June 1, 2004
Well, ladies I haven’t been sitting on my butt all day doing nothing, but I don’t have much to show for what I did do writing-wise. I started a website for a hairshop, so I stopped writing for part of a week. The story I was working on, I stopped because I know it’s only going to get longer. The other day, I wrote a love letter story thing, and I would show it to you, but I’m unhappy with it at the moment. I think I should just write whatever and sort out it’s purpose later. I got this guy in my head wanting to talk and he’s been waiting patiently, but even he’s getting bored with me (If you never talked to a writer for real, you don’t realize that ideas come to life and bug you until you start writing). Besides, I’ve been
out, on bp, shopping, cooking, and dealing with my sad excuse for a life. I promise
by the next edition there will be something to show for it, even if it’s a purposeless
piece of prose. On another note, I’ll try to update my personal website (cause
bp really isn’t real) and upload more poems or something.
Well, of course I want to shout out to everyone in general. Special notes go out to Doe, happy birthday girl! Don’t go out and get too wasted… Tanya, some times
it seems like it will rain forever, but remember the sun will shine one day, make
sure you are outside to see it. Ebony, don’t get stressed on the details, as long
as the deal go down (and you know I’m here to renegotiate shit). Chell, Chell,
Chell, always missing in action, always remembered. Tiffany don’t drop any of
that Gatorade on your foot (and watch your back for Gatorfalls). Antoinette, stay
crazy, but don’t go insane. Everyone else, do what I believe, but not what I would
do.
This time I’m of going to limit it to one story because it’s kind of long. I wrote
this story like three years ago and I wasn’t sure anybody would read it cause
it was too graphic. However, all y’all are grown women, so I think you can handle
it. It’s called Deathbed and I’m thinking on letting it be the beginning of a
novel. I have other ideas which I’m going to write and let y’all read.
~Dear Father we have come to you today~
As I listen to the words of my priest, I recall the events leading to my godfather’s
death. I think of the past, the present, and more importantly the future for
me. Today is the day I bury my last known relative and evaporate back into the
masses and away from public view.
~To see Giovanni Lerpai be laid to rest~
Five days ago, I remember watching him die slowly as blood poured from his mouth
like a broken cup. I watched as his widened eyes looked up at me like a divine
angel come to save him from death. He always had a twisted mind maybe he had
always suffered from some mental illness. He looked at me and tried to call
me to him, but all he could do was silently word my name like a mantra. I don’t
know what surprised him the most, the fact I wasn’t moving to help him, or the
fact I was dead only ten minutes ago.
~In the safety of your arms, surrounded in your present~
It was in his arms that night I had died. We had gotten into a fight about me
coming in house in the middle of the night. He liked yelling at me because he
gave him a reason to fuck with me. This time, I had picked up my dinner knife
and threw it at him. I believe it would have worked if it wasn’t a butter knife.
I turned and ran to my room. Before I reached it, he grabbed me by my hair and
pulled me back to him. He yanked me up and dragged me in my room. In the darkness
of my own bedroom, I grasped at my last breaths fruitlessly as he raped me and
choked me with his belt. I had long since stop fighting this almost nightly
ritual, but that night I clawed at my sheets trying to free myself before he
killed me. He became excited by my movement and pulled harder, squeezing the
last bits of my life out my body, killing me.
~To take him to his final resting place ~
This is where fact and fiction became the difference between logic and reality.
I felt my body stop functioning, my heart stop beating, and my eyes shutting
never to open again. It had been moments of silence when he finally moved again
and removed the belt. It was after I didn’t curl into my usual tight ball that
he realized I was dead.
~Lord we ask you to take care of him~
He checked my pulse and found nothing. I think part of his mind was in shock
because he began talking to me. He was mumbling how he never meant to hurt me,
how he never meant to kill me. He folded my arms across my chest and covered
my naked body with a sheet. I waited for my fate, let it be heaven or hell,
but it never came to take me. I fell into a world of darkness and then deep
sleep.
