i had anger in my palms, my thighs, the roots of my hair, the balls of my feet. “you just gonna go on off and leave a body?” i shouted. “well, go on, then. me and roo will just have to make it without you.”
“peaches, i want you to come, too. the company that’s sponsoring me will sponsor you, too, gladly. we can do more as a pair for their repertoire than i can alone.”
“i don’t know why you gotta split us up like this, you know?” i took out my wallet and swiped my card down the sensor in our table, so hard it didn’t read. in tears, i snatched the card out of the slot and stormed away without paying, yelling over my shoulder, “you gonna be so rich, you take care of dinner!”
i shouldn’t have been driving, but i tore out of the parking lot, headed for roo’s apartment. i didn’t see a thing all the way there, driving the familiar route out of habit and getting there on god’s will. i didn’t even have the decency to be grateful.
“roosevelt! roo! roosevelt!” i yelled, banging on the door. no answer, not even the “go away” i sometimes got if i interrupted him in an intimate moment. hmm. i went back out to the parking lot to see if his ride was there—hadn’t even thought about it on the way in. it was gone. i decided to sit in my car and wait for him. parked where i could see the entrance, i settled back.
it was torment. i didn’t have a thing to do but think.
for the first hour, i thought endlessly about how furaha would reorganize itself after trevette left. i imagined myself as the only female lead, tried to comfort myself with the idea that i would get the judith jamison solo i’d always wanted. but no, they’d likely replace her. and there was something wrong with all the potential replacements, in my mind. michelle—too short. donita—too uninspired. sapphire—not fluid enough. i finally realized that the biggest problem with all of them was that they weren’t trevette.
the second hour, it got worse. i started imagining all the things that coulda gone wrong to keep roo from at least letting me know where he was. not that i was trying to be my brother’s keeper, but when you grow up tight-tight like me and roo, you feel the need for connection, you get into patterns. sundays, we pretty much always saw each other at church, but if not, we’d hook up in the afternoon to chill. trevette was often with us, along with anyone else we were close to. his lovers either hated me or adored me—and they found out fast which option worked for anyone who wanted to be a part of his life for more than a night. we’d lost our mother before we were ten years old, and our father barely lived to see us graduate. we were the core of each other’s family, and others could love us both or hit the road.
so where was he? in an accident, in a fight, in a drug-induced state of forgetfulness? he didn’t really do drugs, feeling the way he did about his body and his dancing, but occasionally his friends seduced him into experiencing some high that was supposed to take him to new levels of creativity and heighten his awareness of his body’s possibilities. if he was down this road, he’d definitely avoid me, knowing that i’d give him hell, during or after the fact.
maybe that was it. just when i needed him so bad. well, he had no way of knowing. i pulled out of the lot and headed for home. i knew he’d turn up at my door before long.
except he didn’t. sunday night, i simply worried. monday morning, i woke up, on top of the bed and still wearing my clothes, in a mild panic. by tuesday’s rehearsal, i was hysterical.
“mari, have you seen or heard from roosevelt?” i had asked everyone in the company, not including trevette, of course, but no one knew anything.
“honey, no, i haven’t, and if he’s not here on time, he’s liable to get his solo reassigned. he knows i don’t play that,” mari responded matter-of-factly.
he never came to rehearsal. i couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything going on. my mind was full of worst-case scenarios: accidental o.d.? car wreck, and him comatose or unidentifiable? stabbed by some crazy ex-lover and left to bleed in a dumpster? i stumbled through my steps and almost broke my ankle on a partnered jump i tried with russell, who was standing in for roo. afterward, i broke down and went over to trevette, who i hadn’t spoken to since sylvia’s.
“i know what you’re going to ask me,” she said as i walked up. “and i don’t know why you think i know anything that nobody else here knows.”
“you’re closer to him than the rest.”
“closer than you?”
that one hit me right between the eyes. i burst into tears.
