Latroya Lovell
The Storm in the Dream

Maybe the body is a mass of particles in the universe trying to penetrate each other, but failing. In this failure, we get a great form that takes up space. This space cannot, no matter how hard it tries, defy the law of impenetrability. We are human beings: huge formations of particles, still trying to get so close to one another—like the small particle I imagined above. There must exist a race of another creature watching us under microscopes—we, the tiny particles, trying to merge.

And I am guilty of it: trying to become one with another being on this planet until maybe our breathing becomes synonymous, or our pulse jumps quick for the same thing. I am trying to become one with another being to the point of not having to ever speak again—for this other person is an extension of myself, the all-knowing other half of me. I am guilty of trying, even though I am aware of my impermeability. Another body will never know mine.

***

Lenox Avenue is always full of sunlight, the kind that makes you want to permanently shield your eyes, as if this would protect you from things you do not need to see. I walk beside you silently. You walk beside me. You don’t speak, but words spew from every crevice of your mouth. These things you say create a ripple effect of twitching nerves down to the third layer of my skin. From your rant, I pull out the words, “You. Are. Insecure.” This one line plays in my head over and over with a sense of vehement denial. I want to yell at you, but I am withdrawn. I want to yell at you, and it is not your fault that I cannot. I want to say, “I’d be insecure if I stayed with you.”

We sit in Jimbo’s on 125th Street. Any thought to distract me from my current feelings, or your speaking, is a good thought. Jimbo’s is perhaps the only place left in Harlem with Harlem essence. The old timers still come here. The weathered hustlers who tote canes and stories about how many people owe them money from 1981 still come here. They order corn muffins, split in half, with grape jelly on both sides. They talk about gentrification; but they do not ever say the word “Gentrification.”

They say, “Man, you see all these whities up and down Lenox Avenue? They be all up in ma dukes’ old building that she lived in before she died. The building up the street from Beeny and dem, that Marky used to have the whores selling they cho-cha for 50 dollars a pop. Member that?”

You ask if I am hungry. I say no, but I order pancakes. I sit across from you. Still silent. “No” is the only word I have spoken since we started walking up Lenox Avenue, and now, since we’ve been sitting in Jimbo’s. You talk through the inherent fact that a conversation involves two people. Until you stop. Tears are spilling from my eyes and I am pouring syrup over pancakes in the same way. Tears run past my jaw and into the folds of my neck; my scarf begins to irritate me. The syrup runs over the edge of the plate.

“I’m tired,” you say.

I know all about the traps people use to get you to speak. They never work on me. They are coded into my membrane as innate language skills, communication difficulties. I know that I should ask you “why” you are tired, but that would drive you to keep talking.

Instead I say, “I’m tired, too.”

You slam your fists onto the table. Your brows are knit together, and your eyes are squinted. They’re throwing out anger and confusion.

You shout, “WHAT THE HELL YOU GOT TO BE TIRED ABOUT, DICK!? You ain’t speaking one word. Feel like I’m talking to a child.”

“Dick?” I ask in a dry tone.

“DAWG, I’M NOT CALLING YOU BABE RIGHT NOW!” you shout even louder this time. You bang your fists into the wood again. The table flinches, the ketchup falls over, the guy behind the counter flinches, he takes his hat off, an old guy behind us flinches, he folds his newspaper. I do not flinch. I barely bat an eyelash. I think about when you called me from Texas the day after Christmas to tell me your daughter said, “Mommy, Daddy is scary.”

You keep talking. Your face is way thinner than when I first met you. I remember: you were full. I hugged you on my rooftop that August and noted that I would never date another skinny man. It felt good to hug you. You smelled warm like Newports and the oil stand and black tea and sativa. You were handsome. Quiet. Surreptitious. Now, you are still talking. You are talking to stop me from leaving you, and this is not the way. You are thin now. It makes you look like a person that I never met. Your hugs embrace me the same way it feels to step out of my apartment building into the 17-degree air and step right back inside. I’m no longer willing to take the walk that I need. I cannot need you because I am trying to know you and it isn’t working. You’re becoming a stranger.

***

There is a certain part of me that is attached to this aspect of the wild woman that is inside all women. This is a notion that I have adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book Women Who Run with The Wolves. Through myths, stories, and reflections she elaborates on the idea that there lives a powerful force within all women. This force is filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. This force is the Wild Woman, and she represents the instinctual nature of women. She is an endangered species, because she is quieted. She is ignored, she is mocked, and though she is usually right, we regret to listen to her.

