Baby Brother's Blues (28 page)

“Forget about it.” She smiled, handing him one glass and taking a small sip from the other as they headed back to the bedroom. She was still naked except for her high heels and the silver thong.

“And for the record,” he said, sitting down again on the side of the bed, “those weren’t
her
clothes. They’re from that vintage store in Little Five Points.”

“Thanks for sayin’ it,” she said, sitting beside him, “but I knew you had too much class for some shit like that.”

He smiled at her and sipped his scotch. “So now you know my secret. What about you?”

She shrugged. “I ain’t got no secrets, baby. What you see is what you get.”

He didn’t say anything. He just leaned over and hugged her with such tenderness that she felt guilty again. Tenderness was more unfamiliar than silence, so she leaned her bare breasts against his chest and waited for him to make the next move. His massive arms suddenly seemed the safest place on earth for her to be. If there had ever been a time to tell the truth, this was it. There was no room left for the lie. She leaned back and looked into his face. He smiled, his big hands moving down her shoulders, caressing her lightly.

“What is it?”

“Well,” she said, “since we’re confessing and shit, I have to tell you something, too.”

“All right. Tell me.”

“That ain’t no birthmark on me. I had a nigga’s name tattooed on my behind because he liked to do it doggy style, and when we broke up, I had it lasered off, but it left a scar.”

General didn’t say anything for a minute and she was afraid that telling him the truth had been a bad idea. Her mother always said the stupidest thing a woman could do was tell a man the truth. “They can’t handle it,” she’d say, sucking her sunken cheeks hollow trying to get
the goodie
out of whatever she was smoking. “They think they can until they hear it, then they lose their whole minds.” Brandi hoped General wouldn’t lose his whole mind, or his interest in her. He was a good, steady john and he definitely had connections. He was old enough to appreciate her, young enough to satisfy her, and there was something about him that she was starting to really like.

Maybe it was how he always treated her like a lady, or maybe she just admired a man who could love a woman as strong as he loved his Juanita. Brandi wished somebody would love her that hard. Maybe General was the one. She hoped her mother was wrong.

“What was his name?” General said after what seemed to Brandi like a two-hour pause to digest her confession.

“His name?” Brandi’s mind went blank. It had been so long ago and there had been so many since then. She felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. She had cared enough to tattoo his name on her skin and now she couldn’t even remember who it was. “I don’t know. Ain’t that a bitch? I don’t even know.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out more like a gurgle. That’s when she realized General didn’t look mad or sad anymore. He was sitting there grinning at her like a Cheshire cat. She grinned back, more relieved than she would have admitted. That’s when he started to laugh. Not just a little chuckle to show he wasn’t pissed. He was laughing so loud her neighbors could probably hear it.

His delight, although mysterious, was contagious and Brandi’s own laugh bubbled out of her like clear water in a mountain stream. There they sat, the great big man with the bald head and the broken heart and the pretty little woman whose tight butt and bouncing breasts paid her rent each and every month, laughing so hard they finally had to just sit there and breathe deeply to get control of themselves. He took her hand and she squeezed his thick fingers, lifted them to her lips, and nibbled his knuckles gently. He watched her.

“Well, all Juanita said was she’d send me a sign,” he said. “She didn’t say anything about whether it had to be a real birthmark or not.”

She looked up at him. “So you ain’t mad?”

He shook his head and smiled slowly. “A sign is a sign, right?”

She nodded. “You got that right, baby. A sign is a sign.”

He reached for her and she moved into his arms in one smooth motion, pushing him down on the bed and straddling his hips, rocking herself against him, feeling his response and her own. He closed his eyes. Her braided extensions brushing against his belly felt more like horsehair than human tresses, but it didn’t matter. She was a gift from his beloved, the living proof that what they’d had on earth was still present in the universe; that Juanita was somewhere,
out there,
watching him, waiting for him, wanting him as much as he still wanted her.

“Say her name!” Brandi panted.

He hesitated for just a heartbeat, but Brandi would not be denied.

“Say her name!”

General heard himself groan and then he couldn’t hold it back anymore. It was a cry, a prayer, a penitent’s confession, and a believer’s testimony.
“Juanita!”

Then it was over.

52

B
aby Brother was pissed. It had been a week. He’d been calling Zora on Davy’s cellphone, the same number he’d given Kwame, but neither one had called back. Or maybe they had called back and Davy hadn’t heard the ring over Rush Limbaugh’s latest harangue. The topic of the week was the war in Iraq and how what every red-blooded American needed to do was get behind the president, no matter what fool thing he decided to do next.

