Chapter 8

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 

“She’s ah devil child.”  Achaia says to Miss Galerie as she sweeps the kitchen floor.  “Every Sunday is de same damn ting with dat girl.  Ah have to force she to come go to church.  All de other children doh give meh no trouble to go to church.  Everybody put on deir clothes to go, but Ms. Njeri.  She hidin in the backyard by de guava tree and won’t come wen ah call her.  Half de mornin ah spend lookin for dat red head girl.  And rude, she rude.  Tellin me  she not goin.”

“How come daddy doh go to church and I have to go?” Njeri asked.  This bothered her every Sunday at five o’clock in the morning when Achaia, briskly dragging her slippers from room to room, woke everyone.  Everyone, except Comrade.  Njeri did not understand why her father spent Sunday mornings in bed reading the paper, while they had to go hear the good news.  Her mother’s constant reminder of, “A family dat prays together stays together,” only provoked more questions.

“Maybe it’s because daddy was brought up in de Spiritual Baptist church, and besides, granddaddy John is de archdeacon.  And in mammy church, dey doh speak in tongues and catch de spirit.  He must be sayin dat dat doh make no sense to go to somebody else’s church.  But he doh even go to granddaddy church.  He just does stay in bed, read de paper and wait for mammy to come home to make him breakfast.  Maybe is shame he shame.”

“Yeah, like de time wen Ms. Rohass ask yuh wha yuh religion is, and yuh didn’t want to tell her.  Yuh keep whisperin, Baptist, Baptist.”

 
“Doh mind wha yuh fadder do.  You just put on yuh clothes and come go hear de good news.”

“Wha…?  Dat Jesus dead?  Ah done know dat ah ready,” Njeri said.

“But wha de devil is dis.  Satan with you or wha?  Yuh know dat de Lord sees and hears everyting.  Yuh better ask for forgiveness.  De Lord is good girl.”

“Yeah, ah could tell just how good he is by watchin you,” Njeri mumbled under her breath.

Achaia stops sweeping and looks at Ms. Galerie and says, “And den, wen we finally get to de damn church, you believe she vomit all over she new church clothes.  Well ah just had enough of Miss Njeri’s stupid-ness.  Ah leave her deir in Sunday school with her dirty clothes and all.  She wasn’t goin to ruin my Sunday mornin.”

From her room Njeri listens to her mother’s conversation, eventually getting up and heading to the guava tree.  She likes climbing the guava tree for its smooth, silky surface.  When Njeri climbs the guava tree, she runs her feet against the warm afternoon branches, until she feels a sensation between her legs.  Njeri rubs her feet against the guava tree until the sensation between her legs becomes wet.  After it subsides, she begins to feel dirty.  For sure now what her mother warns will come true.  The guava tree, plagued with blight, will never bloom again because of her dirty actions which incites the feeling running up from her feet to her vagina.  She wonders if she really is a devil child.

In the face of her mother’s pleadings for her to be more like her sister, and despite her own envy, Njeri knew she could never be like Serena.  Her sister was good at being a girl–a good girl with ribbons that stayed in her hair, clean hands and knees, and always in a dress with her slippers on her feet.  Njeri likes being a boy.  She’d run barefoot in Queen Victoria’s street with her chest exposed. 

When plums and mangoes came into season, Njeri, Joshua and Miss Galerie’s sons, Adesa and Danjumah, raided Mr. William’s trees.  She’d climb even in the midst of her mother’s warning about girls having the ability to blight trees and her own fear that maybe the saying is true. 

After witnessing Njeri chasing and finally catching a garden lizard in the backyard, Serena vowed never to play with her sister again.  But Njeri created her own friends whenever her mother felt hanging around the neighborhood boys might lead to more than just games.  She sometimes played with her brother, but Joshua was never fair.  When he was certain there wasn’t a chance of him wining, he’d quit. 

