Shine

The screen door pinged shut behind her as Bianca stepped onto the porch. Her shoes clopped on the splintering planks as she walked to the stoop. She sat down, minding the fading blue paint that chipped off the wood.

The radio propped in the open window played “God Bless the Child.” Bianca didn’t like the slow songs and blues that her momma hummed along to. She sighed, hoping the next song would be a new big band or some strapping young man sending his vocals down from up north.

Bianca looked up at the sun. It dangled in the sky, showering down and browning her skin. She closed her eyes, yearning to take it into every one of her pores, so maybe one day she’d shine just like it.

When her momma’s laugh suddenly rose to her ears over the music, Bianca turned her head. Her chin brushed the cotton strap of her yellow sundress, dabbing perspiration from her skin. She caressed a drop of sweat from the fold of her neck with her fingertip.

Her mother, Loretta, looked out toward the road through squinted eyes. She stood up straight behind the wicker chair, where Bianca’s little sister Nora sat, getting her scalp greased in the midday heat. Nora sat with her hands in her lap, palms up. She winced as Loretta parted the hair at the crown of her head, always the kinkiest bit. Nora contorted her face in the porch’s shadow, too brave to cry, and scrunched up her nose.

“Here one comes,” Loretta said. “I can feel it in my fingers.”

“Which one?” Bianca’s aunt Sadie asked from the porch swing. Holding the brim of her big ivory hat, she swung easily with her big legs stretched out on the seat like ice cream cones. The flower-printed padding sunk under her weight and sprung up around her wrinkled pink dress.

Loretta titled her chin toward the dirt road. The dust parted as a Studebaker barreled down the drive.

“This one again?” Aunt Tow asked, turning down the radio behind her. In the rocking chair, she drifted back and forth next to Sadie, cooling herself with a fan she stole from a funeral home. “Boy, Lo, you sure know how to keep them loyal. Years, now, this one’s been comin’. What you be givin’ ‘em?” She laughed.

“None of ‘em can stay away too long. Good thing, too. I got bills to pay,” Loretta answered. Tow and Sadie bellowed, their laughter radiating through the heat.

“He ain’t been here since last month,” Loretta continued. “This one’s good. Easy to please.” Her sisters laughed again. “Watch this,” she said, her eyes shrinking into thin slits of brown. She adjusted her bosom and patted her hair up.

Bianca’s eyes rose to the clearing, watching the car drive up. Through the dusty windshield, the driver grinned, like he was about to eat a whole chocolate cake by himself.

Loretta pretended not to see him park, get out of the car with a bouquet of flowers, or walk up to the porch. She just stared into Nora’s hair, swiftly sliding grease along her scalp.

Bianca had seen this one lots of times, but this time, he wore fashionable two-tones, a new hat and a suit with pinstripes instead of his usual plain old black. She wondered where he bought his suits; same as she wondered if he knew about all the others who frequented her mother’s bedroom, but she would never dare to ask something like that.

“Hi, Loretta.” He announced himself, taking off his hat. He’d just been to the barber; clean shaved, with a small part trailing down the middle of his coarse hair.

Loretta didn’t answer.

“Hi,” Bianca said for her.

He glanced down at the girl. She watched his eyes dribble across her legs that were sweet and shiny from Loretta’s cocoa butter.

He let out a small chuckle. “Hi, dahlin’. You’re looking more like your mother every time I see you,” he finally said, smiling enough for Bianca to notice the gap between his teeth that she also hadn’t seen before. His eyes slid over her body again; her legs, her soft hips and breasts that were slow but sure to grow each week, and Loretta’s measuring tape proved it.

Each flower he held was different; different colors, different shapes; all whispering something unique within the folds of their petals. He looked down at them and carefully picked Bianca out a yellow one that hadn’t blossomed yet. When it did, he said, it would be the most beautiful flower this side of a rose. Tow released a snort.

“Thank you kindly,” Bianca said. Loretta winked at her approvingly.

Bianca flipped it between her fingers, watching the pedals glow in the sunlight as he stepped up onto the porch, staring at Loretta. Tow and Sadie sneered to themselves as he held the rest of the bouquet out to her.

Loretta drew her eyes up to his, blinking slowly. She still held the red plastic comb as she took the bouquet from him. She held the flowers to her chest for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. The man’s eyes shined as he nodded toward the bouquet. Loretta looked down into the flowers again, more deeply. Tucked in the flurry of petals and stems was a roll of bills, enough for all of her bills for this month, the next, and maybe even the month after that.
Her lips curled to into a crescent moon smile. She slid her eyes toward the door, giving him permission to go inside, and he did so with a jubilant skip.

Nora yelped as Loretta pressed the comb down into her hair.

“Momma’ll be right back, child,” Loretta told her. “And Bianca, don’t go nowhere. Percy’ll be here soon.” Bianca nodded listlessly.

Her lips drawn up to one side, Loretta winked at Tow and Sadie before she followed the man inside the house. Her sisters released busty laughs as the screen clanged behind her.

“Lawd, we’ll be hearing the hootin’ soon,” Tow laughed, slapping her round thighs with her pudgy palms.

“Mmmmmmhmmmm,” Sadie added, her hand to her forehead.

Tow shook her head. “Wonder why this one still comes around after all these years, especially seeing as they ain’t played it too safe in the past.” Bianca looked up in time to see Tow pointing a thumb at her.

