There are times when I wonder, who is the man in this relationship? My speculation is not in any way an indication of insecurity about my manhood, although, at another time it probably would have been. It's not my fear, but that hardness that makes me question, causes me to doubt. She is, even in her softest and most vulnerable moments, still so rigid. I wonder if I will ever have the words, the strength, the magic necessary to soothe away the callous on her heart.
I admitted that her once, and she replied, as casually as I have ever witnessed her respond to anything - no pause to digest the question, no fixing her eyes on her hands or to some distant spot of the floor to preventing her eyes from being the traitors they so often are - “It’s not a question of my hardness, but of your courage, your willingness to stay. It's about your desire to know more than what you see. I am much weaker than you could ever comprehend.”
I know she believed it when she said it. And even if she didn't, I did. I knew that I had yet to form the kind of bravery that would allow me to face real answers to my question without turning away. I could all but see myself walking away from her, curled up tightly in the broken corner of my sofa, shaking my head while repeating, “No, I change my mind. Maybe I don’t - maybe. I ... I’m not ready.” I wasn’t and she knew.
My unpreparedness didn’t stop me from wanting to know though. I wanted to understand the secrets behind that answer which she gave so casually, almost without thought. It could not have been the first time she was asked, although I suspected that the only person that she’d had to answer before was probably herself.
-----
There’s nothing more intriguing and sexy than someone who seems like they don’t give a damn …
That’s what my best-friend told me yesterday. Her comment in reference to the reason that everyone here seems to be so interested in me. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I haven’t been able to get the thought far from my mind lately.
-----
she wanted him to hold her. she did not want to ask. she needed desperately to ask
questioning, making demands lay at the center of the stability just beyond her reach. silence impenetrable where, “I want you to stay,” or “Can I come over?” should have been, was her most consistent mooring.
He saw that suffocation, that withdrawal whenever they were out and she appeased the wishes of some friend or foe or random in the street. Taken with that ability to give, relinquish, let go, they judge her sweet, strong, sometimes saintly in turn. He knows, though she had not yet realized he saw so much, that there was very little nice about her. she could be when careless, or comfortable, venomous. Never through intent to wound, but by sheer lack of awareness.
Her bite was unexpected in part because it came from so unlikely a source. Mostly though, it stung because it was delivered with such nonchalance, the way a smoker could draw his cigarette, retrieve his lighter, strike, light and inhale, without ever halting the flow of conversation, so too could she smite in a gesture so slight as to brush a stray hair from your face: you soul would be laid open, liver trembling in open air. Yet in dealing her blow, she would at the same time be preparing your drink or fixing your plate with affection, not realizing till the glass touched the table or the plate the mat as she saw you, forehead tensed and gaze lowered, hand lifeless in your lap, that she’d said anything important, and certainly not scathing. Unknown to her because what she’d revealed had likely not broken the conversation and probably had gone unheard by others. But you'd heard. And still you couldn't hate her not only because there was no malicious intent, but because you knew that it is only a love, a penetrating love, that allowed her to see you and know such a poison. a love that saw you so completely that it could speak truth – which is undoubtedly, the only sword that pierces. So she remained meticulous in her concentration, ever afraid of wounding, wishing often not to see, wanting not to know.
-----
She could have been waiting for a taxi, a bus or perhaps her friend, a man to drive by in shiny Benz or a maybe a beat-up brown Olds. Her gaze, slightly to left, and almost, but not quite towards the sky almost as if whatever she was waiting for would be descending from the heavens. For all that her expression revealed she could have been granted to secret of when Armageddon when fall down upon us, sun and stars falling from the sky. It sung innate assurance, but her gait was anything but natural - sculpted, painstakingly rehearsed. The walk, perhaps, was an offspring of her gaze, which though extreme in its direction and intent, seemed to have no focus. She'd needed a mask. She hadn’t wanted them to know that she was bothered, or even aware of the fact that they were only scantily aware of her, if at all. The concentrated effort seemed, now, effortless. Her attention always directed just so it would never appear that she noticed that they noticed her - or at least that was the effect as of late.
Seeing her, standing in front of her apartment door, outside of a store or walking down the street, it was all but impossible to tell what she was doing – coming, going, waiting. Neither stance nor stare held any indication of her purpose, save that whatever her next move it would be hers alone.
