CAFE AU LAIT

CAFÉ AU LAIT

Hey folks! New short story I just finished. I hope you like it. As always please leave any types of comments: good, badd, or indifferent! Gracias!

“I thought you’d been with black women before?

“You assumed I’d been with black women before.”

Our toes stuck out of the covers at the end of the bed. I rubbed mine on his and he kicked my foot away. We played footsie and I wondered why our complexions couldn’t meld together. It would always brown on top of white. White on top of brown. The footsie died down.

“Maybe you could get a tan?”

“Would that make you happy?”

“It wouldn’t make you happy?”

“I’m already happy.”

“I am too, but… no one else is.”

Bile filled my mouth and I pretended I needed to check on the chicken. Actually, I did need to check on the chicken. Two birds, one stone.

“What’s wrong with the chicken?”

“My chicken is fabulous. Why’d you ask that?”

“I missed you.”

“Liar.”

“You just took longer than usual. I got worried.”

“So worried that you stayed in bed and kept watching TV. On mute, no less.”

“The bed is where I do my best worrying.”

“Something about you makes me croon.”

“I missed you.”

“I know.”

I nestled into the space where his shoulder blade and his chest met as his arm wrapped around me. The nook, he called it. If I stayed there too long I’d be in an embarrassing snore-laden sleep and the chicken would get mealy. His underarm smelled like the Axe deodorant I’d bought him. Mine felt like I had a secret. Maybe I should put on some Secret.

“Hold on.”

“Deodorant alert?”

“You watch me too much.”

He was staring at my calf again. Same spot as usual. My splotchy beige colored birthmark that was embedded in medium brown skin. It looked like someone had splattered bleach on me.

“Confession.”

“Spill.”

“Sometimes I get the urge to color your birthmark.”

“Of course you do.”

“See, you thought I meant brown, but I meant green or red or something.”

“Assumes the assumer. I knew you meant blue or orange or something. You’re an artist, remember?”

“I remember.”

I started a bare foot tap dance: the one I was doing the first day we’d met in Central Park. He slapped his thighs along to the beat. The shag rug swallowed my sounds and he projected them. I finished the 60 second routine and he applauded like he always did. Like he’d never seen it before. Chicken time.

“Are you coming to get your plate with me, or do I have to sprinkle the rat poison on it behind your back?”

“Just put the arsenic in my wine glass. I have to prepare something up here.”

“Light a match, shut the door, and use the spray.”

“Not that.”

“Un-huh. Do you want dark meat or white meat?”

“Medium brown meat.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!”

It was times like these when a dumb waiter was the most convenient feature of the entire house. The roasted chicken and the sautéed green beans and the saffron orzo and the rosemary potatoes got cozy on the plates and permeated the air. He was going to ask questions when I didn’t drink the red wine. A 2-Liter of Sprite would have to do. The bell on the dumb waiter was so loud that I could hear when it arrived on the second floor.

“I’m sending something down.”

“Not the sprite. I am an undercover alcoholic trying to survive!”

“Not the sprite, lush-bucket.”

“I got your lush-bucket.”

“I heard that.”

I made faces at the dumb waiter door and pretended to curse him out.

“I saw that.”

“AAAHHH!!!!”

“Like you didn’t hear me come down the stairs.”

“You know I’m deaf in one ear.”

“You’ve got noise repellant in the other.”

“Is there a reason for your heart attack inducing presence?”

“I missed you.”

“You need a new line.”

“I’m leaving you for another woman.”

“I missed you, too.”

He held my back against his torso with one arm and supported his weight on the wall with the other as we watched the cables revolve and send the dumb waiter down.

“Did you slide down the banister or something?”

He exhaled a laugh through his nose and knocked his knee into the back of mine. My leg gave way and he caught me.

“My hair doesn’t smell like strawberries, yet you continue to put your nose in it.”

“I don’t like the smell of Herbal Essence. I like the smell of Razac.”

“Sure you do.”

I turned around and brought my hands together behind his neck. The dumb waiter dinged, but he held me still. I hadn’t made to turn around. He had the type of eyes that others would consider lucky. They were the grey of a suit of armor. Steely. Hard. Cold. But set amongst the warmest face, so they were no longer threatening. Before walking outside with him I had to stare into his eyes and let his steel become mine. I needed his armor to pour out from him and envelope me.

