On the Line (10 page)

At lunch Curtis didn't waste any time getting to the point.

“Maya, I'm in love with Rachel.”

“That's ridiculous. You just met her.”

“Actually, we've been dating for a year.”

“Excuse you?”

“No offense, Maya, but I knew you wouldn't be able to handle me dating anyone, especially a woman older than you.”

Damn right.

“I'm thinking about moving in with her.”

What the hell was he thinking? The conversation was worse than anything I could have anticipated.

I breathed slow and deep. It was imperative I gain control before I lost him. “You have a home.”

“It's Mom and Dad's home, Maya. I need to move on.”

“You're being ungrateful.”

“I'm being real.”

I couldn't believe the crap that was falling out of my brother's mouth. I needed some time to digest his bullshit.

“Curt, let's talk about this over dinner. At home.”

“I have plans tonight. Don't wait up.” He dropped two twenties on the table. “Maybe I'll catch up with you tomorrow.”

I pushed my platter away from me. My appetite was shot. I needed to get my own life together. It was sad, but I couldn't remember the last time I had been on a date.

That night, I must have watched the shadows dancing across my living room walls for hours before I finally went to my room to change. I threw on my favorite black dress with the plunging neckline. I hoped it didn't make me look as desperate as I was.

I took a cab to the Village, where I'd have a selection of bars to choose from. The city was alive for a Monday night, but I managed to find a quiet spot. Eighties music filled the air. It was just what the doctor ordered. There were a ton of sexy brothers in the place. Maybe I'd finally meet someone, unless I'd stumbled into a gay bar.

I ordered a chocolate martini. It was delicious, but I wished I'd ordered something stronger.

I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I hadn't smoked since college. After the stress I'd faced over the last few days, a cigarette was in order.

“Excuse me, miss, but you can't smoke in here,” the bartender barked, his arms folded across his massive chest.

I'd completely forgotten about the No Smoking law. I swallowed my drink and stepped out for my smoke. There were at least five other people engrossed in conversation amidst a light cloud of smoke. I placed my cigarette between my lips when a brother, more delicious than my martini, lit it for me.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, allowing the nicotine to course through me. I opened my eyes and the sexy dream still stood before me. The glow of the streetlamp and the light mist of smoke surrounded his aura. He appeared as a sort of god.

He extended his hand toward me as he introduced himself. “My name's Ken.”

I held his hard, callused hand and smiled. A hard-workin' man. I wondered how hard he worked in the bedroom.

“Thanks for the light.” My cheeks warmed.

“Share a drink with me.”

“What makes you think I'm alone?” I purred against my will.

“Then your man is a fool for leaving a beautiful woman like you alone.”

“How many women have you used that line on tonight?”

His laughter was rich and hearty. “Well, if you must know, you're the first. And, if you reject me, I already have my eye set on the blonde in the white dress.”

I liked him—he was a welcome distraction. “I'm Maya.”

“Maya…Just Maya, like the singer?”

“Maya Perkins.”

A look of surprise spread across his handsome face. “From Brooklyn Community Bank?”

My guard was up. I stepped back. “Do I know you?”

“I'm Ken Douglass from Secret Service.”

Heat colored my caramel complexion. Ken and I had spoken over the phone many times regarding a number of investigations. I had fantasized about him on many of those occasions. His voice over the phone was titillating, a perfect match for the striking Adonis before me.

“Maya? I apologize if I've mistaken you for someone else.”

No mistake. I just couldn't find my voice.
I managed to push out a response. “I'm just amazed at what a small world it is. I never imagined ever running into you.”

“Does that mean sharing a drink with you is out of the question?”

He had no idea how much I wanted to share with him. My body was charged up. I hoped a drink and some conversation would bring me down to earth. Just as I was about to respond, the hot reggae song, “Temperature,” slipped out of the bar and I shook my hips.

“Ooh, that's my song.”

Ken tossed my cigarette to the ground and pulled me back into the club. He sauntered across the dance floor, finding us the perfect spot. His husky build and bronze skin in the dim light left me breathless. I hoped he couldn't hear the beat of my heart over Sean Paul. Ken slid away from me and impressed me with his dance moves. I felt like I was on a menu as he feasted upon my ample figure, tracing every curve with his eyes, before he pulled me back into his arms.

