Summer Love, On Sidewalks
I ain’t checkin’ you.
You callin’ out to me from across 17th and Ashberry but you callin’ too-sweet. I don’t say nothing. I just show you my shoulder and turn to my half-circle of girls. They throw you a third finger and wiggle their double-drop earrings. You ain’t checkin’ them. You stampin’ your workboots, brushin’ your face with your palm-heels, slappin’ your thighs, and shouting out your nothing-love.
You singin’, “Hey, baby! Stop actin’ tricky! Come over, come over! I been looking at you, thinking you the one!”
My girls and me, we got a bus to catch. I ain’t missing my connection to the little job I got ‘cause you want to play my shapes. My girls and me, we been hearing you and your boys talkin’ about girl-shapes, about our smooth and tight places, about the hips you want to drum, the nipples you want to pluck, the bought-hair you want to tug and strum. Boys like you are always trying to warm us up with your hot dreams. We ain’t checkin’ you. We remember when a boy like you came and snatched one of our girls, last winter. We saw you buying her mint-cream cones, saw you scoopin’ summer season into her mouth. We saw you kissing her shy cheekbone, heard your “siempres and trust’ames.” We remember how you loved our girl foul, then threw her back, hollowed out and soul-bruised. We remember you blamed her, said she was too thin-chested and fat-legged, while you were switching your eyes at some other gal’s wobbling ass.
Our Mamas and Tias been warning us about you since we were babies. They been saying, “Careful, careful, and cuidate, cuidate, mija” since we first pulled on satin dresses and pledged to be princesses. They loved boys that gave nothing-love too, and that bad love got them fat with baby or red in the mind.
So when the bus pulls up and you still shouting my name, saying, “Yes, yes, you the one, you the one I want,” I ain’t checkin’ you. I ain’t noticing the waves and rolls of your night hair, not your quick flash of dimple or slick, small teeth. No, I ain’t checking you. Not me. But my girl on the left, she ain’t getting’ on the bus with us. She cutting her eyes at us, then looking at him, now he calling her name. We claw for her, but she taking off across the street. We crying for her, but she followin’ the sound of your ugly voice instead.
We Are Always at Somebody’s Party
Everyone is talking about Big Topics at the gala. I hear them choking on seas and continents.
They are talking about women-pain, baby corpses and dusky bodies shot from chest to soul. They count the colors of the people in the room and their voices turn red.
Somebody asks how I feel about Big Topics. I say nothing. I have seen bloody babies, I have felt woman-pain. I’ve seen the clouds in a dead man’s pupils. I am one of the colors they mention. Nobody in the room has my skin. Still, one of their Big Topics is what to do with people like me.
Somebody I don’t know says my name. The others turn to me and I am glad. I have all sorts of stories to tell. My stories aren’t always about Big Topics.
I open my mouth. When I speak, they smile. They will quote me at other galas. They will say “I know this sort of person…she would know about this…because she’s one of them…” They will say I am their friend and they will look good-hearted and informed. They will not invite me to supper at their homes.
They watch my mouth move for a bit, then cut me off. I am shrinking.
I watch them choke down oceans, gnaw on fat slabs of countries. I watch their mouths grow until they are too-huge and too-dark. I wonder if these mouths will be large enough to devour me someday.
The Girls Who Get Off the City Bus
There are babies in our bodies.
We look heavy but our eyes are light-stuffed. We get off the 71A, bound by elbow and hip, and we get off laughing.
Passersby guess our ages. We know we are too-young. We know about sin and we know about color. We know what it means to have bellies egg-shaped like this, with skin blue-dark like this. We think about tucking our heads down, but we don’t. We flick our mouths up. We laugh about some boy acting tricky. We catch dying snowflakes with our bottom gum. We imagine ourselves growing, fatter and wider, until there’s nothing left on these streets but our enormous stomachs and our hot new-Mama-love.
With these black bodies, big as God and filled with all kinds of delicate weather, we are happy that we can create something as beautiful as life.
Jennifer Maritza McCauley lives, writes and teaches in Miami, Florida. She is the recipient of a Knight Fellowship in fiction from Florida International University, where she earned her MFA. She is also an associate editor of Origins Literary Journal, a book reviews editor for Fjords Review, and a contributing editor for The Florida Book Review. Her most recent work can be found in Deep South Magazine, The Boiler, First Inkling, Squalorly and The Blue Lyra Review among other outlets. She will be entering the University of Missouri’s Ph.D. program in creative writing and literature this fall.
–Art by Milan Vopálenský & Esmahan Özkan
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