I wasn’t sure at the time if Madison was asking because she was just plain curious, curious about kissing girls, or curious about kissing me specifically, but it eventually became a little more clear by the awkward way she asked me if I wanted to room with her during our junior year. It took me weeks, but I eventually found a way to get out of it.
Mom told me, much later, that she often wondered if I might be into girls, a little bit. Of course, she had to mean the white half of me, obviously, because black women don’t go for that sort of stuff.
I can’t decide if these are my sisters or my college friends calling me into the sitting room in the small house on Guernsey, so I sit cautiously beside Mia, my hands in my lap. Not that I’m thinking that there might be any kissing or anything of that sort. No, I simply can’t determine if this is a friendly gathering of mystical forces, or a bitch session.
Mia gives me the answer when she gestures to Cerise and the woman holds up a file folder that she had tucked into the chair beside her. Mia then looks at me, runs her hand through my hair, and for a brief moment there, I consider if it would bother me so much if she did try to kiss me. How would I react?
Would it be wrong? It would, wouldn’t it? Like being French kissed by your mother. That must be wrong.
No, I mean…that’s definitely wrong.
“So, bokkie. Tell me about these people you work for.”
Shit. I really have no fucking clue as to what’s going on.
20
Saint Andrew Parish — Delhi
Mom used to take me to the anti-apartheid rallies that she would attend on campus, to spend my Saturdays holding a sign, or asking people to give a signature, or sit there and be the point of reference for when she spoke of how the South African injustices affected even members of her own family.
Tonya and Naddie sometimes came along, though they were never required as I was, so more times than not, they stayed home while I “fought the good fight.” I mean, what does something like social injustice mean to American girls still in elementary school? Only when she was in junior high and high school did Tonya seem to show any interest and start to tag along with Mom and me. She had somehow wrangled these Saturday mornings into extra credit at school.
“This should be important to you,” Mom told me when I asked her why I had to go.
Truthfully, she didn’t seem to get that something like “apartheid” and “social injustice” really meant nothing to someone who was not yet nine. Those were the circumstances outside the world of Ma and me. It probably affected Ma, but really had nothing to do with me in the slightest. When you’re five, six, eight, all that really matters is how your parent treats you. I mean, yeah, probably the social norms affected Ma’s relationship with me, but really it didn’t have to be that way. I didn’t have to be a disappointment to her because I came out with skin darker than hers. What damned fault was that of mine? Or society’s? It was her choice to make, deciding whether or not she loved her own child.
But after a time, I actually started to enjoy going to these rallies because of the way Mom treated me a differently. During our trips on the T, she started holding me closer, a little tighter, and smiled at me for being her little champion. I mean, I guess other people would see this as being somewhat self-serving behavior from my Mom, but I don’t think so. Mom’s a much deeper person than that. So deep that most of the time we really didn’t have any clue as to what she was going on about. We would simply make a noise and either shake or nod our heads in the appropriate manner. It was Ma who was shallow. All she cared about was the color of my skin. Mom was trying to make a better life for all of us.
So, as irritating as those Saturday mornings sometimes were, getting up early so we could arrive on campus before the start, it became something of a comforting ritual for me. Probably like what other people experience when they go to church every Sunday. It was a time for me and Mom to share something between us that, looking back at it, was about the time that she really began seeing me as her daughter.
So, sorry, Mom, but apartheid wasn’t such a bad thing. It’s what gave me my mother.
We stay on Guernsey, in that little house, the next day, the next night, and on into the following morning and by the end of it all, I’m really happy to get out of there. I can’t be cooped up any longer with that bitch, Cerise.
To be fair, Cerise isn’t really a bitch — she’s nothing more than French — but after finding myself shoved out into the middle of a minefield by her and Mia, I have to be angry with someone. And that someone will never be Mia, so….
Mia hadn’t made it clear as to how much she and Cerise really know. She’s waiting on me to tell her everything. I don’t know if she knows about Getting, or Bouchard, or Nash, or Secret Service, or…. Shit, as far as I know, she’s pulling a Byrone on me and faking her way into me spilling the beans. Damned if I’m going to fall for that again.
And it is a minefield. Mia’s expecting me to give her something, or else she’ll leave me where I stand. I can’t give her too much, though, because I might just jack myself over with Getting. Or Nash. Or both.
It’s some hard shit, tiptoeing your way around, hoping to not blow yourself into a thousand little pieces.
I need time to think. Mia gives me the time, though I don’t really know why she’s doing it. The thing she should be doing is putting a loaded gun to my head and demanding an answer right then and there. With time, I think I can come up with some sort of reasonable explanation. A story.
Unless, of course, she already knows everything.
Unless that’s what she wants me to believe.
Yeah, this is some hard shit to figure.
I spend most of the time telling myself that Cerise is a bitch.
Sorry, Cerise. You’re actually a rather nice host.
