Between Lovers (39 page)

The doctor asks her if she knows who she is.

“Nah. Cole.” She fights, says that in two syllables. “Nah. Nah. Cole.”

They ask her more questions. She knows who she is. She knows me and Ayanna.

Other things are not clear.

At some point, when I'm sure she's back, when the doctor and his helpers need a little more elbow room, I leave the room. Ayanna stays. They ask her to leave, but she stays.

I go down the hallway. My lips turn to the sky and once again I cry a bit. Relief. Happy she's back on this side. A moment later it looks like an entire medical team is heading into Nicole's room. They're not rushing out of fear, just rushing to witness a miracle.

I open and close my hands, can actually feel my own stiffness. Taste the inside of my mouth telling me that I need to floss and rinse and brush away a stale smell. Can hear the sounds of other machines and the moans of strangers, especially the groans from an old man a few rooms down and the squeaks from nurses' shoes as they trek the hallway. I'm defrosting. Melting back into this world. Shaking off my numbness. The numbness that has blanketed me since Nicole left me at the altar. Everything I feel, good or bad, all of it reminds me that I'm alive. That I'm still here.

And I can smell. I inhale and I smell everything.

Yes, my senses come back. Either that or I'm delirious. I smell an expensive perfume. And I smell chicken. Fried chicken. I look up in time to see someone leaving. Someone pulling her luggage-on-wheels, someone wearing red and gold. She looks back long enough to see me.

I nod.

She nods to me in return.

Then she hums as she goes through the double doors. Gets on the elevator. And she is gone.

Maybe she was there. Maybe she wasn't. One man's hope is another's denial.

Ayanna comes out of the room, jars me from my trance.

We stand next to each other and stare out at the dark clouds smothering Lady Oakland.

Ayanna beams. “Sun's gonna shine bright today.”

“Sure is,” I say with equal enthusiasm. “Sure is.”

We both do some stretches. Nothing extreme. Just enough to realize how stiff we are.

She says, “Maybe we can sneak in a short run before the day's done.”

“Maybe.”

Later on we'll find out that Nicole's memory isn't there. Not all of it. But it will come back in bits and pieces. Will move in slowly. Roll in like the fog in the bay. And her speech, she'll talk, but it won't be much, and it will be slow and easy, like a nice run through the hills. Soon it will be time for physical therapists, speech therapists.

Once again they take her out, and this time the wait isn't bad. Not at all.

While we walk the hallway I say, “I'd like to stay a while longer. Until I know she's out of the woods.”

“What are you saying?”

My answer is inside my silence.

The sounds of pages and white shoes squeaking over tile floors fills in the silence.

Ayanna's eyes water up, this time for me. But I don't need any tears.

I tell her, “Not yet. I'm not leaving yet.”

One step at a time. That's how you move away. That's how you move on.

She says, “She'll miss you.”

“I'll miss her too.”

“I'll miss you.”

“I'll miss you too, Ayanna. Might even miss you the most.”

We stand there awhile. Watching the city.

I ask Ayanna, “You smell chicken?”

“Yeah.”

Winter changes to spring. Our season of cold is behind us. And as a great writer who calls herself Sister Soul jah says, that was our coldest winter. Things are changing; things are in bloom. Things are always changing. So many wonderful colors are alive. People are walking, running, jogging, lounging around Lake Merritt, sitting outside at Good Nature, Jahva Coffee-house, and all the other sidewalk eateries.

I ask Nicole, “Where were you?”

She's a beautiful woman in red sweats, walking with a cane, her locks in a ponytail.

“With my daddy,” she tells me with smiling lips. “I think and I think, and all I can remember is being at Riverside Park. Out at Lakeland. Fishing for crawfish. Think I heard you talking to me. Felt you kissing me. When I was with Daddy, I'm pretty sure I heard you talking to me. Heard you crying. That's why I came back.”

“What did I say?”

“You said that you were sorry. That you still loved me, that you had my back, no matter what.”

That's what Nicole always tells me when I ask her what she remembers the most. I always ask to see if some new memory has come to the surface. We do our slow walk around part of Lake Merritt. Walk with a loaf of bread in our hands, feed the ducks along the way. I do that with her twice a week.

Nicole says, “God, look at her run.”

We slow and watch a nice-looking woman fly by us with wings on her feet.

I say, “Was that her?”

“Regina Jacobs. I think that was her. She went by so fast. God, look at her form.”

“Nice booty.”

Nicole laughs. “You need to quit.”

“She's gonna get a speeding ticket. Catch her.”

“You got jokes up the yin-yang today.”

We walk at her pace. She's a miracle woman. Determined to do six months of rehab in half the time. Wants to get back to work. Wants to do a lot of things.

When she gets tired, we rest on a bench facing the waters and petting zoo at Fairy Land.

With a gentle breath, I say, “It's time.”

I say that and there is a long pause. One of those knowing pauses where we stop like they do in the movies, stop and look at each other face-to-face, like we're hitting our marks and posing for over the shoulder shots.

We both know. It's been coming for a while.

Nicole asks, “What are you saying?”

I take a short breath. Hold her hand.

I say, “Going back home for a while. New book, you know.”

“Don't make excuses, sweetie. You could do that all from here.”

I shake my head. “Have to move on.”

“Why?”

I could say that we're not old, but we're not young. I have a better understanding of the realities of this world. And soon a gray hair or two will show its head in ungodly places. I'm still six years older than she is, will always be six years in front of her, and she is still pretty young, will always be young and beautiful in my eyes. But time flies. Nicole may not care that she's at that borderline age where a woman needs to make those maternal decisions, but I do.

So, my answer to her is, “Because butterflies never become caterpillars.”

She understands. Her smile tells me that.

Her voice catches when she asks, “How soon?”

