“It’s when a mother loses her son or daughter.”
“Loses,” I repeated.
“Loses him in any way, to the world, to senseless violence, to racism, to illness, or insanity. It’s when a mother’s child passes away at any age, and leaves this earth before she does,” she said sadly and serious-faced. I understood the words she was saying, but truthfully, I didn’t get it.
“The second saddest thing for a mother is watching her son or daughter suffer, especially when there’s nothing the mother can do to fix it. Like when I was seeing my son heartbroken,” she said. I felt the accusation. Now I got it.
“Good mothers raise their sons and daughters well, with continuous prayers that other mothers will do the same. This way, when my good son meets another mother’s daughter, he will know to treat her with the utmost respect and to love her well. If the young lady has also been raised well, she will do the same towards my son. She will treat my son with respect. Mothers know that once a girl who our good son loves takes root in his heart, we can no longer protect him from the hurt of heartbreak.”
“Mrs. Immanuel, I respect and admire you, and I like you a lot. I know that you like me, too, although I am not sure how come. I know that Elisha is your good son and that he is way better than me. But I do love him strong and true. I don’t think I can say that I was raised well. But I am sincere. My mother was a good mother, but sometimes even that has a time limit. My mother passed away three weeks ago. It was a pain so great in me and it still is. I’m so grateful to Elisha because he is healing me from my hurt.” Her faced softened some when she heard of Momma’s death. I was lightened to see that she had feelings enough to consider Momma. That made me like her some more.
“I know you saw how Elisha and I were this morning. I apologize for you seeing us. We didn’t mean to show that to you. We were stupid and sloppy for doing it that way. Truthfully when we finally saw one another starting on Friday afternoon, we both have been so happy. Friday night was our first time ever loving one another in that way,” I confessed.
“Elisha wanted me to see the two of you in that way. He showed me the blood on his sheets for that very reason. He was creating a preponderance of evidence in your defense. My son is very much like myself. When he wants something, he wants it. He fights until he gets it. But he has never fought with me, until this. Since there is no talking to him about you, I’ll talk to you. Nothing is more important to me than my family. So you and I need to get on the same page,” she said.
I thought I saw her turning from Momma Elon into a prosecutor. I wanted to keep her in momma-mode. I didn’t think I could handle the prosecutor. So I said the things that I thought were the answers to all of the questions and thoughts that she might have for or about me. I wanted to say it, before she asked, which would’ve been too much pressure for me.
“My father is a famous hustler doing life in prison. My sister is doing fifteen. Somehow, my two youngest sisters and I are all okay. I’m glad you invited me up to speak to you, because I didn’t want you to think that I deal in duplicity. I know you make good money and you might think that I came back here for Elisha’s money. But Mrs. Immanuel, I returned to Brooklyn for my momma’s funeral. Before that, I had been in Germany. I came to find Elisha because I love him and he loves me. I don’t need his money at all, but I think it’s so dope that he knows how to make it, and that he made a movie like he always said he would.”
“Would you sign a paper saying what you just said about not wanting his money?”
“If you want me to, sure I’ll sign it. Even if Elisha didn’t make a movie, I would still love him like crazy. You introduced me to your son when I was eleven.”
Smiling, she said to me, “I have two handsome good sons, so this house has been filled with plenty of pretty faces looking for the both of them. I chose you for Elisha because, when I first looked at you, I saw that your heart was good and somehow your soul was glowing. After I chose you for Elisha, his heart chose you for himself.
“You and I should always work together. Even separate from our men, you and I have to have some harmony. I am accustomed to having a very close, happy family, although I can’t get any of them to go to temple with me.”
“Temple?” I repeated.
“We are Hebrew,” she said. “See, there are so many things that I should talk to you about. It’s nice to see that you are humble and willing.”
