Читать книгу Crave - Laurie Jean Cannady - Страница 14

The Way It Is Done The Way It Is Done

By the time Momma was fifteen, she was the last Boone child home. Her only reprieve from labor she alone had to complete and her daddy’s watchful eye were visits with her momma. She’d beg, after finishing homework and chores, to escape Deep Creek’s suffocating forest and dusty road so she could find freedom in Portsmouth, with its rows of homes lined like vertebrae and its fast-moving cars cruising the arteries and veins of the growing city. Most days, the answer was “no,” but there were days Big Boone’s “yes” came with strict instructions that she go to her mother’s and stay there until he either picked her up or her momma took her back to Deep Creek.

She usually abided by her daddy’s rules, but like most fifteen-year-olds, she wore his authority like a sweater she could slip out of. If her momma had been drinking, she could slide out of the house and back in unnoticed. That’s how she met Pop, slid right into him before she could stop herself.

She first saw Pop when she was fourteen. Her daddy had temporarily closed shop in Deep Creek in order to housesit for his sister, Lina. Aunt Lina had a beautiful home, everything so immaculate and shiny, Momma spent the first day admiring the furniture, the trinkets, the pictures on the walls, taking a mental note of things she hoped to one day possess in her own home. She went outside for a walk and was met by a honking horn. Behind that horn sat Pop, his “honk” the universal sign that he liked what he saw and wanted to get closer. She was only a young girl then and her daddy was near, so close wasn’t happening that day, but a year later, when she was able to slide out of her momma’s house back to that neighborhood, where her sister now resided, she answered Pop’s call.

Pop, at nineteen, fascinated Momma. He’d just finished high school and had enlisted in the military. At 6’5” with a medium build, most women would consider him a tall drink of water. Since Momma wasn’t a woman, she considered him an ocean. To her, his words were like hot caramel sliding down a sundae, and when he danced, she followed every jerk, every twist of his body like a stenographer, transcribing his movements into something she could later read. He was also a singer, and on weekends he’d take her, her sister, and her sister’s husband to a club in Norfolk to watch him sing. On those nights, she felt grown, sitting in that club, rocking from side-to-side, transfixed on this man who was quickly becoming her everything. Whenever he spoke to her or around her, she straightened her back, pushed out her breasts and leaned into him. Something was happening to Momma then, something she would unwittingly teach me years later. She was learning to fit her existence around a man’s, and being a quick study, she no longer fought to fit into his space; she became his space.

Soon, every motive centered on getting her daddy to let her go to her momma’s so she could sneak to her sister’s and to Pop. He had an actual girlfriend, one his age, but that didn’t stop him from giving her attention, from telling her how pretty she was, and sneaking a hug or a kiss when no one was looking. Then, they began playing games, games that went beyond “truth or dare” or “hide-and-go-get.” Their games often included alcohol, kissing, heavy petting, and sometimes they excluded clothing. While those games perplexed her and oftentimes troubled her, she was with her sister and her sister’s husband. She was with friends and a man she was falling in love with, as much as a fifteen-year-old could. She felt safe and she had her boundaries, but the lines around her were moving so subtly, she didn’t realize her boundaries were becoming invisible.

Games that included Pop, her sister, brother-in-law, and other friends soon became games she and Pop played alone. Sometimes, the games required a bed, but even those she believed she could handle. During heavy petting and kissing sessions, Pop had always stopped when she said, “No more.” She began to trust him, which meant to love him, and she thought nothing of going into the bedroom, lying in his arms, kissing and grinding in order to prove her affection.

Many days found them in the bedroom together, groping one another. At times, they tried to move to the next stage, but she was still a little girl, even if she acted like a woman. Her tears and pleas for him to stop reminded them both of that. Until the day he ran his hands between her legs and up and down her breasts. He wound his pelvis hard, like a merry-go-round, sustaining rhythm, holding her as if she were a ride he could flip off of. She held onto him too, gripping the sides of his arms, feeling his veins bulging under her grasp. She whispered, “Stop. No.”

He muffled her pleas with his lips, all softness. Warm air from his nose ricocheted against the side of her cheek. The next kisses were not soft, not warm. They were the pressing of lips, tongue into her. She pulled away, but the more she pulled the more he pressed. His hand, clenching, hurt the outside of her thigh. His pelvis rotated as he used one hand to restrain both her hands above her head. One kiss erupted into another before she caught her breath. Her mind screamed, That is enough, and then her mouth screamed, “That is enough,” and then her mouth couldn’t scream anymore and her hands couldn’t push anymore, and her legs were open with his thighs wedged between her thighs.

She attempted another “No,” but he, again, silenced her with his lips. She struggled to free her arms, but his hand remained locked around her wrists. Her body tensed, legs tightened, feet flexed, all preparing for impact. Then submission, when nothing more can be done. Only tears were there, pouring down the sides of her face, washing away the girl she was.

When he was done, when he let go, she ran into the bathroom, plunked on the toilet, and stared down. Blood. With so little knowledge about virginity and what happens when it is taken, she wondered from where the blood dripped.

After a knock on the door, there her sister stood, reaching out to comfort her. Momma cried, “Why didn’t you come for me when you heard me scream?”

“It’s all right,” her sister gently replied, “You’re okay,” with care. “This is the way it’s done.” She rubbed Momma’s back like a teacher, rubbing away tears attached to skinned knees and stubbed toes. She asked, “Do you need anything?”

Momma shook her head, “No,” even though she required much in that moment—an understanding, an apology, an admonition it was not her fault—but she asked for none of those things. She accepted, “This is the way it’s done,” even as she shook her head from side to side and cried.

“This is the way it’s done,” her sister had said, which meant it might have been done to her. Maybe it had been done to her other sisters too, maybe even her mother. “This is the way it’s done” played repeatedly in her mind. What happened, she knew, was wrong, but this is the way it’s done.

She repeated those words as she cleaned herself. She heard them as she returned to the living room where her brother-in-law, alone, stood. She searched the room for Pop, but he was gone. She searched for her sister, but she, too, could not be found. Her brother-in-law had been charged with taking her back to her mother’s on the handlebars of his bike.

As they rode, she clenched the handlebars, rocking from side to side, working to gain balance. She sat, ankles crossed against the stinging between her legs. Her brother-in-law whispered in her ear as the wind whipped across her face. He said many things, but all she heard was, “Don’t tell your daddy.” This is the way it’s done.

She did not tell the first time it happened, so she couldn’t tell each time that followed, each wrestling match in the bedroom, each ride on the handlebars of her brother-in-law’s bike.

The first time, she had not wanted it. This she knew for certain. But the second, the third, and each time that followed, she couldn’t be so sure. It didn’t take much for her to agree to that house, to that bedroom, to that bike. It was the way things were done.

Each time, she screamed. Each time, she cried, but those moments under Pop’s gaze seemed fair trade for tears that would later fall. With each encounter, Momma learned something all women eventually come to know. Loving a man means sacrifice, giving. The act of receiving, of taking, that is the gift he gives her. This is the way it is done.