by Tiana Laveen
Her chest seized up as thoughts of him struggling to breathe in the hospital, barely clinging to life, consumed her, while all that time, she was none the wiser, living in some residual fairytale.
“Mia, I didn’t tell you about me gettin’ into trouble at Holman because I didn’t want you to worry. How would that have helped either one of us? There was nothin’ you could have done. Not only that, you have children to teach and help care for. You didn’t need any of my shit!”
“That’s for me to decide!” She pointed at the man, then at herself, driving her finger hard against her chest and causing a bit of self-inflicted pain. Yet, it paled in comparison to the emotions surrounding the tense circumstances. Stubbornness etched itself over his face, as if he didn’t intend to hear another word out of her mouth.
“You don’t make the choices insofar as what I need to know!” She rose in her seat, and her voice escalated, too. “The man I love was almost on his damn deathbed, and you kept it to yourself but then you turn around and have good news, and I don’t get that either! Aaron, you ain’t gone do me like this, ya hear? We’ve got to lay out some rules right now because this is some bullshit!”
There. She’d said it. She was fed up and she’d be damned if she didn’t address what was on her mind. Her sweetness was sometimes mistaken for weakness, but just because her tea was like liquid candy didn’t mean she wouldn’t bite back! She had lemon in her veins, and it packed a punch. “Now tell me why you did it!”
“’Cause it wasn’t good news as a promise; it was good news as a possibility… There’s a big difference,” he stated in exasperation. “How is gettin’ you all worked up and happy for me to come home to you a good thing if it all goes wrong, and then you have to be told, ‘Oh, sorry, they changed their mind!’” He huffed and shook his head in dismay. “Shit like that happens all the time, Mia. I wasn’t no choirboy; things definitely could have ended much differently.”
The noises of an ice machine interrupted the flow of the conversation. Loud, clanking sounds against a cup echoed throughout while customer voices increased in volume all around them. The two paused and looked tensely at one another, until finally, they released their grip around each other’s hearts so that they could simply catch their own breath.
“Sometimes… sometimes it’s too much, Mia…just, too much. I didn’t want to let you down again.” His voice turned froggy and deeper as he looked down at his lap, disappearing within himself right before her eyes. She hated how she burned for him, felt his remorse. It made her struggle with her anger towards the man. She wanted to keep a hold on it, make him do right, explain himself… but his explanation was different than she’d expected. How could she argue with the truth of his concerns?
“I hate the look of disappointment in your eyes. I’ve seen it! I hate that I’ve caused you pain. Before I even knew you, I hurt others through my affiliations and beliefs. Do you understand what I have to live with, Mia? Have you thought about this from my point of view? You couldn’t possibly!” He vehemently shook his head and his eyes glossed over before he blinked the emotions away. “You will never understand this, because you’re not me. It can’t be reversed… I’ve done what I’ve done! You’re good…always been good and… I’m…I’m not.”
“You are good, Aaron!”
“I’m not!” He yelled so loud, people turned in his direction.
She stood her ground though, kept her eye on the man. His lids slowly shut and he ran his hand over his face – a face he perhaps no longer recognized.
“I have to learn to be good, Mia… I’m trying. You make me want to try harder until I get it right.”
They sat quietly for a moment or two as her appetite soon ceased to exist.
“What is being good, Aaron? Huh? Tell me! Is it being what society says we should be? I’ll do you one better.” She leaned in closer, her breasts pressed into the table as she stared at the man. “Being good, Aaron, is when you know better and do better! Give yourself some credit here. Why would I share my life with someone I feel is inherently evil, a leper of morality? A sick person who sees no light and chooses to turn a blind eye in a world of confusion and animosity? What do you take me for?! I was kind to you because that is how you combat hatred and ugliness, Aaron! Your heart was hideous, but you really didn’t want it to be. I knew that from what you shared with me, the things you said… the private, intimate times we’ve shared before we even met. I knew how to deal with you because you taught me how to change you in your own little way.”
