“Not all men wear emasculation very well.”
She paused. “Life became interesting. But my life has always been interesting.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Did he abuse Margaux?”
“No. But. It was strained. He looked at her and all he saw was me with you.”
“After you walked out, after our divorce, why did you come back to sleep with me?”
She took a breath, treaded in those memories. “Feelings. Confusion. I was young and I felt so much, I didn’t know myself as a woman, didn’t know how to handle the situation properly.”
“Did you ever love me?”
“Intin . . . Intin . . . I had other ambitions.”
“All you have to do is answer yes or no. Did you love me?”
“It’s not easy to answer. Love was new to me. Love was like never having felt water on your skin, then you ease into a warm pool. It feels good, but you go deeper and deeper, never realizing you can become lost, you can lose yourself in its depths, in its current, become victim to its undertow, and drown. It’s romantic, but all romantics eventually meet the same fate. Being in love requires you to give the rein that controls your heart to someone else. You lose control. Not everyone embraces losing control. Not everyone wants to drown.”
I was sad, angry, and sick all at once. “But did you love me?”
“Not when we first married. We were still strangers. You were so different. I was in love with intrigue and mischief, with parental disobedience, with joining the fold and being bad.”
“Were we in the same relationship?”
“Everyone is in an individual relationship, but perceives it as group effort. My relationship with you is not the same as your relationship with me. The eyes can never see their own face.”
I paused, shook my head. “You hated being married to me.”
“I married you. I tried. For five years, I tried. It was not easy for me, being part of a marriage society, an East African family structure that had no room . . . no room for . . . for . . .”
“For a nigga like me. A nigga who has been colonized rooter to tooter from day one.”
Anger rose, intellectualism waned, she said something else in Amharic, took hard breaths as her sweet brown face reddened; tears suddenly fell from her eyes. She wiped them away.
I said, “Yeah. I am bitter and angry. I should’ve fucked your ass the night I met you and finished on your tits, then sent your enlarged sphincter back to Diamond Bar walking side to side.”
“That’s uncalled for. I won’t allow you or any man to talk to me that way.”
“We wouldn’t even remember each other now if I had done that.”
“Your lack of civility is reprehensible. You should seek counseling. You really should.”
“That’s all you got?”
“I see where you live. I see nothing has changed.”
“Yeah, look down your little nose and shake your head that I still live here. Ever think that maybe I’ve been stuck here because of you? You know where my money went. You know I never missed a month paying for Margaux. Never. I could’ve bought a new car every year.”
“It’s impossible for you to stop blaming me for your failures and try and understand me.”
I pulled on the reins. “How am I supposed to feel right now?”
She countered with, “How am I supposed to feel?”
“That was the problem.” I laughed. “You never felt anything.”
“Are you too self-centered to see the pain I have endured? I don’t jump up and down and do the neck like the ghetto girls you are used to. You have to look at my silence to see my pain.”
“You were a horrible wife.”
“There is more to being a woman than being a wife. Men still think women are supposed to know their place, to be grateful when a man helps her in any way, let him lead, to be only with one man despite a man’s natural shortcomings; perpetual misogyny and innumerable infidelities.”
“Yeah, well, I sacrificed all I had for you back then.”
“I abandoned my goals. I gave up Harvard.” She ranted, “I was undereducated, no job, no money, no options, but I was still going to fight to be the best me and not be like the unmotivated women around here happy to be barefoot and pregnant and breed until their ovaries fell out.”
“You were a pregnant teenager, but no one made you marry me.”
“I did what I had to do to take care of my daughter. It was the logical choice, a legal thing I did to ensure we had a roof over our heads. When I said ‘I do’ to the justice of the peace, it felt like I would evaporate. Each day a part of me disappeared, and you never noticed that there was nothing left there, just a shell of a girl. And my needing freedom, not being able to fit into the man-created box reserved for being a wife, that was seen as nothing more than drapetomania.”
“You’re equating our marriage to slavery?”
“It was what it was, despite any good intentions on your part or mine.”
“What, was I just your goddamn overseer for five years? What, did I go down on Auction Square in Memphis and buy you for a song?”
