The Final Testament of the Holy Bible (21 page)

When we was finished that first time, he stayed inside me a long time. Just stayed inside and kissed me and held me. And then he picked me up, still inside me, and carried me to bed. And he put me down on that bed with his arms around me and we went to sleep. I didn’t think about being poor. I didn’t think about what I was doing for money. I didn’t think about my brother rotting in a fucking cell. About my mother dying in a fucking hospital where nobody cared. About being black in a country where it means I ain’t got no chance. About my daughter who wasn’t gonna have no chance either. About a life stretching out in front of me where it never gets to be any better. The feeling of arms around me, of love in my heart, it was more powerful than any of the negativity I knew was existing in the world for me. That feeling of love killed it all.

When I woke up, he was gone. I went in to be looking in on Mercedes and she was still sleeping. I was supposed to be working so I started getting ready.
Taking me a shower and doing my makeup in the bathroom. When I went out to the kitchen, my shit was still there on the table. Made me fucking sick to see it there, made me sick to be thinking that’s what I’d been doing for the last year. Made me sick to be thinking why I’d been doing it and why I was just getting ready. For money. For money that didn’t make a difference. Didn’t get me or my daughter out of anywhere or anything. Didn’t change how I felt in my heart or how I was feeling when I looked in the mirror. Was just something I could hold in my hand. Money don’t mean nothing when your heart is empty.

So I picked that shit up and threw it out the window. Figured some crackhead would find it and have a surprise, there was enough of ’em around. And I didn’t go to work. Didn’t even bother calling. They wasn’t gonna miss me. They might not have even been noticing I was gone. Was gonna be easy to find another girl, ’cause they always too many out there willing to throw it around for the money. I ain’t judging, ’cause I did it. It’s the way of the world. You use what you got, and that’s all that too many women got.

I waited for Ben. Mercedes woke up and I got her and gave her a big long hug. We went out and started playing in the living room, singing songs and tickling. I started getting a little sick, was starting to realize I might be needing the crack I throwed out. I went over to the window and looked down and it was still there. Was some kind of miracle it hadn’t been picked up. I know in the Bible they be saying miracles is
withering some motherfucking fig tree or some shit, but in the world I live in, the real fucking world, a miracle is a vial of crack lying on the ground in an American housing project unclaimed for more than three fucking minutes. But there it was. Tempting me. Calling to me. Not even calling, it was screaming at me. I could hear Mercedes behind me. I started telling myself love stronger than drugs, stronger than anything, love stronger, but telling ain’t always believing. You can tell yourself anything you want, but until you believe what you’re telling yourself, you’re wasting words. I was ready to go down there. Ready to go. So I turned and walked towards the door. When I opened it, Ben was sitting on the floor. He smiled. I started talking.

What you doing?

Sitting.

How long you been sitting there?

A while.

Doing what?

Just sitting.

I looked at him. Just sitting there on the floor.

He smiled at me, spoke.

You want to go back inside.

I smiled.

Yeah.

May I come in?

Yeah.

He stood up and followed me back inside. We played with Mercedes for a long time, singing and playing with her toys, and the whole time I was wanting to smoke. Dinner come around and Ben serve us more
spaghetti. We eat at the table. When we finished I’m feeling really sick, shaking, wanting to jump out the fucking window. Ben have me put Mercedes to sleep and when I’m done I come out and he waiting for me. He take me to my room and lay me down and spend the rest of the night licking and sucking and fucking. And every time I got to feeling sick he do it again, till I finally fall asleep.

And that’s the way it stay for a few days, maybe a week. Ben go out in the morning while I sleep and find food somewhere. When I wake up he with Mercedes, and whenever she nap or sleep or whenever I feel sick he take me in the bedroom or on the floor or the table. And he was always telling me he love me. That I’m beautiful. That I can live however I want to live. That life can be beautiful. That Mercedes love me and I can be a good momma. And I stop hearing it. I start believing it.

