Chapter 5

After breakfast Zeke came into the kitchen where I was helping Rill. I was using Comet and a Wet rag on the grease-dripped side of the old gas stove. The ivory enamel was chipped but looked a lot better as I scoured it.

Sparrow was sitting in a chair by the ironing board. She was letting her baby suck on her left nipple while a bottle warmed. It fascinated me to watch the little mouth take the swollen, purplish nipple. I was envious of Sparrow in a way. She was a mother, a whole woman.

Zeke said, "Lark, Blackbird's out in the Volks, ready to go."

"Okay, thanks." I got up, made sure I had my house key and ID, and went out. I looked for Owl on my way through the living room, but he wasn't around. I was a little disappointed. But I supposed he was upstairs painting.

I went out onto the porch and saw the Volks! like, it was weird at first. It was a mini-bus, but with every inch of it except windows and headlights painted in wild, swirling, psychedelic designs. It was overpowering. I just stared at it in delight.

Blackbird had the rear panel open and was doing something to the engine which was idling. He had it rev up and then slow every few seconds.

I went around to look. He was tinkering with the carburetor. I asked, "Will it get us to San Marino?"

"That where you live? That's an hour on the freeways both ways." He turned an adjustment screw a tiny bit and revved the engine. He listened critically.

I asked, "Will it get us there and back?"

"Oh, shit yes! I got the magic touch. This motor purrs for me." He grinned with pride and knowledge. "I got a touch for motors. That's what Zeke say, and Conez, down at the station."

He shut the back panel and wiped his hands on a rag. He put his screwdriver in a back pocket of his tight jeans. "Climb in."

I went to the front passenger side and got in. There were no seat belts. Dad had seat and shoulder harnesses in the Pontiac. But dad knew he was mortal. Most kids don't think they can die.

Blackbird turned on the car radio. He backed down the driveway with a casual skill and roared the engine once, critically, before shifting gears and starting us on the long trip.

The radio came on loud. It was an Aretha Franklin record and she was shouting, which I don't like much. I just don't see the skill in it. But I didn't say anything. I watched the other cars and wondered what the drivers, and the people on Main Street were thinking when they saw us a colored boy and a blonde white girl in a hippie wagon. Why is she lowering herself like that? Do niggers fuck that good? I wiped out those thoughts.

After a few minutes I said loudly, over the noise of a chattering dj, "Okay if I turn it down? I'd like to talk a little."

"Sure!" Blackbird turned it off. He grinned. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Oh ... the tribe. There's a lot I don't know about it."

"Sure is. I was zonked when ol' Zeke let you in. But you only a second-class member, like us blacks in this country."

I didn't want to talk about race. "Do you like living the tribe way?"

"Shit, yes! I get more-" He laughed a private laugh. He glanced at me. "Ol' Zeke's strict on some things, to keep the Man outa our hair, but he's got the right idea. I only wish I could make more money." He scowled.

"You make enough to pay your way in the tribe, don't you?"

"Yeah, but that's about all. Four hours a day down't the station. But I make it in the tribe keeping this ol' heap purrin', and fixin' things. I got magic fingers."

"I wish I could do something besides help in the kitchen and things like that. I can't even type or take dictation. I won't be able to get much of an outside job."

"You don't have to worry. You white and you got everybody on your side."

"Well, I don't want to be 'white' and get special treatment."

"You can't help yourself!" He had turned up to Fourth Street to reach the freeway entrance. He turned again and we were speeding down the access road. He easily fitted the bus into the traffic. We were doing sixty-five. The engine in the back roared.

It was too noisy to talk much. We had to practically yell. He turned the radio back on.

One time a dark-blue Jaguar swerved in front of us in order to get to an exit coming up. Blackbird got very angry. "Goddamned rich mother-fucker!" His hands tightened on the wheel and he glared. "Goin' home to Beverly Hills! No blacks allowed to own in there!

I kept silent. He made me uneasy. Not because he was black but because he was so obsessed with it himself. A half an hour later we got off the freeway at Pasadena and I directed Blackbird south and east into San Marino a few miles away.

The familiar streets made me feel funny. When we turned into Madison Drive, our street, and I said, "That's it ... the brick front with the green trim," it really hit me this was my home and I was leaving it, casting it out of my life. That familiar icky sensation settled in my belly.

Blackbird drove right up into the driveway. That offended me for a second. I got out and led him into the backyard.

"Damn, you got a pool 'n everything." He looked at the blue-green water, the diving board, the bathhouse further on next to the big triple garage, and looked at me. "What you want to leave all this for?"

"It isn't mine. It isn't even my dad's. He's got fifteen years left to pay on it. He'll probably die before it's all paid off."

"So what? You using it till then."

"I'm just not happy here." I noticed a drapery move in the window of the Rands' place next door. I unlocked the back door of our house and smelled the hot, stuffy air of the closed, all-windows-shut interior. It seemed strange.

