by Tiana Laveen
“My parents were married. I bet that shocks the shit outta you, too.”
Aaron smirked and nodded in agreement.
“Me and my brother went to a good school and then my mama died and everything went to downhill. We moved here to be close to my grandmother ’cause my father couldn’t raise us on his own. I guess I felt a bit outta place.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I got with a group of guys that I shouldn’t have. I knew I was on the wrong path, but I just…shit, peer pressure is somethin’ and I wanted to fit in, belong. I was tired of not fittin’ in and I thought this time would be different.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause when I was livin’ in Mountain Brook, the white kids used to fuck wit’ me there, say racist stuff, laugh, things like that. Me and my brother were two of the few black kids there at the time, man… It was hard.”
Aaron slowly looked away and swallowed, feeling something… feeling something deep within.
“I had to work twice as hard to just prove that I had half of what they did. But, you know what?” A tender smile creased his face. “I don’t regret it. I don’t, not at all, because it made me stronger. It made me able to take a lot of shit, you know? But I was young… just a kid.”
Aaron played the man’s words over and over in his mind, feeling the prickly pain and tumultuous truth of it all. Marcus’ pain overlapped his own until they became one big ball, a tangled mess together. He could not see where his began and Marcus’ ended, but it all felt the same, the same… the same…
“This is wild…”
“What’s wild?” The man looked at him, the whites of his eyes a bit glassy and pink as if he’d been rubbing them pretty hard.
“Just the irony, is all.” Aaron shrugged. “It’s just… almost satirical. Shit like this never happens by mistake. Tell me something?”
“Yeah?”
“How did someone like you end up in here? I mean, you told me the charges, but what really went down? You seem too smart to get caught up. I’m just curious is all.”
“Ha, messed up story…” He slowly turned away, looked down at the dirt-covered ground, and flicked a few more ashes. “My friend said he was goin’ to get his shit from his ex-girlfriend, right? Said she agreed to let him finally come get it from her crib but I knew he was lyin’. That shit wasn’t his to begin wit’. He wanted a ride over there. I was just a getaway driver so to speak and I had a truck, something to haul stuff away in. He’d clown me for being faithful to my wife, not runnin’ round here fuckin’ with these chicken heads ’nd shit. I have a beautiful wife,” he said with a sigh. “Why would I wanna mess that up by messin’ wit’ some of these hoes? Anyway, I ignored all of that, but he started putting ideas in my head a long time before this, things to do with money. I needed some; he had connections. He was gettin’ me greased up and thirsty, so to speak.”
“Butterin’ you up for the kill?”
“Yeah.” Marcus flicked a tiny flying bug away from his arm. “Told me my job at the factory, I.T. managerial and all, wasn’t going to mean shit unless I tried to get some real cash. So, we get over there and I tell him straight out I know what’s up, right? I didn’t want him to think he was dealing with a dummy. So he said he’d give me a third of whatever money he made after he sold what he got from her house. He had some sugar mama, man. She was payin’ for all of his clothes, his bills, his car note, everything when they were together. She was this older white lady, had a lot of money, liked his looks. But then,” he said with a grimace, his tone started to drag, “he messed up. She was the jealous type and was tired of him cheatin’. She kicked him out. Anyway… I knew whatever he got outta there, it would be worth a lot. I needed that money, man. I needed it bad.” He glanced up at the sky for a brief spell, his expression taking on a somber mien. “My father is sick, real sick. Got medical bills, and my wife and I wanted to put our daughter in a private school. I figured it would be easy and over with, and now… now I ain’t got shit…done lost every damn thang, and fuh what?”
“Hmmm.” Aaron swallowed and crossed his ankles as he took notice of an assemblage of rain clouds huddling together, causing the sky to deepen into a darker shade of gray. “Seems like you made a bad decision out of desperation.” Aaron took another inhale of his cigarette then looked lazily in the man’s direction. “I guess you already know why I’m in here.”
