“It wasn’t funny,” Ronalda spoke up from the couch.
Now al his friends laughed at him, although Ronalda hadn’t even made a joke.
“Bald-headed bitch,” Marcus said, but if Ronalda heard him, she didn’t react.
IT WASN’T LIKE on television. It wasn’t The Burning Bed. I wouldn’t even cal it violence, real y. Sometimes it was like a shove with a bit of a shake. Yes, there were slaps, but with a slap, the shock was in the sound more than anything else. It scared me, that was al . And I shouldn’t have asked him about Angie. The two of them had known each other forever. They went to the same church. Their houses had identical floor plans. They were bathed together as babies. I needed to learn how to trust people.
My mother says that if a man hits you once, leave. But the truth is this — my father smacked my mother across the jaw when I was six months old.
She stumbled out of the room, and he sat in front of my crib and cried. She says that was the first and only time. So it happens. But you can’t go around saying that.
I went into the kitchen to pour myself some cucumber water. James and Raleigh fol owed me like bodyguards. According to the clock on the microwave oven, Marcus was ten minutes late already; for once I was grateful for his habit of rarely keeping his promises. There was even the possibility that he wouldn’t show up at al . His life was busy, and he had many friends and obligations. That was just the way things were. Love didn’t always look and act the way you expected it to.
“So who’s the boyfriend?” my father wanted to know. He turned to Raleigh. “She’s too young to be going out this late at night, right?”
Raleigh picked up his camera and aimed it at my father’s face. When James repeated himself, I heard the click of the shutter. Raleigh turned the camera toward me, and I felt myself straighten, improve my posture.
“Not looking like that, Raleigh. Don’t take her picture,” James said. “What’s wrong with you?”
Raleigh lowered the camera.
I said, “I didn’t even say I had a boyfriend.” The lie reminded me of what Marcus had said on the night of the barbecue. I am not your boyfriend.
The memory made my left arm tingle. It wasn’t right for Marcus to talk to me like that, not in front of people, but I knew my father was a man to care only about what Marcus did to me, what I did with Marcus, or the things we did together. James stood before me with his fist throbbing like a human heart. He wanted to hit something. I took a step back.
“What?” James said.
“Nothing,” I said.
James returned to the living room, sat on the couch and the pil ows gave a sigh. “Where is your mama?” he wanted to know. “Why didn’t Gwen tel me about this boyfriend?”
I didn’t respond, and the room was quiet except for the pop of Raleigh’s knuckles. He was also a person longing to use his hands. I could tel that he wanted to turn the camera on James again. My father was sitting on the sofa hunched over like a mourning bear. “I would have thought your mother was raising you a little better than this.”
“Don’t talk about my mother,” I said.
“He didn’t say anything about Gwen,” Raleigh said. “Dana, simmer down.”
“My mother’s at work. Not everybody can have a beauty parlor right in their own house. Not everybody can wear a fox-fur coat. Some people have to work.”
This was the kind of thing Mother said late at night when we were here alone, when she was drinking. I used the tone she used at the best part of the night, when she played her Simon and Garfunkel and sang “Sail on, silver girl” until her voice grew tough and textured. This was the way she sounded just before she started to cry.
“She is a good mother,” I said.
Raleigh murmured, “We know that.”
James said, “Don’t change the subject. Who is the boyfriend? How old is he?” He paced around the living room with heavy steps, making the picture frames rattle on the wal . Raleigh’s fingers stil fluttered on the shel of the camera, and I looked at the clock, not sure now if Marcus would show up at al and not sure if I wanted him to.
James turned to me. “W-w-w-what’s . . .”
I waited.
He tried again, “I-I-I-I w-w-ant to know . . .”
Standing up, James folded his lips over on themselves and breathed through his nose. Deep breaths swel ed his chest inside his cotton shirt.
“The name. I’l k-k-k . . .”
I leaned forward just a little bit. He was going to do what? Kick Marcus’s ass? Kil him? My mouth twitched into a little smile.
The words gave way with a swinging of my father’s arm, and I ducked.
“I wil kil him,” my father said. “I wil kil him. What’s his name?”
“Marcus McCready,” I said, and my father’s face changed.
“I know his father,” James said.
“The tax guy,” Raleigh said.
James sat back on the sofa. “God damn it. How old is he? Isn’t he out of high school yet?”
“He didn’t get kept back,” I said. “He has a late birthday.”
Raleigh said, “Didn’t he get in some trouble?”
“Is he going to col ege?” James asked me in a way that made it sound like he knew the answer.
“He’s taking the year off,” I said. “He’s going to work and save up some money.”
Raleigh patted James’s arm. “Dana, Marcus isn’t the kind of guy you want to even know your daughter’s name, let alone . . .” He looked at the keyhole. “Let alone whatever else.”
“He’s a loser, baby,” said James. “A pervert. He got kicked out of some private school.”
“Something like that,” Raleigh said.
Now my hands were pumping like a heart. “He’s on his way here.”
“I’l kil him,” my father said again, but his voice wasn’t so determined. His hands were not ready.
“No, you won’t.”
“I’m going to kil him.”
“Who are you going to tel him that you are?” I asked. “The neighborhood watch?”
“Watch your mouth,” James said.
Raleigh was looking at the window. “Does he drive a red Jetta?”
My father answered for me. “Yeah, that’s his car. I helped his daddy pick it out.”
We heard the horn. It was a queer sound. People weren’t yet used to foreign cars.
“He’s just going to blow the horn like that?” James said.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I am not letting you leave this house,” my father said. “I’m not playing, Dana.”
I reached for my keys on their purple rabbit’s foot.
My father said, “Put those keys down.”
Marcus blew the horn again. Two toots this time.
I took my keys from the coffee table. “He’s a nice guy.”
My father took two steps after me as I headed for the front door.
“Watch out,” I said, “or he’s going to see you.”
My father froze in his place. I stood in the doorway, longer than I needed to, waiting for him to spring forward like a superhero. I tugged the hem of my keyhole shirt. I pul ed my fingers through my hair, and looked hard at myself in the oval mirror in the foyer. These were my mother’s habits before leaving the house. I tamped my lips together and used my little finger to wipe away any eyeliner that may have smeared.
“I’m leaving now,” I said to my father. “Lock the door behind you.”
“Dana,” my father said, “do not walk out of that door.”
“Bye now,” I said. I opened the door and walked through it, not closing up behind me. I was hoping to hear my father’s feet behind me, but there was no sound from the house as I walked on the cracked cement driveway where Marcus waited, in the Jetta. The backseat was crammed with what looked like four other people, but the seat beside Marcus was empty, reserved for me. I was his girl, and tonight he didn’t care who knew. I turned toward the house and made out my father’s face shadowed in the doorway. I couldn’t see his expression, but I knew he could see mine. I knew he saw the fire in my face, the chal enge in my eyes.