Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady
“No, I was just wondering,” I replied quietly, saddened he couldn't help.
“All right, then. Good luck.”
The peace I'd found at the MEPS station was erased from my reality. Sergeant Williams picked me up and began telling me stories about all of the calls he'd received from Sanford.
“That guy's a lunatic. He even claimed I was sleeping with you. I can't understand why you're with him.” I couldn't either.
I asked him to drop me off at the back door of my home. I didn't dare enter from the front for fear Sanford would shoot or stab me. Sergeant Williams complied, even going so far as to walk me to the back door and wait until I was in the house safely. I breathed a sigh of relief once I made it into the kitchen and found Momma cooking.
“Why'd you come in from the back door?” she asked.
“Sergeant Williams dropped me off there.” I could barely eek out the words with the adrenaline of averting death pulsing through my veins. I made it home, so I would make it through another day. Tomorrow was too far away for me to worry. I stood in my house with its familiar smells and sounds. I looked at the fish frying in the pan and became ravenous. Momma startled me out of my trance with her words, “Someone's here to see you. He's in the front room.”
My body became heavy, immediately weighted to the kitchen floor. I felt betrayed. Before I'd even seen him, I knew Sanford was in the living room and that room would be the last place I'd breathe. I wanted to bolt for the door, grab Momma and run, but I just stood. Momma put down the fork she used to flip the fish. She took my hand and led me into the living room. Unbeknownst to
me, she had learned of the threatening calls Sanford had made to Sergeant Williams and she was not happy with his meddling. She, more than anyone else, wanted me to go into the military, partly because she'd wanted to go herself.
The walk from the kitchen to the living room seemed longer than the bus ride from Richmond. My feet moved, but my mind stood still. Tomorrow seemed to me an unreachable feat. Sanford coolly sat in the chair as we entered the living room. He popped up as soon as he saw me. I braced for attack. While I still held Momma's hand, he hugged me tightly. With a smile, he sang, “Hey, I missed you.”
I searched his face for the moment in which he'd switch from the jovial Sanford to the one I knew. There he stood, sweet, smiling, asking questions about my MEPS visit.
Momma was having none of the bantering. “Okay,” she said, “We need to talk. Sergeant Williams told me about all of the calls you made to him. You shouldn't have done that, Sanford. That's not your business. Now, I don't know why Laurie didn't tell you she was going in the Army, but she is going and you need to stop all of this. She's leaving after she graduates anyway so you don't have much time left together. Now, Laurie, do you want to be with Sanford?”
I closed my eyes, waited for the moment he would jump on Momma or pull a gun and shoot. Petrified, I could barely speak, but I mustered a weak, “No, ma'am.”
“Okay. Then, it's over. Nice knowing you, Sanford. See yourself out.”
My heart danced under my skin. I wasn't sure I'd heard Momma correctly. According to her word, I was free. I held my breath, stifling the tears I cried inside. Free, free, free, my living for Sanford had ceased with Momma's words. I didn't look at Sanford, but I heard breath escaping him and his fingers tapping the wooden armrest, keeping time with my thumping heart.
“Can I say goodbye to her?” he asked.
My heart imploded when I heard, “Okay. Make it quick.”
Momma walked back to the kitchen in order to tend to her fish. Once again, I readied myself for his wrath. The emotional roller coaster had become too much to bear. I preferred one death over Sanford killing me over and over again, so I was ready to accept whatever punishment he had for me. He watched as Momma left the room. No fire spit from his eyes or froth dripped from his chin. His face looked calm, his dark eyes glossed over, his mouth turned into a soft frown. He reached into his pocket, as I braced for what was to come.
Sanford pulled out a handful of pennies. He pressed the cold copper into my hand and grabbed loosely my wrist.
“I brought these for you.” He presented them with a smile, as if he were a four-year-old presenting his mother a bouquet of broken dandelions. I held them in my open hand, unsure of the gift's meaning.
He held my hand as it held the pennies and lowered his body so we met eye to eye.
“You didn't mean what you said, right? You just said it so your Momma could leave us alone, right?”
Too afraid, too shocked to speak the truth, I shook my head “no.”
“I know you still want to be with me. Don't you?”
I nodded “yes” even though I wanted to scream “no.”