“aw, peaches, for christsake! i’m sorry. i know how you must feel. i’m worried, too,” she said, hugging me. “how can i help?”
we called the police and filed a missing persons report. we phoned every hospital in the unit. we checked with his landlord. we drove around to his friends’ homes and his favorite hangouts, asking for him. we put his photo and our plea for information on the web. nothing. no one had seen him since saturday evening. finally, we came back to where we’d started, in my apartment, where i sank into my armchair, exhausted, my hands shaking on my knees. “trevette, i don’t know what i would be doing by now if you weren’t here. thanks, girlfriend. i mean it.”
“don’t thank me—”
“no, really. i feel so bad about how i treated you on sunday, too. i don’t wanna hold you back from following your dream. we don’t have to want the same things outta life, you know?”
trevette’s pretty, round face was sad, and she kept quiet for a minute. “hmm. what i think is, we all do what we have to do, and we try not to hurt the ones we love while we doing it, but sometimes that shit happens anyway.”
i nodded. “so true.”
“but i wonder, is it really true that we don’t want the same thing? i know this probably ain’t the time to say it, but isn’t it more that roosevelt doesn’t want what you and me both want?”
i balled my fists tightly, to keep the shaking from being so visible. “you know, you’re right, in a way. i could never think of leaving him to go out of the unit and do my thing. it seems so selfish. not that my love for the ghetto ain’t real or deep or strong, but i do need some things i can’t find or ain’t allowed to have here. and if roo would come with, i’d be gone in a heartbeat.”
“well, let’s believe you’ll have plenty more chances to convince him that he should try the world outside the ghetto.”
“amen. amen.”
the weeks that followed felt more and more unreal to me. i learned to do what i’d never done on a dance floor, to go through the motions with my limbs and torso, while my head was someplace else. i walked around, always on the verge of being run over on the streets or falling down stairs, because i didn’t see out through my eyes, i saw into my mind, where i was making lists: call the hospitals again, inquire at different private dance companies within the ghetto, check with the morgue.… despite my morbid worries, this last item didn’t make my first few lists, and when i finally admitted to myself that i should do it, i almost fell out from the pain. but he wasn’t there, either, so i kept on investigating as though my life depended on it.
i wandered around the ghetto randomly, and the one thing i was looking for was bout the only thing i didn’t find. the only other things that really registered with me were the bright red decc flyers posted on every corner, reminding us about that hateful new executive order. i sorta cringed every time i noticed them, cause it just made it harder for me to ignore the fact that trevette was going to be leaving soon. i’d start searching again, more desperately than ever.
the police hated to see me coming.
“still no news, ms. johnson.”
“have you found any new leads? are you even trying? you don’t expect me to believe that y’all can’t find my little brother in this unit if you want to!”
“he’s a missing person, ms. johnson, not an enemy of the state. and he’s a grown man. we’ve only got so many eyes, ears, and hands around this force, and there are other cases that get equal and greater priority than your brother’s.”
�
��but—”
“ma’am. just go home and wait. there’s no telling what a man might need to do on his own. it doesn’t necessarily mean trouble. i bet he shows up soon. in the meantime, try not to worry—we’ll keep looking.”
that answer blew my mind. maybe it was that state of mindlessness that made me listen to trevette when she dropped by that afternoon.
“i heard from the decc. my application was approved.”
“i’m happy for you, girlfriend,” i said, and started to cry. when i could talk again, i moaned, “i’m going to be all alone here.”
“if you want out, i can have your paperwork expedited. we could leave together.”
“how can i leave not knowing what’s happened to my brother?”
trevette bit her lip. “i think it’s what he’d want you to do.”
i thought about the conversation we’d had in my apartment that saturday afternoon, the last time i saw him. you should go, peaches, he’d said. without me. i thought about rehearsal tomorrow, and mari’s constant fight to inject new life into the moves and music that were getting so ingrown and dull to me. the popular music that sampled itself in cycles, so that you could never tell what century a cut was from, or whether you were listening to an oldies station or the latest release. there was something in roo that wanted to fight through this enforced boredom, to try to get to the other side by going straight through the heart of our culture. i could see inspiration in his dancing, where my own had beauty and grace, but no spark, not any longer. not for a while now.
finally, i thought about what the officer had said that morning. lost or found, maybe roo had parts of his life that i couldn’t share—and vice versa. that hurt, but waiting by the phone in my apartment wouldn’t change that fact, or bring him back if he was gone for good.
