fiction, written between April 9-13, 2001.
Leopard Park
by C.A. MacConnell
On the most crooked limb, I hang by my knees, halfway up the most crooked tree
in Leopard Park (named after some Big Man. Not the animal). I take long
half-runs to arrive, drifting to rest in this place of twists and turns. Each
afternoon after teaching, I move to hang upside down, my knees wrapped around
the sap-lined bark, my brown braid swinging as a tail would. There, I hold my
breath, and the web of leaves masks my shape. My blood-rushed face. When I come
up for air, right side up on my fleshy seat, I watch them.
I watch them, trying to remember what it was like to be pre-teen and lost in
between Play-doh and college, brand named toys and liquor, recess and gas
stations, potty training and prom. Pre-teen and trying so hard to be known that
it aches. I watch them and remember the ache. I watch them and their age of Boy
and Girl, the age when those words alone could rise up from their voices,
becoming alive. I watch them, and I forget that downtown, the riots are
happening.
Today, they play so close that it makes me hide deeper. So deep, I become the
tree. The tree becomes me. My braid is just a branch. That’s the drift.
Most days, they swing, and then they stretch out in the grass, sunning their
skins as lions would. When one side is cooked, they flip. Sometimes, they face
each other, whisper, and stare up at the sky -- legs spread slightly, bodies
sinking into the hillside. Sometimes, I see their toes touch.
Three weeks ago, when they first met, it went like this: there was only
the sound of stuttered talk, only the jerks of stuttered walk. They stopped
near the swing set, staring at their feet, legs planted down as stiff as wood.
Hearing her sing some Lauryn Hill, from two swings away, James looked over at
her and shouted, “You think you know? You don’t know what it is to be black.”
Red-faced, with a deep voice, she laughed and yelled back, "I dig the
song, so deal with it." Then she just kept on singing. She came from the
gut. Her smile was wide enough to push the cheeks out.
And then they sang together, and their voices grew as loud as the sounds coming
from the swings beneath them. The creaks, the aches. Then their words slipped
into silence and more swinging. Then a contest to see who could go the highest,
and who had the most balls when the swing was at its peak. Who would let
go.
Voices rose again when Katie won the swinging contest. She went the highest,
and she let go there, landing in a heap.
“Still, you don’t know what it is to be black,” James said again, shaking his
head. “But shit, I admit it, you can fly on that swing. You can fly.” James
raised his arms, making wings.
Katie beamed, and that was all it took.
Right here, right now, while the riot fires spread downtown, Katie and James
sit on the stone pillars of the Leopard Park overlook. Only a row of stairs
separates them. Katie swings her feet, rapping her own version of a Nelly song.
She knows more words than James. Rubbing it in, she raps on. Her words come out
clean and soft. Then they change, becoming harder, edgy, and urgent. Then mean.
James nods his head to her beat, black locks bouncing. He scans his eyes over
her thick thighs, her tight jeans that lace up the sides, her two-inch white
platform shoes, and her head full of blond, baby-thin braids. Nearby, on the ground,
her blue and green plaid uniform skirt sits crumpled in a ball. Earlier, she
changed behind a tree, peeling off her oxford shirt, the skirt, the navy knee
socks, the stark white tennis shoes. Now she is fully transformed into her
ghetto clothes, she says.
James rolls his eyes and begins to sing along. No, he hums. He doesn’t know
enough words yet.
Katie waves her arms and sings. She sweats. She swings her hips all the way
through to the last line, eyes shut. She’s got rhythm.
Smooth and slow, Katie glances at his bare feet. Cracked skin lines shoot
across the soles.
He swings his feet to the same beat as hers.
They share a look and smile. They smile at the hills, the massive trees, the
squat ones, and the city below, their city, the city where windows are
breaking, where the reporters count up shootings. Street marches thick with
thieves, congregations joining hands, and the shouting and the blood. And
through the screaming, the shootings, and the looting, through the news, the
radio, and the toothless woman at the bus stop, we all know we must be home by
ten. Citywide curfew.