“I taught you?” he said in almost a whisper.
“Yes. By your admissions and sharing of private details your life, things you had not discussed with others, you showed me what to do to help you get out of your own way. So, after I learned what you were doing, the ugly thoughts you had… the details… I got over the shock and devised a plan – a plan built in forgiveness and education. You fight hate with love, Aaron! Not more hate, damn it!”
His eyes watered at her declarations, and once again, he blinked those emotions away, yet his slightly trembling hands told the truth…
“You don’t.” He shook his head, clasped his hands, and looked at his nails. “You don’t understand because you can’t.”
He doesn’t think he deserves me. He doesn’t think he deserves to be loved. Everything is hitting him all at once. That’s why he left last night. He couldn’t stand to keep sitting there with me. He… he hates himself. He is filled with so much guilt! Aaron, damn it, don’t do this!
“I’ve stolen so much from you, robbed you…and you don’t even know the shit is gone.” He laughed mirthlessly, and the sorrow in his tone took her down.
“What are you talking about?”
He slowly met her gaze.
“Mia,” he said with a swallow. “I can’t tell you every little thing. It’ll get you in trouble. I’m not what I should be, but like I told you, I’m tryin’. It’s because of you… I’d sit back in my jail cell sometimes just feelin’ sick to my stomach… I think about some of the stuff I wrote in my letters to you, some of the… some of the ugly things I said, thought, and believed. And how you just sat there, readin’ that shit… havin’ to see it! A man that told you he loved you… yet, he hated you, too! And you didn’t say one thing. Not one. You just kept on writing to me… but when I looked back at your letters after I wrote those things, I could see you tryin’ a new approach. I couldn’t at the time, but I saw it later. You were my teacher, trying to show me that I was emotionally disabled! I was your student, in need of help! I thought I was sooo smart… so great!” A slow tear dropped from his eye. “I’d clean my damn boots and shine ’em up every morning, Mia. I’d scrub down my floor, ask for the old lemon peel scraps from the cafeteria to clean my dirty ass sink and that stinkin’ toilet but no matter how much I cleaned my body, my clothes and where I laid my head, on the inside… on the inside, Mia, I was still a goddamn mess.”
Oh my goodness…that’s why some of his letters smelled like lemon zest…
“Everything I knew was wrong, Mia! Everything! And now I have to admit that to myself each and every day and begin again. And you just… you just took it!” He shoved his half eaten sandwich away in a clear fit of self-disgust. “The shit I was dishin’ out. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, Mia… alone, going over it in my mind. My racism, my superiority complex – I believed everything I wrote in those letters – good, bad, and in between. It is still inside of me – the warped concepts, the contempt and hostility. It’s embedded deep within me, in my cells…like a disease. That’s why I’m not good, Mia. I don’t want it, but like the ink over all of my body, it won’t wash off! Do you know how much I hate myself for that?!”
She looked down at the table, and simply shook her head. What could she say? Aaron had to go through this process. The realization of his actions had brought him here; he’d hit rock bottom and, rather than turn that anger on the world, he beat himself against it until he ended up a bloody mess. He didn’
t want her bandages, her pain medication, or her comforting words. She knew that now, understood it. No, Aaron lived for the hurt. He wanted to sustain the injuries… to hemorrhage… He wanted a part of him to simply die.
“That was abuse, Mia! I think you’re so used to tryin’ to fix people who are messed up, fucked up, tore up, that you forget – not everyone is fixable.”
“Everyone is forgivable…”
“But everyone ain’t loveable! You felt that I was, so, from a distance you still managed to massage my heart. So when I tell you that you were robbed, it means you really were.”
