See No Color (13 page)

But when he put his palm on my skin, and then slowly stretched out his fingers, I felt another kind of heat growing in my stomach. He ran his fingers up and down my spine and I shivered.

“You okay?” he whispered in my ear, and I nodded, closing my eyes.

He kissed the nob on the back of my neck, which stuck out so far because I was so skinny. He kissed it so sweetly that I shivered again and turned over to face him.

“What's happening?” I asked.

He looked at me and laughed.

I studied his face to see if I noticed anything new there, anything I hadn't seen before. The only thing I could find were the pores on his nose—I could see each one. I leaned over and kissed them.

I listened to the house. The air conditioner was laboring in the next room and a branch tapped at the windowpane. Someone had finally turned the radio off outside. I couldn't hear any other human sounds, except for us, which calmed me.

He kissed me. This time on the lips. They felt warmer than the rest of him, and I leaned into him. We opened our lips. The heat came again, but this time it had pushed itself down further.

He pressed his body against me, and I felt something stiff push into me. I wanted to laugh.

He pulled back. “What's funny?”

“Nothing,” I said.

He looked at me incredulously.

“I'm just…” I struggled for the right word. “Nervous.” I stroked his arm, and he leaned back on it.

“Yeah,” he said. “That's cool.” He moved away from me a little, and I immediately felt cold all over again.

I burrowed my head into his chest. “No, that's not what I mean.”

He stroked my head.

I stared at him. He just looked like he was enjoying touching me, being here, that whatever happened was enough. That made me want to do more with him.

“I want you to touch me,” I said.

He smiled and leaned over to kiss the top of my head.

I kissed him on the lips and then slowly pushed my tongue into his mouth. Before I knew what I was doing, my hands were pushing up his shirt. I heard myself moan and blushed. “You are so beautiful,” I whispered, and I meant it. His skin was so soft, and my fingertips tripped on the muscles of his torso. I suddenly knew that I had wanted to be with him like this from the moment that we first sat down at the pizzeria. That terrible conversation. Even then, I'd wanted this.

Reggie's hand was traveling back up my back, pushing my sports bra up, over my head.

My breath caught.

He brought his hand back down, further, into my running shorts. “Your ass is just tremendous,” he said.

I giggled.

“What?” he said. “I'm just being real with you. It's amazing.”

I moved my hand down to his stomach and made circles there. I felt him shiver, and I felt powerful. “What makes an ass ‘tremendous?'” I whispered in his ear.

He squeezed it again. “Its shape,” he said into my ear. “Its … fullness. Trust me when I say that there are few asses in the world that are stacked like this one.” He moved his lips up and down my earlobe, nibbling and kissing, and I felt my pelvis grind into him. My body was mine, and it was not mine. I didn't know what it was doing, and yet it was me.

Late at night in my bed I sometimes touched myself, had even brought myself to orgasm once or twice, but this was so different. For someone else to touch you, to react to you touching them, and to then respond in turn, was compelling in a way I had never experienced before. I knew my right arm could throw an out to first in a second, but I had no idea that it would send shivers through the rest of me if stroked the right way. In some ways, it was like he knew my body better than I did. This was another kind of power, I realized.

Reggie's tongue flicked around my ear, and I moaned and brought him closer to me. We pressed together and he was so hard and his hands were everywhere—I couldn't keep track anymore. When he slid his finger into me, I just held on tight. There was no baseball, there was no Dad, nobody was black and nobody was not black enough, there were just hands and bodies, everything grasping, everything opening.

• • •

I think I slept in the crook of his arm afterward. When I woke up, I texted Kit to tell Mom and Dad that I was on my way back from a long run and would be back within the hour. It wasn't completely a lie, which was why I thought they might believe it—especially if Kit spun it right.

“Gotta go?” Reggie asked, awakened by my movement.

I leaned over and kissed him. “Yeah. They'll be starting to worry.”

He nodded and ran his hand over my shoulder.

I shivered and finished tying my shoe. “Thank you,” I said, as I stood up. I couldn't quite meet his eyes.

