The Journey of “The Jump”
I was reading in bed at 3:45 AM on August 31st when an email popped up on my phone. It was from the editor of a journal that, hours before, had published my short story, “The Jump,” about a queer writer who turns to lesbian sex work. “The Jump” had been easy to write but hard to publish, with countless tiered rejections asking for something different. I chalked that up in part to the story’s sex scenes, ones I chose to include because I, a Black queer femme, don’t always see iterations of my desire in books I read. I am also a Black woman with albinism, as is Nebula, the story’s narrator, and I don’t see us in literature at all. I was relieved when someone finally took a chance on it, and elated when it was suddenly published after months of radio silence from the publication following its acceptance. In the fourteen hours before receiving this middle-of-the-night email, I’d gone from wondering if “The Jump” had gotten lost in the shuffle to scrambling to sign a contract and gather a bio, headshot, and Word version of the story, complete with small edits to address the editor’s request to modify the mention of a minor character.
But this 4 AM email explained that several lines from my already-published story needed to be cut. Minutes later, another email came, stating that the editor-in-chief was applying for a grant in early September, and parts of my story might affect the journal’s funding. I was asked to review a list of excerpts, with text highlighted to indicate the concerning lines. All of them had been taken from sex scenes between women. In the meantime, the story had been placed in draft mode on the publication’s website, unavailable to readers until I agreed to the changes.
My first impulse was to feel ashamed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as explicit. I even started to feel guilty about the rushed timeline. The request for materials had come at 9:30 AM on August 30th, but I’d been sleeping and didn’t respond until the afternoon. Had I sent them earlier, the editor might have had time to really reread the story. But shame is a survival mechanism I’ve self-weaponized since childhood. For as long as I can remember, it has whispered, “Who do you think you are?” when I refuse ill treatment, leave toxic relationships, or quit terrible jobs. I’ve been defeated by that voice many times, but this time, I refused. I told the editor that if she was going to censor any part of a story she had previously accepted and “LOVED” (her caps, not mine), then the story should be removed, and all rights returned to me. That is exactly what happened.
I decided to unpublish “The Jump” because I believe in displaying the full range of its characters and their interactions, and because the editor’s about-face raises troubling questions: How many times has this happened to other queer writers at other publications? How many times have the powers-that-be censored our stories for the sake of respectability? I don’t want to be complacent with such practices. I am a writer; my job is to write what comes. I am also a writer interested in being published, so I submit things I write. Those pieces can be accepted or rejected, and I’ll still do what I do. It should be simple, and when others try to make it hard, I refuse to comply for their comfort and convenience. That is the complicity that creates the scarcity that prompted my story.
I stand by what I have written in “The Jump.” And I am proud to share what I’ve written with you.
Destiny O. Birdsong is the author of the poetry collection Negotiations (Tin House Books, 2020) and the triptych novel Nobody’s Magic (Grand Central, 2022), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She has served as a Writer-in-Residence for the Hurston-Wright Foundation and the University of Tennessee and is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine. She is currently at work on a second novel and a collection of short stories.
The good thing about working with women is that, unlike the men, they won’t kill you. Not when you yourself are a woman. They save their homicidal rage for their real girlfriends, or for the men they marry. I’ve come across a few rough ones though, the ones who think you should always answer the phone, the ones who’ll grab your ass as you’re leaving the restaurant and accuse you of flirting with the staff. I call them the Set-It-Off types. Straight-backs, everything baggy, convinced money makes their clit heavier. Big Cleo energy.
But for the most part, my clients are tame. Women understand—way better than men—that what they’re buying is time. Nothing else. And fantasy too, of course. I’ve been the childhood bully turned curious playmate, overzealous supervisor turned lover, older sister’s long-lost bestie. The help. I’ve fucked bisexuals, try-sexuals, hold-me-while-I-cry-sexuals. It’s a beautiful game; I prance, they pay. It’s fine. Nobody owns anybody. Nobody expects love.
