A Deeper Love Inside (58 page)

My heart sank some. I guess my offer to pick her up and take care of her for the rest of our lives wasn’t popping enough. I don’t push a Bentley. Elisha doesn’t either. Momma Elon does.

“Have you seen him lately?” Winter asked, snapping me back to reality.

“Seen who?” I stalled, but I knew.

“Midnight!” she said, excited.

There were about one hundred true things that I could’ve said about him and a few other topics, but I didn’t want to. I wanted Winter to keep her dreams and her fantasies. I never wanted for my sister to be discovered hanging from a ceiling, her sheets twisted and wrapped around her neck. I didn’t want her depressed, dead, and dangling until some authority cut her down, erased her from the count, then threw her body in a pine box in an unmarked grave in an anonymous graveyard. I didn’t want it to happen, and I never wanted to receive that call.

So there would be a whole bunch of true things that I wouldn’t lie about, but I also wouldn’t say. I would never tell Winter that Midnight is not thinking about her at all, and wouldn’t’ve considered her even if she were not locked up. I wouldn’t tell her that even if she flashed through Midnight’s mind like lightning, she would be just as swiftly forgotten. I couldn’t tell her that Midnight is rich, international, so fucking handsome and cool and that with the passing of time he only gets better. I wouldn’t tell her that Elisha went cruising on Midnight’s yacht. I definitely wouldn’t tell her that Midnight has a badass batallion of wives, each of them so beautiful, smart, talented, and sweet that they would make any girl or woman who was just as pretty looking as them, and not normally “the jealous type,” feel green and a little insecure, causing her to step up her game, seriously.

In fact, when I asked Elisha if he felt jealous that Midnight had three wives, he said, “I have three wives, too—Porsche, Ivory, and Siri.” Then he pointed out the three diamond rings on my finger and my wedding band. “That’s eleven karats total, your favorite number,” he said. Then I loved him even more.

Maybe Winter would see me as a traitor for falling in love with one of Midnight’s wives as she galloped at top speed on an Arabian horse across the desert like a beautiful mirage. She rode more better than any Native I had come to know and love. She let me ride freely. As I mounted the horse, I imagined I’d race her. Then she mounted
her horse after making sure I was fine on mine. Then she left me in her wind and dust.

Uh un
, I wouldn’t tell Winter none of that.

“What about that wife he showed up with at the graveyard?” Winter asked. I felt a ways about her speaking so easily and casually about Momma’s burial day as though anybody else mattered or could be the focus of that sad morning. “Did they break up yet?” she poked. “Wait till I get back. I’m gonna grab her spot. That’s my spot anyway,” Winter said. I laughed nervously. I could see that for Winter, time was standing still. She was frozen and everyone living on the outside was moving forward and had passed her as they lived into their future.

“Hey, what about Buster? At the graveyard that’s who you said was your man. I know he hustles, right? He copped you that big body Benz. When did you meet Elisha? Did you choose him cause he had more money? What did Buster do when you dumped his ass? Did he threaten to murder Elisha? Did Buster get at him? Did they fight?” she asked, leaning forward with great interest to my response.

“Buster?” I repeated unknowingly. Then I was racing back through my mind and through doors that I had slammed closed and locked shut, I thought, forever. Placing myself back in the graveyard where Momma was, my heart cracking, my body aching, I remembered. Busta Rhymes was rhyming when I pulled up into the graveyard. His voice was jumping out of my Bose speakers. That was why I called his name when my big sister asked me about my one hundred fifty thousand dollar Benz. Winter didn’t know how close I was to having a complete nervous breakdown on the day of Momma’s burial. That, plus my anger at her and Poppa. I could’ve said or done anything on that day at the graveyard. I wasn’t even fearing the armed officers who took aim at me when I pulled up. Somewhere in my mind, I had let go enough not to care if they killed me and tossed me in the box with Momma. Somewhere, and somehow, I hoped maybe they would.

