Antebellum (13 page)

“Yeah, back to D.C.”

“Umm...I hate to break this to you, Moe, but you're booked up with shows and appearances for at least the next six months...”

“I'm cancellin' everything till further notice.”

“You can't. It's in your contract. Failure to...”

The last thing I wanted to hear about was a contract. My voice got louder than I meant for it to. “I don't care what's in the contract, SaTia!”

My outburst caught her with her mouth still open. She glared at me for a second, then closed her mouth and turned her head away.

“My bad,” I said after I had gotten control of myself. “I ain't mean to yell. But I don't...I don't care 'bout no contract. SaTia...” I waited for her to turn and look at me again. She was stubborn, but I finally connected with her eyes again.

“SaTia, look around, man. We in a hospital 'cause some niggas is mad at my battle record and wanna kill me. One'a my mans is lyin' here busted up, and another one went nuts. I gotta get someplace safe—where I can get my head on straight.” I turned from her and looked around at everyone. “We been travelin' for months
now, y'all. It's the same routine, right? Get to the city, bag chicks, blow they backs out, find da dope boy and get twisted, do a show or two, drop a few G's at the mall and strip club and leave. It ain't just me that needs a break; it's all of us.”

It was hard reading their faces. I couldn't tell if they were mad that I would even consider stopping, or if they were dumbfounded that I finally decided to do so.

“I'm sayin', in the end, y'all all grown people. Really, y'all can do whateva y'all want. But I'm gettin' on a plane and goin' back to Chocolate City. If y'all wanna use this as some vacation time or somethin,' do you. I'll let you know what's good.”

“What we look like goin' on some vacation when niggas is after you, man?” Ray stood up from his seat. “You already know, my nigga, we goin' wherever you goin'.”

I looked from Ray over to Brian, Henry, and SaTia.

“Y'all feel the same way? It's cool if you don't.”

They all nodded in agreement.

“Aight, cool. Let's go home.”

Six hours later, we were all sitting in first-class seats of a Boeing 787. Henry's arm was wrapped up in a sling and pulled closely to his body. The pain medicine they had given him made him giggle at the passengers as they walked by.

Although it was funny watching him make a fool of himself, I couldn't enjoy the moment. Two things were taking up my thoughts. The first was a conversation I'd had with Henry on the way to the airport. I was sitting in the back of the Escalade, starting to doze off, while Henry came and sat gingerly beside me. This was before he had taken the Vicodin that the doctor
prescribed for him. It seemed as if his every movement was a labor. The fact that he made the effort told me he wanted to talk about something important.

“Yo, you up, man?”

I'd had my dark glasses on, and he couldn't tell if I was just sitting quietly or crossing over into sleep.

Though Henry was almost back to his old self, it was hard forgetting how he looked while unconscious in the hospital bed. The memory made me really appreciate his presence. I sat up to let him know I was listening. “Yeah, man, I'm up. What's good?”

“You 'member me sayin' anything in da hospital 'bout a dream I had?”

I thought for a moment.

“Umm...yeah...when you woke me up you was talkin' somethin' 'bout some dream you had to tell me. I was so shocked to see you conscious, I don't think I let you finish.”

“Aight, well, check this out—when I was out, right, I had this dream that you was a slave...”

Henry stopped and I imagined flashes of his dream came up in his mind. Each one seemed to prick him like a sewing needle. When he looked back at me, he seemed like he had just come from a funeral. “Yo...I could see your face when they was beatin' you, dogg. I could hear your screams...”

Immediately I thought back to the words I'd told Henry while he was still unconscious. His dream was probably just a manifestation of the things I'd said. I thought briefly about telling him of my confessions, but decided against it. There'd be plenty of time for that back home. For now, I just laughed quietly and turned back to my friend.

“You sure they wasn't giving you no drugs befo' you came out the coma?”

I could tell by his face that my humor wouldn't be reciprocated.

“Naw, man, I'm serious.”

“Don't be, cuz. I know where it came from.”

My nonchalant attitude caused my injured friend to get frustrated. I could see the firmness in his gaze, and I figured it was the just the pain in his arm showing through.

“Aight, man, look, if the dream was what I think it was, then it happened 'cause I took some time last night and spilled my guts at your bedside. I only did it 'cause we ain't know if you was gonna die or not, but I put out some real talk. I don't really feel like talkin' 'bout it right now, but when we get back to D.C., I'll tell you everything I said. It fits with what you're tellin' me, though. That's why I'm sayin' don't stress it. I know where it came from.”

Henry seemed uneasy about letting it go. I leaned over closer to him and pulled my sunglasses off.

“I promise, man, soon as we get settled in D.C., we'll talk about it. Aight?”

He hesitantly nodded his head.

“Cool.” I put my sunglasses back on and settled back in my seat again. Henry waited a few seconds, and then started to move to his seat.

“Hey...” I called out to him, and he stopped and turned around.

“It's good havin' you back, my nigga.”

“Thanks, man...” He waited there, looking at me while something on his tongue held his legs in place. Finally, he let it go and went to sit down.

The second assailant of my peace of mind was the reality that I was actually going back home. Back to the realities of my life
before music, money, drugs, cars, and women had become my day-to-day routine.

And if I ever tried to come home and forget who I was, my family would be quick about jogging my memory.

