The Vanishing Half(14)

“Don’t even look his way,” her mother said. “Boys like that don’t want nothin good.”

Dark boys in Mallard only wanted to go girl hunting, her mother always said. They wanted to give it to a white girl but couldn’t, so they thought a light girl was the next best thing. But Desiree had never met a dark boy until one June evening when she was washing the living-room windows and spotted, through the hazy glass, a boy standing on the front porch. A tall boy, shirtless in overalls, his skin caramelized into a deep brown. He held a paper bag in one arm and took a bite from a purplish fruit, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You gonna let me in?” he said. He was gazing at her so directly, she blushed.

“No,” she said. “Who’re you?”

“Who you think?” he said. He turned the bag toward her so that she could see the Fontenot’s logo. “Open the door.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “You could be an ax murderer.”

“Look like I got an ax on me?”

“Maybe I can’t see it from here.”

He could’ve left the bag on the porch. When he didn’t, she realized that they were flirting.

She dropped her rag on the windowsill, watching him chew.

“What you eatin anyway?” she asked.

“Come see.”

She finally unlatched the screen door and stepped barefoot onto the porch. Early eased toward her. He smelled like sandalwood and sweat, and as he neared, she thought, for one breathless second, that he might kiss her. But he didn’t. He lifted his fig to her lips. She bit where his mouth had been.



* * *



—

LATER, SHE LEARNED HIS NAME, which wasn’t even a name at all, although it made her smile when she rolled it around her mouth. Early, Early, like she was calling out the time. All month, he left fruit like flowers. Each evening when the twins came home from the Duponts, she found a plum on the porch banister, or a peach, or a napkin filled with blackberries. Nectarines and pears and rhubarb, more fruit than she could finish, fruit she hid in her apron to savor later or bake into pies. Sometimes he passed by in the evening on his way to deliver groceries, lingering on her porch steps. He told her that he made deliveries part time; the rest of his days were spent helping his aunt and uncle on a farm near the edge of town. But when the harvest ended, he planned to skip off and find himself in a real city like New Orleans.

“Don’t you think your folks’ll miss you?” Desiree said. “When you go?”

He scoffed. “The money,” he said. “They gonna miss that. That’s all they thinkin about.”

“Well, you got to think about money,” Desiree said. “That’s how all grown folks are.”

Who would her mother be if she wasn’t worried about money all the time? Like Mrs. Dupont, maybe, drifting around the house dreamily. But Early shook his head.

“It’s not the same,” he said. “Your mama got a house. All y’all got this whole dern town. We got nothin. That’s why I give this fruit away. Don’t belong to me nohow.”

She reached for a blueberry in his napkin. By now, she’d already eaten so many, her fingertips were stained purple.

“So if all this fruit belonged to you,” she said, “you wouldn’t give me nothin?”

“If it belonged to me,” he said, “I’d give you all of it.”

Then he kissed the inside of her wrist, and her palm, and slipped her pinky inside his mouth, tasting the fruit on her skin.



* * *



—

A DARK BOY stepping through the meadow behind the house to leave her fruit. She never knew when Early would come, if he would come at all, so she began waiting for him, sitting along the porch rail as the sun faded. Stella warned her to be careful. Stella was always careful. “I know you don’t wanna hear it,” she said. “But you hardly know him and he sounds fresh.” But Desiree didn’t care. He was the first interesting boy she’d ever met, the only one who even imagined a life outside of Mallard. And maybe she liked that Stella distrusted him. She never wanted the two to meet. He would grin, glancing between the girls, searching for differences amongst their similarities. She hated that silent appraisal, watching someone compare her to a version that she might have been. A better version, even. What if he saw something in Stella that he liked more? It would have nothing to do with looks, and that, somehow, felt even worse.

She could never date him. He knew this too even though they never talked about it. He only came by the porch while her mother was still at work, always leaving as soon as the sky grew dark. Still, one evening her mother came home from work and caught her talking to Early. He leapt off the railing, the blackberries in his lap scattering to the deck like buckshot.

“Best be goin now,” her mother said. “I don’t have no courtin girls here.”

He raised his hands in surrender, as if he too felt that he had done something wrong.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. He shuffled off into the woods, not looking at Desiree. She miserably watched him disappear between the trees.

“Why’d you have to do that, Mama?” she said.

But her mother ushered her inside. “You’ll thank me someday,” she said. “You think you know everything? Girl, you don’t know how this world can be.”