photo by Alex Lear

 

 

we don’t always have a name for beauty…

who can remember anything in its totality, in its full specificity? i can’t remember what i was thinking two minutes ago when i saw this young sister raise her hand. or what i thought was raising her hand. we were in class, but she was just smoothing her long black hair, gathered in the back with one of those elastic things with little balls on the end of it that girls know the name of and use to hold their hair in place, and this young woman-to-be who reminds me of another person who was in a class i visited last year, similar skin and body shape, round face and delightful way of smiling with her eyes, she has, the one who raised her hand, has pink balls in her hair, and i can remember that, remember how her eyes shone when we looked at her and asked her what did she have to say and she said “nothing, i was just…” and then she made that gesture, a gesture that feels like soft september rain, warm on my face….

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

WHIRL WIND STORM WARNING UNIA

 

Garvey meant us

collected like a fist

of once faltering fingers

fiercely organized finally

to smash through restrictive fences

 

Garvey meant us

when he said look for me

he meant not an individual

a person, a messiah or some christ

come sneaking like thief at

midnight but rather a bold collective

of conscious, capable and committed bloods

breaking cold day like new firey sun

 

Garvey meant us

when he said the whirlwind

not easy times but turbulence,

the social storm of our Black tide rising,

the breakup of old orders and the unhesitant

scrapping of the status quo

 

Garvey meant us

slave descendant sons and daughters

of Arika sprung fully to fight

come back to claim land and life

organized and acting in our own best interest

and unashamed of our open alliegance of self

 

Look for me in the whirlwind

count me in among the coming storm

if they think they can keep captive

we millions of Blacks

our struggle will prove them wrong

 

—kalamu ya salaam 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

when a man loves a woman

 

i don’t know why i was immobile, just standing, caught between moving forward and backing away from some horror that was not my nightmare. i mean, why wasn’t i doing something, why couldn’t i think of anything to do besides be a voyeur, an onlooker, saying inside my head: this is none of my business, yet, steady gawking at the timeless tableau?

 

i didn’t see him wind up, but i saw the fist smash. they were half a block away. she cringed, or crumpled, or slumped, or something, against the brick wall of the white-painted old warehouse. too far away, i could not hear anything. but from the way she staggered, the hit must have been hard. no love tap. no heated argument slap. but a fist. to the head, or maybe the heart, the middle of her chest, between her breasts. i don’t know. from where i was, i could not really tell.

 

a moment before, i had been at my desk. and someone, i forget who, someone had rushed in and said a man was beating a woman, outside. i remember there were at least three of us, standing at the corner, just beside the front door entrance to the black collegian and edwards printing company. it was butch and me, and i forget who the third person was, probably bill, but i’m not sure. and by the time we got there, what may have started as an argument on the street, and probably included some cursing and even perhaps a shove, or maybe he grabbed her and she tried to jerk away, or could be she swung her purse at him trying to back him back, or something. i don’t know.

 

i don’t remember exactly how old i was, but since i left the magazine in 1983, i had to be in my early to mid-thirties, old enough to know better. i had not yet been to nicaragua, but by then had been to cuba the first time, and haiti, and jamaica, and tanzania, and china, and japan, and korea. i had been a lot of places. seen a lot of things. stood with progressive forces, even ventured into a few situations where to be caught was possibly to be imprisoned, if not straight up killed. some would say i had been fearless. some might say bold. going gladly where most folk feared to tread.

 

so why was i not moving forward this time. why was i just standing and looking. i told myself i did nothing because it all happened so fast. like liston going down in the first behind an ali punch most people didn’t even see, the fight was over before i could re-act. but i saw her body take the blow. and i did nothing.

 

immediately afterwards he looked like he said something to her. and they walked away. together. away from us. down the street. and the three of us went back inside. well. the old street adage: don’t get in the middle of lovers fighting cause you could end up getting jumped by the both of them. or, the other old saw: he might have a gun, she might have a razor (which was reinforced by the fact that most of the men in our office were gun owners, and lorraine, our first secretary, carried a straight razor). and the projects where those kind of people congregated was one block down the street in the direction the couple was headed. but i knew better, and besides, i have faced down police and soldiers—a pistol or a knife was nothing, comparatively speaking. no, the truth was, i wasn’t afraid for my own safety, the truth is, or was: i had been socially shaped not to respond to violence against women, and i was simply doing what i was trained to do: nothing!

 

trained by movies and television that are not only forever showing a woman being slapped, or smacked, battered or bruised, but the media has made violence into an acceptable form of entertainment, something we watch and enjoy, watch and laugh, watch and take pleasure in someone else’s pain.

 

seasoned by the callous lassez-faire of street life that essentially said: i don’t tell you what to do with yours, you don’t tell me what to do with mine.

 

encouraged by the army, especially in terms of all the shady dealings that went down with the women we sexually and economically abused with impunity—a lot of people don’t know that the word hooker came from the name given to the prostitutes employed by general hooker during the civil war; oh, yes, i’m aware general hooker didn’t directly pay the prostitutes or even officially condone the sexual laisions, but that’s the american way. the leaders always have maximum deniability even as the status quo works its nefarious show.

 

conditioned by a culture that said a fight between lovers was nobody’s business but theirs.

 

assaulted by the literature—i never forgot native son bigger bashing bessie with a brick.

 

not to mention pornography, the all-time top grosser among americans, even in the state of utah which is supposed to be so righteous. the violent sexual exploitation of women and children, our number one form of entertainment.

 

violence against women was reinforced by damn near everything i could think of. and the reinforcement was incremental, no one thing guiding it all, but the preponderance, the cumulative effect, like one rain drop does not a storm make, but a multitude steady falling will flood us out, wash us away, cast us adrift, like i was, hesitant, unsure on that sidewalk. where was mr. bold black man that day?

 

even though violence was never practiced in the home where i grew up, and even though it was unthinkable that i would personally hit a woman, nevertheless, in ways, until that day, i was not totally clear about, i  now realize that yes, i passively condoned such violence, and if not condoned it at least tacitly accepted men beating woman as the way it was with some people, a sort of twisted status quo. and, perhaps my passivity was birthed by an even more sinister moral equivocation: it’s ok to be my brother’s keeper, but that doesn’t include stopping my brother from giving my sister a beating—oh, sure, in the family, somebody you know, your mother, sister, daughter, lover, auntee, oh sure then jump in and break that shit up, but some sister on the street we never seen before, i don’t know, you never know what the deal be and ain’t no sense in getting caught up in some edge of night drama.

 

protecting an unknown sister‑no matter what i said in the abstract, when my face was pushed up in it in the real world, her back against the wall, some huge dude all up in her grill‑i hesitated.

 

there had to be some reason, some reasonable explanation for why i simply stood there. it took me a while to realize the main reason was that i live in a patriarchal society, a society within which violence against women is not only deeply embedded, but also a society within which violence in general, and violence against women in particular, is so broadly accepted that it becomes invisible even though it is ubiquitous. how can something so obvious be so ignored?

 

the weight of acculturation does not easily budge and can keep us from moving forward even as we believe that it is backwards to stand still.

 

afterwards, not minutes, but in the days that followed, i said i would never be silent again. that moment of stillness turned me around. i would never be  uninvolved again. and truth be told, i haven’t, but on the other hand, i have never been tested like that again. never been within shouting distance of a man beating on a woman.

 

yes, i have stopped young people who got into inevitable fights and tussles with each other. it really, really saddens me that so much play-fighting is accepted as a form of affection among many of our young people. their seemingly harmless mock violence is ameliorated by genuine affection or, more likely, rather than by affection, by pubescent desire; whatever, the result remains the same: in more cases than not, what began as a seemingly harmless activity actually ends up being a predictable  preparation for them accepting violence as part of the package deal of personal relationships, thus violence is fatally intertwined with what too often passes for true love.

 

i can not imagine any of my daughters or sons either accepting or perpetrating abusive violence.

 

i have marched. i have campaigned. i have written essays, plays, poems, made movies. but ever since that day, i have never been caught standing around simply looking when a man beat on a woman. nor will i ever again revert to letting aggressive violence go down without at the very least shouting out against such abuse, without doing something to stop the violence, and if not bring that violence to a “squelching halt” (to quote my father), at least intervening or in some other effective way opposing and lessening the negative effects of such violence.