And then one day I wake up and know. Know that I’m okay and going to be good, or as good as I can be where I’m at. And I tell Ben and he smile. And I stop thinking just about me and ask him more about why he here with me. He tell me about living in the tunnels and being arrested and he tell me how he leave his family. And how he skipped on his bail. He tell me about his being able to speak to God. He tell me that he know things about the world, and that he know the world going to end if we don’t change it. That man is sick. That the leaders of the world killing us all. Making us think we progressing
while killing us. And it ain’t like there be some big grand plan, they just ignorant. And greedy. And thinking about themselves. And thinking about their Gods. Christians thinking they got God. Muslims thinking they got God. Jews thinking they got God. Everybody thinking God on their side. That God want them to kill and judge and dominate. And all of them wrong. All of them doing what they do in the name of something that don’t exist like that. That fairy tales ruling the world. That God ain’t part of the world that way. That God don’t judge. God don’t give power. That God something beyond the understanding of men or women on earth. That God ain’t giving no gift of eternal life. The gift is the life we got, and when it’s over, it’s fucking over. No Heaven. No parties with relatives and people we love while the angels sing and play harps. No seventy-two virgins waiting for us to teach them how to fuck. No nothing. No God like we believe. Just the end. And all we got in the world is other people. And all we got with them is love. And not love like some dumbass pop song. Love is just taking care of each other, and fucking each other, and letting each other live how we want to be living. And protecting each other from all the shit that life throws us. That comes at us because that’s fucking life, not because some fake silly God is trying to test us, or prepare us for the afterlife, or because he thinks we strong enough to deal with it. Bad shit just happens. Ain’t no reason for it ’cept that it’s life. It ain’t no fucking God. And everything he say making sense to me. Making more sense than everything else I hear in the world. Making more sense than the
bullshit politicians and preachers and popes spewing out every day. Making more sense than the bullshit in textbooks and newspapers and on
TV
news shows. Making more sense than the bullshit laws our government be trying to make us live by. The government that says One Nation Under God, but under what God? The old white man God with a beard who say blacks ain’t got rights, Hispanics ain’t got no rights, women ain’t got rights, gays ain’t got rights, and no one who ain’t like him and believe like him ain’t got no rights. Fuck that. And fuck that God. And fuck all the fools believing in that God. They can come kiss my black ass, ’cause that ain’t no kind of Nation Under God, it’s just fucking bullshit.

Life settled down for me and Mercedes and Ben. I started taking me some
GED
classes and got Mercedes in a daycare program in the project. It wasn’t all daisies and bunnies and hugs, but it was better than sitting and watching
TV
. Ben would leave for the day. Said he would just wander around New York. Walk or get on the train and get off wherever he felt like it. Said he would just see people and talk to them and help them and love them. I know he was fucking some of them, ’cause I could smell it on him when he came back. Sometimes I’d ask him who and sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a man. I’d ask how he’d be helping people and he’d say however they needed it. I asked him how he loved them and he said however they needed it. I know he talked to some of them about how he could speak to God, about what God really is, about the way he
saw the world. About how it going to end. And people believed him. They started showing up at my apartment. Sometimes they brought gifts, brought food or clothes, sometimes they brought money. Sometimes they’d be crying. Sometimes they’d be fucked up on drugs or drunk. If he was home he’d let them in. Some of them he’d take in his arms and whisper in their ear. Some he’d sit with on the couch and take their hands and stare at them. Sometimes he’d stand by the window with them and talk real soft. Some he’d take in the bedroom, men and women both, and he’d close the door, and I know he’d be fucking them, and loving them, and making them better, same as he did to me. Some he put his hands on their cheeks and he’d kiss them real light. I don’t know what he was ever saying or doing to them people, but they’d leave better. They’d leave different. They’d leave with that true belief in their heart. And they’d be telling other people. So Ben started having people saying things about him. That he had powers. That he could perform miracles. That he could save you or change you or make your life better. That he was a prophet. That he was a holy man. That Christ had come back. That he was the Messiah. The Messiah the world been waiting for and praying for and worshipping for, that he was the man come to save us or let us all die. He never said nothing about anything of that. People would say things to him about it and he’d smile and say nothing at all or say
if you say so
. What he told me was important was him loving all the people and making them so they was leaving
better than they was when they came. That was what God was. Making people still living their lives in this world feel better. All the rest was just made-up fantasy stories.

