This Is How You Lose Her(19)

We have to sit down after a while so that I can hold her hand and she can cry. I should say something but I don’t know where a person can start. She will bring them or she will go. That much has changed.

It gets cold. We go home. We embrace at the door for what feels like an hour.

That night I give Ramón the letter and I try to smile while he reads it.





Flaca




YOUR LEFT EYE USED TO drift when you were tired or upset. It’s looking for something, you used to say and those days we saw each other it fluttered and rolled and you had to put your finger over it to stop it. You were doing this when I woke up and found you on the edge of my chair. You were still in your teacher’s gear but your jacket was off and enough buttons were open on your blouse to show me the black bra I bought you and the freckles on your chest. We didn’t know it was the last days but we should have.

I just got here, you said and I looked out where you’d parked your Civic.

Go roll up them windows.

I’m not going to be here long.

Someone’s going to steal it.

I’m almost ready to go.

You stayed in your chair and I knew better than to move closer. You had an elaborate system that you thought would keep us out of bed: you sat on the other side of the room, you didn’t let me crack your knuckles, you never stayed more than fifteen minutes. It never really worked, did it?

I brought you guys dinner, you said. I was making lasagna for my class so I brought the leftovers.

My room is hot and small, overrun by books. You never wanted to be in here (it’s like being inside a sock, you said) and anytime the boys were away we slept in the living room, out on the rug.

Your long hair was making you sweat and finally you took your hand away from your eye. You hadn’t stopped talking.

Today I was given a new student. Her mother told me to be careful with her because she had the sight.

The sight?

You nod. I asked the señora if the sight helped her in school. She said, Not really but it’s helped me with the numbers a few times.

I’m supposed to laugh but I stare outside, where a mitten-shaped leaf had stuck to your windshield. You stand beside me. When I saw you, first in our Joyce class and then at the gym, I knew I’d call you Flaca. If you’d been Dominican my family would have worried about you, brought plates of food to my door. Heaps of plátanos and yuca, smothered in liver or queso frito. Flaca. Even though your name was Veronica, Veronica Hardrada.

The boys will be home soon, I say. Maybe you should roll up your windows.

I’m going now, you say and put your hand back over your eye.

—

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED to get serious between us. I can’t see us getting married or nothing and you nodded your head and said you understood. Then we fucked so that we could pretend that nothing hurtful had just happened. This was like our fifth time together and you got dressed in a black sheath and a pair of Mexican sandals and you said I could call you when I wanted but that you wouldn’t call me. You have to decide where and when, you said. If you leave it up to me I’ll want to see you every day.

At least you were honest, which is more than I can say for me. Weekdays I never called you, didn’t even miss you. I had the boys and my job at Transactions Press to keep me busy. But Friday and Saturday nights, when I didn’t meet anybody at the clubs, I called. We talked until the silences were long, until finally you asked, Do you want to see me?

I’d say yes and while I waited for you I’d tell the boys it’s just sex, you know, nothing at all. And you’d come, with a change of clothes and a pan so you could make us breakfast, maybe cookies you baked for your class. The boys would find you in the kitchen the next morning, in one of my shirts and at first they didn’t complain, because they guessed you would just go away. And by the time they started saying something, it was late, wasn’t it?

—

I REMEMBER: THE BOYS keeping an eye on me. They figured two years ain’t no small thing, even though the entire time I never claimed you. But what was nuts was that I felt fine. I felt like summer had taken me over. I told the boys this was the best decision I’d ever made. You can’t be fucking with whitegirls all your life.

In some groups that was more than a given; in our group it was not.

In that Joyce class you never spoke but I did, all the time, and once you looked at me and I looked at you and you turned so red even the professor noticed. You were whitetrash from outside of Paterson and it showed in your no-fashion-sense and you’d dated niggers a lot. I said you had a thing about us and you said, angry, No, I do not.

But you sort of did. You were the whitegirl who danced bachata, who pledged the SLUs, who’d gone to Santo Domingo three times already.