For the Sonorous

'16

 

In the tradition of young women with sisters, we floated atop the pavement instead of stomping on it. That summer.

 

Our bodies perfumed with one another’s scent. We would ride alongside each other, sometimes with bikes, sometimes not, smelling of oil, of the comeliness of shampoo, of bathtubs in Washington Heights apartments in the smack middle of July. A sister’s skin always so soft, birthmarks cuddled by hair, even callouses coming correct on the pad of our hands.

 

The streets in the city started to smell of summer by the end of May and soon the whole world would be swaying this way and that in the stagnant breeze. We were the types of girls we wanted to be that summer: mouths full of ripe fruit flesh and arms locked around ourselves. One time on my newsfeed I saw a video of a traumatized baby orangutan hugging herself. She could not unlock her arms because she needed to provide her own love and protection. That seemed to be us, strangling our own bodies in order to force love upon ourselves. Writing in our pretty moleskin journals: you are beautiful, you are good, you are deserving. Because we were smart and conscious, and so thoroughly entrenched in our generation’s persistent pursuit of self-actualization and normalization of mental health issues. And we helped one another. My sisters, born of different women, trees extending from different roots. Varying gorgeously, in every category you could dream up. Some freckled, some not. Hair, a different experience for each finger poked between a sheet of it. Visions posing down the spectrum of brown. Some the color of the body of a peach, but still, Brown. My real god-sister and I, we decided to get matching tattoos on our shoulders, to honor our mothers who’d gotten drunk together one night years before either of us were imagined and marked themselves with lilies and lotuses. My sisters, lilies and lotuses. My sisters, flora.

 

We floated between neighborhoods occupied by other brown and yellow women, picking up treasures along our path. Tasted mango dusted in chili powder and bought from a weathered walnut woman whose memories we could never comprehend, who grew up on an Island we would never see, even if we traveled there. Admired another immigrant woman, chopping us some sugar cane. My sisters and I munched sugar cane, feeling the sting of stringy cane between our teeth, the high of pure sugar causing us to jump in the air on the sidewalk, scream in response to raunchy jokes. We squeezed through a flood of fish-smelling, cotton wearers in Chinatown, moving our hips as though down a crowded hallway at a party, parting the non-natives. In Flushing, we copped shaved ice and bubble tea for less than three dollars and lazily watched children tug on each others shirts in the Taiwanese mall. In East Harlem, we were warmed by the sun, fulfilled by the smell of chicken, dragged backwards in time by the cries of little black boys and girls at the freest they will ever be. Peak freedom. Achieved in reverse chronological order. We were dragged backwards, remembering when we’d owned that type of liberation. Little brown girls under playground sprinklers, unconfined because the world was so large and adults so godly. The torture of having our hair taken care of on a bed with some coconut oil and a cruel hairbrush, the lovingness with which our mothers hurt us. In East Harlem, we bought ice cream cones from the truck, ice pops from the bodegas, McDonald’s apple pies once in a while to reward ourselves for treating ourselves with kindness. Food was always a language we brown girls could understand, whichever country lent us the shade of brown we were. Transient, and river-like, we drifted to and from each other’s neighborhoods and strangely, recognized them all. Culture recognizes culture. One girl’s mango with chili powder is another girl’s dan tat.

 

We sat on the cold tiles of our bathroom floors and Facetimed one another while we picked at hangnails. Flies fluttered in an out of our conversations. This was as close to religion as we would get since we matured out of school uniforms. This church was more intimate. Our body hair loose and growing. Our nudity, easy. What an incredibly religious act, sharing your delight in your nakedness with your sisters. Our people understand the love of the body, the naturalness of exposure. And it was not exposure, over Facetime, in our bathrooms, but sheer being. One time we all took polaroids of our naked breasts and marveled when the results changed from invisible to visible. All of our parts differing from one another’s. That the size and shape of a nipple could look so vastly different surprised us, even as intelligent young activist women who’d noted, bitterly, how homogenous the imagery presented to us by white mainstream media was. We compared and contrasted the curvature of a breast, without judgement of one another (though, perhaps, of ourselves). We kept the photos pressed in a book. How beautiful it was, to enjoy one’s own body alongside a girl who enjoyed her own as well. Unbound by imposed shyness. Unbound.

