FLESH AND THE DEVIL by Kola Boof Read online

  “Get the fuck off me!” RooAmber shouted, indignantly--violently kicking Rosaria in the face, hard as she could. “What the fuck is wrong with ‘choo!?”

  RooAmber jumped out of the bed and swung on her.

  BAM! “Goddamned bitch! What are you doing in my goddamned house!?”

  Ka-PLAPP!!

  Rosaria’s body retreated backwards, fast and wobbly. Her white woman’s face resembling the possum playing dead. Her eyes drunk with confusion and evil painful longing. Her hand suddenly covering the busted lip and reaching to feel the bruise across her cheek.

  I smelled my man up in there...

  Rosaria blinked rhetorically.

  Women are delusional. We have a psychosis when it comes to men. We live in drag...dragging behind the days...delusional.

  Longing to be his everything.

  Suddenly, there was water standing in Rosaria’s eyes.

  0 Shane...please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me by myself.

  But Rosaria Roberts was speechless. She fainted.

  ••

  “We wiped her mouth good while she was knocked out”, the black lead police officer told Shane and RooAmber. “We’ve got enough evidence for you to press rape charges, Ms. Childress. That along with breaking and entering.”

  “She needs help”, said RooAmber. “Psychiatric help.”

  Rosaria Roberts sat in the back of the police car with her hands handcuffed behind her back. Twirling Blue and red police car lights lit up the dark of night outdoors. Black people across the street were standing on their front steps or in their windows watching.

  “She may need psychiatric help”, said the police officer, “but what if she decides to kill you next time? Then what?”

  RooAmber looked at Shane, but he was still so shocked and so emotionally torn, not knowing what to think of Rosaria’s actions, and hardly being able to believe it...he was utterly and traumatically speechless.

  “If I were you”, said the officer, “I would press charges for rape, for breaking and entering, and send a message to this woman that you mean business and you’re not going to tolerate any more deranged behavior. If you don’t, she may end up killing you or you may end up killing her in self defense, and if you do end up killing her, you’ll need a strong record proving that this woman has been targeting you.”

  “She’d go to prison”, RooAmber said dispassionately.

  “That’s where she belongs.”

  “No”, RooAmber said shaking her head. “What she needs is counseling and psychiatric observation. She’s unhinged because she lost her son and now her husband’s walked out on her.”

  “As if you give a fuck!” Rosaria shouted from the back of the squad car. “Don’t do me any favors, ghetto bitch!”

  The black policeman laughed. “That’s some white woman.”

  He winked at Shane.

  ••

  The next day in court, after a night in lockdown, Rosaria was called to stand before the judge and tell her side of what happened.

  “My lover asked me to come over and give her some head.”

  “So, you’re saying that you and Mrs. Childress are lovers?”

  “Of course we are. Why would I be up in her room doing something like that if we weren’t? Why would she have given me a key to her house?”

  “So this wasn’t breaking and entering? Your girlfriend gave you a key to come and go as you please?”

  “Yes she did. And the reason that she’s making up lies now is that she’s always been bisexual. It wasn’t enough that she had me, she wanted my husband, too. So she was having an affair with him on the side, too. The only thing is, my husband wasn’t going for this lesbian stuff. So when he came to her house and caught us in bed, she had to make up this lie that I had broken in and forced her to get ate out.”

  Judge Woolery picked up his gavel. “I’m releasing Rosaria Socrates Roberts on her own recognizance.” He looked dead at Shane and RooAmber on the other side of the courtroom. “I have never in my life heard a story about one woman raping another, and I’m inclined to take Mrs. Robert’s word. Mrs. Childress, who is also married to a man, wanted to have some kinky fun and she freaked out when she thought she might get caught. I totally believe that Mrs. Roberts is innocent and she’s telling the truth.”

  The Judge hit the bench with the gavel.

  Rosaria walked.

  ••

  In the parking lot, as Shane was opening the car door so that RooAmber could get in on the passenger’s side, Rosaria jumped at them, seemingly out of nowhere. She flitted around, anxiously, egging for a fight.

