“Then she looked me up. Found my number. Called me. Invited me to lunch.”
“I had no idea.”
“What does she know about Florida? About Balthazar Walkowiak?”
“Nothing. Why would you ask me that?”
“She knows.”
“Not from me.”
“Who else would she know that from? How else would she know about that?”
She took a nervous breath. “You still live here. Same building. Same apartment.”
I nodded. “Same place I lived with you when I met you.”
“This is a déjà vu.”
“Same place, minus the furniture, pots and pans, and money you took when you moved.”
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“No one said you stole anything. You just took everything not nailed down.”
“My father’s doing. It was no secret how he felt about you, about us as a couple.”
“Sure. I bet it was. Him and whoever helped you move everything but the kitchen sink.”
She laughed a little. I did too, then tried to remember the last time we laughed together.
She said, “I was nineteen when I moved here. Lived here until I was about twenty-five.”
“We were married. Wasn’t the best marriage. Wasn’t much of a marriage.”
“The brain develops back to front, with the frontal cortex, the part used for decision making, maturing later. Some say African children mature prematurely due to having African parents. My father said my siblings were normal, but I was the exception. I was his heartache. I don’t think that part of my mind was fully developed. Nor yours.”
“I think it was the weed you did. You smoked sticky green like Snoop Dogg.”
“Could have been. Probably did have an impact on too many decisions.”
“Yeah. I guess we both did some dumb shit disguised as fun shit. Still had bad times.”
“We had good times too.”
“We had a few laughs before the screams and the tears.”
“Before I was pregnant.”
“We had some fun.”
She chuckled. “You were horrible at folding shirts.”
“You were horrible at folding fitted sheets.”
“No normal person can fold a fitted sheet.”
“I can. It’s so easy. Was funny watching you try, get mad, then throw it at me.”
“Because you laughed at me. I don’t like when people laugh at me.”
“It was funny. As smart as you were, spoke four languages, conquered by a fitted sheet.”
Her right hand drifted to her belly. “God, I was pregnant when I moved in this place.”
“Knocked up. Up the duff. By a black American. A summertime booty call gone bad.”
“That summer I was out of control.”
“Your caterpillar days. When you hadn’t become a butterfly.”
“I flew too close to the sun.”
“My wings melted too. Haven’t been able to fly away since.”
She shifted from foot to foot. “Lots of memories.”
I nodded in concurrence, felt my own lot of memories. “Lots of arguments.”
“We didn’t always argue.”
“We argued. I don’t think we ever agreed on anything.”
“Oh God. I remember the horrible things you said regarding OJ.”
“I remember that uncolonized mind of yours taking the side of the wypipo.”
“Hate can’t fix hate. And living in the past does nothing for a better future. So, let’s not revisit the past and let’s see if we can move on. For the sake of our daughter.”
“She’s an adult.”
“Yes.”
“She grew up without me.”
The winds made her royal dress move, made it dance closer to her maple-brown skin.
She looked at the building. “The last time I was here, the scariest night of my life.”
“Your new husband was banging on my door, screaming your name.”
“I remember that moment. Like no other. That moment is emblazoned in my mind.”
“I could have killed him that night. He crossed a line.”
“I was terrified.”
“Yohanes came back here to fight and your father was with him.”
“My father came here with Yohanes? What did he do?”
“I put my Mississippi Soul Stealer into his precious faux-virgin daughter’s Ethiopian Queen of Sheba pussy and gave her a baby that he viewed as not Ethiopian and not black American, but some sort of a third race, and he couldn’t stand that. He couldn’t stand that a black American fucked his princess, nutted in her and put a baby in her belly. That drove him insane.”
“Stop it. Please. That’s uncalled for. I came here to be civil, not to stir up old hostilities.”
“What your father did to me was uncalled-for. What your ex-husband did was what a coward would do. That punk ass didn’t come at me man-to-man. I should’ve called in Jake Ellis. I should have called in other guys I know. I should’ve called in my family and started a tribal war.”
My ex-wife couldn’t hold eye contact. “What did my father do when he came here?”
“He hated that a black American had spoiled his princess.”
“What did he do?”
“Ask your mother and the tribe. She probably orchestrated the entire deal.”
“My mother would do harm to no one.”
I laughed. “That’s some bullshit.”
She spoke in a nervous whisper. “Tell me what transpired.”
“They ambushed me.”
“Ambushed?”
“Right here. Where we are standing. They brought all of your relatives and friends.”
“What happened?”
“I kicked their asses. I kicked forty men’s asses, by myself, right here where we’re standing, because I loved you like a fool.”
“Forty?”
“That’s how it will be written in my memoir.”
