Cheyenne Madonna. Eddie MDiv Chuculate

she whispered.

      The song on the player answered, “Shhhhhh.”

      He couldn’t see anything in the room; it was very dark. He felt her hand along his thighs, down, then up, each leg. She tugged at the top button on his Levi’s, then he felt them all release smoothly in succession. She pulled his jeans down to his ankles and reached under his shorts. He jerked away violently.

      “What’s the matter?” she said.

      “Nothing.” He was turned away from her, face on the pillow. “Is it because I’m black? Is it because I’m a nigger?” she said. He lay silently and heard the “KY-O O O O O-GA” horn in the distance, down the road.

      He felt Yolanda moving and getting off the bed. He reached for her and caught her around the waist. “No,” he said. She had taken off her shirt – her skin was smooth, fantastic, and colorless, there in the dark.

      She took him in her strong, cold fist. He started up abruptly at the sensation.

      “Shhhhhh.”

      She began to move around and soon he felt her mouth on him. He gasped, and found himself feeling the hair on her head. He had always wanted to do that. It was spongy, moist, and smelled like baby oil.

      Suddenly she grabbed his arms and pinned them next to his head at the wrists and straddled him. The tightness, the warmness, shocked him. She was on top of him, rocking, smacking on bubblegum. After a while, her breaths came in loud, clipped bursts. The tingling he felt on his scalp and on the bottoms of his feet met in the center of his spine and shot out of him as she finished with a loud groan and rested her head on his chest.

      He floated home under the silver spray of stars.

      The next afternoon he went with Granny to Safeway.

      “So did you and Yolanda have fun yesterday?” she asked as they passed the Ledbetter’s.

      “No,” he blurted. “I mean, yeah, we shot baskets. Listened to records.”

      “Hmmmm.”

      He was unusually quiet, no joking around or horn honking. Florine, noticing his behavior, asked no further questions.

      Back home Jordan lay on his bed and tried to read the Muskogee Phoenix sports. He got up and moped around different rooms, biting his nails. A quick look out the window toward the brick house. No one. He felt hollow, like a stranger in his own universe. He felt his grandparents were staring at him. His cousin Bud was coming over, and they would probably go riding around.

      When Jordan appeared outside with the fishing rod Butch pranced around in circles then jumped up on him, paws on Jordan’s chest. Then he jumped down and took off at a dead run, stopped, looked back, barked, took off again.

      Jordan walked slowly through the yard and out of the gate. Ahead, Butch was already nearing the pond. Jordan took his time, kicking at clumps of brush. At the pond, he flopped down lazily and threw in a lure and reeled it in slowly. He yawned.

      Suddenly he saw a basketball in the air at the Ledbetter house. YoYo! He got up, leaving his fishing rod. Walking up to the highest part of the bank he could see her black head bobbing and the orange ball floating and bouncing. He felt his heart beat fast. He remembered he loved her. He jogged, then began to sprint, to Yolanda’s house. He ran through the tall grass, ran scared and hard as if someone, a girl even, might beat him.