Usually, Njeri spent most of her time alone, pretending.  She pretended to remove the parts she hated the most.  She even pretended once that her father’s shoes were really the starship Enterprise and the little pebbles she placed on board the shoe’s sole were the ship’s crew with Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock.  Her aunty Tia was visiting that day when she was going to the place where no man had explored.  She couldn’t understand why Njeri found her father’s shoes to be so fascinating.

“But Achaia wha dis child doin with Comrade’s shoe, and it look like she talkin to de little stone in dem.”

“Dat is how she does play.  Weird like dat.  Crazy she crazy.  Dat’s all she does do all day long.  Sit down underneath dat t.v. and play she crazy games.  She won’t pick up ah book and read or do she home work.  All she want to do is watch dat t.v. and act like she’s still a baby.” 

“So how school goin, Njeri?  Yuh doh want to talk to yuh Aunty Tia.  Come and sit on meh lap and tell meh wha yuh learn in school today.”

“Who…? Njeri learn someting.  She head too hard.  She teacher send us ah note sayin she slow.  She not like Joshua and Serena.  I doh know wha we goin to do with Miss Njeri.”

“Wha standard she in now?’

“She suppose to be goin to standard three, but de teacher say dat she not performin.  So dey might keep her back.   Comrade goin and see de teacher on Monday to talk to her, but I doh know wha he goin say.  She report book say she come last in class.”

In the section for teacher’s remarks, which Ms. Persad initially and purposely left blank, now reads in bold red print–“Promoted to Standard Three.”

Regardless of Miss Persad’s efforts–her trained teaching methods of reaching her fallen behind students–and despite Njeri’s own shame, for most of that year in Miss Persad’s standard two group B class, Njeri’s term test scores were consistently at the bottom.  Njeri never made any attempt to do better.  Even though she was afraid of being whipped for her incomplete homework, or made to kneel on the bench with her arms reaching up to the classroom’s galvanized ceiling, she did not try to change her position as the dunce in Miss Persad’s class. 

After all, the bell rang at three, signaling the end of another school day, and the Devil found out where she was living.  He cooked the inside of the house; making tempers flare and smearing a violent red upon the walls, the foreheads of everyone living in it.  The Devil controlled the shadows and made them scream at each other.  No amount of prayers to the Holy Ghost from her mother could prevent the Devil from walking around in the house like he owned it.  Not even Njeri’s Granddaddy John’s blessings above the welcome mat–the goat’s blood he used to write an unrecognizable sign covering the entrance to the house–could keep the Devil out. 

Njeri questioned whether what her mother said was true, that Comrade’s mother and father practiced obeah for the purpose of doing bad.  “But in any case dere’s no good in obeah,” Njeri said to herself.  She kept wondering though, “Why mama and granddaddy John would want to hurt us.”   She believes in her mother’s sermon, since Achaia repeatedly said that Comrade’s brothers, sisters–except for his older sister, Aunty Tia–mother and father never liked them.  It was this belief which made Njeri say to one of Comrade’s sisters, when she asked, “Njeri, why yuh doh like me, why yuh doh like yuh Aunty Sophia?”  With her eyes crossed, Njeri said, “Because you doh like my mother.”

A quiet anxiety fills the room as the class waits for Miss Persad to return the exam papers.  Some of the girls, the girls like Leslie Agastini and Patrice Lucton are excited because they already knew their papers are the first.  The rest of the girls hide behind shaking legs and withdrawn eyes. 

Her hands are making imprints upon her desk.  Her papers are at the bottom of the pile.  Occasionally, in solemn anticipation, she lifts her eyes from the cave her forearms and head makes.  She wrote gibberish on her answer sheet.  She knew she came in at the bottom.  The papers are always handed in the order of the percentage: top to bottom.  Miss Persad, with a grin on her face, holds onto Njeri’s papers for too long and Miss Persad does the unexpected.  She begins to read the contents.

