“She’s my wife and I love her,” I heard Elisha say. “We fly together or not at all,” he added. Then there was silence between them, mother and son. The plane we were all scheduled to take from Boston’s Logan International Airport to Los Angeles, California, crashed into the World Trade Center and exploded that same morning. Me, Elisha, Poppa Jamin, and Momma Elon all watched the flat screen in the living room of his parent’s executive suite, in complete shock and horror. It was my first time seeing Momma Elon’s tears as she watched those who she was sure were some of her coworkers, being driven out in all directions by heated clouds of fire and smoke, many faces and bodies covered in ash. All business came to a standstill, as lives became more important than money for the whole country, for once.
After the Immanuels had returned to Brooklyn safely, and a few weeks after Elisha had donated money to the firefighters who graciously strived to contain the uncontainable, Momma Elon said to me, “That must be the reason why I saw your wings the first day I saw you in the organic market. There are not even words in the English language that I can use to express how grateful I am that you felt too uneasy to fly and that Elisha felt too uneasy to fly without you.”
Eight and a half months later, Elisha Jr. was born without doctors, and against Momma Elon’s “better medical judgment.” But she yielded to her “enchanting daughter-in-law,” because of the “precarious circumstances.” Instead, Elisha Jr. was born at home, without the epidural drugs. There was only Oshadagea Oronyatekha, aka NanaAnna, the only “healer” I would allow, and her two accompanying midwives. I didn’t let them poke our son up with needles, unknown innoculations, diseases, or any strangeness. I knew too well how it feels to be too small to protest against being drugged. When I was young, because I was young no one would listen to me, or hear me when I said I don’t want medicine or doctors. Still, our son was so healthy and happy, a peaceful baby boy who became the Immanuel family’s “love charm.” Everyone was so taken with our son that even Elisha’s grandparents moved into our estate. Sheba and her man decided to marry. Her man was so drawn to our baby that Sheba finally saw the light. She then realized that she didn’t need another degree to have a baby and begin her family. Privately, I had mentioned to her during one of our polite but brutally honest exchanges, that if she wouldn’t give her good man what he wanted, the next woman would! After all, Sheba is my sister now. Why shouldn’t I share with her some of the true things I learned, thankfully, right before it was almost too late.
Our son made Azaziah catch feelings and become more serious. He admired his younger brother even more once he became a husband and then a father. Instead of juggling and playing with a bunch of willing silly girls, Azaziah began to narrow down his group of women, in search of a true love and a woman he could respect and be comfortable enough to marry. As a family we were all super close, but never overcrowded. In our spacious surroundings, we could all stay together and still enjoy one another.
All of the alarms were shut off and then reset as we rode in reverse out of the long driveway and up to the iron gate. The remote caused it to open. I looked back at the gold plaque that was embossed with our family name immanuel. We were leaving in Elisha’s hunter-green Range Rover, the house where we all lived, loved, and worked together. Although we traveled often, this was my favorite place to be.
• • •
“Winter,” I said as I walked in and saw her. I hesitated, unsure if we were allowed to embrace. I glanced around. Other than the fact that there were at least twenty sets of eyes staring at me instead of their loved ones who they came to visit, I counted ten guards, twenty tables where each inmate sat with a maximum of three visitors. Elisha had stayed back at the guest registration building. I wanted to come in alone because Winter and I are separated sisters with so many unspoken words and unexpressed feelings and probably even secrets between us. I thought bringing my husband would change something about the honesty between me and her. Winter and I are so separated, in fact, that we have now spent more time apart than we ever had living together back on our Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, block and in our Long Island mansion. I knew we would even remain separated for six more years if Winter was required to serve out her full fifteen year sentence.
I saw someone else in here touching an inmate. So before sitting, I went and embraced my sister, my arms collapsing around her. Her body felt a bit stiff and restrained and had no particular scent, causing me to recall that “captured feeling” that makes a prisoner’s muscles tighten so tensely that even peeing was hard work. Finally I released her, pulled back, and walked quietly to my chair on the opposite side of her visitation table.
Not looking me in my eyes, she stared at my manicure and said, “I heard you brought Elisha Immanuel up here with you.” I didn’t answer back because I was thrown off a bit, never thought that these would be the first words that we would exchange after over a nine-year stretch of being apart from one another, minus Momma’s sorrowful burial.
“My husband . . .,” I said softly.
“Yeah, him,” Winter said stern and swiftly, as though she were quick and I was slow.
“Who hurt you?” I asked, regarding the thin scar that ran down the side of my pretty sister’s pretty face.
“It’s nothing,” she said. But I knew it was something. I could see that it was an old scar that she had come to accept without choice. I also knew that Riot knew an overseas surgeon who could lift that scar right off like it was never there in the first place. I told myself when my sister gets out, if she doesn’t mind doctors like I do, I’ll have it removed so she could feel good enough to look each person in their eyes when they were speaking to her, especially the ones she knew loved her most, her family.
“A couple of pictures with Elisha Immanuel would go over big in here,” she said. “I mean business-wise,” she added in a way as though she wanted to say she wasn’t a fan. She was just a businesswoman grabbing an opportunity and exploiting a celebrity.
