THE LANDING PATTERN
“A long time ago I slipped into what Miguel tells me now, is a landing pattern. It was just about the only time I can remember it being that way. Before the big bust, before Rick was sent to prison, I was seeing the quarterback of my high-school. I know, it’s impossible to believe, but I used to be alright looking. I had my way of walking those halls! and like I said, it was before things went to Devil’s hell. So far as that quarterback was concerned, I was a flower. I guess that’s what he liked so much about me. (Laughter) He’d write me little notes on paper scraps, but I was free-basing cocaine and drinking cough syrup in the bathroom before he was going out to play on Friday nights. My momma was so proud, you would have thought he was her man.
Pardon?
No, seeing was like saying you was seeing. If it came close to seeing too much then you’re reputation was shot and you might not find anyone who wanted to see you till college, if you were good enough to get there.
So he takes me out one night. We’re out on a drive and he flat out says, “Mary-Jane, you’re the closest thing to a daffodil that I’d like to get next to.” I was thinking about how much I’d like a cigarette, when I looked back at him and smiled.
About a block before my house he parked in a tree-shadow and unbuttoned my blouse. The hand was cold but its fingers strong. I forgot about the cigarette.
I leaned into the car-door, and let my feet go toward him, but when he moved his hand down south something came over me. “I can’t do it,” I said, and what was worse, “It’s against my faith,” I blurted, as if the holy ghost was lying across my lap. (It would be ten years before Miguel’s birth gave me the strength to find the Lord Himself in all his Great Glory.)
So for a few months we did something close to that. He’d drive me home and we’d park. He’d get to my blouse and then stop before the southward part. I kind of wanted him to and all. In the bathroom, some of my friends would say, “Are you finally going to make it with that quarterback of yours?” By that point, me and the gang were really going nuts. I was on all kinds of shit, and doing worse behind the bar with the bikers, all that for just the cash. Who knows why I couldn’t let that strong fingered quarter back get into me.
For months!
Well, he just got bored, I guess. I don’t remember where he went. I had my own problems.”