“Njeri Ironside’s answer to the question–Who were the people Christopher Columbus encountered when he discovered Trinidad—Njeri’s answer– They were Gaulle Gaulle.”  Miss Persad says laughing.  Soon the entire class joins in, as Miss Persad reads all of Njeri’s made up answers.  Njeri feels their eyes exposing her.  Their sharp pointy eyes were cutting right through her skin like glass.  Even Margo, whose score was just a half point higher, laughs.

“Mr. Ironside, it’s such a pleasure to finally meet you in person.  I can’t say how thankful I am personally for the work you have done,” Miss Persad says as Comrade and Njeri enter the classroom. 

Njeri felt a sort of greatness whenever she was out with her father.  She suddenly felt important, as people greeted Comrade with a look and gave a serious nod.  To Njeri, they looked to her father as some sort of savior and the ones that didn’t were traitors to the people.  When he introduced her as his daughter, that look of greatness, also fall upon her. 

In her eyes, Comrade carried this throne well.  With a determined grace, he entered a room, folding his arms in contemplation, and knowing exactly what to say and when to say it, especially to women.  Njeri noticed.  She noticed their excitement, absolute inability to speak, when Comrade told one of his amazing stories of his boyhood adventures, growing up dirt poor and rising to greatness.  Or  he gave them the most modest of flattery about what he heard said about them.

“Thank you and it’s a pleasure to meet you Miss Persad.  Njeri has spoken so highly of you.”  Surprised by Comrade’s comment, Njeri stares up at her father, but she doesn’t give it away that she’s never mentioned Miss Persad’s name to him or Achaia, instead she smiles an approving yes.  She never told about the day Miss Persad returned the exam papers.

“She even said you are one of her favorite teachers,” Comrade says as he turns winking at Njeri.

“I understand you have been working really hard with Njeri.”

“Yes, but unfortunately, I don’t think Njeri has been giving her all, and I am considering holding her back for one more year,” Miss Persad says remorsefully.  She girlishly plays with her brown curls as she takes out Njeri’s report book and says, “If you look at her scores, they show no signs of improvement.  In fact her grades are dropping each term.  I think another year of standard two will help in the long run.  Njeri has not mastered any of the skills for a normal seven year old advancing to the next level.  She needs another year before entering standard three.”  

Njeri sits sluggish and numb.  She listens only when her name is mentioned.  Her attention has been attuned to the games happening outside.  She watches a group of girls playing hop-scotch and peecé-mash-line.  Out of all the games, peecé-mash-line is her favorite.

“I disagree Miss Perad, I think keeping her back a year will hurt her considerably.  And I must say that, I have not been diligent with regards to helping her with her home-work.  But, I assure you things are going to change.  I am personally going to help her with all her work.  Keeping her back one year will only slow her down, and she won’t be prepared for Common Entrance in the next three years.  By the end of this August vacation, I assure you that Njeri will improve for her year in standard three.  Right Njeri?” Comrade demands as he holds her forearm firmly.

Ashamed, Njeri looks down, away from Ms. Persad exposed slender gold tooth, and her father’s charming smile and says, “Yes.”

Well, this matter is off the subject,” Miss Persad says puckering her lips and fluttering her eyelids, reminding Njeri of a peacock she read about in one of the encyclopedias Comrade bought wholesale.  “But I have a nephew, Raul.  He recently graduated from St. Benedicts.  And he didn’t do so well in the CXC exam.  Right now, he’s looking for work.  Do you think you can help him? He’s a bright boy.”

“Have Raul come by my office on Tuesday, and I’ll see what I can do.  In fact, here’s the number to my direct line.”

“Thank you Mr. Ironside.”

“No, thank you Miss Persad, and please, call me Comrade.”

