by RM Johnson
“Look at the way she’s sitting. Is she all right, Jayson?”
I didn’t know, I thought, but I took a step into the kitchen, and felt something crack under my shoe. I reached over to turn on the light so I could see what it was.
“Oh my God!” Asha gasped.
The floor was covered with broken plates, bowls, and glasses. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I started to quickly brush the larger pieces of glass away, making a path for us to get through. That’s when I saw something smeared across the floor under the glass. These were red smears, and when I looked closely, I saw that some of the shards of glass on the floor were painted with this same color red. Blood. I saw only faint traces at first, then heavier marks as they neared my mother, until I saw two puddles of blood just under her feet. She was wearing white sweat socks, but the entire bottom half of each was saturated with a thick pad of her own blood.
“Call 911, Asha!” I yelled, pushing her in the direction of the phone in the living room. “Call 911, hurry!”
I rushed over to my mother, grabbed her by the shoulders. Her head rolled limp on her neck, then fell back, her eyes, her mouth falling open.
“Mother!”
“I’m not leaving,” she murmured, her voice groggy.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not leaving my house. Ms. Tiffany said you were coming to put me in a home.”
“We can talk about that later,” I said, trying to grab her around the back, and lift her, but she swatted my arms away.
“No. I lived here … I lived here,” and she was gasping, as if she was about to pass out. “Forty years, and ain’t nobody taking me out of this house.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said, trying to grab her again, but realizing even if I could get her out of the chair, I couldn’t stand her up, because it was her feet that were injured.
“I got to get you to a hospital,” I told her, then cried out to Asha, “Are they coming? Did you get them yet?”
“I’m not leaving this house, Jayson,” she said, tugging at my shirt. But this time it sounded more like a plea than an order.
“You’re bleeding and you’re sick. I’ve got to get you out of here.” I looked down at her feet, the blood dripping from the socks onto the floor, accumulating now in one wide, shiny circle of red underneath her. “Asha, dammit, my mother’s bleeding here,” I yelled into the other room. “Did you get them!”
“They’re on the line right now”—I heard her yell into the kitchen, and then her voice dropped as she gave them the address—“1642 West …”
“I’m not sick, Jayson. I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”
“You are not fine. You have Alzheimer’s, and you can’t stay in this house by yourself anymore.”
Asha rushed into the kitchen, stood over me and my mother. “They’re on their way,” she said, winded.
“Then stay here with me,” my mother said.
“What did you say?” I said, knowing full well what my mother just uttered, shocked and angered that she’d even suggest it. After all the years that she just barely took care of me, treated me like nothing more than a stranger she was charged to raise, now she was asking me to take care of her? How dare she? I thought, so angered by what she had asked me that I wanted to turn around and leave her that moment.
“I can’t do that,” I said, trying my best to squelch my anger.
“I’m your mother. I raised you, and …”
“Elizabeth, don’t.”
“The least you could do is …”
“I said, don’t, dammit!” raising my voice loud enough to stop her, and have Asha look at me as if I’d committed a crime.
“Then I’ll take care of myself.”
“No, you won’t take care of yourself! You can’t take care of yourself. Look at what you did here. If we hadn’t come here when we did, you would have bled to death. You would’ve killed yourself!” I yelled, becoming even angrier with her. “And who would’ve been to blame?” I grabbed her around the shoulders again, forced her to look at me. “I would’ve. It would’ve been my fault that you were dead. All my fault!” I yelled, infuriated beyond belief. And then I felt Asha’s hand on my arm.
“Jayson. She’s your mother,” Asha said, like she had to remind me of that fact in order for me not to harm her. I looked around, as if standing outside myself, as if someone else made me grab her like that. My mother was looking up at me like I was a stranger. It wasn’t the illness that made me unrecognizable to her, but my behavior. If Asha hadn’t stopped me, I don’t know what I would’ve said next, what I would’ve done. I took my hands off her.
“Like it or not, I’m taking you out of here,” I said, in a firm, even tone. “So I don’t want to hear any more protests. Period!”
And then I heard the sirens from the approaching ambulance, and I was thankful that they were coming, not solely because they would take care of my mother, but also because they would save me from this situation. They would also stop her from depending on me when she had no right, and free me from having to tell her that there was no way I’d ever take care of her like that.
“Please, son. Please, don’t put me in a home,” she begged. “Please. Please, son.”
And after the ambulance came and took her away, after she was checked into the hospital, and after I had made plans for her to be transferred to Shady Brook upon her release, I still heard her voice, calling me, begging me, “Please, son. Please.”
“She’s my mother,” I told Asha, near tears, that night on the stairs outside the hospital. Her arms were around me, pulling me as close as she could to her body.
“She’s my mother and when she needed me, begged me for help, what did I do? Turned her down,” I said, looking up toward the stars, blinking my eyes, trying to stop the tears. They fell anyway. “What kind of son am I, refusing his own mother? What kind of man am I? Why do you even love me?” I said, turning my tearstreaked face to her.
