Two or Three Things I Know for Sure - Dorothy Allison [18]
“What you carry in that thing, girl? You moving contraband state to state?” I was joking, teasing, putting my hand on her butt, grinning at her scowl, touching her in places she couldn’t quite admit she liked.
“I an’t moving nothing,” she told me.
“Uh-huh. Right. So how come I feel so moved?”
She blushed. I love it when women blush, especially those big butch girls who know you want them. And I wanted her. I did. I wanted her. But she was a difficult woman, wouldn’t let me give her a backrub, read her palm, or sew up the tear in her jeans—all those ritual techniques Southern femmes have employed in the seduction of innocent butch girls. A basic error, this one was not from the South. Born in Chicago, she was a Yankee runaway raised in Barbados by a daddy who worked as a Mafia bagman and was never really sure if he was bringing up a boy or a girl. He’d bought her her first three-piece suit, then cursed at how good it looked on her and signed the permission form that let her join the army at seventeen.
“My daddy loves me, he just don’t understand me. Don’t know how to talk to me when I go back.” She told me that after I’d helped her move furniture for two hours and we were relaxing over a shared can of beer and stories of how she’d gotten to Tallahassee. I just nodded, pretty sure her daddy understood her as much as he could stand.
I seduced her in the shower. It was all that furniture-moving, I told her, and insisted I couldn’t go out in the condition I was in. Simple courtesy. I sent her in the shower first, came in after, and then soaped her back in businesslike fashion so she’d relax a little more. I kept chatting—about the women’s center, books I’d read, music, and oh! how long and thick her toenails were. I got down on my knees to examine her toenails.
“Woman,” I said, “you have the most beautiful feet.”
I let the water pour down over both of us. It was a silly thing, to talk that way in that situation, but sex is like that. There I was, kneeling for her, naked, my hands on her legs, my mouth just where I wanted it to be. I smiled before I leaned forward. She clenched her fists in my hair, moaned when my tongue touched her. The muscles in her thighs began to jump. We nearly drowned in that shower.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said later when we were lying limp on wet sheets, and I promised. No.
“Whiskey and cigarettes,” she mumbled. “I move whiskey and cigarettes without tax stamps, for the money, that’s what I move.”
I smiled and raked my teeth across her throat. “Uh-huh.”
“And ...” She paused. I put one leg between her thighs and slid myself up and down until we fit tight, the bone of my hip resting against the arch of her pubic mound, the tangle of her blond curls wiry on my belly. I pushed up off her throat and waited. She looked up at me. Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes almost closed, pearly tears showing at the corners.
“Shaklee! Shaklee products. Oh God! I sell cleaning supplies door to door.”
I bit her shoulder, didn’t laugh. I rocked her on my leg until she relaxed and laughed herself I rocked her until she could forgive me for asking. Then she took hold of me and rolled me over and showed me that she wanted me as much as I had wanted her.
“You’re quite a story,” I whispered to her after.
“Don’t tell,” she begged.
“Who would I tell?”
Who needs to know?
Not until I was thirty-four did my sister Anne and I sit down together to talk about our lives. She came out on the porch, put a six-pack on my lap, and gave me a wary careful grin.
“All right,” Anne said. “You drink half the six-pack and then we’ll talk.”
“I can’t drink,” I said.
“I know.” She grinned at me.
I frowned. Then, very deliberately, I pulled one of the cans free from the plastic loop, popped it open, and drank deeply. The beer wasn’t as cold as it should have been, but the taste was sweet and familiar.
“Not bad,” I complimented Anne.
“Yeah, I gave up on those fifty-nine-cent bargains. These days I spend three dollars or I don’t buy.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Oh, don’t start. You’ve never been