TAKE ME as I am

by C Osborne, Laurina

  At twelve-thirty later that night, the cab pulls up in front of my building. Zoi’s apartment is dark. I open my door and breathe a sigh of relief. I collapse onto the sofa and turn on the TV. At some point, I smell my underarms and switch off the TV. I shower and lie in bed wondering if I should go to work tomorrow. I decide against it. I climb out of bed again, grab a blanket, lie on the sofa and turn on the TV.

  Hours later when I check the time, it’s nine-thirty. I reach for the house phone on the table nearby. It makes that double beeping sound that says I have messages. I call Matt to tell him I got home safely. As an afterthought, I ask him if Keith is still alive. He laughs, so I assume I didn’t kill him. I thank him for all his help and tell him I love him.

  “Now you tell me,” he says laughing.

  Although I remember there are messages, I purposely ignore the voice-mail. Anyone leaving me a message doesn’t know me. I walk over to my suitcase and drag it to the laundry room. After I start the first load I proceed to raid the refrigerator; instead, I end up cleaning it and the entire kitchen. Then I move to the living room and dining area then my bedroom. I dust the boys’ rooms, touchup their bathroom and by one o’clock I don’t know what to do with myself. I call Mark hoping to get his voicemail, but he answers.

  “Hi, did you get my messages?” he asks.

  “No. I just turned on my phone. How many messages did you leave me?” I ask grinning.

  “Three, I think.”

  “Were they about work, love, sex or just to say hello?”

  He laughs loudly. I imagine he’s blushing.

  “They were to say hello and to tell you I miss you, but I can call back and say something about loving you through sex.”

  “I like that. Do you write poetry too?”

  “I have written some way back when, but I’m sure I know some rhyming words if that’ll turn you on.”

  “Your voice sounds so good.”

  “So does yours. Are things going well?”

  “So well that I’m back. I’m actually calling to see if you would like to have dinner with us. I’m bored and in the cleaning mood and since I’m done with my apartment, I thought I’ll go clean Zoi’s and cook while I’m up there.”

  “You really are bored, and yes, I would love to have dinner with you.”

  “Do you like oxtails or curry chicken?”

  “Love both.”

  “Okay, is seven o’clock good?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Mark, it’s also to thank you for telling me a few things that really mattered. It was inspiring and … thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. See you at seven.”

  Upstairs in Zoi’s apartment is a mess. I clean the kitchen and the refrigerator and then start dinner. I clean the living and dining room and then pick up in her bedroom. She is still the same Zoi, still won’t make her bed in the mornings and she got married to her twin. I clean the bathroom, then check the vegetables on the stove and make a salad. I write a shopping list and stick it over the old one. I glance in the other two bedrooms, then flush the toilet and wipe the vanity. At five-thirty I put in a load of laundry and debate what to make for dessert. After a few minutes, I give in and leave Darnell a message to pick up a cake or something Zoi would like for dessert. He probably won’t check his voicemail, so I dig through the pantry and find a box cake, whip it up and put it in the oven.

  I’m watching the six o’clock news when I hear the key in the door. “Nella? Oh my God. I called you about a dozen times today why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “When did you call me?”

  “This morning before I had to be in court,” she says plopping down next to me. “Then at lunch and this afternoon. Why are you back so soon?”

  “I came back after midnight and got up after nine this morning. I wanted to surprise you.”

  She put her head on my shoulder and I lean mine on hers and pat her face. The key turns again.

  “Nella?” he yells. “Oh Lord, you cleaned up. When did you come back?”

  He actually kisses me on my cheek.

  “Last night,” I say, moving Zoi’s head to the back of the sofa. I walk to the kitchen to check the cake. “Darnell, did you get my message?”

  “Yeah, but I thought it was old since you weren’t here.” He’s on the sofa next to Zoi and they’re hugging each other.

  “I’m going to change and be right back. Darnell set the table for four, please.”

  “Four? Who’s coming?”

  “Just do as you’re told before I have to call you idiot again,” I say, slamming the door.

  In my apartment, I change and grab my phone on my way out. As I shut the door, I begin to experience him, a frightening hot feeling running through my body. It’s beyond anything I had felt before. I turn around quickly and he’s staring at me. I stare back and feel my heart beating rapidly. I rush past him and sit on the steps. I hold my chest and listen to myself breathe. He sits down beside me. Tears come to my eyes and I gaze into the park debating if I should run.

  “Nella, are you okay?” Mark asks.

  He looks from my face to the man’s next to me.

  I hold my head and start to cry. Mark bends over me.

  “Nella, what’s wrong.”

  I stand, hold on to Mark with one hand and wipe my tears with the other. I look at him, his pale eyes are full of water and I start crying again.

  I dry my eyes once more.

  “Do you … do you want to see Zoi?” I mutter to him in the voice of a child.

  He nods his head.

  I lead the way on shaky legs. Mark follows in front of him. I open the door. Zoi is actually in the kitchen.

  “Nella, you left the cake and didn’t tell me,” she declares.

