Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

That’s how long she paused, watching me. Then she went to the fridge, found a green plastic cup. She put it on the table, sat, sounded stern, — How about you take the medication mixed with something? You still like it with orange juice? I’ll make it.

I looked at the cup, the white film on top, that clump and beneath it the actual Tropicana Original. There had been plenty at my apartment, taken regular for two years, on my own. But someday you want to rest. — How about you put some vodka in there?

On top of the fridge Karen had left a Tupperware bowl of the boiled egg whites she’d been cutting up for her next day’s meal. Even in the light blue bowl they seemed too bright. She wasn’t kidding around. — Drink it. You told us you would. You were doing so well.

— It makes my head feel like rocks.

— But at least it keeps you thinking right. Just drink this cup. It’ll be a new start. Come on.

See, but I was supposed to take that medicine twice a day, every day. She wanted me to drink this one glass and everything would go right but you can’t dam a river with just one brick.

I said, — Karen, you can’t stop the electric soldiers.

I was twenty-two years old and Karen was thirty. How long before it’s just frustration in her, screaming to get out, wishing whatever was the pain would go away.

— Can you? she asked.

Blissfully the goddamn fridge worked, I could hear its engine going, regular like a heartbeat, mumming along and I was so jealous. When I got up she draped herself across the table, spilling the juice and the orchids she had in a vase, the ones her husband had bought two days ago, purple like lips too long exposed to the cold.

It was lucky Masai was at work. I was much bigger than Karen and I could simply pluck her off my arm and leave, but if Masai had been there it would have gotten louder, the trouble in this kitchen would have been contagious, contaminating the living room, the bathroom, their bedroom. We would have been all over the place. But at some point, as I was tugging, she let go. She could fight harder, she had before. Her hands fell to her sides; she opened the door for me.

I had other people I could have seen, but I kept forgetting their addresses. I might have passed four or five out on Malcolm X Boulevard. Later, I walked by the mosque, the brothers in their suits and bow ties selling the Final Call; I wanted to buy one, help them out; walked over to a short one in a gold suit; he pushed me a paper like it would save my life. — Only a dollar.

— And what do I get? I asked.

— You get the truth. All the news the white media won’t show you.

I leaned close to him, he pulled back some. — You don’t know that all this stuff is past tense? I asked.

Now he looked away, to his boy at the other corner, in green, white shirt, black shoes, talking with two older women; each nodded and smiled, one brought out her glasses to read the headlines. — So you want to buy this or what? My friend held it out again, the other twenty copies he pulled close to his chest. I could see on his face that his legs were tired.

But for what would I be buying that paper? Or if a Christian was selling Bibles? Name another religion, I had no use for any. I wanted to pull my man close, by the collar (for effect) and tell him I knew of a new god, who was collecting everything he saw around him and stashing it in his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue; who walked home from the 1 train stealing bouts of Spanish being spoken in front of stores and when he came home prodigiously copied them down; who stole the remnants of empty beer bottles that had been shattered into thirty-seven pieces, took the glass and placed it in his living room, in a jar, with the greens and browns of others — in the morning he sat there and watched the fragments, imagined what life had come along and done such destruction.

Instead I walked backward until I got to a corner, hugged myself tight against a phone booth with no phone in it as the people swam around me and ignored everything but the single-minded purposes of their lives. After an hour was up my brain sent signals to my feet: move.

I stood in front of my apartment again, had a paper to hand in. Go upstairs and slide it in an envelope, address it to the woman who led my seminar on black liberation movements. The one who lectured me only when I missed class and never remembered to mark it in her book. The one who had assured me that if I wrote it all down this mind would be soothed, salvaged. One Tuesday (Tues. & Thur. 9:00–10:45 A.M.) she had pulled me aside when lessons were over, confided, — These days, the most revolutionary thing you can be is articulate.

I had told her honestly, — I’m trying. I’m trying.

I touched the front door before opening it. I’d been struck by the fear that the building was on fire; a church and a mosque had been burned recently. In the secret hours of night they’d been turned to ash and in the daylight their destruction was like a screaming message to us all. Had the door been hot I would have run farther than I needed to, but it was cold so I walked in.

The elevator was still broken. I had ten stories to climb; my legs felt stiff and proud. I moved effortlessly until I reached the sixth floor and Helena stopped me. She was with her girls, they were coming down the stairs. As pregnant as she was I knew the climb couldn’t have been easy, but the look on her face had nothing to do with exertion. It was all for me. — I was coming to talk to you Sammy, she said. Helena’s cousin Zulma stood beside me; she was so big I felt boxed in.

— You should be out looking for your man, I told Helena.

Zulma looked like she wanted to leave, bored, but was there to get her cousin’s back in case it was needed. If Helena had been alone I wouldn’t have had any problem kicking her in the gut and running. When she’d rumbled to the bottom of the stairs I would have crawled down beside her and in her ear asked, — Now tell me, what does this feel like? Tell me every detail.

— Why you causing so much problems? another of Helena’s girls asked, but I didn’t answer. Instead I told them one of my philosophies to live by. — I never tell a pretty woman I think she’s pretty unless we’re already holding hands.

Helena rubbed her face with frustration. — You need to leave Ramon alone. He’s good when he’s not around you. Her watch beeped, not loudly, but it echoed through the stairwell. Its face was glowing. Batteries gave it power.

— Have you been drafted too? I asked Helena.

— Fuck this, Zulma muttered, then her elbow was in my chest.

As the five girls got all over different parts of me I swung wild. Caught Zulma in the mouth and the first drops of blood on my face were hers. They were yelling as I kicked out with both legs. Then I was burning everywhere and I knew without looking that the off-silver colors in my eyes were the box cutters finding whole parts of me to separate. Fabric was tearing as they removed swatches of my clothing so they could get nearer to my skin. Zulma and Helena were at my face; neither of them smiled as they did the cutting. They didn’t seem angry. Their faces were so still.

I grabbed and reached for something, dipping my fingers in everything spilling out of me. The colors were hard to make out in the bad light, but the stuff was beautiful and thick, it pooled. The girls rose and ran; I listened to five sets of sneakers move quickly down those stairs to the emergency exit; the door swung out and stuck, there was the flood of an empty wind up the staircase.

For years I hoped I’d become a beautiful man, but by twenty-five it seemed the shit was not to be. Sitting down across from me, she said, — You know, you’re really ugly.