It's starting to bug me there is no art around the story, so maybe I'll spend some time finding clip art or something I think will fit and decorate the joint sometime this weekend.
I appreciate the comments I've been getting and am super stoked anyone is enjoying this.
The Mundunga
We aren't raped in battle.
We either come out the other end with our foes spirits in our service or we leave to join our ancestors.
So, what is this person doing inside me shaking me awake?
What is with his hue?
He’s not wearing a paint people like my sister’s and I imbue with knowledge and power why is he so pale?
I remember now the glance.
There was a rock one that had a very powerful charm attached to it because it went through not just my own but my sister’s defenses, several of whom have the power of scores of ancestors behind them,
Something, one, all, very powerful put me here wherever this is.
The rocking it’s more than this man inside me we’re on a ship.
I look left to a warrior laid out chained feet and hands and I ask him.
“Brother where we are what is this place?”
He was just a baby barely old enough to have his penis cut in the tradition of the male conspiracy we women were not a part of, but he was old enough to recognize what was happening to me and what I was if not who.
“A ship Mundunga” he grunted through broken teeth
“We lost we’re headed across the middle passage”
“We’re all fucked just like you”
A very concise report of our position for someone who had probably only been in a few battles if any, he did know enough to use the title of my position, but he didn’t know if I were healer or mover.
I whisper the syllables that make the vibration that make the wood of this place embrace the water with the love absent from the thing that is performing on my tied up body right now.
The water on a molecular level no longer recognizes the 99% of the wood that is not just air and as I embrace the idea, the ship we’re on with 30 of these White things I sense and 400 defeated warriors I feel in various stages of disrepair, dives for the bottom of the sea like a raptor bird after a very fat rabbit.
I look left and the young warrior is smiling
“Thank you Mundunga” he mouths
It was the least I can do how we got in this position, defeated broken with me here just.
“Intolerable” I mouth.
The thing on top of me him I have clasped in my legs like a crab. I’m watching him scream out the bubbles of his life, but I’m not done with him even as his lifeless penis is done with me.
I think at him with much intent
“Welcome to eternity”
With the last thoughts on this plane of existence I show him what’s in store for him for we are Mundunga we are in contact with what is was and will be, he will go in service of those to come and until then he’s going to service the ancestors. They hold games that last millennia just torturing the souls of people that cross over with the vibration I’m imparting to him now.
Oh look it’s hitting him now game on.
I’ll make sure to ask him about it if it hurts in the next world.
When I’m sure I've seen the warriors I should of protected in battle over the trial of the water I’ve started I’ll go myself.
I think of the ancestors my direct line of warrior sisters and sages. Will those behind me hear my stories? Will they accept me?
Will I get to play when I get there or will they reject me or put me through another trial, Oh our Creator will I be forced to come back to live another life on Earth even having achieved Mundunga.
The ship has been on the bottom some time now.
The time for daydreams of what will happen are over and its time to face what will with the dignity of not just my office but my ancestors.
My warriors are asleep forever to this plane and at last I can think the words that make the vibrations that end this understanding of time.
The Scientist
The only person who calls me Algebra consistently is Motherdear my Grandmother who the rest of the family calls “Muhdear” but if I were the type of brother to say it like that I wouldn’t have marched across the floor in the 10th grade to bow before Chris the prettiest girl ever and say.
“Milady wouldst thou care to dance”
Loud enough to make sure the laughter and the teasing sent me to the library the last two years in High School, I thought I was being so cool, but that was OK, if I were to be honest I’d say I fell in love with Tolkien before I fell in love with girls and I was and am far better with him than I ever was with them.
My name is Dr. Algebra Perry Davis III and says my title please at 27 they don’t give em away in Cracker Jack boxes and I’m proud.
I asked Motherdear once why the men in my family were named Algebra she told me in her Alabama patois she hits me for trying to imitate that they wanted us to be “smaht lil niggas” she can call me anything she wants including any flavor of nigger and besides whoever named us knew what they were doing.
