I Cannot Get You Close Enough (41 page)

ANNA HAND I cannot get you close enough, I said to him, pitiful as a child, and never can and never will. We cannot get from anyone else the things we need to fill the endless terrible need, not to be dissolved, not to sink back into sand, heat, broom, air, thinnest air. And so we revolve around each other and our dreams collide. It is embarrassing that it should be so hard. Look out the window in any weather. We are part of all that glamour, drama, change, and should not be ashamed.

JESSIE It would be winter now if I were in Charlotte. Instead I'm in New Orleans, with my stomach out to here. I don't care. I did what I wanted to do. King hates me now. He hates the way I look and he doesn't like to go out with me. That's okay. As soon as I get my baby I'll be out of here. I'll get some money from Grandmother and go live in New York. I'll get an apartment like the one Aunt Anna had and get a job or something up there. I told Olivia on the phone about it. She said, okay, she'd been waiting for this to happen. She's doing great in school. She wants to get to New York too. So, in two more months. I can wait. I wonder what it's going to be. I want it to be a girl. I'm sick of men. I'm sick of Manny being so perfect and calling every afternoon to check on us. We live down the street from Crystal now in a house that belongs to Mrs. Chatevin. It's got roaches and they drive me crazy. I never lived in a little house like this. I hate these old houses and all this old stuff in this town. But I love the flowers.

I quit going to Dominican. I got too tired to get up in the mornings. King comes home any time he wants to. He says he's studying at the Tulane Library but nobody stays at the library until three in the morning. He never touches me now.

Well, I did what I wanted to. I wanted to have the baby and now I'm having it. I won't do it again. Olivia says, Jessie, swear you will never do it again. Okay, I say, I won't. Maybe I'll give it to Crystal. She's the one who wants it so much. I dreamed I left it at a play. I was the star of the play and I put it down backstage and when I went back it wasn't breathing. I haven't been to confession in a year. That's one reason I quit Dominican. I couldn't stand those ugly little nuns giving me those looks. Like they can read my mind.

My baby can read this one day so she'll know not to let it happen to her. I let him do it because he's so good-looking and it felt good. That's it. That's the whole reason. There wasn't anything to do up there all summer anyway. Then I thought I was in love with him. We were starting to argue anyway and so I thought I was depressed the first time I threw up. I guess I got pregnant the first time I let him do it.

When I told him about it he got excited about it. He was the one who wanted to go to the drugstore and get the kit right away and we went to a motel and stayed there all afternoon after we did the test. Crystal gives him too much money. Ever since I first met him at that funeral I have thought that. He gets the most money for nothing of any boy I ever met. That is really nice at first, then you think it over.

So when I woke up the next morning, I thought, I have three choices, get an abortion, get married, run away; Dad will kill me one way or the other. But when Olivia said, Dad will kill you, I said, No, he won't, he loves me. I am a Hand and we never admit we are scared, never admit we are lonely, never say we are not strong. Our coat of arms says, No One Harms Us And Gets Away With It. Something like that in Latin. Well, King didn't get away with talking me into doing it with him. He is stuck here with me now. I'm stuck too, he thinks. But he's wrong. As soon as I get the baby here I'm gone. I talked to Mother last week. She called me from Athens, Greece. She was going to Venice to meet some friends. She says I could come to Europe. She isn't interested in the baby. She is only interested in me. She is the only person except Olivia who is interested in me. I don't care. I like little kids. At least this one will be good-looking and beautiful. I'll take it to Europe. Oh, no, I forgot. Olivia and I are going to take it and go to New York. She gets out of school the last of May. I'll be okay by then. The baby is coming in March or April. It will be pretty big by May. We'll pack up and leave. I'll get on a 747 and we'll be out of here.

Oh, yeah. This doctor I go to for the baby is a lesbian. I was afraid of her at first then I thought, Well, I don't want to have a relationship with her, I just want her to take care of me. She is very gentle and gray-headed. She sees me every two weeks and she is always worrying about me and asking me questions about how we live and what King does and if he's good to me. She isn't coming on to me. She is just interested in me. She is going to try to make this as easy as possible for me. I am going to Lamaze classes but King never goes. He was too young to deal with this but I am not. I am strong enough. I'll make it. Dr. Cordona is her name. She has opened up my mind about lesbians. I can see why a woman would decide to do that. If she just got tired of putting up with men and all their bullshit. Well, it doesn't scare me to think like that. I told Olivia about it and she said that's the mark of an open mind. She is studying philosophy and biology. They are her favorite subjects. She says the central nervous system is the highest achievement of evolution and she is going to concentrate on it. She says the mind of this baby inside of me is the most important thing and I have to listen to classical music and stay calm because I don't want to pass down the sins of our whole family to this baby in the form of making it a nervous wreck before it's born. She is calling me every other night now. I don't know what I'd do without her.

OLIVIA I feel so sorry for her. My God, she sounds so bad on the phone. I ought to tell Dad but if I do he'll just go crazy. I'm saving money. I saved sixteen hundred dollars counting the gold coins Dad's dad gave me for Christmas. I keep telling her to save some money. They all give her money all the time. We can't get away unless we have some money. But I don't think she's listening. I'll go down there at spring break. Poor Dad, no one will be here with him. That's okay, I can't worry about all of them at once. Listen, I am going to work on the Human Genome Initiative as soon as I get out. That's my goal now. Listen, it will still be going on. It's going to take them a long time to finish it. Maybe we should go to Washington this summer instead of New York. I could go and visit the labs there. This woman from the National Institutes of Health came to talk to us. It's fabulous. They are going to find the secrets of life and cure all diseases. This is not a joke. I could be the one who writes about what they do. Then I would still be a writer. It's very imaginative, being a biologist. You have to have a good imagination. I have that.

KING I'm so sick of her crying all the time. She thinks I don't know it. She thinks I believe it when she acts like she likes to cook supper or something like that. It's so goddamn boring, hanging around the house after dinner, trying to study with her moping around. I can't help it if I don't like to fuck somebody that looks like you'd kill the baby if you did. I love Jessie. I told her I did. I just can't stand to stay here.

CRYSTAL I don't know what went wrong.

LYDIA I told them so.

TRACELEEN This too shall pass away.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1990 by Ellen Gilchrist

Cover design by Steven Seighman

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