The sunlight hit Jean-René. The sepia half-moon of a mole by his right cheekbone glistened, steaming coal in a fast car gliding through the hills of Morocco. We stopped to have a very French picnic: kisses. Shadows of lips and teeth against luxurious auburn soil. The sun always slipping in and out of the bends of limbs, wine from Lisbon dancing mouth to mouth, tongues tracing patterns of clouds, scents of goats, sheep, and the last of my Opium, somewhere near Meknes. I wanted to stay in Paris I’d thought, but no. He said he’d have to have me somewhere I’d never been. I’d laughed. I woke in Casablanca to morning prayers and croissants.
If only my mother could see me now: Jean-René meticulously placing strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, grapes, melon balls in a crescent round my vulva. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. My cat has yellow eyes. Now my pussy has lime-green ones, amber pupils, slits.
Casablanca was hot, noisy, trashy, roadblocks everywhere, the war in Spanish Sahara. We retreated like Anaïs to the countryside. This Guadaloupean velvet spur of a man and me, Liliane. I travel a lot. I look at men and take some home or leave the country, borders have never intimidated me. My passport is in order and I carry letters of credit, perfume, four fancy dresses and six nightgowns. I always sleep naked alone at least once a week. I pray and say hail marys by some window at dusk. It’s always best for me to deal with the sacred when I’m naked. For me it has something to do with humility.
I found Jean-René eating souvlaki at the fast-food place next to the Moulin Rouge. I was flirting with some Brazilians from the Folies Bergères. I’d just left Lisbon, and Angola was on all our minds.
In my last paintings, before I left New York, I superimposed AK-47s over fetal transparencies under Frelimo banners. La Luta Continua was the name of the show. There was no way to stop my fingers, my arms, I was jumping up and down ladders to get the touches of blood and fresh corpses finely detailed so there’d be no doubt that the Portuguese left a country the way vampires leave blond white women: drained of life and scarred. I paint. I don’t talk too much. The world overwhelms me. I can give up what I see. I see a lot. I believe in honor, color, and good sex.
Machado and Axel from the Folies were doing their best to entice me to La Plantation, an Antillean discotheque near St.-Germain-des-Près. I looked Jean-René in the eyes once and knew that would never happen. Why would I want to dance in a plantation anyway? Even in the presence of the singularly defined muscles of Latin dancers, one on either side, the man I was slowly seducing across the room just kept looking at me, knowing where I’d be going. I like that. I like a man to know what the deal is going to be in an instinctive, absolute, lyrically facile manner. I like a man with confidence. Take me from these two sweet muthafuckahs simply by looking. Do that and I’ll be gone. Wherever we are going. I mean, if a man’s up to that. I love double entendres, double negatives, duels. Some cocks have triggers; others are freckled or uncircumcised.
I decided I wanted some baklava. Right over there where the man with eyes was sucking me up. Imagine that, disappearing into a stranger’s eyes in Paris. How would they find me? Who would know to look? I don’t leave any tracks, am quick to burn bridges. My friends, well my friends, the real ones, wouldn’t think twice. Liliane, she’s having dessert. They’d smile, unless no drawings arrived in say a month or two. That is my signature, after all, an image. I forget what I was wearing that night. Probably the floor-length azure crepe with lace triangles up to my hips and no back at all. I like that dress, but I’m going to dye it grise: ma robe grise. Oh, Jean-René slid his eyes into my mouth and asked me if I had plans for the evening. “Mais non, monsieur, j’ai pensé que tu voudrais faire des arrangements.” I told him my name several hours later. By then he could barely speak.
Jean-René with the black nipples that grew. Each tongue flick drawing black licorice sticks tiptoeing over my teeth and tongue. Third World delicacies. Cascades of caviar round my neck. Noire et blanche. He played the piano, when he wasn’t near me. Actually he was a concert pianist. He played Bach and Stravinsky, when he wasn’t near me. He sometimes played scales, but anybody can do that.
Coming down the Champs-Élysées all the record stores blasted Stevie Wonder’s newest release, Songs in the Key of Life. “Isn’t She Lovely” chased me from corner to corner. I didn’t know if I should hide near the grated windows or fly through the night like some paradisiacal bird of color: many colors. Any color, everything matches: spirit; free spirits; about to be in love a lot. Stevie Wonder pushing us closer together. Eventually, I stopped running. I walked fast. Waited by the curb. At some point he put his arm over my bare shoulder. His fingers grasped my skin so there were five imprints. A woman with three sets of fingerprints. That would drive Interpol crazy. I was already grazing the edges. I didn’t leave his side til we got to where we began. Remember, the hillside outside Meknes? You won’t believe me, but I heard Charlie Palmieri in Paris on our way to heaven. Those fingers again. I’ll have to draw it for you, okay?
