Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [81]
“You ride?” Her cane made a hollow thumping sound on the floor. I didn’t look at it.
“For fun, once or twice with a girlfriend.” Her eyes were enormous and as black as her hair. Her face looked thinner than it had in the pictures, her neck longer. She grimaced and leaned on the cane. Under her tan she looked pale. She shrugged.
“I miss it myself.” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone, but her eyes glittered. I looked up at the pictures again.
“I’ll bet.” I blushed, and looked back at her uncomfortably.
“Odds are I’ll ride again.” Her jeans bulged around the knee brace. “But not jump, and I did love jumping. Always felt like I was at war with the ground, allied with the sky, trying to stay up in the air.” She grinned wide, and a faint white scar showed at the corner of her mouth.
“Where you from?” I could feel the heat in my face but ignored it.
“Virginia.” Her eyes focused on my jacket, the backpack hanging from my arm, and down to where I had my left hip pushed out, my weight on my right foot. “Haven’t been there for a while, though.” She looked away, looked tired and sad. What I wanted in that moment I will never be able to explain—to feed her or make love to her or just lighten the shadows under her eyes—all that, all that and more.
“You ever eat any Red Velvet Cake?” I licked my lips and shifted my weight so that I wasn’t leaning to the side. I looked into her eyes.
“Red Velvet Cake?” Her eyes were friendly, soft, and black as the deepest part of the night.
“It’s a dessert my sister and I used to bake, unhealthy as sin and twice as delicious. Made up with chocolate, buttermilk, vinegar, and baking soda, and a little bottle of that poisonous red dye number two. Tastes like nothing you’ve ever had.”
“You got to put the dye in it?”
“Uh huh.” I nodded. “Wouldn’t be right without it.”
“Must look deadly.”
“But tastes good. It’s about time I baked one. You come to dinner at my place, tell me about riding, and I’ll cook you up one.”
She shifted, leaned back, and half-sat on a table full of magazines. She looked me up and down again, her grin coming and going with her glance.
“What else would you cook?”
“Fried okra maybe, fried crisp, breaded with cornmeal. Those big beefsteak tomatoes are at their peak right now. Could just serve them in slices with pepper, but I’ve seen some green ones, too, and those I could fry in flour with the okra. Have to have white corn, of course, this time of the year. Pinto beans would be too heavy, but snap beans would be nice. A little milk gravy to go with it all. You like fried chicken?”
“Where you from?”
“South Carolina, a long time ago.”
“Your mama teach you to cook?”
“My mama and my aunts.” I put my thumbs in my belt and tried to look sure of myself. Would she like biscuits or cornbread, pork or beef or chicken?
“I’m kind of a vegetarian.” She sighed when she said it. Her eyes looked sad.
“Eat fish?” I was thinking quickly. She nodded. I smiled wide.
“Ever eat any crawfish pan-fried in salt and Louisiana hot sauce?”
“You got to boil them first.” Her face was shining, and she was bouncing her cane on the hardwood floor.
“Oh yeah, ’course, with the right spices.”
“Sweet Bleeding Jesus.” Her face was flushed. She licked her lips. “I haven’t eaten anything like that in, oh, so long.”
“Oh.” My thighs felt hot, rubbing on the seams of my jeans. She was beautiful, Victoria in her black cloud of curls. “Oh, girl,” I whispered. I leaned toward her. I put my hand on her wrist above the cane, squeezed.
“Let me feed you,” I told her. “Girl . . . girl, you should just let me feed you what you really need.”
I’ve been dreaming lately that I throw a dinner party, inviting all the women in my life. They come in with their own dishes. Marty brings