Simone de Beauvoir slightly references this wild woman in The Second Sex. She states that man is afraid of the natural woman. Society (man) ventures to make the woman as unnatural as possible. Through embellishment, the woman covers her natural self. She does her hair, she wears jewelry, and she wears clothes. She is made to feel guilty for her ways, which mimic a closeness to nature that makes man inherently uncomfortable. It is when I realize I cannot force a soul mate that I find her. It is when I realize that trying to be impenetrable with a man is redundant. It is when I realize that no stress is worth the smothering of my particles by another’s particles that the wild woman wakes up in me.

In my moment of silences, when you are ranting, I feel her waking. I sit with a distance etched into my face while she burns under my flesh. I let your rampage end, and then she comes out. She is unembellished. Naked, her hair is wild and unkempt, and her nails are long and dirty. She is fanged, her jaws are searching; she is hungry. Her body rises massively with her breathing. She is beastly and voracious. She wants flesh. In my thoughts, this wild woman eats men. And when she is done eating, I sit in delight with a faint smile that is inconspicuous to your eye. You are left, a carcass with the spoils of your guts in disarray. In my mind, I hold out my hand and ask if you need help getting up, but I do not extend it far enough for you to grasp. My wild woman is belly full. She stands upright in the sun, and she laughs.

***

You loved them because you couldn’t fully have them. I was there, unknowingly filling in the place of all your women. You could not stop telling me that I reminded you of your daughter’s mother because she was smart. I was a little bit like your girlfriend before your daughter’s mother because she was street savvy, she was motivated. I was a little bit like the girl who made you most unmotivated, Kiara. I made you curious about women like the first love of your life, Keyhatta. I was nurturing like the woman who took care of you and your sister.

Your daughter’s mother was a college girl. She could talk to you for hours about quantum physics, history, and music. She challenged you. She made you think. You read books for the first time, and it was because of her. You finished Crime and Punishment. It is your favorite book. But she could not understand that you were from the streets. She was naïve; she cried a lot and called it passion.

The girlfriend that you had right before your daughter’s mother knew the streets. She didn’t cry and she had no wants; she worked. She gave you her all on the one day a week she made for you, because she was too busy. She left you, without a single word, and all the time you wonder where she went.

You lived with Kiara in a two-bedroom apartment with her son. When I beg you to stay in bed with me, you tell me her story. Kiara used to beg you to stay in bed, she would pull you in with a, “Baby, please hold me,” and you would give in. After hours in bed your stomach would growl, her stomach would growl, and she would be looking at you to fix it. But you were in bed all day, so you made no money. She would be mad at you for not being a man. I would never let you put leisure before work, but when you stay in bed with me, lazy of your own volition, I know you are still in bed with her.

I told you I dated a woman, and you told me you dated a woman who liked women more than men. Her name was Keyhatta. She became unhappy dating you and you became suspicious of her every move. You tried everything to keep her. But she left you for a woman.

The other night, after our argument, I became aware that I can never see your face in the dark. I stayed up all night, your head in my lap, and played with your hair until you snored. I couldn’t help but think of the stories you told me about your older sister, there for you when your mother wasn’t. I imagined that was how you fell asleep with her.

In me were these pieces of all these women that you loved but could not love you back. Through me, they loved you back. Through me, you could be with them all over again. But never with me alone. I’m an enigma, an impossibility. A woman that can possess all the things you long for in a woman but can never truly handle. I am actually only in the bits of your stories. You only love me because you are still holding onto each of them. I believe you reminisce over them when you hold me, resist me, talk with me, and make love with me. I wonder if I’ll get the honor of being the end of the story for your next woman.

I did try, too. I closed my mouth more, tried to be prettier, less volatile, and less awake. I tried not to be too smart, too busy, too lazy, too mischievous, too street, too aggressive, too passive, too lesbian, too nurturing; and it became too much. I wanted to become one with you. I wanted our spaces to collide so that we one day could have defied the laws of impenetrability. My wild woman would not let me. Physics would not let me. You could not love me. I reminded you of all of your exes. This made me too many women. I was too many particles clustered around your one, trying to merge with you. And it is okay.