 

And yet, even with the cultural exchange, the movement from one corner of the city to another—even free of our chains, even under the religion of naked togetherness, we felt the stirring feeling within us individually. Not everything felt good. The mosquitoes were out. Boys continued to be wolves. And every single day we sat in our jobs as receptionists at this little hair salon on 147th, we heard more and more names of slain brothers and sisters from the TV perched on the wall behind our heads, we couldn’t even see their eyes, just watched Miss Sheryl’s face in the mirror scrunched while permed a client’s hair and tsked tsked about the state of the world. We all sensed with our hips and our hearts that change was imminent, sitting on the invisible horizon like a fat overseer. Somewhere buried within us, little girls were asking to go to the park. Asking to play around once more, without fear of getting their hair wet.

 

I asked a sister, “What will we be doing once September comes?”

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She said, “Fading.” Then glanced in the mirror and added, “Is my nose too big?”

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Kalea

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I’d been standing in the egg aisle for a good three minutes, perusing the rows. I was doing the grocery shopping, something that felt like a mom thing to do anyway. In fact, I’d offered to do it so my own mother would look at me normally again, naturally. In her own way she mourned with me, crawling into my bed in the afternoon while I slept—I’d been sleeping most hours of the days—and wrapping her bare arm around my abdomen. But she stayed silent, and in her silences I read her inability to communicate how much there was in this life. When I’d finally came to her, with the rising tears, the hot, incomparable panic, the blood, she’d stared cold stones at me and made herself steady the tremble in her voice when she said “Well, it could be a miscarriage.”

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Shopping at the grocery store. I was a non-mother, doing a mother deed.

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When we’d come home from the hospital inside a vast silence, she had muttered, “You wouldn’t have wanted to go through an abortion. We’re lucky it didn’t come to that. You didn’t need to go through that.”

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And then, after a pause, “It’s better it happened this way.”

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On my phone, a text bubbled. Julien​ had asked, wyd?​ In between walls of cereals and grains I replied, ​food shopping, you? And kept on.

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I pushed the cart aimlessly, a strange, sort of homelessness settling around me. I’d been wearing all sorts of colors but continued to feel clothed only in black, in mourning. Autopilot steered my body and I consulted the shopping list without thinking. Food held no taste for me but my brother loved steak, and other juicy, bloody things. I went towards the meat aisle, which was near the eggs.

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As I leaned over the steaks to select one before the rising in my stomach flooded, I heard, “Leila?” And turned around.

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A boy who knew my name stood there. A real boy. Long arms and long legs clothed in real boy jeans. Head full of locs. A dark, muscular boy. Beneath the skin of his tee shirt I could see the outline of a nice boy body. Took a moment for my eyes to adjust to his darkness, and then I said, “Mal?”

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“What’s good?” He grinned and leaned in for a hug, switching the enormous bag of Doritos​to his other hand, which was gripping a bottle of Arizona. He had large hands, evidently.

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We hugged in that surreal sense of uncertainty, of having spent so many years apart it took a few to de-age one another to the person we knew in third grade. When he let me go he said, “It’s been a while, huh?”

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“Years,” I answered. “What’s good with you? Wait, where do you go now?”

 

“Urban Assembly, what about you?”

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“MLK.”

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“Yeah, really been a minute.”

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“So weird. I actually haven’t seen you in forever like, not on Facebook or nothing. How have you been?”

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He smiled a wide, blanketing smile, “Pretty good, chillin’. Most of my social media is under my other name so maybe that’s why.”

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“Your other name?”

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“Yeah, I make music so—”

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“Oh. dope. You spit or—?”

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“Yeah.”

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We stood there really smiling, no distance. We’d been boyfriend and girlfriend once upon a time in the third grade. “Whatchu up to?” He asked.​ “Shopping?”

