“It was always only Elisha,” was all I said. “My son’s name is Elisha Jr.,” I murmured, and really I was speaking to myself now. I was missing my baby and the warm feelings that he gave me. My breasts were swollen, hard and brimming with breast milk. I imagined Elisha Jr. crying out for me. He’s a peaceful baby to the whole family, a kind of living love charm. But at night he’s only peaceful if he sees me. If I am not holding him, him staring into my eyes, lips locked around my nipple, one hand squeezing the other nipple, drawing breast milk like his life depended on it, he would go off. He would be crying a wordless screaming song, that I knew meant, “I want my momma. Where is my momma?” I understood. For fourteen years, I felt the same exact way about my momma, and sang the same exact song, differently. Elisha Sr. needed me. Elisha Jr. needed me. I needed them just as much, but probably way more. Because of them, I could feel a deeper love inside.
“I heard you had a fight on the block in Bed-Stuy, nearly blinded a bitch,” Winter said.
“Our cousin,” I said.
“I know she deserved it. I watched how her family flip-flopped on Santiaga the second he got locked.”
“That fight was six years ago,” I said, still used to counting up everything. “Who told you about it?” I asked.
“Porsche, the whole hood is up in here. Minus the niggas, of course! They serve their time elsewhere. Even my girl Natalie is in here. I know you remember her!”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing that goes on in the Bed-Stuy hood that we don’t hear about, nothing,” Winter said proudly.
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t muster up the feeling to care or see the value of keeping up with the aftermath of Poppa’s empire and reign over Bed-Stuy. Back then, Winter and I both saw, loved, and enjoyed the beauty, the families, the money, the cars, clothes, and jewels. But unlike Winter, I had made it back onto the Bed-Stuy blocks, and up into the crack buildings and houses. I saw the ugly. I saw it clearly.
“Winter, is there anything that you want that you can’t get that I could give you?” I asked.
“Not really.” She reacted too fast to have considered it. Just then a teenaged girl walked up to our table. The guard signaled her to return to her visit table. Winter signaled the guard as though their roles were reversed. “I got her. That’s only two at my spot,” she called out.
“You’re Porsche Immanuel, right?” The thirteen or fourteen years young girl asked. I knew she already knew. Everybody knew. When Elisha married me, it made headlines even in places where neither of us had ever stepped foot. Two weeks after our City Hall vows, Vibe magazine placed Elisha on the cover with bold print running over his chest. “Young, Independent, Rich, and Married,” the headline read. When the more than a million readers flipped those pages, in every flick of Elisha I was there, his hand holding my hand so tightly, or me partially hidden behind his back, hugging him, or his arm around my shoulders or neck, or me looking sweet on him not knowing that I was being photographed and in an outdoor moment that I instinctively and stupidly thought was private. Then there was also the photo spread of him in the Rolling Stone magazine.
“Yes,” I answered her.
“Can I get an autograph? And can we take a photo together?”
“Not right now. I’m visiting my sister. I never get to see her,” I said, not wanting to hurt her feelings. Her young feelings were hurt anyway. I’m always uncomfortable about giving my autograph. Even as a dancer, onstage I wanted to amaze people with my movements. After the show, I wanted to be left alone and I made that happen. I’d stay tucked away in the privacy of my guarded dressing room. Now I was completely uncomfortable signing an autograph in front of my big sister. As she walked back to her table, her whole family was looking my way like I was the villain. I felt disgusted inside. Why were strangers always showing more interest in me than my own blood relations showed me?
“Do you miss me, Winter? Did you ever miss me?” I asked her. “Do you miss Momma? You must miss Momma! How come you haven’t asked about the twins? Did you know they’re so smart and pretty, look just like you, and can speak a bunch of different languages?” I shot the questions out of a dangerous mixture, love, passion, anger, and disgust, and maybe even a pinch of hate.
“What’s the sense in asking about them? Whether they doing good or bad, right now I can’t do shit about it. I asked you about Midnight. You don’t seem to want to give up any info. Do you want me to beg you? You know that’s not my style,” she said calmly but I could feel the razors in it. I stood up.
“I’ll get Midnight to pick you up on your release day. That’s something I can do for you,” I said. I was in the beginning stages of getting full-blown red.
“It’s good you’re leaving, cause I was getting bored anyway,” Winter said.
