Chameleon (15 page)

“Marisol?”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I stepped back into the shadow to rest my hand and eyes. I glanced back to see the door to Louisiana closing as Trent stepped inside. The fellas didn’t realize I was missing.

Shoot! Marisol. I can’t look at her without my heart hurting, let alone talk to her without sounding like an idiot.

“I’m here school shopping with my mom. She’s in the shoe store just up the block,” she said, pointing past Lucky Liquors, “but I saw you standing here and wanted to say hi.”

She wanted to say hi to me? That stopped my wandering eyes long enough to focus on her outfit. Dotted green toes poked out of clear jellies. Green pedal pushers pushed their way up to a matching green sleeveless blouse. A waterfall of black hair cascaded over her glowing shoulders.

“Your hair is down.”

Shoot! Why’d I say that? She’s gonna think I was staring. Look away.

“Yeah, I washed it this morning, so I decided to wear it down for the day. I can’t wear it the same way
all
the time,” she said. Her right hand touched my elbow as she laughed and exaggerated “all.”

Nice hands. Her soft touch relaxed my body for a moment. But only a moment. Now what do I say? Think, Shawn. Think.

Wait. Don’t think. Just talk.

“It looks good like that. I didn’t realize it was that long. When was the last time you cut it?”

What kind of stupid question was that, “When did you last cut it?” Does anybody remember when they cut their hair? Now she’s gonna think . . .

“Can you believe I haven’t cut it in two years?” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “The only reason I remember is because my brother dared me to cut it before my twelfth birthday. I said OK, but then he said I couldn’t cut it again for at least two years. So”— she touched her hair again —“it’s been two years and counting.”

She tossed it out of her way to the back, then turned around and glanced back at me.

“It is getting long, huh?”

A sea of black flowed down the back of her green blouse, past her shoulders, splashing onto her butt. My eyes pounced on the sight like a cat on a mouse as her hips swiveled the long black strands side to side. Her pedal pushers were just tight enough to see the curve of her butt stretch the green fabric tight. Mother Nature must have been looking out for me because a light breeze brushed the hair aside long enough to reveal her green bottom in full bloom.

Pop!
I snapped a mental picture for future viewing.

I wished I was those pants. My heart sped up. I tried to catch my breath. It felt like I was running a race. She repeated the question and turned again: “Don’t you think?”

Shoot, I forgot the question. “Don’t I think what?”

“My hair . . . it’s pretty long now, right?”

Again she tossed her hair. Again I tried to catch my breath.

“Yeah . . . umm . . . it is pretty long,” I said, picking up my train of thought.

Now I remember. Hair . . . cut . . . bet. Bet.

“So what’d you win?” I asked.

She shifted her weight to one side. Unlike Janine, her body didn’t form into a full
S
shape. It curved. But not like Janine curved.

“What did I win . . . when?” she asked.

“For not cutting your hair? The bet?”

“Ohhhh, right . . . right. Nothing so far. But on my fourteenth birthday, my brother said he’d get me something special.”

She’s not even fourteen? I’m older than her? I always thought she was older than me.

“You mean . . . I’m older than you?”

Why did I say that?

“I guess so.” Her eyes blinked at mine. “When is your birthday?” She ran her left hand through her hair and shifted her weight again. Is she left-handed?

My heart sped up. Speak, Shawn. Answer the question.

“Umm, it was a while ago. Back in January.”

“You’re not that much older than me. Mine is in a month, so I’ll be caught up to you,” she said, brushing her elbow at my side.

I tried to think of something to say, but my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of —

“OH, GOD! OH, GOD! OH, GOD!” punctuated with blasts of “YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!”

No! Tell me I didn’t hear what I just heard. Tell me my ears are playing tricks on me. Tell me these three fools are not out here moaning and groaning. Tell me they are NOT doing this. Not here. Not now. Not in front of Marisol. Not . . . in front . . . of Marisol!