Yeah, you stole my heart, Aaron… but that’s okay…
“I took a little of the hope you had for the world,” he said, pointing to himself. “I needed…to stop…stealin’ from you, Mia. I’d drained you dry.” He shook his head as if in disgust. “That’s why I didn’t tell you I’d gotten hurt. That’s why I didn’t tell you about the court case. I never count my chickens before they’re hatched. I learned that lesson the hard way. I made you feed my ego, make me feel important, and you did. You managed to make my days go from terrible to great, even behind bars. Do you know how happy I’d get when they’d come and give me your letters and care packages?” His eyes twinkled, this time with a bit of joy.
She smiled weakly.
“You don’t know; how could you know? But those letters, even the ones where I could see you were gettin’ fed up with my ways, did something to me. They rehabilitated me, Mia. It took patience and a strong person to be able to do what you did.” He swiped at his eye, refusing to break down. “You were so nice to me… smart… sweet. I thought you’d make me a good wife. I found out you were more than I ever realized, the type of woman men like me dream about but don’t believe really exist. You were not only what I wanted but what I needed and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out. It got to the point, Mia… that… I didn’t care what race you were.”
Her eyes widened as cool curiosity blew through her.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this…” He swallowed, looked towards an older couple sitting close by, then continued. “But you seem pretty upset with me when I don’t tell you everything. And, I’m still not going to tell you everything, but I’ll get better and better about opening up to you, ’cause you deserve that. It’s only right.”
“Aaron, you’re jumping all over the place and not making sense. Don’t try to protect my feelings. Tell me what’s on your mind; let’s get all of this out in the open.”
He nodded in agreement.
“When I confronted you, I had already seen signs prior that made me believe you weren’t who you said you were.”
The coolness inside of her dropped a few degrees, grabbed onto her bones, and threatened to give her teeth-chattering chills. When the man had looked at her while he’d played basketball in the prison yard so long ago, it had felt as if he was looking through her… like he’d already known her from another day, another year, another lifetime. And now, she realized, that uncomfortable dis-ease may have been in fact true…
“Yeah, you still had the same personality, the same spirit and sense of humor, but I pretty much knew you weren’t white, Mia.” He coughed into his balled up fist and cut their mutual glances short.
“What?” she gasped as her head began to throb and she fell into a deep well filled with perplexity.
“I tried to convince myself otherwise. I made excuses and there’s no point in you knowing how I knew; all of that is just bullshit, not really important, but just know that I did. The only reason why I’m telling you now is because I think you need to understand that I hated myself for several weeks for still bein’ in love with you after I couldn’t shake my suspicions. It got to a boiling point when you’d written your actual name, ’cause you left me no choice but to confront you at that time… I hated that you made me say somethin’, but I knew, Mia.” his voice trailed as he rubbed hands nervously against one another. “Yeah… I knew…”
“Oh my God.” She fell harshly against the back of the bench seat, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “You know I have questions, Aaron.” Then, opening her eyes, the tears she could no longer hold back started to fall. “But, maybe you’re right. Maybe none of that matters now.”
“I had to do it just like I did, Mia, because … after I realized what you’d done… how you hid the truth from me about who you really were, I hated not only you, but myself, too.”
“Why?”
“Because I still loved you anyway and I didn’t want no excuse to stop!” His eyes glossed over. An employee moved about the area, picking up empty trays and discarding plastic utensils from the tables. An occasional burst of laughter came from a table chock full of teenagers, their lives in full bloom, protected by the unknown.
“You haven’t stolen from me, Aaron. I need to make that clear. I gave you my all. And nothing was given to you that I didn’t want you to have.” Steel, ice, and a few razor blades danced in her tone, though she didn’t mean it that way. She softened the edge of her delivery at the end, though she meant the words just the same. “It was a mutual exchange. Some were beautiful gifts we gave to one another, some were painful lessons we each had to learn, but we’ve both given to one another. This wasn’t one sided. I’m kind, yes, but not a fool.”
The man nodded and smiled at her, then reached out to hold her hand in his. Starting a slow caress along her knuckles, he warmed them with the simple touch. They simply stared at one another, forging a commitment, making oaths, vows, and unspoken declarations.
