Saint And Sinners (56 page)

“Three? Dayum! I been busy!” he laughed garishly. “I thought I just had a son.”

“As I was going under, you heard me talking about my son. That’s how you knew I was
having problems with him, and the first thing you wanted to say to me was not to ask
you for advice…but I must. Please, I’m begging you, Saint.”

The boy sat there for a minute and scratched his freshly faded hair, deliberating,
rolling it over in his mind.

“And by the way…you and Raphael are still best friends.” Saint grinned.

“Awwww man!” The boy lit up like a Christmas tree. “That’s my boy! Some good ass news…
Okay…what is it? What did you want to ask me?”

“I know he’s only nine, but is there anything I can say to my son to make it a bit
easier for him as he goes through this process of growing into his powers and what
that entails? I no longer have the mindset of a child, Saint. I am a grown man. I
can’t go back in time and think like you or a nine year old. I’ve tried, believe me,
I have. You, on the other hand, are in between both worlds. You have the body of a
man; you are
almost
physically sexually mature. As you know, you can get a girl pregnant right now if
you’re not careful. You have facial hair, pubic hair, your voice is deepening… Your
body is more like how it will be when you are my age than how it was before, even
when you were twelve…but the outside of you doesn’t match the inside. You have the
mind of a child, as most others your age do. I need to know what
I
can do that I’m not already doing, to help him.” Saint brought his hand up and laid
it against his heart. “I’ve accepted I can’t change his fate, but I
refuse
to sit back and not make him understand that I love him, and I will always be there
for him. I need to say it in a way that he better understands and believes, though.
He isn’t talking to me, Saint…he isn’t talking to anyone, actually, except his mother,
and even that is strained.”

The boy thought long and hard for a while.

“Let me tell you what to tell him.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out another
joint, lit it, and took another toke. The room filled with wispy rings of smoke. “You
tell him that he is greatness, not because YOU are greatness, and he came from your
fuckin’ nutsack. No, you tell him he is greatness because he just fuckin’
is
! Let him know it got little to do with you—you were just the man to bring him into
this fucked up world, okay?” The boy’s eyes narrowed as he drew serious.

“You tell him ain’t shit that can happen, not even the death of his own mama, to make
you to stop loving him and supporting him!” The boy’s eyes welled with tears, his
bottom lip trembled, after the troubling words left his mouth. He was in serious pain,
falling apart in front of him. Saint knew this was taking everything out of the boy,
so he appreciated his sixteen-year-old self even more for giving him this gift. Saint
wiped a tear away from his eye as he felt the emotional tumor growing and growing
and growing…

The boy pointed an unsteady finger in Saint’s face. “Keep being the best father you
can be, man,” he said, shuddering. “That’s another reason I wanted to make sure I
never slipped up and got no girl pregnant!” Tears streamed down the boy’s face now—hot,
angry tears. “Not just because I’m too young and didn’t want my freedom gone, but
also because I didn’t want to be like my old man! I knew I would…I sure as
hell
would because I don’t care about shit right now and just like my old man didn’t want
my ass to ever be conceived, I don’t want no fuckin’ baby at this time. A kid deserves
better than that! They got the right to be wanted, loved. He ain’t
never
want me and
still
don’t!” He was sobbing now, crying into the palms of his trembling hands. Saint reached
out and touched the boy, but his fingers went right through, as if his sixteen-year-old
self were made up of the same particles that created dreams.

“Since I made it past twenty-one and got me a little shorty… Shit, I got three you
say, right?”

“Yes, you have two sons and a little baby girl…nine, six and three. Hassani is the
eldest. He is just like you, looks like a darker version of you and acts like you,
too. Then your second one is Dakarai. He looks like you and his mama combined, almost
a fifty-fifty split, but acts more like his mother. Then last, you have Isis… She’s
beautiful, Saint, and she’s smart, so full of life, just a real sweetheart. She is
definitely a daddy’s girl. They are great children… I’m blessed…so blessed.” Saint
ran his finger under his eye, rubbing away more tears. “All three of your children
are gifted by the way. Hassani is the strongest.”

The boy paused and smiled real wide, the tears still streaming down his face. “Is
my wife an Angel Child, too?”