Chapter 6

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

She is searching for herself in her father’s steps. Heavy, hard and premeditated–penetrating the wooden floor–the sound of his steps traveling through the corridors, making its way to the kitchen. In Comrade’s steps–the ones that walk over her mother, marching in time to the struggle–she tries to find herself. In her father’s words that rallied people together–one union, one struggle–she is lost in between. Words he never learned at any college, because his parents couldn’t afford the $35.00 entrance fee. “Wen Comrade Ironman speak, he talk the truth.” The people listened. They listened to Comrade Ironman’s cry to shut down the entire country, when management for the electric company, T&Tec, refused to increase worker’s wages.

“Let Trinidad stand still tonight. Let the lights from T&Tec go out tonight and management feel the might of the people.”

And for one day, just days before Carnival, the lights went out, and the streets of San Fernando and Port-of-Spain were dead. The next day the management’s negotiating team and the union returned to the table. The workers were given their wage increase. 

Njeri cannot find what she is looking for in her mother’s sighs, because her mother is the jack-ass washing and ironing Comrade’s blue skirts for tomorrow’s battle. Cooks his food and carried his babies–four alive, three dead. She cannot find herself in her mother, who drags her feet everyday singing, “Oh what a friend we have in Jesus,” since she made a pact with God, and even God had failed.

“If you make dem stop fightin, den I’ll go to church every Sunday.” Njeri waited a whole year for God to perform what to her seemed like a miracle, but the miracle took too long to come. By the time she was seven, she was estranged from and unmoved by the word every Sunday. “Dere ain’t no fuckin God, and if he real, he could hold he ass.”

She can’t imagine herself as her mother, who had to ask someone to write, A C H A I A down. And Njeri’s own name–that unconquerable name weighing down her shoulders with too many expectations and requirements–she felt foreign when she heard it in its entirety: Njeri Ironside.

All of this–Comrade’s heavy footsteps, her mother dragging her feet, God’s betrayal and that unconquerable name–in a rush they glide around her head. Now, as Njeri struggles to remember what she was like when she was unconscious; before she started school, before anything. Like the time Joshua pushed her off the hammock, and she flew–hitting her head against a large stone. For awhile there was nothing. Njeri feels she has lost something–something is missing.

Her seven year old body sits on the toilet seat. Staring at the ceramic squares, she wonders how long it will take for her dangling legs to reach the floor and her beginnings to exist. She aims to go back, but all she sees is a blinding white vacancy–lightening, flashing, fleeting moments. She remembers her first day of primary school and how prepared she was not to cry.

I remember yuh first day of school and how yuh wouldn’t stop cryin. I remember. Ah was puttin on yuh school uniform, and yuh just wouldn’t stop cryin. Yuh fadder try to make yuh feel better by takin yuh picture. He even let yuh ride in front with him wen he was droppin yuh off to school.

But as soon as her father left and seeing all the other girls were in tears, she couldn’t help herself. The teacher came back and said, “You too, I thought you’re a big girl, and look at you, crying like de rest.”

She sees a hazy image of her mother throwing a grapefruit, hitting her hard in the stomach. Then there was the time she was lost in the supermarket–the fright she felt swimming in a sea of people walking past and through her. But these memories seem unreal. She tries to remember her birth, or when she couldn’t speak, because Joshua claims that he remembers being inside their mother’s womb. But all Njeri remembers is a feeling. A feeling of fear that comes with the shadows as they thrash around in the dark: loud sudden crashes, bodies slamming against walls, the sound of out-of-breath screams, and the silence after. An eerie silence, similar to the sound the beach made early in the morning and late in the evening, when all the people were heading home. The quiet between the waves coming in, crashing into the sand; the silence that was never without sound because the walls cried every night. Her heart racing with expectations of something breaking, someone suddenly screaming, “Oh God, look at de blood, so much blood!” This is what she remembers, but it is not enough. She cannot find herself amongst any of these memories, amongst a feeling.

