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After Claud had died of hepatitis in Clinton, she had mourned him in a haggard frenzy of alcohol and downers, diving for oblivion and hoping for death. She had sat for weeks in a chair, letting Angelina scream and weep herself to sleep in fear and hunger. Co
She dreamed that Claud was being born again: that her mourning hauled him out of the grave and drove his restless soul back into a baby’s body. Even now from his junkie mama, Claud was being crushed into the world with a habit, and waiting for him was the pot balanced on the edge of the stove that would blind him and seal his face ever after from the light of the world. Reform schools, the courts, zip sixes for kids picked up on federal raps, those rotten sixty‑day‑to‑six‑year indeterminate sentences, all the institutions that would punish him for being black and blind and surviving. All the scorn and meat hooks of the world were waiting to carve off chunks of his sweet flesh. As Claud was crammed into the baby’s writhing body, as he was forced into the small flesh and vast terror, he cursed her.
She wakened cold with sweat on the couch, her back aching, and the first thing she heard was Angelina screaming. Angelina was standing about ten feet away in their one room, screaming and kicking the wall with anger, kicking the leg of the metal table. Co
“You fucking kid!” she screamed, and hit her. Hit too hard. Knocked her across the room into the door. Angie’s arm struck the heavy metal bolt of the police lock, and her wrist broke. The act was past in a moment. The consequence would go on as long as she breathed.
As she slumped against the wall of the bleak seclusion cell, tears ran into her lap, soaking the yellow dress, faded from repeated laundering. Tears for Claud dead, for Angelina adopted into a suburban white family whose beautiful exotic daughter she would grow into. Remembering what?
Why had Dolly betrayed her? Well, why had she betrayed her own daughter? She had thrown Angelina away from the pain of losing Claud. She should have loved her better; but to love you must love yourself, she knew that now, especially to love a daughter you see as yourself reborn. She slumped against the wall clutching her knees and tried to concentrate on the pain of the old burn that had never quite healed, to blot out memory.
She felt then that sense of approach almost as if someone were standing behind her wanting to come through, that presence brushing her consciousness. The feeling was at once an irritant and a relief. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, lacking anything else, and made a grimace of disgust at the sloppiness. How she hated to be dirty. She felt ugly, bloated with the drugs, skin deadened and flaking, lips dry and split, hair lank and dirty and bleared with feverish sweat. Her throat was sore and the back of her neck ached all the time.
Vanity before a hallucination? If she could so clearly imagine him, why couldn’t she imagine herself clean and beautiful? At least a proper hallucination would be some kind of company, so she let her eyes shut, leaned against the wall, and permitted the presence to fill her. For perhaps ten minutes she remained thus, head back and eyes tightly closed.
“Co
“This is the first time I’ve been by myself since the first night.”
“Are we responsible for your being here?”
She did not immediately open her eyes. “No.”
“Fasure? You’re not just painting the bones?”
She briefly described the night of her commitment. When she opened her eyes she saw Luciente consulting the watch that whispered.
“It’s ru
“Her pimp, Geraldo. And she’s my niece, not my sister. Geraldo is a pig! He didn’t want her to have his baby.”
Luciente looked deeply embarrassed. Passing his hand over his mouth, he shifted from haunch to haunch, squatting before her. “Uh, I know you people ate a great deal of meat. But was it common to feed upon person? Or is this slavery, I thought wiped out by your time?”
The urge to cry was still burning her eyes. “Sometimes we have nothing to feed on but our pain and each other … . What’s that about meat?”
“How did this Geraldo sell per flesh then, and pigs too?”
“She hustles!” Seeing blank incomprehension, she snorted and said harshly, “Puta. Tart. Whore.”
Luciente began fiddling with the wrist gadget again till she reached out to stop him. Small bones he had, little heavier than hers. “Who do you talk to with that?”
“My ke
“I suppose nobody in your place sells it, huh? Like they say about Red China.”
“We don’t buy or sell anything.”
“But people do go to bed, I guess?” Co
“Two statements don’t follow.” Luciente gave her a broad smile. “Fasure we couple. Not for money, not for a living. For love, for pleasure, for relief, out of habit, out of curiosity and lust. Like you, no?”
Like sunshine in her cell, he looked so human squatting there she heard herself ask half coyly, “Do you like women?”
“Allwomen?” Luciente looked at her with that slight scowl of confusion. “Oh, for coupling? In truth, the most intense mating of my life was a woman named Diana–the fire that a
“I thought so.” Why should that make her feel gloomy? He had shown no signs of sexual interest, except for all that patting and hand holding. But shouldn’t a figment of her mind at least satisfy her? Perhaps being crazy was always built on self‑hatred and she would, of course, see a queer.
“You’re lonely here, and I just let you down. Truly, I’m not rigid and I like you.” Luciente took her hands between his warm, dry, calloused palms. “What is this place? You seem to be locked in. I’ve seen holies about your prisons and concentration camps. Is this such a place?”