Caught Up in the Rapture - Tapa dura

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SHENESKA JACKSON teaches at the UCLA Writing Programme and she is the author of CAUGHT UP IN THE RAPTURE.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

Are you listening, god?

I'm just about sick and tired of all this sneaking around like I'm some two-year-old child. I mean, look at me. I'm twenty-six years old and still breaking out in a cold sweat because I'm afraid Daddy won't let me go out tonight. He's probably going to say something like I need to be in church where God can reach me better, or he'll break out into one of his holy chants. "Oh Lord, save this child," he'll say, closing his eyes and holding the palm of his hand to my forehead. "Make her see the error of her evil ways. She's headed for destruction in them streets, Lord. She don't know no better. You gotta save her." The Reverend Deems has a definite flair for the dramatic. By the time he's finished, I'll feel so guilty and ashamed that I'll get dressed in one of my homey little white dresses and follow right behind him to the summer revival at Holy Sight Baptist Church. Or at least that's what usually happens, but not tonight. Tonight I've got big plans, and nothing, not the good Reverend Deems, not even the Almighty Himself, is going to stop me.

I mean, my goodness, to hear Daddy talk, you'd think I was some sort of low-life tramp who hangs in the street all night. But to tell the truth, I'm just like every other young woman these days. I wanna hang out With my friends, go places, see things, meet people - hell, have a little fun before I'm too old or too ugly or too tired from working or too depressed over what I don't have or too spooked by all the things I do have. And dang it, I'm entitled to a little fun. I get up every morning and go to school, make good grades, then rush off to my part-time job at Bullock's. Then I come home and clean up everything Daddy didn't have time to because he had to rush off to choir rehearsal or go to the hospital and pray for someone he doesn't even know or go help out at some other church auxiliary function. Next it's homework or studying for the next test or research, and if I'm lucky, I'll get about fifteen minutes to sneak a listen at Luther or En Vogue before I hear the clink-clink of Daddy's keys at the front door. What a life.

Okay now, let's see. I've got my hot curlers, my makeup kit, my good panties that I keep hidden in a pillowcase just in case Daddy comes peeping into my underwear drawer on one of his surprise scavenger hunts. He claims he'll be looking for a pair of his socks that might have gotten mixed up with my things in the laundry, but I know he's really trying to see if I have what he calls "demon material" hidden in there. Once he opened my drawer and found a romance novel and an Ice Cube tape, and I swear I thought the man was going to have a stroke. He went off into one of his holy trances and for the next month I was by his side every night at Holy Sight, praying for redemption. That man is too much. You'd think he'd be grateful. I mean, I could be a whole lot worse. I'm a college student, at UCLA no less. I work, I'm dependable, I'm smart, I can take care of myself, I'm kind to people, ambitious, clean, neat, careful, and have a high tolerance for putting up with bullshit or else I'd be out of his dang house by now. I could have turned out like some of the rest of these stupid girls running around here. I could have dropped out of high school, had about four or five babies, be on welfare, and sit around the house watching The Young and the Restless and Oprah all day. But nooo. I'm trying to do things the right way, and look at me - still sneaking around trying to think of a good lie to tell the good reverend so he won't be suspicious.

Now where did I put those lace stockings? I've gotten so adept at hiding things from Daddy that I can barely remember where the heck anything is when I need it. Oop, here they are, under my mattress right next to my birth control pills. Ha, if Daddy knew I was taking the pill? I don't even want to think about how he'd react. His baby having sex? And she's not even married? Lord have mercy. By the time he would get finished with me, I'd be ripping out my own uterus. But it's not like I really use them anymore. The only time I took them for their intended purpose was when Dakota set me up with one of her cousins because she said I needed to be broken in. I was twenty-one years old and still a virgin and to Dakota that was like some sort of Guinness world record. Dakota's a dick-happy, borderline tramp, but hey, she's my best friend and I love her. So of course I did like she said and gave my virginity away to Boston, her stupid cousin who looks like a Bob Marley reject, with his long, messy dreadlocks that hang down to his butt and that goofy smile that makes him look like he's high all the time.