“You look gorgeous.” His lips brushed the nape of my neck. Chills rippled through my energized body. “I'm so glad we finally met.”

It felt so good to be in this man's arms. Every kiss he placed lifted my fears of being alone. He was what I needed right then and there. If he didn't stop, I wasn't sure what I was capable of doing at that moment.

“I think I'll take that drink now.”

We sat at the bar and Ken ordered a couple of drinks for us. I watched a special news report that flashed on the television above the bar.

I shook my head as the reporter described the scene where an unidentified young black man was shot by police. The unarmed suspect was driving a Mercedes that resembled one that was reported stolen, according to authorities. That was the third case in two months.

I tried to ignore my cell phone buzzing away in my purse, but the caller wouldn't give up.

“Maya, you need to get to the emergency room, right away. Curtis has been shot.”

Rachel rattled off the name and address of the hospital. Like a zombie, I repeated the information to Ken. Without any further questions, he drove me and has been by my side ever since.

For years, I listened to your fans whine about their lives. I was always ready to blurt out some advice for your frazzled callers and talk about them at work the following day. I always said, “You'll never catch me on that show.”

I was wrong. Please help me.

I'd tempted fate when I wished Rachel was out of our lives, and it backfired. I made a mistake. I gave Curtis no alternative but to pack up and move on, and that's what he was doing the night he was shot. I pray he makes it. How can I make it up to him?

The doctor's here now.

Pray for me,

Maya Perkins, My Brother's Keeper

 

Slowly, I fold the letter and gently place it back in the envelope. Wow. That's all I can say. Yes, sis, I will be praying for you. I could never say that out loud on the radio; it would mess up my MO, but in the privacy of my bedroom in the still of the night, I can pray for you. And I do. I actually close my eyes and say a prayer—and maybe it was just as much for Maya as it was for me.

I yawn loudly and stretch, then take a peek at the digital clock on my nightstand. It's almost four a.m. I rub my eyes. I think I have one more reading left in me before I call it a night. Taking out another letter, I open it and place it on my lap.
Black Power?
Oh, dayum. A revolutionary. Well, this one should be interesting. I perk up, no longer sleepy.

D
ear Joy,

I'm writing to you because I was listening to your show a couple of weeks ago and heard a woman call in talking about Black Power. She said that Black Power was dead, and you and some of the other callers agreed with that fact. But I'm here to tell you that just because something or someone has died don't mean it's dead.

A woman named Black Power had a room on the ground floor of 567 Stuyvesant Avenue. That was in 1964 when I was just eight years old and Mama owned the only bookstore for thirty blocks.

I remember spending my school holidays in the bookstore, which was just called The Bookstore back then. Me at my mama's hip, doll clutched in one hand and my favorite,
Where the Wild Things Are,
clutched in the other.

I didn't know it then, but plenty of famous people came in to talk to my mama about politics and the plight of the black people. Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis and Assata, before she was accused of killing that state trooper, broke out of jail and fled to Cuba.

I remember their conversations the way small children do, the words floating above my head in a mist. The only thing clear and simple to me were the knees of the folk and the fabric of Mama's kente cloth skirt.

Nothing in that time was more amazing to me than the sunlit streets and the eerie way the streetlamps knew just when to come on.

Mama was a Black Panther sympathizer then and kept her beret in the top drawer of the desk that doubled as the counter. Next to the old cash register was a picture of my daddy in a gold-plated frame. He smiled out at me from behind the glass Mama kept dust-and streak-free with Windex.

I only knew my daddy through pictures, the letters that came once a week addressed to “my sweet baby girl,” and the voice that floated to me from the other end of the phone every Wednesday night at six.

Mama would go upstate once a month to visit him. But I wasn't allowed to go. Daddy didn't want me to see him in that place.

I remember a white lady coming into the store. She was tall with thin pink lips and long blond hair and even though she wore her beret the way the rest of the Panthers did, for some reason it didn't look right on her. Something about her blond hair or the color of her skin took the meaning away from it.

She wore tight black pants, dark shades and a black T-shirt that said Power To The People.

She didn't say a word, just walked up and down the aisles, running her fingers along the spines of the books and making small noises in her throat. When Mama couldn't take it anymore, she asked, “Can I help you find something?” And even at that young age, I knew the “Miss” was missing from her question.