“Jayson,” she said, softly. “You’re doing what you’re doing, because you have reason to. What reason that is, I don’t know, and you don’t have to tell me. But whether you do, or don’t, I will never question it, because you’re a wonderful man.” She broke the path of one of the tears on my cheek, kissing me there. “And that’s why I love you, and I always will.”
I remembered those words as I descended the final stair, placing myself in front of Asha’s door with orders to tell her that we could no longer be friends, that the promise she made that night to love me forever didn’t matter anymore, because I no longer had the right to care for her.
I reached up to knock on the door. The watch on my wrist read a little after midnight, but I knocked anyway.
After a moment, there was no reply. I thought of turning around, walking back up those stairs, thinking of some lie to tell Faith when I saw her, but the door opened. The door opened just as I was turning, as I was counting my blessings that she hadn’t answered.
“Jayson,” Asha said, holding the door open. “Is everything all right?”
I turned around giving her a saddened, concerned look.
“Come in,” she said, reading my expression.
I walked in, my head lowered, and headed into the kitchen, had a seat on one of the stools beside her breakfast bar. I clasped my hands together, focused my attention on them, feeling ashamed of what I was down here to say.
“Something’s wrong. Tell me what it is,” Asha said, walking toward me wearing a cotton nightgown that fell to just above her knees. She had been in bed, probably sound asleep, and here I was bringing this shit to her. I felt even more ashamed. I pulled my head up, looked at her face, the sympathetic expression she wore, the same one she wore the night she comforted me those years ago, and I knew I had no business doing this.
“Jayson,” Asha said again, now standing in front of me, placing a hand on my hands, urging me to tell her what was wrong.
“C’mon, Jayson,” she said,
lighthearted, smiling a little. “You’re starting to spook me here. Remember what we said, whenever there was something bothering one of us and the other person asks what it was, we would have to tell. Just tell me. It can’t be all that bad.”
“Faith doesn’t want me to be friends with you any longer,” I blurted.
The smile disappeared from Asha’s face and she took one step backward, caught off guard by what I’d said.
“So … so why is that?”
“Because she feels threatened.”
“By what?”
“By you,” I told her.
“Me? Did you tell her that we were just friends? Doesn’t she know that?”
“I told her, and she knows, but I don’t think she believes it, or trusts it,” I said, grabbing one of Asha’s hands.
“So you told her that she’s just going to have to learn to trust it, right? You told her that she had no right demanding who you’re friends with and who you aren’t,” Asha said, as if expecting me to cut in and tell her how I did exactly that.
“You reminded her that I’ve known you longer than her, that we’ve been through all sorts of shit together. You told her that, didn’t you, Jayson?”
I was silent, unable to admit to her that I hadn’t said anything of the sort. But she deduced as much and pulled away from me, turning her back.
How could I make this make sense to her? How could I relay to her all that was at stake here?
“Faith is my fiancée, Asha,” I said, timidly. “We’re about to get married, and like she said, for her to feel threatened in the process of taking the most important step of her life just isn’t right.”
Asha didn’t say anything, but I heard her sniffling, and from behind her, I saw her bring her hand to her face.
“Asha,” I said, walking up just behind her. “I don’t want to do this.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because Faith is my fiancée, and I love her.”
“And I’m your friend, and I thought you loved me too,” Asha said, turning around, her eyes puffy.
“I do, but—”
“But what? That doesn’t mean anything now, because Faith is on the scene? You can just toss me aside like I’ve never meant anything to you. Fine! Do it. I don’t give a fuck. Do what you want to do,” Asha said, about to move away from me, but I grabbed her by the arm, held her there in front of me.
“You think I want to do this?” I said to her forcefully. “Is that what you think? You’re wrong. I have no choice. Do you know how many relationships I’ve been in that ended because I ended them, because I wouldn’t let them continue, because I couldn’t, because of how my mother screwed me up?
“For years now I’ve been running, avoiding commitment, and you know that. I’ve done it to you. And all that running has left me with nothing, with no one.”
“You act like there’s something wrong with being by yourself.”
“I’m not saying that. I just can’t do it anymore. I need someone, and that someone is Faith.”
Asha just stared at me for a long moment, looking as if she were trying to burn my image into her brain so she’d never forget me. Then with the tips of her fingers, she smoothed the tears from under her eyes.
She sniffed and said, “I’m just being a selfish bitch.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s because you’re my best friend and I love you. But Faith is absolutely right. If I was in her place, I would probably be doing the same thing.”
“What are you talking about? What are you saying?” I asked. Even though not a moment ago, I was trying to convince her to accept Faith’s wishes, I was now feeling betrayed that she was surrendering so easily.
“You love her, right?” Asha said, still sniffing, wiping the last tear away.
“Yeah,” I said, sounding more unsure than I was.
“And you’re happy?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s what is most important to me. I would never want to jeopardize that,” Asha said, moving toward me, wrapping her arms around my neck and giving me a hug. “Besides, after a while, she’ll realize I mean her no harm, and we’ll be friends again. Just wait and see.”
