In the Matter of Two Men

Copyright 2012 by Dhae Walpoole

In the Matter of Two Men

A Novel by

Dhae Walpoole

So, I know which man must win at last,

I know! Ah, Friend, I know!

--James David Corrothers

- ONE -

The coroner lied. No, wait, that’s too blunt. Zaeed needs to come up with the perfect lead-in. He has been pondering various possible approaches soon after his mother had broken the news to him Wednesday morning over buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup during their usual junkets. It is a way to get her from behind the grind of household chores, to catch up on family gossip; but, most importantly, a way for him to unwind from his own hectic schedule. That was three days ago but still he has not been able to come up with an angle for the right phrasing.

So now here he stands staring at his reflection in the mirrored wall tiles while trying to analyze the perfect hook to present this newly unearthed land mine to his cousin, Traquinna. Talk about your baby mama, daddy drama. This crap, if he will ever figure the right way to present it, is going to take the blue ribbon for family drama. He paces back and forth between the wooden oak bathtub and the almond porcelain vanity, brainstorming some more angles that does not sound any better than previously abolished openings.

Why had he so graciously volunteered to take on this mega task anyway? He would like to know where is it written that being the eldest offspring means being responsible for handling everyone else’s affairs in the first place? He already has enough on his plate as it is. In just three months, he will be walking down the aisle of holy matrimony. Soon after that, finalizing of the adoption papers for Bertha Lynn, who, by the way, will be playing in a young junior’s tennis tournament tomorrow. After making an appearance for that event, he will be headed to New York next week for his men’s clothier fall collections. Completing selections for special customers and their very eclectic taste for the ultimate in fashions fresh off the runway is definite high priority.

Customers with deep pockets are the ones who keep the doors open and the lights on. Once satisfied with those selections, he has to return straight away and decide on cabinets for the 80 year-old house he and his fiancée, Fabu, are renovating. But instead of dealing with any of the stuff requiring attention in his world, here he stands trying to head off a Dr. Phil crises that involves someone else. His favorite cousin, true; but she is still someone else just the same.

Everyone is all the time lying to him about how he is the compassionate one in the family. How he always knows the right words to say to put everyone at peace. Yeah it used to make him feel righteous because that task was previously placed in his father’s troubled hands. This time, though, he may have accepted a task that is beyond his comfort zone. Way beyond.

He’ll have to figure out something, though, because it is too late to try and change horses in the middle of the stream now. He had looked at his mother, directly in the eye, and said he would handle it. Well, if memory serves him right it was something to that effect. Thinking back on it now, he believes what he really said was that he’d see what he could do. Which when you think about it makes his part to play in the scenario a lot less binding. Therefore, if something reasonably doable does not enter into this brainstorming session soon, miff it.

He becomes distracted from his thoughts as a lizard pauses long enough to change its coloring from green to gray then continues to scurry across the outside of the bathroom window. How many times had he wished, without stepping into the sunshine, that he could perform the exact same feat? To change from cafe latte to mocha mint; or from Dutch chocolate to bronzed copper in seconds.

Taking a quick glance at his watch, he then does a double take. Damn, where has the time gone? And where in Sam Hell is Traquinna? The doctor has put her on bed rest because of complications with the pregnancy. She is supposed to drop the kid in a couple of months. She has been hell on wheels lately and will not take kindly to having to wait for him. But at this point, she’s the one running late her-damn-self. She should have been here at least twenty minutes ago.

He peeks out the front blinds and thinks about ringing her up but decides against it. Don’t want her trying to drive and talk on the mobile at the same time. We already got too much of that craziness on the roadway already. Zaeed checks his watch once again and shakes his head over the predicament he finds himself in the midst of.

Somewhere between appetizers and dessert he’s going to have to figure out how to give her the news about her used-to-be, trailer park, wannabe dreadlocked, jailbird boyfriend sitting on death row. But, if they lose their table reservation because of her functioning on CP time, it is going to be Mickey D’s for sure.

He probably should have offered to drive, though, because she has been complaining of getting dizzy spells lately. But, hell, he called and made the dinner date and, therefore, will be picking up the check. So, with gas prices skyrocketing like the Fourth of July, it seems only fair that she should do the honors in the transportation department. Nobody told them to move all the way out to ‘Plum Nelly’—plum out of the city and nelly out the world—especially since all the happenings are on this side of town. Traquinna knows she likes being in the mix. So go figure why she let Old Boy talk her into a new way of life in the boonies.