“No. She’s a commoner, a civilian. And you know what the best part is?”

“What?”

“She knows
exactly
what we are, Saint, and she accepts us. She loves us, acts like it is no big deal.
She was born and raised in California, and that’s where you meet her. She’s not just
a good fuck, Saint.” He swallowed, repressing the desire to reprimand his sixteen-year-old
self. “She’s the mother of your children, all of them planned and wanted and desired!
Your fears do
not
come true! She’s your lover, and the best fucking lay you’ve ever had not just because
she can take a dick beat down, but because you two are in love and she completes you!
You two don’t just have sex, you make
love
to her. You take care of her, and she takes care of
you
. She’s your best friend in the whole world. She’s your soulmate…made especially for
you.”

The boy paused long and hard, undoubtedly thinking about the whole concept of a soulmate.
Saint surmised the notion had never entered his damn mind…

“You are a good dad, I can see it…
feel
it.” He leaned slightly forward, causing his gold chain to sway like a pendulum.
“You so proud when you talk about them; you smile, even through your pain, when you
talk about them. I like that. Matter of fact, I like the future me.” He smiled a bit
wider. “You don’t beg a mothafucka for shit, I can see that about you, but you begged
me to tell you how to make your son…
our
son’s life better. I’ll tell you how, damn it. You tell him every damn morning and
fuckin’ night that you got his back, man! That’s what the fuck you tell your oldest
shorty, man. You let him explore. He gotta do some shit on his own, find out the hard
fuckin’ way, but keep a chain on his ass in case he get too far.

“You yank his ass back, so he know you love him ’cause one day, won’t be no damn chain,
and he’ll be off on his damn own. If you do what I say, he might get off track, shit,
ain’t no might, he
will—
he is an Angel Child with incredible strength if he like you, like
us—
but he will
always
bounce back to you, to your teachings, because he knows you believed in him, and
you loved the shit out of him and it’s all because you told him he was greatness in
the flesh! The child may stray, but it’s the parents’ love we always crave! He ain’t
gonna want to disappoint you and if you the parent you claim to be, that I
think
we are, he will want to be like his old man…men…when he get to be an old head because
he been out there, fuckin’ up, just like every kid in the damn city does at least
a time or two. And now he knows all the shit in the streets wasn’t shit!

“I ain’t stupid. I know I’ve been messin’ up. You tell me Mama,
our
mama, wouldn’t be proud of me sleeping around? Yeah, I know that…but what tha fuck
am I gonna do, huh?! Being in between some legs is the closest thing I got to feelin’
special! It’s the only time someone tells me I’m good at some shit; I’m great, I’m
important! I’m good at fuckin’, I make these females feel good, so that’s what I do
and I do it the best I can, so somebody wants me, at least for an hour or two. If
these broads really knew me, the
real
me, they wouldn’t want me, man. I’m too cerebral. I’m out here trying to be something
I’m not, just so I can get some pussy…and I get it. When I’m the real me, no one has
time for it… They don’t want to hear shit I got to say.”

“Saint, what do you like? Besides sex, what topics really get your blood pumping?”
Saint knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from his inner-child.

“I like science. These girls don’t wanna hear that shit, though! They don’t want to
sit around and talk about how life began on Earth, water on Mars and Sigmund Freud.
If I said, ‘Let’s talk about homeostasis.’ These ladies would look at me like I was
fuckin’ crazy and the only homeostatic shit they care about is if I have some stable,
steady cash flow, and a secure, hard ass cock. I have to read about all that shit
secretly, on the low, ’cause if anyone found out, my cover would be blown…but I love
it. I like reading about the world, and about all sort of shit, and thinking about,
like, ‘what if’ you know? I gotta bunch of science books under my bed. And I like
readin’ about anatomy and astronomy and all kinds of shit. I wish I could find a girl
that would let me be me, but shit, I can’t blame these broads, man. Even if I found
one, I probably still wouldn’t be happy. I got too much shit goin’ on.” He took another
puff of his joint. “I already got two strikes against me; I can’t make it worse for
myself.”

“What strikes are you referring to? What makes you feel inferior?”

