Whispers in the Night

by Brandon Massey

  The fact that the modern aesthetic now favored his complexion and physique was not lost on him. He had been amazed when he first began to see models and actors with skin as dark as his, thick lips, wide noses, and shaved heads. He’d been even more amazed when a black woman had come up to him and called him beautiful for the first time in his life. But more than a decade later, he still found it hard to believe them, and harder still to forgive them and impossible to forget. The cruel mocking voices of his youth haunted him without relent.

  “You so black that if you went to night school they’d mark you absent!”

  “I bet when you step out of a car the oil light goes on.”

  The echoes redoubled. They ricocheted around Malik’s skull, building up momentum and making him feel like his head was about to rattle apart. His chest started to feel tight; he felt himself starting to hyperventilate just as he had back in junior high school when the walls would close in and suffocate him as he watched the curly-haired, caramel-skinned crowd lord over their darker brethren, insulting them every chance they got and teaching them to hate themselves for not having more European features.

  Malik looked back across the room at the beautiful office assistant and saw one of the greatest tormentors of his youth leering at him with that cruel smirk as her mind worked feverishly to concoct the next put-down. Her name was Kelly. Her cocoa-brown visage swam into view, transposed over the office girl’s features. A vicious sneer twisted her lips as they moved to form that vituperative storm of insults Malik had come to expect from her.

  “Ewww! You so black you look like you’ve been dipped in shit. You could stick your finger in hot water and make coffee. Ya black scab!”

  The irony was that she was just a shade or two lighter than him. Definitely not the coveted high-yellow complexion favored at that time. But she was not alone. Jennifer Hart, who was the color of buttermilk, added her voice to the choir.

  “He’s so black that if you tossed him in a volcano for about a million years he’d come out a diamond!”

  Between the two of them they had driven him to two suicide attempts and numerous elaborate murder/ suicide schemes that he’d plotted out to the last detail but had never put into action. He still heard their thirteen- and fourteen-year-old voices in his head, even though reason told him that the girls would be well into their thirties by now. He heard them whenever he looked at a beautiful cappuccino-colored woman like the one staring at him from the next cubicle. The one smiling seductively, as if she might actually be interested in a black scab like him.

  “She’s too pretty for you, ya ugly mud duck! You think a pretty little redbone like that would touch a spook like you? She’s looking for Denzel, not Darrell. . . or Malik.”

  No. He didn’t think she would want him. All she would do was make fun of him and his African ancestry. She would call him a spear-chucker behind his back, when all the girls were gathered around the coffeemaker gossiping in the morning. She’d tell them how disgusting it would be to kiss his big lips. How his hair felt like Brillo. And how his thick arms and chest made him look like an ape. Then she’d laugh just like Kelly and Jennifer had. She’d laugh and laugh until Malik would have no choice but to kill her.

  He caught her looking at him again, and once again she did not turn away when he looked back. She held his gaze and smiled, batting her eyelashes flirtatiously, waiting for him to say something. She twirled a pencil in her left hand and touched it to the corner of her mouth, nibbling the end of it as she tilted her head and let her eyes slide slowly down his body and then back up again. He could almost feel the heat of her smoldering stare warming him as it traveled over his flesh, turning him on despite Kelly’s and Jennifer’s combined voices interpreting every gesture she made into a diatribe of racial slurs.

  “You big, black, Mighty Joe Young–looking ape!”

  Malik winced as if he’d been slapped as the woman continued to stare at him. He was still turned on, but now he was getting angry as well.

  How dare that bitch make me feel like this? he thought. Why is she fuckin’ with me? Why can’t she just leave me the fuck alone?

  He whirled around in his chair, turning his back on her and trying without success to go back to his work. He stared at the screen, but all the letters and numbers were running together into some indecipherable stew. He could still feel her eyes on him, like intimate caresses touching him everywhere. He wanted to get up and choke the life out of her.

  Malik had always made it a point to steer clear of women like the beautiful tan-skinned woman in the next cubicle. The majority of his romantic conquests had been with white women or women with skin as dark as or darker than his, though even they sometimes made him uneasy. Not all of the girls who’d teased him back in high school had been light-skinned. Even the ones with skin the same color as his had looked down on him, as if his onyx complexion made him somehow subhuman. Usually when he went after black women they were African or West Indian, or even darker-skinned Cubans and Puerto Ricans. With American girls there was always the fear that some honey-complexioned gigolo with hazel eyes and wavy hair would come and take her away from him.

  One of the other office girls had now joined the girl in the next cubicle. Her skin was smooth and flawless and the color of milk chocolate. Her hair was thick and wooly, though neat and well kept the way his had been before he’d gotten tired of fussing with it and shaved it all off. Her nose was wide with nostrils flared like a wild beast scenting a fresh kill and her lips were full and thick. The very same features he’d been ashamed of all his life she wore with beauty and grace. On her that woolly Afro looked stylish and trendy, that wide nose wild and exotic, those full lips sensuous and sexual. He knew that there were women out there who looked at him the same way. But they were usually not black women.

