Authors: Laurie Jean Cannady
Gotta Be My Own Healing
Gotta Be My Own Healing
Three months after ending with Greg, my only reminders of the relationship were the burning, itching, and bleeding. I mostly thought of him when the stinging and stabbing shook the mental block I had constructed around the pain. Then I regretted having ever met him, wished that first night in the dumpster had been my lowest, that I had refused to go in the dark hole and had been demoted at that moment. Those times I did think of Greg, I wondered what I'd seen in him, why someone so small in character and stature had grown so big in my eyes.
I wondered this as he walked to my house, three months after we'd ended, pale skin, thinning, brownish-blond-gray hair, stubby legs, and sly grin. “Hey, my pretty young thang,” he slurred. I didn't offer a faux giggle as I had in the past. I just stared, questioning his presence.
Greg stopped, midstep, obviously taken aback by my lackluster welcome. He pulled at the bottom of his shirt, craned his neck and tried again. “How have you been feeling, Laurie?” This question seemed sincere, less rehearsed, and that angered me even more. Sincere had never been our relationship. Everything about us was rehearsed, one scene after another, written and produced by Greg, acted out by a “minor player,” me.
“I'm good,” I said with heat that contradicted my “good.”
“I got something to tell you,” he stumbled, “to ask you, I mean.” I listened, expecting him to ask me to go out again or to have sex with him. I already knew my answer, but I listened anyway.
“I got something and I think you gave it to me.”
I clasped my hands tightly around each other as I processed his words.
He had something and thought I gave it to him
. I stopped myself from swearing out loud. I had something too and even though I knew he'd given it to me, I'd never said those words aloud.
I'd never allowed myself to think about confronting him. Maybe I was embarrassed for him, for me. Maybe I was afraid revealing his dirt would make me appear dirtier. Whatever it had been, I'd always known he had left something behind, and my silence, out of deference to him, was required.
But on that porch, I didn't want to be quiet anymore. Not only had he ridiculed me, used me for sex, cheated on me, infected me with some disease, but he had the nerve to want to place the blame on me, to bid me carry more of his dirt even though I had been the one wallowing in it for months. As I prepared to pummel him with my tongue, Greg continued.
“I went to the clinic downtown and they have your name and everything. You just need to go down there and they'll tell you that you got it. They said its gonorrhea or something like that.”
“Gonorrhea,” I repeated. In the middle of my rage brewing for Greg, an itch, a good one, was growing in me. I felt goose bumps sprouting all over my body. “Gonorrhea” was what I had been suffering for the last four months. I could have hugged Greg, but he was still talking, still asking for more than he'd ever deserved.
“See, you had to have given it to me because I hadn't been with anybody but you and my daughter's mother. She said I gave it to her, so I know you had to be the one to give it to me. You think you know who gave it to you?” he asked as if pleading for my “yes.”
Then it all became clear. Greg needed me to say I'd given it to him so he could believe his child's mother hadn't. He wanted me to sacrifice myself so she could be his
happy
. I was in pause, rewinding the last months, seeing snippets that revealed we had been suffering the same hunger, had been starved in the same way, yet we could not feed each other. But, here, I could give him a gift that had never been given to me. I could be his lie, so he could continue living the one he had constructed around his relationship.
Greg's sly grin became a pleading frown, one degree less than a scowl. With eyes looking down, hands in pocket, he kicked at imaginary rocks. He asked again, “So, how have you been feeling?”
Same question, new meaning. To say “I was sick” would corroborate his lie. To say “I was well” would be me spinning a lie of my own. So, I had to decide, Greg's lie or mine.
Without flicking neck, smacking teeth, or rolling eyes, I said, “I'm sorry Greg. I've been fine. Just had a doctor's appointment and I don't have anything.” His shoulders slumped, as his heavy boot lay flat against my dirt yard. The porch banister separated us and yet I had the urge to hold him, to comfort him as I witnessed his reality shattering against the hammer of my own. Part of me wanted to give him what he wanted. I felt a strong need to shoulder the blame, so he wouldn't have to eat the sourness of his child's mother, his
happy
, being untrue. But the need to save him quickly passed when I felt a new itch, an old one, but new because I had suppressed it for so long. I remembered the bleeding, the burning, the itching, and how no one, especially not Greg, had helped me. He had infected me with a disease; I would not allow him to infect me with the guilt of his and his girlfriend's infidelity. I had enough of my own guilt to carry.
“Greg, you're going to have to talk to your girlfriend again,” was all I could say.
“Well, here's the doctor's name at the clinic and here's the clinic's address. Maybe you don't know you have it. The doctors say you can have this disease and not know.”