I got into it by accident. I was in Publix one day, wondering how they keep beet-red watermelon year-round, when another woman walked up to the fruit case. I quickly apologized, angling my cart away from it to make room for her.
“Don’t mind me, I just came over to look.”
Casual, but something about her tone nudged me to attention. I looked up. Crisp white shirt, denim jeans, steel-tipped boots. A chain with links as thick as my belt. Tapered fade.
“I see,” I said pointedly.
“My name’s Reet.” She held out her hand, palm down. Pinky ring. “What’s yours?”
“I go by Neb.”
Reet wanted to know if I was dating anyone, and when I told her no and she saw that the question didn’t send me running, she asked if I’d been to the Baez exhibit at the Frist, which had been extended for a week. It was gorgeous. Was I into art?
I was. And no, I hadn’t been.
She grinned. “Let’s go then.” She slid her phone from her back pocket and handed it to me. Later, as I was putting items on the conveyor belt, she appeared from nowhere, waving two fingers over my head for the cashier’s attention.
“I’ve got these.”
The cashier, who was probably seventeen but looked ten, nodded, her big eyes bulging from behind a pair of sky-blue Harry Potter frames.
. . .
Reet played it smooth on our first date. We met there, and she greeted me on the steps out front with a hand squeeze and a dry kiss on the cheek.
“Like a vision, as always.”
I was wearing a floral cropped peasant top with wide pants and rope wedges—fitting attire for an afternoon date—but the way she said it made it sound like she was ready to shoot POV. I smiled.
“Thank you. So do you.” Reet was wearing a casual green suit, shawl lapel, tapered leg. Expensive loafers. She looked down at herself then up at me, flashing her grocery store grin.
Inside, she trailed me for a while, pointing out pieces she loved and asking softball questions about my life. About halfway through, she excused herself—someone across the room she wanted to speak to. She told me she’d catch up.
A few minutes later, I saw another woman looking at me, though it was hard to tell because she was wearing goggles—literal goggles in an art museum. In fact, she bore a striking resemblance to Aaliyah. At least her clothes did. I hadn’t seen Hilfiger boxers in years, but there they were, peeking above the waistband of her oversized Jncos.
I tried staring back and she didn’t flinch. My underarms started to prickle. I rounded a corner and ducked into the bathroom.
I was at the sink washing my hands when the door opened. At least she hadn’t come in while I was peeing.
“Hey there, friend.”
I said nothing.
“Don’t panic. I know Reet. She speaks highly of you.”
“Well, that’s surprising, seeing as we don’t really know each other.”
The woman laughed. “Reet’s good like that.” She took her goggles off and checked her impeccable makeup in the mirror. When she saw me staring, she laughed again.
“I know. ‘If Your Girl Only Knew,’ right? Did I nail it? Sondra isn’t gonna be honest with me, even though it’s what she asked for.”
“You had me fooled,” I said. I tried to sound nonchalant.
She put her goggles back on with a snap that sounded like it should have hurt.
“I’m Kit. Not my real name, given the circumstances….”
“What?”
She cocked her head at me like she was considering something, then pulled a card out of nowhere like a magic trick.
“We should talk somewhere outside a bathroom.” Then she left.
. . .
Two days later we’re at a coffee shop in the Gulch. She’s drinking something with Kahlua in it and it smells like October. I don’t drink around people I don’t know, so I got some matcha concoction with raspberry puree at the bottom. Not bad.
Between sips and looking around the place like she was waiting for the cops to jump out, Kit gave me the game: Reet likes to find fresh fish she can share with her friends. Not a pimp or anything—Reet makes her own good money. More like a curator. She looks out for her friends by finding women they can trust. Ones who can keep a mouth full and keep their mouths shut at the same time, know what I mean?
I bristled. Clearly this was a misunderstanding.
“Kit,” I said. “I’m not a prostitute. I went on a date with her because I’m horny.” After the exhibit, Reet and I ate at the café downstairs. She walked me to my car and left with a light kiss on the lips, like she was blowing a dandelion.