It was all a matter of craft however. Truth be told, there was always a portion of her attention that couldn’t be captured, or perhaps just not held for any period of time longer than a few seconds. It was as of there was always something to do, somewhere to be, some thing … This of course, may be as connected to her avoidance as anything else. You can’t be troubled by a lack if there are too many things occupying your mind for you to recognize the lack.
I asked her once, how she gotten it, that nothing-touches-me look.
It is rare when someone takes time to listen to the words that you speak, responding not in habit but out of genuine thought. I have found that very few people able to do this. Most folks converse in much the same was that they eat and digest food. Take it in quick, get it out faster. No time for taste, for savoring, for allowing for the startling discovery that they’ve found something that they despise, or worse yet, that they love and who, these days, has time or courage for emotions.
But have you ever seen someone who knows how to eat, knows how to take in without just consuming. Who appreciates and savors? That was her with words – my words. You can’t help but note the intensity that it takes as someone rolls your words around on her tongue, sampling the flavor of my apprehension and the aroma to seep in, scorching the memory with an indelible imprint.
She inhaled my question, pausing in the doorway to let the stale aroma of my apprehension saturate her taste buds. And after she was contented with its scent she swallowed, as if it pained her to take the idea into her being. Then, as was her habit; she shifted her eyes away from me, though they had stared so intently just a moment before. They looked past me into the kitchen, although she probably saw little, at least little that was in the present.
Chewing softly on her bottom lip, she inhaled shallowly before beginning, in a voice belonging more to a nine-year-old girl than the thirty-something woman before me, “I never thought I was pretty when I was young. Well, that’s not exactly true. There were times when I would stand in front of the mirror, never looking below my neckline, and I'd think… you really are a cute girl. Big ole eyes, bright smile. Mostly though, I didn’t think I was pretty; pretty girls weren’t fat. And even if they were, I wasn’t one of those fat girls, because those girls had guys that liked them, wanted to hold their hands, wrap arms around them in hugs, even if the arms couldn’t fully circle their body. Nobody touched me and nobody wanted to,” she pauses in a quiet exhalation of not-quite-laughter, “No one held my hand until I was almost twenty.
“I suppose it didn’t help that my female friends varied from slim to thin, although they were always telling me the bigger I got that I wasn’t really all that big and the guys … hmm, how many times did I hear the phrase, ‘Any guy would be lucky to have you …’ just not them. Anyway, it was hard to stand there waiting for the bus or at the lockers while guy after guy came up and looked right past me, stopping only on those occasions when they wanted to ask, “Hey yo, how can I get wit’ your girl?
“Well, I don’t know what the look did to guys back when you were in school, but today it’s probably one of the things that they find most attractive. Ironic, yes?”
She shrugged casually, but with a hint of tension, as she bent down to pick up the gray canvas tote that forever found itself all but falling off of her right shoulder as she traveled. Swinging the bag into place her eyes to return to me again for a moment as she replied, “The effect’s the same. I never allow them to know whether or not I see them … and they still don’t say anything.”
Picking up the two hard bound books on the floor at the foot of my sofa, she turned away from me in a quasi-pirouette and walking through the study towards the back door, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t wait up for me. I have to get some work done and I know you have that meeting in the morning. But kiss me before you leave for work, I’ll wake up … love you.”
-----
When I was little, I used to crouch in my bed at night, covered by the tent of my wooly electric blanket faintly lit by the miniature light in my Rainbow Bright watch, waiting for my mother to come home. I couldn’t sleep until I heard her footsteps crunching on the gravel in driveway or padding on the worn brick red carpet in the living room. Some nights, she’d find me tangled in my blanket in the pink armchair before the door, and as she turned off the light, bending to lift me to her shoulder, I’d exhale, “Hi Mommy… ‘night,” content.
-----
I took ballet classes when I was five, until the money ran out. I don’t remember much besides pink tights, black leotards and never being able to wear a bun at the back of my head like the white girls standing in front of me at the barre. But, there was one day when my mother has signed me up for a different class, something experimental. Instead of dancing with the other girls, I was in a class with a whole lot of grown-ups. My best-friend would call them granolas – outdoorsy, a bit rugged, long hair all speaking in feather soft tones as they watched a six-year-old black girl, legs crossed holding a guitar only a bit smaller than herself, hum and strum a song, never heard, but surely much older than anything than she had any right to remember.
copyright Jovonne J. Bickerstaff
No comments:
Post a Comment