“I promise to make your son happy. I won’t disappear. If I’m alive, I’ll be right beside him. I can cook and I clean. I work really hard. I can’t promise you anything about temple or religion. I don’t even know what Hebrew means. What I know is, I am already happier than I’ve ever been,” I said softly. “And I agree to the first and the second marriage ceremony. And I won’t break Elisha’s heart on purpose ever,” I swore. “And Momma Elon, you don’t know this yet, but my promise is as good as gold.” I smiled sincerely.
I wanted to be a good daughter-in-law to her, truly. I had every reason to love her. She was everything I ever wanted from my momma. She loved Elisha the way I wanted Momma to love me. I also thought that just maybe, at our second private wedding ceremony, in her church or temple or whatever, I would get to invite Midnight, Lexus, Mercedes, Riot, and maybe even NanaAnna somehow. I would send invites to Onatah’s whole family. They would definitely show up, including her brother, my drummer, and his wife. Maybe as a wedding gift, Riot would bring Lina to me and allow two of her puzzle pieces to attach themselves to one another for a change. I fantasized about having the Diamond Needles as my bridesmaids, all eleven of them, including Siri, of course.
Lastly, but really importantly, there is the elegant Mr. Sharp, Big Johnnie, Esmerelda, and my whole who-over-forty crew. Mr. Sharp would outfit the entire event and place some of our photos on his wall at The Golden Needle.
“Ivory!” Elisha’s mom seemed to have raised her voice. “You daydream, don’t you?” she asked me.
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“Do you have any idea whose car that is parked in my garage?”
“It’s mine,” I told her.
Chapter 51
As we left City Hall—Elisha, Momma Elon, Poppa Jamin, Azaziah, Sheba, Mr. Sharp, and myself—we were met on the steps by at least fifty reporters, who were joined by a swelling mob of fans. I can’t say I was surprised. I saw the excited looks of the women working behind the counter when we first arrived, and believed I saw the girl who phoned in the fact that Elisha Immanuel was in the building getting “hitched.”
“Elisha! Have you seen this?” a reporter asked, holding up the New York Daily News headline, which read, Elisha Gets the Gold!
“Nah, I was focused on getting the girl first!” he said, smiling. He was still holding my hand. I was standing hidden behind him.
“Who is she?” A reporter called out.
“My wife!” Elisha shouted back, causing the reporters to laugh.
“Is there a ‘pre-nup’?” a reporter asked.
“For what? I’m gonna love her forever!” Elisha answered. The cameras were steady clicking. “It’s all hers anyway,” he stated boldly to my disbelief. I wouldn’t dare look back to see the expression on the faces of his family, our family, Momma Elon in particular. Although, I understood that feeling Elisha was expressing, of wanting to give the one you love everything you have and being more happy to see them have it than to have it to yourself.
Maybe Elisha was feeling now what I was feeling on the cold winter evening when he placed my hands underneath his warm underarms. I felt the love swelling in me. I wanted to give him everything I had and anything he wanted. That feeling grew so strong, that on Elisha’s fourteenth birthday, I withdrew my twenty-thousand dollars cash from Mr. Sharp’s safe. It was the same money that I had worked my ass off to earn and save for Momma’s apartment. I placed it neatly inside of a pretty box stuffed with pretty tissue paper, and decorated with a pretty red ribbon. I gave it to Elisha along with a carrot cake I made from scratch with
love for him. Both of these were my gifts to him. I wanted him to have his movie camera, and realize his dream. My dream about Momma and us getting a new apartment together was looking impossible back then. Momma didn’t want to live with me, it seemed.
Filled with love for Elisha, and sorrow for Momma after she removed all of my things, clothing and belongings, except the cell phone Elisha had given me, I handed the gifts to him in the cold wind and asked him not to open them until he got home and was alone in his bedroom. It was twenty-thousand dollars cash, plus almost a hundred dollars for the organic ingredients for me to make the homemade carrot cake and then place it inside of a quality cake container. I never missed or regretted the money.
“Thirty-five million on your opening weekend! What do you have to say to that?” a reporter shouted.
“Show the people what they wanna see,” Elisha answered.
“What do they want to see?” a woman shouted.
