T. Oso

Morningside Park Middle and High School are part of a particular kind of private school; aimed at the young and upwardly mobile people of Morningside Heights who don't like to think about what that spells. The ones who don't think of themselves as private school people, but aren't quite insane enough to send their children to a Harlem public school.

There are no uniforms; there are lockers, and dances in the gym, not private hotels. There is, here outside the school office, a long wooden bench where troublemakers awaiting their doom can contemplate what has brought them to this pass. It looks more like a TV set of an ordinary American high school than an ordinary American high school--no graffiti, no door torn off the lockers, and this bench doesn't get a lot of occupants--but that's good enough.

There are three kids on this bench; one of is from the high school, tall and athletic in a wiry way. He's in ninth grade. The other two are eighth graders; a small Asian boy in glasses and a pretty-but-gawky girl with honey-colored skin, draped in a letterman jacket that's far too big for her skinny frame.

"You are so dumb," Laura Bailey tells them. "Dumb, dumb, dumb boys."

***

"Hey--um, hey Laura?"

She pauses in the doorway, her friends waiting up for her; a thousand sof adolescent girl-stares nailing him to the spot.

"Yeah?"

"D-do you have a date to the dance Friday?" Kevin Park stutters out.

She smiles--whenever she smiles it's like the sun coming out; Kevin Park is not a poet (words are hard) but he wishes he could be. He's only fourteen. Then she nods, and his heart hits his tennis shoes.

"Okay," he says quietly.

Laura smacks his arm. "You. Duh." Then she darts off to catch up with her friends, who are twittering about it.

He doesn't care. (His arm kind of hurts. He doesn't care about that, either.) "Hooray!" he tries saying.

No, that was stupid. But his grin--while maybe not as illuminating as Laura's--is pretty wide going home.

***

"I mean, I'm not even surprised about you," she tells the older boy. "But you're supposed to be the smart one, Kevin. I don't need two stupid boyfriends! One is enough!"

Kevin already looks low; now he's trying to climb into his own collar.

To Chad: "And I don't know what you're looking so smug about, dumbass. God. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking, wow, Laura's going to be pissed if I just stand here and watch Ferguson beat the crap out of her--out of this guy."

***

"So I have a date to the dance Friday," she mentions. They're getting a slice on the walk home.

"Hah, you're funny."

"I'm not joking," she says. Mmm, extra cheese.

"You can't go to the dance with someone else." Chad is indignant.

"You said you didn't want to go. You said it was a dumb middle school baby dance and you had better things to do. I want to go, someone asked me." She shrugs, chews.

"Okay, fine, if it's such a big deal, I'll take you."

She shakes her head. "Too late, I already told Kevin I'd go with him."

"You can't go to the dance with someone else."

"Well... I'm gonna." You can't let boys boss you around.

"Well, we have to break up then."

She shrugs. "Okay."





"Whatever." He kicks the table.

"What does that mean, whatever?"

"Whatever, go with your little middle school friend. I don't care."

"Okay. Are we broken up?" Chew chew chew.

"No. Do you want to break up?"

She shakes her head; beams. "No, I'm fine."

***

"Kevin," she says, "you have to lie."

"What!?" Chad grimaces. "That's bull."

"You don't understand about his mother." Kevin looks terrified; silent.

"I'm not scared," Chad says. "There's no rule about it."

"His parents will pull him out of the school, Chad."

"What?"

"They barely can stand that I have a girlfriend," Kevin whispers.

"Jeez."

"I don't want to lie," Kevin says, quietly. "I'm not sorry."

Laura looks sick; so does Chad a little bit. "Maybe you should, dude. I will, too. That way it's fair. It was all just a bunch of rumors."

"No, that's dumb," Laura says. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

***

"I had a really good time," Kevin says. She's holding his hand, and he's acutely aware that it's sweating. He wishes it would stop.

"I did too!" she says. "I never knew you were so cool, Kevin. You're always so quiet."

"I'm not cool," he says. He's having a wonderful night--a dream-come-true night--but he's not delusional.

"Maybe not cool-cool," she admits. "But you know so much stuff I don't! And you get so excited about it, it's totally cute." He gets very pink.

He wonders if he should kiss her. She looks troubled, though, so he doesn't.