 

cause when you get right down to it, a true love of one has to also be, to one degree or another, a love for all—and if we can not love others, especially those whom we see as the “other,” whether that be a gender other, an ethnic other, a racial other, a sexual-orientation other, whatever other, if we can not love an other and yet claim to love a particular individual then we are cutting off part of our own selves—the part of our selves that is also a part of the other. we are restricting our lives, constraining our souls, diminishing our spirit, and this is especially true when we are dealing with the questions of violence against women.

 

when a man loves a woman, truly loves a woman, he will not silently condone nor, through his own inaction, allow any man to do any woman wrong. because, while there are those fortunate enough never to be victimized by violence, in general there are no exemptions: each woman in a society shares some of the essence of every woman in that society. when a man truly loves a woman, he must love all women or not really love any woman at all.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

MURDER

 

our sister is thin. she is leading her whole family down the street. her four year old is just ahead of her. she and her little man, two year old malik, walk hand in hand behind skipping and giggling sekou. she is not paying any attention to things in the streets: the cars, trucks and busses whizzing by in both directions. they had missed the bus they needed. the evening was nice. warm. so why not walk and why not take a short cut down napoleon avenue, a thoroughfare what used to be one of white folks' big streets?

 

a camera swung innocently on her hip beneath the medium sized windbreaker, which enveloped her. although out of sight, the camera was at the ready because she liked to shoot. most of the time without film. she would "see" a scene. compose an artistic comment from a chance encounter. but not being able to afford as much film and processing as she would shoot if she had the green to match her ambition, she would just flash the camera and capture the still in her mind's eye, the image frozen in her brain as the sound of the shutter-click indicated the shot was complete. some people did not understand taking pictures without film. they either were not deep into art or else they were not poor. but poor artists know, you've got to practice your art anyway you can.

 

cause she was on a family outing. listening to her boys be themselves. actually coming back from standing in line paying a bill and headed to the house that barely qualified as shelter, not to mention was a poor stand-in for a secure and loving place she could accurately call home. because her braids were in place and would not need rebraiding for another three or four months. because the essential bills were now paid. and she did have thirty dollars in her pocket for two weeks of food. because sekou was singing "space is the place..." his favorite sun ra song -- oh, she was proud that sekou dug ra. i mean, what parent would not be proud of a four year old with the sensitivity to embrace sun ra? because she was making sure she was walking slow enough so that malik could keep up but fast enough so that sekou would not outdistance them. because malik was just getting over the flu and she kept hugging him from time to time both to cuddle and to take his temperature. because she was enjoying her kids. and had taken fifteen shots of them already today. the last one a little shaky because she didn't use a flash and the shadows were getting long, which meant shooting at a slow shutter speed and her hand had shook a little as she focused on the look in malik's eyes and saw the man whose seed spawned malik. the hand shake was not out of hate or even any particular rememberance of love or passion, but rather because this little man looked so much like that big half-a-man and she could not help but wonder would little man grow to become the whole man that the older man was destined never to be. she knew that was her task. to somehow teach these little sweet knuckleheads to become men, somehow, in the absence of a steady man on the scene. if you are a young woman. attractive but not gorgeous. black in color and consciousness. poor as a welfare queen, except not even food stamps stuffed into your bra. proud in the classic "we may not have much but we're going to make it" way, estranged from your birth family because you have become, some-terrible-how, exactly what your upbringing and college education was supposed to prevent: a poor, single mother of two, head of household, fatherman long gone. if you have struggled with being a statistic for three or four years running. cooped yourself up. did odd jobs here and there. hung on by a thread. managed to hold on to your decency -- i.e. declined to live off of ocassional dollars left on the bedside by dawgs who liked the way you jocked their dick -- managed to stay physically clean of diseases (and you have found the easiest way to suffer sexual deprivation is to do without completely, except, of course, for the casual hand job in the tub or a particular good spliff of reefer every other week or so), so you’re clean and have managed to hold on to your pride. no begging back to mama. no buckling under to stern papa's patriarchal nonsense. if you were wearing synthetic clothes even though you prefered cottons and wools. payless sneakers when rockport walkers were really what you needed, especially given that you walked most places you had to go--a buck a throw to ride the bus added up to a tremendous deficit in the pocketbook, and besides, it was usually three bucks to ride because it was cheaper to take family outings then to even think about paying one of the kids in the block to be a babysitter, besides what sense did it make to let kids who were little more than babies watch your babies? if you had finally sold some photos to some magazine for less than you hoped but for as much as you could expect, cashed the money at the corner, paid your electricity bill, paid the rent, and still had thirty dollars and change left over to buy food for two weeks until next payday, because of all of that, if you were shooting a photo of your youngest son and you saw the last man who dispassionately screwed over you staring out of your son’s two year old eyes, your hand would quiver too. all of the above is why her hand shook a little trying while squeezing off that slow-shutter-speed shot.

 

because of ruminating on all of that and because she just never would have expected it, she wasn't paying attention to the brother walking toward her until he stopped in front of them. went down into his pocket and began pulling out a pistol that was so long it seemed like it took two hours for him to keep extracting it from its hiding place. he just kept coming up, up, up with that thing.

 

why was he showing her his gun? was all she could think of at first.

 

brother was tall but not overly tall. just regular ghetto brother tall. tall enough to be playing ball instead of pulling a gun on her. was moderately attractive, except she did not pay too much attention to his looks because she was faced with the fascination of a lethal weapon about to be aimed at her chest. he maybe weighted as much as her whole family -- sekou was no more than forty-some pounds, malik was only about twenty-nine pounds, and she weighed ninety-eight pounds wringing wet -- she had weighed herself the last time she took a bath at her girlfriend's house, her girl friend, whom she hadn't seen or talked to in months now, kept a scale next to the tub, so when she stepped out, it seemed like the obvious thing to do, to hop on the scale and give it a go, the scale registered ninety eight and a half pounds, she had deducted half a pound for the water dripping off her and for the towel she was clutching and rubbing across her body as she dried herself -- so 98 plus let's say 30 was 128 plus say 45 was 163, no 173, yeah, he looked to weigh 200 or so pounds. shit. he didn't need no gun to rob her. he could have been like most men and just threw his weight around. but she couldn't help paying attention to that gun.

 

a gun is a funny thing when it's aimed at your chest, when it's in the hands of somebody who doesn't give a damn about your life, when it's loaded and maybe also loaded is the person holding the piece. a gun is funny in the macarbe sense that even though she was a statistic of poverty she had never thought of herself as eligible to become a statistic of homicide until she was confronted by a little piece of specifically twisted metal, phallic shaped and capable of spewing a metal projectile that can rent flesh, shatter bone and easily cause fatal harm.

 

we had embraced when we met, the huge of my bear hug almost wrapped completely around her twice, my right hand on my left elbow, my left hand vice versa, her living flesh encased against my chest, i could feel her breathing, her small breasts, the slenderness of her back, the top of her head not fully up to my chin, she didn't look sick or anything, or feel weak, but no one would mistake her for being at the top of her game, she had a semi-nervous gesture when i asked how she had been, both hands went to her hair and tugged the braids back on her head, hands over her ears like she didn't want to hear the question, and she looked down, away from me, before answering that she was just kind of coming out of seclusion. while she made those silent sad gestures, i was thinking about her children being sequestered in a cramped shotgun double, and, of course, trying to be a bit sensitive, i didn't ask how she was caring for her kids, i mean i was just another man who was not going to support her two young negro males, and if you ain't going to solve the problem what right do you have to tell a young mother that she ought to take better care of her kids, doesn't she know that every day she gets up, dresses them, feeds them, as best she can? i guess if i were she i too would have been in seclusion. and then she tells me that she almost got killed.

 

but that's life in the waning moments of the 20th century, everybody is almost getting killed, life, especially in new orleans a recent statistical murder capital of metropolitan america, life is murder. i could tell from the quiet, unhysterical, deliberate, clearly ennuciated, without eye contact at first but then the quick glance up into my eyes, i could tell that life is sometimes death from the way she said the word for the day around our way: killed. i could tell this was not an exaggeration.

 

you know the old saying, what goes up must come down? it's not the lift off that's scary, nor the arcing descent, what is scary is surviving the crash. i'm beginning to understand the anxiety of survival. sort of like how it felt surviving the middle passage. what am i living for? how come i'm still alive? when friends and kin fall all around you, you wonder why you're still standing. in this case, i was also wondering how she was still standing.

