Loving Donovan. Bernice L. McFadden

a lit joint between his lips.

      “You ever done this?” he asks before he takes a hit and holds it in.

      Campbell shakes her head again.

      Trevor moves beside her now, puffing and blowing smoke in her face. “You want to try it?”

      She thinks about the friends who have. The ones who tease her sometimes and call her square, and she shakes her head. Slowly this time, like she might want to but needs a little push.

      “Just take one hit. Just to see how it feels,” he says. She coughs the first few times, but by the sixth pull she is able to hold it in, and her body becomes heavy, but her head light.

      Campbell would remember laughing, laughing so much that her sides began to ache, and she fell over and onto the black leather couch. She could see Trevor grinning above her, the foldaway twin bed unfolded and resting in the center of the room.

      She didn’t know how much time had passed, but when the laughter finally settles into giggles and the giggles leave her with just a twitching mouth, she’s naked and spread out on the bed, and Trevor is already on top of her, pushing up inside her.

      “I’m a virgin,” she whimpers into his neck.

      “I know. I know.” He moans and kisses her cheek.

      Campbell can hear the radiators whistling and knocking, the windows blanketed in steam, but her body is cold, convulsing against the chill.

      She thought she must have been screaming, because his hand is over her mouth, his mouth whispering, “Shhhhh, baby, shhhhh,” in her ear.

      There is pressure building inside her, moving up above her waist and into her chest until it’s all in her shoulders and trapped in her head. Campbell thinks that if she could scream—if she could scream, she could get some release, but he won’t remove his hand.

      Campbell hears the song in her head, her theme song, climbing, climbing, “Somewhere over the rainbow . . .”

      Suddenly, everything around her is too loud, the singing voice in her head, Trevor’s breathing and groaning. She wants it all to stop, wants everything to end, and she manages to get her hands free to press against his chest, pushing, pushing.

      Tears welling up in her eyes, streaming down her cheeks, and then suddenly a snapping sound, and her whole body goes quiet.

      Trevor breathes for both of them, and moments later the pressure takes its leave of her and snakes down through her body and drips out from between her thighs.

      They part ways on the landing. She never does get to Luscious, but chooses instead to head back home. Luscious has a keen eye and sharp nose. She’ll know about Campbell as soon as she walks through the door.

      She decides to take her chances with Millie instead. Millie’s mind is always on Fred. She’ll have a better chance with Millie.

      * * *

      On Christmas Day, right after Luscious called for a third helping of pie and Great-Uncle Nate decided just to go head-on and set the bottle of bourbon down between his legs instead of hoisting his heavy frame up off the couch each time he needed to refill his glass, the doorbell rang.

      They weren’t expecting any more people, but it was Christmas, and Millie didn’t care if the whole world stopped in. She was happy that Fred had finally bought her those diamond earrings from JCPenney and Luscious hadn’t picked on her too badly and the turkey had turned out perfect and so had the yams, so Millie was smiling when she answered the door.

      There weren’t any leaves left on the trees by the time December arrived, but there they were, floating in with the winter wind, like it was October or even the second week in November.

      Millie’s smile just vanished. It didn’t fade, slip, or crumble; one second it was there, and the next it was gone.

      “Yes?” Millie asks, and she might as well have said, What you want, bitch? because that’s how deadly it sounded.

      “Fred here?” the woman asks, and Campbell moves closer, because the leaves and the sound of Millie’s voice have her all confused, and she sees a glimpse of that faux-fur wine-colored collar.

      Fred pushes Campbell aside, and she looks into her father’s face to try to understand what this is all about, but it’s blank—and when his eyes lock with the woman’s, he’s so cool he don’t even blink, and even the woman is taken aback, and she squints at Fred to make sure this is the same man who’d held her in his arms just two days ago and assured her that he was leaving his wife and child to be with her.

      “Fred,” she says, and his name is like worn velvet on her tongue.

      “Yes?” Fred responds, and squints at her like he’s never brushed her hair and stepped in behind her in the shower and kissed her in places on her body he hadn’t even considered on Millie in months.

      Millie is breathing so hard that Campbell can see the tops of her breasts pushing out from below the scooped neck of the red pullover she’s wearing.

      The little girl, with her sweet round eyes and smiley face, is looking at Fred the way Campbell looks at him, and her heart speeds up, and she starts taking breaths like Millie because she knows what’s happening now; she understands completely.

      “Did you tell her?” The woman leans on one big leg and tilts her head to the side like she’s tired. Campbell knows if they all weren’t there, all of them around the door, Fred would have stepped forward and rubbed the fatigue from the crook of her neck.

      He doesn’t say anything, and Millie’s hands are busy pulling at her pants, her head swinging between Fred, the woman, and the child.

      Fred just sighs and pulls out his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He looks down at the child and kind of smiles, and once again Campbell feels that if they all weren’t there to see, he would have leaned down and tweaked her tiny button nose.

      He pops a Winston in his mouth and then strikes a match, careful to cup the flame with his hands, protecting it from wind and Millie’s heavy breathing.

      “Close the goddamn door!” Great-Uncle Nate slurs from the living room, and the toilet flushes upstairs—and Campbell knows that Luscious will be down soon and Fred better get to talking quick, ’cause Luscious don’t warn nobody; she just surveys the situation and commences to swinging.

      “Fred, what this woman want?” Millie manages to say. Her words bounce off each other and then seem to echo.

      Fred just puffs on his cigarette, and the smile he offered the little girl is looking kind of strained now, and his left eye has begun to tic.

      “I said, what this woman—”

      “She belong to him. He ain’t tell you?” The woman cuts Millie’s words off and pushes the little girl an inch closer. “You ain’t said nothing to them, Fred?”

      All eyes fall on Fred.

      Luscious, already down the stairs, takes a moment to digest what she’s just heard before reaching past Campbell for Fred’s throat.

      There’s a lot of commotion then. Fred struggling to get Luscious’s fat fingers from around his neck, Campbell hollering, “Daddy! Daddy!”

      The little girl hollers the same.

      Millie’s eyes roll between Luscious’s back and the surprised face of the woman. She don’t know who to hit first, but she wants to hit somebody, and so Campbell jumps up on the stairs and moves three steps up and out of the way.

      Great-Uncle Nate gets up, red-eyed, bottom lip fat and hanging, bourbon bottle in hand, and zigzags across the room, swinging the bottle up and into the air, taking drunken aim at Fred and missing him by a mile, the glass shattering on Luscious’s shoulder.

      “You asshole!” Luscious screams, still holding on to Fred’s throat, while using her free hand to snatch the broken bottle out of Nate’s hand.