The Heart of Revenge (27 page)

“If I don’t go to Cali today, I won't get the
job, it pays eight hundred U.S. per week. I got to go Mama.”

I wasn’t going to Cali to any job. I pulled
the zip around the suit case and lift it to standing on its wheels
on the floor.

“Mama, meditate. This is the best way to take
you out of the ghetto like you’ve always dreamed. I’m doing this
for us. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. For us, and Tati. I
got to go.”

“It just look strange for you to get a call
late in the night and you packing and leaving already, the next
day. Something just don't feel right ’bout this thing and you know
my feeling usually don't wrong.”

I turned around, looked at her withered face.
I should just be honest with her, tell her I was going up to escape
my guilt and this gangster life, a life that had gotten way too far
lastnight. This life wasn’t me, just wanted to prove to my friends
that I was thugged. I couldn’t afford for anyone calling me Sissy
like Vance, or let no one ride my back with ridicule. I had to show
them that I’m tough. So of course I hid my journal from them, the
only friend I showed my journal was Pinky, she knew I wrote, but I
never gave her my journal to read. I hide it from all my brethrens,
they’ll think my stories and poetry is too sentimental, girly and
soft. A thug can’t have that. I couldn’t tell Mama I was a gangster
either, it would make her angry. Make tears come to her sick eyes,
have her wondering what have she grown her boy to become, but it
wasn’t her, it was the streets. I was the streets. And I couldn’t
tell her about what happened lastnight, it would kill her the very
minute anywhere she stood. I pulled the handle of the suitcase and
it extended out for me to haul.

“Mama, got to go.” I was striding by her,
wheeling the luggage.

“You sure you not lying to me Ajrien? Look at
me.” She touched me at my waist as I hauled the suitcase by her,
tried to subside my emotions. I couldn’t. I stopped. “Who’s going
to be here with us if nothing happen, God forbid?” Her eyes were
weakening. "What if things don’t work out up at foreign? How mi and
Tatiana going to eat?”

I couldn’t look back at her, I gazed ahead at
the door. I’m usually an optimist, but in reality things could get
really atrocious. Portia link is my dying straw of hope. I really
want it to come through so I can really uplift Mama’s life. Turn
this negative that had happened to me to drive me into a positive.
Mama been suffering long enough.

I looked at my hand, my fourth finger, it had
a plastic ring. Lia had given me the ring six years ago. We were
kids, playing, but serious. Marriage. I was so right for her then.
Now I’m so wrong. I guess that’s how life is, people change as time
goes by. Situation and circumstances change people. We have grown
to be two different persons. She went uptown, I went gangster. I
ran my hand over Mama’s wrinkled hand at my side.

“Everything will be alright.” I remembered
the card, “Almost forget.” I brushed the left side of my blazer
open and went into the top pocket of my button up shirt. “Here.” I
handed her my bank card, “Use this till I get myself together up
there.”

I ran a quick mental check to see if I was
leaving anything that I would need. No. The four things I valued
the most I had, my journal, a wallet size pic of Tati and Mama, my
credit card and my white plastic ring. Nothing else mattered that
much. Time to leave.

Tatiana rompingly skipped through the door,
vivaciously hopping in the same spot. Dropped her blue Dora the
Explorer Lunch-pan at her feet and clapping with her tiny finger
spread wide apart and missing the clap on some occasions. Her blue
and white uniform bouncing to the rhythm of her energetic hops, her
forehead sweating from the hot sun outside. One of her pink
knapsack’s straps slinking about to fall off her shoulder, you can
actually see the dry dust on her blue socks and black shoe, except
for the silver buckle at the side of her shoe. She swung both hands
up to me for a hug. I smiled, hugged my little princess.

“Monster Daddy, plway monster ... tehehe” The
Monster game she was talking about was Hide and Seek, but I’m the
monster looking for her, and when I found her I gobbled her knees.
She giggled loudly when she hid so I could find her quickly and eat
her knee. That's the part she loved. She absolutely loved it, eyes
became sparkly, giggled endlessly as I playfully gobbled her
knee.

“Can’t play now sweetface. Got to go.”

“Tehehe ... Daddy where you going?”

“Remember what I told you this morning
sweetface?”

“Yeah ... You going in the sky.”