 

i mean it was difficult visualizing her on the sidewalk, pulling malik close to her with a firm hand that just moments ago was leisurely linked to his little palm. or how did sekou, big eyed and backed back against her thighs, how did he look while some original gangsta practiced his mayhem tactics on this family trio. sister got less than nothing--all the cash she will beg, borrow, earn and steal this year will not cover her annual debt, and some hardleg is trying to jack her up. what a tremendous disrespect for life this is. what kind of parasite would ripoff a whole family whose liquid cash is probably less than the cost of the bullets and the gun being used to rob them?

 

sister laughs nervously as she relates to me how big the gun was, pantomiming the gun being pulled on her, coming up out the dude's pants, she uses her hand with finger and thumb stiff at a perpendicular angle and just keeps raising her hand higher and higher until it's over her head. i imagine when all the money you've got is thirty dollars and it's secreted on your person, and your two young boys are scrunched up against you silently waiting for you to do something, and there's this big dude standing in front of you about to rob you or whatever, i imagine, at that moment, the gun do look like it will keep growing in size, bigger and bigger and bigger.

 

"i told him, you know you wrong for that. you see my kids..."

 

i could not imagine being bold enough to tell a robber he's wrong for robbing. but beneath the stress of crisis, she rose to protest the moment of her assault.

 

"i had to tell him, man, you wrong for that. and then i kinda instinctively backed toward the street. before i knew it, we were standing in the street. a car came along. the driver hit his brakes. leaned on his horn. swerved around us and kept going. i was yelling at the car: stop, stop. the dude hollered at me: give me your money or i'll shoot you. but by then i was standing in the middle of the street, my arms around my kids and then another car was coming. they was just going to have to hit me and my boys, or stop. fortunately the car stopped. i jerked on the passenger front door but it was locked. roll down your window, i begged. help me. please. help me. i pointed at the dude at the curb: that man is trying to kill us."

 

i watched her unconsciouly re-enact the escape as she narrated the scenario of resistance to assault. the unsentimental starkness of her words connected me to her like a fishhook in the flesh, each syllable held fast and pulled me closer because it hurt to back away from her. when i had asked how she had been, i had no idea how near she had come to not being and how out of it i would feel as she related to me the tale of her near demise.

 

although each one of her quiet words conjured up an image in my mind, everything i was thinking was abstract compared to the knot of feelings wrenching my gut as i stood transfixed by the mesmerizing sight of her pantomime, her body jerking through the survival motions: the desperate pulling at the car door, her braids thrashing as she frantically grasped for an opening; the fearless pointing at the assailant, her arm extended, ending in an accusatory finger aimed at some spot to the right of me; the protective collecting of her children, the hugging of open space with right arm and left arm, the hunching over, making a shield out of her body. i was hearing her words with one mind and watching her body with another mind, and both minds were marveling at what they witnessed. she sang and she danced. her words were warrior song, her motions, warrior steps. and yet she was unarmed, all she was doing was defending, defending her right to be, to be woman, to be mother, to be walking down the street with her children. you know we're in bad shape when a single mother and two children are viewed as easy prey, when a literally poor woman who obviously doesn't have big bucks can't take a family stroll through the afternoon without one of her brothers pulling a gun on her, threatening murder, demanding her money or her life.

 

i was simply standing there listening to her story, painfully aware that i was doing nothing but listening. she was not only doing the work of telling the tale, she had also first done the work of surviving the murderous maze of choices facing her that fatefilled afternoon. when a robber puts a gun in your face, most people's minds shut down and they become incapable of making calculated decisions, incapable of making any decision. most people freeze up and simply do what they are told. but this sister in the flash of a few seconds figured out how to be a survivor. threaded through the labyrinth of violence and somehow found a path to avoid the palpable possibility of getting murdered. this sister refused to go silently into the book of urban armed robbery and homocide.

 

i was emotionally exhausted as she continued the story of a murder that didn't happen. since she was here telling me about it, i knew that the story did not end with her murder, but as she revived the terror of the moment with the sound of her voice and the intensity of her movements, i felt the helpless chill of realizing just how fragile we all are in confronting the callous brutalities of contemporary life.

 

even though it would have been a tragedy had she been shot, the greater shame is that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, unbelievable about this story. if i didn't know it before, i knew it now: the realities of late 20th century new orleans had predisposed me to accept murder as a normal way of life. i wondered what i would have done had i actually been a witness to the attempted robbery. how would i have reacted if i were a passerby? would i have driven away, like the driver of the first car that almost hit them, or would i have simply stood motionless as a tree witnessing a black on black lynching, a black man assaulting a black woman?

 

"it was an older black man at the wheel of the car that stopped. i pounded on the window. i looked over my shoulder at the dude standing on the curb with the gun still out. please, help us, i shouted. the man unlocked his door. i pushed my kids in first."

 

then she addressed me. reminded me that i was not innocently an uninvolved spectator. by directly addressing me, she did not allow me the simple escape of observing her as though she was a television or a movie screen. she reminded me that i, a man, was looking at her, a woman. what was the relationship of my manhood to her? as "a man" i could be a perpretator or i could be a helpmate. she reminded me that manhood was no abstract choice. day to day, incident to incident, relation to relation, one on one, one to many, one to none, each man had to choose how he related to each woman. i didn't say anything as she interrupted the narrative flow, looked directly at me and made a parenthetical remark as she continued. what could i say?

 

"man, it was some shit like in a movie. it was happening so fast. but what was i going to do? i didn't want my kids to see me getting shot or nothing. or whatever that man with the gun intended to do to me." the awfulness of "whatever" hung in the air like the scent of foulness in a slaughterhouse. i said nothing and just waited for her to hurry up and get away from the man with the gun.

 

"at first i was going to tell the kids to run but they wouldn't move. they just kept clinging to me. so when i pushed them out into the street, they kinda was resisting. but it was the street and maybe getting run over by a car or else standing still and getting robbed and maybe getting shot. lucky for us, a car stopped. so after i got the kids in the car, i jumped in behind the kids. the man who was driving asked me what was wrong. i said just drive please. please drive. and he drove off. i didn't even look back. to this day i couldn't really describe that dude to you, but i can still see that big-ass gun."

 

and then it was over. she stopped talking. went into herself for a second or so to lock down whatever emotions that retelling and reliving the tale had set loose.

 

once she was back to the present, she looked up and into me in real time, swung her attention to my presence and calmly met my gaze without the terror of the past beclouding her bright brown eyes. she was no longer back at the scene of the crime, she was now standing in safety before me, a slight, very slight, smile creasing her face. silent. and then she said: "i'm alright now, but i been kind of staying inside, yaknow." and then she giggled nervously. i mumbled something about being glad that she was ok, and then recognizing that i had nothing substantial to add, i changed the subject.

 

days later, i find myself facing the question: what are you going to do about it? it's over but it's not over. murder marches on. armed robbery careens through our community unabated. no matter how i twist the combination of causes and effects, proactions and reactions, i don't come up with any great new insights into the problem.

 

in terms of dealing with our very real social problems, i am a beggar standing lonely outside a banquet of the damned. i don't possess any secret solutions or even any short term suggestions. but i know i must say something. so i raise up these few words and shout out to all my brothers: hey, my brothers, if you see a young sister, reed thin, dark skinned, walking down the street with two big-eyed kids, hey, please don't fuck with them. and brotherman, if you find them in trouble, please help them. that's the least a human being can do. help, and, most certainly, do no harm.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

flushing before finishing

 

before i was finished urinating i flushed the toilet. it was like my father was standing beside me. i know where i got this habit from. big val used to do that. he used to flush the toilet before he was finished. and they used to call me lil val. i don’t remember whether it was because we had the same first name, vallery, shortened by most folk who knew us to val, or did i really look like him, act like him? was i really a new generation of him?

 

there is no easy answer.

 

a few years ago i was commissioned to write an essay about family. i choose to write about the spirit family of the secondline. my words did not even mention my father, yet, something strange happened. well, not really strange, now that i think about it. but at the time i just went along with the unusual request and thought nothing about it, until months later someone made a remark that has left me wondering. “you look just like your father.”

