Aching For It (7 page)

“Come on, Junie. We’re going to be the last ones off,” my
sister kept nagging. “Even the flight attendants are leaving.”

“Something else, anything else,” I commanded myself.
“Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey, Sylvester Winfrey.”

My dick went soft immediately.

I was cool, calm and collected as Sis and I drove down La
Brea Avenue. The Hollywood Sign glistened from the hills in the far distance
ahead of us. I could feel her eyes on me. I glanced over at her. She had the
strangest, sweetest smile on her face.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m just happy, Junie. I’m really happy for you.”

“Thanks, Sis.”

“And you know something?”

“What?”

“You really love that boy.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“The way you cussed me out, it had to be love.”

“I’m sorry about that, Frankie.”

“Don’t be. Don’t ever be sorry for defending the honor of
someone you love.”

The next day, Wells Caitlin went over the paperwork we had
brought back from the Dominican Republic with a fine-tooth comb. He then
retrieved the paperwork he had on file, including my sworn statement as a
third-party witness to the relationship, and the all-important I-130 Petition
for Alien Relatives form. He had already filled out the Alien Relatives form
and offered it to Frankie for her verification and signature. He also had her
complete and sign off on the marital consummation section, putting pen to paper
to only a half lie, considering Frankie’s dick-grabbing assault. Yes, I did
forgive her, but I would never forget what she had done.

Over the next two days, the Dominican documentation,
including the marriage certificate, was translated from Spanish to English,
triplicated, notarized and sent off by registered mail to U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services along with the required fee. Caitlin speculated that we
should hear something back within four weeks. It was the longest four weeks of
my life, but just as Caitlin had predicted, the UCIS receipt notice arrived
almost to the day. He then outlined the next step.

“We’ll have to wait for approval of the petition. Once it’s
approved, which I’m sure it will be, based on the information submitted, it’ll
be sent to the National Visa Center. Once it’s received by the NVC, all we need
to do is wait for an immigration visa number to become available. Now that
could take a while.”

“How long?” I asked impatiently.

“Hard to say,” Caitlin answered, addressing Frankie, “but we
can file for a K-3 nonimmigrant visa, Mrs. Santos, which would allow your
husband to come to the United States and wait here to complete the immigration
process.”

“And what’s the procedure for that?” Frankie asked, picking
up her cue.

“Since you already have a spousal petition on file, the K-3
visa application is pretty simple, even though certain circumstances can make
Mr. Santos ineligible for it.”

“Like what?” I jumped in anxiously.

“Drug trafficking, having HIV/AIDS, practicing polygamy,
advocating the overthrow of the Unites States government.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about any of that,” I
responded confidently.

“Also submitting false statements and fraudulent documents,
Mrs. Santos, which could not only end Mr. Santos’ chances of ever coming here,
but could subject you to federal charges.”

Suddenly a chill shot up my spine. I thought about Frankie’s
sworn affidavit that the relationship had been consummated. I thought about my
signed statement as a third-party witness to their romantic relationship.

I thought about Sylvester Winfrey.

* * * * *

“You know, you really need to work on your poker face,”
Frankie chided once we were outside Caitlin’s office.

“What?”

“You’re too old, too black and too gay to worry about every
little thing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that since you’ve gone through everything you’ve
gone through and gotten this far in life, you need to sit back and chill a bit.
You’ve run the gauntlet, Junie. From here on in, it’s going to be a cakewalk.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You sat there in front of Caitlin stressed like a new widow
with no inheritance.”

“I did not.”

“Yes you did. Thank God you don’t have to be there for the
interview with the consular officers.”

“The consular officers?”

“Yeah, did you forget? I’ll have to go back down to Santo
Domingo for an interview with officers from the US Embassy there. Étie and I,
remember? They’ll put us in separate rooms and ask us all kinds of questions to
make sure our stories jibe, including stories about our sexual intimacy.

“But you guys signed an affidavit about that.”

“Yeah, but they want to see us eye to eye talking about it.
They want us to work up a sweat, see if we’re lying. Besides, it’s another way
for Uncle Sam to get his rocks off.”

“Oh shit. That’s right.”

“Yep.”

“Oh shit.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how good Étie’s going to be at that.”

“Don’t underestimate your man, brother dear. He’ll be just
fine. He’s smart and he’s cool. A lot cooler than you.”

“Yeah.”

“And besides, there’s one thing I can definitely attest to
without any chance of contradiction.”

“What?”

