Memory is the worst thing about healing. I lie around all day with nothing urgent to do. Brooklyn has taken care of explanations to the office staff: attempted rape, foiled, blah, blah. She is a true friend and doesn’t annoy me like those fake ones who come here just to gaze and pity me. I can’t watch television; it’s so boring—mostly blood, lipstick, and the haunches of anchorgirls. What passes for news is either gossip or a lecture of lies. How can I take crime shows seriously where the female detectives track killers in Louboutin heels? As for reading, print makes me dizzy, and for some reason I don’t like listening to music anymore. Vocals, both the beautiful and the mediocre, depress me, and instrumentals are worse. Plus something bad has been done to my tongue because my taste buds have disappeared. Everything tastes like lemons—except lemons, which taste like salt. Wine is a waste since Vicodin gives me a thicker, more comfortable fog.
The bitch didn’t even hear me out. I wasn’t the only witness, the only one who turned Sofia Huxley into 0071140. There was lots of other testimony about her molestations. At least four other kids were witnesses. I didn’t hear what they said but they were shaking and crying when they left the courtroom. The social worker and psychologist who coached us put their arms around them, whispering, “You’ll be fine. You did great.” Neither one hugged me but they smiled at me. Apparently Sofia Huxley has no family. Well she has a husband who is in another prison and still unparoled after seven tries. No one was there to meet her. Nobody. So why didn’t she just accept help instead of whatever check-out-counter or cleaning-woman job she might be given? Rich parolees don’t end up cleaning toilets at Wendy’s.
I was only eight years old, still little Lula Ann, when I lifted my arm and pointed my finger at her.
“Is the woman you saw here in this room?” The lawyer lady smells of tobacco.
I nod.
“You have to speak, Lula. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ ”
“Yes.”
“Can you show us where she is seated?”
I am afraid of knocking over the paper cup of water the lady lawyer gave me.
“Relax,” says the prosecutor lady. “Take your time.”
And I did take my time. My hand was in a fist until my arm was straight. Then I unfolded my forefinger. Pow! Like a cap pistol. Mrs. Huxley stared at me then opened her mouth as though about to say something. She looked shocked, unbelieving. But my finger still pointed, pointed so long the lady prosecutor had to touch my hand and say, “Thank you, Lula,” to get me to put my arm down. I glanced at Sweetness; she was smiling like I’ve never seen her smile before—with mouth and eyes. And that wasn’t all. Outside the courtroom all the mothers smiled at me, and two actually touched and hugged me. Fathers gave me thumbs-up. Best of all was Sweetness. As we walked down the courthouse steps she held my hand, my hand. She never did that before and it surprised me as much as it pleased me because I always knew she didn’t like touching me. I could tell. Distaste was all over her face when I was little and she had to bathe me. Rinse me, actually, after a halfhearted rub with a soapy washcloth. I used to pray she would slap my face or spank me just to feel her touch. I made little mistakes deliberately, but she had ways to punish me without touching the skin she hated—bed without supper, lock me in my room—but her screaming at me was the worst. When fear rules, obedience is the only survival choice. And I was good at it. I behaved and behaved and behaved. Frightened as I was to appear in court, I did what the teacher-psychologists expected of me. Brilliantly, I know, because after the trial Sweetness was kind of motherlike.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m just mad more at myself than at Mrs. Huxley. I reverted to the Lula Ann who never fought back. Ever. I just lay there while she beat the shit out of me. I could have died on the floor of that motel room if her face hadn’t gone apple-red with fatigue. I didn’t make a sound, didn’t even raise a hand to protect myself when she slapped my face then punched me in the ribs before smashing my jaw with her fist then butting my head with hers. She was panting when she dragged and threw me out the door. I can still feel her hard fingers clenching the hair at the back of my neck, her foot on my behind and I can still hear the crack of my bones hitting concrete. Elbow, jaw. I feel my arms sliding and grabbing for balance. Then my tongue searching through blood to locate my teeth. When the door slammed then opened again so she could throw out my shoe, like a whipped puppy I just crawled away afraid to even whimper.