“Not too soon. Never too soon. Just wanted you to know.”

“You can go. I can make it, you know.”

“I'm not ready. Just getting ready.”

Her eyes water as we stroll. “This love I have for you, what do I do with it?”

“Same thing I do with mine. Give yours to Ayanna.”

“And you? Who you gonna give yours to?”

I shrug. “Dunno. I'm outnumbered nine-to-one.”

And we walk around that lake, stopping every now and then to toss crumbs to the ducks.

That night we made love, slow and easy. I slipped inside her like a whisper, once again an oyster clamped around a pearl, and while her tears fell like rain, we moved like thunder. I touched all of her, tried to steal it all to memory.

 

Oakland is a beautiful woman. It's always hard to leave a thing so beautiful.

I stayed in Oakland that whole season, until spring came along. Until things started to bloom. Long enough for Nicole to get out of the hospital. Long enough to help load her up in the SUV and help Ayanna take her back and forth to rehab. Long enough for Ayanna to get everything situated at their home. Long enough to take long runs through the hills with Ayanna at my side, those beautiful red-and-gold locks bouncing as I chased her up the hills.

Long enough for me to finish that book about three lovers.

 

Before I say my good-byes, I do go back by the Waterfront. For a while I eat apples and talk with the beautiful Ethiopian women who work the front desk. Give them books and smiles and conversation.

Tseday is happy to see me. She's always happy to see me.

She beams, can't wait to tell me, “I have a great idea.”

“Oh, boy. I'm listening.”

“You should put an Ethiopian in your next book.”

“Oh really?”

“As a good guy. I mean girl. She has to be good.”

I laugh. “Everybody wants to be in a book, but nobody ever wants to be the bad guy.”

She laughs along with me and shrugs. Her eyes sparkle when she smiles at me, looks into my eyes.

I invite her to lunch at TGIF. She says yes with a hesitant smile.

I say, “It's for research.”

“Okay. For your research.”

Over hot wings, salads, and fries she tells me about the trouble in her country.

I say, “You're political.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Yep. I am.”

“My family is very political. My brother was a POW in Eritrea. He was released a few weeks ago.”

At some point it gets lighter, more personal. She tells me that she grew up in Addis Ababa. Went to an all-girls school, the Nazareth School, from kindergarten to twelfth grade. A Roman Orthodox.

I say, “Is that Christian with an attitude?”

She laughs.

I ask, “Whassup with the attitude?”

“We were never colonized.”

“So you have bragging rights.”

“You better believe it. We kicked the white man's butt. And we're beautiful.”

She tells me that she came to the states to go to college. But got married and that slowed down her ambitions, and now she's divorced, no kids, older, wiser, enrolled at Berkeley, and back on track.

I ask, “What's your major?”

“Epidemiology and bio-statistics.”

“That's a serious double major.”

“Yep.”

We share smiles.

After lunch, we shake hands and she sashays back to the Waterfront.

I watch her walk away. Watch her look back and wave. I wave. And when I raise my right arm, seven silver bracelets sing and reflect in the sunlight.

I say her name loud enough for only me to hear.

Whisper her name and look at the bracelets on my arm.

If only I were ready.

I chose to stay on the road, chose to keep moving. Books had to be written. And my old man needed me by his side from time to time. A lot of injustice still goes on, and somebody has to show up to complain for the people who don't have the time to protest. Between writing and bitching about a system that changes too slowly, there are too many marks on my day planner to slow down. Moving and distance did me some good.

My I-pager lives on my hip and vibrates with sweet words from her. We'll send e-mails for a while. I'll send books. Christmas cards. Cards for Kwanzaa. She'll send thank-you notes dipped in sweet patchouli or frankincense. I send her flowers when they spotlight that miracle woman in
Essence.
Not every woman takes a punch from an SUV and comes out of a coma ready to laugh about it.

 

From time to time, Nicole would show up at my book signings in the Bay area. I'd see her walk into the crowded room, lingering in the back. As beautiful as the sun is warm. Those honey-blond locks now a shade of auburn, several cowry shells in the end of her mane. Afrocentric from head to toe. A queen amongst queens. My locks touching my shoulders by then. And I'd be wearing a goatee. Some gray coming into my light-brown mane. Not much, just a strand or two to let me know a change was on the way. And I'd see corners of gray struggling to come out around her temples. My one true sin would stay in the back, near the door, leaning on a cane, barely leaning, and smile at me like she was so proud. She whispered that she still loved me. Always will.

She'd blow me a soft kiss, then wave her right arm at me, the arm with the silver bracelets singing to me, telling me that I'm always welcome, always wanted in her life.

I'd salute her with a kiss as well, then wave my right arm at her, my silver bracelets jingling right back at her. Seven silver bracelets she gave me after that day we walked around the lake, when I told her I was leaving. One bracelet for every year we had together.

And while I signed books, she always vanished.

And I knew where to find her.

Once when I was done, I followed her heart, let it lead me up Broadway into North Oakland. Beyond the golf courses and the mini-mansions onto Broadway Terrace. To Proctor. And I parked across from that house with the huge palm trees, the city lights dancing behind me.

A beautiful flag, one with the brightest rainbow was in front of Nicole and Ayanna's home.

No more running.

We did complete the circle. Not at that house. We completed that circle on a cold February morning, under dark skies, in the rain, with Ayanna being Nicole's lungs and me being Nicole's heart, then me being Nicole's lungs, and Ayanna being Nicole's heart.

We loved Nicole back to life. And in the days after her eyes opened, we brought her healing. Healed us as well. We completed that circle. So, I guess we're forever bonded.

That's why when, for the hundredth time, when Ayanna reminded me that I had won that race around that lake, I told her what I wanted as payment.