Her skin is blue black, obsidian. Except for her neck where rings encircle, embed, divide heavy sections of flesh--gray, ash against African blue. Her thighs show zig-zaggy indentations as well, where they sag, circling various pockets. Flub.

Between the high-rises on the asphalt street, summer sears. The woman exudes perspiration, streams of it. She wears a man's Hawaiian shirt, a ripped pocket, though the setting is megalopolitan, not island. Enormous shorts. Huaraches with tape, huaraches two sizes too big.

She ambulates herself off the curb just as the young couple in the car stops at the white line of the crosswalk. She lumbers. Slow. Very slow. African-American hair frizzles carefree, unhindered, escaping her head. She ogles the couple, a joke on her lips, then stops outright and bends to fix her shoe, as if to tie a lace. Except she's wearing sandals. Who knows what she's doing? Another gander with fists pushing on her hips, her body swaying toward the car--Who the hell do you think you are?

He scowls out his windshield where there is nothing but her, revs the engine.

The young woman in the passenger seat stares at him, brows pinched.

"Why the hell doesn't she move her lard ass?" he adds.

"What?" his date asks.

"Brillo."

"She has no power over anything, except the crosswalk."

He peers over, as if deciding whether he cares what he says in front of her.

"Porch monkey."

The young woman grabs the handle of her door and yanks.

Still monopolizing the intersection, the black woman suddenly smirks, holds her belly like it might get away, chuckling from deep down.



About the author:
Bonnie ZoBell has received an NEA for her fiction and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in such magazines as American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short stories by Emerging Writers edited by Joyce Carol Oates, The Bellingham Review, The Greensboro Review, Arts & Understanding: America's AIDS Magazine, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. She received an MFA from Columbia on Fellowship. She teaches at Mesa College in San Diego.

© 2009 Word Riot