The woman shook her head no and then suddenly turned and walked out, but not before dropping a folded piece of paper down on the counter.

Mama picked up the piece of paper and then watched as the woman climbed into a fancy car that pulled away quickly.

I often wonder if the woman's eyes were blue or brown. I dream them blue, because that's what color Black Power said the devil's eyes were.

I never knew what was written on the paper, but I think it had something to do with my daddy being killed in prison, because Mama just kept saying “No, no, no” over and over as she dialed a million numbers and asked, “You hear anything 'bout Divine?”

It was true, true as the sky was blue. My daddy was dead. They said he committed suicide. Found him in his cell, swinging from a foot of rope.

But Mama never believed that that was true. When she talked about my daddy's death, she always said, “When they murdered my husband…”

The Black Panthers came to mourn my daddy, but never did bring groceries like they promised they would. They did leave a gun though, told my mama to use it on herself and me if she had to. Said, “Don't let the white man kill your man twice.”

Mama put that gun next to the beret.

Black Power didn't come into the bookstore for a long time on the account she'd seen that white woman walk in there the day my daddy died. She thought that Mama had gone over to the other side. She told people that my mama was conspiring with the enemy.

Mama heard the rumors Black Power was spreading and even saw a petition that Black Power was trying to get people to sign to get Mama out of the neighborhood. But no one would sign. When Mama got wind of that, she nearly lost her mind and walked right up to Black Power and gave her the what for.

I didn't hear any of it—I was in the bookstore staring out at them—but I knew Mama was giving her a good piece of her mind by the way her head was rolling on her neck.

Black Power screamed back at Mama and then looked sorry. After that Black Power started coming back in the store again, edifying Mama and me.

I asked her one day where her babies were at and Mama's mouth dropped wide open like I had said a cuss word.

Well, what did I know? Every woman that I had ever seen had babies or had had babies at one point. I had never seen Black Power with a baby—not even a picture of one in the man's wallet she carried in the back pocket of her fatigues.

Mama called me “fresh” and told me to hush. And I did.

Black Power just looked at me and said, “All the black people in the world are my babies.”

I didn't believe that.

The most babies I had ever seen a woman have was ten and that was Ophelia Jackson on Halsey Street and she was a whore. Or so the talk went. I figured there had to be at least one million people in the world and Black Power couldn't have birthed them all and she certainly wasn't my mama.

I just called her crazy in my head 'cause had I said it out loud Mama would have smacked the black off of me.

I heard Mama whisper to a friend of hers, after Black Power left the store, that the state had taken Black Power's babies away from her because she didn't allow them to eat no meat, cheese or drink milk.

I heard Mama say she was a vegan, and back then I imagined that meant she was a bad mother, 'cause I hadn't ever heard that word before.

I could have asked Mama exactly what it meant, 'cause she'd spent two whole semesters at Howard University, before she met my daddy and dropped out, but I didn't bother to ask because she would have got on me about eavesdropping on grown folks' business.

One day I was sitting out in front the bookstore on a chair that Mama had brought just for me, licking on my cherry ice pop. It was nearly three in the afternoon and the sun was shining real high and bright in the sky.

People had been in and out the bookstore all day long and for some reason—a reason I would understand later on in life—their Afros looked bigger than the sun to me on that day and the men wore two black-fisted Afro picks in their heads instead of the usual one.

People came in dashikis and wearing their Black Is Beautiful T-shirts. Some came with lit candles and others came with pans of food. Their faces were mad, sad, and some even walked in and straight out began to weep. Well, curiosity got the best of me and I snuck back into the store because I wanted to know who died, 'cause it sure did look like a repast to me. And I was about to ask, when someone slammed his head down on the counter and shouted, “We gotta kill them sons of bitches!”

Mama sent me out of the store then.

So there I was, back in my little chair, licking on my cherry ice pop when a whole lot of racket started making its way down the street. Sounded to me like forty people coming, but when I looked up it was just Black Power.

She was beating on a drum, and strapped to her chest was a cassette player blaring someone yelling in a language I ain't never heard before. It was hot as sin that day and Black Power was dressed in her usual fatigues and the sweat was just pouring down her face.

