I do not see lattes, warm conversations, and jazz.
I see frustration. Perpetual pain. A wounded heart that will not heal.
Kenya struggles to get the gun out of her purse, struggles with her own irrationality, with intent. Anger dances in her eyes. They are Gravedigger and Delphinie in reverse.
I will be the witness to this crime.
Something simple saves Deuce from getting shot. The U-Haul key. As Kenya yanks the gun out of her purse, the U-Haul key flies out, lands on the table with the sound of a brick hitting a marble floor. Her lie echoes so very loud.
Silence.
We all stare at the key.
Kenya holds the gun by the handle, tight at her side.
She puts the gun down on the table.
Stares at the gun.
At the U-Haul key.
“Lying bitch. I can’t believe you stole my furniture.”
“Half of that shit should be mine. I’ve been putting up with your ass all this time.”
“Give me my goddamn key.”
“Here’s your fucking key.” She snaps. “Your shit is in Odenville.”
“Nothing but a lying bitch.”
“One more ‘bitch’ and a bullet will fly up your ass.”
“Where’s my damn U-Haul? Where in Odenville?”
“Parked in front of the elementary school.”
He nods. “We still have that other matter.”
“We’re finished, Deuce. You can go back to that ugly shit you were fucking.”
“Well, somebody owes me for two tits. And if we are through, I intend to collect my due one way or another. So, either you or the pervert come up with my money, or you better be ready to use that gun, Kenya. That pussy might be yours, but those tits belong to Deuce.”
Silence.
“Come get your tits, Deuce. Bring your bad ass on over here and get these tits.”
She holds the gun, its barrel pointing at the ground, now her finger on the trigger.
“C’mon, Deuce.”
A sudden vibration causes me to jump, makes all of us blink.
It’s my cellular phone. A text message. From Genevieve. She needs me.
Deuce says, “Me and my ex are getting back together.”
“That ugly shit can have your shriveled-up nuts.”
Deuce bobs his head and clenches the key in his hand.
He looks at me like he wants to hit me, then shakes his head and walks away.
A few people come into the bar, unaware.
From here we can hear Deuce’s Harley start up and head away.
Kenya puts her hand on mine. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Logic rises above emotionality. Sanity above insanity. I play what if and ponder how long happiness would reside with us. Not true happiness, but that illusion that shields the light of the truth by covering our eyes with the blackness of our own carnality, blinds us with our own desires. How long will it take for me to wake up and wish she were Genevieve? How many orgasms will rise and subside before I realize that orgasms are all she has to offer? How soon before I shed this selfish shell and ease back into my intellectual clothes and attempt to have a meaningful conversation, one not rooted in either race or anger, one that is not of the loins, and see that blank look, or even worse, that impatient expression that rings of irritation in her eyes, or hear her tell me to simplify my language, to dumb down my world in order to make her feel at ease?
A model who doesn’t model. A writer who doesn’t write. A poet with half a poem.
Tattoos. Body piercings. Hair that moves like a stallion, wild and free. Everything about her is wrong. Terribly wrong.
I move my hand away.
I shake my head.
Her eyes widen.
I say, “Genevieve might be a Holly Golightly, but you’re not close to being Genevieve.”
I expect her to react, to sling curses and say many unkind things about my character.
She does not give in to her jealousy.
Her eyes tear up.
I pat her hand like she is a child.
I say, “I have to go.”
“I won’t be here when you and Sister get back. But I’ll be in touch. One day soon. I’ll get the number from Grandpa Fred. We can have that talk.”
“Where are you going?”
She shrugs. “Maybe I’ll get a taxi and catch a Greyhound and go back to New York. I have friends here. Was going to drive that U-Haul up there and sell off Deuce’s shit. But, hey. Could just go somewhere new. Make some new friends. Get another tattoo. Another piercing.”
“More pain to cover the pain.”
She gives me a rugged smile. Again I expect her to curse me, talk to me the same way she talked to Deuce. She turns her eyes away from me, arms folded beneath her breasts, her back straight, militant, and in a stiff tone she says, “I can take care of myself. Been doing it all my life.”
“What about the funeral?”
