Heiresses of Russ 2013

by Tenea D. Johnson

  Essylt wrapped her arms around Sadiya’s waist. Her fingers found the hollow of Sadiya’s lower back, her spine like a string of jewels, and she leaned in, pausing to remember this moment always, and kissed her.

  •

  Saint Louis

  1990

  Jewelle Gomez

  Gilda was more than alive. The hundred fifty years she carried were flung casually around her shoulders, an intricately knit shawl handed down from previous generations, yet distinctly her own. Her legs were smooth and mocha brown, unscarred by the knife-edge years spent on a Mississippi plantation, and strengthened by more recent nights dancing in speakeasies and then discos. The paradox did not escape Gilda: her power was forged by deprivation and decadence, and the preternatural endurance that had been thrust upon her unexpectedly. Her grip could snap bone and bend metal, and when she ran she was the wind, she was invincible and alone.

  Tonight, hurrying toward home to Effie, she walked anxiously, gazing at the evening skyline. It sparkled like Effie’s favorite necklace, which plunged liquid silver between her dark breasts. The image pushed Gilda faster through the tree-shrouded park. She glanced over her shoulder at the shadowed sidewalk behind her, where the light from the street lamps was cast through shifting leaves. Little moved on the Manhattan avenue at this late hour but Gilda knew danger was not far behind her.

  Gilda had not seen any of her siblings since she’d escaped slavery more than one hundred years before. Their loss was so remote; Gilda was always surprised when an image of them arose in her mind. It was the same with Samuel, whose face she could not banish now. Not a relative, but a blood relation, Samuel had haunted her path since they’d met in Yerba Buena just before the turn of the century. The town had been exploding with prosperity, much like New York now. Gold almost coursed down the hills into the pockets of seamen, traders, bankers and speculators, until its pursuit became a contagion.

  Gilda easily remembered her first impressions when she’d met Samuel: greed, selfishness, fear and jealousy. That volatile blend had swirled through Samuel’s eyes like mist from the Bay. Even when he’d smiled, Gilda knew he despised her. Her femaleness and her blackness were an outrage in his eyes. It was this peculiar amalgamation of feelings that turned Samuel into a dangerous man. The surprise of seeing him again tonight had left Gilda feeling chilled and sluggish. She walked slowly turning over in her mind every word he’d said in that angry encounter, trying not to let his sudden appearance alarm her.

  When he’d stepped from the darkened doorway on upper Broadway Gilda had been preoccupied with getting home. Samuel appeared abruptly in front of her, giving an elaborate bow as if it were still 1890.

  “The not-so-fair Gilda lives, I see,” Samuel had intoned, the taut agitation of his voice unchanged after almost one hundred years.

  “Samuel,” Gilda answered simply, as if she were greeting him in one of the Yerba Buena salons they used to frequent. She said no more but shifted her weight in preparation for his attack.

  “Gilda, why so pugnacious? I’m only looking up an old friend.”

  “What do you want Samuel?”

  “I’ve just stated my intention. One would think you’d be more solicitous of past acquaintances.”

  Remembering how Samuel had tried to choke the life from her the last time they’d seen each other, Gilda only replied evenly: “As I recall our last encounter was less than friendly.”

  “Those of our blood are fewer than used to be, Gilda. We must learn to make peace with each other. We greeted the turning of this century in each other’s company; I thought perhaps we might do the same for this millennium which is on everyone’s lips.”

  Gilda had watched his eyes as he spoke. They still glittered with the sullen anger he’d always harbored. Samuel’s dark blond hair was masked almost completely by a narrow-brimmed hat which he wore at a rakish tilt. His wiry build rippled with tension beneath a raincoat with a short cape. The affectation made his shoulders appear much broader than Gilda knew them to be. She tried to push into his thoughts to discern the truth of why he’d sought her out, but he carefully blocked her probing. Samuel shared blood from the line of those who’d brought her into the life yet he was as different from those she counted as family as night was from day.

  “For some reason, Samuel, you’ve always felt I cheated you. It’s as if I was the favored child and you were somehow left out. I don’t know why you’ve fixed this sentiment on me, nor do I care.”