Njeri gets up and looks at her reflection in the medicine cabinet’s mirror, and for a quick second she cannot recognize her face.  The image grins and jeers at her. She hears something whispering, “Yuh stupid girl.” And then, she feels someone or something moving behind her, but no one is there. She turns the lights off, and feels the person or thing’s eyes were nailing her to the wall. She doesn’t know what it is, but it makes her feel the sickening sense of nausea  inside her stomach. She searches for its eyes and body but it ends when her mother comes knocking at the bathroom door.

“Wha you doin in de bathroom so long, girl? Is hide you hidin from house work so?  No man want ah woman who can’t cook and clean, so yuh better come and help meh in de kitchen. Come cut dem carrots and sweet pepper for de fry rice,” Achaia demands.

“So yuh ask yuh fadder bout goin to de beach tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Wha yuh waitin for? Yuh doh want to go on de beach?”

“Yeah.”

“Well yuh know he will do anyting for you and Serena. You and your sister are his girls. He doh listen to me, so why yuh doh ask him. We can go and get out of dis house for one day? You should ask him wen he come home tonight. O.K baby, you know dat mommy loves you.”

She is Comrade’s girl. Njeri thinks about this as she cuts the vegetables. She believes that it is true. Whenever anyone wanted anything from Comrade, they came to Serena or Njeri. Her mind wanders to the time when her picture was on the front page of the Sunday Express, holding a placard–“One Union, One Struggle, Unite”–in her hand as she marched side by side with Comrade to Fyzbad on Labor Day. Even Comrade’s friends from the union said she was the spitting image of her father, and if Comrade ever went crazy and said Njeri was not his child, they’d have to jail him.

“I have his dimples, and red hair. I’m brave just like daddy, so brave dat I doh fraid lizards and frogs like Sreena.”

It’s not enough.  She still feels like a stranger invisibly walking behind Comrade’s foot steps, stepping into his enormous black shoes that Joshua spit shined for him every Sunday evening. She can’t be a jackass as her mother called herself, cooking the food Comrade won’t touch, “This is stale food you giving me.”

Njeri wants to be as powerful as her father.  The man who could shut down the entire country if he wanted to because the people believed in him.

Chapter 5

Previous chapters here:  1, 2, 3, 4

“It ain’t look like he comin,” Achaia says to herself.   Her hands shake as she packs her clothes in cushion covers and paper-brown bags. Maybe she can get away with this impulse, this unsettling decision to leave Comrade and the children.

“He must be up in dat bitch ass. I cyar believe dis man goin call my child after dat whore.”  Even though Francesca, Achaia’s grandmother’s name, was the name on the birth certificate everyone called Achaia’s and Comrade’s first daughter by the name of Comrade’s mistress, Serena.

“Well, she could have him. I done see enough trouble with dat man. Wary! Wake up yuh sisters. Help dem put on deir clothes quick before yuh fadder come home. He go take care of all yuh good. Is only all yuh and he self he does study.”

They walk across the dark road. She’s expecting Comrade to come any minute now, stopping her from running away to her aunt’s, Lady Moore, place in Port-of -Spain. She sees no one appearing through the darkness.  She wraps baby Joshua safely between her arms and a blue blanket. Njeri hangs onto the tail of her dress, as Wary holds Serena’s hand walking ahead. They stop by the neighbor Bianca’s house. The lights are on. Achaia yells,  “Bianca!”, but no one answers. Desperately, she cries again, “Bianca! Bianca!”  Still no one answers, but the lights are on.  Bianca had agreed earlier in the day to look after the children while Achaia made her escape to Port of Spain.

She sluggishly falls to the ground and begins to cry. The children surround her, displaying their guilt for eating earlier that evening.  The KLIM powdered milk mixed with granulated sugar.

“He promise to take care of meh,” she sobs. “He go make tings all right. I so stupid to believe him. Ah should-ah just leave and go like Auntie say before all dis.”  She says waving her hands at the children.  “Ah cyar leave all yuh now, is all yuh ah stayin for.”

