Life After Death

by Sister Souljah

  “Okay, I am not innocent. I was not innocent. I was never innocent. I was not a drug dealer. But I did hold my nigga’s guns and drugs and move them from here to there. If that makes me a criminal, then yes, the truth is, I am a criminal. I am not innocent. How you like that? I did not lie,” I said. However, my voice did not say anything back to me.

  The screen switched on. It froze on some type of weird word list. “Say aloud which of these sins you have committed in your Earth lifetime and/or afterlife.” Those were the instructions listed above the word list. I just stared at the list. I thought it was some last trick that would be their final attempt to break me. They wanted to turn me into a liar. But, I came to the Truth Booth with my mind determined to win. So I started at the top, scanning the words and calling out aloud the wrongs that I had committed in my life and afterlife.

  “Fornication,” I said aloud. I remember Pretty taught me the meaning of that word. “Yeah, I fucked a bunch of niggas who I wasn’t married to and who weren’t married to me. But I did not fuck married niggas. That has to count for something,” I said aloud to the voice that was my own. Then a thought occurred to me and I swiftly explained myself. “Yeah, I wanted to fuck Midnight even though I know and knew that he was married. But the truth is that I never fucked him and I never fucked no married man.”

  “Continue,” my voice said to me. My eyes refocused on the list and scrolled down. I saw the word sodomy. I knew that was ass-fucking. But I didn’t think that I could be guilty of sodomy. I don’t have a dick. If I did, I wouldn’t put it in an ass. So since I did not put a dick in anyone’s ass, I skipped that one.

  I felt like I was aging while reading the haram list. Haram being the word used in the City of Mercy for forbidden things. The nuns called them sins. It was all the same shit I guess. And between the harams and the sins, there were more than sixty words on the screen. I have felt teenage young my whole life. I even felt like a teenager before I actually became a teenager. I even felt like a teenager when I was no longer a teenager. I felt like a teenager even the day I got released after serving fifteen years. No one could convince me then that I was a day older than nineteen. But in this booth reading this list, I felt squeezed. Kind of how I felt when I was lying in my casket, with my eyes and lips stitched shut and my bones breaking and my body deteriorating.

  Okay, I need to focus. So far I had called out that I committed three murders and fornication. I hesitated. My eyes hovered over the word theft. I am not a thief. Simone’s the thief! I thought to myself. “Wait a minute,” I asked out loud. “Should I confess to being a thief just because of the one incident with the old lady, the Gucci shoes, cash and credit cards? I already confessed to the murder!” I hollered in frustration. My own voice, which I heard clearly in surround sound; my own voice, which I did not control; my own voice, which had been making all of these accusations against me, did not reply. The screen with the word list switched off. The film of incidents of my real life began once again. But where was this place I was seeing on the wall screen? Obviously, it’s some church. So now I was like, What the fuck does that have to do with me? I never attended nobody’s church. That isn’t the sanctuary in the convent. That was the only church-like place I been to. Who are these people packed in the pews? Way more people than the convent had at the Last Stop Before the Drop. The images moved. I was in a bathroom again. But this time, I was inside the toilet stall with the door locked shut. I wasn’t shitting, though. I had the toilet seat down and I was using the top of it to sort money. The bills were disorganized. So I was separating the ones, fives, tens, and twenties like Poppa Santiaga taught me to do. He liked clean, neat bills. All bill faces facing the same direction. The wall screen froze on my pretty fingers with the bills in my hand. The image faded. The booth went dark. Instead of waiting, I just got it over with. I couldn’t win this game with a lie. So why delay? “Theft!” I screamed out that one word. I was keeping it short. I did not need to add on the circumstance or explain how I stole the money from the church event that was put together to raise funds for HIV-positive children and their families. I know I did. I know the reason why I did. But this bitch who was me, or this voice that was my own, or this film of my life that I didn’t agree to or benefit from didn’t know my reasoning. My reasoning couldn’t be captured on film. Not even a film that seemed to be coming from the soul dot. My reasoning for all the shit I did was in my head and no one else’s. So yeah, fuck it. I called out, “Theft!” Now I would be thrown in the low category with a real thief bitch like Simone.

  The list returned to the screen. I just started reading off damn near every haramful sinful word. I needed to get this over with. I needed to tell the truth, progress to the masjid, and make my sincere prayer, which I could do because I was not telling any lies. And I did fear Allah. Or better yet, I should say I feared the range of power that Allah is and that Allah seems to have over my life, death, and afterlife.