  The two women were smiling and whispering and now they were both staring at him. Malik wanted to melt into the floor. He felt as if he were in an interrogation room under bright lights. He knew everything they were saying about him. He could read their lips even with his back turned. He could hear them in his head. See them laughing and pointing at him in his mind’s eye, tearing him apart piece by piece until there was barely enough left of him to flush down the toilet.

  “You shit-colored black scab!”

  His mother had tried to teach him to be proud of his African heritage.

  “Your skin is dark because your bloodline isn’t diluted. You can trace your ancestry all the way to the slave ships and even back to the motherland. You’re a thoroughbred, a pedigree, the descendant of kings and queens and great warriors! You should be proud of your black skin. Those half-breed mulatto kids are just jealous because they’re mutts. You just tell them, the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”

  Malik got up and stormed away from his desk with Kelly and Jennifer screaming in his head and the two office assistants boring their eyes into his back. He had to get some fresh air.

  Walking briskly past rows and rows of identical cubicles in which the other office drones toiled, Malik began to calm down. The voices in his head began to slowly abate. He hurled himself into an elevator and rode it downstairs to the lobby, then dashed out onto the teeming city streets, into the flow of pedestrian traffic. He leaned against a light pole and inhaled deeply several times, finding himself inexplicably wishing he had a cigarette even though he’d never smoked a day in his life. The voices were quieter now, but they were still there whispering hateful things to him. It had been a long time since they had come on this strong and Malik knew the reason for their renewed vigor: that damned office assistant with the Halle Berry smile and complexion. Despite his anger, he could not ignore the fact that he’d been immensely attracted to her, and Kelly and Jennifer had known it too. That’s why they had attacked him.

  Those fucking bitches! Why can’t they just leave me alone?

  Malik gnashed his teeth together, the squeaky grinding sound drowning out the sonorous echoes in his skull. He whirled suddenly an
d almost jumped out into the street, pinwheeling his arms to stay on the curb as a cab rushed toward him, his eyes fixed in horror at the beautiful light-skinned office assistant who’d just placed her hand on his shoulder. She reached out for him again to help him regain his footing, pulling him back onto the sidewalk.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You almost killed me!”

  She continued smiling at him despite the bristling rage and hate boiling off him in waves. She was oblivious. She probably expects the world to love her, Malik thought as he struggled to calm his galloping heartbeat.

  “I just wanted to introduce myself,” she said.

  “Why?” Malik found himself backing away from her in horror as if she were something dangerous that might attack him. The woman took a step closer with every step he took in retreat until he was once again teetering on the edge of the curb.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “My name is Danika.” She held out her hand and Malik had to take it to keep from falling off the curb into traffic.

  “I’m Malik.”

  “I know. The girls in the office already told me about you.” She swept her eyes down to his feet and back up to his eyes again, and once again his body tingled everywhere her gaze landed.

  “What did they tell you about me?”

  “They said that you only date white girls.”

  “What? That’s stupid. I date plenty of black girls. I date all kinds of girls.”

  “Then why haven’t you asked me out? How come every time I look at you, you look like you want to run away? Do you think I’m ugly or something or are you just scared of me?”

  Why is she doing this? “I’m not afraid of you and you know you aren’t ugly.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Why would you want to go out with me?”

  “Why? Look at you! You’re gorgeous!”

  Malik paused and looked closely at Danika’s face to see if she was serious, hunting for any sign that she was putting him on or patronizing him.

  “What, do you have some kind of bet with your friends or something?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?”

  “Look, I just think you’re fine as hell and I’d like to get to know you. But if you’re not interested, I ain’t going to beg you. A sista does have her pride. If you prefer those white girls, then that’s just your loss.”

  She turned on her heel and started walking back into the building.

  “Danika?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “How about tonight?”

  The date was going well. Malik was surprised by how much he and Danika had in common. Even the voices in his head were silent for once. Malik was enjoying himself. Each time Danika laughed he laughed with her. She reached out and took his hand as she told him about how her grandparents had to flee the South sixty years ago with the KKK hard at their heels because her grandmother had married a black man. She told him how much she hated being called “high yella” or “redbone” as if she were some other race than black and how she hated being called a mulatto most of all because it sounded so much like “mutt,” which she’d also been called on a few occasions. Malik kept his own stories to himself, listening instead, staring at her tiny brown hand in his and wondering what he’d ever been afraid of.

  “What about your parents?” he asked. “Were they both black?”

  “My mom, like I said, was half black and half white and my dad was Puerto Rican.”

  “So what do you consider yourself, then?”

  “Well, Puerto Ricans have black blood in them too so I just call myself black. It gets too complicated otherwise.”

  She smiled and Malik smiled with her. The waiter brought their food and they ate their meal of Cornish game hens stuffed with wild rice and cranberries in small bites in between conversation, sipping white zinfandel and never once breaking eye contact.