“Yeah, man…everybody know.” The guy looked him in the eye. “It sure ain’t no mystery.” He grinned, but Aaron could see a part of Marcus hated him… hated him merely for what he represented, claimed, and had become. “Later on I’ll get a bunch of questions as to why I was even sittin’ here in the first damn place. You different than I thought you’d be though… Yeah, you different.” The man scanned him slowly up and down.
“You’re different too, Marcus.”
“What did you expect?” The man laughed lightly, reached around, and smashed his cigarette butt in the ashtray, making the butt crinkle down to a mere nub like a tiny, white accordion.
“I thought you’d be… I don’t know what I thought you’d be… just not like this.”
“You looked a little pissed when I started asking you questions. Didn’t expect that, but I didn’t expect you to know the answers, either. I guess we both thought somethin’ different, huh?”
“The quiz…yeah.” Aaron scratched his scalp. “I knew what was up as soon as you gave me that quiz though.”
“Oh.” Marcus leaned back, obviously more comfortable now, too. “You knew what was up, huh?” He smirked, amusement in his tone.
“Yeah. The black nationalists and Hebrew Israelites around here know all of that stuff, so I figured I’d chosen the wrong guy to talk with, accidentally run into one once you got to yappin’.”
“Accidentally ran into one?”
“Yeah. I’d been standing here trying to figure out which one of you I was going to ask to talk to me, to make my ol’ lady happy.” Aaron smiled from ear to ear, getting a kick out of how that sounded.
Yeah, my woman… she did this shit to me… but it ain’t so bad…
“I figured I’d pick someone who fit what I thought most of you all were, get it done and over with, prove my case, but I was avoiding the black pride activists – already dealt with them.”
“Hmmph.” Marcus shook his head. “Why’d you pick me, then?” He looked up and down real suspicious like. “I don’t look like what you described, or at least I don’t think I do.”
“You don’t.” Aaron shrugged. “I think I felt like you’d at least talk to me though; you didn’t appear unapproachable is what I’m saying. Also, I didn’t know you. I didn’t want my reputation to sway you… had hopes you didn’t know much about me either but it turned into something else… This entire conversation has turned into something else.”
But I’ve already been thinking about this shit, haven’t I? About my beliefs, what I’ve stood for thus far. It’s all been hanging on the line, begging me to look it in the eye and figure it out…
“I’d have to agree with you there.”
“It’s uh… as strange as it sounds, it’s hard to put a face with the beliefs… easy to separate the two.” He pressed his fingertips into his ribcage, feeling himself as his damn heartbeat seemed to pause for just a moment. Releasing a choked breath, he continued. “Not think of you all as having similar issues or analogous ideologies, at least on some levels. You and I aren’t the same… but… I have to ask myself questions now, things I had answers for before. But those answers don’t always work anymore.”
“That’s because you spend most of your time focusing on differences, instead of everything that brings us together, man.” The man slapped his thigh angrily as he gritted his teeth, his eyes turning impossibly darker. “That’s a lot of wasted time if ya ask me! Who got time fuh that shit, man? I sho’ don’t. Not all of us are out here raidin’ and lootin’ and actin’ a fool! I messed up, okay?” He pointed to himself. “I made a mistake. Who hasn’t? But I
ain’t no damn thug and you can bet I won’t be coming back here. White people ain’t perfect; not all of y’all are upstandin’ human beings and guys like you act like ere’thang y’all do is kosher, true blue, and ere’thang we do is uh bunch of bullshit. Tha shit ain’t fair; somebody not countin’ these chickens right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you what I mean. I’m four times as likely to get pulled over by the police than you. You know why? ’Cause I’m a black man, man! If you did the same crime I did, I bet you wouldn’t have even gotten sentenced or it woulda been a slap on the damn wrist.”
Aaron simply listened, fought his programmed urge to come back with facts and figures, percentages and examples… No, he simply heeded the words being shared, took them in, tried to decipher them in a new way. The task proved daunting, but something inside him forced him to do it, take a step forward, and then another.