“I was going to the ladies’ room, not leaving,” I said truthfully. But did I need to admit that I need to squeeze milk out of my breast to feel comfortable enough to stay here longer?
“Well, you might as well keep on going from there. Now I see why these visits are fucking ridiculous anyway.”
“Ridiculous,” I repeated. My body began trembling beneath my Burberry.
Winter obviously didn’t know what it took for me to come up here, facing my fears and reentering a prison place, being searched, patted up and down, even my fingertips being drug-tested to see if I had handled any drugs in the past twenty-four hours. She must’ve not known how many hours Elisha drove to get here, us leaving our house at 4:30 in the morning. She couldn’t have known how hard it was for both of Elisha Jr.’s parents to leave our newborn at the same time. She must not have known how I protected Elisha Jr. from coming into a prison space where even babies are searched, Pampers opened, and infant clothes lifted and shuffled around. She don’t know how shaken I was leaving my husband in the prison visitation registration receiving building surrounded by C.O.s who admired him and left their posts to gather around him to get autographs or to hand him demos or to discuss screenplays or book manuscripts they were thinking about or working on.
“You’re right. She doesn’t know,” Siri said. “How could she know? And, Porsche, why do you always get upset at someone who doesn’t know any better?”
• • •
I felt like dancing. Not in my pretty dance studio that Elisha had built on our family property. I felt like dancing naked inside of a small closet with no windows and very little air until I collapsed. Instead I came out of my coat and then my heels. I rolled down my tights. Standing barefooted outdoors on the cold cement, I hiked up my Burberry dress and stepped into Elisha’s Rover. I laid my coat, tights, and Blahniks on his backseat, then turned and placed my feet up on the dash, my toes pressed against the passenger window. He just watched me.
I loved that he didn’t ask me one question about the visit, and for a whole hour we rode in silence, first narrated by the sounds of Coltrane’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” followed by a group of cuts from Poppa Jamin’s jazz favorites handed down to his youngest son.
“Juxtaposed to who?” I asked Elisha without warning seventy minutes later. He smiled then lowered the volume on the music. “That’s easy . . .,” he said. He still loved tests.
“That Midnight cat,” he said. “I couldn’t get him to say nothing about anything or to even speak about the whole drug-dealing era. He’s the type who you gotta watch. A great movie director/writer could make millions off of a real life character like him,” Elisha said, always excited about film. “Ricky Santiaga, the man who built an empire, a man who everybody knew. A name that rings bells in the hood, sounds alarms in the police precincts, and raises respect in the prison system. Ricky Santiaga juxtaposed to his right hand, the silent man who nobody knows. Somehow, the right hand ends up with an empire and an army. He does big business seemingly, minus the drugs. He even raises Santiaga’s youngest daughters. In the end, he remains best of friends with Santiaga, still carries out the duties of a retired right-hand man, which suggests there was no betrayal
between them. Now that’s juxtaposition at its finest.” Elisha schemed. I smiled at him.
“Maybe the story gets told by two sisters, juxtaposed to one another. Both daughters of the same hustler, one is speaking from her cell, the other from her clandestine treehouse, a secluded location.”
“Clandestine,” I repeated softly. I’d ask him about that word later. “I hope you know your man pays attention,” he said. “I know,” I said, smiling now.
The CD switched. Now Elisha was playing a new song that Siri recorded for him. All of her songs were only for Elisha. She would only sing them to him. But, he would bring them to the world to feel. Siri didn’t mind, as long as she didn’t have to show up. She sang to him because it made him feel good. It made him happy. It made him love her even more.
“Porsche, some people in the press think you married me for my money,” he said. “Even some of my friends and coworkers had their doubts about you and us. None of them realized, I married you for your money!” he said it like it was a fact. I slapped his shoulder. I knew that was Elisha the actor speaking now. The guy who I first met when he was twelve. The actor was still a part of him even though he prefers directing so I just listened to him as he began setting up the scene. He was about to rescue me and I loved that.
“Seriously, you fucking inspire me like crazy, like how you put your pretty feet up here. Your painted toenails and pretty dancer’s legs inspired me to get through the first hour of this ride home.” He was flirting with me.
“I’m sure you see a lot of pretty girls everywhere you go, Elisha. And they see you, too!”
