How to Escape From a Leper Colony (6 page)

Let me tell you how I meet this sweet thing. It’s Christmas time so the place fill up with people from the ships and the resorts. She walk into the Sun Shack like she one of them tourist. She even talk all Yankee. I don’t really bother with she because I don’t want to be all Stella get her groove. I let the white lady help she. But Yolanda walk over to me on her own and then her voice change up and she sound like any island girl all the sudden. She want to know about the Maui Jims behind me, so I take them out for her and tell her she look sweet when they on her face. She don’t buy a piece of shades but she leave me her number and I don’t even self pretend to not watch her ass as she leave.

For two weeks we spend some big amount of time together every day. Sometimes I just drive my four-runner to her house on my lunch break and park in the middle of the street. I tell her jokes about the red-faced tourists who come into the shop—how the women does tell me my accent don’t even sound like English, but some exotic native language. How the man them does lean in and ask me quiet-quiet where they could get some weed. Yolanda does laugh so hard that she have to sit down on the pavement and lift her legs scissor-like into the air. She tell me that in college they asked her where she buy her sneakers because they didn’t think Nikes could sell anywhere but the U.S. But when she talk about that kind of stuff, it’s not funny. It’s all serious. And I think that it’s a real good thing that she have a sense of humor and some maturity to boot. When we talk serious it does make her want to kiss right there on the sidewalk. I let she. I let she all the time. At the beach in the water. On the couch in my living room. I never let a girl do that before.

One night we sitting in my car, parked in the middle of her street. Since the last hurricane St. Croix don’t have no streetlights in this neighborhood. If you get too close to either side of the road the house lights shining right into the car. So we was parked in the middle where it dark. We ain having sex yet but since I a lot older than her, ten years older, I cool that she keeping cautious. I ain no young boy. I cooling. Yolanda’s on my lap snaking away—getting her nut. I kissing on her neck and thinking how this young girl have me acting like a schoolboy. She wearing tight white pants and because it’s so dark that’s all I could see clearly, and her teeth when she laugh and the white in her eyes. At this point we only been seeing each other for those two weeks and I already know she like to laugh and kiss and even do both when we fooling around. I like foreplay. I good at it. I mean I good at the whole shebang, but a older guy know foreplay is sweet. Just doing it is for dogs. I too old for that.

Now a car is coming down the street and I have to drive around the block with Yolanda in my lap and me having to look under her arm to make the corners. She love that stuff. Laugh so loud I had to give her a hard stare. “Hush, no, girl. Your laugh will wake the dead.”

When we reach back in front her house she go to me “I have to tell you something.” I know what she going to tell me just by how her eye them all small and her mouth all slack, and I don’t want to hear it yet. So I say “Get off my lap.” When she sitting there in the passenger seat, I try to relax my heart and my dick cause the blood in both is slamming away. “Don’t tell me,” I say. “It’s too soon.” But we been dancing all night and now she been on my lap for almost a half hour. “I have to say it cause it’s true,” she say. So I let her. “I love you, Slick.” Damn. Leave it to a young girl. A college girl. To fall in love and have to tell you the minute it friggin happen. I pissed but I don’t have no choice but to admit it back. “Okay, Yolanda. I love you, too. Now I gotta say something.” And I tell her about what I do on the side. How I deal sometimes. How I have a gun under my seat. I take it out and show her. She get all quiet like she gonna cry and right then I don’t know if I want hold her and tell her I going be done with that shit if she will just be my shortie for truth and I’ll move with her to Tallahassee where she in college. Or if I just want kick her out the car for being such a damn softy, tell her I need a ride or die chick and not some goody-goody college girl that don’t know nothing about the street. I ain gonna change for no man, woman, or child. But she don’t cry. She just rest her head on my shoulder. “Shit, Slick,” is what she say. And her voice is so sweet and she seem so for real that I decide then that I going wait this girl out cause she could be the mother of my youths. And so I tell her, “If you gonna be my woman you can’t be calling me Slick. It’s Anton. But don’t be screaming it in the street.”

