A Deeper Love Inside

by Sister Souljah

  “I wanna do whatever Elisha wants to do. I wanna go wherever Elisha wants to go. I wanna give him everything he wants and everything I have. I’ll be his wife and have his babies.”

  Elisha’s father stood up from his seat with amazement in his eyes and admiration for his youngest son.

  We left New York University in a complete uproar.

  • • •

  “Keep your bedroom door open, Elisha,” his mother said after welcoming me into their home and commenting on my “lovely red dress.” As she watched her son rush me away and down the hall hand in hand, she called behind him. “Even though you’re seventeen, keep it open,” she reminded him. So he did.

  He was leaning up against his desk in his bedroom. I was seated on his bed. The beautiful silk and linen red taffeta layers of fabric were spreading around me. My high-tops and heels were set on the wooden floor. I was brushing my feet with my hands, admiring the way my manicure and pedicure designs matched up nicely.

  “Even your feet are pretty . . .,” Elisha said.

  “Are they?” I teased.

  “Almost as pretty as your face,” he said. We laughed some. “That dress is crazy,” he said. “You’re not supposed to look better than the stars on the screen or the stars in the sky on opening night.” He smiled. I felt the normally confident Elisha was nervous and that was so sexy to me.

  “Your movie . . .” I began to say.

  “I don’t want to talk about the film,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said softly.

  “Your mother,” Elisha began saying.

  “I don’t want to talk about Momma,” I answered softly.

  He handed me a tiny box of Godiva chocolates, same as he did when we first met.

  “I’m not hungry. I’m not sad tonight either,” I told him, smiling.

  “Open it anyway,” he said calmly as he leaned on his desk, his arms folded across his chest.

  I opened the chocolates, but there were no chocolates inside. Instead, there were three diamond rings all shining. I looked up to Elisha.

  “One for Porsche, one for Ivory, one for Siri. I’m confident about at least two of you,” he said, smiling. “I’ll take either one of you or all three.”

  “Who do you love the most?” I asked.

  “Whoever you are sitting right there in that red dress,” he said. “If you tell me you’re not either one of them three, I’ll dump them all, and take you no matter what name you come up with.”

  “So is it me or the dress?” I teased. “If I take off the dress and give it to someone else, will you marry her instead, because she is wearing the red dress?”

  “Take off the dress, let’s see what I do,” he said. I stood up. Elisha closed his bedroom door and turned the lock. He dragged the chair from his desk and tilted it underneath the doorknob.

  “Elisha!” his mom called him. He was unbuttoning his shirt.

  I switched the lights off and moved from the bed.

  “Let’s take a shower in the dark,” I said.

  “Elisha.” His mom was right outside his bedroom now. I knew she wanted to talk. But we were through talking for the night.

  “Elon, leave your son alone. He’s a man now.” Elisha’s father’s voice had spoken. It was the first time I ever heard it, and he was saying the right thing.

  Dark, and in the cool shower, he washed me and I stood directly in the downpour. His hand moving the scented soap over my skin felt good to me. He scrubbed my pussy hairs the same as if it was the hair on my head. His hands wrapped around and cleaned my back, slid down and breezed through my crack. He was washing my thighs now and my legs were trembling.

  “Your skin is on fire,” he said. “Let me rinse you.” He spun me around slowly, holding my shoulders so I wouldn’t slip.

  “Let me wash you,” I said, taking the soap and caressing his upper body with suds. With soapy water I gripped the base of his hardness and washed him, moving up and down until it was clean and my palm was filled with warm sperm.

  “You’re cheating,” I told him. He smiled, a little breath escaping from both our lips. “Let me rinse you,” I said.

  Both of us clean, hot and boiling with longing, we skipped the towels. Laying on the wood floor of his bedroom, covered in droplets of water, Elisha stroked my pussy hairs. “I like your bush,” he said.

  “You just like me,” I said. He split it open and ate it like it was the inside of a Sunkist orange. When he sucked my sweetness there, a sound came forth from me that I wasn’t controlling.

  “Sshh . . .,” he said. He was licking my nipples, sucking my neck. I threw my leg over him. On top, I wanted to please him.

