FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof Read online

  The Caucasoid and Arab ones stood in RooAmber’s mirror, their strange hair dark and bristly like stubble against their shaved heads, their arms reaching out to the sea--throwing the babies--into the sea.

  RooAmber remembered it well. The love as it died between her and the white woman. Her name had been Akinyi in that life.

  She remembered the squads of African men returning to the island to rape and urinate on them, feed and ride them.

  Every nine months, new babies were born.

  Born out of red clay women, straw colored women, egg yolk yellows and bossy cinnamons, fish belly whites, deep dark royal African browns and mystic charcoals. Women from all the wars and all the sales bargains among men. And always the pregnancies, always the screams.

  The African slave master’s always came and rescued the blackest boy children. Sold them back into the interior, into army squads and work tribes. But the girls and the white males were left on the island to be trained as new sex slaves and “white bucks”. And, of course, the African slave masters were so very pitch black in color that all of the colored women produced dark brown or chocolate or pitch black offspring with the same faces as the slave masters and with the same strong African hair. But when the white or Arab women produced babies that were these dark colors, they went to the sea and drowned them or left them at night in the jungle for animals to eat. They couldn’t bare to mother them. But the ones that were the color of bright faded sun and sea waves--those ones they kept as their progeny.

  Those ones that were the strangeness of them. With dead eyes and weak, wavy hair and skin that the African sun could only rape and burn. They kept these ones and raised them and bred them, and within time, it was as if the white and Arab women had rubbed two sticks together and made fire. Their white children separated themselves from the others and took instruction from the blank, cold stares of their mothers. They became lighter and lighter.

  RooAmber remembered making love with the white woman. She remembered asking the white woman about the charcoal twins that had been born out of her womb and hearing the woman say that the sight of them gave her nightmares about being raped, so she killed them.

  She remembered the way the Caucasoid woman called her name, “Akinyi”...as though it were sweet coconut in her mouth.

  But then, the island women began to fight. The black children complaining and feeling suspicious as the white minority became clannish and contemptuous of the dark majority. Whites feared extinction, so they fantasized about making the blacks extinct.

  The natural instinct.

  The natural human instinct to compete for dominance and priority.

  And, of course, the whites had not the genetic material to stand along side the black majority as equals. There was no way for the whites to procreate, except by second generation. They could not be born white from a black slave master and a Caucasoid. They could only attain and retain the mother’s dream of whiteness--by separating the purest from any and all others.

  And it was natural, Akinyi realized, for the Caucasoid mother to dream of her image, her own white beauty. To desire and demand it. It was human nature to wish for one’s image to continue forever through one’s children.

  For truly, Akinyi would not have the white children as her children, either. But the difference was, Akinyi was not willing to kill them. She could not abandon or loathe or drown a child just because it was not her own image. But the caucasoid and Arab mothers did so routinely, and by design.

  By design. Systematically, with a smile, slowly...but surely.

  They were strategically brilliant women, competent in the ways of male territorialism, and overall, fearful and without genetic power to counter the blood berry of the black women. Obviously, to render the blacks less and less pure, and therefore, less powerful, was the only chance of survival they had.

  And in time...things became so horridly divided and so utterly confused by a “rainbow of colors” that the African slave masters invaded the island and killed all the white and Arab women and the entire white colony of children. The whites simply would not accept blackness, they would not become it. So killing them off had been the only way to bring unity and alignment to the black people themselves, and to get rid of the endless confusion caused by the splintered rainbow groups, and through these acts of evil rape and devilish enslavement--these legacies of colorist murder and human competition, the concept of “race”, to Africans, meaning “family”--the world of womanly sisterhood and women’s wombs were cursed forever and marked with the mark of pig’s blood and men’s semen.

  Each color was a different family.

  And Akinyi, old and near death, had watched love die. The love between she and her Caucasoid sister and separation of human beings. The white lover’s throat cut right in front of her. The dead eyes...really dead at last.

