Hold Love Strong

by Matthew Aaron Goodman

  “Luscious, baby,” said my grandma. She hugged her and then holding Luscious’s hands, she looked Luscious over, sized up her gorgeousness. “Oh,” she said. “Don’t you look just so fine.”

  My grandma and my Aunt Rhonda wore matching purple dresses and purple shoes and they carried purple purses with yellow stitching and accents. There were purple and yellow streamers Scotch-taped to the walls, purple and yellow balloons pressed against the ceiling. The tablecloth was purple. The napkins were yellow. The plastic plates were gold. The plastic utensils were silver.

  “Abraham,” said my grandma, “I almost forgot! In the kitchen. Get the sign. Hurry up. Put it on the door. I feel it in my chest. My son is close by.”

  The sign was multicolored, metallic letters strung together to spell Welcome Home. Standing in the hallway, I taped it to the door. I made sure it hung just right, that its curve was centered. Then I stepped back and looked at it and, although where I might go I didn't know, it struck me that one day soon such a sign might be befitting of me. Then I reentered the apartment, paused, and stared at my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda and Eric and Mr. Goines and Luscious. Then I looked at the white walls of our apartment, the family photos and school pictures of us above our couch, the television, and the purple and yellow pageantry. Yet I felt empty.

  “You want me to see if I can find D?” I asked.

  Donnel had left first thing in the morning, before my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda had gone to the beauty salon and had their hair done and their fingernails and toenails painted yellow and purple. They wore red lipstick and makeup and perfume and since they’d come home they’d gone everywhere in the apartment, into and out of the kitchen, into the living room, their room, and the bathroom. They couldn’t stand, sit, or think still. And after Luscious arrived she joined them. But my question caused them to cease, forced their flittering to stop. My grandma looked out of the window. My Aunt Rhonda looked at the floor. Then she looked back at me, her eyes full of ire.

  “And what you think he’s gonna say?” she scolded. “You think he’s gonna come? You think he wants to be here?”

  “Let him be, Abraham,” my grandma instructed. “He’s too grown to go chasing after.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” burst Luscious, valiantly attempting to combat the sadness that I had introduced to the room. “Me and Nice are gonna have us some kids, a whole lot of them. We gonna make ourselves a family.”

  I sat on the couch with Eric and watched music videos. Of course, I thought about Donnel. And, of course, the waiting for Nice to arrive and my impatience made me think about him. But the product of my thinking about them was not just the conflict of one man’s return and another’s flight. Rather, it was one thing, one word, and that word was free. What did it mean? How could one be? Nice had insisted that no one pick him up. He was to walk out of prison like a man: free. He was to take a bus to the city, the train, the bus to Ever: free. He had twenty-four hours to report to parole. He had no job, no work history, no accreditation but the GED he’d earned the first year he was locked up. He had no relationship with the nineteen-nineties, with the last decade of the twentieth century, with all of the changes, developments, and new technologies. He did not know of my mother’s death in a manner in which he could fully realize the loss, in which he could grieve. What was he going to do? Where was he going to go? And Donnel? Atlanta? Was that what free was, how he disappeared in order to provide?

  Suddenly, there was a thunderous knock on the door.

  “Oh God,” my grandma whispered. “Oh, thank you, oh sweet Jesus, thank you.”

  “Look at me,” Luscious announced. She held her hands out. They quivered. “Look how I’m shaking.”

  “It’s him,” said my Aunt Rhonda. “My baby brother is home!”

  In a rush, my Aunt Rhonda turned the TV off. Then she clapped and ordered Eric and me to stand.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Get up. Get ready! And Eric, Jesus, wipe that toothpaste from your face!”

  “Go ahead,” said my grandma. “Rhonda. Go ahead. Get the door.”

  “Why me?” said my Aunt Rhonda.

  “This ain’t no time to argue,” scolded my grandma. “Go.”

  My Aunt Rhonda took one deep breath and then she walked across the room, grabbed the doorknob, and looked over her shoulder.

  “Go ahead,” said my grandma. “Open it.”

  “God, fuck, Jesus,” listed Luscious, wringing her hands, desperate to calm herself.

