A Deeper Love Inside (55 page)

“Who is she?” A reporter called out.

“My wife!” Elisha shouted back, causing the reporters to laugh.

“Is there a ‘pre-nup’?” a reporter asked.

“For what? I’m gonna love her forever!” Elisha answered. The cameras were steady clicking. “It’s all hers anyway,” he stated boldly to my disbelief. I wouldn’t dare look back to see the expression on the faces of his family, our family, Momma Elon in particular. Although, I understood that feeling Elisha was expressing, of wanting to give the one you love everything you have and being more happy to see them have it than to have it to yourself.

Maybe Elisha was feeling now what I was feeling on the cold winter evening when he placed my hands underneath his warm underarms. I felt the love swelling in me. I wanted to give him everything I had and anything he wanted. That feeling grew so strong, that on Elisha’s fourteenth birthday, I withdrew my twenty-thousand dollars cash from Mr. Sharp’s safe. It was the same money that I had worked my ass off to earn and save for Momma’s apartment. I placed it neatly inside of a pretty box stuffed with pretty tissue paper, and decorated with a pretty red ribbon. I gave it to Elisha along with a carrot cake I made from scratch with love for him. Both of these were my gifts to him. I wanted him to have his movie camera, and realize
his dream. My dream about Momma and us getting a new apartment together was looking impossible back then. Momma didn’t want to live with me, it seemed.

Filled with love for Elisha, and sorrow for Momma after she removed all of my things, clothing and belongings, except the cell phone Elisha had given me, I handed the gifts to him in the cold wind and asked him not to open them until he got home and was alone in his bedroom. It was twenty-thousand dollars cash, plus almost a hundred dollars for the organic ingredients for me to make the homemade carrot cake and then place it inside of a quality cake container. I never missed or regretted the money.

“Thirty-five million on your opening weekend! What do you have to say to that?” a reporter shouted.

“Show the people what they wanna see,” Elisha answered.

“What do they want to see?” a woman shouted.

“
A Love Supreme
,” Elisha smiled and promoted. People applauded.

• • •

Elisha agreed to convene in a nearby hotel for a roundtable for the high-visibility press, which included the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
New York Daily News
, Associated Press, the
Amsterdam News
,
Newsday
, as well as
The Source
and
Vibe
magazine.

“Thirty-five million . . .” Elisha whispered to his mother as we entered the room where the press were gathered. “Did you see the headlines?” he asked her, leaning her way.

“I saw a write-up with that kind of prediction early yesterday morning in the
Wall Street Journal
,” she whispered back.

I offered to step to the side. Elisha, holding my hand, pulled me closer to his side and held me there.

The Associated Press reported asked, “Elisha Immanuel, can you please confirm that your film is an independent film, made without the backing of any major movie house?”

“Confirmed,” was all Elisha said, which caused the crowd to laugh.

An older man from the
New York Times
asked the next question, “Elisha, why is the film titled
A Love Supreme
?”

“It’s a salute to my father. He’s a retired musician, a sacrifice he made for our family. Instead of pursuing an uncertain music career, he labored and earned and paid my mother’s way through law school and raised a family. He always enjoys listening to all kinds of music, including John Coltrane, who had a track titled “A Love Supreme.” My father has been married to my mother for twenty-five years. He worked at UPS for twenty years. His life is like a jazz instrumental. Besides, the title of a successful film should welcome in the whole family, grandparents and all, each generation,” Elisha explained.

“Was the film based on a true story?” the
Vibe
magazine reporter asked.

“How did it feel?” Elisha turned the question on him. There was nervous laughter. “If it felt real it was,” Elisha said solemnly.

“About the movie soundtrack,”
The Source
reporter asked, “you have two cuts moving up the charts and heating up the top radio countdowns in every major urban area, and moving with a bullet on Billboard Top 100. Will you pursue a music career in addition to film directing? And when will you showcase a live performance from Siri of her remake of ‘Loving You’ retitled ‘Elisha.’ ”

I fidgeted. They were talking about my girl, Siri. Elisha gripped my hand more tighter. He was letting me know to trust him. I do trust him, more than anyone else.