  “Zo, come here,” I say, and watch as she looks beyond me. She grins big.

  “Hi, Mark. I’m glad it’s you who came to dinner.”

  I put my arm across her shoulder and open the door wider. He has the scar on his right cheek and he looks tired. His grey eyes are bright and full of unshed tears.

  “Zo, this is … this is Daddy,” I stammer as the tears flood my face and I hold Zoi tighter.

  “Nella, are you sure?” she asks.

  I can’t hold on any longer. I feel myself crumble to the floor still shaking. Mark picks me up and carries me to the sofa. I cling to him bawling. He rocks me as if I’m a child. I am mentally four years old. I take a while and Darnell hands me a glass of water and some paper towel. I drink and stare at my father’s face that has been branded into my brain for life.

  “How long have you been in the States?” I ask him when I finally find my voice and my own seat next to Mark.

  “I arrived five months ago and then left. The detective found you three months ago and it took me a month to talk myself into seeing you. I left you messages, but you never returned my calls.”

  “Nella felt you when you got here,” Zoi says. I turn to her and her eyes are bright and full of love.

  “Zo, he was in St. Matthews too. Lawyer Henry told me, but I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet.”

  “How can you remember him? You were four,” Marks says with his arm on my shoulder and his eyes are examining my face.

  I stare at Daddy.

  “You never forgave me,” he states simply.

  “No. I can’t forget and I can’t forgive you,” I say, and the tears pour down my face.

  He moves and sits on the sofa next to me. We hug and we weep.

  “You never came for us. You had no intention of coming for us. You sent us away because of the way I look.”

  He eases me away from him.

  “Tell me what you remember.”

  I stand and pace. I look at him and he’s staring at me intensely.

  “Granny Nanny told you Mommy would want you to take care of us. She asked you to come home with her, the fresh air would do you good and in six months you would be ready to live again. You said no. She told you that you
were all we had and if she took us with her, we would be losing both of our parents. You looked right in my face and told Granny Nanny you were a white man and without my mother you couldn’t take care of us.”

  I glare at him and dare him to deny it.

  He nods his head in agreement and the tears run down his face as they do mine.

  “She told you all we needed was love and as we got older you’ll be able to figure it out, but you still sent us away. When she saw my face, she knew I understood you and she told you I would never forgive you. Yet you still sent us and never came to get us.”

  “Eunella, my heart was broken. After I lost your mother and your brother I practically died.”

  “And I’m a walking dead. Emotionally I’m crippled. How can anyone love me when my own father looked in my black face and rejected me?” I ask him.

  I look up at the ceiling.

  I need to run.

  I drop the paper towels and walk out. I run down the steps and take off across the park and keep running until all my breath has left my body.

  I return an hour later and let myself into my apartment. Zoi is asleep on the couch. I walk past her, through the bedroom and into the shower. I dress quickly, wake her up and ask her if she wants to go home.

  “Sit,” she says. I sit as she rubs her eyes. “You can’t keep running. He came for you and you need him to help you feel sane again.”

  “I know. It’s just that I’ve had this inside me all my life. I had to run one more time. It’s how I cope. I will talk to him, but I need time.”

  “Darnell asked him to stay with us; he’s upstairs.”

  “Did you apologize to Mark for me?”

  “I had a hard time keeping Mark from going after you. I don’t think he likes Daddy which means he likes you a lot.”

  “I like him too, but I’m raw and discarded and I really need time. I can’t ask him to wait for me, Zoi; plus he wants to get married again and I just finally got out of a marriage, I don’t want to get back into another.”

  “Be honest with him. And oh, I forgot; Mark’s still upstairs, so let’s go.”

  I ease down on the sofa beside Mark and turn my head to him. “I’m sorry for my juvenile behavior. Running is how I cope.”

  He nods, leans his head against mine then eases back and looks into my eyes. I smile and he smiles too. I feel the heat between us.

  “I can only offer you food right now. Do you still want to eat?”

  “I’m starving,” he says and puts his hand on mine and squeezes.

  I look over at my father. He looks at me with a calmness I don’t understand.

  “Do you eat West Indian food?” I ask him.

  “Of course, your mother was of West Indian parentage.”

  “Okay, I’ll warm everything up and we can eat.”

  “Can I help?” Mark asks.

  I reach out for his hand, take it and lead him behind me to the kitchen, which is in the rear of the island that separates the living room at its front end and the dining room on its left from the kitchen. I turn on the stove and put the rice in the oven.

  “This is a really nice apartment, I like the lay out. How many bedrooms does it have?”

  “It has three bedrooms and the floor plan is the same for all of them except for mine. Zoi and I bought the building three years ago basically to impress a guy who Zoi loved.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not really.”

  “So how did she meet Darnell?”

  I grin at him and turn back to the stove. He comes behind me and rubs up on me. His hands are hugging my belly.

  “You smell so good. Did you just take a shower?”

  “Yes,” I say on the verge of giggling.

  “Tell me how they met,” he says in my ear.

  “You’re touching it.”

  “What?”