“I put money on your books before I walked over here. You can live easy with that for at least a year or two. Get whatever you need, whatever you want,” I said. She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to say thank you to me. That’s not why I came up here and not why I gave it to her. I gave it because I understood what it is like to be in her position. I love her and wanted to help before she thought there was no good in the world, which is easy to think when you’re locked down in and up.
“Have you visited Poppa?” She broke the silence between us.
“Not yet, but I will,” I said. I didn’t tell her that Elisha had been to see Poppa a few times and had stacked money on his books without being noisy about it. I also didn’t mention that Elisha was thinking about directing a film about our father, the infamous Ricky Santiaga. Elisha thought the true story of a real Brooklyn hustler could best be told realistically by someone on the inside:
“A Ricky Santiaga joint could be bigger than all the flicks from that genre. Maybe we flip it around and tell it from the perspective of the hustler’s daughter,” Elisha suggested. “It wouldn’t be all about guns, drugs, and betrayals, although that would definitely be a small part of it. It would be about a father, a brotherhood, and a network of families who set up, built, and ran an economy in a Brooklyn hood that nobody in power gave a fuck about,” Elisha had once explained to me.
“But look how it ended,” I had said to Elisha, thinking and speaking as the “hustler’s daughter,” or at least as one of them.
He and I had often talked in detail about stories, true and made-up ones. Together we read screenplays, wrote our own screenplay, and even watched films lying on our backs in our family film room. When we disagreed too much, it would end with a popcorn fight. We’d have fun making up while plucking kernels out of the plush carpet. Elisha, like his mom, would never give up on convincing someone, especially me, about his point.
“That’s why I’ll juxtapose Ricky Santiaga to another Brooklyn man. The two stories would give the audience so
me options before they draw any conclusions,” he pushed.
“Juxtapose!” I repeated. “Now you talking slick, Elisha,” I complained.
“Juxtapose, it means to place two things, two stories, two people side by side, to compare,” he explained and defined.
“Oh,” I said softly. I was thinking. In the back of my mind, I was admiring this married high school graduate who got accepted to Harvard, Howard, Stanford, Columbia, and NYU universities. I was told you had to be brilliant to do all that. All I knew was they accepted him. He rejected them, at least by delaying his decision for a year and privately letting me know that it was all up to me, and that they needed him more than he needed them at the moment. Each of the colleges were in talks to get him to donate a wing, building, or fund, especially the schools that his family members had attended and previously graduated.
“So what did you come up here for?” Winter interrupted my thoughts. “It’s been nine years. You’re my first visitor, besides some nosy-ass reporter, but she definitely doesn’t count.”
“I came to see you,” I said.
“For what?” she pushed. I didn’t know what kind of answer she was searching for. All I could give her was my true feelings.
“So you could see me, too. We’re family. It’s not alright for me to have while you . . . I’m saying, we don’t have Momma anymore. You’re our big sister, so it’s like you’re the momma now.”
“I’m not nobody’s momma,” she said straight-faced, giving me a cold feeling.
“I am, I have a son,” I said softly. “Should I show you his photo?” I asked.
“Later, show me before you go,” she said. “And you should have been put money on Poppa’s books,” she added.
“Elisha did. He even visits Poppa,” I revealed.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said a little excited.
“Poppa must’ve told you. I know he writes you a lot of letters,” I added.
“He might have mentioned it,” she said casually, as though it was a small fact that could easily have been forgotten.
“You know we have a brother?” I said suddenly.
“No we don’t,” Winter said confidently.
“Yes, we do,” I said softly in almost a whisper. I wanted to talk about it, not challenge her.
“Our family is only the ones who grew up on the same block, same building, in the same apartment and lived in the same house together,” Winter said.
Now I was quiet again. I knew what Winter didn’t know, that Ricky Santiaga Jr. has the same handsome face of our father, same hair, same eyes, and even the same jawline. The morning after Momma’s burial, Midnight had taken me to get my Social Security card and New York State identification, and to handle all of the paperwork that gave me back my true identity. He had even given me a copy of my release papers issued from the Kennedy-Claus nuthouse where the authorities lied and claimed I served out my time. After spending the whole day together, and even enjoying a dinner, he took me to meet a lady who looked like a lady our father would be attracted to. Her name was Dulce Tristemente, and Ricky Santiaga Jr. was her son and the son of our father. It was one of those things that didn’t need to be questioned, denied, or tested. Blood recognizes blood. Would Winter be angry that I had feelings for the handsome young brother who handled himself like he was twelve instead of eight years old? Was it wrong for me to give him my phone number and invite him to remain in touch if he didn’t mind? Was it okay that I took his photo and even carried it in my wallet?
“His mother is a real bitch,” Winter said, getting red. “She was supposed to hand over some money that Poppa had set aside for me. She fronted. She’s first on my payback list.”
Just then, Winter looked like Momma to me. My mind juxtaposed the two of them, Momma and Winter. The memory brought tears to my eyes.
“What you crying for? This is not a crying place. In here if you gotta do that, you gotta do it in the dark where nobody can see.” She was serious.