She reaches into her purse. Takes out an obituary. Her father’s. Everything about her softens. She stares at the obituary for a moment, then she finally says, “I’ve been to the only funeral that’s going to matter. Would tell you to give this to your wife, but it’s the only one I have. Tell Sister… tell her… we’ll resolve what’s wrong between us some other time. We’re not ready yet. I’m not ready for that yet. I thought I was. Really thought I was. Daddy would be ashamed of me for some of the things I’ve done.”
“Why did you…” My thoughts jumble. “Why me?”
She says, “Why did I fuck you?”
I nod. “Why did you fuck me?”
“We have our issues.” She’s talking about her and Genevieve. Hurt rises as she plays with her tongue ring and yields a vindictive smile. “To prove that she’s not any better than any of us. To prove that I can get anything she has.”
“To take what she has.”
“Maybe.”
“But you can’t. Nobody can.”
Her hands go to her wild hair; her head lowers in sadness. She wipes her eyes. Cries without making a sound.
My cellular rings again. Another text message from Genevieve.
I get ready to leave Kenya, then pause and ask, “You need money?”
She shakes her head.
I have four hundred-dollar bills in my wallet. I give her three.
I say, “New York?”
“Someplace. New place. New tattoo.”
I nod.
She waves good-bye, dismissing me once again.
Then I walk away.
TWENTY
SWEAT MAKES MY T-SHIRT STICK TO MY BACK AS I GET OUT OF A TAXI.
I’m back in Odenville on Route 411 and Alabama Street. At the Exxon.
The taxi pulls away and I begin my stroll up the dark road toward the Methodist church.
I dial her cellular number.
She says, “You got here quick. Keep walking. I’ll see you.”
We hang up.
The moonlight takes away enough of the darkness for me to find my way.
The heels on my dress shoes betray me as I stroll across Beaver Creek.
Genevieve waits on the corner at Alabama Street. In front the town library. Not the new one that has been built on the foundation of a historic hotel. Directly across the street from where the library used to be when she lived here as a child. She faces the defunct Bank of Odenville, its windows dingy and opaque. She sits in the darkness and stares at the abandoned place that was her escape, if only in her mind, her legs folded underneath her, once again a little girl.
This is where she vanished to. She rode a yellow cab back to sit in front of the library.
“Where do we go when we die?” she asks. “Where does the soul go?”
“In the ground until Judgment Day,” I tell her, then sit next to her. “That’s in the Bible.”
“When did you ever read the Bible?”
“We will all be dead and in the ground.”
“Willie Esther is not
in the ground, not yet.”
“But Willie Esther is dead.”
“For real?”
“Yes, my Genevieve, yes.”
“Just like my mother.”
“And just like my mother.”
She looks at me with an emotional stare. Words try to rise but she holds them down, shakes her head as if to say not now, not in this order. Things must be given in sequence.
The sky grumbles over our heads.
Genevieve says, “When I came back, Willie Esther started putting things inside me.”
“What are you saying?”
“Willie Esther. She put things inside me if I was bad. I don’t mean actually bad, I mean bad inside her mind. She would look at me and I knew she was about to come after me. She’d do that and say that if she had done that to my mother, then my mother would not have been a whore leaving all of these leftover niggers running around her house driving her crazy. Then she’d walk across that graveyard and go to church on Sunday morning, stay all day long.”
I reach to touch her. She moves my hand away.
“The library, Willie Esther didn’t come here. This was a post office before it was the library. She might’ve come in here then. But she never went inside this building when it was a library. It was safe. I could go inside and get away from all of this, escape inside my mind.”
“God bless the libraries.”
“And the librarians who dare us to dream. You have no idea how many people the libraries have inspired. You have no idea. A library is more than a building made of bricks.”
“Of course.”
It is so quiet here. So peaceful. I cannot imagine anything bad happening in this town.
Genevieve speaks again, responding to the memories and thoughts in her mind, tells me, “Willie Esther put things inside me.”
“Inside you…”
“So I conditioned myself to not react when she put something inside me. Like a… like a slave who wouldn’t give the master the satisfaction of screaming when he was beat with a whip.”
A moment passes. I ask, “Anybody know?”
She mumbles. “Now I can’t uncondition myself.”
“Did anybody know?”
“I’ve never told anybody that. I’ve never said that out loud.”
I reach for Genevieve. She shakes her head. Does not want to be touched.
She takes a deep breath. “She said that would keep me from being a whore with a litter of leftover niggers. What she was doing, she’d pray while she did it, like she was some sort of a healer. She’d wash the sins out of the neighbor’s clothes. Had the television on Channel 11. And she’d put things inside of me. To keep me in line and keep me from being a whore.”