“He is definitely packing.”

“Frankie,” I warned.

“Oh Christ, Junie. Allow a lascivious old diva a little
levity.”

But I wasn’t much in levity mode. Not only was I still not
completely over the idea of my sister grabbing my man’s
pinga
, I
certainly was not ready to joke about it or make light of this very serious
situation. One false move, one inconsistent statement, could blow everything.

“Okay, sorry, poor taste. But the reality is that they’re
going to ask Étie and me some pretty personal shit. Caitlin made that clear
from the get-go. So we might as well prepare ourselves for it. And believe me.
Étie can handle it, even if you can’t.”

“I’m just not sure, Frankie.”

“Look, you don’t have to be sure. Étie and I have to be
sure.”

“I just don’t know.”

“Do you want to get your man over here or not?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Well then, stop being such a fucking pussy.”

Frankie was right. That’s exactly what I was being. And to
think I had the nerve to accuse Étie of that, of being a pussy when he had been
nothing but brave, collected and unshakable throughout this entire ordeal.

Still, I must confess. Frankie had correctly clocked me.
There was always going to be a certain nervousness, a certain uneasiness about
this rock-strewn, muddied, potholed odyssey toward our goal of getting Étie
here, at my side, in our home, in my arms, in America.

* * * * *

Étie and I spoke on the phone daily. I was able to get a
nice deal with Vonage so that I could have unlimited international minutes to
the Dominican Republic for one flat fee. The delicacy of the inevitable
interview sessions he and Frankie would have to endure was, true to Frankie’s
acute assessment, more emotionally challenging for me than for either one of
them. I was like the father-to-be in the waiting room, attacked by
indescribable anxiety, sweating in agony, in need of sedatives and painkillers
to ease my mind’s spastic contractions, desperate for a psychological epidural
while my spouse bravely endured the pain of real labor.

“I will be ready,
Papi
,” Étie assured me as I
explained to him what he would face under consulate interrogation.

“You and Francesca will have to be totally prepared. You’ll
have to have long, detailed conversations about very intimate things,” I
nervously cautioned him.

“You think I do not know how this works?”

“I just want to make sure, Étie. I don’t want you to get
tripped up.”

“Considering what I have already experienced in life and
considering what I have to look forward to, nothing can—how you say—trip me up
now,
Papi
.”

* * * * *

Over the next few weeks, Étie and Frankie got to know each
other,
really
know each other, over the phone. Some of it, I was able to
fill each of them in on. I could tell Étie all about our brothers Andre and
Craig, our sisters Desiree and Niecey, our beautiful widowed mother and our
wonderful late father. Filling Frankie in on Étie’s dark and Dickensian
life—his mother’s death, his father’s cruelty—was not so easy, but oh so
crucial. I knew that Frankie was a good enough actress to pull it off, but the
very things I so loved about Étie were the very things that worried me most—his
honesty, his purity of heart and his unlying eyes.

But somehow they were able to discuss and retain the details
of their invented intimacy, including the details of their invented sexual
activities, to their mutual satisfaction, details I did not need to be made
privy to. The very idea of the discussion was enough to blush me plum-purple.

By the time Étie and Frankie were summoned to the American
Embassy in Santo Domingo for their interview, Frankie knew as much about Étie
as I did and Étie knew more about my sister than I needed to.

At the small hotel in downtown Santo Domingo where we had
booked rooms, I paced back and forth and sweated.

But it was my nerves, not the humid weather that drenched my
forehead, chest and underarms as I anxiously waited for Frankie and Étie’s
return from the inquisition. I showered again to kill the time that wouldn’t
die and tried to distract myself with the Spanish language
telenovela
—a
Latin soap opera—that filled the TV screen with brimming melodrama.

Suddenly I heard the sound of familiar voices in the hallway
right outside the room. I shot up like a jet just as the door opened. Étie
escorted Frankie in.

I rushed them, giving them both a scare.

“My God, Junie,” Frankie scolded. “You freaked the living
shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” I said, unable to tell by their demeanor if the
interrogation at the consulate went well or not.

Frankie, more fluent in Spanish than I, was saying something
to Étie in his native tongue that I didn’t understand and Étie was answering
her in what seemed like a heated debate.

“What?” I asked anxiously.

“I know my brother,” Frankie said to Étie in firm English,
ignoring me.

“And I know my lover,” Étie countered with equal firmness.

“Just look at him,” Frankie insisted, examining me like a
corpse.