“Well, that’s good because I wouldn’t call this sex work.” Kit tapped her nails on the table. They were coffin-shaped French tips, throwback acrylics from the 90s. “I like to think of this as…flex work. Listen,” she said, lowering her voice as a server breezed by, “I work in banking. The feds follow two things: money and flash. So, you wouldn’t wanna work for just that kind of shit anyway.”
I hadn’t thought about not fucking for free a day in my life. Still, this offended me.
“And why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you should be thinking bigger. Put it to you like this. Black women make about sixty cents on the dollar for white men. Queer women? In the South? Usually less than that. I’m not saying Reet and her set ain’t doing dollars, but what they’ve got way more of is connections. Ways in.” She squinted. “What are you? What do you do for a living?”
“Right now? I teach. But I want to be a writer.”
“Perfect. So, you find yourself cuddled up to someone on the board of one of those grant foundations. And you let them know you need time off to finish your book. Or you want one of those things where they pay you to sit in a library all fucking day. Get an exclusive submission. Win a prize or something.” Kit looked down into her cup like she just realized there was an insect floating in it.
“How do you know about those?”
“I get around.” she smiled wistfully. “It’s always educational when they’re closeted.”
“Nobody is closeted anymore. Especially not in my field.”
“Tuh! You’d be surprised, my little nimbus.”
“Nebula.”
“Why on earth would you use a name like that for anything, much less this?” She waved down someone behind me, tapping her cup. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but here goes. Listen carefully, or open your Notes app, because I don’t repeat myself. Here are the rules.” She waited for me to tell her not to waste her time because I wasn’t interested.
I didn’t.
On the way to our cars, Kit stopped at a red Mercedes coupe. It lit up like a happy baby, lights flashing.
“You say it’s not about the money, but what is this?” I flung my hand toward it.
“I told you I was in banking, right? I’m the CFO of a real estate firm.”
“In this city?” I whistled. “You should be retired already.”
“Soon come. I’m at Marguerite Simms Investment Specialists,” she said over her shoulder as she opened the door. “Guess who the CEO is.”
. . .
I started for a bunch of reasons—first one, and then others. I’ve never been materialistic; I make art for a living. And when I can’t do that, I teach people how to make art for a living. If I was into anything other than paying my mortgage and buying cute pillows, I’d have drunk myself to death by now. But sometimes, I spend so much time inside my own mind, I become feral, strange to live with. Men sense it and run, as they should. Women—the right ones—will talk to me about it. I turn to them when I get bored with my strangeness, my aloneness, with licking the dull knife of my life and getting blazed on the taste of my own blood, like the wolf on the Dead Prez album.
Something else Kit said that caught me by the throat: the thing about wanting more. I’ve done alright in my career. I’ve written things some people have read. I know my way around pages. I figured at some point other people would notice. I’ve been building something. And I’d always assumed the desire to build was enough to keep me going. But Kit made me wonder if there’s more out there to want. And maybe there’s more than one way to get it.
I started out with Reet because she was cute and smelled strong and clean, like a newly laundered comforter drying on the line. She could lift me over her head, and she ate good pussy. But the first night she spent at my house, she fixed a leaky faucet and a light fixture. The next time, it was a lock on a windowsill that sometimes woke me up at night, panicking that someone had tested it and found it didn’t work. It’s cliché, yeah, but she’s handy. It’s how she started the businesses. The first houses, she flipped by hand while taking classes at Belmont. She was closeted then, but she and her friend Sondra would buy a house out east and start remodeling it on the weekends. That was back when it wasn’t shit out there but trailer parks. She was older than she looked. She thought my house would look good with new floors. The porch was a disaster. She could screen it in for me, make a little writing nook. I told her she could do whatever she wanted.
“Good. I miss that shit, working with my hands,” she said, hooking two fingers through the crotch of my lance thongs. I was supine on the bed at the time, and she was above me, signature grin, chain dangling like a lasso over my tits.
. . .
