Author: benjancewicz

I dropped her off at work, so I could fix the tires on Tamika’s Volkswagen Golf…

To be continued

Tamika arrived at 1, skipping across the road toting two grocery bags of food. She wore a chocolate shirt and a white, blue & brown flowing headband that trailed down her back and matched her belt.
She dropped the bags when she got inside and stood on her toes to give me a kiss, feeling my forehead.
She began setting up, and I found another can of stew to match the beef she had brought for me.
She unpacked bread, cheese, and ham for grilled cheese, and then produced from the other bag one by one.
“Mmm, tissues. A whole box for you, a special kind that is really soft AND disinfects… and…” she pulled out 6 little packets, “small ones to put in your pockets… Strawberry cough drops, Dayquil & Nyquil gel-caps, not the drinking kind, Vapor Rub to put on your nose, and…” she smiled, “Lip balm! Medicated lip balm, to make you lips feel… mmm… nice and soft…” she kissed me.
“Thanks.” I said softly, “Thanks. I like being taken care of.”
“Good.” She grinned, “I like taking care of you.”
She spun around. “Soup.”
She tugged at the pull tab and popped it off with flair.
However, the “flair” shot bits of stew everywhere.
“I’m sorry!” she groaned, rushing to the sink and grabbing a sponge.
“Don’t worry. It’s alright.” I said, getting some napkins and wiping it up.
We finished cleaning, and she went to the sink to pull off the other tab.
I pulled out one of the fresh, new Kleenexes, and started up stairs to get my bag.

She yelped.
The water flashed on, she shuddered holding her finger under it.
Her pinkey spurted blood, she hunched over the sink with her teeth grit and her arms shaking.
The lid of the second can of beef stew had swung around and sliced her pinkey deep. She was crying, but making very little noise.
I ran back, covering the finger with the clean Kleenex and put pressure on it. I turned on the cold water, and let it run, and put a little salt on the cut. She gripped me tight, her eyes bubbling tears. I washed it in cold water, and sat her down with her arm raised.
I didn’t have any ice, so I had her hold a pint of ice cream against it.
It took a while for the bleeding to stop, the cut was so deep. But she took it well despite the pain. I ran upstairs and got some bandages once we got the blood to clot, and I patched her up.
“I’m sorry,” she said through tears “I came to take care of you, not the other way around…”
“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled, “I like taking care of you too.

“Brown Skin, you know I love your Brown Skin…” ~India.Arie

“I can’t get enough of you baby…” ~Smash Mouth

“Nothing even matters… to me…” ~Lauryn Hill

“Settle for my love…” ~Musiq Soulchild

“All you gotta do is say yes…” Floetry

“Lovin’ you is easy… comes so naturally…” ~Alicia Keys

“So Love you when you’re right, Love you when you’re wrong, Love you when you’re weak, Love you when you’re strong, Take you Higher, When the world got you feelin’ low…” ~Alicia Keys

“Ooh… Baby… We… need to smile…” ~Eryka Badu

“But everythin’ means nothin’, If I ain’t got you…” ~Alicia Keys

“They’ve got so much things to say right now, they’ve got so much things to say…” ~Lauryn Hill

“I want to rub your lonilness away…” ~Carl Thomas

“You give me Butterflies… inside…” ~Floetry

“I’m caught up with her, I’m so caught up with her…” ~Musiq Soulchild

“Baby don’t worry, you know that you got me…” ~Eryka Badu & the Roots

“I wanna know if you feel the way I do… I do… I wanna know if there’s a chance for me and you… and you…” ~Alicia Keys & Jimmy Cozier

“And ooh… I love you, I love you… And I want you to know right now… That I… That I… I want to give you some good lovin’…” ~Lauryn Hill & Bob Marley

“No no no you in love with me… I know you in love with me… I’m in love wit’ chu… Yes I’m in love with you…” ~Eryka Badu & Lion

“… and it’s almost
Like being…
… In love.” ~Nat King Cole

“Love is Friendship set to Music.” ~E. Joseph Crossmann

“Laughter breathed to Admiration, this is Friendship. Adoration breathed to Friendship, this is Love” ~Benjamin Jancewicz

Tamika and I drive back home (me driving), she comforts me, and gives me advice on how to build bridges with my parents, and I realize once again how good she is for me. I decide to scrap the original and write another letter to my parents to be sent in with my little brother’s birthday present.