“Why waste yo’ time on tryna find ways to get rid of somebody and focusin’ on all that you hate about us, and Jews, and Hispanics and everybody else that ain’t white, when you could be lookin’ for feasible solutions? We ain’t goin’ nowhere, and neither are you. A race war won’t do nothin’ but leave everyone dead, so then what?!”
The way he said that… the way he said that just now… Well, shit… that meant something…
“A lot of this shit out here is just a bunch of bull,” the man continued as he stared down at his filthy sneakers.
“It is… It really is, Marcus. I think the time when stuff like this first starts – certain ideas, you know – is while we’re young and it takes something to bring it out, make it explode. I think so many things start early in life, but we don’t find out about this until much later.”
“Yeah, that’s true. In my house, we was taught you keep yo’ family business to yourself. So, kids walk around bein’ angry and confused, with no one to talk to. If anything, that’s the time we should be encouraged to talk the most.”
“That’s an interesting perspective.”
“You probably listened to music that put crazy thoughts in your head as a kid, just like I did.”
I did…
“Children are impressionable… we were impressionable. Whatever happened to us waaaaay back then, some of that shit stuck to us, just like glue. Man, if you mess up a kid, don’t raise ’em right, hell, even if you do raise ’em up right, so much can go wrong. I try to do right by my daughter, but now…” He shrugged, obviously disappointed in himself. “Her father is in prison. It don’t too much matter what I say; my actions will always be louder than my words.”
Aaron sat there, thinking, taking the words in. Marcus definitely had a way about him, reminding him of somebody he knew… or did he know himself at all?
If he were white, we’d actually probably get along real well… might even be friends…
“What have you heard about me, Marcus?”
The man slowly looked up at him and their eyes locked.
“I’ve heard you the wrong mothafucka to piss off. Dat’s what I heard.”
Aaron let out a ragged breath as he took a glance at the guards standing in the not too far distance with guns in plain view.
“Matter of fact, when you first called me over, I’ll admit, I was a little scared, man. I didn’t know what you had planned, what you wanted. I knew I had to protect myself though… but I was surprised when you said you just wanted to talk. I didn’t believe you. But so far, that’s all that’s happened… that’s really all that’s happened.”
“As I sat here beside you, I kept starin’ at you, Marcus, ’cause you even have a few mannerisms that are similar to mine.”
“Like what?”
“Well, the way you look people in the eye, the way you smile sometimes even when you’re mad. I kept looking at you, and tryna understand who you reminded me of. Maybe…maybe I picked you because of that very reason.”
“Marcus, the black Aaron?”
They both looked at one another and burst out laughing. After a few moments, they simmered down, refocused.
“How long you been like this, man? Serious talk,” Marcus asked.
“Been like what?”
“Hating people that ain’t like you… different races.”
Aaron looked around the place, his eyes resting on Danny for a mere moment before traveling back to Marcus. “A long time. A pretty long damn time.”
“You got a lot of clout. Even those guys over there yonder.” He pointed to the crowd of white men. “They bowed and hung their head when you came out, like you God or somethin’. I been hearing people talking about you… you got this prison scared as hell. They say you smart, cunning and crazy.”
“I’m all of that.”
“Do you like bein’ like this? I mean, probably so, right? It makes you feel important, superior.” The man sneered at him, his hand fisted in his pants pockets, as if he might want to go to war. Emotions seemed to overwhelm him, reminding him who he was sitting next to.
Aaron exhaled. “I thought I did, Marcus. I don’t right now…I just, I just don’t know.” They were quiet for a minute or two. “Look, you uh, you put something on my mind. I need to think about this, work it through. As for you,” he said, pointing at him. “You are gonna be alright, you hear me? This meant a lot. You took a chance, did something you ain’t wanna do, with someone you ain’t wanna do it with. When people do me right, I do them right, too…”
Marcus slowly got back up. Through squinting eyes, he assessed his surroundings before speaking. “I hope you got what you needed. Anyway, I gotta go, Aaron.”
