A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story

by Sister Souljah

  • • •

  Face to face with Mr. Sharp, words weren’t necessary. His facial expression told the story of Momma’s death. His look, I know, was 99 percent pain that he felt for me.

  “Do you want me to take you to the hospital where she is?” he asked.

  “No,” I said softly, sweetly, and sorrowfully. I knew he meant, where her dead, naked, cold body, and what remained of it is . . . being refrigerated.

  “You should sit down then,” Sharp said. “Here’s the situation. I’ve made all of the arrangements. The wake will be at the Johnson’s Funeral Home on Eastern Parkway, but it won’t happen for at least ten days. Your father is processing through the red tape to be able to attend the funeral and it looks like it’s gonna happen.”

  • • •

  Shopping alone in Neiman Marcus for Momma’s final outfit, I was shaking. With the wake set to occur in twenty-four hours, and the undertaker waiting for my fashion choices so he could dress Momma’s dead body, my brain drew a black blank. My own mind was afraid to show me any images of Momma after 1994, when Momma was a stunner and the priceless crown jewel in Poppa’s crown. It was as though my memory of Momma hooked and dragged down by crack was temporarily erased. The team-in-my-head were working feverishly to decorate and redecorate. They were spraying perfume on everything, covering up the stench, and removing the stains. They were converting Momma into an angel, who could never do and never did anything wrong.

  Maybe that’s how I ended up at the register with a white dress designed by Gianni Versace in his heyday, and the stilettos Momma definitely would’ve worn with it.

  I paid in cash without blinking an eye, losing one breath, or even reviewing the receipt. I’m sixteen, and I’m made of money. I have it bulging out of my Birkin bag, falling out the sky over my head, and leaving a trail wherever I walked. Like Midas, every business venture I ever took on, doubled, tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, and turned to gold. My stacks of money was easy, getting my mind right was complicated. Fixing my heart was fucking impossible.

  It’s crazy. No, I should say, it’s ironic. Elisha taught me that word. Momma had died on my sixteenth birthday. It had taken Mr. Sharp a couple days to make contact. Why that day? What was Momma saying to me? From now on, on my birthday, when I’m supposed to be happy and celebrating my life, I will be remembering Momma’s death.

  • • •

  Undertakers look at dead people all day. For them, that’s a normal life. When Momma’s undertaker looked at the outfit I selected, he handed it right back to me and then excused himself, calling Mr. Sharp on his back-office phone, as I overheard the conversation.

  “The young lady has purchased a white minidress for the Santiago corpse,” he began saying to Sharp.

  In my state of mind, I knew Mr. Sharp would take care of everything. I wanted to speak to him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t assemble one sentence to say out loud, much less a string of sensible sentences. It was as if I was trapped in the corner of my mind screaming, while soft music played. It was not the kind of music I was used to or that I danced to.

  There were no drums, no drum machine, no guitar, acoustic or electric, no bass, trumpet, violin, or sax, or even piano. The music I heard was the tingle of someone tapping the triangle, while another played only the xylophone. And that’s it, no other instruments.

  When my cell phone rang I just stared at it. I didn’t pick up. It was an interruption to my music. When I returned to my hotel room, the hotel phone was blinking red with recorded messages unheard. Suddenly it began ringing loudly, too loudly to ignore. I picked it up but couldn’t remember how to form my mouth to say hello.

  “It’s me,” Mr. Sharp said. “There’s a gentleman here to see you, a Mr. Bilal Ode. He’s out in my reception area. Before you hang up, listen. I’ve seen this man before. He used to come with your father for fittings. Silent man, never said one word besides the greetings. I just thought you should know that, before you send him away without hearing him out.”

  Bilal Ode, Bilal Ode, Bilal Ode, Bilal Ode, a chorus began singing the name over and over again, opera style, until my tears boiled up and spilled. The African man who adopted my baby girls, the twins, and moved them to a place Momma called, “the African Jungle,” I thought to myself.

  “Are you listening?” Mr. Sharp asked me calmly. I hung up.

