19

Nineteen
Tenderness contains an element of sadness. It’s not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived, but it is the natural situation of fullness. You feel so full and rich, as if you were about to shed tears. Your eyes are full of tears, and the moment you blink, the tears will spill out of your eyes and roll down your cheeks. In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart.” --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Hadassah leaned against the door frame, watching a curled up Adrienne mindlessly gaze at a rerun of the Cosby Show. When she had left her it had been an old Roseanne. Apparently she had been arguing with Reuel for half an hour. Hadassah crawled onto the bed next to Adrienne. She stroked matted red curl. It hadn’t been washed for days. “Come on baby girl. Let’s go take a bath.” She stood and pulled Adrienne to her feet. Adrienne followed Hadassah to the bathroom, clasping her left hand gently. Hadassah dropped Adrienne’s hand and began to run the bath water. Adrienne propped herself up against the doorframe. Hadassah added Jasmine bath and shower gel; the water began to rise, thick with suds.
Hadassah turned to face Adrienne, her eyes filled with a tenderness in the place of the usual lust, catching Adrienne off guard. She averted her eyes and stared at the blue linoleum floor. Hadassah approached her slowly. She ran her hands gently down Adrienne’s shoulders, stopping at the hem of the pink T-shirt. Holding Adrienne’s murky gaze, she lifted it softly over her head. Next she knelt on the floor and unzipped Adrienne’s jeans. Adrienne slipped out of them slowly. Her delicate hands slipped down Adrienne’s panties, making an effort to remove them without it being overwhelmingly sexual. She stood and turned slightly, tossing the purple bikini panties into the corner where she had thrown the rest of Adrienne’s clothes. When she turned back, Adrienne stood less than a foot away from her. She ran her hands up the front of Hadassah’s T-shirt, feeling the warmth of her breasts. She then lifted it gingerly over Hadassah’s head. Reaching down she unbuttoned Hadassah’s black jeans. Once again, no underwear.
The bathtub was large enough that both Hadassah and Adrienne could have sat at opposite ends. Instead, Hadassah sat near the faucet with Adrienne’s back to her. Slowly she massaged the Jasmine scented shampoo into Adrienne’s hair, beginning at the roots. Adrienne’s hair hung to the middle of her back when it was dry. It was at least a couple inches longer when wet. Gingerly Hadassah gathered up the ends and piled all the hair in one sudsy pile on top of Adrienne’s head. Turning around she grasped the spray attachment she had fixed to the faucet. Adrienne leaned her head back as Hadassah effortlessly rinse out all the shampoo.
Adrienne sat on Hadassah’s lap. Facing her, she ran a hot sponge across Hadassah’s mocha shoulders; She stared intently at the little beads of water that collected and scattered themselves across her skin. The sponge ran along the hollows of Hadassah’s neck, hollows that Adrienne’s moist lips would later trace. She ran the sponge along Hadassah’s arms, across her ample breasts and down her stomach, memorizing the contours of her glorious body. Hadassah caught Adrienne’s chin with her right hand; holding her steady, Hadassah gave her lips a full, wet massage with her hungry mouth. She ran her smooth, manicured fingertips over each breast, causing each nipple to harden, each individually, each in its own accord with sensory response to her seductive touch. Adrienne ran her fervent tongue over Hadassah’s abundant lips. Parting her lips, she passionately returned Adrienne’s kiss; she pulled away abruptly, as if suddenly aware of something that she hadn’t been before. Adrienne’s eyes darkened slightly, becoming a deep, stormy grey instead of a light hazel. Hadassah searched their murky depths willfully, aware that somewhere behind them lay things that she might not be able to handle or would later regret that she knew. It was then that she spoke, as she lightly traced the curves of Adrienne’s mouth with her elegant fingers. “I don’t know whether I’m supposed to ask you to tell me or whether I’m supposed to wait for you to tell me of your own accord. When I see something that I want I take it, simple as that, with no equivocation involved. I could be a storm that takes you by force, without thought as to what exactly I am acquiring. If you were just some random fuck then that’s exactly what I would do; but you’re not, because if you were you wouldn’t still be here. If this is what we’re going to do, I’m going to need to know what’s going on. I need some answers Adrienne. I can’t just ignore whatever the hell is going down.”
Adrienne lay down in the water, her head resting on the wall of the bathtub. Her eyes had glazed over, not in an unconscious way, but in a way that almost seemed hyper-conscious. It was like the glaze was there to filter out bright sparks that threatened to burst forth at any moment. “There are days when the sun wakes me up and the first thought in my head is, Goddamn it to hell, why did I have to wake up? The sun spills across my body and it’s like it’s taunting me with life. Look you sorry piece of shit, you still have breath in your lungs. Doctors always tell you, stay regular with your medication, otherwise how will the intensity of these feelings be lowered? The intensity of my feelings? Did it ever occur to them that I wouldn’t like to have them at all? That maybe it’s better to wake up to nothingness than to wake up to something that you know will never work properly for you? Sure you exist, but what kind of an existence is it if you know that it will never be fully what it is for everyone else, because everyone else can function on a higher level than you can. Everyone else gets out of bed in the morning and they think, hey, maybe I’ll wear red today or eat chocolate cake for breakfast or pizza or Chinese food. They think of all the things they have to do in their day and what they have to look forward to at night. I think, maybe I’ll lie here in the floor long enough that because I don’t get up to go to the bathroom I’ll self induce kidney failure. Maybe in a few hours I’ll get enough strength to get up out of the floor and go take some of everything toxic in the house. Maybe this time Jamar will leave his ass at home and not come barging in on a mission to save me. It isn’t about me; it’s about having someone to save. Someone to make him feel useful, to make him feel like his affection isn’t misguided. Something that makes him feel that he’s not just some insignificant spec in the universe. You said he was a patriarchal bastard, and he is. He automatically binds himself to a woman that he feels needs taking care of; she is second rate and he is first rate because he exists on a higher functioning level. I don’t want to be taken care of because I need taking care of. I want it to matter to someone what happens because they believe in me, not because they believe that my existence somehow equates that theirs is higher, that my sole purpose is to demonstrate their superiority. Sometimes the medicine helps; sometimes I get out of the bed, put on my clothes, and vanquish the day because I am woman, I am empowered, and somewhere in the universe I have a purpose. But those days are so far and few in between. Sometimes I think I’ve lost them, like you lose the end of the rainbow when the sun shines too brightly. I lose them, and I don’t know how to get them back.”