Victor
LaValle is the author of the short-story collection slapboxing with
jesus,
© Vintage Books
winner of the PEN Open Book Award. He has also been awarded the key
to Southeastern Queens. "Weekend Pass" is excerpted from his first novel, The Ecstatic, which has just been released.
© Crown Publishers
Weekend Pass
An excerpt from The Ecstatic
Victor LaValle
I met Lorraine on the 6 train when it was between 14th St.
and 23rd . We were in a tunnel, but I choose to remember this as meeting when
it was dark. Sunday, October 8th, my mother woke with
bruises on her cheeks because the Haitian woman was a better fighter.
That morning we sat nearly together in the living room, with Mom, Grandma and
I on the sectional couch. Nabisase sat on the floor eating cereal from a yellow
bowl in her lap.
My mother and sister talked, but I was quiet
just like Grandma. When anyone's tea was finished I made more. Grandma convinced
Nabisase to let her comb and braid her hair. In this way we hoped to apologize
to Nabisase and even Mom.
My mother and grandmother were
foreigners, essentially, so they had an alien's attitude about forgiveness. Mom
apologized and expected that all bad feeling was soothed. But, being Americans,
my sister and I expected contrition. Saying sorry was fine, but tears were better.
This is a country of moral failures, not mistakes.
But Mom
only said, -I didn't mean to fight. Forgive me.
That's it.
Then she and Grandma left the room to clean the bathroom,
mow the yard, keep living.
Leaving my sister and I as mystified
as a Baptist with a Buddhist groom.
Our living room was painted
red, but in the low register. Nearly crimson. It was a serious little chamber;
only more so with my sister in it.
- This family needs church,
my sister said.
- Awww. I groaned, ground my teeth, gripped
the couch cushion then collapsed.
- Let's get dressed, Nabisase
commanded.
- You should at least ask me.
- Wear a suit, she said.
- I've only got one and it's dirty.
Mom and Grandma weren't going. -We did our time in that institution,
Mom insisted.
When I hid in the boiler room I hoped my dithering
would make us miss the preacher's call, but Nabisase appeared carrying my shoes
and black socks. I ducked into Grandma's closet and my sister brought me a tie.
A thirteen-year-old girl haunted me.
This had nothing to
do with religion; if this had been Saturday she'd insist we go join a synagogue.
On Monday it would be to attend a school board meeting for Community School District
29. A teenager's natural talent is for blending tedium with enmity.
Unfortunately in Queens it was possible to indulge this impulse for Holy Ghosts
or Holy Rollers at any time. I couldn't delay us out of a sermon. There were seven
churches in a one mile radius from our home; even one that operated from midnight
to six a.m.
Storefronts, trailers on the side of the road,
established brick venues with gabled rooftops and parking lots. Christ was here.
I later discovered that Queens was much like the South. Places where there is
one God and he tolls for thee.
There was a church three blocks
away. Close enough that Nabisase and I walked even though I didn't want to.
On the corner of 229th Street and 147th Avenue there was a small brick building
that might have been mistaken for a speakeasy rather than a church. It had no
windows and only one grey metal door in front. The sign on the gate that surrounded
the church read: Apostolic Church of Christ. A Church with Old Time Powers.
- These people actually believe in God, I told her. Do you understand that?
I didn't want to attend a service just to hear my sister rant to the pastor afterwards.
Screaming about how much she hated Mom's corrupt behavior at the picnic.
Nabisase would do that because she believed the church was here to serve her not
the other way round. If she knew that self-centeredness was a sin she'd never
have gone inside. Airing family distress seemed like the wrong reason to attend
anyway and, more to the point, embarrassing. I really wanted to avoid that kind
of thing in Rosedale. I thought I came off pretty well at the cookout so I wanted
to make more good impressions, not fewer.
As my sister opened
the church door I ran away. Slowly. Two blocks to the bus stop.
I went to the subway via a gypsy van to Jamaica then an E train from Parsons Boulevard.
Since it was Sunday and I couldn't look for work, I'd decided
to buy a second suit. They were only $100 for everything. Not including shoes
and socks. I transferred at Lexington Avenue to the 6. Where I met Lorraine. A
little shredded paperback in her hands
I sat next to her
so I could be sure she wasn't reading a hair pamphlet or a cosmetics catalog or
a douche brochure. I don't know.
Where we sat the train car
smelled pleasantly like cinnamon because of two small girls whose hands and cheeks
were iced and sticky from pastries. That seemed like a good omen for a fat man.
Even better when the cover of her book showed the words, Translated from the Russian
by Andrew R. MacAndrew.
- How do you like the story? I asked
her.
Lorraine turned her face to me, but not her body.