 

what was the request? the photographer said, can i shoot you without your glasses on? i’ve worn glasses since i was in third grade—even when i sat on the first row, i couldn’t read the blackboard, and i was a good reader. so, i took off my glasses and patiently waited for the photographer to finish. afterwards, i forgot about it.

 

my daddy didn’t wear a beard. i’ve worn a beard since the seventies. yet, the older i get, the more i look like my father. what gives? did my unique and younger genes loose the fight with the older genes passed directly from my father? do we really change how we look as we grow older? am i a unique case? what’s up with looking like my father?

 

as i finish urinating i am forced to admit i don’t know how much of me is me as opposed to my father living in me; which, of course, begs the question how much of me is in my sons and daughters.

 

i used to think it didn’t make sense to flush the toilet before one is finished urinating, especially as sometimes relieving one’s self took longer than one initially thought it would and one would have to flush the toilet a second time to clear out the lemony-colored water from the bowl. and even more infuriating, sometimes, if it was one of those old house toilets, you had to wait almost two full minutes for the toilet tank to contain enough water in order to flush a second time. and yet, as stupid as i used to think it was to continue the habit of flushing before finishing, today i do it, even after congratulating myself in my youth for not following my father’s example. i do it and i know exactly from whom i got this habit.

 

what i don’t know is what all else i got from him. i’ve never done a complete inventory and the reason i never did this inventory is because even though i have one of his habits that i often thought didn’t make sense, and even though i look like him, today i am forced to admit i never knew him well enough to know whether there are other aspects of him that i keep alive. most of us never really know our parents personally as individuals, we only know them as the older people who had us and who, if we are lucky, took good care of us. yet is it not true that there is no future that is not intimate with the past?

 

whether we know our parents and forbears, whether we look like them, whether we have their temperament or proclivities, their way of walking or talking, way of bearing pain or grudges, whether we love them and talk with them often, or could care less and have not seen them in decades, whether they live now or have transitioned to ancestorhood, whatever, whether whatever, the simple truth is: an essential part of all we are is shaped by whatever our parents have been (even if we don’t know who or what they were)—their influence on our fate is inescapable.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

I APOLOGIZE FOR THINKING

(to/for Thelma Thomas)

 

The last time you saw me you were looking at my back as I walked away. Were you aware you would never see me again? Was I aware that over fifty years later I would want to tell you this face to face? And those two questions are the major realities of life—does either person know how significant and long-lasting a particular moment will be when those fleeting minutes are going down? In the moment we can never know how deeply events will affect, indeed, not simply affect but even accurately foretell our future; nor, in that moment, can we predict how long we will carry those specifics with us in our rambles through life. Like a swift razor slice leaving a keloid scar and in this particular instant the knife was me dipping out and the face was what should have been my heart but instead was your murdered silence. I heard nothing as I left. What did you hear? This is an apology on paper. I wish it were delivered in the warm air between my mouth and your ears as we looked each other eye to eye. If I had not been such a barbarian, I could have been a real man rather than an unfeeling block of flesh thinking…

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

Just Like A Woman

 

         You know I ain’t scared of nothing. Not nothing. Mainly cause I been tried, tested and found true. I been stabbed. I been shot. I ain’t never been poisoned but I done slept in the same cell with the most vicious bunch of cut throats in the world, thanks to old cigar smoking Judge Shea who sentenced me to a double dime on accessory to armed robbery. I wasn’t armed but I was there when we stuck that store up when Peety popped the dude upside the head with the gun, I just stepped politely over the blood and tears flowing on the floor, and went on about my business of rahzooing the cash register. We had sense enough to shoot out the video camera eye, but not sense enough to take the video tape before we left. Aw well, you know, you live and learn. Time ain’t nothing but a classroom, and either you learn and move on, or you stay stupid and just keep doing time. I did a dime and loose change behind some stupid shit.

         You know the joint is good for getting your head together. It didn’t take me long to realize that sticking up poor people was both stupid and evil. First they ain’t got nothing much and second why take anything from somebody who ain’t got next to nothing? You hear what I’m saying? I view the joint just like grade school, you do that shit once and you ain’t never supposed to return. Me, myself, I ain’t never going back to the joint, twelve years is a motherfucking-Ph.-motherfucking-D. Besides them young thugs what’s showing up now in the slams is straight out ignorant ass fools, you know what I mean?

         As I look round this funny ass hole in the wall, it seems to me that everybody in this motherfucker done been up on the yard except for that pretty boy sitting over there checking out every hard leg what walk up in here, I guess he know how long he would last in the joint, and then again, some of them living better in prison than they ever could live out here in the world cause there ain’t no big time faking and fronting up in the joint. Damn near everybody is ether sticking and getting sucked or else sucking and getting stuck, so you know, you kind of get used to men being women. Dudes like pretty boy is a prize that brothers fight and die over everyday. Lil dude like him get a big time murderer to be his old man, ya know, a cat who got more time than Methusaleem, or whatever that old dude in the bible was called, anyway, they get sponsored by one of them kind of dudes who ain’t gon never see the sun shine again.

         Being in the joint is just like anything else after you get used to it, it becomes your life. The joint be your life just like being in the world is somebody else’s life. You do what you got to do to live. And you do whatever you can do to enjoy your life, you know what I’m saying? At first it be different, but after you spend a bunch of years doing it with dudes, you get used to it. Some people don’t, but most people do. It ain’t no big thing, not like it seem…

         Well ain’t this a bitch, here come Popeye Henry. How in the fuck did he get out? And who that woman he got with him? She look too fine to be Popeye’s squeeze. She must be a whore and he must be buying his first piece since getting out. The motherfucker acting like he don’t know nobody, strutting around with that real pussy by his side.

         “You want another beer?”

         “Yeah, give me another one.”

         “We don’t give nobody shit around here. You can buy another one.”

         “I got money, motherfucker…”

         “Man, have some respect for your mama. Call me Mr. Motherfucker.”

         Me and Euclid the bartender been going at it for over two hours now. Euclid’s a funny ass motherfucker. He claim he got his name cause he was conceived in the back seat of a Ford when his mama was in high school and she opened up a book that was on the floor and picked the first name she saw. Ain’t that some shit?

         You don’t talk much, do you? You ain’t said a word since we been sitting here.

         Aw shit, now look at this. Look like Popeye and that broad got some kind of major static happening.

         “…I can say whatever I want to say.”

         “See how much you can say with a fist all up in your big ass mouth.”

         Oh Popeye, that ain’t no way to treat a lady. Boy, you know I taught you better than that. “Henry, my man, why don’t you cool it.” She must not be no whore he just met, cause I don’t believe he giving her enough money to take a ass whipping like that.

         “Who that dipping they lip in my business?”

         Look at him fronting. He ain’t even so much as looked over here to see who it is sounding on him. Reaching his hand up in his coat like he packing and I’m supposed to be scared or something.

         “It don’t matter who it is, right is right, and right ain’t never wronged nobody. Just cause you got a beef with your lady, you ain’t got to go upside her head.”

         “Fuck all that shit. A man take care a business wherever the business is.”

         Now where this motherfucker get off challenging somebody’s manhood. See, before I went to the joint I would have been all over that nigga talking that murder mouth shit. But like I told you, I don’t plan on going back, and seeing as how I’m still on parole, I don’t need to be getting into no fight behind somebody else funny business. Except, you know, I know this nigga. We did time together up on the yard. I know him in ways he don’t want nobody to know. Maybe he didn’t recognize my voice.

         Now look at this shit. He hitting her again just to show me he can hit on a woman. Hey, man watch my back. I don’t want no heat slipping up on me while I’m dealing with this roach-ass nigga.

         “Miss, you ok?”

         “Steve, this ain’t your business man.”

         So, you did recognize me. You just fronting but I got something for your fronting ass.

         I look at the woman, and she don’t say nothing. “I said, are you ok, lady.”

         “Hey man…”

         “I’m talking to the lady, Henry. Not to you.”

         “Yeah, but that lady is with me.”

         “Meaning?”

         “Meaning, this ain’t none of your business.”

         “I’m alright,” she finally says cutting the silence of me and Popeye squaring off like some typical Saturday-night, two-dudes-fighting-over-a-bitch shit.

         I can hear the place get quiet. There’s always this silence before some shit jump off, sometimes the silence is less than a second, sometimes it be a minute or two, but there’s always this point where it could go any which way, and it’s like everybody be holding their breadth. And waiting. The dangerous quiet. That’s when you got to act fast.