She snapped. “You bought me for twenty-five dollars. That’s how much the marriage certificate cost, right? Yes, it’s hyperbole, but that’s how it felt. It felt like I sold my soul to the devil and my body to you. I’m sorry that I’m repeating a decades-old argument, but that’s how I felt back then. My life was tied to yours. My soul was tied to yours. You wanted too much from me. You needed me to be someone I was not. Whatever I felt for you, what you felt for me was centuple. Attached to you, I felt lost. I had to let go of the rope that attached you to my soul.”
“Margaux needed you too.”
“Every second of every minute of every hour, and that overwhelmed me.”
“I told you I would take care of you and Margaux.”
“You did. That surprised me. You didn’t walk away.”
“If I had been Ethiopian would we be having this conversation?”
“You think that would change anything? That had nothing to do with what I felt.”
“Or could we still be married? If I were from Addis Ababa, your parents would’ve accepted me. I had too much Mississippi mud in my blood for Africans born darker than me.”
“You will never let that go. Like most men you are so petty, your views so myopic.”
“Did you give your second husband a son and treat him the same way? Did you cheat him into the ground, then walk out and get a divorce? I hope he kept his son and not you.”
“Eff you, you pathetic, uncouth donkey. You are no better than an animal in the wild.”
“You didn’t complain about that when you were facedown, ass up, legs shaking.”
My ex-wife cursed me again, then turned around, her beautiful colors superhero-like, her ethnic pride as intense as the resurrected pain in my heart. She hurried to her car. She was as powerful as Makeda, and I had tried to be her King Solomon. Seeing her again hurt too much.
Hands in fists, I followed my daughter’s mother, my philosophical ex-wife. Sneezes, orgasms, and my anger were three things that could not be stopped once they had started.
I said, “You always run away when it gets too tough. You haven’t changed. I wish I could have insured our marriage so when what we had collapsed, at least I would have been paid, reimbursed for all I invested.”
Hands flailing, she blistered me hard, fast, and unrelenting in Amharic.
I said, “African baby momma, your American baby daddy don’t understand shit you said.”
She seethed at my rudeness, then spat out the English equivalent of her insult. “Eff you.”
She marched back, spitting more pent-up anger, faced me, eyes like tombs, cursed and insulted to the nth degree. A tsunami attacked an earthquake and on behalf of all baby mommas and baby daddi
es around the world, we stood on the sidewalk yelling at each other, my insults in English, hers in rapid Amharic; strong, powerful, hurtful; made me feel like I’d been gouged by the horns of a raging bull. It sounded like two countries on the verge of another tribal war.
My ex-wife jumped into her pristine BMW, put her eyeglasses on, started the engine, stared at me as the car purred, then screeched away from the scene of the crime. Blanketed in anger, I watched her tap her brake lights at Degnan, turn a hard right on red. She did a California roll; then she vanished, slipped into darkness that couldn’t shadow my heart.
Only one thing was worse than a fool at forty. That would be two fools at forty.
Closure was for Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant movies, not for real life. Resentment was too good at taking root and could outlive the Great Basin bristlecone pine called Methuselah. The dark feelings between us, not even a soul-train line of hurricanes could uproot. I had had a falling-out with my daughter. That had been the first hurricane of the day. Had fought the father of my grandchild-to-be. Another hurricane. And now Jimi Lee had come here, a Category 5 following two Category 5s. She engaged me in the ring and worked me for twelve rounds.
She had caught me off guard. Showing up without warning hadn’t given me time to deal with old feelings. I had lost it, argued with her like she was still my wife, my enemy, my betrayer.
I felt bad. I felt guilty. She was right about a lot of things, and those things were hard to face. I was wired a certain way, wired to be responsible. Yet she made me feel like shit. And that made me say rude things just to piss her off and try to break her intellectual ass down.
They said if a man was a fool at forty, he would be a fool the rest of his life.
I glanced over at Bernice’s window. A soft moan came from her hole-in-the-wall, the sound a woman made when a man eased inside her. Somebody was deep inside London.
“Oh . . . God yes . . . Don’t stop . . . Don’t stop . . . Ooo-ooo . . . harder . . . harder.”
A Rubicon passed, trap music loud. “The ting go skrrrrrrrra pa pa ka ka ka!”