Maybe he is right. I am not the woman. When he left I shook it off and pretended it didn’t matter.
Foam spurting from an aerosol can made him chuckle, so he lathered with shaving soap and a brush, a handsome thing of boar’s hair swelling from an ivory handle. I think it’s in the trash along with his toothbrush, strop and straight razor. The things he left are too alive. It’s time to throw all of it out. He left everything: toiletries, clothes and a cloth bag containing two books, one in a foreign language, the other a book of poems. I dump it all, then pick through the trash and take out his shaving brush and bone-handled razor. I put them both in the medicine cabinet and when I close the door I stare at my face in the mirror.
“You should always wear white, Bride. Only white and all white all the time.” Jeri, calling himself a “total person” designer, insisted. Looking for a makeover for my second interview at Sylvia, Inc., I consulted him.
“Not only because of your name,” he told me, “but because of what it does to your licorice skin,” he said. “And black is the new black. Know what I mean? Wait. You’re more Hershey’s syrup than licorice. Makes people think of whipped cream and chocolate soufflé every time they see you.”
That made me laugh. “Or Oreos?”
“Never. Something classy. Bonbons. Hand-dipped.”
At first it was boring shopping for white-only clothes until I learned how many shades of white there were: ivory, oyster, alabaster, paper white, snow, cream, ecru, Champagne, ghost, bone. Shopping got even more interesting when I began choosing colors for accessories.
Jeri, advising me, said, “Listen, Bride baby. If you must have a drop of color limit it to shoes and purses, but I’d keep both black when white simply won’t do. And don’t forget: no makeup. Not even lipstick or eyeliner. None.”
I asked him about jewelry. Gold? Some diamonds? An emerald brooch?
“No. No.” He threw his hands up. “No jewelry at all. Pearl dot earrings, maybe. No. Not even that. Just you, girl. All sable and ice. A panther in snow. And with your body? And those wolverine eyes? Please!”
I took his advice and it worked. Everywhere I went I got double takes but not like the faintly disgusted ones I used to get as a kid. These were adoring looks, stunned but hungry. Plus, unbeknownst to him, Jeri had given me the name for a product line. YOU, GIRL.
My face looks almost new in the mirror. My lips are back to normal; so are my nose and my eye. Only my rib area is still tender and, to my surprise, the scraped skin on my face has healed the quickest. I look almost beautiful again, so why am I still sad? On impulse I open the medicine cabinet and take out his shaving brush. I finger it. The silky hair is both tickly and soothing. I bring the brush to my chin, stroke it the way he used to. I move it to the underside of my jaw, then up to my earlobes. For some reason I feel faint. Soap. I need lather. I tear open a fancy box containing a tube of body foam “for the skin he loves.” Then I squeeze it into the soap dish and wet his brush. Slathering the foam on my face I am breathless. I lather my cheeks, under my nose. This is crazy I’m sure but I stare at my face. My eyes look wider and starry. My nose is not only healed, it’s perfect, and my lips between the white foam look so downright kissable I touch them with the tip of my little finger. I don’t want to stop, but I have to. I clasp his razor. How did he hold it? Some finger arrangement I don’t remember. I’ll have to practice. Meantime I use the dull edge and carve dark chocolate lanes through swirls of white lather. I splash water and rinse my face. The satisfaction that follows is so so sweet.
This working from home isn’t as
bad as I thought it would be. I have authority still, although Brooklyn second-guesses me, even overrides a few of my decisions. I don’t mind. I’m lucky she has my back. Besides, when I feel depressed the cure is tucked away in a little kit where his shaving equipment is. Lathering warm soapy water, I can hardly wait for the brushing and then the razor, the combination that both excites and soothes me. Lets me imagine without grief times when I was made fun of and hurt.