  RooAmber Childress opened her green eyes suddenly. For in the darkness of her bedroom, she heard the sound of her front door closing downstairs. But that was impossible, so she thought surely she had imagined it. She turned over and went back to sleep.

  And Scotch Childress hopped in his car and took off…once again undetected.

  ••

  Namibia Roberts smiled, a blue fedora shadowing her white face, as the chauffeur opened the back door of her Rolls Royce and carefully held her gloved hand so that she could step out onto the red carpet that led inside one of Georgetown’s most exclusive Jack and Jill restaurants, The Show Boat.

  With nervous knees and many deep breaths, she assured herself that everything was going to be alright and that this was the best thing she could do--inform Shane that he had a son.

  “Mrs. Roberts!...welcome back to Georgetown. Should I seat you at your grandfather’s favorite table?”

  “Yes, thank you, darling. Ever so.” Namibia made no eye contact.

  “Will you be smoking?”

  “Yes, I will, darling...and please...bring a fan for my coat.”

  The waiter handed Namibia a menu and then pointed at a small telephone that sat on the table. He said, “When you’re ready to order, Mrs. Roberts, just pick up the phone and press 0-9. We take orders by phone.”

  “Well, how delightful. My son, Shane, is joining me...”

  The waiter opened his tray set and removed a bowl of freshly sliced cantaloupe, a plate of chilled crab meat mixed with coconut, pepper and bacon bits and two glasses of water and two glasses of orange juice. A small carafe of white wine was also set on the table with a water tray for finger washing.

  “You’re divine darling, thanks.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Roberts.”

  And then it happened.

  A stranger, tall and exceedingly handsome, dark as sugared graham crackers came marching down the aisle and stopped right at Namibia’s table as she was dunking a piece of cantaloupe into the white wine.

  Startled, she looked up at the dark man.

  “Good morning mother.”

  Namibia stared incredulously. Hives beaded her white throat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mother?”

  And then Namibia realized that it was him. Her son Shane. But...he looked so incredibly different.

  “What’s wrong, mother?”

  “My wooord, is that you? You’re as dark as toast!”

  Shane grinned, proudly, and sat down at the table. “Yes, I know. Isn’t it thrilling? I don’t even tan or go to the beach and my skin has been getting darker and darker. I went to a skin specialist to find out why, but he didn’t have any real answer. He said that some black people darken as they age, others lighten.” He laughed and said, “Women have always come onto me, but they considered me a pretty boy. Now all of a sudden, I’m the dark fantasy of ultimate masculinity. They say I’m fine.”

  “But this is not natural”, Namibia stared with alarm. She shook her head as though she didn’t want to see him like this. “Will it go away?”

  “Go away? I hope not.”

  Shane stared at the horror in her mother’s gr
ay eyes. “Mother, what’s wrong? You don’t like it?”

  “Well...I didn’t recognize you. But yes, you’re very handsome.” She looked up at his hair--to check that it was still good. And was, oily black and wavy as a Spaniards. She said, “You look like an Ethiopian now. You don’t look like us anymore.”

  And that was when Namibia Roberts quietly decided that she would never tell Shane about his son that looked Denzel Washington. Something in her would rather deal with Tangie’s blackmail. Something in her...the whole damned world was losing its standards and understanding.

  The flesh.

  The flesh made a cold sweat break out on her brow.

  The flesh made her want to protect her son. Protect him from whatever it was that just didn’t fit.

  Fit normally.

  22

  •

  Shane’s penis, however large, had always seemed to fit perfectly into Rosaria’s mouth. She was tasting it again, craving it. And when she twirled yet another night before the mirror, her flowing haired ivory body draped exquisitely in the wedding gown, she decided to demand it.

  Clumsily, she almost tripped over the vodka bottles that stood next to her bed, but by palming the mattress for support and standing back up straight, she got her bearings and found her way to the hiding place to fetch the key and then disappeared through the double doors.