  When the check came, they both agreed not to let the night end. They went to a nightclub down the street and sat at the bar, drinking and talking. A Marvin Gaye song came on and they went out on the dance floor, hugging each other closely and swaying to the beat. He kissed her lightly on the lips as they danced to “Purple Rain” and she kissed him back deeply and passionately as the song ended.

  An hour later, she was nestled close to him with his arm around her shoulders and her head on his chest as he hailed a cab.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

  They looked at each other and Danika smiled again when Malik gave the taxi driver his home address.

  “So, why did you act so weird around me at the office? I’ve been there a week and you never even looked at me.”

  “Oh, I looked at you. I just didn’t know why you were always looking at me. It made me nervous.”

  “What? Did you think I was some kind of crazy stalker or serial killer or something?”

  Malik chuckled. “Something like that.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just wanted to get with you, so I was trying to let you know I was interested.”

  “Girls like you aren’t normally interested in brothas like me.”

  “What do you mean, girls like me?”

  Malik paused. He knew what he meant, but knew that it would offend her if he said it. “Sistas as pretty as you don’t normally dig me. I mean, I know a lot of white girls are into my look, but you know how they are. Once they decide they’re into brothas they ain’t too choosy.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve got self-esteem issues? You? I would never have guessed that. I mean, with a body like yours I’d think you could get any woman you want. I was worried that I didn’t look good enough for you.”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  He reached out and stroked his fingers through her thick curly brown hair, staring at her staggeringly beautiful face in amazement, amazed that she was actually attracted to him.

  “Is that why you spend so much time working on this magnificent body of yours? You really don’t believe you’re handsome?”

  She ran her tiny brown hands over his muscular chest as they huddled together in the back of the taxi. She slid them over his shoulders and up his neck, cupping his face in her palms. “I think you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.”

  They were still kissing when they paid the taxi fare and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Malik’s house. Malik was in heaven. It almost felt as if he was falling in love, on the first date, and with a woman whose skin was the color of cinnamon pastry. The whole thing made Malik as nervous as it did happy. It had been hours since he’d heard Kelly’s or Jennifer’s voices in his head. As much as it was a relief, it was also a source of worry. They had never gone away on their own like that, not without medication, or without Malik giving in to them and giving them what they wanted, and there was no way Malik was going to do that, and he hadn’t taken his medication in weeks. Still, he hadn’t heard those shrill scathing voices spilling their relentless stream of vitriol since he’d agreed to the date with Danika. Desperately, he hoped that meeting her had somehow ended their hold on him, which made him panic at the thought of her leaving him now or ever.

  “Come inside for a while.”

  “This is your house?”

  It was a large single story with decorative stone all around the front entrance, a long driveway covered in stamped concrete that continued up the walkway to the front door. The front yard was desert landscaped with large palm trees and big shrubs of rosemary and sage. It was over two thousand square feet squatting on a lot that was about a fifth of an acre.

  “I got lucky on this one. I bought it before the market went nuts. I only paid a hundred and eighty for it six years ago.”

  “Wow. My house is half this size and I paid three hundred for it. I had to take an interest-only loan out and pray that the thing appreciates in five years so I can refinance. You did get lucky.”

&n
bsp; “Come on in.”

  He opened the door and they stepped into the foyer. They were in each other’s arms kissing passionately before the door was closed. They undressed in a hurry, desperate for each other. Malik lifted her slim delicate body into his arms and carried her to the bedroom still kissing her passionately, their tongues dueling, lips bruising against each other. He laid her on the bed and kissed his way slowly up her thighs, pausing between them to taste her sweet musk, sending a quiver through her and stealing the breath from her lungs. He kissed his way up her stomach, kissed and sucked each nipple, flicking his tongue across them and making her moan, before returning to her lips. She was trembling all over when he finally entered her. She matched his rhythm as their flesh entwined in urgent thrusts, slowly at first and then with greater and greater urgency, building to a mutual orgasm that shook them both. They collapsed into each other’s arms, catching their breath before making love once more. Their bodies complemented each other’s perfectly. They made love without inhibitions, not holding anything back, exploring every inch of each other’s bodies, getting to know all the spots that drove each other wild.

  The night was half over when they lay spooned against each other, breathing heavily with sweat and semen drying into the sheets.

  “You still think I only like white women?” Malik kissed the back of her neck gently.

  “Oh, you definitely know how to appreciate a sista.”

  He laughed. “I’ll be right back.”

  Malik got up from the bed. His legs felt as if they were made of Jell-o. He staggered into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, grabbing on to the sink to steady himself. He was just about to turn on the lights when he heard them.

  “That bitch must be crazy fucking a big black scab like you. That nasty trifling ho! If you won’t kill that bitch, then we will.”

  Malik knew why he hadn’t heard the voices in his head all day. Jennifer and Kelly weren’t in his head anymore. They were right there in his bathroom.