I did it partly because it was the thing to do and partly because I wanted to know just what the heck Dakota and everybody else was so crazy about. The whole experience lasted less than fifteen minutes, and I swear that boy didn't know the true meaning of deodorant or the pleasures of a long hot shower, but then again it was the middle of summer in L.A. and even the best of us get a little funky in one-hundred-degree weather. I had waited twenty-one years to do it so of course I thought my first time would be extra special, but it was nothing that I thought it would be. In fact it was pretty painful. Dakota said that it was just because it was my first time and since I hadn't done it before, I was just too tight and that it would take at least three or four times before I would experience any real pleasure. So Boston and I spent the majority of that summer twisted around each other, rubbing, poking, trying to get me to feel what everybody said I was supposed to be feeling, but it just didn't work. By the time I started my next semester at UCLA, I just gave up. The whole situation was just too dang awkward. I mean Boston was cool and everything, but he just wasn't my type, and I'm not one to put up with anything for too long that doesn't satisfy me to the fullest. Except for Daddy and that's just because I have no other choice.

Dakota says I'm weak when it comes to Daddy, but she just doesn't understand. "You need to leave the nest, Jazz," she tells me just about every other week. "You need to break away, do what you wanna do for a change. You're twenty-six years old and still running around trying to please him like he's going to put you on punishment or tell God to strike you down in a bolt of lightning."

"I know, I know," I tell her, but she just doesn't get it. She never had these type of daddy-daughter problems. I envy Dakota, I really do. She may not be the smartest sister, but she has her freedom. It seems like we're exact opposites, but I guess that's why we are the best of friends. I remember the first time we met at the beginning of twelfth grade at Harriet Tubman High. It seems the older I get, the more I like to reminisce about my last year of high school. Up until that time, life had been pretty boring, but twelfth grade was a time of change. In twelfth grade, there was Dakota.

It was the second week of school and by that time everybody had formed their cliques and posses and as usual, I was left by the wayside. Just another geeky-looking fat girl, with a face full of freckles, who was neither in style nor really wanted to be. While all the other girls were wearing their cropped tops and biker shorts, Guess? jeans and bomber jackets, I was in my homey, pleated skirt, penny loafers, and starched, white, button-up blouse - looking neat and pure and like a virgin. Makeup was a no-no, according to Daddy, and my red, shoulder-length hair was plaited in one fat braid down the middle of my head. And pants? Please. The only pair of pants Daddy ever let me wear were some cream-colored slacks that he only let me put on in the winter or if it rained and got really cold, which was hardly ever in sunny Los Angeles.

Needless to say I was nowhere near the "in-crowd" and by that time I had convinced myself that I didn't even want to be. Oh sure, I envied the hot mommas, with their basket-weave braids, long sculptured nails, and tight designer jeans, walking around campus in their boyfriends' football jerseys or ditching school to hang out at Taco Bell or better yet, sneaking over to one of their boyfriends' houses to play grown-up games. But by the time the twelfth grade rolled through most of those girls were walking around with swollen bellies, spent most of the day cutting classes and smoking in the bathroom, or had dropped out to take care of their kids or might as well have dropped out because they had nowhere near enough credits to hope to graduate by the time June popped up. For them school was just a fashion show. A place to hang out, see who was wearing what, talk about those who weren't wearing the right thing, and screw a few football players so everyone would think they were so cool because they were doing the nasty.

That life wasn't for me. I was on a mission. I wanted to go to college and not just any college, a good college, so that I could make something of my life and get out of South-Central Los Angeles. And if I earned Daddy's respect along the way, that would make it all worthwhile. I spent class breaks and lunches by myself mostly, sitting on a bench underneath a shade tree by the girls' locker room with my head in a book. That was my private hideout. A place where I could get away from all the wanna-bes and the laughter and insults from all the boys about my less-than-perfect figure and out-of-style clothes. That's where I first met Dakota.

Dakota was the new girl in school and of course nobody liked her because of that. I had walked over to my hideout and there she was, invading my space. She had on a pair of faded blue jeans with holes in the knees, a white T-shirt, and a pair of high-top Jordans. She was sitting on the edge of the bench, trying to hide a lit cigarette behind a Vogue magazine. I sat down on the other end of the bench, quite upset that my space had been violated, opened my English book, and started reading. The fumes from Dakota's cigarette engulfed me and although I wasn't in the practice of bothering people who weren't really bothering me, I had no intention of letting this foreigner who had so boldly invaded my hideout choke me to death with smoke.