  “Sweet pussy bitch!” she called.

  “Hey-hey!!” Shane barked, but Rosaria kept her stare trained on RooAmber. “Did you tell Shane how much you were enjoying it, ha?”

  RooAmber cut her razor-sharp stare at Rosaria as though she were ready to kill her. “I see you’re gonna keep fucking with me, right white girl? You think you got enough ass to get on stage with mama, that it?”

  “RooAmber, I’ll take care...” Shane had tried to hold RooAmber back.

  “No...let me go!” RooAmber kicked off her shoes. In a flash, she ran up to Rosaria, hauled off and punched the shit out of her. BAM! Socked her right in the mouth. BAM! Socked her right in the eye.

  Rosaria screamed and tried to run holding her jaw.

  “You forgot to bring your Quentin Tarantino script, bitch? You thought this was a Paul Beatty novel? Is that it, bitch?”

  RooAmber caught up to her, grabbed her by the hair, jerked her to a forced stop and swung her around and stole right dead in the face--BEP, BEP, BEP--hard and deliberate as a Congo woman.

  “You been watching the Ricki Lake Show, listening to all her white bitch propaganda? That it?” BAM! “What--you thought you was that fake, phony ass Xena: T.V. Warrior bitch?” RooAmber fucked her ass up.

  “I thought you was a baaadd white bitch--like the kind they make up on t.v. Thought you was gone whoop my black ass ‘n shit. What happened, Wonder Woman? Quentin Tarantino didn’t deliver your script?”

  Rosaria screamed as loud as she could. “Heeelllppp!”

  But RooAmber was mad as hell. She beat the living shit out that bitch.

  It was a dumb move on RooAmber’s part, however, because the police stopped Shane and RooAmber six blocks away from the courthouse and placed RooAmber under arrest for assault and battery. She spent two days in D.C. jail and was forced to return to the court three months later for a hearing, at which time, she got a ninety day suspended sentence and was forced to pay a fine of $2,500. On top of that, Rosaria’s doctors and attorney Donald Spears came up with some fake jaw alignment problems and got an additional twenty-five thousand dollar injury settlement from Shane Roberts.

  Rosaria went by herself to a dinner party in Bethesda. Up and down the staircase and all around the wet bar, other white women were whispering about the fact that her “black husband” had not only left her, but had left her for a black woman. They gasped and shook their heads with pity. And two other white women that had black husbands attended the party, but one of their husbands was a Washington Redskin, the other a millionaire talk radio host and motivational speaker. They, too, gossiped about Rosaria being abandoned for a black woman. Talk about a loud statement against poor Rosaria!

  And as Rosaria’s deathly white face hung possum-like in the crackling skillet of humiliation, she stared into her champagne and said, “You’re making the wrong statement...in public, Shane.”

  Part Three

  The Ax Forgets.

  But the tree.../It remembers.

  23

  •

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Blue Egg Island, The Caribbean

  •

  Forgiveness and love.

  These two things...forgiveness and love...have become the hallmark of black women all over the world, because as the lowest human on the food chain, she is the one most often asked to forgive the legacies and transgressions of the
rest of humanity’s greed and selfishness. She is the one asked, time and again, to “love unconditionally” the very people that she should hate with every fiber of her being, and many times, those people that she should hate are her very own children, her very own men. But men’s religions stop her from hating when it’s natural to hate. The whole world depends on this weakness in her, her legendary self-loathing and belief in everyone else--but herself.

  The world lies and dubs her, “Strong black woman...mother of the world...African Queen.”

  As if she could ever cash these titles in and change the fact that the whole world’s spit, including her men and children’s, has been running down her face for thousands and thousands of years. These are the lies they fill her nappy head with. The titles they allow her in order to delude her into thinking that she has a place and a function...in their hearts.

