“Girl, you okay? What’s up? Is it about Mabel?” Then she just reach over and just holds me. I start to choke on sobs, pouring out months of pushed down ache. I is feeling Mabel and Neri and Queenie and Epi and my mama, my dad, the snow and the ocean and the stars and ice, life and death, all in my throat holding words down and pushing truth out.
It hard to speak, I’m so plug up with feelings, so I just breathing and crying on Jazzy. She snuggle me up and it make me cry more.
“It’s okay, get it out, I ain’t scared,” she say, and I just let myself go into she arms, because I can’t really do anything else.
She holds me for a long time. And after I calm down a little, she pulls out her water bottle from her backpack and some tissues and gives them to me.
“You don’t gotta tell me anything, okay, girl? Just cry, okay? It’s okay,” she tell me, and I relax into her.
“Jazzy . . . ,” I say, and I is able to breathe deeper and I is calming down in she arms. “I had a friend in Trinidad . . . she was more than just any type of friend,” I say. Jazzy is really quiet and keeps holding me. Once I say those words, I say everything else.
“She went to my mother’s church and she was the pastor’s granddaughter. She sing real beautiful and make me feel like I belong, even though I ain’t want to be there. She name is Neri and I really love she,” I say, and Jazzy still here, holding me tight. Jazzy listen, and we is just here in she car. I tell she everything about me and Neri’s C.H.U.R.C.H.
“’Cause I love Neri, my mama send me from Trinidad.” I cry into the cold air that freeze the tears to my face, but Jazzy’s arms warm me up.
“Awww, Audre, girl, it’s all right to cry.” She holds me tighter. “What you went through was traumatic and then being sent off. Dang, girl. And your dad don’t even know, so you been bottling that up on top of it. That can’t feel good.”
“Jazzy, I miss Trinidad. I love it here also. I didn’t want to come here initially, but my father has been good to me and I ain’t know I was going to make real friends. But I still feel like I got life in Trinidad too that feel interrupted. I is feeling like I ain’t know what to do and my spirit feel so heavy, it so dark and cold here and it feel like my spirit is that way too.” I tell her that Neri get sent away to Tobago with her elder cousin.
“So you don’t even have contact with her either? I wonder what she is going through.” Jazzy sits up and then closes her eyes in thought.
“Jazzy, I just feel like I is bad luck. After all a that, I is sent up here and my first friend turn out is dying. And, to be honest, I think I is getting feelings for she too.” I’m unable to shut up now, and Jazzy leans back and looks at me and starts smiling.
“Oooh, see, I knew it, girl! Awww . . . That’s so sweet. And complicated too. Love always is though. I’m sure she feels for you, too, though, boo. You are adorable. Plus you got that sexy accent and you’re so sweet.”
I surprised hearing her describe me in those ways.
“But, Jazzy, I is telling you, there must be something wrong with me. Ever since I young, I never feel quite good inside, and now I is messing up everything that come by me.”
“Are you blaming yourself for Mabel’s bizarre disease? That ish is just effed up and nobody knows why bad stuff happens, especially to someone so dope and chill as Mabel. But it don’t make it yo’ fault, girl,”she say, looking at me deeply to see if I is trusting what she was saying. “Matter fact, you be the main one being there for Mabel and making her feel good during this sad situation. Making her all of them Technicolor juices, watching cartoons with her, and just helping her feel less lonely. That’s what she probably needs more than any of those crazy treatments she’s getting in that hospital.” Jazzy grabs my hand, holding it firm. “We all scared and don’t know how to handle it, but you are a real one, Audre, and you just love her.” Her hands are on my face now, wiping away my tears with her soft fingers. “You are a good person, okay? Even if your mama can’t see it.” Her words feel nice to hear, but I still struggling in my being. But I glad I tell she about Neri, Mabel, and how I is feeling.
“Okay,” I say, “I better get to Mabel’s, even for a little bit today.” I look down at my fingernails, chipped and bitten, with my favorite yellow polish peeking out of the tips of my new gloves that transform into mittens.
“Can I take you someplace first, though? It’s a place that makes me feel good when I’m feeling a lot.”
I say yes and then we drive off just as new snow begins falling.
Jazzy take us to a quiet place in the woods of a park I’ve never seen before not too far from school, Minnehaha Falls. We walk by ourselves, silently, for a while until I see a waterfall frozen in time. It look stuck mid-fall, cascades of crystal. I gasp quietly at its prettiness.
“Come on, we can get closer.” And she leads the way, and I explore behind her, examining bits of tree and leaves that poke through the snow. I hold them and feel their life and power.
“AHHHHHH,” Jazzy screams when we’re close to the falls, her chest to the sky, her mouth open wide, and the waterfall, the icy goddess we worshipping sing it back at she, echoing back from she cold and silver chest and throat.
“I like to come down here, when I ain’t feeling right, and just explore. Sometimes I scream until something feel different.”
We explore the cave that the frozen waterfall has made of itself. We sit down and take in the quietness. I take deep breaths, and I feel still within this cave, within myself.
MABEL
“I THINK IT’S STUPID, and I’m mad that they would even contact us,” I hear my dad say. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and could hear their upset voices through the walls.