∞

In the family bible, her full name is printed, Bertha Achaia Sharp, but everyone calls her Achaia. It suits her better. The name itself meant grief and trouble, and she knew about grief and trouble so well she could hold in the pain, stand and continue working.

She was born in Mount George, Tobago, and spent most of her youth there before she was sent to live with her grandmother’s sister, Lady Moore in Trinidad. She is the first out of fifteen children of Njeri’s grandmother, Hilda Romeo.

I never had ah home. I never had a home dat is why I stay and put up with yuh fadder shit. Is because ah all yuh, ah stay.

Hilda couldn’t marry my fadder, Rupert Sharp, because he raped her. Is only out of shame and obligation she keep me. But Rupert did love Hilda. And seein dat she intended on havin me, he proposed, but she refused him. Dat didn’t stop Rupert from comin around lookin for Hilda. Some years later, when I was still ah baby, Rupert died of some kind of complications, sugar or something. I never really knew my fadder. I just knew of him.

I was nine when yuh grandmother was pregnant with yuh Uncle Augustus, and she decided to marry Keith Romeo. The only problem with dat was he didn’t want me to live with dem. Yuh grandmother ask she people if dey could take me in for awhile. At least until she could work someting out with Keith. But he didn’t want me to spend one more night under deir roof. It was like he couldn’t stand de sight of me. So, when ah come home from school, ah find all my clothes scattered across de front yard, and Keith sittin in de verandah with a cutlass in he hand, sayin, “Hilda ah doh want dat blasted child in meh house or else I’ll kill she. You better not step into dis yard if you want to live girl.” Some days after, ah started to shake real bad and ah tought dat ah was possessed by de Devil. But it was just bad nerves.  I’ll never forget the scorn in Keith eyes.

Meh own mother kick meh out. Ah was movin from house to house, from school to school until meh grandmother took me in and ah stay with her until she passed on. I was fifteen when Lady Moore, yuh grandmother sister, send for me.

Because of de movin around, ah never finished school and de only skill ah had was workin in ah store. Sellin. Dat is probably the first ting ah learn. Checkin money. Yeah, because ah use to work in meh grandmother’s parlor after school and on de weekends.

When ah started livin with Lady Moore, she tell meh dat ah had to help meh self. Ah was workin at Diamonds, the fabric store on High Street. It was at Diamonds dat ah meet Comrade.

At first I wasn’t interested in Comrade, but after de encouragement from Lady Moore, ah started to feel for him. Lady More was impressed by Comrade, because one ting, yuh fadder could talk. If anyting else dat man know is how to persuade people and he always have he self lookin like he could buy de world. Lady Moore at first tought dat he woulda make ah good man, but when she see where dis good man was comin from–how poor he family was–she tell meh ah should end it. Lady Moore did tell meh dat. She say dat Comrade would always be tied down by his family, but by den it was too late. I was already two months pregnant with Wary.

Yeah I was still ah young girl when ah had Wary. Ah was nineteen and yuh fadder was twenty two when we married. Lady Moore pleaded with meh to stay with her. But ah felt like ah had no other choice. I felt like ah had to say yes. In partin, Lady Moore said to me, “Mark my words Achaia, Comrade would always have to take care of his six brothers, four sisters, and his mother and father. He will never have time for you.” And believe it like we is God’s children, what she say is true.

Chapter 2

This is the second installment to the novel I’m trying to write, finish… You can read the first chapter here.

In the dream, I can only see the back of her body, rocking from side to side on what looks like Serena’s bed. I suddenly realize my legs bending, shaking as a feeling of urgency runs through them. A feeling so deadly, crossing my path as I timidly approach the room. I can’t see if it’s really my mother, but somehow I know it’s her. I’ve seen her like this before, beaten down, frazzled, afraid. She’s lying there in this strange arrangement of a room, where the bed is the only furniture. I want to say something, but I can’t. I have no voice when I open my mouth, or maybe it’s because I’m a coward, afraid of what she might bawl. I just stare at her lying there like a child. And I want to cry as well, I can feel the heaving coming up as I try to force it down. “Say something,” but I can’t.