~For he was not a saint, Lord~
There was pain and then a quick breath of air flew into my body. I popped up
into an upright position as if I had just had a nightmare, but no this was real.
I don’t know how long I had been dead, but it had to be more than an hour. I
guess he didn’t have any bright ideas about getting rid of my body because I
was still lying in the place he had left me. I rubbed my hands over my cooling
flesh, wondering if I was dead or alive.
~But Lord he lived by your word~
I got up and pain shot through me as I limped to the bathroom. I looked into
my full-length mirror. My body was already bruising and there was a purplish-black
mark where the belt had been around my neck. My eyes were murky pools of gray
surrounded by the dark circles under my eyes. I traced my reflection in the
mirror. Why wasn’t I dead? Was this a macabre nightmare? Or had my godfather
finally cut the last strings to my sanity? I took several deep breaths to insure
I was indeed alive and breathing. However, my lungs were aching at every breath,
as if they hadn’t worked in weeks, not hours.
~He believed that one day he would be with you in heaven~
I got dress in my silk black robe and I sat on my bed trying to figure out what
happen to me. I realized I wasn’t safe from him until one of us was dead, and
I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be me anymore. I lay there and thought about my
best friend, Eric and my job, and I realized some part of me got up in the morning
for that. For once, I had at least one good reason for living. I had friends
I cared for and people who actually loved me. I finally knew what love felt
like, and I didn’t know if death offered me the same comforts.
~So God please take him home to his castle in heaven~
I walked down stairs cautious that he might see me. I walk into the kitchen
to get something to drink for my dry mouth. When I pulled a glass out the cabinet,
I heard him come behind me. I looked over my shoulder and we both paused. I
looked in his eyes and a thousand questions rang unanswered in our minds; I
doubt either of us had the answers for them. I realized for the first time in
my life, I wasn’t afraid of him. There was a part of me that would do anything
to stop him from ever touching me again. The worse he could do is try to kill
me again, but I had already cheated death. He was scared. I could tell because
nothing kept him from touching me every time we were alone. He was standing
by the door and he hadn’t spoke or moved since he saw me. I made the first move;
I turned around and put the glass on the counters. The bang the cup made when
I put it down cut through the deafening silence, like a hot wire to water, we
jumped.
~Let him know we love him and miss him dearly~
“I hate you.” I hissed through the shadows between us. I meant down to my soul.
I felt free and it was like a weight was lifted from my body, and I didn’t have
to creep around him anymore. “I want you dead. I will see you dead.” I told
him. I believed it. I could almost feel it flowing through my veins like surreal
energy. There were feelings, voices, and an inner glow flowing through my body.
It told me I had the power to kill within me. I knew I could kill cold bloodedly
with a gun or knife, but this was much deeper than that. I’ve killed people,
yet I had never felt this way before. It was raw power, and I didn’t know what
to do with it. I made the first move and walked towards him.
~And help those who miss him with their loss~
He stood his ground curious to what I was doing. Honestly, I didn’t know what
I was doing, but something was calling me to him. I walked warily around the
marble island in the center of the kitchen, now there was only about 7 feet
between him and me. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth and I thought for
a moment he would speak until I saw blood dripping from his mouth like someone
had turned his mouth on like a faucet. He clawed at his chest as he kneeled
to the floor. I froze. Of a million different scenarios, this was the last one
I would have thought about. It was like watching one of those old black white
horror movies and for a moment forgetting that you were only watching it. However,
this was really happening. I watched in part shock and part fascination as he
writhed on the floor and tried to call me towards him. I walked closer and that
is when I felt the buzz in the room. It was more like a tingling energy crawling
right under my skin. It felt it more the closer I came to him. By that time,
his eyes had almost bulged out his head and his whole body was limp on the floor.
A pool of blood had formed around his head, but spread around his body like
a black hole eating the floor.
~And let this be a day of rejoice and not one of sorrow~
For at least a full five minute, it seemed like time had stopped and I was the
only person left alive. I looked down at his body unable to touch it, yet unable
to look away. I reached down with shaky hands and rolled him onto his back.
