	       WHEN YOU AIN'T HERE THE CIRCUS AIN'T FUN

     (c) Copyright 1993 by Franchot Lewis

	 "Yo, Wanda?"  He called from the other side of the park. She
    turned. She looked, taking care not to lose her place in the Book.
    She placed her finger on the word where she had stopped. She
    looked again. The blurred shape of his face formed. He was not
    in range. She sighed. She wished he would walk faster. She hoped
    he would learn to come on time. She mumbled to herself, "Why
    should he?" He knew that she would wait.
	 His features formed slowly. Her eyes went back and forth,
   from him and to the Book. He took small steps. She mumbled,
   he was waiting for her to get up and jump. He was her favorite
   one. She mumbled, she would go anyplace with him, and even in a
   room where he had broken wind - providing he had cracked open
   a window, enough for a breeze.
	 She saw him now. He brushed his hand across his crotch.
    The heat of the summer-like day was shrinking the cotton of his
    slacks.  He smiled at her, as she squinted her eyes to see him.
    "Where are your glasses?"
	 She squinted more. He shook his head, "Stop peeping at me
   like that."  He took her glasses from the purse in her lap. "Put
   them on, four-eyes," he said.
	 She glanced away from him, and at the Book in her lap, then
   she looked back, and when she did her eyes glared. They went
   through the puffy whites of his eyes and the red that seemed to
   have drifted to the side. She smiled when she realized, he was
   teasing and asking her to laugh.
	 "How dare you call me four eyes?" she said. "Imagine
   how I would look with four eyes? I would have one in my forehead,
   the other extra one in my ear."
	 He quickly bent forward and kissed her cheek. She frowned
   again. The stubble of his beard scratched her, and she remembered
   him bearded, with hair growing wild around his face, and her
   hair, bunched up, and in dread-lock rolls like his, and growing
   down to the top of their backsides. She wanted no more hair
   like that, or of them in their little hut house, the one room, and
   the shared bath down the hall. He shaved, kept his hair
   short, and she kept hers shoulder length and combed, but for some
   reason, he had not gotten all the hairy stubs. To her, for a
   moment, they looked the same as the thick beard that grew when he
   and she lived gross.
	 He sighed. He said, "I can't think of anything that could
   make me happier now."
	 She pulled back. He took her face in his hand and gazed
   as if considering kissing her again, then he heard her
   complaining, "You didn't shave?"
	 "Man, I did," he answered.
	 She pulled free, gently, and smiled softly, blushed. If
    she was not careful, then she would be right back in a grungy
    room. She knew why he was there, though he was late.

			   II.