  My Aunt Rhonda unlocked the locks. She unhitched the chain latch. She opened the door. After years of being buckled, boxed in, and constrained in all aspects of his life and then suddenly, uneventfully being handed freedom back, albeit a warped version, there stood my uncle with a face of stone, a countenance of awe and exhaustion, beset by incomparable relief and confusion, the crashing of joy and self-doubt raging in his chest, the numbing tumult and paralysis of freedom after being cleaved from it. Roosevelt. Nice. No longer a young lithesome brother, but a full-grown, hard-looking, bearded brother with strain in his face.

  “Oh Roosevelt,” said my grandma, tears streaming mascara through her rouge and foundation. “Oh thank God!”

  He wore a simple white T-shirt, a pair of dark blue jeans, white prison issued canvas sneakers, and his head was crowned with a black kufi. His biceps, shoulders, chest, and neck were so muscular his brown skin simultaneously stretched to the point of bursting and possessed a glow that was the amalgamation of pain and meditation. My Aunt Rhonda wrapped her arms around his muscular neck and hugged him, and she kissed his cheek, repeatedly mashing her face into the side of his.

  “My brother,” she said. “Oh my baby brother!”

  With one thick arm, and staring blankly ahead, he, stunned by where he was, disaffectedly hugged my Aunt Rhonda back. Then when she let go, he let go and there was a moment when everyone just stood there, in silence, he looking at us, we looking at him. Seven years of incarceration had made his beauty the type of beautiful you had to commit yourself to, the type of beautiful you had to study to understand. He was no longer good-looking, no longer handsome. Rather, he was greater. He was kingly, indefinitely regal, in possession of a strength so vast it is only available to those who’ve overcome banishment. His nose was square. His lips lay on a plane of unwavering indifference, as if no longer possessing the capability to smile or frown. He looked at my grandma, at Eric, at me.

  “You all got so big,” he breathed.

  His eyes were deep set, staid, oval, dark hallways that led to extensive contemplation, the pondering of things his five senses did not have the chance to confirm or refute; scents and sights, the way that exact moment would feel. Seven years of thinking and constant wanting, of longing and silencing the begging for time to speed by in the blink of an eye had not prepared him for where he was nor what was before him.

  He scanned the room: the same TV, the same couch he sat on the day I was born, the trophies he’d won along the base of the wall. In his right hand, he held a small plastic bag of his belongings. Veins rippled and splintered into a web of rivulets along his forearm. He put the bag on the floor. He looked at Luscious. Then he stood as tall and as proudly as he could.

  But what to do next? He took a deep breath through his nose, sucking our apartment and Luscious and his freedom in. His huge chest expanded. He closed his eyes. We waited and watched him. Dappling the straight, hard lines of his cheekbones and cheeks and scattered on his forehead were shallow pockmarks and small scars from the pimples he’d picked out of having too much time to scrutinize blemishes and mistakes. There was a scar on his forehead that was dotted with marks from stitches and a three-inch scar on his neck and his left eyebrow was cleaved with another. He had been battered and abused and he had battered and abused himself.

  Luscious stood in the middle of the room, her hands over her mouth, her entire being shaking. My uncle opened his eyes and studied her. How had he awaited this? How had he dreamed? How had he acquiesced to what might
come, to the defeat that she might no longer be his? He breathed slow and inconsistent breaths, breaths only taken to suppress the swell of tears born in one’s throat and chest. Then he raised his arms and opened them like doors.

  “Come,” he said, his voice soft and deep, the echo of a bottomless vessel. “Come and let me feel you.”

