I didn’t understand how she could bear to disengage or how she could move so quickly. The kiss seemed to go on forever, but why I couldn’t get my arms around her I did not know.
We went a little ways from the park and into the street. She led me up a nameless alley, behind a machine shop. There we came to a Dodge van that was wedged between two small buildings.
She opened the back door. The carpeted back of the van was completely bare except for a canvas cot that stood against the far side.
“Get in quick,” she said.
The dog, Max, ran in with me.
“Take off the clothes,” she said.
She pulled off her one-piece black dress. Underneath she had well-formed small breasts and a flat stomach. Her pubic hair was plentiful and wild, like an untamed shrub. I moaned when I saw her and tore a fingernail on the knot of my bootlace.
When I had most of my clothes off she looked at me and smiled. My erection was pointing right at her.
“What do you want?” I asked. I knew that I couldn’t move without her telling me to.
I was hunched down because the van wasn’t big enough even for her to stand up straight.
She pulled the cot toward the center of the space.
“Here,” she said, indicating that I should sit on the edge toward the bottom.
I was naked except for one boot and the pant leg I couldn’t get over it.
She made me lie down and then she got herself astride my erection. I felt something so firm and warm and embracing that I gasped.
“Don’t move,” she said.
“But I have to.”
“Does it feel good like this?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t move.”
I was looking up into her eyes. She seemed to be asking for something, and I was trying my best to give it to her. Every now and then I’d have a spasm and a shake.
“Don’t move” would be her response.
After a long time she began to move up and down slowly, leaning over a little so she could run her fingertips over my nipples. I tried to move with her, but she dug her nails into my chest and whispered, “Stop. If you feel like moving, just call out, just scream. Nobody’s gonna hear you. Scream.”
She started to move faster then.
I let out a yell.
The dog barked.
“Just lie there, Chance,” Claudia Heart said. I wondered where she’d learned my name.
I screamed.
“How does it feel?” she asked.
“Like cashmere and steel,” I said. I don’t know where I found the voice or the words.
“Do you like it?”
I couldn’t answer.
The dog let out a howl that echoed inside my chest and brain.
“Spread your legs,” Claudia commanded.
I heard her but somehow I didn’t think she was talking to me.
“Spread your legs,” she said again.
I did so and instantly felt the dog’s hot tongue lapping against my testicles. I tried to pull my knees together, but Claudia put her hand out to stop me.
“If you try it, Max’ll snap those balls right off.”
Scared as I was, I just got more excited.
“Just take it, baby,” Claudia said. And she began to move fast, moving me around like rock and roll.
When I came I thought my heart would explode. Claudia let her serious gaze break for a momentary smile.
“It’s just the beginning, Chance. It’s just the start.”
I tried to get up, but Max bit my thigh. He howled again; Claudia brought back the cashmere and steel. It was hours before she was through with me. I don’t know how long it was exactly because I wasn’t conscious the entire time.
After our lovemaking I slept and dreamed.
My father was there, tall and black like he’d been in the photograph Mom kept. He was wearing a suit in the dream, not the jeans and work shirt.
“Hey, Lester,” he said. Lester was my given name. Ordé named me Chance through prophecy and divination. He said that the name stood for the slender thread of hope that humanity had for survival in the face of creation.
“Yeah, hey,” I said to my old man.
“You still my son, boy. You still a black son to Africa too. Don’t let them white folks get you down. They ain’t no kinda problem less you let ’em be.”
“But Mom’s okay, right, Dad?” I asked.
“She’s fine, fine. But just don’t let her deny me in your veins. Don’t let her tell you that you just the same. You’re better than anybody could imagine.”
I was sitting on a tiny island with Claudia. She asked me where we were, and I told her that it was my island. The island where I went to get away.
I was looking for that island when I left home to go to the University of California at Berkeley. Before that I lived in Los Angeles with my mom. She sent me to church and school and summer camp with all white kids. She told me not to listen when they made fun of me and to just ignore it when they played tricks on me. They never beat on me, because I was too big. But they could hurt my feelings anyway.
I told Mom that I’d be strong, but I couldn’t be, and when I left I never went back to her or her life.
I started out in the dorms until I got my B.A., but when I entered graduate school I moved to a big warehouse in San Francisco shared by drug addicts, runaways, students, and dropouts. I kept up my studies for a year or so. I dropped acid and learned the recorder. I’d hitchhike up along the Russian River with girls I’d just met that afternoon. With the hippies I found some peace, but it was a hard peace. I felt guilty because of my mother, and so it was always difficult to sleep.
“Wake up. Wake up.” Claudia was shaking me. She had her dress on again. Max was asleep in a corner of the van. “Get up.”
“Hi,” I said. My pants were still inside out, hanging from my left ankle and boot.
“Go on now, Chance.”
“What?”
“Go. Go home.”
“Can’t I go in the morning?”
“No. I need to be alone now.”
“But—”
“We’ve done whatever it was you needed, Chance. It’s time for you to go.”
There was no arguing with her. I pulled on my clothes. She went to the driver’s seat of the van and waited while I dressed. When I was finished I tried to say good-bye but she didn’t seem to hear me.
I reached out to touch her, but Max growled and leaped to his feet.
Three
I found Ordé waiting for me when I got back to his speaking stone. It was already dark.
“You left my sermon,” he said. It was neither a question nor an accusation.
“She made me.”
“I know,” he said. “I was trying to hold on to you with my words, but her sex was too strong.”
“I knew it,” I said. It felt like an unfaithful lover’s confession.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I could fly but don’t remember how.”
“And what do you want now?”
I looked him in the eye. We were the same height. Where he was thin and golden, I was strong and the color of milk chocolate. There wasn’t much of my white mother in me.
I shrugged and held back a sob. Ever since I’d left Claudia’s van I wanted back in. Back into her presence. She was the only thought my mind could hold on to. Everything else was dissolving. All my memories and desires were fading like temporary images glimpsed in the contours of a cloud.
“Would you like to hear the rest of my sermon?” Ordé asked.
I still knew how to nod on my own.
He went right into his talk just as if it were still noon.