***

The boys are arguing; as far as Laura can tell, they've completely switched positions on everything by now.

"Omigod," she says. "Fine. Look. Let's just tell Ms. Patterson everything. The truth is the simplest thing."

"It's not that simple," Chad sulks.

***

"You what?"

"I really like him," she says, twisting her fingers. This is different than telling him about the dance.

"So you're breaking up with me?" Chad sounds... disbelieving. For an eighth grader??

"I don't want to," she says, her voice small.

"What--what are you saying?"

He doesn't take it that well.

***

"Kids, Ms. Patterson will see you now."

They each hold one of Laura's hands, going in. Laura takes deep breaths.

***

She's on a date with Kevin (milkshakes), when her phone rings. "Chad? What do you want?"





"Oh boy."

She feels bad, because she's pretty sure Kevin only does it because he'd rather have that than nothing. But then--why else did Chad call her, either?

***

"So you've all been going out... together?" Ms. Patterson says. "Do I have that right?"

"No!" Chad says, and Kevin is hot on his heels. "Not together."

"We're not gay."

"Laura, explain--"

"Huh?" Laura shakes her head. "Um--sorry. I was somewhere else."

(It was a happy place.)

***

"You can break up with me, you know," Kevin says. She wishes he didn't sound so pathetic. It's kind of...

Pathetic.

"I don't want to, oh my God," she says. "Why would I put up with this if I didn't want to."

"I mean, you don't have to be afraid of hurting my feelings."

"Kevin. I like you. A lot. You were the one I started all this for, remember?"

"Yeah, but you weren't happy with... just me."

Kevin." She rubs her temples. "Please, just... believe me."

***

"All right, boys. I think this can be cleared up," Ms. Patterson said. "You're... friends. Right?"

They look at each other. Shrug. Nod.

"Okay. And sometimes friends... look out for each other. It would've been much better if either of you had gotten an adult," she says sternly. "But... boys will be boys. You'll both have detention, of course."

"And our parents don't have to know about--" Kevin says, trailing off.

"I don't care if they do," Chad says, posturing. But he looks relieved.

"No, I don't see why they would. Laura, can you stay and talk to me a little bit, though?"

***

"Look, we need to talk about this," Chad says. She wants to scream.

"I can't do this again, Chad. I can't. You're in or you're out, okay? In or out."

"I need something, Laura. Something. To show me you're not just dragging me along behind you."

***

"Laura, it seems to me like you're the one holding this little triad together. Would you say that's right?"

"I 'unno." She shrugs.

"Well--the boys wouldn't have done this on their own. Is that right."

***

"Which one is your girlfriend?"

"The one in my letterman jacket, duh."

"The one sitting next to that Korean kid?"

"Yeah, I guess. Whatever, dude."

"They look pretty cozy."

"Yeah, I'm real scared of an eighth grade nerdbox stealing my girl, Ferguson."

***

She sighs. "Yeah."

"It must be stressful, keeping all this going."

She nods.


***

"If she's your girlfriend, why does she wear that guy's jacket?"

"Why don't you shut up, Ryan?"

"Just answer the question, man."

"I'm pretty sure your girlfriend is, like, your hand," Kevin says, the closest he gets to wit. "So why don't you shut up."

"Are you sure she's really your girlfriend?"

"Hey guys!"

An uneasy chorus. "Hey Laura."

"Hi, Kevin." She grabs him.


"Laura Bailey. That is not appropriate to the lunchroom." Mr. Harris, an English teacher, pretty much drags her off of him.

***

I woke up before her for once. She was sleeping the way I'd seen people sleep in hospitals, sometimes; the body simply shuts everything down in favor of S L E E P. Something just short of a coma.

I had time to think about what came next; I made a sandwich with tuna salad I had bought and ate it while I did, and while I watched her. At this point, any reasonable person would have questions to ask. I don't know if 'reasonable' is the word for twenty-two and halfway in love already, but still, I was curious. (Not frightened, although maybe I should have been. Only curious.) But if I really was--

It seemed to me then that if I wanted to know, the worst thing I could do was ask. Because she would not answer. A door would shut, and I would be on the wrong side of it. I could ask if I wanted--if I wanted to make a point of principle, that if she was going to ask me to be here she owed me an explanation--but if I did that I would kill all my answers. If I wanted to know, I needed to not ask, I decided. Just wait. Pay attention.