Reet stayed my main, but it didn’t take long before there were others. Kit and I rarely overlapped in the folks we fucked (and we never, ever fucked each other) but when we did, she’d give me her notes. It wasn’t personal. It never should be. I dated Sondra once or twice, but remember what I told you about Big Cleo energy? Plus, I’m too pale to dress up as anybody from the 90s besides Gina Waters, so….
There were a few femmes too, some obviously closeted, but I followed Kit’s rule never to ask questions and don’t go looking for them in broad daylight. “The less you know, the less you care,” she would say. And these women were rarely forthcoming about their personal lives. They didn’t expect you to pity their loveless marriages or the husbands who’d shove dicks in their mouths without a second thought, but claimed men giving head was an abomination. These women paid for their time in money and other ways that made sense to us both. Once the floors were done, I got new furniture—a housewarming gift from some designer company that had gone viral on Tik Tok when Maven, a homesteading influencer, said they had great couches. Then there was high-end cookware from Stacy, who owned a housewares boutique. “Thanks so much for trying out our new product line!” read the note that came with boxes the Fed Ex man tossed so haphazardly I would have filed a complaint if I had paid for any of it. When it was time for a new car, I mentioned it to Teresa, whose father and brother co-owned Belle Forest Audi. A week later, there was a new Q3 in the driveway. I’d won a holiday raffle I never entered.
I got used to this sort of thing. I started making lists of what I needed in the house and in my life: an IRA and some light dental work. Derrica was one half of Southside Smile, a clinic on the north end of Antioch. I wanted to see an ophthalmologist I’d heard good things about. My contacts made my eyes itch, and he specialized in ocular albinism. Surely, he knew of something newer, more comfortable.
One day, I was on the porch, visually planning my garden, when Kit called.
“My place, about 9:30? I want to introduce you to someone,” she said. Her ass is incapable of small talk.
“Who is it?”
“All you need to know right now is remember the rules. The less you know, the better.”
“Wait, what should I—”
Three beeps. She was gone.
. . .
Kit lived in Belle Meade near the park, of course. Some ritzy complex where the guard scanned my license, glanced at it, and chuckled.
“Nebula Fae —. Your parents hippies?”
“No. Comedians. I’ve had the same blonde fro from birth. They saw it, saw my skin, then named me. Simple as that.”
He nodded uncomfortably and waved me through.
When I rang, a woman who wasn’t Kit answered the door. She looked like someone who was the treasurer of her queer student alliance back in college (because they never let Black folks be president). You know, the ones who only fucked white girls and was always the only Black friend. Close shaved head, t-shirt that looked like it came from Five Below. Cutoffs. Chucks. No jewelry. Bare face.
“Come in,” she said. “Kit isn’t here, but she’ll be back soon.”
We sat down on the couch, me on one end, she on another.
“I’m Sep. I’m new to this.” She was turned toward me, one leg up on the cushion. She looked comfortable, but her foot bobbed spastically, shoelaces flailing.
I guess I was supposed to take the lead.
“That’s okay,” I said, stifling a sigh. “We’ll play by ear. Tell me one thing in your life that brings you joy.” I used to ask this question to my students, but then I started using it for the women because it could go either way. Some name things like their kids playing frisbee in the park. Others start naming their favorite positions—nothing like getting to the point.
“Freedom,” Sep said slowly. “I feel free here.” She passed a hand over her head like she was running it through hair. Her voice was soft but powerful, like someone who was warming up during a speech.
“What does freedom mean to you?” I really felt like I was talking to one of my students then, but I wanted to know.
“Sitting here, just like this.” She smiled. Beautiful teeth.
We talked for a bit about anonymous things: shows we liked, new music. She was into neo-shit: Ndegeocello, somebody named Cleo Sol. In my big age I’m still into rap. I like chaos.
“Nothing wrong with that,” she said, smiling again. Her thigh buzzed.
“It’s Kit,” she said. “She’ll be back soon.” She scooted closer to me and lowered her head. We kissed deeply.
. . .
I followed the rule. I didn’t know what Sep did for a living and didn’t ask, but I know on our first outside date, we met at ten at a restaurant that closed at nine. When the driver escorted me out of the car, it looked completely dark: curtains drawn, lights off. But as soon as my heels hit concrete a maître d’ in a bow tie and shirtsleeves appeared from nowhere with a lamp, holding the door open.
