Something She Can Feel (36 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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PART FOUR
Taste
Chapter Twenty-eight
June 24, 2008
Tuscaloosa, AL
 
I
could hear my mother's screams from outside the house. After driving the three hours home from the airport in Atlanta in silence, I pulled into the oval-shaped driveway that came right up to the door-way at my parents' house not knowing what to expect. Either they'd be angry at me and force me to suffer as they listed everything I'd ever done wrong, or miss me so much the fact that I'd run off didn't matter anymore. Either way, this was the only place in the world I had to go and the only place I could begin to get back into what I'd left unburned in my life. My home with my things in it wasn't but a handful of miles away, but I wasn't ready to face what was waiting there yet. I wasn't ready to face who was waiting there.
When I opened the car door to get out, I heard my mother screaming, saw the front door fling open and her body come shooting out as if seeing me from a distance had in some way shaved twenty years off her age.
“Oh, my Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” she cried, wrapping her arms around me and holding me so close I couldn't move. One of my legs was still halfway in the car and I was twisting out, but this didn't matter. In a second, I was crying and holding my mother, too. Shaking and rocking as if we hadn't seen each other in years. And even though it had really been only a few weeks, the way I'd left, the way things were, made it feel like an eternity. Yet, here was my mother, in my arms, smelling like the raw cinnamon she kept in dishes around the house and the summer Alabama breeze. Everything. Everything that had happened before I'd left and while I was gone came through my tears in an outpouring of emotion. I'd tried so hard to stand on my own as an adult. To believe that my solitude could prove something about who I was, but in my mother's arms, I was still a little girl—longing to have her family back together, wishing everything would be okay.
“Mama, I missed you,” I cried. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
I opened my eyes and saw that around us was everyone—my entire family, standing there and looking at me. They were arm in arm in a bunch behind my mother. May was crying. My father's arm was around Jr. And Justin ... Justin was standing there with his hands pressed to his mouth. That's when I saw it. In his eyes was more than a look of anticipation. It was fear. I went back along the stares of everyone else and saw this there, too. They weren't simply looking at a Journey they'd missed. They seemed to be looking at a ghost.
“My baby's home,” my mother said, holding my face delicately with both hands. “Praise God!”
“What is it, Mama?” I asked. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“We been praying all morning,” my father said, “that you'd come home.”
“We thought you were dead,” May added with her voice cracking.
“Dead?” I repeated.
“The TV,” my mother said. “It's all over the TV ... in the newspapers ... the Internet.”
“We've been trying to get information since last night, but no one knew where you were ... if you were alive,” my father said, stepping up next to my mother.
“But what are they saying? What?”
“Dame,” Justin started, “he turned himself in.”
 
 
All afternoon long, as my mother sat on the phone and called everyone to tell them I was all right and at home, I sat on the couch beside Justin flipping between news stations to piece together what people knew of the situation in Kumasi and what happened since I'd left Ghana. The reports ranged from local sources revealing that Dame and I had actually tried to rob the man to our being involved in a drug transaction gone bad. All statements described a yellow woman with light eyes and wild hair. Some said she'd been killed along with the African man and others told of a possible kidnapping. It was both amazing and disturbing how the stories were so distant from anything resembling the truth. They made what happened sound so sensational. So far away. So unreal. Like Dame and I were some characters in a rap video who'd only gone overseas in search of trouble. And even the man who was killed, whose name hadn't been mentioned one time, seemed like a simple pawn in the thing. Africa was a backdrop and he was just another character in the concocted adventure story.
I had to work to ensure my father that none of this was true. And while he seemed a bit softer than he had when I left, he appeared more happy to see me home and alive than to hear my story. But then, I thought, maybe I was the one who needed to hear it again.
“Here it is,” May said, turning up the TV when a grainy image of Dame being escorted into what looked like a police station by a bevy of military-looking police officers. Behind the looping image, the reporter announced that Dame had turned himself into the authorities for the murder of an African man in a Kumasi bar. His attorneys had no comment and there was no word yet on the charges he would face.
“You okay?” my mother asked, handing me a napkin to wipe my tears.
“Yes, Mama,” I said.
“I know you're upset about that boy but we're just happy to have you home.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see that it was Jr.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“W
hat a month,” May said, pulling the covers back for me on the bed in one of my parents' guest rooms. We'd eaten dinner and after a few awkward hugs, Jr left to go back to his house and May stayed in her seat beside me on the couch.
“Yeah. It's been pretty crazy,” I agreed. I didn't know how I'd be able to find any sleep during the night, but the rest for my bones sounded very inviting.
“But it's kinda nice to see everyone back in the house. For a while, I thought this would never be possible again.”
I slid off my shoes and sat down on the bed.
“I'm sorry,” I said, “for everything that happened with Jr. He had no right saying the things he said.”
“Don't feel sorry for me. And don't apologize for your brother.” She turned and smiled weakly. “As mean as he was, as harsh as his words came out, he made us all finally face the truth and that's the best thing that could've happened, really. I feel like I have a whole new life. It hurts a lot. Sometimes I really miss Jr—I won't lie. But I have to protect myself first now. And I'm seeing more and more that I'm worth protecting.”
“Wow,” I said. “You certainly don't sound like the same May I left crying on the bed at her mother's house with the Bible in her lap.”
“That's because my Bible is in here now,” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “And no one can manipulate the meaning there.”
“So what else has been going on since I left?” I asked after changing into an old nightgown my mother left on the chair beside the bed for me.
“Nothing,” she said, laughing a little. “You know, it's funny. When you left, everyone just went their separate ways. No one was talking and it was like we were just going through the motions, but not really saying what was on our minds. I moved out. Justin left. Your parents—they just went back to pretending nothing happened. And then when the news broke about what happened—”
“In Kumasi?”
“Yeah.” She looked off. “We all ended up coming together here again. One behind the other, the cars showed up in the driveway. We sat around the TV and your parents had Justin looking up stuff on the Internet and it was like we had to really see each other again for the first time because we had to depend on each other for support. And while we were still quiet, the apologies were in our eyes. In our silent prayers. In our wishes that the last thing that made us a family would be returned to us unharmed.”
“I didn't mean to just leave like that,” I said. “But I had to go.”
“Did you love him?”
“I
do
love him.”
When May finally left me alone in the room, I lay in the darkness in the center of the bed for a long while. I didn't expect to find rest or hear the silence in the room. My mind was too busy tossing around images of where I'd been. Some were sad and some were happy. And I could hear things, too. My singing. Dame's laughing. The gun going off. The thump of the man's head on the floor. The sound of the plane taking off as I departed. Kweku inviting me to talk. These sights and sounds played in no specific order in my mind until they became a foreboding dream. Where I was happy, there was this ominous blanket covering me. Where I was sad, I knew that soon I'd hear the blasts again and this would all end. Even in my unexpected sleep, I knew these images were real and as I fought each second to change what had happened, everything was replayed just the same.
 
 
“I guess you ain't dead,” I heard a voice calling over my shoulder. I was already awake and laying on my side, looking at the clear Alabama sunshine alive outside the window.
I was about to turn over and then I realized the voice was Billie's. I smiled and decided to stay on my side.
“You know you hear me, heifer,” she said and I heard her step into the room. “I know you ain't sleep no more! Leaving me to sneak off with some ashy negro. Got some nerve.”
I was truly laughing now and fighting to keep my squeals contained.
“The least you could've done was taken me with you. Then I could've found me a real Mustafa. All those single brothers they got in Africa. I know one got to have love for a schoolteacher. Did you bring one back for me in your suitcase? Let me check.”
“You keep your filthy hands off my suitcase,” I demanded, turning to Billie. “There's nothing in there for you!”
“See, I knew you were awake,” Billie cheered, jumping into the bed and embracing me.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“It's you! My best buddy. How are you?”
“I'm fine,” I said as Billie made herself comfortable in front of me on an empty space in the bed. “I've been through hell, but I'm fine.”
“Hell?”
“Real hell.”
As I told Billie everything that had happened, we laid in the bed just looking up at the ceiling like we'd imagined the whole tale unraveling on the white surface like a movie. In true Billie fashion, sometimes, like the time Dame and I first made love, she made me retell certain sections and others, she balked and threw her shoe up in the air.
“Do you think you'll ever see him again?” she asked, bringing up a question I'd been trying to erase from my thoughts.
“He left me,” I said. “It's over. I think we've pretty much discovered where the bird and fish can live ... nowhere.”
“What about Evan?”
“I don't know. Have you seen him?”
“He's been around, laying pretty low. After all the stuff came out about you and Dame in the local papers, I think he was embarrassed,” Billie said.
“I never meant to hurt him,” I said. “I just wanted to try to make sense of what I was feeling, you know? I couldn't keep lying to him like that. It wasn't right. Either way, it wasn't right.”
“Well, we can't be right all of the time. Half the battle of life is counting the time when you're right and when you're wrong.”
“Hmm.” I paused and looked over at Billie. “So what's up with the wedding.”
She didn't look back at me. She just frowned and shook her head.
“I gave the ring back.” She held her naked left hand up toward the ceiling. “I didn't like it.”
“Stop playing,” I said, slapping her hand down.
“Ohhhh.” She exhaled and turned her head to look at me. “I was busy planning the wedding. I signed up for all these Internet sites and started ordering things. I was just so excited. And then, one of the sites declined my credit card, so I had to go look at the account to see what happened to my balance. I'd given that fool Jerome Jenkins from Jasper over one thousand dollars in all those weeks.”
“One thousand dollars? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. And I just kept thinking how sad that was. How I did something that stupid to get something that I wasn't even sure was mine.” She paused and turned back to the ceiling. A tear rolled from the side of her eye and down to the pillow beneath her head. “I know Clyde loves me, but I don't think his love or even my love is enough for us to survive what we've been through. I need to move on. So ...” She wiped a second tear and sat up suddenly, smiling wide as ever.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“I'm ... moving.”
“What?”
“I'm moving.”
“Moving? From Tuscaloosa?”
“That's right. There are no men here, so I have to go where the boys are.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Here you go with your ideas again.”
“No, Journey,” she said. “I'm serious. I already quit my job.”
“What?” I sat up, too.
“I have to leave if I'm going to move on. It's not just about Clyde. It's about everything. My life. My youth. I spent my whole twenties chasing behind someone and I didn't do anything for myself. Now I want to live.”
“Well, where? Where are you going to go?” I felt excited for Billie and I could see in her eyes that she was serious, but I also thought immediately that I didn't know how I'd be able to live and just be in Tuscaloosa without her.
“Well, at first I thought Atlanta would be a good stop for me ... but then I remembered that Justin has been enjoying a vibrant sex life there,” she said, and I laughed, slapping her hand again. “And I don't think we should be dating in the same pool of applicants, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I get it,” I said. “Leave my baby brother alone.”
“And then I looked a little farther north to Charlotte and then Virginia and then D.C... . Philly. And then ... I looked at New York City. The Big Apple.”
“No. You're moving to New York?”
“Kayla already set up my lease to sublet her apartment. If she could find love down here, maybe I could find love up there. Oh, yeah, she and Richard got married at the courthouse last week.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” I screamed, using the Lord's name in vain too many times and I didn't care who heard me. “I'm so happy for her ... and you! You! New York City? This is huge!” I hugged Billie and every drop of selfishness I'd just felt dissipated. I thought I'd done something bold. Billie was redefining the word.
“I can't believe you're really going to leave.”
“Well, as Langston Hughes said, ‘I don't give a damn/For Alabam/Even if it is my home,' ” she said, and we both laughed at the old poem we'd memorized in our African American poetry class in college. “No ... really, I'll always love this place. You don't grow up weak living in a place like this. It made me who I am ... whoever I'll become ... But it's time for me to go.”
“I understand,” I agreed. “Trust me, I do.”
“Now before we talk about anything else, I need more dish on Dame,” she dug. “Man, I know he looked good on that beach.”
 