The specks of grey in his black hair were from stress, not age. They weren’t there when I met him, but he preached that I was not the cause of their untimely arrival.

“Now who’s staring?”

“Well, sometimes I want to color you, too.”

“That would be rather strange: me walking around with strands of goldenrod and turquoise in a head of black hair.”

“Oh, because my leg would look so much better?”

“I’m in love with you.”

“How is that so easy for you to say?”

“I open my mouth and say it.”

“You and your off the wall suggestions.”

“Try it.”

“What if I don’t mean it?”

“You mean it.”

“The chicken is re-freezing itself as we speak.”

His soft lips were a hair away from mine and I closed my eyes in anticipation. He liked this part. He liked when I begged him with my rapid breathing and wrinkled brow. He had the type of mouth that I wanted to have wrapped around me all day, so I held myself back from kissing him as often as possible. He already had me treading water in the deep end of the pool. It took work to keep a clear head around him. Work that he wanted me to abandon so I’d drown. Work he wanted me to forego so I’d see he was just beneath the surface waiting for me with an oxygen mask.

I pulled his head down the rest of the way and our four lips became a chocolate-vanilla blob. Though he was so sweet it was more like a milk chocolate - white chocolate blob. I liked this part. I liked the tingling in my nipples and I liked the smell of his skin right under my nose. I could feel each raise in his taste buds when his tongue sucked mine. He slid his hand along the cup of my ass and pressed my middle to his middle. It was comfortable there. He closed the space between us and the wall and licked my chin when I pulled on his hair.

“I thought you sent something down?”

“I thought you were about to submerge yourself in the water?”

“Drown, you mean?”

“Submerge.”

“Well now it’s not authentic if you’re trying to beat it out of me.”

“Your name is not Kizzy. I’d never beat anything out of you.”

“If you were black you wouldn‘t have even said that.”

“You’re right. I would’ve said something about Ike and Tina.”

“Touché.”

We stared at each other. Grey eyes on brown.

“You know it’s funny. I’m colored, but my skin’s brown, my hair’s brown, my eyes are brown. You are white and your hair is black, your eyes are grey, and your skin is nude. You tell me who’s colored.”

“We can both be if you let me color you in one day.”

I laughed into his chest. My chest hurt. He was so easy and I was so hard.

“Did you paint me again?”

“What’d you say?”

I moved my mouth out of his shirt.

“Did you paint me again?”

“Do you need something to drink?”

“Maybe a little water.”

He pulled me off the wall and walked us to the refrigerator. I walked backwards, him forward. He reached around me and made noises. Clink. Clunk. Sworsh. Or whatever sound water makes going from the refrigerator door spout into a glass. He put his feet on top of mine as I drank. He didn’t want me to run away from the conversation.

“Pretty soon you’re gonna be chopping my feet off like they did Kunta.”

He didn’t have a rebuttal so he just stared. I apologized.

“You brushed your teeth.”

“All the better to kiss you with, my dear.”

He licked my teeth. That was my move.

“The food’s ruined at this point.”

“Are you telling me I can’t sustain you?”

Brown on grey.

“You can. You do.”

“I love the smell of Razac.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“Do you hate that?”

“No… but they do.”

“Are you in love with them?”

“At one time.”

“Are you any more?”

“Not any more.”

“Are they still in love with you?”

“Maybe.”

“That could be true for anyone.”

“True.” Pause. “They called me race traitors.”

“Did they laugh afterwards?”

“Yeah, but you know what they say about jokes.”

“That you’re as broke as one?”

“What does that even mean?”

“We can google it after we heat up the food.”

I walked backwards. He walked forward. We stopped at the dumb waiter. He’d sent the food back down.

“You know, this seems clairvoyant of you, but, in truth, if you hadn’t jumped down a flight of stairs and struck up a conversation this wouldn’t have been necessary.”

“I can’t even impress you anymore.”

“Are you sure you’re white? You’re looking a little clear.”

“That was so corny.”

“Give me a break! I’m hungry.”

“Open Tony.”

I opened Tony and there was our food, conveniently covered in foil and still hot.