Tamika was frustrated. She’d forgotten a shoe to bring to the party, and was mad at the way her outfit looked. Her mother was pushing her to get out the door.
I stood against the counter, giving her a soft smile. I just wanted her to smile once. I knew she probably would enjoy herself once she got there, but just wanted her to cheer up.
“Why are you looking at me?” she shot.
I shook my head, still smiling and feigned looking away.
After a while she seemed to soften slightly, and leaned toward the door.
I took a step toward her.
She moved away, pretending to be annoyed and raised her eyebrow.
I stood stock still, smiling softly.
Gradually, she took steps toward me… getting closer and closer…
Talisha came down the stairs.
She and Alex weren’t doing so well, and had their first big fight. She was acting as if it didn’t bother, though it was apparent to everyone that it really did. She reached into the fridge for a drink.
Tamika finally got so close she looked up at me pouting, and put her head upon my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, but her arms remained limp. Slowly I reached down…
Mrs. Pinkney came down the stairs yelling at Talisha for her to get ready. She rummaged through some stuff on the table looking for her bag.
I lifted Tamika’s arms and placed them around me. She giggled, but they remained limp. I crossed my arms around her back, nuzzling her head gently.
“I don’t wanna go…” she murmured, finally hugging me back.
“Tamika, we gotta go.” Her mom said, distractedly looking for her keys.
I grabbed Tamika tighter, and she giggled.
“Tamika, do you know what it is you’re going to sing?” her mom asked.
“No.” she said, half smothered in her chest. “I don’t feel like singing.”
“You’re gonna sing.” Mrs. Pinkney said.
“Mom, don’t make her sing if she doesn’t want to, ok?” I pleaded.
“She’s gonna sing.”
“But she sounds so good when she really wants to.”
Tamika hugged me tighter.
“And besides,” I added, “She’s sick.”
Tamika laughed.
“She’s not sick. She’ll be fine.”
“Ok. Just don’t force her.”
Mrs. Pinkney and Talisha headed out to the car.
Finally, Tamika sighed and released her grip, following her sister and Mom out the door.
As she was about to go through, I held her hand back and planted a kiss on her cheek.
She smiled, and left.

After I sent Natalia and Joshua to bed, I wrote my Mom and Dad a letter.
I don’t feel close to them and want to be. My mom had sent me a package, and then I’d talked to her on IM and told her I’d write her a real letter back.
Tamika and I had been talking earlier about the barrier I have towards some people, especially towards the white American suburbanite.
Though I have nothing really against them personally, I find I have trouble relating to them.
Tamika agreed with me, but pointed out that perhaps on occasion that much of the division was my fault too, because I automatically assumed they would not understand me.
I’m already a shy person as it is, and don’t go out on a limb to explain myself to people; just letting them assume as they wish and not bothering myself about it.
What I realized the other day, however, is that my parents are white—American—suburbanites. That’s where they grew up, more or less, in Connecticut.
I have an Uncle Jim; my dad’s brother, who is rather reclusive. He constantly seems to evade us, and doesn’t participate in family affairs much, though he lives nearby. We rarely hear anything from him.
And I don’t want to end up like him.
So, I was honest. I poured myself out into the letter, telling my parents how I felt.
I don’t feel like we’ve ever been close… ever since I was very little. I remember talking to my mom when I was extremely young, when she’d found me crying. When I told her it was because I had no friends because they hated me because of my skin colour; she didn’t know what to say. She just stood there dumbfounded a moment, then admitted to me she didn’t know what to do; except to assure me that one day I would have friends.
Ever since then, I felt the chasm between my parents and myself grow. I stopped telling them about the daily beatings, about the abuse, about the emotional destruction that had happened when I started falling in love. I stopped telling them about everything. All through late elementary and high school, I can’t think of a single time I told them about… anything. I remember just going off by myself a lot.
They were pretty liberal with me, and let me go out when I pleased for the most part. I remember one time when my Dad realized I was sneaking out of the house at midnight. He asked me what I did while I was out. I shrugged and told him I was riding my bike. He told me to make sure I locked the door.
And so I did.
I would disappear into the woods, and sometimes go for a day or two. Sometimes my parents would go out on trips and I would go off by myself on my snowmobile. One time I was out for 3 days on my own, when the snowmobile broke down and I survived by killing a rabbit.
I never told them of the time I killed a bear which had attacked me at the dump either.
I didn’t tell them about the knife fights at school, the gang wars, the street fights I had been in, the times when I had been threatened with guns, the things I had seen some of the kids do…
And the chasm widened.
I imagined that they wanted to know… my mom would ask me questions about girls sometimes, and I would respond with the name of a girl I liked. My mom would nod her head with a “Hmmm. That’s good.”
I could tell she didn’t know quite to say… but I was only a kid. I didn’t know how to respond either… it wasn’t like I was going to volunteer information like that… the stuff I felt hurt so bad I didn’t know how to talk about it. Like how her girlfriends had written me nasty letters about being white, or about the love letters I had sent anonymously until I was found out because I was the only one with that level of English literacy, or about the girl who had a crush on me but wouldn’t go out with me because she wasn’t used to guys being nice to her, or about watching the jock of the school French kiss the girl I had a crush on in the hallway simply because he knew I had a crush on her…. The list goes on, and I digress.
In all honesty, I have no idea how we could even start talking again. But I knew I had to give it a shot.

