Amazed, I repeated, “The national anthem?”
“I’m not kneeling.”
“Your fans will hate you on Twitter.”
“Yeah. Well. It’s in my contract, if I kneel I don’t get that Jennifer Hudson paycheck.”
“They wrote that shit down?”
“In black and white. Someone else sang and kneeled, so they have shut that down.”
“We asked to not be killed by the cops, for the slave catchers to be held accountable, and the most powerful country came apart like a cheap suit made at a sweatshop in downtown LA.”
“Soon kneeling at sports events will be outlawed. Every black road ends in a roadblock.”
“White House have something to do with that?”
“If I kneel, they’ll call me a Black Identity Extremist.”
“That’s a thing? I thought she was making up some shit.”
“It’s real. It’s the latest insult from the FBI. They’ll probably bug my home like they did MLK.”
“What are they calling the boys carrying assault rifles and Confederate flags?”
“Activists. Cousins. Daddy. Momma. Nephew. Children of the Corn get better press.”
“Black Identity Extremists.”
“Now you are extreme for identifying as black. Basically, we’re Muslim-adjacent.”
We looked at each other; then we laughed at the idiocy and shook our heads.
I said, “Wow. Extreme for asking to not be killed in the streets like dogs.”
“Or whatever they are trying to call unruly Negroes these days.”
“And they have a moratorium on kneeling.”
“If I went out there and did a Kaepernick, I’d probably end up on the FBI’s list like Martin, Malcolm, and would get set up like Assata Shakur. They’d find that old research paper I did on Islam versus Judaism. Quote things I reported about Israel and the Zionist ten years ago. Or they will pull that one Bobby Fischer quote from all the chess champion quotes on my pages.”
“They’ll have the IRS auditing you before you drop the mic.”
She sang, “And my little legal issue in Alaska would be brought up, they’d bring up my birth name, resurrect that shit, and since I have some domestic violence in my past, even though it was directed at me and I had to put a motherfucker in check, I’d be the poster for the black woman America loves to hate. I’m imperfect, more Claudette Colvin than Rosa Parks. They’ll use that as a reason to not give me my coins. And then I’d have to send you to straighten that out.”
“Your fans won’t care about your contract. Twitter comes down on folks hard and Black Twitter has a long memory and is less forgiving than the IRS was with Al Capone.”
“Bullshit. They’ll get over it. If they can get over Chris Brown and R. Kelly, they can get over my not kneeling. Just booked that gig. Don’t want no shit. I just want to sing and add that to my résumé, and now I’m about to be caught up in some damn politics. Nina Simone got caught up in politics and they stopped playing her songs, killed her income. I need the exposure, and exposure means more money. I could use that bump. I mean, it’s not like I’m Beyoncé. I don’t have a ten-million-member Beyhive to back me up if I step out there in a white coat, then pull it off and have on fishnets, heels, all black leather, and rock a beret like the Panthers, fist up high.”
“Brothers did that in the Olympics and were ostracized. No Wheaties box for them.”
“On the real, you know I play chess. You know I am the queen of chess.”
“You play so good you run them out of chess tournaments crying.”
“In chess, something is thematic when a pattern reoccurs, which will infer it’s not new because it has happened before. Paradoxically, every position in a game of chess is new after a couple of initial moves. However, you can train the eyes to pick out these patterns. When they become automatic, you begin to recognize themes over and over again. They begin to jump out to you. Themes save time; they give you leverage, an advantage; they help with memory.”
“Okay.”
“This is not new. Rejecting all black concerns, this is not new.”
“Recurring pattern.”
“But on this chessboard, when you make advancements, they change the rules. No matter what we do, no matter how peaceful we do it, the rules will always say we are wrong.”
I took a breath. “Sure you want to take this gig in the middle of all of this controversy?”
“When has there ever not been controversy in some form since 1492?”
“I’m more concerned with you moving to the UK.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Were you going to send me a postcard of you waving from the London Eye?”
“After I had everything sorted out. And it was definite and I had lodging set up.”
“How would you handle a transition to London?”
“Same way people from all over the world come here and figure it out.”
“And do you know how to use a bidet?”
“I’ll learn. I’ll get a flat, start over, write more songs, sing background and do studio work there until I get established. You can come with me and we can both start life over together.”
“Become expats? What would I do across the pond the rest of my life?”
“What’s important is I’d get you away from San Bernardino. And Jake Ellis.”
“I don’t have that kind of cash to pick up and restart my life right now.”
“I’d take care of you. For a year.”
“That’s generous.”
“I have no problem supporting a man who loves me, especially when I love him.”
“How would I live overseas? You speak four languages. I speak one.”
“Weren’t you going to go to Africa?”
“What does that have to do with London?”
“You don’t speak Yoruba or Oromo or Hausa or Igbo or Zulu or Shona or French. And your Amharic is awful. That English you speak here, you’d speak that same English there as we walk along the Thames. All you have to do is learn British slang, not curse, and you’ll be straight.”
“Yeah. But this skin won’t stand out in Africa.”