“Miss, welcome. Right this way, please.”
On our second date, we went to a skate center, and same thing: a Monday, nighttime, and we had the place to ourselves, our wheels echoing loudly, competing with the music, which somehow sounded louder with the place empty. Sep held me by the waist and tried to teach me to skate backwards. On every round, when we passed the kiddie ramp at the back of the building, she kissed my neck.
A lone woman manned the concession stand, and it was the first time I’d ever been there that I got everything I wanted: slimy pizza, nachos, slushies, candy. The moment we sat down at one of the red tables, the lights dimmed.
“I used to love this place as a kid,” I said, cutting into my pepperoni and sausage slice. “And in college too—I’d come with my friends sometimes.”
Sep popped a loaded tortilla chip into her mouth and licked her fingers.
“Same. The children’s church ministry used to bring us here. It was the most fun I ever had in this city.”
“Just skating around?”
“Yeah. I was way faster than the boys. Too fast for them to catch me. To try to hold my hand.”
“So, you hated the boys, even then?”
She laughed. “I guess I did.”
“How do you feel about them now?”
Sep dragged her finger through a glob of chili.
“How do I feel about them now…. I’m surrounded by them.” She laughed again. “My brothers are all boys. My father, my—.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I tolerate them. I wouldn’t say I hate them.” Then she went quiet.
I knew better than to pry further, so I nodded back toward the floor.
“Well don’t let me hold you back. You should skate like you did back then. When your tolerance was pure hate.” I grinned.
She beamed. After eating, I waved her on while I sat on the sidelines, sucking down the last of the watery syrup from my slushie. She started slow, but gradually picked up speed. “I Saw the Sign” came on and she threw her arms up, going faster and faster. Sometimes, she pivoted elegantly so she could skate backwards; sometimes she lowered herself almost to the ground, lifting one leg and holding it in front of her for so long I worried it would cramp on her and she’d fall, skidding painfully across the waxed floor.
Around, around, around. And I watched her: lithe, graceful, swift. She looked like she’d forgotten the world existed. I wanted her to strip down to nothing, not just so I could see, but so she could feel the breeze her body made on every part of her. When she finally came over to me, braking easily before jumping up to the bench, she was breathless.
“That was so good.” She shook her head like she couldn’t believe it.
“Good like that freedom you were talking about? You looked free out there,” I added quickly, so she’d know I wasn’t being sarcastic.
“You know what? That’s exactly what it was.” She looked at me and nodded, then leaned over to me, but she wouldn’t come in for a kiss. Instead, she stopped an inch away and parted her lips. I parted mine too, leaned forward until they were touching.
“I don’t know what I should do here,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know. Do what comes.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you want. Just like you did on the floor.”
With that, she knelt and started untying my skates, lace by lace. Her fingers were long like her legs. Small palms. When she was done, she put my feet up on the carpeted bench and got up there too, on her knees. She slipped her hands under my pleated skirt, palming my hips. Then she looked up.
Her face was blank, but I knew the look. On others. On me. All those years of loneliness and want, fantasizing about somebody one day touching me and making my body logical in all the ways the world said it couldn’t be. I wanted an end to that for her. I sat up.
“Wait,” I said. “I can go first if you want. I’ll show you.”
She froze. Blinked a few times. “Okay.”
I asked her to lie back and I slid off her shorts. Then her briefs: black with a white band, fitted like gloves.
“We can leave your skates on,” I said. It felt important. She nodded.
When I put my mouth on her, she gasped. I stopped. Waited. She rubbed the back of my head, and I went in again. Parted her with a curl of my tongue.