Allie takes a real liking to me, and by lunchtime on the second day, he seems enthralled with my “mysterious” past, my working undercover, and the fact that I “hail from the colonies.” He finds me outside, standing with my eyes closed and my hands in my pockets as I let the wind float my hair about my head and the sun — which has been out all morning — warm my face. Clouds are racing across the sky, creating ripples of shadow and light over the surface of the fields, and I find it rather calming because it reminds me of Die Baai at the end of September, the end of winter, before the start of spring, when we would get some days when it wouldn’t rain all the damned time and Ma would let me play in the park near where we lived, when the dirt no longer was mud. I’m trying to calm myself in hope of divining a solution to my current situation.
Allie comes and stands beside me and states that his family had fought “in the war.” I rake my hair down and turn to face him, not because I’m particularly interested in what he has to say, but because that direction keeps the hair on my left side from lifting up.
“I’m sorry,” he says, seeing that he’s disturbed me. “It’s just that when they get all Gallic in there…” He thumbs back towards the house, towards the kitchen. The few times when the wind settles, Mia and Cerise’s voices are plainly heard. “I can go back inside.”
I shake my head and smile politely. How much does he know? Or had they sent him out here as the “good cop?” It’s ridiculous, of course, because as much as Allie would love to play a cop, good or otherwise, he is, at the heart of it, a straight-up finance guy. He finds all of this — what’s occurring in his home — the most exciting thing that’s happened to him in a long time.
He tells me that he has a distant cousin of some sort that was stationed at Ladysmith, and two great uncles on his mother’s side at the garrison at Mafeking, during the siege. He smiles ever so slightly when he tells me these things, really trying to get me to like him. He wants to find some sort of connection with me. His skin is so pale, though, that it’s obvious that he’s blushing from the effort. I can sense that Allie wishes that he was more like Mia, that he envies her ability to draw people to her by the way she speaks to them.
<
br /> Hell, we’re all smitten by the idea of Mia.
I blink at him until he understands that I have no clue as to what he’s talking about, which only embarrasses him further. He quickly explains that these two places are sites of famous sieges during the Second Boer War…in South Africa…1899 to 1902…the Natal, the Transvaal…the Boers.
A little before my time.
“My family’s Afrikaner,” I tell him. I state it as simple fact, not meaning to insult or belittle him. “I think we were on the other side.”
He takes it politely and turns to watch the shadows flow across the field before us. I feel bad and figure he’s deciding that he doesn’t like me much after all, so after a moment of awkward silence between us, I ask him if he’s ever been down there. Perking up, he faces me again and beams his willingness to be on good terms once more. He tells me that he’s not, in fact, been there, but that he’s always wanted to go, now that the whole Apartheid thing is over. He believes that I’ve been down there recently, so I tell him that the last time I was there, Apartheid was the normal way of things.
I really can’t say when it even ended, though I’m certain Allie can.
The first season of The Amazing Race happened when I was on the West Coast, around the time I moved from Seattle to L.A. and hooked up with Byrone. I made a name for myself in Seattle — on the criminal side of things, that is. It was there that I started what was serious undercover work. I had no idea of what I would be facing down south.
Anyway, the point is, between that time and the time when I first entered prison, I never once had the chance to watch The Amazing Race because I was otherwise preoccupied with trying to keep myself alive in the brutal world of drug trade, to keep myself alive in the hospital, and to keep myself from offing myself over the prospect of what would end up being nearly nine years in prison.
Some of the new women coming in would inform us of the shit happening out in the rest of the world. (Like the new thing everyone had to have — the iPhone. I still don’t have a smartphone. No, mine is dumber than a brick.) One woman — a girl really — that everyone called Tar was a real freak for The Amazing Race. (You see? The Amazing Race…T.A.R. She even had the logo of the show tatted to the front of her shoulder, in reverse, so she could look at it every day in the mirror and remind herself of her ultimate goal in life, which was to get onto that show.) Anyway, she cycled in at the middle of the show’s season, shortly after we all were moved down to the new place in Aliceville, and let me tell you, she was invested in the people who were running that race. So much so that the primary job of her family was to keep her informed, each week, of which teams came in what place and which team was booted.
Rumor eventually got around that she was passing time for putting her boyfriend’s head through the TV and using the jagged glass to sever his carotid after he refused to turn the channel when a game he was watching went into overtime. Could be true, might not.
No one was so impolite as to ask.
Anyway, even though I had never seen the show, I heard enough about it from Tar that I would spend my nights, alone in my bunk, imagining probably the longest, most involved, most grueling season of The Amazing Race ever, featuring me and Naddie. I mean, this race went for close to five years, off and on, and I’m sorry to say that some lives were lost.
I doubt they would ever have a season where you will hear Naddie and Elise. Sisters from Boston, Massachusetts.
My sister Lissie and I used to be close but sort of lost track of each other after she went to prison.
Not for murder. They were deemed justifiable homicide.
We’re hoping that this race will bring us together again.
I think it will.
Of course, I never imagined that I would actually be living the fucking thing.