“She’s sort of pretty under all that black.” Neighbors and their daughters agreed. Sweetness never attended parent-teacher meetings or volleyball games. I was encouraged to take business courses not the college track, community college instead of four-year state universities. I didn’t do any of that. After I don’t know how many refusals, I finally got a job working stock—never sales where customers would see me. I wanted the cosmetics counter but didn’t dare ask for it. I got to be a buyer only after rock-dumb white girls got promotions or screwed up so bad they settled for somebody who actually knew about stock. Even the interview at Sylvia, Inc., got off to a bad start. They questioned my style, my clothes and told me to come back later. That’s when I consulted Jeri. Then walking down the hall toward the interviewer’s office, I could see the effect I was having: wide admiring eyes, grins and whispers: “Whoa!” “Oh, baby.” In no time I rocketed to regional manager. “See?” said Jeri. “Black sells. It’s the hottest commodity in the civilized world. White girls, even brown girls have to strip naked to get that kind of attention.”
True or not, it made me, remade me. I began to move differently—not a strut, not that pelvis-out rush of the runway—but a stride, slow and focused. Men leaped and I let myself be caught. For a while, anyway, until my sex life became sort of like Diet Coke—deceptively sweet minus nutrition. More like a PlayStation game imitating the safe glee of virtual violence and just as brief. All my boyfriends were typecast: would-be actors, rappers, professional athletes, players waiting for my crotch or my paycheck like an allowance; others, already having made it, treating me like a medal, a shiny quiet testimony to their prowess. Not one of them giving, helpful—none interested in what I thought, just what I looked like. Joking or baby-talking me through what I believed was serious conversation before they found more ego props elsewhere. I remember one date in particular, a medical student who persuaded me to join him on a visit to his parents’ house up north. As soon as he introduced me it was clear I was there to terrorize his family, a means of threat to this nice old white couple.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” he kept repeating. “Look at her, Mother? Dad?” His eyes were gleaming with malice.
But they outclassed him with their warmth—however faked—and charm. His disappointment was obvious, his anger thinly repressed. His parents even drove me to the train stop, probably so I wouldn’t have to put up with his failed racist joke on them. I was relieved, even knowing what the mother did with my used teacup.
Such was the landscape of men.
Then him. Booker. Booker Starbern.
I don’t want to think about him now. Or how empty, how trivial and lifeless everything seems now. I don’t want to remember how handsome he is, perfect except for that ugly burn scar on his shoulder. I stroked every inch of his golden skin, sucked his earlobes. I know the quality of the hair in his armpit; I fingered the dimple in his upper lip; I poured red wine in his navel and drank its spill. There is no place on my body his lips did not turn into bolts of lightning. Oh, God. I have to stop reliving our lovemaking. I have to forget how new it felt every single time, both fresh and somehow eternal. I’m tone-deaf but fucking him made me sing and then, and then out of nowhere, “You not the woman…” before vanishing like a ghost.
Dismissed.
Erased.
Even Sofia Huxley, of all people, erased me. A convict. A convict! She could have said, “No thanks,” or even “Get out!” No. She went postal. Maybe fistfighting is prison talk. Instead of words, broken bones and drawing blood is inmate conversation. I’m not sure which is worse, being dumped like trash or whipped like a slave.
We had lunch in my office the day before he split—lobster salad, Smartwater, peach slices in brandy. Oh, stop. I can’t keep thinking about him. And I’m stir-crazy slouching around these rooms. Too much light, too much space, too lonely. I have to put on some clothes and get out of here. Do what Brooklyn keeps nagging me about: forget sunglasses and floppy hats, show myself, live life like it really is life. She should know; she’s making Sylvia, Inc., her own.
I choose carefully: bone-white shorts and halter, high-wedged rope-and-straw sandals, beige canvas tote into which I drop the shaving brush in case I need it. Elle magazine and sunglasses too. Brooklyn would approve even though I’m just going two blocks to a park used mostly by dog walkers and seniors this time of day. Later on there will be joggers and skaters, but no mothers and children on a Saturday. Their weekends are for playdates, playrooms, playgrounds and play restaurants, all guarded by loving nannies with delicious accents.