When the nice White lady sat and tested me she didn’t understand what I meant by I can see functions and numbers. I think now she was shocked a 10 year old Black kid could describe what a function was, but she didn’t say it out loud or anything.
I didn’t mind taking the test again when she didn’t believe the genius it said. I didn’t even mind taking it again for the State and again for someone else. Heck it got me out of class and it was summer. They didn’t let us play for the smog alerts wouldn’t let us outside to play on the concrete grass they didn’t need water the air was too bad.
My first orgasm came when someone showed me a fractal it was so pornographic it told me her name was Chaka and she wore shiny tap pants like the real one. I still keep the equation next to my bed and before I TMI let me just state that since im going to be calling women “Milady” in the Information Age its nice math makes me happy.
Parrots
They’re beautiful and loud with their red heads over vibrant green. They’re wild and free they fly all around Pasadena . Somebody a long time ago brought some in as pets and they escaped. The climate around here must have really been to their liking. They must be on their 100th generation of freedom and God has let them in from the desert and given them Pasadena as their Israel .
You might wonder how having the first freeway in America means time waits for you, and let me tell you. They built it purposefully with looping curves and lovely parks surrounding it. No engineer’s straight line efficiencies for these people. Driving into Pasadena was meant to be an event and one you went to through beautiful environs and narrow lanes. Consequently when I was a lad growing up just about every school in the San Gabriel Valley
The blocks on this street are wicked long and are an artifact of it’s beginnings as one of the Southlands first millionaires row built by easterners one upping each other in their western retreats. The names on the mansions read like a who’s who of early 20th century mega-money. Busch had his first gardens Gamble had a mansion that used no metal fasteners, Wrigley chewed up a huge chunk with a lovely house that’s used as the parade’s headquarters today.
I’m lucky.
The house at the top of Fair Oaks was built like Pasadena was, by money. To actually buy a spot up here like this is way more than my salary or 10 times it can buy.
It has a granny flat I inhabit. The trust that now owns it seemed to die with the old lady whose’ father invented a new way to twist wire hangers. Maybe he was the chemist that made that boom go that much faster. I never hear from them. I kept meaning to look him up on the net but some new Math article was always more interesting and sometimes scantily dressed.
It began its life after World War I as a horse barn attached to a car’s garage but its location high in the hills of behind Pasadena was choice.
I’ve never had a car and riding a bike downhill to class or downhill to my job was advantageous.
You’re way less tired in the morning when you have to ride your bike around than you are in the evening in hilly Southern California .
“Squawk”, squared even, from the parrots. It looks in my head like a pointy triangle that calls itself Lenny because I thought of it as squared, and the avian New Israelites wake me from my morning reverie.
I grab my coat, grab my under bike coffee carrier full, and my ultra light racing bike off two hooks on a wall that probably held tack back in the 20’s.
It’s a beautiful day. Most days are here even when the clouds are cold and grey against the mountains my pad is situated on. I look south and head into Cal Tech where I not only graduated but teach undergraduate mathematics.
Not a bad way to start the day at all.
The Drake
“Don’t tell me Motherfucker I was there”
Said The Drake in a long distance phone caw to an OverSoul far and near away.
“The Drake threw down all day, fuckin eyeballs, didn’t fuckin have to shake my glass for that sweet eyeball juice to fill my beak, and I got high yes lawd. I was fucked up!”
“Genghis Khan set out the best feast tha fuck evah!”
“Hey let me hit you back” someone hit a deer, and someone dropped a French fry and a dead fish and someone threw up and spicy Thai food. It’s all so good to The Drake.
Schwartz Malamud one of the few Motherfuckers The Drake can Caw a friend. That nigga was there too at Hurtgen Forest
“I know Motherfucker I was there” The Drake Cawed
Hummingbird The Drake stabs it cause the motherfucker thinks he’s so smart.
The Drake is the agent of Karma The Drake was there when those fools made the Dharma. The Drake got a special dispensation from the Creator when he got here The Drake has always been here.