	 She awoke. She saw her Daddy's eyes, his hawk face
    glaring. His gruff voice has caused her head to buzz like
    a swarm of wasps had stung her. She sat on the bed, shaking
    from remembering while she slept what her father had told her
    about junk. "I don't mess with that bad ass stuff anymore," he
    said. "Not this hard head, no way. When I got off the stuff,
    back then, in the not enlightened times, when nobody shed a tear
    over a fool. The way they got you off of stuff was to put you
    in a straight jacket and lock you in a cell. And they let you
    scream. I remember how I screamed - and everyone of the giant
    spiders that crawled out on me - and the gorillas, grabbing my
    bounded arms,  and my legs, biting them."
	 "Ugh,"she groaned at the crumbs and the trash in the
     bed, the residue from the box of cookies he had eaten. She
     mumbled, "He's making roaches." He always left crumbs on the
     bed and floor. She knew the crumbs would draw more roaches.
     "Gawd!" she cried. He wet the middle of the bed with sticky
     glop. "What is that?" Chocolate syrup. She wondered what had
     he been doing? "Shit, this place stinks," she said. The smells
     of the sheet, the sweat and syrup, the sex and the feet were
     almost as bad as that of the dead mouse, she found under the
     bed the previous week. She had almost died. She only stayed
     in the room because the manager promised that professional
     exterminators had been killing the mice, and he gave them a
     night's free rent.  The smells of the sheet on the bed made
     her almost barf, but she could not barf. She had nothing on
     her stomach. She coughed up spit, and placed her hands over
     her mouth to prevent the spit from running. Still, some spit
     dripped from her fingers and on the sheet. She flung herself
     up from the bed and wobbled on her legs as she tried to stand,
     then she leaned against a chair.
	 Four pages - one a summons, one a warning, one a notice,
    the other with the numbers of her lawyer and of her mother -
    lay on the night stand. These were important papers dealing
    with her court dates. She glanced at his paper - one raggedly,
    wrinkled sheet, with many stains, soiled like a mat on which a
    barnyard rooster had stood. The paper lay on the floor where he
    left it. Pieces torn from the paper, as though a rooster
pecked and tore the paper - All over the paper, numbers and
letters were written as though the rooster had scratched them
there.
	 "Hey," she called to him. She reached for the paper, her
    legs were still wobbling. She mumbled. "His paper probably's
    too ruin to touch." She left it. "Do you know your court date?"
    she yelled.
	  The door to their room opened and he walked in, "What
    you yelling about?" His hair was wet. He wore a robe. He had
    showered.
	 "Oh? You were out there?" She spoke in a trembling, loud
    whine.
	 "If I were you, I would get to the shower while it's empty,
    before the rock stars wake up, and the hot water's gone."
	 "We're out our minds," she whined. "What are we doing
    here? On this floor are the rock stars, on the top floor,
    the winos."
	 "You want me to help you in the shower?" he asked.
	 "No."
	 "You better put some speed on the rump," he said. He
    slapped her on the butt.
	  "Darn, don't hit me," she said.
	  "Don't be flaky," he said. "I don't hit you, that was
    a sexy slap on the butt."
	  "I've got to get something solid on my stomach before
    I throw up."
	 "Don't you want to shower first?"
	 "Where are the crackers?"
	 "Gone."
	 "Food disappears when you are around, don't it?"
	 "Do you want me to run and get you something?"
	 "No, if it's not too much bother."
	 "What do you want?"
	 "Food."
	 "Let me get dress."

	 She dropped into a chair and waited. He dressed and went
    out for food. The room was quiet, except her head buzzed. Loud
    people in the hall, on the floor above, in the street outside
    her window, kept making noise. She cursed. The noise did not
    stop for a blessed moment. She mumbled, why had she followed him
    to this rat and roach hotel?


			  III.

	 "What would Mama say about him? Daddy would hate him.
    He reminds Daddy's little girl of Daddy ..." she whispered
    and mooed softly, as she lazily rolled her tongue up his
    sleeping face, pouring gross amounts of love that she long
    held, stored for her prince. She stopped at his lips. Her
    tongue pushed opened his mouth. She showered her love on his
    two chipped teeth. "I've got bowls and bowls of good stuff for
    you," she cooed in his ear. "If you wake up now, you will think
    you've got yourself one flaky woman."
	 She met him on the bus while she dropped sixty pennies,
    one penny after another, into the fare box. The fare was one
    dollar. She held up the line for two long minutes. The bus
    driver became angry. He growled, "Lady!"
	  "What?"
	  "There are people who want to get on this bus, some of
    them are on their way to work, others are on their way home
    to their children."
	   She barked back, "I'm paying my damn fare."
	   "Humf!" the bus driver grunted.
	   At sixty pennies, she stopped, waited. The driver gave
    her a hard stare. After a moment, she sneered, "Now who's
    holding up the bus? Give me my damn transfer."
	 "Put the rest of the fare in, lady."
	 "Say what? You've got the fare from me, a solid dollar
    in pennies."
	  "Look, this bus is going to sit here, and these people
    are going to get mad at you until you put the rest of the fare
    in the box."
	 "I've put a solid dollar in. You want me to open up that
    damn box and count out all of those pennies for you, again?"
	 "Look, lady, bring your head around here and look down
     there. See that? It's something new, an electronic coin
     register. Metro is concerned about passengers being short
     with the fare. This here registers the amount that people
     drop in the box."
	 She looked. On the back of the fare box was a digital
     dial showing the number sixty in red light. "It must be
     broken,"  she said.
	  "Lady, put the rest of the fare in or get off the
      bus."
	 "I've given Metro all I've got," she said.
	 "Lady, get off the bus."