  IV

  That night there was a party, a celebration so incredibly grand every brother and sister in America had at least one cousin there. Wonderful Ever Park people. Chocolate City. That’s what it was. It was sweet and it was thick and it was beautiful; a melting, a divine amalgamation. Angels stood along the walls and in the corners of the room, brown skin shining, perspiration above their upper lip and at the cusp of their hairline, smelling of Egyptian musk, French vanilla, and sun-warmed tropical fruit so swelled with juice that with one bite their insides would leak all over, saturate, and leave a mane of pulp on a face. There were artists with photographic memories and stutterers with cerebral files on every player in the NBA. There were doves who were breakers of school chairs and reckless pugilists who had been dating the same girl since the sixth grade. Prophets and martyrs, writers of love letters, apostles. Some girls giggled like candied lambs. Some men had voices so deep their tones were drums of testosterone rumbling in their necks. There were heroes who were convicts and criminals who shouted the loudest every Sunday in church. We were jammed in the apartment. We flooded the hallways. We spilled down the stairwell. Dares and stories were bestowed. Explanations and smatterings of lyrics were lofted by liquor-loosened tongues. If there was ever a more august gathering, a more majestic parade, if there was ever anything more essential and dignified it was only because confronted by a sudden apocalypse, the world had learned its existence would never end. We danced. We sweated. We reveled in the refuge of one another, in the need for release. We were highlights and hallelujahs. Mr. Goines took pictures with an old camera. Young women shook what their mothers gave them and what their fathers wished they didn’t have and every lover of a woman’s shape suffered palpitations. Everyone elucidated their laughter with more laughter. Hope had arrived. No one, no matter how starved or exhausted or battered by the previous days, suffered from the slightest wavering or weakness.

  The couch, the TV, and the coffee table went in my grandmother’s bedroom. Quentin McKnight, DJ Q, set up his turntables and spun everything from Madonna to Wu-Tang. Bass bumped so loudly the windows of cars in California rattled. Jewelry, our necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets shivered on our sweat-shining skin. Plastic cups and bottles of liquor and beer were held above heads, spilling and foaming over their edge. Aluminum trays, piled high with food, with chicken wings and potato salad and macaroni and cheese and salad and ham and peas and rice and spaghetti crowded the kitchen counter, spilled onto the floor, and when emptied, crowded the kitchen sink and garbage along with plastic utensils and plates and soiled napkins. A variety of beers—Coronas, Heinekens, Budweisers, and Bud Light, Red Stripe, Amstel Light, name it and it was there—packed the ice that filled the bathtub. There were bottles of champagne and bottles of malt liquor and bottles of cheap red wine and cheaper sparkling white, and the sweet scent of the kindest, greenest marijuana ever, harvested from the West Indies to hydroponic Amsterdam, wobbled its smoky hips through the air. Gallons of rum punch and piña coladas and every alcoholic beverage that could be swallowed without permanently blinding and burning was emptied, saturating tongues, livers, lungs, and kidneys. By 10:00 p.m. the apartment was so crowded and hot all of Ever Park was dressed in fog.

  “Abraham,” said my grandma. “Go and get the fan from my closet.”

  I went into her room, came back out, and using the only string I could reach, I pulled one of the laces from my sneakers and hung the old, rickety box fan in the kitchen doorway. Then I stretched the cord as far as it would go, plugged it in, turned it on high, and left the fan swaying and blowing a faint breeze as if whispering might cool us down.

  Good old Doo-Doo Dave, who used to live on the third floor but had since moved to the Poconos, arrived saying his twin brother Jamel sent his regards. Then he and his big, round belly seemed to attach themselves to my Aunt Rhonda’s hip and for the rest of the night he played the straight man to her raucous celebration. My Aunt Rhonda was never without a drink. She danced. She hooted and hollered. Her lipstick dripped and slid from her lips.

  Then after midnight, from across the mash of bodies in the room, my Aunt Rhonda held on to Doo-Doo and set her crossed, heavy-lidded eyes on me. She blinked hard. She wiped her face, dragged her sweaty hand down her sweaty cheek to pretty herself up. Then she leaned forward, pushed herself away from Doo-Doo, wobbled, steadied herself, and teetered through the crowd toward me, swimming through bodies with her elbows because she had a plastic cup in each hand. When she reached me, she slurred every word, even those without an s or r. She told me my mother would be proud, so Goddamn, motherfucking proud of me. She repeated it three times. I had to know. Abraham you got to know. I needed to understand. She closed her eyes, slung her arm over my shoulder, and pressed a plastic cup against the left side of her chest.