He smiled. “You gonna be okay out there? Running in the night?”

“I do it all the time. Don't worry.”

“You,” he said, standing up and pulling on his shorts. “I know better than to worry about you. At least out loud.”

I laughed. Then we left his bedroom and walked down the hallway to the front door.

“Just text me you're home when you get there,” he said, kissing me one more time on the steps. “Not 'cause I'm worried, but you know … just 'cause.”

I laughed, held up my phone and nodded, taking off at a measured pace under the streetlights. The steady tread of my foot soles on the pavement fell right in line with what I whispered into the hazy summer night, almost all the way home:
Reggie. Reggie. Reggie. Reggie.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

D
ad and I stood in the backyard a few days later, dusk coming behind us, throwing the ball around. We each took a step back after every throw, and our voices were rising as the exercise went on.

“Waukesha got word that they might have to play us. They're not pleased.” He grinned, catching the ball.

The Wisconsin State Baseball Tournament would be held in late June this year, over three days. The top teams from sectionals would battle each other the first day. The winners of those games would advance to the semifinals the next. The two teams left standing in each division would face off on day three for the finals.

“Better us than Eau Claire,” I said. Eau Claire had won States three out of the last seven years, although they weren't playing so well this year for some reason.

Dad frowned. “What do you mean? Eau Claire sucks.” He threw the ball back, and I watched it spin toward me.

“They don't.” I reached out and grabbed the ball. “They suck
right now
, but they might not suck in a couple of weeks. There's a difference.”

Dad snorted. I wondered if he knew that we weren't really talking about Eau Claire, but about me. “Eau Claire sucks,” he repeated.

I shivered. It would soon be dark. I heaved a high, arcing throw toward Dad.

“They couldn't find their asshole if it bit them in the face right now,” said Dad, making a lazy basket catch. “A winning team has to win games. Everything else is just nice stories for the history books. What have they done
lately
?” He skimmed the ball across the grass at me—a not quite hard grounder.

I charged the ball, taking it barehanded a few hops earlier than he probably expected and whipped it back at him sidearm. The ball rocketed toward his head. “Hey!” He had to twist awkwardly to glove the ball. “What are you trying to do, kill me?” He glared at me.

I wasn't grinning. Not quite. “Sorry, Dad.”

He looked at me funny from across the yard. Even though he had thrown around with me in this very spot and at the same time of day thousands of times, I got the feeling that in that moment, he wasn't sure he recognized me. And then it passed. “It's okay,” he said. “Just be more careful next time.”

I punched my glove, nodding. “Sure,” I said.

• • •

The next night, Reggie and I sat under an elm tree in the park with branches that twisted and turned in the wind. His arms were around me, and I felt safe again but also anxious.

“You okay?” he asked me, in my ear.

I nodded.

“You're a little quiet.”

I didn't say anything, just watched a squirrel dig up acorns in the dirt around us.

“Did you tell anybody? About what happened the other night?” he asked, his voice a little strained.

“No,” I said.

He kissed the top of my head. “Me neither.”

The wind was swirling in my ears. I remembered his lips on my neck, his hand pushing the small of my back into him, the sound of my breath catching, his fingers inside me.

He pulled at a strand of my hair so that the curl straightened, and then he let it go and it bounced back. Reggie laughed. “You got pretty curls, especially in the back.”

I picked up a stick and began digging in the dirt. “I don't like it,” I said. “It's too frizzy.”

“No one wants the hair they got, no matter what kind it is,” he said and then pulled on another curl. “I bet your mom doesn't know what to do with it either.”

I laughed and dug deeper. The sky was turning from purple to deep blue.

“I don't really get what ya'll do with your hair, but I know my mom, Grandmom, and my sisters get theirs straightened,” said Reggie. He shrugged. “They seem to like it well enough.” His sisters were both away at college, so I had never met them, had never seen their hair. He snaked his face around so that he was looking at my profile. “You ever been to a black hairdresser?”

I shook my head, thinking that I just might dig all the way to China.

“Well, maybe you should go, see what you think.”