I don't want to make too much of her; Lorraine was on her way to being as heavy
as me. We had the same shape. Just she was six inches shorter. Her face was nearly
lost in these frizzy hairs that dangled the sides of her head. She lurched forward
so much as she sat that her nipples nearly touched her belly button. Lorraine
was a shlump and tremendously glamorous. I wanted to cry over her feet because
I was so thankful that she'd turned around. More so when she kept listening to
me.
She was reading a book of stories by Nikolai Gogol so
I told her about his novel, Dead Souls.
That when he'd finished
the first third his mind began to twist, instead of just being a good story he
was convinced that his book was meant to save the Russian people. When he realized
this was nonsense he burned the unpublished pages, most of the second third, then
starved himself to death in a religious fervor. The year was 1852.
Lorraine didn't find the tale very compelling, but she liked the fact that I knew
it. Most of the guys she dealt with divided their time between PlayStation games
and good weed. I couldn't tell a woman with that kind of bias that I'd rather
be discussing ghost stories. My freshman lit class had taught me enough to approximate
erudition.
* |
We spoke on the telephone most evenings. Lorraine
was a college student and in class during the day. I was never allowed to ring
her because she had a volatile roommate studying to be a veterinarian. A guy.
She said she lived in the dorms, but I sure didn't believe her. Because I didn't
have her phone number I felt powerless. Whenever she chose Lorraine could stop
calling then where would I be?
Every conversation I asked
her to spend the night with me. For two weeks she waffled, but why else were we
talking.
Two weeks to wear her down.
She suggested this motel with a view of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Snug between a furniture warehouse and an abandoned furniture warehouse Red Penny
motel looked positively high-toned. Seventy-five rooms, but only two lights were
on. Twenty-six cars in the parking lot. The night was so cold that my nose had
numbed and I didn't get to smell this rich city I'd missed.
I walked into the parking lot. Probably the first person over the age of sixteen
who'd ever done such a thing. The bus stop was seven blocks away, and calling
a gypsy cab would have been a waste.
The lobby entrance was
cramped down by the giant penny slung above the doors. Eight feet across with
a large Abe Lincoln whose nose was misshaped long and had a pointed beard, more
Devil than the long-interred emancipator. Maybe the crazy black Hebrew Israelites
had gone into the hospitality industry after realizing there was no profit in
broadswords.
I went into the lobby to get keys for a room
then waited on a bench across from a pair of old women. I had never seen such
love as theirs. They held hands absently, but firm; one set of fingers like kudzu,
the other like dirt. It was the kind of friendship earned after forty years. I
doubted they were renting a room; the motel clerk was letting them rest some warmth
back into their bodies. If they had shelter I wouldn't know it; how they made
money I can't surmise.
After ten minutes our quartet had,
involuntarily, synchronized our breathing. A tiny gasp around the room and then
a silence deeper than the fields of space.
The first woman
wore sandals even though it was October 21st . Her toes were exposed. Her heels
were calloused into stiff yellowed skin that I wanted to caress between my thumbs.
I missed women very much.
I was wearing
a dark green suit that was ugly, but I got good service at the store. It was fitting
that I wore it to see Lorraine again since I'd been on my way to buy it when I
met her. The Egyptian guy who owned the place in midtown Manhattan even recognized
me when I visited. He came from behind the counter screaming, Big Man! I have
the jacket for you! You know famous rapper Mr. Notorious B.I.G.? I make you look
as good as that.
The suits were worn at home and at work.
I'd started moving furniture a week ago.
I stood and smoothed
my clothes the best that I could when an old Cadillac arrived; it had commercial
license plates and darkened gypsy cab windows. My hands were shaking.
Out stepped Lorraine. She paid the driver a twenty. As
I led Lorraine to our room I felt the pulse of nature on the stairs. My arms and
legs shook so much I thought they were going to tear.
The
room had a double bed and that's it. Not even a night table. The telephone was
on the floor. There was space for a dresser or chiffonier, but those starving
animals had been sold off by the farmer. I would have made a joke about the decor,
but was too afraid that Lorraine only needed one excuse to leave.
- I'm glad to know that, Lorraine said.
I had that feeling
again, of my mind being read.
- Your smile, she clarified.
I'm glad to know you can smile.
She was nervous. She was.
If I sound surprised that's because I was surprised. To me
women were like the perfect model of government: paving the roads and protecting
the weak. Omnipotent.
Boys without fathers say that kind
of thing a lot. About their mothers. About their wives. Comparing ladies to goddesses
and gold. But still I think we hate women even more than the average guy.
My hands were on her shoulders. I reminded myself that we weren't in love. Be
fun, I told myself. Don't get weird. She only wants to play.
A man walked across the second floor landing right outside our room. The curtains
were drawn so I only heard his boots on the concrete in drowsy cadence. He stopped
at our door.
Lorraine wasn't listening, but I was.