I silently let go of Asha, kissed her on the cheek, and walked toward the door. I reached out, grabbed the knob, turned it, but could not open it. I just stood there, thinking about all Asha and I had been through, all that she meant to me, and the foolish, thoughtless thing I had just done to her.
“What?” I heard Asha call from behind me.
“I can’t do it,” I said. And then I turned around to face her. “And I’m not going to do it. You’re my best friend, Asha, and if Faith wants me, then she’ll just have to understand that we’re a package deal.”
Asha smiled, and at that moment I knew how much that meant to her, and I knew I had made the right decision.
When I walked into my apartment, Faith was standing in the living room, her arms crossed, as if she had been standing there the entire time I was downstairs, checking her watch, wondering why it was tak-ing me so long. When she looked at me, I saw the expression on her face soften some. She could obviously see that I was hurting.
Faith walked over to me, opening her arms, taking me into an embrace. She kissed me on the side of my face, rubbed a reassuring hand back and forth across my back.
“I’m sorry I asked you to do that, baby. But it had to be done if we were to move on. Did she take it okay?”
“She was hurt,” I lied. I wanted to tell her the truth about what went on down there, but I just couldn’t do it. “I think she’ll get over it, though.”
“I’m sure she will, baby,” Faith said, still rubbing her palm gently across my back.
5
“Can you make this thing go a little faster,” Asha said, leaning forward from the backseat of the taxi so the cabbie could hear her over the loud classical music he was playing.
“What?” he said in a thick East Indian accent, without turning around to acknowledge her.
“I said, can you speed it up? I’m late for work,” Asha said, louder, almost screaming. “And can you turn down that damn music!” She plopped back in the seat after the cabbie turned down the volume only a notch or two, and sped the car along congested Michigan Avenue.
I shouldn’t have yelled at the man, Asha thought, slumped in the backseat of the cab, fuming. She wasn’t angry at the driver, but at herself, and not for being late. She was angry because she had been dreaming again, dreaming about the things she told herself never to dream about. She wanted so much for those thoughts, those images, never to enter her sleeping mind again. At night before going to bed, she’d sit and pray, and beg God to keep them away. She had even done this last night, but they came anyway. They came and blanketed her, wrapped themselves around her, bound her so tight that she could not find her way out of sleep, could not awaken to stop herself from dreaming. But did she truly want to stop herself? This was the question that really bothered her the most.
If she really wanted to wake up, if those dreams were as troubling as she told and taught herself to believe, wouldn’t she have snapped out of them instead of sleeping through them, waking in the morning feeling as rested as ever, but with an uncanny wanting, a yearning that she didn’t quite understand?
At first, three or four months ago, they were innocent, just a woman in a bare-walled room with Asha. They were talking—about what, Asha could never remember upon waking. But just the fact that the woman was beautiful made the conversation somewhat enjoyable.
Each time the dream came, the conversations became more intimate. Not with regard to what was said, but how it was said, from what distance it was said, and how much clothing was being worn when it was said.
During the first dream, this woman was sitting way across the stark white room in the only chair other than the one Asha sat in. She was fully clothed, in a business suit, sensible shoes, glasses, her hair pulled back in a bun. But with each dream, that chair
would come closer, another button would be undone on that blouse revealing a bit more cleavage, a few more strands from that bun would find their way loose. Eventually the glasses just disappeared.
Then they began to touch each other. They would touch each other’s hands at first, caressing each other’s fingers, each other’s palms. Asha would lay a soft hand on the side of this woman’s face, and this woman would lay her own hand on top of Asha’s, and smile, letting it be known that she approved of Asha’s touch. Then the clothes started to disappear, and Asha would find herself in this room nearly naked, only in a bra and panties, the woman wearing the same thing. This scared Asha. The woman would then take Asha in her arms, close to her warm body, and comfort her, tell her everything would be all right, that there was nothing to worry about, or to be afraid of, and Asha would feel herself relax.
And then the dream would end, and Asha would awake, feeling strangely empty and fulfilled at the same time. Asha would try to remember pieces of that dream, breathing deeply, attempting to pick up the woman’s scent, because the dream was that real. And all the while she would scold herself for doing so.
The touching, the holding—that was as far as it ever went … until last night, Asha thought, feeling overcome by anger in the back of the cab.
Last night, as Asha was first stealing into her dreams, she had immediately woken herself up. She had propped herself up on her elbows, her eyes darting about in the dark bedroom, as if looking for the woman who had shown up so fast in her dreams. All the other times it had taken her a while. But she was right there, and something felt odd, this pulling, this attraction Asha felt within her, and she knew that this dream would be the one that crossed the line. So she cleared her mind, focused on something in the dark room, the picture of an old dirt road hanging on the wall that she couldn’t see but knew was there. And when she felt that the desire was no longer there within her, Asha allowed herself to settle back into her pillows, between her sheets and blanket, and fall back to sleep.
