Finding My Thunder (26 page)

"Write
more. Tell me…."

"I
love you. I cried on the way home from the VA because I can't bear to think of you
hurt. I kiss your picture but I've had to stop because I'm ruining it."

"Don't
use tongue," he tried to joke. "No…use tongue. I'll get you another
picture."

"I
do count the days on a calendar until you might be home. I feel you in my brain
all the time, in my skin even, and there's really not a whole hour where I
don't wonder what you're doing, how you feel."

"Why?"
he said. "Tell me why."

Naomi
never did come out of her room, but I had to keep my voice low but I spoke desperate,
"Because I love you so much."

"Do
you think of how it will be…when we see each other again?"

"All
the time, don't you?"

He
laughed some, "I want to feel you under my hands, you know? I want the
real you."

"Me
too. I want you."

"Why?"

"Because
I love you. I don't want to be with anyone but you. No one ever…ever even comes
close for me. It's you."

We
sat in those words for a few seconds. It wasn't a waste of time because it was so
powerful.

"Your
heart beats so hard when I touch you," he said.

It
was hammering now.

They
were yelling at him and he said he had to get off. "Think about what we
said and write me," he said.

"I
love you," I said.

I
heard scuffling and then the line was dead.

Finding My Thunder 41

Danny
was coming home the day after Christmas. He would leave for Vietnam the same
week Sukey got out of the boy's farm. Christmas at Temple was a busy affair.
Ever since Thanksgiving we'd been collecting things, prizes and baking and cooking
and sewing for the children and older folks, and moms raising children by themselves,
and the soldiers and jailbirds, just everyone.

We
served Christmas dinner at the Temple and Naomi spoke to us after, the big white
bird and the black fist rising up on the wall behind her. We pretty much loved or
hated that fist but no one felt strongly enough one way or the other. And it
did bring Derrick back when he visited
Lavinia
on
holidays.

Debra
seemed relieved because Tad was due home from the army the end of January. But
me, I was popping out of my skin thinking I'd pick Danny up from the airport
next day. While Naomi spoke I rubbed my fingers against each other. These very
fingers would touch him in less than twenty-four hours. He would be here. He was
coming home.

Endless
letters and phone calls on Sunday. We had two weeks now before they shipped him
out. Two weeks to try and get it close as we could to right. No more of this
maybe, we should, we shouldn't. No more bullshit.

I
was in the pew my ankles crossed and pulled back and my legs scissoring. I had set
up my room. I wasn't on the pill like I'd planned but I nearly was, not that it
counted. I'd made it to Planned Parenthood, but it was up a long flight of
stairs in Memphis and I went up them halfway and people were up there laughing
in an office, I guess, I couldn't see, but I stopped on those stairs and I was
so afraid to go up there, and maybe ashamed, I don't know, I had a lot to
overcome to be a woman of my time. So we were going to have to think of
something else and anyway I couldn't imagine I'd get pregnant. I knew I could
but I couldn't imagine it and usually what I couldn't imagine couldn't happen
at all.

When
Temple was over I got home and he didn't call me cause he was busy traveling,
so I changed into my jeans and went to the big house. Naomi wouldn't be home
for a long time. She had so many people to see and I had been so good and helpful
I was free.

So
I ran to the house, some albums in my arms and I went into the clean kitchen
and through the downstairs to run up the steps and I breathed that Pine Sol and
went in to my old room. I'd been staying here some and Naomi didn't like it so
much, worried about me, but I knew if I let her see me happy she wouldn't stop
me. So I did let the happy out but it was mostly over thinking how Danny and me
would be together. But my old room, it was in readiness, bed fresh and sweet, music
piled and waiting, rug and pillows on the floor, candles waiting for fire and flame,
new poster painted in neon colors. I laid there, music playing, and I thought of
him moving toward me, coming my way after all these long four months, eager to be
home with me, he said he was, and my arms aching to receive him.