We're getting there, Alice had said. We were learning each other, not with questions, but bit by bit. I watched her sleep, and learned a little more.

I had never seen anyone wake up that way. There was no in-between. She was asleep, then she was awake, and there was no confusion over where she was or who was in her room, either. She was just awake, and smiling at me. As she sat up, The Lord, who was sleeping by her feet, darted off. They never really liked each other, but sleep was an undeclared peace.

"What time is it?"

"After four," I said. I was sitting on top of the covers, dressed, and I didn't even have a book or anything; it was obvious I'd been watching her sleep.

"I need a shower." She rolled out of the bed, and I could see things I hadn't been able to before. She was dirty, and battered--bruises like dark stains on her skin. She moved stiffly. There was a weal like a rope burn under one breast, and it looked like her wrist was burned, around the tattoo. Char-colored. When she came out of the shower, wearing one towel and carrying two I'd left on the floor, she already moved more fluidly, however, and the darkness on her wrist had washed away after all. She dropped the towels into a hamper, and picked up one of my sweaters off the floor with her toes. I tended to wear them baggy--still do--and it fit her well enough for the purpose. "Ahhh."

She beamed at me. "Hello." Whatever had brought her home wrapped in darkness had been slept away or washed away or maybe stroked away by my hands. "Are you starving? We can order something."

"I bought groceries," I said, and she nodded.

"I'll cook something." Spoken like a woman who had seen my kitchen.

I followed her into the kitchen, and perched on a chair to watch. She put two chicken cutlets in a saucepan with red wine, and began to cook them; she added things as she went to make a sauce. I don't think she was working from a recipe. She didn't know what I had bought. She was just making it up as she went along. She was humming a song, something I didn't know, and I was sure that was the first time I'd heard her do any such thing. Improbably, she seemed to be in a fantastic mood.

"Sorry I slept the day away," she said. "I have to work third watch tomorrow, too. So I won't be home until midnight." The way she said home manifestly included me.

"That's the dangerous one, isn't it?"

"Well, it's the busy one." She cut up a mushroom while we talked; her hands were a blur. I didn't understand how she didn't cut herself. "I have three days on that, then another two days off. Twenty-four in five, that's the rule. Overnights are long shifts, because the second half of the third watch is the busiest." My head swam.

"That's all right," I said. "I have to go back to my apartment tomorrow anyway." I watched her, and she didn't turn. If she had, to give me the puppy-dog eyes or say anything at all, I suppose everything would be different. But she just went on humming, and reached back to tug the hem of the sweater back down. It kept creeping up.

"To bring more clothes over, I mean," I added. "And my hairdryer. Yours is terrible. Some of The Lord's stuff."

It's funny how we get old. Some of the best decisions of my life would horrify me, if my children made them.

I crossed the kitchen floor and leaned my head against her arm. "I'm in a lot of trouble, aren't I?" I said. I don't remember how my voice sounded, but I wasn't frightened. Never frightened.

Alice spooned up some of the sauce. "Try this," she said. "It's delicious."

It was, too.

The address she gave me was a diner, back in Spanish Harlem. I asked them where the firehouse was, half-expecting some kind of smirk.

One of Miss Alice's girls, eh?

Paranoia. The counterman pointed me up the street without much interest. I stood out on the sidewalk for twenty-five minutes, chilly in a sundress that would be more appropriate when the sun got higher. Around eight men started coming out. One of them made a comment. Alice came out somewhere in the middle, and she smiled when she saw me, but when the firemen saw her heading towards me the catcalls started up in earnest. She put a possessive arm around my waist and steered me back up the street.

"They're just fucking with me." Wry.

"Next time I'll stay at the diner," I heard myself say, leaning into her arm. Like being on fire.

I expected her to get eggs, but she got a tower of French toast. I got a bacon omelet myself. What the hell. (Yes, I remember. I remember what she was wearing--a white tank top that made her skin darker than I knew it really was, and stiff new blue jeans and boots, and she carried that same butch black purse, and a battered leather jacket she still owns.)

She seemed quiet. Tired.

"Look," I said eventually. "I can't keep doing this. This--isn't this out of hand? We keep crashing into each other. This has to end. I'm not coming here tomorrow."

