by Lisa Braxton
“It is not too late to fix your problem,” Khadim stated.
“I do not want to hear it.”
“You should have more than one wife.” Khadim thumped the dashboard with the palm of his other hand. “In fact, you should have three or four wives.”
Omar seethed. Polygamy had caused so much pain in his family. His father had four wives; his mother, Fama, was the first. He would never forget the day he, his father, and the other drummers returned from Dakar after drumming for Duke Ellington outside Amity Arena at the Festival of the Black Arts. Fama and the other wives cooked a feast: calabashes full of couscous, succulent slabs of beef, monkey bread, fresh milk with honey, and gourds of wine. Later in the evening, Fama went to serve Ibrahim wine as he rested under a Baobab tree and accidentally spilled some on his boubou. Ibrahim roared with anger, and then reached up, grabbed Fama by the hair and smacked her across the face with the back of his hand. Fama fell to her knees and cried out. Laughing, the other wives rushed to her, dragged her along the ground, and kicked and slapped her.
“That is your answer to everything, but the last time I looked you only had one wife,” Omar responded.
“That way,” Khadim continued, ignoring the remark, “if one of them gets lazy you can get rid of her and not even shed a tear because you will have the other wives to take up the duties. Keep two at home and make two get a job. In no time you would have enough money to move to a better apartment.”
Omar eyed his friend. “Or I would move to a jail cell because the last time I checked, that was against the law in the United States.”
Khadim’s hands were flailing. For a moment, Omar thought he’d have to grab the steering wheel from him to control the taxi. “Does not matter my friend. You can have the ceremonies at home. No one has to know about it. Eat coconuts while you have teeth.”
Omar didn’t respond. Khadim said nothing more on the topic. A little later, Khadim turned the radio on. The news announcer was talking about a march by women for abortion rights. “American women,” Khadim muttered and snapped off the radio. “So you do not believe that Natalie is doing the boom boom with this vocal coach?”
“Do not know,” Omar gritted his teeth.
“She has you—how do the Americans say—twisted around the big pinkie.” Khadim held out his thumb and rotated it to demonstrate. Omar was so angry he wanted to snap it off.
“She has not given you a baby,” Khadim continued. “You have given her enough time. I am telling you, get rid of her.”
Khadim’s words stung. Omar remained calm. “She wants to finish her studies. She is still grieving the other one—our boy.”
Khadim slowed down and took a U-turn to get back to the road he missed. “Be alert, my friend. When she finishes school she might leave town with that voice man, move to New York, sign a recording contract, and then you will never see her again.”
Omar was stunned at the thought.
“It happens all the time. You should watch The Mike Douglas Show. It is right on there. A famous singer—she is a black American—was talking about how the day she left her husband and moved in with her white agent, her career took off. She lives in a Hollywood mansion with him.”
Omar wished he wasn’t trapped in the taxi with Khadim. If only he hadn’t missed the bus. He relaxed a bit when they rode down a wide tree-lined road. When it narrowed, they passed a granite sign with a boat anchor carved in it welcoming them to Swift Moore Estates. To their right was the entrance to a golf course and up ahead, a guard’s station. Two cars were in front of them. Omar and Khadim watched as the guard picked up a phone to place a call, then apparently hit a switch to lift the metal arm so the first car in line could proceed.
“I knew Fullerton had money bulging in his pockets, but I did not expect this,” Omar said, gesturing toward the guard’s station.
“I do not know what to say, my brother. I have never had a fare in this neighborhood.”
“We should back up and get out of here,” said Omar.
“Your landlord will not let you get beyond the gate.”
“I am afraid you are right.”
But it was too late. By now, cars were lined up behind them. The metal security arm rose, and the car ahead of them went through. Omar could feel his stomach roiling. Khadim pulled up to the guard’s station. A pale white man with a dusting of freckles around his nose, the guard was dressed in a red linen sports jacket and white linen pants. He glanced at the taxi and gave Omar and Khadim a hard look.
“I will tell him that we are lost and need to turn around,” Khadim said to Omar. He rolled down his window.
The guard’s scornful look gradually turned into a smile. “My favorite taxi driver, what brings you here?”
Khadim paused a few moments before responding. “You surprise me,” he said, finally, reaching an arm out of the taxi to shake the man’s hand. “By chance we meet again, my friend.”
“I thought I’d never see you again. I have to thank you for what you did.”
“We will thank Allah,” Khadim added. “He put me in the right place.”
The guard reached into his wallet, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Khadim. “I need to make this right. Get in contact with me. My wife wants to thank you, too. She doesn’t know the real story. We’ll keep that to ourselves.”
When Khadim told him they were going to see Fullerton, the guard hit the button to lift the metal arm without calling ahead. Under an azure blue sky, they crept along the posted speed limit—ten miles per hour—past the golf course.
Omar was mystified. “Are you going to tell me what is going on, or do I have to figure out the riddle myself?”
Men in golf carts bounced over grass as green as the tart apples Omar liked to get from Bamba’s market.
“Harold was on death’s front step, and I saved him,” Khadim said. “This was a year ago. He was in downtown Bellport late one night getting the boom boom in The Badlands.”