She turns to me, and I immediately close my eyes. Somehow it would all be real if I look. I won’t witness the dust she blows into my face. I’m too afraid to do anything now. So very still I stand, in midair it seems. When I finally open my eyes again, she’s still rocking from side to side. She says in a small voice, so very small, I can barely recognize those words making those sounds. They’re all jumbled like she’s speaking in tongues:

“Ahcyartakeitnomore. Ahgointogocrazy.”

I’m running now. As fast as I can, I run away, leaving her behind, running faster and faster with long legs extended. I’m running fast up this narrow corridor that never ends. It’s covered in red, in everything that came out my mother’s mouth. With long legs, I’m running so fast to the master bed-room. I know I shouldn’t look back, but I do and all that is there is a large mirror reflecting an image of what looks like the backside of my body rocking from side to side. I turn away and stare at the large wooden door before me. My fingers are long and skinny, nervously reaching for the bronze handle.

My father is resting comfortably with his newspaper covering his upper body with information. The air conditioner hums in the background. And everything that I say out of breath sounds like I’m speaking in tongues.

“Whatdidyoudotomammy?”

He removes his covering and looks at me in so much disbelief, that I wonder if I’m really alive. I’ll wake up if I could just pinch myself.

I must be alive, because I understand every word he says:

“I didn’t do anything to your mother,” His words are so clear. They’re so clear they make me ashamed. As the time when I was eight, and I couldn’t spell beach, and he said, “Big girl like you don’t know how to spell beach, your little brother can spell beach.”

Beach, big girl, beach. And Joshua was all pleased as he sang in his five year old voice, B E A C H. The door slams behind me, as I leave the room.

At the other end, down the corridor, my mother is speaking in tongues, “Ahcyartakeitnomore. Ahgointogocrazy,” a sound so quiet but still manages to shake the corridor’s walls. And I could hear him saying, “I didn’t do anything to your mother. You can’t spell beach. Spell beach. B E A C H.” Their voices compete, growing in volume; they pound against the walls, and I lose the muscles in my legs. I cover my ears and as I look down, there’s nothing but a black abyss beneath me. I begin to fall.

That’s when I wake up, when I start to fall. It happened again tonight, today. It’s been happening for weeks now. The same dream night after night. As soon as I close my eyes, I dream that she dies. My mother. I haven’t told anyone, not even Serena. It would scare her, believing that dreams can tell the future. But then again, they say when you dream of someone dying the translation is marriage. It must mean someone is about to get married. A little part of me still participates in superstition. I tell myself it’s foolishness as I feel the cold and try to remember where I am.

Yaya isn’t sleeping down by my legs, and I don’t hear the fish tank. This isn’t Regan’s apartment, I wonder about it for awhile. I wait for Yaya to come lick my feet, but she doesn’t. Everything becomes entangled as I try to readjust, and forget all that I saw in the dream. It becomes an impossible task as I listen and hear a woman singing an intoxicating song. I want her to stop her singing, but she continues:

I want to give you a dream that no one has given me

Remember when we found misery, we watched her

Watched her spread her wings and slowly fly around our room

And she asked for your gentle mind.

“I know her voice,” I say out loud. “Blonde Red Head’s Misery is a Butterfly,” I keep repeating. The song swells, and I begin to recognize shapes. I know these lifeless walls staring back at me. They’re without pictures, posters full of ideals, only white washed unmarked walls, plagued with roaches in the background. I look around and I’m startled by a pile of clothes resembling a tall man with feathers in the corner.

Nearing the song’s climax, I realize my state: lying on a ransacked mattress in my apartment. I wonder why I’m naked. The sun has already set, and I can see the deadly softness in the way the snow falls, collecting. Everything smells like ashes. As I shiver for the comforter resting at my legs, I remember waiting to board the bus at Union Station in D.C. The cold wind eating through my jeans.