“It was always only Elisha,” was all I said. “My son’s name is Elisha Jr.,” I murmured, and really I was speaking to myself now. I was missing my baby and the warm feelings that he gave me. My breasts were swollen, hard and brimming with breast milk. I imagined Elisha Jr. crying out for me. He’s a peaceful baby to the whole family,
a kind of living love charm. But at night he’s only peaceful if he sees me. If I am not holding him, him staring into my eyes, lips locked around my nipple, one hand squeezing the other nipple, drawing breast milk like his life depended on it, he would go off. He would be crying a wordless screaming song, that I knew meant, “I want my momma. Where is my momma?” I understood. For fourteen years, I felt the same exact way about my momma, and sang the same exact song, differently. Elisha Sr. needed me. Elisha Jr. needed me. I needed them just as much, but probably way more. Because of them, I could feel a deeper love inside.

“I heard you had a fight on the block in Bed-Stuy, nearly blinded a bitch,” Winter said.

“Our cousin,” I said.

“I know she deserved it. I watched how her family flip-flopped on Santiaga the second he got locked.”

“That fight was six years ago,” I said, still used to counting up everything. “Who told you about it?” I asked.

“Porsche, the whole hood is up in here. Minus the niggas, of course! They serve their time elsewhere. Even my girl Natalie is in here. I know you remember her!”

“Yeah.”

“There’s nothing that goes on in the Bed-Stuy hood that we don’t hear about, nothing,” Winter said proudly.

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t muster up the feeling to care or see the value of keeping up with the aftermath of Poppa’s empire and reign over Bed-Stuy. Back then, Winter and I both saw, loved, and enjoyed the beauty, the families, the money, the cars, clothes, and jewels. But unlike Winter, I had made it back onto the Bed-Stuy blocks, and up into the crack buildings and houses. I saw the ugly. I saw it clearly.

“Winter, is there anything that you want that you can’t get that I could give you?” I asked.

“Not really.” She reacted too fast to have considered it. Just then a teenaged girl walked up to our table. The guard signaled her to return to her visit table. Winter signaled the guard as though their roles were reversed. “I got her. That’s only two at my spot,” she called out.

“You’re Porsche Immanuel, right?” The thirteen or fourteen years young girl asked. I knew she already knew. Everybody knew. When
Elisha married me, it made headlines even in places where neither of us had ever stepped foot. Two weeks after our City Hall vows,
Vibe
magazine placed Elisha on the cover with bold print running over his chest. “Young, Independent, Rich, and Married,” the headline read. When the more than a million readers flipped those pages, in every flick of Elisha I was there, his hand holding my hand so tightly, or me partially hidden behind his back, hugging him, or his arm around my shoulders or neck, or me looking sweet on him not knowing that I was being photographed and in an outdoor moment that I instinctively and stupidly thought was private. Then there was also the photo spread of him in the
Rolling Stone
magazine.

“Yes,” I answered her.

“Can I get an autograph? And can we take a photo together?”

“Not right now. I’m visiting my sister. I never get to see her,” I said, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Her young feelings were hurt anyway. I’m always uncomfortable about giving my autograph. Even as a dancer, onstage I wanted to amaze people with my movements. After the show, I wanted to be left alone and I made that happen. I’d stay tucked away in the privacy of my guarded dressing room. Now I was completely uncomfortable signing an autograph in front of my big sister. As she walked back to her table, her whole family was looking my way like I was the villain. I felt disgusted inside. Why were strangers always showing more interest in me than my own blood relations showed me?

“Do you miss me, Winter? Did you ever miss me?” I asked her. “Do you miss Momma? You must miss Momma! How come you haven’t asked about the twins? Did you know they’re so smart and pretty, look just like you, and can speak a bunch of different languages?” I shot the questions out of a dangerous mixture, love, passion, anger, and disgust, and maybe even a pinch of hate.

“What’s the sense in asking about them? Whether they doing good or bad, right now I can’t do shit about it. I asked you about Midnight. You don’t seem to want to give up any info. Do you want me to beg you? You know that’s not my style,” she said calmly but I could feel the razors in it. I stood up.

“I’ll get Midnight to pick you up on your release day. That’s something I can do for you,” I said. I was in the beginning stages of getting full-blown red.

“It’s good you’re leaving, cause I was getting bored anyway,” Winter said.

“I was going to the ladies’ room, not leaving,” I said truthfully. But did I need to admit that I need to squeeze milk out of my breast to feel comfortable enough to stay here longer?