Gallivant Plantation. Now that is another damn mystery within itself. Why for the love of Judas would black folks move out somewhere with the word plantation in the name makes about as much sense as the man in the moon, in his frequently public opinion. It tripped him out, big time, when he first journeyed out there for the three-person housewarming—him, his moms, and the realtor. Right smack dab at the entrance to the subdivision was a full-blown, perfectly landscaped, genuine cotton patch. Yes, you heard it right, sports fans, a cot-ton patch. He did not want to believe his moms when she told him that is what it was. It was not until after he circled back for a second look, and saw the ‘Real McCoy’ cotton gin gleaming at the side of an old oak tree did he accept his moms details. He had to believe her then. Oxy moronic to the nth degree. But as Rodney King would say in similar matters, Can’t we just all get alone.

He ignores the chiming of the doorbell in order to finish his on-line, e-bank transactions, seeing as how she should have already been here nearly an hour ago, she can park her ass on the porch and wait. After a few more clicks of the wireless mouse, he logs off and hops down from the computer chair—all four-feet eight-inches—and rushes toward the front door as Traquinna starts pounding on it with her fist.

- TWO –

As soon as Zaeed flips the lock on the front door of his two-bedroom townhouse, Traquinna rushes in as if being chased by wild hyenas and gives him her favorite greeting: a yank on the earlobe.

Late again, cuz. What was the slow-down? She inquires, while walking around the room, appearing to inspect the area but not looking at anything in particular.

She is wearing her favorite color, a basic black, short-sleeved dress stretched to capacity over her bulging mid-section; diamonds at the earlobes, a diamond & sapphire bracelet, and black sling-backs.

She’d wanted to assist him in decorating his place with everything from the furnishings in each room to the type of carpeting and various wall color schemes. But he’d restricted her ‘Suzy Homemaker’ antics to the living room and kitchen areas only. Mauve walls in the bedroom simply were not his cup of tea. She stops her visual inspection at the stairway and slowly gazes up the steps.

Zaeed, I can’t believe you still haven’t put any pictures on that wall. If you had let me finish what I was doing, all this up in here would be slamming, she pronounces, waving her arms in the air for emphasis.

You know you don’t have a clue about the ins and outs of decorating a house. If it hadn’t been for me and Aunt Xernona changing your room, when we were little, it would have kept those same ‘Cookie Monster’ curtains and bedspread forever. Now, say I’m wrong?

Forget you. And you the one late. He adds, wanting to keep her from any further inspections. His stomach has started to growl and that is not a good sign. He tends to get cranky and short fused on an empty stomach. He needs the comfort of a good meal to pamper his nerves while trying to relate to her this latest news of the decade.

Yeah, well. I ain’t that late. She tries to stifle a laugh that is becoming uncontrollable.

Some of his braids have bunched up in his back collar which is giving him an ‘elephant man’ appearance or was it the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ theme that is working?

My watch battery is dead.

He grasps her left wrist—making sure not to touch the diamond & sapphire bracelet—and leads her back toward the front door.

Come on here, Tickle me Elmo. Did your Daddy buy you that dress or did he bribe it from his skinny-ass other woman?

Ouch! As soon as the words leaves his lips he knows he has struck below the belt. Her father is her Knight in Shining Armor, although they didn’t start to get close knit until she had entered her teen years. His present wife has no reservations in expressing her displeasure whenever Traquinna ends up in the stepmother’s presence, on the infrequent occasions of her visits to what she calls ‘Abu Ghraib.’

Okay, rat ass, don’t even try going there. You made your point, now, go get in the car. By the way, she teases, I moved the kiddy seat to the front just for you. That way you can glimpse the landscape or, at least, the tops of the trees as I drive past. You can thank me later.

Oh, wait. She yanks away from his grasp and makes a quick detour into the bathroom and starts rummaging through drawers and cabinets.

What you looking for, woman?

Where’s your funk butter? I’m defenseless.

Damn, Traquinna. You that eager to get out of that purgatory Old Boy locked you away in that you didn’t take time out to wash your ass? It’s in the cabinet under the first sink, he retorts, getting worked up into position for a name-calling session.

For your information, short-stop, I took a bath. I just forgot my deodorant. My hormones outta whack.

Hummmm. Actually, maybe you better bring the funk butter along. You know how you get to sweating when you are eating seafood. And one thing I can’t stand is a woman cuttin’ up in the armpits.

After a couple of swipes, she returns the cream to its rightful spot in the cabinet; then, grasp tight her hip as she attempts to straighten back too quickly to a standing position.

Just go get in the car, dip shit. I’m not eating seafood tonight.

Zaeed secures the alarm, locks the door and heads down the walkway toward her vehicle.