	 "Bertha," he called. He was waiting to get on the bus.
    Three people were ahead of him. "Girl, what you doing
    getting ahead of me? I told you, I've got the damn transfers.
    What you doing paying that man for? God in Heavens knows we
    can't have the same mother. Let me get up there." He pushed
    his away passed the three people ahead of him. He climbed
    the steps and pushed her away. "Bus driver, our mama dropped her
    when she was a baby and she ain't been right since." He
    stopped and glared as she rolled her eyes at him. He pushed
    her. "Girl, get back there and get a seat."
	 "What?"
	 "Get back there."
	 As she sneered, he turned to the bus driver. "She's
    retarded. Here are our transfers."
	  The driver nodded, "Thank you."
	  "C'mon, Sis."
	  She kept sneering as he walked toward the seat across
    the back of the bus.
	 "Lady will you take a seat and let the other people on
     the bus?" the driver asked.
	  From the back of the bus, he whistled, "Sis," and
      smiled. She went to him.
	 "Who in the hell are you?"
	 He put his finger to his lips and whispered the word hushed.
	 "Fool, who are you?"
	 "Sit, Sis," he grinned. "You're on the bus, right?"
	 She pouted, "Will you answer me? Who in the hell are you?"
	 He smiled.

	 Her prince, that is whom he was. She looked toward him
    and smiled as she lifted a half pint carton of milk to her
    lips.
	 "You like to drink milk, don't you? " he asked, displaying
    his elastic grin.
	  She held the carton from her lips, showing the white
    circle on her mouth. "Don't you wish it was you drinking
    milk from my titties?"
	 He laughed, "Yeah, why not?"
	 She finished, discarded the carton in the waste can, and
    she belched.
	 "Full?" he asked, grinning again.
	 She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm full of fast food."
	 "Fine, get your shower and we're going out."
	 "I stink?" she frowned.
	 "Yeah."
	 She smiled, "I supposed I do. But, let me sit here for
    a moment. I suppose, I might need you to help me - to scrub
    my back and to help me lather up."
	 She waited for a moment, until she felt steady enough to
    stand on her legs. She leaned on his shoulders and giggled
    girlishly, as he took her two hands in his and cradle her
    chin. She brought her hips up close to his. Her breasts
    pulsed, as she felt the heat in him, surging like something
    liquid. "Don't I smell?" she asked.
	 "I can't notice," he said.
	 "Why did you bring me steak-in-cheese when you know I
    don't like cheese steak?"
	  "You needed something solid on your stomach."
	  "Where are we going after I shower? Out to get something
    more to eat?"
	   "No, I thought -"
	   She stopped his mouth with her lips. His body shuddered. He
    pulled her tight, with one hard move, then he relaxed,
    accepting what his nose was telling him, that she needed to
    shower.
	 "Let us go to Trios?" she said.
	 "The Restaurant?"
	 She giggled.
	  No, I don't think so," he said.

