Under the Peach Tree (6 page)

I didn't see John again until that next day. He was in the kitchen making breakfast. I had just showered and curled my hair and was ready to start my day. Momma said she needed to get away for a few days and had John pay for her to get a hotel in the city. I knew all she really wanted was just to be away from me. It was a relief to know that the cause of the tension was no longer in the house. I felt good about today. Nothing would bring me trouble.

I took a seat at the kitchen table and watched John cook the way I used to when he first moved in. He looked over at me and smiled. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“Top of the mornin' to yer!” I said in a terrible Irish accent, causing his smile to widen. “What are we gonna do today?”

“Church?” he asked, catching me off-guard.

I choked on the orange juice I had picked up from the table and taken a sip of.
Church.
I had never gone to church. I had never thought it was a possibility. Did I want to go? No. I didn't. I never wanted to go to church. I was repelled by it. I was afraid of church. I thought that if I stepped inside, I'd burn. That's what Momma used to tell me when I was younger.

“No,” I said kindly, but he didn't go for it.

“I thought you always wanted to go, since they never let you.”

“Church ain't for me, ain't never been for me.” I tried to hold back tears. I hadn't realized the topic of church was still such a fresh wound. I still hadn't dealt with how differently Faith and I had been treated. She was allowed to go to church and I wasn't. It still hurt and John sensed my anxieties.

“Hey,” he said, turning away from the stove to look at me. “Church is for everyone.”

“Not me. I ain't never been welcomed there and I don't ever plan on going.”

He thought for a moment. “Do you believe in God?”

“Honestly? No,” I told him, feeling frustrated that he was asking me about God. “I mean sometimes I do, when I need to pray to something, but then I remember He ain't never been there for me. If He wanted me, He would've called to me. Faith told me stories about how God worked in the old days, how He spoke to people. She said David would call on God, and He would save him from his enemies. God ain't never do that for me. So I don't do nothing for Him. I don't care about church or that Christian life. Momma said I was the devil. Devils don't care about church.”

“Hope, don't let your momma define you. You are stronger than her. You can make your own decisions,” he told me. “Take control of your life. If you wanted to go to church, you can walk right in and go. And God loves you. It wasn't Him that kept you from church, it was your momma and your grandmother. Don't take it out on God.”

I felt it was God's fault too, but I didn't say anything. I was tired of hearing people try to convince me to change the opinions that were branded into my head from childhood. It's what I believed. It's what I knew and had accepted a long time ago. It would, no pun intended, take an act of God Himself to get me to change my mind.

Later that day, John and I sat out under the willow tree in the front yard. He pushed me on the tire swing as he told stories about the good times in his childhood. The sun began to set, casting a beautiful orange haze in the sky. John stopped pushing the swing, which caught me off-guard. I grounded my feet and turned to John, who was having a moment staring off into the sky.

He looked down at me and smiled. “God speaks to us through nature, we just don't listen. We've detached ourselves from nature, building houses to cage us in, roads to keep us from touching the earth, but God still does things for us to notice. Look.” He pointed to the sky. “God gives us moments in each day to smile, thank, and acknowledge Him. When I see a sky that beautiful, I think . . . God is good. Go into a forest and just sit there and listen. You wouldn't be able to come back and tell me that you didn't feel the best sense of peace. The wind, do you ever listen to it?”

I smiled. I had listened to it. I felt that I could almost hear someone talking to me.

“One day, sit outside for hours and listen to it, listen until you hear it. It's God telling you something. He's always trying to tell us something. We've just forgotten how to listen.” He walked around to face me. “Close your eyes.” I did as he said. “Breath in and out, slowly. Keep your feet planted on the ground, spread our arms, let all of your worries go, and feel the earth's energy surge through you. Now listen to it, listen to what it has to tell you. Let God speak to you.”