“Yeah, you’re about to be called back in.” He looked down at his watch. “I got ten more minutes. Anyway, thanks…” Aaron stood up too, and this time, he didn’t extend his hand. They agreed on the shit via eye contact, man to man, as they stared at one another a final time. No public display needed.
“Don’t thank me, man…just do yourself a favor.”
“And what’s that?”
“Stop hidin’ behind your ego. Ain’t no woman make you talk to me. Man, it was more than that.”
Aaron cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms. “…She did ask me do it.”
“I ain’t sayin’ she didn’t. The idea was hers, but you went wit’ it. You did it ’cause after she put the hint in your head, you wanted to. Don’t nobody make you do a motherfuckin’ thang, and you know it.”
He’s right.
“Tell me something…”
“Yeah?”
“Aaron, are you happy, man? I mean really happy?”
He hesitated a little before responding. “It depends what day you catch me on, Marcus…”
“Well, today ain’t a good day then… You might be a bad mothafucka, got these sons of bitches in here scared to even goddamn breathe.” The man pointed around at all the guys standing about, none of whom dared to approach him without permission. “I heard about you long before I ever saw you, that’s for damn sure. You make me a little uneasy too… just sittin’ there listening to you, looking you in your eyes like that. You got hate in your eyes man, but you got something else, too.”
“What else do you think I have?”
“I can tell you ain’t at peace, man… Them same eyes of yours that glow like orange flames, they the same eyes that’s fightin’ back a bunch of shit most people can’t even see.”
Aaron swallowed, looked down at his dusty black boots, then slowly lifted his head once more to meet the man, eye to eye.
“Ego is a son of a bitch, Aaron. It turns every damn body into its slave. Set that mothafucka free, so you can be free, too.”
And then, just like that, he walked away…
Chapter Sixteen
THE SLANTED WOODEN table painted in a tapestry of muted rainbow colors displayed a pair of vintage beige wedding shoes, weathered and yellowed from the cruelty of blood-splattered time past. Next to them sat a pair of tattered mule shoes, and as Mia tipped her body slightly forward to read
the museum inscription, she soon discovered that a slave had created them to keep the mule’s hooves from sinking into mushy rice fields. She paused from her perusing and made a note of the rapid minutes that had rolled by without her notice. She’d been so wrapped up in the various displays featuring Civil War and African American slave memorabilia, she’d completely lost track of time.
I better get home…
She made her way through the gift shop, the only way to reach the exit. Boy were those retailers skilled at such sneaky marketing techniques! A pair of dangling burgundy earrings caught her eye. The things sparkled like strawberry Kool-Aid in a glass pitcher being hit by the sun. Nana used to make it for her and Trudy as they sat on the lady’s rickety porch in the heart of the summers past.
So pretty…
She ran her fingers delicately over the things, causing them to sparkle a bit brighter.
…What a nice color…
Yeah, burgundy… a deeper shade of red…
She smiled as she contemplated and wondered if Aaron would like those on her, and then, her smile fell flat as reality dawned on her. The sound of the ringing cashier served as a horror sonnet in her mind as she raced out of there, through the large glass doors covered with stickers and signs of upcoming events. She continued her mad dash to the semi-full parking lot. Looking from left to right, she tried to calm her nerves while rolling a tiny pearl pendant from her necklace between her pointer finger and thumb.
Where did I park? Oh wait, there it is…
She spotted her black Ford Explorer a short distance away and made the jaunt, her oversized brown hobo bag swinging with each urgent step she took. She snapped on the radio, allowing the Isley Brothers to serenade her along the way with their ‘Always Come Back’. It didn’t take her long to get on the highway, speeding along the way and daring someone to honk at her. What had begun as a wonderful little after school trip to ease her mind turned into an emotional internal upheaval, an intramural wreck.