         Popeye slips his hand back in his pocket. Knowing this nigga, I’m sure he got a shank, might even be packing a piece. I turn my attention away from him, hoping to cool the scene out, “What’s your name, baby?”

         She looks at Popeye when I ask her that. “I’m Marlene.”

         Popeeye glares at her. “What difference it make to you what her name is?”

         Look at this motherfucker fronting. “My name is Steve. Me and Henry go back a long ways. We did time together. Did you tell her about me, Popeye?”

         “She know I did time. I’m just saying that was then, this here shit is now. And I don’t appreciate…” I watch him make exaggerated hand motions in his pocket. “…you butting into my business.”

         “When you got out?”

         He don’t answer me. After we exchange snake eyes for a minute or two, I let it drop and head back to my seat. From over my shoulder I hear the ruckus. “What the fuck you looking at him for, bitch?” And I hear him slap her again. I know Popeye is just acting out on account of he just got out the joint, and he sitting up in here with a bunch of motherfuckers who been up in the joint, so he trying to prove that he’s a man and not a turned out, jailhouse bitch, but he ain’t got to be beating all over that broad to prove he a man. I can’t stand to see no shit like this go down, so I got to do what I got to do.

         “Popeye,” I say to him as I turn around and walk up in his face. “When you was my woman in the joint, did I treat you this way?”

         Henry don’t say shit. He kind of shrink back into himself a little, take his empty hand out his pocket, don’t say shit, and just walk away straight out the door. Marlene looks confused as a motherfucker.

         But, see Popeye should have been cool from the jump and I wouldn’t have had to call him out on that mishandling a woman shit. It reflects bad on me for him to act like a thug. Right is right and wrong ain’t nothing nice. And, like I said, ain’t nothing wrong in doing right cause right ain’t never wronged nobody. You know what I mean?

         “Hey, Euclid, sell me another beer, mister motherfucker.”

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

Men With Guns

 

from: shay@hotmail. com

to: dred_dee@earthlink. com

 

d.

 

my fingers hesitate, but i must tell someone, and who better than you, even though, i’m sort of sure, i mean, i’m pretty sure, you’re not expecting to hear from me. you know, the way we left, or at least, the way i left. maybe one day before we make thirty you will forgive me... i hope you’re willing to read this ... anyway, stop distracting me. oops, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to say that.

 

i’m blaming you again for my own in-discipline. remember, how once i jumped on you for sleeping to quietly? you woke up and asked me what i was doing, and when i realized i had spent 20 minutes just looking at you sleeping, i got angry at you... anyway, how are you?

 

sometime back i filed some photos for the christian science monitor. was supposed to have two shots but it got cut down to one (kalamu re-ran the article on www.topica.com/lists/e-drum, you can search the archives for “black diamond” and read it). i’ve attached the two photos.

 

i think i did a pretty good job even though no one photo can tell it all. plus, you know, i don’t know that photography (or anything else) is capable of telling the whole story over here. remember we talked about what photographs can do, about why i continue as a photographer, why i think i can make a contribution being a revolutionary photographer. yu said a picture of a gun can’t shoot shit. and my reply: but a picture of a woman with a gun can make a man shit. lol. rotglmao (that’s, rolling on the ground laughing my ass off). smile, that’s just my macabre humor at work.

 

what’s that blues line: laughing to keep from crying? except, i really felt like crying after that shoot. you’d have to be here, i guess, to feel me, except if my pictures are strong enough to make you feel... i’m talking in circles again, huh?

 

we were in this encampment at a village caught in the middle. d, there’s nothing left. the guerillas invited us in to report on what happened. the journalist i’m traveling with is interviewing guerilla women, including one named black diamond. she’s only average height, robust but not big. a plain, oval-shaped, dark face. could be any woman in this area. except she speaks with fierce intensity. not shouting or loud, but not soft either. and, like, everything she says sounds like a command that everyone follows without hesitation. of course, i took some shots of her, me kneeling and angling up, making her look like a giant.

 

while the interview continued i looked around for something else to shoot. there was nothing. devastation is not dramatic unless you can find a small something that will hit home to the viewer, but there’s nothing  we would recognize as a destroyed home. and... d. are you still reading? i hope so. i’ve got a whole half hour of internet access. it only took me about ten or twelve minutes to file photos. my batteries are charging now, and i have about fifteen minutes left, so that’s why i’m rambling...

 

i’ma be honest: i miss you. but i know you know that cause whenever we argued and I threatened to leave, you used to all the time say, you know how you drawl, dawg, you gonna miss this bone when i’m gone... “dawg!” d. was that your hip way of calling me a bitch without saying the word? did you think i was acting like a bitch cause i didn’t want to commit to a long term relationship? ... i didn’t mean to bring that up.

 

this girl was standing by a tall, slender tree, one arm around the trunk. ther was something, like, I had this feeling she had been watching me for a long, long time. she did not avert her gaze when i glanced at her. just stared back. instantly  i knew she had seen a lot of stuff, there was no innocence in those eyes. no curiosity. just witness. her eyes were like my camera.

 

i held my camera up and pointed it toward her to ask permission. she didn’t respond. just kept looking. my hand flew to my mouth covering my lips, you know the gesture i do when I’m embarrassed, you always used to point that gesture out to me. i thought about you at that moment and how you would always say: ask for what you want, don’t be embarrassed by your wants.

 

so, i said, “photo”? no response at first, then she raised her free arm and hugged the tree like it was a best friend. i started to try and quickly frame that shot but before i got the camera up all the way she said, “yes, mam.” her english was clear and her deference made me hesitate.

 

“what’s your name?” I asked.

 

she replied, “kuji.”

 

i told her my name and fired off two quick shots. i wanted to talk but couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so i asked her age?

 

“fifteen.”

 

“you live here?”

 

“no. i am with the freedom fighters.”

 

i took another shot, she was holding her hands clasped in front of her.

 

“how long?”

 

“for life.”

 

“no, i mean when did you join the freedom fighters?”

 

“when i saw captain diamond.”

 

d. i’m running outta time (you know how long it takes me to type, how I usually send postcards, but we have not had easy access to the mail, except the office email is working fine, thus, this email but no postcard, you unnerstand?), anyway, i will just tell you what kuji told me. kuji is a war orphan, her mama was beat to death, never met her father, her twin brother is missing and she dosn’t have anyone else. she said she used to go to school in the city and one day they all had to leave suddenly. their teachers put them in the back of a truck trying to escape, but the truck was attacked and all children jumped out running, except kuji climbed a tree and she saw one of the guerillas catch a teacher. kuji heard the woman screaming and saw the man grab her red hair, that’s what kuji said, “red hair.” the teacher tried to run but tripped. the man grabbed her by hr blouse. the cloth ripped. kuji said, “she had one of them white straps holding her breasts” and the gurilla he grabbed that and it broke. and then he kicked the woman and jerked her by her arm and dragged her into a hut. after a while, kuji said, black diamond came with some other women guerillas and then the man came out with his gun in his hand, saying something kuji could not hear. when diamond tried to go inside, the man stepped in front of her. dimond pushed the man aside and went in. she came out quickly and walked straight up to the man and before he could do anything, she hit him with her gun. twice again. and ordered one of her soldiers to take his gun.

 

d. it was extraordinary to hear the pride as this young girl described this. kuji’s eyes were shining while telling me what had happened. kuji says, the guy and black diamond started shouting. diamond turns to the other guerillas and they discuss what to do. that’s when kuji climbed down and told them what she saw. they asked her questions and the guy questions. the man said kuji was lying. she said, I’m scared but i’m not lying. and than the man tried to grab her and shouted, “this kid is lying.” and i said, i mean, kuji said, i no lie! that’s when diamond ordered, let me see your dick. show me your dick! we will see if you have been with a woman just now. the man grabbed himself and shouted no. long story short, black diamond shot him. and proclaimed, we are fighting so that men with guns can never hurt us women again. death to thugs!

 

d., i got to go. i wish i had got the picture when kuji repeated diamond’s words, holding her little fist fiercely above her head: death to thugs! if you saw all the mad violence i’ve seen here, you would understand a teenage girl being proud of helping to kill a rapist. or maybe not, but anyway, life’s truly tragic here and probably it will take more women killing a bunch a men in order to put an end to all the killing and raping women suffer.

