He put his hand on her back. “Lay down with me, baby.”
She shook her head.
“Please, Lydia. Come on.”
She couldn’t face him: she was too ashamed, so she curled on her side and he held her that way, his belly to her back. His breath moving the hair on her neck, while he told her somebody did bad things to him, too. His uncle, a man that he had loved like a daddy, because Dante’s own father had killed himself after he came back from Vietnam.
Uncle Warren had helped to raise Dante. He taught him how to play basketball and fix a car, but then Uncle Warren had pounced and raped him when he was ten. He said that Dante was the faggot, taking it while his uncle was giving it. The raping kept happening, over three years’ time. The only reason it had stopped was Dante’s friend Tim, when they’d been in junior high school. They’d known each other since kindergarten, and he had protected Dante growing up. When the other boys at school had called him skinny and soft, Tim had beat them down, and told them, don’t fuck with his friend. Because Dante was more than Tim’s friend. He was his brother, and he showed it, too. One night in junior high, when his uncle was watching Dante while his mother was at work, Tim and his friends let themselves in with the key that Dante had slipped them. They whipped this uncle’s ass good, and Tim told the uncle they’d kill him next time.
“You think something’s wrong with me ’cause I couldn’t fight for myself?” Dante asked Lydia. “’Cause I let Tim do it for me? Tell me the truth.”
“No, you’re just fine,” Lydia said.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with you, neither.”
They didn’t make love. That would take two more weeks. That night in the motel, they only held each other tightly. They talked until they fell asleep, and when Lydia woke up, Dante was still there. That was enough for her.
*
The semester ended in May, and Lydia had a month before her mother and sisters came south for the summer, time enough to get her story straight. To think about what and how to tell her mother about Dante. For Lydia to explain that their love was different from anyone else’s. She knew something that other women didn’t, and Dante was different than other boys and men. He was good and kind and she couldn’t let him go.
Lydia packed her belongings from her dorm room, placed them in her car, and hugged Niecy. She drove to her granny’s house, unloaded the boxes onto the back porch, and gave her the story she’d worked out with Niecy, that Lydia was staying with her roommate in Atlanta. Niecy’s parents had a big house and didn’t mind company, but she didn’t want to bring all her junk to Niecy’s house. Here was the number, in case of emergency. Lydia would see her granny in June.
Dante had moved into a smaller apartment, further down the road from where Miss Opal lived. He told his mother, please don’t be mad, but he was twenty-two. He needed his privacy, and business at the convenience store was good. He was working more hours. Dante told Lydia he didn’t want to hurt Miss Opal’s feelings and make Miss Opal feel like he was trading her for another woman. That was his mama and he’d always love her. But Miss Opal wasn’t mad when she came by one evening in the middle of the week, after Bible study, and there was Lydia cooking dinner. Miss Opal laughed and told Dante she understood that her son was a man; this is what she raised him for. She didn’t want him living up on her until he was fifty, and besides, her sister wanted to move from Macon to Atlanta. And she told Lydia, come hug her neck, when Lydia asked her to stay for dinner.
By then, Miss Opal was calling Lydia her daughter-in-law. Teasing her every time Lydia came to church and ate dinner at her apartment after services. Miss Opal’s sister and Tim joined them, but there were no more ungentlemanly displays. After dinner, Dante would bid his friend and family goodbye, and he and Lydia would leave. He wanted to spend some quality time with his lady.
In the new apartment, there was a plaid couch Dante had found by the side of the road. Two television trays made a coffee table. A TV rested on an orange crate, but Dante had splurged for cable. In the bedroom, sheets covered a mattress and box spring. Beside the makeshift bed, another crate topped with a pillowcase and a lamp. Lydia used some of her emergency money to make some purchases. A see-through shower curtain with fishes, and a fluffy mat and toilet cover and towels in bright pink. A visit to the thrift shop, where she bought a scarred chest of drawers and used pots and pans that reminded her of Mama’s, streaked with the residue of grease and soot. Metal already seasoned, used in a happy kitchen.