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“Yeah, picking up for my mom.” I eyed his cart, the chips and the tea. “But you…?”

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“Uh yeah. No, my friends and I are are gonna go cyph right now so we’re just getting some food and shit. Yo, you wanna pull up?” He raised his eyebrows in this cute little way, “I got medical.”

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I actually thought about it. I hadn’t smoked since what happened, hadn’t touched a drink. Drowned in ice cream because somehow I felt like if I did some bad shit there’d still be something inside me, some remnant, some leftover, left to kill.​“Nah,” I said, “I gotta take this shit home. But lemme get your IG​ so I can follow you? I wanna chill. Some other time.”

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He opened his mouth as a pair of hands descended on his shoulders. Another boy, pushed him gently, playing. “Yo, can we hustle? I’m tryna…oh hey, hi. What’s going on?” He looked over me with his mouth playing up, eyes lit. “Who’s this?”

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“Leila,” Mal pushed him back and turned his focus on me again. “Yo, I’m having a show tomorrow if you wanna come through. I’ll send you the deets. Can I get your—?”

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“Oh sure.” I smiled while his friend giggled oh​ sure. I put my name in his phone and ended looking up with a nice girl smile.

 

“Aii. I’ll hit you up.” Mal returned his version and walked away, his friend called out “Nice to meet you!” at my back.

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My phone buzzed with a text from Julien but I ignored it, tossing a steak in my cart and trying to preserve the smile I’d caught on my mouth. Possibly the first real one in a while.

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Julien and I had always said once we got married and had a bright little sunburst of a girl, a perfectly small and lovely daughter, we’d name her Kalea.

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Actually, “always” is an exaggeration. Thinking back, we fought over names. A kind of fight that we engaged in just to flirt with one another, to give him a reason to pinch my thigh when I mocked his suggestions, that lead to playful grabbing, that lead to sex and let’s​ make her now.

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I’d been thinking about the thing that could have been our Kalea since I’d told him in tears that I’d miscarried.

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Things had been souring for a while, I suppose. Took a death to see it. Death was notably the wrong word. A thing that was not yet alive couldn’t die. But the we​ of us had died. And the fetus was gone. Took the gone​ to show how little life there was left in our love. The gone​ stabbed the carotid and committed the final slice.

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For one thing, I was going to Ithaca the next year and Julien hadn’t gotten in. For another, it’d been two years and we felt so tired at the end of our days. We didn’t talk as much or with as much energy as we’d used to. Our jokes didn’t land properly. I missed him less when he went on his trips.

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And when I told him I’d been pregnant apparently, but no longer was, we​ finally died. He’d gotten angry, said, how​ could this happen, Leila, said you​ been missing pills? said how​ could you not know you had a thing inside you, said but​ it’s kind of a good thing right? then said oh shit I didn’t mean it like that and I’m​ sorry and said are​ you hurting? and no​ I mean hurting physically and finally, I’m​ so sorry this happened. I love you. And I said, I ​love you too. But we still died.

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Yet nobody pronounced us dead, took us off of life support and sent off us with proper grace. We did not break up. I guess you don’t break up with a girlfriend you loved, who lost a baby you didn’t know you planted, who was cracking and peeling all over the floor.

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When I got home from the grocery store, I’d still not answered his text.

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It said, j​ playing smash bros w Amir nd Tareq

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I texted Mal, deets?​

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I went to my room to lay down, already exhausted from the day’s chore. In bed, I tried to picture Mal and what he was up to. Probably high by now, maybe munching on Doritos. The last time I’d seen Mal he couldn’t reach the top shelf of anything. A short boy, who’d become tall somewhere down the road.​ How odd to see him now. After all this. With locs. Closing my eyes, I thought about the three letters of his name.

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When I woke up my neck creaked. Rubbing the sore spot, I checked my phone. There were three texts from Mal and one from Julien. Out of nowhere, a warmth reddened my cheeks, my jaw. A strange feeling, reading the three letters. I checked his texts first.

