Crave (32 page)

My Happy
My Happy

Since I failed Greg's first test, he promoted me to the next level. He picked me up almost every day after school, quizzed me, sexed me, and then took me home. Some days there were dinners consisting of KFC or a McDonald's hamburger. I never asked for much, only what I believed I was worth.

Greg didn't love me, even though he said he did, and I didn't love him, even though I said the same. But I liked him, a little more than I liked myself. For that reason, I continued to be with him, even though the sex couldn't be considered “good.” All my pleasure came from my ability to please him. In between sex, everything I did was under scrutiny. I recommended putting water in a half empty ice tray. That gaff entertained Greg for hours as he ridiculed my technique and said, “You're not too bright, but you're pretty. I can teach you what you need, my pretty new young thang.”

When I received all A's on my report card, he reminded me of my failures with Sanford by highlighting the fact that while my current grade point average was a 4.0, my cumulative was an underwhelming 1.7. “What were you doing those other years?” he asked. “See, I'm already making you smarter.”

He peppered every conversation with hypothetical questions more real than I allowed myself to believe.

“What would you do if my daughter's mother came to live with me? Would you be mad if I had female friends that came to see me sometime?”

Before answers left my mouth, they were wrong. If I said I wouldn't mind, I was a pushover, much like other “young thangs” he'd used and discarded. If I said I'd mind, I cared for him more than he cared for me and that gave him leverage, the ability to toy with me longer, to see how low I would go. I should have walked away, as he often offended me with his questions. A woman would have,
but I was still a girl, more broken than most girls, and Greg never hit me nor cursed at me, so his indiscretions became acceptable.

As we passed time, I watched the evening of our relationship burn into night. We lay together on schedule as if our bodies were clocking in for work. I waited for his faux spell to be broken, so I could get on with the business of settling. Often, I lay in his room's darkness, enclosed in a house that had gone unfurnished except for a bed and a picture of a pretty, slight woman holding a little girl. I stared at the white walls hanging around the picture, too strong, too loud in contrast to the silence of darkness.

One night, the pressure of urine pressed against my bladder, my back, and stomach. I peeled Greg off of me, and shuffled my naked body with socked feet to the bathroom. I sat, teasing the fluid out of me, bidding it to make a quick exit and relieve the pressure welling within. It began with that itch on the inside urination normally causes and cures, but it heightened like the bridge of a symphony, scratching, dragging against my kidneys, bladder, and urethra. I clutched at the sides of the toilet, working to steady myself against the itch, which evolved into a scratching, a shredding, and then an inferno contained within the walls of my vagina.

Initially, I thought I was experiencing a delayed orgasm, like the first one I'd had with Sanford as we grinded against each other's bodies on his couch. But that had been pure pleasure. I'd never had an orgasm with Greg, and the pressure of pinpricks stabbing my inner and outer lips would never be described as pleasure. I looked into the bowl, expecting to see my vagina hanging low, turned inside out, being rubbed against a cheese grater. I peered into the still water, searching for blood, pieces of me floating like lily pads constructed of flesh.

I traced the equator of my stomach, the straight line where skin meets pubic hair and massaged through my flesh to whatever had caused me to burn, to itch so much that the bottom of my feet were sweating. I thought if this were an orgasm that hadn't gotten all the way through, it had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I could
not deny it, but I could ignore it.
Yes, it was an orgasm
, I concluded, which meant Greg was that good, even better than Sanford. The pain had just been an aftershock following the earthquake of love making Greg and I shared. So, I softly patted myself with tissue and went back to bed with Greg.

After that night, sex with Greg felt like darts hurled at flesh, hitting bull's-eyes each time. I couldn't walk straight, couldn't think straight either. Itching and burning during urination evolved into an inferno constantly ablaze in the seat of my underwear. The days always seemed too hot, too bright, the nights even hotter as I tossed in bed, my hand cupping my vagina, trying to massage away stab after stab of pain. Since walking straight wasn't an option, I took to vaulting my legs side to side, ensuring the lips of my vagina did not rub together, sparking a fire that would burn for hours. I woke to nailing pains in my groin, pulsing between my legs. I believed the area in between my legs was swelling into a bubble and being popped each second. Some nights, with only the light from the moon, I held a mirror there, hoping to discover what I'd imagined: millions of bugs swarming through my pubic hair, climbing in and out of me, crossing the bridge of what made me think I was a woman, eating away the boundaries where smooth skin met hair. But there was nothing there, just me. The mirror could not reveal the churning, spewing on the inside, boiling lava, splashing against fragile skin. Then came the blood. Not the bright blood I was accustomed to when I came on my menstrual cycle, but a bark-colored drainage with the consistency of warm Jell-O. I'd taken to wearing pads throughout the whole month. When I was on my period, even the O.B. tampons felt as if they were submarines lodged in between my legs, so I wore heavy pads that stretched from my zipper to my butt.