“You are okay, true baby?” Étie asked me, staring me in the
eyes.

“Okay?” I yelped. “I’m a nervous wreck!”

“I told you,” Frankie humphed triumphantly, stretching out
her hand to Étie. “Pay up, Mr. Saldano.”

“God, you guys are killing me!” I growled impatiently as
Étie reached in his pocket, pulled out a fifty pesos note and slapped it into
Frankie’s open palm. “I can’t take it anymore! Tell me! Tell me before I
burst!”

“Oh baby,” Étie pouted. “Why you nervous wreck?”

“Because I know my brother,” Frankie chimed in, sticking the
folded money in her cleavage.

“I bet Frankie you be cool as cucumber.”

“Come on, you guys, how the hell did it go?”

“It was good,” Étie answered matter-of-factly.

“It was good?” I begged the question.

“Piece of cake,” Frankie answered smoothly.

“Baby?” I looked into Étie’s knowing eyes.

“It was
very
good,” his voice and his eyes answered
me.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, we are very sure. When officer ask questions about how
I love her, I tell him truth.”

“The truth?!” I panicked.

“I tell him truth that is in my heart. When he talk to me, I
think of you. I tell truth in my heart about my love for you. I just change
name to Francesca.”

There was nothing left to do but wait. Wells Caitlin
couldn’t say for sure how long it would take for the embassy to make a
decision, but he assured Francesca that a decision, either way, would be made
soon.

It was the “either way” that bothered me.

Nonetheless, the three of us—Francesca, Étie and I—busied
ourselves with the routines of our designated professions. Frankie booked three
weeks on a Lifetime movie playing evil twins vying for the fortune of a smitten
old fool played by Kelsey Grammer.
Details
magazine hired me to shoot
the photo art for a story featuring the guys from
Entourage
. Down in
Santo Domingo, Étie was grooming a young kid by the name of Gael to replace him
at the Trujillos’ bodega once, we were cautiously assured, Étie was approved to
move to America and wait out his immigration process.

And yes, I was my typical nervous-wreck self while Étie
maintained enough cool, calm and collective for the both of us. He was strong
beyond his years, resilient in a way that my rather pampered existence had not
prepared me for.

The ache of a three-thousand-mile divide was the pain I
found nearly unbearable, even as a bright and hopeful future hung just above my
head, our heads, within an arm’s reach, like a wishing star.

But for Étie, that three-thousand-mile divide was but a
short and final joust, the adrenaline-fueled final sprint to the finish line
where true happiness was the winner’s loving cup.

It was he, Étie, who constantly encouraged me to be strong, to
realize that the fulfillment of our dream was just around the corner, even
though, more often than not, just around the corner was not close enough for
me.

And then I remembered something he had said to me when,
early on, I was about to allow my frustration to get the better of me.
That
is the difference between our two cultures. Americans demand what they want
immediately and usually get it. But we know to be patient, out of necessity and
lack of options.

And so, in spite of my naturally spoiled nature, I began
cautioning myself to heed my lover’s gentle words of truth and admonition.
Patience was but one of the many virtues he possessed. And patience was what I
needed to learn from him among so many other things.

I then began filling my days not so much waiting for the
word to come down, but planning the inevitable life we would share together.
And all of those wonderful plans, those dreams, did indeed cause time to pass
quickly.

* * * * *

I don’t quite remember where I was or what I was doing when
I got the call from Frankie. Everything outside that particular call was a
complete blur to me. I simply remembered feeling a happiness I hadn’t
experienced since the first time Étie and I made love. It was that kind of
happiness that filled me, overwhelmed me, humbled me, when I received that
fateful call from Francesca.

“I just got the notice from ICIS,” I remember her saying,
although, at the time, I couldn’t read anything in her voice except that
nebulous void between hope and dread.

“And?” I dared to respond.

“Well…” she teased, invoking the breathless pause always
available to thespians and drama queens, both of which my sister was.

“What, Frankie, what?” I pleaded.

“I’m afraid…”

“Afraid?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to rearrange your medicine
cabinet.”

“Huh?”

“And make room for another toothbrush. They said yes, Junie.
Yes! Étie’s been approved for a K-3 visa!”

“Oh my God,” I whispered in awe.

“He can come to America!”

“Oh my God, Frankie!”

“You guys can be together here!”

Although I knew we still had a long way to go, whistles,
bells, firecrackers and Hallelujah Choruses suddenly went off inside my head.