	 She remembered Trios as an early experience in their
    relationship. The day was warm - blue skies and bright sunshine-
    a perfect day for lunching in the sidewalk cafe. The food was
    fresh and good. They ate a big meal, double helpings of everything,
    and two desserts. The waitress was nice, a foreign girl from
    Tanzania who was going to school. They were both nice to her
    until the check came.
	 "Leave the rest of the dessert," he whispered. "Don't
    stuff too much, remember you've got to run."
	 "It has an almost light taste, I never had cake like
    this," she said too loud, her eyes trying to focus on the
    morsels still inside her spoon.
	 He put the green colored check under the empty red wine
    bottle on the pastel colored plastic table cloth. He took a
    napkin scratched a note, begging the waitress pardon, and
    he placed the note under the empty bread basket. He breathed
    in once, then twice, and waited until the waitress had gone
    inside for another patron's order. He whispered, "C'mon,
    now, babe, time to split."
	 They were both tall, with long legs and could run. "Trios
    has fat people working in the restaurant," he had told her to
    get her to join him for lunch at Trios. "The food is good. You
    can tell by the fat people working there. They got fat on the
    food. They are good cooks, but no good at chasing customers
    who walk out without paying, and customers like us who are
    going to split and run. Those fat people will get a heart
    attack if they try to chase us. They'll get heart attacks
    and die. They're all middle age anyway. The youngest one is
    thirty, and he's fatter than a hog."
	  "C'mon, babe," he said, as she wiped her hand on the
     table cloth.
	  She heard a scream. The waitress returned and suddenly
    realized the two of them were running out on the check.
	  "Stop! Stop!" the waitress screamed. " Help! The manager
     is going to dock me. Stop!"
	  "C'mon, babe!" She was running. She felt her breasts
     swelling, jiggling, as though she was not wearing a bra.
     Carefully, she picked up her feet and ran, as the waitress
     behind her howled. She placed her feet down faster and
     faster in front of herself, as she raced to cover the
     ground between herself and his bouncing butt, and his both
     of his thumping legs. He had the point, pushing people
     aside, opening a path for her to run. Her dress whipped up as
     she ran, exposing her thighs. She usually was careful of
     how she looked, making sure she covered her self. Now, she
     did not care how much her dress showed.
	 The waitress, the cooks and the others in the restaurant
     never came close to catching them, and nobody along the
     escape route tried to stop them.
	 As she walked with him to the hall bathroom to shower,
    she reminded herself of the incident's thrill. She smiled
    warmly at him. They were younger and invulnerable, and running
    was not as painful. After lunch at Trios, he took her
    to his apartment. It had a sitting room, and a bed, and a bath
    of its own. They fell into bed, she on him. She grinning in his
    face.
	 She looked at him now with a look of appreciation. He
     had her stripped. He and she were in shower. He lathered
     both of their naked bodies.
	 Somewhere along the line they had found their way into a
     rat hole. Rent had to be paid on the apartment, and the rent
     money went to the newest thrill he showed her, the injection
     of the juice delivered by the crack man. The landlord booted
     them out of the apartment.
	  She was not dwelling on the lost of their private bath.
     She was shrieking. He was on her back with his tongue. She
swore. She felt a telephone pole somewhere on her back. She
    howled and sent both of them flying to the shower floor,
    giggling.

			IV.

	 A week later, they were in the hotel bed. She had cleaned
    the room a little. He told her, he had a couple of dollars for
    food, and a couple of dollars was all the cash he had. She winced
    when he told her of his plan to get some cash by robbing a store.
	 "Ain't got no money, we need some cheese," he said. She did
    not like his plan or the sound he made as he explained it. He
    spoke in sputters, in a voice, strained and hoarse. "Gotta get
    some cheese," he croaked like a frog. He cocked his head. "Think
    I'm breaking wind, talking through my ass?"
	 She stumbled from the bed, opened the night stand's drawer
     removed her four papers, and the raggedly one, his.
	 She said, "Don't need no more beefs, gotta speak to
    these first, Babe."
	 He looked grim. "Hello?" he said. "No, you don't have the
    wrong number.  There's no one here named 'Kennedy' or 'Rich
    Heiress.' Either we get the cheese to pay the lawyer or that
    rat is gonna dump us on the tender mercies of the merciless.
    We'll be locked down in a hole until our short hairs turn
    white."
	 "No."
	 "If you're scared, say you're scared."
	 "I'm scared," she said.
	 "Ain't that terrible?  Obviously, you think I don't know
    what I'm doing? I know what I'm doing. That is why I don't
    worry about what I'm doing."
	 "Man?" she said.
	 "Put those papers down. They scare you with them. I
     don't look at such things when I plan."
	 "Man, how are you going to rob a store?"
	 "With a plan, a gun and a ... backup lady."
	 "No," she said.
	 "Look at yourself," he said. "Every morning, we wake up
    about this time, and every morning, I get out a ten spot and
    you tuck it in your hot little jeans, and you run out, if I
    haven't already run out for you, and you get a little piece of
    the rock. You never say no then. You never can wait to say
    yes. You need that little piece of rock, Man, like I need
    cheese. I ain't got no more cheese to get you those rocks,
    Man. You're hungry for it like you're hungry for me. I need
    cheese, Man. I need you to back me up."
	 Then, she shook her head and softly said, "Oh, shit."
	 He whistled and grinned.
	 She remembers, something from high school, "Once more unto
    the breech dear friends. Once more unto the breech."

				  V.