Tow rolled her eyes. “Don’t pay us no mind, child,” she said, shooing Bianca’s attention away. Bianca turned her eyes back to the yard, pretending not to listen.

“That was 16 years ago,” Sadie said. “Lo just played it like nothing happened at all and he went along with it. He don’t need to know who’s who, so long as he keeps payin’ her bills, is what she said. After all, he’s the best one to her. Do you remember those silk scarves? And that perfume? Straight from France.”

Tow shook her head. “It’s so hot, though,” she said. “I don’t know how she can take all that heat.”

“Mmmm, honey, I know!” Sadie said. “Then again, if I could get my fingers on one—one like that, too, with all that money—child, I wouldn’t mind the heat neither.”

Tow giggled. “Uh-huh, I’d be making all kinds of heat with him, enough to ‘bout bake a cake!”

They laughed boisterously at their own jokes. They talked in circles because of Nora. They tried to talk in circles around Bianca, too, but she was already familiar with them.

A prickle crawled into Bianca’s fingers, starting at her knuckles. She looked out toward the road. The air was still, but the bushes by the woods fluttered. Her eye got a flash of Michael James as he hiked out of the brush. Bianca watched him climb over branches and start for her backyard. She knew he could feel her eyes slithering up his back. He turned around. A little too tall for his age, Michael James ran in cotton shorts that he’d outgrown since last summer (His mother didn’t see any need in buying him new ones if he was just going to outgrow those by Labor Day). He drew his small pink lips into a tiny smile before he looked away again, sending icicles through Bianca’s skin.

She looked down at the flower that had wilted in the heat and lay unbloomed in her hand. Perhaps she’d gripped it too tightly, she thought. She looked back at her aunties who kept on listing and dreaming about the men they’d put their titillated fingers on if they were Loretta.

Bianca stood up and smoothed down her sundress. “I’ll be back,” she said.

“What you doin’?” Sadie’s voice trailed behind her footsteps. “You know that Percy fellow is comin’ to see you today. Your momma got it all set up. He’s probably on his way now. Where you goin’?”

“To play,” Bianca answered, smiling. She wondered why she need bother with a boy like Percy. Even if he could buy her a new dress every week like Loretta had told her, he was pushy, clumsy and thick as Loretta’s homemade pudding.

Bianca could feel Sadie shaking her head, telling her that she’s too old to play, especially with little boys like Michael James.

She wandered around the house. She found him running from tree to tree, tapping each one lightly as he passed. He stopped at a tall one and looked up into it, tilting his head back like a thirsty sunflower.

“Hey,” Bianca said.

“Hey,” he said, his voice cracking slightly.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothin’.”

“Wanna go inside and play?” She asked, watching dirt collect on her shoes as she dug them into an ant hole. She raised her eyes slowly. The sun leaked through the trees, spotting his smooth face and bony shoulders.

“No,” he said.

She stood still as he went back to amusing himself. He picked up a stick and flicked the trunk of a tree with it, sending loose bark flying.

"You should come in,” Bianca said, slowly walking closer to him. She reached out to touch his shoulder when he’d stopped and noticed just how much he’d grown this summer already.

He turned to look at her. “I don’t want to.”

“But I want you to. Didn’t your momma ever tell you to respect your elders?”

His cheeks were blushed from playing in the sun all day. His eyes were rings of gold and black. They blinked slowly, looking down. He nodded sullenly after a long moment. “Okay.”

Bianca slid her hand down his arm to his wrist, then captured his trembling hand in hers. She lulled him farther back into the woods, humming a song Loretta used to sing to her when she was little, much littler than Michael James. He followed her every step, over sticks and branches and bugs and poison ivy. He pulled along easily, without much fuss at all.

When they got to the old outhouse, Bianca tipped opened the broken door with her tingling fingers. She nudged him into the darkness and closed the door behind them. The air was musty and thick. Heat filled her nose. A hole in the wall let a small circle of sunlight into the outhouse, onto an inch of his shrunken shorts and pubescent legs.

Bianca’s fingers sailed across the outhouse until they met Michael James’ face. They glided down his neck, his chest, his stomach, his thighs. Eyes blind, her hands floated upwards again. She brushed the brown side of them against his lashes and his cheeks, which were now moist from the heat rising between them in the outhouse. She held his wet face in her hands. She dribbled a finger across his lips, still soft and cool from a popsicle, probably. Bianca stopped and licked his lips, swallowing remnants of cherry.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up,” she said.

“But—”

“You know, most boys your age would be lucky to be doing this now, especially with an older woman.”

His face softened beneath her palms like her momma’s silk night gowns. His lips became as supple and docile as cookie dough. His body turned to clay between her tickling digits.

When she was done, Bianca smoothed down her sundress. Michael James’ zipper buzzed in the darkness. Bianca licked her lips as she opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight. She felt the heat subside in a moment against her flesh.

Michael James stepped out behind her, stroking his hairless arm nervously. “What do I tell my momma?” He asked, staring at the damp ground.

“Nothing,” Bianca sighed.

She walked away, hoping they didn’t smell like the outhouse. She raised her fingertips to her nose. They just smelled like Michael James and cherry popsicle. The tingle was gone. She held her fingers to her lips as she walked around the house, up to the porch. Percy still hadn’t gotten there. Bianca sat back down on the stoop as Tow turned up the radio to cover the hootin’ that had just begun inside.