I led the way through the gleaming, white, gadgety kitchen, down the hall to my room. I went in and the room wasn't mine. It was the same as I had left it almost two weeks before Joan Baez and Dylan posters on the wall, neatly made single bed, record racks, desk, bureau, the sliding door closet, the frilly curtains insisted on for the windows it was all the same but I felt oppressed by it. I didn't want it. The room, the house, the pool, it was all tied together with mother and dad and David and their worrying about money all the time while going deeper in debt, my knowing open secrets about people but pretending I didn't. . . their always pretending ... always living in their fake world, my awareness of the hate and fear and cesspool minds behind smiling masks. The people in San Marino had everything, but they were afraid! Anything different, any change scared them. They knew deep down they were living on quicksand and any movement ... social, cultural, even scientific made them hate and fear.

Blackbird looked around my room and said, "Man, most of the people down in Venice would sell their black souls to live like this, and you willing to walk out of it?"

"It's the things that come with it that count. This is really a refined kind of a hell, in a way."

"I'd like to try it."

"Then you don't really belong in the tribe."

"What you mean?" he scowled.

"If you want this, then you can't be satisfied with the tribe's way. You can't have them both."

"Who you tellin' about the tribe? Who're you? You not really in yet and you flappin' your mouth about me not belongin' in the tribe! You got to prove yourself first before you can talk. Talk's cheap." His expression changed subtly. "But you're scared of me. You're scared of going to bed with me."

"I am not."

"Sure you are. I seen the looks, like in Zeke's room when he told you, you'd have to fuck with me. You got all up-tight inside. Shit, girl, I can read you like you got printing a inch high on your face."

"Well, that was because I didn't know you. You were a stranger, and..." I shrugged and tried to smile wryly and be cool but it didn't go. ". . . I've never done it with a colored boy, and besides I'm hung on Owl." I went to the bureau and pulled open some drawers. I knew what he was thinking. I knew what he wanted to ask. I was dry-mouthed and jerky in my movements. I was frozen inside. I went quickly to the closet and slid it open. I pulled down a suitcase, a big one, and my yellow and blue ski jacket. I was very busy. I couldn't look at him. I said, "You could unplug the stereo and carry it out."

"You ain't givin' me orders!" He was close behind me. "You got to remember who you are now. You Lark." His arms came around me. He pulled me tight to him. He felt my tension and resistance. "All you can think is color!"

"No..." I had to let him. I knew it, but not so soon! I had expected to get used to seeing him around, to know him as a person, and to let it happen in the tribe house where I'd feel free and easier about it.

"Then let's do it, Lark. I want to make it with you. I dig you. An' I can make you feel good. I can make you feel good as Owl." He had a rhythm, a sing-song quality in his words, a ritual line he was feeding me, to justify and force me to agree.

His hands were on my belly and his right hand started edging under my forearm, under Owl's sweatshirt to my bare skin. I wasn't wearing a bra. He knew it. He had seen the loose movement of my breasts, and seen the bumps made by my nipples.

"Not now. Tonight."

"Why not now? This is a better place. I won't hurt you. We got real privacy here."

I saw he was right. I didn't really think he'd hurt me or get freaky or anything. And it was a better place. There wouldn't be anyone to hear us, or see me right afterward, or before, and if I did it now, I thought, it would be over with, the first strange, awkward, up-tight time.

I tried to wipe out his blackness in my mind. It didn't matter! He was a tribe man and he wanted sex and he wanted me, and he had a right to me. And I had no good reason to refuse. I was tribe Lark. I had to be or I had to forget being a hippie and living with the tribe and Owl. I might as well just stay in this room ... call mother and dad and apologize.

I relaxed as much as I could. I let my arms drop. "All right."

Both his hands went up under the sweatshirt to my bare breasts and squeezed and explored and got to know them, and found out how big, and what shape they were and what kind of nipples I had...

He kissed my neck and said softly, "Ummm ... nice ... hot skin..." He laughed softly. "You got hot tits. You hot like this all over?"

"Sometimes." He was pushing his loins against my orange stretch pants, rubbing his erection against my buttocks.

I saw him in my mind's eye as he had been that morning, in Owl's room, naked, a beautiful body, proud of it, arrogant in little ways of gesture and movement. Willing to be naked in front of me ... any girl ... to show off.

He was tall. He turned me and I wasn't prepared for his kiss. His wide, thick negroid lips were a physical shock coming down at me warm and ugly and hard and I closed my eyes to shut out his gloating eyes, challenging eyes, staring.

The fear thing was fading out for me. The more he touched me with hands that were like other hands, and breathed loudly and pressed tight ... he was only a young man with a hard-on...

I was in possession of myself again. A film slipped away in my mind and let the curiosity come up through the fear and strangeness. I loosened my mouth and let him push his tongue in my mouth. His hands still held me tight as if afraid I'd run.

