Marlon Rachquel Moore

The first surprise was seeing you at the airport. The second was after you disappeared around the corner ahead of me, realizing I was holding my breath. There was no time for a conversation, so I paused at the intersection of Concourses A and B and glanced in your general direction. I spent the ride home dreaming of the time you briefly landed in my life, animated and high-pitched, like a hummingbird.

#

You weren’t that boy. The boy of burnt-red hair and clay-brown skin who thrilled us younger teens with tales of the toughest games or a play that saved the day. The one whose varsity jacket had patches flowing down both sleeves. His parents grew up in the same speck of a Texas town as mine, but he was a military brat who had seen the world and lived in Louisiana. That boy was so busy being the celebrated athlete in his high school, the sun in his sister’s sky, and the jewel in his mother’s crown that he could only find time for me when the sun went down. 

You weren’t that boy—the one who showed up on random Friday nights at his Big Mama’s house across the street. Who spent Saturday mornings bent over the engine of his rebuilt Trans-Am, then washed it and drove off to join the crowd at the city park. His Kenwood speakers thumped in my chest as he rolled past. That boy hung out with girls who wore makeup and spent money on their hair. Not just any pretty girls; he rode around with the popular ones who never spoke to me at school. He attended dances at our community college gym and leaned against the wall while the girls from my school whispered and glanced in his direction. I didn’t have to be there to see it. He would tell me all about it someday soon when the sun went down. 

You see, Red was my sweet secret. I thought no one held him like I did. Under scratchy hotel sheets, he complained about his girlfriend back home. She was always accusing, always unsatisfied. My fingers drifted across taut back muscles when he was anxious about fatherhood the first time she turned up pregnant. And I was moved by the defeat in his voice when her belly swelled yet again. I squeezed his calloused fingers as he recounted the career-ending injury. Inhaled his woodsy cologne as he contemplated entering the Air Force to avoid growing old in a factory. 

Red never called me except to say, Can you meet me in the driveway?  I would climb out the window at 2:00 a.m. and straddle him in the Trans-Am. Sometimes, I noticed the lingering rose-jasmine fragrance of a certain dancer. She was a senior with intricate braids, which looked right through me. I would imagine her face while his coarse hands gripped my thighs. I found her kiss in his mouth and swallowed her hungrily.

#

You showed up in the summer of 1988 to stay at Big Mama’s house. Red’s cousin from the West Coast. My age, bubbly, and bookish; your mother sent you here to get to know your father’s people. Between us, laughter came easily. You asked how I filled my time, as you were unimpressed by “the woods” and wondered how country folks withstood such monotony. That’s when I read to you from my diary. Suddenly, we were standing beneath the glowing lights of a Ferris wheel. Flipped the page and—wee!—a roller coaster creaked slowly to its peak, took us for a loop, then dropped us in free fall through the air. We ate cotton candy on page three.  “This is where I go,” I said, snapping the diary shut, “to find some way else to be.”

You were the freckle-faced girl who knocked on my mama’s front door. Invited me to sit under a shade tree. The one who brought a zipper bag of pencils and a spiral notebook tucked under her arm, full of sketches from your time near the sea. Laid it all in my palms, your amber eyes piercing me. “Come into my world next,” you pleaded. “Tell me what you think. Could we work on something together? Like, you start the poem, and I follow where it leads?” 

Passing the notebook became our daily routine. Through dragonfly characters, you depicted your homesickness, and I disclosed my scars. We had inside jokes and silly codenames to mock the adults, and sometimes we kissed, playing truth-or-dare. Skin-close in the summer breeze, we burned time like crisp fall leaves. Nitpicking rhymes and high-fiving clever lines, we built escape hatches one stanza at a time.

#

One day Red returned, and you slipped out of view. Through the curtains, I watched him. Back bent under the hood. Occasionally wiping away the sweat dripping from his face with the T-shirt dangling from his back pocket. 

I took a bath. Plugged in the curling iron. When I checked the window again, I saw them together. He was with my cousin. She was like those other girls and closer to his age. She had been sent to her grandmother, who lived next door to me. Word in the family was she needed to be straightened out after some incidents in Houston revealed her rebellious tendencies. 

I squinted, trying to interpret their faces. He wiped his neck, laid the shirt over his shoulder, and leaned against the car. She fingered her earring and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Then they laughed at something and went together inside. I dropped the curtain, picked up my diary, and scrawled furiously until I found some way else to be. 

#

It stung like bullnettles on unsuspecting skin.

“I was surprised by how smoothly things clicked with her,” Red casually explained from the driver’s seat. After eavesdropping and moping for weeks, I stood outside the car window, arms crossed, faking nonchalance. “Now, anywhere we go,” he counted on his fingers, “like the zoo, restaurants, the mall, people compliment our shine.” He rattled on about letters he wrote my cousin behind his girlfriend’s back and the creeping mileage from visiting her every chance he got. “I mean, haven’t you ever had somebody hijack your thoughts?”

Watching his taillights disappear over the hill, I conjured the perfect getaway. We’ll transform into blue jays, I thought desperately, with sturdy speckled wings. Perch so high no feelings can reach. 

“Sorry, baby,” Big Mama said. “She already gone.” Back to your mother, back to the sea.

#

Seeing you again sent me down a hallway of memories I don’t often pass through anymore. Probably because I have to admit I returned to that reckless lover soon as my cousin discarded him. And it reminds me that I would, again and again, slink to the driveway, dragging my dignity across the concrete. Eventually, a lovely someone came along and met my gaze pleasingly. Her thigh against mine was like sunlit poetry. She held my hand as I opened doors that previously frightened me. One day, I will understand my season of secrets quite differently. But I was not that girl in 1988. Not yet.