were going to be a grown-up glamour couple one day.

  “Stephanie Worthington, what do you want to do with your life?” our homeroom teacher asked one day. Steph had to stand up as usual, walk her narrow frame to the front of the class before speaking. Everyone else simpl
y explained their aspirations from the seats, and briefly.

  “I’m going to be different,” she said with emphasis. “I’m going to make lots of money and move away from here!”

  Stephanie Worthington was a glutton for attention.

  “Stuffy Stephanie Worthington!” the class yelled in the background. “Stuffy Worthington’s going to be somebody!”

  So her nickname stuck: Stuffy. Even I began calling her that after a while. But I chose when and where to do it. Sometimes she didn’t find it so funny.

  “Lift your head and talk to me, Stuffy,” I said softly from the bench seat in the bar. I had to lean over to make sure she heard me because we were smothered by loud music.

  “I don’t really want to talk,” she replied. Her face was still buried in her hands. “And stop calling me that shit.”

  It was easy to notice that Steph was losing weight, losing it from where, or how, I don’t know. Her clavicle was as visible as a skeleton’s, even with skin, and her elbows grew to points without any trace of flesh. I knew that her resting them against the hard table was painful.

  “Talk to me, Steph. You didn’t come all the way back to Chicago to sit in our bar quiet, right?”

  “You always want to talk. All you did was talk when we were kids.”

  “I guess it’s what I do best.”

  “I don’t really want to hear it, Jacob.”

  I’d pause and give her a moment. Maybe even two. Just try to figure something that would ease her a bit. “Hey, well, anyway, my brother asked about you.”

  “Li’l cute Tracy?” She allowed a small smirk to curl her face, showing facial bones I didn’t even know humans had, and began running her pointing finger around the mouth of her glass.