Omar had heard that the section of the city was made infamous by prostitutes and drug dealers that roamed the area. “Why were you there?”
“I was dropping off a fare. Harold came staggering out of a house. He had both hands around his neck. Blood was spilling out like a fountain. A hooker sliced Harold in the neck with a razor. I told him I would call for an ambulance from my two-way radio, but he said he wanted to keep it hush-hush. He did not want his wife to have a clue. His father is a big shot on city council. I rushed him to Bellport General Hospital. The doctor said Harold would have bled to death if he had not gotten there as soon as he did.” Khadim chortled. “He paid a high price for his boom boom.”
“You never told me that before.”
Khadim grinned. “Remember, it was hush-hush.”
Khadim turned the taxi onto Sea Horse Drive, passing white picket fences and high hedges. The tires crunched over the white gravel of a circular drive. In the distance sat a pale yellow colonial-style house with grey shutters. A pair of ceramic lions flanked the landing like sentinels keeping watch.
“I will wait for you here and keep the motor running in case some bullets fly,” Khadim offered, putting the taxi in park. “We may need to make a quick getaway.”
“Dieuredieuf,” Omar replied. “Thank you my friend. But I am not worried.”
To take the most direct route to the front door, Omar bypassed the stone walkway and crossed the yard, stepping over the thick roots of an oak tree. He rang the bell. After what felt like a full minute, no one answered. Omar turned toward the foot of the driveway. Khadim was standing outside of the taxi, leaning against the driver’s side door with his arms folded over his chest. Omar thought about ringing the bell again but instead banged on the door with his fist. The weathervane perched on top of the roof squeaked as it turned in the wind. Then a door opened slowly. A young blonde woman stood in the doorway with an unlit cigarette in her
mouth. She was wearing a white tennis dress with the initial “F” on the lapel.
“I am here to see Mr. Fullerton.” Omar said.
“He’s not here.” She spat out the words and then shut the door in his face.
Omar thought about knocking again. Then he heard her on the other side of the door talking to someone. He wondered who it was since she said Fullerton wasn’t home.
Moments later, she opened the door again, smiling as if she’d been forced to do it. He was surprised at the change in her disposition. “You can come in and stand here on the doormat,” she said, backing up enough to let him cross the threshold, “but don’t come any further.”
Omar entered the house. His feet sunk into the brush carpet of a brown and gold doormat with “Fullerton” printed on it. He could smell the lemon scent of the freshly polished and buffed hardwood floors. Skylights brought sunlight into the house. A sliding glass door led to a patio overlooking sailboats bobbing in the inlet. He looked around, puzzled that he didn’t see anyone else there.
She looked from his sandals to his boubou and wrinkled her nose. “You got the notice, didn’t you?”
“Tell your father that he cannot force people to live in these kinds of conditions and then kick them into the road,” he said more loudly than he’d intended.
She pulled a lighter out of the pocket of her tennis dress and lit the cigarette. “He’s my husband.”
Omar was stunned. Fullerton had to be at least sixty-five, maybe seventy. This woman appeared to be in her early twenties.
“Non-payment of rent is grounds for eviction.” She took a drag. “We want you out by the end of the month.”
Omar felt sickened by her imperious, belittling tone. “We have no heat for months and no hot water. There are so many building violations. I shall contact the health department.”
She brushed past him, opened the front door, leaned out, and peered left to right.
Had she called the police?
She shut the door, went into the kitchen, and came back with an ashtray. “I told him he shouldn’t have rented to you people.”
There was that saying again, “you people.” Why were so many white Americans fond of those words? He heard a car horn.
“You foreigners,” she continued, “we let you in here and then you don’t know how to take care of anything. You call us and complain after you’ve wrecked the place. We don’t need this grief.”
He heard the horn again, and this time it didn’t let up. He yanked the door open.
“We got to get the hell out of here,” Khadim shouted from the curb. Omar looked in the direction that Khadim was pointing. A police cruiser was rolling toward them.
“You get off this property,” she hissed. “I can call immigration, too. What do you think of that?”
Why did Americans assume that he was in the country illegally? He’d had his permanent residency for some time. Omar heard her slam the door behind him as he walked briskly across the yard. He took the shortcut by the oak tree and tripped over a thick root but stayed on his feet, walking fast.
Omar jumped into the front passenger seat of the taxi. His ankle was beginning to throb. Before he could shut the door, Khadim pulled onto the street and headed toward the guard station.
CHAPTER 7
MAXWELL TURNER’S PHOTO was deceptive. He appeared to be a tall man in the photo that ran with his weekly column in Inner City Voice. However, Sydney had to look down at the newspaper executive to meet eyes with him as they stood in the doorway of his office in Downtown Bellport.
“K-man has been speaking very highly of you,” he said. He pointed her to a high-backed leather chair facing his desk. He wore suspenders over a starched, white pinstriped shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He looked like a miniature version of the newspaper executives she’d seen in the movies. Plaques, awards, and certificates lined his office walls. On a shelf behind his desk were a number of large, framed photographs. Cicely Tyson smiled from one of them. It was autographed, Max, my hero. He swiveled around in his chair, picking Cicely up. “Miss Tyson was passing through town a few years ago. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had just come out. Did you see it?”
