“Sure you want me to come to your room?”
“Will you be a gentleman?”
“Depends on what kind of woman you are behind a closed door.”
“This is getting crazy.” She took a sharp breath, ran her hand over her braid, today her appearance so tame, regal, and bohemian. “Look, I don’t want to hurt anybody, I really don’t.”
“It’s all fun. Just talk.”
“Yeah. It’s just us shooting the breeze and bullshitting.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Is it?”
“We can walk away.”
“Can we?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Don’t want you to think I’m… that this is easy for me.” She paused, took another sharp breath. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll think about it. You think about it. If you can get away for a few, come to my room. If you come and I don’t answer the door, don’t take it personal.”
“If I don’t knock on your door, don’t take it personal.”
“Actually, I don’t want you to come. But I want you to, too.”
She opened the door, walked away, head down like she was in conflict, didn’t look back. I stepped out into the hallway, but didn’t follow her. I watched. Watching her in high heels, the way her hips moved, was ecstasy. Her easygoing sway was like unwinding on the sandy white beaches and enjoying the glorious sunsets on Fiji. An island built for paradise.
I watched her get on the elevator, still not looking back.
A minute passed before I got on an elevator.
I licked my lips, shook my head, rubbed my eyes. Tingling rose, spread. I swallowed that feeling, a flaming desire to swim deep inside her, savor the clear and warm waters.
I wasn’t going to her room. To her bed. I wasn’t going to look for what was missing in mine. I closed my eyes. Reminded myself that nothing was missing in my world, that I was insane, that there was more to loving than sex. That I would not allow my frustration to cause me to chase the orgasm. I imagined Genevieve doing this to me, imagined myself going insane.
Love should be uncomplicated, uncompromising, and unconditional.
Love should not have room for distraction.
Headstones above the graves of many a failed marriage should be marked with that singular word, with those three syllables. Distraction. I would not be distracted. I would not lose my balance. Never. I loved my wife. Loved her mind and body. It was the brains behind the beauty that proved to be the most beneficial. I repeated that over as if it was my mantra.
I took to the hallway and hurried by Kenya’s door, moved down three rooms, stood in front of the door to my room. Room key in my hand. Music was on the other side of my door.
Stedmanization.
That map that was on her west wall. Her list of accomplishments. I was on that list. I was a checkmark on a flowchart that told what and when she would be doing from now until she received her call to glory. If her life was flowcharted, that meant my life was flowcharted as well. That map told what I would be doing until that same moment. That I would not have children until she was ready. That nothing would be done until it fit her master plan.
The slow Stedmanization of your manhood, which could be your worst nightmare.
At first I thought the hallway was creeping by me, thought I was standing still while the world went by, floating like that famous shot in a Spike Lee movie. I looked down. My legs were betraying me, leading me closer to Kenya’s room. I clenched my teeth, made my legs be still.
I despised Kenya as I inhaled, hated her interpretation of my life.
But I desired her as I exhaled.
I stopped moving, allowed my emotions to wrestle with my intelligence, what was felt debated with what was learned. In the end my intelligence told me that I didn’t despise Kenya. Not her. What she represented. What Genevieve could not give me left me tormented. If I could cut that free-spirited part away from Kenya and give it to Genevieve as a gift, I would. What she has I had been denied for so long.
No, I would not give it to Genevieve in whole, but in measured doses, would give her just enough of what I felt was missing without being abusive to the woman she was now. Would mix it with honey, spoon-feed the Doctor Forbes who was so ambitious with the Genevieve who brought me smoothies, with the woman who taught children in our neighborhood how to swim.
I leaned against the wall, palms sweating, heart beating to its own drummer, while that battle between id and superego manifested itself. Id was violent by nature, the devil incarnate, more persuasive than the angelic part of me governed by morals and the principal of reality.
In Genevieve’s battles between her id and superego, superego always won.
Genevieve was in one room waiting for me.
Kenya was in another.
I thought about The Lover. Those images. The young girl, devastated, sitting in that room on their bed, waiting for him to come after he was married, but he never went to her love.
The way my mother sat and waited for my daddy to come back, in vain.
And then at the end of that movie, her North China lover’s chauffeured car just sitting there on the docks, in the shadows as her ship pulled away. He had married a woman who was not his first choice. His lover was heartbroken, destined to marry a man who was not her first choice.
First choice.
My wife was not my first choice. I was thirty when I met her. Had lived and loved more times than I chose to remember. And, with her being older, I knew I couldn’t have been her first choice. That wasn’t a bad thing; just a way of life, a way of finding love. I doubt if many people married their first choice. Because nine times out of ten, we weren’t our first choice’s first choice.
To someone we are all less than ideal.