Mama came running out of the store, and I saw from the corner of my eye that she had something small and silver in her hand that she hurriedly shoved behind her back when she saw me looking.

“Go on in the store, little girl,” she said, and I did.

“What you doing, B?” Mama called over to Black Power. She never called her Black Power, just B.

Black Power got to the front of the store and stopped beating her drum, but the man on the cassette player was still yelling and Black Power was saying something but Mama couldn't hear her and said, “Turn that mess down, B. I can't hear you.”

Black Power turned it down and then tilted her head over her shoulder a bit. Mama walked around behind her, put her hands on her hips and nodded her head, and then she did something I ain't never seen her do before. She touched Black Power, put her hand right on her shoulder and squeezed it, and then said, “Carry on, sister, carry on.”

Black Power turned her cassette player up, began banging on her drum again and started down the block. As I watched from behind the window, I saw that the back of Black Power's jacket was missing and her bare skin was exposed, and written there in red letters were the words: Free Nelson Mandela.

That was June 12, 1964.

But what I would learn years later, after Black Power was dead, was that those letters on her back weren't written on—they'd been branded on.

 

“You mourning someone, B?” Mama asked her one day as she locked the store up.

Black Power looked at her and I swear there were tears in her eyes as she said, “I had a premonition.”

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“I saw,” Black Power said, and spread her fingers out before her face, “a great prophet standing on an altar, a halo over his head, his robes that of the common man.”

Mama's chest heaved and she kind of smirked.

“And then the air around him came together and turned into a bolt of lightning that pierced his heart and he disintegrated into dust.”

Mama just stared at her for moment before saying, “I'm gonna make me a red velvet cake tonight. Make sure you come by tomorrow and get yourself a piece.”

Three days later, Martin Luther King was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Mama cried something terrible and Black Power chained herself to the light pole, banging her drum and talking in tongues until someone finally called the cops and then the cops called Bellevue.

 

“Our people, our people,” Mama repeated over and over again in 1974 as she stood behind the glass pane window of the bookstore, watching the white men install the roll-down metal gates. The bookstore had been broken into and vandalized three times in three months. The intruders had defecated on the books and spray painted cuss words across the pictures on the walls.

Mama said the neighborhood was under siege and all of the conscious people were fleeing, getting city jobs and moving out to the suburbs, out to Queens.

My generation was hooked on heroin and attacking the elderly on the first of the month when the postman delivered their social security checks.

All around us, black metal gates were being installed over windows, the beautiful wooden double doors with the elongated glass panels that welcomed the sunshine into an otherwise dark brownstone were being replaced with dark gray steel ones that blocked out the sunshine altogether.

“Our people, our people,” Mama said, and then I thought the world stopped reading, because no one came in to buy books anymore and Mama had to finally give up the bookstore. She couldn't get a job at the post office even though she'd passed that test with flying colors. Hell, she'd taken it a few times over the years for other people, just to make a little change on the side, so when the results came in and said that she had failed, Mama balled up that paper and threw it across the room and yelled out, “Goddamn FBI file!”

Black Power had been locked away for most of the seventies. When she was finally let out, she came back to the only place she ever knew, the only place she'd ever called home—Bed-Stuy.

Her little apartment was gone. In fact, the entire house was gone and so Black Power made her home on a bench in Fulton Park.

The bookstore had gone from a numbers hole/candy store to a beauty salon to just an empty storefront.

There were still a few people left in the neighborhood who remembered the old days, the consciousness and Black Power, and they would hold on to their empty soda cans and beer bottles, saving them for the time they would see Black Power and her shopping cart shuffling down Fulton Street mumbling to herself.

“C'mon by,” they'd say when they came upon her. “Got two bags for you, gotta be worth a good five dollars.”

Black Power never even acknowledged them, just kept shuffling along. But she would eventually show up and collect on the offer.

Mama and I stayed, even when the neighborhood crumbled around us and people started referring to it as Bed-Stuy live and die. We stayed, found a way and made a home.

I never did go to college the way Mama dreamed I would, but I did get a job at the post office and in the mid-eighties, the city of New York practically started giving away Bed-Stuy's brownstones.

By then I was married to a good man who worked for sanitation and, together, we bought a four-story brownstone on Macon Street. Mama didn't want to, but we convinced her to take the apartment on the ground floor.