There’s a way that sex happens when it’s performance; it can be a mess of mechanics and maneuvers. Every twirl and thrust is a means to an end, but I didn’t do that. I spent time with her in my mouth. I sucked like I wanted to savor her. I snaked. I swallowed. I took my wet fingers and traced her thighs, every part where the briefs had been. I wanted her body to feel as free unclothed in the dark as it had in the clothes she’d spun herself around in on the rink. Finally, I closed her lips in my mouth and held it there until she started fucking back. Then I let my tongue follow her rhythm. When she came, her legs tensed, threatening to vise-grip my neck, but I gently spread them open, up. No hiding. No trying to hold it in. No involuntary pulling away to escape the feeling. I knew. And I stayed, mouth on mouth until she stopped shaking.
At some point, someone had turned the lights all the way down, so when it was my turn to lie back, I couldn’t see, only feel: her hands grazing my hips, then cupping my crotch. She was loose now, playful, fingers walking inside me then dancing, her cold blue tongue shocking my nipples, my thighs—in the right place and every place at once. When I came, my cries echoed across the slick floors as Paula Abdul whined the lyrics to “Rush, Rush.” I didn’t give a damn who was playing the music, who was working the lights. I didn’t know where the concession lady had gone.
. . .
Sep paid only in cash, wire transfers from a company whose name I didn’t recognize, just a cluster of initials. When I Googled it, a smatter of results came up: names for outlawed pesticides, global organizations fighting climate change. I gave up and stopped caring, mostly because I was starting to care about other things. How I touched her, what made her happy. I was in it. She always planned our outings and I told her she could take me anywhere she wanted, like a Polly Pocket. We did things mostly around the city: the rink a few more times, some spa where we got massages and drank something called Infinity Juice (the lady also booked me for spider vein removal later that month), rock climbing, midnight bowling, laser tag—all on nights they were normally closed. We’d talk pop culture or art, our debates filling empty spaces with shouts and laughter, all those lovely explosions. We read articles together about FDA trials for Alzheimer’s drugs. I told her how every adult in my family dies before they’re old enough to forget. Diabetes, heart stuff, gunshot wounds. She told me her grandfather’s symptoms started when she was nine. They played games and had sleepovers in front of the TV like cousins until the day he struck one of his caregivers.
“That summer was the kindest he’d ever been to me. He called me Jake. That was his childhood best friend.”
“He thought you were a boy? What you hated?”
She laughed. “Well, I didn’t hate that. It helped me make sense of myself. I didn’t know women I wanted to be like. And no women like you.”
“What makes sense to you now?” I was finishing a glass of red, swishing the final swallow in the glass.
She shrugged. “Being a different woman in every room. It’s how I survive.”
I looked down at the cutoffs she was wearing, the ones she wore whenever she was with me.
“You know you don’t have to do any of that here. I like pussy; I don’t care about the package.” I coughed out a nervous laugh.
She turned to me and tilted her head in that way she did: shy but knowing. “Here, I’m everything I want to be, just all at the same time.” She moved closer, put her mouth to my shoulder, licked a line where my dress strap met my skin.
“What do you think of me?” she asked.
“That you’re everything,” I said.
. . .
I wasn’t lying. The weeks went by, and I wanted Sep all the time, all to myself. I didn’t care where. We fucked in all those places, at booths and on safety mats—once in an outdoor garden at the arts center. I held on to a statue while she raised my dress from behind, fingers in first until my blood started to hum, then quickly, her mouth. Even when we weren’t together, I found myself breathless and flustered, like a woman who had been caught doing something for which she felt sheepish, but not sorry.
In early June, Sep said she had a few free days. We should go away: someplace local, but out of the city. I thought it’d be a bed and breakfast-type thing, but after the driver spent forty-five minutes up 65 before turning onto a dirt road, I got nervous, gripping the door handle until I saw it. Then, I could barely wait for him to shift into park before jumping out. Sep was standing on the steps: gabardine shirt, cutoffs, sandals—the most unassuming outfit ever for this place. I threw my legs out of the car and ran to her, holding down the back of my short dress. I was happy I’d packed the stilettos to put on later.
“The Congo House? Are you kidding me?”
“You like it? I figured you’d appreciate it, since you’re a writer.”