She nodded, as if she heard me, as if she was agreeing that we were behaving like a couple of crazed teenagers, and then she said, "See me tonight. Come by at six."

And I said, "Okay."

"Bring food, if you can," she said. "Pizza would be great."

I don't remember work that day at all. I must have gone, I got paid.

I showed up with pizza, feeling like I was staring in an illicit film. She let me in but seemed to be paying more attention to the pie than me, at first. She looked like she hadn't slept since I saw her this morning.

I decided to try again. "Look," I said. "You can't just... order me up like a pizza, okay? Double pepperoni and sex on the side." Although she had, and here I was, so...

"This isn't about sex," she said unhurriedly, still noshing through her half of the pizza. "Just free pizza. Mmm. Where did you get this?"

"DiCarlo's," I said. "We're really not going to do anything?"

She shook her head. "It's really good. No, I have to work tonight. I'm exhausted already, I can't be--no." She didn't eat her crusts. "I just wanted to see you."

"And do what?" Somehow I was coming off as the sex-obsessed one. It didn't seem fair to me.

"Look at you," she said.

Oh.

"Who are you?" I asked, finally, and she blinked at me.

"I'm Alice." As if I might have forgotten. "You're Zora."

"I don't know anything about you," I said.

"We're getting there," she said. She sounded hopeful.

I gripped her wrists. "Try words." She looked slightly panicky, so I lifted her right hand. "Tell me about this."

She looked at it, as if she hadn't seen her own right wrist or the tattoo there before. "That's Oriza. She's a goddess. Her name."

"You're pagan," I said, and she blinked at me again.

"Sometimes you just need something holy that you can't lose," she said. It sounded profound to me, at the time.

"I'm an atheist," I said. I was, at the time. "Tell me what you believe."

"Oh, jeez," she said.

At first I thought that was all I was going to get.

"I believe in roses," she said. "I believe in love. I guess I'm a romantic."

"Robert says you go through a lot of girls."

She started into another slice. "A lot of girls go through me."

"What about the last one? That blonde from the party?"

She shrugged. "I wasn't what she wanted." It seemed unbelievable to me, in the moment, that anyone would walk away from her. I couldn't do it after three days. I didn't know that a year from then, in the same apartment, I'd be walking away myself. I really didn't know her, not at all. What I was beginning to know was someone young and half-feral under her armor; someone who looked a little cornered by a direct question.

"We work, don't we?" she said, with the same plaintive voice.

"Did it work with the others?" I heard myself say, nastier than I meant.

"Not the same way," she said. "Not like you. I don't know what to do with you, Zora. And that is the truth."

"Don't you," I said, and my voice was soft, and okay, she went to work a little more tired out.

"I have to go away," she said, as we walked to the firehouse. "I had these days off coming and I thought we could do something, but something came up today. I have to go out of town and take care of it. It's complicated."

"Okay," I said. She kept throwing me off balance; I kept banging my shins on things I couldn't see. I started to feel used again.

"This is crazy," she said. "Can you wait for me? At my place? You can bring your cat."

"Wait for you?" I said.

"I'll be back before Sunday," she said. "You could be there, when I get home. It's hard to say when it would be."

"All right," I said.

"All right?"

"All right."

People don't understand why I said yes to that, I've found. Why I didn't tell her to come to me when she got back. I don't know what to say. If you can't understand it, then I can't explain it to you. You have to be me, I guess, and no one else is.

Waking up in someone else's bed is never easy, and it helps if they're there. She wasn't. I thought about the room I was in, which was spare. The whole apartment was a little crackerbox over a bodega. The walls were sort of silver, and tired. She had good furniture, though, and a big closet, which was open. It seemed like an invitation. I smelled cooking.

I put on a shirt that fit me like a tent and said I DRINK NOZZ-A-LA, which meant nothing to me. It struck me that this was all a little practiced. Gobbling up arty girls with pencils in their hair, I thought, even as I was trying to wind my hair up. I gave up.

She was cooking eggs, in a t-shirt and pajama pants. The pants offended me. She didn't understand that, then or now, and maybe you don't either. I don't know what to tell you. It seems obvious to me. It was ridiculous. I told her that: "You're wearing pants."

