Chapter 3. Revised

See Chapter 1 & Chapter 2.

De moon had settled itself dat night in de middle of de sky so everybody could see it. De neighbors were comin out with dere Vat 19th and Coca Cola. Somebody with ah spoon–ah melody pulsatin on half ah bottle. De quarto player was takin another sip. Feelin de spirit, he play ah devil of ah tune. From house to house, dey moved with gaiety in deir steps and was greeted with de smell of cloved ham, fruitcake and sweet bread. Little children yelled out to deir mothers dat de parang players are here.

Even dough tings were as dey were–poor people still strugglin to make ends meet–dat Christmas in ‘78, it seemed as dough God was lookin down on we. We still was poor, but people could at least afford some new paint for de steps, and some new curtains to replace dem old ones dat we just take down, wash, and put back up. It was all because dem white people was all of sudden interested in de oil in Fyzabad. Now dat was Christmas. Even dough tings was dare, people could taste a real apple and a pear, just like in de States. Yeah man, it was nice dat year Njeri turned two.

“Where you think you going Achaia.”
“I goin wit you.”
“What, lookin like that…”
“And who to blame for dat…” Quiet.  Brisk footsteps.
“Ah sorry…Ah didn’t mean dat Comrade.” He cuffs her down.  Quiet.
“Don’t ever talk to me so.”

She holds her belly, and withdraws into a ball.  He turns away and lights a cigarette. She listens to his footsteps, slapping the pitch, walking hard towards his 280 C.

As the car speeds away, a boy, a skinny little boy, in khaki shorts, runs out the house. He leaves behind his sleeping sisters, Serena and Njeri. His bony arms struggle with the intention of saving his mother and the baby inside of her. He pretends he has the Incredible Hulk’s arms, strong enough to carry her pregnant body to the verandah, and then to safety: his parent’s room.  Finally, he begs, “Mammy,” he begs, “per yuh hand on de gate.”

Carefully, they walk to the concrete steps where they both sit and wait in silence. He rests his arm on her shoulder. He stares at her as she props her head showing off her heated face. He stares at her tears rolling down her cheek, and he says what he always, “Mammy, doh worry, wen ah get big and rich, I go take care of you.”

Short breaths escape from the other room’s wooden walls; the sound of her hand soothing her polyester belly; buckets being filled with water, restless with splashes, chatter, giggles from women and children by the standpipe outside; and the occasional car up-heaving the dust from the road; completes the air. Lost to the ruffling of sheets, as the boy sits up and asks, “Mammy, daddy doh love you no more?” With her puffy red eyes, she says, “Wary, I doh know,” and sighs to a spawning cobweb in the wooden creases of the galvanized roof.

Exhausted, she pulls Wary to her chest, and says, “Look how tings change now. Ah remember wen yuh fadder wouldn’t even let a fly light on me. Huh. Now he is de fly.” She caresses the burning pain swollen across the left side of her.  ”Ah remember how he use to get on like ah was de only one for he.  And yuh believe ah didn’t even like he damn black ass. He look like he had wife and child already. Ah remember it good, all de talk bout me runnin him down.” She says sucking her teeth, then, amused she gives a slight grin and says, “Ah remember wen he come by meh house for de first time. He make bout fifty-nine trip up and down my street lookin for meh house. Ah was laughin at him. Ah tell meh cousin Theresa, yuh see dat jackass walkin dey, he lookin for me.”

∞

I’ve been warned. The same brain that houses the mind that keeps the record of every action, interaction; so that the same mind can repeat very loudly while one’s alone in that house, with just its voice, comparing, juxtaposing any and everything of a past record with the present log of daily events.  This same mind created itself a voice.  A voice that is taunting me with doubts about how much I can be so unsure of the existence of God yet still want to live.  Especially in the company of dead lizards, sleeping with something so crippling as the web of a spider,… is

I’ve felt this before.  I’ve seen this happen.  The satisfaction in losing it to a buried gratification: destroying something I had a hand in creating. Letting it all go to a tiny trifle, to base all my regrets on and ultimately kill. Especially since I’ve put so much hope into such a fantasy.

I’d wake up and find Pieta, my only reason to be better. A fantasy so fruitful, it made me less jaded to fantastic dreams of us aging blissfully, tolerating each other’s nonsense. I leaped in, believing in magic.

I can’t stop staring at the videotape leaning there on the bookshelf. The videotape Pieta made of us having sex. She thought it would be fun, since it was in the back room of the bookstore where we worked. It was going to top that time in the park or that late night on the red line train.

I was twenty-one, so perhaps it was just like the infatuation you’d find in a Jane Austen novel. I fell for the way her eyes hid behind her tangled black hair. The teasing way she said hello, goodbye or anything at all. I had to avoid her gaze when she spoke to me. I felt that if I looked her in the eye, she’d see everything inside of me, the memories I suffocated and drowned unsuccessfully. In those stupid moments, I wanted to make her happy.

Yes.  All I wanted was to make Pieta happy.  “Really, this is what you wanted? Hahaha.”

When I first saw Pieta Melendez, she walked into the bookstore where I worked after classes at G.W. and on the weekends.  I acted indifferent when she asked if we were hiring.  As  she rummaged through her purse for a pen to fill out the application,  I pretended not to be distracted by her perfume.  It dominated everything I’d smell for the rest of that evening. I was already so infatuated that I kept her application, and threw away the rest.  I read her answers, and kept recreating who she was. Who she might be.  I neatly placed Pieta’s in Roger’s mailbox with a note, “She sounds prefect for the position in Inventory.”

