Sub Rosa and Other Stories

Stolen Kisses A boy, a girl, a time, a place. The boy was sixteen. He lived in a bubble, a very thick bubble. The boy was White. The girl was sixteen. She lived outside the bubble. The girl was Black. The time was one of change and violence. The girl’s hero had been shot down in Memphis. Murder and the smoke of burning cities hung in the air. Cracks in the bubble were beginning to show. The land was rich, the topsoil thick. The Red River flowed nearby. The girl lived on a bayou covered by cypress trees. Her father and brothers farmed the land and stood watch over her. The boy saw the girl through a crack in the bubble. She was beautiful but forbidden. He knew that. They met at a school bus stop along the bayou where the girl lived. He was there in his car to pick up his sister, who was going to school with the girl. His sister was nowhere to be found that afternoon. But the girl, she could be seen, heard and touched. The boy wanted all those things. The girl wondered about the White devils who killed her hero. Were all White people devils? No, she thought. At least one wasn’t. She knew the boy’s sister. They talked on the bus, even laughed together. The sister wasn’t like the devils who killed her hero or the ones who spat on her in the halls at her school. Now, the boy was talking to her at the bus stop. He made her laugh. Would it be okay to talk back? No one was around. The boy was offering her a ride home. No one would be there when they arrived. No one would see them together. Sure, why not? A ride was better than three miles of hot dirt road. The time was late spring. Her fathers, uncles, brothers and cousins were in the fields planting until dark. Her mother, aunts and older sister were all working late at the big house. It was laundry day. The house would be quiet and empty. As they drove home with the windows down, the boy and girl couldn’t help but smell the turned-up earth that yielded their daily bread. It had been this way for as long as anyone could remember men and boys turning up the earth, planting cotton in the deep red dirt, battling weeds and weevils over the summer, and picking come the fall. Bubble or no bubble, blood or no blood, murder or no murder, the cotton would be picked, and all would be well in the Red River Valley. The place she stayed was down a shady road lined with cypress and water oaks. The road ran along the bayou, which flowed into the Red River. Her home was one of several sharecropper cabins built long ago and still occupied by the families working for the Dutch farmers who owned what was left of the old plantations. While the bubble may have been cracking in town, and more so in the big cities, it was still thick and strong along the bayou. No way a White boy should be giving a Black girl a ride home, even talking to her. Both were doing wrong, and they knew it, but neither knew why. It was just that the boy thought he smelled something sweet, and the girl thought the boy was funny. He wanted to touch her hair. She wanted to show him their shrine to the Virgin Mary, maybe hold him. The boy parked his car in some bushes down the road from her home. He was leaving the bubble. He might be seen. He didn’t want that. The only soul who could see him was the girl. He wanted to be seen by her and heard and touched. He entered the threshold of her home, his eyes wide open, his heart pounding. Above a wooden chest was a statue of the Virgin. Her skin was Black. A Black Baby Jesus sat in her lap. Two small candles burned in colored jars. Left of Mary was a saint he didn’t know. Right of her statue was a photo of their fallen hero. He looked like the grown man Jesus, staring over the horizon, straining to see something better. The boy was a Baptist, so some of this was lost on him. He whispered to the girl that it all was nice. She had a really nice home. He was trembling inside and out. He had never been outside the bubble. He didn’t know how to act. The girl bade him sit on the couch. The girl sat next to the boy. She pulled her dress down, properly. She could see the boy was still nervous. She wasn’t scared. She knew her people wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours. He would be long gone by then. She told the boy as much. They smiled at each other. The girl rose and went back to her bedroom to get a record. She placed it on the hi-fi and returned to the couch next to the boy. The hi-fi played songs by Marvin and Tammy. The girl could see the boy ease back and relax. Instead of looking googly-eyed around her living room at every object and family photo, he was now gazing at her, into her eyes. She took his hand and stared down at their hands intertwined. Zebra hands, she thought, and laughed inside. It tickled her. It was a time for something special to take place. She felt it. There would be an uncovering, an apocalypse, like what John saw on Patmos. Something would be revealed to her. Had she invited a White devil into her home? She was ready to find out. Would this destroy them both? Fear and desire ran hot in her veins. The zebra hands parted as he drew her closer.