Such character you’d expect from Cecil Taylor’s fingers, or my grandfather’s, Frank, who was a master carpenter. My fingers still smack of perfumed talcum, white gloves, and honeyed lotions. My calluses are elusive, if ever present, closer to my heart than my wrists which are deceitfully delicate. Veins, blue-black pulsing, rise eloquently from Jean-René’s hands, small muscles throb over the white and black keyboard, eliciting the reveries of Bartók, Monk, Abrams, and Joplin. My back refused to sound anyone but Satie, Bobby Timmons, and John Hicks. This frustrates Jean-René. When he smacks my cheek with the back of his hand, only Andrew Cyrille comes to mind. The Frenchman is unnerved. The music of my body is deliberate. There’s nothing I can do about how I sound. When I open my mouth, Shirley Cesaire and Jeanne Lee scramble for the skies, my tongue finds his somewhere high above the treble clef. We’re pulled back, flat to the soil. Sun running us pianissimo while our sweat moistens the virginal African grass. Our bodies lay claim to the earth, silhouettes of lovers, smooth unbroken lines, enveloped by tall brush, quivering in the wind, as tongues would wag in whatever language were our license with each other known beyond this side of the road. Meknes.
I want to paint now. Throw Jean-René’s swarthy limbs over the pillows I laced with scents of raspberry, bay leaves, cinnamon. He’ll rest in soft fragrances: me and my spices. I pull out my brushes and pastels. Sequester myself on a rocky cliff before the walled village. Women wrapped in blue-black swishes of spun cotton float through the streets. The men in white and tanned robes saunter with a holy gait toward a precipice. It is dusk. I am using wine as water to moisten my paints. The air is too light for oils. Watercolors, moistened pastels alone, capture the haunting prayers of these disciples of Allah. I am allowing my fingers to float as the women do, over the cobblestones, reddened dirt paths, billows of dust following donkeys, mules, bicycles. My brush strokes unevenly. The abyss around which we assemble in honor of Allah. The evening prayers begin. The sun splits open, cries for atonement and adoration pierce the clouds, hovering weights above our heads. I feel a sharp pain in my groin, my heart is racing, I am losing my breath. I see Jean-René. His eyes are glazed over as if in a trance. I swoon. My blood has come. The forces of this sacred earth have drawn menses from my body. The sun sets. I use this last scarlet liquid to highlight the figures in my painting. Hundreds of women, floating blue-black apparitions etched rouge, the soil rouge, the brush-colored caftans of the men dragging in blood. The Jihad has simple implications. Holy war. Where is there war without blood. Blood falling to the ground. I am weak now. I leave my paints and brushes alone, slide over to Jean-René, who holds me close to him as if we’d been in danger, as if communion with God was a travesty. We can’t kiss, not now. Fierce angels are everywhere, sneering and eager to mock our frailties. Mortals, flesh, driven souls, seeking wholeness with mouths, fingers, wrapping limb over limb to become one. Music issuing forth from their depths, entering one another, desperately seeking that one song, one melody of peace. The angels gather above the rushes, snide, shaking their heads, wagging their fingers through the air, lighting up the sky and calling thunderous rhythms to startle us, to insist we acknowledge our nakedness. I pull my paintings to me. The colors pour onto my skin. I am now streaked blue-black, reds, yellow, luminous blue. Jean-René grabs my hand. I hold my paintings, soaking in the downpour. Scarlet drops fall from my bosom to my toes, to the soil, blue-black smudges crowd off my own sepia tones. Lurching toward the car, I turn. Drop the paintings. Fall on my knees, bleeding. Pleading with Allah to bless me, to accept me as an instrument of the holy spirit. Jean-René whispers hail marys in my ears. I am digging for the scent of my god. My hands are covered with small rocks, brown mud and slivers of brush up to my wrists where the clay has dried like bracelets. Jean-René lifts me in one moment, holding me a statue over the ruins of my art.
My hands were small fists, knotted round the earth I’d gathered. Jean-René glanced at me once. “We’re going to Fez. If you want to save that dirt, there’s a small box in the back. Wipe the blood from your arms and face or we’ll never get a hotel room.” My eyes followed the rise of his cheekbones, the arrogance of his slender nose, and the flippant curve of his lips, those finely wrought muscles in his forearm. Yes, the box, save the soil for earth paintings. Wipe the blood away. Watch Jean-René take the road, soaring, an ebony eagle, round mimosa and hibiscus and palms. Jean-René smoldering like Mont St. Pierre, but this volcano was holding the eruption for me. The woman shedding blood and soil in the backseat of an Antillean eagle’s flight to Fez.
I liked to kiss Jean-René on curves or steep downhill glides. I liked the wandering tree limbs to let their shadows enter his mouth as my tongue did. Shadows and tongue skipping and sliding over his pearl teeth and blackberry lips. Dangerous, you say? Mais non. You’re talking to the woman who was physically searched three times at Kennedy Airport because the buzzer went off whenever I went through the screening device. I had forgotten to take my ben-wa balls out. They’re no threat to international security. When they’re working, the last thought on my mind is hijacking a plane. Why should I swipe an airplane when young Guadeloupean peacocks stalk about Paris and fly me to Morocco in the middle of the night. All he needs is a piano and me. I carry my own entertainment: color, wine, brushes, pencils. My ben-wa balls attracted no attention at Orly Airport. I guess they could see the contentment of my face, or smell my pleasure. I always assume people can smell how happy I am, how full of love I can be. That’s how Jean-René found me in Paris at that fast-food souvlaki place. He could smell my joy, he said. I told him I heard Eric Dolphy in his eyes.