I paused in my digging. “Would you really walk in there with your white mother if you had one?” I asked.

“If I needed to get my hair done I would,” he said. So many things were so simple for him.

My face colored. “You think I need to get my hair done?”

He snickered. “Now, don't put that on me. You're the one who said you wanted it less frizzy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
he lights of Glenda's were a raucous, neon blue that left my eyelids scorched. The sign was in cursive and “Black Hair Designs” was written in print below it. Mom pulled the Jeep into the only free available spot, sandwiched between an ancient pea-green Chevy station wagon and a navy Ford Escort. She had picked me up after work at the Cultural Affairs Office and was still dressed in a khaki pantsuit. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was swept back neatly into a bun, not a strand of it out of place. The whole drive over, all I could think about was why I wasn't given hair like that, why mine had to take so much time and effort to tame, why none of the stylists my mom went to ever seemed to know how to cut it. If I had had hair like Mom's, I could just have brushed it in the mornings, pulled it back, and gotten on with the day. Instead, I had to spend at least fifteen minutes every morning dealing with it, and it still looked too frizzy, no matter what I did.

“Okay, ready?” Mom asked. “I have a good feeling about this; this place looks really professional.” I got the sense she was saying this mostly to herself. When I had hesitantly brought up going to a black salon after I got home from being with Reggie, she had read some Yelp reviews and gotten me an appointment for the next day, just like that. But I could tell she was nervous.

My stomach began to churn and my palms were hot. I grabbed my weathered copy of
American Gods
and got out of the car. Mom's hairdresser, a middle-aged white woman, was the only other person besides Mom who had done my hair. Usually, she somewhat fearfully trimmed up the ends.

Walking to the door of the new salon, my skin felt paper-thin, almost translucent. A sweetness overwhelmed my nose as we entered the waiting room, a pungent, chemical odor. Peeking over the divider, I saw three black women seated in high salon chairs, their heads encapsulated with Saran Wrap. One had huge thighs that burst from her shorts like bread rising in an oven; earrings the size of my fists hung from another's ears. The last one, who was more my color than the other two, was absently flipping through the pages of
Jet
magazine, sighing every now and then. Her eyes met mine suddenly, and it seemed like they were asking, “Who the fuck are you?” so I darted my head back into the waiting room, resolving firmly not to look at any one of them again. My fingers clasped
American Gods
even tighter. If things got really uncomfortable here, I could always retreat to my book.

“Alexandra Kirtridge,” Mom was telling the woman at the counter.

She moved her light green fingernails down the pages of the datebook. “Ah, yes. Alexandra. I see you right here.” She stuck out her hand. “You're my two o'clock. My name's Naomi, and I'll be doing your hair today.”

“Nice to meet you,” I heard myself say. I began to feel like I was in the middle of a game, up to bat, and the pitcher was about to throw me something I knew I had no chance of hitting. My fingertips tingled the same way they did then.

“So, I'll pick you up in about hour, then?” Mom said to me. She turned to Naomi. “Will that be enough time?”

“Well,” said Naomi, looking me over. “That depends on what she wants.”

Mom had already grabbed her purse and turned on her heel, poised to leave. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Well, what do you want, Alex?”

They were both staring at me, waiting for me to say what it was I wanted. I could see that they needed to know right then, that it was urgent, that I should say something.
Tell them what you want
.

“I want it less frizzy.”

Mom's eyelids fluttered slightly, and she stepped back—probably trying to get me in focus. Then she recovered and swept an imaginary hair out of her face. “Okay,” she told Naomi. “Less frizzy.”

But Naomi was not fooled. Her eyebrows knit together. She knew that I didn't know what I wanted. “You want it straightened? Is that what you mean? Do you want me to relax the curl a bit? Or maybe straighten it, and give you a set of rollers to take with you? I got some really fly extensions in this week that customers have been raving about. We could even put in a weave if you really want to try a new look. Just 'cause we live in the Midwest doesn't mean we can't be as fly as the coasts.” She grinned at me, like we were both in on a joke.