After a million thanks, I got off the phone with Frankie,
danced a spastic electric slide that twirled me down my hallway, swept me out
my back door and skipped me through my garden as I sang thanks and praises to
the God whose sunshine smiled down on me so brightly. And then I called my
baby.

“It is true?” he asked when I gave him the news.

“Yes, baby, yes!” I sang into the phone over and over and
over again.

“Oh my Father God,” he whispered back distantly into the
phone, his voice humble and gentle and free. “I must go to church and thank
Heavenly Father.”

And then we were both laughing and crying and planning and
laughing and crying and singing and happy in a way so decidedly devil-may-care
and yet so foolishly apropos.

“I’m coming to get you,” I managed to say amidst all the
wondrous chaos.

“I will be here waiting, my sweet,” he answered, his words
giggled with love.

* * * * *

The next two weeks were filled with glorious madness. Once
everything was verified through Caitlin, and Étie was physically in possession
of his K-3 visa, I booked my round-trip ticket to Santo Domingo and Étie’s
one-way ticket to Los Angeles.

I cleared my schedule and decided to spend three weeks with
Étie in Santo Domingo to help out with his transition—packing, moving out of
his room at
Señora
Vasquez’s place, and preparing him in any way I could
for his new life in America—and hell, to just lay up with him.

With all of his belongings packed and shipped off to
America, save for the clothes and incidentals he needed during the remaining
time we’d spend on the island before our scheduled flight to the States, we
turned those last days into another of our honeymoons. We checked into La Habra
Resort, which was nestled against the pristine beaches of Juan Dolio, and
celebrated our first night there with sparkling champagne and shimmering
candlelight and gentle, thankful lovemaking.

Our kisses that night were ever so tender. Our lips didn’t
tremble with hunger, but were given over to a delicateness. Our tongues were
un-darting, soft and relaxed as they slow-danced in the calming moistness of
our mouths.

My fingers slowly caressed his beautiful face, with the
reminding scar of his father’s rage, and then they easily found themselves
strolling through his glistening jet-black hair.

His eyes, like mine, couldn’t decide whether to stare
longingly or to flutter blissfully or to succumb to the half-open leisure of
their bedroom state, even as the gentle kisses ignited a warmth as soothing as
cocoa and caramel.

I kissed all of him; the black curly hair I had lightly
tussled, the ears I’d so often whispered sweet somethings into, the beautiful
face with the poignant scar no artist could capture. He took my worshipping
lips with a sigh. He moaned and muttered soft Spanish as I sucked and bit his
nipples lightly. I painted his chest with my worshipping tongue and paid
special attention to his perfect navel.

The feel of his black silky pubes dizzied and dazzled me as
I buried my face in their glory only to discover buried treasure galore.

His beautiful penis was rock-hard now, its glistening head
half-exposed above loose foreskin. My tongue worshipped that head with kisses,
and as my lips gently devoured him, my tongue in the dark of my mouth explored
the terrain between dickhead and foreskin. My mouth and my tongue played with
slurping glee all around it, up and down it, sucking the foreskin back over the
head, munching the wrinkled opening, sucking it back down, then sucking it back
up, then back down again, up again, down again, gagging me lovingly as I took
all of him, from the slit of his dick to the top of his balls, over and over
and over again.

Caught up in what seemed like unbearable bliss, he twisted
beneath me and took me in his warm mouth like a babe to a bottle and sucked me
as deeply as I sucked him. He then scooted down farther and, finding my ass
cheeks hovering above him, he grabbed around my waist, and the feel of his
tongue as it entered my asshole sent a shiver through my body like glorious
lightning, causing me to moan and gurgle and deep-throat him to the point of
choking.

When finally we tore ourselves away from our oral pleasures,
we took turns fucking each other in that beautiful way, staring into each
other’s eyes, eyes that danced drowsily to the rhythm of each smacking
penetration. And we kissed as deeply and as delicately and as divinely as we
fucked. It was half past midnight when finally we shot our loads together for
the third time and collapsed into each other’s arms, totally spent, totally
satisfied, totally in love.

He kissed me good night and spooned himself into my arms. I
kissed his shoulder. His beautiful brown beauty astounded me and in his
presence, I realized that I was in the glow of Jehovah’s approval. God is love.
And love is for everyone. Thank you, Lord.

