Something She Can Feel (23 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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Chapter Eighteen
A
s desperate as things seemed to be getting in my marriage, in my family—in my personal life in general since my thirty-third birthday, there were moments like the one with Zenobia that day out in the lobby of the school at the beginning of sixth period that brought some clarity. The days following, I remembered what my mother said about taking stock of my life and I realized that while I wasn't clear at all on the direction anything was going to take—at that point I was willing to admit that—I had to begin to trust myself. As I told Zenobia, who was now having to take stock of her life and start planning a path that even I couldn't imagine how dark it was going to get, I had to believe in myself. That only
I
knew if
I
wasn't happy. That
I
knew if
I
was happy. And that soon, I'd have to make a decision about everything and trust, like I'd told Zenobia, it would be okay. Now, this was just a tested theory in my mind at the time. While I'd tried to seem confident and allknowing like adults did whenever they shared advice with children like Zenobia, I was preparing myself to take baby steps to get to wherever I was going. So when Evan came to me each night when the moon was high and he wanted me to make good on my promise to start a family, I kept a secret to myself and just said I was tired. But the truth was I needed time to think. Time to make a decision to stay and move forward. To fall back in love with my life and having him in it. Or time to plan away out. To just walk away from everything and leave my past behind and Evan with it. And then I'd think about Dame and how he'd left and went out into the world even before anyone said he should. Just like me, everyone had plans for him, but he had plans for himself.
At church on Sunday, it was as if I wasn't even there. I was sitting in my seat beside Evan and next to May and Jr, but I wasn't there. I couldn't hear the sermon or focus on one song that was sung. I was praying. Not in a formal way. Not with my hands lifted or my head bowed. In fact, if anyone found my face in the row, they'd think I was just listening. But I was in my mind. Meditating and thinking of the better me. The better Journey I wanted to be. The things about myself that I hadn't said to myself in a long time. My wants. My desires. My strengths. The things that Dame had said to me that tickled my ears like the lightest feather.
Evan rested his hand on my lap and laughed at something my father was saying. It was a big laugh—one that let me know that Evan was just in his world while I was in mine. As he was static, I was racing. As he was staying the same, I was changing. And then I looked out over the congregation and suddenly all I could see was moving parts. Everyone was the same. The way my mother looked at my father—even when she was angry with him. The way Jr rolled his eyes when Jack Newsome stood up. Mrs. Alice sitting in the third seat from the aisle in the fifth row. The choir in the loft. They were all the same as they'd always been. The same grudges. The same fears. The same happiness. The same sadness. The same praise in the same place I'd been every Sunday of my life. And for the first time, I thought maybe I wasn't even there. It was like I was watching a movie. I wasn't even there. Just in it. Participating as expected and playing a role, saying lines when cued. After this, Evan and I would walk to the car, talk about the sermon, and head to my parents' house for dinner. There, my father would press me about children. May would be quiet. Jr would say something mean and I'd sit and wait for it to be over. The act was the same and I'd be there for the entire thing until I went to bed and lay in my space in the bed where the moon looked down on me to see that once again, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. This list turned into a tornado in my mind. It was spinning and kicking up dust all around. Forever—forever. I was breathless just thinking about it. Just wondering how I could do it all and come out okay on the other side. Could I still be me each night when I went to bed? Could I be my best? Or was I someone else?
I looked up into the rows in the second and then third balcony to try to find something still to stop the spinning—to focus on. Six faces I counted—all laughing, all smiling at the same thing. Seven. A door swinging open. A man with his back to me. He was walking outside the doors, but even from my seat I could see his size, his gait, how he carried himself in the loose fitting jeans and buttoned-up shirt he was wearing.
“Benji?” I said, and hearing Dame say in my mind, “Whenever you see Benji, know that I'm just two steps behind,” my heart immediately began to palpitate.
“What'd you say, honey?” Evan asked, leaning toward me.
“Nothing,” I answered, but there was something. Like a rope was tied from my navel to Benji's waist, I was being tugged somehow from my seat. “I have to go,” I said next and I didn't know where I was going or what excuse I was about to use to get out of that church. But I just had to. I had to see.
“Go where?” Evan looked at me.
“My head ... it hurts.” I massaged my forehead. “I need to go home.”
“Well, let's go,” he said, moving to get up.
“No.” I put my hand out to stop him. “You don't have to come with me... . I don't want you to miss the rest of the sermon. You were enjoying it. I'll just go home and rest up a bit and come meet you at my parents' for dinner. I'll take the car and you can catch a ride with Jr and May.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just need some rest. Some quiet.”
He handed me the car keys.
“I'll see you later,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.
“Yeah.”
 
“Wait! Wait!” I hollered at Benji's back. I'd run—not in an inconspicuous trot, but in a full dash as if the very air I was breathing depended upon it—out the doors by my seat, down the stairs, through the lobby, and out into the parking lot to catch him. I was out of breath and sweating, my hair had come loose and I realized I'd left my purse in my seat, but I was still running.
Benji stopped.
“Wait,” I said, reaching out to grab him as I fought to keep my breath. “Wait.”
He turned to me.
“Is ... he ... here?” I managed. “Dame?”
“He's waiting for you,” he said, “by the river.”
 