In between the stabbing, burning, and bleeding, I had sex with Greg, counted the pumps of his pelvis, gripped the sheets on the bed, and prayed I wouldn't drown in the puddle of blood oozing down my crevices. Most times, I utilized tools life had supplied me with. The pain was not mine if my mind were somewhere else,
and so I scratched my fingers against the sheets, rapped my toes against the footboard and danced in my head to Karyn White's “I'm Not Your Superwoman,” and Marc Nelson's “You Can Always Count on Me.” Sometimes, I danced with Carl, away from Pee Wee before he had ever been, with Mr. Todd from that first year, before Carmen lay writhing under his weight.

It was those nights with Greg I imagined life in the military, wondered if leaving was the best thing for my family and me. I'd already survived so many wars. Would I chance a future in a real one? Maybe Greg could save me. Maybe I wouldn't have to leave at all. We could learn the source of the burning, fix it, and live happily ever after. I'd never seen happy before, so how did I know Greg wasn't already it?

Still, even as I lay under him, even as I worked to mute the friction grinding between my legs, I knew he wasn't my happy. He was probably someone else's, maybe his daughter's mother, but he wasn't mine. When I allowed that reality to settle around me, against the same arms, hips, and waist Greg gripped, I sometimes cried, wondering why happy could not belong to me. My father, Carl, hadn't been it. Pee Wee could never be it. Mr. Todd, Mr. Tony, Lenny-Pooh, Barry, and Sanford—none of them had been it. Even Momma, as much as she tried, couldn't be her own happy, so I knew she could not be mine. But Greg was there, even if he wasn't my happy, so with him I burned, allowing him to push deeper, allowing him to leave more than sperm, more than sweat, and not one bit of happy behind.

Dull Pain
Dull Pain

Some pains dull over time, becoming a part of the mechanics of the body, but mine never dulled. It just grew, flowering over parts of me I never knew were connected to my vagina. My joints ached. My head pounded, even in my sleep, and whether it was hot or not, I woke with sheets sticking to my skin. After two months, I had to tell Momma. Whatever was wrong was spreading through my body. I was too ill to read, eat, or go outside. Nausea had replaced sensations of hunger, and my muscles had begun twitching even as I lay still in bed. I found Momma in her bedroom, resting before she had to go to work.

“Momma, something's wrong with me,” I began. “My privates are itching and it hurts when I pee.”

“Huh?” Momma's brow shot up as she eyed me standing at her door. “When did this start?”

“It started hurting out of nowhere. I don't know why.”

“You having sex?” she asked, squinting her right eye, twisting her lips into a frown.

“No ma'am, I'm still a virgin,” I said too loudly.

Momma didn't look convinced, just tired. “Okay, I'll make you an appointment at the doctor's. Probably just got a yeast infection or a UTI. We'll see.”

On the day of my appointment, I walked a little lighter, smiled harder, and skipped to classes. I was going to be healed. The doctor would make all of the burning go away. I wondered how long it would take to get used to a normal, pain-free life. I looked forward to counting the days.

My doctor was a pediatrician on High Street, so Momma caught the bus to Wilson and we walked there. Cars whizzed by as we journeyed past Maryview Hospital, past Greater Grinders Subs, into a world I'd never seen before. In that majestic neighborhood, trees overlapped each other, forming a tunnel over the narrow
street. Large houses sat on each corner with grass that looked like green, rippling waves. Shiny cars with names I didn't recognize sat pristine in each driveway. Some peeked from the insides of garages also holding mowers, ten-speed bikes, and motorcycles. No people loitered on the corner. I saw no dirt anywhere and wondered if all of theirs had been transported to Lincoln Park.

I bet girls who lived in those houses didn't itch and burn like I did. Girls in those homes weren't anyone's “pretty red young thang” and they'd never been as hungry as I had been.
Would I ever be one of those girls?
I wondered. Momma wasn't one of their mothers, so probably not.

We walked until we reached a small house on the corner. If the “Pediatrics” sign hadn't been there, I would have thought it was just another home. A clanging bell dinged when we walked in. It was an inviting place, with chocolate paint enveloping the room. The carpet was a shade lighter, but soft, under my sneakered feet. Posters of smiling children covered the walls and in a corner were primped dolls sitting in a line next to Tonka trucks and alphabet blocks. Nursery rhymes keyed on a piano played in the background.