The Congo House was a former plantation owned by the Cannens, who’d built it in the early 1800s and had kept it through half of the 19s, when the poet Mabel Pierce Cannen died requesting it be made into a writers’ colony for single women. They could live there however long they wanted. Some stayed for decades. Then, sometime in the 90s, it was bought by millionaires from Kinshasa, who renovated it and reopened it as a venue space that still hosted short-term residencies. I’d only seen photos online. Up close, it was gorgeous: a sprawling, gilded castle.
Had I shown up under different circumstances, I’d have marveled at all the places I could write. Now, I was just looking for spots to recline, places for Sep to spread me like a map and trace whatever route she wanted to take, or to lift my legs over her shoulders and push a strap into me until I sobbed with happiness. All these velvet cushions, I thought. All these wall-length windows overlooking fields. My God.
In the kitchen, she showed me where I could find sustenance. The fridge was packed with prepared gourmet meals: lemon-topped salmon, marinating filets with crocks of chimichurri. Cut fresh fruit in heavy glass bowls.
“Raspberries,” she said. “A bird told me you like raspberries. Maybe we could puree them and make drinks.”
I bristled at the distant memory of that day at the café. I wanted to pretend Kit and the ones she’d brought to me never existed. That Sep and I met the way all lovers meet: by chance. I just showed up someplace, and there she was.
“This is amazing,” I said, getting breathless again. “Thank you.”
“Thank you back,” she said, “for spending time with me.” She grabbed my ass, fingers gathering my already-high hem. “I know what else you like. Let’s go upstairs.”
. . .
Congo House was the best weekend of my life. We’d spent time in all these dark places and now, we were finally in broad daylight, albeit still unseen. But we could share meals in the morning: breakfast in bright rooms, sunlight on silverware and Sep’s naked body. Mine. We lay tangled on the porch in the evenings. I recited Cummings and Dante Rosetti from memory. She read passages from Zami and snippets of Machado. She asked me what kind of books I wanted to write.
“The kind that make people feel the way I felt at sixteen listening to Mia X. Powerful. Endless.”
She was sweeping her hand distractingly over my thigh, slung across her lap.
“That’s why people pray, I think. Why they come to religion. To tap into power.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Art can be religious.”
“I think that’s right.” She pecked me on the cheek, like a tiny gift for giving a good answer.
“And love. For some people, love is a religion,” I said.
“Maybe. It’s similar in that the distance between what we love and who we are is so vast sometimes. From here to God.”
I thought of the women on my roster, how they went back to sterile houses and men who knew nothing about pleasing them, but they insisted on loving them anyway. “Only when you let it be,” I said. “Would you ever love like that?”
She looked out onto the grounds for a minute, then fully to me, her voice steady, but low.
“Every person I love, I’m somehow estranged from,” she said. “The life I’ve chosen, that’s what it requires.”
I thought about her grandfather and the still-living men in her family. Maybe they had chosen to distance themselves from the woman she’d become: a shorn enigma I was falling in love with even though I didn’t fully know her.
In the mornings, I would wake up early. The curtains were never closed, so I lay on my back, legs still open, watching the sun come up over Sep’s face. As sinewy as she was, her features were fine as fingerprints: pinch of a nose, scratch of a Cupid’s bow, heart-shaped mouth pink as penny candy. When her lashes fluttered, I closed my eyes quickly, holding my breath until I could feel hers on my face.
“I know you’re awake, Nebi.” She’d pop a kiss on my lips and head to the bathroom.
On the last morning, I awoke to her sitting up in bed, staring out of the large windows onto the land.
“Hello,” she said. It was almost a whisper.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. Her face was placid, but there was something solemn in it. “You okay?”
”Yeah. Just trying to commit all this to memory.”
I smiled. “That’s what you’ve been catching me doing every morning.”
“Did it work?”
“Not enough for me to want to leave here.”
Sep closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Me neither.”
. . .
I left first, the car scheduled to pick me up at noon, her at four. She had to meet the cleaners there, pay the balance. I kissed her deeply, right in front of the driver, pushing myself into her hungrily. I wanted to see her tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.