The Drake is all about that Law.
The Drake aint no Lawbird.
Nawl motherfucker that’s so raven, The Drake is that Black sinewy Mandingo Crow joint.
My nigga Schwartz got the Talmud tatted on all his feathers gives no fucks who thinks its wrong.
Caw a nigga bout to go Jay-Z give me a motherfuckin beat.
There is only one Creator man,
Don’t go fucking around making idols and shit worship the One, damn.
Love that creator cause guess what that fool is you
Don’t use God’s name just keep it holy in all you do,
Every tick tock keep tight one day not enough for you,
Honor your before,
Don’t murder motherfuckers out da door,
Don’t cheat motherfucker and you know what I mean
or want the shit that go to a different team,
Prime Directive, Yo
you reap what you sow,
have some fucking integrity and do unto others G.
You’ll know your opponent they gotta wear the colors of their dream
You can’t enslave a soul know what I mean?
“Don’t tell me Motherfucker I was there”
Parrots.
Motherfuckers I hate them more than I hate those fucking hawks they just talk shit never do shit.
I fly a symphony beating my wings that starts a party in hell.
The Drake would Caw a posse for a hawk maybe see if Schwartz wanna ride shotgun, but for one of those motherfucking little heads below? I could just shit on them or that little nigga on the bike.
The Drake motherfuckers recognize.
Tapas
“Pops Maxie is hot again” I said into my 2 generations old smartphone
“No I don’t, and I’m on New York Dr. , No Pops the freeway part!” to the questions Pops had about the Triple A and why I didn’t ask someone for their hose and some water for my overheating Nissan.
Glancing right I can see good Ole Pasadena High School by looking across a golf course and the idea of the 10 year reunion approaching in a few months filled me with as much loathing as the idea of walking half a mile back and forth to the gas station I can see If I looked in the other direction.
Just when I was about to get up a full funk of steamy Maxie here comes 30 colorful shirts a flight of high speed bicyclists swept by chasing me up on the curb and out of the bike lane. Out of the pack is a man not dressed for a work out but like a Black man that uses Steely Dan to outline the contours of his life.
It took him more time than the racers to get to me, but he did pumping with a look on his face like he didn’t have a care in the world or maybe something was tickling him.
“Algie” I said out loud as I thought I was thinking it.
It was nice as a woman to see someone you know pedaling at you on a lonely piece of street, but even more. He likes me, I can tell.
All women have men who want to like you. My mom’s Black lady ass and the breasts I have to supplement my bra’s engineering with arm crossing when I run make sure to that. I’ve never weighed below 200 (shh no one knows that) in my grown life.
I guess he sees or the wide brown eyes and perfectly oval hair follicles the Korean ladies sell I got from Dadaji.
Funny I don’t think of getting my hair from my Dad but his.
Maybe if I had known him better or at all really.
Algie is getting closer not close enough for conversation but I hear him
“Natarsha Miladay your steed seems parched and dry”
God he’s corny but he’s cute.
He looks at me though I watch him never too long, but I know what he wants.
“Oh parched steel Equiis
I have rode miles her service
Perhaps for a kiss?”
“Haiku and Rennassance fair Algie? You’re so corny” but I smiled and hoped it didn’t hurt his feelings.
The enthusiasm he ripped the liquid carriers off his bike and dove under my hood let me know I hadn’t .
We met as grad students when we were both teaching a seminar to kids at the local City college just a block from Cal Tech.
He would explain the math in my Astrophysics program like he was watching a movie. Sometimes he’d get so engrossed it was like he was. I showed him something I had been trying to figure out since my first competition he said it was beautiful and reminded him of Kandinsky and he looked at me in the way that scared me to be alone with him.
We should have met earlier there aren’t that many field medal or Westinghouse winners in the country let alone two minorities kids from the same little cities in the San Gabriel Valley, but somehow he managed not to hear about the time the entire PHS senior class ditched and went to the beach, where I started my period unprepared in the one swim suit that held the girls and none of those bitches would give me a plug.
