From the Journal of Yardley Brown
June 1, 2004
As she lies sleeping, I can’t help but be grateful that I finally know what true love is. I thought I’d found love before, thought that I’d embraced it, but I was wrong. Sheila, Roxie, all the rest of them, they had come into my life and turned it into chaos. Now I’m finally at peace with myself and my ability to give a woman what she really wants and really needs.
Not to seem like I’m reducing it to a sexual thing, but she does something to me. I can’t contain myself when I’m around her. My dick gets hard every time I think of her. I spend half of my days and all of my nights—the ones when she isn’t here with me—fantasizing about what the next time with her will be like.
Sometimes I wish that I could place my dick inside of her and sleep there, feeling her pussy pulsating around my shaft, letting me know that we are as one. But it is more than sex; it is love. The kind of love I’ve searched for my entire life. The kind of love that I want to feel for the rest of my life.
Yes, I mean it. She’s the one. My only fear is that she’s been damaged so much in her past that she’ll fight me tooth and nail and refuse to totally open up to me; the way I need her to open up to me.
To think that we wasted so much time—almost two years—wasting time trying to make relationships work with other people, when we belonged together all along. I guess it’s like my mother always told me. Things don’t happen when we want them to happen; they happen when they’re supposed to happen.
Learn as if you were going to live forever.
Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
—Mahatma Gandhi
One
Rayne Waters, Age 15
Birmingham, AL
June 1990
I was lying in my bed dreaming about Prince laying me down on his basement bed; like he did to Apollonia in Purple Rain. I’d fallen asleep staring at the poster of him I had taped to my bedroom ceiling; a nightly routine for me. It was the one where he was lying on his stomach with his ass cheeks exposed; enough to tease the millions of teenage girls who idolized him like me.
“Rayne, wake up! Wake up, dammit!”
Momma’s high-pitched, irritating voice pierced into my blissful sleep. I willed both it and her to go away. Lost cause. Momma shook my shoulders and yanked me halfway off my twin-sized canopy bed.
“Rayne, you know you hear me! Sit up, missy! Time for a talk!”
Trying to sleep was out of the question so I propped my back up on a pillow. “Momma, it’s the middle of the night. Can’t this wait?”
“No, it can’t wait.”
Her breath almost knocked me out when she plopped down beside me, landing her hip on one of my kidneys. I moved over slightly. She was drunk again; no huge surprise. Momma spent at least five nights a week at the Eagle, a cruddy bar less than a mile from our apartment.
“Baby, I should’ve done this a long time ago, so listen up!”
“Done what, Momma?” Various scenarios raced through my head. Then I remembered my less than stellar grades. “Is this about my progress report? I’m gonna pull that D up in math. I promise.”
Momma let out this hideous laugh. “This ain’t ’bout no damn school! Fuck school!”
Humph, I wonder how many members of the PTA would want to jump on Momma’s back for telling her child to “fuck school.” She wasn’t exactly June Cleaver but she could’ve at least been supportive of my education. I was really trying hard in school and was having issues with a couple of classes; mainly because of my staying up half the weeknights waiting for her to come home. I’d hear all these creepy noises in and around our apartment and we didn’t exactly live in the safest area of Birmingham. I realized Momma was doing the best she could, considering my father—who she refused to name, if she even knew his name—had never been a part of our lives. Momma worked as a waitress at this dump where they couldn’t even give me free food to eat. She used to try to get me to come by there after school to eat at her employee discount rate, but after a couple times of struggling to chew their meatloaf and ending up on the toilet for three hours, I decided my digestive system was more important than saving money.
On the flip side, I’d gained a lot of weight from eating fast food. I tried to tell myself that I could lose it at any given time. After all, I was young, and that had to count for something. I wasn’t obese, so I simply let it flow and ignored the few assholes at school who made comments. I’d tell them, “God didn’t intend for everyone to be a bag of bones!”
Momma slapped me on the leg and the pain shot up my spine. The room was flooded with an unwelcome burst of light after she reached for the ceramic lamp on my nightstand. “I wanna talk to you about fast ass boys!”
“Momma, why are you yelling? I’m right here.”
Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed her mascara and lipstick were smudged. She was so beautiful, even in disarray. She had the smoothest caramel skin, and men lost their minds over her gray eyes; the ones I shared with her.
“What about boys?” I asked. “I’m not even dating.”