  I didn’t call down for them to bring the Benz around from valet parking. I couldn’t speak. Downstairs I handed the parking attendant a valet ticket and a ten-dollar bill.

  I got in and was driving to meet Bilal Ode at Mr. Sharp’s.

  “He left his card,” Mr. Sharp said when I arrived. “He’s staying at the Palace, a hotel in Manhattan. He said he needed to meet up with you. I can drive you over. You would do better with a driver at times like this.” Mr. Sharp took over.

  Chapter 43

  The Palace Hotel’s presidential suite took extra security clearances to access. Suited men began speaking into microscopic microphones pinned to their lapels, each with listening devices lodged in one ear. I was used to security escorts, VIP arrangements, and elite living. I let all the “officials” speak to Mr. Sharp. I was nothing but a pretty mute.

  A security-styled man, suited differently from the security who were already escorting us, opened the door to Mr. Bilal Ode’s suite. After both security teams once-overed, and exchanged a few words with each other, we were cleared to enter.

  In a spacious area decorated with expensive old furniture, a tall dark man stood looking down on some papers, with his back to me. He turned around. My eyes trained in on him. His eyes searched me, then locked into mine.

  “Hot sauce,” my lips murmured. I remembered that feeling from when I was seven. A rush of heat raced around my body waking up every internal organ and thickening my blood.

  “Midnight,” was all I said, in an airy whisper, before I collapsed onto the floor.

  It wasn’t his diamond cufflinks, each princess cut placed precisely in a square surrounded in pure dark gold. Or the fact that carefully customed cufflinks send an electric current through the body of any woman who loves high-quality, manly, masculine men. It wasn’t his Gucci gators or his Armani suit. It wasn’t his white monogrammed dress shirt, so cleaned and pressed so perfectly it glistened, or his Yachtmaster Rolex or hundred-dollar dress socks.

  It was his countenance. Elisha taught me that word, too. It was his complete composure. At sixteen, I am a woman who is highly regarded as erotic and exotic, a mesmerizing, hypnotic dancer, to be seen and amazed by, but never, ever touched. It was more than unusual. It was rare and difficult to be in the presence of a man so arousing that I’m forced to feel like I’m cheating on my own man, when I’m actually doing nothing at all. No, it wasn’t rare. It had never happened to me before.

  How could Midnight be so rough and manly, while tailored and manicured and prettier than me? On top of it all, so fucking cool and calm as though he was completely unaware of his power. His unconceited stance moved me. His victorious presence, after everything and everyone else had crumbled, insulted and enticed me. Was he laughing at the Santiagas? Or was it something else? What about Winter? What would she do? Fuck him or slap him? Maybe both.

  When I woke my eyes were still closed. I was in the laying-down position. Then my eyes opened halfway. I was lying down on my side on a plush divan, covered with a silk paisley sheet. My instinct was to drag my hands up my thighs and push my finger into my pussy hole, then to smell it to see if anyone had messed with me while I was knocked out. As I did, my eyes fully opened now, landed on three Arabian-type females. They were the kind that would hang out with a dude named Ali Baba, and his forty thieves. They were the wrapped-up foreign ladies, with sex and longing in their shapely eyes. The ones who flew on magic carpets, had pretty belly buttons, and decorated feet.

  What the fuck? What was happening to me now? Porsche L. Santiaga, I reminded myself. Porsche L. Santiaga, I thought again just to be sure that’s who I am and that I was aw
ake.

  “Miss Porsche,” one of the Arabian-type ladies said softly and respectfully to me.

  “Hmm,” I thought. She knows my real name! For the past two years I had used at least twelve different names, none of them the real one, which Poppa had given me. I must be dreaming. Suddenly, I began laughing and laughing and was not able to stop myself.

  “Miss Porsche Santiaga, are you feeling okay?” the Arabian lady asked me again.

  I drew in a deep breath. Her and my eyes locked, and I simply nodded yes.

  “I’m Sulima, director of protocol. She is Dr. Fatima Ali, and beside her is Rhakia Azziz. We were directed to ensure that you are feeling well, and to provide you with medical assistance if needed. We are also here to prepare you for your meeting with Aleema and Hasna.”

