Something She Can Feel

“No,” he said quickly. “Slavery happened. I know that. I don’t need a damn reminder. I was raised in the United States—in the South. I’ve had reminders all my life. All I need to know now is that we’re not slaves anymore.”

“It was still something to see where it all began,” I said, remembering the feeling of closure I had when I stood in the female slave dungeons and saw the shackles that had been used to bind these women together. It was sad. It was heartbreaking, but somehow I felt that my return after hundreds of years to pay my respect to these women and men and attempt to remember what happened to them made the bitter feeling dissolve just a bit.

“Africa’s about more than just slavery,” Dame said. “There’s a whole big continent of people out there right now trying to make money and enter into the world market. We have to let them outlive that past.”

“Preach, Brother Malcolm,” I joked, shaking one of my beaded necklaces at him.

“Oh, you got jokes?” Dame laughed at me. He got up and slid the undershirt he was wearing right off and threw it over onto the floor. “We’ll see how many jokes you have when I come in here tonight.”

He looked at me suggestively and just stood there. With the new shine the African sun cast on his already dark skin, he’d become spectacular to look at. I was salivating. Worse, in our small hotel room, he’d taken to dressing and undressing right in front of me. It was beyond tempting, but still, I didn’t know what to do with him. We’d kissed, we’d hugged, and even fallen asleep beside each other on the beach, but I was still married to another man and had never been so close to anyone but him. I knew Dame, who now had unimaginably gorgeous African women throwing themselves at him right in front of me, must have been frustrated by this coquettish behavior, but he never pushed the subject. It seemed we were both just waiting for passion to overtake reason.

The phone call to my mother might have been better if I’d made it the morning Dame tried to put it in my mind, but I wasn’t ready to face her yet. So I waited three more days before I even looked at the phone and then two more before I picked it up. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of, but I knew what I was avoiding. By now, there was no way she didn’t know where I was and who I was with. The camera crews on the ground in Atlanta had arrived in Accra and Dame could hardly leave the hotel without a reporter or photographer spying his every move. Apparently, there was more to the trip than he’d let on. Dame’s label troubles were growing and gossip was spreading that he was in Africa to escape some of his contractual duties. Between journalists trying to get a few quotes about this and Dame’s Ghanaian fans, who greeted him in the street

like the crying European fans at the Michael Jackson concerts in the eighties, I was sure someone had taken my picture and sent it over the airwaves. The only good thing was that no one seemed to know my name. I was still “the mystery woman.” But not to the Southern woman who’d just picked up the phone.

“Mama,” I said after she answered. “It’s me.”

“Journey Lynn?” I heard her toss about a bit and then I realized it was very early in the morning there and that she was probably in bed next to my father. “What are you doing there? In Africa? With that boy!”

“Okay! Nice to hear your voice, too,” I said.

“It’s all over the newspaper,” she whispered, ignoring me, and I could tell she was sneaking out of bed. “Everyone down here knows it’s you. They’re all talking about it. Everyone.”

“I know, Mama. I’m just—”

“They’re saying you’re having an affair with that boy. Is that true?” she asked.

“Well, we’re—”

“Poor Evan. The man is sick. Just walking around here like a ghost. It’s embarrassing really.”

“Evan knows,” I said. “I told him.”

“You told him what? That you’re a grown woman who’s running around behaving like she’s a child?”

“I’m not a child,” I said.

“Precisely. You’re a married woman. A woman of God. I didn’t raise you to be running around God knows where with some boy—”

“You didn’t raise me to do a lot of things,” I said, looking out onto the street from the hotel room window.

“Don’t you sass me, girl. Even with everything that happened over here, I’m still your mother.”

“Mama, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just ... I really like him.” What should’ve felt like lead in my throat instead came out like song lyrics. It was the most sincere thing I’d said to my mother in years.

“He’s a child. And you’re a damn fool if you think he’ll be more of a man for you than Evan. Mark my words. I’ve been on this earth long enough to know the start of something bad. He’ll only bring you down. What do you even know about him?”

“Oh, Mama, why can’t you just be happy for me?” I pleaded.

“The way you run off out of here like a scared child? Abandoned your family when we needed you most? How could I be happy about that?” She started to cry. “It’s like I have no control over you anymore. No say.”

“That’s just it, Mama,” I said. “I felt like I had no control over me anymore. No say. I’m just trying to get that back.”

“And you had to go over to another continent to do it?” she asked, and there was silence.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I guess I did.”

“Well, when are you coming home? Your father is sick of everyone talking about this thing,” she said, and I could hear the real worry in her voice, but I hadn’t decided if I was supposed to care about his feelings again. He was part of the reason I’d left in the first place. “He’s afraid someone’s gonna go telling the press who you are and then folks are gonna start coming down to the church.”