“I need to get ready to go to spend this evening with my daughter. I promised her I’d be back later on, like I told you.” Mia nodded in understanding. “Tomorrow, I want to take you out on a date, okay? A real date.”
She nodded and smiled as her cheeks heated with sentiment and love for the man sitting across from her.
“Okay. That sounds good.”
“I’m going to pick you up ’round six. I’ll ring the bell, like a gentleman. Then, I’m goin’ to take you out and we’ll do the things we’ve been daydreamin’ about – some elaborate, some just every day, simple things.”
“Simple things are many times the best things…”
“I want to court you, honey. Treat you like a real lady; treat you how you deserve to be treated. No, I take that back.” He shook his head as if he’d spoken out of place. “You deserve way more than I can give, but I’ll try to come as close as possible. When I want something, I never give up, and I want you more than anything in this whole world.”
She smirked at the man as he laughed lightly.
“Aaron, in time, you will see that I was right about you.”
“Really? That I’m this great, fantastic man, right?” He chortled. “I am fantastic.” He caused both of them to burst out laughing louder. “No, really I am, but I’m fucked up, too. It’s fine.” He shrugged. “Don’t they say knowing is half the battle?”
“Yes, but it’s not just that. We’re all messed up, Aaron. No one is perfect, especially in this crazy world. Dysfunction is reality.”
“Yeah, I’d have to agree with that, Mia. We’re all fucked up, huh?” He smirked.
“Yes, and we can both be fucked up together,” she said. He smiled real wide at her then, causing her to return the gesture in kind. “There are just different levels of the fucktivity, and we want the playing field to be a bit more even.”
At this, he burst out laughing so hard, the thick vein in his neck protruded.
“I’ve never heard you use that word before!”
“What?” She grinned sheepishly, knowing damn well she dropped F bombs at least a few times a month. He’d find out soon enough.
“Oh don’t give me that ‘what?’ shit.” He imitated her, batting his thick eyelashes in a girly fashion. “And then the way you just used it…fucktivity…man.” He leaned back in his seat and sighed as if finally at peace. Sweet relief. “That was funny… damn funny.” She smiled at the man, so happy she was
the cause of him relaxing a little, taking it easy.
“You deserved the forgiveness you received.” She winked at him. “You know yourself better now. You’ve turned a new leaf so to speak, but now, I need you to see yourself as worthy of having all the good luck and love that has come your way. There are a lot of ugly words in this world, but the F word, in this case, stands for forgiveness, and that word sure ain’t a bad one. You didn’t steal anything from me, Aaron. You did give me something though. Now, it’s time to give yourself something, too.”
“What?”
“Give yourself the gift of forgiveness. It’s long overdue…”
Chapter Ten
SOMETIMES YOU SEE a mirage and then realize it ain’t no mirage after all. Instead, it’s just a warped, smudged mirror, and in that mirror is your sad little reflection lookin’ back at you…
Marcus leaned against the wall of the building, nursing a crooked cigarette that would have to last him ten more minutes. The damn thing was so tiny and used up, he wasn’t sure it would make it, but his budget told him he better make that shit ride on out until the last drop of ash fell off. He took another toke, feeling a bit uneasy as he stared up at the deep, mauve sky, where the clouds gather together like handfuls of cotton while threatening to do something ugly, downright heinous.
Life had been just as foul and unkind. So much so, he questioned at times whether he was in his right mind. He’d made an anonymous call some time ago and once he did, everything, within reason and out of scope, had changed. The police demanded he come in, explain himself… and that’s when shit got real.
Being dubbed a damn snitch was not a good look. He could no longer move about in his own skin, but that skin never fit him well anyway. No tailor could fix it, and a seamstress would surely just be wasting her precious time. Conceivably it wasn’t that at all; maybe he had it all wrong? Perhaps he fit in his skin just fine, but others around him—the clouds so to speak—thought he looked a bit out of place, needed him to find a costume of sorts to hide his true self.