I got to visit Dad’s family in India in the summer a few times before I was 12 and Dadiji Dad’s Mom passed away. I’d tell her the same joke when I’d get off the long flight from LAX.
“Hi Cube Batman. NaaNaa, NaaNaa, NaaNaa Batman”
“Yes, Nataraj that is indeed very funny, but I am not your mother’s mother I am your father’s” she’d say in the Indian patois that got me teased when I tried to imitate it in the 6th grade.
She also called me Nataraj not the Nararsha that was Mom and Dad’s young lover’s compromise, but the Natarj I would have been had Dad not crashed with his Black girlfriend on the 110 freeway 6 months after I got here.
Maybe she wanted me linked to her even though I lived far away. I don’t know.
Mommy was a song girl I still have tape of her dancing in her USC cheerleader’s getup those tits and ass looked better with the hourglass shape gene cut out by the part of the Sub Continent Dad’s family was from.
I think she would have wanted me to call her Mommy.
Pops calls her that he’d say
“You look like your Mommy doing this” or “Your Mommy sure would eat”
I don’t know I’ve lived 8 years longer than Mommy and he’s way less protective cause Algie is fixing the Nissan and he’s not already here.
“SCREAAACH”
Nice day though. the parrots roosting on top of a row of Deodar trees brought in among the many plants not native to Pasadena seems to agree, and Algie is coming to out from under Maxie looking successful.
1st Gear
“Walk like an Egyptian”
“Wha”
Algie thought drowsily incompletely from inside a sleeping
bag on top of a waterbed. “Walk like an Egyptian”
Something repeated from the one other room, and then
“BLAM BADANG DANG DANG DANG DANG A DANG”.
the music that compromised Natarsha’s ring tone started
another day for Dr. Algebra Perry Davis III but this a full hour before the
6:00 am I’d usually get up.
I picked up my phone and called Natarsha, she must have left
her phone over I thought as the sleep
rolling from my brain allowed me to recognize the ringtone.
“Walk like an Egyptian”
“Walk like an Egyptian”
From the other room and I hang up my cell letting my brain return to
yesterday evening.
Natarsha actually got out of her car and came in further
than she normally did.
“Step into my lair” I said hoping she would like to have a
seat
She didn’t seem on edge when I invited her in, there were a
few moments I thought I had a chance, but she didn’t stay long. Just long enough to take 4 sips from a bottle
of water that was the only beverage I could offer, and before I knew it she had
to get back to something I couldn’t get her to explain.
So, I spent my night like so many in the past doing
iterations my computer can do way easier, but they help me get over. I
developed an variation that was the spitting
image of Mae West.
As I step out the front door to admire my view of Los Angeles proper the
early morning reveals and the pockets of darkness of the money that doesn’t
need street lights showed.
This huge crow started screaming at me from under the roof.
He did it 3 times then 6 and 9 and it sounded like Monsanto or something to my
mathematical mind as it tried to equate it.
Glancing to where he flew over The House I notice that the
door to one of its wings was hanging wide open.
It’s not in my lease to do maintenance, but I couldn’t just leave it
hanging open I thought as the Crow flapped from one tree to another.
“Who you tellin?, who you trying to help? The Drake?
Motherfucker don’t you know I was there?”
Said The Drake on a very important long and short distance phone
Caw.
“I seent the shit, shit was funny, bitch is dancing around
enchanting incanting I am Mundungu, you will make it, I am Mundungu and nothing
will touch you
and BANG.
Blue Eyes busted them tricks.
“He put two in the head and one off the dome that fool made
motherfuckers turn dead cold”
Thought she was slick all on that ship
and another sailed her people on a cotton pickin trip”
The Drake cawed in his best Nate Dogg imitation.
“Raccoon on the road smashed out” the awareness tickled a
piece of The Drake’s awareness, and The Drake beats wings down down between the cars to nibble
on fingers.