	 She screamed, "Hallelujah! My Lord and Savior, Jesus
    Christ!" From the back of the hall, she opened her mouth and
    let out another scream. The scream came deep down from her
    stomach. She had screamed like that only once before, when
early in her relationship with her lover, she wrapped herself in
him, while he thrust himself in her, deeply, showing his love. Jesus
    was in her now. She felt Jesus deep, moving in her.  Every
    head in the hall turned to her. The preacher lady laughed
    and clapped her hands. The other women, except one, joined
    in the clapping. This one person stood in the back of the room,
    and watched the ladies' assembly. This one chuckled to herself,
    when her intended silent laughter got too loud, this
    person coughed, and then began to clap with the others.
	 The guard was clapping, the preacher lady was clapping,
    everybody was clapping. The clapping got louder. She knew
    what it meant. Soon she would have to stand, let her
    emotions burst, and testify. Fifty of her fellow prisoners by
    their thunderous applause urged her to stand.
	 She fretted. Her mind filled with thoughts, rolling all
    the scenes of her deeds and misdeeds that her conscious
    credited had merited her being there.
	 He had robbed a store, and she was with him. They got
    caught. The detective said, they were such bad robbers, they
    were asking to get caught. She did not remember much of the
    robbery. He had let her get a toot. She needed courage. She was
    geeking. Her legs wobbled. She spoke fast, sounding like a bird
    who chirps. She needed the stuff to stay on her feet.
	 After the police arrested her this time, her mother took
    charge, got her a legal aid lawyer. Her mother fussed like
    fussing was something a mother must do. "He is no good for you.
    How many times have I told you that? Look at yourself and think
    about where you are, and who you are. Did I raise a child to be
    a fool?" Her mother and her lawyer insisted that the court
    separate her trial from his. He entered a plea of innocence. Her
    mother and her lawyer got her to confess. The judge gave her only
    a quarter of the time he could have given for the crime.
	  The court released her lover on personal bond pending his
    trial. He came to visit her in jail, asked if there was anything
    he could get her. "No, nothing," she said. She asked him how he
    was getting along.  He said he would be sweating until the trial.
    "Gotta get some money for my lawyer," he said. "I had a legal aid
    lawyer," she said. "Yeah," he said. "And you're in here." She
    said, "But, we did wrong." He said, "Yeah, but we can't give
    up. After I leave you, I've gotta hit the bricks hard. I've
    gotta get a thousand dollars in my lawyer's hot little hands. I
    gotta sell, gotta sling some rocks -" She said, "What?" He said,
    "You know, I've gotta stay out of jail, gotta get the lawyer's
    money." She said, "Be careful."
	 Now, she was being cheered. In a calm voice she was telling
    her story of how she found Christ, and was in the process of
    being born again. She was nervous when she stood, but their
    cheers were like magic. That is how she will describe it in a
    letter to him.

			  VI.

	 "Yes! Yes! YES! I feel fantastic and clean, indeed,"
    are words she wrote him. "I am a witness to the awesome,
    forgiving power of God."
	 He wrote back, carefully to print the words slowly, so
    she could read his handwriting. He had gone to trial and
    been acquitted by a forgiving jury of senior citizens, the
    majority of whom were old ladies who lived in government
    housing. Clean shaven and rid of his long hair, and showing
    watery, contrite, puppy eyes, he looked like somebody's grand
    son, a nice, sweet boy. His lawyer beat the prosecutor,
    like the prosecutor was somebody's raw hamburger from a
    Jewish delicatessen.  Feeling regrets, because she was were
    she was, but feeling no regrets because he was free, he
    wrote her a sweet letter, telling her how much he missed her
    and that he could not wait until she is free.
	 She wrote back. "Baby, it is by God's Grace that I feel
    good about myself. I have grown spiritually and am a true
    witness for God. I am saved. Baby, I love you, and I want
    you to find Jesus too, and be saved. To help you, I want you
    to be my prayer partner. I want you to kneel everyday at the
    same time everyday and pray. Write me back and let me know
    what time is best for you, and at that time I will kneel
    with you, and stop  whatever I might be doing and pray for us.
    Is that a deal? Things will start going better for both of us.
    I just know it. Stop frowning and smile, and pray with me.
    Believe it or not, this will work."
	 He wrote back. "Okay, Babe, how about at seven every
    morning for ten minutes?"
	 "I hear you laughing," she wrote. "But, do this for me.
    If you haven't tried prayer yet, try it. Please?"
	 He wrote her back, swearing that every day at seven he
     was on his knees.

			   VII.