After a day of having to listen to all that crap, Baby Brother wanted to tell the people who were calling to argue that they ought to spend a week or two in Fallujah before they made any final decisions. By the time a woman who proudly identified herself as a white Southerner without having been asked stated that she thought they should empty out the jails by sending all the prisoners to work off their sentences as frontline soldiers, he wanted to scream. The caller credited her husband with the bright idea and urged the station’s listeners to write their congressmen.

“You see what I’m talkin’ about?” Davy said as they finished their last delivery and climbed back in the truck for the ride home. “That’s how they think.”

“Yeah, so?” said Baby Brother. “A lot of niggas think that way, too.”

“Yeah, but they just talkin’ shit. These crackers ain’t kiddin’.”

Davy indicated a left at Lawton Street and Baby Brother realized they were going to pass right by Zora’s bright blue front door. Maybe he could catch her at home and just drop in long enough to see if she was still mad at him for having had a little too much to drink the other night. He’d paid for it by peeing all over himself, but she had no way of knowing that. Maybe he’d tell her. Maybe she’d laugh and feel a little sorry for a soldier, a long way from home. Sympathy sex was some of the best sex around and he was overdue. That guy he’d met at the club had given him two hundred bucks and a blow job, but that was business. For pleasure, Baby Brother needed a woman.

“Hey, man,” he said to Davy as they turned toward the corner. “Pull over for a minute.”

“For what?”

“Just pull over, okay? I need to check on something.”

“On somebody, you mean.” Davy pulled up in front of Zora’s place and grinned. “You better leave that woman alone. She ain’t thinkin’ about your broke ass.”

Baby Brother had made the mistake of telling Davy he might get a call from Zora on his cell. He hadn’t mentioned a possible call from Kwame. That wasn’t anybody’s business. Davy had initially been impressed, but after several days went by with no contact, he began to tease Baby Brother for having delusions of grandeur.

“Your cheap-ass phone probably ain’t even hooked up,” Baby Brother said, jumping out of the truck and heading up the walk. He rang the bell above Zora’s name, but got no response. Annoyed, he pushed it again, laying on it longer.

“Come on, nigga. Even if she’s there, she ain’t home to you. Can’t you take a hint?”

Before Baby Brother could respond to Davy’s taunt, the blue door opened and a tall, good-looking woman with a little Afro and a kid in her arms almost bumped right into him. She was talking to someone over her shoulder, and if he hadn’t reached out to stop her, she would have walked right into him.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said, her hand moving to the child’s back protectively. “I didn’t even see you.”

“No problem,” he said, but he was looking at the man standing behind her. No doubt about it. It was Kwame from the club. “Excuse me.”

“Are you looking for someone?” the woman said pleasantly, stepping out of the open door. The man returned Baby Brother’s gaze, but said nothing, perhaps hoping that without his voice, his identity might still be in question.

“I’m a friend of Zora’s,” Baby Brother said. “I was passing by on my way home from work and I thought I might be able to catch her.”

The woman shifted the baby on her hip. “She’s not here right now. You want me to tell her you stopped by?”

In the truck, Davy had turned down the radio long enough to try to eavesdrop on the conversation.

“Yeah, sure,” Baby Brother said. “Tell her Wes came by.”

“Wes?” She was waiting for him to say his last name.

“Wes Jamerson.”

“You working with Davy?” She waved, and from the truck, Davy waved back.

“For a minute.”

She grinned at him. “I heard that. I’m Aretha Hargrove. I have a studio upstairs. This is my husband, Kwame.”

Baby Brother held out his hand and Kwame shook it. “Whazzup, brother?”

“Whazzup?”

“Me, Mommy!”
the little kid said. “Tell him
me.
”

“I’m sorry, baby.” Aretha smiled. “This is Joyce Ann.”

“Ice cream,” the little girl said. “Ice cream, Daddy?”

Kwame had no choice but to respond in correct fatherly fashion. “After you have your dinner, remember? Then we’ll have ice cream.”

“Ice cream!” she said again, and hugged her mother’s neck.

“I’ll tell Zora you came by,” Aretha said, heading down the walk.

“Yeah, thanks,” Baby Brother said, locking eyes with Kwame so there would be no mistake. “Good to meet you, man.”

“You, too.”

The three of them got into their car, complete with a baby seat in the back that Baby Brother remembered from the other night, and drove away with Kwame at the wheel. Davy was watching, too.

“That’s one lucky nigga,” Davy said as Baby Brother hopped back into the truck.

“Oh yeah?” he said, wondering how much this fool knew. “Why’s that?”

“He’s married to that fine-ass Aretha, he’s working for Blue Hamilton, and his mama is gonna be the next mayor.”

“Of Atlanta?”

“No, nigga, of Macon. Of course, Atlanta. What you think?”

“When?”

“As soon as the next election comes around. Next year or some shit.”