Traquinna, following behind, wonders if she has gone too far with the dwarf jokes. She cannot remember a time when he ever allowed his compact size to hinder anything that he wanted to accomplish. He played a mean set of drums in high school band. Although he had to lean back a bit, to keep his instrument from dragging the ground, he was the baddest bass drummer on the field, and didn’t mind showing out during the battle of the bands, and every other chance he got to showcase.

After pulling away from the parking space, she looks over at his profile.

Nice sweater, cuz. You carry that designer over at your place?

He is wearing a wine colored Northern Isles cashmere sweater with a thin black stripe across the chest.

You betcha. Only place I shop, Chuck’s Berries it is. Speaking of shopping, when are you and vein-brain moving back to civilization?

After passing through the security gate, she reaches over and plops his security card inside his sweater pocket. Then she chooses to change the direction of the conversation because she has not been pleased about the move either. Vaui, her husband, tried to justify the reason he wanted to move so far out of the city was so they could breathe fresh air. But, in actuality, she believed the real reason for dragging her out to ‘Hell’s half-acre’ was because he wanted to get her as far away from her family and friends as he possibly could. He is not one for the party scene and prefers a nightly, home cooked meal to an evening of dining out and painting the town red. Besides that, she had always prayed for the white picket fence, dog, and 2.5 children. Therefore, she felt that to start complaining now would mean she was not grateful for getting the storybook life she had prayed for.

Zaeed snaps his fingers. Are you going to set there and daydream all night or let me in on what’s up with Grandpa Moses?

She slaps both palms against the steering wheel before regaining control of the car.

Stop it, Zaeed! He isn’t that old!

According to whose yardstick?

Mine, dammit. And I’m getting sick of ya’ll all the time talking about his age. You’re getting on my nerves with that shit. Put a lid on it! It ain’t funny and I’m tired of hearing about it. He’s my husband. I’m the one who has to live with him, not you. So give it a rest.

If he was an airline pilot, they’d be preparing his retirement packet as we speak. But, hey, as long as you’re happy.

Leave it alone, Zaeed. I mean it.

Okay. So let’s say, hypothetically, that he ain’t that old. But, then, we’d have to analyze his lifestyle habits. Right? I mean let’s get serious. Nelson Mandela, pushing 70, looked a might better when he walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in—

Ok, Ok, I got your point, junior varsity, Traquinna interrupts as she wheels her special class, rose pink Lexus onto the freeway headed in the direction of the Seafood Shack.

Furthermore, if memory serves me correctly and it usually does, Mandela was released from Robbin Island.

Well, actually, my little chickadee, his stay at Robbin Island came before he was relocated to Pollsmoor.

He turns his whole body toward her to bring more emphasis to his point.

You should know better than to try and question whether I’m coming correct or not. I don’t speak about anything I haven’t already double-checked. You know that.

Uh, I don’t know about all of that; but, the only place I ever heard about was Robbin Island.

After almost sideswiping a vehicle in the right lane, due to staring at a billboard of a soccer player in his BVD’s, Traquinna shifts her sites back on the road.

If you’d read a little more you would know about these things, my dear. And if you wreck this car with me in it, you better hope you die right along with me. Because I’ll come back from the grave and haunt your bad-driving ass right on up outta here. You think the Exorcist was scary. Not!

Vaui’s diabetes is getting worse. She mentions in a whimsical tone, as if she is thinking aloud to herself. She does not mean to put her husband’s manhood on display but nothing is off-limits during soul-searching discussions in the company of Zaeed.

I see. So that’s why you almost killed us just now, sitting over there drooling at a cardboard blowup of some half-naked jock? He shakes his head in pretend discuss and then makes a loose fist and pops her on the upper arm, after checking the all clear in the nearby traffic.

Before you go barrel-assing down the road, with me off in here, you better have your mind on what you’re doing.

I was watching the discovery channel the other night, with the housekeeper, she continues. The commentator said that over fifty percent of some Native American groups are diabetic. I guess that means it must be hereditary or something, huh?

Damn, you mean to tell me you finally found a housekeeper that could stomach your huss-band? I gotta meet her.

Traquinna shoots him one of those ‘if looks could kill.’

I’m trying to keep the conversation lively, ass-wipe.

"Hey, don’t slay the messenger. Anyway, heredity ain’t got a damn thing to do with diabetes. In many American Indian cultures, what they are told to do from a young age is to hold their emotions in. Reminds me of the lyrics of a song Mama used to sing: Don’t cry out loud / keep it inside / learn how to hide your feelings. You try bottling everything inside for a whole lifetime and see what type of effects it will have on your body. I bet you’d have more than diabetic issues. Stress can be a mother for ya. That is for damn true. All that cortisol constantly pumping through your veins increases the craving for high carbs which creates even more problems. Knowhatamean?"

