Читать книгу Crave - Laurie Jean Cannady - Страница 23

Black Oak Black Oak

My first memories of Pee Wee don’t include his age or information about how he met Momma. I just remember he was tall. With dark skin and coarse, black hair that made his face coppery by comparison, he seemed nice, doling out candies and calling me Minnie Mouse as he patted my puffy ponytails. I never had the illusion that Pee Wee was my daddy. I knew my brothers and I belonged only to Momma, but from a distance, I watched the way he walked, with his back upright and tall, like an ironing board. I watched the way he ate, with a ferocity that made food disappear. And, I watched the way he touched Momma, sometimes softly palming the small of her back or holding her hand when they walked together. I loved him for the way he loved her even though he could never be my daddy.

One of the things I appreciated most about Pee Wee was the disappearance of hunger when he was around. I remember him and Momma tromping into the house, grocery bags under each arm. He wore a smile that meant there was a Hershey bar hidden in the bottom of the bag just for me. I’d watch, expectantly, as he and Momma unpacked food and loaded cupboards until they looked as if they would burst from fullness. Then I’d receive my treat, a blob of chocolaty sweetness I swished back and forth from cheek to teeth to tongue until my mouth became a chocolate cavern.

Pee Wee babysat us when Momma went to work. Most days consisted of a visit to “Tom and Jerry” land, a lunch comprised of a thick slab of bologna, a square chunk of cheese, two slices of bread, and a glass of juice, which left us with red mustaches on our faces that we licked like cherry lollipops well into the day. Then we’d play together, outside or in the house; it didn’t matter as long as we were running, jumping, and screaming. We weren’t lucky enough to have our own bikes, so we hopped on our neighbors’, Ryan and Tyler’s, which were bikes pieced together out of parts from the junkyard.

My brothers and I often got into little skirmishes when we played with Ryan and Tyler, the Wozniak boys. The Wozniak boys were rough. They ran up and down Victory Boulevard, shirtless, and wearing shorts that formerly were pants. Their skin was so white I could see veins running along their chests and up their necks. And their necks were a dingy gray, with dirt that sometimes resembled paint splotches. Their teeth were a yellowish brown, as if the boys had been sipping coffee, even though they were only eight and ten.

What intrigued me about them was they were white, but they were as poor as we were, maybe poorer, and they looked nothing like the well-dressed kids I adored on Eight Is Enough. I remember Ryan and Tyler scrounging in our backyard, combing through trashcans for treasures Momma may have unknowingly discarded. It wasn’t unusual to see Ryan wearing the same holey, butter-cookie shoes Momma had thrown out because they were too mangled for Champ to wear.

When I was four, Champ sold me to Ryan for a raw, peeled potato. All I had to do was let him grind on me for ten seconds, and Champ would split the booty with me. The potato was brown and tattooed in lines of dirt from Ryan’s hands. Tyler stood partially hidden, snickering against the side of the house. I didn’t think it was a good trade, the potato for myself, but Champ and I were hungry and dinnertime seemed years away. Even with all of the dirt covering the potato’s flesh, it looked tasty. And I’d never eaten a potato like an apple before, so I imagined the juicy crunch would be foreign, refreshing, and worth what I was giving.

So, I let Ryan do the nasty to me while we leaned against the side of the house. His hands were placed on both sides of my head, as he stared straight at the wall. His breath smelled musty as it ricocheted from the siding to my nose. His lips twisted into a grimace as he thrust his pelvis into my stomach, without any specific rhythm or purpose. It was just pulsing, pushing for the sake of itself. I looked past Ryan, past Champ, and past the potato to the interstate that ran in front of my house. I saw the cars whizzing by to worlds I often imagined. I then looked at the big black oak hovering over me, and wondered what it felt like never to be wanting, to be so big, so grand, so free, waving in the wind.

Champ counted, “One, two, three . . . ,” slowly and melodically. After he reached ten, Ryan pushed off of me and ran away with our dirty potato. Champ tried to chase him, but Ryan was too fast. After making his way to his bike, which squeaked as he mounted it, Ryan quickly took off. Champ then ran back to me out of breath.