  “Be easy.” He sat up. He placed both hands on my waist, picked me up and placed me over his hardness.

  “Come down easy,” he said. As I bounced down slow, he pushed up strong. He kept pushing until he was welcomed inside. He pushed some more so intensely that he hit the bottom and an incredible feeling vibrated through my body and a sound came out from my lips. The more he moved me and the more I moved, the more incredible it felt. The friction was his thick and hard pushing, pressing, plunging into a tightened, but moist soft space. Movement was my thing and my body was letting him feel that rhythmic flow of my hips. He hit the bottom again. I had bounced down, he had pushed up hard. Warm juice sprayed into me and oozed back down. Then even my rainfall came and my body trembled.

  With him laying on the bottom, holding me steady by my butt as I laid on top, we were facing the window.

  “See the window? See the moonlight?” He smiled. “In a few hours, you’ll see the sun,” he promised.

  “You are my sun. I love you, Elisha.”

  “I know. I could always feel it,” he said calmly. “And besides, girls tend to like me.”

  Chapter 49

  After a night of intense feelings and tender kisses and arousing tongues touching, I still awakened with my pussy pounding. I squeezed my thighs together tightly trying to soothe it or slow it down. Elisha was asleep. He looked like he was deep in it and like he surely needed it. I resisted a so-strong urge to mess with him so that he would mess with me. Instead, I touched myself then pulled back my fingers. “So this is the scent of him inside of me with a little bit of blood mixed in it,” I thought. I slid down and out of his single bed.

  Both naked, our clothes were everywhere. As I tiptoed into his bathroom, I said to myself, “The red dress should only be worn once. That’s the beauty, power, and influence of it.” After showering, I wrapped myself in a big blue bath towel he had. I eased the chair from beneath his door and unlocked then turned the knob. The house was completely quiet.

  Tiptoeing down the hall, I stopped in front of Sheba’s door and tapped lightly with my fingernails. I couldn’t hear her moving. Figuring she was still sleeping I turned to go back. Her door opened. I looked and her face appeared.

  “Sheba, can I borrow an outfit?” I asked her. She opened her door some more. Then I stepped inside. She closed it behind me.

  “You really are something,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  “So bold. You come in here and fuck my brother, sleep over, and walk through the halls naked.”

  “Elisha fucked me,” I said. “It was our first time and it was really so nice. My feelings are still going crazy on the inside,” I said to her.

  Her mouth was dropped opened. I didn’t know why. I was being honest with her.

  “I’m not naked. I’m wearing the towel.”

  “I heard you, through the walls,” she said.

  “So then you must understand,” I said. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” I asked her.

  “Umm, yes . . .,” she said.

  “So you definitely understand. I’ve been in love with your brother since I was eleven. Now I’m sixteen. We both really tried to manage. How is it for you and your man? You two must be managing better than Elisha and me cause you don’t have any babies, right?” I asked her.

 
“There is something called birth control,” she said with soft sarcasm.

  “I know, but I don’t like medcine or doctors.”

  “So you two didn’t use nothing!” she asked.

  “No, and it felt so good.”

  Sheba threw her hands up.

  “Where have you been all of this time, and what did you do to my brother Elisha?”

  “I was working. And what happened to your brother?”

  “You know what happened. You put some kind of spell on him that made him love you too much without you even being here. What did you write in your letters to him?” Sheba asked.

  I knew she was referring to the letters I wrote to Elisha every other day for two years. The day after my disappearance from Brooklyn, I wrote and mailed the first one to him from upstate New York along with my diary, which I dug up from the ground at NanaAnna’s. Even though I had scratched out everybody’s name except my own; he would still get to know and feel my true story. I had written to Elisha for many reasons, because I wanted him to know for sure that my leaving was not because I didn’t love him. I gave him my diary because I trusted him and wanted him to know me, really know me—what I had lived through and why my moods swing so hard. I wanted him to understand that I needed time to separate from him, but not forever. I needed help with those holes in my heart.

  “Why didn’t you just ask Elisha what I wrote?”

  “So clever, you enchanting one,” Sheba said.

