by Lisa Braxton
“Is that okay with your health as it is?” Della asked.
“You’re a dear to be concerned,” Inez said, “but air travel is very comfortable these days and very accommodating. They’ll put us in one of those motorized golf carts and zip us around the airport. Willie loves it. We get on the plane before anyone else. While we’re in and out of town, we’ll stay current on the rent.”
“Oh, I have no concerns about that.” Sydney turned to the parlor doorway to look at the line of people waiting for autographs. Malachi had rejoined Lawrence at the cash register. She wondered if he’d found any clues to the thefts. “I should get out there and help,” she said.
“Go ahead, dear,” Inez said. ‘I’ll sit here with Della.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Della said, nodding at Sydney.
“When the line dies down,” Inez continued, “we can take LeRoi out for a late dinner, and Della can have him sign her book.”
Omar looked over at Natalie. She was naked, except for a silk scarf draped around her waist. Their ritual, before Natalie had turned her back to him so long ago, was for him to take off her undergarments—panties, hose, garters—piece by piece. Now, he tugged on the scarf, but she playfully smacked his hand away. She straddled him and held him by the shoulders, forcing him to lie back on the mattress. This was something new. He had always been the aggressor. Omar watched Natalie’s eyes flare with excitement.
“Natalie, I…”
She shushed him, pressing a finger to his lips. He decided to surrender to Natalie’s touch. The smell of cocoa butter on her skin filled him up and aroused him more. Her braids fell in his face, the cowrie shells tickling his cheeks. She rode him. He came within seconds, the manic force, bursting forth uncontrollably.
Natalie giggled, planting wet kisses all over his face, neck, and shoulders. She teased his ear lobes with the tip of her tongue, the most sensitive spot on his body. He sucked on her bottom lip and then plunged his tongue into her mouth all the way to the back of her throat. He was hard all over again. This time he was floating. Every touch heightened his arousal. He felt like a wild animal with no conscience or inhibitions. His heart was thumping fast. The room turned dark red. He began wailing and had to press his eyes shut and grip the mattress on both sides to hang on for the ride. He cursed himself for not being able to hold on longer. When it was over, he was embarrassed at his loss of composure.
He watched Natalie ease herself off of him. She lay on her stomach and tucked herself part way underneath him. “I’ve missed you,” she purred. He wanted to respond but was spent. He felt as if he was free-falling in a tunnel, losing consciousness as he tumbled.
Omar shut his eyes. He dreamed that he was in Senegal. It was the morning of his twelfth birthday. Ibrahim presented him with his very own full-sized djembe, newly strung. The head was made out of soft goat skin, the intricately carved body made from a hollowed-out Lenge tree.
“Take care of this drum,” Ibrahim stated. “It is a sacred object. Believe in its power to heal. Respect the goat that was used to make the drum head and the tree from which it came.”
Omar listened to his father, spending the rest of the morning pulling on the rows of ropes, tightening and knotting them to tune the drumhead to the perfect pitch. Then he began to play. After a while, his palms were throbbing, but he kept on. People began to respond. Women in the village left their chores and gathered in the center of the ker, jerking their bodies to the beat, whirling around, swinging their heads back and forth. Ibrahim joined Omar, singing as he drummed about kings and chiefs and others who made contributions to the life of the village.
As his dream continued, the women in his village fired up the forge for a big feast in celebration of Omar’s first day with his djembe. He was standing under a palaver tree with other boys his age, but a force he couldn’t stop willed him to move closer and closer to the forge until the heat felt as if it would burn through his skin. He tore at his clothes and covered his face with his hands to shield himself from the heat, yet he drew closer to the flames. The women of the village stood around him talking to each other but not reacting to his distress. They didn’t seem to feel the heat from the flames. The dream was so upsetting that Omar forced himself to wake up.
He opened his eyes to pitch black. The bedroom felt like a furnace. Rivulets of sweat tickled his chest. His sheets and blankets were soaked. He reached for Natalie, but her side of the bed was untouched. Half asleep, Omar struggled to make sense of what was going on. He heard the crackling sound of what he thought was a campfire. He tried to yell for help but something caught in his throat, making him cough. He heard sirens and sat up ramrod straight.
