When I held him in the hospital as they worked and cut off his clothes, he was himself.
When they cleaned his body and brought his body for us to say goodbye, he had left his body, though it still belonged to us.
His body was colder than it had been, though not ice-cold, nor stiff and hard. His spirit had clearly left as it had not left when we found him on the basement floor and I knew that he could hear us.
Now I know for sure the soul is an evanescent thing and the body is its temporary container, because I saw it. I saw the body with the soul in it, I saw the body with the soul leaving, and I saw the body with the soul gone.
Eleven
The story begins in 1962, where two women in cotton lawn maternity shifts approach the end of their pregnancies, one in Asmara, Eritrea, one in Harlem, USA. The low-hanging moon of impending childbirth governs their days. The ones we may come to love have been born by the time we start longing for them, and so my beloved and I came onto this earth in March and in May of 1962, halfway around the world from each other. Then in 1996 we came together, one family who arrived in America as Eritrean refugees who had never been slaves, the other who landed one hundred, and two hundred, and three hundred years ago, slaves and free, from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Every beautiful day we lived, every single beautiful day.
II
HONEYCOMB
One
You tell the story.
No, you tell the story—
I had just recovered from a rather significant romantic mis-step and had fled from Chicago to New Haven, to Yale, at the invitation of my director friend Leah, to write a play. I hoped new work would heal me.
A friend took me to see Reggie-the-Psychic-of-Brooklyn-New-York.
You better get yourself together, girl, Reggie said, because your man is on his way and you can’t stop this love from coming.
This is no regular Negro, Reggie said. He’s from someplace tiny that no one’s ever heard of. I see you in a kitchen, picking up a conversation where you left off, even though you just met each other.
He’s a painter, said Reggie. The paintings are big, and the colors look like sunset, like the American Southwest. I want one!
And here comes the baby! Reggie said. It’s a boy, and he’s coming sooner than you think.
And by the way, you want to be a playwright? Guess who you’re going to meet tomorrow? Mister George C. Wolfe.
Pish-tosh, I thought, and then went on about my business. Reggie-the-Psychic. Hmph.
A few weeks later, I was sitting in a café in New Haven, drinking my orange pineapple smoothie and minding my own business.
I was to meet an old, old friend. Strangely, she never arrived.
Excuse me, he said, like so many songs go. I looked up from my book.
And thus we proceeded to talk.
I loved that she was an artist. I loved that she was a teacher. I loved that she had short hair.
A torque inside my stomach, the science of love.
I was headed back to Chicago that week and so wrote down for him, 517 West Roscoe Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60615, and then, last minute, my local telephone number for the next few days.
The phone was ringing when I went back to my campus apartment: Would you like to come by for coffee tomorrow?
And I said yes.
And he said, Call me when you set out walking, and I will wait for you.
There he stood on the corner of George and State Streets, waiting for me, smiling.
I went for coffee and I never left.
And did I remember to say? The day after speaking to Reggie, I met the great George C. Wolfe, at the theater in New Haven, totally by chance.
Two
When we first became lovers, we entered a three-day, three-night vortex. Night One I slept Senghor’s “deep negro sleep” for the first time ever, lifelong insomniac no more. Night Two I burned with high fever and dreamed of my grandmother and a cherry tree, the only fruit she ever ate to excess. The next morning, Ficre gave me small sips of cold black currant juice and rosehip tea to make me well. Night Three my fever broke and so did my menses, more blood than I had ever let in my life, all over the bed, a trail across the room, the bathroom floor and in the tub. He cleaned it up; I did not feel abashed. Then he had to go to Washington, where there was to be an exhibition of photographs of Eritrea that he took during the long war and just after independence. He packed a small grip in thirty seconds and stepped lightly out the door. The last thing he put in the bag was my first book of poems. We left the loft together and off he zoomed down I-95 in his sister’s borrowed Honda Accord.
He returned to New Haven five days later with a present for me: a honey-drenched honeycomb, from Luray Caverns. Its structure was ancient and iconic. Did you know that honey was found in King Tutankhamen’s tomb and is still edible? he said. And that honey was found in sealed jars in Pompeii? We marveled at the honeycomb’s simple construction and deceptive strength, and held it up to behold its incomparable gold. We looked all around us through the honey’s gold light. Then we ate of it.