“let’s do it,” i said, trevette’s hand in mine like a promise, her breaking smile like a star i could steer by.
and we did. my application passed through the decc so fast it left burns on some folks’ desks. then we had to sign contracts, witnessed by pale decc agents in dark suits, acknowledging that we understood we could never return to the ghetto, and that our contact with persons inside the unit would be limited and monitored, to ensure that no “contamination” of black culture occurred. we caught each other’s glance, quick-fast, the only sign we made of our pact to try to use our exile to break down the hundred-plus-year-old walls between the ghetto, the other units, and the rest of the world.
the air transport took us up and out, west and south, into geography we knew more as historical landscape than a place we could travel to in today’s world. our new company was located in a city cradled between hills and river, between north and south, called cincinnati. we’d been there only once before in our lives. i stared down at the hills and highways rolling beneath us. silently, trevette reached into her bag and handed me a folded paper.
dear peaches,
i’d rather for you to be mad at me than for you to go on mourning a dead brother who’s still kicking it here in your former home. so here’s the truth: i’m safe and happy, and ready to get back to my life, which i left long enough to let you go. mari is going to whup my ass (on the dance floor) before she lets me get back into my lead position, but she’ll get over it. i’m going to be tearing up the joint, up in here, and you better do the same out there. make something beautiful, girl, and i’ll hear about it. i’ll know.
love always,
roosevelt franklin johnson
p.s. trevette ain’t nothing but the victim of my stubbornness and determination, and she didn’t ever lie to you even if she didn’t tell you everything she knew, so don’t give her a hard time! she is the only person i know who loves you as much as i do.
i read it six times, sixty times, i don’t know how many ways i set my eyes across that page. i felt a different feeling every time i read it, though—i know that much. when i folded it up again, and finally looked into trevette’s eyes, i said the only thing that i could say after my long weeks of worry and grief.
“he’s all right!” i whispered.
she sighed in relief, giving me a quick kiss of apology. hand-n-hand, we peered out the transport window, looking for signs of home in this foreign land, falling gently toward earth.
TASTING SONGS
Leone Ross
(2000)
At the time, the only problem I had sleeping with another woman in my wife’s bed was the sweat.
I make no apologies for the affair. No, actually, that’s not true. I apologize, even today. When I say that, I don’t mean the days that screamed with silence, when all you could hear in our house was the click-click of Sasha’s heels and the taunt of her zippers, her snap fastenings, I swear I could even hear her fingers against the buttons of her shirts as she walked around me, through me, dressing, sitting in front of the fridge spearing cold akee and saltfish into her mouth because she didn’t have the energy to cook, packing Jake’s little bag, all in awful silence, handing him, wordless, to her sister, whose disapproving back called out to me as she left with my son, yelling, Adulterer, adulterer, with every self-righteous step, as Sasha turned back to the battle, one only she could win. I don’t mean the sound of my pleas that eventually became whimpers and soared into shouting and then dipped down to the indignity of whispered pleas once more, begging her to forgive me, Please, just talk to me, say anything, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Sash. I don’t mean any of those things. I mean the apology inside of me. To Sasha and to Brianna. To both of them.
I’m putting this all down, sitting on the veranda of our new house. For Jake, I think. He should know, and I realize that having him read it as an addendum to our will is a damned cowardly way, but I can think of no other.