“I understand why you told your Momma that. It's okay. We'll talk tomorrow and figure out a way to see each other. I love you.” He kissed my cheek and pressed the cold pennies into my warm hand. “Goodbye, Ms. Lois,” he cheerily shouted as he exited the house.
I didn't know how to feel. I didn't know what to do. There were so many competing emotions running through my head I felt exhausted. For that brief moment, with Momma standing there, I was free. But, I hadn't been able to close the deal and back up Momma's words. Shame followed me as I trudged upstairs to my bedroom. The fish no longer smelled appealing. I looked out of the window and saw Sanford walking in the distance. His walk had not lost the skip, which initially made him endearing. I held
the pennies in my hand and lowered my head. Crying seemed childish, though I did it anyway, “Why won't he just let me go? He doesn't want or need me anymore. He has all those other girls. Why can't I be free?” I pounded my penny-filled hand against the windowsill as I beat out the words. I wanted someone else to live my life, someone else to be strong for me.
When I looked up, I saw an image out of the corner of my eye. At the store across the street from my house, there sat a white delivery truck. In between tears, I saw what appeared to be the stereotypical flowing hair, blue-eyed Jesus seen in every Baptist church, but it felt like an answer. It felt like a healing. I blinked hard and refocused my eyes. The image was gone, but a newfound peace settled over me. I was not alone and everything would be okay. I would not die by Sanford's hands. I would eventually be free of his chains, but it wouldn't happen on that day. It wasn't time yet. It would be time soon enough, but not just yet. I crawled into bed that night, praying sleep would find me quickly. As I waited to slip into a deep slumber, I heard my family in the dining room, eating and sharing. It was going to be one of Mr. Bryan's late-night entries and my siblings were taking advantage of the time they had with Momma. I wanted to be with them, to bite into the fish and allow its warmth to massage my throat. I wanted to feel the joy that they were feeling as they fed off each other, but my present state wouldn't allow me to do that. If I had partaken in that feast, it wouldn't have tasted right because of my journey, the one from which I had just returned and the one I still had to complete. After what Sanford had taken me through, some things, like family, just couldn't fit together again. Rather than faking solidarity and wasting good food on my muted palate, I chose not to eat, as I waited for sleep.
During school, I'd taken to meandering in the halls, no longer interested in what my teachers had to say. The lessons I needed most, the ones that might have saved my life, were not on any of their lesson plans. I cut through the empty cafeteria, startled by the quietness of it all, unwittingly tiptoeing because I didn't want to awaken the silence of the place. The halls on the other side of the cafeteria held the band room, the custodial lounge, and other dark places I could remain undetected.
As I exited the cafeteria doors, I stumbled upon Sanford and a girl named Tameka. It appeared they too were looking to go undetected. There they stood, facing one another, him looking down, her looking up, embraced in each other's gazes. I did not know what to do. The role of girlfriend, a title I wore even if I didn't want to, called for me to confront them, to pull what little hair Tameka had and scream, “What are you doing with my man?” But the prisoner in me stood solid on that tiled floor, littered with brown, blue, and red specks heavy enough to hold me in that space. I was not angry. I was not sad. I was curious, wondering if Tameka would finally be the one, if she could fill him enough so he no longer needed me.
Sanford saw me first, snickered under his breath and leaned his large arm against the tiled wall. Tameka turned quickly, and exhaled an “Oh,” which might have knocked me over if we would have been closer. I did not speak. I didn't even know if I had the right to. Sanford looked to be as much hers as he was mine and I couldn't be certain I hadn't become the other girl.
Sanford walked toward me and said nothing. He looked as if he were waiting for me to react. I'm certain he expected of me what I expected, chaos, anger, but by then he had beaten the fight out of me, so I had none to spare. I braced myself, readied my arm for a snatching or my hair for the pulling. Instead, he smiled, cut to the left, and disappeared through the cafeteria doors. By the time
I looked back at Tameka, she was rushing into the bathroom down the hall. I followed her, uncertain of what I would do. I didn't even feel myself walking, my legs moving, or my shoes clanging against the tiled floor. I saw myself doing it, saw the heavy wooden door push against my hands, saw my eyes burning with tears I could not let fall. My body had disconnected from my mind. That shell of me stood in front of Tameka as she, with a paper towel, wiped her face.
“Are you messing with him?” I asked.