 

those are hard facts, but what else can anyone do? war is hell and women are heaven.

 

let me know how you like the article. i’m thinking about doing a book about the women over here and maybe i will call it, death to thugs.

 

gotta run. ciao (mein). ;>)

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

Anyone Who Has A Heart

 

On the ninth day Akim woke up before the sun. Today he was going home and his family would be there to greet him and to thank him. Akim was a hero.

 

Akim greatly enjoyed basking in the new day sunlight. He sat on a rough, stone bench and remembered when the bus had pulled away to bring him to this cold place that made him shiver—for the first time in his life he had slept under a blanket.

 

Unconsciously, Akim flashed a warm smile as he recalled the way Kuji had waved to him, her slender arm twisting like palm trees sashaying to and fro in the sea breeze. His sister and their mother had been standing side by side, each with one arm wrapped around the other’s waist. Mother hailing him with her right hand high above her head and Kuji rocking her small left hand back and forth at the height of her shoulder.

 

Mother had been sporting her best red skirt that was short enough that it would even be short if Kuji had been wearing it, even though, at fifteen, Kuji was half a head shorter than her mother and did not have long legs like her mother. Their mother also had on those black shoes with the pointy toes that she only wore when she went out at night. She did not have on much of a top, it was something black-colored, thin, and tight that stretched over her bulging breasts. But she did have on a red wrap artfully arrayed on her head covering her short hair. Akim was glad mother had not worn her wig, like she usually did in public. The wig made her look so different, made her look like a lot of other women. With that wig on, it was sometimes hard to tell she was their mother.

 

Kuji had on her plain red-and-white striped dress and rubber sandals, her hair tightly corn-rowed. Regardless of what she wore, Akim would always recognize Kuji’s circular face, round as the bread loaves the women sell in the market.

 

Early this morning when the nurse had handed him his small bundle and told him to get dressed, Akim put on the same clothes he had worn when he came to this place: a dingy but freshly-washed Nike t-shirt and long shorts that had once been some one’s jeans but had been cut off just below the knees so the leg bottoms could be used for patches.

 

Akim wondered if that man who brought him here would take him back home. That man, who had given his mother a brown envelope, had had on clean clothes and new shoes. Akim could tell the shoes were new when he saw the bottoms. At first Akim thought he was the bus driver, but when that man had walked up to them to talk to his mother, Akim realized his mistake. This man did not labor. He smelled like some kind of soap Akim had never smelled before. He had a sweet smell, too sweet for any man who worked hard and nothing like the sweat, or smoke, or liquor, that most men smelled like. But then, this man also spoke clean words. He talked with a clipped, flat sound obviously proud of how distinctly he could pronounce each part of every word he uttered. This man even made the short words sound long when he assured his mother, “Is going to be A-OK. You will see. A-OK.”

 

Akim had followed directions and found a seat next to a window near the rear of the bus. His mother had given him a small bag of peanuts and some smoked fish wrapped in a piece of paper. Once the bus had left the familiar neighborhood and lumbered away from the coast, Akim clutched the cloth pouch that secured his dinner, and anxiously pressed his face against the window while looking at all the sights he had never seen before.

 

Now it was time to return home and Akim tried to imagine what his family would look like when he got there. Akim could clearly envision Kuji waiting, tall, standing with her feet close together, looking like that pole in front the old barbershop while wearing her dress-up dress with the torn sleeve.

 

Akim flashed back to when they had decided one of them would do it. They had agreed to toss a beer cap for the honors. She got to choose, he got to flip the cap high into the air. He was so fearful of the outcome, he couldn’t bear to look. When Kuji stomped her bare foot on the hard-packed dirt floor and exclaimed, “haa,” then sucked her teeth before pouting, “you always win,” that’s when Akim opened his eyes and let out a long sigh—his prayers had been answered.

 

“The next time, it will be your turn to go.”

 

Kuji had not been listening to him, instead she had plopped down on her little stool, sulking, her face turned to stone as she stared at the paper-covered wall. “No fair. You would not even know if I had not told you.”

 

Akim had hesitated. Kuji was right. She had been the one to find out about the offer. She had been the one to tell him about her plan to help their mother. But he had been the one bold enough to go into the big building and ask questions. Kuji was brave but she was shy. Akim had almost said he would swap turns with her, but, no, a deal was a deal. He was to go first.

 

Who else would be there to welcome Akim home? Who else was there? No one really. There was no other real family that he knew of. He had never met his mother’s people. They lived so far away. In the north. They never came to the city.

 

Do pictures have family? Akim had always wondered, ever since his mother silently showed him the fading photograph that revealed One-Eye with a grim grin that made the man look hard, at least Akim thought the face was hard, maybe it was because you could not see his teeth, or maybe it was the way he was clutching Akim’s mother. One-Eye had a big python grip almost crushing her into his side, and she was not smiling, just looking straight at the camera. What kind of family would a huge arm have? Who would claim a man whose smile showed no teeth?

 

Akim recalled how once, when his mother was away, he had snuck into the basket to examine the little photo in detail—the stiff paper hadn’t even covered his tiny ten-year-old palm. When he put his finger atop the man’s face, the face disappeared.

 

The picture was not too clear, so you could not really make out One-Eye’s features. He had big ears—Akim had touched his own ears, they were not big like the man’s ears. And Kuji’s ears were the same size as his own ears, which was natural since they were twins and were alike in almost every way, except she stuck out at the top—her breast poked out like little ant hills, and he stuck out at the bottom, sometimes, almost big as the small orange bananas that he liked to eat.

 

Kuji had caught Akim just as he had lifted his finger off their father’s face. Akim had tried to wrap the picture up quickly, so she wouldn’t know what he was doing, but she saw. When he shoved the basket back into the corner, she darted over and grabbed the cloth and carefully re-wrapped the photograph. “You have to do it just like mother or else she will know you were trying to find out her secrets.”

 

Another time, when they were older, Kuji had asked, “do you think our father knows he is our father? I mean, do you think he knows we were born?” They were squatting together and Kuji was holding the picture with her thumb atop the man’s chest when she spoke so softly, almost like she was talking to herself, but since their heads were close together and it was so quiet that he could hear her breathing—they even breathed the same—he heard every word, every short pause between words, everything. “Do you think One-Eye has a picture of us and looks at it the way we look at him?”

 

“No, don’t you remember that day mother was crying. Remember she said, ‘Nobody cares about us. Nobody even knows we are alive’?”

 

“That was the day she was sick,” Kuji had made an excuse for their mother. And the saying stuck. Whenever their mother came home and they could see someone had beaten her, they would say she was “sick.” Akim wondered had their father ever made their mother sick. He looked like he might have.

 

In the picture, the man had his hat pulled so low and at such an angle that you could only see one of his eyes. That’s why Kuji called their father, One-Eye.

 

All their mother had ever told them was, “He is gone. His name was David.” Akim had wanted to ask where father-David had gone? But the sad way his mother said “was David,” Akim knew “was David” was not coming back. And when he had looked up from the photograph he was startled, frightened really, to see tears glistening on his mother’s cheek. Later he would learn, that’s always the way she cried: silently. The tears made no sound as they rolled over the cliff of their mother’s high cheek-bones, streaking her gaunt face like chalk marks scrawled on a blackboard by children who did not know how to write.

 

When Kuji told their mother how much money they could get, at first, their mother did not believe Kuji. “No more getting sick, mother. And we can get a house with everything inside—the water, the latrine…”

 

“They call it bathroom.”

 

Akim spoke up for the first time, “Why do they call it bathroom if the latrine is there?”

 

“Because, the room has a shower and a toilet…”

 

“What is to-let?” Akim innocently asked his mother.

 

“Akim, you are in school now. You must say it proper. ‘toy-let’.”

 

“Tar-let,” dutifully repeated Akim. “What is tar-let?”

 

“It’s a latrine that’s shaped like a stool.”

 

“Well, yes. We can get a room with one of those in it,” Kuji insisted.

 

“Kuji, I will have to find out more about this. I do not believe it is easy so to get plenty much money.”

 

“And they even pay you in dollars. Five hundred dollars,” Akim announced.