Tamika seems infinitely curious about me. She wants to know all kinds of things about me, working on a deeper level rather than just finding out peripheral things about me. She works to find out the way I work.
I still don’t usually let out much without prodding… but rather than prodding she’s gently peeling back layers of protection and slowly finding out things about me.

I remember trying to play the Moment game with my parents.
I suppose it might be one of the reasons I originally created the game; just to work to understand people the way no one had every bothered to understand me.
But it was awkward. My little brother was far too hyper to take it seriously, my mom seemed embarrassed and uncomfortable; nervously laughing at the questions, and my dad was mostly unreadable. My sister seemed to appreciate the game, but also seemed to find it weird to speak on deep terms with her brother.

Maybe it’s a communication problem that the family inherently has. My parents work very well together, better than any couple I’ve seen. I admire them a lot and strive to achieve the kinds of things they set out for themselves in my relationships. But they came from families where communication was in many ways fundamentally messed up, so it is apparent to me that they wouldn’t find situations with their kids easy to deal with.

I plan on going home for Christmas; we’ll see how that goes.

Mrs. Pinkney called me to check up me, and then handed the phone over to Tamika. She had had a pretty good time, and had sung really well, really feeling God help her through it. She had started higher than she normally did, but had hit every single note. She had felt God’s presence while singing and knew it wasn’t her causing the music at all.
She passed me to Ronnie, her cousin. He amiably grilled me on who I was, but I flipped it gently and he ended up telling me more about himself than anything else. I won his approval, and got Tamika back.
She said she missed me, echoing my feelings.

Last night’s conversation is still bugging me a bit… but then I’m still tired and feeling a little sick. I was rather dazed at school, I mismatched 3 of my classes…
It’s where I sit now, during a free period.
I probably won’t see her tonight, Vinny’s cooking her dinner, taking her out for dessert, and then going to Gabriel Brothers to go shopping.
I think I’m going to take a nice bath and maybe go for a walk. I need to talk to God. He’ll make me feel better.
*sigh*
I need to be stronger…

My bath was wonderful. I fell asleep for a while, just soaking in the steamy goodness.
We have the awesome bathroom with a giant tub in the middle of it under a skylight. I love being in there, it’s so nice. Our hot water heater sucks, but what I do is turn it on at a trickle, and after an hour it’s full. It’s so HOT too, it’s wonderful. It stays hot too, because I leave the trickle on.
I lay there for a while, and then when I felt energized I got up, shaved, and changed into something comfortable.
I knew I was fretting over something that I shouldn’t have been. Wearing your heart on your sleeve is wonderful in some senses, whenever anyone shows you affection you simply are lost in it. That’s how it was Saturday night.
But, it also leaves all safeguards down. So when things aren’t going so well, it makes me worry; especially if I’m tired. Sensitivity goes up and I find it harder to control myself.

I know… she loves me.
Wow, what a statement.

She’s never said it more than playfully, never told me exactly how she felt.
But I knew. I could tell. Which is scary in a lot of ways… I have trouble telling when someone feels a certain way about me… but I know that she appreciates me. I don’t even know exactly why, but I know she does.
She doesn’t need to say it. I almost feel it radiate from her.
Honestly, I even felt it last night…
I just have trouble… trouble seeing the hilltop I was just on when I’m in a valley. Knowing where I had been would help me a lot, I think. It would enable me to climb back up again when I’m feeling low.
Indeed, it would keep me from getting low in the first place, no matter how tired or distraught I felt…

I knew this, so I began doing archiving.
I looked up all the Journals I had submitted to DA and began to archive them. There are a bloody lot of them! And many of them are very long too!
You readers are right, this would make a cool autobiography. I need to find a microphone and a speech to text processor. Otherwise I’ll never get done.

I read over my old journals, reading how Tamika and I had first gotten close…
It made me feel a lot better.
Elbreth came online out of the blue, and asked me how I was doing. I told her how I was faltering, and she encouraged me.