I was in a cloud somewhere, fanciful, floating around with the idea that it was better to see her everyday, to witness her peacock dance than having to deal with the disappointment of never seeing her flair her colors ever again.  I felt I could live with this compromise.  Compromise, because I had suspicions, that she had some boy lurking.  And my suspicions were right.  There was a boy.  ”Well of course… idiot!”

Six months later, and winter was nearing its end, Pieta and I had only been seeing each other for two months when I finally revealed to her how I truly felt, that I was already in love.  She told me she felt the same.  I was in la-la-la land.  I knew she was still sleeping with her ex-boyfriend.  She lied about those nights when she wasn’t developing her photos in her father’s basement darkroom.  She was over at Darren’s.  But I was in la-la-la-land, believing her every word. I even tried to forget when Darren started leaving me messages, “Dyke bitch, you’d better watch your back.” I should have ended it then.  She finally confessed and told me, she was still sleeping with him.  A man who threatened to kill me every night she wasn’t with him.

“Mail the tape.” I pick up my address book, and flip through the pages until I get to M. I see her hand writing. Her name: Pieta Melendez.  Her address: 3803 Brentwood Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20222. I throw the book in a corner, and I hear his teasing:  “I knew you couldn’t do it.  You’re such a coward.”

I take a swig of J&B, and contemplate sending the videotape to her parents.  It fills me with a sort of grace, a chameleon grace. I imagine the gratification of exposing her secret.  This reclaims the surrender I’ve been wanting. I put out my last cigarette on the icy ledge. I take another swig, hoping it is enough to preserve this now invigorating hate, drowning the memory of her indifference.  As I remember her walking into the Warehouse Next Door’s back stage.  She’s holding a drink that she occasionally sips. Choking, I try to cough it up.  But the memory keeps me still, as beads of sweat run down my torso.

This want wasn’t overnight though. All the reasons I should use this tape is a bridge, leading to more than Pieta’s pretty mouth. I’ve seen more. The secrets I hushed into a ghostly room, ransacked now when I had let her in.  I fear this gratification would change me into something I ran away from. A million miles away.

This same mind of mine that created itself a voice, solely searches for just these pieces that are meant to kill, and throws them like sharp daggers at me. And I’m in that dream again, dreaming of death no longer a million miles away.

∞

I couldn’t hold her anymore, like the time Dr. Parrot–he has a funny mustache and a white coat and was taller than me, taller than everyone–said my mother was having a nervous break-down. I remember this, but it feels like a dream, seeing my mother drooling one sided on a white pillow, sleeping. Talking to herself, sleeping. She couldn’t recognize any of us at the hospital, and even when we brought her home. She screamed at me to stop following her, as she crashed into the corridor’s green walls. She believed I was the demon walking behind her every step.

She cried everyday then. At night, I’d keep her company. Climbing into her bed, my seven year old arms tried to reach each other as I held her. Too small for her, I still held on, so she won’t fall, saying, “I’m here, so never let go.” Every time I remember this moment, I’d hold on whispering in her ears, “Forget about him.”

Taller now, walking, leaving, closing doors behind me. With long legs, running faster than words, when words are too convincing, I have long legs faster than his words, “I didn’t do anything to your mother;” and her nonsense, whispering without a body. I am faster than her slippers, dragging in the darkness. When I have long legs to outrun them both.

But how do you successfully outrun them, when you can’t even measure their volume? How do you find the circumference for their pain and speak of it? How do you measure it, as their sound is louder than your own words? I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

This hate, this want for revenge, all of it makes complete sense. Or does it? Maybe it’s still a fabrication even when I want to realize the desire. Layering with every move I make. I see it everyday setting in, troubling my eyes particularly. I feel it now illuminate the moments I wait… When no one is there, tolerating the sun dimly shining through the sheets. When each day is as identical as the last, I arrive from the hidden: blood-shot and blue velvet. Greeting another morning the Lord has so graciously made with nocturnal eyes. I’d look to the medicine cabinet’s mirror, only to shun the confused image. Haunting me from skyscraper windows trying to keep clean, trying to surpass each other, I’d struggle to refute its reflection. I’d see the patch filled gray, halfway configured shadow, behind me, reflected through the steel of the Metro machine. Sharply shifting out of focus–impatiently waiting as I take too long to buy my fare card–I’d feel it wanting that closure of being numb. Being dormant for however long, only to be roused again by a variety of details my mind collected.

I drink the last of the whiskey, and I suddenly know why I get up every morning: to ride the overcrowded so-called greatest trains in the US.  Greatest, because they work 24-7, even when it takes forever to come, you can’t understand the conductor announcing that it’s not the train you believe it to be, and the transfers, the circles you make to get to your destination.  When, at the end of it all, hope will outlast me. Coming to any room with a mirror, I imagine leaping out, letting hope outlast me.

The phone rings, and without looking, wanting it to be Pieta, I answer.
“Hello.”
“Jeri? It’s Gary. What happened today, I was expecting to see you at 5:00. Is everything O.K.?”
“I wass real ly ti red after the tripp. Guesss I over sslept.”
“It sounds like you’ve been drinking. What happened in D.C.? Sorry I didn’t pick up last night when you called. We could meet somewhere and talk if you like.”
“Can I call you back?”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“Leymme call you back.” I hang-up.

The phone rings, it’s him again.  I sit staring at the phone, confused by it’s urgency, about whether or not I should answer it. I get the feeling something bad will happen if I don’t.  I light another cigarette and watch the superstition float around the room in circles.