Longest
day of my life the day after Christmas. I was an hour early at the airport. I'd
nearly had a wreck in Lonnie's truck. There were still things I didn't know or understand
about roads and Memphis was so busy, but I finally got there and parked and
walked forever until I found the area where he'd be, and I rounded a corner and
there was a game room and a soldier standing at a pinball machine and playing
it, he had broad shoulders and he was tall and he wore a wide hat like a cop's
hat, and I walked up behind and my body knew it was him before my mind ever
caught up and he had a big green duffle bag on the floor by his feet and he had
just cursed at that machine and his game was over. He turned around then like
he felt me close maybe and I stood there and I didn't look like much, but I
wore a skirt and a sweater and a white peasant blouse and the slip he wanted to
feel under it and my hair was so long folks talked to me about it sometimes,
asked me about it, other girls and guys touched it while I sat in my desk but I
pulled it away.

But
now, he took it all in, not dramatic, just serious and happy at the same time, but
quiet. He didn't reach for me, nor me for him.

"Hey,"
I said, and he seemed to come to himself after looking me over and he bent for
that big bag and hoisted it up and we just started walking, then we got closer and
he put his arm around my waist and pulled me in but almost as soon we broke apart.
It was too much and I was so excited, this feeling between us I almost couldn't
think where I'd parked the truck.

Handsome?
Oh my God he was the most handsome thing I'd ever seen. A man for sure. I had a
man. Danny. He was clean shaven and bright eyed and his face seemed harder and
his neck even so strong, and that big bag riding his shoulder like it was
nothing. And his hands. He was so tall. Was I shrinking? No wonder I was so crazy
in love.

We
said some dumb stuff, small talk people make. When we got to the truck he threw
his bag in and we parted and got in each side. He seemed ready for something,
his legs spread wide. His hat off and his hair buzzed but beautiful. "You gonna
kiss me?" he said just those eyes on me making me crazy.

"You
want to drive?" I said.

"You
can," he said, then he pulled me over and his lips were on me and it was
bold and he was in control. I was at his command cause I whimpered I was so
pathetic and my hands were on his face and we were looking at each other now. I
really didn't know if I could drive.

He
stared at my mouth just so boldly, "Kiss me," he whispered, and I did
slowly let my lips touch his, and his tongue moved over my lips, then he pulled
me to him and we kissed hard and his tongue was in my mouth and I thought I
would die with this powerful lust that hit me like the holy ghost and made me
moan. I just went crazy then, my feet on the seat and me falling onto him as I
kissed him and knew him that way. I didn't want him to know how desperate I
was, how lonely for him, a madwoman for him.

He
was laughing some and kissing me back but the laughing, even while he panted
and put my hand on his thing that was big in there and hard and he lifted his hips
off the seat but it wasn't organized and I could barely note what was going on
I was just feeling inside and out.

I
ended on his lap, my legs over his, skirt hiked on pale flesh that drew his
hands and led him all the way to squeezing my bottom and settling me against
him. Naomi flew through my mind and I pushed that thought out. She wasn't here.
She didn't know. It was just him and I was melting on to him and my arms were
around him and I was never going to let him go. We were kissing with everything
we had…I was…and surely he was cause this old truck squeaked and moved like it
was coming to life.

This
is how it went, I knew now. His breath up close, his arm around me, his hand on
the back of my neck holding me to him, me tasting him, his mouth, his skin, invading
him, letting him invade me, mixing everything, wanting everything while I smelled
him, the places he'd been, who he was, it was new and a little familiar, and completely
strange and so exciting.

This
was private bedroom type kissing and moving and I was in a garage and I could
hear car doors off in the distance closing and cars passing now and then, people
calling to each other, but nothing close, just Danny Boyd so close I was trying
to crawl into him and he was trying to get into me and he was succeeding. I felt
shocked when his hand was on my private place and I was letting myself go and crazy
and moaning and rubbing myself on him, his hand and his
willy
like that time in my room only worse. I knew the truck was moving and I was
like Sooner for all the control. And he was slowing me down and saying my name,
the "H" sound so beautiful the way he said it, and I pulled back
panting and looking in his face. He was stroking over my hair. "You're
so…you're even prettier…you’re beautiful," he said and he was breathless
like me.