“Not in the sky baby, in a plane.” Tati had a
slight lisp from the couple of teeth missing from her mouth, her
voice was mostly sing-songy when she spoke,

“Really really and truly ruly going on plane
Daddy?” She pointed one finger up to the roof. “Up there so? In the
sky?”

Maybe leaving wasn’t the right thing after
all. I frisked my hand in her thick head of hair, nodding, yes. She
asked the darnest questions. Her round face as broad as pie, her
cheeks puffy, smiling and wiggling her head out of my frisking
hand,

“Stop spwoil my hairstyle Daddy. I’mma hot
girl.” This little big woman was so cute, and seemed smarter than
Google for two and a half years old, a blessing to me.

“Who tell you that you are a hot girl?” She
fixed her knapsack’s strap properly on her shoulder, akimboed and
rocking, said

“Aunty Pinky!” She smiled, her eyes proud,
"Daddy, want come with you, plwease, plwease.” She grabbed onto my
suitcase handle, started pulling, helping me with the suitcase.

"Oh, no, no, Hold on, you can't sweetface.
Well not yet. You have school tomorrow.”

"No. Not sweetface Daddy, hot girl... Is your
plane? You must Brwing back ice-cream and cheese-balls for me.” I
watched her in awe, she was just in my scrotum like yesterday. “You
want mi give you money to buy ice-cream Daddy? She generously
dipped in her uniform like she had money. Mama smiled, my heart
smiled, my face smiled, “You soon come back Daddy?”

We stopped smiling. There was a sudden
eruption of silence in the room that was heavy on our hearts and
awkward. She looked at me. Mama looked at me. I gazed at them both.
The cataract was spreading in Mama’s eye, almost covering half of
her pupil. I replied,

“I don’t know.”

“Come back tomorrow Daddy, or else mi ...”
She lashed her hand by her bottom suggestive of whipping me. “beat
your bottom.” She smiled, she was so joyous. “We can play Monster
tomorrow when you come back Daddy?”

I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t
tell her the whole truth. My phone beeped. A text. It was Portia. I
read it. It read

‘You have to link mi right now. Stop by at
work before you leave and how you never answer what mi ask you
lastnight? You doing it or not?’

From the tone of the text I knew it spelled
some disaster. I hoped this had nothing to do with what happened
lastnight, or worse anything bad about the link in Cali, or
worserer bad news about both. The taxi tooted its horn outside. I
looked at Tati waiting for the ice-cream and Monster tomorrow,
looked in Mama’s cataract eye, kissed Mama. Kissed Tati.

“Have to go.”

Tati was no fool. she sensed it was more than
tomorrow, by the look in my face and by the aura around us. She
felt it. Her face changed, her smile disappeared. She stepped
towards me. Her feet bounced her Dora lunch-pan that was on the
floor. It fell over, spilled opened, her lunch container an juice
bottle rolled out. She didn’t look at it, she looked in my eyes and
insisted

"Daddy don't go.”

“Got to go sweetface, I got to go.”

by: Leelia Lexings

It was a surprise how huge the crowd was
already. The accident was a lot nastier than I had imagined. There
was a river of blood on the black tar. A totally dismantled red
Suzuki Swift and a white coaster bus. The coaster crashed head on
with the small Suzuki Swift . The petrified crowd surrounded the
dead body. A bald head gentleman.

The driver had smashed through his windscreen
and was laying against shattered glass from windscreen, headlights,
and orange and red indicators. Blood pouring from his split skull.
Instantly my mouth and stomach felt provoked. I tasted earthworms
in my mouth and felt them wiggling. I covered my mouth. A young
girl probed up-close to the disgusting sight of the dead body,
curious to see more clearly in the night what the body looked like.
She vomited lumpy chunks of pink, orange and brown slush in a
watery mixture at the sight of inside the man’s head and the raw
smell of his blood and brain. She spewed one more mouthful of vomit
slush on top of the already colourful muck on the ground.

The witnesses all seemed more angry than
shocked. The bus driver walked in every direction and in circles,
his two hands on his head, his fingers squashed down into his huge
afro. He was chatting non-stop.

