Dancing In The Shadows of Love (28 page)

Enoch leans back on his heels. He removes a hand from my chest to swipe rainwater off his face and the sleeve of his black leather jacket captures the rain in perfect droplets. Each drop clings until it can cling no longer. Then it, too, surrenders and releases and, as it splashes into the puddle at his feet, transforms back into that from which it came: it is one with its source. How I envy that droplet the safety of its surrender!

‘Go away,’ I mumble and roll over on my side, away from him. ‘I’m happy like this.’

He tugs me around. ‘You
are
happy,’ he agrees. ‘But you don’t know it yet.’

I swot him away, hurting my hands, scoured open as I tripped over Grace’s headstone. I wiggle myself upright to lean back against the marble angel and draw my feet under me. The rain has stopped and the radiant Garden of Remembrance offers me a new freedom.

‘Happiness is a lie. Like friendship.’ Exhausted, I make no effort to hide my bitterness.

Enoch dabs at the blood that oozes out of the old round scar in my palm. The letters of his tattoos blur as he works. L-O-V-E over P-E-A-C-E. P-E-A-C-E over L-O-V-E.

‘That’s a lie too.’ I jerk away. ‘There is no love in this world. Or peace. It’s all selfish lies. Look at Jamila.’

‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘find the truth in Jamila. Move over.’ He pokes my shoulder until I shift so he, too, can sit at the foot of Grace’s angel. ‘Before you look to Jamila, you must look at yourself. Find the truth in there.’ A long slender finger, adorned with a tattooed “P” taps my chest, still heaving as my heartbeat settles and I suck in sweet breaths of rain-washed air, perfumed with the scent of the white roses that lie scattered around.

My head tips back. The marble is cold and damp, but I ignore it and close my eyes to reach for my rage. Here, with Enoch to share the solidness of Grace’s angel, I can remember how angry I am with Jamila, with the world and with the
Spirit King
. But I can’t find it inside me, where my hatred has lurked for so long. So, with cool logic, I remind myself of why I should hate Jamila.

‘She calls herself a believer, but she’s a hypocrite.’

‘It’s a wall,’ Enoch says. ‘She’s built it to shore herself up against her
ezomo
.’

‘She calls it allegiance.’

‘It’s her difference to you,’ he replies.

‘She’s an ambitious social climber.’

‘It’s her hope,’ Enoch says, ‘for a future better than her past.’

‘She’s a liar! She breaks promises!’ The anger and the pain make a sluggish attempt to claw back to life.

‘She calls it love,’ he says. ‘But she has no idea what love is. Is that a
Great Error
? Not to know the love that endures? If it is,’ his impartial sea-grey gaze does not leave my face, ‘we should all be doomed.’

I’m tumbled from the tower of my loneliness by a bolt of lightning as fierce as those that have recently swept in off the sea.

I see in what he says much of what I’ve seen in those that I’ve called both friend and foe. I am Jamila; I am Dalia; I am all those who flee and curse me as the
Levid
. My immutable bond with them all is that I, too, have seen them as different, when the only real difference is whether the view was theirs or mine.
Nova
or grace, Enoch said earlier and, until now, I’ve chosen to see the
nova
and not the grace.

I sigh and bend my head forward onto my knees as I glance sideways at Enoch. He smiles, with nothing but love in his face, and sweeps me away to a place I’ve never been before.

‘You’ve got it, my beloved,’ he whispers, and he rests his forehead on the crown of my head. ‘You’ve got it.’

‘What?’ I choke, fearful of the richness in this moment I do not fully understand. ‘What have I got?’

‘Love,’ he says. ‘You have found love, Luyando.’

He pushes himself to his feet and dusts away bits of mud and grass. ‘Don’t go,’ I say, afraid I’ll never see him again.

‘I won’t leave yet,’ he says. ‘I have to fetch Zahra.’

‘Oh.’ I chew the inside of my lip, my new companion doubt. ‘How do I know?’

‘Know what?’

‘When to love instead of to hate.’

‘You’ll know. Look with—’

‘—with my inner eye,’ I interrupt and rummage for a weak grin.

‘That’s right. Your heart’s voice,’ he says, ‘will keep you free from the differences which have never existed except in our minds.’

He throws his head back and laughs, as he did with the old crone, his black hair loose, the silver
nova
in his ear glinting in the sun as it slides out from behind the intermittent storm clouds to bathe him in beautiful golden light.

