I was past the embarrassment I had felt when things first started changing, when I wore a sweater wel into the spring to hide my bra straps. At fifteen, I threw my box of tampons on the drugstore counter along with my packs of gum and nail-polish remover. But under my father’s eyes that evening, I felt shy again and obscene.
“Sit back down,” James said. “We don’t need no cucumber water. What we need here is to have a conversation. Raleigh, you got eyes in your h-head. What we n-n-need to do is s-s-it down and talk.”
Sitting back down, I faked a cough to give myself a reason to pat my chest and cover the keyhole with my palm.
“You’re going on a date,” James said. “Don’t lie to me.” His voice was turning angry. I looked over at Raleigh, who picked up a magazine from the coffee table and stared at the pages.
“It’s not real y a date,” I said.
“It’s something,” James snapped back. “When did you start wearing so much makeup?”
The real answer was that I started wearing Fashion Fair when Ronalda and I figured out how to swipe the testers from the counter at Rich’s. The eye shadows were fastened down to the displays, but a person could get away with the lipstick and blusher if she knew what she was doing.
James went on, “Look at that shirt you’ve got on.”
I didn’t speak to my father. I told myself to be calm, that he would start to stammer soon, that whatever conversation he seemed bent on having could never take place.
“Where did you even b-b-buy that top? Y-y-y-you’re about to b-b-b-bust out of it.”
“I was going to wear a jacket,” I said.
“She’s just growing up,” Raleigh said. “Both the girls are growing up.”
James shrugged Raleigh’s hand off his shoulder. “That’s easy for you to say. They’re not your daughters.”
I looked up at James. Had he ever spoken of me and Chaurisse in a single breath? It was like we were regular sisters, driving our dad crazy like the light-skinned daughters on
“Dana,” James said, “I know your mama has talked to you about this already.” He looked at me for confirmation so I bobbed my head a little bit, stil smiling like fool. “You’re a good girl. I know you’re a good girl. I love you, right? Your uncle Raleigh, he loves you, too. Right, Raleigh?”
“Of course, Jimmy,” he said. “Both of us love you, Dana.” He raised his camera to his face and snapped it at me.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Daddy.” Feeling brave, I repeated the whole sentence. “I love you, too, Daddy.” The word tasted a little sharp, like milk about to turn, but stil , I wanted to say it again and again.
Raleigh pressed the shutter once more, and it was like the Fourth of July. I blinked in the purple flash; the spots left in front of my face were like those little cartoon hearts around Popeye’s head when he looks at Olive Oyl. My father loved me.
He said it, right here, not to please my mother, but just because he wanted it to be said.
MY FATHER LICKED his thumb and reached toward my cheek. There was a part of me that knew that his damp finger meant that he wanted to wipe something from my face, that he was probably aiming for my chocolate raspberry blusher. I understood this in the brain, but my body twitched.
My shoulder rose to protect my face.
I should have been over it by then, but I cringed, jumping back the way I did whenever Marcus raised his hand, even if he was just reaching for the light switch to give us some privacy. “Don’t be scared of me,” he had said just the day before, when I ducked as he was adjusting the light in the top of his car. I told him I wasn’t scared. I didn’t want to get into it al over again. It wasn’t like it happened al the time, and when it did, people had been drinking.
Twitching like that in front of James shamed me as much as the keyhole in the shirt. It wasn’t normal, this aversion to being touched. Marcus let me know that other girls didn’t behave like this, which only aggravated the situation. This flinching had become worse than a reflex; it was a stammer of the body.
I let my head hang heavy on my neck and said, “I’l change my clothes before I go. I wasn’t going to wear this, anyway.” I got up and I glanced at the clock, careful y, not wanting to draw attention to my nervousness.
“Sit back down,” James said. “Sit back down. What time is he picking you up? I want to meet him.”
“Nobody is coming to pick me up,” I said. “I am meeting the people over at their house. It’s not a date. It’s not just one person I’m going out with.”
“So you wearing that top with al your business hanging out just to see what you can catch?”
“Aw, Jimmy,” Raleigh said. “It’s not fair to talk to her like that.”
“I’m fair,” James said. “I would be the same way with Chaurisse. I’m fair. Evenhanded. Fifty-fifty in everything.”
Raleigh said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Speak for yourself,” James said. “I am trying to talk to my child here. It’s my duty.”
I touched my earlobes, disturbing my earrings. My mother’s mother had given them to her when she was born and when I was born, my mother gave them to me. She told me to give them to my daughter. I asked what would happen if I didn’t have one, what if I had only a son, or no children at al . “In that case,” my mother said. “You get to keep them and wear them in your coffin.”
James wet his finger again and aimed for my brow bone. Again, I jerked away.
“Dana?” Raleigh said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Reflexes. Nothing.” I kept repeating the last word, unable to stop myself.
