by Zane
When I checked the apartment, I saw that it was empty. My aunt had made one of her rare forays into the outside world—most likely for food and other household essentials. I didn’t want to be alone just then. I wanted someone to talk to and play games with—someone whose presence would be a shield against my budding awareness. In this context, my mind returned to Tisha; and for once, I found myself willing to risk the kind of loneliness that came with rejection, if the prize was another wondrous afternoon with her.
Outside, Mr. Williams mumbled his salutations to me; I grunted and rushed past him to meet the girl who literally seemed to be the woman of my dreams. I ran to the crack house with a desperation I had never felt before, and which I probably haven’t felt since. I willed Tisha to be there. As I ran, I conjured scenes where she turned to greet me—just as she had the day before. I was so mad with longing for her—or at least for what she seemed to represent in my childish imagination—that I half thought I was dreaming when I rushed into the room and saw her sitting on the rug, playing with her dolls. We began playing without greetings and without the banter that marked true friendships. We played the same games as the day before—with even more virtuosic flights of fancy. However, we played with an underlying desperation that neither of us had the will to acknowledge. Playing there, in that strange room where the curtains suffused everything in a pink, fairy tale hue, and the realities of the outside world seemed magically banished, we were free—but free in a way that bred madness and delusion, not empowerment.
Still, even then, delusions can sometimes bring peace of mind—at least in the short term. As Tisha and I played—rather, as Tisha allowed me to share in her fantasy world—I looked at her and felt grateful beyond reason. She wasn’t merely playing, she was summoning ancient magics and I was her apprentice. Now that I think about it, there was always an ancient quality about her, something anachronistic. I had before joined her and Madame Evangeline because of their accents, but now I joined them explicitly because of their communion with forces that seemed to exceed the limitations of physical space and time. Even now, I can’t think about her without my mind going to newly emancipated slaves migrating to the north after the Civil War. Somehow, Tisha carried with her the religion of the slaves, an unshakable faith that God was good and on her side, coupled with the resigned, pragmatic awareness that the only joy and peace she would ever experience would have to be in another world. For us, the basement room became that other world. As she played her games, there was about her, that desperate hopefulness seen among those that had experienced a trauma so deep and all-encompassing that they, themselves, could barely come close to conceptualizing what had happened. The only thing they seemed to have was the hope that something better would eventually come their way. Also, now that I think about it, I was probably drawn to her precisely because something about her terrified me. Something about her kept eating away at me. Yet, perhaps even then, it ate away at me in a manner that left me thinking that I was on the verge of unlocking a portal to heaven and eternal happiness.
… I’m not saying that I realized all this back then, of course. Whatever truths I was able to glean that afternoon were all subverted by the realization that I didn’t want the afternoon to end. The games we played were wondrous, precisely because they were mysterious to me—and had been conjured by Tisha’s imagination. They gave me a window into her soul and her mysteries. Thus, when she brought out a huge teddy bear, I thought it was only another game. However, it was then that she asked me, “Have you ever been angry with anyone?” That entire afternoon, that was probably the first time she had addressed me directly—addressed me as the boy playing with her, not as a character in whatever fantasy she was conjuring. I felt enlivened—vindicated somehow. However, her question remained in the air. I looked from her to the huge teddy bear, then back to her again.
“I guess,” I said at last.
She smiled, going on, “You can do anything to dolls; dolls can be anything or anyone you want… even people you’re angry with.”
I nodded when she paused.
“Who are you angry with?” she encouraged me.
I didn’t really have any particular person in mind, but as she looked at me imploringly, I said, “My mother.”
She took my hand then—I remember that her hand was warm and soft—and made me stand up before the teddy bear. I complied shyly. “Hit it,” she told me, gesturing to the teddy bear. I looked at her stupefied. “Hit it if you’re angry with your mother.” I hit it timidly. “Hit it harder! Is that all you have?” she taunted me. I balled my little fists and hit the teddy bear in the buttons that passed for its eyes. “Hit it!” she screamed again, and a strange rage expanded within me—a self-destructive kind of rage that made me lash out at the teddy bear with a vicious right hook. In the wake of the strange outburst, I stood there panting and terrified… and feeling guilty somehow, because I loved my mother and felt that she would know what I had done. Somehow, she would know, and would never come back to me. There was a tearful expression on my face now and Tisha, thinking that my outburst had been cathartic, laughed and hugged me. She pulled me into her budding breasts; she held me with her maturing body, with its promise of womanhood and adult dreams… but my terror and guilt remained.
