Thumbwars

Chapter Two

Nortey Jr., Sam - Thumbwars [Avidbook, MF, Contemporary, New/Young Adult, Urban Fiction] Chapter Two

Chimes make such distinct sounds. From the onset, the sound seems interminable, or endless, and just when one begins to accept it as part of the background, it stops.

With the final swing of Ms. Opal’s clock’s pendulum, the chime ended, and I thought that what I was feeling, that what I had just felt, would at last come to an end. Naïve.

On the contrary, the first time someone tells you they love you is never the last. Over and over again, the words continue to be repeated. With each repetition, the magical and seemingly chance combination of circumstances defining that moment is recalled and revisited. The person, situation, time, and place defining that moment will forever lead us down an imaginary aisle in our minds.

My mind continually bears witness to a marriage between the unchanging sound and ever-changing significance of the words Ms. Opal was the first to ever tell me.

Those three words were a gun that fired and commenced a race with no finish or end in sight. In that dark place inside me, the measured stride and the slow trot of a horse upon which my emotions firmly reined, suddenly became a fast, furious, uneven, giddy, gallop. That horse charged to the top of a mountain. High up there, on that mythical mountain, I experienced transports of pure ecstasy, joy, and happiness I’d never known.

To remain forever in the place where those words took me was probably too much to expect, but just the memory of that paradise would’ve been all I needed.

However, it simply wasn’t to be. I’d be dragged down and yanked from that mountain by the same string of words that had led me there.

Forever, the announcement of her love would coincide with the shattering of the picture image she held of me.

The sound of her voice would evoke a searing sensation of pain that’d be quickly substituted by what I’d come to feel for . It was a feeling, that for so long, I’d never been able to announce.

There seemed to be no escape from this situation, for its recurring nature was just like Ms. Opal’s antique grandfather clock.

At twelve o’clock, every day, the chime would sound and the pendulum would swing. For the next twelve hours, the sound of the chime would stop, and the pendulum would cease to swing.

. Swing. Stop. Twelve Hours. . Swing. Stop. Twelve Hours. Ad Infinitum.

“It’s 12:01! I gotta go! My dad will kill me,” I told her.

In slurred and syncopated speech she began, “Come over here. Gotta tell you something.”

Pointing her finger at me and shaking her head, she began with a strained conviction, “You can love and hate him at the same time. One day, I said no more. I heard my voice, and it told me to scream.”

While giggling and raising her glass, Ms. Opal said, “Gotta toast. To life. To our lives. Together. Forever. Oh, how could I forget? To love.”

I raised my glass, replaced it on the floor beside my chair, and then slowly moved towards her. Her breath smelled of alcohol. Her hair was slightly disheveled, and her lipstick was slightly smeared at the corner of her mouth. I moved closer to her, nervous about what would happen next. We were about an inch apart. Our eyes engaged. I saw the pale blue of her dilated pupils. They reflected a calm that mesmerized me.

Under the flickering light of the burning candle, she inhaled deeply.

Amidst the dark, dizzy, alcohol-induced disruption of my forming thoughts, I saw her for a tiny moment. Under her usual make-up mask, I pieced together her eyes, nose, and mouth into a symmetry I could’ve only imagined before.

Immediately, she smiled and exhaled at the same time. A rush of blood instantly colored her pale cheeks, and the deceptively timeless snapshot of perfection before my eyes disappeared just like a scene lost forever under the closing of dark stage curtains.

Then, coming from nowhere and without warning, her lips gently engulfed mine.

My chapped lower lip now began to sting with gin from the Tom Collins cocktail she’d taught me to make earlier that evening.

My eyes quickly darted to the mirror above us. I could see only a face. It was that of a dead man I now hoped to become. James Dean.

Recollecting her face once more, I withdrew, unlocking her pursed lips from mine.

Preparing to leave, I took another look at her now open eyes and found an inconsolable sorrow. My fearful eyes began to trace the outer circumference of her iris. All at once, their light blue hue darkened. It was the same shade as the ink from my Mont Blanc fountain pen, a recent graduation gift from my father.

This immense blue then became a blinding myriad of colors, sparkling almost like an iridescent rhinestone found on a ball gown. In addition to their changing color, her eyes took on a glossy quality, like glass marbles.

As I collected my things, Ms. Opal moved towards the window. Numb to all that had happened, I finally made my way to the door.