He urged me over to my bed. He ended the kiss. He was aroused. He was breathing hard. We sat on the bed and he pulled my sweatshirt off. I let him. I unzipped the side of my stretch pants and pushed them down, aware of him undressing next to me watching, and he was trying to be cool he was trying to be casual!

I realized it meant much more to him in a positive, ego-pride-status way than it meant to me as a square-value put-down and humiliation. I was Lark! I wasn't losing anything! I was gaining! I was learning, really opening my mind and accepting something new!

He pushed down his tight jeans and it wasn't as big as David's, or even Owl's. Blackbird had a beautiful body.

He had already pulled off his sandals. I had come barefoot. I was nervous and could feel my heart whamming away. I took my panties off, too, and started to lie back.

Blackbird sprawled out beside me, pressing against me, his hard penis burning against my hip, his hands sliding all over me, down into my crotch to rub and then up to my breasts ... and back again.

He said huskily, "You got a nice body."

"You've got a better one." I touched his shoulder.

He grinned, pleased with my compliment, and lowered his mouth to my right breast. He sucked my nipple but the sensation was weak. Everything I felt was sort of thinned out.

He was working a finger into me when he asked, "You like straight fuckinT' I nodded.

"You not very wet yet."

"I will be. Go ahead."

"You gonna like me, Lark. I take a long time. Robin go crazy sometimes when I been fuckin' away in her for a hour or so." He was bragging, smiling.

I just couldn't picture thin little Robin, with her wasted, atrophied legs wide, taking him, liking it. . . 'going crazy.'

Blackbird rolled onto me and I opened myself for him, knees high and wide, fingers holding myself apart down there while he pushed inside, half dry, rubbing the sensitive pinkness with his rigid black penis, pushing it deeper, while he snorted and let his weight down on me, and curved his hips into my hollowed loins and pressed in farther.

"You nice'n tight."

I didn't answer. I didn't like it. Why did I have to do it if I didn't like it? He was moving, a swift rhythm, with his head next to mine, his breath warm on my neck, making little grunty satisified sounds, while his hips, arched and pressed, arched and pressed, in and out ... bringing a little glow of feeling when he compressed my clitoris with his body at the end of each inward thrust.

My juices were flowing, oiling his way, erasing the dryness and pain.

It went on a long time like that. Every few minutes he raised his head and kissed me, tongued me, and asked, "You like it? Gettin' anywhere?"

I nodded. He lowered his head and I chewed my lower lip and worked with my hips to make him come sooner.

I was slowly getting a small glow, a ripple of pleasure from it, after about twenty minutes. But then the pleasure that had been building inside me faded away. I became a machine.

After a longer time he began breathing quicker, more deeply, and began exhaling strongly. He said, "Can't hold out no more ... "

I moved with him, took his quicker plunges and met his jolting with my hips, and felt him quiver in his body.

He groaned and his hands tightened on my shoulders. I was panting with effort to make it good for him in spite of it not happening to me too. I was Lark. And I got a kind of thrill out of giving, out of experiencing his deeper thrusts and holding him tighter in my arms and feeling the shuddering spasms that shook him ... and hearing words torn from him in his climax: "Je-sus, you good! Uhh...."

Then he was sighing on me, flopping away onto his back, face slack, empty, at peace for a moment, and I had to cup my hand against myself to keep from leaking and dribbling on the bedspread and the carpet as I got off the bed and went into the bathroom.

I washed and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked down at my wet pussy and back to the mirror. I watched the reflection of my sloping breasts and still erect nipples. I whispered, "You are now Lark. You're a different girl."

I hoped the Enovids were working.

God, if mother could have seen ... I giggled a little hysterically.

About ten minutes later Blackbird carried out my portable stereo, a hundred twenty dollar V-M, and I followed close behind with my suitcase filled with spare under things, mostly, and blue jeans, pedal pushers, some sweaters. I carried my guitar, too.

I saw old dumpy Mrs. Rand, squinty in the sun without her sunglasses, standing next to our driveway by the low cinder block wall that divided the properties, watering her flowers there with a green plastic hose. She was all eyes.

I tried to ignore her. But she said, "Hello, Juli."

"Hello, Mrs. Rand." I followed Blackbird back into the house.

When we emerged again, each with an armful of records, she said, "Moving."

"Yes."

"I thought Ruth and Robert and you were only staying at the beach two weeks?"

I wasn't taking anything more. I had locked the back door. She kept looking at Blackbird, at the decorated Volks, and then at me. Her eyes sparkled with the things she was going to say to friends in a few minutes on the phone. I said, "They'll be back tomorrow maybe." I opened the passenger door of the minibus and climbed in.

"Won't you be with them?"

"No. And please tell them not to worry, will you?"

Her eyes were wide with growing shock. Her eyes darted from Blackbird to me. "Juli...."

Blackbird started the engine, revved it, and backed swiftly to the street. I waved at Mrs. Rand and leaned my head on Blackbird's shoulder. It was a terrible thing to do to Mother and Dad, but I was exhilarated and suddenly free. I had really burned my bridges.