“What did you tell me when you were eleven?” he asked me. “You said none of ’em are like you, none of them are the same thing.” He asked and answered the question himself.
“True, but that’s not because of being pretty. That’s because of what I’ve been through in my life in a short amount of time,” I said.
“I know. Everything you went through was rough while you were going through it. But, when you look back on it, every true story, every day, month, and year of your life, and all of your feelings, is pure gold. That’s why I married you for your money! I don’t need to hire any writers or researchers. I’ll never run out of stories. My first film was about you. Probably my next ten films will be about you.
I could go to dinner with a thousand women one by one. Business or no business, I’m just checking my Rolly waiting for them to finish up so I can get home to my wife.” He laughed. I laughed, too. I loved the way he could cure me without any drugs, doctors, or hospitals. I fucking loved that about him.
“I know no matter what girl I see, she won’t be prettier than you, can’t cook as good as you do. She wouldn’t love as deeply as you do, or feel as good as you feel to me. She wouldn’t care for my family as sincerely or have survived and fought as hard as you did. She wouldn’t have earned her own first million on her own, then walked down the Brooklyn block stealing the show in her red Converses and red ball gown. She wouldn’t have ever lived on an Indian reservation, and shopped at an expensive Brooklyn organic market even on the same day she was wearing dirty skips and a dingy white tee shirt. She wouldn’t have showed up weeks later, Gucci’d up and designer down to her fingernails. No girl would’ve been able to get me to follow her lead through Brooklyn to any strange places I never took a look at before to find strange ingredients and things I never heard of before she came along. She wouldn’t have dropped twenty thousand dollars in a box and handed it to me with a homemade carrot cake like it was no big deal. Then disappear for eight months, return, and never ask about the cash. She wouldn’t have crashed into me with her cart so boldly, or got me so open in an underground space, and then disappeared for two more years so I couldn’t forget her and didn’t want to and had to work so hard to not lose my fucking mind. And I wouldn’t and couldn’t have loved anyone else half as much as I love you.”
My happy tears were spilling now. He was healing me. “What other woman would have a best friend like Siri, who’s a little bit sweeter and softer than her? Would she let Siri sing me a song that makes my blood boil and allow me to make love to her, too? Porsche, no one is more fun than you.”
He wiped my tears. “Another woman could have her BA, BS, master’s, or her Ph.D. and still couldn’t figure out how to be a little moneymaker like my wife was even before I married her. She would have the degrees. But you’re the real genius. Your life, all seventeen years of it, that you shed so many tears over, is your riches. The Adventures of Porsche Santiaga is worth a billion or at least one hundred thousand bricks of pure gold.”
Acknowledgments
To the MAKER of all souls, I give my deepest gratitude, loyalty, appreciation, and submission.
No one else is worthy of worship.
About the Author
Sister Souljah, bestselling author and the hip-hop generation’s most compelling storyteller, is best known for her work as an educator of underclass urban youth. a beloved personality in her community, she lives in New york City with her husband and son.
You Can Get in Touch with Sister Souljah:
E-mail:
[email protected] Mailing address: Sister Souljah208 East 51st Street, Suite 2270New York, NY 10020
Website: sistersouljah.com
www.emilybestlerbooks.com
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COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE LAY-LOW
COPYRIGHT © 2013 SIMON & SCHUSTER
Also by Sister Souljah
No Disrespect
The Coldest Winter Ever
Midnight: A Gangster Love Story
Midnight and the Meaning of Love
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Souljah Story, Inc.
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[email protected] design by Arlinda M of Sofistafunk, The Skirt Company, contact
[email protected] All Sandra Segura photography is by Mike Lay-Low, sneakers by Converse, courtesy of Nike. Interior model is Jada Brielle Demerey. Photographer: Mike Rich, contact
[email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Souljah, Sister.
A deeper love inside / by Sister Souljah. —1st Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. African American women—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Inner cities—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.O7374D44 2012
813'.54—dc23 2012029222
ISBN 978-1-4391-6531-7
ISBN 978-1-4391-6534-8 (ebook)
You Can Get in Touch with Sister Souljah:
E-
mail:
[email protected] Mailing address: Sister Souljah208 East 51st Street, Suite 2270New York, NY 10020
Website: sistersouljah.com
Sister Souljah, A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story
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