Chapter Twenty Linda
CHAPTER TWENTY
LINDA
You know I get cray-cray when you wear that,” Linda said.
“Girl, you are one basic bitch,” Imani said right before she took another toke of weed and dabbed the stub in the red plastic ashtray she’d placed among thin plaid sheets. “This some Fruit of the Loom shit I bought at the dollar store.”
Didn’t matter how low-budget the brand. It drove Linda wild when Imani pranced around in her gray underwear.
Well, really any underwear, truth be told.
But there was definitely something special about cotton gray.
How the fabric lay against her chest, how it accentuated the slight curve of her bosom and contrasted with her skin.
Drove Linda nuts, and Imani knew it. On such occasions, lasciviousness usually ensued.
Backs being massaged. Nipples being kissed.
Necks being devoured. But the mood that evening was heavy, off.
But Imani still knew how to play. She studied Linda’s hungry eyes, sprang up on the bed, and posed like she was in a Calvin Klein ad. She tousled her braids, pouted her lips, and snickered before settling into the type of facial ennui meant to imply one was above it all.
“So tell me something you learned about me… something you shouldn’t know,” Imani said as she settled back down into the sheets cross-legged.
Something you shouldn’t know—the game the two played with each other ever since Linda had revealed her special gift.
How she could explore people’s emotions and thoughts and memories with her mind.
“Uhhhhm… okay. That you stole thirty-five dollars from your grandma’s purse and felt so bad you replaced it with a fifty a year later. ”
Imani flicked Linda on the shoulder. “Sure did. And I think Grandma sussed that shit out as well. You know how long it was before she gave me Christmas money again? Like she was telling me for years, ‘You little thievin’ ho, payback.’”
Linda smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”
Imani stared hard at her girlfriend. “That you cook all the time now, even though you hate cooking… because you want to make sure your dad is eating right… and you want the kitchen to smell like your mama’s favorite dishes.
” Imani leaned in close. “I didn’t have to read your mind to figure that out.
And I know today it’s been a year since she passed.
I remember. I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up. ”
That was Imani’s way, to be playful and cackle like a crackhead, then veer into the territory of deep introspection and care.
Linda used to wonder, Does she behave this way because she’s a Gemini?
But she eventually realized that it was a ploy to encourage people to let their guard down so Imani could share some hard truths.
To help them out. Her girl, a Bronx-born trickster wise beyond her years.
This was the game they always played, after Linda had used her empathy to reminisce with Imani.
She would absorb bits of memory that Imani chose to share with her and project back to Imani bits of her own past. What parcels of each other’s memory could they verbalize, could they hear come from each other’s lips?
Linda preferred to use her power like it was a parlor trick for public consumption.
She never shared anything too heavy or serious that she learned, even though she easily could. But that’s not how Imani operated.
The exchange of consciousness bound the two in a way Linda had never experienced with any of her previous girlfriends, not that she’d had many by the age of twenty.
Not that she would’ve let any of them know about her gift.
Imani was the first person she trusted to share who she really was outside of her parents and Estelle, who would sometimes plead with Linda to visit her, to help her train.
Linda would never have met the overbearing woman if it weren’t for Papi, who practically dragged his daughter to Estelle’s botanica once he realized that there was something strange about how she moved through the world.
“I do miss Ma,” Linda said to Imani. “Every fuckin’ day.
I was trying not to think about it, but…
” For months, being in a house without the person who loved her the most, her father constantly working double shifts at the precinct, refusing to stay home and be near his daughter.
All of it, a weight she often felt she couldn’t bear.
“I miss her, too,” Imani said. “And you don’t talk about her enough.”
“Yeah, I know.” Linda wiped her eyes and kissed her girlfriend.
She tasted the weed on Imani’s breath. She hated the scent.
Hated how her tiny bedroom reeked of the stuff even though Imani mostly stuck her head out the window to smoke.
But Linda didn’t complain. Such things were frivolous compared to everything else her girl offered.
They continued to talk into the night, heaviness ameliorated by closeness.
Linda asked Imani to stay since she knew Papi wouldn’t be back from the precinct until morning.
They took out old photos of Linda’s mom, most taken when she’d just immigrated to the Bronx from Guyana in the 1980s.
Soon after she’d met Linda’s dad, who’d arrived from the DR. The resemblance between mother and daughter was uncanny, though Linda had taken after her father in terms of her athletic build.
Linda loved to play with Imani, loved how much their connection helped her keep her head above water.
She wasn’t in the mood for any big-time intimacy, even with the lovely gray, but she wanted her girl to know how much she appreciated her.