She called me back late.
She wasn’t feeling good, and was cranky and tired. She said a couple things that kind of stung, but I kept trying to tell myself she didn’t mean them. I kind of felt like she was taking advantage of me. I don’t get angry and forgive easily, but I hate being taken for granted. It’s happened too many times before and it hurts.
I was tired and getting sick myself, but I tried.. I tried not to let it affect me.
She and Vinny went on the Homestar Runner site and were cracking up. I felt like she was ignoring me. I wanted desperately to sleep, but knew she wanted me to stay on the phone. I think it made her feel better.
I didn’t fall asleep. Vinny went to bed, and she looked jobs online. She asked my opinion a couple times, but cut me off mid sentence when she suddenly decided on her own. That hurt too, but I worked to brush it off.
It’s harder now. I trust her more. I need to be careful.

Though we had slept at 5:30, we got up in time for church. She took a shower while I walked Daisy. I took her out to the highschool nearby their house. I clipped her onto my camera case and took some pictures. The warm autumn sun glowed on my back. I knew it was going to be a good day.
Vinny decided to go to a church of her own rather than accompanying us.
As we drove to my place so I could change, Tamika wondered if it was her striving for her independence. It was becoming more apparent that Vinny was going down a rocky path, but as much as Tamika wanted to help, she couldn’t push her.
As she drove me home, she apologized for being so short with me.
I ribbed her neck, and told her it was alright. She was tired, and very sick.
She pouted softly. “Who’s going to take care of me and help me get better when I get home?” she said.
“Well, you could call me… we could do Bible Study and you can sing me French lullaby’s…”
“But I don’t know any French lullaby’s…”
“Oh, ok.” I grinned, “I guess I’ll just have to sing them until you learn them.”
She smiled.

I stretched myself out on the floor, hands behind my head. I stared at the ceiling. The lamp I had put together for her floated over me. It was a tan colour, with leaves embedded in the thin rice paper. It glowed softly. I had installed a dimmer switch on it too. I got up, brushed my teeth, and came back, switching the light off.
I wasn’t sure. I felt… maybe… maybe I was being used. Maybe I was giving too much. Maybe.
I feared repetition. I feared being used. I had been before. For as long as I can remember, girls have strove to take me for granted. Nice guys, ones who really strive to be selfless, do get walked all over.
And though it did not keep me from giving as much as I do, it scared me. Not being sure of how she really felt, I had to be careful. I started adding up how much I had spent, and then forced myself not to.
She came in from the bathroom and crawled into her bed, switching her bedside table light off. I didn’t move, and breathed deeply.
We lay in silence.
She rolled over and looked over the edge of her bed, her head silhouetted by the light of the moon silvering through the blinds.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I was solid as a rock, all muscles tensed. This was it; the turning point. This pivot would end it all and all because once again I had done what I had felt. Beads of saline dewdrops pooled at the corner of my eyes, but I didn’t move even to brush them away.
“…are you ok?” my voice was steady.
She didn’t answer. She reached over and pulled the light switch. It was right over me. The blast blinded me and I shielded my eyes. “Sorry…” she said. “I asked you first.”
I sighed. This was it. “I wonder if sometimes I give too much.”
She paused.
“To me?”
“Yeah.”
She bundled up her comforter at her chest and peered down at me.
“Maybe I just don’t give enough.” She spoke softly.

Her eyes glistened with such intensity…
She mirrored the drawing of her that hung on her wall behind her, but now, her eyes were open…
My eyes were wide; I looked up at her in disbelief.
Words came from my lips, but I swear I didn’t think them. “I know what’s holding me back… what’s holding you back?”

She told me about how she had a strong crush on me last fall. I glowed. I had never known that. She had stayed away because she felt that I wasn’t over Inya yet (and right she was). She recounted the time when we had gone to Twi’s church. I had been bombed out. Inya had done something that had crushed me, and Tamika saw it. Matter of fact, I think everyone saw it that day. She had thought it best to stay away.
She told me about the time she and Vinny had come to the Blue Star, and how much of a crush she had had on me there. Kinda funny, because I remember looking at her while I had sung “Love Song for No One at All”. She told me how Vinny was particularly impressed with me.
She told me about the time when Pagoda had played at the Student Union (come to think of it, I sang to her then too) and she had talked to Nikki about me.
Nikki had asked her if she and I were going out.
“No, not really,” Tamika had replied, “Just good friends.”
“Well, do you think something could happen?”

Tamika called me after work, telling me how work had been a pain and how sick she was. She said she didn’t want to do Martial Arts; she was too tired and not feeling well. She said she wanted to do some laundry and walk the dog. She mentioned how hungry she was, but didn’t feel like cooking, so I asked her if she wanted to come over and I would cook for her.