  “Who?” I said, finally speaking.

  “Your sisters,” she answered calmly.

  “My sisters, Aleema and Hasna?” I repeated. “I have three sisters, Winter, Mercedes, and Lexus,” I said aloud, more for myself than for them.

  “The latter two,” the director of protocol said.

  “The latter two?” I repeated.

  “I guess this is where we should start. As you know, they were both adopted into a new family. They are completely aware of that fact. However, they were also adopted into a new way of life. They are called Aleema and Hasna and of course they have maintained the name of their father as well.” She looked at me as if to ask if I understood what she had said so far.

  “To eliminate confusing the twin girls, who are thirteen and impressionable . . .,” she said.

  “Where’s Midnight?” I raised my voice a little louder than the therapeutic tone that the softspoken woman was using. “Where’s Midnight?” I asked again.

  The three Arabian chicks looked back and forth at one another, as if they suddenly didn’t understand me.

  “Bilal Ode!” I shouted.

  “Yes, the men are engaged in a meeting in another room. Surely we woman can handle at least this much, can’t we?” the lady doing all the talking said.

  “Where are my sisters?” I want to see them. If not, I’ll be leaving,” I told them. I was sitting up right now and getting red was getting me clear.

  The three women walked into the corner of the room and had a meeting with themselves. It sounded like a melody of whispers. I was looking at my Cartier watch, giving them sixty seconds, starting right now, to get their shit together and get my sisters out here.

  “We will bring them in for you to meet them. We will also stay. As long as nothing inappropriate occurs, everything else should be fine. Can we offer you some water, tea, juice, coffee?” she said, too politely.

  “Water would be best,” the woman doctor said.

  “No, thank you. I’ll wait for my sisters,” I told them.

  After a particularly rhythmic knock by the director of protocol on one of the doors inside of our suite, Mercedes and Lexus entered from an apparently connected hotel room.

  My tears betrayed me the second I got a glimpse. Their strut was graceful. They looked like two Winters, with slim pretty caramel faces and praline eyes. Their noses were slim and straight and their chins dimpled. Their smiles revealed perfect teeth. They were innocent smiles. They were the smiles of two perfumed and pampered rich girls who were now leaving childhood, curves of femininity rushing in to define things clearly. Four pretty hands without one single scar between them. Twenty manicured medium-length beautiful nails with only clear polish and that seemed more than enough. There was no uneasiness, awkwardness, fear, or sorrow in these pretty things. Definitely they were not the faces of girls who had just lost their Momma, or who had searched for their Momma for eight long years only to discover she was cold and dead and gone, forever.

  Furthermore, these were girls who had never been sent to the bottom with chained ankles and wrists, had never been sprayed with ice-cold water and sent to sleep in a dorm with thirty-three crazy little strangers. These were girls who had never stood or crawled or laid down in lumpy or watery shit or barked like dogs or mooed like cows. Nope, Midnight had saved them with Poppa’s written permission. Poppa saved them, but not me and no one saved Momma.

  Their eyes darted towards the Arabian woman.

  “Why is she crying?” Lexus asked her.

  “She is sad because your umi has returned to Allah,” the Arabian one said.

  “I have three umis,” Lexus said. The Arabian lady put her finger over her lips as if to say, Don’t tell Porsche our personal business. Meanwhile, I’m like, what the fuck does umi mean? What were they discussing? Mercedes came over to me and gave me a hug.

  “I remember you, Porsche,” she said and embraced me.

  I started bawling like a baby, her feminine scent mixing with my own. To be recognized and hugged was too much, enough to last me for the next five years. Now Lexus was hugging Mercedes, who was hugging me.

  “Where do you live?” I asked them while I could ask them. I never wanted to lose track of them again.

  An Arabian lady interrupted and spoke a foreign language to my twins. Their embrace loosened and the twins turned and faced her with full attention and respect. Then the twins began speaking a foreign language back to her as well. Instead of them saying where they lived, the director of protocol said, “You will be given all of the necessary information in your meeting with their guardian.”

  “When’s that?” I shot back, my red feeling returning.