That Rubicon’s trap music covered other deadly sounds. Beasts charged from the east. Shadows stormed my way. Like rabid coyotes in the night, they had been in the cut, waiting to attack. They came at me hard, came at me fast, the same way Jake Ellis and I had gone after ruffians for San Bernardino the last two decades. I hit one in the face and he went down like Cassini crashing into Saturn. A second one was dropped like a bad habit and a third and fourth were coming at me, but a blow to the back of the head wobbled me. I saw more stars than at a Hollywood movie premiere. Acute pain registered and sobered me up and I started swinging, trading blows like I was fighting Tyson, Holyfield, Mayweather, and at least two others all at once, threw punches until my jaw caught a blow. The ground stopped me from falling through the center of the earth and coming out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, stopped my descent abruptly. Faraway sirens sang in the distance, the wail of a fire truck, and that triggered the barking of every dog within two miles. Fists rained down on me in between the kicks. They held me down, but I was strong enough to get two of the monsters off my neck. We wrestled until I had enough room to breathe. Strong motherfuckers piled on me like I had the football and was trying to get into the end zone. Bastards used their combined weight to weaken and suffocate me. For a few agonizing seconds, my heart beat so hard, beat so strong, I was unable to hear what they were yelling.
“Stay down,” one of the tattooed shadows demanded. “Stay down or die, black man.”
Unafraid of any man, I barked, “You motherfuckers got the right one on the wrong day.”
Their leader said, “Be glad you and the kaffir stole all of my guns. All but this one. Otherwise I would have given each man a gun and they would’ve been trigger-happy and you might have had a Bonnie-and-Clyde moment. Be glad you stole my guns. Be very glad.”
Garrett walked up, expensive hard shoes on urban concrete. His knees popped as he grunted, lowered his weight, and got down on his haunches. He reeked of anger, revenge, and some cologne that made him smell nicer and friendlier than he had been to his own wife.
The rich man made brief eye contact, and the madman expected to see a frightened dog. He saw anger, not fear. He saw that if I got loose, I would drop him screaming into a mulcher.
“You’re a good fighter. Jesus, you can fight. You would’ve been worth it. I would’ve put you in a few underground cage matches, let you set free that Mandingo, Shaka Zulu rage, and won some real money. You knocked out two of the best cage fighters. You could’ve been rich.”
“Back up off me. Get off me. I’m the wrong field nigger to fuck with.”
“No, I’m the wrong man for a nigger to fuck with. San Bernardino should’ve warned you.”
I fought, struggled, got a couple of blows in, hurt them good, but was outnumbered.
Amused and impressed, Garrett said, “Nigger, you should’ve taken the money. I would have thrown in Rams tickets, Lakers tickets, Dodgers tickets, and Kings tickets as a bonus.”
I struggled to breathe, grappled with pain, sweated and choked out, “Fuck you.”
“You left and my wife called a divorce attorney. She packed to leave. To beat some sense into her, I would have thrown in tickets to Disneyland. For three days. Hotel included. We can still work something out. Just whisper in my ear where I need to go to find the African.”
Garrett waited a moment, wanted to see if Jake Ellis lived by me, waited to see if the Don Juan of Ghana bolted out to rescue me from a beatdown that would make LAPD proud.
Dogs barking in the distance, another modern-day Uncle Tom ran to where we were.
“We found six Mustangs within two blocks.”
Garrett said, “The African was driving a convertible Mustang that had no plates.”
“It’s parked that way. Engine is cool. Lights are off in all the apartments. I checked as many mailboxes as I could to see who had an African-sounding name. Too fucking many.”
“People around here street-park close to where they live.”
“They try to. People like their ride outside their window in case the alarm goes off.”
“Find a brick. Bust the windows. Sound the alarm and draw him out. Niggers love their cars more than women. He’ll come out running. We’ll wake up the neighborhood if we have to.”
“I have a cinder block in back of the ice cream truck.”
Mr. Garrett spoke to me. “Looks like I’m about to find the disrespectful African.”
As I struggled, I warned my subjugator. “San Bernardino won’t like this. Not at all.”
“After this uncalled-for impoliteness, you think I give a fuck about San Bernardino?”