“A Love Supreme,” Elisha smiled and promoted. People applauded.
• • •
Elisha agreed to convene in a nearby hotel for a roundtable for the high-visibility press, which included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Associated Press, the Amsterdam News, Newsday, as well as The Source and Vibe magazine.
“Thirty-five million . . .” Elisha whispered to his mother as we entered the room where the press were gathered. “Did you see the headlines?” he asked her, leaning her way.
“I saw a write-up with that kind of prediction early yesterday morning in the Wall Street Journal,” she whispered back.
I offered to step to the side. Elisha, holding my hand, pulled me closer to his side and held me there.
The Associated Press reported asked, “Elisha Immanuel, can you please confirm that your film is an independent film, made without the backing of any major movie house?”
“Confirmed,” was all Elisha said, which caused the crowd to laugh.
An older man from the New York Times asked the next question, “Elisha, why is the film titled A Love Supreme?”
“It’s a salute to my father. He’s a retired musician, a sacrifice he made for our family. Instead of pursuing an uncertain music career, he labored and earned and paid my mother’s way through law school and raised a family. He always enjoys listening to all kinds of music, including John Coltrane, who had a track titled “A Love Supreme.” My father has been married to my mother for twenty-five years. He worked at UPS for twenty years. His life is like a jazz instrumental. Besides, the title of a successful film should welcome in the whole family, grandparents and all, each generation,” Elisha explained.
“Was the film based on a true story?” the Vibe magazine reporter asked.
“How did it feel?” Elisha turned the question on him. There was nervous laughter. “If it felt real it was,” Elisha said solemnly.
“About the movie soundtrack,” The Source reporter asked, “you have two cuts moving up the charts and heating up the top radio countdowns in every major urban area, and moving with a bullet on Billboard Top 100. Will you pursue a music career in addition to film directing? And when will you showcase a live performance from Siri of her remake of ‘Loving You’ retitled ‘Elisha.’ ”
I fidgeted. They were talking about my girl, Siri. Elisha gripped my hand more tighter. He was letting me know to trust him. I do trust him, more than anyone else.
“Siri is a shy Brooklyn girl I know who sings from her soul beautifully. She doesn’t want to be in show business, but she agreed to sing that song only for me. That’s why it’s retitled ‘Elisha.’ I knew the whole world would want to hear her voice. So I recorded it. We’re gonna let it rock. If it hits number one maybe she’ll change her mind by popular demand,” he said.
“How does your new wife feel about the new artisit Siri singing so passionately to her husband?” a woman from Newsday asked. Everyone laughed.
“My wife has known me since I was twelve. She knows girls tend to like me,” Elisha smiled brilliantly. The cameras were flashing.
The Newsday reporter followed up. “Where did you and your wife meet? Why such a young marriage? You are reported as being a seventeen-year-old high school senior,” she asked.
“We met in an organic market in Brooklyn. I love her more than anything. She’s my motivation. And a man should get what he wants and make it his own.”
“A thirty-five-million-dollar opening weekend; how will such a young man manage all of that money?” the Wall Street Journal reporter asked.
“Oh, I’ll manage.” Elisha smiled again, bringing the group to laughter.
“Who is you attorney of record?” the Wall Street Journal asked.
“My mother,” Elisha said.
“Who is your management?” they followed up.
“My mother.” Everyone laughed. “I think I can finally afford to pay her fees. When I get back in September, I’ll retire her from Wall Street.”
“What’s next? You got the gold, the girl, and the fans obviously adore you,” the Amsterdam News reporter asked.
“Honeymoon in Dubai,” Elisha said.
“Sounds like a film title!” the New York Times reporter blurted out.
• • •
“Dubai?” I asked Elisha when we were alone. He pulled up a world map on his computer. “I’ll show you where it is.” He pointed. “You traveled over here, that’s Europe. We’re going over here. We’ll meet your sisters and family out there,” he said. “That’s why I chose it for us. I thought it would make you happy.”
