|
||
|
Tayari Jones from HAVE YOU KNOWN ME LATELY?
I’d really spent that December day and others with Monte. I wouldn’t have called him my boyfriend. He didn’t have my phone number and none of my friends even knew that I knew him. He was a nice boy, but short. When he introduced himself to me in the dark of the microfilm room, he did so by telling me my own name. “You’re Annett,” he said. I nodded. “Without the e on the end.” “The German way,” he said, telling me something about my own name that I hadn’t known. Each day since school had let out for Christmas, I rode the MARTA to the East Lake station where Monte waited on me, rubbing his small-boned hands together. “Why don’t you wear gloves?” I asked him. “Because I want to hold your hand.” My palm seemed too large in his as we walked to his house to make out. The couch in his living room was an imitation leather that squeaked as we wiggled on its slick surface. The furniture in my house was all crushed velvet. I preferred Monte’s mother’s taste in furnishing. Fake leather made you sweat. I picked Monte as the sort of guy who could understand rules, who could appreciate structure. There had been better looking guys in the microfilm room. They’d all been nerds, but some nerds were more attractive than others. For example, many nerds were tall. What drew me to Monte was the fact that he kept all his schoolwork in a red vinyl Trapper Keeper, a cross between a loose-leaf binder and a Zip-Loc bag. This was a boy who knew about order and caution. I’d laid the guidelines out in advance, put them in writing and gave them to him while we rode the elevator up to the third floor, where the archival material was kept. I’d felt sort of silly putting these terms into print. Some words were things you said, not things you wrote down. But I did it anyway. I couldn’t risk any sort of misunderstanding. So these were the rules: No drinking. No touching below the waist. No removal of any clothes (not counting outerwear). No humping. My Health teacher had warned us that humping, even “dry humping” could cause you to get pregnant, due to the industrious nature of microscopic sperms. Monte had read the guidelines and nodded. “Understand?” I said. He nodded again; his lips trembled but he didn’t speak. Then, I took the paper from him and shredded it with my big hands. I wouldn’t do to have my cover blown by simple carelessness. When it came to boy/girl matters, I lived under a rather inflexible mandate. But luckily, my folks had placed me on a sort of honor system. There was one rule, simple and broad. Don’t mess with boys. I said okay, I wouldn’t. This dictum, in place for two years now, had been provoked by the fact that I had, in seventh grade, for some reason, taken it upon myself to tongue-kiss Scotty Jackson in the band room after second period. A substitute teacher discovered us. I was grateful to see her. I wasn’t enjoying the kissing and hadn’t wanted to offend Scotty by telling him so. But the sub, young and new, looked something up in a yellow spiral bound booklet and told us that she would have to take us to the principal’s office. That night, my father had whipped me. He and my mother had called me into the kitchen and laid down the one rule. I’d agreed to it, grateful to have gotten off so easily. I had expected some sort of lingering, annoying punishment, to be forbidden to use the phone or go roller skating. I thought I’d be grounded like kids on TV. I never thought I’d be whipped. Neither of my parents had lain on hand on me in since fifth grade. Corporal punishment was supposed to be behind us. I’d earnestly promised not to have anything to do with any boys ever, when Daddy said, “Go to your room and take off your pants.” For two years, I’d pretty much kept my end of the bargain, unless you counted covert touching of thighs underneath the table in science lab. But since then, Angela, my best friend of over a month, suddenly stopped having lunch with me after she starting going-together with Joe Johnson. This is why I’d taken up with Monte, to gain and understanding of what went on between boys and girls. I wanted to experience passion and lose my mind, be changed, walk differently. But on the day that I walked in on Candace and Bernice, all I had to show for my time spent with Monte was a constellation of passion marks and warm craving that I found difficult to identify. I returned home, frustrated and a little depressed, and I’d found them there, in front of the Christmas tree in a clinch more graceful than anything I’d managed with Monte. To this day, I remember Berenice’s chin, tilted to receive Candace’s kiss. They pulled away as soon as they realized that I was there, but my split-second observation let me know that me and Monte, for all our efforts and intentions, had missed something fundamental. “Holy shit,” Candace said. “Annett, I thought you were gone shopping.” “I was,” I said. We were all silent then. Berenice sat on the burgundy sofa and looked at the Christmas tree. She was an ordinary looking girl, plain as tapioca. The blue lights of the Christmas tree made her look at little bit interesting, but still not pretty. As soon as I had the thought, I regretted it. Who was I to talk? I was no great beauty myself. I had decent features, basically symmetrical, which counted for something, but I didn’t have good skin. A case of late-childhood chicken pox left me with scarred cheeks and spoiled my face. Mother gave me a small pot of fade cream and assured me that other people didn’t notice, but I knew she was just being kind. Candace was the one with the looks—not that she was gorgeous, but she was a hair and nails sort of person. Her long bob sat just at the neckline of her cream angora sweater. I pulled my zipper up and down the front of my coat, just to make some noise. “Where are The Ps?” “Dad is out drinking with Uncle Frank.” “How do you know he’s out drinking?” Candace rolled her eyes. “What? Do you think he’s selecting Christmas ornaments?” “You don’t know for sure,” I said quietly, embarrassed to be having this conversation in front of company. “Don’t worry,” she said to Berenice. “He’s not a mean drunk. He’s a funny drunk. The more he drinks, the funnier he gets.” “Where’s Ma?” “Gone to buy more stuffing for her dolls.” Our mother is an avid hobbyist, specializing in copyright infringement. That year, she’d taken it upon herself to sew one hundred replicas of the popular Cabbage Patch Dolls. In April, Mother would dress the dolls in sorority regalia and sell them at the convention. A dozen dolls, naked as newborns, leaned forward a bit, as though eavesdropping. I turned my attention from their cloth faces and looked at my sister, who had never liked me, not even when I was a baby. Because of a six-year age difference, she was more like a young aunt than a sister. But I adored her, maybe because she was out of my reach or maybe because she was prettier and my parents liked her better. “Shit,” Candace said, smacking one of the soft-bodied dolls. “You’re going to tell The Ps.” She flopped down on the couch and took Berenice’s hand. I saw Berenice try and free her fingers, but Candace held her fast. “No need to be shy now. Annett’s going to tell. I’ve been knowing her all her life. I know how she is.” [...]
|
||