  “He was prepared for you before your fainting episode. Now he’s in several meetings,” she said gently and politely, but I could feel the stab tucked in it.

  “Baba always has meetings,” Mercedes said to me calmly.

  “So when then?” I asked the director.

  “I’m sure he will reach out to you directly if you provide us with your information,” she said, but I didn’t like that it sounded like she was just guessing or making up her response.

  I searched through my Birkin bag for pen and paper. I wrote my cell phone number and Mr. Sharp’s numbers down twice. I handed one paper to Mercedes and one to the lady who requested it.

  “No matter where you go in the world, please stay in touch with me, Porsche, your big sister. Please never forget me, okay?” I said.

  Mercedes said, “I like your handbag, it’s really nice.”

  “Do you want to have it?” I handed it to her until her little fingers were gripping it tightly.

  “The shoes are pretty, too!” Lexus said. Finally she said something to me. I removed my shoes so she could try them. But she wouldn’t. Instead she left them right where I left them.

  “We don’t wear heels yet,” Lexus said.

  “Your hair is nice. You just got it done, right?” Mercedes asked.

  “You are definitely a Santiaga!” I said to her, laughing lightly.

  “Let me see your hair?” I asked her to remove her headscarf. She took it off. Her hair was long, pretty, and well kept, like my own.

  The director of protocol began speaking in a foreign tongue again. I hated that shit.

  “Speak English! Speak English so I can be apart of this conversation with my family,” I said, not yelling yet.

  “Sorry to agitate you, Miss Porsche. I tried to converse with you concerning these matters in the first place.”

  “It’s okay. We’re all girls so I removed my hijab,” Mercedes said to the protocol lady.

  “Hijab!?” I repeated.

  “We are Muslims. Our religion is Islam, and we do not remove our hijab in the presence of any man who we could potentially marry,” Mercedes said.

  “Muslims? Do you like that?” I asked. “Do you even understand what that means?” I definitely did not know what it meant or involved. More than that, I didn’t want my twins to be anything that separated me any further from them.

  “It’s what is best for us, and we love our family and all of the women in our family are the same. We hope to live like them,” Mercedes said.

  “We have fou
r sisters and five brothers,” Lexus said. “And three mothers,” she added.

  “Four sisters?” I asked. “Including me?” I said.

  “Oh, we meant in our house where we live,” Lexus said.

  “Plus you makes five sisters,” Mercedes said graciously.

  “Plus Winter . . .,” I said. Their eyes were wandering with uncertainty.

  “Okay, six sisters,” Lexus corrected herself.

  “What about Momma?” I said, desperately.

  “She is no more,” Mercedes said.

  “She is no more,” Lexus repeated. Both of them were without a trace of one tear. My body shook with sorrow.

  We shared a meal, Mercedes, Lexus, me, and the three Arabian women. I couldn’t seem to squeeze them out of the package. Midnight’s meetings never ended.

  I was politely dismissed by the director of protocol. She told me that I would receive a call. She said the twins would not attend Momma’s wake tomorrow because it wasn’t how they believed it should be handled. She said they would both attend the burial because their biological father had requested it and their “guardian” had made the agreement and exceptions.

  “What about their address? You said you would give it to me.”

  “Pardon me,” she said, went into her purse and pulled out a card. I looked at it first just to check it. It was the business card for Mr. Bilal Ode, barber, with a Silver Spring, Maryland, address and the same cell phone number Mr. Sharp had recited to me for Midnight.

  A lot of things didn’t seem right. But who was I to start shaking down anybody else about their true identity, whereabouts, and occupation?

  Out in front of the Palace Hotel, Mr. Sharp was in my Benz seated behind the wheel. He saw me before I saw him, pulled up, and off we sped.

  Chapter 44

  Wake, they call it, but the dead is in a permanent sleep. When I was much younger, if I overheard any talk of the dead or even saw a dead person in a movie or on television, I believed that there was a possibility that the doctors were wrong and the person would wake up suddenly and find themselves permanently trapped in a box without air to breathe, pressed deep into the dirt. Death was equal to horror for me back then.