There is no fire up here. There is no heap of stolen goods on this hillside.
There is no gang, no crowd, no suited men with sticks, no beanbag guns, no tear
gas. Up here, Katie and James can kick back in the trees, their bodies
cradled by ancient limbs. Those tree lines run deep. Sometimes deeper.
Slowly, the sun sinks. The few dog-walkers, the few sunbathers, one by one,
begin to vanish. The birds change to bats. Katie and James, blond against black
now, sit back to back in the grass. There, they remain until the grass darkens
and seems to blend to one flat blade.
Though it’s way past my time, with tests to grade, a cat to feed, and the riot
news to watch, I’m staying right here to see Katie and James roll their
shoulders against each other, back to back in a double massage. Like this, they
move, her braids twisting to join his locks, a mix of stiff blades of hair
crunching together, bare feet digging tunnels in the grass.
Katie pulls her knees in to her chest, becoming smaller. “Look, James,” she
says, “I’m just a shadow.” She holds up her hands and spreads her fingers for
him to see.
He doesn’t turn to look. He whispers, “Yeah, you are.” He leans against her.
Minus the moonlight, I might believe her.
Then he holds up his hands, reaches back, and hooks his fingers in hers. They
arch, back bend style, hands clasping, heads tipping back crown to crown.
“We made our own moon,” Katie says, leaning back more, pressing her head
against his, holding his hands tight. Her neck seems to grow longer, wider,
becoming a white slide.
James is the first to let go. “I’ll show you a moon,” he says, rising, pulling
down his pants, and showing her all of it -- his backside, light brown and
smooth. Then he laughs and sprints off into the trees to use the pisser.
She covers her full face with her hands, giggling. From her place on the grass,
she stretches and strains to see the curve of his lower back, the shape of his
dark backside, the strong, runner’s thighs. The thighs fade to thin calves.
They’re tight as a cat’s, thin and sleek. Fast.
“Hey, don’t look!” he yells from the trees.
“Why not?!” Katie yells back. Giggle, giggle.
“I said don’t look!” James yells again.
But she does anyway.
He zips up his pants, catches her looking, and charges at her bullet-fast. “You
better run,” he says.
So she runs, faster than I think she can in her platform shoes.
With his hand, he catches her by one braid, giving her head a soft jerk.
She doesn’t have a chance. She stops and turns to face him. Her chest bounces
twice, and then settles.
I can tell by her wide eyes that she has hopes.
His locks creep all over his forehead, moving and sliding like bundles of thin
men. Close up, he talks to her, his tone jumping from soft to thick-skinned
within words.
Together, they walk as slow as Sunday street-crossers. When they reach the
swings, I can make out her grin and her grip on the chains; I can tell that for
Katie, there is nothing better than ghetto clothes and an afternoon nap
next to the one who can feel the ache of the same sunburn.
By now, his hand is buried in her blond braids. I wait for him to swing
forward, lean down and kiss her forehead first, then lower. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he gasps and shows his teeth. He leaps from his swing, pointing at the
sky, then lower, pointing at me, that woman in the most crooked tree. That
watcher. He comes closer, baring his teeth. It is only then that I know they
are real and can see the gaps. Still, he is pointing, his finger so close, I
think it might poke me. Poke my eye right out. Poke a hole through me, one that
wouldn’t kill, but one that would grow wider until I became no more than air,
breath, smoke, and steam. Not even dust.
“There’s someone there,” he whispers back at her, “Some bitch watching us,
Katie.”
“Shit,” she says, shake-turning to look. She joins him in front of my tree.
“Creepy bitch stalking us.” Her plaits frame her face, making it seem even
rounder. Her lips seem redder. Bloodshot red.
No one moves until I shoot down from my nest, scraping my hands on the limbs,
breathless and sticky with sap, and begin to run, faster than I think I can.
But still they are gaining.
“James, I can’t see you!” Katie cries in a childlike panic.