Coon have declared Jihad been throwing gang signs for weeks.
“Well won’t be throwing up any signs with these digits” The
Drake giggled enjoying the moments.
Me and that nigga Bilal been rollin on that ass but I’ll be
damned If I caw over a down soldier.
Bilal down too you can call that nigga 5 times a day and he’ll
get you high.
“But who you tellin I said I seen all that shit I see it all
I’m the Drake” Cawed The Drake but without too much chest The Drake been there
The Drake ain’t no Duck this ain’t no fuckin Aflac.
After a shower and shine and tossing on some jeans and a
purple
T-shirt reading Black UFO Hippies featuring a picture off a
Parliament album and uniform teachers
tan corduroy jacket that young ones hadn't worn since the 60’s I noticed the
hooks that hold my bike were missing the front wheel.
Before I had the chance to walk like an Egyptian and call
Natarasha’s phone again, she pulled up from behind one of the huge bushes the
Trust doesn’t want to maintain smiling and waving.
“Exchange of prisoners my phone for this” Natarsha said
holding out an ultra light front bike tire.
“Shibby, it was going to be hard going downhill doing the unicycle
thing
I was just about to
go” I told her.
CAW!
“The door” I mumbled absent mindedly yelling “hold on let me
go close the door to the house” over my shoulder. As I turned to go close it I
was really happy that Natarsha hoped out of the car and followed behind me.
We walked over to the door and going through it noticed that a window high above the library the room
was open across the room.
“Santa Ana winds do blow” I crooned at Natarsha surmising why the door was open in the first place.
I hadn't been in The House too many times before, when I
signed the lease as an undergrad maybe a few times around holidays visiting the
Old Lady.
It was as impressive
as Pasadena was 100 years ago, almost like the stately Wayne Manor a bit in
miniature that was also in Pasadena, but the intervening few decades were less
than kind with the old lady old then no one in it and only me behind it.
The library was full but the books seemed like they had been
hit with water a few times with boxes all around the floor from where the Trust
must have gone through for anything of literary or monetary value. Natarsha sat on a stack of 3 of them as
opposed to the dusty chairs in the room.
I don’t know why I thought it would be rude looking at the
things of people long dead, but I did, so I only caught glimpses as we began to
put the papers away. Names, columns, ledgers, film tapes, a pink hat, all
manner of things and as we almost had things tidy enough to close the door and
leave I saw it.
Elena Mumford said the name on the box, and Natarsha said “Hey
she’s one of my heroes the one Rocket Girl!”
Sumina Corp! she explained and the outlines of the story
returned.
They
offered me a money job the moment my doctorate was accepted and I still might
take them up on it now that I think of it.
"Who was Elena? The daughter" I ask Natarsha.
No silly she was the girl don’t you know her? She was brilliant
she deveoped the patent on the radar that made Sumina what it was during WWII she
married Sam Underwood, but before she could finish telling me about Sam I saw
it.
I had never seen an equation that hadn't introduced itself
to me immediately before in my life but this one didn't it felt upset. It felt
like it owed me something I couldn't tell what, but the longing in it felt like
making me cry and I guess I must have been because it was Natarsha’s hands on
me that broke me from sobbing.
Before the hug I'd suddenly hoped would come to Natarsha’s phone went off.
“No, Pops I’m not" she said into the phone, followed by "sure
on the way down and in a few.”
“What time is it” I ask and she tells me from her phone 7:00
and I know there is no way I can make it for my 8:30 seminar even pumping downhill.
On the walk back to my little house I start dropping little
hints about how late I’ll be and sure wish someone would give me a ride so I
can be on time, and by the end of the walk she smiles and tells me as long as I
didn't mind stopping by her Pop’s house and waiting for her to finish her class then she’d give me a ride back and forth.
“shibby” I tell her again making myself the only person to say that twice before 8 and think to myself how this going to be yet
another beautiful day in Southern California.
I hardly even notice that I put the Elena box in the back of her Maxima like it's mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment