Part 9 (2/2)

I wanted her to drop it. Last night had happened and was gone and if I said anything about it at all it'd just make us hate each other. I didn't want it that way. So I said, 'I'm sorry, baby, but I took as much of Leighton as I could. If I'd known you were going to have all the wizards here I'd have stayed away. I just came because I wanted to talk to you.'

'But you insulted Tom deliberately,' she charged. 'He hadn't said anything that should have offended you. He was merely trying to tell you something for your own good.'

'Well, I ain't for it,' I said.

She frowned. 'It isn't just that. That's just one incident. You always have a chip on your shoulder.'

All of a sudden I knew she was trying to put me on the defensive. 'Now what are you getting at?' I asked. 'I suppose I'm to blame for everything that happened last night?' I said it before I thought.

She got a hurt look on and said, 'So that's it? So you're trying to get even with me now?'

I started getting mad. 'G.o.dd.a.m.nit, if I'd wanted to get even I know plenty ways of doing it besides sitting up listening to your G.o.dd.a.m.ned friends,' I told her.

'I can't stop you from hating me if that's the way your mind works,' she said.

'All right, baby,' I said harshly. 'You said it, now let's skip it.' I knew if the thing started riding me we wouldn't have anything at all for each other any more.

'Is that why you told me, this afternoon when I called, about your affairs with other women?' she went on. 'Is it because you want to hurt me now?' The thing was eating into her: she couldn't let it go.

I spread my hands. 'That isn't what I said,' I denied. 'What I said was I knew plenty chicks I could go to bed with if that was all I wanted--'

'Isn't that all you want of me too?' she cut in.

'What do you want me to say, that I believe it was an accident--a drunken episode--that I still believe you're the finest, most wonderful chick on earth?' I asked her. 'Is that what you want me to say?' I blew a stream of smoke into the air. 'Okay, I say it. Now let's drop it.'

'You have an egocentricity that borders on a disease,' she informed me, getting a high and mighty air. 'You begin by attacking my character, and then when I point out some of your own weaknesses you say, ”Let's drop it, I can't be criticized, i'm too--”

'Baby, please,' I said. 'I didn't mean it that way. I'm not trying to bring you down. I was only--'

She didn't let it touch her. 'I know you will find it hard to realize that anyone could be thinking about anything besides you,' she said. 'But believe it or not, I am thinking about myself. I am wondering why I put up with you, why I continue this farce--'

It was getting brittle now, acid, raw. 'All right, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, let's quit!' I flared. 'I'm willing to let it go, why in the G.o.dd.a.m.n h.e.l.l aren't you?'

But she wasn't satisfied; she went on as if something tight inside of her was driving her. 'You're rude and uncouth and unintelligent.' She paused to light a cigarette, and I let myself go limp. I was tired of fighting with everybody; I decided to let her get it out of her system so we could have some understanding.

'There are three men who sit on my doorstep who are superior to you in every respect. They are cultured, intelligent, sensitive, prominent in the community; and any one of them could support me if I married him. . . .'

I closed my eyes and tried not to listen.

'They understand the niceties a woman enjoys. They do anything in the world I ask them and it's a pleasure to be in their company... . You're anti-social, boorish, ill at ease,' she kept hammering. 'You're not especially handsome--you're darker than I like; you dress like a gangster, you're not acceptable socially in any respect, and yet I impose you on my parents and my friends--'

It was beginning to ride me now. I kept telling myself that she just felt beat because she'd let me see her the night before and now she was trying to get over it by digging me. But it wasn't working so well; it was all I could do to keep from blowing.

'Too true, baby,' I said, trying to keep it inside of me.

'You're insanely belligerent,' she continued. 'You think you can solve all of your problems with your brawn. You have a really staggering inferiority complex, amounting to a fixation. You're disrespectful, quite ignorant, simply impossible.'

I had enough of it. 'You know what you can do for me,' I grated, leaning forward in my seat.

She gave me a long clinical stare of appraisal and then smiled contemptuously. 'I've been tremendously worried every minute since you left me last night that you would be so hurt and angry I would never see you again,' she began, then waited for it to sink in. 'I have even considered going to your room to plead with you.' Now she was sneering at me. 'I find that you are not worth it,' she said. 'You are not only willing to take it, believing that I am such--'

I told her right out of the hollow chagrin in my guts: 'That's because you're a n.i.g.g.e.r. If you were a white woman--'

She was out of her chair and across the room and had slapped me before I could finish. It was a solid pop with fury in it and stung like h.e.l.l. I came up bhnd mad, grabbed her by her shoulders, and shook her until her teeth rattled.

