Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

“Aww, thanks,” he had said, acting surprised when T.C. put the cash down. “I owe you. I’ll get you back tonight then.”

T.C. had nodded, though he didn’t know what tonight would bring.

It was hard making it out of Tiger’s car; even once they pulled up to the house, Tiger was still talking shit.

“Aww, man, this don’t even seem like the kind of girl you want to be involved with. She stay all the way Uptown, don’t have no car. At least Alicia had her own place. I mean she moved for the baby, but she always did for herself. She ’bout to get a nursing degree. This girl got a job, T.C.?”

He didn’t answer, he just lifted his plastic bag of belongings and strapped it to his shoulder. He would need to call Tiger for a ride in the morning, but he didn’t want to get into that now. The thing was, as far as Uptown was from New Orleans proper, T.C. enjoyed riding out here. The people in this neighborhood had been touched by Katrina too, but you wouldn’t know it by looking, not like his own block. Sometimes he’d wake up screaming, remembering the flood marks nine feet up his wall, the refrigerator tossed to his bedroom, his baby pictures unrecognizable, and that smell, that God-awful smell of rotten food and mold, as if a skunk had died somewhere in the house underneath all the trash and they didn’t know where to begin to look.

“I’ll holla at you a little bit later, my nigga,” T.C. called out over his shoulder, walking up to the front gate. He rang the bell, then looked down Freret Street while he waited. There were new kinds of restaurants opening up, pricey ones too, places where he had no business even reading the menus. And he wasn’t saying it wasn’t a good thing — he remembered the neighborhood before Katrina, the vacant storefronts, that his mama locked her car door when she drove through. It was just different, that was all, more to get accustomed to, but maybe one day he could take Bon Bon to one of these fancy spots, let her order whatever she liked without feeling his chest tense up.

He had expected Bon Bon to be at the door waiting for him, maybe dressed in something see-through, but no, her fat-ass mama opened the gate in a muumuu even though it was past eleven in the morning.

“Hey, how you doing? Good afternoon,” he said in his best upstanding-citizen voice. He tried not to deliver that goofy-ass smile, but like he said, it just came out sometimes.

“I’m here for Bon Bon, I mean Natalia. She told me I could stop by and see her.”

“Bay Bay,” the mother screamed out to the back of the house. While they waited for the girl, the mama just looked him up and down as though she could smell the prison yard on his dreads, the disgusting lockdown food on his breath. Finally, Bon Bon came to the door. She wasn’t wearing Victoria’s Secret, but good enough. Little-ass jeans and a belly shirt. He thought about Alicia again. Last time he saw her, she had been big as a house, her belly button sticking out like a thumb already. The thing was, it had been beautiful to him, her carrying his seed. Of course he’d wanted to be married with a job, but just because it didn’t go down like that didn’t mean he couldn’t find the joy.

The mama finally stepped out of the way, made room for her child. Bon Bon opened the door fully, and he pulled her into his arms. They stood like that, embracing for a while. She stepped back after a few minutes, but he didn’t want to stop touching her. He could feel himself filling like a balloon getting ready to pop.

He followed her down a short hallway, holding her hand, her head barely at his chest, trying to stay far enough behind her that she didn’t feel him pressing into her back.

Her room smelled like her, shampoo and Tide detergent. There wasn’t much in terms of furniture: a bed, a desk, a dresser, but she had a stereo, speakers strapped to the wall beneath her window, a big-screen TV, two iPads. There were posters of whack-ass Drake all over the wall, the last person T.C. wanted to be looking at when he was inside somebody as fine as Bon Bon, but it’d have to do. He collapsed on her bed; it had been so long since he’d been on a real mattress that actually sank with his weight and then lifted again. He looked up; she was standing on the other side of the room.

“Come on over here,” he said. “Let me see you.”

She inched a little bit closer but stopped midway at the computer desk and leaned over to check her email.

He told himself to calm down. He had waited this long, he could go a few minutes longer.

“What?” he said, her back to him. “You nervous?”

She giggled, then turned around, twirling the ends of her long black hair. He looked at her, really looked at her, the smooth chestnut skin, the straight white teeth, the big lips. He’d like to get those lips around his—

“No, I’m not nervous,” she said. She had such a sweet voice. Alicia’s, on the other hand, was so low she got mistaken for a man on the telephone sometimes. Alicia carried herself like a grown woman was the thing, and her voice was just a part of that.

“Come over here,” he repeated, stretching out his long thin fingers.

She came but with reluctance and sat on the bed beside him, not on his lap where he had wanted her.

“Let’s just talk for a little bit,” she said.

“We been talking though,” T.C. said. If it had been any other day, he would have bit his tongue, but the truth was all they had done was talk. He called her more than he called his own MawMaw, and more times than not she would answer. Sometimes when they’d run the distance of their normal topics, her classes at UNO, how they would touch each other when the time came, she would just sit on the phone and breathe. That had been plenty for him then, but now—

“What you wanna talk about?” he asked, sighing.

“I don’t know. How was your day?”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “How was my day? You know I just got home from jail, right?”

She nodded.

“You know that then? So my day was nothing. I woke up, ate breakfast, stood up for roll call, I got processed out, now I’m here with you.”

“You glad to see me then?” She smiled. She was teasing him now, seeming more comfortable.

“Hell, yeah, I’m glad to see you.”

She started tracing her fingers along his chest. He wanted more than anything to move her hand down, but he restrained himself.

“Tell me again how glad you are to see me,” she said.

He felt himself relax inside. This was the girl he knew, the girl who’d let him sneak his hand inside her jeans but wouldn’t let him see what he was feeling. From what she’d been saying on the phone though, she was ready for the real thing.

She got on her knees and straddled him. It was on now. He pulled her down, closer to him, kissing her, his hands fumbling with her clothes in an awkward fever. It wasn’t his style. Alicia used to tell him that he made love like a woman. He didn’t like to hear it that way, but he knew what she meant, that he took his time, that he used his mouth, that he treated her body like it was holy ground, but this was a different story and one he would have to make up for later.

He flipped her on her back and climbed on top. He was startled by how slender her waist was, her titties round as buttermilk drops from McKenzie’s before they closed down. He put them in his mouth one by one, alternating back and forth, feeling finally as if he was at home in his body, as if God had put her here with him now as an apology, and He was forgiven, for the half-crazy mother, the runaway father, the learning disability, the deferred basketball dreams. Sometimes in his early-morning thoughts he believed that God was condoning his drug activity. Where else would such pure inspiration have come from, the carefully laid-out plans? And he’d become angry with his Maker when he was caught, as if he’d been betrayed by the true author of the crime, but now all was forgiven. In this world, even if he hadn’t come in as a completed man, he had been made one now.