For the months Yolanda’s away at college I screw out on her, but not really. I thinking about her when I doing it and I wearing a Magnum so I don’t give her nothing when she come back. On the phone I tell her I just slapping my stuff when I look at her picture. She thinks that’s sexy so sometimes that’s what I do for real and I let her listen. I make more noises and stuff than I would if I was by myself, so she could feel she a part of it. I think it’s practice for when we really do it for the first time. I mean, I love this girl. I have some secrets but they in her best interest. I is a street man. And a street man is the sweetest man. Them goody schoolboys don’t know what to do when they have a lady on their hands. They tell everything and make their woman miserable. They worry about career and shit before they worry about pleasing their woman. Not I and I.

My last name is Colter and that’s a good name on the island. Only my pops is the black sheep so we don’t have no money like the other Colters. But Yolanda’s moms is forgiving. She a black sheep, too. Her husband dead in some American war and now she live down by the seaplanes. So she okay with a street man for a son-in-law. I polite. I say goodnight when I enter. I wash the dishes when they have me over for dinner. And while Yolanda is gone I still visit her moms. Sometimes do her shopping for her. I never bring my piece in their house. I always keep body spray in the car so I don’t smell like sensimania when I knock on the door.

I pick Yolanda up from the airport when she come home for summer vacation. First thing she tell me is that she miss me and then in the car she all over me. I call her moms on my cell and say that the plane is delayed but it coming in an hour or so. I take Yolanda to this house on a hill that get blow away in the last hurricane. It don’t have no roof and only one wall but it have a flat for the car to drive up and it have a view of the ocean—which is hard to come by on St. Croix. I know this place because I used to deal to the white folks that owned it. They didn’t like to come around the park so I would drop it off during my lunch break. When the hurricane hit they run speeding back to Texas. They had want to set up some long-distance thing but Fish and me can’t be doing that. We small time and I plan on keeping it so. The place ain been sold yet now so it’s kind of my place. I go there to think. Think like how I might one day own my own Sun Shack place. How I would sell shades to all the local roughnecks. Expensive stuff and good quality, like Fendi or Dolce. I think about greeting the customers and putting the things that don’t sell on sale. I think that I’ll always do my own books so no one even have a chance to mess with me. I think even Fish will come to my place with respect and I going give him a deal. I think maybe I could even have the shop here at this blown-away house. How if someone spare me a loan I could set it up.

I ain never brought anyone else up here. And now I bring Yolanda. We do it right in the driver’s seat. I open the car door so there’s more space. Her back keep hitting the horn and making her laugh. It’s so good, but I don’t want to come too quick so I think about my moms who left the outside light on for me and about how she gonna cuss cause I ain washed her car in a week.

When we done I ask Yolanda if it’s okay if I smoke. She says it’s cool. I don’t offer her. I don’t like ladies smoking. It’s a bad habit and it looks even worse on them. But for fun I blow the smoke toward her and she open her mouth to catch it. I think that yes, this is my woman. My woman is home.

It’s summer so we go out constant. Sometimes we hit the beach before it get dark and the sand flies come out. Sometimes she and her moms want to have family time so I wait until midnight and then roll by. I just sit in the car in the middle of the street. Sometimes I park right there, turn off the car, and wait with the radio on low. Yolanda knows my ride so it don’t take her long to come out. Then we go to my house and watch a flick with action and a love story—something we could both be into. In my bedroom with my mother snoring just on the next side of the wall, I tell Yolanda that I don’t eat pussy but she only laugh as she guide my head.

I don’t deal in front of Yolanda because I know she won’t like that. If we in traffic and some guy come up to me with his hand open I look at him hard and say, “Partner, you don’t see my woman with me?” I never bring Yolanda to the park and she know she better not show up there looking for me. If she in downtown and she want to find me she only need to text me and I’ll leave my post by the kiddie swings long as I ain in the middle of nothing.