As I unlocked it, Ms. Opal said tearfully, “Richard, don’t go. Even it’s only for tonight, I beg you not to be like the others. Stay. Don’t turn around, open that door, and walk away from me. Please don’t. I need you.”

However, amidst her sob-muffled words, the slight tremor of fear in her voice made me turn around. The sound of her calling my name and saying she needed me rang like a loud siren driving my heart mad with an odd, irregular throbbing of joy, confusion, and obligation.

Hypnotized by her fear, I forgot my own. I moved towards the black lacquer commode in the vestibule. A telephone and an empty red-and-gold carton of Dunhill cigarettes were lying on it. I rested my left hand on the edge of the black table as I picked up the phone with my right hand.

Hoping to get a better hold of the black commode, I placed more of my weight upon it. My left hand then suddenly slipped from the shiny, slick, slippery surface. If it hadn’t been for fancy foot maneuvering, I’ve fallen. Managing to maintain a somewhat insecure balance, I dialed, with difficulty, a phone number children much younger than I’d memorized by heart.

“Hello,” I said.

In a highly concerned tone, my mom asked, “Richard, where have you been? We hadn’t heard from you since this morning. When are you coming home? Are you all right?”

Before I responded, I wanted to turn around and read the answers to these questions in Ms. Opal’s eyes.

Never turning around, I nervously responded, “Ma, I’m fine. There’s no need to worry. I’m feeling good. I’m at a friend’s party. I…”

Interrupting my sentence, my mother began, “Your father’s been worried. What should I tell him? Richard, when are you coming home?”

“Ma, tell him I’m staying with a friend and I won’t be coming home tonight.”

Answering that final question, I placed the receiver down, as my mother asked where I was or how she could reach me. I couldn’t answer her because, in earnest, I didn’t know, at that moment, where I really was. I repeatedly asked myself how I’d gotten to this place.

Coming behind me and taking my hand more gently than before, Ms. Opal led me from the dark. I followed her shaking shadow projected upon a wall to the left of the banister railing.

At the top of the staircase, we left our shadows behind as we stepped into the candlelight.

The candelabra rested upon what seemed an ostentatious bronze Roman imitation of a three-legged round table found in Greece during its height, the Hellenistic period.

The positioning of the light, although at an appreciable height, was slightly below my eyes, forcing me to always look down towards it.

Grabbing hold of a knob next to the round table, she pushed open the door.

I waited, thinking she’d walk in before me. Her body was splayed upon the door.

I looked at her face. A streak of cherry-red lipstick extended from the corner of her mouth as though a child had colored outside the curved outline of her lips. Besides this, I continued to focus on her lips for another reason.

She smiled that strange smile I’d seen after class when she’d first asked me to recount my story. I turned away and walked inside.

Ms. Opal closed the door behind her. As it creaked and circled through its half-revolution, the tranquility I just rediscovered in the clear blue of her eyes became increasingly turbulent as every degree of light soon became eclipsed by a corresponding degree of darkness.

“Slam.”

As the bolt of the door slipped, I stood motionless as a bead of sweat slowly rolled from the bridge of my nose to the ridge of my lips.

It was then that I knew where I was. It was there, in her bedroom, face-to-face, in the silence, locked away from the light, with only the darkness separating us.

* * * *

Years later, I believe that Ms. Opal saw more than the alcohol-laced perspiration that dripped from my face that night so long ago.

In fact, standing here today in the New York blistering heat, dripping with perspiration, I’m more than convinced she saw me. In her dark bedroom on that night, having torn passed the peculiar smile that clung tightly to her lips, I know I saw her.

That night, even in our drunken haze, one thing was certain. Ms. Opal and I both experienced a miraculous moment of lucidity that forced us to see one another. Only, it was in the names of other people that we saw each other.

Some things, however, continue to remain uncertain. Could I, for example, love a person who saw someone else when they were looking at me? Was it possible to love only one person and no one else? Did I even know then what it meant to love somebody? Do I know now?

* * * *

I tried to concentrate, but all I could see before me was a reflected and mirrored blackness. Three loud protracted honks from below brought me back to the present.

I quickly patted my black pea-sized curls into place. I took my sunglasses, Dunhill cigarettes, and Zippo lighter from the mantle and placed them in the pocket of my linen blazer. My smile was self-deceptive.

All of a sudden, rising involuntarily from my diaphragm was a laugh, which bore an uncanny resemblance to Sheila’s.

I thought to myself, “Damn her to think she could help me. I’m better off without her. Saying all that crap about being in love. Being in love with me! Me? Ha! Nothing but words! None of it was true.”

Shaking my head in anger, I reached over to pick up my plane ticket lying on the mantle beside an open book. Suddenly, a cool breeze came from an open window behind me. At first, it was gentle enough to cool the growing beads of sweat on my face, and then it inconceivably became strong and gusty. Consequently, my plane ticket flew and landed on a page of Ovid’s . The room’s torrid heat had resumed.

Retrieving my ticket, I couldn’t help but read a passage on the open page.

(1)

The mythological god Jupiter expressed his wish to punish and cleanse humanity’s sins with a great flood.

On this sweltering, hot, ninety-degree day in August, the likelihood of a flood or natural disaster seemed absolutely ludicrous. However, a storm of a different sort had been brewing for some time, and no weather forecast could’ve predicted its coming or eventual damage.

A heart that no longer palpitates impatiently in the face of what it perceives to be love, but races with a menacing guilt, is a punishment far worse than what Jupiter had envisioned.

Reaching for my keys on the mantle, I shifted my eyes from the James Dean poster. Standing upright against the wall was the square gilded picture frame that had fallen down several months ago in my senior college dorm room.

My eyes unsuccessfully attempted to zoom in on the center of the glass-encased reprint that my mother had found at a flea market. Cracked glass not only covered the people in the poster but also distorted my reflection of exactly how those two looked.

The cabby honked his horn again.

I put on my Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses, turned around, and walked toward the open window. With my back now facing the mirror, I had left behind me the mirrored reflection of myself and of the things in my apartment. Through the dark lenses, I finally saw, in black and white, the posters and broken picture-portrait as they really were.

After closing the window, I picked up my bags, walked out the door, and out into the sun. The cabby helped me put my bags in the trunk. I quickly withdrew a cigarette from the package and lit it.

I’d read somewhere that smoking gave a person the power to never have to say he or she was sorry. I smiled and believed that I felt sorrow for no one. Taking my sunglasses off before entering the car, I looked up towards the sky and found not a single cloud. Only a glaring reflection of people gone and of times passed.

* * * *

Through the cab window, I looked at the sun while trying to imagine the look on Mama’s face this afternoon when she told me the frightful news on the telephone. My mind just kept hearing and rehearing the tone of her voice. In my mind, I found it difficult to replay the entire conversation. I remembered or wanted to remember only the beginning and the end of it. Mama began by repeating my younger brother’s name like she’s done several months ago.

Late that afternoon, however, Noah came running into the kitchen, where Mama had been preparing dinner. Instead of finding her, Noah found my father and me arguing.

“You graduated from college with a degree in mechanical engineering, and now you want to be a writer,” my father yelled.

With a newfound courage that slightly startled me, I said, “I’ve always wanted to write.”

“You never told me that,” he fired back angrily.

“You never asked me what I wanted or who I wanted to be,” I said.

“We’ve spent all that money so you could work as an engineer and earn real money. This writing crap is for the birds. You’ll never make any money as a writer! How are you going to support yourself? Get your head out of the clouds and look for a job in your field,” father retorted.

“Leave him alone,” my brother yelled. “He just graduated from college. We should be happy no matter what he’s doing now. It’s up to him to decide. It’s his life. He’s grown up.”

“Do you know I came to the United States with only a five-dollar bill and studied to get a master’s degree? Your mom and I have tried to give both of you a good education. You think I get up at four in the morning every day because I like to? You’ve gotta be kidding. Look around you. This house. The neighborhood. The school you go to. Everything I’ve worked and paid for. All of it! It’s not for me. It’s for you. The two of you. Your future. And you know what? It’s all a waste! You know why? You wanna know why? Because your older brother is wasting his college education.”

“Dad, can’t you understand? It’s not a waste. For the first time in my life, I’m doing something for myself by myself and for no one else,” I said with a quavering voice.

“Go ahead and waste your life on this writing crap. Just know that you won’t get any more money from me. You’ll have to fend for yourself. If you continue with this silly notion to write, you can pack your bags and move out of this house! No child of mine who chooses to live like a pauper when he can earn real money will live under my roof! I just won’t have it!” my father yelled.