They called it Princess Pale Moon's Throat. A secluded, untouched corner of the Black Warrior River where a gentle stream created by rolling hills beneath the fall line separating the upper part of the river from the lower part ran beneath canopies of maple, sweet gum, and poplar trees. Behind the trees, a mixture of sand, gravel, and mud that washed up from the floor of the stream when the river ran high created a path that was just wide enough for a car to come winding down to get up close to the stream so that someone could get out and walk over to enjoy its beauty. For years, this path was known as “the Throat,” a road that led lovers to the most beautiful face Alabama had to offer—Princess Pale Moon, a Choctaw beauty who was said to be loved by more men than Mataoaka, known to most people as Pocahontas. It was the most secret place in Tuscaloosa every lover, old and young, knew about. Unlike other parts of the river, which were now largely rerouted for navigation and big business with the coal from the basin, nothing was ever built there or left along the edge of the path to let anyone know it had been discovered. And we liked it that way. So much so that if anyone arrived in a car with their lover, hoping to park and be alone in the world for a little while, and there was already another car there, the new arrivals would quickly shift into reverse and head back out onto the main road. The face was to be enjoyed alone. The secret of the place had to be kept.
When Benji said Dame was waiting by the river, I knew where to go, where to head off the main road and catch the start of the throat to lead myself to the sweet gum trees. In the clearing, where the throat turned for the last time and then a straight path led to the stream, I saw the old pickup truck. It was up on the side of the path and the driver's-side door was open. I pulled up behind the truck and turned off my engine. All around outside was silent when I got out of the car, but then a yellowhammer flitted off the top of the stream and flew up into the sky. I watched the bird disappear and then looked back at the quiet truck. I couldn't see Dame.
“You're scaring off all of the birds,” he said behind me. I didn't turn. I just laughed and shook my head.
“Maybe he's going to tell his friends I'm here,” I said.
“And maybe he already knew you'd be here, but he was too scared to approach you face to face.”
“Scared?” I turned around as I laughed. But Dame wasn't there.
“Got ya!” He poked me on the shoulder and I turned again and there he was—brown and beautiful again.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I don't know. I haven't been out here since I was in high school,” he said, and we started walking toward the stream.
“Not at the Throat,” I said. “I mean, why are you in Alabama? I saw Benji at the church.”
“I know. I sent him there.”
“For what?”
“What do you think?” he asked. “I told him to go there and just see what happened. If you saw him and asked about me, then he'd tell you I was here, and if not ... it wasn't meant to be.”
“But there are thousands of people in the church. How could you know I'd see him?”
“In a room full of a million people, if there's one thing you want, you'll see it.”
“Oh, you're so sure of yourself.”
“I have reason to be.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I am who I am.”
“You're ...” I shook my head, trying to remember where I'd heard that quote in the Bible. “Exodus—”
“3:14.” He grinned, knowing I didn't expect him to know where that came from.
“That's blasphemy!” I couldn't help but grin back as I said this.
“What?”
“You're too cocky.”
“I should be cocky. I'm a black man.”
“Here we go again.”
“No. No. No.” He reached out for me, placing his hand between my arm and torso. “You want to know why I'm really cocky today?”
“Why?”
“Because I'm here with you.”
I looked away, knowing my cheeks revealed my excitement at hearing that.
He pulled me closer to the side of the stream where a big, flat rock sat right in the middle.
“Let's sit down.” He pointed to the rock, but there was a little pool of water between the dirt where we were standing and the rock.
“I'll never make it in these shoes,” I said, looking at my heels.
“Okay,” he said, putting out his arms to pick me up.
“Oh no, you can't pick me up. I'm too big,” I said. “I'll just take off my shoes and—ohh!”
I was up in the air. Before I could finish my statement, Dame picked me up and hopped onto the rock light and assured like it was a lily pad. He let me down slowly and easily as if he could hold me for another five hours and I felt so light. So impossibly light and just manageable. After easing down to my feet with his arms still held at my sides, I realized I had no clue how big or small I was right then. It didn't matter. In front of him I purely felt like a woman. A graceful, precious, feminine woman who was okay ...
as is
. My diet was permanently over.
“I know you said you didn't want to see me again, but I can't do that again. I just can't stop thinking about you,” he said after we sat down. “Since you came to Atlanta, it seems like everything else in my world is just dead.”
“I've been thinking the same thing, too,” I said.
“I can't go back to that. I can't pretend anymore.”
“But I—”
“Wait, before you say that, let me say something,” he said, pulling me down to sit on the rock beside him. “I don't care about my image, my fans, the industry—I don't give a damn what anyone in that club the other night thought about what I had to say about how I feel about you. I'm open and I'm not going to hide it anymore.” He paused and looked at me. “Now, all I want to hear from you right now is what you really feel—not what you believe you should feel or should say. I want to know what you really feel about me because that's all I'm giving you. I'm not hiding anything.”
He pitched a rock he'd picked up out into the stream, and the yellowhammer appeared again, flying from a branch along the canopy. Another followed behind it.
“You make me feel like I'm ten years younger—and not like I did when I really was ten years younger—with duties and promises—my life set out in front of me like a map I couldn't change. Maybe like I should've felt then. Like I could do anything. Go anywhere. And that's something because before, I was so comfortable, and now ... well, I've never been so afraid in my life. Afraid somebody might find out. But that fear—that rush—has made me see everything differently. Like what I would do if I could just pick up that map and tear it up and walk away ... just leave everybody,” I said, looking at him. “And when I think about walking away—even though I know I can't—I think about you. About your energy. Your kindness. How everyone just looks when you walk into a room. It's like you're electric. You own yourself and you don't care what people think. And no matter how old you are, that's the most manly thing I've ever seen. In fact, it's beautiful.”

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