“I know I didn't give that to you, Greg,” I said as I examined the card. “I'm just sorry you don't.” He looked up when I said that, defeated. The whites of his eyes were redder than I remembered and wrinkles formed lines around his mouth, his cheeks. They connected with the ones around his eyes. He looked so old, tired, scared. How had I ever thought he could save me?
“Can you at least call me after you see the doctor? My number's the same,” Greg said.
“Yeah, but can you write your number down? I don't remember it.”
He looked disappointed as he pulled out a pen from his pocket and wrote his number on the back of the card. It was probably the
same pen he'd used when he wrote my name and number that first day. No twinge of jealousy escaped me or made me think,
I have to make him choose me
. I didn't care anymore. I just wanted him to leave so I could celebrate my future healing.
I would go to the doctor the next day. The doctor would tell me if Greg had gonorrhea, then I probably had it, so he'd treat me in lieu of the results. He would give me two shots in my butt and I would cry in relief, already feeling the healing coursing through my body. But that was the next day's business.
That night, after Greg left, I lay in bed, allowing myself to feel every pang of burning, every itch resembling a cluster of mosquito bites, every bee sting lump against flesh. My body twisted in pain, as I screamed into the pillow, beat hands against the mattress, kicked feet against cinderblock walls.
For the last few months, I had been paralyzed, so I began willing every nerve in my body to awaken from a too-long slumber. In between each stab and spasm there was peace. I heard leaves high-fiving outside my window. I felt summer's heat crowding the window's screen, carrying the fragrance of beach, cookouts, and lemon floating in iced tea. The unmute button having been pressed, I heard myself, a song, again. I ushered all those feelings, the good and the bad, into me because living required it and I was ready to scab over and mend.
After Sanford and Greg, there were others found and lost, as I searched for something or someone to save me. I'd grown accustomed to the dysfunction of Lincoln Park. I no longer felt anger toward Momma when she chose Mr. Bryan again and again. Sanford had all but faded into my past. I'd resolved myself to entering the Army once I graduated. Still, I believed there had to be something better, someone better who could guarantee my life would not be as it had always been: one of starvation, one of waiting.
I believed I'd found my savior once I met Pat, Pretty Pat as most of Lincoln Park referred to him. We met the afternoon after Wilson High's awards day. Momma had let me wear one of her prettiest dresses, a royal blue, double-breasted one that rounded out my body in all the right places. Gold buttons the size of silver dollars meandered across the front in rows of three, and the V-neck showed just a hint of cleavage. The hem stopped above my knees, highlighting what Momma said was one of my best assets, my curvy legs. It fit like a winding sheet, bullying imperfections into shape. I morphed into Momma as I wore her dress, hair blowing in the wind, brown skin glistening under the sun's kiss. I felt beautiful like Momma, so I twisted harder, walked longer, and smiled as the alley leading to my home turned into a runway.
While with Sanford, I barely passed most of my classes and ended my junior year with a 1.7 G.P.A. Once we were no more, I devoured my teachers' lessons, went to class, listened attentively, and began to think of myself as more than a punching bag or something to sex. I learned I was actually smart and not Greg's smart because he was
teaching
me, but my smart, owning a knowledge that had always been in me, a knowledge that had nothing to do with being someone's woman.
During the awards ceremony, the principal presented several certificates to meâstraight A's throughout the year, highest G.P.A. in Spanish, getting second place in a poetry contest, and making honor roll every marking periodâbut none of those honors meant as much as Pretty Pat following me with his eyes as I exited the bus.
Pat sat on the brown, wooden fence parallel to my house, as he'd often done since the Cavalier Manor boys infiltrated Lincoln Park. He wore a white T-shirt that framed his muscular chest and jean shorts that exposed his bulging calf muscles. His skin was cappuccino-colored, free from dark spots or lines, so perfect it looked like liquid had been poured into a glass statue.
After he appeared in Lincoln Park, many girls, myself included, watched him, studied the way he walked: with wide gait, straight back, and a buoyancy that made it look as if the ground had gone soft just for him. He had brown, full lips, eyes more caramel than my own, and thick wavy hair that framed his chiseled face. He moved effortlessly through the dusty and dark Lincoln Park; where he went, my eyes followed. Mary and I sometimes sat in our bedroom window, chins resting on folded hands, eyes locked on his movements. We discussed for hours how a man could be so beautiful and still be a man.