	 He sat on the bench. "What do you want me for?" he asked.
    "In D.C., they shoot wayward lovers, I know. They shot six
    of them in one night last week, all at about half-past three
    in the morning."
	 "You're safe, it's just past three in the afternoon,"
    she said.
	 "What do you want me for? To put me against the wall
    and shoot me? To have pools of my blood at your feet?"
	 "I want to talk to you," she said.
	 "Why? We're like dead leaves in the park even though
    it's a sunny day."
	 "Shit," she said.
	 He asked, "Why do say that?"
	 "I love you," she said.
	 "Love me? I'm a bit lost. Isn't this the woman who is still
    telling me that she won't leave that other dude?" He took
    her hand and squeezed. She thought of pulling away and
    stopped. She was drawn to the scar on his arm, and she remembered
    a drug deal that went bad. She and he were selling crack to a
    blonde couple. The blonde girl did not want to pay. He threatened
    the blonde girl and her blonde boy friend. The blonde girl began
    to curse. She slapped the blonde girl. The blonde girl went to a
    car and returned with an aluminum bat, and beat her about the back
    and legs. And, he was beaten up by the blonde girl's boyfriend.
    The blonde couple chased them down the street.
	  "Baby?" he called her from her thoughts.
	  She answered, "Man, I really wished you had come back in
    my life before I fell in love with him. You know, I really had
    intentions on marrying you. Maybe if we had been together,
    and I had been stronger -"
	  "You're in love with him? Why do you keep calling me?"
    He scratched his head. "Man, I get this mental image of
    you with this middle age, old dude. He's sixty. He's
    dressed up in a black suit. You have on a black dress.
    It's a cold, gray day, like night, though it is day time.
    He's dropped his black pants and has pulled up your dress.
    He's got you bent, face up, across a short brick wall, and
    he's doing it to you. I know why you keep calling me. It is
    because you need some. You need to melt again. You get no
    thrill, no nothing from him. I see no love there. It gets
    messy between your legs with him. It gets like a waste dump.
    Maybe if you would come clean we can get to developing
    something. We can get busy together and make something
    happen."
	 As he talked, she turned out some of the stark ugliness
     of his words. She heard herself thinking, almost aloud.
     This muffled some of his mocking tone. She saw herself
     walking.

	 She walks up the stairs toward the bedroom, to sleep
    with dear, old, weather beaten, hard working, long-time
    employed by the same employer, Mister Green. Mister Green is four
    years her senior, but he seems like a thousand years older. Her
    mother likes him. When her mother comes to visit, her
    mother always looks at Mister Green's face and smiles. Her
    mother keeps a smile for Mister Green. Like her mother, at the
    first sight of Mister Green, she looked up and smiled. She calls
    him, Greenie.  However she feels, she always has something nice
    to say to him. She likes him. She is like a child toward him. She
    trusts him. Mister Green is like the windows of his house, clean
    and clear, giving light an easy surface to pass. She opens the door
    to the room. Though the house is big and they are alone, Mister
    Green wants the door closed when they are in the room together.
    Mister Green said, closing the bedroom door is a good habit to
    develop even before the children come. Mister Green wants children,
    as many as he can count on one hand, five. Mister Green has a
    bathroom on every floor for the children. Yes, she is willing to
    be the mother of his babies. She feels Mister Green will be a
    good father.  Mister Green has been borne again and is saved.


	 "Maybe this is not a good day for this, you're in a moody
    mood."
	  "One thing I want to know is, does that dude know
    about me? And what did you tell him? And have you told him
    about me recently? No, I bet?"
	 "Baby-"
	 "Man, you know yourself, I'm the one who will go over
    there and tell that dude about us, and if shots get fired,
    well, let the thing be."
	 "Why?"
	 She has asked herself many times, "why?"
	 Why? The need, she answers. The buzz in the head like
    fuzzy whizes until she can't see. She needs clarity. The
charity of his penis, she thinks, as she needed the
charity of his dope.
	 She became angry. "Look, Baby. I don't know what kind of
    women you've been dealing with, but I can tell you they were
    not on their jobs." She stopped, listened to what she had
    said, heard herself whining, and started softly. "Don't mean to
    talk about them, but that is really how I feel."
	 "My women?" he shook his head. "What about your dude?"
	 Her dude, Mister Green - Mister Green or him? She thought.
    With him people disappeared, friends, associates, people you
    knew. They were in jail. Some were dead. Some got tired and
    left. She did not see them anymore - only him. With Mr.
    Green - well, Mr. Green was Mr. Green.
	 She thought, she dreamed, she remembered.