All of a sudden, I felt too old. Problems like mine did not belong in a place like that. My illness required white walls, tiled floors, elevator music slinking through speakers. As Momma talked to the receptionist, I sank my butt into one of the plush chairs lining the wall. Relief, I thought, as I shifted my weight from side to side, allowing the cushion to scratch what I couldn't in public.

I watched the receptionist's expression turn from a smile to a strained grin when Momma handed her my Medicaid card. I would normally have rolled my eyes at the woman once Momma sat down, but I didn't want to ruin my chances of seeing the doctor. Finally, the nurse called us into the office, took my vitals, and asked what was wrong. Momma sat in the seat next to me and listened as I spoke.

“It hurts when I pee. Burns, itches, and sometimes I bleed,” I said. Momma looked on as I ran down the list of my ailments. I waited to see if her expression would change, to see if she'd link
my symptoms to something other than a yeast infection, and rise from her seat ready to slap me for lying. She didn't.

Soon after the nurse finished her scribbling, the doctor knocked on the door and peeked in. “Hello, Laurie,” he said. “Can you get on the examination table so I can check you out?” I imagined checking me out would lead to a cure, so I almost yelped in pleasure. My excitement was short-lived when the doctor took out his stethoscope, tested my reflexes, and felt around my neck.

“Okay, painful urination, itching, bleeding? Can you see where the blood's coming from?”

I shook my head no.

“Are you having sex?”

I had anticipated that question. “No, sir,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis.

“She's a virgin,” Momma announced proudly.

“Probably just a yeast infection or urinary tract infection. We'll be able to clear this up quickly.”

Momma nodded in agreement. I nodded too, until the doctor began making his way to the door.

“You're not going to look at it?” I asked, panicked. What if he was wrong? What if it wasn't a UTI or yeast infection and he wouldn't know unless he examined me.

“No need,” the doctor said. “You're a virgin.” In that moment, I realized I'd hurt myself more than anyone could have. I almost began crying on the table, but Momma squeezed my hand.

“You'll be good to go, girly. I've had those before and they heal up fast once you get the medicine.” I couldn't cry after Momma said that. Then, she'd know.

That night Momma filled my prescription of pills and Monistat cream. I took the pills as soon as I got them, but waited until bedtime, as Momma had instructed, to insert the cream. I sat on the toilet, legs parted, plastic applicator in hand, cream pressed to the top. Before I did the deed, I prayed the medicine would work, that it would act like a fire hose, a whole fire company, extinguishing
the blaze that had left my fields raging. I lowered the applicator, fingered the plunger and pushed.

My body convulsed as my legs snapped closed. Using my free hand to pry them open, I rose from the toilet slowly. I wanted to keep the cream where it would do the most good, but I immediately learned that was a mistake. If I were on fire before, now I, a flame, had been dropped into a vat of gasoline. My armpits itched, burned, the bottom of my feet too. My nail beds, in between my fingers, my ears, eyes—everything was on fire. I clawed in between my legs, trying to grab what I could with my fingers. I filled the applicator with cold water, once, twice, so many times I felt as if I were drinking from the wrong side.

I couldn't feel anything down there but swelling. Everything else was numb. For that I was grateful. Later that night, I lay in the fetal position, my knees pulled as tightly to my chest as I could get them. I was naked, hoping the air would cool me where I burned most.

After a week of the pills with no relief, I went to Momma again. She made me another appointment, but this one I went to alone. The doctor went through the same routine, asking the same questions, prescribing different medications. He prescribed cream after cream, suppositories, pills so many I was raw by my third visit. He smiled each time, assured me I'd be cured, and sent me home. One day I just stopped going, just stopped trying, just stopped caring. I was burnt out.

The pain had become so excruciating, Greg and I stopped having sex altogether, which meant our relationship was over. It had outlived itself anyway. I caught him, one night, kissing another girl in his car. Since that girl was not his child's mother, I roughed him up a bit and Mary stabbed a couple of his tires, then we were over.

I knew whatever I had Greg had given me, and after the medicine hadn't worked, I also knew it wasn't a UTI or a yeast infection. The doctor couldn't find out what it was. I couldn't figure out what it was, but without a name, without a diagnosis it was eating me from the inside out.

Even though consistent, constant pain can sometimes dull, I learned that wouldn't always happen on its own. Sometimes, the dulling has to be willful, self-imposed. Mine had to be beaten, pressed into nerves that once allowed the touch of breeze, the taste of strawberries, the sound of Marvin Gaye to tease, tempt, and tantalize. So, I willfully became a dulled, dead, walking thing, a being devoid of pleasure, an oozing wound that chose not to feel itself festering.