“You’re pretty clever, for a man.”

“Racist and sexist. Someone should put out a law against you.”

There was the Sprite. There was the flatware. There he was eating the food right out of the dumb waiter. There I was joining him. When did he pull up a bar stool and when did I climb into his lap? When did we forego the flatware?

“Tell me again.”

“That I love this food and I’m the best chef ever? I love this food and I’m the best chef ever.”

I munched on my green beans while he shoveled orzo into his mouth. Some rolled onto his face instead and I suctioned it off. I fed him a potato with one hand and fed myself one with the other. Our greasy fingers slid along the skin of the chicken.

“I’m in love with you.”

Grey on brown. Silence.

“We both have a secret, but the secret is I know what both of the secrets are, and you only know yours.”

“Spill.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“I’ve known that since the summer.”

“Did you know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you?”

My throat was dry again. Damn sweaty palms and slippery fingertips were no match for the cap on the Sprite bottle. He grey on browned me as he took it out of my hands and released the cap with the bottom of his t-shirt. My chest rose and fell dramatically as I drank from the bottle. I calmed myself down before I started up a real asthma attack.

“Good. You calmed down. I don’t want to have to tell our kids that before I got the chance to propose to their mother she had to be rushed to the hospital because her lungs failed.”

“Well you waited five months. Another few hours wouldn’t have killed you.”

“You knew my secret?”

“I knew your secret.”

I inhaled the air that he exhaled. He reached behind my ear and performed the greatest magic trick I’d ever seen. He held a flawless diamond ring between us and made my focal point go from grey to diamond.

“You are the woman I want to love for more years than I dare to count.”

“Yes.”

I was crying somehow.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I only waited so long because I wanted you to be sure.”

“I know.”

I backhanded my tears away. He already knew I loved him. He didn’t need to see it leaking out of my eyes too.

“Do you have that drowning feeling?”

I held my left hand up so he could slip the ring on my finger. My nails were bubblegum pink.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes. I’ll marry you now. I’ll marry you forever.”

He smiled and the steel in his eyes softened when his face did. My torso got lodged to his in the hug and his nose pushed into my neck when he hid his face there. I rocked back and forth and his middle rose to meet my middle.

“What are we going to name it?”

I pulled back to brown on grey him. Now that he knew I loved him it seemed ridiculous that he not know everything else.

“You knew my secret.”

“I said I did.”

“You did say that.”

“Well?”

“Well doesn’t it depend on the sex?”

“No.”

“Well in that case… I was thinking we could name it Café Au Lait.”

HUMP -- short story.

Pimps and thugs. Hoes and ice. Number 69: Garlic Chicken w/ Rice.
On the bandstand. Moo Goo Gai Pan. From the best chinese restaurant in the land: whaattt!
Lol, good ol' Brown Sugar throwback classic.
Ok, that had nothing to do w/ the short story I'm posting =P

Here's the first short story I'm posting called HUMP. (don't forget to leave comments: bad, good or indifferent. i love them all!) The story's inspired by Erykah Badu's "That Hump". If you haven't heard it you should listen to it.

Zora stood outside the office building trying to get the last pulls of her cigarette before her fingers succumbed to frost bite. It was bad enough it was her last cigarette, but she couldn’t even enjoy it properly. She dragged too hard on the cigarette and started with that deep bronchial cough of hers. She’d been meaning to get that checked out, but Lord knows she didn’t have the time. Her eyes stung from the new wind as she tossed the hot filter into the gutter. Instead of going inside she stared at the place where her cigarette had gone. The more she looked the more her eyes stung, but now tears were forming along the bottom lid. She’d tossed her cigarette in the gutter, just like life had done with her. She wondered if life had done it just as carelessly and routine as she just had, or had it taken more careful planning?
The alarm on her little flip phone beeped off and broke her trance. Ten minutes was going by faster and faster these days. She willed her tears to evaporate before going any further. The hard breath from her nose clouded the air. She turned the collar up on her fall jacket and braced her bare knuckles against the wind for the walk back around the corner to the office building entrance.
“Hey, Zora girl, how’s it hanging?”