	 Even with light in her eyes as she lay naked, waiting for
    Mister Green to begin the baby making, and feeling that she
    likes him an awful lot, probably loves him, she can not help
    thinking of him who was her lover before she was born again
    and saved. After sex with Mister Green, she feels less tired
    than she had with her ex-lover. On that first night with Mister
    Green she felt a slight buzz.  With her ex-lover, she thought of a
    rooster, saw a barnyard cock. Mister Green is a dependable husband,
    a homebody. To her, sex to him is like climbing the front steps on
    a slippery icy day - careful, so not to fall and hurt herself. She
    remembered racing up a hill with her ex-lover, fleeing around the
    corner, to the blacksmith's, watching the hammer going hard.  She
    has not counted the number of steps Mister Green climbs as he huffs
    and puffs. Sometimes while Mister Green is climbing, she turns and
    looks at the closed door; other times, she recites in her head a
    poem  she learned in the third grade, a poem that starts, "How do I
    love thee? Let me count the ways."

	 "Babe," he tapped her gently on the shoulder. "Where 's
     your mind?"
	  "Huh?"
	  "You 're not listening."
	  "I am," she said. "And, if I left him, I wouldn't have you,
    you're still messing with that crack."
	 "What?"
	 "Still letting it get the best of you? Huh? I told you
    when I got out of jail if you were still messing with shit -"
	 "Shit? Watch your language. You're a church lady now."
	 Her face twitched and she looked from him to the
    ground. He laughed. She glared. "If you had stuck with me
    when I got out and stopped messing with all those crack head
    bitches, you'd be better off. Now, see if I left him where
    I'd be?"
	 "Crack head bitches?" he grinned. "Church lady has
     dropped her religion. Her religion is a twitching corpse,
     fallen into the dust." He giggled.
	 She asked, "Did you ever love me?"
	 He replied, "Yes."
	 "When?"
	 "From the beginning, when I first saw you on the bus.
    Why do you think I gave you my transfer?"
	 She smiled. "Are you still hustling transfers?"
	 "Man, where is this going?"
	 "You're on shit, aren't you?" she asked. He did not
    answer. "Because if you weren't you would have been at the
    circus, yesterday."
	 "I'm here today."
	 "After I had to call you and leave messages everywhere.
    Anyway, I still love you, though I had to spend my damn
    money on tickets, and I spent the whole afternoon waiting for
    you."
	 "I didn't want to go to the circus," he said.
	 "You said you did."
	 "I didn't want to go."
	 "It was your idea."
	 "I talked about going -"
	 "That's was all you talked about the other day."
	 "Since I was a kid, I've always liked going. I mentioned
    it, and you took up the ball and ran with it, said you would
    get the tickets and we would make a day of it together. You
    even suggested a little nookie afterward. But, I couldn't go."
	 "Because?"
	 "Don't know."
	 "Because?"
	 "Not going to tell you."
	 "BECAUSE?"
	 "The circus wouldn't be fun, with you not there for me
    to take home afterward."
	 "Baby," she said, "I can't."
	 "You've got to go home to that dude, don't you?"
	 "Yes."
	 "Nothing I say can change that?"

	 She stood. She knew. Each night when Mr. Green finishes
    with the baby making, Mister Green smiles and is happy.
    Knowing that Mister Green is happy makes her feel better.

	   "My birthday is next month, " she said.
	 "You don't want me to forget that, I won't forget
    that."
	  "Don't forget," she said.
	  "Wait," he said. "Maybe we can go someplace for the
    next couple of hours?"
	  "No, you promised me you would get off the shit
    first."
	 "Oh, Man," he said.
	 "No, baby," she said.
	 He raised his hands up in the air, said, "See you," and
     he began to walk away. She called to him, "I'll call you?"
	 He waved, acknowledging, and kept walking without
     turning to look back. She watched him until she could not
     see him any longer, then she tucked her Bible under her arm
     and took the subway home.

     ------------------
     (c) Copyright 1993, Franchot Lewis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