“I’m a poor inner-city young man that the fucking world has forgotten about. I’m labeled
a criminal just for that alone; never mind that I make good grades and all that shit.
Secondly, I ain’t a white man. In case you haven’t noticed, they run the world, and
I can’t pass for that shit, either—not that I’d want to. Matter of fact, most people
try to guess what the fuck I am and get it wrong. I ain’t mad about it though.” He
shrugged. “How many half Korean, half Egyptian mothafuckas
you
know?” He chuckled, causing Saint to do the same.

“…Not many.”

“Exactly. So, I’m just out here, man, wasting away, but your son ain’t…
my
son. Wow, that trips me out. Anyway, he got somebody; he got an active father in
the damn house. He only nine; cut the little guy some slack. He gonna do right, I
promise you. He gonna do right, ’cause he got a mama that’s still breathing and she
is a good mama too or you wouldn’t even be wit’ her ass and he got a father that loves
him so much, he came to visit his former self…some shit we both know neither of us
wanted to do, because it fuckin’ hurts! The best thing in the world is the genuine
love from a parent, and he got that, times two! My shorty is gonna be dope, man—a
damn champion. I’m proud of his ass already, and I ain’t ever laid eyes on him.”

“Would you like to see him?”

Boy-Saint paused for a moment, as if afraid to answer.

“Yeah…let me see him.”

Saint looked into his eyes real closely and envisioned Hassani from the moment he
was born, until the way he looked at present. The boy started to shake again then,
his body trembling from head to toe, and a smile cracked his face. He was proud…so
damn proud.

“I love him. He’s the
best
part of me! I
made
him!” Tears rolled down his face. “Not everything I touch turns to shit—he’s proof!
Tell my wife, good lookin’ out.” He smirked and chin checked. “You calm down, you
relax, man. It’s copasetic. You good, man…you
better
than good. Peace.”

…And then the sixteen-year-old Saint vanished.

Saint, the man, sat there all alone. The only time he’d felt lonelier had been when
Xenia had moved out of their home several years earlier. He couldn’t stop shaking,
falling to fucking pieces. All that remained was the strong, rich aroma of freshly
lit marijuana hanging thickly in the air, and the tears that continued to pour, wetting
his shirt, making a mess of everything. He clutched his kneecaps, coming even more
undone, despite Lawrence’s muffled voice in the background.

“Saint! Wake up! Saint!”

His eyes fluttered, and suddenly, he was back on the man’s floor, the burnt orange
pillow crushed under his writhing weight and his face stinging from the tears that
still continued to stream down his face. He looked around, confused and out of sorts.

“What happened? Am I here? I mean, is it over?” He looked to the left and right, then
straight ahead, unable to grasp reality with both hands if he’d tried.

“Yes, it’s over, Saint.” Lawrence snuffed out the candle and grabbed his arms, squeezing
tightly. “Look at me…no, not over there. Look into my eyes.”

Saint finally met eyes with the man.

“I want you to take three deep breaths, okay? You are running on adrenaline right
now, and your body and spirit are confused about placement.”

Saint gulped, then did as told. His heart began to beat a bit slower. Lawrence handed
him his Snapple.

“Now drink the rest of that…”

He drank until there wasn’t a drop left.

“Alright. It is obvious you saw yourself as a teenager. I could only hear your responses
to your younger self, not what he was saying. Whatever it was, it moved you…touched
you. Hopefully you received some answers you needed as well as told him what you thought
of him…”

“…I did. But, I wish I’d had more time.”

Lawrence nodded. “When he left, that meant it was time to go.”

“It’s strange… I’m worried about a boy I used to be, Lawrence. I’m worried for that
kid. I know he is inside of me, reliving his sixteenth year over and over again. That
was one of the worst times of my life. When most sixteen year olds are in Driver’s
Ed, or getting their first car, or having some big party, I was living on the street
for a few days until Raphael’s mother took me in. While other kids were in school,
I was hanging out with people that didn’t care if I lived or died. They wouldn’t have
lost a wink of sleep if someone gunned me down right in front of them. Lawrence, will
he remember that he spoke to me? Or will I fade away in his mind?”