She left soon thereafter. Binzo bellowed her name from outside—more likely than not from his car window—and she sprang up from our reconstituted game and dashed out of the door, again without acknowledging me. I looked at the teddy bear guiltily, then, hoping to get a final look at Tisha, I went to the window and, standing on a chair, was able to see her running up to Binzo’s car. Still, despite her seeming haste, she slowed down about five paces from the car and walked the last remaining steps cautiously—as though anxious of stepping on a land mine. Binzo was actually outside the car, sitting on the hood with one of his expensive new sneakers resting on the bumper and the other one resting on the curb. These were the days of thick gold chains, jumpsuits and Kangol hats, and Binzo was resplendent as he sat there contemplating Tisha. I suppose that Binzo was in his late 20s. His face was scarred, and gold teeth replaced those that had been knocked out—
“Yo’ mama told me to take care of you,” he announced equivocally as she strolled up and stood before him. He sat watching her undecidedly as she stood before him. There was an uncomfortable, lingering silence. I guess he had expected her to say something—to thank him for following her mother’s dictates perhaps—but she remained silent. I’ve come to realize that men like Binzo, who are used to having their way—especially when it came to poor, desperate young women—think it beneath them to ask for what they want. There is a certain patience about then, born either of calculating wisdom or cowardice. They see the desperation of others and know that eventually those others will come begging for their help. However, in Tisha’s case, even though she exuded a certain kind of desperation, there was something unaccountable about it. It wasn’t desperation of the type he had seen and known, which was soothed by sugary words, new outfits and the honor of riding shotgun in an expensive car. Her desperation, I’m convinced, wasn’t material—but spiritual. The simple calculations of the ghetto defied it. Also, whereas Binzo had learned to be patient with those he wished to corrupt, when he looked at Tisha, there was an expression of frustration—and impotence—in his eyes. Tisha’s mannerisms were outwardly submissive, yet he still wasn’t able to get what he wanted. She did what he ordered, but he didn’t want to have to order her. He wanted her to come to him—even though he probably didn’t care whether her coming was because of love or suicidal desperation. Both were only pretexts that had as their ultimate design sexual intercourse and his total mastery of her.
After about thirty seconds of the strange silence between Tisha and Binzo, he ordered her to get into the car. She complied and they drove off soon thereafter. Having no reason to remain in the darkening room, I left as well.
Another long, steamy night seemed in store for us. I walked home in that languid way seen
among those who had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Guilty thoughts about my mother lingered in my head. I found myself thinking that the next time I saw Tisha I would tell her that I had lied. Tisha was again the good fairy to me, and in telling her the truth, I would be able to undo whatever enchantment my hateful words and actions had cast.
On the block, some ten-year-olds were taunting Williams, while he went on a shrill tirade about how in his day a child would never talk to an adult the way they did. His tirade encompassed the children’s horrible parents and the futures of jail, pain and pointless deaths. Williams was right, of course: none of those 10-year-olds made it to 25. Two got AIDS; three were gunned down; one was serving a life sentence when he was stabbed in the prison shower. That afternoon, I stood on the sidewalk watching them objectively. Maybe the spectacle of all the name-calling and Williams’s flustered attempts to defend himself (and the honor of old people everywhere) intrigued me for a moment. However, in the end, the realization that none of them had anything to say to me made me walk past them and go inside.
In the apartment, I found my aunt in one of her strange moods where she was trying too hard to be happy—and to be nice to me. For a moment, I thought that the amulet was finally working and that the demon had been banished from the house, but the obvious unnaturalness of my aunt’s behavior made me increasingly uneasy. Her boyfriend had called and said that he wanted to work things out. Like I said, she was trying to be happy. There was strain on her face; her smiles took effort and were too short-lived to be genuine. She kept asking me what I thought and I began to realize that it wasn’t a confidante she wanted, but a co-conspirator, someone to help her carry on the charade of being happy. Her strange joy terrified me—it was a terrible burden that she was trying to hoist on my shoulders—and all I wanted to do was get away.
Her boyfriend showed up a short while later. He had an annoying habit of calling me, “Chief.” He, too, was trying desperately to be happy. They disappeared into my aunt’s room to continue Act II and I went to the living room and turned up the volume on the TV. I fell asleep on the couch. I awoke hours later to the sound of my aunt and her boyfriend saying loud, demonstrative goodbyes at the front door. Declarations of love were made; promises to make things work out were renewed. However, in their voices there was a rushed, anxious quality—like when someone was making an emergency long distance call from a payphone at a highway gas station. They were forced to scream over the bad connection, talk quickly before time ran out on the payphone and they were left stranded in the middle of nowhere. As my aunt and her boyfriend rushed ahead with their declarations, it was as though they were even then thousands of miles apart.
Ghosts inhabit the imaginations of all human beings; but for children, ignorance and hopefulness continually give flesh to these ghosts. We are born seeing wonderlands and hell dimensions. However, with age and maturity, the customs and limitations of society begin to crush that innate hopefulness. Similarly, the lessons used by society to banish ignorance often have the side effect of withering the soul. At six years of age, I was in a state of flux. By now, I had consumed most of society’s kernels of wisdom, even though I hadn’t digested them yet. Whether that indigestion came as a result of my inextinguishable hopefulness or because of the same obstinacy I demonstrated with Williams, I can’t say. Either way, I clung to life—the essential goodness within me; and when I say “goodness” I don’t mean some moral precept. I merely mean that I was still intact. Most of the little compromises that socialization and maturity demanded of us hadn’t yet manifested themselves on my psyche and self-concept. I was still me….