I
started to come to myself and I climbed off him and he let me. We were looking at
each other and his uniform was rumpled.

"I'll
drive," he said and I nodded and straightened my skirt and stayed in the
middle of the seat and he came around and when he got in, his uniform shirt was
off and even though it was winter and chilly he threw that shirt behind the
seat and in that white t-shirt with the v-neck he got in and started it up and
I had one arm behind him and the other across his stomach and I held him and he
looked at me as he drove through that garage.

"Miss
me?" he asked and he had to laugh some and he was even cuter, cute in the beauty,
when he laughed, and I didn't even answer I was just looking at him.

Once
we got out of there, out of that garage and on the highway he worked his arm
around me and I kissed on his jaw and rubbed on the front of his pants until he'd
make me stop because he could barely drive and he said I was killing him, and so
I'd leave off rubbing but I'd never take my arms away from him.

We
drove straight to my house, and I was in a haze the whole time and I had him park
in front, I didn't care and when we got out he picked me up and I whooped and he
carried me up the stairs and in and I slammed the door and I told him to go up and
he carried me all the way up and into my room and he kicked the door closed and
we fell on the bed and he kissed me for such a long time, then he pulled back and
tore at his shirt and he undid that buckle on his pants and that hair line
going into his pants he opened his clothes and I saw it, where it went and he
was bare and glorious and I wanted him, I wanted him. He got his boots off and
everything off.

Then
he knelt over me and worked on my blouse and got it off with my help, and I unbuttoned
my skirt and I was in the slip, laying on my back and he did run his hands all
over it, over me. My legs opened up, so hospitable, come on in, and he looked
at me, then looked there and he stood and pulled my underwear off me and he
looked there as he knelt back on the bed, one knee between mine and he gently but
firmly parted my legs enough he could see me.

"You're
so…." It just died cause whatever I was to him, the silence was what said
it and it was something he didn't have yet, those words, but he had me and I
was so willing, and I opened more for him and it felt so free to give myself to
let someone know me like this and his thing was so ready and he lined it up and
we got to kissing and squirming around and he pushed in and I yelped because it
hurt so much, but it was like I was dying for him, right there in the act,
letting him in when he knew it hurt and he was conflicted, wanting in, not
wanting to hurt me, and I had to keep telling him it was okay, try again, oh
no, get out, go in, slower, it's okay, don't stop, no stop, no….

He
laughed a little, “Don't worry I won't stop,” he said, “unless you need me to.”
But he choked out those words and he was so confident I kept going. When he was
in me it was relief and misery. He tried to move a little but that hurt so he
was slow, then the movement helped and didn't, and all of a sudden he was
grunting and sweat was on his forehead and he shuddered and his face had this
expression of receiving…like a commission…I don't know how to describe it, but
he pulled out and I felt the liquid follow and my blood was on him, and it was
sacred blood, just for him, I gave him all I had, me, such as I am.

And
he gathered me to him. "I," and he broke and swallowed. "Thank
you. I'll take care of you, too."

"It's
okay," I whispered, his salty skin all over me, wrapping me in itself.

Finding My Thunder 42

Danny
rose in the morning to go home. He started to gather up his greens. He said he
wanted to get them right because Dickens would care so much.

While
he did that he sang me some of their marching songs, words so nasty I couldn't
believe it, but they were funny too. It was the best music my room had ever experienced.

Well
he kept forgetting to get dressed and revisiting me in the bed where we kept kissing
and hugging and rubbing and making noise.

"Do
you want me to drive you?" I said.

No
he didn't. He did not want to explain to his mother that he'd been lying up
with me. He figured his mother knew, even though he'd smoothed it all out with
lies, saying his flight got in this morning and a buddy was dropping him off in
Ludicrous.

