In the summer, we’d catch lightning bugs. Bare feet cutting through sharp grass, mud squeezing between our toes before being pressed into the sidewalks that met the other side of our short lawns. We’d marvel at them between our fingers ever so carefully to not let them slip through. The key was patience. We’d trap them in jars until it was time to go home then set them free. We’d learned a long time ago that preserving them until their lights went out then tossing them away – forgetting we once found them exquisite – was cruel. And things with wings weren’t meant to be kept hidden away.
And that’s exactly how we loved each other.
Quietly and completely, knowing time was fleeting and the loss of freedom was always a dimming street light away.
Time sped by and chasing each other through the grass became long phone calls about what high school would be like. The lightning bugs became sneaking sips of Maker’s Mark from his dad’s bar then refilling it with water. The lights on the street no longer determined when we were expected home and the moment I drove off the Volvo lot without the money I’d been saving for the past three summers, the bounds of Manor Park were no longer our concern.
We rode that car into the ground through the remainder of high school and college. I still haven’t pinpointed the moment that things changed between us. When, suddenly, we wanted less.
Less space, less clothing.
Spending every minute together became every second.
Until I decided it was over.
I moved to New Orleans. He moved to Brooklyn. A year went by.
Then two.
Then three.
I didn’t reach out. I didn’t return calls that weren’t breathless with desperation and stunk of yearning. I never brought up visiting and only discussed my returns home when I was already boarding the plane back to Louisiana.
I loved him though. Despite never telling him so.
I learned the game from women who’d spent their whole lives surviving by it. The kind who’d grind their teeth at night as their past haunted them in their rest. Ones who ditched the shapewear and allowed the full ride of their bodies to sway and bounce. Women who laughed at teary-eyed proposals and the concept of “serving” your husband. The kind that would be amused at a desire for a juvenile love and dismiss it as the type of innocence that wouldn’t (couldn’t) benefit women like us.
So, I put him away with everything else from my childhood. Like I’d seen them do.
Because I always knew that you inevitably turn into the women you come from.
I wait on the three-step concrete porch in a plaid long-sleeved dress with red buttons and a thick white collar. “Ain’t you hot?” My mom asks as she bursts out the metal screen door. It slams behind her – as it always did. The only way we’d enter and exit the house. “No.” I’m lying. It’s late June in DC. The humidity is relentless in its pursuit of me. I quickly wipe the beads of sweat off my forehead as she stretches out next to me. Her long, umber legs reach all the way to the last step as she puts one hand behind her, taking a long drag of a Newport Menthol Blue, arching her back, and blowing it towards the sun. “He isn’t coming,” she says. She’s wrong. I wore his favorite dress because I knew he’d love it and this time would be different. “He is,” I reply in a tone as firm as my 9-year-old voice would allow. She puts her cigarette out, then places her manicured hand on the right side of my head and pulls me in to kiss the left. “Never let a man decide when you wait and when you go,” she says before pushing herself off the stairs.
She looks at me with a love I didn’t understand yet. I look away.
She goes in and bang! She’s inside. I wipe another round of sweat beads from my
upper lip and decide to wait.
The ice cream truck rolls by blasting Lucy Pearl. I wait.
Mrs. Mohammed across the street waves me over, lifting up some benne balls she made. I shake my head, smiling like my grandmother would want me to. I wait.
The heat drew thicker and I bite my barely existent nails until I draw blood then sit on them before my mother has the chance to notice. I wait.
Jehan, who lives three houses down, strolls up with a jump rope in hand, “You wanna bring yours to double dutch?” “Can’t. I’m waiting.” She examines, “Whatchu waitin’ for?” “My dad,” I smile. “We’re going to the zoo.” Her puzzled face forces me to confront the quiet, “You know they got giant pandas last year?” She looks at the exiting sun. “You sure he’s still comin’?” She asks. “Of course he is.” I let her borrow my jump rope – the reason she came. I wait.
The street lights go out. The lightning bugs take over. My mom calls for me. Another bead of sweat rolls out from the inner corner of my eye down my cheek. I wipe it away.
Then another and another.
I wipe them all away.
I peel myself from the concrete stair I’d spent the day on. I go inside. Bang!
I never waited again.
As I approach the door of (what I’m told is) the newest restaurant in the H Street
Corridor, I catch myself in the reflection of the floor to ceiling windows that line the front. I realize how much time has passed since I’d been back. Like the neighborhood, I found myself unfamiliar. A foreign takeover of curves. I, too, was gentrified. I felt sticky in all the places I once found sweet. I go in.
He waves me over before I get a chance to speak to the hostess. He stands up and waits for me to make my way over. We hold each other for a second before sitting.
He smells the same.
Damn.
He looks the same.
Damn.
He makes me wish that I, too, was the same.
“This used to be Serrano’s Smokehouse, right?” I ask, engulfed in what was. He nods, “It closed last year. Remember when we’d split a half smoke after a night out?” I laugh recalling our empty wallets and fake IDs.
Wine is poured.
I brag about my access to beignets and crawfish po’ boys. He gushes about cheap, greasy slices and the pace of his new life. He notices I don’t bite my nails anymore. I interrogate him about his recent promotion.
More wine is poured.
“So, you in love up there yet?” He laughs at the question, “You think it’s that easy for me?”
“Yes.”
“It was never easy. For me.”
“I know.”
“And you?”
“What? In love?”
“Is it easy?”
“No,” I whispered.
My pants are tighter. Glasses are empty.
He circles back to a question from earlier, “Are you?” I look at him quizzically. “In love,” he asserts.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever love me?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
I hesitate.
“Well, that’s when we begin to wait for the end, isn’t it?”
He looks out the window, thinking. I follow his gaze. I remember it’s summer and there’s something missing in the city I once called home.
I ask, “What ever happened to all the lightning bugs?”