* * * * *

The next morning we woke up as we fell asleep—in each
other’s arms. Only the sudden ringing of Étie’s phone parted our good-morning
kiss. With longing regret, he eased away and picked up the whining phone from
the nightstand. He then cradled his naked body back into mine and brought the
phone up to his ear, his head nestled in my chest, his raven curls soft against
my cheek, their sweet cocoa-butter scent my reliable aphrodisiac.

“
Hola
,” he softly greeted the caller in the soft,
easy voice of one who had been loved all through the night. Then he smiled. “
Señor
Trujillo
,” he continued, snuggling his warm body deeper into my embrace, “
Es
agradable oír de usted. Como está Señora Trujillo?
” And he smiled again,
even broader. “
Bueno, bueno
,” he then said, glad to know that the
Trujillos were doing just fine.

Then a strange and eerie look began to contort his beautiful
face. He lifted his head from my chest, slowly sat up and stared out
questioningly. “Is everything all right,
señor
?” he finally asked, his
brow furrowed with concern. But as he listened to what
Señor
Trujillo
had to say, the look on his face turned into something I had never seen
before—something stoic and cold, something newly frozen by a grimness buried
deep inside a place I could not have imagined existed. His stillborn silence
scared me. I had no doubt that the chill could be felt on the other end of the
phone line. I could barely make out
Señor
Trujillo calling out his name
with a pleading.

“
¿Étie? ¿Étie?
”

“
Sí, señor, yo estoy aqui
,Ӄtie answered
slowly, ominously.

And
Señor
Trujillo continued. But the more Étie
listened, the colder he became.

I touched his hand. He flinched. Then he looked at me, a
peek from the trance in which he was submerged. He tried to smile, a weak
apologetic smile that still couldn’t disguise or erase the ill tidings that had
numbed him so. He slowly pulled the phone away from his ear.

What I was now hearing
Señor
Trujillo saying shocked
me, saddened me, caused me to feel the pain my baby was hell-bent on not
displaying.

“
Su padre está muy enfermo, Étie
,”
Señor
Trujillo
said.“
Su padre se muere…querría verle.
”

Your father is very sick, Étie. Your father is dying…he
would like to see you
.

“
Perdón, Señor Trujillo
,” Étie answered finally,
coldly, yet with a deference for the man on the other end of the line, “
pero
yo no quieren verlo
.”

“He is your father, Étie,”
Señor
Trujillo was begging
in Spanish. “You
must
see him.”

But it didn’t matter.

“He was never a father to me,” Étie answered mercilessly. “I
was only the product of his wasted sperm.”

“Don’t speak so cruelly of him!”
Señor
Trujillo
scolded like a father to a naughty child. “Whatever happened between you and
him should not be held against him anymore. Not now, Étie. Not now in this time
of his greatest need. He wants to talk with you, Étie. He wants to make things
right. He wants the chance to earn your forgiveness.”

“Earn my forgiveness?” Étie snapped. “Let him earn my
forgiveness in hell.”

“Étie!”
Señor
Trujillo cried.

“
Perdón, Señor Trujillo, pero deben ir
,” Étie then
said, near tears himself, tears that threatened to burst through his hardened
heart. “
Adios.
”

“
Un momento, Étie!
”

“¿Sí, Señor?”

“I cannot believe that this is the Étie that I know,”
Señor
Trujillo said sadly, but forcefully. As I did the translation in my head, there
grew heaviness in my own heart. “I cannot believe that this is the Étie that I
have known all these years, that this is the Étie whose heart has always
overflowed with human kindness. That this is the Étie who sits in the holy
Father’s house and prays for His forgiveness, yet cannot give forgiveness to
his own father, to his own flesh and blood. I cannot believe that this is you,
my son.”

“Believe it,
Señor
Trujillo,” Étie answered bitterly
in his native tongue. “And believe me. That man is not dying. As far as I am
concerned, he has already died. He died a long time ago,
señor
. He died
when my mother died. He died when I was born. He took his last breath when I
took my first. I have been an orphan all of my life, a child without a mother
and father, on my own. All of my life, I’ve been alone.”

“I thought
Señora
Trujillo and I were like parents to
you,”
Señor
Trujillo said quietly, hurt weakening his voice.

“Yes. That is very true.”

“And you say that you love Jesse and he loves you?”

“Yes,” Étie answered, looking up at me, a single tear
dropping defiantly down his cheek. “That is very true as well.”

“Then you are not alone, Étie. When you have love, you are
never alone. And now you are all that your father has in this world. He needs
your love. He does not need to leave here being alone.”