Zora glanced up and saw Rick looking at her with an expectant smile. Rick the salesman. Rick the widowed father of two. Rick the subtly handsome man who, after 43 years of living, Zora found herself as shy as a lamb around. It was times like these when she wished she could wear something better to work. Maybe then she could reciprocate one of these damn smiles Rick was always handing out.
“It’s ok. Just about to start work.”
“Oh I‘m getting back from lunch… I had to eat at the deli alone.”
“Well maybe you’ll ask a coworker or somebody next time and you won’t be alone. Isn’t that what people do?”
Zora’s deadpan voice made Rick chuckle. She was definitely one hard rose to pick. “Yes, I guess they do.” He held the door open for her and let others follow her in before he went in himself. While everyone walked to the bank of elevators he saw her disappear into a stairwell and knew she’d be going to the basement. Her swampland, as he’d overheard her saying.
“Rick, man, you coming?”
He turned his head and acknowledged Brett with a smile. In the lift Brett started talking about that day’s impossible quota and how he planned to put a sledgehammer through it. Rick looked at the stairwell door and had the same thought.

----------------------------

Zora didn’t have time to workout. Zora didn’t have time to take bubble baths, cook extravagant meals, or kick back and read a book. Hell, she didn’t have time to make a pot of coffee in the morning. She didn’t even have time to sit down in between jobs and switch her brain from stadium vendor to janitor to nanny. The only thing she had time to do was keep on pushing. She didn’t even know what she was pushing for anymore; she just knew that if she stopped pushing everything would surely crush her down until she couldn’t discern herself from a sad ass piece of road kill. She most certainly didn’t have time for that.
“Zora I need you on three, four, and five today. And make sure you go all the way to the back of five because, as you can see, Merlinda called out sick today, so she can’t do it. I‘ve already got Marisol on one and two.”
She probably called out sick of this job. But Zora didn’t mind so much. The more time she spent at work the less time she had to spend at home. With the kids she bore. With the kids she resented. With the kids who didn’t have a care in the world. Who could up and quit their little Mickey D’s jobs without wondering how to house and feed two other people while they looked for a new job.
Zora sent her cleaning cart up to the third floor on the service elevator and walked herself up the back stairs. This would be her workout.
She started humming There Were No Mirrors in my Nana’s House as she climbed. That was another reason she opted to take this route instead. No damn mirrors or reflector panels or security cameras looking at her face. She looked at her face as little as possible and kept her head down to afford others the same luxury. She knew her face. She saw it when she closed her eyes. She saw it when she stared at a blank wall. The skin was still soft, but it was old skin. People had always told her she looked younger than she really was, but she doubted that was true any more. Her face was gaunt. The skin caved into her cheeks and drooped dejectedly everywhere else. The years of smoking had put a stain on her teeth. There was enough space between some of them to fit a toothpick and then some comfortably. The only blessing there was that those were more in the back. She’d been meaning to set up a dental appointment, but she didn’t have the time.
The push-bar on the third floor door made a loud clap as the door opened into the stairwell. Bernita and Renee’s heels clopped onto the landing, and then up a flight of stairs. The clopping seemed to add a melody to their conversation:
“Well did you hear? They’re probably going to let some people go at the end of the month. The sales team’ll get hit for sure.”
“Yeah, girl, I heard. That’s why I can’t work in sales. You don’t put them numbers up and all of a sudden you can’t afford your damn car note. It’s a mess.”
“You don’t have to tell me. These customers get on my last damn nerve, but customer service is job security like a mother fucker. All I have to do is say, ‘Hi; yes ma’am; no ma’am; goodbye,’ and, boom! I’ve got a job!”