“Let me know when you make it back,” I whispered into her mouth, kissing her again.
She smiled, skimmed my back with her hand, squeezed one of my buttocks and tapped the top of the car when she shut me inside.
. . .
After the first week, I got frantic.
—Kit, where is she? Is she ok?
No answer.
—Fucking call me, Kit. Or tell her to. This is some bullshit.
Still nothing. I tried Sep again, texting every sweet name I could think of. Maybe I’d done something at the house. I wanted to curse, but I didn’t want to make her angry. When I finally called, the phone was out of service. A burner, which I already knew.
It was seventeen days before I saw it, accidentally, while reading the Times newsletter:
“Vows: Two scions of Evangelicalism tie the knot in a lavish ceremony.”
“Why the fuck would they cover something like that?” I thought, but I clicked on the link anyway.
And there it was.
“On Saturday, Malkishua Williams and September Swayne, who goes by her middle name, Renée, exchanged vows in a lavish private ceremony at the Congo House, outside Nashville. The groom is the son of megachurch pastor, Jonathan Williams, and the heir-apparent to his father’s renowned pulpit, which includes satellite ministries around the world. Ms. Swayne, granddaughter of the late Paul Swayne, who built a broadcasting juggernaut that includes the first Black-owned Christian news outlet, Swayne Outreach Network (SON), is putting her international relations degree to good use, working in global outreach for her family’s media empire.”
And there, standing hand in hand with a clean-cut, wide-jawed man who looked like he came straight out of Getty Images, stood Sep in a tastefully tailored engagement dress, nude heels, full face of makeup, and a lace-front wig that looked like she’d grown the hair out of her own head since I’d last seen her. Her fiancé was looking up at the camera, laughing, while she was smiling down at the broom at their feet. Its handle was wrapped in Joseph’s Coat roses the color of her dress.
I took a screenshot and sent it to Kit.
—you fucking knew.
Almost immediately, she texted back.
—you knew too. But you forgot what I told you. You got caught up. Now you’ve been broken in.
—fuck you, Kit. I’m not a goddamn horse.
—No. You’re a woman who knows better.
Then: Now, every time you think about falling you’ll remember. This was the gauntlet. And you passed. Everything else will be easy.
A few seconds later: Welcome to the team.
I fired back: Did Sep know you were using her? me? Us?
—Would the answer make you feel any better?
I looked at the phone for a long time before getting up and placing it gingerly on the dresser. Then I crawled back to my bed and cried like a baby.
Two days later, I was checking my email by phone when a new one popped up. I almost deleted it; it looked like spam that had slipped into my primaries. The subject line said simply: “Apply.” I opened it to make sure it didn’t contain anything interesting.
“Dear Nebula,” it read, “My name is Brigitte Morgenstern, and I was introduced to your work by a colleague. I’d like to reach out to invite your application to the Adair Fellowship, a prestigious….” She didn’t have to tell me what I already knew. The Adair was $150,000 and you didn’t have to do a damn thing to earn it except write. There was another ten g’s or so for travel, but you didn’t even have to relocate. It was exclusive—applications were by invitation only—and from where I’d been sitting, elusive as hell. I skipped to the bottom, where she ended with, “If you have questions, I’d be happy to chat with you. My cell number is below, and I am available whenever you’re ready. I do hope you take this opportunity to at least reach out. The selection committee would review your submission with great interest.” Below her name was a string of titles: Advisory Board Member, the Adair Foundation; Fundraising Committee Chair, the Newcastle Literary Festival; Interim Executive Director, the Cannen Foundation.
I read the email over and over again. I wanted to feel outrage, but all I felt was grief, and something else: a tightening, a cementation. If this is what it was, then so be it. I took the last image I had of Sep jogging back up the Congo House steps, her back straight, calves cabled and oiled, hands in her pockets like the casual orchestrator she was. I shuffled it into a deck of other faces, other bodies. Then I copied the number listed in the email, and dialed.
Love this piece.
Wow I loved this. I want a whole book of it!!