“Man, you should have held him,” he said.

“I know,” I squeaked. “Next time, I will.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to catch him and beat him up,” he replied.

Champ then grabbed a hold of my arm and we walked hand-in-hand back to the front of our house. Later that day, all had been forgiven. We picked right back up with Ryan and Tyler where we had left our friendship, running, playing, and laughing.

One sunny afternoon, I’d been playing hopscotch by myself while Champ, Dathan, Ryan, and Tyler were wrestling, imitating NWA wrestlers. Champ was Dusty Rhodes and Ryan was Ric Flair. Dathan and Tyler were the managers, the fans, and the referees. In the middle of one of their toughest matches, where Champ had Ryan in a headlock and Tyler was positioning himself for a sneak attack on Dathan, Pee Wee came barreling down the stairs and stood tall in the middle of the doorway. Normally, his voice wafted down the stairs. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted one of us to do that he couldn’t have done for himself when he’d gotten up, but I was ready to comply, hoping there’d be a chocolaty treat at the end of his request.

“Laurie,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“I need you to come upstairs for me right quick.”

“You need Dathan and Champ, too?” I asked.

“No, just you,” and he quickly went back up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

When I entered the living room, with only a loveseat, television, and my little sister’s crib, I expected to see him sitting there with his long legs hanging over the side. I was startled to find he was behind me, closing and locking the door.

Pee Wee walked over to the chair. His feet, dragging along the floor, sounded like the swish of the broom. He sat on the loveseat and told me to go into Momma’s room and get her brush. I quickly moved, skipping into the room, hoping he’d reward me with a glass of juice afterward. I was already planning to rub my liquidy treat into Champ and Dathan’s faces as one skip after another carried me into Momma’s room.

I looked for the brush on the dresser, but it wasn’t there. Then, I went over to the nightstand because I thought that it had fallen on the side of the bed, but it wasn’t there either. Then, I remembered I was watching Momma brush her hair in the bathroom before she’d gone to work that day, so I turned and bolted for the door, but there Pee Wee stood between me and the open space in the living room. For some reason, he was bigger than I remembered, as if he’d grown ten feet from the time I left him in the living room to that moment when he was standing between me and the door. His face was different too, darker, and his eyebrows were so close they could have been kissing. I stopped, mid-sprint and said, “Excuse me, Pee Wee. I think the brush is in the bathroom.” He didn’t move.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pee Wee,” I said again and attempted to step around him. I flinched, as he sharply dropped to his knees.

“Laurie, are you scared of me?” he asked. Normally, I would have said “no,” because Momma would have been there to save me if Pee Wee or anybody tried to hurt me, but this time, I wasn’t sure of what to say. I’d always been able to joke with him and he often laughed whenever I said something Momma considered grown, but this wasn’t Pee Wee kneeling in front of me. This was a dark cloud of a man that could hurt me because Momma was at work and Champ and Dathan were outside. Since I was on my own, I replied with a nod of my head.

“Do you think that I’d ever hurt you?” A sharp smile appeared on his face, but his eyebrows were still crowded at his forehead.

I nodded again. The smile then faded.

“You’re right,” he said. “I would. Do you love your momma and your brothers and sister?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“Then you better do exactly what I say and if you tell anybody, I’m gonna kill them all and then I’m gonna kill you. You understand, Laurie?”

I did understand. I’d never known of anybody being killed before. Other than Uncle Junie dying of Leukemia in 1980, I’d never seen a dead body. I didn’t know Uncle Junie was dead until at his funeral I yelled for him to get up and stop acting like he was asleep and Momma slapped me hard across the side of my face. Only then had I seen what death looked like, drenched in pain and sadness. As I stared at my uncle in that casket, I was glad I had never told what Pee Wee was doing.

“Laurie,” he said, “I want you to lay on this bed and be quiet. Don’t say nothing and don’t you cry. Just lay here and I’m going to lay on top of you. You hear me?” I nodded again.

