Not Quite

"I wonder if she has my hair."

Sometimes the words come to me just like that and I have to stop, hold my breath. If I allow her to be real, she will be.

***

In a seedy motel room at Pigeon Forge, skin lies upon skin. It doesn't make a difference what color it is, because it's completely dark. Only light makes us different until we open our mouths.

"You on the pill?"

I shake my head, then realize that it's so dark, and he can't really see me, "Condoms?"

"Yeah," I hear him swallow, rustling, then triumphant laughter. "C'Mere," He picks me up and settles me down, causing blood to sizzle through my veins. I settle down over him, on him, and hum to myself with pleasure as I do. I can't speak, otherwise, except to say.

"How the fuck do you do it to me every time, Prichard?"

He laughs, "Jackie, Darlin', you're my girl." With his hands on my hips, as if that answers everything. After that, words don't matter any more.

***

Everyone thinks they have me pegged; take one look at me and say something like 'tough black chick.' After 'Fear Factor', it changed to something like 'semi-tough black chick." I let y'all see a part of me that I never wannna show again; my soft side.

It's hard not to be soft when you're afraid of heights and your legs are too Goddamned short to reach from one thin little log to the other.

The night it aired, the two of us went out together for dinner. No one looked at us funny. Maybe it's all of that inborn crap from having to fight my way through those backwater promotions, filled with hateful assholes who see dark skin and start putting on white hoods, but I expect to put up with shit when I'm out with my slightly older, college-degree-bearing, white-skinned lover. Sad but true.

We toasted to everything that night; his blue eyes, my small feet, the wallpaper. Came home shitfaced. I've never felt dumber in my life then when I'm crocked.

My memory gets too long, too.

**

Eddie Marlin wasn't going to stand for his top babyface team making a baby out of wedlock. That's a nice way for him to suggest it was outrageous that his white babyface fuck around with his darky valet.

We were frantic; first-time parents, unmarried, working hand-to-mouth for the third-biggest company in the nation. I had no place to run to; my father would do something boneheadedly backward, like shoot Tom in the face or force us into a shotgun wedding. Daddy doesn't realize that I'm not afraid of his God anymore.

Finally, Eddie Gilbert, of all people, suggested we try to place the baby with an adoption agency. We almost instantly found a willing couple; very yuppie, eager. They moved into my apartment, obsessed over my every last move, took our lives over in that false-friendly way. (they wanted undamaged merchandise, of course).

I went into labor while Tom was on tour, so they took me, waving their damned camcorders in my face as I gave birth to my little girl. They didn't even let me hold her. In two days they were gone.

Leaving difference in me, but not my life. Certainly not in Tom's. Which is where the beauty of being a wrestler comes into living. We can act our way around anything.

***

"You never want to talk about her."

"I thought you didn't."

He squeezes his eyes closed and rubs at the red mark they've left behind. "Sometimes...I wish we hadn't sealed the adoption."

He's holding me in our bed, our house, in a neighborhood that so bubbled with diversity that you can almost absorb the different languages being spoken through the walls. Why does it matters to me now, so many years away...I don't understand.

"I want to know who she looks like," I express. And then break down.

**

Somewhere in Tennessee, a little girl tugs back a lock of hair, after it lingers too long in her eye. She's pretty, in an unconventional way; with blue eyes and brown, untamable hair, and skin like coffee with lots of cream in it. Everyone around her is different, so it doesn't matter if she is.

She frowns down at an equation; math isn't her strong suit. Practicality doesn't fit her at all.

She smiles when the last problem is solved; a slate cleaned, another day done. She has friends at home that are waiting for her.

These are the pictures I comfort myself with. To help me sleep at night.

The End