  Hardly being able to wait for the look on their faces...when she caught them tangled in RooAmber’s bed...her voice startling them with a loud and emphatic, “excuse me!”...”but can I suck my husband’s dick just one more time before we sign the divorce papers?”

  Tears beaded in her eyes as she flew down the staircase. Tears, because she was so obsessively in love with in her husband. She didn’t think she could make it without him. And to lose him to a black girl.

  To be left by a black man...for a black woman.

  OhmyGOD!! she bolted towards the car. Fell down and skinned her knees.

  ••

  Teena Marie was singing “Out on a Limb”.

  RooAmber Childress dipped a piece of chilled cantaloupe, lightly peppered, into her glass of white wine. She flipped it in her mouth, closing her eyes, and savoring the sweet juicy burst of heat as it stung her tongue. Uhm, that’s good. She lay back in the hot sudsy bathwater, her bones and muscles, her whole body appreciating the soothing sensuality of being in water.

  Teek-ding, teek-ding...teek-ding.

  RooAmber opened her eyes, sat up in the tub and picked up her cell phone and hit Talk. “Hello?”

  “I love you.”

  She grinned with a smile so bright it could have lit up a cave. She lay back in the water, resting her head. “You coming over tonight?”

  “Well, it’s already ten thirty. I might as well finish up some work on the computer and make a salad, get some sleep for the board meeting tomorrow. What are you gonna do?”

  With her eyes closed and her smile still radiant, she said, “I’m treating myself to a luxuriously long, beautiful bath. And I’ve got the vanilla soul sista, Teena Marie, to keep me company. I’m having peppered cantaloupe and wine for dinner.”

  “God, you make me want to come over. Put that cantaloupe inside you and then eat it back out.”

  RooAmber giggled deliciously at his teasing.

  “I’m serious. I could go for a nice hot bubble bath.”

  “Well, Shane, if you want to come over...that would great. But I’m not going to ask you to come by this late. I mean, really, it’s up to you.”

  “My nature’s rising just talking to you, beautiful.”

  “Don’t excite yourself. This is the ninth time you’ve called me today.”

  Shane chuckled. He said, out of the blue, “Would you...would you marry me, if I asked you?”

  “You’re not even divorced yet, Shane. That’s why I’m not letting you move in here. I’m a D.C. girl, I take things slow.”

  “But once the divorce is final. Would you be willing to have kids by me? I really want a child with you, RooAmber. I want us to be bonded and chained together forever.”

  “Is that what you told Rosaria once?”

  Shane gulped. He didn’t know what to say. He said, “My love for you, RooAmber, is from a whole nother world. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, truth be told. I never loved my wife. But I didn’t know that until I met you. You’re more than a woman to me. You represent something that’s bigger than this thing between men and women, love and marriage, sex...whatever. You mean something else to me, but I can’t name it. It’s as though you’ve always been waiting for me...and I’ve been a fool...a fool not to look up and see clear as day that you were there. You were always there. Belonging to me and loving me. Dreaming me into being. I feel as though I’m one of your ribs.”

  “Pour it on nigga.” She laughed heartily.

  Shane laughed, too. He said, “This is special, though. Serious, Roo. This is really a love from the inside out. A soul that we share.”

  “Shane...you know about the visions...the memories I have sometimes. Back to the times when we knew each other as ourselves. We’ve always been ourselves, there’s always been...a you and me.”

  Just then, RooAmber became sad. Not just sad, but terribly sad, because she thought of her mother, Soraya. She said, “Have you seen how dark I’ve been getting, lately? I’m about Nestea colored right now. I wonder if this will make my mother love me more?”

  RooAmber’s voice broke. She couldn’t help but become emotional, remembering all the years from her childhood when Soraya had worshipped Sula and Dinari’s darkness while punishing her for being light; for having green eyes. RooAmber cried, “...my mother always wanted to be dark skinned, and I was just so...so helplessly light skinned. Like her.”