"I'm cooking eggs," she says. "Are you hungry?" I looked at a clock; it was six am. On a Saturday. She was some kind of monster.

"I guess so," I said. "Why the pants?" She looked at me like I was a crazy person. I told her: "You get up in the morning, putter around, make eggs. You don't want to get splattered with grease. Fine. You put on a shirt. But pants?" The t-shirt hung easily past her hips. "Who does that?"

She shrugged at me, and turned back to her eggs. I wasn't having any of that. It was a problem easily solved; I grabbed the baggy seat of the pants and yanked, and they dropped around her ankles. She didn't even have them cinched up properly.

Look, it makes sense to me. I'm sorry if you can't follow it, but it was ridiculous to me. I liked how she dealt with it, though; she kicked them into a corner. I like someone who knows how to concede gracefully.

I sat at her table and wondered how many other arty girls with pencils in their hair had sat her and eaten their eggs and then been shown the door. She brought me the eggs, still in just the shirt. Good legs.

"Eat fast," she said, and it was so bald it was like a slap in the face. "What?"

She was already eating, salting her eggs while she chewed. "In about five minutes I'm going to jump you," she said. "Ready or not. So you better eat those. You're going to need your strength."

I did finish them. We didn't make it out of the kitchen, but I did finish them.

Well, it went on like that. If you're someone who doesn't want to read about it--my children, for instance, poking through Mama's files for cute stories of how they met--you may want to stop. We had a lot of sex, is what it comes down to. That first weekend we had a perfect storm of sex. We talked a little bit--I grew up in California, she was a New Yorker from the start, she had some college but didn't finish, I went to UC Berkeley--but none of it seemed to mean anything, the way the things she said on the train did. I didn't know her any better that way. I learned more about her from the way she moved and the way she touched me.

We started and didn't finish two or three movies. At a point we ordered Chinese food and devoured it; it may have been dark out by then. Sooner or later she looked at me and said, why do we keep putting clothes back on?

And I said: "She gets it! Ye gods and little fishes, at last she gets it."

She had scars. Has. More now than then. She wasn't comfortable with them. Other than that she was completely unself-conscious about her body, no more than a cat, and she had nothing to be ashamed of, but the scars bothered her. As if they took something away from her as a woman. Her back was muscled amazingly, like something from Grey's Anatomy, and when we slept (was it night? or a nap? I forget) I picked them out one by one, making patterns in the web of sinews, and felt her falling asleep under my hand. I was sure she was asleep when I reached her shoulder, grazing over the knot of scar there. It was worse in the back than the front, something that had blown straight through her, and it made me feel--I don't know. Shivery. She was solid, a rock, but something had gone through her like that. When I touched the scar what I knew was that she had healed. She was still solid; the wound had been beaten. She didn't see it that way I guess. I felt her stiffen the moment I touched it. She didn't wake up--I don't think so, anyway--but she reacted just the same.

I moved back down her back, doing everything in reverse, until she relaxed again. It was the best moment in a weekend of bests, I think; she was mine, then, when the last knot let go. She belonged to me. Had any of the other arty little girls--damn Robert anyway--felt the same way, watching her sleep? Maybe they did. But I had doubts. She seemed unwound in a way that was basically alien to her; that seemed obvious at the time and was borne out later. She could let go. She was with me, after all, and she was mine.

Sunday morning there was a late brunch. Omelets. There was nothing in her refrigerator but eggs and ketchup and olive oil and three heirloom tomatoes; she had some onions in a basket. She had me run down to the bodega wearing one of her sweaters like a dress to buy peppers and shredded cheese and more cheap Puerto Rican wine.

In the evening I told her I had to work Monday, I needed to go home. She said all right, and she put my dress in a garment bag. I didn't have a bra and nothing she had would possibly fit me, so I rode on the train in her sweater with my arms crossed over my chest and she stood behind me with the bag. She put a hand on my hip and her chin on the top of my head, and I closed my eyes and the train rocked us together, back and forth, and I felt the other half. It was the beginning of loving her. The Lord help us both.

In my apartment I fed the Lord first, and then I went into my bedroom to change, so I could give her her sweater back. I was saying something inane, thank you for a wonderful weekend, and then she came in. It wasn't far to the bed. She didn't have to carry me.