When it was just us, it was like we was married, but not hating each other like most married people being. Was like we was a couple. He didn’t seem to be loving me any more or any different than anyone else, but we was together, and he always came back, even when he’d be gone for a night or two, and I was always knowing he’d come back, never doubting nothing. It didn’t matter I was only nineteen and he was thirty-one, and it didn’t matter we was different colors and had been raised different or that our parents was from different countries, speaking different languages and believing in different Gods. We just loved each other. Didn’t want each other to be no different. Didn’t bitch about what we didn’t like ’bout each other. Was accepting of each other as human fucking beings. Who felt the same shit. Knew the same kind of pain. And knew that love was the only weapon against that pain. Nothing else can end it or stop it. That’s what Ben taught me more than anything. That we got this gift of life and we got it one time and we gonna get hurt in it and be hurt going through it and the only thing that’ll make that hurt better or hurt less is love. And part of our love was fucking. Ben loved to fuck. He loved to kiss me and lick my body and suck on everything I got. When Mercedes was sleeping and no one was knocking on the door, we’d spend all
our time fucking. Fucked for hours and hours. He never got tired of fucking. Said coming was the closest thing any human on earth would ever know about Heaven. That there wasn’t no pearly gates, no trumpeters, no man waiting with some book ’bout all the good shit and bad shit we supposedly done in our lives, ’specially when most of what we do ain’t good or bad, just boring. That there ain’t no one gonna judge us and decide we can be in that all-time never-ending party or get sent to burn. That there ain’t no party like that, just like there ain’t no ball for Cinderella and her sisters, or prom for Barbie, or labyrinth with a bull that gonna eat your ass up. But there’s the feeling you get when you cum. When everything disappears. When your body tells you it loves you and everything in the world is perfect and secure and safe. When you feel better than you ever feel any other time in your life. That feeling you wish wouldn’t never end. He said people that try to say it’s wrong is just stupid. That people who say fucking is wrong is just stupid. That say you got to fuck under certain conditions laid out by God are just fucking stupid. No one should tell other people how to fuck. Said people who take vows not to do it are denying themself one of the greatest gifts we got in the world. That men in silly robes singing songs in dead languages who ain’t never fucked in their life certainly got no right. That maybe if they fucked, they’d understand God in a way no book and no cardinal and no pope could ever be telling them. He said if everyone who went to church or temple or mosque spent all that wasted time fucking instead
of praying to made-up shit, the world wouldn’t be ending soon. And he right. And you know he right. If you look in your heart, and if you’ve ever cum in your life, you know he absolutely right.

After my classes and before I’d get Mercedes and go home, I’d go see my momma. They had moved her to some place where people watched her and tried to make sure she was comfortable and she lied in a bed and her body was just wasting away. She was hurting real bad. Her body eating itself. Eating all its organs and eating all its bones. Cancer everywhere and no way to do a thing about it. There wasn’t ever a thing to do about it. Most days I was strong and I’d hold her hand. Some days I’d just sit by her bed and cry. They’d just be giving her more and more drugs. Drugs that make her someone she wasn’t, make her something not even a person. Just some flesh lying there breathing. You ever sat by the bed of someone dying you know what it’s like. There ain’t nothing you can do. You just sit there feeling pain like nothing else on earth. You sit there feeling helpless and empty. When they awake, every second you sit with them you know that they gonna die soon. Every word you say got this weight on it ’cause you know there ain’t gonna be many more words. Everyone comes into the room do their best to be happy and seem cheery. To be talking about shit that ain’t got nothing to do with death. But it’s always there. The sickness. The death. The fact there ain’t nothing to do about it. The fact that they won’t be no more. That they gonna go in the ground and rot.
And that you gonna go on living. And you can say whatever you want and tell them you love them and do everything in the world to make their passing easier, but it don’t change. They feel the pain. And the only way to stop the pain is load up on so many drugs that you a vegetable, or die. And in the meantime, everyone that loves you just feels the pain. The worst pain you can know.