Delores Jepps

It seems insane now, but she’d be standing soaked in schoolday morning light, her loose-leaf notebook, flickering at the bus stop, and we almost trembled at the thought of her mouth filled for a moment with both of our short names. I don’t know what we saw when we saw her face, but at fifteen there’s so much left to believe in, that a girl with sunset in her eyes, with a kind smile, and a bright blue miniskirt softly shading her bare thighs really could be The Goddess. Even the gloss on her lips sighedKiss me and you’ll never do homework again. Some Saturdays my ace, Terry, would say, “Guess who was buying Teaberry gum in the drugstore on Stenton?” And I could see the sweet epiphany still stunning his eyes and I knew that he knew that I knew he knew I knew— especially once summer had come, and the sun stayed up till we had nothing else to do but wish and wonder about fine sistas in flimsy culottes and those hotpants! James Brown screamed about: Crystal Berry, Diane Ramsey, Kim Graves, and her. This was around 1970: Vietnam to the left of us, Black Muslims to the right, big afros all over my Philadelphia. We had no idea where we were, how much history had come before us—how much cruelty, how much more dying was on the way. For me and Terry, it was a time when everything said maybe, and maybe being blinded by the beauty of a tenth grader was proof that, for a little while, we were safe from the teeth that keep chewing up the world. I’d like to commend my parents for keeping calm, for not quitting their jobs or grabbing guns and for never letting up about the amazing “so many doors open to good students.” I wish I had kissed Delores Jepps. I wish I could have some small memory of her warm and spicy mouth to wrap these hungry words around. I would like to have danced with her, to have slow-cooked to a slow song in her sleek, toffee arms: her body balanced between the Temptations’ five voices and me—a boy anointed with puberty, a kid with a B average and a cool best friend. I don’t think I’ve ever understood how lonely I am, but I was closer to it at fifteen because I didn’t know anything: my heart so near the surface of my skin I could have moved it with my hand.