Page 138 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

HERCULES WAS WAITING on the staircase that led up to her room, his legs

stretched all along the step, his feet jammed into two slots in the banister. He
was reading one of the books Flor had left at Bettencourt headquarters: for
colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. When he
saw her he scrambled to his feet and hit his head on the stone ceiling. She felt his
pain, so she patted his shoulder as he went by; he took her hand and followed her
up the stairs until she came to a halt.
“What?”

“Is this yours?” he asked, holding up the book.
“No.”
“But you’ve read it?”
“Yup.”
“It’s great, isn’t it? It sort of rocks you . . . reading it is sort of like reading

from a cradle hung up in the trees, and the trees rock you with such sorrow, and
as the volume turns up you realize that the trees are rocking you whilst deciding
whether to let you live or die, and they’re sorry because they’ve decided to
smash you to pieces . . .”
“But then you’re put back together again, in a wholly different order . . .”
“And it hurts so much you don’t know if the new order will work.”
“It’ll heal. It has to hurt before it heals, don’t you think?”

He was smiling at her again. He hadn’t let go of her hand yet. It was nice until
he invited her to the Bettencourt dinner. She hesitated for a surprising length of
time (surprising to her, anyway) before she said: “Herc, I can’t.”
He wasn’t daunted; she’d shortened his name, that had to mean something!
“You’re a Homely Wench. I’m not saying I understand all that that entails, but I
don’t think the Bettencourters and the Wenches are that far apart in the way they

see things anymore. Laughs, snacks, and cotching, yeah? And we have a journal
too: a journal read only by us. Can’t we read each other’s? I know you want me
to pretend you don’t look like anything much, but you’re a beauty. Sorry. You
are. Just come to the dinner, come and meet the Bettencourters and actually talk
to them, come and meet the people they think are beauties too. We’re not like
last century’s Bettencourt Society. I guarantee you’ll be surprised.”
They both laughed at this closing speech of his. She didn’t want to blush but

blushed anyway, and he saw that. He thought she was a beauty! What a
wonderful delusion. And she liked the idea of the Societies reading each other’s
journals. She could just about imagine putting on a slinky dress and going along
to this little dinner, making the acquaintance of his brothers in charisma and the