How to understand a quiet woman

I said with my eyebrow, the word bitch is too comfortable in your mouth. But you’re progressive, pro-black, pro-feminist the same way the white woman who sat across from me was progressive when she asked “so, how is the drug problem in your high school?”

When I looked out the window while you played your garage band song, that was me saying I don’t give a fuck about your garage band song. My smile was a good ole southern “bless your heart.”

I grabbed your hair because it was in my face, not because I thought it was pretty. It was greasy and smelled like gym. Use dry shampoo and stop skipping leg day. You are built like the WB frog.

When I sat in the corner of the classroom and wrote rather than talked to you, I was saying I’d rather construct an entire universe and put white people at the center of it than listen to Lil Wayne.

You must learn to listen to my smile. The ones that don’t reach my eyes are the ones that are saying you ain’t shit.

Nail filing is the language of the unbothered. So is blogging.

There were moments when I closed my eyes or stared up at the sky or ceiling. That was me envisioning not being near you, escaping to solitude, imagining the freedom of stretching out and your body not being there, of wishing I had driven instead, of calculating the cost of a Lyft.

When I didn’t hug you goodnight at my dorm room door, that was goodbye. That was don’t call me. Waving was me saying, I need you to disappear.

When I hugged my notebook over my chest that was me saying stop sexualizing a minor. That was your only warning.

Me giving you those earrings back was a

critique of your fragile masculinity.

Me pressing my cold feet into yours was my way of saying you’re selfish.

That moment I put my phone down and turned my music off was my consent to listen to the bull shit you were about to say.

Me pushing you away, physically with my hands was a clear no. No I don’t want to dance with you, your worn out deodorant, or your day drinking breath. I’m not going to smile for you, tell you my name, let you type your number in my phone. Listen to you call me bitch for ignoring you.

No.

No.

No.

Zero room for negotiation.

Open letter on the Subject of Sniffing

Yes, I sniffed you while in line at the AMC theater. You called me on it, your brows lifted into confused flat backed D’s. The girl at the ticket counter looked down at her shoes, bite her lip, looked at her screen, then towards the bar which was closed for the night. She was saving her laugh for later. 
You offered advice on the art of subtlety which I shall in future politely ignore.   
I cannot remember the way my grandmother smelled, what detergent she used on the blanket I wrapped myself in while watching cartoons on the floor. I cannot remember the smell of her kitchen, the soap she kept in bathroom, or books she owned. I cannot remember what brand of cigarettes my great grandma smoked, the names of the perfumes on her vanity, or the scent of the mildewed pages of the harlequin paperbacks she owned by the dozens. 
I don’t remember the smell of my momma’s old Ford, the black one with burgundy interior, but I can map for you the smear of the bug guts on the back seat.  
I can remember the smell of the boy I had a crush on when I was ten, fresh cut pine and rain misting on summer asphalt, and when it rains here, I remember lip smackers lip gloss, Limited Too, butterfly clips dissipating to glitter as a basketball smashed into the top of a girl’s head, the blood bubbling on her scalp and Coach Morgan with blue surgical gloves on telling me and my classmates to take a knee. 
Somewhere in your cologne, body wash, deodorant, and sweat was something I wanted to remember, a story to tell later, or a moment that lingered on the edge of memory that I wanted to relive again. Going to see Shrek with my uncle, cousin, and sister, smearing popcorn butter on my lips and puckering them with a soft smack, the scent of the hand soap at Festival 18 in Crestwood. Something in that moment made me lean over and breath deeply, audibly.  
Was is weird? To you and the girl behind the ticket counter, yes. 
But not to me. Sorry, not sorry. 

Open letter to the man who bought me my first “girly” drink

It was pepto bismal pink with a cherry and pineapple speared on the rim, ten dollars for five ounces of fruit juice and a tea spoon of vodka. It was everything you didn’t like, artificially sweet and light weight with more fruit than punch. I drank it anyway.

I dug around for the cherry at the bottom while you told me about your childhood. Detriot born and raised, middle kid of three. You didn’t drink your beer with a lime wedge.

Dave’s had a chill like a leaky pipe and juke box with top forty hits from a decade ago. You weren’t a No Doubt fan. I imagined kicking off my flip flops and climbing on the table to dance like the rail thin white girls by the bar, but I kept my ankles crossed, still stabbing at the cherry at the bottom of my drink.

