another story i worked on. yeah, yeah...two kinda love stories. well nigga, i love love, and a sap to boot. fuck ya'll.
“We set out to change the world. We listened to our peers telling us it couldn’t be done, and we refused to accept it as truth. And change we did.
It wasn’t easy, nor was it random. It was a plan, a well thought out and conceived plan to change everything around us.
We had to become honorable.
We had to become virtuous.
Two words that hard to make into reality because the definitions are so obscure. The dictionary could tell us, but you learn by being shown. And these two words ex-patriates of our country, ordered to exile. Or maybe they voluntarily left. But current day examples were few and slim, far to none. So, we had to come up with our own definitions. Movies and history could provide the catalyst, but the definition had to come from us.
We boiled it down to two very simple tenants:
Doing whatever is hard is virtuous. The easier it is to do, the less virtuous it was. The converse wasn’t true.
We must give back for everything we had. God had blessed us tremendously, so we could give back until the end of time, and still not be on this side of even.
And at the end of it all, we would know we succeeded because there would be a statue of us.”
“A lot of time has passed since we first started this”
“It has. You never really know how much time has passed while it’s passing. It’s only until…”
“Yes, I know. She’s gotten huge, hasn’t she?
“And grown too. Too damn grown if you ask me. Ha. Just like her momma.”
“I mean, did you honestly expect her to be any other way?”
“No not really. Eh, well…no, not really”
“I wonder what our children would have been like.”
“A little of you, a little of me…”
“Right. All crazy.”
“Hell yes.” His laughter was quick, but trailed off slowly, as if the end was in retrospect about the beginning. “God knows there had to be a reason it never happened.”
She spoke without looking up. She spoke without knowing she was being heard.
“God knows why. I have no idea.”
“Huh?”
She looks up, with no wasted movement. Her eyes meet his, and nothing else. She has to get this right, because moments like this are fleeting.
“Why didn’t we have children?”
She expected a sigh filled with regret. With thoughts of what could have been, what should have been. She expected a comforting, protective tone. Instead, she received none of it.
“We chose not to. We chose not to do a lot of things. Virtue was the choice, remember? We were trying to save…
The words came from inside of him, marinated in emotion and wrapped in himself. It would have been easier to hate him if he didn’t believe in them. But he did. Hate was not a luxury to be afforded to her now.
“that didn’t leave any room for anything else.”
Her head moved back down, slightly between her shoulders, eyes looking between her feet. Searching in that small space on the floor for a feeling. She had the words. For years she had the words. Words stripped of their feeling are a tragic circumstance. She had seen enough tragedy not to want to knowingly add to it.
She found the feeling, and the words left her mouth with a desperate sense of urgency. She didn’t want to lose it. One chance to get it right. A pause. Her eyes closed slowly. A small rise in her chest. Her exhale was audible.
“Did you think it would cost us so much?”
Cost so much? He made no effort to complicate the meaning of her words. She was owed more than that. Those words settled on his chest like somber lead. He knew his answer and did not make her wait long to hear them. A hand on her shoulder, constant and steady. “There, there” is what the touch told her. She looked up at him.
“No.”
She got into it because of the children. Because of one child in particular. One child that gave her the motivation to try and change it all, a child that haunted her nights alone, when the only self, was herself.
In her attempt to find herself, she worked for a non-profit organization. It was a community center in her neighborhood, which also functioned as an outreach house for the discarded. It never felt like work or a job when she was there, it felt like living. And this little girl Fatima, no older than 10, everyday taught her how to live.
They had conversations, but that isn’t how she learned from her. She learned by watching her be.
Fatima approached everything with the exuberance of a ten year old child. Mainly, because she was a ten year old child. New and fresh every experience was to her. She was never afraid because everything was an adventure to her. After everything she saw, heard, smelled, tasted, accomplished- she realized that she changed. That she was, different. Started out one way, but ended up another. She relished that moment of realization. No sparks or colors, just deep rooted change.