  “You will care, Gilda my girl.”

  “I only care that you stop leaping into my life as if I owed you some form of retribution.”

  Samuel’s bellowing laugh was riddled with strands of his hatred. Two men lingering in front of the metal-shuttered doorway of a bodega glanced in their direction nervously then ambled up the street to another spot. Gilda recalled the way he’d always clung to the idea that he was the victim, even when he was inflicting pain.

  When they’d first met, Gilda was new to their life and still learning the mores and responsibilities of her power. But she understood immediately that Samuel was one who believed in nothing but his own gain, his own life. And wherever he’d fallen into error, he found someone else to blame. They were connected by blood that had turned sour, and Gilda was weary of trying to clean Samuel’s wounds.

  “The follies of your life are your own. Leave me out of them,” Gilda said. The chill of her disaffection made her voice flat.

  “Fine. If you insist. I’d always thought there was fairness about you, Gilda. I’m sure I’m not mistaken.”

  Samuel had turned on his heel and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Gilda to continue on her way home with a rising sense of ill-defined dread. Samuel had drawn her into battle twice in the past century. She had no doubt he intended to do the same again, sometime soon.

  She veered off of Broadway down to West End Avenue where grass sloped gently downward from the city street to the brackish river. The soft flowing of the water played in her ears, obscuring the city sound to her left and stirring her already bubbling uneasiness. She focused her attention to steel herself against the discomfort of the running water of the Hudson River so she could enjoy the textured darkness of the tree-lined avenue and try to rid herself of the image of Samuel.

  Ahead of her, hidden from the streetlight by the shadows of a thick maple tree, Gilda saw a man leaning against the park fence. Her body tensed, but she felt no fear. It wasn’t Samuel. This was a mortal, in his twenties, strongly built and obviously up to no good. He wore a sweat suit several sizes too large, but that did not conceal his muscled arms from her. A knit cap was pulled down over his brow to hide his dark features; it only exposed his vulnerability to Gilda. Gilda slowed her steps momentarily, and then thought: he’s just a man.

  A surprise flood of anger washed over her—first Samuel and now this one! She’d only recently understood such anger could be hers. Her mother, Fulani features hemmed into a placid gaze, had not been allowed that luxury. She’d been a slave, admonished to be grateful. As a child Gilda had not understood: the master, who owned all and was responsible for everyone, never showed anger; his wife, whom he pampered and worshipped oppressively, was angry all the time. So too the overseer who regularly vented his anger on black flesh. But blacks were not thought to have anger any more than a mule or a tree cut down for kindling.

  Gilda looked quickly behind her and saw several apartment dwellers moving casually past their windows, and a couple approaching a little more than a block behind her. No sign of Samuel, but the young man stood ahead of her under the maple, his intentions leering out from behind an empty grin.

  Gilda’s step was firm. She wondered what drove men—black, white, rich, poor, alive or otherwise—to need to leap out at women from the darkness. As she walked past she noted the sallow quality of his brown skin. He spoke low, almost directly in her ear, “Hey, Mama, don’t walk so fast.”

  Gilda continued on, hoping he would take his loss and shut up.

  H
e didn’t. “Aw, Mama, come on. Be nice to me.”

  The wheedling in his voice scraped and scratched at her. That sound had been the undercurrent of every encounter she’d had with Samuel over the past century. His demands for her help, his threats to harm her, his pleas for her sympathy were all delivered in the same calculated, pitiful pitch; devised to take advantage of their blood relationship.

  We’re connected by blood, too, Gilda thought, as she felt the young black man waiting. She understood that the poverty she saw around her ground people into hopelessness. She, herself, fought each day to resist the predatory impulse which promised to ease her feelings of desperation. In the man before her she recognized his surrender to that impulse. Like Samuel, he reeked of his enjoyment of power over someone else he considered weaker, unworthy. His assault in the dark was the substitution for truly taking power.

  Anger speared her, leaving a metallic taste in her mouth. Where were the words for what she felt?