He jumped out of bed too quickly, catching his foot in the tangle of sheets and blankets and stumbled and fell, hitting his forehead on the nightstand. He slammed his ankle on a chair by the bed.
“Natalie!” he said between coughs, but got no response. His ankle throbbed. Sirens got louder. He managed to stumble into the living room.
“Omar! Omar! Get out of there, my brother.”
It was Khadim shouting from the street. Omar called for Natalie again. Nothing. He heard car horns, walkie-talkies. From the kitchen window he saw fire trucks and a ladder being extended from a fire truck.
Popping sounds like gunshots and fireworks exploded in the air. Windows shattered. Now unable to put weight on his swelling ankle, Omar crawled toward the front door of his apartment. But the drumbeats wouldn’t let him continue. They were coming from the drum room. He had to turn back.
On hands and knees he got to the drum room door and pushed it open. As he entered the smoky room, the drumbeat got louder. It was the spirits of the villagers who cut down the trees to carve the drums compelling him to rescue the drums, to not leave them to burn up in the fire. The drumbeat got so loud he thought it would burst his eardrums. He felt a tickling sensation on his upper lip as blood ran out of his nose. He felt his way to the drums, pushed open the window and grabbed the most important one, his father’s djembe, which Ibrahim gave him when he left Senegal. As a firefighter yelled at him from the ladder, he tossed the drum at the small patch of grass in front of the building, hoping to save it from splitting open as it hit the ground six floors down. Omar tossed his drums one-by-one out of the window, as he did, the drumbeat quieted down. “Are you crazy, man? Get out of there!” he heard Khadim shouting.
Omar had gotten most of them out when he remembered the framed autographed pictures of him with Duke Ellington and the one with Duke Ellington and his orchestra. He wanted to save them, too. He felt along the wall and managed to touch the glass of one of the framed pictures, but it was so hot it felt as if his fingertips were being singed. Bracing himself, he grabbed one photo and then another. His palms hurt so badly he wanted to scream. He tossed the photos out the window. All at once, the door to the drum room burst open. Before he could turn to see what was happening, something heavy fell onto his back. His knees buckled and he crumpled to the floor. He reached behind him and felt the wooden blades of the ceiling fan pinning him down.
Omar tried to get up but couldn’t and lay there spitting out lint and other debris. He prayed to the spirit of his ancestor, Maguette Bassari, that he wouldn’t die.
Moments later he felt himself being lifted off the floor. It was a firefighter. The firefighter carried him over to the window where the other firefighter was waiting outside on the ladder against the building. As the second firefighter brought him down the ladder, Omar gulped in the bitingly cold air and tasted blood that had trickled into his mouth. The firefighter placed him on a gurney. A cone was strapped over his nose. The pain was becoming unbearable. He felt as if a hot knife was stabbing him in the arms, legs, and shoulder.
From the flashing lights of the fire trucks and police cars, Omar could make out the figure of a large-framed man holding a leash attached to a German shepherd that wouldn’t stop barking and kept lea
ping up. Who was he? Omar knew he had seen him before but couldn’t remember where. He wondered why the man wouldn’t make the dog heel. Then Khadim’s fuzzy face came into view. He was standing over Omar, yelling, wiping at his eyes with the backs of his hands. What was wrong with Khadim? Couldn’t he see that he was okay? He tried to ask Khadim about Natalie, but his friend apparently couldn’t hear his words through the cone. Then he noticed Uncle Mustapha nearby. Uncle seemed hysterical, pacing back and forth in front of Omar, his arms flailing as he yelled at one paramedic and then the other. Omar couldn’t hear what he was saying. He wished he could calm both men down.
He felt the sensation of moving through the air as he was lifted into an ambulance. Pain came and went in crashing waves, until he had the peace of feeling nothing at all.
After Amiri Baraka autographed the last book for a customer he got his coat and joined Della and Inez in the foyer. Sydney opened the door for the trio as an ambulance went speeding by. She told them she would try to join them at The Bell Tower Steakhouse a little later. Malachi ushered Lawrence into the reading room. Lawrence sat on one side of the long table and Malachi and Sydney on the other.
“What’s this about?” asked Lawrence.
Malachi pulled his chair closer to the table. “I’m not sure where to start.”
Lawrence looked from Malachi to Sydney. “Well, y’all got to say something.”
“You kept going in and out the back door while Mr. Baraka was talking,” Sydney added. She felt like an attorney in a courtroom.
Lawrence shot Sydney a look. “Yeah. I took the trash out.”
“But you took the trash out at least four or five times,” Malachi added.
Lawrence sat up straight and turned to Malachi. “I didn’t think it was a problem. Everything was already set up. I put the tablecloth out, arranged the chairs, got the pens and a stack of books ready. I stepped outside to take a smoke. That’s all.”
“A smoke?” asked Malachi.
Lawrence narrowed his eyes. “I know I told you a while back that I quit, but I started up again. It’s a habit, you know. It’s kind of hard to break.”
Malachi leaned across the table. “I don’t care about your smoking. But just be straight with me, man.”
Lawrence threw up his hands. “You be straight with me.”
Malachi went over to a large box at the end of the table. He pulled out a framed Bridgewaters painting called “The Potter,” which depicted an old black man sitting at a potter’s wheel while his grandson looked over his shoulder.
“What you bringing that out for?” asked Lawrence.
“We found these in the trash bin,” Malachi replied, pulling out three smaller Bridgewaters paintings.
“What were they doing there?”
Malachi said nothing.
Lawrence pushed his chair back. “Aw man, you can’t be accusing me of taking those. That’s ridiculous. What would I do with them?”
Malachi shrugged. “They’re worth a couple thousand on the street.”
Lawrence stood up. “Fencing? You’re crazy man. All this time I thought you were looking out for me. And you go and accuse me of something like this.”
Malachi eyed Sydney, then continued. “We saw you take some books out of here.”
“Huh?”
“People saw you stuffing books in your backpack, The African and Black American Experience during the grand opening. The three volumes,” Sydney said.
Lawrence paused before answering. “The old man wanted those books.”
“What?” asked Sydney.
“The old man downstairs. You rent to him and his wife? He wanted to see those. He told me you all said it was okay.”
“Willie never said anything to me about borrowing those books,” Malachi countered.
“Well, that’s what he told me.”
“What about the cash?” asked Sydney.
“What cash?” Lawrence snapped.
Malachi stood up. “There’s money missing. We were short one hundred and fifty dollars the night of the grand opening. And we are still coming up short some nights. Sometimes I count the drawer and it’s twenty-five dollars missing, sometimes fifty, sometimes even more. And it happens every time you’re working.”
“Don’t try to pin that on me. I’m not a thief. I wouldn’t steal from you.”
“Besides Syd and me, you’re the only one with access to the cash register.”
Lawrence got up and brushed past Malachi as he strode toward the door. “Like I said, I don’t know nothing about that. You’ve got a thief running around here, and it ain’t me.”
“Okay then, help us figure out who is stealing from us,” Sydney offered.
Lawrence turned back around to face them, red-eyed and frowning. “You must take me for a damn fool. Call the cops.” He went behind the front counter and snatched his backpack. He slammed the door on his way out.
They sat there for a while. “I hope we didn’t make a mistake,” Sydney said eventually.
Malachi sighed heavily. “I know, but I didn’t see any other way around it. We had to talk to him. We couldn’t just let it go.”
Sydney looked toward the front door. “I just hope we did the right thing.”
CHAPTER 27
OMAR HAD KNOWN pain before. When he was eight years old he was taken one day from his village outside of Bakel before sunrise and sent with other boys his age to the bush where they underwent a series of exercises and tests to build courage and learn responsibility. Omar didn’t flinch when it was his turn to have the pakka, the knife, slice through the foreskin of his penis. He pushed back the tears that rushed to his eyes as the pain intensified. He shouted in Wolof, “leiguii gor la” or “I am a man!” with the other boys as his blood dripped into the dirt.
But his becoming a njulli, a circumcised man, did not prepare him for the pain he felt now. After the fire, he spent two weeks in the burn unit of Bellport General Hospital. He was discharged with no place to go. Bulldozers had flattened what was left of The Commonwealth Arms. So he moved into the cellar of Uncle Mustapha’s restaurant. Khadim had offered him his sofa bed, but it was in the living room where his kids normally watched television. Uncle Mustapha’s apartments above the restaurant were all occupied. That only left the basement.
He was growing tired of lying on his stomach but it was the only way to keep his back and shoulders from rubbing onto the mattress surface. His second-degree burns had blistered and oozed while he was in the hospital. Now the skin was stiff and crusted with scabs. Pressure or irritation could scrape the scabs off. If he lay face up the mattress would feel like a bed of nails. The nurses had given him a tube of ointment to put on his burns when he was discharged, but he felt uncomfortable having Uncle Mustapha apply it.
Omar replayed in his head what the nurses had told him. A firefighter had gotten to him just minutes before the building was engulfed. Fifteen families lost all of their belongings. The bulldozers were hired by the building owner, James Fullerton, to flatten the building.
The doctors had told him that the burns on his back and shoulders should heal within three to four months. He was more worried about the second-degree burns on his palms. They would take longer to heal—six months or more. He hoped the doctors were right. There was no way he could play the drums with damaged palms. He would be of no use to anyone if his hands didn’t eventually heal well enough for him to perform.
Omar instinctively reached for his neck to touch his gris gris, forgetting that it wasn’t there. He would miss it. It was a reminder of the last few days he spent in Bakel before leaving for America and a special time that he shared with Fama. He was sure the gris gris burned up with everything else in the apartment or snapped off in the chaos of his rescue.
A long scab across his shoulder blade began to itch. The sensation was so intense that he turned his attention to h
is surroundings to distract himself. His cot was up against the wall directly underneath the kitchen of Le Baobab. He was tired of staring at the tiny holes in the cement wall. He flipped onto his other side, keeping his back off the mattress, and faced the room. His blanket, issued by the Bellport Rescue Society, was scratchy and stiff. He kicked it off, preferring to feel a chill from the drafty cellar than the chafing of the wool.
The room was small and unventilated. To make matters more oppressive, Omar could smell burned flesh—his flesh mixed with the medicated lotion that had been applied before he left the hospital. The smell made him nauseous. There was no getting away from it. Omar stared at the narrow cellar window near the ceiling, wishing he could open it enough to get some air. Bits of sunlight shone through the dirty glass. He had enough light to see at the far end of the cellar opposite him, two rows of cots with bare mattresses and pillows. He could make out the chunky form of a woman curled into the fetal position. She rocked back and forth and sobbed into a blanket. He recognized her from Petite Africa and was pretty sure she was Senegalese. A child, who Omar guessed to be about seven or eight, sat on a cot near the woman, looking at the ceiling, swinging his legs back and forth.
Omar didn’t know the time. He calculated that lunch was over because he heard no more noise coming from the kitchen overhead. It must be two-thirty or three, he thought. It wasn’t time yet for the kitchen staff to start preparing for dinner.
Omar dozed a while but was jarred awake by the sound of the cellar door creaking open. He sat up. His stomach had been growling for hours. Uncle Mustapha’s rubber-soled sandals descended the stairs. Uncle’s face was drawn, his shoulders slumped more than usual. Omar thought back on the meals his uncle had brought him over the past several days, groundnut stew when he first got out of the hospital, then gradually heavier meals like thiebou djeun, the Senegalese national dish of stewed fish, rice, and vegetables. Omar hoped his uncle wasn’t spending all of his time taking care of him and neglecting his health. The aroma of black-eyed pea fritters, one of his favorite dishes, filled the cellar.