At 10, she didn't know this. Didn’t care to know. What she did know or care to know is that after spending time with her nana at Byrd's Sanctuary, helping to serve food to those layered in clothes that no more belonged together than crabs and ice cream, allowed her to view Mr. Buddy, who spent every waking moment on how to get wet and how to stay dry a little differently. She heard his words as kind, even wrapped in the slur of intoxication. These changes softened her, allowing her to bypass judgment based on appearance. The hue of skin, amount estrogen in a voice, or lack there of, meant nothing to her because she never noticed it.
She saw, better yet felt, what made them… them. Goodness felt as warm and sweet as the crook of the neck of a woman loved. Sadness was thick and slow; anger, blindingly bright. A living, breathing canvas of emotional color, forever changing and remaining the same was her world, and she never wanted to leave its comforting embrace.
She saw Fatima, and for the first time that she ever noticed, felt a twinge of what it means to be a mother. The desire to protect. Before meeting this little girl, she was content losing her place in this world. She saw it for what it was, and what it could be, but didn't know how to bridge the gap. Was it to get as much education as possible? Or maybe refraining from eating meat. Going to poetry reading was the answer for a while. Books with authors with little letter names, words infused with afrocentricity. All these things left her with temporary satisfaction, and constant confusion. Instead of feeling this way, she was content on giving up her slice of life, free of charge. Death wasn't an option, but detachment was. She was going to withdraw to find a place where she could at least feel like she belonged. But…she couldn’t.
She couldn’t shake the girl.
”We need to talk, forreal.” She walked into his fenced backyard. The gray drab metal seemed to fit the mood. She felt that behind this 4 foot high fence, their decisions were protected from the ignorant scrutiny of the world. But her words wouldn’t be protected from him.
“About what?”
“About leaving.”
“I knew it.”
“You knew what?”
“That you weren’t serious about it. You just can’t let go, can you?”
“I can’t” For the first time in the conversation, she broke eye contact. She walked passed him with her head down. With their shoulders parallel, she paused mid-stride. I will not feel like this. The feeling trickled down her mind like cold molasses. Slowly.
I will not be ashamed. She turned her head at less than a 45 degree angle, eyes meeting his once again. “But not for the reason you think.”
“What’s the reason?” Concern laced with anger. As if a bright, thin red line was drawn though the median all of his words and thoughts. It demanded attention.
“Does it matter?” A futile shove in the face of relentlessness. He didn’t budge an inch. The protective fence now was becoming her cage, and getting smaller by the minute. Her back wasn’t against the wall…yet. She knew he would not back off. She didn’t want him to either. He deserved an explanation and he would be provided with just that.
“I can’t leave, not now. Maybe not never.” She not nevered him when she wanted him to laugh. To break up the monotony of his far-too-stern-to-be-this-young face.
It worked. He smirked. “What made you change your mind?”
She immediately wanted to share Fatima with him. How seeing little she made her rub her stomach as if life lived there (inside). How seeing her little hands try to keep steady as she carried unruly soup that probed the edges of the bowl, tongue unknowingly peeking out the side of her mouth, eyes crossed in concentration as she moved this meal across the room, and the smile that accompanied achievement made her realize that she couldn’t give up. To leave was to give up on her, and the hope for her world.
But something would get lost in the translation. He wouldn’t get it.
And the more he looked at her, she found herself hoping that he couldn’t get it. A feral scream rose up inside of her as she sensed he was getting close to her. She instinctively felt the urge to claw at his face and hiss, to protect little her from his probing stares.
A desperate concern was slowly easing over his face. More desperate the longer she waited. The anguish and guilt were ganging up on her, pushing back her protective instincts. She had to say something.
“We can’t run. From everything we disagreed with or didn’t understand, or went against what we believed. Never stood tall against, never fought back. All of our lives, we’ve been running, even if we didn’t know it.”
He tried to read her face, and she turned away. She thought that if he looked too long, he would see too deep, and see Fatima. That little her she wanted just for self. He would see this selfish human desire that made her come before him and abandon (The Plan.) She expected to feel badly about it and she did. But emotions oft come in pairs, and with the sadness came relief. The pair turned triplicate as anticipation crept in, and the trio soon became a quartet with the arrival confusion, and the four became a symphony with a cacophonous sound that would soon drown her. She didn’t expect that he would come to save her so she reached for a tree, and held on for the ride.
“Right. What we’re looking for isn’t here, we know that. We figured out that far too soon.”
“But that doesn’t mean we should leave. What about those who can’t leave?” She looked up into the wild blue yonder to save herself the anguish of seeing his reaction it to her words. Now moved from the flood of water to the sky, she felt like a plane taking evasive maneuvers from being destroyed. The air between them was slowly being filled with countermeasures, and she hoped one would divert his attention from the truth. His eyes turned away from her.
Those words struck something inside of him, and the reverberations echoed throughout his mind. What about those who can’t leave? Who didn’t know they should leave, or that leaving was an option at all.
Damn.
He so badly wanted to forget their faces, making it easier to forget them. His responsibility to them. Those he prays for as they sleep on grates. The ones that he always gives a conversation that recognizes their humanity. He loved too many. Too much. Too deeply. But none as deeply as her.
“He is no longer afraid.”
He sat down and wrote this years ago, when his thoughts were caught in the “what ifs”. What if he died, what would they say about him. At that time, he hoped it would be this. Now it sounded like a coarse blend between and psychiatric evaluation and an autopsy and oversimplified for space restraints, but it still had pieces of him in it, pieces that he didn’t think people would understand, even when he was dead and gone.
When people died, the cream rises to the top. He saw that we only tend to think of people on vast terms. We remembered that we loved them, and they loved us. The smaller memories that we could hold on to were all the more rich because they led us back to the big picture. He wanted to be gotten, to be understood, big and little picture understanding both. Hopefully before he got off of here, but most certainly when he was dead.
She understood. Not the minute they met, or not soon after. Actually, he had no idea when the realization happened, he just knew it did. Well, maybe he did know when saw how deep her well was, and that she was willing to get the water from the bottom of his.
He wanted to say it was the conversations.
But it wasn’t the conversations.
It had been awhile since they were able to have one, but even from the beginning, they were always conversations. He would say something, and get a response. An answer that actually had to do with what they were talking about. But…it was more than that. Something that took the conversation further, to places that he hadn’t thought about, which was amazing, because he thought about everything. He covered all the angles like a geometric grifter, and twice as fast.
It wasn’t just the conversations.
When they talked, he didn’t have to think. He could just be. Maybe he could have done that with other people, but he didn’t. That made her special, even if it didn’t (really). It he thought at it least made her different than so many of the others. Before her, he would tag people with judgments, and cast them out into the wilderness, with periodic check-ins to see if their behavior matched the tag. It distanced him and those he loved from the others, gave him comfort in knowing that they were one way, he and his, another. To see them acting in such a way filled him with a host of emotions, none greater than sadness. His deepest pain came with lost women, an amalgam of broken promises, closed minds and open legs that somehow shaped itself into persons capable of only the most self-destructive of pursuits, and selfish of desires.
Talking to her made him realize that he was no different than the others. They were just trying to make sense of this life with what they had been given, and for some, that wasn’t much. His tags were in fact words as dismissive as the backhanded wave. It made not trying to understand them easier, because the explanation was implicit in the word. An idiot was dumb, period. A slut was a freak, period. No more thought, no more consideration.
“but if you start off with the premise that we all pretty much come in here on a level playing field, then it has to be a reason they ended up so supposedly slutty. understand that, then you begin to understand that person…
She brought him to the wilderness, and in this far country he found belonging.
“they went left, and you went right, and it was as simple as that. they aren't horrible losers or lames, weak or pathetic. they are what you could have been, or could be or...are…
From those words on him, her…everybody was closer than he ever thought. All were ultimately trying to find some sort of comfort, some measure of peace. Satisfaction.
you bring them back from the wilderness. or you join them out there. either way, your alot closer to them than you ever thought you could be, in more ways than two.”
And once found they would all walk back together.
She helped him to understand that. Not though any conscious actions, but through her imperfections that she (not) so freely exposed. She took what she needed from him, and gave to him more than he could have ever hoped for. His cup runneth over.
She was far from a saint.
But no one loves a saint. (Truly).
She helped him to understand that sacrifice meant to give of yourself when it’s easier, and in your best interest, not to. That sacrifice meant love and love meant it all in one.
And to her, he would give all.