“Siri is a shy Brooklyn girl I know who sings from her soul beautifully. She doesn’t want to be in show business, but she agreed to sing that song only for me. That’s why it’s retitled ‘Elisha.’ I knew the whole world would want to hear her voice. So I recorded it. We’re gonna let it rock. If it hits number one maybe she’ll change her mind by popular demand,” he said.

“How does your new wife feel about the new artisit Siri singing so passionately to her husband?” a woman from
Newsday
asked. Everyone laughed.

“My wife has known me since I was twelve. She knows girls tend to like me,” Elisha smiled brilliantly. The cameras were flashing.

The
Newsday
reporter followed up. “Where did you and your wife meet? Why such a young marriage? You are reported as being a seventeen-year-old high school senior,” she asked.

“We met in an organic market in Brooklyn. I love her more than anything. She’s my motivation. And a man should get what he wants and make it his own.”

“A thirty-five-million-dollar opening weekend; how will such a young man manage all of that money?” the
Wall Street Journal
reporter asked.

“Oh, I’ll manage.” Elisha smiled again, bringing the group to laughter.

“Who is you attorney of record?” the
Wall Street Journal
asked.

“My mother,” Elisha said.

“Who is your management?” they followed up.

“My mother.” Everyone laughed. “I think I can finally afford to pay her fees. When I get back in September, I’ll retire her from Wall Street.”

“What’s next? You got the gold, the girl, and the fans obviously adore you,” the
Amsterdam News
reporter asked.

“Honeymoon in Dubai,” Elisha said.

“Sounds like a film title!” the
New York Times
reporter blurted out.

• • •

“Dubai?” I asked Elisha when we were alone. He pulled up a world map on his computer. “I’ll show you where it is.” He pointed. “You traveled over here, that’s Europe. We’re going over here. We’ll meet your sisters and family out there,” he said. “That’s why I chose it for us. I thought it would make you happy.”

When Elisha and I had our intimate discussion seated on the floor in my hotel room Saturday afternoon, I told him that I still loved my twins, but that I had buried my true feelings for Poppa and Winter at the same time as I had buried Momma. Elisha said a one-word response: “No.”

“What do you mean
no
?” I asked him.

“No, you can never ‘bury them.’ They are your family
no matter what
. And, if you can bury them, that means that one day you could bury me. You loved them before, so love them now. Love them always. Real love never disappears.”

AFTERSTORY

Siri cried uncontrollably. Hers were silent, soft, warm tears.

“Porsche,” she whispered. She was standing in the corner of our bedroom in her yellow sheer nightie and gold slippers. “You are only loving Elisha and little Elisha. You are forgetting about me.” Because Siri cried, I cried, too, even though my life now is 93 percent peace and pure happiness.

“Woman,” Elisha said. That’s what he calls me when he doesn’t know what to call me. We were lying in our huge bed beneath our Egyptian cotton sheets, next to our wide wall-length window. The moonlight was incandescent, causing Elisha’s beautiful dark brown skin to glow even more than it did naturally.

Incandescent
, a word Elisha taught me, among hundreds of words he had taught me, but this one I learned on the first night we moved in here. It is our new house, which he had promised me when I was thirteen, “a house with great big windows.” And since Elisha already came from a house filled with love, he saw no reason to actually separate from it. His wealth and popularity made many doors open to him. That, coupled with a large number of people making an exodus out of downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, made it possible for him to buy the brownstone he grew up in, as well as two more on the opposite side of his backyard, one to the left, and the other to the right of it. The three buildings represented his commitment to remain strong and loyal to his neighborhood, the people and the businesses that knew and supported him, and to those facing trying times. The three brownstones, plus renovations and extensions, made up the Immanuels’ East Coast estate.

Our newly born baby, nearly six months young, Elisha Jr., began fidgeting in his sleep, the same way his small body always reacts when he suddenly hears his father’s voice after not hearing it for some hours. I placed one finger over my lips so Siri could see it and try and
be quiet. I wanted Elisha Jr. to sleep some more while I sorted out my thoughts and feelings.