I spun around, expecting the worst. The image before me was even more embarrassing than I imagined. The fellas stood in front of Louisiana Fried Chicken facing us, a chicken wing in one of each of their hands, huddled together, moaning and groaning. Lorenzo once again clawed at his shirt with his free hand while Trent grabbed at his own sweat-stained shirt. Andre stood in front, circling his hand across the basketball, thrusting his hips and panting like a hot dog between moans and groans.

“Marisol — I gotta go.”

I wish I had a flying guillotine to silence them from where I stood.

“I just . . . I gotta go!” I said, backing up.

If I could hear them, I knew she could. I turned around and picked up the pace, their voices getting louder with each step.

As I dashed away she called out: “
Adiós,
Shawn!”

I looked back over my shoulder and paused as she tickled a beauty-queen wave good-bye. Didn’t she do that at the Tamale Hut yesterday?

I can’t believe they did it again. I didn’t like it when they did it before, and I didn’t like it now. They changed their tune as I got closer: “Go, Shawnie! Go, Shawnie! Go, Shawnie-Shawnie-Shawn-Shawnie!”

I snatched the ball from Andre and bounced up the block, huffing past their embarrassing chant. Lorenzo tried to grab my shoulder, but I jerked out of his grip and sped up. They followed. I stopped.

“I hope you guys are happy,” I said, jerking my hand up to shade my eyes. Andre and Trent flinched like I was gonna hit them.

“Everything was easy-breezy with Marisol until y’all ruined it!”

I dropped my head and focused on the sidewalk, tossing the ball from hand to hand.

“Come on, Shawnie-Shawn . . . we was just bustin’ on you. Having fun. You know . . .” Lorenzo said.

“Yeah, I know . . . you meant to embarrass me!” I said. Loud.

“Naw, Shawn. Come on, man, it ain’t like that,” Andre said.

“We just . . . we saw you and your girl and . . .” he added.

“She’s not my girl,” I interrupted.

Lorenzo jumped in. “You could’ve fooled me. The way she was looking at you, smiling at you, touching your arm, running her fingers through her hair, showing you her butt. . . .” He imitated Marisol doing everything he just said: flitting his eyelashes at me, rubbing my arm, throwing his head back with his fingers brushing through his junior Afro, turning around to show me his big backside. I did everything I could to keep from laughing.

You know, she did touch me more than a few times, and she did run her fingers through her hair a lot but —“Hold on . . . what do you mean ‘showing me her butt’?” I squeezed the ball with both hands.

Lorenzo continued, “Oh, come on, Shawn . . . you didn’t see that? I saw her turn around a couple of times at least. Most girls, and I do mean most, know we check out their bee-hind, so they try to hide it from us. But not her, brutha man. Uh-uh. She had it on full display, just for you.” He nudged me in the ribs and added, “I saw her turn around, looking back at you all sweet-like —”

“‘What do you think of my butt, Shawn? It’s nice and round, isn’t it?’” Trent interrupted, making Andre and Lorenzo bust up.

I slammed the ball into his stomach, making him cough and Andre and Lorenzo go quiet.

“Dang, Shawn, I’m just saying,” Trent said, clutching his stomach and the ball.

“See, Shawn. Look at you. You got it bad for her, brutha man. But the thing is . . . the way she was acting”— Lorenzo shook his head —“she likes you too.”

Was Marisol “checking me out,” like Lorenzo said? Her smile flashed across my brain more than a few times as I replayed the scene in my head. Her hair swayed a bunch of times too. Hmmmm. She laughed a lot. And smiled a lot too. Maybe he was right.

“I’m telling you, Shawnie-Shawn, she was eyeballin’ you,” Lorenzo said, adding, “Girls usually try to avoid my eyes at all costs.”

“That’s ’cause they know you thinking about them naked,” Trent said. That drew a laugh from Andre, Trent,
and
Lorenzo, who added, “Well, you know . . .”

I never even thought about what Marisol was thinking, standing there talking to me. Didn’t she come up to me, even though her mother was up the block? She didn’t have to do that. But she did. Didn’t she show me her butt — I mean hair — not once, but twice?