I aged during the twenty-four hours. I feel it most as I try to get up off the mattress, and why it’s now difficult to walk to the kitchen without breaking down half way. I remember doing the show at the Warehouse Next Door and drinking rounds of tequila with Smurz and Regan, then, staggering onto a Greyhound at 3:30 this morning. I still see the red from the curtain from the dream, as new events that are not new at all come to mind. The shock, and I gasp, of seeing royal white feathers ruffling aggressively. I shake my head and everything becomes a messy ache of nausea, of too much unsettled on my stomach. I try to keep my head up as some of last night throbs its way back slowly.

When I open the fridge, I have to cover my eyes, blinded by Christmas lights in a darken backdrop–the Warehouse Next Door’s stage. I remember the band before us having a good set. I remember a piece, a scene I have to say shut up to more than once, running so fast, threatening to reveal itself completely like it did on the platform for the R train.

I was listening to The Streets’ “It’s Too late” on repeat, waiting for the R at Port Authority to take me to Lexington Ave for the 6. Monday morning’s rush hour, with so many crammed next to each other. Walking too far, feeling the wind gust of the train’s arrival, I found a dead end of shirts and ties that might topple over the yellow edge leading to the tracks. I began to sweat, and my dark shades fogged up. Nervously, I took another gulp of the coffee I spiked after the rest stop in Delaware–the morning’s glare, unbearable to look at, as the abandon buildings and the trees, burden with snow, raced by. Some of it spilled onto my coat. My hands were shaking from the nightmare I tried to drown: the demons coming uninvited. I tried not to argue aloud with them. With my shoulders caving in, I hid in pockets of shade as they mischievously exposed, giving a second life to, events I’d like to forget.

The 6 violently raced out of the tunnel, jagged apartment buildings urgently streaking through the glaring mirrors. My jaws tightened as I bit down hard on my lower lip, as the shock of seeing Pieta kissing someone else consumed everything.

We were playing the one ballad in the set, and I had lost control. Unbearable to look at–the memory of last night, lingering long after I have closed my red eyes. I moved to another car in the train, and all I saw was an audience staring back at me, knowing I had lost control.

I needed a distraction, an ambitious effort, trying to stop the images from walking through the plastic ads. Feeling the sharpness of the sunlight, all I saw was Pieta in the front row with Rickie Favors. I lost the timing and Smurz began her solo early. Regan glared at me why, as she began to sing:

We’d forget the love laws

for one night

for one night feel the ache

feel the pain in our curves

you’ll show me where

show where it hurts the most

I punched the car window hoping I could break the spell, embarrass myself into the present. But it was already too late, the stupid question I asked Pieta kept repeating itself, “So how was it? So how was it?” It rang in my ears, alongside Regan’s haunting vocals:

We’d forget our tongues

caught in Reason

drawing a line

drawing a rigid line

we’d refuse such a sentence

to lie down with

My walk was slanted, trying to catch myself before I fell too far down. My shoulders were lost in awkwardness, smashing into everything. I tried to outrun the memory of her full pink lips answering the stupid question. I protected my ears from the indifference in her voice. It moved with me anyway. From car to car, I heard her saying, “It was nice. It was nice.”

listen from the pit speaking

speaking a new nonsense

in a moment we’d lose

we’d lose everything

we didn’t have anything but skin

the salt from our eyes

the sadness in a kiss.

Staring at the Brita in the fridge, I remember the pieces that are meant to hurt the most. I notice a red dot on the floor. Tasting my own blood, I feel my lower lip.

I can’t remember how I found my way, walking through the after-math of the weekend’s blizzard for five blocks to my apartment building.

It’s 6:30pm. My phone beeps. I have four new messages, all of them from Gary, asking why I didn’t show for session today. I reach for my jeans covered with the crust of dirty melted snow at the legs. The liquor store will still be open.