  “Fornication, sodomy, murder, theft, liar, cheater, arrogance, niggardly, ingrate, selfish, hostile, vanity, lust, wrath, envy, greed…” I shouted them all. I left some out that I was sure didn’t apply to me. “Done!” I shouted and dropped to the floor, worn out from this bullshit. “What’s next? What’s next?” I shouted from the floor in the semidark booth. Only the light from the word list glowed.

  “Are you forgetting anything?” my own voice, which I do not control, asked me.

  “Why don’t you tell me, bitch! You seem to know every goddamn thing about me!” I said salty.

  “It’s you who must confess it and correct,” my own voice said to me. “Review the list one more time to be sure. When you are sure, press the red button on the left,” my voice instructed me. My immediate thought was, Maybe I should just confess to everything on the list. That way my voice couldn’t possibly catch me in a lie. But then I thought, If I confess to something that I am not guilty of, that would definitely be a lie! Gluttony was on the list. I didn’t confess to that. I never been a big food eater. True, I am not a glutton. That had to do with pigging out, I reminded myself. I have the definitions of these words that study bitch looked up and we discussed and fought over in my mind permanently. I already confessed to greed. That was greed over money, whips, houses, fashions, jewels, and beautiful shit like that. I stood up, reviewed the list again. I stopped at the word sloth. I was like, Nah. I never been a lazy bitch. Even organizing a crew or a gang is hard work. Yeah, when you’re on top of any gang, crew or business, you let the low ones do some of the dirty work for you. But that’s the commonsense way for them to earn their way up out of their low position. I looked it over. I was done. I pressed the red button. The light came on. The floor of the booth turned me a 180 back to the mirror. I saw my reflection and smiled. My beauty awed even me. My look, I’ve got my look, I assured myself, but only inside of my own mind. I was not talking aloud or screaming or explaining to my own voice, the one that was outside of my own body and outside of my own control.

  I touched my hair. Stroking it was calming to me. It had grown back nicely. When I lifted my hand to stroke other strands, the hair I had been stroking fell out. Some was in my hand. Some was slowly cascading to the floor of the booth. I was looking down at my feet where the hair fell. As I looked down, more strands are appearing on my feet in clumps. I looked up and my hair was shedding. I touched it. My touch seemed to cause the shedding to increase. I placed both hands on my head and tried to press down and hold on to the hair that remained. I stood there for what seemed like hours, holding the remaining patches of hair. When I let go out of pure exhaustion, all of my remaining hair fell to the floor. “What the fuck!” I screamed at my reflection. I was bald. I was bald like how Brooklyn Momma turned bald as she changed into Crackhead Momma. “Momma shaved her hair off herself!” I hollered at the bald reflection that was also hollering. I yelled at my own voice that had not spoken in a long while. “Momma made the choice to shave her head. She wanted to look like Grace Jones! So what the fuck is this? I did not wi
ll for this. I did not ask to be bald. Why the fuck would I do that? Even Momma looked terrible after she made that move,” I shouted. But there was no reply. Me and my reflection still looked exactly the same, bald. The lights stayed on, even though I realized I had been cursing. But I was not cursing and mixing curses with sacred words like Bomber Girl warned me not to do. Besides, I was talking to myself. So who cared if I was cursing my damn self out?