“You’re saying that many people came and attacked you?”
“And if I didn’t love you then, if I didn’t have a daughter that I didn’t want to have a father on lockdown for perpetuity, you would’ve been buying forty pine boxes for your tribe of goons.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“This was a mistake. Coming here thinking we could be civil was a mistake.”
I took a deep breath. “How are you just going to just show up in my life like this?”
“I should have just sent you a long text message. Yes, this is a mistake.”
“I’ve already realized that being happy that Margaux called me was a mistake too.”
She turned to leave. “What transpires between you and my daughter, that is not my concern. She is an adult now. She makes her own choices, pays no attention to my advice.”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
She said things in Amharic, things I could tell weren’t pretty.
I said, “Wait. Stop.”
She stopped and turned to me. “I have pulled the scab away from an old wound.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Ours. This wound connects you to me and me to you and us to our daughter.”
Voices carried. I looked across the pond. Bernice was in her window enjoying the show.
Jimi Lee looked too, then frowned at apartment buildings that went on for miles.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Just amazed a lot of the people I used to see here when I was here, they are still here.”
“People come and go. Some stay. Some do better and move away.”
“Jake Ellis?”
“Two blocks that way. He was on Garthwaite
awhile; now he’s over here on Stocker.”
“He came back from Ghana.”
“Has been back a few years.”
“San Bernardino?”
“Still working when there is work.”
“You?”
“The same.”
“UCLA?”
“Dream deferred.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“More for me than for you.”
She nodded. “Liquor Bank still there. And they have torn up Crenshaw for the new train.”
“Progress. But rent’s high and some people are struggling to pay off payday loans.”
She said, “And congratulations on all the 420 shops paired with barber shops.”
“Bet you wished this was Sativa Row and Indica Lane when you lived here.”
“Weed is probably why I ended up living here.”
“Hormones.”
“That too.”
“Would you do it over?”
She said, “No.”
“No?”
She stiffened. “No.”
“Not even for Margaux?”
“Would you? Be honest. What we went through, would you do that again?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“I know what this is like. You have no idea what my life has been like. And I have a daughter who has been difficult. Very difficult. No, I won’t lie and say I would do this over.”
“Sounds like you were Bette Davis with her daughter. Or Joan Crawford with hers.”
“My answer is no. Without hesitation. I wouldn’t be standing here now. So, please, let’s move on. Let’s avoid another round of whataboutery, or any form of mythomania. Serves no purpose. I’d rather suffer a bout of tenesmus than stand here and imagine what might’ve been.”
“No problem. I’ll keep it real. You were always the logical one.”
“Not always. I only know that what we did was a lesson. And we both lost.”
A group of teenage girls passed by, sexy clothes, hair whipped, talking, laughing, walking, texting, updating Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, all smelling like the party room in a Kush factory, in search of a good time and cute boys, out to live out loud after midnight.
After they passed I asked Jimi Lee, “How long have you been out here?”
“I’ve been parked here awhile. Sitting and thinking. Tried to reach our daughter. Sent her a text. I didn’t tell her where I was. She’s nursing her boyfriend.”
“Still have your key?”
“I’m sure you changed the locks several hundred times since then.”
“Never changed the locks. Never thought about it.” I paused. “When did you get here?”
“Couple hours ago.” She hesitated. “I saw you when you came back from your date.”
“And you’ve been sitting here since then?”
“Is she . . . the woman in the red dress you were kissing . . . is she your wife?”
I shook my head. “Only had one wife. Lost the taste for marriage after that.”
“Where is the woman in red?”
“She’s swimming in her European dreams right now. We can talk for a quick minute.”
She paused. Looked at me the way she did when we first met. “You still look good.”
I swallowed, batted away old feelings. “Thanks. You look nice yourself.”
“I’ve gotten older.”
I took in her figure, her face, her eyes. “You make forty look like the new twenty.”
“You’re still fit. You were always fit. Always boxing and running and doing weights.”
“And here you are. Back at the scene of the crime.”
She took another breath, her heart in her throat, shivered again. “I should go.”
“You never should have come.”
Jimi Lee didn’t move. She said she was leaving but stood like a statue.
Then she nodded, then took a breath, shook her head, began speaking in Amharic. “Ene betam nafike alehu. Hulu gize enafikalehu. Ketele yehm bohulu. Hulu gize ewed halhy.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying. I’ve been drinking and my Amharic’s offline.”
“Tesas cha lehu. Tesas cha lehu, Kenneth Swift. Ante turi sew neberk. Ante turu bale neberk. Ene hiwothn abelhsheu. And most of all, ene rasen ykr allm. Never in this lifetime.”
