Chapter 2-Wedding

jimmy wedding day photo
In the wedding photo, taken by Danny, Marina wore a short silk dress she'd made from a remnant she'd bought for five dollars. She'd sewn the dress herself, by hand. It too was a halter dress. The only way she knew to make a dress was to sew two rectangles, hem both ends, and string a strip of cloth through the top hem. Jimmy stood beside her in a red and green dashiki. Sewing the dress by hand didn't take long except for the drawstring. She'd taken great care to sew a narrow strip of the same silk for the drawstring on top. It took her a long time to turn the long strip inside out. She'd made the dashiki by hand too, basically the same principle. She sewed two rectangles of red and green African print cloth and cut out the arm and head holes stamped onto the cloth.
Jimmy organized a bunch of his friends from the Reparations Party to come to the Water Hole and Marina that same afternoon made some phone calls and almost everyone she called showed up. Jimmy's friend Kwasi owned the bar where the Reparations Party did most of its work and most of its play. Kwasi had gotten a mail order ordination so that he could marry his friends. The Waterhole was a small storefront with a small wooden bar in the front room, and a back room with small tables where the crowd was gathered when Marina arrived. The tables and chairs had been pushed to the walls. Marina saw Jimmy by the back door that led to a small patio with small scattered tables. He was taking a deep drag from a joint. From the way he stood leaning slightly forward she could tell he was already pretty drunk.
She looked around. Everyone else was drunk too. She took a long swallow from the glass Kwasi's wife Tisha gave her and another long swallow from the bottle Chef Manuel pressed into her hand. Her old boyfriend from high school Danny grabbed her by the hand and the last thing she remembered was dancing, her back to his front, him humping, doing the dog, their old joke dance from high school. She was gone, out of her body and not even watching from the ceiling. She came back doing a slow dance and kissing Danny, his tongue deep inside her mouth. Jimmy lay on a row of chairs that had been pushed against the wall, passed out. Everyone had left except Tisha and Kwasi, both of them also asleep or passed out on the rows of chairs, Tisha's head by Jimmy's feet. Marina let herself kiss Danny for a few more seconds and then pushed him away. “Am I married?”
She walked home, married but alone. Soon enough Jimmy would come to and make his own way. The sky was grayish pink over the rooftops of the red brick buildings, the narrow streets were empty. She noticed she was not afraid, not angry, only numb in a familiar almost welcome way. She lay down in her wedding dress and pulled the soft quilt over herself and slept until Jimmy joined her naked under the covers, pushed up the wedding dress and put himself inside her. “Our first married fuck,” he said after they were done.