Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father (91 page)

“Nuh uh! I don’t like this game!” Hassani protested. Dakar
ai’s face cracked with a devious smile. Hassani had spent quite a bit of time training himself to block his brother from the constant invasions, but the stronger Dakarai got, the more difficult it became to keep the little guy at bay.

“Come on, Hassani. I’m doing this for a reason. Don’t try to block him, just let him see something you don’t mind him seeing.”

Hassani turned reluctantly toward his brother and did as he was told. After a couple of minutes, Dakarai smiled and looked at his father who held Isis in his arms.

“He thinking about what did
Mommy cook for dinner. Can we ask Isis to show us?”

Saint and Hassani burst out laughing.

“Dakarai, Isis can’t just do it at a drop of a dime all the time. It isn’t guaranteed and it is tiring for her, just like it is hard work to move objects around without our hands. As she practices and gets older though, she will be able to do it quickly. She’s still too young right now.”

“Well Daddy
, did Mommy tell you what she is makin’ for dinner ’cause I don’t want none of that onion stuff or that loaf of meat.”

“Meatloaf?” Saint smirked. “The turkey meatloaf?”

“Yeah, I don’t like it.”

“I don’t know what she made, Dakarai. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you’ll eat whatever it is, if you’re hungry enough.” Saint laughed as he ruffed up the boy’s hair.

Dakarai grimaced and crossed his arms in defiance.

“Okay, now
, was your brother right, Hassani?”

Hassani smiled and nodded. “Yes. I was wondering what she made for dinner and I’ll eat the meatloaf because I like it but I don’t like onions and Mommy knows it, so she leaves
them off mine.”

Saint grinned and looked back at
his middle child. “Dakarai,” he said sternly. “I’ve told you time and time again to stop reading people’s thoughts. You are going to get into some trouble if you don’t stop it. Now, I mean it. I will take each and every toy out of your room until I feel you deserve to have them them back if you don’t cut it out.”

“But you just tol’ me to do it, Daddy!”
Tears welled up in the little boy’s eyes.

Saint dropped down and grabbed him, kissing his cheek.

“Dakarai, calm down. I asked you to do it so I could time you, to see how fast you could get inside and to see if your gift is developing at a good rate. I wanted to also see if your brother could properly block information he didn’t want you to see. It helps both of you in the long run.”

“Den why you get mad at me?”
he asked, sniffing.

“You’ve been doing it to other people. We’ve gotten complaints that you are eavesdropping on private conversations. You and I both know that you have not been. I know how you are getting the information. It must stop at once, Dakarai. I’m not playing with you. This isn’t a game. It could affect you and the rest of us in a bad way. Do you understand me?”

Dakarai nodded and wiped off the tears from his eyes. Saint stood back up and patted his head.

“Okay now
, Hassani, I want you to reach inside that basket and take out three things. I want you to make them move around at the same time, and you and I will toss them back and forth to one another.”

Hassani smiled wide and raced over to the picnic basket. He removed a baseball, a green toy car and one of Isis’ baby dolls.

Dakarai pointed and laughed. “You picked a doll!” He held his chest as he giggled, holding his stomach, and fell back on his behind. “You like dolls!”

“Shut up, Day-Day, no I don’t! You a punk!” Saint could feel that Hassani regretted picking out the thing. Saint also knew that Dakarai had said the mean words because he was jealous. Saint shook his head, realizing that sibling rivalry between the two was inevitable.

“Nuh uh! You uh punk! Dollbaby, kiss! Kiss!” Dakarai giggled.

“If Daddy wasn’t here, I’d knock you out, dummy! You’d be cryin’ and I’d be happy about it!”

“Okay, you two stop it right now! Hassani, stand over there.”

Hassani backed up.

“A bit farther. Okay, that’s good.”

Isis hugged her Daddy’s neck tighter.

After a few minutes, the doll, baseball and car spun around in the air. Hassani smiled as he looked up at them. He was given the rare opportunity to do this outside. He’d never been allowed before.

“Great, good. Now move them toward me and do it slowly. I don’t want to get hit in the forehead by a tiny Porsche.” They all started laughing, except Isis, who was too busy chewing on her shirt collar and drifting in thought. One by one, the objects moved between them, as if they were playing a slow-motion game of catch.

