It was Teelah's first night in her new apartment in the city. She was lying in bed, beads of sweat were forming over the muscular legs she spent so many years honing in gyms for countless hours, the legs that were the source of her powerful physical presence, the legs that tossed and turned her in her tortured twisted dreams. Teelah dreamed of a girl, the same girl, every night. Her nightmares, her fantasies, her dreams were all swirled into one. In the depths of her slumber Teelah was back in high school. She and Loretta were back in the school yard.
"Who does that racist bitch think she is?" thought Teelah before receiving the beating of the century. In her dream it was, it always was, just as it was in reality. Every blow felt real. Every punch. Every kick. The humiliation of begging for mercy on her knees made her palpitate viscerally as she looked up at her challenger. Black braids hanging neatly at her shoulders. The afternoon sun hit the girl's dark brown eyes from the side, giving them an otherworldly appearance. Teelah wondered how such a compact girl could have been such a violent aggressor against herself, the special Teelah, with her thick muscular physique, her sassy attitude. All the other girls in town followed her, but not Loretta. Loretta was from the city. And the view of Loretta from Teelah's knees was changing something in Teelah. Fear was intermingling with excitement, excitement with fantasy, but it was not something Teelah could put her finger on just yet. It was so amorphous that she awoke in a sweat, the memory of her dream faded like an ice cube melting in her hot hand. It was nothing more than an intangible memory of a strange and curiously developing seed in her. She got up and got a glass of water, washed her sweaty face, and tried to fall back asleep, but only tossed and turned, her brow wrinkled as if to aid her in trying to place her finger back upon her mixed emotions.
Back in high school, Loretta was the only black girl in town, but here in the city there was a much larger black population. When Teelah went shopping for house wares the next day, for her new apartment, she came across several black women. She was ashamed to admit that every time she passed a black woman she felt a sense of fear in the pit of her stomach. But just as in her dream, that fear was mingled with excitement and while a part of her wanted to run from these women a braver, more daring, and simultaneously more naïve side of her was drawn to them, wanted to present herself to them as an object of challenge in contrast.
That night Teelah showered, pulled her shoulder length, brunette hair back into a ponytail, and slipped into a pair of blue boxers and a white tank top. As she prepared dinner for herself, using some of her new kitchen appliances, she let her thoughts freely contemplate the black women she saw that day in town. She thought about how she felt towards them, how each and every one of them brought forth varying degrees of visceral responses from her. She imagined what it would have been like if she had walked up to one of them, and presented herself as a challenger, as she had fantasized about during the day. She wanted revenge on Loretta. She wanted to show those black girls who was really the boss. But in every scene she worked out in her mind, in every scene the black girls gained control over her.
Even in her own fantasies they dominated her. She ruminated over these fantasies, circled them about in her head repeatedly. The more they ran through her mind, the more she began to enjoy them. She created an inkling of a connection with her experience with Loretta and her new found fantasies. She dreamed up scenarios of humiliation, of bondage, of masochism. Before she knew it, it was time for slumber. Teelah wished for nightmares.
The next morning she awoke, sadly, with no recollection of the previous night's dreams but did have a marvelous idea over coffee.
"A black roommate," she thought. But how would she go about obtaining one? And how would she find the right type, because not all black women elicited as strong a response from her as others. She wanted to feel that feeling all the time. She decided to place an ad in the paper. She knew she couldn't get away with asking for a black roommate, that would provoke too much questioning, so she simply posted that she did not discriminate racially.
Teelah interviewed many women, many of whom were black, but none of whom fit the bill. None of them gave her that feeling she sought, those fantasies. They were all too nice once she got to know them. Too sweet. Teelah wanted to be the sweet one. After a weekend of interviewing Teelah had to get out of the apartment and get herself a coffee drink at the coffee shop a few blocks down. She thought she'd walk to clear her head. With every step she took she felt her fantasies slipping away and her heart breaking a little. Maybe she was a little crazy for wanting such things. As she walked she noticed a slightly older black woman in braids stapling a flier to a wooden pole. She had that urge to walk up to her and present herself. Something in her snapped. Maybe it was because this woman looked like an older Loretta, with her neat braids and dark, dark eyes. She read the flier aloud to herself in the black woman's presence.
"Room wanted for rent. Two females," said Teelah.
"Yeah," the woman said. "Me and my sister."
"I have a room for rent. Real close," Teelah said, pulling off a pre-cut tab with the woman's phone number. "I'm going for coffee. You wanna come interview with me?" The black woman sized Teelah up. Teelah's legs in tight stretchy jeans, feet in sneakers, her waist accentuated by a feminine tee-shirt. Teelah's hair was pulled back neatly into a pony tail.
"I'm Comfort," said the woman, "I'm from Louisiana. I'd be moving in with my sister."
"Oh," said Teelah, "What a nice accent. What's your sister's name?"
"Oh. She's younger than me. So everyone always just called her Sis." The two ladies went off to coffee. They talked about jobs. Teelah worked at a designer boutique on commission. People gravitated towards her on account of her body, but she was sure it was her sales prowess that earned her the big bucks. Comfort was a bank associate, who also earned commissions on accounts and mortgages she sold. Teelah was sweet. She knew this about herself. It was a source of confidence for her. It allowed people to be comfortable with her. They often told her things, things they normally wouldn't tell other people. Teelah considered herself a keeper of secrets, and, as such, she considered it her duty not to judge people. After all. We all had our secrets. In Comfort's presence, Teelah was well aware of her own dark secret.