Sydney nodded and then tried to think of a response that would impress Turner enough to hire her as a freelancer.
“There were a lot of important messages—racial tensions, sensitivity to deaf people, class differences—those themes stay with me even now,” she responded.
His eyes twinkled. “When it’s a movie you don’t forget, that’s a sign it was a good story. Miss Tyson sat right there in the chair you’re sitting in. We must’ve talked the whole afternoon. A fine woman. One of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met.” He put Cicely’s picture back and picked up one of himself and another man holding a plaque. Max’s Afro was much bushier in the picture than it was now.
“John Johnson,” he said, handing it to her.
“I don’t think I know him.”
He laughed. “You ever heard of Jet magazine? Ebony?”
“Yes, of course.”
“He’s the publisher. I met John last year at the Publisher of the Year Awards. Good man.” He put the picture back and beckoned her to hand over her portfolio. “How’d they treat you in classifieds?”
“Just fine. She said I would get a three-line ad that will run for the next four weeks.” In Sydney’s nervousness, she couldn’t think of the name of the woman who had helped her.
“Mamie.” Max grinned. “Don’t know what I’d do without her. She does just about everything, even fills in when my secretary’s out.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and began to slowly flip through Sydney’s collection of photos and the newspaper articles she’d written for Harambeé about sit-ins and protests by the Black Student Union. The BSU had staged marches on campus to protest the lack of a black studies program and later held sit-ins at the administration building to demand that more black entertainers and lecturers be booked on campus for student events. Sydney was proud of the work she had done capturing the raw emotions of the students. It was while she was volunteering with Harambeé that her interest in journalism began to rival her law studies.
Now, sitting across from Max, Sydney realized that she was wringing her hands. She forced herself to stop. “I don’t know what Kwamé told you,” she said, “but my experience has been limited to activities on campus.”
He took his glasses off and pointed them in her direction. “Mrs. Stallworth…”
“Please,” she interrupted, “call me Sydney.”
“Yes. Sydney. “Don’t shine your light under a bushel. It’s not about your level of experience. It’s about talent, and you have it. You’ve got a good eye. I see you can write, too.”
“Thank you.” She felt her cheeks growing warm from self-consciousness.
He went back to her portfolio, a smile creeping into the corners of his salt and pepper mustache. “K-man tells me that you’re from Old Prescott.”
“I lived there for most of my childhood.” She didn’t like much attention being put on her, so she decided to ask him a question. “So, you and Kwamé are good friends?”
He put the portfolio down. “Met through ‘the movement.’ K-man was always heading a protest, a picket, a demonstration, a sit-in, and I was always there with my reporter’s notebook. He tipped me off to some of the best stories I’ve written for this newspaper. I started working the night beat here in 1966, the year I graduated college. I’d come in after my shift at Nutmeg Brewery. I actually did some stringer work for The Boston Globe, Kwamé’s idea. I tried to get on with them full-time, but it didn’t happen. Being black and militant didn’t help, I guess. So I continued working for Inner City Voice. Never thought I’d work my way up to executive editor. Kwamé’s a good brother, one of the best. He’d give you the shirt off his back.” Max leaned back in his chair and
folded his hands behind his head. “k-man tells me that you and your husband are opening up a bookstore in a few months.”
“Yes. It’ll be a cultural center, too. We’ll invite in poets and writers to do readings. We hope that we can also have actors come in and perform scenes from plays.”
“Anything we can do to raise the consciousness of our brothers and sisters is important,” Max said. “Let me know if you want the paper to co-sponsor a writing contest.”
“That’s a great idea.”
He gestured at the portfolio, frowning. “Do you think you’ll have time for this and the bookstore?”
She caught herself slouching and sat up straight. “The Talking Drum will take up some time, but it’s my husband’s dream. I’d like to pursue what interests me.”
He chuckled. “You sound like my wife. She used to work here, but after a while she wanted to leave to open up a catering business.”
“How did that turn out?”
“She loved it. Did it for a while until we had our daughters—twins, teenagers now—and she hasn’t returned to work since.” He zipped up her portfolio and handed it back to her, smiling. “So what would you like to do for us?”
She hadn’t prepared for that question. “Tell me what you need. I can do it all,” she lied.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his chest. “Tell you what. I’ll be down a reporter next week. One of them is going on vacation. Why don’t you check out the police and fire department news conference next week about the fires in Petite Africa?” He got up and paced the room, punching his fist into the palm of his hand. “It’s a hot story, excuse the pun. I think we’ve got a firebug on our hands. If this keeps going on, someone’s gonna get killed. The briefing’s gonna be at the old Nathaniel Hawthorne Boot Factory.” Then, in a loud whisper, he added, “I think one of the land owners over there has something to do with it, but that’s just my theory. I hope I’m wrong.” He went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a folder of newspaper clippings of recent fires and handed them to her.