She touched my neck to tell me that we could kiss, but I wanted to hear the man
outside go mosey off. I tried to think of some excuse for checking the door, but
didn't want to look like the cheating husband afraid that he was being followed.
Or worse, a nut.
Lorraine made my skin tin again. When she
squeezed warm hands around my cheeks they curved and shaped easily. I wanted to
enjoy it, but hardly could because the outline of a man was still visible through
the window when our curtains shifted.
Don't think I'm being
too spectral here, I wasn't afraid that the guy was a ghost; it was a push-in
robbery that worried me.
- There's some things I've got to
take care of anyway, Lorraine said, then dropped her book bag on the floor.
I was agitated by the guy standing outside then by the fact that my hesitation
had curdled our mood. -Why don't you forget about that? I suggested. What is that?
- My books, she said. I have to write a paper.
Insulted, I went to the bathroom. Who brings homework to a rendezvous?
Of course, geek that I am, outrage gave way to a fantasy of she and I doing naked
research on the bed. How erotic it would be to write up the bibliography with
her bare thighs pressed against my back. Then when I walked out again Lorraine
was packing.
- We have to move, she said.
- What the hell are you talking about?
- There's no working
phone and I need one.
Lorraine had unscrewed the mouthpiece
from the handset to find that inside it someone had lumped ten or twelve pieces
of gum.
- What do you want the phone for? I can help you.
- Please, she scoffed.
I got angry that
she didn't want my sexy research assistance. -You know these rooms are usually
hourly, I said.
- It took you almost an hour just get up
those stairs.
I sat on the bed and stifled any cracks about
her own fat back because Lorraine seemed an insult away from packing up.
- It's not so hard. You go down and tell them the room's not how you want it.
I was so annoyed that I forgot about the spook by my door
until I was out there with little of Lorraine to protect me. But I did still have
the perfect clean smell of the woman, which seemed to be enough because the man
out there had gone.
* |
This new room was like the other
one except that we had a night stand which Lorraine used as a desk. While she
chatted with classmates on the working phone I sat on the floor, horseshit insane
for pussy.
When another half hour passed I walked over to
see that she was writing her essay in bubble letter handwriting, like a junior-high-school
girl. Plus the book she used for reference was wrong, mostly because she used
only one. Lorraine was writing, in part, about Lee Iacocca's relationship with
Henry Ford II and what caused Iacocca to finally leave Ford. But she used only
Iacocca's autobiography for the facts.
When I get bored my
favorite pastime is to catalogue the stupidity of others.
- I thought you were supposed to hang up a jacket so it wouldn't wrinkle, she
said just then.
- Uh, this is wrinkle-proof.
- Nothing natural is wrinkle-proof.
She laughed, but I wondered
why she had to be so shitty. Maybe she'd seen me sneering at her two-inch-wide
margins. I felt my face warming and didn't want the ridicule. If we'd been having
sex already this wouldn't come up.
My mother might think
a diet was going to save me and Grandma feel the same about hard work, but what
I truly needed was to release this hydroelectric dam-sized nut then the lesser
problems like debilitating psychiatric disorders could be swiftly fixed.
But my outburst only made Lorraine less horny, imagine that. Instead of shredding
off her underthings she asked me some questions that I didn't understand.
- Do you think Ahmed Abdel deserves another trial? she repeated.
I shrugged, I stalled, I had no idea who this guy was but wanted to sound well-informed.
Maybe he was a singer who'd killed his wife while on drugs. William Burroughs
never went to jail, so why should this guy?
- That's not
what happened at all, she yelled. What do you do with your time?
Lorraine drained a pamphlet from her bookbag. His name was Ahmed Abdel and he'd
gone to jail for exploding a police car while two cops sat inside. He swore he
hadn't been involved. That he was a journalist, not a jingoist. This was on the
first page of the pamphlet.
- My friends are making time
for his campaign. What about you?
I didn't like her tone;
it sounded like a dare. -I'm afraid I'd get lost in the crowd.
- You are the crowd, she said.
I think my hesitation rubbed
her rawest parts. She was in college, a time of optimistic fascism when it seems
that what the world needs is one more rally.
- I'm not sure
we'd ever be good friends, I told her.
- Is that why we're
here?
- Well.
- You keep that. Getting
involved can change your entire life. Make you a better person.
She pointed to the pamphlet and wouldn't relent until I'd put the ten-page document
in my jacket pocket. I was on the bed and so was she, but we faced dissimilar
walls.
* |
Two hours past midnight Lorraine said, -You've
been quiet.
- I've been looking at you.
She had a faint mustache over her upper lip. It didn't make her ugly or masculine.
Right then it was the most beautifully feminine thing that I could stand.
I crept toward her on my knees. Dim light was the best special effect; it made
me appear graceful. My knees were in some of her papers; my palms ground down
on the books. She put one hand out to push me back, but I was fawning over her
and she liked that as much as everyone does.