  “Cause deep inside,” she sighed, shaking her head left and right. “Because that shit, Abraham, that crack, baby, that crack can’t touch this.”

  V

  There was only one wrong committed all night, only two wrongdoers: Donnel and Nice. Their wrong was neither a simple gaffe nor was it a misdemeanor or felony. The crime they committed was nothing punishable. It was worse. It was too great.

  Neither laughed or smiled more than halfheartedly. Neither danced. Nice shrugged away Luscious’s attempts to get him to join her for slow songs and stood against the wall, awkwardly greeting brothers and sisters he had once seamlessly loved, mechanically embracing those who embraced him, and stiffly refusing helpings of food, things to drink, and even the slightest taste of the marijuana sweetening the room. And when Luscious was not at his side, whispering in his ear, pointing out who was who and who was whose child and setting him at ease as much as she could, he scoured the room, dissected every brother and sister with an otherworldly, infernal mistrust, and followed Luscious’s every move, his eyes twisted with suspicion and jealousy. Who was she talking to? Who was that brother, that sister to her? How intimately did they know her? Why were they touching her the way they did? Were they lovers? Had they seen her naked, smelled her secret scents? And did they know who he was, or rather, who he had been? And who was he? In that room; at that party; amidst all of the brothers and sisters he had once awed and been worshipped by, he seemed lost.

  And worse, throughout every moment of the celebration, he was scrutinized, scoured by the hateful glare of Donnel, seeming always to be leaning against the wall opposing Nice, nodding and shrugging when people joined him, darkly smoking blunts and drinking the same warm forty-ounce all night while measuring Nice, his musculature and failed attempt at a disaffected disposition. Not once did Nice and Donnel speak. Not once did they make eye contact. Matter-of-factly, but not specifically, Luscious had told Nice. She said Donnel was doing, you know, things; running, you know, the streets. Early in the night, Nice came to me for verification. And I said: “D? You know, he’s good. He’s all right.” And that’s all I said. I took the Fifth against everything else Nice asked, against the very idea that Donnel was headed down the same path Nice had previously traveled and, just hours before, returned from.

  So all night, Nice and Donnel shared just two things: nothing and critical judgment. And yet, my grandma wasn’t having it. No. Such divisions would not exist in her home. And so, when the party’s population finally dwindled to a few dozen exhausted brothers and sisters and the only people dancing were a handful of couples, my grandma, drunk herself, stormed over to DJ Q, pulled the headphone from his ear, and told him what she needed to hear. Then she marched across the room, snatched Donnel by the hand, and dragged him into the middle of the floor.

  “Go ahead and leave this spot,” she blasted, her eyes an
d face ablaze with a murderous level of sincerity. “And you don’t never come back! As God is my witness, just keep on vanishing!”

  Then my grandma left Donnel, crossed the room, and snatched the hands of my Aunt Rhonda, Doo-Doo, and Eric, and led them into the middle of the room to stand with Donnel.

  “Luscious baby, Roosevelt,” she shouted, holding my Aunt Rhonda and Donnel by their wrists. “Let’s go! Both of you! Come on over here.”

  It took a moment, and something she whispered in his ear, and a gentle tug of his hand, but Luscious led my uncle into the middle of the room where my grandma and Eric and my Aunt Rhonda and Doo-Doo, and Donnel, slouching to demonstrate his defiance, stood.

  I stood by the window with Kaya and I had been telling her things I could only say because that night was a celebration of my family, of whom I was born loving, and I had the courage of malt liquor and marijuana swelling my chest. She was beautiful. I had dreams about her. And I told her the secrets, how I had written her love letters when we were in middle school and written her letters apologizing for not giving her the letters; how I struggled with seeing her because of how deeply just the sight of her meant to me. I didn’t know why. It just was what it was. Maybe because seeing her made me forget myself, forget the sadness I harbored. I wanted to take her to a movie. Did she want to go to a movie with me? How about to dinner? What about dinner and a movie and maybe some ice cream? What was her favorite flavor? Butter pecan. Wow. Me too. But not really though. So what type of cone, sugar or wafer?