I was actually relieved all I had to do was let Pee Wee “do-the-nasty” to me like Ryan had. With Ryan, I’d never gotten the satisfaction of sinking my teeth into the dirty flesh of the potato, but at least I’d have my family if I let Pee Wee do what he wanted. So, he grabbed me by my wrist and led me to the bed. I wasn’t even afraid, even though I didn’t have Champ to count down from ten for me.

“Lay down,” he said as I plopped my torso onto the bed and turned my head toward the open window.

“Open your legs.”

I moved my right leg sharply to the edge of the bed as if I were opening a pair of scissors.

“Move your hands off your chest.”

I quickly pulled them close to my sides and grabbed my shorts. Pee Wee then grabbed my shorts and underwear in one fist and pulled them down to my ankles. The heat contained in the fabric radiated across my skin. I was confused; “doing the nasty” had never required the removal of clothing, especially underwear. I didn’t know what Pee Wee was planning on doing, but I wanted so badly to tell him he was doing it wrong.

The house went silent and I could only hear the hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off in the kitchen. Pee Wee then laid his body on top of mine. The heat of his skin made me feel sticky. If I turned my left foot inward, I could feel the joint clinking in his right knee. He was still for a moment and then began deeply inhaling and exhaling as his stomach muscles pressed into my chest. He moved his hand down and began rubbing on something; I was almost certain it was his penis or “dookey” as Champ and I often called it. I smelled the lotion Momma always rubbed on us after we took a bath and wondered why he was rubbing it there. Momma had always told me and Champ never to put anything on our private areas because it could make my “biscuit” and Champ’s “dookey” sick. I began to wonder why she’d never told Pee Wee that.

Pee Wee then touched me and my body went into a spasm. No matter how many times I’d “done the nasty” with Ryan and Tyler, no one had ever touched that part of me. Pee Wee’s fingers felt like ice and I became happy my shorts and underwear were around my ankles because my feet were cold. Then, I felt something hot, even harder than his fingers pressing against me, my private spot, my space. His stomach muscles contracted. With a grunt from his chest he forced pressure into me. My legs attempted to snap shut, but met the resistance of his outer thighs.

His rhythm made my body flinch. With each down beat, each pull, I knew the stinging, burning, pressure that would follow. Unlike Ryan, Pee Wee seemed to have a purpose for his pulsing, his pushing and each thrust cut a piece of me out of me. I wanted to scream, to release the pressure and the heat from between my legs into a howl, but I couldn’t; my family’s life depended on me doing exactly what he told me to do. So, I bit hard the inside of my lip and tasted blood running through me.

I turned my head to the window, then back toward Pee Wee. All I could see was his neck and the dark lines that ran across it. Then I looked down at my belly, my once round belly I had relished on nights when Momma cooked biscuits from scratch and navy beans. I found it to be flat, empty.

My fingers stiffly clenched my sides, grabbing onto skin with each thrust and releasing with each retraction. Then, I lifted my head from the bed, wanting to see what was causing so much pain—hoping I could find a remedy if I could see what the problem was. Then I saw him, disappearing into me. I’d only seen a penis when Momma made Champ, Dathan, and me take baths together in order to conserve water, but I’d never seen anything as dark and ugly as what was going in and out of me. I worried it would turn the bottom half of me black and everybody would know how bad of a girl I was.

I was too afraid to cry tears, so I cried in my mind. I went back to a time when my cousin Tedren had taken me to a mall and decided to go up the escalators instead of the stairs. Somehow, I separated from her, but I saw myself as I stood, afraid of the moving stairs while she waited for me at the top. I, at the bottom, was too afraid to take that first step. I remember her looking down at me, clapping her hands, telling me it was safe. But all I could see were those silver, moving stairs swallowing me whole. So, I stood there and cried out with every ounce of fire I had until she came back down, picked me up, and took me safely up the stairs. Those tears stained my cheeks long after we left the mall, so I had no doubt there were enough to spare for the tears I could not cry while Pee Wee was on top of me.