  Suddenly, my face darkened. I pushed myself closer to the mirror. Had someone dimmed the lights in here? I looked around. No, the lights were still the same. I returned my gaze to the mirror. My face had darkened another few shades. It wasn’t pretty dark, like the color of the beautiful black skin of Midnight. It was like ashy dark. I started to try and rub it off. Thought maybe there were some invisible bugs like the ones from the Last Stop Before the Drop attacking my look. But my blackening face didn’t rub off like ash or soil would. It didn’t feel like a rash, either. When I pulled my darkened face back, I saw that where I had been rubbing and touching my face now had marks even blacker than my darkened skin. “What the fuck is this?” I shouted. Then the black marks cracked and opened somehow. Inside there was red. “Oh my fucking God. Why are you doing this. This is bullshit,” I screamed impulsively. My mouth began hurting. I covered it with my palm. It did not help ease the pain. When I removed my hand, a few of my teeth were inside of my palm and the others began falling out and hitting the floor of the booth like spilled raw rice or beans. I started crying furiously. Not a whimper. It was the cry of the whipped mixed with intense anger, no agony. My gums were pulsating. “Fuck it! I don’t need teeth. I don’t eat nothing down here anyway!” I shouted. I began feeling cold. I touched my shoulders and hugged myself. When I did, I felt that the skin on my shoulders and my arms as I moved my hands downward was filled with those open wounds. They felt like the wounds on my face. I realized that wherever I placed my own touch, some horrible ugliness would happen in that same body part. I was like, What kind of shit is this? “I can’t even touch myself now?” I screamed. “Is touching myself a sin? You are too much. You want too much. Farting is a sin. Touching myself is a sin. This is not Mercy. This is bullshit. You are the goddamn liar. You are way worser than Shayton. At least he was fun while it lasted. At least he turns people into animals. I’d rather be a serpent, a dog, or even a rat!” I said screaming and crying. But my tears made the wounds on my face burn. I hate burning, I reminded myself. Calm down, I reminded myself. When I went to wipe my own tears, I felt fur against my face. When I looked at my reflection, my hand was black. My nails were long and black. I shouted. It was not words. It was a scream coming from deep in my gut, a roar.

  “It’s all fucked up now! You fucked up my look! You fucked up my currency! It doesn’t even matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.” I tried to keep talking and screaming at the horrible reflection that is me. I couldn’t. My tongue was in the process of growing longer and longer. It blocked me from speaking. Sounded like I talk with a lisp. It soon grew long enough to sit on my left titty. It turned colors, from pink to purple to black. Now I was officially scared of my own self. The floor beneath spun me in a 180 away from my own reflection. I was Yeah, I don’t need no goddamn mirror. I don’t need any damned thing. I don’t worship Allah. I definitely don’t love Allah. I never did! The lights in the booth turned off. The wall screen flashed on. When it did, I told myself in my own mind without a voice of my own, “I’m not going to watch anymore.” I tried to move my eyes away, but they were locked in the direction of the screen. I tried to move my head. Both my head and neck were locked, like a paralyzed person. On the screen close-up was me, riding in Dat Nigga’s whip. I opened my window and threw the Holy Quran out into the darkness.

  “Yeah that was me! I threw out that ridiculous big-ass book. So what. I don’t give a flying fuck!” The floor beneath me opened up. I was sucked through the floor by a powerful heated vacuum. It was not the thrill of the roller coaster. It was not the high or soaring feeling I had while my hand was being held by Young Drummer. It wasn’t like the people who I had seen enjoying hang gliding on the TV. It was a dangerous, endless heated falling—maybe like being trapped alive in an exploded airplane and on fire the whole way down. A shocking, terrifying drop with no warning and no bungee cord to rebound. No parachute to open up. No net to catch me. No, I was not simply falling. I was being thrown and slammed and forced down. I could feel that it was intentional, awfully mean, and a forceful, painful, punishing fall.

  33.

  “Have you seen the script?” the showrunner asked me.

  “I received it. I didn’t read it, though,” I said at the same time as I glanced towards the trash bin where I had thrown the script. She followed my eyes. Her facial reaction revealed that she saw it there.

  “This is supposed to be a reality show. So, I’m gonna keep it natural,” I said calmly.

  “Natural will only work for you, Winter, for several reasons. First of all, because you’re the star. Second of all, because your beauty, coupled with your mysterious life, will captivate the viewers and keep them from reaching for the remote. Lastly, because this is your first appearance during season one, and it’s the season finale at the same time,” she explained in a desperate tone.

  “Exactly.” My one-word response.

  “However, everybody else on the show needs to play off of you. So we need you to at least remain in the framework of the script,” she pleaded. I just looked at her. She knew that meant to get out. She was standing in my private V.I.P. greenroom, which was filled with welcome-back bouquets of red roses, congratulatory vases of white calla lilies, and clay-potted blue morning glories. No matter how stunning my surroundings are, inside of me my memory is demanding my attention and always reminding me. Right now, my memory was showing me images of the wisteria trees, the willow trees, the blue jacarandas. I had never heard of any of those trees before my death. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.

  “Are you hearing me?” The showrunner politely interrupted my thoughts. She had pulled the script pages from the trash and placed them on the countertop in front of me. I didn’t acknowledge. She left.