He is a vision of the new day I have longed for all my life. Only this time, I can choose the colour of my freedom. I wipe away the last remnants of my tears and see my future before me: doubt or belief; despair or hope; hatred or love.

Which will I choose for the rest of my life?

“How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?”

‘Lulu said she didn’t want to come to my wedding,’ Jamila says to Chuki Samanya as they sit on the white expanse of the bed Chuki shares with her husband. ‘But she’s not spoken to me for days.’

‘Why care about her?’ Chuki says. The sharp clink of her wine glass on the bedside table startles Jamila. ‘Stop worrying. You were kind to her—you did it for her own good!’

Ignoring a quiet, inner warning—and a memory of a naive young girl staring at a dew-dropped
nova
—Jamila agrees. ‘In a way, I was being kind to her, wasn’t I?’ She curls her bare feet underneath her, the white leather headboard cool against her bare shoulders, so at ease in this room it’s hard to remember she was once afraid of it. In the weeks since Dawud has been at war, she has visited so often that she has learnt to relax in the Samanya house.

• • •

Chuki takes her into the bedroom after dinner and slides open a cupboard door, revealing an enormous plasma television screen. It looks out of place to Jamila, with its black, blank face reflecting the colour and contours of the all-white bedroom.

‘Let’s watch a movie,’ Chuki says.

Jamila enjoys having a friend like Chuki. Blossoming under Chuki’s attention, her confidence has grown. She’s so different Dawud won’t recognise her when he returns from
The War
.

When Chuki opens a bottle of wine, she refuses.

‘One glass won’t hurt you,’ Chuki says, her eyes black in the subdued glow of the lamps.

Jamila remembers the taste of the wine on the night she first kissed her
ezomo
. Her heart skips an anxious beat and she slides back into a moonlit night, right into eyes that belong to another Samanya.

‘There’s no one else here,’ Chuki reminds her. ‘Relax and enjoy yourself.’

Jamila, mortified by the hint of mocking laughter, says, ‘It’ll be good to relax,’ and takes the glass. She wants to dive deep into the ocean of experience, without worrying about drowning, so she finishes the wine with slow sips. When it’s empty, Chuki refills it. Later, Jamila falls asleep and wakes up entwined with Chuki, who laughs at her awkward stiffening.

‘You’re so shy, Jamila,’ she says, ‘and sweet. Don’t be embarrassed; it’s girls only. Think of it as a grown-up pyjama party.’

In the face of her amusement, Jamila shrugs off the unfamiliarity of waking up to someone who wasn’t Dawud. Sleeping overnight in the Samanya’s marriage bed, while her
ezomo
is away from home, becomes a regular routine.

• • •

Tonight they start with a casual supper. They sit cross-legged on the wide bed watching the classic “Twelve Angry Men.” As she reaches for her customary glass of wine, Jamila leans back into the padded luxury of the bed’s headboard.

‘Where does Daren go when we’re here?’ she asks.

‘Oh, he keeps himself busy,’ Chuki says enigmatically. ‘He says we’ll enjoy ourselves more without him.’

‘I do enjoy these times,’ Jamila replies. ‘When we’re on our own.’

Jamila means what she says. But, to her surprise, she finds that she misses the time she used to spend with Lulu. Not that they had a regular arrangement, but Lulu was always there when she needed to talk about things she can’t talk about to Chuki. Now that is gone.

Since Chuki told Jamila not to invite Lulu to the wedding, she asks herself whether she’d acted in the way of the
Spirit King
. She rubs her gold chains repeatedly and wonders what the
Spirit King
would have done. Would he have insisted that someone like Lulu be part of what she can never have? Lulu said politeness had driven her acceptance, and yet…the
Pale One
has withdrawn into a place where Jamila is unable to follow.

She has Chuki’s friendship, but how can she tell Chuki—who has no interest in forming an allegiance with the
Spirit King
—she’s certain she’s about to touch Granny Zahra’s essence? The old woman has begun to ask questions about what’s happening at St Jerome’s and Jamila hopes they’ll soon attend services together. Lulu would’ve shared her excitement had they been talking to each other. She sighs, and sips from her wine glass.

‘Are you thinking of that freaky
Pale One
?’

She grimaces and Chuki slips a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘You’re too tender-hearted for your own good,’ she says. ‘You did what’s best for that creature. She should appreciate your concern.’

‘I did it for her own good,’ Jamila agrees and smiles gratefully. ‘You understand me. Not even Dawud understands me so well.’