“Bullshit. Africans will know. We have African bloodlines, but our swagger is American.”
“Americans are the cousins of the Brits, same type of oppression, same type of racism, another all-white government, and knowing that, you’d move me from one racism to the next.”
“You’re afraid?”
“Cautious. Knowing the crimes of Britain, I am cautious.”
“You’ve lived in the same spot so long you don’t know how to leave.”
“England is in a war with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.”
“You’ve been around the sun forty-three times from the same spot. Don’t be one of those people who are born and die and never travel any farther than Las Vegas. Vegas is nothing compared to the rest of the world. Vegas looks like the world turned on its side and all the junk landed in one spot, and people flock there like they are going to see the real Pyramids.”
“It’s dangerous. They have a lot of terrorist bombings over there, more than over here.”
“Trayvon. Sandra Bland. You know the list. We’re being killed here. The cops over here make the ones over there seem like angels. You won’t fear for your life if you’re stopped.”
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“How? Cops over there killed like five people last year. And they were armed.”
“I hear they have gangs and stabbings on the streets over there.”
“All impoverished areas have gangs. Black, white, everyone. Poverty equals violence because poverty is violence imposed on the people. Starving people is an act of violence.”
“We’d be the foreigners in another land run by the
colonizers.”
“You’re scared and making up excuses. See? This is why you need me.”
“I hear they drink their beer warm. I mean, who does that?”
“They have these things called refrigerators. And they have icemakers.”
“They call their potato chips ‘crisps.’ And they eat cold beans for breakfast.”
“So what? Ken, just pack a bag and leave. That’s what I did in Alaska. I knew nothing about the lower forty-eight, other than what I saw on television. I didn’t know any black people. I did it, and I’m a woman. You know how hard it is for a woman to do that? We have other considerations, other fears, a level of fear you will never have, and I did it, by myself.”
“British people have bad teeth and drive on the wrong side of the road.”
“They drive on the opposite side of the street.”
“Do they even watch American football over there?”
“Opposite does not mean wrong. Here they teach you anything different is wrong.”
“They celebrate black history in October, Mother’s Day in March, and that’s just wrong.”
“Read my lips, nucca. What’s different is not wrong; it’s just different.”
“You’re serious about quitting America. You’re giving up LA smog for London fog?”
“I’m tired of this reality show. Nothing going on but hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”
“Hopefully it will end soon.”
“Look, I feel like I’ve done my time here in the land of faux Christianity and extreme capitalism. If I were a white woman, with all the singing lessons, with the piano lessons, with the guitar lessons, with all the dance lessons, with all the modeling, with all my heavy-handed Eritrean mother did to mold me into the version of being the woman she failed to be, with this insecure body that works out every day, sometimes twice a day, with the way I hit five out of eight octaves, the way I can go toe-to-toe with Chanté Moore, the way I can sing Minnie Riperton with Sy Smith, with this sashay that brings down the house, and this sexy red dress, I’d be mega famous. I’d be outselling Céline Dion on the Vegas Strip. I’ve conquered anorexia and beaten bulimia, both a result of a loving mother who made sure her daughter would not be fat and black. She’s why I hate hot combs and perms and will never go back to using heat or the creamy crack. It’s natural hair from now until the grave. I had to learn that an eating disorder is not a diet, and that self-harm does not equate to attention seeking. I have my issues, and small, embarrassing cuts in places that no one will ever see but you. I grew up with a face filled with pimples, wearing nerdy glasses, around no one who looked like me. Skin too dark, hair never straight enough, sounded like a white girl, only knew white guys, and married the first one who looked at me like I was the prettiest thing on the planet. I survived that abuse and beat a murder charge. Left town with that shame heating my backside. I have my ways. I’m difficult. But at the end of the day, I’m a very talented woman, an amazing black woman, yet I am who they hire to sing backup for the less talented. Black women with mega talent rarely rise beyond BET status.”
“You say you’ve done your time like you feel imprisoned here.”
“The biggest prison is your mind. I was imprisoned in Alaska. My mother was my warden. I love her, I will pay her bills, I will send her flowers, but I can’t be around her. I understand why my father left one day and never came back. Free yourself. I want you to come with me. Get out of America. Get away from this mentality. It’s not going to change. Look at the makeup of the people running the country. They have this shit on lock. Let’s move on and see what else the world has to offer. Let’s see what the USA looks like from the outside. Let’s find some place where they don’t consider kneeling as more disrespectful than the murder of black lives.”
“You just dropped this on me without a warning. It’s a lot to think about.”
“We’re here pretending to be Americans, but we’re not. We have no constitutional rights here. No real freedom of speech. The Declaration of Independence and other documents were written by and for white men, by and for rich landowners, and blacks and browns and everyone else, we’re trying to revise commandments and force ourselves to be included in that manifesto.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“I’m more than a sexy, sassy, loud, and fun-to-be-with singer with an incredible ass.”
“No doubt.”
“We wake up fighting every day and acting like when they say Americans they are talking about blacks too. We’re not Americans, and we’re not Africans. We’re in-betweeners, if anything. We’re not enough of that to be that, and not enough of this to be this. We wake up rushing to get online to see who was killed while we slept. Enough. Let’s bail and find our place in the sun.”