I grieve and listen.
“If I reacted, she wouldn’t stop. That reaction, that told her that the devil was inside me trying to get out. She wouldn’t stop. So I taught myself to not react. To not feel. To not give in. She whipped me. Oh, yes. That bitch beat me. And she put things inside me.”
“Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
“I was ashamed. Thought it was my fault. Thought if I told somebody they wouldn’t do anything. They didn’t do anything about the beatings. Thought she would… put me on the other side of that fence. She always threatened to do that. Put me right there with my momma.”
She puts her hand on mine, ready to feel my energy.
She asks, “Should I have told you that? When I met you, in those first three minutes, should I have told you that? Should I have put this on my resume, what I am telling you now?”
“Not in the first three minutes, but you should have told me. You should have trusted me. Then I would have understood you. I would’ve known what you were sensitive to. I would’ve known why. You shut me out one minute, then you almost let me on the other side of that glass wall, then you’re gone again, behind a thicker glass shield, and I have no idea who you are.”
She cries. Her glass wall shatters and she gives me her emotions and she cries.
“I’ve been carrying this cross for so long. Carried it from Odenville to California. Now I will put this cross down. It may not make my life easier, but at least it’ll be easier to walk straight.”
I rub her shoulders, kiss her eyes.
She wipes her eyes and sighs. “I wonder who I would’ve been if I had stayed here. If I would’ve had a nice home. Or if I would’ve still lived in one of those trailers. If I would have had seven kids by the time I reached thirty. Wonder if I would be wearing a long flowered dress and have cabinets filled with plum preserves, mango chutney, strawberry jam, orange marmalade. I could be a grandmother by now. Sitting on a porch with a big stainless steel bowl between my legs shelling peas and watching the grass grow. Chewing Skoal and spitting in a tin cup.”
“You would’ve become the town librarian.”
“Yeah. I would have liked that.”
“Maybe the mayor.”
“Doubt that. Not with my family history.”
“You hate this place.”
“Just that trailer. The devil’s den.”
“You love the library.”
“Yes.” Her smile comes back. Wide and strong. “This library is my good memory.”
“I understand.”
“Part of me has always wanted to come back here and just drive around, smell the earth, look at faces. Have one of those red hot dogs that are linked together with string.”
Silence.
She says, “I have put most of my cross down. Put down some of yours.”
“Not that easy.”
“Fire is the devil’s only friend. I remember the preacher saying that in a sermon.”
“What does that mean at this moment?”
She doesn’t answer, just asks, “Will you ever tell people the truth about Pasadena?”
“What about Pasadena?”
“Don’t back away. Your mother. How she died.”
“That car accident in Pasadena killed her, you know that.”
We pause. “Your mother didn’t die in that car accident.”
My voice cracks. “She did.”
“She died two years after that accident. At a hospital in Fresno. You went back to Fresno after that accident because your mother got too sick to take care of you.”
I pull my lips in. Hands clench into fists.
She says, “I’m waiting. Just say it. To me. You don’t ever have to say it to anyone else.”
I swallow and I hear the rain coming down.
She says, “I saw your mother’s death certificate. Pneumonia.”
I take a hard breath. Then another.
Genevieve says, “I’ll give you all of me. Just say it. For us. And I’ll give you all of me.”
I feel us in that car. I swallow again and I’m hydroplaning. My hands are small again. It’s that day in Pasadena. The day we had that accident in the rain. I close my eyes and see that wall coming at us so fast. The shattered glass sprays all over me. I get tossed. My momma’s blood dripping. I scream for her. I am but a child. A terrified child who wants his momma.
That is where it ends in my mind. Right there.
But Genevieve is right. That is not where it ended.
Then my momma coughed. She moved her hand. Reached for me.
Her lips moved and she tried to ask me, “Baby, you okay?”
All I could do was cry.
By then people had run over to our car. The rain coming in and spraying my face.
Momma lost a lot of blood. She had to get a transfusion. Ended up getting bad blood.
Back then nobody wanted to touch you. Ignorance complicated by rumors. I was a child and my grandparents didn’t understand. They kept away from me, just like they did my mother. Momma was cremated. Funeral homes didn’t risk themselves with AIDS bodies back then.
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