  “I think I should come over tonight.”

  “No, you don’t have to. Really, I’m fine.”

  “I think you need me right now. And I need you.”

  There was a tender silence.

  “Well, O.K. But...could you uhm...bring some Thai shrimp in peanut sauce, a broccoli salad and two large pink lemonades?”

  Shane laughed. He said, “Anything for you, baby. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  He was just about to hang up. “...Shane!?”

  “...yeah?”

  “I’m lucky to have you.”

  Shane smiled to himself. He said, “I’ll be there soon, babe.”

  ••

  Phyllis Hyman singing “Old Friend”. It faded in and out as RooAmber Childress lay wrapped in a towel on the bed waiting for Shane to arrive with the food. Her eyelids were so heavy and drowsy that she found herself dozing off, drifting into a peaceable sea of blue and green.

  Beneath the clear warm water, she became a kind of ballerina.

  Her silvery dolphin’s tail spinning like a wheel as her blacker than eggplant body entertained the sea horses and jellyfish. Snowflakes of tiny plankton weaving in and out of the dark Brillo-paddish halo of hair that crowned her head in a stiff African bush.

  His deep voice called her name tenderly: “Ife Ife”.

  Shane finally arrived.

  Without opening her eyes or coming out of the sea, RooAmber felt him kneeling down on the bed, gently spreading her tawny lotion legs. She felt him put his mouth against her vulva and begin giving her the sweetest heart shaped kisses...Mwah...Mwah...Mwah...he kissed like a mother kisses the precious cheek of her baby. And then he dove his tongue in, teasing the wetness. RooAmber gasped in ecstasy.

  “Oh yes”, RooAmber cooed arching her neck back and dragging her left hand to his head and cupping the back of it.

  It seemed bulkier!

  The hair on his head. It seemed bulkier and far more silky soft than she had remembered it.

  But like a child sucking juice and sugar from a mango half, his mouth sucked and licked and sucked ravenously at the wet rose of her crotch.

  ••

  Outside RooAmber’s townhouse, Shane Roberts drove up with the food.

&
nbsp; As he cruised to find a parking space, he thought he saw Rosaria’s jaguar parked out front.

  That’s absurd, he thought. Stop being paranoid. There was no way that Rosaria would be at RooAmber’s house.

  He found a spot to park--but then he realized that he had forgotten to get RooAmber’s pink lemonade. Damn it!

  He backed up and took off down the street. Rolling back to the Thai Food Restaurant.

  ••

  On the bed of the black mistress, Rosaria Roberts, beautifully draped in her flowing white wedding gown, continued to take to RooAmber’s spring fresh vagina like a kitten takes to catnip. Her pink tongue licked as her mouth sucked, puckering and pulling, her desire calling Shane...her nose smelling him, she believed, and her taste buds detecting his presence...up in there.

  “Ouh god, Shane!” moaned RooAmber as he ate her passionately.

  Rosaria buried her head deeper and intensified the twat-suckling, the gentle biting and pulling, the tongue poking.

  “Ouh yeah...gimme something I can feel!” RooAmber cooed to Shane as she pushed his head down harder, the juices now running between the crack of her buttocks and into the bed sheets.

  RooAmber wanted his hand on her breast to tweak at her nipple.

  She reached down for it.

  “Give me your hand”, she whispered reaching for it.

  And then, when he gave her his hand--her green eyes shot open!

  Bulged open wide, in fact, because his hand felt soft and bony and she could feel long glossy fingernails on it!

  RooAmber Childress Screamed Out Of Her Mind!!!!

  Even before she saw Rosaria’s glazed, white face--she screamed, horrifically, and then when she did jump, leaping into sitting position, her eyes peering down at the woman’s head between her legs...it was so shocking, so terrifying and violating, that all she could do was kick and scream, kick and scream. She had seen Rosaria’s photograph many times and had never expected that this could be the way they would finally meet.