'G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I'll kill you,' I mouthed. 'I'll--I'll--who in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned h.e.l.l do you think you are, you--you--' I couldn't think of anything bad enough to call her.

When I stopped shaking her she looked up at me with a funny docile expression and said in a low controlled voice: 'You are a filthy Negro,' and I said: 'What about you? You're no G.o.dd.a.m.ned angel.'

She sighed and said:'But for some strange reason I love you,' and went candy. Her eyes got limpid and her mouth got suddenly wet and her body just folded into mine.

Whatever she had, it was really and truly for me. I couldn't help it. I went soft as drugstore cotton and fell into her arms as if I was going home. I kissed her eyes, her nose, her throat; I pulled her housecoat away from her neck and kissed the curve of her shoulder. I could hear her soft throaty gasping as she pressed her body hard against mine.

Right in the middle of it the thing got me again. I couldn't help it. I asked her, 'Did you ever really do that?'

She went instantly cold, put her hands against my chest, and pushed me away from her so quickly I almost fell.

'Do you just have to do it?' she asked, her eyes condemning me. 'Do you just have to keep bringing it up?' She went over and sat down and put her face in her hands. 'You destroy every emotion I have for you.'

I stood there, clenching my fists, sucking for breath. I got a crazy feeling of being penned in by my own emotions; of getting out of my own grasp; of not being able to control my actions any longer. I didn't know whether to be mad, indifferent, or sympathetic; whether to turn and walk out, or sit down beside her and try to work it out. Finally I dropped back into my chair.

'Baby, I wish you'd try to understand,' I said. 'I don't want to think about it either. G.o.dd.a.m.n, it hurts me too. Probably more than you. Can't you understand that? I feel like a d.a.m.n simple fool.' I took a breath, let it out, felt my legs tightening so they lifted my feet off the floor. 'Every time I kiss you now I'm scared you might be laughing.'

She opened her eyes and looked at me for a long time. It was as if she was searching for something. Then suddenly her whole face took on a soft tender look and way back in her eyes there was something like a shadow of hurt. She got up and came over and sat on the arm of my chair. 'You're just a baby,' she murmured. 'Just a big little baby.' And lifted my face and kissed me like she never had before.

I put my arm about her waist and pulled her down into my lap and rubbed my face in her soft silky hair, smelling its faint perfume and feeling its soft caress. I felt all alive inside for the first time in days, on the brink of something wonderful. I felt as if all of a sudden everything was going to be all right; as if I was going to know all the answers and never have anything to worry about again as long as I lived.

She drew back her head and shoulders to look at me. Her gaze was level, pure, but not tender any more. 'Bob darling, won't you believe me when I tell you that I am not a Lesbian?' she said.

I could feel the frown pop between my eyes. 'But you'd been there before,' I said.

She broke away and jumped to her feet, wheeled to look down at me. 'So that's it,' she said. 'So that's why you came here tonight--to cross-examine me.'

I put my hands on the arms of the chair, stood up. I felt resigned, tired, let down, as if I was locked up and would never get out. 'You wanna know why I came here tonight?' I asked her. It didn't make any difference one way or another now. I could tell her. I didn't even give a d.a.m.n what she might think about me. 'Not because I wanted to, I'll tell you that. I didn't want to see you again until I could get you straightened out in my mind. I sure as h.e.l.l didn't come here to argue with you about all that mess that happened last night. I didn't come here to argue at all.' I took a breath. 'I came here because I had to. Because I thought you were my girl and I didn't have no other G.o.dd.a.m.ned place to go. Maybe that don't sound so bright, but it's the truth. I had to get somewhere to cool off, to get myself straightened out. I had to get off the G.o.dd.a.m.ned streets out of the G.o.dd.a.m.ned p.e.c.k.e.rwoods' eyes before I killed some son of a b.i.t.c.h and went to the chair.' I let my breath out, sighed, started turning away. 'Now I'm gonna quit bothering you with it and go home,' I said.

She stepped around in front of me, clutched me by the arms, held me, made me look down into her eyes. 'What is it, darling?' she asked. 'Tell me, please.'

'I don't know,' I muttered. I wanted to tell her; I wanted to get it out of me. 'Every G.o.dd.a.m.n thing. My nerves are on edge. I keep expecting trouble every minute. Everything's going wrong all at once--it's pressing me too hard. G.o.dd.a.m.nit! You! And the job! And just living in the world--'

'Has anything happened on the job?' she asked quickly.

I looked away from her. 'No, just the same old grind,' I lied. 'The white folks trying to see how much we'll take.' I paused, then said, 'But it don't never lighten up. I tell you, I can't take much more of it.'

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