 

Ama had heard about this before. She had even gone to that man who knew about these things. He told her there was another man she had to go see. And she had gone. He stuck her arm and took some of her blood and told her he would let her know in a handful of days. When she had gone back to him, he said they did not want her. Her blood was wrong family or something like that. Other people she knew had tried, but the man did not want most of them either because either they were sick or they had the wrong family blood.

 

Ama was certain that if her blood was the wrong family, then most likely they would not want her children because they surely had the same family she had. When she went back to find out the twins’ test results, Ama saw the man smile for the first time. He said the twins had the right family blood and both of them were healthy. So, yes, they would buy a kidney—whatever that was. He had said everybody had two but you only needed one to live.

 

When the bus dropped off Akim back at the marketplace where all the busses came, only Kuji was waiting for him.

 

“Why is mother not here? Is she sick?”

 

“Yes.” Kuji’s eyes were puffy like she was getting over some man making her sick.

 

Akim looked away before he asked the question, “Kuji, have you been sick?”

 

“No. But we must do something. Mother is very sick.”

 

“Well, we have money now. So we can…”

 

Kuji cut off Akim before he could continue, “Someone took our money.”

 

“What???”

 

“I came home from school one day while you were gone and mother was on the ground and she was very sick. Everything was broken and tossed about.”

 

They walked in silence for a while. Finally, Kuji resumed recounting what happened. “Akim, mother is hurt very, very bad and the money is gone. Mother had paid for my school and for your school too, but they took the rest.” Kuji took a deep breath, “Now, it is my turn to go and get us money.”

 

Akim’s side was beginning to hurt a little. “Kuji, please, I can not walk so fast right now.”

 

“Akim, I forgot, you are sick too.” Kuji slowed down and touched Akim lightly on the shoulder, “You must tell me what I need to do to prepare to make the money. Does it hurt when they cut you open?”

 

“I don’t know how it feels. I was not awake when they did it. They made me sleep through everything. Afterwards it feels like a goat hit you hard in the side. That’s why I can not walk so fast.”

 

They were not even half way home yet, but Akim had to stop to rest. He could tell Kuji was thinking something. “Kuji, what are you thinking? I will be alright. I’m just a little tired. Don’t worry about me. And I’m sure that mother…”

 

“I tried on mother’s red dress.” Akim looked at his sister and was afraid to ask her what she was thinking, but Kuji knew Akim wanted to know, and Kuji began talking before Akim could say anything. “I am too skinny. And too…” Kuji paused and then suddenly changed the subject. “Can I see where they cut you?”

 

“It is covered. When I change the bandage tonight, I will show you. Come on, I can walk now.”

 

It took them a long time to get home.

 

* * *

 

When Akim and Kuji got home their mother was dead.

 

* * *

 

“We nah need more kidney. Them need heart. You sell heart?”

 

Akim was surprised when Kuji spoke up, “How much heart be?”

 

The man thought about how much money he could skim off these kids and decided half, “Heart be plenty-oh. Two thousand dollars. American. You sell heart. Let me know.”

 

Akim swiftly grabbed Kuji’s hand and tenderly tugged her away from this man he did not trust. Outside as they walked slowly Akim struggled to figure out what he would do to save Kuji from wearing wigs too big for her head and dresses too short for her legs. Plus, school would be out soon and then they would not have any more food.  Their plan for Kuji to sell her kidney did not work and now, there was… well, there really was nothing else since Akim knew he did not have two hearts.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

ALL MY LIFE

 

 

 

“Joshua, you’re laying here wounded in a hospital bed and you’re worrying about what’s happening in Fallujah?”

 

Joshua looked at Vivian, a pained tenderness clouding her usually clear dark brown eyes.

 

“No, I’m worrying about humanity, about the species, and about my own personal humanity. If I can’t feel their pain, how human am I?”

 

Vivian bit her lower lip. Joshua momentarily paused when he saw the signature sign that she disagreed with something he said.

 

“Vi, they’re killing women and children, dropping 500 pound bombs. Those people, all they’ve got is rifles and grenade launchers, and a will to resist. They’re burying their dead in a soccer field cause the Marines won’t let them get to a cemetery. And why? What for? Cause four mercenaries got killed? Cause, to quote president Chavez, that ‘asshole’ Bush...”

 

It wasn’t good for his healing when Joshua got so agitated. Closing her eyes to dam the beginnings of tears welling up, Vivian softly kissed Joshua in an intimate attempt to halt his ranting. Joshua did not return her kiss.

 

Ignoring her unvoiced plea, Joshua raised the remote and clicked on the TV. Since the play-offs hadn’t started yet, all he watched was the news for as long as he could stand it, which was usually twenty-some minutes at the max. If his brain was a computer, TV was a virus. What was he to do: the radio was worthless, filled with twenty songs in constant rotation on the pop stations, right wing toro-poopoo on the talk stations, and liberal drivel from NPR?

 

Vivian took the remote from Joshua’s hand; he did not resist. She clicked the mute on. The surrealness of Joshua watching war reports from his hospital bed was too much. Thankfully, the efficient hum of medical equipment provided an unobtrusive aural wallpaper.

 

“They doing that mess in our name, baby. You know?”

 

“I know.”

 

“I don’t want my silence co-signing that.”

 

She was faring worse than he was. Even with bullet wounds in his lower right leg, in his right side and in his left foot, Joshua was still feisty; his inability to sleep peacefully did not seem to too adversely affect him.

 

When you have shared a bed with a person for over thirty years, you know their breathing, how they toss when troubled, which way they turn when upset, moreover, inevitably you know that person’s slumbering self better than the person knows that part of their own self. Almost two whole weeks of keeping watch over Joshua’s fitful, sometimes nightmarish sleep had exacted a heavy toll, and now here he was all wrapped up in this Iraq thing...

 

In the pastel gloaming of the sun setting in the distance on the other side of the city, panoramic as a postcard when viewed from this seventh floor room, Vivian searched for something safe to say.

 

“Jamal’ll be here tomorrow.”

 

“I told that boy he didn’t have to spend that money to come out here. I’m alright. He’s just stubborn.”

 

“I wonder where he gets it from?” Vivian chided Joshua.

 

“Probably from his mama.”

 

Joshua returned his attention to the cool, color images flickering on the screen mounted on the wall facing his bed. What was Rev. Sharpton protesting now Joshua wondered without much interest. Then Kobe Bryant appeared. Josh reached for the remote. Vivian handed him the controller. The clipped but breathy tones of a female anchor gushed forth, “...charge that police did not read Bryant his Miranda rights.”

 

“Ain’t that something?”

 

“Joshua, please.”

 

“Ok. Ok.” Joshua clicked the TV off. “I’m just saying...”

 

“Joshua, we had this discussion already. Just because the police were wrong doesn’t make what Kobe did right.”

 

“You don’t even know what he did, Vi.”

 

“He admitted he committed adultery.”

 

“Yeah, ok.”

 

“Ok, nothing. He shouldn’t have never had that girl up in his room.”

 

“You’re right.”

 

Joshua looked up at the ugly ceiling. After twelve days of laying in bed, it seemed like he knew every inch of the room. In the corners, the wall, which once had been a sort of dark teal, now looked more like a putrid dish of lentil soup crusted over, molded and gone to some shade of brownish-green between tequila-laced, guacamole vomit, and the dirty brown of two week old road kill. Although he didn’t know what the name for that color was, he was sure there was a name and equally sure it was clearly delineated on Vi’s mental color wheel.

 

Joshua smiled grimly and then looked at Vi standing beside his bed, her left arm held across her paunch-less stomach and her slender right hand curled over her mouth--as usual, she was not wearing lipstick.

 

He really liked that she was not self-conscious about the faint, but unmistakable, sexy, facial hair above her full lips--at least he thought the ecru-colored, wisp of a moustache highlighting the plum dark fullness of Vi’s luscious lips was sexy as hell.

 

Funny, he had been able to resist the enticement of Vi’s kiss a minute ago, but now here he was, entranced by the tantalizing sight of her negroidal profile silhouetted by the twilight glowing through the two, large windows directly behind her. He was especially mesmerized by the way she pursed her mouth into a fleshy pout, and though it was concealed in the darkness covering her profile, he vividly imagined the deep dimple two thirds the way up her jaw. Even in her fifth decade there were no hanging folds of flesh marring the elegant line that curved from chin to jaw to throat. Vi could have been the perfect model for a Dogon mask.

