Vicki Runninghawk

I brushed off the bits of bark and leaf clinging to her clothes.
From high up in the nose of the rocket slide, I could make out my house on the other side of the grass field.

I heard her breaths quicken, and I felt her racing heart against the side of my hand.

We were silent again for a while.

She stood perfectly balanced on the steel beam.

I took off all my clothes.

I could blot it out with a fingertip.

Under an awning of branches.

For the millionth time I considered calling Vicki, but how could I? What would I say to her? "Hi. Do you remember that night we laid together?"


I looked at my watch. It was later than I thought.

We walked back to the playground mostly in silence.

She stepped behind a bush to pee.

Then I picture how it's going to look telling my parents, show them the stained underwear, describe the stinging sensation, ask them to please bring me to the hospital.

I can't do it. Instead, I go to Donny's house and ask his mother to take me to the clinic.

No way, I think, could she not have known.

It felt good to share it with someone.

Mostly I just wanted to talk to someone. Anyone.

In the shower, after seeing my penis excrete the gel-like substance, I worried about what my family would say.

Her clothes reeking of pot.

Her lips tasted of smoke.

But before any of this, that afternoon,

***

When I was sixteen I was gifted a gentle strain of gonorrhea by a girl named Vicki Runninghawk. Older than me by a year, Vicki was a couple inches taller than me with oddly wide hips that gave her a suggestive gait when she took those long strides of hers. She once feathered her straight black hair like the white girls did. But it didn't look quite right, hardening and squaring even moreso her already boxy face.

We weren't friends, not really, just a couple of kids who lived in the same neighborhood. She'd been three months staying in the only green House on Highland Road, which we all knew of course was where kids with problems were shuffled in and out of. Although I sometimes saw her with books shoved under her arms, I knew she didn't go to the city high school. Maybe she went to the nearby continuation school. Anyway, that's where most of the kids who lived in the green house went.

Sometimes, before that night she gave me the clap, I'd look out my bedroom window through the chain link fence and catch her hanging by herself at the elementary school playground behind my house. She'd be tucked high up in the caged tip of the rocketship slide, or on the swings with her long legs folded close and her feet dragging the sand, or else after kinking the chains as tight as she could, she'd let herself spin back into a normal sitting position. Once in a while I'd see Vicki over at Choi's 7-11, where we used to go to get our root beer Slurpees. One good thing about Choi's was that the old Korean didn't much care if you refilled your Slurpee, so we'd brainfreeze ourselves by sucking down half the cup then refill it before leaving the store. Another good thing was he never hassled you when you wanted to buy cigarettes. Just as long as you weren't in Choi's 7-11 loading your pockets, he was good people.

But like I said, me and Vicki didn't really know each other. She never smiled. Ever. Not that I know of, anyway. I mean, I don't ever recall her even giving one of those polite expressions people kind of flash when passing other people on the sidewalk just to acknowledge you see them.

The guys all thought she was a little crazy. But nobody said they wouldn't do her. Donny especially, who I'm sure had the hots for her but was too proud to say. Manuel, on the otherhand, told us he'd been over at the Gable Street apartments and saw her tangled up tight with an airman from the nearby base. He said they were practically doing it under the crabapple trees that shaded the the complex swimming pool we'd been chased out of a million times.

The night I got the clap from Vicki, I'd ran into her just after leaving Donny's place. I was cutting through the elementary school playground, headed home.

I didn't know she was even around. I had my hands pocketed and was kicking the sand with the toes of my K-Marts when she gave me a start, calling down from where she was crouched high in the tip of the rocket slide.

"Hey!" she said. "Hey."

I stopped and glanced up and saw her piled up close against the bars of the little compartment in the tip of the rocketship slide. She said, "You got matches?"

"Matches?" I patted my front jeans pocket, felt the square matchbook and fished them out. Holding them up in front of me, I said, "Matches, right?"

"Could you bring them up?"



Vicki Runninghawk gave me the clap. I was sixteen. She was a year older. A lanky girl with wide hips who never smiled. Never. She had straight black hair. Once she wore it feathered like the white girls did. But it didn't look quite right.

Vicki lived with her parents and five older brothers in the blue house around the corner. We weren't boyfriend and girlfriend or anything like that. Not even close friends. Just casual friends. We used to see each other hanging around the neighborhood. Sometimes at the Choi's 7-11. Sometimes at the elementary school, which didn't have a chain-link fence surrounding it back then. Sometimes I'd be sitting up high in the rocket slide, where I could see the entire neighborhood. Where I could look across the field and see the leaning fence of my own backyard. Sometimes I'd be on the swings, sitting there spinning, kinking up the chain that held the leather seat in place. My cheap K-Mart tennis shoes would scrape the sand. I'd write my name in the sand with my cheap K-Mart tennis shoes. Actually, that's what I was doing the night Vicki Runninghawk gave me the clap.