  I didn’t know what enchanting meant but I marked it in my mind to ask Elisha later.

  “Elisha kept your letters in a trunk locked in his closet, every time he received one, he’d go in his room, close the door, and not come out. None of us knew what you were telling him. Whatever it was, it must’ve been so magical that it changed him,” she said.

  “In a bad way?” I asked.

  “No, in a different way,” she said, avoiding filling me in.

  “Sheba, I have my own clothes of course, but not here. Can I just borrow a pair of jeans and a tee so I can run to the organic market? I want to make breakfast,” I said.

  “So now you’re gonna cook in my mother’s kitchen?” Sheba asked.

  “I’ll cook for your mom and for you, too.”

  • • •

  Wearing Sheba’s jeans and a Barnard T-shirt, Sheba’s socks and my red high-top Converses, I prepared a fresh, should-be-delicious, all-organic ingredients (including all seasonings) meal. I grilled fish, with onions and hot peppers. I made salad and vegetable soup. As Elisha would say, “to give options” I made pancakes with maple syrup and organic strawberries. I didn’t have the time to soak and boil down beans to go with the pancakes. I compromised and served a side of turkey bacon. Inside of separate, decorated dishes, nicely placed on the long Immanuel table, pecans, raisins, sliced bananas, cheese, and olives.

  Oshadagea Oronyatekha, the healer, was the closest to a true mother to me. Or maybe I should say she was the closest to a true mother feeling. She had taught me well when I was ten, by teaching me how to teach myself. When I returned to her alone at age fourteen, exhausted and distraught, she welcomed me back in, thankfully.

  “Food is natural medicine; if you want to heal, you must first heal with food.” She taught me that healthy foods could even change people’s attitudes and personalities and soften, then open, their hearts. I was trying to soften and open Elisha’s family’s hearts to me. I knew that trust is feelings and actions stretched out over time. I also knew that with his family, because I had suddenly disappeared, I was just getting started again.

  Poppa Jamin was the first awake. He followed the scent directly to the table.

  “Good Morning . . . Poppa,” I said to him softly. Sheba shot him a look. He nodded, pulled out a chair at the head of the table, and then sat down. I watched his eyes surveying. He was a big man. When I asked Sheba what was his favorite food, she said fish. “He especially likes porgies, cause he catches them when he goes fishing from time to time.” Sheba was difficult, but helpful.

  “Good morning,” I said when Mother Elon came in, wrapped in a pretty robe.

  “She cooked it, I watched her,” was all Sheba said. Her eyes widening some.

  “Are you proud that she cooked and you watched instead of helping her?” Poppa Jamin asked his daughter. “Sit down,” Poppa said to his wife. “It smells good,” he commented.

  Azaziah showed up willing, eager, and excited. “Man it’s been a long time since we had a homemade spread like this . . .” He sat down ready to get to it.

  “Go and wake up your brother, tell him to come down here,” the father said.

  Azaziah got up. “And we all gonna eat at one time!” Azaziah commented as he left.

  No one’s smile was brighter than Elisha’s, but he wasn’t the one I needed to convince. His heart was already open to me.

  “You stayed asleep so long, we slipped out and went to the market. She cooked all of this. Weren’t you worried she might disappear again?” Sheba asked.

  “No,” Elisha said confidently. “She accepted my wedding ring and I loved her right last night. If she left me after that, it would mean that I love her, but she isn’t the right one for me.” With all eyes on my three diamond rings, I kept my head down and spilled a few tears. I had felt the warmth and the warning in Elisha’s words. A warning to me, a warning to them, a warning to us, not to take his love for granted. I understood.

  Momma Elon said some words over the food. As they cautiously began eating, I peeked and thought I saw their hearts softening.

  • • •

  “Elisha, I gotta get my clothes . . .” I said, returning back to his bedroom after learning how to use their dishwasher, and choosing to wash the dishes by hand instead.

  “You good?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” was all I said. His eyes were staring into me, beyond my body and into my feelings. “You left your bed sheet in the hallway,” I told him, also noticing now that his mattress was bare.

  “I know,” was all he said.

  “Let me wash it for you.” I turned to go and get it.