“This is cool!” Hassani exclaimed. “This is fun!” And they continued on for a couple more minutes until Saint took his turn, grabbed the objects from the air and returned them to the basket.

“Alright gang, let’s get packed up and out of here. I just needed to see and feel where you all were at. Dakarai, you are getting much stronger, as I suspected. I surmise by the time you reach fifteen or sixteen, there won’t be many who can stop you from getting into their mind. Hassani, since you are multi-tiered, I know less about your future but—”

“Ask Isis,” Hassani blurted, causing more laughter.

“That was good, that was witty, a fast comeback, too.” Saint narrowed his eyes on the boy and pointed at him, pleased at Hassani’s response. “
But as I was saying, I don’t know but the gifts I’m sure you have, they, too, are growing stronger. You guys are doing great.”

“Grape!” Isis shouted, causing more laughter as they made their way down the hill back to the Escalade.

“Great, baby. Daddy said ‘great.’”

“Grape!” Isis repeated anyway, causing Saint to smile even wider.

“You must be hungry, we’ll be home soon.”

They all piled into the car and Saint made sure everyone was secure in their respective seats. As he drove home, he thought about how incredibly gifted and beautiful his children were. He was thankful that they were strong and healthy, and had their own thoughts and personalities. He drifted into the pleasantry until Dakarai broke his thoughts with a question.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Dakarai?”

“Why don’t Traci come by no more?”

Saint lowered his head a bit and
ran his hand across his forehead as he drove down the narrow path before reaching the highway.

“She—”
He got ready to lie, but then he looked in the rearview mirror at the boy, at those dark eyes—eyes just like his mother’s—staring right back at him. He told himself after the hospital bullshit he’d never lie to his children again. “Dakarai, she and Jagger are going through some personal things, okay? I can’t tell you because it is between them and it is adult business. But she still likes you and Hassani, as much as she did before. She just needs some time to herself is all.”

Dakarai grinned real big and wide. “Dat’s fine. That mean I can date
’er now.”

Saint smiled weakly then broke out laughing.

“What do you know about dating, Dakarai?” he asked, but Hassani jumped in, derailing the entire conversation.

“He don’t know nothin’ about dating, Daddy!”

“I do, too!”

“She don’t want you. You’re a lil’ boy. You only five! I gotta girl, but if I didn’t, she’d want a man, like me.” Hassani jetted his thumb into his chest and cut the little guy down as the roar of passing cars flew past.

And the two boys continued to argue back and forth, insult after insult in their own special way while Isis sat between them, oblivious to her brothers’ antics. Saint smirked and shook his head as he drove home, tired, but so happy to have these crazy little people in his life…

~***~

Saint took a sip of his lukewarm water, the label saturated with condensation, falling apart against his thumb each time he manipulated it with a nervous rub. He’d just gotten a text message from Jagger that the IRS had seized more files and wished to see him as soon as he got back in town. It put a bit of a damper on things, yet he still had to attend to his responsibilities. Now, he stood in front of the audience of Queens and Rainbeaus—a couple’s conference, a novel idea which may be the first of many, or the one and only. No one was for certain, but it was suggested and pushed by the panel, and Saint accepted his role in the matter. He looked out into the audience and scanned the area in slow succession from left to right, as if he were a panoramic camera hired to do an in-depth documentary. All eyes were on him. The Queens, radiant and beautiful coming in different shades of brown, sat beside their husbands. Some held hands, others seemed tense while others appeared to only be there to test out this so-called dynamic speaker. They’d come from all of the country to hear Dr. Aknaten speak about the divinity of their relationship.

“So it appears to me,” Saint continued, “that the vilification of the interracial relationships
that consist of women of African descent, lineage and heritage and her partner of non-African descent receive an uneven level of condemnation.” He paused, setting his bottle down in the podium and stuffing a hand in his pants pocket. “The playing field is not even. We can simply look at the media representation as one reliable source, to determine this unleveled situation. While one situation appears to be glorified, another is torn to pieces.”

He picked up his water bottle, took another long, hard gulp as if it were the vodka he craved and continued.