I tried to focus, but John was so close and so passionate, I couldn't focus on anything but his soft voice. I opened my eyes. He was standing there with his arms spread out, eyes closed, face tilted up, listening to something I couldn't and wouldn't hear. I began to admire his beauty. He was only thirty years old, five years younger than Momma, but his eyes held the wisdom of a man twice his age. Momma was stupid to put this man down. If he'd been mine, I'd have cherished the ground he walked on. I would have done anything to please him. Momma didn't deserve him. He didn't deserve the unhappiness she caused him.
Maybe I could make him happy. If I did, maybe he'd stay longer. Maybe he'd never leave.

I stood up slowly, staring at his parted lips. I wanted to kiss those lips the way Momma couldn't. Make him feel the way Momma refused to make him feel. We were the same. He understood me and I understood him.

I quickly pressed my lips against his and stepped back, waiting for him to rage. John's forehead furrowed as he opened his eyes and found mine. I knew what he'd say, that I shouldn't have kissed him, but I didn't want to hear it.

“John, please don't be mad at me. I just love you so much and I couldn't contain it.”

He sighed. “Hope, I love you too, both you and your sister, but you don't kiss me. I'm a grown man. You should kiss boys your age.”

“Them boys ain't nothing but stupid,” I told him. “What's wrong with me?”

“Your age.”

“Back in the day, men your age married young women like me, even younger. I'm sixteen. In two years I'll be legal, and then we can run off together and leave Momma behind and be happy. Just you and me,” I told him, smiling as I said every word, smiling like it would work.

“Hope, you're still a child and I love your momma.”

“How can you love her? She don't even love you!” I yelled. I clenched my fist, trying to contain the anger I felt. How could he reject me? He said that he loved me and I had always been in love with him, I just didn't know it until that moment. “No man ever loved me like you love me, John.”

“You're confusing the love of a father with the love of some little boy.”

“You ain't my daddy. You can't love me like a father loves his daughter. Don't lie to me, John. You want me too.” I walked up to him, rubbing my hands down his stomach. He gently moved them away. “John, let me make you feel good, like you make me feel. Let me touch you.” I reached for his manhood, but he pushed my hands away, backing up.

“Hope, stop.”

“No, John. Please, love me.”

“No, Hope, stop!”

I stopped advancing toward him. My heart felt crushed into a million pieces. “You don't love me?”

He sighed, rubbing his eyes in frustration. “You know I love you, Hope, but—”

“Then prove it to me. Momma ain't gotta know. She ain't never gotta know.”

He shook his head. “No.”

I nodded once and ran away. I heard him shouting for me but I didn't care. I ran back into the house and into my room. I locked my door and threw myself on my bed and cried. I didn't care about putting a pillow over my head to drown out the noise. I wanted to world to hear my pain. Rejection is cruel. I felt it from Momma, Grandma, and now John. I no longer wanted to live if love was not an option.

John knocked on my door a few times that evening, but I ignored him. I ignored my sister's phone call. I ignored the world.

John had to love me. We were so close to each other, so open. He told me his secrets, ones no one else knew. We were closer than Momma and him. Even closer than Faith and me. I just knew I wasn't being delusional.

Somewhere along the night, I decided that I wasn't going to give up. I knew John had to have wanted me too. I went into Momma's bedroom where John slept while she was gone and crawled in next to him. He groaned in his sleep but kept snoring. I felt under the covers and placed my hand on his bare chest and journeyed down south. I had never touched a man like that before, but I'd have done anything for John.

“Juanita . . .” he mumbled in his sleep, turning toward me. I scooted closer, kissing his neck, rubbing on him, feeling him get excited under my touch. “Juanita . . .” He reached for me, touching my breast, pulling me closer. I let out a moan and his eyes snapped open. “Hope!”

“Shh,” I said, scooting closer before he could protest. “Please. Just let it happen.” I started kissing his tensed neck, pulling his arms around me, pushing my hips to his. He groaned deeply, trying to resist the temptation, but I knew I'd won by the way his manhood responded. He finally gave in and began to undress me. I was beautiful girl; he wouldn't have been able to resist for long.