I said, “Inae algeebanymi. I don’t understand. You’re talking too fast.”
She took a breath, regrouped. “My daughter said that you were very angry and bitter.”
“She called me out of the blue. Talks to me like I’m some thot on Twitter.”
“She has been taught to speak her mind. Too many women are silenced in this world.”
“She threw a snot rag in my food. She flipped me off and cursed me in public.”
“I don’t believe that. She doesn’t swear.”
“I guess she knows you as good as you know her.”
“She would never be that rude in public.”
“Then had the nerve to send her sperm donor over here to jump on me. And I’m bitter?”
She wiped her eyes. “You hurt him. They messaged me that his nose is broken.”
“Yeah, I bwoke his nose. Should’ve bwoke his neck.”
She took a breath. “I’m about to become a grandmother.”
“You’re the mother of a black woman who’s hiding inside the skin of a white woman.”
“Yes, hiding.”
“I was joking.”
“I’m not. I feel as if she is hiding.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
“She asked me for fifty thousand dollars.”
“Are you for real?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“You have to ask her.”
We heard howls, animalistic screams. Jimi Lee jumped. I tensed for a second.
I said, “A dog is being attacked by a coyote.”
“Oh my God.”
Then a series of rapid pops, the report from what sounded like a .22.
“Oh my God. What was that?”
I said, “Coyote is being attacked by a dog owner.”
Jimi Lee shook. “Can we not do this conversation out on the streets?”
“Did you come for a truce?”
“Don’t be rude. Don’t be inappropriate.”
“Just checking.”
Police sirens lit up Crenshaw, the sound carrying down Stocker.
Jimi Lee asked, “Can we go to the Denny’s on Crenshaw?”
“And do what? Argue over a stack of overcooked pancakes?”
“Let’s make this about our child.”
“Jimi Lee, it’s always been about Margaux.”
“Please. I’m not Jimi Lee. That is not my name anymore.”
“Jimi Lee is all you’ve ever been to me.”
She made an angry face. “No one has called me that since the day I left here.”
“My bad. How should I address the Queen of Sheba?”
“Dr. Feleke.”
“Doctor?”
She nodded. “Dr. Feleke.”
“You made it back to university. Where did you go?”
“First I went to AAU.”
“What’s that? Arizona? Arkansas? Alabama?”
“Addis Ababa University. I enrolled when I went back to Ethiopia. Then when I came back I finished undergrad at UC Riverside. Master’s and doctorate at Cal Poly Pomona. Wasn’t Harvard. But I made it back. Contemplating law school now that Margaux is gone from the nest.”
I paused, inhaled the night air. “You got your doctorate?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“I guess it was easier once your Wednesdays were free.”
> “It was wrong. It was. But after our Wednesdays ended . . . we went back to Ethiopia . . .”
“Your second husband took you back to Ethiopia to get you away from me.”
She said, “They said I had mental issues. Which was a lie. But they all agreed to the same lie. The elders. They all said I had to be removed from this environment.”
“They wanted to take you, reclaim you, and steal my child away from me.”
“I had to confess that I had had an affair with you, that I had divorced you, then continued seeing you after I had remarried, and I had to tell them how many times I came here, and say sorry to my husband. I had to apologize for ruining my family’s reputation in our circle. I had to admit I had lost touch with my roots, that I was no longer aligned with my parents’ core values.”
“Did you have to wear a scarlet letter too?”
“When everyone knows your secrets, you wear an invisible letter day and night.”
Across the street, phone in hand, Bernice Nesbitt moved away from her window.
Jimi Lee said, “I used to have our baby in my arms, you’d be sleeping, or off to hurt people, maybe kill people, and I’d pace the floors, walk to and fro in that mousetrap, look out the window, and see people having fun, enjoying life. One night I was breastfeeding my daughter and saw a neighbor with a white man sucking her breasts. Will never forget that. I was in pain and she looked like she was on the highway to heaven.”
“You envied that.”
“She could come and go. She didn’t have to deal with a crying baby.”
She looked up at my window. I did the same, didn’t see Rachel, took a deep breath.
The woman I had known as Jimi Lee said, “You never married again?”
“No, I didn’t get caught up again, not like I did with you.”
“More children?”
“No more children. You?”
“Yes. A son.”
“Wow. Margaux didn’t mention that.”
“He’s four. They’re not close.”
“With your second husband, I assume.”
“Yeah. With Yohanes.”
“You cheated on me with him, then on him with me.”
“We’re divorced now, but we had a son.”
“Well, that son should have made the bloodline happy. Before that second divorce.”
“But that only complicated my life and exacerbated the delicate situation between us.”
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 21