Before We Were Wicked, page 22
A twenty-something guy seated on the other side of the table facing Jimi Lee spoke up, said something in Amharic, sounded as if he defended Jimi Lee, and Jimi Lee countered, made him stop talking. Her father owned the room. He said what he wanted to say, said what he wanted me to hear in English, then turned away and talked in Amharic to the men seated near him. I took my daughter and headed to the bathroom to change her, and Lila walked with me, did her best to keep up with my aggravated pace. Her heels clicked as she carried the diaper bag.
Lila said, “Let me take Tsigereda into the proper girls’ bathroom and change her expeditiously.”
“Her name is Margaux.”
“Let me do my duty as godmother.”
“And her last name is Swift.”
Not many changing tables were in men’s toilets. In public, it was still a woman’s job.
But that didn’t bother me. I had no problem wiping the excrement from my child’s ass.
I asked Lila, “Who is the guy seated directly across from my wife?”
“His name is Yohanes.”
“A sibling?”
“Family friend.”
“Where is he from?”
“We all grew up together.”
“What does he do?”
“Rocket scientist.”
“He’s very interested in my wife.”
“Well.”
“Why am I getting the cold shoulder from my father-in-law?”
“He’s the leader. They will do what he says. Unless Menna disapproves.”
“So, he’s the slave master and this is his plantation unless Miss Ann disagrees.”
“He’s an elder. Everyone here is under his influence.”
“He’s rude as fuck.”
“Strict and can be violent. The Ethiopian National Defense Force is still in his blood.”
“Ruder than white people when King tried to cross a bridge in Selma, Alabama.”
“Of all of his children, Jimi Lee was his special pride and joy.”
“What did he say in Amharic?”
“You . . . basically he says you ruined her.”
“She was ruined when I met her.”
“That her life will be the life of a black American now.”
“He said that?”
“Yes. Well, he didn’t call you a black American.”
“What did he call me?”
“Well.”
“What the fuck did he call me?”
“He pretty much called you N.W.A. without the W.A.”
“Half of your people are darker than burnt toast, and he called me—”
“Don’t let him upset you. He has his ways.”
“And I have mine.”
“Well, from a father’s perspective, you ruined his perfect daughter.”
“Jimi Lee ruined me.”
“Well, her need for coffee and jazz met your need to jazz, and here you are.”
“She wasn’t the only one who had plans.”
“Just ride this out. Just have dinner and ride this out. It won’t last more than two hours.”
“My wife tried to emasculate me.”
“She’s stressed.”
“She talked down to me like she was better than me.”
“Jimi Lee wanted . . . needed you to leave the room so she could talk to her mother and father.”
“They brought a nation.”
“Jimi Lee is . . . was very important to them. She was their intellectual Doris Day. Their Shirley Temple in brown skin. She was the last one anyone imagined having a child. Everyone is shocked to see her like this. They want their daughters to see her, to see what happens when a girl fails to do as she has been instructed.”
“She’s afraid of him. He used to beat her.”
“He is from Ethiopia. Not here. He is from where children still experience corporal punishment at schools and severe punishments at home. Corporal punishment is lawful in the home. It is required for proper upbringing. You won’t understand that. Here in America, a parent spanks a child, the child calls nine-one-one, and the parent is arrested.”
“You think it’s any different for children in Mississippi? My people don’t spare the rod or spoil the child.”
“Tsigereda is crying, Ken.”
“Here, Gelila. Margaux is reaching for you.”
“Because you’re scaring her.”
“Nobody wants shit to do with me now.”
“Don’t say that. That’s how Jimi Lee’s father wants you to feel.”
Lila took Margaux, grabbed the diaper bag, and hurried into the ladies’ room.
A brown-haired white boy passed by, bumped me, didn’t apologize. Of all the people to body check me and keep going, it was that motherfucker. Baggy jeans. Lakers jersey. Kareem’s number. Lots of people stopped wearing Magic’s number after they found out he was HIV-positive. He went into the men’s room. Amazing how a white boy could call a black man a nigger, dress like Tupac, and listen to Cube while he rocked Air Jordans and Kareem’s number. While my daughter was being changed, while my wife was being treated like a child, as my temper flared, I followed that brown-haired boy. Wanted to see if he remembered me. Needed him to know I remembered him from a year ago. Needed to hit somebody, pretend they were Jimi Lee’s dad, and make them feel my unwarranted pain.
CHAPTER 27
THE NEXT WEEK I took Jimi Lee and Margaux to meet my parents and my siblings. My parents lived less than two miles away from my spot in Leimert Park, up in the hills. I hadn’t seen them in two years. No love was lost between us. After that two-hour visit, Jimi Lee didn’t want to meet my southern-born and raised parents again. I felt the same about hers, and it didn’t matter that they were from the Horn of Africa. Her parents and my parents would never break bread. Mississippi would never invite Ethiopia to the Black Beverly Hills for a backyard barbecue.
I wished I had never bought my old man those trees.
I was so pissed off I wanted to rip them all from the ground.