This is still the new house to me, even though we’ve been here twenty years; Jake departed for college two years ago. Jake, do you dream of this house? When my subconscious pulls down images of home, it always chooses the old house, the house of my own childhood, the one my mother left for me. On Hope Road, the dogs howling over the fence, cats mating at night, bunches of hibiscus laden with crazed hummingbirds, clumps of love bush, splayed in orange chaos across the hedges at the front, a difficult driveway that Sasha could never reverse into. But my son’s dreams must be strident with this new house, the only one he’s ever known, the place where his parents embarrass him by laying their hands on each other, even in their disgraceful forties. When he comes out from Miami on Spring Break I see him watch ghosts here: ghosts of himself, hurting his knees and knuckles, playing marbles, doing homework. But it’s still the new house to me; it reveals none of my childhood. Or my sins.
It’s the house Sasha insisted on, after Brianna. Number One, she said. I can never live in this old house, she said. I don’t care if you first walked here and your fucking mother breastfed you here. Buy a new one. I remember those words because they were the first ones she said to me after she found me and Brianna grappling like lost animals in her bed, the sheets stinking with good-byes. Sasha made it clear: Moving out of this house is the first step. And then I will think about me and you. I could smell victory; I blew my savings on a deposit immediately, put the old house on the market, bought new furniture, decorated. Sasha would have nothing to do with it. It was penance. She swigged Red Stripe and watched me pack our clothes, wrangle on the phone with estate agents, laying one imperious, broken nail on the fabric swatches I placed before her, a yes or a no handed down from her hurt high. My patience and sorrow were tested in those weeks, with the inquiring looks from decorators who could not understand how a man with broad shoulders could walk on glass around his matchbox wife. She’s small, Sasha. Small with a strength that makes her taller than me, and if you strike her, she burns.
She said that she could smell the sweat everywhere, that it was like some oil slick that had infected the old house, as if the liquid had touched each surface, had dived into her underwear drawer, insidious in the folds of frothy G-strings and off-white panties for long-gone
heavy period days, as if it poured itself among the cutlery and evaporated into the air, contaminating her. I told her that Brianna only ever came to the house that one time, but she didn’t believe me. There were times when I found her washing herself like a woman after rape, scrubbing at her skin until brown was red, watching Brianna disappear down the plug hole of the sunken shower, then reinfecting herself as she stepped onto the bath mat. And, of course, the photographs had to go. God help me, it hurt to destroy them. Simply, some of the most inspired work I’ve ever done, seasoned with desire and the eroticism of guilt. How would you feel if I fucked someone else, Jerry? She said it to me conversationally, our second day in the new house, Jake playing with a star-covered mobile in his cot, her moving closer to him, despite herself, smiling at his first smiles that were really gas. Yes, a casual tone, over my son: I should. I should go to one of Lillian’s sick parties and fuck the first man I meet. Can you see that in your mind’s eye, Jerry? Sure you can. That’s Number Two. Picture it for me. Sasha. She knows me, and she says it like it is. I suppose that I understand why her first words came out of her sore, and why they hurt my ears. She could see the way I coveted Brianna. I still, yes, even now, feel an old stirring when I think of Brianna, her body, the way she moved, my inability to bring her peace.
I was twenty-eight, and we’d been married for a year. I left my wife for weeks at a time, to work. It was June, hot, but less than ninety degrees in the shade, when I returned to Jamaica and her from a harried, thirsty tour of Central America, rolls of film stuffed into every orifice. They were full of female pulchritude: a woman who told me she couldn’t remember her age, who covered her face the first three times I spoke to her, whose wrinkles I made into journeys; her daughter, blind, who lived on her tiptoes and the money she made kissing men; a twelve-year-old with burnt sienna skin and eerie eyes, yellow and green, like a cat’s, that she rolled back until there was nothing there but the whites, a habit from childhood days when she was teased as a temba, a goddess fallen from the sky; another girl whose face had been torn apart by jealous acid. It’s my gift: to hold up women’s beauty and show it to them, to revisit the faces and breasts and feet that they’d judged wanting, old, withered, not enough, too much, and have them see them anew. And they cleaved to me, eagerly, afraid, I suppose, that they’d forget that they were beautiful once I was gone.
Dark Matter Page 9