One of his goons said, “You want to shut this one up, Mr. Garrett, or should I?”
“Not before I talk to him. He can help me and make it easier on himself.”
Another henchman asked, “Should I get the gas cans out of the ice cream truck?”
“No, it’s hot as fuck, so get me scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone.”
“What flavor you want, boss man?”
“Of course I want the gas. Stupid ass. Do what you’re paid to do, nigger. All you niggers. Do what you’ve been paid to do. Get this nigger off the ground and into the truck.” Then Garrett turned his attention to me and said, “Just tell me where the African lives. Which building. Up or down. He won’t know you gave him up. He won’t be around to come back at you for doing what’s right.”
A thug grunted. “This motherfucker must be on some flakka, Molly, MDA, and Ecstasy.”
Garrett firmed his tone. “Give me the African and I’ll let you go. You were professional. Give him up and I’ll put five thousand in your pocket. This isn’t personal with you.”
I cursed. “You’re dead, Garrett. All of you are dead. You are so fucking dead.”
Garrett
spit on the ground. “The Muslim you were arguing with. Was she another one of San Bernardino’s workers? San Bernardino uses pretty women to do drop-offs and pickups.”
“One of your guys is following her.”
Garrett told me, “Give me the African. Last time. Or the woman will get what you’re getting. Plus only God knows what else. Men get around a pretty woman and men will be men. Just like the African was with my wife, these ex-cons will be the same with the one you talked to.”
They were shadowing Jimi Lee.
They held me down, I could hardly breathe, was sweating, but I growled, tried to fight them up off me, became Atlas lifting the world one breath at a time.
“This strange fruit won’t give up, and he’s stronger than Luke motherfuckin’ Cage.”
Garrett instructed, “Do what I paid you to do. Be ready to bury the African.”
Above me, in my apartment, Rachel Redman was drunk, unconscious. They didn’t know which apartment I had come out of, upper or lower, and I was glad they didn’t care. My girl was in bed naked. My country had been invaded, and all invaders were killers and rapists. Across the street, Bernice was getting dirty after dark, not in her window. If anyone else saw, they were following the code of the streets. Wasn’t their business. As far as they knew, it was ICE agents taking down a brother from Cuba or the Dominican Republic. Or they knew me, knew I was a bad man, and chickens had come home to roost. I had to fight. No surrender, no retreat. Garrett’s thugs were following Jimi Lee. The rest wanted to put Jake Ellis in a pine box. I grunted, flexed, lifted them all, got those motherfuckers up off me, and we fell into a no-holds-barred life-or-death fight. They threw more blows, and I reciprocated with punches, elbows, and knees, thought I could turn this around until I took a blow to my chin that made my neck twist like an owl’s. That blow was followed by another that shattered my soul. I felt the spirit of every dead man and woman murdered during the Middle Passage. I felt the anger and pain of every Congolese murdered by King Leopold II. I felt all of them rising like Margaux had said she wanted them to do in that movie her boyfriend was writing. All of a sudden that bad idea made sense to me. I heard them all telling me to win. I cursed Rachel Redman for getting me drunk. I cursed Bernice Nesbitt for drawing me out into the night, and I cursed Jimi Lee for accidentally setting up the bear trap that had snared me. They had created the perfect storm. If I had seen Garrett and his bushwhackers from my window, I could have crept out the back and come up behind them, .38 in hand, Jake Ellis at my side, and left bodies ready to be outlined in fresh chalk. But they had me. I knew they had me. A hoodlum caught me in a headlock, choked me while I tried to get loose, choked me the same way I had choked Balthazar Walkowiak in Florida, held me while the other kicked my black ass. Still I rejected death, and I lifted the one choking me, then we fell backward, and I dropped him on his head. I made it back to my feet, went up against three wounded warriors until a blow from the butt of Garrett’s gun came down on my head, wobbled me. Garrett hit me in the face. He hit me hard enough to know the offer to work for him and for the tickets to the games was null and void. I tried to stagger toward my apartment, wanted to get upstairs, wanted to get my hands on my .38. His bushwhackers came after me. They were hurt, bleeding, but they persisted. Woozy, winded, captured; the next uppercut forced the sun to set inside my brain.
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