  “Just leave it there. Are you on your period?” he asked me strangely.

  “No.” I smiled. “How come you asked me that?” Instinctively, I pulled the tee and placed my nose inside and inhaled. He smiled at me for being insecure.

  “Let’s go. Thanks for cooking our breakfast. No one could front on that.”

  • • •

  I was stupidly prepared to ride the bus or catch the train, but Elisha’s driver pulled around in a Crown Vic. He opened the door for me. I got in.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “The Four Seasons Hotel in the city.”

  “We’ll get your things and check out of there,” he said.

  “Okay,” I agreeded.

  “You look pretty,” he said.

  “In Sheba’s clothes!” I asked.

  “In anything,” he said. “What room are you in?”

  “Suite 1111; I requested that room, that number. When I first checked in, they said that suite wasn’t ready. I sat in the lobby three hours waiting for it.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said.

  “Elisha, you don’t ride the bus no more?” I asked him.

  “Of course, but these drivers are on call and as directed all week because of the film premier. They’ll drive us down to DC tonight,” he said casually.

  “Washington, DC?”

  “Yeah, I gotta gig at Howard University. Sheba graduated from there. Some students will watch the flick after dinner tonight, and me and my band will play at their afterparty.”

  “You gotta whole band now?” I asked him.

  “You know I gotta play my music. But I’m not taking you to the party,” he said like it wasn’t nothing. I didn’t say anything, but I felt a little sad that I wasn’t invited.

  “I’m taking Siri. Maybe she’ll sing something if I strum the strings right.”

  “It’s up to her,” I said. “Eli
sha, when we get to the hotel can you give me fifteen minutes to clean my room before you come in?”

  “Definitely not,” he said. “You know me. I wanna see how you was living.”

  • • •

  “My man!” the valet said when the driver opended our car door and Elisha stepped out. Then the fellas that usually sweat me every morning, watching my hips sway, were now sweating Elisha.

  “I checked your flick last night on Church and Flatbush, at the Kenmore.”

  “How was it?” Elisha said.

  “Place was packed. You got the whole Brooklyn behind you.”

  “Elisha, I’ll be back.” I took the opportunity to run through the hotel doors and straight to the elevator. I was gonna try and fix up my room.

  Upstairs, as I fumbled through my red Epi Leather bag looking for my wallet, which contained my room key. I broke a little sweat in the air-conditioned corridor. My bag was red, my wallet is red, my Converses are red, and the red do not disturb sign was glaring just as I left it days ago. I found the key.

  Dropping everything, I ran to the back bedroom and gathered up my Victoria’s Secrets, which I had in every color, flung everywhere. I pulled out my empty Louis luggage, opened it, and began assembling my lingerie inside. In the bathroom I began collecting all of my carefully selected personal items. I never used the ones the hotels all around the world supplied. As I rushed around I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  “Why are you panicking now?” I asked myself aloud. But I didn’t know the answer. I put all of the lotions, oils, and creams in my leather waterproof case, and put the case inside of my saddlebag. A thought shot through my mind. I ran to the vault. I typed in 0726, my birthdate, and the vault door swung open. The program for Momma’s wake was the first thing I saw. My eyes moved over Momma’s photo. I stood stuck for some seconds.

  “C’mon,” Siri said. Then I collected the remaining stack of papers from the vault, including my passport, which listed me as Onatah Rivers, my driver’s permit that listed me as Penelope Sharp, my vehicle registration and insurance papers, which listed Mr. Sharp’s name and Penelope’s. My release and discharge papers from Kennedy-Claus Hospital, my New York State identification card, and my Social Security card, all brand new, all listing me as Porsche Santiaga. I also had my Lufthansa Airline ticket stubs, postcards, flyers and advertisement cards written in foreign languages, inviting guests to see my solo dance performances. I had one envelope containing the last letter that I had written to Elisha, but never mailed after receiving the news of Momma’s death. I pulled it all out, then realized I left the handbag I carried today back in the living room. I wanted to run and get it, but decided I better breathe before I collapsed in the closet where I was standing, next to the vault. I inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, and exhaled.