  Gilda stopped and turned to him smiling as she remembered the words of an irate Chicago waitress she’d overheard decades before: “I am not your mama. If I were, I would have drowned you at birth.”

  She walked on. He caught up. “Why you bitches so hard. Come on, sistuh, give me a break!”

  Gilda continued walking. She had no desire to let her anxiety about Samuel push her to end the night with angry blood.

  “Come on, sistuh, let me see that smile again.” With that he seized her arm. His grip would have bruised another but Gilda shook free easily, leaving him off balance. In a smooth reach he snatched at her close-cropped hair, hoping to pull her into the darkness.

  The image of Effie, waiting in their rooms, her sinewy form concealed in shadow, flashed through Gilda’s mind. A low moan sounded in the back of her throat. She could almost feel her slim fingers clenched around his neck, snapping the connection to the spine. She replaced that sensation with the memory of a hot night thirty years before—Florida in 1950. She’d been sitting in an after-hours club watching the fighter show how he’d whipped a Tampa boy who said boxing was just a “coon show.” His precision was awe-inspiring. As was the care he showed the young boys who clustered around him outside the club, waiting in the wee hours for a glimpse at their hero. More than his fists he had craft and commitment that seemed saintly when he looked down at the boys who worshiped him.

  Gilda smiled again as she raised her left fist in perfect form and smashed it into the man’s jaw. He fell unconscious to the cracked pavement, half-sprawled on the thin city grass.

  Gilda lifted him from the street and held him to her as the couple she’d seen earlier passed by. Once they were several paces away she lowered the man to the ground so he sat against the maple tree. She knelt low, hiding him from the street, and smoothly sliced the flesh behind his ear with her fingernail. His eyes opened in shock, and Gilda held him in the grip of her hands and her mind. He was pinned against the tree, its rough bark biting into his shirt as Gilda rummaged amongst his thoughts. Confusion replaced shock, then rage followed. Unable to move, the young man bellowed internally. His ideas were petty, self-centered; ignorant of any world except the small circle in which he traveled. Gilda knew the history, the triumphs she’d seen all meant nothing to him. He was so tainted by the hatred and fear others had of him he left no room inside for anything but that. Gilda had not felt so unrelated to a mortal since she’d taken on this life. In his eyes she observed the same deadness she often saw in Samuel’s: they always looked inward, were always scavenging. They never really saw.

  Gilda pressed her lips to the cut. Blood had begun to seep out onto his sweat shirt. The flesh was soft, and smelled of sweet soap. Gilda could imagine the boy he’d been, when he was still able to picture himself a part of the larger world. She drew her share of the blood from him swiftly, barely enjoying the warmth as it washed over her. His anger began to swell inside of her, wiping away the sensation of his youth. She was engorged yet continued taking the blood, unable to stop, feeling no need to leave something for him.

  At the final moment she pulled back from the wound in his neck and looked into his almost dead eyes. She touched his nearly empty mind searching for a tiny space where there was no anger or hatred. She found too many places seared white with disappointment turned into rage. And then, a small moment where a treasured memory was hidden opened up. There she planted the understanding of what it could mean to really feel love toward a sister, and from that love find a connection to the rest of the world. In the shallow cavern of his thoughts she left him that one sensation to live for, to strive for as she held her hand to seal the wound. His pulse was faint but soon became steady. She lifted him gently and rested him on the park bench, placing his arms casually behind his head, as if he were only napping. She drew the cap back so it rested on the crown of his head but left his dark face open and smooth in the dim light. His lips were no longer curled in a smirk but rested partly open, ready to finally speak. She could see the young man he’d been, the young man he might still be.

  As she rose to leave, Gilda was glad she had such a good memory. “Yeah, Joe Louis was a heck of a fighter,” she said aloud.

  She knew it would not be so simple with Samuel. A century of bitterness and jealousy, left over from times even Gilda couldn’t remember, festering fuel. She looked down at the young man and hoped his bitterness would end here.

