What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (phonics story books txt) 📕

Angie rushed toward him with all her intention, leaving Carla on the other side of the street. The sometimes father turned from locking his car door; he seemed not the man Angie needed to berate. He was sighing, taking a deep breath as people do arriving home, happy to have left work. His face was relaxing, his hand was reaching for his pocket to find a cigarette. Angie was disarmed for a fleeting second by his casualness. She was expecting something to be burning in him too. She was expecting a face creased in worry or sin. Surely deeds leave a mark, she thought, but no, his face was settling into placidity, into coming home like any ordinary person. She would have to figure this one out, but she rekindled what was left of herself and flew at him, saying, “How could you? You promised, you promised.”

The man raised his arms as if to ward off a blow. He felt numb from another day wondering what the hell he had got himself mixed up in. She was crazy. Angie surprised him and frightened him. His instinct was to run or fall to the ground. He did both, running toward his door, fumbling his key in the lock, putting the screen door between them, and falling into his hallway. Why he hadn’t hit her he could not make out. His instinct should have made him do so. But he had felt flushed and heartsick for a moment, a sudden dejection had washed over him. Behind the door he felt ashamed for running and thought of going back outside to assert himself, but he simply locked the door when he heard the balmy sounds of his home and family, the smells that filled the house—the roast and fried potatoes from the kitchen. Finally, he opened the door, but Angie and the child were gone. He came out farther, looking down and up the street. There was no one there, the street was as usual: his street, his car sitting outside, the darkness of early evening had greyed everything. Perhaps it hadn’t happened.

The street was quiet, a neighbour putting out garbage. He had to do something about her soon. She couldn’t come to his house like that with the child. It had been a mistake on his part. She was such a small woman, he hadn’t thought she would run him down like this. He’d promised her, no doubt, and at the time he had intended to fulfil that promise. Such a pretty woman, and she had seemed to need him and she had made him feel powerful and important. He had not looked at her clearly beyond those things and beyond the fact that a little something on the side was not unheard of with him.

When Angie first became pregnant, he did not discourage it entirely, but he told her that she would be on her own; he would support the baby, but he couldn’t be there the whole time. When she had Carla, he had second thoughts. Perhaps this was the family he was supposed to be with, perhaps he had made a mistake initially with Nadine. He moved in with Angie for six months, but then something pulled him home again. Indecision plagued him, even as facts multiplied. The fact of Nadine, the fact of Angie and the baby, the fact of a family he had already, the fact of a second family, the fact, the fact … He felt fear and self-scorn and rage and self-doubt. But he also felt excitement, passion. Another kind of rage. He was in the middle of a crisis. He was in the middle of love. Ownership. A contest for himself. It seemed as if he was always awake, always startled. He noticed everything with a brightness. There was the other side of that too. If there was a smudge on his black shoes, it made him panic, any dust and disarray annoyed and frightened him, the faint mould on the bathroom walls disturbed him.

When he saw her a week later, after he had run away from her, it settled him. He went to the apartment. He fucked her hard. He told her not to come back to his house. He told her he was going to leave Nadine. He needed time. If she didn’t leave him alone, he was going to leave and never come back, never fuck her again. He told her everything, many things, all contradictory and all true. He said he loved her; he said he couldn’t live without her, Angie; he said he couldn’t leave Nadine at this moment. He said he was staying for his boy. He said never, never come to his house. She was standing across the street the next day. It should have disturbed him, but he was relieved. He didn’t want the feeling of crisis to end.

She held the threat over him that at any moment she would kill him, betray him—she had already done that by coming to his house. They both understood. They were beyond betrayal. Otherwise he would have done something. He could easily have charged her with stalking him, with threatening him. She had established with him that he would never rest, and she thought he had accepted it. What else was this choreography between them? What else was it but his acceptance of a thing he owed.

Early one morning when Carla was still a child and Jamal was just a baby, Angie had taken them with her to the bank. On the way Angie played a game. A game where the rules shifted at every turn. After all, it was her game and a game she was making up as she went along. A superstitious game. Here’s how it would go, she told herself, if someone said hello to her on the way, she wouldn’t do it. No one said hello. If the bus came before she arrived at the corner of Church and Wellesley. The bus was already gone.