“I think it just makes it feel more real or something for you, and you don’t want to deal with that. We are seeing the same thing, ’Quan, and I know it has me messed up,” she says, and I walk closer to their door so I can hear better. “I feel all of the hope in the world, and I also feel exhausted trying to be optimistic when some days I just wanna bury myself in a hole, remembering how it felt to have her living and swimming inside of me.” I wonder if she has her hands on her stomach, remembering me inside her. “I don’t even remember life or who I was before her. I honestly pray every night, I will wake up and this will be a dream, ’Quan. Or that I could switch places with her.”
“Coco, could you stop saying that?” I can see my dad, fists balled up, but with no opponent he can see to hit. “I don’t want anybody sick. If they are telling her to think of her dying wish then she is going to think she is dying, and we need her to be hopeful.”
“You know she is not a little kid anymore, right? You don’t think she understands what she is feeling in her own body? You think she doesn’t know that this thing most likely will be how she dies? I feel like the longer you take to accept this, the longer I gotta sit here and be emotional and sad by myself. I think it’s selfish as hell of you,” Mom says with a snap in her tongue.
They go back and forth like this and soon I feel more tired than ever. I walk away from their door and back to my room. I lie in my bed and feel numbness like I’m in a tunnel and somewhere at the end of it, a limitless feeling. I look at Whitney looking down on me and wonder about where she is and where I’m most likely going to go soon. I wonder how she feels about being in heaven. That is where I assume she is, I guess, because she was a Christian and sang about Jesus a lot. I hope if that is where she wanted to be that is where she is. That she’s with her daughter and that she can sing and it is as pretty and divine as Trinidad and Black Eden and that she can have any kind of lover she wants and that she is free.
I don’t know where I think I’m going to go after I’m no longer me and alive, even though now I think about it all of the time. I would like to watch over my family and be there for them still, especially Sahir. I’d like to be there in the way Audre talks about her ance
stors. In the way that I sometimes feel Whitney watches over me as I get sicker. Afua believes that we travel to other stars and lifetimes, that our souls will unfold into new dreams and lessons. Some days, I just don’t want to feel sick anymore, wherever I end up. I just want to feel free in my body and away from doctors and machines and drugs. I want my body to stop moving into irreversible oblivion. I want my body to feel alive and beautiful like in that rainstorm with Jada or with Audre in Black Eden.
I also hope my friends and my family miss me. I want to have meant something to people and not just be someone folks is sad about for a little bit, because I died young or whatever. I hope Sahir wears my Biggie T-shirts and thinks of me when he eats chicken dumpling soup. I want Audre to think of me when she is eating raspberries and hears Whitney.
I think of Afua and all that he has done from a room smaller than mine and with people beating him and keeping him away from his family. I wish that he could get back his life and get to feel rain and nature and love and all of the things that I’ll miss about life.
I slink out of my bed and walk to my parents’ room and knock on their door.
“Mom and Dad, please let those people know I have a wish. I want for Afua Mahmoud to be free,” I say, as soon as they open up their bedroom door. “If they want to know what I want for my life wish, it’s that my friend can have life. I don’t want anything else besides that. Contact them, and let them know that is what I want: for Afua to be released from death row and returned back to life in this world with his family and friends.” I already know I ain’t gonna back down.
PISCES SEASON
nobody knows how to swim that deep
you got to be born there
gills fastened to your ribs
in the watery placenta of Neptune
you only dream when you are awake
everything so ancient it is happening in the future
to survive on this earth we escape into ourselves
hide in plain sight, finding solace in vice and lovers
no light, no air, no need
all this is a dream anyway
mysteries only the ancestors
know how to swim to the bottom of
bioluminescence is deep see melanin
flashing wisdom in your own skin sparks of cosmos in
the depth of your watery dark
when an ancestor is coming back to the earth
old ladies dream of fish swimming through lakes
of remember and forget
then they catch the babies like fisherwomen
on the starlit sea of Sankofa
AUDRE
LAST NIGHT I SLEPT OVER AT MABEL’S, and we had a dreamo treatment. She has been so weak and tired since she last radiation. She has lost some weight, so she is feeling cold all of the time, but she still has energy and is able to eat somewhat. Ms. Coco and I made her a bath with herbs and oils to warm her up and help her sweat. Then Mabel and me both got into our pajamas and just laid in her bed talking about astrology and life and playing BLK LVRS. Her room is dark and quiet with moonlight flowing in on us and I feeling mellow with her.
“Audre?”
“Yes, Mabel?”
“You know I wouldn’t be hurt if you ever didn’t want to lime with me. If you went to a party or something dope. I know there are cool things that you could be doing with the homies, that is tighter than watching Waiting to Exhale with me and André 3000.”
“I where I want to be. I get to hang out with people at school anyway. I like chilling here,” I say. I like when she say “lime,” in she Yankee accent.
Mabel get quiet and she nod.
