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The pedal push that was supposed to send her somewhere quickly actually split the chain. There was a click and then the bike simply stopped moving. Zena’s insistence on continuing her pedaling sent her and the bike, rather quickly and very dramatically, to the hot tar pavement, where she really hoped she would die.
“Lord, she done fainted,” Zena heard a man’s voice say, so she knew she hadn’t actually died, which was a letdown.
“No, she didn’t. I think she just fell,” she heard a woman’s voice say, and she knew it was the mother, who’d been standing by the car, because as she looked up from the ground, she could see the woman’s coral espadrilles rushing toward her.
Soon, the family of four was gathered around Zena as if she was a fallen angel. Worry was on everyone’s face. Everyone but the boy who looked her age. He was smiling. Almost laughing at the sight.
Zena was quiet, quieter than she’d ever been in life. She watched as the four fussed over her, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. The father discovered that it was the broken chain that sent her tumbling to the ground, but he kept saying something about the heat and that it was too hot for anyone to be riding a bicycle at 3 p.m. And didn’t she know that? The mother tried to quiet him after sending the little boy into the house for water.
She asked, “Where are your parents, honey? You live around here?” Her voice was Southern sweet. She sounded as if she could get anything from anyone. Zena had never heard a woman sound quite like that. It made her instantly like the woman.
Zena was listening but not speaking so the mother made the father check for broken bones. He found none and announced that Zena was just in shock. Just afraid because she’d fallen from her bike and here they were hawking over her like police officers. The couple laughed in unison at their hovering in a way that Zena had never heard her parents connect. It was as if they were suddenly alone and had heard lines in a conversation no one else could hear. Then the father kissed the mother. He said, “That’s the nurse in my baby. Always worried about somebody.” They kissed again and giggled.
The boy who was about Zena’s age, the one who’d been ready to laugh at her fall, was frowning then and rolling his eyes at his parents as if he’d seen this all before and it was making him sick. He turned to Zena and pointed his index finger into his open mouth toward his tonsils as if he was about to make himself vomit.
The little comical gesture introduced Zena to the saying, “I have butterflies in my stomach,” because some new feeling was literally tickling her insides, from her navel to her throat. At that very moment, the tough girl from Queens awakened into feelings she’d never known. It was as if those little butterflies fluttered their delicate wings at her insides all at once and sent some mellifluous whispers of what she’d later recognize as first love straight to her heart. She’d never even thought of looking at a boy the way she did at that moment. She wanted to know everything about him. To smell him. To touch his curly black hair. Kiss those full lips. And if she’d ever heard the word imbibe, she’d want that—to imbibe him. Drink him in. Soak him up. Absorb him so she could feel what she was feeling in her stomach again and again. But that would come later. Junior year in high school. In someone’s basement after a football game. Right then, she just wanted to know one thing—his name.
And without Zena even asking, he acquiesced.
“I’m Adan,” he said, struggling so hard to make his pubescent voice sound masculine as his parents came out of their love bubble and noticed the teenagers’ quick connection.
“I’m Zena,” was returned.
“She speaks,” the father said, looking at the mother with a kind of adult knowing in his voice.
“Good to hear, honey,” the mother said. “We’re the Douglasses. You’ve met Adan already. This is Mr. Roy.” She pointed to the father and then to herself. “I’m Mrs. Pam. And that little hellion who never came out with the water is Adan’s little brother, Alton. He’s probably playing his Nintendo game.”
After helping Zena to her feet and carrying her bicycle to the sidewalk as she reluctantly revealed that she lived up the street and had just moved to Georgia from New York with her mother and sister, Roy abruptly excused himself and his wife. Attempting to pull Pam toward the house, he winked at Adan and ordered him to fix the chain with the supplies in the garage. Pam ignored Roy’s clear desire that Adan and Zena get better acquainted and asked about Zena’s mother again. She wanted to make sure Zena got home okay.
“The girl just told you she lives up the street. I think they’re renting the Jefferson’s old house. That ain’t far. She’ll be fine, Pam!” Roy protested. “Let these young folks figure it out. Everything will work out fine.” He winked at Adan again and pulled his wife up the walkway and into the house.
“They’re so weird. Weird and embarrassing,” Adan said when they were gone, and with every word he spoke, Zena felt those wondrous flutters all through her body again.
“My parents are divorced,” Zena announced as if she’d been holding it in her stomach all that time and needed to let someone know. “My dad cheated. He’s having a baby.”
Adan hardly reacted. He just shrugged in his learned teenage boy way. Zena would soon recognize this as his cool routine. “My mom would kill my dad if he cheated. She told him that one night. I think he believes her.”
Adan picked up the bicycle and began rolling it toward the garage.
Zena followed close behind, watching him walk, spying his muscular arms and calves. She kept thinking that he had to be the cutest boy she’d ever seen. But, then, she couldn’t remember ever really seeing any other boys. Memories of the ones who’d chased her around her neighborhood in Queens had faded so quickly. Who were they? What were their names again?
“Your chain is mad rusty. Where’d you get this bike? The Salvation Army?” he asked jokingly once they were in the garage and out of the hot sun.
“Yes,” Zena admitted, embarrassed, and then she wished she hadn’t fessed up to it. She didn’t want Adan to know she was poor. Then he wouldn’t like her. Could he like her? Did he? Zena looked into Adan’s eyes for signs of something. Anything.
“Really?” Adan seemed surprised by the news and the obvious fumble of his joke about the Salvation Army. His light brown cheeks turned ruddy, and suddenly Zena saw in his eyes reflections of the same feelings she felt in her stomach. He liked her. Maybe he did. She felt her own cheeks turning red then.
“That’s cool anyway. The bike is a little rusty. It could use some cleaning. But it’s a nice bike. A Huffy,” Adan said, suddenly cutting his gaze away from Zena as if he was becoming more nervous.
“You think it’s nice?”
“Yes. It is. I could help you fix it up if you like. We could spray paint it. Make it dope.” Adan looked back at Zena and smiled.
Zena smiled back. She felt as if she’d been asked out on her first date. “That would be cool,” she said.
“We could set it up here in the garage. Work on it. Like a project.”
Zena had never heard a boy her age use that word before—project.