Why did I even accept Byr’s offer? Well, there’s no one answer because my reasons shifted as often as our relationship did.
At first, I was only trying to keep myself from feeling that weird sensation of my head being trapped under Kel’s arm and a chunk of lead entering the top of my skull. I figured I could buy time until I could get myself out.
Then there’s the unspoken disappointment from your supervisor after you make contact and tell them that you want to get the fuck off the ride. Of course, they never really say how disappointed they are, with all that wasted time, money, and scarce Bureau resources you just flushed down the toilet, but you can hear it in their voice, and see it in the way they look at you. And you feel it, too — feel like a big goddamned failure as your career kind of swirls slowly down that same toilet from there.
Then there was the money. I mean, it was a lot of money in exchange for what seemed like some pretty minimal information. I built up quite a stash. Too bad the government had to go and take it all away.
‘Snot fair.
Sometimes, it’s kind of exciting, being bad.
Byr, Kel, Getting. I bet none of them pay taxes.
And, finally, what else was I going to do? These guys — Byr and Kel — they were my friends, my comrades. Not like I thought they would really ever try to kill me, before they tried to kill me.
I mean, I hope to God Byr felt like shit when he decided to tell Angel to make sure I didn’t make it back alive that day.
I fucking hope it still keeps him up at night. But I doubt it.
So if I had the chance, knowing what I now know, to consider Byrone’s offer again, of course I would’ve gotten the fuck out of there. I can live with disappointment. I’ve had to live with it most of my life. I could’ve even lived with a bullet put through my head, so to speak.
But no one deserves what happened to me.
NO ONE, you fucks!
Shit. Did I deserve it?
If I call Getting and tell him that I’m through, I’m pretty certain that he won’t be springing for a business class ticket home. Besides, what’s home? That fucking dump in East Boston?
If I call Nash and tell him I’m through, I’m pretty certain that he will spring for a ticket — an economy class ticket. And have U.S. Marshals waiting for my arrival so they can take me back on the BOP for breaking early release.
“Are you going to leave me?” I ask Mia.
It’s dark outside and the temperature is dropping again, the wind makes it so that I have to shout to be heard. I’m shivering, but I’m not so sure if it’s due to the cold.
“What? No, bokkie. Why would you even think that?”
Mia truly sounds surprised that I would ask such a question. It makes me feel foolish for even asking, which upsets me, which starts me crying, again. She laughs in the way a mother will laugh when you ask them the most absurd things — both bemused and heartbroken at the same time.
She takes me in her arms and holds me until I stop.
Why am I crying? I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve found that I’m stuck. Abandoned. Cared for. Watched. Trusted. Untrustworthy. Whatever. Nothing that a good cry can’t fix, you know?
I tell her everything. Everything about Bouchard, Getting, the job, the deals, the things that were said about her, believed about her. I even mention Marie, which brings a fleeting moment of recognition, though Mia says she really can’t remember all that much about her.
A small part of me feels bad for the sweet girl.
Most of me thinks Good.
I don’t tell her about Nash or Secret Service.
When we step back inside to the kitchen, where Cerise and Allie are waiting, I’m fairly sure that Allie’s thinking that this was something of a lovers’ tiff between me and Mia. He’s a guy. What do you expect?
Mia announces that we will be leaving in the morning for Singapore. Cerise is relieved and Allie becomes excited. He’s always wanted to go to Singapore. He’s hoping that there’s some reason that he may be able to come along.
“I can be quite useful with financial matters,” he tells Mia, sounding very much like a boy pleading with his older sister to be allowed to tag along to her friend�
�s house party. “Singapore is the financial capital of Southeast Asia.”
“Hong Kong is the financial center of Asia,” Cerise points out. They spend much of their time correcting one another over stuff, when they’re both speaking the same language.
“China, maybe, but not Southeast Asia. Malaysia. Indonesia.”
“I bet I can name the financial capitals of more countries than you,” Cerise then says with a smug grin and narrowed eyes, double-dog daring him.
Allie simply turns away, looking to me as he says with a voice much too low for Cerise to hear, “Bet you can’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, sweetheart.”
“I think a naughty lad’s due for another spanking.”
I’ve never seen a person’s face turn such a brilliant shade of pink, bordering on fuchsia. Allie, though, has a vague smile on his lips and at that moment, I understand this pair a little better. Good for them, I think, though I really want to get out of the house now.
Mia thanks Allie for the offer but tells him that she and me are going to Singapore to attend a party. A party we’re not invited to, but we’re crashing by special invitation.
She pulls from a pocket of her jeans — that little pocket where I usually just carry lint — the small memory card that had been in my possession for a short time in Denmark, the card that booted Bouchard off the operation. The card that Mia tells me to mention to Getting the next time you call your PO.
I knew that was going to get suspicious!
I ask her what I should say, specifically.
“Tell him about the card, and that we’re going to an island off of Singapore.”
Great! Another fucking island.
Zwerfster Chic Page 19