Vicki Runninghawk had a boyfriend, she said. He was an airman at the nearby Air Force base. He lived in the Gable Street apartments behind the 7-11. He was from Mississippi and Vicki said he said he'd marry her. Maybe. She said he took her virginity. She said he was gentle. She didn't want to do it, she said.

Vicki had a joint. She said she got it from her mother's hobo purse. I had matches. So we lit and toked and inhaled and got a little buzzed. We watched cars zip by in a blur on the other side of the gate. The streetlights came on while we sat there in the tip of the rocket. There was a funhouse. A kind of barrel you could walk in that kept going round and round. If someone walked faster, the inside of the barrel would spin faster, too. And if you didnt' keep up you'd fall.

I don't know what we were talking about. Just talking. Next thing I knew she was close against me. Then she took her gum out of her mouth and flicked it between the bars. I didn't see it land in the sand below. Then we were kissing. My eyes were closed and my hands were exploring, moving all over her softness.

We came down the rocket ship. With our arms linked, we walked along the perimeter of the school, the backyard fences of people's homes. We found a place in the grass full of shadows. That's where Vicki, under an inverted, frowning moon, gave me the clap.

Afterward I got up, left her alone and went back to the playground and climbed the ladder to the top of the rocket slide. A short time later Vicki came up the stairs and sat next to me. She held my hand. The breeze blew and her hair lifted, floated in the scant light a moment before falling again. Her head fell against my chest and she was crying.

***

Next day at school me and Vicki didn't look at each other during class. She kept her head down. I kept mine down, too. The teacher droned on. That night I began to drip.


***


The doctor at the hospital said I had gonohrrea. I can still feel the scraping out of a sample. I can still feel the gelatinous antibodies injected into my behind. I can still hear myh mother crying. Then shouting. Then slamming doors and demanding I tell her who gave me the clap.

I didn't tell her.

But I did tell Donny. This was when he was still my best friend and we were in his bedroom. He'd just finished a car model and he said he didn't believe me. I showed him the bottle of penicillen.

This was before the night Donny gave me his last dime and I flipped it and it stuck in the dish and I picked out the big stuffed lion. Donny wanted it. Wanted to give it to his mother. I told him no. I brought it home. Gave it to my sister. She sat on its back and a couple days later it was so sagged.

This was before Donny asked me if the new girl in his apartment complex, Kimmy, was pretty. I said she was. Then I started dating her.

This was before I dumped Kimmy and came to Donny's house and found her on the sofa with him. She got up quick, threw on her sweater, and rushed past me. She was crying. The door slammed shut and Donny was looking at his feet.

"You're not with her anymore, right?"

"That's right. I'm not with her."

We smoked a couple joints and watched cartoons. The cartoon about the singing frog who wouldn't sing at the auditions.

This was before I joined the Navy and found out that Donny had saved a girl from being raped at a party. He pulled a gun.

This was before I got an email one afternoon saying Donny had been shot dead outside his Oklahoma City apartment. His roommate did it. Shot him dead.

Donny promised not to tell anyone. But back then promises got thrown around like baseballs. I dont' know why we even made them, or expected other people to make them.

He ended up telling Manuel. That was like telling everyone.

***

She stood at her open locker and I came up to her. She didn't look at me. She kept fidgeting with the stuff in her locker. There was a magazine poster on the inside door of Tony DeFranco.

"You gave me something bad," I said.

She shook her head. "I know. I mean, I didn't know then."

"I got cured," I said.

"You hate me."

"No," I said.

She shook her head and slammed her locker shut. Someone had used a magic market to scribble on the steel face of the locker. Sleep with Runninghawk. Get Runny Cock.

"Well," she said, struggling to keep her voice from shattering. "I hate me."

She walked away and I turned glaring to Donny. He said, "I didn't tell nobody."

"Liar."

"Only Manuel."

"Then you told everybody," I said. "You're an asshole, Donny. You know that?"

"I'm sorry man."

"A real asshole."

***

Before the week was over, Vicki Runninghawk had dropped out of school. Someone in the neighborhood said she moved to North Dakota to live with some relatives. A 'For Sale' sign popped up in the front yard of the blue house on Highland Street. Nobody was buying houses back then. The grass dried up and grew high. One night we took Manuel's truck and pulled 'For Sale' Signs out of a dozen yards in the neighborhood. We jammed them all in front of Vicki's house.

Donny still asked me, after she was gone, if I'd really done her. I told him I didn't. "Liar," he said. "You did her."

I still have the penicillin bottle in the top drawer of my desk. No pills left, though. Just the empty bottle. My name on the label above the doseage. The underwear had to be thrown out, of course. My mother never brought it up again. Nor did I. Until now.

Pink bubbles blooming between her lips