“Naw,” she replied without the heat I had anticipated. She wasn't playing her part either, which called for cursing, threatening words from her mouth.
“Why were you here together?”
Part of me hoped she'd say they were in love and he wanted to break up with me, but there was still that prideful part of me, that lion lurking that did not want to be rejected, that didn't know who I was if I wasn't Sanford's rag doll. That part of me hoped she'd say nothing.
“He's been trying to get with me, but I don't really like him like that.”
Him wanting her and not getting her wasn't enough. Him wanting the others and even getting them wasn't enough. I knew then she couldn't help me.
“What did he say to you?” I prodded.
“Just that he likes me and he thinks I'm pretty.” A wave of emotion washed over my arms, my legs, my neck, my head, pressing deeply on all parts of me.
“I can't take this anymore,” I said as I pulled my stringy hair through my fingers. “Why is he doing this to me? Why? Why?” I cried. Tameka stared at me with horror in her eyes. She appeared to be searching for answers to questions that did not belong to her. She placed her hand on my arm, as I leaned against the sink. I prayed the pressure would stop. I hoped either I or the wave would break. I didn't care which, as long as it separated from me.
“What's he doing to you?” Tameka asked. “I'm sorry, but I thought you two weren't together.”
“We're not. I mean we are. He just won't let me go. I keep trying to do everything right. I do what he tells me, but he just won't stop.” She nodded as if she knew the secret I worked so hard to hide from the world.
“I'm not gonna mess with him,” she said. “I didn't know y'all were together and if I had I would never have talked to him. You don't have to worry about me.”
To my surprise, the pressure lessened when she said that. I hadn't told her Sanford was hitting me out of fear he would retaliate, but I had said enough without that information to make her leave him alone. I knew I didn't want Sanford, but she didn't know that. Yet, she had bent to my will even though my will was opposite of what she had done. The pressure within was replaced with a gnawing, like the chipping of a saw cutting through unnecessary layers. I had maintained an ounce of the fight I had before gentle eyes turned dark, before soft hands slammed against faces. There was hope I could become me again.
Later, when I sat next to Sanford in the car, when I held my fingers close to my scalp, attempting to lessen his hold on the hair that he gripped between his fists, shielding my face, my eyes, my nose from wild blows, I remembered that moment in the bathroom with Tameka, when I had won a battle, when I had found the last piece of me protecting itself from what I had become.
Lemme Show You Something
Lemme Show You Something
The senior show for the graduating class filled the halls of Wilson High with anticipation. Most kids skipped classes before the performance, preoccupied with purchasing pom-poms, #1 foam hands, and painting their faces orange and blue. That year, Sanford had been a wide receiver on the team, #83, but he had been ineligible to play because of his age. Still I, in my sequined majorette uniform, with my baton held tightly in my hand, clapped for my love during the games, even though he wasn't often loving me.
Earlier that year, we prideful Prexies filed into school, ready to celebrate our winning football team. The buzz of “the graffiti” hit me and other students before we'd exited the bus. Like most gossip being passed from one person to another, the story matured in front of my face before I could imagine what the matter was. As I walked to the entrance of my school, I looked into the windows I often stared out of while dreaming of a life better than the one I had in Lincoln Park, better than the one I had with Sanford. I was mesmerized by the black lines and curves etched across the front of the building, shining against the wall that held what was Wilson High together. The word “nigger” and drawings of Swastikas were scrawled across the front of the wall as if on a scrolling news ticker, flashing brighter than the sun against midnight, causing more wind to whoosh my way than even the leaves on the trees.
We never learned who wrote those obscenities, but we all imagined it was students, we hoped, from the high school our team had defeated. Mr. Gatlin, the school principal, quickly arranged for a cleanup crew to scrub the words off the building. There were no provisions made to scrub them from our minds. Even after the front of the building was free of the darkness, the words and figures strangling it, the stain remained; I could still see it until the day I left Wilson High for the last time.
However, during the year of Sanford's graduation, none of that mattered. Hilarity replaced what had been written. The anticipation of the seniorsâour personal superstarsâperforming occupied us all. I sat in the Willet Hall auditorium surrounded by rows of chattering students, stifled, anchored by Sanford's letter jacket, the one I'd taken to wearing in order to hide the bite marks on my wrists and shoulders. The hum of the talking and laughing lulled me as I waited for the show to begin. Word had gotten around that Sanford had a surprise for the whole school and he'd be performing some secret skit that would steal the show. It had gotten around to me as if I weren't his girlfriend, as if his secrets no longer belonged to me as mine belonged to him.
