The Novels of Gloria Naylor by Gloria Naylor

Author:Gloria Naylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

December 21st

Xavier Donnell was falling in love with a black woman. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. He was trying to remember when he had ever been this afraid. Why, it was worse than that summer at boy scout camp when he’d gotten his fly caught in the motor of the garbage compactor. And far worse than the report last year from the auto clinic that two of his transmission valves might be irreplaceable. At least he had been able to scream his way or buy his way out of those situations because he could pinpoint exactly where the danger lay. He had seen the iron gears chewing up the front of his shorts, smelled the oily teeth as they pulled him into the back of the machine. But when he looked at Roxanne Tilson, all he saw was a woman, no better or worse than the dozens of others who had flowed into and out of his life—soft where she should be, curved where he’d expect it, sweet behind the ears, mellow between the breasts, and pungent in that mystifying zone where the thighs joined the center of her body. She had flowed in that way but something was terribly wrong: she wasn’t flowing out. Somehow she had frozen around his liver, on the walls of his stomach, and in the cavities of his intestines; and she was dripping out much too slowly. When he found that it had become cold enough inside to affect his heart and cause a chill that made it shiver when he touched her, he tried to build up a series of heated arguments to melt her away: she’s too fat, too loud, too slow, and he always hated being kept waiting for anyone, especially a woman. But those fiery complaints didn’t help when he kneaded the full flesh on her thighs and stomach, or when the waiting became anticipation of the first, piercing note of her “sorry” that would engulf him in a symphony for the rest of the evening. Those damn shivers would return, leap on him unexpectedly over a plate of fettuccine or in a darkened theater, to remind him that something was happening inside that was beyond his control. Something that kept drawing him much too quickly into a center that held his first memory of love and fear: the dark, mellow texture of her female being. White chocolate, he’d think, burying his nose into her soft neck and nibbling upward toward the dimpled chin, seeking the hidden essence of cocoa that was embedded in the deep-yellow cream of her skin, that he could taste on his tongue, smell on his hands and arms. The colors and tints from the thighs that brought him into the world, the breasts that kept him alive and warm. The mindless plunge and search for the eternal circle that would let him die over and over in the cavity that gave him life.

But Xavier had come a long way from the womb.

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