"I remember that song. What was the name of the group? She used to hum it all the time. Don’t Cry Out Loud. Aunt Xernona had a beautiful voice. But I sure don’t have to worry about elevated cortisol levels. I can’t even hold back from speaking my peace for a whole week. Hell, sometimes I can’t hold my tongue not even a whole day. An hour. Shit, thirty minutes."

See what I’m saying? And what you talking about, had? Mama still has a beautiful voice. If your lazy ass came to church every once in a while, you would know this. She song a solo in senior choir Sunday and brought the whole house down. I’d almost forgotten those old sisters could move like that. Jumping around like barefooted penguins on a blazing sidewalk.

"She must have sung Precious Lord, right?"

Yeah, that’s the one. You heard her do that one before?

Uh huh.

I didn’t know that. The woman got some lungs on her. Especially being as small as she is. Remember when Luther and Aretha used to go through those seesaw weight reduction episodes? Their voices didn’t ever sound as good when thin as it did when they’d gained that lost weight back.

Huh. I didn’t ever notice.

That’s because you don’t have an ear for music. And another thing, while we on the subject, holding your piece ain’t all the time bad. Maybe if you held Old Boy’s piece a little bit more, you wouldn’t be creaming over some naked jock on a billboard.

Yeah, well, whatever. She wants to move on quickly before Zaeed gets started with his narcissistic musings on his favorite person—himself.

"Aunt Xernona hums Precious Lord a lot. Did she tell you I found a copy of the poem that Phyllis Wheatley wrote to George Washington? Well, I think she may have seen it first and passed it on to me. Anyway, we were at the library book sale a couple weeks ago."

Zaeed gives her a puzzled look, wondering what became of the other conversation involving her husband’s diabetes but he digresses.

I haven’t ever been able to figure, for the life of me, why everybody be getting starry-eyed over Phyllis Wheatley so much. She wasn’t the first Black American poet to get published.

Traquinna is glad to see her exit coming up. She is getting dizzy and nauseous at the same time. She’d found if she ate crackers or something sour before a meal, it would sometimes keep her from getting queasy and help to keep her food down. She has nothing edible in the car and does not want to pull over to the shoulder of the freeway and start retching on an empty stomach.

You being chauvinistic, Zaeed. So what if somebody else was first, her stuff was more popular, which makes her the first MAJOR Black poet.

That’s because she had her white-folks master as her agent, he suggests. Don’t forget, we can’t get off at Muelburg because the exit ramp is closed for repair.

I know that. The repair is actually complete. The bastards over the road crew just haven’t bothered to come back and remove the freaking cones out of the way.

If that’s the case, why didn’t you call the City and tell them to send somebody back out here?

I forgot! Alright! I’m not the only one that drives up and down this strip.

Uh, huh. And if you call, that’s the same lie they’ll use: We forgot.

As I was saying, Phyllis was still a good poet, taking into consideration the atmosphere slaves were subjected to.

Slaves! See. There you go again. They were Black people held in bondage. They were not slaves; they were enslaved. How many times do we have to go over this?

Only until you stop bitching about it, Oh Mighty Great One, she snaps, rummaging through the divider pocket for stale crackers or anything that is salty or bitter to calm her stomach.

I’m just trying to be politically correct. Anyway, the so-called free Blacks didn’t fare any better than their enslaved brethren, Zaeed declares. What are you looking for? Here’s the exit right here, woman, he urgently adds, tapping on the side window for emphasis, to get her attention.

After missing the turnoff and making the necessary adjustments for the alternate freeway exit and yelling the loudest during the ‘you missed the exit’ banter, they arrives at the eatery. She breathes a sigh of relief as a candy red Camaro is backing out of a perfect spot directly in front of the entrance. That is always a good sign. Lets you know the universe is working in your favor. She turns the ignition off while, at the same time, opening the door.

Thank you, Jesus. Get the table and order my usual, Zaeed. I gotta go potty.

You mean go drop them stanking H-bombs you like to hoard until the last possible minute.

Forget you, ass wipe. I want tea instead of a soda: Rooibos, she sings, rushing, with tiny steps, to what the restaurant so elegantly refers to as the ‘necessary’ room.

Ain’t that the truth, she thinks. There is not much that is more necessary in a restaurant for a thoroughly pregnant patron than a toilet bowl.

Roy, who? He yells at her back.

She throws him a birdie from over the shoulder while moving through the crowd like a woman on a mission. After flushing the toilet, running a sanitary wipe over the lid and covering the seat with tissue, she plops down and realizes how out of shape she has become.

Because of the heart problems she has been experiencing, the doctor has restricted her from any strenuous activity. She is going to have to find a way, though, to get in some kind of exercise. It seems strange and unfair that she