“Oh, but don’t forget the new one: ‘Thank you for calling Cablevision; please hold for a survey to rate how I treated you!’ Ugh, girl you know I hate that part. Who the hell wants to stay on a phone and rate how someone treated them? I feel like I’m asking for charity.”
“Yeah, but all you have to do is think of those benefits and you’ll be good to go!”
The conversation faded away as the women entered the door for the fourth floor and Zora made her way onto the third. The service elevator had probably been sitting there for five minutes. The five-o-clock rush to leave work was crowding at the elevators and she wished she could be a part of it. Those ungrateful hussies in the stairwell didn’t know how good they had it. A cushy job where they got to sit down for 8 hours and talk to people about nonsensical things and make 14 dollars an hour while doing it. All their friends were around them keeping them entertained all day. They put up pictures of loved ones to keep them motivated. They could afford to wear nice little office clothes.
At Cablevision one had to have a year of call center experience or a college degree in order to get hired. Zora had neither. She got knocked up around the same time she graduated high school and thought she’d fare better as a full time mom living off her amazing and devoted boyfriend, Corey. Corey was sure to do something great with his life. He was about the most handsome thing walking around Snyder High. He knew it. She knew it. Everyone knew it. Back then she was nothing to shake a stick at herself, but she still felt lucky to be chosen by him. He just had that quality about him like whatever reality he wanted his life to be he made it that way. He made the elements bend to his will. The fates bowed to him.
“Corey, baby, guess what?”
“Mmm. What’s that?” Corey asked in between nibbling on her lips.
“I missed my period last month and this one.”
“Oh, good. I thought you had been happy for the past two months straight with no breaks in between!” More kissing. Chuckling from him. Giggling from her.
“You so damn silly, boy! Anyway, don’t you know what that means?” Zora was just about in heaven. She felt so alive around him and this was sure to cement their relationship. Maybe they’d have a summer wedding.
“It means this neck of yours is tasting better than I remember. Mmm!”
Zora squirmed away from the tickling sensation as he kept a hold on her so she wouldn’t fall off the sofa. “No, silly. It means we’re gonna have us a little Corey Junior!” His hand stilled on her thigh. “Or I guess if it’s a girl she can be Coretta; but I really hope it’s a boy.” She was breathing fast and hard from excitement and from trying to get away. Once she calmed down a bit she realized that her breathing was the only sound she was actually hearing.
“Baby?” She looked up at his set jaw with a crease in her brow. Her beloved seemed to lock up with rigor mortis. “Baby, stop playing. Say something.”
Corey removed his hand from her thigh. An instant later he had pushed himself to the opposite end of the couch and his face was twisted up into the kind of disdain Zora had never seen on him before. “You know I don’t want no kids, Z. How could you get pregnant?”
Zora pulled herself upright into her corner and pulled her sweater closed over her dress. “What do you mean? I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I didn’t say that. I just mean… We only did it once without a condom.”
“Well as far as I know there isn’t a requirement for how many times you have to do it before you get pregnant.”
“Z, I don’t have times for your funny little games. I can’t have no fucking kids, man. I’m going to college on a football scholarship. I’m not gonna have time to take care of no baby.”
“Well I mean, I would mostly take care of the baby. And then you could come home at night and I’ll have a hot dinner for you, and you can just kiss the baby and hold him for a few minutes. He’ll probably be asleep most of the time anyway.” She couldn’t tell if she was working harder to convince him or herself. “Oh, baby, you’re being silly. You know we’d make a wonderful family. You’re just nervous about being a good daddy, is all.”