"Skuse me," I said timidly. "I can't breathe."

She took one last drag from behind her magazine and put the cigarette out in silence without even looking in my direction.

That upset me even more, because she didn't even know me and already she was being rude. Who are you, anyway? I wanted to ask her, but I already knew. I had heard some girls gossiping about her earlier. They said she had gotten kicked out of her other school for ditching and for smoking in the bathroom. They said she was weird and I could tell they were right. It didn't take a genius to know there was something different about this girl. Nothing really weird though, just different, odd. Whatever it was, it was getting on my nerves and I didn't want her around. The bench and shade tree were my places of solitude, and I wasn't going to give them up for some new girl with a pack of Newports and a Vogue subscription.

"If you wanna smoke, there's a secret spot behind the gymnasium. Nobody ever gets caught over there," I told her.

"Look, I put the cigarette out, okay? No harm, no foul, honey," she said and finally looked at me. She was cute in an offbeat kind of way. In fact, she looked like she could fit right into the in-crowd if she wanted to. "I'm Dakota. Don't ask me my last name' cause I don't have one," she said and laughed. "So who are you?"

"Jazmine Deems," I answered, trying to figure out if she was really interested or just making small talk. Ten minutes later, I guessed that she must have really been interested or either bored to death, because I swear the girl talked my ear off. By the end of lunch, I practically knew her whole life story.

Her parents, who she called by their first names, were musicians. Earth, her mother, was a drummer and River, her father, a bass player. They made most of their living doing session work for various blues artists and often went on tour across America and overseas, leaving Dakota here in L.A. by herself. That didn't seem to bother Dakota, though. "They're free spirits," she told me. "They do their thing and I do mine."

While Dakota's family weren't exactly the Huxtables, from what she told me they were pretty close. Their home was always filled with the sound of music like Ray Charles, Aretha, and B.B. King. All you heard at my house was some generic gospel group singing the same "Glory, glory, praise the Lord, Hallelujah" crap that amounted to nothing but a bunch of screaming and hollering. Not singing. The only group I really liked was BeBe and CeCe Winans, and I had to beg Daddy to let me play them at home because he insisted they weren't a real gospel group. He came home from church one evening and I had BeBe and CeCe blasting, filling myself with the spirit, and before I could catch my breath from the high note I had just belted out, he popped the tape from the stereo and flung it into the back of my head. "No secular music in this house, girl!" he screamed and began to pray and call the Lord.

"But that's the Winans, Daddy," I pleaded between his shouts of "Oh sweet Jesus" and "Lord have mercy on this poor child's soul." He finally came around though, after the church sponsored a bus to take the choir to see BeBe and CeCe and Take 6 at the Wiltern Theater. After that, he changed his mind, but I still could only listen to selected songs. Once I tried to sneak in a cut of M.C. Hammer's rap song, "Pray," but that tape ended up hitting me upside the head too. So I decided just to stick with the Winans, Take 6, and occasionally, Anointed.

Dakota enjoyed gospel music too, and after a week or so, she and I became tighter than Laverne and Shirley. I never invited her over to my house though. Daddy would have a fit if Dakota pulled out a cigarette in his holy house, and knowing Dakota she would do it just to start a controversy. That was Dakota, always pressing the boundaries. That was the way she was brought up. "Be who you be," she always says. "And never settle."

I remember the first time I went to her house. Her mother was walking around in a bikini singing some old Chaka Khan song. She was dancing around like she didn't have a care in the world. Dakota chimed in, off-key as usual, but didn't care, and I just sat on the couch watching the two shake and prance in the middle of their living room. "Come on, Jazz," Dakota said and grabbed my hand and pulled me up. Before I knew it, I was getting down right with them. It was so fun. "I'm every woman, it's all in me," I crooned. Then Earth and Dakota stopped and looked at me and I felt so embarrassed. I thought I was doing the right moves, but the look on their faces made me sit my fat behind right back down.

"Girl!" Earth screamed. "Where'd you get pipes like that?"

"I didn't know you could blow, Jazz," Dakota added.

"Oh, I sing every once in a while in the young adult choir at church, but mostly at home, when Daddy's not around.



Continues...

Excerpted from Caught Up in the Raptureby Sheneska Jackson Copyright © 1996 by Sheneska Jackson. Excerpted by permission.
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