‘You’re easy to understand,’ Chuki says. She lies back, close to Jamila even though the bed is big. A quiet chuckle huffs from deep in her chest as she adds, ‘Very easy to understand,’ and strokes her hand up and down, up and down, Jamila’s arm.

The rhythm and the wine soon soothe Jamila and she relaxes. She’s become comfortable with the fact that her friend is a “toucher.” Almost every sentence, every action the other woman makes involves a stroke, a brush, or a kiss and a hug.

‘People like us do it all the time,’ Chuki had said when Jamila, embarrassed at her gaucherie, flinched. ‘When you’re one of us, you’ll do it too.’

As her head droops onto Chuki’s shoulder, she doesn’t resist and slips an arm around her friend to make herself more comfortable. It brings back an almost forgotten memory.

Sharing a mattress with her younger brothers on the floor of their small tin shack, a heavy thunderstorm overhead, hailstones the size of golf balls hammering at the roof. But, while Papa spoke to the boys, Mama was there, holding her, stroking a hand up and down, up and down, Jamila’s arm, telling her she’s special, she’s somebody, she’s Jamila Johnson and she will be safe.

She hears them. Papa’s deep, Mama’s lighter, tones, but this time there is no anxiety. There’s a note of raw desire, and she half pushes herself upright but Mama—no, Chuki—says, ‘Hush. Go back to sleep.’ A pillow slides beneath her head as she’s lowered back onto the mattress.

‘Mama,’ she murmurs, restless, for the memories make her anxious.

‘Don’t be afraid. You don’t have to be afraid.’

But she
is
afraid. In the depths of her dream, she remembers the fear that they will wash away, like the little boy one summer. Wrapped in his rough grey blanket, the flood of storm waters sucked him in and, like the sinners who drowned in the Age of the Great Flood, their hands clawing out of the tumultuous waves that showed no mercy, he was dragged down and down until there was no chance of ever being saved.

She struggles a bit, as the hands feather over her body. The cool night air brushes her skin with a tender touch and she’s not scared any more. The duet soothes; it murmurs; it calms; even as the hands, more than one, more than two, knead her fear into a warmer, more dangerous seduction.

She twists her way through the layers of uncertain sleep. She wants to find Mama and Papa, but the closer she is to them, the more they separate into different words and a different place.

‘She’s awake,’ Chuki says.

Jamila opens her eyes to stare into Chuki’s face. Not the face of her friend Chuki. The eyes have changed: there’s a hunger in them she can’t explain. She’s seen it in the mirror, sometimes, after Dawud has rolled off her, replete, but leaving her restless and yearning for the impossible.

Chuki smells different too. Like the acrid poison Enoch used to spray the court garden before he brought Chuki into the office. It trickles down Jamila’s nose, into the back of her throat. As she coughs and surfaces into full wakefulness, she realises this smell frightens her more than the vicious drumming of those hailstones on the flimsy tin roof of the shack Papa built.

She blinks, and drops her eyes from Chuki’s, then wishes she hadn’t. For Chuki is naked, as naked as she is, and that look, that hunger in Chuki’s eyes, keeps her frozen as Chuki lifts a hand and closes it on Jamila’s breast, her naked breast. As she captures Jamila’s gaze, she leans forward and places her lips, open-mouthed and damp with relish, on the other breast and Jamila gasps a sob, even as she closes her eyes to the horror. The damp, delicious horror of what she wants and what she feels.

From somewhere above her, or behind her, there is another. She cannot tell, because the feeling, the licking, the loving are like a fire in her blood. They consume her, and she almost doesn’t hear Daren Samanya when he says, ‘It’s been a long time, Jamjar. Did you miss me?’

The shock of his proximity, the fulfilment of her quiescent dream, forces the heaviness from her eyelids. She snaps them open. She is two: her
ezomo
and her. Both naked. Stretched out behind her, he crams his heated length along her back. He kisses and strokes her, until she begins to sink beneath the turbulent waters that swallow her into the belly of the ocean monster that devoured the sinners as the ancient floodwaters rose and rose.

Languorous with the inevitability of it, she turns her head to peer over her shoulder. ‘Where’s Chuki?’ she asks.

‘She’ll be back,’ he says. ‘When you want her.’

‘Why did she do this?’ she moans, half in despair, half in pleasure, as he flips her over to face him and mounts her with a smooth, slick movement.