And so it was. Zora kept the baby, knowing that Corey would come around some day. Some day became eventually became never. Her dream summer wedding didn’t happen. Corey came around less and less, saying that classes and practice were getting the best of him. Soon her ninth month was upon her and she hadn’t seen him at all. His parents never called to check in on her. Her parents let her know the weight of parenthood would be on her. And to top it off she’d had a girl. A girl she’d named Cori Sampson in honor of the father. If he ever did come back Zora wanted him to immediately know that Cori was his.
Corey Sampson hadn’t shown his face in 25 years. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Cori Sampson in a year or two either. She was off “bettering herself” and turning her nose up at Zora. Zora didn’t care, though. She didn’t have time to care. That was one less ungrateful mouth to feed.
Zora had time to clean. Each night at work she’d play a game with herself to keep the cleaning interesting. Sometimes she’d start with trash, then go on to sinks, toilets, and finish out with floors. Sometimes she’d do a relay to see how fast she could get sinks done compared to toilets. Sometimes she’d count how many times she could flush the toilet and watch the sickening swirl before she felt like she wanted to stick her own damn head down the drain.
The Sony walkman rescued from the junk drawer in the kitchen needed only a new set of dollar store batteries and it was back to operational. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Your Baby Tonight” poured through the earmuff speakers. Zora disappeared into a fantasy set up by Whitney. The third floor was no longer a bathroom, a break room, and a trash bag at every other cubicle. It was a deserted plain where characters appeared and acted out each story that Whitney sang about, then disappeared when the track changed. Only in the space between was Zora reminded of exactly where she was and what her purpose there was: to serve others by cleaning up after them for they could not clean up after themselves. But she was only reminded for a few seconds, before it was on to the next whirlwind fantasy.
Zora was a sex driven female who wanted to take her man to the heights of pleasure in “I’m Your Baby Tonight”; she crooned and told that man that everything he’d done for her hadn’t gone unnoticed and she appreciated everything he did to keep her feeling like the strong woman she was in “All the Man That I Need”; reassurance of her love and devotion to him, because of how long she’d waited for him, came in “I Belong to You”. She finished out the third floor with “I’m Knockin’”, telling whoever was at the other side of the door that she was coming through to get whatever love he may have to offer her.
She continued her journey of cleanliness on the fourth floor with Tevin Campbell’s I’m Ready tape, and the fifth floor with En Vogue’s Funky Divas. Her “Give It Up, Turn It Loose” whirlwind got interrupted by a tape jam.
“Damn,” she cussed to herself.
Rick looked up from his phone call thinking he was hearing things. The whir of his chair gave him away as he rotated to look at the crestfallen janitor behind him. Except now she was trying to change her face to a look of nonchalance now that she was being watched. The tapping in his ear made him snap back to face his desk.
“Hello? Hello?… Yes, of course I’m still here, I apologize… No, we very much appreciate your business here at Cablevision Mister,” he glanced at the screen and winced, “Ojamadube…. Absolutely, if you’ll let me place you on a one to two minute hold I would be happy to take care of that… Thank you so much, sir, please hold.” The whirring came again, but this time Zora was off to the left changing out garbage bags. There was no point trying to get her to come to him.
Plastic rustled in Zora’s ear. She would have preferred to hear En Vogue talk about how yesterday their problems seemed long gone, but she was scared to even touch the tape in the deck. It looked like it would snap for no reason at all, and she didn’t have time to put herself through that right now. Another bag rustled on the side of her. One that she wasn’t holding. Rick was holding it. The apology in his eyes was for the garbage in his hand. It only had one coffee cup.
“Look, I know you get mad when you have to switch bags and there’s hardly any garbage, so I took out one of the steps and brought the trash to you.” His ever-present smile was lopsided, but genuine. When he’d first started chatting her up here and there Zora though he was mocking her.
She accepted the bag without a word and added it to her growing collection; she did manage a polite lip movement that would have to suffice as an appreciative smile. Rustle. Silence. Rustle.
“What time do you get off tonight?”
Zora furrowed her brow. Where was this heading? “Ten-o-clock… I work part time.” Well he didn’t ask you that, did he, Z?
“Oh, I guess that’s why I don’t see you when I leave. I get off at nine. The babysitter gets off at nine-thirty,” he coughed over his chuckle. Was that his best on-the-spot joke?
“Oh.”
Rick cleared his throat. “Look, Zora, if you want me to leave you be just say the word.”
The sad breath Zora let out of her nose made Rick put his hands up in surrender. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry, I’m a brother that can take a hint. Here, let me get back on this call and let you do your thing.” Rick backpedaled to his seat and sat down. Who knows what Mr. Oja-baba-bibbidyboo had asked him to do before the hold. It really didn’t matter at this point. “Hey, thank you so much for holding. I’ve got that all squared away for you. The technician will come to install on Wednesday morning between eight and eleven a.m.” Rick felt Zora’s proximity as she inserted a new bag in his waste bin. He felt it best that he not look down.
Zora didn’t have time to feel bad about their awkward encounter. She didn’t have time to be regretful that she didn’t say what she’d meant to say to him, instead of letting him assume the worst. She didn’t have time to mentally explore the possibility of a world where there existed a Rick & Zora together. All she had time to do was finish out the fifth floor and find out what else her supervisor needed her to do. And go home and get some semblance of rest before she had to wake up to baby sit for the Johnsons tomorrow.
All she had time to do was get over this hump in her life. Maybe then she’d feel better.

Hope you liked it! Thanks for reading, folks!