When Elisha and I had our intimate discussion seated on the floor in my hotel room Saturday afternoon, I told him that I still loved my twins, but that I had buried my true feelings for Poppa and Winter at the same time as I had buried Momma. Elisha said a one-word response: “No.”
“What do you mean no?” I asked him.
“No, you can never ‘bury them.’ They are your family no matter what. And, if you can bury them, that means that one day you could bury me. You loved them before, so love them now. Love them always. Real love never disappears.”
AFTERSTORY
Siri cried uncontrollably. Hers were silent, soft, warm tears.
“Porsche,” she whispered. She was standing in the corner of our bedroom in her yellow sheer nightie and gold slippers. “You are only loving Elisha and little Elisha. You are forgetting about me.” Because Siri cried, I cried, too, even though my life now is 93 percent peace and pure happiness.
“Woman,” Elisha said. That’s what he calls me when he doesn’t know what to call me. We were lying in our huge bed beneath our Egyptian cotton sheets, next to our wide wall-length window. The moonlight was incandescent, causing Elisha’s beautiful dark brown skin to glow even more than it did naturally.
Incandescent, a word Elisha taught me, among hundreds of words he had taught me, but this one I learned on the first night we moved in here. It is our new house, which he had promised me when I was thirteen, “a house with great big windows.” And since Elisha already came from a house filled with love, he saw no reason to actually separate from it. His wealth and popularity made many doors open to him. That, coupled with a large number of people making an exodus out of downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, made it possible for him to buy the brownstone he grew up in, as well as two more on the opposite side of his backyard, one to the left, and the other to the right of it. The three buildings represented his commitment to remain strong and loyal to his neighborhood, the people and the businesses that knew and supported him, and to those facing trying times. The three brownstones, plus renovations and extensions, made up the Immanuels’ East Coast estate.
Our newly born baby, nearly six months young, Elisha Jr., began fidgeting in his sleep, the same way his small body always reacts when he suddenly hears his father’s voice after not hearing it for some hours. I placed one finger over my lips so Siri could see it and try and be quiet. I wanted Elisha Jr. to sleep some more while I sorted out my thoughts and feelings.
br /> Elisha pulled my body close to his. He placed his fingers on my face. Elisha is so comfortable with my tears. He had even told me that he fell in love with me “because of the honesty” of my tears on our first date. I still don’t know the secret of why a woman’s sincere tears move men.
Now he was gently wiping my tears away with his tongue. Then he began kissing me. My body gave in to him as it always does.
He was moving over me now, both of us enjoying the intense sexual feeling that takes over when both of us are trying to bump, grind, and love each other quietly as another person (Elisha Jr.) lays on the same bed, and still another (Siri) stood watching, closely.
It felt so good, our movement, and the passionate way that Elisha expressed his love to me. He was deep inside of me now and deeper inside of the feeling. I am already pregnant with our second, and the sensitivity of the recently impregnated womb intensified the pleasure of each touch, push, and movement. Now I was breaking my own rule to keep quiet. I was moaning, unable to hold in the sound of what our thrusting was making me feel. There was no one living in the next room or up close enough for me to hold back the sounds of our love. There was no reason for Elisha to place his thick fingers over my mouth and whisper sshh. My husband isn’t a moaner, but his heavy breathing and way of coming for me and working up a slight sweat fucking thrilled me. I was excited by the way my hips moving excited him, the way he gripped on to the headboard or mattress mashing me even more made me come harder and I shook some. We were both moist and warm now. Elisha kissed my ear and rolled off. Like a magnet, my body turned towards his back and clung to him. I pushed my hands through his arms, my fingers resting on his abs.
“Elisha,” I whispered, kissing down his spine. I began caressing the back of his legs. “Elisha, we gotta get going,” I said.
“That’s why you were crying,” he said. I knew it wasn’t a question. He knows me too well. He knew that I was shaken up because today is the day that he’ll drive me to upstate New York, to one of the many, many prisons, to visit Winter Santiaga, my big sister, for my first time.