Arguments continued between my father, mother, and me. Soon after that, I left home. I’d moved into an apartment in New York’s Upper East Side. Whenever I wondered how I’d pay the late rent, I wrote in a journal that I’d begun in my senior year of college.

Often, while I was writing, the telephone ringing would pierce the deafening silence. Rarely allowing the answering machine to take my calls, I ran to the receiver and secretly hoped to hear my father on the other end. However, it was only through my mother’s words that my father and I communicated.

Today, while listening to Mom on the phone, I realized I missed hearing his voice. I missed Noah’s voice and the words he had used to support my dreams.

If I could only repay him for what he’d done...

* * * *

Leaning against the cab window, I could do nothing to stop a tear from rolling down my taut, sunburned face.

All I could do to stop my mother from crying on the phone was say, “He’ll be all right. He’s going to be all right.”

I couldn’t ask her what I was now thinking, because it was preposterous. I wanted to ask if I’d killed my brother. I didn’t… I couldn’t have…

Even in an air-conditioned cab, a haven away from the scorching heat outside, I wasn’t safe. The violent shivers traversing the column of my spine were due to more than the full blast of vented-air blowing on my body.

I looked at my watch and asked the cab driver if we could go any faster. He said nothing. We accelerated, whizzing by skyscrapers and scantily clad New Yorkers who fanned themselves in vain.

At a red light, I saw a woman wearing a one-piece salmon-colored dress with a white sash wrapped around her waist. Resembling a gift-wrapped package with ribbon, this white-gloved, noticeably bosomed woman in white high heels slowly walked her leashed Chihuahua across the street. All of a sudden, her dog ran back toward the curb where a nondescript man stood watching his leashed dog rush away from him.

The two dogs met each other, barking loudly. In contrast, each dog’s respective owner resisted being completely pulled together in the street.

I watched, with attention, the way the two dogs wrestled with each other. Moreover, it was with that same relentless energy that my brother and I wrestled one afternoon, shortly after having begun to play ‘Cops and Robbers’ in our bedroom.

The direct target of the toy pistol I held was my brother’s heart. He quickly lunged. We then rolled off of my bed. We continued wrestling on a carpet littered with Matchbox miniature cars, Transformer toys, and candy wrappers of the chocolate that we’d eaten earlier that afternoon.

As we tumbled and fell on top of each other, the abdominal folds of both my brother and me alternately enveloped the pistol butt.

I closed my eyes.

My intestines rebelled, and like angry clouds, they unleashed a torrent of harsh gastric juices. I felt it again.

That same sensation, albeit with a strange intensity, had returned. Feeling what I had experienced while pretending to be Earnest, another woman’s son, I envisioned myself as Billy the Kid played by Paul Newman in ‘.’

I loved that film. ”Colt,” the name of Billy’s gun, gave him the power to do whatever he wanted. For me, brandishing Billy’s persona instilled a sense of power, however, that no gun could ever give.

Sadly, that power came and went as quickly as the butt of the gun changed direction between my brother and me. In my mind, I changed constantly from being Billy to being the person my brother saw holding the gun.

My finger was now on the trigger. My brother’s hand clenched mine as the pistol went off. In that same instant, I screamed. My brother yelled something.

With the loud “clang” and “pow” of the gun and my yelling, what he was saying continues to remain an incomprehensible cacophony of polysyllabic mishmash. What’s even worse was that I didn’t even know who’d been shot.

* * * *

Today, with all the troubling news my mother told me about my brother, I try to identify a face before the gun went off.

As I now stand in line waiting to board an airplane, I see three faces, virtually inseparable and occurring simultaneously. I see the face of my brother and of a man who’s not Paul Newman. Instead, it’s of a smiling dead man who continues to intrude unannounced upon my every encounter with “love.”

The third face is a picture of the man the airline ticket counter clerk sees on the first page of my passport.

Sadly, in my mind, the moment I focus with clarity upon a single face, the gun goes off. Shortly after that, it becomes a blur of faces and an inarticulate din of voices.

With a bizarre sensation of consolation, I tell myself I killed him. However, like a torn leaf in a storm, the question of whether I was guilty of committing a crime continues to turn itself over and over in my mind. If so, could there ever exist a prison to punish people who believed themselves to have done the same as I had done?