There You Are by Morais Mathea

Author:Morais, Mathea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Published: 2019-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

TRACK 4

Little Girl Blue

MINA’S HOUSE IN CLAYTON had a wild front lawn and a short, crumbling brick porch. Inside, it was warm and dusty and smelled like Nag Champa incense. On the walls, African masks, Chinese Buddhas, and oil paintings of white men in wigs followed Octavian up the three flights of stairs to Mina’s bedroom, where different, familiar eyes greeted him. Miles Davis’s wild eyes, and the sad eyes of Billie Holiday. Prince with his eyes curved and lined in charcoal, and Mick Jagger, his eyes closed.

“You like the Rolling Stones?” Octavian asked.

She blushed. “I love the Rolling Stones.”

“Frankie used to love them, too,” Octavian said, looking at her bookshelf. “Francis used to be a real classic rock head.”

“He’s not anymore?”

“Nah, Frankie stopped listening to music a long time ago.” Octavian walked slowly around the attic room. Mina could tell he was taking it in, saw it with his eyes—the candles on the windowsill, the bowl of dried flowers on her desk, the moth-eaten quilt on her four poster bed. She knew what he was looking for.

“Where are they?” he asked.

Mina pointed to the corner. “Over there.”

Octavian walked over and sat down at the desk that was right next to her bed. “Mina Rose’s personal record collection,” he said and smiled at her. “Watch out.”

It would have been easier for Mina to stand in front of him naked than to watch his hands—strong and slender, with clear nails and a long scar on his left hand in the shape of a V—flip through her records. Octavian pulled out Kanta’s battered copy of I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! and smiled his wide Octavian smile.

“This is an original,” he said.

“It was Kanta’s,” Mina said.

“Where’s she at?”

“Kanta? She’s asleep, or out, I don’t know.”

“She won’t care that I’m here?”

“Like I said, she doesn’t care about anything.”

Octavian blew on the end of the needle, and gently lowered it onto the record. The static crackled and he leaned back and closed his eyes. Janis sang into the room. Sang to Mina. Told her she was never going to be able to count on anything but the raindrops. Mina swallowed the feeling that it might be dangerous that Octavian could see into the barren place where she was still the little girl whose lunch fell apart in her backpack because the bread was so hard it broke. She wondered if maybe she should tell him to go home. But she told herself, she could see into that part of him too—where he was still a little boy, his hands dry and cold, his heart confused.

“I just realized something,” Mina said. Octavian looked up. From under her bed, she dragged a brown metal box and began looking through it. She pulled out yellowed pieces of paper, a string of pearls, some broken sea shells, and a small stack of birthday cards held together with a rubber band.

A ticket stub fell on the floor and Octavian picked it up. “This is from the Bobby Brown, New Edition, Salt-N-Pepa show.

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