{"id":850,"date":"2019-04-17T19:13:47","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T19:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/?p=850"},"modified":"2021-08-04T16:58:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T16:58:19","slug":"bless-her-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/2019\/04\/17\/bless-her-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Bless Her Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here was Michael and Susie\u2019s daughter at the lounge on Seventies Night, looking a hot ass mess with her hair uncombed and her arms looped around some white boy\u2019s neck. Even before I got a good look at her face, I recognized her from her laugh and her behind, both of which had come from Susie. I had been hearing for eighteen months that she\u2019d moved to Northeast and was milking her parents\u2019 friends for job leads, but I\u2019d managed not to run into her even once. That was how I just knew <\/em>the child would turn out to be a mess: The District\u2019s black intelligentsia is only so big, and I\u2019m no more than two degrees\u2019 separation from each of about twenty people any of whom could have gotten her a halfway decent gig at an agency somewhere. And yet we hadn\u2019t had a single encounter, planned or otherwise, in over a year of living in the same quadrant. She wasn\u2019t trying. But you better believe I had been keeping my makeup right, my hair slick, and my cuticles pushed. Just in case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And then here she was, in this bright yellow dress with nothing to it, slutty as all hell, and this white boy was handsome enough but didn\u2019t give two shits about her. You could tell from the way he was looking everywhere but at her body as she thrashed it around to the song. Which happened to have been a favorite of her daddy\u2019s a hundred years earlier. The beat would turn over and he\u2019d dip his body like a ladle into a pot of melted chocolate. So then you had to assume this child had gotten her sense of rhythm, or lack thereof, from Susie. Who used to stand in a corner somewhere like she had a violin\u2019s bow up her ass, her pretty face tight as she watched Michael dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I think that girl is the daughter of a friend of mine, I said to my date, and I got to my feet, my hips looping loosely to the music. I walked over to the bar with my glass in hand and parked right by her, asking the bartender for another refill. The girl was actually bent over at the waist, her delicate fingertips on the floor, the yellow dress covering almost nothing. Could there be an easier song to look good dancing to? And yet. Her date\u2019s eyes met mine as she ground her behind against his thighs. Help me, <\/em>he mouthed, a sardonic smile in his eye. He was cute, all right. But he didn\u2019t give two shits about her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You couldn\u2019t blame him for indulging it, though: Her hair was a horror, but she had that crackling prettiness, just like Susie\u2019s. He let her go like that through the whole first half of the song, till just before the Three Degrees came in, the mild interest on his face giving way to perplexity and then boredom, and then he leaned over and said something into her ear. She straightened up, panting a little as he walked away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I love your dress, I said so she\u2019d turn my way. So I could get a better look at her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Thanks, she said in Susie\u2019s voice, pulling at the hem. Her eyes, which followed the boy on his march to the men\u2019s room, were glassy but wide and lovely, a brown so dark you couldn\u2019t make out pupils, and ringed with half a pencil\u2019s worth of black liner. Something, finally, from Michael, whose eyes could submerge you in nighttime at any hour of the day. Susie\u2019s eyes had been that saditty amber color, and she\u2019d always done them up in green. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You\u2019re Michael and Suzette Lamb\u2019s daughter, I said. Aren\u2019t you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Now her eyes snapped my way, a cringe flickering across her face, and she gave her collar a little upward tug. Oh, she said, smiling politely. Trying to look less drunk. Well, yeah, actually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019m Cynthia Hazlett, I said. Your father and I were good friends in college. Aren\u2019t you just the prettiest thing! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I could see that my name didn\u2019t trigger one bit of recognition, but before I could blink she had arranged her face into an unimpeachable imitation of warmth and familiarity. Cynthia! she said, and hugged me. It was all so Susie, the falseness of it, the fact that you couldn\u2019t find evidence of its falseness anywhere. She told me her name, one of those androgynous nightmares my friends couldn\u2019t get enough of in the eighties, and said she lived up the block from the lounge. That she and the boy had been walking by and been lured in by the pulsing disco beat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            You\u2019re your father\u2019s child, I said. He never wanted to leave the party till the DJ was packing up. He wore holes in some of my favorite records. This one included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Haha, she said lightly. I just like a good beat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019m surprised your father didn\u2019t name you Lana, I said. He always talked about wanting a daughter named Lana. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Haha, she said again, rising to her toes to peer over my shoulder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            One of those things we\u2019d talked about on meandering walks around campus or maybe after sharing a joint in someone\u2019s dorm room. A son named Michael Junior and a daughter named Lana, which he said was the prettiest name he\u2019d ever heard. Michael Junior, maybe, but I\u2019ll never agree to Lana, I had said. Because of what it spells backward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Only an English major would ever notice that, he\u2019d said, rolling his dark eyes to the sky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            But still! I\u2019d said, laughing. You can give up now. I\u2019m never going to say yes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What do <\/em>you say yes to? he\u2019d asked, leaning in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Why of all the conversations we had over three years, that\u2019s <\/em>the one that stuck with me, who the hell knows. Except that later I caught myself wondering whether sociology-major Susie, who said no to plenty but couldn\u2019t spell any better forward than backward, was going to let him have his Lana. Whether that was part of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Where is he, Michael and Susie\u2019s daughter was muttering, fiddling with the yellow fabric over the place where the underwire of her bra would have been. If she were wearing one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Maybe there\u2019s a line, I offered. It hadn\u2019t been long; the same song was playing as when he\u2019d left. This was the part of it where Michael used to do eight surprise counts of the robot and then switch back into his graceful, slender-hipped hustle, his sculpted Afro spinning in perfect half-circles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            His daughter, now, was tripping over her own feet. Fuck, <\/em>she swore as her battered purse slipped off her shoulder and onto the ground; and then, \u2018Scuse me, Cynthia. Like I was going to call up her daddy and tell him. I leaned over and got it for her, noting the ridiculous height of her heels. She\u2019d gotten Susie\u2019s size, too, shorter than me even on three inches of cheap-looking wood. Thanks, she said in that same flat, unwaveringly polite voice as I handed the purse over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I haven\u2019t been in touch with Susie for a while, I said. Does she still play the violin? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            She stopped messing with her purse\u2019s busted zipper and looked up at me, all eyes, her lip twitching in a way I didn\u2019t recognize. Not Michael\u2019s or <\/em>Susie\u2019s. Oh, my mom? she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            She used to play so beautifully, I said. Your daddy said she made him learn to love real music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Oh, she said. My mom passed away a while ago. I mean, a pretty long time ago. When I was five. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            It\u2019s funny: As soon as she said it, I remembered hearing about it. Through the same grapevine that, twenty-five years later, would tell me the daughter was living in Northeast, struggling a little bit and looking for a halfway decent job. Michael suddenly a widower with two little girls, neither one named Lana, everyone dripping sadness and sympathy, a couple of my nearest and dearest actually warning me not <\/em>to reach out because it wasn\u2019t the time. Remember how you carried on at their wedding? Carmen had said. Don\u2019t put him through that same thing again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Which I wouldn\u2019t have. He had cut his hair by then, was living all the way up in Philadelphia, raising little girls. I was firmly established in the District, raising no one, too busy filling my 401(k) to worry about all the births and deaths clogging up the alumni newsletter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019m so sorry, I said; and, Let me get your next drink. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Okay, she said, slinging the strap of her purse over one shoulder. It\u2019s whisky and soda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            What Susie would think, I thought as I ordered it, upgrading her to the top-shelf stuff. Susie, who wore her hems long and her shirts buttoned all the way up her pretty neck. Who wouldn\u2019t touch a drop of anything when we all piled into someone\u2019s room and shared two six-dollar bottles of wine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Is it her? asked my date when I returned to my seat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Sure is, I said, drumming my fingertips over his knuckles. We both watched for a while as she stood there, sipping her expensive drink and grabbing uncomfortably at the elastic around her d\u00e9colletage. As the song ended and the DJ switched over to something from the eighties, something he was trying to pass off as disco. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Did her man leave? asked my date after a while. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I checked the time and saw that more than ten minutes had passed. Looks like maybe, I said. We watched her slam her empty glass onto the bar, wobble a bit on her heels, lift her phone to her face. Texting and backspacing with unsteady fingers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Stupid man, said my date. Leaving a pretty girl like that alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Well, for sure, I said, stroking his linen-clad shoulder. But, bless her heart, the child has no rhythm. She can\u2019t dance worth a damn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Well, when you put it that way, said my date, lacing his fingers through mine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shannon Sanders <\/strong>is a DC-area writer and attorney. Her fiction has been featured in Puerto del Sol\u2019s Black Voices Series<\/em> and is forthcoming in Slice<\/em> and Juked<\/em>. She was a 2019 finalist for One Story\u2019s <\/em>inaugural Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here was Michael and Susie\u2019s daughter at the lounge on Seventies Night, looking a hot ass mess with her hair uncombed and her arms looped around some white boy\u2019s neck. Even before I got a good look at her face,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[22270],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1223,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}