To me, home meant a couple of things. It meant the two-floor brick house that had been in my family since my great-grandparents took their blood and sweat to the bank in a pillowcase. My grandmother was thirteen when they moved in. She took one look at her parents' faces when that balding white man grudgingly handed them the keys, and she vowed to herself right there that she would die before she let anything happen to the house. When my great-grandmother died, Big Mama's husband had already been killed in the war. She moved back into the house to help take care of Papa Jenkins, and she brought Marcus Jenkins, my father, with her.

Marcus Jenkins was a genius. Big Mama told me that her husband left him a saxophone that one of his war buddies brought to him personally after he came home. From that day on, my dad never went anywhere without it. When it got old and rusty, my dad worked a whole year to make enough money to get it refurbished. By the time he graduated from high school, he was making enough money playing music that he started doing it full time.

“Only two groups of people I really believe is cursed in this world,” Big Mama would always say with sadness pouring from her eyes, “the Kennedys and musicians.”

Tisha Freeman fell in love with Marcus Jenkins while he was playing “In A Sentimental Mood” with his band in a local club. Her love was thick and sweet, like honey, my dad always used to say. She was smart enough to know what his twitches meant, but too smitten to care. He brought her home one day to meet Big
Mama, and when he came back from dropping her off, Big Mama told him to marry her.

Mama says I kicked her so hard during the wedding that she had to hold on to the pews as she walked down the aisle.

Seven years after my parents married, my mom decided she couldn't take care of my dad on her own. He'd been hospitalized more times than she could count, and she was terrified of waking up one morning and finding him dead beside her. Mama and Big Mama had a long talk one afternoon, and the next week mama packed us all up and we moved from our apartment into the family house. The day we moved in, Mama put all of my dad's stuff into his childhood room and told him they wouldn't sleep in the same bed again until he was clean.

In the end, it was Big Mama who made the difference. To this day, she won't tell us what she told him, but after Mama took the last of my dad's stuff in the room, Big Mama went in and closed the door behind her. When she came out, my dad swore to us that he wouldn't leave the house until he got better.

About three days in, my father called me into his room. In between the shaking and cold sweats, he told me stories about Big Mama cleaning up feces off the bed and floor when my great-grandfather would have accidents. He told me how she would bathe Papa Jenkins and put him in her bed while she stayed up bleaching the floor and mattress, only to have to go bathe herself and head out to the Whitfield house to scrub and wash and scrape and soak all day.

“Why didn't y'all just take him to an old people's home?” I asked.

“Sh...she...she could've,” my father told me. It was the middle of July, and he shivered like he was caught naked in a blizzard. “I...I asked her the same thing...one day, when the...the whole
house smelled like a toilet... 'cause Granddaddy had the stomach flu...”

I went and got a warm cloth to put on his forehead.

“What did she say?” I asked when I came back.

“Sh...she slapped me...'cross the face.”

“Dang.”

“Then...she looked at me...and said that without him, n...n... none of us would b...b...b...be here. She said he...he gave his s...ss...soul to white folks so he could feed her mother and her, and anything else he had left over he g...gave up for this house....”

“Wow, Daddy...”

Marcus Jenkins did all he could to sit up in his bed. Dripping sweat like an icicle when the sun comes out, he looked me in the eye and cupped the back of my neck with his hand.

“That's...why I called you in here, Moses. My grand...my granddaddy died before his time...tryin' to make sure this family had something...and my daddy...di...died in the war doin' the same...thing. It ain't a day that g...goes by that I ain't proud of both of 'em. I'm in bondage right now...but I swear...Moses... soon as I get...get...this monkey off my back...I'ma make you just as proud...just as proud of me.”

I was only seven years old, and I didn't understand what was happening to my father. All I knew was that he was sick and confused. I couldn't do anything about him being sick, but I knew I could cure his confusion.

“But, Daddy...” I said as I looked back up at him. “I am proud of you.”

It was the only time I'd ever seen my father cry.

Two weeks later, when he walked out of his room, it was as if someone had turned on a lightbulb under his skin. That week
was the best one of my life. He asked me whether there was something I always wished we could do when he was sick, and after I told him, he found a way to make it happen. I felt like Richie Rich.

His first gig after sobering up was that Saturday. At 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, Rico, the drummer in my dad's band, handed him a small case with a needle in it.

The following Monday night, Rico came to our house and wept on our couch. “I was jealous,” he struggled to speak through his tears. “He looked so young, so healthy, and the rest of us was still junkies...I just wanted to show him the demon was still there... that he wasn't no better...I swear...I ain't know he'd do it all...”

By 2 a.m. Sunday morning, Marcus Jenkins, my father, was dead. Big Mama had Jeremiah 9:4 engraved on his tombstone.

Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers...

My mother loved my dad to the point of insanity. When he died, she tried on two separate occasions to commit suicide. After the second time, Big Mama went out and bought a gun. She filled it with bullets and took it up to Mama's room. Mama's wails echoed through the door as Hattie Jenkins rested the gun on my mother's lap, and told her that if she didn't love her son enough to stay alive, then go ahead and put herself out of her misery and stop costing the family money by running back and forth to the hospital. But if she decided she did love me enough, then come downstairs tomorrow morning ready to start living again.