Wrath White - Yaccub's Curse

For a moment I couldn’t say anything. This was the most emotion I’d ever seen from Huey aside from when Tank was murdered. I stared at him for so long that he self-consciously dropped his head back down to stare at the inarticulate shadows on the floor. I reached out for Huey’s hand and he looked up once again and met my gaze.

“I love you too, brother, and I’m going to grandma’s funeral.”

Christina and Iesha finished changing the baby’s diaper. They carried him back into the room fussing over him like two schoolgirls playing with a doll. Iesha held the bottle in his mouth, while Christina cooed and kissed at him. My eyes followed them as they paced back and forth. I couldn’t stop staring at the child. He smiled, gurgled, cooed, threw-up, pissed, and shit, but never seemed to cry. His eyes stared back at me without love or hate, but with expectancy and patience. He seemed to be waiting for something. Something I wasn’t sure I was willing to give. I would kill Satan for him, but I would never forgive him for my people’s pain. I had no right. No one man did. He could forgive me if he liked, but I would keep my hate. I needed it for what I had to do.

“You still think that kid is Jesus Christ?”

“What?” Christina asked, half giggling.

“Oh, that’s right. We didn’t tell you two yet. Your boyfriend here thinks he rescued the baby Christ from Satan and now Satan is gunnin’ for both of them.”

Iesha and Christina both turned to look at me.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Scratch is Satan. So, I guess that means I believe that kid is Jesus too.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?”

“No, baby, I’m serious. You didn’t see what I saw. If you did then you’d believe it too.”

“But why, dog? I mean, what about him has you so convinced? He’s just a kid.”

“Huey, man, just look at him. I mean just look at his eyes. You see that pain? You see that peace? You see that love? How could an infant have such ancient eyes? This is Jesus, dog. This is Jesus Christ.”

“I thought you always said the Black man didn’t have no savior?”

“He don’t. But I guess Jesus does. Us.”

“A damn crackbaby,” Huey walked over to the baby still cradled in Iesha’s arms and looked at him for a long moment, “If this is Christ then he’s been damned too.”

“Just look at his eyes. You ever see a baby with eyes that wise?”

Nothing I said would have convinced Huey, but I could tell that when he looked into that child’s calm peaceful eyes he saw. He knew. He believed. He knew like I did, with some primal metaphysical awareness that defied both faith and reason and went straight to instinct, to some genetic memory of our creator. But Huey would never admit it to himself. Even though I could see his legs tremble. Before that moment, I had never thought it possible for him to be afraid.

“S-so if he’s really Jesus then you really think Scratch is…”

“Satan. And not just figuratively or metaphorically. I ain’t talkin’ about that racist Muslim shit. I’m not just sayin’ he’s got evil in him. I’m sayin’ he is evil. Evil made flesh. I’m sayin’ that Scratch is the literal Satan. Lucifer himself. And if we let him get his hands on this kid the sun is gonna set on all of us forever.”

“Yeah, well, as long as this mutherfucker can bleed ain’t no way he’s gonna do shit to this kid.” Huey reached out to rustle the baby’s thin whispy hair and drew his hand back quickly when the child turned his tiny head and smiled at him.

“See, fool! Now you got me all spooked.” Huey chided with half a frown and half a smile fighting for control over his face. Christina and Iesha were both staring at the baby trying to see what we had seen in him. Huey was frowning, trying hard not to believe.

Christina and I had finally adjourned to the bedroom leaving Huey and Iesha alone on the long tattered couch. The baby was once again lying in the center of the bed between the pillows. We left him there and lay down on the floor beneath her queen-sized comforter. A sheet lay between the thin carpet and our naked bodies. Christina was wound up tight with sexual tension, but trying to hold back, not sure if I would be in the mood so soon after hearing of my grandmother’s death. Honestly, I was trying to mourn, remembering the strong, loving, cantankerous old woman that used to bake me pies every Sunday for desert, but my flesh was responding to the heat radiating from her, the wetness of her sex against my leg, and the subconscious gyrations of her hips. I rolled her over and entered her.

“Thank God.” She gasped as my manhood slid deeper into her, “I thought I was gonna explode if you didn’t take me soon.”

We made love slowly, with uncharacteristic warmth and affection, both of us delaying our orgasms until they built into a massive eruption that shook us violently; our juices commingling in a rushing wave of mutual ecstasy. I drove myself so deeply into her that I could feel her heartbeat. When it was over we held each other in silence. I slept almost immediately and had a pleasant dream in which I never woke up— then the morning came and the dream ended.

It was a windy, October morning, cloudy and damp. The trees were ablaze with reds, yellows, and oranges that fluttered to the ground in pastel colored heaps. A thick layer of clouds covered the sky to the horizon with a somber ceiling of gray. Funeral weather.

Huey and I drove through the winding turns on Lincoln Drive with the windows down and the wind whipping through the car’s interior like a minor hurricane. I didn’t mind. It kept the tears out of my eyes. Iesha and Christina had awakened us early in the morning with bacon, eggs, corn flakes, and kisses. Huey wolfed down the bacon without a thought.

“I thought Muslims didn’t eat pork?”

“I never said I was Muslim. That was your interpretation of it. I just agree with some of their beliefs…” He forked another slice of bacon into his mouth and smiled slyly, “…but not all of them.”

Christina was growing attached to the baby and had already changed and fed him by the time I had finished showering. He was lying on the couch staring at an improvised mobile of cat toys Christina had bought from the supermarket and attached to a hanger.

“What can we do for a crib?”

“My mom used to keep Tank in a dresser drawer when he was that little.”

“Tank wasn’t never that little,” I joked and then my heart sank and silence descended like the final curtain of a failed play. We were all just going through the motions, pretending as if everything was okay. As if all the death that had surrounded us for the past week was inconsequential…nothing but a thing. But after a while it became impossible to suspend our belief and we simply stopped talking rather than have to articulate the fears, angers, and sorrows, that had plagued us through the long night. Huey and I finished our breakfast and dashed outside into the street as if we could somehow leave the pall of death behind us locked in the apartment. We raced Huey’s Monte Carlo out of Center City trying to out run the ghosts that were forever chained to us. My house appeared sullen and empty as the Monte Carlo pulled up and disgorged my long frame out onto the sidewalk. The ghosts caught up to us and wrapped their whispish forms around our shoulders sending small shivers across our skin.

“I’m gonna go home, change, and make a few calls. I’ll pick you up in half an hour… tell your mother you love her.” He sped off around the corner before I could reply, leaving me to face the lifeless building that loomed above me. I took the first few steps toward the house and instinctively looked up at the second story window, as if by some magic Grandma would be there smiling down at me, only to find the curtains drawn closed and the blinds lowered like a shut eye.