But once I left Yolanda in the car for almost two hours while I went into Fish house to get a gun put in my mouth. That was his punk ass way of asking why I ain make no profit. And though I could have just told him that I smoke it up myself, so send me to rehab already, there was a gun in my mouth and all I could think about was Yolanda outside in my four-runner, reading her book. I done this before. Gone inside to some nigger’s house and stayed longer than I should. Told her I’d be back in a few minutes but then I gone for a hour. This though was the worse. What Yolanda thinking out there all that time? That I’s a real waste? Or maybe she ain thinking of me at all.

When I get back she in the seat reclining way back with her feet all up on my dash like she just here in the island vacationing. The thing is Yolanda never complains when I make her wait, but if I’m sweating she look at me all suspicious like she think I been screwing or something … but she know I ain been doing that. She does wear me out. She younger than me, so it’s no big deal. I’m the one who should be worried really. I mean she not even with me half the year but it seem like she want to do it all the time. I have to keep asking her: “Do you love dick or just my dick?” and she laugh with that mampie laugh and tell me “Just yours, Anton, just yours.”

Yolanda is a good girl. And I done decide that a street man like me need a good sweet thing like her. It’s a balance. She’s not about “keeping it real” and all that fake shit. She’s not going hold my gun for me. And I don’t want her to. I is the thug in this. I don’t want no chick I have to worry might sell me out or turn me in because she know too much. Yolanda know I work for the Sun Shack and that I’s a hard worker even when I been smoking a lot. She the kind of girl don’t want to know everything that goes on in my life.

That summer she had a job teaching computers. And sometimes I used to bring her lunch. The other girls would look all cut eye at me. Once I see a big bush of roses on the front desk and only for a second do I wonder if they for her. But then I get my stuff together. The next day I bring she flowers. The next day a stuffed bear. Why not? I smoke a little less, add more fronter to my spliff. I save some money because one day I going buy this girl a ring. She start wearing my hand chain around she wrist and it so thick and bulky that everybody must know that it’s a man own. That she mine.

At the club I buy her friends drinks and they smile at me and tell she I is the cutest guy she ever been with, loud, so I could hear. On the dance floor when she there tongue-kissing me, like the white tourist girls do the Rastitutes, I make sure our hips don’t press cause I know she hate to feel my gun in her waist.

Some of the guys in the park probably think I is a punk. That I sprung over this girl that’s cheating on me when she off island. That she too young for me. Too educated. Fuck them. She ain cheating cause I’m digging up in her every single night—enough to keep it in her dreams when she away. And yeah she young, but so what. I still hustling and I almost thirty. Plus, she ain had no pops in her life for a long time. She need a older man. I did two years at FAMU but then my pops disappeared and I had to go home to take care of my moms. I can still go to UVI, but I’m old now. You know. When would I have time? Between selling shades to the tourists at the Sun Shack and sitting at the bottom of the park slide with my pockets full of dime bags. I mean, I know things. I read the entire newspaper every day. And sometimes Yolanda and I shout each other down over politics. We teach each other stuff. This is love, son. The real thing.

One day I up by Fish and as usual Yolanda waiting in the car. This time I have my gun and I open my shirt to show him. “Listen,” I tell him. “I ain smoking it all. It’s that shitty skunk weed come in from Jamaica. It making everybody sick. Even I can’t smoke it. Either I sell it cheap or we go in the hole.” He want me to sell some coke to make up. I tell him I’ll come back for it cause my lady in the car and it’s bad enough I carry my gun around with her. I don’t want her caught up in nothing. He give me a hard time but I remind him that I been his partner for years. I’ll come the fuck back after I drop her off. I hate that Fish nigger, but he my cousin on my mom’s side—so I suppose to know that he won’t really kill me. And he’s suppose to know that I won’t really sell him out.