One Safe Place (10 page)

“When I say dysfunction, it's not to mean I hate or hated my dark, black skin just because I never ate black-eyed peas and greens or did any other stereotypical black things. My dysfunction means there have been times when I've been confused on where I should be and where to go. On many levels and situations, love for a man has been confusing.”

Darcelle's voice has hurt and some anger. She drinks another full glass of water. We sit in silence for a long moment.

I do know that my questions and statements, at times, can be harsh. I can tell she is a good woman, and I have made her feel guilty about her choices when she's already hurting. I let my I-wanna-fix-the-world attitude cross the line.

She is accurate to the personal attacks I'd dealt with as a mixed-race child. I don't experience it as an adult, but light skin versus dark skin and all the in-between effects on black people are here to stay.

How we as black people got to this internal conflict doesn't matter. I know some people think if we all study how we got here, we'll have some kind of Kumbaya awakening. Bullshit. Yet, I have no answers. I try to clean up the hurt I put on her.

“Darcelle.” She takes five seconds to look at me. “Darcelle, love is all about confusion. We can meet a good person, but they could be ten years older or younger, and to them that could mean you're not perfect enough for what they seek in life. We can meet a person who is attractive and loving, but their size is wrong for the activities or lifestyle we live. Maybe we meet someone with children, and we don't want children, or shit, some people have families that are just too damn crazy to deal with. A person cannot trade their family like a used car.

“How I worded what I said—I apologize. I know anyone can find themselves in a situation they had not intended.” The blue and red police lights reflect in the window. My heart and mind go back in time and visualize a dying, bleeding woman in my arms.

I must have been lost in thought for a moment; Darcelle taps me on the arm. “Can I call you PB like Velvet tells me you go by?”

“Yeah.”

“PB, I make good money, and for some men that's a problem. Maybe some women don't make it easy for a man in that department. You know, just because a person doesn't say something is a problem—harboring resentment is a death sentence to be handed out in any relationship. Being a lawyer, I have handled a few divorces. I had to stop handling them. The worst of ugliness can walk through the door seeking representation. I have represented men and women, and detested what they wanted to do to the other side. Men and women can be some fucked-up people, and I've had my moments.

“PB, you're puzzled about how I could have married a man who wore diapers, peed on me, and who fucks his mother. Everything you can think of…well, let the nastiest imaginable thoughts come to mind and it happened. I let him do it in the name of love, and to fit that old-school train of thought that what goes on behind closed doors is behind closed doors. If you wonder if I liked it, it doesn't matter. I did it, and I'm paying for it now, for loving unconditionally, although utterly foolishly.

“So, Mr. Black, I need you! Help me, please. Yes, I have issues; yes, I do! Maybe, with that critical mental stick you carry around, you may be helping me see the devil next time, and I'll keep the triangles and circles out of my square ass.

“Maybe you should look at your own life, though. Not everyone can liberate themselves. Here is a thought, PB—while you're saving
or protecting everyone, think of the ones you don't or cannot save. That should tell you that you're not the answer. You're a fix after the fact.”

“Good point. I pray over that often, and all I can do is continue to pray. But Darcelle, you didn't give me an answer to the one thing I needed to know despite your situation.”

“And that is?”

“Backbone. I needed to know, do you have a backbone? I needed to hear are you aware of your life, and life itself. If not, when I fix your problem, you'll make the same mistakes again, and as you said, I cannot save everyone, especially if I have to save the same people over and over.

“No matter how I put it to you or anyone else, they have to face their own hell and become stronger, not weaker. All shall rise to joy when after laying aside insecure emotions in thoughts and actions and by gaining faith in yourself, and first and foremost, in God. Neither man, nor woman, can steal one's joy if we are leaping to new heights, or rewriting a failed history by staring into the face of the enemy. The enemy is the old self, which lacked faith in its own soul and relied on someone else's. Excuse me if I seem to be preaching my point, but my grandfather had a Bible in his hand morning and noon, and a woman many nights, as he was studying. He shared his observations and analyses with me and I have found many to be true.”

Darcelle stares at me and finishes another glass of water. Her eyes are watery. She slowly shifts the scope of her vision to the windows. The outside lights, in reds, blues, yellows, and greens, reflects in her watery eyes. They reflect arresting of the old. Dinner jazz volume goes up as conversation filters out of the Performance Hall. I don't hear Gabrielle's voice or any other speaker's
anymore. Darcelle Day and I finish our conversation with her giving me information I need.

Does she have a man in her life now? I don't need another person trying to do something counterproductive to what I will have to do, even though I don't know what that is yet. She says her life is lonely and has been for years because she doesn't know whom she can trust to come in to her life. I feel sad for her.

I invite her to an event later. She says she will come. We shake hands, and she leaves.

“I
know somebody is in the room. I can hear you breathing. Are you getting off looking at me sitting here tied up and naked? You like what you see?”

Evita perceived evil close to her; she thought it was one person, but not the same person all the time. She'd been awake, clearheaded and bound since morning. She figured she must have been out through the night. She sensed it was mid to late afternoon. She was warm. A hood over her head made her skin itch from the heat inside.

Evita, hearing how her muffled voice resonated in the room, thought she was in a medium-sized room, with other furniture. She turned her body and placed her bound feet to the side of the mattress so they could touch what was under her. Carpet. The person in the room with her moved to a standing position. Evita could hear their breathing change, but not to any level of panic. Yet, the pace of the inhale and exhale changed.

It was not the first time Evita had been bound. Her life on the wild side of the streets had taught her about forced and unforced captivity. Evita didn't consider screaming; she knew no one was going to hear her. Pros had taken her. With her hands and ankles tied and no gag in her mouth, her captor or captors apparently weren't worried about her screams being heard. She had an inner chuckle about watching a crummy movie where a woman screamed
and begged to be let go, and she'd never tell anyone. She placed her feet back on the mattress and placed her tied hands between her legs and closed her thighs.