In the morning, my aunt continued her attempt to be happy. I awoke to the sounds and smells of breakfast cooking. Still rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I approached my aunt shyly—and with a lingering sense of suspicion. Her baby seemed suspicious as well. It took her new onslaught of caresses and kisses for pokes and prods, and soon began to wail at her slightest approach. While I wolfed down her cooking, she spoke of the wonderful future that was in store for her, all the things that she and her boyfriend had discussed the night before. She was going to re-enter school; and somewhere down the line, there was a glorious career and marriage… and a house in the suburbs where her children could run in the back yard. I wasn’t really listening to her, of course. My aunt’s dreams were hers, and I had mine. Even as I sat there, all I could think about was Tisha and that magical basement room.
Compelled by that fantasy, I soon left and returned to the crack house. Nobody was there, but once again the reality of the room was a verification of the hours I had spent with Tisha, and therefore seemed to validate my hopes and my existence. The only drawback was that in the next room, one of Binzo’s knights was bartering with a bone-thin crackhead—trading a blow job for the drug she craved. Unfortunately, she was so on-edge from her addiction that her teeth chattered. She began chewing the sensitive tissue of his penis, and when a sudden spasm seized her body, the lamentable result was that she clamped down on his penis. The most blood-curdling scream you can imagine shook the foundations of the building. When I rushed to see what was happening, the crackhead was going into convulsions, her jaw still clamped down on the dealer’s penis. I don’t remember what the dealer’s name was—since those guys didn’t last long. However, I remember that from then on he was known as “Stumpy.”
With all the commotion (an ambulance was called), I left the crack house and began wandering the neighborhood. I figured that this would be a good time to visit Madame Evangeline. However, when I got there, the door was locked, and when I knocked on the door, the crazy old man that lived upstairs looked out of the window and yelled at me for making too much noise. He was pretty much toothless and, as he yelled at me, huge globs of spittle rained down on me. I left with a queasy feeling—not only from the spit, but because Madame Evangeline’s absence seemed to be yet another sign that I was doomed.
With nothing else to give me home, my yearning for Tisha became so acute that it occurred to me that if I headed in the direction that she and Binzo had driven off in, then I would eventually find her. I walked until about midday—past neighborhoods no different from mine, to neighborhoods with elegant brownstones… and all the neighborhoods in between. I didn’t find her, of course, and this corroborated my budding suspicion that Tisha only existed in that room and its immediate environs. With this new awareness, I rushed back to the room. On the wobbly stairway to the basement, I heard her laughter and leapt down the last four steps in my haste to get to her. And maybe she would hug me as she had the previous afternoon. I was almost wild with these thoughts now… but when I was about three paces from the door, I heard other voices—unfamiliar laughs. I stiffened, and when I turned the corner and looked in, I saw Tisha surrounded by five other little boys. I stared with the shock and heartbreak of a man that came home to find his lover in the arms of another. The boys were all about my age. However, as I didn’t recognize any of them from school, I knew that they weren’t from the neighborhood. Maybe, I considered, they were from Tisha’s imagination, conjured in my absence; maybe even I was only the product of one of those conjurings and had no real substance beyond this room. The little boys were hopping about her; I looked from their stupid antics to Tisha, thinking, Wasn’t I good enough for you? When she finally saw me standing there broodingly, she called me over. However, I sat to the side, listening to the shrill laughter that seemed to be a desecration of our magical place. I sat there for hours, thinking that Tisha would eventually see how unimaginative the boys were and banish them forever from our sacred room.
… Only in retrospect do I find it strange that a beautiful 13-year-old would seek out the company of six-year-olds. Yet, even as I stood there, I knew that something was very wrong—and it wasn’t my puerile jealousy anymore. Though Tisha was physically maturing into womanhood, she acted as though she were six. Gone from her play was the imaginative virtuosity of previous afternoons—maybe that virtuosity had never been there and I had
only imagined it in my desperation. As I looked on, I realized that her play with the boys seemed rushed, yet calculating—as though she were on some kind of deadline. It all seemed bizarre to me; and then, she asked the little boys the question she had asked me the day before—except that now, instead of it being “Who are you angry with?” it was “Who do you hate?” The little boys rushed up to give their responses. They didn’t succumb to the hesitancy that had gripped me the day before. The boys were natural born haters—perhaps we all are. They had people in their lives who mistreated them—and even abused them. The constant trickle of resentment was easy to dam into a reservoir of hatred. Growing up in the ghetto, surrounded by poverty and people who hated their lives, it wasn’t difficult to bring forth hate. Learning to hate was essentially about learning to hate one’s self—about realizing that one was in a situation that one didn’t have the wherewithal to change. Hatred isn’t so much about what others have done to us; it is about what we cannot do to them. Oppressors may disdain those they oppress, but the oppressed always hate their oppressors. There is a power relationship there: the realization that no matter what one does, one will never be able to correct the inescapable injustice of one’s everyday existence.