Loving Donovan. Bernice L. McFadden

little ol’ strawberry? I mean, they are the sweetest things. Now blackberries, yuck! I hate those with a passion. I could understand a person’s body breaking out in hives after having one of those things, although some say the blacker the berry the sweeter the— Oh, look at me going on and on.”

      Clarence finally took a breath, and Millie took one right along with him. Campbell, who had been listening from the kitchen, just giggled to herself.

      “I love strawberries and cheesecake. Thank you so much,” Millie said, and another warm smile spread across her face.

      “You’re welcome. Very, very welcome,” Clarence said, and surprisingly turned and walked upstairs without another word.

      “Yeah, he’s got plenty of sugar in his tank,” Fred commented afterward as he grabbed a glass from the cabinet.

      “Oh, Fred. Some men are just a little feminine—it don’t mean he’s gay.”

      “Oh, he’s a faggot all right,” Fred said as he held the glass up to the light to examine it.

      “Fred!” Millie screamed, and turned on him.

      “What?” He gave her a dumbfounded look.

      “That word, it’s disgusting.”

      “What word, faggot?”

      Millie went rigid. “Yes.”

      “Well, that’s what he is, Millie. I’m just calling it the way I see it.”

      “Can’t you just say gay like the rest of the world?”

      “I don’t know anybody who says gay, Millie. What world do you live in?”

      “Stop it.” Millie shook her head.

      Well, it was becoming quite evident to Campbell that Clarence did have a little sugar in his tank.

      The more comfortable he became with them, the more melodious his voice grew, the more expressive his hands became as he used them to pilot himself through conversations. Campbell thought of them, his hands, as pigeons during their morning flights over her house, diving and climbing, their movements sensuous and erratic all at once.

      Fred rarely stayed to listen to Clarence’s drawn-out, overwrought stories, but Millie and Campbell quietly, politely took in every word he had to say.

      If Clarence was gay, then Awed was something else, but at that tender age, Campbell didn’t know what the proper term should be.

      It seemed that Awed liked women too, liked them enough to bring them home when Clarence was at work, bring them home and do to them what he did to Clarence on nights Clarence came home with a case of beer or a fifth of scotch.

      Somehow Campbell felt that Awed didn’t touch him in that way on evenings when Clarence came home empty-handed.

      One day, as Campbell sat at the kitchen table trying to concentrate on a particular history problem, a steady knocking started beneath her. She was used to the sound, accustomed to hearing it on nights when the house was quiet and she was supposed to be asleep.

      On those nights, Millie would pull herself out of bed and turn the television on to drown out the sound of Clarence and Awed’s lovemaking. If Fred happened to be home, he would shake his head in disgust, grab his bathrobe, and step outside to have a cigarette or take a walk.

      It was always over quickly, just as Fred flicked the glowing butt of his Winston out into the street or rounded the corner that happened to have a working pay phone.

      But on that day, the sun still high in the sky and schoolchildren playing hopscotch on the street, the knocking sound was annoying, and Campbell thought it inappropriate for that time of day.

      She slammed her pencil down on the table and put her hands over her ears until curiosity overwhelmed her and she scurried from the chair and down to the floor to press her ear to the vent.

      She heard a woman’s soft giggle and then Awed’s voice, thick and guttural, “Whose pussy is this, bitch!” and the thumping sounds became louder, faster.

      “Yours! Yours!” the woman screamed.

      Campbell’s eyes bulged.

      “Whose, whose!”

      “A-a-aweeeeeeeeed!”

      Campbell remained at the vent, alternating ears, ignoring the pain the beige and white linoleum was causing on her soft knees. She was mesmerized with the lewd call-and-response game Awed and his lady friend played.

      “Whose, whose, whose!”

      “Aweeeeeeeeeed!”

      Millie called from work, just as she did every day at four p.m.

      “Hello?” Campbell answered breathlessly, the sudden ringing of the phone catching her off guard and making her feel guilty.

      “What you doing?” Millie asked suspiciously. “Who’s there?”

      “No one—I was in the bathroom.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Millie announced that she would be detained at least another hour and said for Campbell to remove the frozen chicken parts that she planned to fry for dinner that night.

      “Is your father home?” she asked as an afterthought, but Campbell knew that Millie had wanted to ask that question at the very beginning of the conversation.

      “No.” She sighed, her eyes glued to the vent, her ears straining to hear what she was missing.

      Fred had not come home from work yet. He worked the midnight-to-eight shift for sanitation and should have been home by ten o’clock that morning, but it was just past four, and he’d still not arrived.

      Millie was quiet for a moment and then offered a quick goodbye before slamming the receiver down in its cradle.

      Her mother’s orders forgotten, Campbell rushed back to the vent. Just as she was getting herself situated, the front door swung open, and Clarence whisked in, hands laden with shopping bags.

      “Hello, Princess Campbell!” he sang before gliding down the stairs to his apartment.

      “Hey,” she called back.

      She’d barely been able to get to her feet before he’d breezed past the door. If it had been closed, like it was supposed to be, she wouldn’t have had to move at all, but she’d gotten so used to it being open when her parents were home and had taken to doing the same.

      She could hear Clarence jiggling the lock, could hear the keys clinking together as he became more and more frustrated. He breathed and then sucked his teeth before knocking; he knocked softly at first and then called to Awed through the door.

      “Awed . . . Awed, you’ve got the double lock on. You know I don’t have a key for that. Awed?”

      Awed’s feet hit the floor; quick shuffling sounds followed as he and whatever woman he had there tried desperately to locate their clothing.

      “Awed!” Clarence’s voice was shrill. He’d heard the rustling, shuffling sounds too. “Awed, you open this door right this minute. Right this goddamn minute!”

      Clarence banged on the door now, his shouts climbing to the screams of a frantic woman.

      Campbell wondered if she should call the police, Millie, or Luscious, but she couldn’t move; she was glued to the vent.

      There was an endless instant of silence that was so intense she could hear the insistent tick-tick-tick of the pumpkin clock that sat on the wall above the refrigerator.

      She held her breath and waited.

      “Gimme a damn minute,” Awed’s voice finally came.

      The door slowly opened, and Clarence was met with a dusky blackness that was weighed down with the scent of cigarettes, beer, and sex.

      Awed,