Once the spotlight pressed against the stage curtain and the MC emerged on stage, the crowd quieted. Several of the football players ran on stage wearing headbands and cheerleader uniforms, clapping, skipping, singing cadence after cadence, “Go, go, let's go, beat Norcom.” They flipped, twirled, even attempted splits as the entire auditorium shook in laughter. The end of their performance was marked by a pyramid that barely rose above the third level. Then they fell, clumsily, thunking against the stage floor, laughing and cheering as the audience cheered along with them. “Our team is what?” “Red hot!” “Our team is what?” “Red hot.” The show was off to a great start.
Next was Dana, Wilson's resident Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. impersonator. Whenever February rolled around or there was a pep rally, Dana stood on stage, intermixing parts of King's “I Have a Dream Speech” with declarations of our football team's ability. “I have a dream,” he'd begin, “that the Woodrow Wilson Presidents, the Prexies, will win that game today. I have a dream, I say.”
Despite its inappropriate usage of King's words, that skit, too, earned the seniors many laughs. There were other skits, each funnier than the next, until it was time for Sanford and the surprise everyone had been waiting for. The lights dimmed, hushing the audience as they went lower and lower.
The spotlight slammed against the stage curtain, highlighting the empty space. Once the curtains opened, the crowd spewed merriment. There stood Sanford wearing a two-ponytail wig. He wore a bikini top that barely covered his dark nipples, biking shorts, covered by a skirt, with yellow neon stripes running against his thighs and tube socks pulled past his knees. There he stood, parodying Jim Carrey's Vera de Milo from the comedy show
In Living Color
. Sanford's arms were lowered in front of his body as he assumed the position of a body builder, flexing for the judges. “Hi, I'm Vera de Milo.” The audience shook in laughter. I even laughed a little myself.
His muscles looked like mountains and valleys in contrast to the bikini top and biking shorts. Sanford's lips jutted from his teeth and he whinnied like a stallion calling its mare. He erupted into an impromptu body building instruction class, flexing the muscles in his arms, his legs, craning his neck in order to highlight his trapezius and deltoid muscles. He whinnied and neighed throughout the skit, throwing a Fire Marshall Bill “Lemme show you something” in between each move he executed. As his performance drew to an end, he offered the audience advice, “If you want to be beautiful and strong like me, then you just need to take your medicine.” He then picked up a jar of skittles, with the word steroids written on a white label, and poured the candies into his mouth. They covered his face, toppled down his chest, and ran over his back onto the stage floor. The crowd erupted, stood for him, called encore even before he'd exited. Sanford remained on the stage, flexing, turning, basking in the audience's applause.
I eyed his muscular arms, traced them with my eyes, remembered tracing them with my fingers, remembered being headlocked between them. I did not join in the clapping. I could do little more than stare. I couldn't believe how good his costume was; everyone believed a funny, generous Sanford always resided under that bikini top, biking shorts, and tube socks.
The crowd continued to burst at the seams, but I could not hear their laughter, nor the neigh that pressed out of him. He stood, his head rotating from one shoulder to the other, in a Herculean
stance. My own thoughts were not audible to me. But later that night, when all things quieted, I dedicated my thoughts to the Sanford that stood on that stage, that sweet, funny, happy being that shared a body with the person who had imprisoned me. I wondered how those two resided in the same body. I couldn't imagine the battles they must have fought in order for Sanford to just walk straight.
I'd like to believe I knew the real Sanford, and that the biting creature, the slapping, slamming monster was all of him. But in front of me, in front of all of Wilson, there had stood this comedian, this man-child who just wanted a laugh, who just wanted the audience to stand in ovation, to salute his talent. He was all muscle, but then he was, and I knew this even at sixteen, anti-muscle, emotional mush. There had to have been something soft in him to allow him to treat me the way that he did. I wanted to rescue that sweet part of him, but it came with the other Sanford and that one I had to protect myself from. That Sanford on the stage, the nineteen-year-old just graduating high school, the man-child basking in the wind pushed toward him by the applause, that one I felt sorry for. For that one, I prayed he'd one day escape the other that I, too, was running from.