But
she would never condone what he was doing, he said. She wouldn't comment if he
didn't rub it in her face. It wasn't me, it was the whole thing of him compromising
a woman he wasn't married too, but claimed to love. That's just the way it was
for his Catholic self.

Secretly,
she would be glad he had me, he said. Unlike Paul, his mother knew he'd felt
alone.

His
clothes abandoned once again we lay in the gray light and he'd held me and

told how his
mother had written him in the first weeks he'd been gone. She mentioned she'd
met me and found me to be a beautiful girl with a compassionate heart.

That
was what she'd said. Beautiful and compassionate. Naomi would remind me of Abigail
in Scripture if she could hear this. Abigail was one of three people in the whole
of the bible noted for her intelligence. The other two were men, but Abigail was
the only woman given credit for having something beyond good looks. Good looks
were top soil, Naomi liked to say, but underneath, Abigail had rich earth.

Things
could take root.

Danny's
mother had seen more in me than some top soil then. Compassion was the
underneath. I had not thought of myself that way. I wondered if it was true or she'd
just given me too much credit.

So
before he left my bed again, Danny told me he'd thought about it all those months
away and he would marry me. I saw no other future either. I had never been a
girl given to those kinds of fantasies…wedding, bride and all. I did not have a
Barbie Doll or ever feel the need for the endless acting out of those things.

When
I saw myself down the road I was Nina Simone, standing before crowds and telling
them the truth. There was greatness in me, I knew it, but only in terms of a small
life. That was the great thing…a life where there was love. That would be my great
work.

In
real I was cotton and denim, not sequined dresses. Not microphones please. But
kindness in my hand, a poem under my pen, safety in my space and joy breaking open
like fragrant good bread. Feeling and thinking and listening…those things were
my ambitions.

Then
sharing everything with Danny…with my world because nothing mattered if you
held it, but it grew if you had the guts to let it out.

"I
would marry you," he said again.

"If
I was pregnant?" I tried to understand.

He
laughed a little. "If you would let me," he corrected.

"I
don't really believe in marriage," I said.

Well,
I did, it stood there like a giant, refusing to budge, but I was scared of it
was more to the truth. "Doesn't marriage scare you?" I said.

"No,"
he answered right away. And I knew why. Right off I knew. He was facing war.
Marriage was nothing. Actually he'd pondered it for hours and it seemed like a good
thing, something he could count on. He wanted something he could count on. I saw
it more then, him, this time together, what it meant. He was looking to join
us, be close in every way.

Lord
he swung out the whole path of the pendulum. He broke with me and then went the
whole other way. Now he was talking marriage. This was him inside. It was like
seeing him naked twice, in the flesh if I wanted to look under the sheet, but inside
too.

But
here's the thing, I couldn't have given myself if I felt anything less than
full on to the grave love. Marriage was the usual destination for this kind of
singing in the rain. "I don't love you any less if I say we should
wait," I said.

"Why? Why
wait?"

I
got up on my elbow and looked at him good. "Cause…marriage…they say you don't
need it anymore."

"I
don't believe that," he said angry, even though he was touching my hair
like a

butterfly.

"Why
do we need it? It doesn't keep people loving each other."

"That's
because it's just a thing…like a contract."

"So
we don't need it," I said.

"You
been raised in church all your life. You're supposed to be telling me why we

need it."

"You're
the one brought it up," I said.

"Well,
it's the deepest thing," he said. "It means you're saying, 'for
life.' It takes some guts. You got to put your ass on the line and figure stuff
out. Maybe you want someone else?"

"Do
I?" I said knowing my one eyebrow was up. I couldn't pull it down for
nothing.

"You
know what I mean."

"What
if you don't always feel this way?" I said.

"I
will. Will you?"

"I
told you it's always just you. But marriage…."

"Just
forget it. You're just a junior."