“Is swing mi did have to swing out of the
green Rover boy that run through the redlight enuh. Suppose mi
never did swing? With the speed him come round the corner the whole
bus load of people would’ve dead off to pussyclawt.” He stopped and
looked at an office attired lady that must have been on the bus,
seeking her approval “Don’t? You see that is Jah-Jah guide the bus
though mumma?”

My eyes instinctively searched the
surrounding for the Rover that caused the accident. Nowhere in
sight. Gone.

“Him not even stop after him ram up in the
little youth vehicle and kill off the youth.”

The driver took one of his hand off his head.
Shoved his hand down his big jeans with its waist two times the
size of the driver waist, hauled up and draped up around his belly
by a slim belt. He shuffled his hand up and down his pocket. Took
out a slim silver phone. Dialled, one hand still on his head. A
market lady asked aloud,

“Nobody don’t catch his licence plate
number?”

“Mi catch the number.” A student still in his
khaki pants and white shirt said.

Mr. Douglas had no conscience. He could run
but they still gonna find him anyway. I bet he must have raced
home. I hurried my barefoot across the road to the red plate taxi
and chartered it straight to Mr. Douglas’ house.

I reached. The crushed Rover was there,
parked. The property was closed. The steel gate padlocked. The
guard, Mr. Willie, was in the white guard room to the side of the
wide gate. This is a problem. I wondered if Mr. Willie knew I was
no longer entitled to enter the property without consent. My
wedding drama was the hottest mix-up in the entire area, because of
how popular the Douglas family were and to have such a propaganda
at Mr. Douglas’ son wedding was headline mix-up. Well apart from
the dirt I had on Mr. Douglas. Mr. Willie must have heard about the
wedding, of that I’m sure. How should I approach this? Shoot. Only
one way. Here goes.

by: Leelia Lexings

“Hey, night Mr Willie. How things man?”

“Goodnight Ms. Leelia, longtime mi don't see
you ’round this side.”

“Yeah. Been up and down. Busy. Really been
awhile for true. Can you believe I left my keys at home? Oh silly
me. Let me in please.”

Mr. Willie put down his Pepsi on the guard
table, turned the volume knob down on the small radio. His black
rubber watch was buckled in the last hole on the watchband but it’s
still swingled around his fine wrist. His navy blue guard uniform
was baggy and slinky on him. He definitely didn’t have the built to
be a security.

“You leave your keys? ... How?”

“The haste.”

“Boy Ms. Leelia, mi hear ’bout what happen at
the wedding. Sorry to hear that man. Up to this morning mi and my
wife was talking ’bout it.” He spun the silver key in the huge
padlock, unchained the gate and opened it.

“I know right. It’s Ok still, we worked it
out.” Walking through the gate with a feeling of relief, yes I got
in. Mr. Willie wrote my name down in the visitors’ log book.
Stopped writing. Looked up at me suspiciously.

“But wait ...” He paused, “Come out back one
second Ms. Leelia.”

“Why Mr. Will?”

“You just come out back little.”

“Why?”

by: Leelia Lexings

I stood inside the property still. Staring at
Mr. Willie in disbelief.

“Mr. Willie? Do better than that, don’t treat
me like mi a thief.”

“You is not no thief Ms. Leelia, but just
come back out one second please.”

I looked to the apartment complex. It was a
lengthy dash from here. I’m not in heels, barefoot. Should be able
to sprint leave Mr. Willie. I thought hard. Looked at Mr. Willie
back at the complex, back at Mr. Willie. My steps towards the gate
and back through were slow. He spun back the lock close. But why
should Mr. Willie treat me like a stranger? We cool. I made him
lasagne for lunch every Saturday when I lived here. I glared at Mr.
Willie in disbelief. I was no thief. I touched between my
bosom.

“It’s me enuh Mr. Willie. Leelia.”

“Yes Ms. Leelia, mi know is you from you
walking come up the gate...” His small eyes were like two black
beads staring at me through the night’s darkness, his face shaved
clean and his receding hairline an ill-shaped semicircle, “But mi
not sure mi can let you in?”

“Of course Mr. Willie man. Why not?”

“Mi don't want get in no trouble.”

“What kind of trouble? It’s me. What mi going
to do? Rob the complex?”

“Mi doing mi job. Mi following procedures. Mi
just get some orders and mi have to check out something first. It
alright with you if mi do my job? Or you want tell mi how to do my
job?”