“Well, you might as well keep on going from there. Now I see why these visits are fucking ridiculous anyway.”

“Ridiculous,” I repeated. My body began trembling beneath my Burberry.

Winter obviously didn’t know what it took for me to come up here, facing my fears and reentering a prison place, being searched, patted up and down, even my fingertips being drug-tested to see if I had handled any drugs in the past twenty-four hours. She must’ve not known how many hours Elisha drove to get here, us leaving our house at 4:30 in the morning. She couldn’t have known how hard it was for both of Elisha Jr.’s parents to leave our newborn at the same time. She must not have known how I protected Elisha Jr. from coming into a prison space where even babies are searched, Pampers opened, and infant clothes lifted and shuffled around. She don’t know how shaken I was leaving my husband in the prison visitation registration receiving building surrounded by C.O.s who admired him and left their posts to gather around him to get autographs or to hand him demos or to
discuss screenplays or book manuscripts they were thinking about or working on.

“You’re right. She doesn’t know,” Siri said. “How could she know? And, Porsche, why do you always get upset at someone who doesn’t know any better?”

• • •

I felt like dancing. Not in my pretty dance studio that Elisha had built on our family property. I felt like dancing naked inside of a small closet with no windows and very little air until I collapsed. Instead I came out of my coat and then my heels. I rolled down my tights. Standing barefooted outdoors on the cold cement, I hiked up my Burberry dress and stepped into Elisha’s Rover. I laid my coat, tights, and Blahniks on his backseat, then turned and placed my feet up on the dash, my toes pressed against the passenger window. He just watched me.

I loved that he didn’t ask me one question about the visit, and for a whole hour we rode in silence, first narrated by the sounds of Coltrane’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” followed by a group of cuts from Poppa Jamin’s jazz favorites handed down to his youngest son.

“Juxtaposed to who?” I asked Elisha without warning seventy minutes later. He smiled then lowered the volume on the music. “That’s easy . . .,” he said. He still loved tests.

“That Midnight cat,” he said. “I couldn’t get him to say nothing about anything or to even speak about the whole drug-dealing era. He’s the type who you gotta watch. A great movie director/writer could make millions off of a real life character like him,” Elisha said, always excited about film. “Ricky Santiaga, the man who built an empire, a man who everybody knew. A name that rings bells in the hood, sounds alarms in the police precincts, and raises respect in the
prison system. Ricky Santiaga juxtaposed to his right hand, the silent man who nobody knows. Somehow, the right hand ends up with an empire and an army. He does big business seemingly, minus the drugs. He even raises Santiaga’s youngest daughters. In the end, he remains best of friends with Santiaga, still carries out the duties of a retired right-hand man, which suggests there was no betrayal between them. Now that’s juxtaposition at its finest.” Elisha schemed. I smiled at him.

“Maybe the story gets told by two sisters, juxtaposed to one another. Both daughters of the same hustler, one is speaking from her cell, the other from her clandestine treehouse, a secluded location.”

“Clandestine,” I repeated softly. I’d ask him about that word later. “I hope you know your man pays attention,” he said. “I know,” I said, smiling now.

The CD switched. Now Elisha was playing a new song that Siri recorded for him. All of her songs were only for Elisha. She would only sing them to him. But, he would bring them to the world to feel. Siri didn’t mind, as long as she didn’t have to show up. She sang to him because it made him feel good. It made him happy. It made him love her even more.

“Porsche, some people in the press think you married me for my money,” he said. “Even some of my friends and coworkers had their doubts about you and us. None of them realized,
I married you for your money
!” he said it like it was a fact. I slapped his shoulder. I knew that was Elisha the actor speaking now. The guy who I first met when he was twelve. The actor was still a part of him even though he prefers directing so I just listened to him as he began setting up the scene. He was about to rescue me and I loved that.

“Seriously, you fucking inspire me like crazy, like how you put your pretty feet up here. Your painted toenails and pretty dancer’s legs
inspired me to get through the first hour of this ride home.” He was flirting with me.

“I’m sure you see a lot of pretty girls everywhere you go, Elisha. And they see you, too!”

“What did you tell me when you were eleven?” he asked me. “You said none of ’em are like you, none of them are the same thing.” He asked and answered the question himself.