13
There wasn’t enough air in the universe for all the huffing, puffing, and blowing Mimi was doing when Afrika asked the one question she had never hoped to hear. Good thing Afrika couldn’t see her face; she would’ve never gotten away with the flimsy half-lie she told.
Keeping her secret from Afrika was proving to be a bigger chore for Mimi than she expected. There was always the possibility that coming back to Durham might have repercussions, but the possibility was slim. But in less than a month, she’d been introduced to the daughter of her best friend who looked so much like her own daughter, she’d been confronted by the man whose actions had caused her to leave Durham in the first place, and she’d been contacted by her best friend that she hadn’t seen in nineteen years, who was the wife of the man who’d confronted her and the mother of her daughter’s new best friend. Damn. Her life was more complicated than it ever was.
It was time to call Raphael. Her husband would have answers. After all, he was a Colonel in the United States Army and he commanded troops at home and abroad, from Ft. Riley, Kansas to the sandy deserts of Iraq. Mimi punched the first number in on her BlackBerry when she remembered the blinking light on her house phone.
As she suspected, it was from Victor. Mimi had had enough of his antagonism for one day and wasn’t about to listen to anymore of his threats taunting her and Afrika to leave Durham. Curiosity wanted her to listen to the message, but peace of mind pressed the delete key. She didn’t care what time it was in Europe, she was going to call Raphael.
The voice on the other end of the line was groggy. “Hello, hello.”
“Baby, I’m sorry for calling you so late.”
“Yeah, it’s one in the morning. Mimi, you all right?”
Mimi could hear rustling in the background. “I hope you weren’t in a deep sleep. I’m all right.”
“Hey, baby, it’s me, Raphael. You know I know you.”
“Really, I’m fine. I needed to hear your voice.”
“My body was down for the count, but I hadn’t gone into the zone yet. I do need a good night’s sleep, but I’m sitting up now. Busy day. We shipped out twenty-five hundred more troops to Afghanistan.”
“I’ll be glad when the war is over.”
“Afghanistan and Iraq. But you didn’t call to talk about that. I’ve missed you. How’s Afrika doing?”
“I’ve missed you, too. Afrika’s doing great.”
“Have you changed your mind about coming to Germany? I can put in for housing right away. As I told you before you made the decision to go to Durham, Afrika was going to be okay.”
“No, I need to be here. If something happened to her and I wasn’t able to get to her, I would never forgive myself.”
“Me either, baby. I guess I saw our baby as all grown up. Afrika has always been very independent and intelligent. She got that from her father.”
Mimi was quiet. It was true that Afrika had taken on Raphael’s traits and demeanor. A large constituency of Afrika’s high school teachers and Raphael’s colleagues made a bet that Afrika was destined to follow in her father’s footsteps and would probably become the first and only African-American female Commander General in the United States.
“Afrika has been fortunate to have you as a father. Baby, I’m sorry to have disturbed you. Go on back to sleep. I needed to hear your voice.”
“I’m awake now. You sure you’re all right? I detect a little something in your voice.”
“Well, remember me telling you about this guy who harassed me in college?”
“You mean the guy who tried to assault you because you wouldn’t give into his advances?”
“Yes, he’s the one. As big as Durham is, guess what?”
“Don’t tell me you ran into him.”
“I did, Raf. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, but out of the blue, there he was.”
“Did he say anything to you? Did he try anything? I’ll be on the first thing smoking back to the U.S.”
“No,” Mimi lied. “It felt strange seeing him again. He stared at me like I was on display at some museum. It gave me the creeps.”
“Listen, Baby. If this guy, for any reason, gives you any cause to feel threatened, get a hold of me right away; I’ll be home as fast as I can get there. Nobody messes with my wife. Hopefully, it was only a coincidence that you ran into him.”
“I hope it was, too,” Mimi said. Raphael meant what he’d said about getting on a plane straightway. There was no way she could tell him that Victor had come to the house, put his hands on her, and threatened her all in one afternoon. It would set him off.
“I’m serious, Baby. If you feel uncomfortable and need me to come home, I wasn’t lying when I said I’d be on the next flight out of Frankfurt.”
“You know how to make a sister feel safe,” she told Raphael, although the nerves that wracked her body said differently. Wasn’t the reason she had called him the first place because she was ill-at-ease? She didn’t want Raphael to worry, so she played it off.
“So what are you going to do for a brother you woke up in the middle of the morning that has a serious hard-on from listening to his wife tell him about another man looking at her like she was a chocolate sculpture he wanted to eat.”
“I didn’t say that, Raphael.”
“It was close enough ’cuz that turned me on, Baby.”
“You’re a naughty boy. I’m telling you about some guy from the past who gave me the heebee jeebees when I saw him today, and you’ve got the nerve to turn it into your own sexual fantasy.”
“Baby, I’m glad you’re all right, but you know how you do me. Now if you would slide those fine voluptuous hips of yours through the telephone cables, you’d make a brother real happy.”
“Now, Colonel, I’m not that kind of girl. What would your troops say?”
“They’d say, ‘do it, Colonel. Go on and get your twenty-one gun salute—boom-boom, boom-boom.’ And you know I’m gonna try.”
“Aren’t you afraid that you might be reported to your superiors?”
“Sister, I say lay it on me. I’d do fifty push-ups right now, if you were going to set me free. I’m all alone in this dark room, undressing you with my mind, throwing kisses all over your body, feeling every crevice of your being…”
“Well, Colonel, umm…umm, if you don’t tell nobody, I for sure won’t. There might be something I can do to make your dream come true. Your wish is my command.”
“Talk to me.”