A Reckoning
[fiction]
Bill Withers pours through her window, a melody that sways with the breeze. Lovely Day. Bill knows that her gold-flecked curtains will emit the heavy sun shining against her walls. She stretches her body like a cat. Hell yeah, she is flexible these days. Certain things don’t matter anymore, the size of her ass, what her roommates think if she re-reminds them to rinse their dishes, if a man sees her before she’s had enough time to stretch her hair into a tight bun, or a carefully crafted pineapple, or curls with big enough coils to twirl along her finger. She can stand nude with a teeny tiny Afro, send them shoulders forward like her body can only take so much of itself. Feeling herself in the most proverbial of proverbial ways.
It started when she turned thirty. Like the first spark of a riot’s fire, some see her sexiness as a destructive thing, undignified even. Compare it to the Rodney King Riots or Rihanna’s Work, your choice. For her, and likewise Mario, it is a reckoning.
Mario is not her man, but a fine one nonetheless. Hard enough to come by, but too unsure to live under. Something of an abnormal attraction, a man who likes James Baldwin and John Coltrane but cannot grow a mustache. Not a sprinkling of fuzz above his lip. She wouldn’t have dated him in her twenties, not a man without a beard let alone a man without a mustache. Her ex-boyfriend had a beard, a beard and a chest, a chest that felt like it was made of satin, skin so smooth it could make your head spin. She has learned that a chest like that should be revered but not overrated, a beard even less so, a mustache merely minutia.
Today, she feels like dancing. She dances in her seat on the train, when walking to work on the rigid streets of the Upper West Side, while at the desk that her manager walks by every so often to peak over her shoulder, these same shoulders that pull her sexy forward and send it into the faces of imprudent men. She dances for herself, inside of herself. They want to dance inside her, too, but of course, this is impossible. So they tell her she has a nice smile, nice legs, and she’s so smart, damn, she’s so smart. Let me touch that, they wish aloud, and she laughs at them in her sultry staccato way.
Today, she walks into a Harlem sun that is fighting gentrification with the goal to give her heart away. Today, she will hand it to someone, Get a feel of this weight. Do not hand it back yet. Just hold it, fool, and hold it tight. Horns and curses careen off of cars coming to a slow stop, allowing passengers with voices as loud as their bodies to lean out of the window. She dances as she passes them by.
It started when she turned thirty. Like the first spark of a riot’s fire, some see her sexiness as a destructive thing, undignified even. Compare it to the Rodney King Riots or Rihanna’s Work, your choice. For her, and likewise Mario, it is a reckoning.
When she gets to the bar, he is not Mario. He is wearing hunter green pants, slim fit. Brown boots that make him look taller, 5’10”, maybe 11” with an ego. His sweater reminds her of the Cosby Show and her grandmother’s hands. When he smiles, he looks like he is also thinking. In the past she has sworn that men cannot smile and think at the same time.
He says he wants to dance with her, because of course, he can see the way she points her toes and bends her knees and rolls her hips from side to side.
Does he know the cabbage patch or the butterfly? No, she stops herself, what do the young kids call it? “Can you break your legs?”
He raises an eyebrow and questions why he would ever intentionally break his legs, but his smirk shows that he knows what she meant.
“Do you salsa?” She shimmies in her seat, an implication.
No. He eats it though.
“Do you ballroom,” And immediately she knows she needs to clarify. “The Detroit Ballroom? It’s a black thing.”
He doesn’t ballroom, at least not the black way.
“Do you step? Chicago style step?” she asks him, thinking of Darius Lovehall.
Step? No, he’s from Texas.
“Holy Ghost dancing? Do you clap on the two and four?”
He laughs. He’s not as sure about Jesus as he used to be.
Still she gives him her heart, but without him knowing Jesus and all, she will request it back in the morning.
Janelle M. Williams received her BA from Howard University and her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College. She was a 2017 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, and her work has appeared in Kweli, Auburn Avenue, The Feminist Wire, and Writopia Speaks. She tweets @Janelleonrecord.