She got into
bed under the comforter. I dug in there to find one of her feet.
She squirmed, but I pulled her down toward me. I touched the back of my hand against
the top of her wide foot.
I took her clothes off without
getting to see her naked. Pulling the socks, jeans, shirt, panties even, while
the covers stayed up to her neck. It was nice. Like she was stripping, but I only
got to see the layers once they were removed.
In the bathroom
I ran a washcloth under hot water and motel soap then sat near her again and pulled
the covers away from her thighs. I massaged the cloth into her leg until one was
slick with bubbles. Under the knees. On her shins. Until the cloth was dry.
Wet the hand towel again. Soap again.
Lifted her other short
thick leg onto my shoulder, pressed the red cloth against the back of her thigh.
Wrapped the cloth over my pointed finger and touched it to where leg greets pelvis,
where her skin shifted from one shade to one darker.
Did
this steadily until her hips matched the rhythm of the wet cloth and my hand.
As she pushed against me lather wept down her leg.
I squeezed
the little towel until the soapy water uttered into a puddle in my hand then I
rested my palm against her pussy. When she rubbed against me the slight tickle
of her hair played up my forearm into my elbow. Moved my hand until the foam spread
across us then I touched my hand to my own neck, to my mouth.
The look on Lorraine's face might have been mine. With her eyes shut she seemed
far away. I wondered where. I doubt she was even focusing on Ahmed Abdel or that
guy she lived with. She had reclined into that calm state people only find when
alone.
I rubbed the top of my head on the lips of her pussy
just to spread her scent on me.
I thumped her knees lightly
with my fingertips.
What sounds? If the curtain hadn't been
so thin there would have been that kind of total quiet when there's no light.
We had a sackcloth warmth in the room.
I wanted to ask her
everything.
If she genuinely cared about Ahmed Abdel's cause.
Why she had started college late. If she had children. If she had ever been out
of the country. If she was in love with me.
- Why won't you
give me your phone number?
She answered sluggishly. -A woman
realizes power however she can.
- Why does that prisoner
mean so much to you?
- Because his mind is such a powerful
tool.
- Could you imagine feeling that way about me?
I asked, but she didn't answer. Only breathed.
- What are
you that I don't know you are?
Without hesitation Lorraine
replied, -The hero. Two hours later Lorraine could sleep,
but not me. I was pretty naked except for my t-shirt and boxers that I wore the
whole evening because even in the dark I was self-conscious. I took them off since
she was sleeping, then ran naked around the motel, three times.
Okay I felt like doing that, but if I really had it would have been an act of
joy, not madness, though it might have appeared otherwise to the average person.
I did have trouble sleeping though, so I spent time in the
bathroom wishing there was a television above the tub. I hadn't even brought a
book because I'd had this fantasy of Lorraine and I sexing each other for eleven
hours, which is the kind of thing one comes to believe when years pass between
layovers.
Eventually I was so bored that I tried to wake
Lorraine again, but her eyes were soldered shut. This led me to that paper she
wrote. Just to do something. The one on the night stand, the one that I took.
I shut myself inside the bathroom and corrected the work.
I didn't mean to be snotty when I wrote questions in the margins like, Are you
sure Ford was a 'toad of a man?' and, Should you really describe Lee Iacocca as
having 'the business sense of a god?' and, Do gods really have business sense?
Which one? Mammon? Ayizan?
My suggestions left a terrible
smell. Instead of running off tonight I wanted to have sex with her in the morning.
I wanted to wake her by gliding my tongue up the crack of her ass. I wanted to
do that many times in the coming weeks, but that wouldn't happen if she found
this cutjob. So I rewrote the paper, making the corrections I could, but without
rearranging her ideas entirely. It was so much fun. I would have made a good English
teacher, except that I hate kids.
After I was done I wrote
a note on another sheet of paper apologizing for having spilled water on her notebook,
so that was why I had to do it over by hand. Then I tore her version, the one
with my boring corrections, and flushed the scraps away.
Fingers of my left hand were cramped from writing awkwardly; sitting on the toilet
using my crossed leg as a desktop. After I put the notebook back on the night
stand I ran warm water over my hand, but I heard Lorraine mutter around so I thought
she was waking up and I turned off the light in the bathroom. This was the first
moment in an hour when I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I wanted to be good
alone.
I shut the bathroom door then locked it. The water
was running into the sink, but the faucet made another sound, too. Like a gas
oven burner when the dial's been turned halfway, but the flame hasn't yet been
lit. A -hisss- that was soothing not sinister. I couldn't see myself in the mirror,
only the outline of me since the light came faint through a small window near
the ceiling. I couldn't go outside and do it, but in here I took off my clothes
to prance around the little room; I shook my naked ass celebrating an end to one
long dry season. Sure I knew better, but for one night I felt cured.
©
Victor Lavalle
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