That is not said to diminish love. It’s said because that’s the way life is.
That scene lives inside me. Unshakable because it was so palpable, so sad.
I raised my hand, stared at my wedding ring. My legs started to bend and I eased down on the carpet, my hand pulling at my hair. People got off the elevator, talking, walking by me.
I never raised my head.
My eyes were on my watch, the time, counting the minutes between heaven and hell.
I wipe my lips and look at my fingers, expect to see bloodred lipstick on my flesh. Nothing is there. I swallow and expect to taste her. Nothing is there. I inhale and expect to smell her. Nothing is there. I quiver, shake those wretched thoughts away, look over at my wife, expect her to be staring at me, reading my mind, her expression that of horror and disdain. She is like a child, so unaware. I look at Genevieve’s black slacks and black jacket, gaze at her bronze lips with hints of gold, and force Kenya’s bohemian vision out of my eyes. They are sisters. They are almost of opposite complexions and temperaments but of the same DNA. Melded together, in a controlled environment, in my mind, that Frankenstein-ian experiment would yield the perfect woman. I stare at my wife, holding her hand, and search for similar features, for family traits, find similarities to her sister in her forehead and nose.
She senses my uneasiness, asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Just worried about you.”
Guilt rises. She is a good wife. I should be on my knees until they are red with blood.
Bubba Smith interrupts my guilt trip, brings me back to this road trip when he says, “Got some cold water up here in a chest if y’all want some.”
Genevieve shifts, runs her hand over her hair, says, “Please. Thank you.”
Bubba Smith hands her two bottles. She thanks him and opens mine first, then hers, before she places both in the holders.
Bubba Smith says, “I have a copy of St. Clair Times up here. Birmingham Times too.”
Genevieve mumbles, “No, thank you.”
“Don’t blame you, ma’am. Nothing in them papers but bad news. Woman was attacked with a chain saw then set on fire. Stalked her and her boyfriend, her ex-husband did. Paper said she had cuts and burns over
ninety percent of her body. Bad enough that Bicycle Bob got killed by them two fools. Why they want to do a homeless man like that, only God knows. And that dang Eric Rudolph. I’m not for abortion, but I’m not for blowing up people about it either.”
Genevieve tunes out his chatter, says nothing.
A moment later Bubba Smith says, “Radio control’s on your arm rest if you want music. You might want to try 95.7 out of Birmingham. Lot of people I pick up like that station.”
Genevieve’s mind has taken her back to her own Neverland. She stares out the window as if she sees someone walking up the highway. I see no one. But we see our own ghosts.
Truckers’ and the locals’ noses come our way like dogs sniffing strange scents. Riding in a Town Car, we stand out from the dented pickup trucks and older cars that cruise the roads in this part of the world, a city that looks like a hardworking poster for Wal-Mart.
I pay attention, remember history and Jim Crow, try to hear the echo from long-dead sharecroppers and people who worked at the steel mills and coal mines. Listen to the black men who were shackled and given hard labor for petty crimes like vagrancy. Look to the branches on trees and look for the remains of ropes, reminders not to raise your eyes to a white man or woman, especially the latter. Listen for the sounds left behind by Genevieve’s people.
A black woman being driven by a white man. Times have changed.
We come up on a real estate office that has a gravel easement leading into a paved parking lot big enough for six cars. A sign is out front, black lettering on a white billboard.
LEEDS 1.5 STORY
3BR 2BA
OVER FULL BASEMENT
$179,000
Less than the cost of a one-bedroom condo in Culver City.
The scenery changes, becomes less city and more trees, populated with more trailer homes and dilapidated structures that could pass for Blue Collar TVs Redneck Yard of the Week. Homes that are mobile and a yard filled with cars that aren’t. Nowhere has a middle and this is it.
Bubba Smith says, “Don’t mind my asking, what y’all do out there in California?”
Genevieve folds her arms and stares out the window, her foot bouncing ever so gently. Controlled angst. She wipes her palms on her pants. So uneasy with this trip that’s taking us deeper into her history. I touch my wife; she licks her lips, but doesn’t give me her eyes.
He says, “Told my wife about y’all. She was thinking y’all were in show business or something. Wanted me to ask ‘cause she sings and would love to make a record one day.”
I say, “Let me guess. She sings Loretta Lynn songs.”
“Not no more. She’ll cuss the Lord before she plays Loretta Lynn in our house.”
Genevieve’s body is here but her mind is on its own journey.
Bubba Smith said, “If you know anybody, would love to get the missus on one of them shows and get her an ambush makeover. Get her looking sophisticated. She would love that.”
“We’re not in show business.”
