Nowhere Is a Place (30 page)

Sawyer fingered the cross around her neck and then her fingers absently searched the thin gold chain for the clasp, unhooked it, and tucked it safely away into the top drawer of her bureau.

Vonnie didn’t like religion.

He moved slowly and with no great conviction down the four streets that made up the District. Familiar faces turned away or lowered, and hands came up to conceal, but Vonnie knew them all. The hard ones—the sanctified, single, married, and lost.

The District, a shotgun of a place that was never supposed to be anything more than a pit stop between Augusta and Myanmar but somehow grew into a cluster of rag-tag buildings that leaned in high winds and seemed almost imaginary during the long hazy, heated days of summer.

* * *

Sawyer meets him at the doorway, the scent of lavender water sailing from her bare elbows. She wants to kiss him on his mouth that is so unkissable, dying to know what those ruined lips will feel like against her own, but he won’t allow it and so she just smiles and steps back, letting him through.

The room is less than appealing: stained and peeling wallpaper, cracks stretching along the ceiling like cobwebs. Sawyer has tried to make it beautiful, soft. Sheer curtains, a colorful gypsy’s wrap thrown across a cluster of oil lamps. A mauve-colored cushioned stool sits in one corner of the room, a standing mirror crowned with stalks of heather in the other.

Vonnie sits down heavily on the foot of the bed. He does not remove his hat but waits for Sawyer to do so, and she does, placing it on her head as she hums a foreign tune and begins a slow dance of seduction.

Vonnie watches nothing but her feet, and she knows it will be awhile before his eyes break loose and crawl up her calves. He likes her knees and so will spend some time there before gathering his courage again and scaling her thighs, rounding her hips, up her stomach before stopping at her breasts, which poke out at him from her cupless brassiere.

By the time his eyes fall on those succulent, jutting nipples, he will be more than ready for her. He will feel like perfection itself and will have no problem tilting his head skyward without the broad brim of his hat casting shadows and hiding his cruel mouth.

* * *

There in the District in the middle of the day, curtains pulled back and dazzling sunlight spilling in and igniting every inch of Sawyer’s body, there he could take his time and push away the nasty comments his cleft palate brought. Could toss out the adult faces that stared in horror and then whispered behind cupped hands. There he could erase the pointing children that mocked him for the two years he went to school.

In that place he could forget the angry tears he’d cried because he wanted what all boys his ages wanted, but no girl would give him because of his mouth, which drove him to take it from his own gene pool.

There he could twist his father’s words to make it all seem okay and right.

There in the District and in the middle of the day, he could caress and sink into that wet place that was so yielding, so warm that he imagined heaven itself was lodged there and he did not have to swallow his moans. His timepiece was of no consequence, and the ownership was brief and paid for. And when it was over, he could lie there in the crook of her arm and smell the stink and sweet of them both and listen to what the world sounded like beneath the beating heart of a body that was spent and glistening, while she stroked his cheek and told him that he was beautiful.

___________________

The days sizzle on and after nearly a year, Lovey still does not understand how one can tell the difference between spring and summer in that part of the world. She is as miserable in June as she was in April. Dumpling has started to drag her words and Beanie Moe is always walking around with a stalk of hay dangling from the corner of his mouth, like some cowboy.

Wella is all but lost, because when Lovey points to the framed picture of Lillie, Wella looks back at her, blinks, and asks, “Who you say dat is again?”

Down here with the heat that didn’t seem to let up until January, and everything the young teacher Mrs. Pace was teaching, Lovey had learned two years earlier. Now she sat, twirling her pencil in her hand and staring out at the open road and the field beyond.

Some part of her still half expected to see Lillie come strolling out of the blue, or at least down from the big house, handbag swinging from her wrist, the heels of her pumps leaving tiny half moons in the dirt. A year earlier Lovey had thought that if she wished it hard enough, it would happen. But it never did, even though there were times when the room was suddenly overwhelmed with the scent of Evening in Paris and Lovey would look around for a jutting hip, curling cigarette smoke, and a splash of red.