You had good intentions. I was a newly minted twenty-one and never had anything stronger than a glass of wine. I was as buttoned as baby’s breath, but definitely not a sweet punch kind of girl.

I can’t know if you thought you had me pegged. I wore flowers in my hair and skirts to my ankles. I’d kick my shoes and occasionally you would find me balled up somewhere barefooted with ink stains on my hands. You thought I was a floetry-esque hippie. I listened to heavy metal.

I remember the hot beer sitting on your coffee table, the tv fritzing while the Heat played the Spurs, your eyes slick as glass and tired. It was what we had in common.

You took me to a bar with a top patio that had fairy lights and roaches the size of zippo lighters. We didn’t stay long. I asked what you were drinking.

“Grey Goose. Can’t really do mixed drinks. Shit makes my stomach hurt.” It was Thursday and the bar had a five dollar deal on Long Island ice teas. I sipped  in silence.

I thought you should know, the woman I am now wouldn’t have let you order for me. I am not a simple syrup vodka splashed cherry. I’m more a honey Jack straight- as spiced as I am sweet with a kick that is not easily forgotten.

On July 22, 2016August 8, 2017 By Tonesa JonesIn Nonfiction, Open LetterLeave a comment

About touch

I was obsessed with his cheekbones that were high cut in the planes of his face. Sometimes I would bite the fat of my cheeks, trying to see the beauty of his face in mine. All the differences of our features became a nuanced examination of self: the softer hair texture, the warmer eye color, the lighter skin tone. I was use to looking into the faces of men and seeing somewhere, a reflection of myself— melanined skin and a neglected sense of blackness. But I could not see that in his face.

In the place of familiarity was an alien sense of love and fear. He was beautiful like cold statuesque western art, symmetric and unmoving, poised like Auguste Rodin’s thinking man, but this was not the beauty I had loved my whole life, not the beauty that I had took so long to see in my own mirror. I was afraid that I’d come to hate him for that or myself for being so critical.

I rode shotgun in his van, heels curled  to the backs of my thighs and imprisoned my fingers within the vesseled flesh of my knees, controlling the urge to pick at my nail beds and to resist the urge to touch his hair. I hated when people did that to me, intrusively and without permission, always stretching some poor curl to frizz.

But he gave me permission, his cheek pillowed into my thigh, his eyes closed and breathing meditative. And I touched his hair, the pads of fingers searching for the smallest grain of resistance, the smallest hint of Afro texture in the smooth inky curls. I touched his hair like my mother used to touch mine, coaxing the curls to waves then releasing them, watching them ripple back to coils .

That was the moment when nothing existed but nerve and nerve, a quiet exhale of neurotransmitters saying yes we feel. Yes we are vulnerabily human. And nothing else mattered.

 

 

About Halos

He was the kind of guy who could drink champagne out of a red solo cup at two in the morning while cruising along Richard Arrington, windows down with a remix cutting up on the stereo. He wore all black and work boots and smelled like salt, weed smoke, and Irish spring. I remember halos around street lights, an insomniac hallucination induced by the ecstasy of night life and the sweet sweat of a nearing Alabama summer.

There were a lot of nights like that, hazy and warm with plastic cups that reeked of liquor and backwash. I drank from them anyway, always looking for those halos to surround my vision, to make me see the otherworldly in an ordinary face.

One night, we parked behind a house, trying to see the stars, but a storm rolled in and rain casted a song over the car, the quiet pit-pat lulling us into silence. He cradled his head against my heart, and I felt the pulse from his temple on my right breast, just below my birthmark. Our breathing fogged the mirrors, and night disappeared except for the occasional flash of lightening.

The moments without silence showed exactly why I couldn’t date a guy content with drinking  everything out of a plastic cup. Besides my need for proper stemware, I could not take the silence. The most profound sound he could offer was a beating heart during a thunderstorm, and on those dry, silent nights, it wasn’t enough. Slowly those memories began to dried up like creeks in June.

I don’t go searching for halos anymore. That is the tricky part of summer. It is easy to remember it like a dream, a perfect rendition of fantasy, but the fear that stirs awakening is usually forgotten.