“Too bad. She’s going to the Super Soap Weekend at the MGM in Orlando and woulda been nice to get her all fancied up. She’s gonna try’n meet Susan Lucci. The wife has started another one of them fan Web sites for that gal. That’s Erica on All My Children, if you don’t know.”
I tell Bubba Smith I work at Nicolaou Laboratories. He perks up, keeps talking, and wants to know—if I don’t mind answering— what I do there. I tell him that I work with a group of people who are working on a cure for a life-threatening disease that attacks the immune system.
He wants to know what I mean. I tell him that I am an AIDS researcher. It’s not the type of occupation that yields a positive response. Not something you reveal and others say they have always wanted to do the same thing. Curing diseases has no entertainment value.
He makes a noise, bobs his head, chews his lip, tells me, “God created AIDS.”
“Is that right?”
“Yessir. That’s why man can’t find no cure.”
“Why would God create something like that?”
“He wanted to kill off some particular creatures, same way he killed off the dinosaurs.”
“I heard a rumor that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs.”
“God sent the asteroid.”
“Oh. Right.”
Bubba Smith smiles a smile that says, “Checkmate.”
Genevieve glances his way long enough to shake her head and sigh.
Welcome to the South, where God the Almighty is also the root of all evil.
I fight the urge to ask him to explain why God created the common cold, or polio, or syphilis, Parkinson’s, Lupus, other ailments, but know that conversation would take us nowhere.
He shuns the Internet, would rather ride a donkey than fly in a plane, knows that he is smarter and wiser than I will ever be. His god has given him a level of understanding that surpasses educated men. And blessed him with a wife who gets kicked out of Loretta Lynn concerts for being too loud. I don’t argue the acumen of his personal relationship with the God of his making against those things in science that he does not understand. This is his country. The parade of cars boasting pious bumper stickers reminds me where I am.
I’ve never read the Bible. I own a few versions. From time to time I tell myself that I’ll read it cover to cover, will start on some distant New Year’s and be done by the following Christmas, will become a scholar of the scripture and draw my own conclusions. And I will become fully aware of that part of history, of the relationship between the pagans and the Christians, of the Greek gods and the singular god that has risen and replaced all others.
Thoughts, images of my momma come and go. Remember her at South Union Baptist Church, singing and catching the spirit. She didn’t go often, but when she did she rejoiced.
I lose that thought when I see a Confederate flag in the front window of one of the fourth-rate businesses. I want to curse. We pass pickup trucks and signs letting us know that not only were we heading into the heart of God’s country, but toward St. Clair Correctional Facility as well.
In a low voice I ask Genevieve, “Is that where… your father… ?”
“Daddy’s at Elmore. Just told you that last night.”
That is my first time hearing her call him Daddy.
Her eyes glaze over and she lowers her head, wipes her palms on her pants.
She fades again.
Historic churches stand out like sentries watching sins. Each has its own marquee, some competition with the spiritual message. Ebenezer United wants people to know that God uses us not because we’re perfect, but because we believe. Branchville Church declares, “God: Don’t leave home without him.” While at Calvary Baptist they offer “Free trip to Heaven. Details inside!”
Bubba Smith asks, “What street am I turning on to get to where we going, Ma’am?”
Genevieve inhales deeply, shifts as if she hates Bubba Smith. Or the smell of cigarettes that permeates his black suit and rises from his pale skin. Or his greasy hair. Or his ill-trimmed moustache. Maybe just hates his question. My wife has transitioned from this city spotted with trailer homes and dilapidated structures lining a two-lane highway, a route filled with old churches and immaculate American flags, to getting her PhD at a prestigious city that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. She has books in Spanish and French and Portuguese on her shelve, postcards of places where she has traveled and stayed at luxurious hotels. Places she went and made love before she met me. Our backyard is tropical. Our own paradise. Where Genevieve is the most comfortable.
Bubba Smith reminds Genevieve of all the things she wants to forget.
She sucks in some air. “Alabama Street. Toward the historic Bank of Odenville.”
“Sounds like you know your way around.”
She nods. “I know all about red link sausages and mountain oysters and going to the market and buying a half pound of hogshead cheese and a half pound of hook cheese and going down to Mississippi and seeing levees and standing in the dirt
fields and watching crop dusters.”
My eyes go to her, to her new openness. I have never heard of those experiences.
Bubba Smith says, “I was born in Panther Burn, Mississippi.”
“Panther Burn.” Genevieve nods. “I’m familiar with Sharkey County.”
“My daddy moved us from Panther Burn to Pell City when I was a boy, ma’am.”
“Pell City. Springville. Acmar. Margaret. Leeds. Knew them all.”
Bubba Smith laughs. “Get out of here. How long since you been this way?”
Genevieve mumbles, “Twenty years.”
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