  But the truth is, the world has no heart. The whole world has followed the wrong man into the sunset, and consequently, violated both the spirit world and the natural world. RooAmber was understanding now. Understanding that nothing in this world...is as it was meant to be. Everything is wrong. The whole world cloaked in artificial meaningless beauty, evil masculine greed and insecure man-made racial, religious, colorist and sexual politics that bred an endless unethical corruption of natural order, a separation of truth from the eyes and ears of the minds in the crib. Even the black people in America, the people that Shane and RooAmber came from. These former slave people had witnessed their own African leaders sell them by the feet, by the flesh...by the flesh and bones, by the penis, the pussy, by the body...and even after all that selling...they...the black Americans, had now sold away the souls of their own ancestors, and had not overcome their slave master’s system of perfect evil, but in fact, had mixed with it (systematically and deliberately once slavery ended), ingested it and become it. And it was no different anywhere else in the world. In Africa, South America, Negroid Europe and the Caribbean--it was the same story. Instead of change, black people, overwhelmingly, coveted exchange. They sold out the struggle as they disallowed the dark skin, the West African smiles, the wide noses, the one true hair of their ancestors...into extinction.

  Barefoot. Warm and free on Blue Egg Island.

  RooAmber realized all this now, because she was naked outdoors.

  When you walk through God’s world naked, you are far more powerful, you suddenly have more than five senses, you can believe in God better when you’re natural in the world. You become God. And there they were.

  Naked as the day they were born. RooAmber held Shane’s hand as he led her up the side of a hill by the sea, their feet soothed by the smoothness of the red clay road that snaked through palm trees. It wasn’t West Africa, but it certainly felt as though that’s where they were and that they’d always been there.

  Children from the hillside villages played amongst the palm trees and caves and giggled freely at the sight of such skinny, alien-looking grown ups, obviously Americans imitating the nudity of the island’s Ajowan-Arawok people, the children’s white-white teeth chomping on shards of coconut as their purple black skin and lawn-ish African hair glistened in the bright seaside sun, their dark eyes flickering with delight.

  Gopo Sunogo! (look, lovers at the beginning!) One of the boys said to the others as he pointed a finger at Shane and RooAmber.

  A little girl sang out, “Happa SawaNongo!” (the lady is pretty!)

  Shane became self-conscious with the children pointing and giggling and speaking words he couldn’t understand, so he clutched RooAmber’s hand tighter and tugged her, forcing her to walk too fast. “Shane!”

  “Well, what the hell are they looking at?”

  “Shane, they’re children”, RooAmber laughed. Then she playfully socked him in the arm.

  He let go of her hand with a gregarious grin and tried to sock her back--but she bolted running and laughing.

  “Damnit woman! Come here!” Shane ran chasing her, and although RooAmber couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of her titties bouncing so profusely, her long legs were fast. She flew up the hill, into the clouds and the dark blue background of the sea.

  The children became excited, laughing and following with their eyes. The boys shouting, “Catch her, Papa!”, and the girls chirping, “Run, mah-ma!”

  Shane could have caught her right away if wanted to, but he much preferred to see her now reddish-brown naked yellow body jiggling and flexing. He chased her, but playfully, his own powerful buttocks cutting through the air like the perfect backside of some realistic brown Tarzan.

  “Noooo, Shane!” RooAmber screamed, just as he almost caught her, but then she had psyched him out and ran another way.

  And it was so much fun.

  It was like a beautiful long away memory. Not a memory of RooAmber’s, but a memory of Shane’s. His mind somehow catching images from ages ago, the romantic chasing and catching of naked, laughing fast-as-a-cheetah African girls. Their mud black helmet-like butts and thin-thin arms and legs cutting through bush and plains, their toothy white-smiling African laughs, sweat from the heat running into their dancing feminine eyes. African evenings. Hot and sensuous as birth. The catching of the girls by the boys. The handing over of the chewy sticks or the kola nuts. The innocent gestures of fondness.

  Shane caught RooAmber. Her whole body shook with laughter. “No fair, you cheat, boy!”