Jimi Lee said, “I hate your mother. I will hate her beyond my grave.”
“Calm down.”
“After what she has done, the way she treated me, don’t tell me to calm down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’s a goat.”
“Don’t call my mother a goat.”
“Donkeys have better manners. Your father and siblings are no better.”
In Amharic I told my wife, “Ayzoh.”
She snapped, “No, it will not be okay.”
“Enen.”
“I don’t need your damn apology. She insulted me and my child. She should apologize, not you.”
“Jimi Lee.”
“I repeat, your mother is a goat. A donkey. No better than a cow. And you defended her.”
“She is no worse than your father. No worse than your mother. They were no better than hogs.”
“Fuck you. Motherfucker, fuck you.”
My jaw tightened and I gave her silence. It was for her own good. For my own good.
Then, brows furrowed, ignoring our crying child, over and over she said, “This, Adanech?”
I reached for Margaux, but my daughter rejected me. She wanted her mother. Her mother wanted nothing to do with us. So we had a triangle of anger, rejection, and misery. I picked up Margaux anyway, held her in my arms.
Jimi Lee said, “You talked me into this. You bamboozled me into this world of yours.”
Jimi Lee wanted that other life. The one where her parents were proud of her.
The life in which my daughter and I never existed.
CHAPTER 28
BACK AT HOME, days later, tension high, we sat at the dining room table.
I looked at Jimi Lee, saw she had the blues, then asked, “What’s the new issue?”
“I talked to a couple of friends. They are at Yale and Harvard studying, going to frat parties, being courted by sororities. I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe and I keep waiting to wake up in my bed at Diamond Bar.”
“You’re singing that woe-is-me song every goddamn hour of every goddamn day.”
“Don’t curse me. Don’t ever talk to me in such a way again.”
“Go. If you are that miserable, leave Margaux with me. We’ll be fine.”
“I’m not abandoning her.”
“I’m her father. You won’t be abandoning her. This isn’t the front door of a fire station.”
“Mothers can never abandon their children and be considered worthy of living.”
“What do we do then? How do we take care of Margaux and get you happy again?”
“I’m married to you. No longer eligible for my scholarships.”
“Your father has gotten in your head.”
“And we’re living in this small apartment. I can’t breathe. My parents had a large home, and I had my own room, I had peace and tranquility, but here, nothing but chaos, and this cave feels like a dungeon. I hear rap music; I hear street sounds; I hear adults cursing; I hear children cursing; and I hear it all day long.”
“Well, I’ve missed my escape from here, just like you.”
“I was Ivy League. Ivy League.”
“And when you made it to Harvard, they’d still call you a nigger.”
“Do you know how hard I had to work from the beginning, how careful I had to be, how hard I had to study, how much I had to sacrifice in order to be smarter than every white boy and girl in every class in Diamond Bar? And even then, they wanted to create two valedictorians, let one be white, when my GPA was much higher.”
“I didn’t know that. And at the same time, I’m not surprised.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“Your first time living in an apartment and you act like this is a concentration camp.”
“You think I’ve had no struggle. My mother counseled me all of my life, and I have let her down. She told me not to go into the arts, to select a field that pays, a field that is new and go into it through the front door. I was to pick one subject and focus, pick a field and become the expert, because that is what an African woman has to do. She wanted me to be powerful and self-sufficient, not dependent on any man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry about everything.”
“Well, it’s starting to feel that way.”
“And make Margaux stop that damn crying. Tsigereda, please be quiet. Shut up.”
Jimi Lee showered, dressed, stormed by me as I held Margaux, the colicky child still crying in my arms. Jimi Lee left the apartment, hurried down the thirteen concrete stairs out front, went to the curb, hit the remote, got into our convertible Benz, let the drop top down, sped away, left us to sort it out, and didn’t come back until two in the morning. She staggered in, smelled like Riesling and sticky green. That meant Margaux’s food source was tainted. I was pissed as fuck. We argued until the sun came up; then I tended to Margaux all day, and as soon as she took a nap, I was in Jimi Lee’s face, and we argued until the sun went back down.
While we stood in the kitchen, as Margaux slept, I asked, “How do we fix this?”
Jimi Lee slammed a glass onto the floor, made it shatter into a thousand pieces.
I yelled, “Have you lost your goddamned mind? Why did you do that?”
She looked at me, tears in her eyes, and asked, “How do you fix that broken glass? How do you put that back together? Everything can’t be fixed, so stop asking me how to fix it.”
I grabbed a broom. “Margaux could crawl and get glass in her knee. Or get it in her hand. Or pick up a piece and eat it. What the fuck were you thinking? You stupid . . . stupid . . .”
“Say it.”
“I’m getting tired of your shit.”
She sat down at the kitchen table and cried, gave up her pain, sorrow, hate, grief.
I said, “Let’s take parenting classes. Let’s be better parents, for Margaux, if nothing else.”
She marched away, opened and closed drawers, made them bang with her ire. Two minutes later, she was out the door. She left without a good-bye. She wasn’t back home at sunrise. I didn’t look for her. After lunch, I took Margaux to the park in Ladera, put her in a swing for a while. While she laughed and went up to the smog-tinted clouds, while I hoped she didn’t get allergies or asthma breathing this shit, I cried. I was glad Jimi Lee was gone, and I was crying because I knew she would come back. I wanted her to go the fuck away, vanish from my life.
When we made it back home, Jimi Lee was in the kitchen, cooking.
I handed her Margaux; then I walked out the door. Margaux cried, broke into tears, didn’t want her mother to hold her, called for her daddy, but I kept going until I couldn’t hear her cries.
I used Margaux’s cries to punish Jimi Lee.
Jake Ellis was in front of my building, waiting on me to come down.
He asked, “You good with this local job, or should San Bernardino send in someone else?”
“Let’s do this shit. Let’s bust some heads and pay some bills.”
Horns blew over and over. A U-Haul truck was out front, across the street. Four Mexicans were blocking the one lane of traffic on that side of Stocker. They unloaded enough furniture to fill a one-bedroom apartment. A taller-than-average girl was on that side, a light-skinned black woman in her early twenties. She yelled and pointed at what to take where. She had a small waist, wore itty-bitty pink shorts and a yellow top, a UK-branded hoodie around her waist.
Jake Ellis said, “She’s from London.”
“You know the yellow gal.”
“Bernice Nesbitt. She’s here to go to LMU.”
“Loyola Marymount University. The Christian university on the hill.”
She waved at us, smiled. We kept going, not in the mood to move furniture.
Unsettled, unhappy, I looked back up at my window. I saw Jimi Lee and heard Margaux’s cries.
I told Jake Ellis, “Let’s go.”
He waved up at my window, said hello to my wife, then followed me and caught up.
Jake Ellis said, “So her folks actually did that shit?”
“Yeah. The tab for that dinner at Mimi’s ended up in my lap.”
“You paid?”
“Maxed out my Discover card.”
“They played you.”
“Motherfuckers didn’t even leave a tip.”
“Well, you tried.”
“I had on new socks and drawers and was treated like I was a crackhead.”
“That’s why your momma wasn’t nice when she met Jimi Lee.”
“That meeting with my people was worse than the one with Jimi Lee’s people.”
“Jimi Lee doesn’t want anything to do with your family up in the Black Beverly Hills.”
“As much as I want to do with her folks out in white-ass Diamond Bar.”
CHAPTER 29
JAKE ELLIS AND I walked out of Leimert Park, went two miles away to an area called the Jungle. The area was built in the forties and was one of the first developments of high-density apartment living in Los Angeles. It used to be a prestigious white area. Banana plants, palm trees, begonias. Now it was a Mexican and black neighborhood; signs said Section 8 was accepted. There was a con man there who owed San Bernardino some money.
I knocked on that man’s door, and when his guard answered, I rushed in, knocked him to the floor, and beat him half to death. My mind was still at Mimi’s Café. Jake Ellis had sprinted by me, beat the Mexican con man to his gun, then knocked that man into the floor. Jake Ellis was done with the job and I was still taking my frustrations out on that delinquent Mexican’s bodyguard. Then I went after the Mexican. After a half-dozen knockout blows, Jake Ellis reined me in, pulled me away. I was still back at Mimi’s, imagining I was beating Jimi Lee’s dad into the pavement.
Jake Ellis said, “Fuck, man. We just supposed to scare ’em and give ’em black eyes.”
“They’re scared.”
“As fuck.”
The bodyguard moaned, “Señor.”
At the same time Jake and I snapped, “Shut up.”
Jake Ellis went to the refrigerator, took out two beers, tossed me one. I opened mine and poured it on the men at my feet. Then I motioned for Jake Ellis to toss me another one. I popped the top and took a swig.
Jake Ellis said, “Jimi Lee got you twisted and acting like a fool.”
“Señor.”
At the same time we barked, “Shut up.”
I sipped my beer again, sat in a worn-out chair, vented, told Jake Ellis all of my problems.
He asked, “What you gonna do?”
“I’m married with a kid.”
“Trapped.”
“Only takes one good nut to put a man in a bad predicament.”
“A bad nut can have the same result. But I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad nut. It doesn’t matter if the nut is good or bad; it can put a woman with a good egg in the same position.”
“Señor.”
“Shut up.”
I nodded. “If Jimi Lee left, Margaux and I’d be fine.”
“You’d keep the baby?”
“Margaux is mine. That’s my daughter. She’s my blood.”
“What about her momma?”
“Jimi Lee is just some crazy chick I met in a club. A Diamond Bar chick looking for LA dick and I fell for a cute little butt and a smile in a white miniskirt and slipped and dipped and tripped myself into the trap of all traps.”
“Whatever you just said, you don’t mean that.”
“Bro, sometimes you have to show a motherfucker that fat meat’s greasy.”
“Bruv, I have no idea what that means either.”
We dragged both of the men downstairs, stuffed them in the trunk of the wounded man’s car. We drove them to San Bernardino, made that three-hour drive, and dropped them off with the person they feared most.