So he called it a sacrifice when he spoke to those people around him. Shared his thoughts on the world’s problems, and listened to theirs. He spoke with passion and conviction. He made a list of things he wanted to change, and sought out to do so. It was all for her, to make a world where they could be with each other, whole and complete.
He gave and he gave, and little changed. Time made him more disillusioned and selfish, even though he may have been selfish all along. A part of him thought that he ran up to the world juxtaposed to it, because in some small part he wanted to crash up against it and fail. With the failure, he would have an excuse to leave.
He was no longer afraid. Of leaving.
As much as he thought of saving the world, all his thoughts went back to saving his world, with her being the only occupant.
He couldn’t shake the girl.
______________________________________________________________________
He wakes up to find the room covered in amber and purple glaze that cuts the room in half. He thinks if the looks down, he will be surrounded in rings of color like Saturn. There is light, but the color dominates, and he knows this is a moment that he will never forget.
thank you god.
She is bustling around the room, and even though she hears him stir, she doesn’t break pace or look at him.
He sits up in the bed, putting his back on the headboard. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“Why are you so damn dramatic? What is it that you can’t do?”
“Live like this with you.”
“What? Like what? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Don’t curse at me.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
She stops to look at him, but doesn’t say anything. He watches her gather her things, making note of what she is taking. Her movements, though quick, don’t seem haphazard. There is thought in her movements. She is working though a plan.
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Ever since we left home, but that’s not the question you want to ask. When did I decide to do it?”
“After my sister’s wedding.”
“Yup.”
He looked back out the window at the sun waking up and thought of his mother. He knew something was different on the ride back home, but didn’t want to say anything after she asked him about the cost. That was Game 7, cut down the nets and go home. Those words left him speechless, but they never left him. He tried to wash them away in the nighttime with rocked up scotch, but the blended soul didn’t have enough to heal his. It was a question that completely caught him off guard, because he honestly never thought about it.
For long.
“So why didn’t you say something to me about it?”
She stops what she is doing and walks over to him. She doesn’t sit down on the bed with him. As he looks up at her, he feels like he is in the principles office, having to account for an action that he has no satisfying answer for. She wants to hit him, she wants to cry, but she restrains herself. Her heart and mind have let down walls that contained her emotion, and now there is a battle in the back of her throat for the words that will represent her feelings. But little do they know, they are all lacking and will be cut down. The effort exhausts her and she is silent.
“So why didn’t you?”
Still nothing.
“Not this silent shit again. Come, you gotta say something.”
At the end of the melee, 5 words survive. Out of thousands, just 5. She doesn’t know if they were better, or even adequate. Maybe just lucky, but they are still here. A band of brothers, they lock arms, and walk away from the carnage.
“Why did I have to?”
why did she have to? After that, he stopped acting like he didn’t know. He knew, but constantly denied it to himself. virtue was the choice, remember? He remembered, but he knew that it was never the choice, for either one of them.
“You didn’t, I knew.”
“So why didn’t you say something?” It was hardly a question, because simply questions didn’t make him feel like this. It closed his eyes, and pushed a deep breath out of his lungs. It made him unwilling to move. This was a plea.
“What was I supposed to say? Nothing I would have said would have given you what you wanted.”
“So why didn’t you just give me what I wanted?”
Everything he said seemed like rotten fruit thrown the gates of heaven. He wanted to throw his hands up, and quit. Let her walk off, and give her an ending fit for a best picture nod. She would embrace him, and whisper the phrase of poignant finality of their journey in his ear. Their hands would linger, and she would step away, maybe look back, and the door closing would be the first note of the end theme.
Not this time. no more running. She may indeed still leave, but not without the truth.
“I thought if we did it, had children, I would lose you.”
“When did it become just about me? I thought we were here to save…”
who were we trying to save?
It had been years since they left home, young and full of hope. Something like hope. It was a hope for a better world, and a better future for everyone. At least that is what they said. Looking back, she knew then he saw something else in his eyes when they spoke of the change they were going to effect. It was desire, a desire to change the world….that’s what she told herself, especially at night when she could still feel the message his eyes were screaming to her. But it wasn’t an overarching desire to save the world. No, not at all.