  “My butt.”

  “I know I’m touching your butt, but I still want to know how Darnell met Zoi.”

  “I saw her ass in the park and came looking for it and found Zo,” Darnell says in a huff. “And don’t say it, they called me idiot for six months before I realized why. Now stop feeling her up in full view; we can all see you and hurry up I’m starving.”

  We laugh at him.

  I then turn to Mark and kiss him. He responds and holds me tightly to him. I need his touch. We stop and I move away from him.

  I open the cabinets on the left of the hood and reach for serving dishes.

  “Can I come home with you tonight?” I ask Mark.

  He responds with a big grin and a nod. I smile big too.

  After we’re all seated, I start to apologize.

  “Dad, how long are you staying?”

  He surveys me.

  “I’m not trying to chase you off. I need you to find my way back to sanity, but I need time.”

  “I have the time.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Daddy, were you ever tortured say about thirty years ago?” Zoi asks.

  I stop eating and stare at him. He feels my stare and glares back.

  “Why do you ask, Zoi?”

  “Because if you were, Nella felt it all.”

  I look away and swallow.

  “Can we talk about it another time?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “You cook extremely well. Your mother tried, but she wasn’t very good at cooking.”

  “Nella needs to teach Zoi to cook,” Darnell says and he kisses the side of Zoi’s face to soften his words, I assume.

  “Why? I do other things well and besides Nella will never let me starve.”

  Daddy and I lock eyes. He remembers too.

  After we clean up, Mark and I leave. I pack a small bag and call a cab. We kiss and touch each other until the cab comes and then head to his place. He lives in a multi-level, three thousand-square-foot, high-rise in Lower Manhattan. I’m impressed just by the lobby and when I see his apartment, jealous too.

  “Mark, exactly how rich are you?”

  “I do okay.”

  “How badly was I being underpaid?”

  “Badly.”

  “What would you have done if I stayed?”

  “Paid you much better,” he says with a serious face.

  “Why? Because I slept with you?”

  “No, because you’re excellent at what you do and you’re an asset to the company.”

  “Maybe I should change my mind and stay.”

  “You can, but I hope you won’t.”

  I get serious. “Why?”

  “You haven’t agreed to date me yet, but I’m hoping you do and we can work our way forward.”

  “Can we have sex first before we get too deep, because if I say something horrible you won’t want to do it and I deserve really … good … sex tonight.”

  He puts down his drink on the bar and walks up to me. He looks into my eyes, bends his head and kisses me. I crawl inside his body and slowly feed the pain of the past two days until my body can no longer move. I lie beside him, hold his hand and I have to tell him.

  “The reason I’m not sure I can date you is because of your skin color.”

  “I guessed that before and it became apparent tonight.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You agree to date me, so I can end it with my ex-wife and you can go on having excellent sex. Then we take our time getting you back to where you no longer believe you’re crazy.”

  “I like the sound of that; but what if you end it with your ex-wife and it wasn’t the right thing to do?”

  “You like the idea that my happiness is not totally dependent on you.”

  I turn on my back, so I can see his face. “I finally got a divorce on Monday, at least in my head. I want to be with you and not just for sex. I like talking to you and being around you and I would rather not spoil what we share. I know this says something awful about me, but I would prefer to compromise than to have what we share right now change for the worse.”

/>   “I’m a lot like you and that’s why I’m still clinging to my ex; but the fact is at some point you will get to that mental place where clarity sets in and if you’re sharing me and I’m good with that you will walk away never to return. And I cannot share you at this point.”

  “What do you mean, at this point?”

  “If you have to ask you’re not ready to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me what you can about your trip. So I know you saw him and you were fair to yourself.”

  I take a deep breath and blow it out through my mouth.

  “I got what I went for and the next day I finally replayed what he did to me after I caught him in bed with his male assistant. The idea that I didn’t fight was what was really killing me. The one time I needed to stand up for myself I was so scared, I shut down. I couldn’t take being there one more day, so I left. I got to my connecting flight and sat outside reading. I felt him before I saw him. He was supposed to be gone from the island all week, but he heard I was back and he was determined.

  “His brother was there and we’re friends. If I had to choose a guy to marry back then I would have chosen Matt.” I stop.

  “Did you love him?”

  “I liked Matt a lot. I didn’t know he loved me.”

  “Go on.”

  “I didn’t realize Keith was still so angry with me. I guess I ruined his chance to come to the States.”

  “Or maybe he loved you,” Mark says.

  I turn to him.

  “Did he? I took his kids without his consent. When he refused to even pay their way to come and visit him during the summer, out of guilt I sent them anyway.”

  I stop and look at Mark again.

  “I don’t think he loved me. He had a political agenda and the idea of a wife could help him keep it. Anyway, we argued a little bit and I told everyone listening that he raped me in front of his assistant. The way he looked at Matt I knew I had to keep Matt out of it. I calmed Matt down and decided that he had not broken me. I remembered how you made me feel with your words and I stood up for myself with a knee to his groin and one to his assistant’s too.”