Natural Law

PREY

All the creatures that linger in the dark waiting for their prey to cross their path. It is the superstition that mothers and fathers talk about.  As one of the ways to fear their teenage daughters from the temptation of coming home at dusk.   

I never really believed in stupid superstition, that there’s jumbies whose sole purpose is to come out at night and hang around trees, waiting for the living to go pass, so they can follow them into their homes and perform the unspeakable on the living.  The only way the living can prevent the jumbie from entering the house is by stepping into the home backwards. 

One night, I was walking home late.  I felt someone or something was following me, but I thought I was just freaking out because it was really late and I was walking home alone. 

I get home and I enter, but not backwards.  I undressed and lay down on my stomach.  As I felt sleep coming into my eyes, I also felt someone or something on top of me.  No matter how many signals my mind made to my legs and arms to move, they were incapable.  I just laid there while there was someone or something on top of me laughing in a bizarre, crazy manner and I heard all sorts of whisperings, but I couldn’t understand what was being said.  Eventually, when I realized that I was pinned and it didn’t make any sense to struggle, I closed my eyes and relaxed my mind and started cursing out loud, “Get the fuck off, motherfucker!!”  I’m sure that was pleasant for my neighbors to hear at 3:00 in the morning, but it worked. The creature, or whatever it was, left.  My power to control my limbs was back.  Since that night, I’ve been entering my home backwards.

PREY

It was around 9:00pm on a cold winter night, and she was getting home from work.  The bus ride was dreary; the bus’ movements were as lethargic as a boat aimlessly drifting on the sea.  With the exception of herself, the bus driver and another man sitting in the back, the bus was pretty empty.  She and the man sitting in the back got off at the final stop. They were both heading in the same direction.  She took off her headphones because the path was dark, and the man was behind her.   After years of becoming aware of what it means to be a woman, these things are instinctual.

She and the man were walking up the slope and she heard him say, “Hello.”  Without turning back, she says, “Hello,” rolls her eyes because it just seems to her that it’s difficult for men to not say anything to a woman alone.  They must say something or the world won’t turn.  It’s like, she thought, they are wired to believe that every single woman on the planet is waiting for their personal, “Hello.”

The man was catching up to her footsteps and in response; she made hers more brisk.  But the man is relentless, and doesn’t understand why she would want to get away from him.  Instead, the man pursues her, his steps harder, until he is walking by her side.

He asks, “What’s your name?”  She says, “None of your fucking business,” and proceeds to walk faster; believing that the tone of her answer would diminish what he believes is confidence.  But he doesn’t hear the disgust in her voice.  He equates this as playing hard to get, an indirect invitation to keep on, keeping.  He goes on to say, “I notice that you’re always alone at night.  Walking alone at night.  Why is it that such a beautiful girl like you should walk alone at night?”  She made her strides longer and said, “It’s none of your fucking business if I walk the streets naked!”  But the man who believes that he has a right to tell the woman things and to call her names, he doesn’t hear she.  And he proceeds to pull her closer to him.

She was really afraid.  But she wasn’t paralyzed by fear, and quickly shoved him away.  She looked him straight in the eyes with so much contempt and hatred and said, “Get the fuck off me, motherfucker before I fucking kill you.”  The man was shocked.  He stood back with his mouth open.  But she didn’t stop.  She came up to him, “I’m going to fucking kick your ass and kill you if you don’t start walking.”  She made him walk in front of her, until she got to the coffee shop where she worked.  She told the owner what had happened.  He, the man, was scared stupid.  He came into the shop and proceeded to act like the victim.  He told her boss that she was crazy and threatened to kill him.  The woman is always hysterical and crazy when she gets mad.