That night, as the two drifted off to sleep, intertwined, Linda used her empathy to share with Imani how much she adored her.
I love you…
A message sent to Imani’s soul over and over again through the night. Unrelenting waves of care for her girl. And her mom.
The next morning when Linda woke up, she found Imani had retreated to one side of the bed, which struck her as weird. She preferred to cuddle nonstop.
Maybe she’s tired, Linda thought. Let me give her extra time to rest. She brushed her teeth and handled her business in the bathroom. By the time she’d showered and come out, Imani was still sleeping.
Maybe she’s not feeling well?
“Hey, rise and shine, kiddo, you’re gonna be late for work.”
Linda leaned down and nudged Imani’s shoulder. As she drew closer, she gasped.
Imani’s eyes were wide open. Saliva fell from the side of her mouth.
“No!” Linda screamed. She gently lifted Imani up by her back to make sure she was breathing.
Linda called 911 immediately and summoned an ambulance, which took Imani to Montefiore, the closest hospital. There doctors declared she’d entered some sort of catatonic state for no reason they could discern.
Imani’s parents absorbed the news with stone-like disbelief, trying to understand how their completely healthy daughter had succumbed to something so random.
All the while, Papi just sat in the corner of the visitation room and stared at an utterly stunned Linda, as if he knew the truth.
As if his mind held a message that she could read if she chose to delve into his thoughts, which she never did, because she was too frightened of what she would discover.
You did this.
My child, the evil bruja.
Her father, arresting officer, judge, jury, and executioner. Who knew no one would believe that Linda was to blame for Imani’s condition due to hidden mystical powers. Their terrible secret.
Imani would never recover, would never wake up.
In the ensuing months, Linda became so racked with guilt that for weeks she could barely eat or sleep, at one point close to death’s door herself until Estelle practically barged her way into the apartment and nursed her back to health.
Would things have been different if she’d accepted the older woman’s offers to train, to better understand her power?
Had she been careless with her empathy because of her grief?
Had her gift been too much for her girl’s mind and soul?
I’ve destroyed her…
She soon pledged never to use her empathy again and joined the police academy, where she graduated with honors and then worked as a beat cop, all in a vain, misguided attempt to stanch the venom that oozed from Papi.
To earn back his approval, though she wasn’t sure she’d ever had it in the first place.
She remembered…
… the first time she’d put aside enough money to procure Imani a bed at the New Rochelle facility when her parents’ health insurance coverage ran out after their daughter had grown too old.
She remembered…
… the first time she visited Imani and spoke at her bedside, something she couldn’t bear to do for the first two years of her coma.
She remembered…
… weeping at her girl’s bedside for the umpteenth time before Imani woke up, stroked Linda’s head, and told her to stop crying.
Which had actually never happened.
Linda stumbled back, shocked to see her girlfriend sitting up with a stoic demeanor.
Imani’s hospital bed was in Linda’s town house, in her shadowy living room full of candlelight.
The adult version of Elegua with his red knit hat and cat eyes loomed above them in his familiar portrait.
Linda swore he was looking directly at her.
“You can’t keep on torturing yourself like this,” Imani said. “I’ve already forgiven you for what happened. It was an accident. You need to forgive yourself, move on.”
I can’t. Linda said nothing, just leaned forward and kissed Imani. Her lips felt exquisite, parched as they were. She wanted to drink her all up.
Imani didn’t kiss Linda back, didn’t envelop her girlfriend in an embrace. Instead, she slowly pushed her away.
“I can’t wake up,” she said. “My time is done. I think you’ve known that for a while…
but you have to wake up, Linda. There’s something out there that you have to confront, that you’ve made it your mission to handle.
Because you’re a badass bitch who no one can touch.
You need to remember that, and you need to wake up. ”
Linda shook her head. This wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“Imani…”
Elegua continued to peer down as Imani closed her eyes, placed her arms by her sides, and lay back in her bed. There was nothing more to say.
Linda rushed over to Imani as she returned to a comatose state. She took her girl’s hand, the same move she’d made for years whenever she visited the care facility in New Rochelle.
“Babes, come back,” she whispered. Tears came. They always did. “Please, I need you.”
The smell of rum and incense permeated the room.
Linda wiped her eyes. She pushed past the desperation and confusion and guilt and abruptly realized… that she was in a most familiar place.
She was in ritual. At the crossroads.
This wasn’t real, yet also very real.
And she had a decision to make.
She stepped back from the bed, feet full of lead, head full of cotton. She clenched her fists. She didn’t want to do this. And yet, what choice did she have? She had a mission.
Linda lowered her gaze and whispered to Imani, “Goodbye.”