At first, I wouldn't even allow myself to want him. He was too much beauty for my sixteen years. So, I chastised myself for not being woman enough to have someone like him as my man. That was until awards day when I got off the bus as Momma in a royal blue dress with gold buttons, patent leather shoes, and legs for days. I knew I was shining brighter because the sun didn't seem so bright, and I knew I was cooler because the breeze wasn't its usual cool and I, who had always been invisible, became flesh, came into focus right in front of Pat's eyes.
The smile that always spread across his face evolved into a look of surprise, awe even, as he dismounted the wooden fence, stood in the middle of the walkway, and said, “You are so beautiful. What is your name?” I stopped, unsure of what to do. The clock
had struck midnight and I was no longer Momma. I remembered I was a pumpkin. While I didn't know what to say, my friend Toy knew exactly what she wanted to say. She knew Pat in a different way than I did because she lived in the Ida Barbour projects where Pat was known for being a stick-up kid.
“You better get out of our way,” she said. “You got my cousin hurt.” Her words definitely weren't in line with my thoughts. Pat's smile quickly bent into a frown and he looked as if he were about to walk away. I wanted to be loyal to my friend, but the months of watching him, forcing myself not to want him, tsunamied over me in that moment. Before she could finish telling Pat off, I interrupted.
“Girl, you crazy. Pat, my name is Laurie.” I thrust my hand out to his, and looked into his toffee eyes. Pat could have asked me to run away from home or rob a bank. I would have been more than happy to do both because he had chosen me. I had already accepted that the person who does the choosing retains all the power and the chosen relinquishes it. I was satisfied with the act of being wanted, which was the only thing I'd chosen up to that point.
Toy, along with the others riding the bus, disappeared. “Where did you come from? Do you live here?” he asked.
Since I'd been watching him for the last three months, I tried not to laugh. I pointed at my house, and said, “I've lived here for years, too many years.”
“Can I come and see you sometime?” he asked, as he graced me with white teeth peeking through smiling lips.
You can move in if you like
, I thought, but I just smiled and nodded.
“You'll be seeing me,” he said.
Pat had given me enough in that encounter to make me feel as if I could accomplish anything. If I never saw him again, that moment would have been etched into my reality, but he did come around, often flashing that smile, holding my hand, telling me how beautiful I was. We often sat on my porch, in between his
dealings
with others. I, the dutiful girlfriend, waited while he conducted business, and welcomed him
home
, as if he'd just completed a long day at work.
Everybody in Lincoln Park, men, women, and children, loved Pat, wanted a piece of him, but I believed he only belonged to me. He wasn't the typical drug dealer, loud, cursing across the park, leaving forties against buildings, pissing in alleys. He was refined, holding bags for older tenants walking from the corner store, giving change to kids who wanted to visit the candy lady. He talked to every person as if he or she were the most important person in the world, and we all appreciated his generosity. In another life, I imagined he would have been a politician, a psychiatrist even, because he knew how to make people feel like they were as special as he was.
I was certain there were other girls in other neighborhoods receiving the same affection. Some didn't even live in the projects, so I believed they had an advantage over me. I'd heard of his wife, who'd been the first to capture his heart in high school. They'd married young and produced three children that were as beautiful as Pat. His wife, according to Pat, had broken his heart and had taken everything except the tattoo of her name on his body, one he intended to cover with the words, “Screw you.” Then there was Daphne, a girl who lived in Cavalier Manor that had loved Pat since they were kids. I'd heard she showered him with gifts and put up with all sorts of crazy just to be with him. I rationalized Pat's love for his wife as necessary since they'd built a life together with children and I decided his relationship with Daphne was one of convenience, since she bought him gifts, but I bought him nothing. I believed I had nothing to offer, not even sex since we had no place to be alone. I didn't care if Pat had other women. He spent most of his time in Lincoln Park, which meant he was with me, which also meant he'd chosen me again and again. While with Pat, I forgot I wanted to escape Lincoln Park. Leaving didn't seem as important as being with him. I questioned my decision to go into the Army. That had been pre-Pat and nothing pre-Pat had significance.
I had a brief conversation with Momma about leaving. “I changed my mind. I don't want to go,” I said. She looked at me with more determination than I'd seen in her in a while, especially since Mr. Bryan had been sucking life out of her.
“You getting out of here,” she said, and that was the end of that conversation.
Pat was the tornado pulling me into Lincoln Park's center, pushing me to the dirt-filled lawns, making me eat the grit of my former aspirations of leaving, but I didn't care. Nothing in the Park had felt good until I'd met him. I convinced myself a bit of goodness in a sea of bad could be better than a lot of good somewhere else. Pat was the prettiest thing I'd ever had, the best that had ever belonged to me, and he wanted me. He saw value in me and that meant I was worth something.