  I know that I have the top reality show being viewed by millions across the globe. I know that I broke all records by being the star of the top reality show and the star of the top show period. We had even outdistanced scripted shows and sitcoms in terms of the numbers of people viewing my show in America and all around the world. Moreover, we had done something unplanned, unexpected, completely original and unique. We claimed the top slot without the star, that’s me, ever saying even one word or making any live appearances on her own show. Elisha said even a genius could never have conceived such an idea. At that time, I wasn’t sure if he was bigging himself up, since he was the one who decided to move forward with the show even after my being shot dead. But later he clarified his statement saying that the whole show was a “Godsend.” That led me to asking him, “Since the show is already in the top slot, and there’s only the finale remaining, why should I appear? It might be more powerful to end the season without me. Let me debut on the first show of season two.”

  “Trust me. This finale needs you. You have worked so hard to get back everything you almost completely lost. Winter, you will give the whole world hope. You look so unbelievably beautiful and healthy, no one would believe that you had ever experienced the tragedy that you experienced,” he said passionately. I was swooning over him saying out loud how beautiful I look. Then on the inside my memory reminded me not to swoon. Not to need and desire constant signs, words, and acknowledgment of my amazing outward appearance.

  “Well, Elisha, since they saw my tragedy on camera, they will definitely believe it,” I said. I was low-grade stabbing him for showing such a gruesome event. He knew that back then for me it was all about my look. Of course he did. He was the one who had my wardrobe secured and delivered to me exactly as I had ordered for him to do. He was the one who threw in the diamond necklace a
nd other powerful perks. Therefore he must have known that I would never agree to being filmed getting shot dead. But a dead person has no defense. I’m not mad at him, though. He has made me into what I always wanted to be, a rich bitch.

  Someone knocked. “I’m Mika from wardrobe,” she said. She was a petite girl pushing a wheeled cart that held the bagged clothes I had ordered custom-designed two months ago, to be worn for my finale appearance. She left the cart and exited after saying only “Thank you” to me, as though I had delivered the clothes to myself. That’s the level I’m at now. People thank me out loud for even being able to work for me, with me, or to serve me. She closed the door.

  I stood up, walked over, and locked it. Since my return, I spend a lot of time alone behind closed and locked doors. However, it is not like before. Nothing is the same as it was before. The closed and locked doors that I am behind are exquisite rooms, suites, apartments, houses, and spaces. I have locked the doors myself. I am not locked in or imprisoned. I can unlock anytime. I can walk out anytime. And I do, when I feel like it.

  While I am dressing myself finely, I am thinking about my game face. It takes more effort for me to maintain it now. When I make my debut on the finale of my show, I need my game face, to face Simone, Natalie, and all of my girls for the first time since getting shot, flatlining and pronounced dead, revived and hooked up to life support, comatose for weeks and then returning to real life, breathing on my own, seeing and being seen. They would never know that I know who each of them really is and what they had actually done to me. How could they know? It was only me, out of my crew, who got murdered and traveled to the unknown. I now know that the unknown is called the unknown for a reason. The living have no knowledge of it. My girls will never know or possibly imagine that I saw them have that secret hood after-party conversation about me on the night of my death. Simone would never know that I heard her bold drunken confession. None of my girls would know that I know, that they had all agreed to remain silent about my murder. They sold me out, chasing the money bag. I ain’t mad at them, though. I’m no snitch. In the aftermath of the same circumstance, I might have done the same thing, easily. But even though I am not mad, I still don’t want to let on that I know what they did. I want to see how well they play it. I want to see how mean their game faces are now. I want to experience their reactions. Simone, after believing that she had successfully murdered me, had said, “Winter does the least and gets the most.” She must have been right. They got their little appearance fee crumbs for being the help, I mean for being the support cast on my show. While I laid in a coma, I collected more than a million dollars, after the original contracted sum of eight hundred thousand dollars. Plus, there were bonuses and perks direct deposited into my account. They’re probably still mad at that, if they had somehow gotten anyone to break the confidentiality agreement and run their mouths about my deal. What the fuck did they expect? I’m Winter Santiaga, bitches, bow down, I thought. Then my memory reminded me not to say or dare even think, or need or desire others to bow down to me and for me. It wasn’t an easy thing to erase from my core. Besides, the name of my reality show is Bow Down, Starring Winter Santiaga. I had asked Elisha to name it that before I was ever released or shot dead. I can change the show name now that I know better. Show execs would fight me the whole way though. Why would they want to change the biggest reality-show title moneymaker?