I let him remove my clothes, feeling victorious.

“This will be our secret,” I whispered.

That next day, my body hurt in strange places, but it was a good kind of pain. I felt like a woman. I walked taller and with a purpose. My smile was wider. I felt loved and for the first time. When I had woken up, John was already out of the bed. I was slightly hesitant about what would happen between us after that night.

I walked out of the room in my pajamas and saw John in the kitchen, making breakfast like usual. I shrugged. Maybe not much had changed. I took a seat at the kitchen table and waited for him to speak. He acted as if I weren't there. I smirked, stood up, and wrapped my arms around him from the back. “You're not talking to me?”

He tensed but didn't move. “Good morning.”

“Great morning . . . and night.”

He sighed and turned to me. “Hope, what we did last night—”

“Was amazing. It was the best gift of love you could give me.”

“I don't see it that way.” John looked torn and weary. I could see the darkness forming under his eyes.

“Then change how you see it. What we did wasn't wrong. What Momma don't know won't hurt and ain't no point in regretting what you can't change. Might as well embrace it.”

“It's not going to happen again,” he said, and yet he didn't move away from my touch. “Crushes from little girls should be innocent.”

“I ain't innocent and I ain't every girl. Besides”—I laughed—“you just made me a woman.”

He finally pushed my hands away from him and turned to face me. His face was serious. “Hope, it's not going to happen again.” His words sounded final.

Of course I snuck back into his room that night and let him have his way with me again. We kept at it until Momma returned a few days later. I liked what John and I did. It was an outlet, a way to forget about the pain inside even if it was only temporarily. I didn't like how tormented John felt because of his actions. It was eating him alive. He wasn't at peace with himself. He walked around the house heavily. He sighed often or cursed under his breath. I imagined he was shunning himself over and over again. I was just glad that he had a conscious. I sure didn't.

As much as Momma had hurt me, I couldn't have cared less about hurting her. Tit for tat. Was I wrong for feeling that way? At the time I didn't care. I was taking charge of my own life, doing what I wanted to do. I only saw what I wanted, and would have it at whatever expense. Besides, it was our secret. What Momma didn't know wouldn't hurt.

Momma made it be known that she was back. She stumped into the house, cursing me out for not cleaning, even though the house was spotless. She cursed John for no reason at all. I wanted to tell her about my love affair with her man, just to throw it in her face. I wanted her to hurt like she hurt me. And yet, when I had the opportunity, I couldn't do it.

“Hope!” Momma screamed from the kitchen, making me jump. I quickly walked into the kitchen thinking John had told her. Thinking she'd found out. She looked at me like I was a piece of trash and then handed me the phone. “It's your sister.”

I sighed in relief.

I kept the secret even from my own twin. I couldn't break her heart or ruin her impression of John. He was a good man, the best man, and she loved him too. I was glad that it wasn't in the same way. I was sick of her taking everything I wanted.

At the end of the summer, Faith came home. She found me in the bathroom, throwing up, and sat beside me, brushing my hair back the way she used to when we were younger. She handed me some tissue and sighed.

“This ain't the welcome I thought I'd get,” she said. I looked up at her from the toilet; there was a happy glow in her eyes. I sat up and smiled. I didn't realize how much I missed her until then. “I got a lot to tell you, girl!”

Faith and I went outside for a walk, heading toward the white church the way we did when we were twelve. She began telling me all about her time at the university and how she met new friends, went to some college parties, and fell in love. She seemed more at ease, more confident in her walk and her womanhood. She even dressed differently. When I asked her about it, she said, “This is how they dress in the city.”

“Since when did you care about that?” I asked.

“Since I decided that I wanna go to that school.” She glanced off, focusing on the cornfield while twisting her long hair with her fingers. There was something that she wanted to tell me. I could see the anxiousness in her eyes. “David called me as soon as I got home, saying he missed me already.” Faith shook her head and laughed quietly. “Hope, I want to tell you something.”