And to make things worse, the prized red pumps were missing and all she had left to dote on were the crimson-colored silk gloves and the red plastic beaded necklace.

___________________

“Women in the District got a passion for red too,” Suce told her after she’d bitten off a piece of snuff and tucked it into the corner of her jaw.

Lovey shrugged her shoulders and continued clearing the table of the dinner dishes.

“Don’t you like no other color?” Suce probed.

Lovey shrugged her shoulders.

“Yellow is nice.” Suce breathed. “Green too.”

“I guess.”

“Blue, how about blue? Do you like blue?”

“Not as much as I do red.”

“Blue like the sky. Big. Everywhere you look, can’t miss it. Always on display, always noticed. Not like red, most times you gotta search for red, gotta dig it out of something living.”

Lovey had never thought of it that way. “Hmmm,” she said, and started to walk away, but Suce caught her by the wrist and held tight.

“What you say we exchange?”

Lovey twisted her lips. “Exchange?”

“Yeah. You give me them red beads and I’ll give you something blue in return.”

Lovey snatched her hand away from Suce. “Them beads belonged to my mama!”

Suce kept her voice steady. “I know, and your mama belonged to me.”

Lovey just stared.

“I ain’t got nothing of hers to hold on to,” Suce added.

“You got plenty.”

“Well, nothing as special as them beads.” Suce rolled the tobacco across her tongue and tucked it into the other cheek. “It ain’t like they leaving the house; you can come see ’em anytime you want.”

Lovey smirked. “What you going to give me?”

“Got a blue ceramic pig your Uncle Ezekiel sent me from Chicago.”

“I don’t want no pig.”

“Uhm . . . I know, I got a blue ribbon—ain’t never been worn,” Suce said hopefully.

“I got blue ribbons.”

Suce racked her brain. “Well, I don’t know, child. What you think you want?”

Lovey knew, had spotted it the first time she set foot in that house and Suce reached out for her. “That,” she said, pointing to the blue granite eagle hanging from the leather strip around Suce’s wrist.

Suce felt her breath catch in her throat and her hand went immediately and protectively to the charm. “This?”

“Yeah, I’ll trade you the beads for that,” Lovey said emphatically.

Suce slowly rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the stone. “What you want it for?”

Lovey smirked again and leaned heavily on one leg, jutting out her slim hip. “Don’t worry. You can see it every day and I’ll let you visit with it whenever you want,” she said sarcastically, and then grinned slyly.

Suce’s eyes snagged on the child’s hip before breaking free and finding her face. She had to blink; it was the first time she realized how much Lovey resembled her own Lillie.

“Well?” Lovey said, pushing her open palm closer to Suce’s face.

Suce shook her head clear and even managed a stiff laugh as she slipped the charm from her wrist. It was just a piece of stone. It wasn’t like she was passing it along to a stranger, this was her grandchild, she thought, and then aloud she said, “This belonged to my mother.”

“Uh-huh,” Lovey said, still pushing her eager open palm out toward Suce.

“Uh-uh. Even exchange,” Suce said, and pointed a finger at the red beads around Lovey’s neck.

Lovey smiled and then carefully lifted the necklace of beads from her neck and held them out to Suce. “Okay, on the count of three.” She laughed, and on three Suce grabbed hold of the beads and dropped the blue eagle into Lovey’s hand.

___________________

Maybe it was the weather that day—not too hot, a hint of November cool in the air, even though it was just early September.

Maybe the silence, the blue sky, and the paintbrush streaks of white that were too thin to be clouds.

Maybe it was the sun, so pale it was almost white.

He could look back on a number of those things and think:
Maybe . . .
?

But it was just her, just Lovey.

Walking slowly up the hill and toward the big house, that birthmark that looked like a G on the back of her thigh, visible beneath the flouncing hem of her skirt. She was twirling a dandelion in her hand and humming something—what, he didn’t know, but she could have been the pied piper from the storybooks Suce had read to him as a child, because he found himself helpless and stumbling up the slope behind her.