 

Vivian saw Joshua lick his lips and slowly work his jaw muscles, producing saliva which he casually swallowed.

 

“Here.” Vivian held a straw to Joshua’s mouth so he could suck a small sip of cool water. As the liquid trickled down his esophagus, Joshua closed his eyes, wondering how it was that this wonderful woman always anticipated his desires. There was a slight click when she sat the plastic cup on the Formica tabletop; then the unmistakable sound of a visitor in the hall--it had to be a visitor because of the click of hard-soled high heels on the linoleum (all of the nurses were stealthy in their rubber-soled sneakers); and finally there was the distinctive, hushed, musical jangle of Vi’s bangles quietly clanging.

 

“Hmmmm,” Joshua half-audibly hummed as Vivian rubbed his chest. Vivian was leaning against the bed, the head of which was elevated at a gentle twenty-degree angle. She had slipped her right hand between the top and the third button of Joshua’s pajama top after deftly unsecuring the second button to give a wider range of motion.

 

“That feels good.”

 

Vivian playfully pinched his left nipple.

 

“Yeahhhh.”

 

A nurse walked in.

 

Vivian did not move her hand.

 

The nurse said nothing, peered at the equipment connected to the patient, picked up the chart and made a few quick notations. “Do you need anything, Mr. Gibson?”

 

“He’s Ok.”

 

Joshua glanced from Vivian to the young, white nurse--well, at least she had reason to be in his room. Vivian continued lightly scratching her fingertips through his chest hairs, maybe scratching was not the word for it, perhaps tingle-touching was a better way to put it; whatever, it felt good. When the nurse left, Vivian withdrew her hand. Oh, so Vi’s touches had been a marking of territory, a sign to other females: hands off.

 

“What’re you smiling about?”

 

“Why yall always got to want to know what a man is thinking?”

 

“Why are you men so reluctant to share your thoughts?”

 

“Just like yall got secrets...”

 

“Ok. Whatever.”

 

The lamp’s florescent glare masking its departure, daylight was near completely gone from the room.

 

“Mr. Tucker called.”

 

Josh knew where this was headed. Thirty-three years and counting. “I told that fool I don’t work cause I got to, I teach cause I want to. The kids need me.”

 

“I need you.”

 

“Just wait til they let me out of here, I’ll give you all you can handle.”

 

“Joshua, I’m serious. You know you could volunteer in a community program. You don’t need the pressure of teaching every day.”

 

“Vi, haven’t we crossed and re-crossed this bridge?” Hadn’t they talked about why he wouldn’t retire until he did thirty-five years? Thirty-five--just like his mother. It hadn’t mattered that it was safer when his mother taught, much less stressful, the schools better. Actually there was nothing sacred about thirty-five years. It was just something Joshua wanted to do.

 

He had started when he was twenty-three. In two more years he wouldn’t even be sixty yet--he had plenty enough years left to enjoy retirement.

 

Vi kicked off her comfortable red-suede mules and half sat on the side of the bed, cozying beside her husband. She drew her knees up, careful not to touch his side, and lightly rested her head on his collarbone while smoothly slipping her right hand down his arm, that sensual motion culminating with her fingers intertwining his as she clasped his hand.

 

Joshua had felt a twinge of discomfort when Vi climbed aboard but that was quickly replaced by the pleasure of her softness: soft touch caressing, soft voice humming, soft spirit nurturing.

 

Joshua half-turned his face towards the crown of her head. The peach-flavored fragrance of the shampoo in Vi’s salt-and-pepper un-cut, longer-than-shoulder-length, natural hair delightfully tickled Josh’s nose. Once out of high school, Vi had never again permed her hair and after she retired from the Post Office in ‘98, she said she’d let her finger-snap-short afro grow until 2000. By the time 2000 arrived, Joshua had gotten so used to burying his face in the luxurious pillow of her black and silver mane that he begged her to keep letting it grow, like, what was her name, Sonia Braga, yes, Sonia, that gorgeous Brazilian mama with the flowing, au-natural hair. Vivian preferred to believe that her auburn hair and skin shade resembled Alice Coltrane like on the cover of Alice’s Transformation album, but she knew Brazilian beauties was Joshua’s thing and had long ago come to understand that Joshua’s fantasies and movie-fueled infatuations were no threat to their marriage.

 

***

 

“Aaahhhh.”

 

Even though Joshua’s cry had not been very loud, Vivian woke instantly. The nightmare was back; this time after only two nights absence.

 

For the first week it had been very rough and then it got rougher--some inexplicable signal would rouse Vivian and she’d know immediately, Joshua was... was... well, was... what was it Robert Johnson sang? Hellhounds on his trail. Yes, that was it, Joshua would have that terrified look, the look of a runaway flailing through the swamps, vicious dogs about to leap on his back.

 

The first time Vivian saw Joshua cry she shrank back involuntarily for a moment before gathering her self and going to him. “Ssssshhhhh, ssssshhhh. It’s all right. I’m here.”

 

Joshua had shook.

 

“Ssssshhhh.” Badly as she wanted to, she had been afraid to hold him less she harm his wounds. She could only think to dab his forehead with a cool towel and to coo to him until he eventually quit shaking.

 

And, my God, that first time he hollered out, she was sure it was physical, probably his side or something like that. He wouldn’t talk. She rang for the nurse. They ended up sedating him. But it happened again a few nights later.

 

“Tell me. Joshua, tell me. What is it? Joshua?”

 

When he had turned to face her, his eye sockets were twin grottos, each filled with a glistening pool of tears. Vivian’s heart had raced at that point. She had never before seen him cry.

 

He didn’t have to say anything. She knew, from that first night when the police called, when they told her as near as they could figure it, some young thugs tried to car jack Joshua and a battle ensued over a gun and two people were shot, one was dead and “your husband is in the hospital. He’s wounded but the doctors say, it looks like he’ll pull through ok.”

 

Vivian had known the healing would be difficult but she was anxiously confident he would overcome. She remembered decades ago his struggle to master martial arts, how long it took him to get to black belt, how many times he damaged his hand trying to break wooden planks, but he kept at it...

 

“Vi, you know I been loving you since I met you...”

 

Vivian snapped out of her momentary hypnosis. It had only been three and a half seconds before she gathered herself and bent to minister to Joshua, but during that long interval, Vivian had remembered encountering this anguish for the first time.

 

“Sssshhhh, sssshhhh. Joshua’s it’s ok...”

 

She had also remembered Joshua apologizing for loosing the new, forest green, Toyota Prius that was found two days afterwards, burned out. The irony of getting jacked for an environmentally safe car and that car subsequently getting trashed; were it not so serious, it would have been laughable.

 

“...don’t try to talk. It’s ok.”

 

When Vivian bowed to rub Joshua’s brow, he turned his head away. She began humming Naima, Joshua loved her singing.

 

Vivian knew, neither the car nor his wounds was the issue, it was...

 

“Vi, you know, it’s like, I don’t see how we’re going to survive.” He spoke while looking at the wall. “What can we do? The shit has gotten so bad. All my life... well, you know.” Joshua paused, turned to face Vivian and then continued in a firm voice, “The sit-ins, the going to jail, the African liberation support stuff  in Tanzania and hanging in the bush with the Frelimo guerillas in Mozambique, right down to supporting the Sandanistas in Nicaragua in the eighties, and, all that. You know?”

 

Joshua stared helplessly at Vivian, she closed her eyes, bent low and whispered in his ear: “this too shall pass.” But even as she said it, she knew that neither she nor Joshua would ever reconcile themselves to the horrible guilt that Joshua felt for killing that boy.

 

“He told me to run. I said, take the car, man. He said, ‘run, nigga.’ Vi, I ain’t never run from nobody in my life, and I wasn’t about to start that night. I was already mad cause I had bought this car for your birthday and...”

 

“It’s ok, it’s ok.”

 

“Naw it ain’t. When he shot me in the foot, I knew I had to do something or at least die trying, even though it was two of them. I would’ve been alright, but the other one started shooting...”

 

Joshua stopped.

 

It was early, early, ‘fore day in the morning. The silence was awful. The sinister mechanical chirp of the medical equipment, awful. Joshua squeezed the morphine pump. Vivian blinked to keep her own tears from spilling as she bent low and slow-kissed away Joshua’s tears.

 

-end-

 

—kalamu ya salaam