Page 20 - Contrast1977Aprilv20n2

>l1y anger, my raw excited jealousy, that I dream t.hi s up to
cast a necessary doubt, a flurry of shadow, over Goddess.

Thus the streets received us of a Sunday night. Snyde's

with its worthless suspension \olrackedits sides and
shook our viscera. The girls in back gave little sexual
hoots amidst their general noisemaking, and my thoughts
snuck to a passage I had read about females riding horses.
Black back-seat girls from an institution, they were
vulgar and crude, but, dear God, they were female, and, if
one Jet himself go, more exciting than !!pst. Vile words
took a tantalizing turn in t.l-jeifrull mouths of china
teeth and luscious tongues -- pink tongues, as blood again-
st dark lips--- lips like labia. I looked at my hands. The
savage in me hardened. No question now, what I had to do:
&'1 Leslie, striding home, me on the mind, a smi 1e on tile
face, that quite darling face. But no question -- nD ques-
tion, I say! I myself had started it. And who did I feel in
my support 1 urging me onward with handfuls of hands; pxa i s-:
ing, cheering? JI~so: there in a clearing st.ood my parents,
looking as they had before the fire called them Clp and
said: "Be my breakfast!" while I watched w i t.h stricken eyes.

The bus in trut.."was a.Negro bus; "Snyde' s " was an
idea tllat took on meaning only at its destination, beyond
t.he ghettos and merrt.Ia institutions I far up out of the
dirty well, to where people walk white and light as clouds
over the prettiness of repaired battlefields, name of
Get.tysburg. The windows were br o.'1.1..as t.he eyes of a Black;
night painted the rest of t.he inside Black. I looked at

my ~a~ds again. ~~ack, Black hands, though when they got to
WeStmlDster they 0 float, and set about sailing channels.
No matter, now they were Black. As the miserable medicine
ball heads, .w~v~ng ~n their stalks; the rioting girls in the
rear; the DlVlnlty In the seat behind my 0.'1.1...

She was just there and I just here: we were close
enough to playa game. Was she counting the hair on the
back of my head? Let her! I could not have been more happy
t.han for her to show me such attention.

, Suddenly I.felt Leslie falling away from me, a skin
I sned to the wa.nd. It shot straight into the sky, but not