I rewound back to that moment: me standing there squinting my eyes from the bright sun, noticing her bright green outfit glowing in the shade. My heart sped up again, and a smile worked its way across my face. Until . . . that sound. My smile disappeared.

“Yeah, but you guys messed that all up with your little show. I told you to cool it with them noises!”

I was mad. Marisol was gone, and I had no idea when I’d see her again.

I scanned the block for her green figure and sighed when the only thing even close was
Lucky Liquors
written in green letters a few feet from where we stood.

We headed up the block side by side. Andre snatched the ball from me.

“Cheer up, Shawn. Life is good if you got girls smiling at you. I almost forgot,” Lorenzo said, pulling a silver package from his sweatshirt pocket and passing it to me, “we saved you some chicken wings. You’d be amazed at how many you can get for a dollar.”

I unwrapped the foil to find two plump, grease-splattered fried chicken wings. My grumbling stomach did flips at the sight.

The breeze blew my thoughts back to Marisol . . . her smooth shoulders, her fluttering eyelashes, her bright smile, her black hair, her butt — oh, man — that butt.

And then . . . that sound. A man and a woman —“doing their thing”— moaning, groaning, scratching, clawing, and everything else, repeated for the world to hear from the mouths of three loud teenagers. Repeated in front of the chicken shacks. Repeated in front of the liquor stores. Repeated in front of the beauty parlors. Repeated in front of the check cashers and all the storefronts. Repeated in front of the one person I didn’t want to hear them: the girl in green with silky black locks. The girl who made me forget red, forget blue. The girl who made me forget drunken sighs, forget slurred words. The girl who made me forget the hot sun and how to breathe. The girl with the nice butt, who showed it to me, twice. The girl who touched me with her smile: Marisol.

Dang!

I tore into the deep-fried flesh like a lion devouring a deer and managed to chew out a simple and plain “Thanks.”

HOUSES TOOK THE PLACE OF storefronts as we bounced in no particular direction. No more liquor stores. No more beauty parlors. No more chicken shacks. Just houses. White ones. Tan ones. Brown ones. Green ones. Blue ones. Yellow ones. Pink ones. Pink ones? Who would paint a house pink? I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody say, “You know, I would love to have a pink house.”

I imagined who was in each house and what they were doing as we strolled by. How many couples were “doing their thing”? How many were just sitting there watching TV? How many were passed out on the floor?

“Where we goin’?” Trent asked, terminating his dribble at an intersection.

To our right was MLK. To our left was Auntie’s house. Straight ahead was the Tamale Hut.

Lorenzo wiped the sweat from his forehead and said: “It’s
too
hot. Them chicken wings made me thirsty.”

“Yeah, my mouth is like a desert,” Trent said, smacking his lips.

Trent wiped the sweat from his forehead, making me and Andre do the same. My mouth was dry too, but we were broke, so . . . another problem to solve.

“Well, we outta money, so what you wanna do?” I said.

Lorenzo flapped air under his shirt and spoke again: “You know what? My house is right down here. We could get something to drink and cool off for a li’l bit.”

He pointed right. Same direction as MLK.

“Cool with me,” dribbled from our lips, and we bounced off. Andre snatched the ball and weaved between me and Trent like we were pylons in his path.

“You going out for the basketball team at Marshall, Andre?” I asked.

Lorenzo led the way, with me and Trent close behind. Andre was a few steps ahead of us, but he drifted back between me and Trent. He wiped more sweat from his brow and answered, “Yeah, either freshman or JV. JV’ll be much better, but I might have to start off on the freshman team. I don’t know how it works.”

“What about varsity?” Trent asked.

“Shoot, I ain’t ready for that. Those guys are huge,” he answered, tossing the ball between his hands.

“Yeah, but if you’re good, you should be able to play for the best team, right?” I asked.

“If I make JV, I’ll be happy with that,” he replied, then flipped the question to me, “What about you, Shawn? You going out?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it,” I said.

“Come on, Shawn, if I’m going out, you
gotta
go out — you
better
go out. We could be on the same team and everything,” Andre said, nudging me with the ball.