  Gilda continued downtown, her sense of dread building. Samuel’s words were like a prickly burr against her skin. Turning them over, back and forth Gilda searched for reasons Samuel would return at this particular time. The young man she’d left on the bench had probably lived all of his life under the sour message implying his worthlessness. He made victims of others out of ignorance. Not just ignorance. Vanity! Gilda thought. She probed the air around her looking for Samuel’s thoughts, trying to discern his presence. She perceived only apartment dwellers and the homeless who slept in the park. It was a kind of vanity that drove both Samuel and the young man. They could not stand to be one of many, but only one—always alone, always outlawed. And that fooled them into thinking they were on top.

  Her recollection of the last time Samuel had burst into her life did not comfort Gilda. For a moment it had seemed as if he’d forgotten their past, had learned to appreciate his special place in the world. He’d appeared in much the same way as he’d done this evening, with no warning, on a public street. Then he’d been more devious, trying to lull Gilda into a sense of goodwill. Her wariness had lingered and was proven justified. The battle between them had gone on for several hours, leaving both with gruesome injuries. Gilda had not wanted to fight him, or to kill him. It had been a draw and Samuel had retreated when he understood that Gilda could not be easily destroyed. Gilda shuddered. There can be no fairness in a fight between us, she thought.

  Fair. The word resonated in Gilda’s mind; there was something about the way he’d said the word several times. She felt the skin of her entire body become an antenna tingling with input. And then she understood. Samuel had said she was not fair—not light-skinned. Then he’d said there was “fairness about you.” He was talking about Effie. In some cultures, the name Effie meant “fair.” Effie herself had told Gilda that when they first met. Samuel had come to hurt Gilda, just as she suspected, but he’d do that by hurting Effie.

  A flame of terror shot through Gilda’s body dispelling the chill that had settled on her. She now knew why the image of Effie had shown her in shadow. Anger pulsed through Gilda leaving no room for caution. She knew Effie had powers at least as strong as her own, yet fear for Effie’s safety seared her heart. She pushed a warning through the air toward their home as she turned swiftly southward, then disappeared inside the wind blowing off the river.

  •

  Manhattan lay glittering like a sequined scarf, floating on the coastal waters of the Atlantic. Lights from the street, apartments and office buildings flickered in the darkness, multiplied by their reflections off the glass of windows, storefronts and sh
iny cars. Yet night was wrapped tightly around the city and its chill penetrated Gilda. She moved so quickly she was invisible to anyone looking down from one of the windows of the towering apartment buildings of Riverside Drive. The rustle of leaves was the only sign that she passed through the night air. A pedestrian, out for an evening stroll by the river would feel only the brush of an unexpectedly warm breeze. But Gilda was a whirlwind of emotion as she sped downtown to the danger she knew was also hurtling through the night toward her home.

  Gilda’s thoughts were a kaleidoscoping blur. She glimpsed the calm and elegant face of Effie, her brow furrowed with concern, then an image of the home they shared in lower Manhattan, with its startling murals of foreign cities created by her dear brother Julius. The almond shaped eyes of her tenant, Marci de Justo, who’d become almost as close a friend as those of her blood. Vivid sounds of Celia Cruz and Ismael Miranda wafting down from Marci’s audio speakers out over her back yard garden like a warm mist usually welcomed her home. The faces of Sorel, Anthony, Julius and Marci—the men in her life—floated through her mind. Gilda often laughed at the image of the incongruous quartet. Her fear that a fifth, Samuel, was about to destroy all she held so precious swelled in her throat, almost choking off the air to her lungs. Even as she pushed herself to move faster Gilda wondered if she were imagining the menace she felt when Samuel had spoken her name.

  “The not-so-fair Gilda lives, I see.” Samuel had said casually, as if he were simply observing the movements of a bug beneath his feet. Samuel continued to be the threat he’d always been. In less time than it took to think Samuel’s name, Gilda had traversed the four miles downtown and was standing outside the door of her garden apartment. Located in a renovated brick building she’d owned for twenty years, the rooms provided both the privacy Gilda required and a natural place in the rhythm of the neighborhood that nourished her as much as the blood that maintained her long life.