“We wake up to bad news. Just like our parents did by reading the newspaper.”
“And just like their parents did, only it was probably by word of mouth, or by looking up at the NAACP offices in New York to see if they had the banner saying another man was lynched.”
“And I had to find out you’re jetting by overhearing you talk to a stranger?”
“Again, I will take care of you. For a year. Ironically, with some supremacists chilling like villains in the White House, I’m making bank on my aerospace stocks. He dropped a bomb and stocks damn near doubled. And if he starts a war with North Korea, my stocks will quadruple.”
“We didn’t win the first Korean War. We didn’t win Vietnam. We haven’t won in Afghanistan. And now they want to go nuclear bomb–to–nuclear bomb against North Korea.”
“Win or lose, I’ll be making money every time they fire a shot or drop a bomb.”
“My secret Republican with Democratic sensibilities. What do I see in you?”
“I always vote for my money. If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”
“Good thing you have your own health insurance and birth control.”
“You call what we do birth control?”
“If you get pregnant that way, we’re going to have a long talk.”
“Freak.”
“You like it. Can tell you grew up around them white boys.”
“And I give head like a white girl.”
“Like two white girls on E.”
“I know how to pull the soul out of you. This black girl is different. I know how to make you weak.” She laughed, ran her hands over her braids. “Buy me another shot or two or three.”
I waved down the bartender, got shots, then asked, “The Russian know about London?”
“Ken.”
“Does he?”
“I didn’t invite him.”
“That guitar he just bought you?”
Her nostrils flared as she exhaled. “Can we talk about that later?”
“Are you keeping it?”
“You want to make this an issue now?”
“It’s a simple yes or no.”
“Later?”
“Sure.”
CHAPTER 17
THEN THE ECSTATIC fan she had just met came over with a dozen fierce friends, and they gathered around Rachel and sang an amazing “Happy Birthday” at the top of their lungs. Her life became a musical broadcast live on both Facebook and Periscope. She told me she would be right back, and left singing and dancing with her new friends. I found a spot that wasn’t crowded and checked my phone. Jimi Lee had called again. Margaux had called too. Still nothing from Esmerelda. I sent her a reminder text; then I turned my phone off. Now wasn’t the time to fall into my past with no safety net. And I needed to let Esmerelda do her thing. Plus, I had to deal with Rachel, had to remain present.
I went to Rachel and found her on her phone. When she saw me coming her way, she ended her call, ended it talking in Russian. Then she was all nervous smiles. I didn’t call her on her bullshit, just let it ride. I stole
her away from the clutches of her endearing fan club. Now she smelled like a cloud of freshly grown sativa.
She said, “Oh my God. We smoked some Charlie Sheen.”
“Never heard of that.”
“Charlie Sheen OG. They say it’s the tiger blood of weed strains.”
“Sounded like you were on the phone talking to Putin on behalf of the president.”
“The ex just called.”
“Oh?”
“He saw the pictures I posted. He’s jealous.”
“What’s up?”
“Told him to fuck off. If he wanted it, he should have put a ring on it.”
She had a cigar in her mouth, resting like a phallus. She was beyond blissful tonight, so I wouldn’t complain, just let her party until she dropped. Her phone vibrated. I felt it. We were that close. She ignored it. It was the Russian calling back. That took the wind out of my sails.
I shouldn’t be jealous. But I was. He’d bought her that Gibson. I knew she wasn’t going to give it back. And I wasn’t going to ask her to. She had to do that shit on her own. I didn’t want to bring up the Russian over and over and become preoccupied with some other motherfucker.
When I was with Jimi Lee I had lost too much sleep. I told myself never again.
Rachel danced as we found two seats at the bar. She moved against me like she was trying to give me an erection. I inhaled her and wanted to be inside her as deep as I could go. She scooted closer, so close we could be mistaken for Siamese twins, then put her warm cheek next to mine, rubbed her hands on my inner thighs, massaged my rising bump, smiled, kissed my lips, put lipstick on my face, whispered, “Can I tell my sexy boyfriend something?”
My cheek against hers, feeling the warmth of her face and the sweetness of her spirits-tinted breath I said, “Have I ever been able to stop you from saying that which you want to say?”
“That which? What, you’re auditioning for Shakespeare in the Park?”
“Let me sound as smart as you without you fucking with me.”
She crooned, “I came over to your place, freshly shaved and moisturized, looking sexy, smelling good as hell, wanted you to see me when I walked in the door, wanted you to see me and become speechless, get an erection and lose your mind, wanted you to take me as soon as I walked in the door, wanted you to make me get on my knees and open my mouth, wanted to suck you, drive you crazy. I wanted to do some of the things Skin Diamond does in her videos. I can’t freak like her, but I wanted to take it to my limit. Wanted to talk dirty. Real dirty. I wanted to go full Brazzers. I wanted you to rock this ass and make me jazz, then jazz wherever you like.”
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 18