She had to have heard him coming—the soles of his boots crunching the earth, the clink of the timepiece bouncing against the ignition key in his pocket—but she never turned around, slowed, or quickened her pace. The humming got louder, though, and the dandelion began to twirl so fast, its thin petals became a blur of yellow and the G on her leg was as clear as if he’d written it on his eyeball.

Up at the house, the day seemed to go from morning to evening with one step. His heartbeat slowed a little; he was most comfortable in darkness.

“I sure do like it up here,” she threw over her shoulder.

* * *

Lovey, now seated on a tree trunk, legs crossed, dandelion stuck behind one ear, lips wet, said, “Nice and cool, don’t you think?” Hands rubbing her knees, down between her legs, up where breasts were just starting to bloom.

Vonnie’s mouth went dry.

“Don’t you think?” she said again.

“You were told not to come up here,” he whispered, legs weak.

“But,” Lovey said, and undid the first button of her gray blouse, “it’s so much cooler here.” Second button now. “And quiet.” Third button. “And private.”

No T-shirt, just skin and brown freckles that looked like eyes. And the blue eagle dangling from the leather strap on her wrist. He raised his hand, pointed a steady finger, and opened his mouth to ask, “How you get ahold of that?” But what came out was:

“What you trying to do to me?”

“What you want me to do?”

___________________

By the time Lovey smirked and slung, “You mean
gorgeous
ass,” at them and then sauntered out of the room, leaving behind gaping mouths and climbing eyebrows, Helen knew that Vonnie had gotten to her.

Who knew
gorgeous
could be made to sound so foul. But Lovey had a way with words, she could take
sweet
and make it sound like
shit
with the flick of her tongue.

And now her reply to Suce’s, “Get your ass on outta here wit dem red whore gloves on,” was bouncing between them and off the walls and ringing louder than the town hall bell.

“What she say?” Suce asked, her head cocked to one side, hand floating in midair, the pinch of chewing tobacco forgotten between her index finger and thumb.

“She said
gorgeous
ass
,” Wella repeated, and tossed a pecan shell into the crackling flames of the fireplace.

The night shifted outside the window, then the front door pushed open and Vonnie stepped through, bringing the cool evening air with him. His face was drawn, looked ragged beneath the flaxen light that came off the kerosene lamps. He’d lost some weight too—his clothes hung on him—and he shuffled instead of walked.

“Evenin’,” he muttered as he removed his hat from his head and hung it on the nail by the door.

The women just stared back at him.

“What?” Vonnie said as he started toward them.

“Did you tell Lovey she had a gorgeous ass?” Beka snapped suddenly.

Surprised at Beka’s forcefulness, Helen found herself quickly ingesting air and wincing at the bite in her sister’s words.

Suce’s face was still working at recovering from Lovey’s slur, and now she turned her astonished gaze on Beka. “What you say, gal?”

Had she actually said it out loud?

“She must have heard it from somewhere.” Beka’s recovery was weak; Helen’s expression told her so.

“And that
somewhere
is Vonnie?” Suce blinked and finally stuffed the tobacco into the corner of her mouth. “Why in the world would your brother, my son, say something like that to his niece?” she sputtered, and her lips glistened brown. “His own flesh and blood?” Her head shook in disbelief.

He wouldn’t say something like that. Wouldn’t say anything at all, Helen thought to herself, not unless the game had changed.

Vonnie pressed the tip of his tongue against the bottom row of his teeth, but his face remained stagnant.

* * *

The game had changed indeed. There was no flint and flame, no shameful eyes that looked away from him in moonlit bedrooms.

Lovey had changed the game. She had become the stalker and he had become the prey.

Enticing him, teasing him, sprawled out on that swinging porch chair with one leg thrown up over the wooden back, the other leg dangling over the edge, dress hiked damn near up to her waist.

And those fucking red gloves.

He would try to pretend not to see her, but she wanted him to. Well, she practically handed herself over to him the day he tried to walk past her and she snatched at his pants leg and sang, “Hey, Vonnie,” sounding everything like her mama.

He had turned to her and said, “You forgetting something, ain’t you?” And his voice, the one that never rose or dipped, stalled and then cracked when he said it.