Two or Three Things I Know for Sure - Dorothy Allison [14]
“You know, I been thinking about going.” Pat looked at me from between the fringes of her bangs. “Thinking about dumping school completely and running off. Find me some real dope and people who an’t planning on working at the Winn Dixie the rest of their lives.”
It was a conversation we had had dozens of times. We’d talked about running off until we knew just how to go about it. We’d memorize the bus fares for all the cities we were considering, and played at making up false IDs. Sometimes it was only the game that kept us from actually buying that Trailways ticket out of town. This time should have been no different from any other. I should have chimed in with my own curses, said, “Damn yes, let’s go.”
But I did not. There was something in Pat’s voice, some edge of frustration. Her eyes were turned away, but I could see just how dark and bright they had become. She’s going to do it, I thought, and shocked myself with a wave of desperate longing. The rush of my need stunned me—not to go with her but to keep her with me. Suddenly I understood that more than anything in the world I did not want Pat to disappear out of my life into some strange Yankee city, some alien life where I could not follow. My mouth opened, and I barely stopped myself from begging her to stay.
I looked down and saw my own body as a hated stranger might see it. I looked up and saw Pat’s eyes looking back at me—unafraid, dispassionate, curious. She had no way of knowing that without warning or preparation I had just become my mother’s daughter, my sisters’ counterpart—tender and fragile and hungry for something besides dispassionate curiosity. This was what everyone had known that I had not, this sudden onslaught of desire and terror.
“I got to go,” I told her, and headed for the door. I did not look back, afraid she might see what I knew was on my face.
Three months later Pat was gone, running north with a vanload of friends I didn’t know. It would be a decade before I saw her again on her mother’s porch, her hair cut shorter still, her mouth loose with Valium, both arms in casts acquired when she had thrown herself out of a moving car.
“You ever get to Washington Square Park?” she asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Wasn’t what I thought it would be. Ratty place full of ratty people.” Her words were slurred. Her eyes tracked away from me.
I curled my fingernails into my palms. I couldn’t think of anything to say, certainly not “I’m sorry” or “I think I loved you.”
“Well, hell!” For a moment I saw an old spark in Pat’s eyes. “You come back when I get these damn casts off. I been writing some poems will give you a headache just to be in the room with them.” She grinned, and I knew I loved her still.
At twenty-four I joined a karate class and learned for the first time how to run without fear pushing me. It was not what I had intended. I never expected to join the class at all. I showed up because I had been told there were no women allowed and my newfound feminist convictions insisted someone had to do something about that. Along with my friend Flo, I dressed in loose clothes and hitched a ride out to the university gardens very early one Monday morning.
On a rutted dirt lane a small group of peevish-looking young males were climbing out of rusty old cars and pulling off shoes.
“Where’s the sensei?” I demanded of one of those boys. He stared at me blankly. I stared right back and repeated my question.
That boy just stood there, looking from me to Flo to his friends. Then somebody laughed. Flo and I glared fiercely. One of the boys stepped forward and gave me a nod.
“Down there,” he said. “A quarter mile down that path. The class