The movement sounded like peeling a wet mat off the floor. When I touched him,
the tingling stopped and I felt drained suddenly. Between the shadows of this
unlit room, there were a few rays of moonlight from the above sunlights. His
face was shaped like a dead fish mouth dropped open with crimson smeared on
the left side of his face, eyes wide in a blank stare to beyond, and the expression
of an endless scream. I checked his wrist for a pulse and found nothing but
lifeless flab. I waited for a few moments to see if he would breath, but he
never did.
~And let us reflect on the good times with him and not the bad~
After thinking long and hard about what I was going to do next with a dead body
on my hands. I did what any person with naïve sense would do I called the police.
I knew they couldn’t say I killed him, yet something told me I did it. How and
why he died, I couldn’t tell you, but I was sure it wasn’t natural causes. They
came, and took the body and told me to go stay with a friend for a night or
two. I went and stayed at my friend Stacy’s house because I didn’t want to have
to worry about the cops showing up at Eric’s. Stacy took me in and didn’t ask
me one question because she thought I was in upset about the death. I was upset,
but not at his death, just at how he died. The hospital contacted me the next
day to tell me how he died. They couldn’t explain how it happened without any
evidence that it was a homicide, but his heart was crushed until it burst in
his chest. It was blown to little pieces of flesh in his body, and blood had
filled his chest like a water balloon. In that moment, I knew I killed him.
There was no other way to explain it, than that.
~Ashes to ashes~
The next few days past by like one of those scenes on television, where you
are looking at a public place in fast-forward, everything is quick and chaotic.
I planned the funeral to be private because I knew his friends and family would
feel more at ease then if the media was breathing down their backs. My godfather
was a successful businessman and a lot people knew him, both publicly and personally,
they just didn’t know his darker sides. I had to talk to several reporters on
his timeless death; for some reason I felt at ease lying to them about my loss.
Many of the people who knew him tried to comfort me, I reassured them I was
fine, but I doubt anyone believed me. A week after the funeral, there was to
be a reading of his will. I was invited to go; however, I doubt he left me with
the clothes on my body. I would have to just move in with Eric until I found
my own place to live.
~Dust to dust~
His lawyer called me and told me I needed to come because he had written me
in his will. When, I arrived there was only a handful of people there. His cousin,
assistant, and the few close business partners who he called his friends. I
knew William Davis at little too personally. I remember him standing over me
as he watched my godfather play with his favorite fuck toy. I hated him not
because he knew what happened to me, but because I know he enjoyed watching.
He smiled at me and offered me he seat next to him. Like the broken toy, I am,
I smiled and sat down. As the lawyer read the will, my mind focused on the hand
molesting my leg. It seemed like Davis was thinking about adopting me too. The
lawyer cleared his throat and I noticed everyone was looking at me.
~In the name of Jesus~
“These papers were given to him by your grandfather,” the lawyer said to me
as the other people got up and left the room. There was a woman crying as she
left the room. He handed me the papers, but covered my hand when I took them.
“He left you everything, you know. His money, his property, his pain,” I looked
up at him and looked down at where he was rubbing the bruise on my wrist, “You
was all he had and he wanted you to be everything.” I squeezed my eyes shut
as they burned with tears. I didn’t want hear this. I didn’t want to begin to
understand. I remembered the lawyer’s name was John Slowack. He took the folder
from my hand and got up and closed the door. I tensed when I heard the click.
“This is your birth certificates, adoption papers, and social security card.
It wasn’t in my client’s best interest to release these papers to you. Angelique,
you became my client the moment you were born.” He pulled out the paper out
the folder and dropped in on the desk. “Mr. Defire wasn’t your legal guardian,”
he said referring to my grandfather who raised me until he died when I was six,
“Nor was Mr. Lerpai.” I looked at the birth certificate and noticed where my
parents name were supposed to be was blank.
“In fact you don’t have one.”
~Amen~