  “Cheat how? You can’t get too much speed with them titties, girl.”

  He pulled her close, the power of his gaze silencing her mouth, her laugh turning into a calm joy, their passionate stare challenging the sun.

  “Once we’re married, we should build a summer getaway down here”, Shane told her. “I love this island.”

  “Do you get the feeling we’ve been here before?”

  “Not here”, he answered. “Africa. Definitely Africa. I’ve chased after you through eternity, and that must have been the first place.”

  “Of course it was the first place”, RooAmber told him. “Africa is the first place for everything.”

  They kissed. Natural as rain finding pure sweet earth. Deeper than the night. Two until one. Man and woman. They kissed.

  RooAmber pulled away, still unsure if she could commit to marriage. “How many times have we been at the beginning and how many times have been at the end?”

  “There is no end, RooAmber. Don’t you know who we are by now? Me as a black man and you as a black woman? We keep coming back to the beginning, because there is no end. There is no end.”

  “That’s very romantic, Shane, but...”

  He put a finger over her lips to silence her. “There is no end, RooAmber. The longing and loving that started even before our heartbeats. So few of us find our way to the truth, but you and I, we’re covered in our ancestor’s blanket of truth. Now and forever. There is no end.”

  And when Shane kissed her the second time...it was the kiss that black men and black women give to one another in white nations. The one that says--”the whole world is against us. Our love is taboo. Our love, the thing forbidden.” That kiss.

  ••

  That night they took the wall off their room. As so many people do on Blue Egg Island, they unhinged the wall, hung up a net and let the starry night fall in. They oiled one another’s skin and Shane scratched RooAmber’s scalp, fascinated by the softness of her nappy hair and playing in her fluffy bush whenever she wasn’t insecure and allowed it.

  They behaved like real black people.

  RooAmber made a meal by boiling the live crabs, lobster and shrimp that she’d gotten for nearly nothing from a fishing boat in Garifuna lagoon. She took a coconut and drained its milk into a bowl, then she dug out the meat of the crab legs, chopped up the lobster tail meat, chopped up the shrimp and sat that in the coconut milk. Next she shredded the coconut itself and mixed that in the sea meat with a single raw egg. Then she added cracked pepper and shredded some dandelion greens and wild radishes she had found in the forest. She tur
ned on the hotel room’s stove and heated a little olive oil in a skillet. Then she barely scorched the mixture from the bowl, frying it mildly. She poured it on a single platter and garnished it with freshly cut juicy mangos on which she’d spread a light mayo.

  By spoon she fed Shane, and by fork, he fed her.

  They drank cold tea with honey and rum in it after that and laid upon each other’s body, their gaze drifting out to the serene night sea beyond the net where the wall had been.

  “The quiet here sounds like music”, RooAmber noticed.

  Out of nowhere, Shane presented an object. He ran it in front of RooAmber’s drowsy dark green eyes.

  “What’s that?”

  He gave it to her. “Look at it.”

  She lifted herself up. Holding the solid gold O upon which sat a trio of 24 karat glacier-sparkling pale blue diamonds

  “A ring?” she smiled sarcastically. “You know I don’t like jewelry!”

  Shane looked her ass in the face. He rolled his eyes like a girl would do. RooAmber burst out laughing and hugged him close.

  “That’s your engagement ring, fool.”

  “I love you, Shane Roberts.”

  “So when’s our wedding date?”

  RooAmber sighed heavily. “I’m still not ready Shane. Don’t rush me, O.K., daddy?”

  Definitely, there would be a wedding--a lavish, beautiful one--but for RooAmber to commit to it, the moment had to be just right, her mind and spirit in tune with her heart.

  In this case, it was her own self that she needed to forgive and love, because although she never spoke about it, she felt incredible guilt about the way she had abandoned Scotch Childress and broken his heart.

  This thing with Shane had been the most selfish thing in her whole life, and coming from a community of single black mothers, abandonment and selfishness were two things not easily forgiven or lived down.