“We hear about the diseased mentality of the black woman.” He slowly paced the small stage; low lights set him aglow. “We hear from online sensations on websites such as You Tube, BlackPlanet and commentary from some celebrities about how bitchy the black woman is.” He paused again as he looked out at the sea of people. They were quiet, hooked in, waiting.

“We hear the sarcasm and cruelty, not based in logic, but emotionalism. The same cats telling black women and black men about the emotionalism of black women are showing their
own
emotional instability, under the guise of allegedly telling the truth, of keeping it real, of dispensing education on a primal level. This is not true. The motivation for misinformation is indeed a vehicle to deceive. This is done by repeated blogging, vlogging, publishing books and articles to proclaim the black woman as undesirable, downtrodden, physically unhealthy, manly in her appearance, barbaric, suffering from a ghetto mentality, unkempt, devoid of moral fiber, habitually self-victimized, classless, uneducated, money grubbing and financially exploitive, sexually promiscuous, intellectually incompetent, overly dramatic and riddled with delusions of grandeur.”

A roar of low applause rippled through the mixed crowd.

“The truth of the matter,”—Saint removed a small white cloth from his pocket and swiped it gently across his brow, then returned it to the warm cubby of his pants—“is that there are women
and
men of
all
races, creeds and ethnicity, who could fit those descriptions. However, when someone feels they have been harmed by a particular group of people, and they attribute it to that person’s race and gender, their emotional instability comes out of them. It oozes out of their pores and if they have
any
intellectual inclinations at all, it can come out as educated, well-researched and coherent. Once you look deeper into the cause, into the person, into their history and dichotomy, you discover they are a wounded person. Now, the wounds may not be evident. They may not even realize they are wounded…” He paused, allowing his words to steep before continuing. “But just because an animal is bleeding out it’s gut, doesn’t know an arrow is wedged in its rib and half of its brain falling out through its ears, doesn’t mean the wound is suddenly hidden, healed or gone away. One’s own acknowledgement of a situation does not change the facts.”

Several people stood
and broke in enthusiastic applause as Saint wrapped up his discussion.

“I was told this evening that I would be speaking to aristocrats, to high-class, upper echelon people
.” He grinned, welcoming a few sporadic chuckles. “I was told to please not use excessive profanity because this isn’t a conference, this is for scholars who happen to be in interracial marriages and wish to take back the information to the masses and share it. Initially, I said ‘Fuck you.’.”

The crowd burst with laughter.

“But then I agreed to it, and the reason was to show diversity and depth. This is not the style I prefer, but apparently, some people do not believe I can speak eloquently, that I have the education I do, imparted from some of the best teachers in this land and that I myself have mentored some up-and-coming therapists who are now doing great work around the world. We have discussed very serious matters this evening. I have focused mainly on the image of interracial relationships and racism that pertains directly to that, as a reflection of our societal woes and problems. I want to close, however, with speaking about the karmic orgasm, and how all of us, all races of people on this planet, begin life from an ejaculation and what that actually means.” He cleared his throat.

“We all were created by two people. Unless you were formed in a lab or cloned, you were created by two people…a man and a woman who made love. Even if you are the product of a pimp and his whore, a trick and a prostitute, a child conceived from rape or a one-night stand, two people got together and had intercourse,
and whether it was consensual or not didn’t stop the ejaculation from occurring. One person at least, the man, ejaculated. This is important because…” Saint moved slowly across the stage. “We have demonized sex in this society and we’ve done so even more so when a black woman opens herself physically to her non-black partner. Sex is natural. Sex is normal. Sex is the beginning of life. We corrupt it, turn it into something dirty, when everyone on this planet, came from the same means—an orgasm. How can we dirty something up that is so magnificent and efficient as well as physically, spiritually and emotionally fulfilling? When a woman has an orgasm right before, during or soon after the act of intercourse, it changes her vaginal pH balance. This will either help influence boy sperm, which are not as strong as girl sperm but faster, to make it to the egg first, or it will do the opposite; there are many factors involved. This is a somewhat provocative statement, however, I have a very good friend who is a well-known specialist in this field, and he swears by this.” Saint shrugged.