Still, he is gaining. Thin and sleek. Fast.
“I’m here,” he calls back to her. “She’s heading for the parking lot.” His
voice is calm and smooth. He’s got rhythm.
He’s still gaining when I see the lights. Surely it’s eleven or twelve for
sure. Way past the curfew. Who would’ve thought they would have time to check
here.
As the cop pulls up, James waits beside me in the lot. He stands a full head
taller than me, but I don’t look at him to see this. I sense him there -- the
way I would sense someone behind me, someone hiding, someone seeking, a stray,
or a spirit.
Katie breathes hard, crouching behind James’ lean frame. “My mom will kick my
big white ass if she finds out I’m here,” she mutters. “She thinks I’m at
Dad’s.”
The cop swaggers up to us, one hand empty, and one hand on his belt. Then the
East hand resting on his stick. The West hand on his gun.
James’ eyes are lined with more age than I thought. And from the waist up, he
seems thinner. Gaunt even, his cheeks hollow with the weighted breath of
getting caught; he seems older than a thousand thirteen-year-olds, aching to
run. I too consider bolting.
James shifts from foot to foot, waiting. He looks left, then right, grabs Katie
behind him, holding her still. It’s much too late to run.
“You want to tell me what you’re doing here past curfew,” the cop says. He
smells like a barn, like leather.
I grab my scuffed elbows with my hands. Fold my arms.
Holding hands, Katie and James stand with droopy cheeks, their lips trapped
open in a slight gasp. Each of them has thick pieces of hair covering one eye.
Crushed and trapped, we all heave.
“I was just taking them home,” I say to the cop. It isn’t to save them, but
more to save me, the forty-year-old teacher who hangs from a tree to watch
kids. No, it isn’t for them. It’s for The Great Watcher. Me, watching them,
wearing my jogging pants and t-shirt, hair falling out of my braid. In fact,
there isn’t much of a braid left at all. Just pieces. Fragments. Gotta get home
to the riot news and the cat.
Katie is clinging to her uniform skirt, still balled up, useless in one hand.
James towers over us all. Tight-lipped, tight-muscled, he folds his arms tight
at his chest. He isn’t going anywhere.
“Yes, I was just taking them home,” I say in my best teacher voice.
“No, she wasn’t,” James says with a tight half-smile. “Let’s be real here.”
Katie moves out from behind him and elbows his hip.
When James peers down at her, eyes wide and wet, black as a hole, she wraps her
arms around his waist, locking her hands there.
The cop tips his hat, scratches his middle, and reaches for his cuffs.
I’m waiting for him to take me, the Great Watcher. Take me in. But he gets an
urgent call on his radio from some high-pitched dispatcher trying to tone it
down, trying not to sound frantic. It tears him and his leather smell away.
“Just get them home,” he says to me from his car, rushing down the driveway.
Downtown, the riots call him away. We all know that in that moment, the riots
save us.
The cop pulls past the swings, the crooked tree, turns on his lights again, and
speeds down the drive in a blur of red, black, and blue. Then black. And we
know it is safe.
James pulls on Katie’s shirt, saying, “Come on, baby.” Suddenly, she’s his baby.
Together, they walk shoulder-to-shoulder, matching strides. No holding of
hands. No kissing. Just the faint sound of Katie singing and James backing her
up. Then he turns around, facing me, The Great Watcher. He tenses and shakes,
crouching down. Just as I think he will leap and take me in, he stops there,
holds up a palm, and gives me a stiff, forced wave. No smile. Just his frozen
palm hanging in the air, still for one moment, then two. On the third, James
turns his back and hooks that hand in a loop on Katie’s jeans. Both of them
take a deep breath and exhale at once, spent. Their ache comes from the gut.
As I head home, I reach my hands up to touch each finger to its match, making
my own circle of skin. In my strange shape, I see three more cruisers prowling.
Still, I creep forward, holding together my own moon, humming one of Katie’s
tunes. This bitch’s got some rhythm. Baby, it’s much too late to run.