“Could you tell me a story about Trinidad, if you feel like it? I always feel like I’m there when you talk about home,” she say, and this make me wish I could take her to see Trinidad one day. I would love for she and Neri to meet. They is the two best friends I ever have in life that make me feel like I special and belong. I don’t always feel like I can talk about home without being very sad. Even though I am feeling more a part of Minneapolis and life here, I still miss my life in Trini. I feel to tell Mabel something I never could tell she before. I inhale real deep and then exhale. I want she to know my truth.
“Okay, I is going to tell you a story, it ain’t a happy one, but it is a real one. Remember when I come up everyone thought I was into church?” I say. Mabel start to giggle a little bit.
“I almost forgot that, because I know you now. But now I do remember your dad told my dad that you were all about your church and Jesus and then when you got here, you was like nah,” she say, her soft breath feeling nice in my ear.
“Well, it was because I was very involved in the church, mainly because my mother and stepfather forced me to go. But then I started going to their church, and I meet a friend, Neri. And . . . she became a very special friend to me.” I glance over at Mabel and she is looking at me and her eyes are like they always are. Gentle, sweet.
“After a while, we used to go by the water and lime after church, just talking and swimming. Then things started to get different between us, we started to feel feelings that was deeper than just friends . . . we fell in love.” I say this for the first time and it is true. “I ain’t know I could feel anything like that for anyone and it was the best feeling.” I take another breath and say the last part. The part that is the hardest.
“My mother caught us together one day, and it was very bad. My mother get so vex, she get violent. She decide she ain’t want to deal with me no more . . . So she send me to live in the States with my father.” I is feeling my tears dripping down my face and I can’t say nothing else. Then next thing, I is bawling. Mabel wraps me in her arms. I look and she is crying too.
“Wow, girl . . . I’m so sorry. You ain’t deserve that. I don’t even know what to say, Audre. I’m sad and mad that you went through that.” And I know she mean it.
“I always wondered about your mother, but I figure she just wasn’t around much and you was mainly with Queenie. I guess it was more complicated than that.”
“Mabel, I’m sorry I ain’t tell you before. I couldn’t really say nothing before because it still hurts.” I heaving in my chest, crying still.
“I’m glad you told me, Audre. You are always there for me and I want to be there for you too. Do you know what happened to Neri?” she asks me.
“She get sent away like me. To Tobago, but I ain’t heard a thing yet about she. Queenie been trying for me to find out something, but she ain’t finding out nothing,” I say.
“How Queenie feel about you and Neri?” she asks me.
“Queenie say it was okay and she always know I was this way. She and Episode both try and get my mom to change she mind, but she ain’t want to hear a thing. I was so sad to leave. If you ain’t become my friend, I think I would’ve die, yes.” After I say that, I realize what I said was something stchupid, since Mabel actually is maybe gonna die.
“I mean, I sorry, I ain’t know why I say it like that,” I quickly say. And Mabel nods and then starts to smile.
“It’s okay, I know you ain’t mean it no kind of way. And low-key, I think if you ain’t become my friend, being sick like this would have been the worst. I feel so sad about what happened to you and that you got sent away from a place you love so much. And then I feel bad and selfish, for being happy you came here and became my friend. I could only imagine how bad Neri misses you, ’cause if I lost you as a friend, I don’t know what I would do.”
I feel torn too. Mabel snuggle up to me with she head on my shoulder and holding my hand. I still have tabanca in my heart from leaving Trinidad and losing Neri. But I feel that in the hurricane that my life went through, maybe Spirit was leading me to meet Mabel and connect with she too. I feel even since we was eleven and I came here to visit, something was special about her and when I was sent here
this time I still feel she was special. Like when she brought me back to Black Eden and let me eat raspberries and be weird. Next thing I hear is a loud snore. Mabel is passed out and sounds like a congested frog croaking. It strange but I love the sound of she snoring. I close my eyes and sleep catch me too.
AUDRE
“SO I TELL HER, this is the wish she wants to give for her life and that I think it’s actually a beautiful request. Instead of Disney World or meeting Taylor Swift—no shade to these other sick babies—she wants to leave a revolutionary legacy and change this brother’s life,” say Ms. Coco with her phone pinched between her shoulder and ear, while she swirls around the kitchen making tea and scrambling eggs. I overhear her talking to her sister Niiki on the phone, while I make a smoothie for Mabel on the other side of the kitchen, before I go to school. I ain’t trying to listen, but Ms. Coco ain’t making it easy.
“Then, this Life Wish fool gonna ask me, and girl, ooooh, this still got me hot! She gon’ ask if we put Mabel up to this? Niiki, that’s when I cold snapped on them! Like why would I coerce my sick daughter in this way, the fuck? They was the ones who called us about this wish shit. And now that Mabel has this wish, they showing their politics instead of trying to see what they could do. Afua already been in jail since he was Mabel’s age, thirty-something years. Ain’t he served his time? He still says he didn’t do it, so why not let him free? Hmm-hmmm. Yup”—Ms. Coco listening—“Oh, what happened next? Girl, I hung up on her,” she says, cutting up fruit and putting it on a plate. I is cleaning up and still not trying to listen, yet I is hearing everything. My phone buzzes and I look down and see that Jazzy text that she is outside. I finish up the smoothie, and put it in the fridge for Mabel later.
* * *
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The Stars and the Blackness Between Them Page 19