Even though she got away, and her actions to protect herself maybe viewed as heroic, courageous, she is still terrified.  For months she will look over her shoulder, thinking he was following her and would eventually find out where she lives.  She will walk around with a long piece of iron.  She will think about him every time she gets off the bus alone.  She will imagine what-ifs.  What if he didn’t believe her bluff, what then?  From now on, she will walk in the middle of the street, thinking that it is better to be run over by a car than to have to go through this again.    She will begin to feel like she was prey for the man, out there, waiting in the dark.  Standing around on the corner, looking at her body like it was a piece of meat.  She can see his mouth open, drooling like a hyena.

PREY

Prey to your unwelcome presence
I walk faster.
My mother’s prayer burning
in my ear, “The night is never yours
jumbies lurk
near dim corners
waiting,
waiting…”
We want to say it’s only natural as a lion
gaming, finally devouring the lamb
that men are born jumbies waiting under
night trees. So when I go pass, he is free to follow
my steps to my door. But I’ll never let him in.
I enter my house backwards. 

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.

Chapter 3

This is the third installment to Chameleon Grace.  Here’s parts 1 and 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 with clapping slippers and skin-fitting khaki shorts, runs out the house. He leaves behind a room occupied with the short breaths of 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 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 cheek, over her beautiful face. He stares at her tears meeting the steps’ surface, turning into red circles. And he says what he always say to her, “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. Where God would be.

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 caress the burning pain, swollen across the left side of her beautiful face. “Ah, I remember, huh 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 couldn’t hold her anymore, like the time Dr. Parrot–he has a funny mustache and a white coat 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–with every squeeze, 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.

Drinking the last of the bottle, I suddenly know why I get up every morning: to ride the overcrowded trains, the greatest trains ever.  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.

A Visit to Miss Blackette’s

I held out my palms for a reading.
Miss Blackette looked at them closely,
running her index finger against their lines,
she said my hands are not in love with each other.
I brought what she had asked: a strand of lover’s hair
and a wrinkled picture kept in my wallet.
Miss Blackette held up the strand of lover’s hair
and a cottonmouth hissed its fangs at me,
slithering away, fading into a dark corner.
As she held the wrinkled picture into the light,
the ascent began. From the ceiling view
I saw what I looked like outside Miss Blackette’s room,
I saw myself in a mirror peeping through
my lover’s window, floating on a whirlwind:

My eyes were burning. Beads of sweat trapped in them, lighting splitting down the middle. My hands, that are not in love with each other, climbing really high. Perspiring. They climb to the top. To the opening of my eye. There, I see them in a one-sided room with walls covered in blood. My blood.

I see him walking jagged and long. Coming. Walking jagged and long. And she…She looks taller now and leaner as she stands against the door, staring at the mirrors where my eyes have been hung. There, pupils come alive. She stares back a cross-eyed faint blue. Letting him into our room. The capsized room. Suddenly slanted. The eyes that envy in enlightenment. Clothing taking turns. Crawling urgently. Slipping off their bodies.

The smothering smell of pussy gone foul lured the crows by my side. By my side, they begin to caw. By my side, they pick at the wooden floor. Ruffling their jet black feathers. Downstairs, in Miss Blackette’s room, her mocking bird’s laughter laughs at me. Her three legged dog, staring up at my ascent, barks Jackass louder. Wagging his tail casually. By now there’s a twangy guitar as her helper, a boy with dirty clothes and a delirious smile, sings in erratic chords:

Cuddled in torment
drowning in their own will
holding in the evening’s hours
I see them lying even
see them lying naked
weeping ruin as rain.

Miss Blackette didn’t have a remedy for my hands.
She didn’t tell me to take a bush bath.
As I gave her the twenty dollars, she said earnestly:
Your left eye will eventually become green my dear,
by the ease of seeing him coming,
walking through her door.
Made green by your stutter for words.
Tightly, warmly within.
Made green my dear,
when nothing of you grows in her.
His shadow will become your stroll. You’ll see.
As you take a step, into his footprints,
his fingerprints still settled in her skin.
Your right eye will be as yellow as superstition.