Loving Donovan by Bernice L. McFadden

Author:Bernice L. McFadden [McFadden, Bernice L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2015-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

JANUARY

Like every New Year’s Eve before that, Donovan found himself surrounded by family, a little less than sober, wearing a colorful, pointed paper hat, his lips moving from plastic horn to Hennessy-filled plastic cup in short intervals, his ears filled with the sounds of music, conversation, and laughter.

Paper plates heavy with chitterlings, black-eyed peas, and collard greens littering everything with a flat surface. Not a dirty piece of clothing in the house and the seventy-eight of “Auld Lang Syne” ready and waiting on the record player.

Everything had been done just so, in order to secure good luck, health, and fortune in the New Year.

He wondered as he wandered through the crowd of relatives if this would be the year that the dreams would stop and the voice would die.

Would this be the year the fear and uneasiness that had settled itself on him like a second skin was finally shed?

He was a grown man, but he still got the sweats and shakes whenever he had to go down into that basement.

The chair was still there and the small table next to it. The twin bedframe, skeletal without the mattress, had been propped upright against the wall.

Donovan would stand there, trying to catch his breath and keep the sweat out of his eyes, but his hands would shake and his lips tremble, and he had to fight with everything in him to keep from running back up the stairs.

He talked to himself while he searched for whatever it was Grammy wanted from downstairs. He needed to hear the sound of his own voice, because without it, Clyde’s whispers would fill his ears.

“Ain’t you got no woman yet?” “When you gonna get married and make some babies, man!” “You ain’t getting any younger.”

His relatives pelted their questions and smart-ass comments at him like stones.

That was the other problem with these gatherings. He wondered if that problem might be attached to the first, but wasn’t sure about that and couldn’t bring himself to find out from a professional, a psychologist, because that might mean he was crazy or something worse, and maybe the doctor might want to prescribe pills or electric shock or hypnosis to unearth this thing that had him terrified of the basement, this thing that didn’t allow him to trust or to love.

That’s what Delia had told him. She’d screamed, “You don’t love me completely!”

Donovan pretended not to understand what she meant, but he knew. Three years earlier, Sandra had accused him of not fully loving her.

Nina had never had that complaint. Donovan had relinquished himself to her, and the wall that he lived behind had crumbled the first day he’d laid eyes on her.

He’d truly thought that she was the one.

Long, leggy, and copper colored, Nina was a wet dream in high heels.

He’d said hello to her one day as she passed by him on the sidewalk. He hadn’t expected a response; a woman who looked like that wouldn’t give him a second thought. But he’d spoken to her anyway, just because.

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