"I
don't care about that," but I did. Girls got married out of high school,
but during school was a little quick. But I'd always been off-sides in my life.
There were no time tables where I lived. "You were promised to Tahlila,"
I said.

I
felt his arm stiffen some, felt the ease tighten up. "Don't always bring
her up."

"I
mean…is this what you think you have to do or something?"

"I'm
only going to tell you this stupid story one more time. About three of them got
those kinds of rings about the same time. Then that's all I heard. It was a
promise ring, a promise that we were serious and on that road. I can't say it
in a way that's not going to get me in trouble, but I kept waiting to like her.
She was like a room.

“You
could go in there and you were in that thing. It was like “The
Jetsons
,” you get on that moving belt and it moves you.
That ring was totally her idea. I thought it was harmless and it would make her
happy and get her off me so I could think of how to get out of it. I knew I was
going to get out of it. It was…a way to hide almost. Tahlila filled the bill
pretty much, I always had a date, she kept the others away. So many people got
connected to it, it got to be complicated so I didn't fight it I just played sports
and made sure it ran smooth at home for Mom and that bunch of monkeys and it
pretty much did."

"You
were passive," I said.

"Not
really. Passive is like…effort. I didn't care. But my sympathy for her only goes
so far. Every time she let my indifference be enough I lost respect a little
more and I knew a little more. Yeah, that ring was all guilt. She could never
ever be someone I wanted a life with. I was never looking for that with
her."

"Okay…no
more about it," I said, still not understanding. He liked to go to extremes.
I was the other extreme from her. That worried me some, but I did have a suspicious
nature.

"I
don't want a promise ring," I said.

That's
when he remembered my birthday present and got up in his birthday suit to wrestle
through his bag and find it. He told me, "Don't look." Then he
laughed and he said, "You can stare at my ass, just don't look at what I'm
doing."

"Thanks,
I'll just keep my eyes closed," I said, staring at his perfect ass.

I
heard the rattle of something ceramic. When he stood straight and turned he
held a china box he obviously had buried in the center of his bag. He carried
this to me in all his natural tan beauty, his black hair, his long arms and
hands and legs, his
willy
just right there. I called
him a hunk in my mind. That's what girls said about boys who were
beautiful-hunks. He was that, and more.

I
sat up like Lady Godiva, the sheet around my waist. I took that pretty box so carefully,
a pink rose on it.

"Look
inside," he said.

I
set it on my lap, him standing beside the bed. I lifted the lid and inside was
a bed of cotton and on it lay two silver earrings with dark gray pearls on the
ends. They were so pretty. I looked at him. "Thank you," I said, so
damn glad it was not a promise ring.

He
knelt next to the bed and took my hand. I could not look away from the expression
as naked as the rest of him. He was not going to let this rest.

"I
love you. And I want to marry you. Will you…marry me, Hilly?"

"Eventually,"
I said sounding so stupid. Then, "Do you…really? Why?"

"It's
what you do when you feel like this and when you have intercourse and want to
keep on having it with someone like…forever. And maybe make a baby…or a bunch
of monkeys," he laughed. "So, why wait? I mean…I do want you to be a
normal girl…but…me and you…."

"In
ancient times," I said because it sounded less like Naomi, "an
earring meant ownership."

"Yeah?"
he said liking this too much.

"So…you
own my heart," I said taking out the gold hoops I'd been wearing and putting
the black pearls on silver chains into the self-inflicted holes in my ears. I turned
my head side to side so he could look at each with a certain gravity. I watched
him up close, until my hands went to his face and he stopped looking at the
earrings and stared at me. I had a revelation, another look inside of him. Danny
wanted a future. I was his future. He wanted to think of it when he left…that
it waited for him, that the war was just a break in it, not an end in itself.

"I'll
wait for you," I said. "I always have…I always will. I'll marry you
when you get back…but for me? It's already settled."

He
grasped my hand in both of his and kissed my knuckles. His head was bowed and
his eyes were closed. We'd just exchanged vows and we both knew it.