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7 Imperial Place, Grand Concourse. 9 PM. My group is Capital Punishment I perform as Mal the X.

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And, we​ can chill after the set if you want.

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And, hope​ you can make it.

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I knew what it meant. I knew what I thought it meant, at least. I knew I’d stalk him now I knew his other name. Numbly, I looked at Julien’s message.

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Still there?

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There’d been a time he’d send sixteen messages in a row. It’d been annoying at the time, but now, feeling small, sore in my neck, heavy from the loss of a potential Kalea, I wanted him to text me at least the same number of times as this random kid I’d just re-met.

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I put down the phone and closed my eyes again without responding.

 

The next night when my mother went to work in the evening, I went to work on myself.

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I hadn’t gone out since. My girls wanted me too. They wanted me to have fun and forget and be a girl again. Not for their sake, but because that was the only remedy they knew how to cook up. My girls glowed and wished to heal me with their glow, to bring some glow out of my sleeping state. But I’d been sore all the time. I’d been ghostly, drowning in ice cream.

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But that night I would glow too. I would shimmer like I hadn’t lost a thing.​Like I hadn’t lost weight. I pulled on something tight, with the fly jeans that always provoked Julien into coming for me with a vengeance. Jeans that might have made the potential Kalea. As I did my make up I stared at my face, without seeing. The way one looks at bathroom tiles, without seeing. I just worked on my face until I could tell, without seeing, that I looked better. Pulled my hair with a flat iron until it fell attractively down my back. Then I went for the subway.

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7 Imperial Place turned out to be a warehouse-like space—uninviting but in the sexy way. A lot of people had come to see the sets and my fragile smallness slid through the crowds easily. Alone, I’d found it wasn’t hard to swim through people to the front. Mal was just stepping on when I got there.

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Felt good to say that Mal was good. Felt good to hear. Numbly, I noticed myself moving to the beat, feeling the music, tasting the music. Mal made the feeling come back to my fingers, come back to my hips. A miracle. For everything that happened and that would happen with him, he should be honored for that. He took a dead woman and breathed some movement into her hips, just enough to shake a dance out of her. About halfway through, I saw him see me, saw the recognition there. Mal shouted me out.

 

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After they played their final number, he came to find me. “Come here,” he said, and brought me to a back room. Musicians, grungy with sweat, fly in their nice kicks, shaded in their snapbacks, lounged smoking on fold out chairs. “Did you like it?” He asked.

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“Y’all were some fire,” I grinned. “I loved it.”

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“You came by yourself?”

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“Yes sir.”

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He lit up. “Let me get you a drink.”

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I accepted. The first time. He mixed me something with juice and I drank it up thirstily, like a child, making him laugh. “Damn, girl,” he pinched the fabric of my shirt between his thumb and forefinger, “Slow down.”

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We grabbed more to drink and went back out for the last set. They sounded pretty good too and he rubbed against me while we danced, with a good excuse. Julien kicked my mind, his name, his face, trying to get in between us. After two years, how could I not think of him? But like everyone, I’d gotten good at denial. I pushed him out. And besides, I felt, loudly and clearly, awake. And that felt good. And needed. I thirsted for more.

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When Mal, pulled me into a bathroom, I didn’t resist. “You look so good,” he murmured. “You got really fucking fine.”

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“Thank you.” The bumps of my hipbones poked at his deep skin, his clothed legs. He ran a hand up the plane of my thighs in Julien’s favorite jeans. He began to undo the button, and as though bundled thickly in a daydream, I did not stop him. He ran his hands around me the way we used to ran around his housing unit, around the big boys in the ball court in his project. I rested my hands somewhere on his neck face and let him play with me. When he turned me around so my hipbones bumped the clinically cold and graffiti-scrawled sink, I let him pull my jeans to a puddle my by ankles. I heard the belt, and the scuffle of his hands with his underwear. I heard him say, “This okay?” And finally, felt the push.