 
I stayed locked up in my parents' house for the entire weekend before I even thought to leave. When the house began to move on Sunday morning as everyone started getting ready for church, I called my mother into the room and made up some excuse about having eaten too much the night before and said I needed to stay behind. She did the obligatory pat on the head to make sure I didn't have a fever and pulled some pills and potions from the medicine cabinet, but I could see in her eyes, she knew I was looking for excuses.
“We'll pray for you, precious,” she said, kissing me on the forehead as she always did when I was sick as a child. She pulled the blinds open in the bedroom. “You need to let some sunlight in here. You can't keep the outside locked off forever.”
“I know, Mama,” I said. “I know.”
The next morning, my mother and Justin were leaving for Atlanta for a few days to meet with Justin's doctor. While my father was still unable to even discuss Justin's decision, I was happy to see my mother had proven to be the less austere of the two. She said she'd rather be in control of who was caring for her son than out of control and risk losing him altogether. A “he” or a “she,” Justin was still hers and she intended to be in his corner whether my father or God himself approved or not.
While she'd expressed all of these ideas to me in private, as my mother and Justin walked out of the house, it was clear she was acting out of pure love for her son. As caring as she was, my mother was still a child of the old South and this presented a new-age situation. Dressed in an immaculate white pants suit with gold buttons up the front, low white heels, and a matching bag with gold stripes, she looked like she was on her way to a baptism or book club tea, not to meet with a doctor in a big city who was about to attempt to change the sex of her son. In her hand, she carried two snack bags of cookies she'd made for the drive and a Bible. Justin, who ambled behind my mother in a beige T-shirt and jeans, snickered at her back, but I could tell that, like me, he was proud that she was at least trying to connect with him.
“Come on, Justin,” she called. “It's already 7 a.m. These hours aren't going to drive themselves. I don't want to be late to meet this Dr. Kas—”
“Kastenpale,” Justin said, nudging me. I was standing beside him on the steps in the same shorts and T-shirt I'd worn for two days.
“Kastenpale,” she repeated, walking toward the car. “That's it. Kastenpale. He sounded like such a sweet man. I hope he likes my cookies.”
“I thought those were for us, Mama,” Justin said.
“You've had enough cookies this week,” she answered, and we laughed. Apparently, Atlanta wasn't as “big city” as we'd thought. There was less than a handful of doctors who actually did the complete sexual reassignment surgery Justin wanted, and there was a possibility he'd have to leave the state for some procedures after he finished his hormone treatments. Either way, the cost was claiming every dime he made. Needless to say, he was broke, but he was the happiest broke man I'd ever seen. And I was sure my mother was lining his pockets by now—against my father's wishes.

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