I select a bench near an artificial pond where real ducks sail. And though I quickly block a memory of his describing the difference between wild drakes and yardbirds, my muscles remember his cool, massaging fingers. While I turn the pages of Elle and scan pictures of the young and eatable, I hear slow steps on gravel. I look up. The steps belong to a gray-haired couple strolling by, silent, holding hands. Their paunches are the exact same size, although his is lower down. Both wear colorless slacks and loose T-shirts imprinted with faded signs, front and back, about peace. The teenage dog walkers snigger and yank leashes for no reason, except perhaps envy of a long life of intimacy. The couple moves carefully, as though in a dream. Steps matching, looking straight ahead like people called to a spaceship where a door will slide open and a tongue of red carpet rolls out. They will ascend, hand in hand, into the arms of a benevolent Presence. They will hear music so beautiful it will bring you to tears.
That does it. The hand-holding couple, their silent music. I can’t stop it now—I’m back in the packed stadium. The screaming audience is no match for the wild, sexy music. Crowds dance in the aisles; people stand on their bench seats and clap to the drums. My arms are in the air waving to the music. My hips and head sway on their own. Before I see his face, his arms are around my waist, my back to his chest, his chin in my hair. Then his hands are on my stomach and I am dropping mine to hold on to his while we dance back to front. When the music stops I turn around to look at him. He smiles. I am moist and shivering.
Before I leave the park, I finger the bristles of the shaving brush. They are soft and warm.
Sweetness
Oh, yeah, I feel bad sometimes about how I treated Lula Ann when she was little. But you have to understand: I had to protect her. She didn’t know the world. There was no point in being tough or sassy even when you were right. Not in a world where you could be sent to a juvenile lockup for talking back or fighting in school, a world where you’d be the last one hired and the first one fired. She couldn’t know any of that or how her black skin would scare white people or make them laugh and trick her. I once saw a girl nowhere near as dark as Lula Ann and who couldn’t be more than ten years old tripped by one of a group of white boys and when she fell and tried to scramble up another one put his foot on her behind and knocked her flat again. Those boys held their stomachs and bent over with laughter. Long after she got away, they were still giggling, so proud of themselves. If I hadn’t been watching through the bus window I would have helped her, pulled her away from that white trash. See if I hadn’t trained Lula Ann properly she wouldn’t have known to always cross the street and avoid white boys. But the lessons I taught her paid off because in the end she made me proud as a peacock. It was in that case with that gang of pervert teachers—three of them, a man and two women—that she knocked it out of the park. Young as she was, she behaved like a grown-up on the witness stand—so calm and sure of herself. Fixing her wild hair was always a trial, but I braided it down tight for the court appearanc
e and bought her a blue and white sailor dress. I was nervous thinking she would stumble getting up to the stand, or stutter, or forget what the psychologists said and put me to shame. But no, thank God, she put the noose, so to speak, around at least one of those sinful teachers’ neck. The things they were accused of would make you puke. How they got little kids to do nasty things. It was in the newspapers and on television. For weeks, crowds of people with and without children in the school yelled outside the courthouse. Some had home-made signs saying, KILL THE FREAKS and NO MERCY FOR DEVILS.
I sat through most of the days of the trial, not all, just the days when Lula Ann was scheduled to appear, because many witnesses were postponed or never showed. They got sick or changed their minds. She looked scared but she stayed quiet, not like the other child witnesses fidgeting and whining. Some were even crying. After Lula Ann’s performance in that court and on the stand I was so proud of her, we walked the streets hand in hand. It’s not often you see a little black girl take down some evil whites. I wanted her to know how pleased I was so I had her ears pierced and bought her a pair of earrings—tiny gold hoops. Even the landlord smiled when he saw us. No pictures were in the newspapers because of privacy laws for children, but the word got out. The drugstore owner, who always turned his mouth down when he saw us together, handed Lula Ann a Clark bar after he heard about her courage.
I wasn’t a bad mother, you have to know that, but I may have done some hurtful things to my only child because I had to protect her. Had to. All because of skin privileges. At first I couldn’t see past all that black to know who she was and just plain love her. But I do. I really do. I think she understands now. I think so.