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No one had been in me since. No one had been in me since the thing had slipped on out. Imperceptible. In a warm pool of my own blood. He was a foreign object. I breathed in. I received. And in the cracked mirror I looked at myself.

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No denial on my face. I did not even look puffy and tired. I looked afraid. I wasn’t, or I hadn’t been. But the reflection of a terrified woman swam in my gaze. I looked how I had when I’d come to my mother with my wet underwear, gone rigid from the silence as she drove me to the hospital, when I’d heard the doctor explain to me in her soft, practiced voice what had happened, that it was more common than we thought for women to miscarry before they realized they were pregnant, and I’d crackled from the disorientation, and tried to impart to her underneath my voice, my tongue, my language I’m​ just a kid, I’m not pregnant, I’m just a kid. I looked like none of this made sense. Pregnant but a kid. Not pregnant anymore. Not a kid. A boy in the back of me who wasn’t my boyfriend. Who was hitting hard, his eyes screwed closed, looking like he’d stubbed his toe, teeth bared, happy. And I, frightened, and not asleep at all. It all was real. I struggled to keep the sounds of my crying as still and silent as my mother. And when Mal finished (outside of me, in the toilet) I took the opportunity of his turned back to wipe my face with a smear of mascara on the back of my hand. And only when he cried out in a soft gasp, I sniffed audibly, so the sounds of his own pleasure would mask it. When he’d straightened up he smiled at me again and asked how I was and for one second I think I saw him register the odd contortions of my face, the unnatural grin, my features scrambled like clothing roughly put back on—wrong. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired. I think I’m gonna dip.” But I wasn’t fine. I was perpetually bleeding.

 

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The outside air felt relieving. Cold. There are no taxis in this part of the Bronx but Mal knew the cab company to call. “This was fun,” he told me. “Let’s chill again, okay?”

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I tried to smile. He pulled out his wallet and handed me some cash. “Thanks.”

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When the cab pulled up, Mal put a hand to my face. He kissed me, which I then realized he hadn’t done before. A quick kiss, pleasantly obliged. “Hit me up.” He said and turned his back.

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I squeezed into the cab and gave the address. A wave of tiredness hit me as I sank into a cushion.

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“That your lucky man?” The driver asked. He sounded nice, accented and chatty, in a way that Bronx cab drivers often are. Conversational.

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“Yeah,” I lied.

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“How old are you?” The driver scrutinized me playfully in the mirror. “Fourteen?”

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“Eighteen.”

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“No!” A great voice boomed out of him. “I look at you and think fourteen.”

 

“I know, I look young.”

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“I see you kissing in the street and I think fourteen! And kissing in the street!”

 

I felt my face smile for me, a representative. “Nah, nah. I’m eighteen.”

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“You live with your parents?”

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“Yes.”

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“Your mother?”

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“Yes.”

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“She must be beautiful, to have made a beautiful girl.”

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“Thank you.” My face smiled again. Beyond my face, the ghost of a beautiful girl slept dreamlessly.

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“You speak Spanish?”

 

“Not well. Lo siento.”

 

“Ah. Too bad.”

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After a moment, I leaned forward, into the space between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s.

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“You got kids?” My face asked.

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“Yes.” Behind him, I could feel him smile. “Two. They’re in high school.”

 

And I don’t know why, but I pushed, “Boys? Girls?”

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“Two boys.”

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I leaned back again. Two boys. No Kaleas. On my side, the night with the city inside of it raced past. In every complex, unit, project, everyone’s mother and father rubbed their sore bones. Everyone’s boyfriend and girlfriend fucked. Every life lived, free or caged, old or young, girl or woman. Except me, I dozed without promise of waking any time soon under the blanket of my face.

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When we pulled up to my building, I counted out Mal’s cash.

 

“Just give me ten back please,” I said, leaving room for a large tip.

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The driver grinned again. “Thank you, miss. The beautiful mother raised a good girl.”

 

His conclusion interrupted the blood flow. Then, it caused a flood. “Thank you, sir.” I said, “Have a good night.”