“You’re no burden on me, Kid. We’re family.”
“And I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, because you don’t. Like you said, this wheelchair doesn’t make me a cripple. I’m smart enough to know how to take care of myself.”
Eshon pushed him along the sidewalk. Their talk felt like it was becoming a lot more turbulent. He wanted to leap from the wheelchair and show the strength in his legs, but it would be stupid of him. If he did so, it would change everything between them. She would see him as a liar. True friends didn’t keep secrets from each other.
They traveled three blocks with their conversation growing more and more. They continued to talk about Kip. It was one way she was able to find healing—by reminiscing and talking about Kip to someone who knew him too. It felt like he was still alive.
“If you were to leave the city, where would you go?” asked Kid.
“I don’t know, maybe out west . . . California. I always wanted to see Cali. The way Jessica would always talk about it, it seemed an exotic and exciting place to see.” The mention of her name made her teeth itch and feel rotten. “I never have been outside of New York.”
“I haven’t traveled much either.”
“If you were to leave, where you would want to go?” she asked him.
He gave it some thought and replied, “I would leave the country, maybe Africa. I’ve been researching Ghana.”
“Africa?” Eshon uttered, taken aback by his answer. “Why Africa?”
“It’s a rich and thriving continent, despite what you hear about it from the media—the white man’s media. Africa has a growing middle class, and its urbanization rate is already at thirty-seven percent. I wanna go back to my roots . . . to the Motherland. Like Kunta Kinte.”
“See Kid, you’re smart. You know shit that I probably can’t even comprehend. Not too many people from Harlem would say they want to go back to Africa.”
“Kip and I always talked about it.”
His statement shocked Eshon. “What? Kip was talking about Africa?”
“He was. He would bring it up at times. My brother was many things, even a killer. But he did have some culture in him. He was smart, and he wanted to escape from who he was at times. He would always compare himself to Shaka Zulu—leading his people into battle against indifference and injustice. I remember when we first saw his story on TV as kids, my brother was captivated by the man. A half-naked black man with a spear and courage, having all this power over these people and putting fear in the white man’s heart.”
Eshon chuckled. “Kip was a warrior.”
“He was. Sometimes I felt he was born in the wrong era.”
“Harlem wasn’t ready for a man like him,” Eshon said.
“Harlem . . . New York City wasn’t ready for him. Kip was ready to take on the world.”
“And I was ready to be his ride-or-die queen right by his side.”
They managed to laugh while talking about Kip. They felt some light in the dark. Eshon exhaled somewhat. The emotions started to flood inside of her. The memory of Kip was always welcome. There were so many things she still didn’t know about him. Ghana. If he was willing to move to Ghana, Eshon would have been on the plane with him. If it took relocating to Africa to start a new and better life with him, there would have been no hesitation on her part. Thinking about it brought some sadness to her, though. She could see it, the two of them raising a family in the Motherland.
“If he was alive you think he would have taken me with him . . . to Africa?”
“He did love you. I just think he had difficulty showing it.”
“He used to break my heart a lot, and yet, I always managed to forgive him and let him back into my life. I wanted to give him kids. Sometimes I felt so stupid when it came to him.”
“You were a woman in love. It’s not a crime,” said Kid.
“No, it’s not a crime, but it sometimes felt like I was on death row with him,” she said faintly.
“Hey, we were brothers and sometimes I felt like the invisible man when he was around. Kip had this way of bringing you up so high that you felt you would never come back down, and he knew how to bring you down so low, that you could feel the fires of hell at the heels of your feet.”
“He did. Shit, I still carry the scars in my soul because of our ups and downs. But you couldn’t help but to love that man.”
“Yeah, we did. But you were the only one he truly cared about. He never talked about anyone else with me. And you knew how to push his buttons too, Eshon.”
She laughed. “I definitely had my moments with him.”