a race, just jog.”
They took the dirt road instead of cutting through the fields and Jordan stepped on the bottom strand of barbed-wire and pulled up on the middle strand to let her through. She did the same for him. The wire was spotted with tufts of black and blonde cattle hair, caught when cows stuck their heads through to eat on the other, greener, side.
On the road they began jogging easily, but when her house came into view YoYo took off sprinting. Instinctively, Jordan took off after her. She was moving fast, soles spitting little rocks and pebbles and puffs of chalky red dust. She cut suddenly onto her driveway, and Jordan slipped and dropped his records trying to mimic the move. He stopped to pick them up and when he caught up with her she was already jumping up and down underneath the goal.
“I’m Evelyn Ashford! I’m the champ!” she shouted, arms above her head. She walked up to Jordan and said, so close to his face that he saw gold fillings at the back of her mouth, “I tole ya, I tole ya! You cain’t hang with the champ!” Again she threw playful rapid jabs, hooks, and uppercuts at him.
Abruptly, she cut the routine and told him to come on in. She led the way through a small door, which Jordan thought would lead into the house but instead led into a spacious garage. A creamy white Corvette, crouched like a predator underneath a speed bag, glowed in the dim light.
“When I gets my license this year you be seein’ me off in that motherfucker,” YoYo said. “Pops, he say he ain’t gonna let me drive it. He say he gonna buy me some funky-ass new Honda. I cain’t be stylin’ in no square-ass Honda!”
Jordan followed her into the house. Just like at Safeway, the cool air washed over him when he stepped in. They went into a bright kitchen, and YoYo poured two glasses of Kool-Aid for them.
“Come on, sugar pie,” she said, and led Jordan down a myriad of oak-paneled hallways until they were at her room.
“Kick off your shoes,” she said. “I don’t want no cow shit on my carpet.”
Jordan felt the spongy thick cushion sink beneath his feet. He had never felt anything like it. She had a large dresser and mirror along one wall, covered with medals, trophies, and brightly colored ribbons. Along another wall, underneath the window, was the biggest stereo system Jordan had ever seen. All around were posters of sports stars. On the ceiling looking down on them was the afroed Dr. J, holding a red-white-and-blue basketball high over his head with one hand, soaring towards the basket.
YoYo put a big stack of 45s on the cartridge above the turntable and swung the metal arm into position. The bottom record dropped down, the turntable began to spin, and the arm with the needle slowly swung over and settled down. There were scratching noises then a heavy thumping bass as red and green lights jumped along the face of the receiver.
“You act like you ain’t never seen a stereo before,” YoYo shouted. “You ain’t gots a stereo?”
“I’ve got one,” he lied.
She took their glasses and set them on her dresser, removed a magazine from it, and stretched out on her bed, moving over to make room. She slapped at the pillow beside her. “Lay down right here. I show you who Evelyn Ashford be.”
Jordan stretched out and she began turning the pages.
“There! See?” She turned the magazine around and pointed to a large picture of a sprinter. Ashford was frozen in midstride, a knee to her chest, fists clenched. Her eyes were wide, and her lips made a perfect small circle.
“That looks like you when you run,” Jordan said.
“I be off in a motherfuckin’ magazine one day, too.”
They lay on their backs looking at Dr. J and listening to the sweet, churning soul. Lord, let your Holy Ghost come on down, Lord, let your Holy Ghost come down on me, the song was saying.
YoYo was tossing a little orange Nerf basketball in the air. She was quiet for a while.
“My mother, she wants me to be a teacher. My father, he wants me to be a dentist,” Yolanda said. “Me, I don’t want to be either. I just want to run track. Look.” She held her palm up to Jordan’s face. It was dotted with tiny black marks.
“What are those?” Jordan said.
“Cinders. From the track. They’re stuck in there forever. I got tripped on a relay and they stuck in my hand. I look at it every day. They could dig them out but I don’t want them out. Reminds me of my goal. Mom told me I can’t run track forever, but I’m going to try.”
Outside, beyond Yolanda’s hand, the sun, a watery reddish ball, cut a slow curving trail across the window as YoYo began to hum along low, soft, with the record. It reminded him of the women singing Creek songs at church, and soon he drifted to sleep.
Yolanda had her cool hand underneath his shirt and was rubbing his stomach when he awoke, startled. Choked in darkness, he didn’t know where he was. He began to say something when Yolanda put a finger to his lips.
“Shhhhhh,” she whispered.
The song on the player answered, “Shhhhhh.”
He couldn’t see anything in the room; it was very dark. He felt her hand along his thighs, down, then up, each leg. She tugged at the top button on his Levi’s, then he felt them all release smoothly in succession. She pulled his jeans down to his ankles and reached under his shorts. He jerked away violently.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“Nothing.” He was turned away from her, face on the pillow. “Is it because I’m black? Is it because I’m a nigger?” she said. He lay silently and heard the “KY-O O O O O-GA” horn in the distance, down the road.
He felt Yolanda moving and getting off the bed. He reached for her and caught her around the waist. “No,” he said. She had taken off her shirt – her skin was smooth, fantastic, and colorless, there in the dark.
She took him in her strong, cold fist. He started up abruptly at the sensation.
“Shhhhhh.”
She began to move around and soon he felt her mouth on him. He gasped, and found himself feeling the hair on her head. He had always wanted to do that. It was spongy, moist, and smelled like baby oil.
Suddenly she grabbed his arms and pinned them next to his head at the wrists and straddled him. The tightness, the warmness, shocked him. She was on top of him, rocking, smacking on bubblegum. After a while, her breaths came in loud, clipped bursts. The tingling he felt on his scalp and on the bottoms of his feet met in the center of his spine and shot out of him as she finished with a loud groan and rested her head on his chest.
He floated home under the silver spray of stars.
The next afternoon he went with Granny to Safeway.
“So did you and Yolanda have fun yesterday?” she asked as they passed the Ledbetter’s.
“No,” he blurted. “I mean, yeah, we shot baskets. Listened to records.”
“Hmmmm.”
He was unusually quiet, no joking around or horn honking. Florine, noticing his