Elisha pulled my body close to his. He placed his fingers on my face. Elisha is so comfortable with my tears. He had even told me that he fell in love with me “because of the honesty” of my tears on our first date. I still don’t know the secret of why a woman’s sincere tears move men.

Now he was gently wiping my tears away with his tongue. Then he began kissing me. My body gave in to him as it always does.

He was moving over me now, both of us enjoying the intense sexual feeling that takes over when both of us are trying to bump, grind, and love each other quietly as another person (Elisha Jr.) lays on the same bed, and still another (Siri) stood watching, closely.

It felt so good, our movement, and the passionate way that Elisha expressed his love to me. He was deep inside of me now and deeper inside of the feeling. I am already pregnant with our second, and the sensitivity of the recently impregnated womb intensified the pleasure of each touch, push, and movement. Now I was breaking my own rule to keep quiet. I was moaning, unable to hold in the sound of what our thrusting was making me feel. There was no one living in the next room or up close enough for me to hold back the sounds of our love. There was no reason for Elisha to place his thick fingers over my mouth and whisper
sshh
. My husband isn’t a moaner, but his heavy breathing and way of coming for me and working up a slight sweat fucking thrilled me. I was excited by the way my hips moving excited him, the way he gripped on to the headboard or mattress mashing me even more made me come harder and I shook some. We were both moist and warm now. Elisha kissed my ear and rolled off. Like a magnet, my body turned towards his back and clung to him. I pushed my hands through his arms, my fingers resting on his abs.

“Elisha,” I whispered, kissing down his spine. I began caressing the back of his legs. “Elisha, we gotta get going,” I said.

“That’s why you were crying,” he said. I knew it wasn’t a question. He knows me too well. He knew that I was shaken up because today is the day that he’ll drive me to upstate New York, to one of the many,
many prisons, to visit Winter Santiaga, my big sister, for my first time.

Elisha owns his own business and sets his own work schedule. Even though he is his own boss, he is also, as he explained to me, “the product.” Therefore, he is most often very busy, and in high demand. He could’ve ordered his driver to drive me, and his security to accompany me; however, he handles all matters involving his wife, personally and privately, attentively and compassionately.

“You say you want me to get up, but you’re still touching me, which means we both wanna stay right here in these sheets,” Elisha said as he turned to face me.

Soon as he started sucking on my breast, Elisha Jr. burst out of his sleep in protest. Elisha Jr. seemed to believe that my breast belonged only to him. Now our son was suckling from my right nipple, and my husband’s lips were locked around my left nipple. It felt good, and confusing. My son’s suckling makes me feel loved and needed in a really pure way. It was as though he was pulling life out of my breast and becoming more alive because of me. I felt a love for my son and from my son that seeped deep down in my bones and even circulated in my blood. My husband sucking on me was so erotic and exciting it made my pussy muscles contract wildly, which aroused me like crazy.

Seventeen years young, I’m a wife and a mother. This whole feeling, of having a loving husband, father to our son, made me wonder why every woman wouldn’t want this exact life? Quietly, I decided that every woman does want the same feeling, things, and life, but most don’t have the confidence to pull it off, didn’t know how to make it happen, couldn’t “seal the deal,” so to speak. I do know for sure that love is completely different than business. Many women don’t know how to be sweet, don’t know how to love and be loved, don’t know how or who to allow to love them. Don’t know how to inspire their men to become great men. I almost fell into this same category. I am so happy that Elisha always had the type of love I admire, needed, and respect, “that fighting love,” the kind that doesn’t give up or give in, especially when a man can feel that his girl loves him, too, but just needs a little help and a little push to pull herself together, then merge.

Elisha and I began playing a rhythm on Elisha Jr.’s back to get him to burp. Our hand song made us both sleepy-smile. Another
thought came to me while holding our son.
How could any mother not be in complete love with her children, the way I am?
Then inside of one second, my 93 percent peace and true happiness shattered into pieces as I thought of my momma. Why didn’t she love me? Why didn’t, couldn’t she love me enough? I knew now that drugs were mind-changing substances. Thinking about it further, I realized that more than altering a persons mind, drugs had the power to change and erase a person’s heart.