Incredible story.. *
Scottie and I spent a whole two hours, watching Jason's Lyric in silence. There were a few scenes that really affected me but I tried my best not to give myself away. I wondered if Scottie felt the same things. Several times I looked over at him. I could see his left eye jumping around as though he sensed I was staring. He never turned his head to find out for sure. He was playing the same game that I was. He was being tough or maybe what he saw on the screen didn’t really affect him the same way. I couldn’t tell but for sure it was doing something to me.
The first scene that got to me was seeing Jada and Allen by the pond. He was washing her feet and then later on they made love. I’ve never felt someone’s body up against mine like that. I’ve never had someone so into me that nothing else in the world mattered. That shit affected me but then I turned it off because that’s like allowing somebody to control your feelings. It helped that the sistah in the next scene made jokes about it. Scottie and I laughed pretty easily but sharing any other type of emotion seemed like it was off limits for some reason.
Then toward the end of the movie came the part where the brother of Allen Payne’s character shoots these guys in the house and then chases Jada into the bedroom. My heart was pounding like crazy. I couldn’t resist saying something.
“I hope he doesn’t kill her…”
“That’s some crazy shit what he just did, though!” Scottie responded.
I couldn’t tell if Scottie was serious or actually responding to something that he wished he could do.
Then Allen Payne’s character came into the scene and this movie seriously had me bugging. Still, I played it cool. I watched and I tried to anticipate what was gonna happen. Actually, I could figure it out pretty easily so I closed my eyes, hoping Scottie wouldn’t look over at me and think I was scared. Shit, only thing I was truly scared of was him seeing tears rolling down my face because I felt what was happening on the screen. Even though me and Scottie were semi-close by this time, our emotional boundaries didn’t really feel defined, at least not to me they didn’t.
Then a gunshot blast echoed inside the movie theatre. I could hear other people reacting in front of me, to the side, and to the rear but I didn’t feel any movement from Scottie.
I asked him “what happened?”
“He shot her. Damn, I didn’t expect that shit to happen.”
“Whew…this movie was good, huh!”
“Hold up!” Scottie said as he leaned forward.
“What’s wrong?”
“How they end up on a bus together? Her ass just got shot, point blank in her chest!”
“Don’t take it so serious Scottie. It’s just a movie.”
“Yeah, whatever… They just trying to throw a happy ending on there cause they afraid to keep it real. That’s bogus!”
“Can we go Scottie? The movie was good to me.”
“Yeah, let’s go. That ending was whack, though.”
Scottie teased me during most of the walk home. He said he could tell I didn’t want to see Jada get shot. He said it was nice to see I still had a soft spot in me.
“I know you try to be hard Leesha but on the real, not everything is so easy to brush off like it’s nothing” he told me.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You brush stuff off all the time…”
“Yeah, I probably do but that’s a lot better than losing my mind from reacting to all the craziness that goes down.”
Scottie went into one of his usual pep talks that he’d give me just before we’d say goodnight. He told me that I needed to stay strong and not let my situation at home affect me at school. As easy as that came out of his mouth, I wondered just how I’d do trying to accomplish it. I get angry as soon as I go home. I think Scottie and I had that in common. He had issues with his brother and mama was only giving me about five seconds of eye contact each day. Quality time had become a childhood memory.
Copr.2005