“Are you going to kill me?” She repeated the same question two more times. Evita was gauging distance and windows. She knew her back was near a wall. To her left, her voice reverberated, dead in a way, alerting her it was possibly wood there: furniture or a door. To her right, her voice sounded thinner, like a glass window was nearby. Evita calculated that most likely she was not in a basement or a warehouse.

“I need to use the bathroom. Now! Or you deal with the smell.”

Her hood was dark with a tight thread count; light was almost nonexistent. Evita needed to walk, to know if she could, or if whatever drug had taken her down was still having an impact. She needed to know the texture of her surroundings, and hopeful she would pass close by light to signal for help. Lastly, she wanted her kidnapper to come close to analyze. Psalms' survival lessons. His training, first as a Navy SEAL and then as a Secret Service agent, taught her to dissect situations, and think of possible counter measures.

“Now, asshole…now!” Evita feared to speak aggressively, but she needed her captor to get pissed, even if it caused her harm. Evita was in the survival mode of deduction.

A forceful grab of the hood near the back of her neck almost lifted Evita off the bed and off her feet. The captor stood her erect and led her like a dog on a choker chain and spun her around many times. Evita let out a wounded cry, but she did that each time so she knew she'd turned 360 degrees as a marker. She kept her eyes open and peered straight ahead knowing it would keep her from getting dizzy, although she was in the dark. Evita started to get a sense of her captor; at least the person holding her was not a pro.
The person now leading her in a few turns was about her same height because the pull on the rope was not a downward force. The person behind her was trying to use a straight arm to keep distance, but the distance was short. Evita's bound ankles had enough slack to allow her to take baby steps, and she kept count, just in case she needed to know.

Evita walked into a small room with a tile floor, and six feet from the entrance, she felt a cold toilet hit her leg. The toilet seat was down. It smelled clean. She knew she was in a nicer place: most likely a house.

Evita did her business, number one and two, and found a tissue roll next to her. Because her hands were bound loosely, she managed to clean herself, and water was turned on for her to wash her hands. Evita played ignorant of being able to follow the sound of where the water was coming from, and she was led to the sink.

Led back to the room, her eyes detected light—outdoor light, a window. The captor did not spin her around on the return. She was pushed from the back of her neck. Evita fell onto the bed. The hand that pushed her was small.

Time to listen for planes, trains, cars, dogs, human or mechanical noise.

Evita now knew all she could. She was by water. She could tell by a distant sound.

In the darkness, under the hood and in her mind's eye, she saw Psalms carrying her away to a safe place like times before. This time was so different: she understood she would be dead if Psalms didn't save her. A desire made her heart beat irregularly. If Psalms didn't save her in time, she still wanted him to carry her away, even if totally naked. Then her heart lost several beats.
What if he sees what is wrong with my body after all these years? Maybe he won't even touch me or bury me.

D
eniece Williams' “Cause You Love Me Baby” smoothly enters my ears, and I'm sure my head looks like a bobblehead with rhythm to the cars we are passing. I reach to turn the volume up, but PB beats me to it with the volume control on the steering wheel. The back of his hand touches my cheek as softly as the music.

Night lights on the Eastside of Seattle sparkle and seem to bounce with the music. Microsoft's neon signs are affixed on high-rise buildings, overlooking high-rent office space and high-end retail stores. I feel a slight G-force as PB powers the car on a wide, circled ramp onto the freeway.

I'm free from security restrictions tonight. I'm never away from a security detail unless I'm with PB. People want me dead. I would be a crest for their cause in and out of my great country. People hate—to the point of taking a life—as if it might bring some form of satisfaction, or avenge their cause. The ugly get only uglier. They kill Americans and will kill even more of them, and paint it pretty.

Most worry about death in terms of one day their time will come. Some worry about death in the form of an accident or sickness they hope to avoid. Fortunately, not many have to think death can come at them from the hands of a killer dreaming, plotting, hunting, and executing their mission. The killer who pulls a trigger, or pushes a button, maybe sets a timer, and
boom
…they smile and
revel in the same fulfillment of an orgasm that never stops…I live with that daily.

I wake up and wish I could plan my day with all I want to do. I go about my life, eating, drinking, laughing and possibly dancing the night away, and from there, I'll make love to my lover. In the middle of any joyous or ordinary moment, my killer or killers can rise up, and remove my smile, my breath, and take my last heartbeat. Tonight could be that night, but hopefully after I make love to the man next to me.

Why kill me?

Men starve women and children for land, or just to say they are in control. Many times, in my capacity of leadership in the administration I was in, I had to take a stance to support a cause I did not believe was right. America's best interest is always the last deciding factor. I cannot say I'm proud of everything I supported or took a stand for, but there is the greater good. I understand to some I'm an awful person for the decisions I have been a part of. Some are right; decisions can be awful and we often find out after the smoke has cleared. With everything any and all have done in their lives, turning back the hands of time is just a song when it's all said and done.

I'll be judged in history for my effectiveness or failures. Ultimately, the president I served under will receive the praise or blame, and ten or maybe twenty years later, I'll be forgotten or a side note.

I just left from the dinner where I told bits of truths and left out the whole reality of decisions made. People listened to me and acted as if they cared for forty minutes. People paid two hundred dollars for a steak that most likely came from another country. Some paid one-thousand dollars or more for a table to bring their friends to impress. Unknowingly, they ate farm-raised fish imported
from a poor country where people will starve. But tonight, because it was all cooked to picture-perfect presentation, we say it's all for a good cause.