Baby Brother wanted to holler. He felt like he had just hit the lottery. This guy wasn’t just somebody on the down low with a few dollars to spare. This guy was a gold mine.

“So what you got on my forty?” Davy said, thirsty for a cheap malt liquor because that’s all he could afford.

“Fuck that,” Baby Brother said, feeling expansive. “Let’s get a six-pack. Of Heineken.”

“You ain’t got to tell me twice,” Davy said, pointing the truck toward Mr. Jackson’s liquor store. “What are we celebratin’ all of a sudden?”

“That nigga ain’t the only one who’s lucky.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of luck you got all of a sudden?”

“You gonna be drinkin’ good. What the fuck you care?”

Davy laughed. “You got that shit right!”

Baby Brother didn’t care what Davy was drinking to celebrate. He knew his celebration was because his ship had just come in big-time. And not a moment too soon, he thought. Not a moment too soon.

53

T
he last session of Abbie’s Introduction to Altars seminar had been one of those moments that made her realize one more time how grateful she was to be doing this work with these young women. They had all shared a potluck supper, another of Abbie’s traditions, cleared away the dishes, and gathered in their sisterhood circle to say a formal good-bye to this moment they had shared.

“I want to thank all of you for being willing to explore your spirits,” Abbie said, smiling around the circle. “For being so open to new ideas about yourselves and about each other. It is my hope that you will regard this seminar as only one small step on a journey that will take you a lifetime. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.
Be peace!
”

Then they all hugged. Some of the more sentimental ones cried a little, but by nine-thirty, they had all gotten themselves together and headed home. Abbie spent an hour cleaning up, but it was still too early to go to bed. She didn’t feel like reading or watching televison, so she stretched as tall as she could then leaned over to touch her toes while she considered her other options. That’s when she realized what she wanted to do was get into a nice hot bath and think about Peachy.

Their
date
was only a few weeks away and her imagination was working overtime. Lately, she had been considering the possibility of sex toys, although she wasn’t really sure about that yet. Her experience had been that when men thought of sex toys at all, their imaginations ran more toward voluptuous young women rolling around naked while pleasuring themselves and one another with an oversize dildo that would strike fear into anybody who wasn’t getting paid to stuff the thing into every available orifice. She had tried to introduce a vibrator into the proceedings once with a widower whose prostate cancer had left him wanting sex as much as ever but unable to sustain an erection or make peace with oral sex on any kind of regular basis. Abbie had suggested that a vibrator might be the most pleasurable and practical solution and he had responded by calling her a whore for suggesting such a thing and never calling again.

Peachy was certainly more worldly than that, she thought. From the conversations they’d been having and the letters he’d been sending her, Abbie knew her
almost lover
was open, adventurous, and as excited about their upcoming exchange as she was. They hadn’t had phone sex yet, but the last few times he’d called late at night, they had walked right up on it before she pulled back. She didn’t want their first time together to be long-distance. The first time, she wanted to feel his body against her own. She wanted to hear him call her name…

Down, girl,
Abbie admonished herself as she turned out the lights and headed upstairs. She glanced at the clock in the hall. It was almost eleven and the neighborhood was surprisingly quiet. She was glad. The home invasions seemed to have stopped. Even though the police had never made any arrests, everybody was breathing a little easier. She lit a fat scented candle in the bedroom at the top of the stairs and started the water in the tub, pouring in enough sweet oil to make things both fragrant and slippery. In the bedroom she stepped out of her clothes and hung them neatly in the closet, listening to the CD she’d been playing all week,
The Very Best of Solomon Burke.
His unashamedly
mannish
tones filled the room and she smiled, listening to his heartfelt plea for some attention from a faraway lover.

A love that runs away from me.

Dreams that just won’t let me be…

Abbie walked naked into the steamy bathroom, singing along like Solomon had invited her to join his backup trio.

So far away from you

And all your charms…

The water was high enough and hot enough, so she turned off the faucet and stepped in carefully. Solomon’s voice from the other room was urging a brokenhearted damsel to bring him her troubles.

Don’t you feel like cryin’?

Come on, cry to me.

Crying was the last thing on Abbie’s mind as she slid down into the water up to her shoulders. The girl Solomon had been talking to must have finished with her crying because he had slowed things down and now he was promising not to stop loving her until she told him everything was all right.

Can’t nobody kiss you, little girl,

Like I’m kissin’ you…

Abbie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and ran her hands over her breasts, her stomach, the soft prickle of her wet pubic hair. She touched her body gently and thought of Peachy’s hands, Peachy’s mouth, Peachy’s desire for her as a woman, and hers for him as a man. Solomon Burke was crooning that
tonight was the night
and she closed her eyes, let her legs fall apart a little farther there in that candlelit room, and sighed. That’s when she heard the glass breaking downstairs.