Pee Wee’s rhythm began to quicken and his breathing turned from intermittent grunts to long huffs every few seconds. Soon after, I went numb, unable to feel my hands, my feet, and anything in between. Suddenly, he lay completely limp on me and the feeling slowly returned to my body. I felt his sweat, his heat, latent against the inside of my thigh. He rolled off of me like a leech swollen with blood and lay flat on his back. Pee Wee then turned his eyes to me and looked right into mine. “Don’t forget what I told you,” he said, “If you don’t want your Momma dead, then you better not tell anybody.”

He didn’t have to warn me again. I knew telling would only mean bad things for me. “Now go into the bathroom and pee,” he said.

I was so grateful to be out of Momma’s room, so afraid I would have to go back, that I forced urine out of me as quickly as my bladder would allow and wiped from front to back as Momma had always instructed me to. I felt a void, an absence of flesh in the middle of me, even though I saw red tears trickling onto the surface of the water. I wiped again, front to back, and then again, front to back, until the red trickles ceased.

By the time I left the bathroom, Pee Wee was on the loveseat, watching television. His legs were in their usual position, draped along the arm of the chair and he had one hand resting on his belly, while the other one was wedged behind his neck.

“Get me a cup of Kool-Aid, Laurie. Then you can go back outside. You can have a cup for yourself too.” I poured Pee Wee’s Kool-Aid in a glass that had a crack, which ran from the bottom of the cup to the brim. I stared at it curiously, wondering how it still had strength to hold itself together while so broken. Then I poured a cup for myself. I sat there and sipped the Kool-Aid, afraid if I gulped, I would choke. It was cold going down my throat, but it tasted saltier than it did sweet. I realized the sweet was mixing with the sweat on my upper lip, which made me think of Pee Wee’s sweat. After that, I couldn’t drink anymore. I tiptoed past Pee Wee, placed the cup on the coffee table, and found the once locked door, unlocked and slightly opened. I carefully went down the stairs and sat where the porch and the steps met. Champ and Dathan had finished their last match with Ryan and Tyler and were covered in dirt. They ran over to me on the porch, panting out words that were supposed to describe how they’d kicked Ryan’s and Tyler’s butts. Dathan spotted the red line atop my lip and asked, “Laurie, you got some Kool-Aid? I want some? How come you able to get some when it’s not lunch or dinnertime?”

“Yeah,” Champ echoed, “How come you were able to get some?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no answer for what I had done, what acts had led to what I once thought was a gift. Champ then began making his way up the stairs, “I’m gonna ask Pee Wee can I have some, too,” he said, envy floating through his words.

“Champ, you don’t want to do that,” I said, afraid Pee Wee would think I had told and Champ possibly wanted the same thing I had gotten.

“Why not,” Champ asked, “If you got some, I can have some.”

“Yeah,” Dathan said.

“You don’t want it, Champ. It’s not even good. It tastes like it has salt in it, like he mixed it with salt instead of sugar. I put most of mine back. So, don’t ask him for any ’cause he’s gonna get mad if he knows you know.” Champ looked at me with skepticism, but eventually turned away.

“Man, I don’t want no Kool-Aid anyway. Dathan, let’s go over to Ryan and Tyler’s and see if they mixed anymore of their daddy’s beer with Kool-Aid. Maybe they’ll give us some this time.” Both Dathan and Champ hopped off of the porch and made their way to the Wozniaks’ house. I, again, was alone.

The sun shone so brightly, I could barely open my eyes. I felt as if I were burning, even though there was a small breeze caressing my skin. I sat on the porch and looked out at the cars zooming on the interstate. The reds, the blues, and the greens were all a blur. I wondered about the people in the cars and if some of them held the same secret I now held. I wondered if their worlds allowed people like me to live in them despite the awful thing I had just done. I thought about Pee Wee upstairs on the couch, gulping down the Kool-Aid, tasting every grain of sugar. I wanted nothing more than to be away from him, riding in one of those cars, transformed into a red, green, or blue blur. But I knew that could not be. There wasn’t a car big enough to carry my family and the secret I now owned. So, I sat on the porch and looked at the black oak, waving in the wind, strong, tall, solid. The opposite of me.