“Okay, maybe the bitch is not first on my payback list, but she’s definitely on it,” Winter said. “There’s a few snitches and a few bitches that gotta get tagged back. I’m waiting for the day the real motherfuckers get released from all these upstate cells and put a spark to the phony motherfuckers that stepped into our spots when we got knocked and did a fucking horrible bootleg job of pretending to be us.”
“You don’t need a list. I’ll be here on your release day. You’ll have me and everything you need,” I promised her softly and sincerely. A smile spread across Winter’s face. Her smile caused me to smile some. I was relieved that finally I had said something right that moved my sister to feel good and to feel connected to me, her full blood relation.
“I had a dream that Midnight was waiting for me early morning on my release day. He pushed a blacked-out black Bentley, had it parked sideways in front of the prisoner release door. He was looking so rich and strong the C.O. got tight that I had something to go home to. I was hyped cause I knew he would run back and tell everyone how I’m living now. In the dream, when I got in his ride, all of the girls up here, I could hear them screaming and cheering for me through those thin little wired windows. Midnight took me straight to Fifth Avenue, bought me everything I chose. That dream was crazy!” She smiled some more. Her face was still lovely, caramel-kissed, and slim. Her chin dimpled.
My heart sank some. I guess my offer to pick her up and take care of her for the rest of our lives wasn’t popping enough. I don’t push a Bentley. Elisha doesn’t either. Momma Elon does.
“Have you seen him lately?” Winter asked, snapping me back to reality.
“Seen who?” I stalled, but I knew.
“Midnight!” she said, excited.
There were about one hundred true things that I could’ve said about him and a few other topics, but I didn’t want to. I wanted Winter to keep her dreams and her fantasies. I never wanted for my sister to be discovered hanging from a ceiling, her sheets twisted and wrapped around her neck. I didn’t want her depressed, dead, and dangling until some authority cut her down, erased her from the count, then threw her body in a pine box in an unmarked grave in an anonymous graveyard. I didn’t want it to happen, and I never wanted to receive that call.
So there would be a whole bunch of true things that I wouldn’t lie about, but I also wouldn’t say. I would never tell Winter that Midnight is not thinking about her at all, and wouldn’t’ve considered her even if she were not locked up. I wouldn’t tell her that even if she flashed through Midnight’s mind like lightning, she would be just as swiftly forgotten. I couldn’t tell her that Midnight is rich, international, so fucking handsome and cool and that with the passing of time he only gets better. I wouldn’t tell her that Elisha went cruising on Midnight’s yacht. I definitely wouldn’t tell her that Midnight has a badass batallion of wives, each of them so beautiful, smart, talented, and sweet that they would make any girl or woman who was just as pretty looking as them, and not normally “the jealous type,” feel green and a little insecure, causing her to step up her game, seriously.
In fact, when I asked Elisha if he felt jealous that Midnight had three wives, he said, “I have three wives, too—Porsche, Ivory, and Siri.” Then he pointed out the three diamond rings on my finger and my wedding band. “That’s eleven karats total, your favorite number,” he said. Then I loved him even more.
Maybe Winter would see me as a traitor for falling in love with one of Midnight’s wives as she galloped at top speed on an Arabian horse across the desert like a beautiful mirage. She rode more better than any Native I had come to know and love. She let me ride freely. As I mounted the horse, I imagined I’d race her. Then she mounted her horse after making sure I was fine on mine. Then she left me in her wind and dust.
Uh un, I wouldn’t tell Winter none of that.
“What about that wife he showed up with at the graveyard?” Winter asked. I felt a ways about her speaking so easily and casually about Momma’s burial day as t
hough anybody else mattered or could be the focus of that sad morning. “Did they break up yet?” she poked. “Wait till I get back. I’m gonna grab her spot. That’s my spot anyway,” Winter said. I laughed nervously. I could see that for Winter, time was standing still. She was frozen and everyone living on the outside was moving forward and had passed her as they lived into their future.
“Hey, what about Buster? At the graveyard that’s who you said was your man. I know he hustles, right? He copped you that big body Benz. When did you meet Elisha? Did you choose him cause he had more money? What did Buster do when you dumped his ass? Did he threaten to murder Elisha? Did Buster get at him? Did they fight?” she asked, leaning forward with great interest to my response.
“Buster?” I repeated unknowingly. Then I was racing back through my mind and through doors that I had slammed closed and locked shut, I thought, forever. Placing myself back in the graveyard where Momma was, my heart cracking, my body aching, I remembered. Busta Rhymes was rhyming when I pulled up into the graveyard. His voice was jumping out of my Bose speakers. That was why I called his name when my big sister asked me about my one hundred fifty thousand dollar Benz. Winter didn’t know how close I was to having a complete nervous breakdown on the day of Momma’s burial. That, plus my anger at her and Poppa. I could’ve said or done anything on that day at the graveyard. I wasn’t even fearing the armed officers who took aim at me when I pulled up. Somewhere in my mind, I had let go enough not to care if they killed me and tossed me in the box with Momma. Somewhere, and somehow, I hoped maybe they would.