“What I mean is, they just want to take you over, know what I’m saying?” Keisha says. “They want to control you and make it so they own you or something.”
“So just opening up to someone, just talking to someone, would make them control you?” Larry asks her. Isabel sits forward on her chair and stares intently at Keisha.
Let her finish.
“Yeah, kind of.” Keisha scratches at her head. “But it’s more than opening up. I’m talking about talking, really flapping with someone.”
“Flapping?”
“Flapping. Flapping gums. Talking. You know? Like about all your stuff. They think they got you in their hand, you belong to them and you can’t belong to yourself anymore. I hate that. Like the tribes who think if you take their picture you’re taking a piece of their soul. It’s like that. You tell yourself to someone and they steal your soul. That’s why I don’t talk to anybody. I wanna keep my soul, man.”
“Go on,” Larry says.
“No one wants to hear about all my shit, anyway,” Keisha continues. “Who am I supposed to go to—my sister? Ha.” And she looks genuinely amused at such an apparently bizarre notion.
“Why do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?”
Alex looked down at the comforter on the bed and traced a line of quilting with his finger.
“You’re always calling Casey when you’ve got a problem.” He calculated a sulking look. “You even call your mother…”
“And?”
“And you never come to me with the problem,” he said. “You won’t let me have a crack at it first. I am your husband after all. That’s what husbands do.”
Isabel crossed the room to the spot right in front of Alex on the edge of the bed. “I am so sorry,” she said, kissing his cheek, “how about,” kiss “I promise,” kiss “to come to you,” kiss “first next time.” Kiss.
Alex pulled his head away and looked her square in the eye. “Only me,” he said.
“Only you?” Isabel was smiling, leaning to kiss his cheek again.
“Only me,” he repeated. If Isabel had been paying attention she would have noticed his emphasis was on the first of the two words. And he wasn’t smiling back.
“We all have to have someone to talk to,” Larry says.
Leave it to Birkenstock Boy to paraphrase Dylan.
Keisha is shaking her head. “Not me, man. Not me.” She looks proud of her stoicism. “No one I know talks about all this deep shit, anyhow. All we talk about when we get together is who sleeping with who, who wearing what, who got what CD…all that shit. No one sits around talking about how bad they had it with their mama.”
Amen to that.
“Have you considered that you might need more than that?” Larry asks her. “Especially now?”
“I tell you what, Larry,” Keisha says, her childish face suddenly somber. “I don’t see any black folk here, in this place. Not a one. I’m the only one I see. And black folks, the ones I’m talking about, not talking about all this psycho-shit. And they ain’t here. So that tells me that maybe there’s something to that, know what I’m saying?”
She’s exactly right. Exactly right.
“What are you saying?” Larry asks.
“I’m saying maybe that’s the key,” she says proudly, “that’s the secret. Talking about the shit’s what makes you psycho. You don’t talk about it, you don’t have the problems. The problems start when you start digging all around them.” Keisha is triumphant with her theory.
“Or—” Larry follows her theory with his own “—or, the digging leads us to a deeper understanding of what we’re all about and therefore moves us to a deeper appreciation for life.”
I like Keisha’s philosophy better, dude.
“I like my philosophy better, man,” Keisha says. If Keisha had been paying attention to Isabel she would have noticed the startled look on her washed-out face.