Mortal Combat
Chiseche Mibenge
I am fast like the Gingerbread Man. They are men, and they are stronger, but they can’t catch me. Scene-by-scene, I outrun them every time.
In this shot they send a woman. She feels all my anger at being persecuted in my own home. I don’t run. I give it to her on the floor of my bathroom. I have her in a choke hold and I’m knocking her head over and over again against the tiles. Her face is rigid with shock, and this expression of defeat makes my rage more powerful than my fear. I don’t want her blood on my floor and suddenly, there is a shower head in my hand, and I spray a torrent of water into her eyes, mouth and nose.
In the final sequence they let me run down the stairwell, they watch me go. They know, and I do too, that this time there is something waiting to receive me in the lobby. It’s my boss, he is wearing a woman’s wig and a dress, and he falls backwards as I throw the door open. So long sucker. I feel the cold wind, I’m outside, and I wonder if my feet are bare. That is when the man thrusts a knife into my throat.
I know I’m awake because I can hear the screaming ambulance at the Jewish nursing home across the street. The dream is finished and all I have to do is be still and know that I am God. My neck is twisted, and the sensation that it is separated from my body doesn’t subside for minutes.
Violent dreams were a regular feature of my night life when I was safest. For a decade, in Utrecht, I lived a gentle academic life. I would make my way home at 2:00 AM, my judgment impaired after hours sipping blond bier, but certain that no one would ever accost me. I cycled past men on foot, men on bikes, men in cars and they didn’t throw up something dirty, with their eyes, mouths or bodies. And yet the dreams were the worst in Holland. They were frequent enough for me to figure out a pattern: they were wet with blood always heralding the first sighting of my menstrual flow. I was attacked, but I was also a victim that was very good at violence. It was a mortal combat type of scenario, guts and limbs splashing the screen.
I check my period tracker app and it says clearly I am not premenstrual. I have no excuse for this dream.
*
I’m not scared of New York anymore, but of course this doesn’t mean that I’m not often in code red mode. But sometimes I disarm and put myself out there, play the hero, even though I’m not brave.
I am this close to getting home and out of a New York blizzard. The street is deserted, all mine, and then I see a car drive slowly around a figure stranded in the middle of the road. I call to the woman, ‘Get off. You need to get off the road.’ She whimpers, ‘The ice, the ice.’
It’s obvious, she needs to be grabbed but I can’t tell if she is scared of blacks and if she will resist or hurt me if I try and grab her. I wait at the side of the road, expecting a white savior to materialize, and recognize that she is their responsibility.
I have a mango in my shopping bag, and I want to eat it at my kitchen table before dinner. I have aubergine, spring onion, tomatoes, a yellow green pepper and mushrooms and I want to google an easy ratatouille recipe. Mommy makes the best ratatouille, and I want to be in my kitchen, thinking of Mommy tossing salt over the thick slices of aubergine. But I’m in the middle of the road, playing the hero.
I only take her by the hand after I ask her permission. She is used to strangers rescuing her, and is very compliant. She does not want to stand on the icy sidewalk but she lets me pull her onto it. ‘I know you’re scared of the ice but I can’t have you standing on the road. Do you really think that’s a good idea? Where’s your house? Can I call your Mom?’ I admonish her as if she’s a child although she looks more like a granny. She is quite hopeless, not drunk or mentally ill, but something is missing. She gives me a telephone number four digits short. She begins to cry.
‘Are you sick? Should I call an ambulance?’
She tells me she is Betsy and she is not sick. Her knees hurt, but she doesn’t need an ambulance.
‘Can I take you to my building lobby? It’s right over there, and then I can call your family.’ She says, ‘No. I don’t want to go to your house.’ I believe that she really understood the question so I ignore the impulse to push and pull her like a sheep towards my lobby. My head and feet are getting cold, and my fingers gripping plastic shopping bags have lost sensation. I try and scare her into compliance.
‘I’m going to call the police! Now, do you want me to call the police?’
Yes. She actually wants the police.
I have never had to call the American police. I’m kind of disappointed, 911 is different in real life. It’s slow going and they ask lots of superfluous questions.
‘What is she wearing?’ I notice for the first time that she is not wearing a coat. ‘And what color are her mittens, and the hat?’ They want to know how old she is. I look at her face pressed against my coat and answer, ‘She’s a senior, maybe in her sixties.’ And then I ask her, ‘Betsy how old are you?’ She answers, ‘I’m 42.’
Oh! Betsy is not a disoriented geriatric, we are almost the same age. I finally understand the problem but I don't know how to say it out loud.
‘Betsy do you have a mental problem?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know.’
So, I say it to 911. ‘She has Down’s Syndrome.’ And then Betsy says it herself, ‘I have Down’s Syndrome!’
They want to know my full name, they make me spell it. And my telephone number. And then, ‘Are you going to stay with her?’
No, I'm not going to stay with her. I see my neighbor, a blond Italian, walking by, she is a member of my co-op board. She could pass for white except for her accent. She is curious about the spectacle of me in the snow, in the dark, embracing an elderly white woman, but clearly not interested in being a Samaritan. ‘My phone is dead,’ she shouts as she trudges past, ‘I call the police in my home.’ I want to tell her, it’s -11 degrees Celsius and I want to go home too. This is your person. Vaffanculo.
‘Yes. Yes. OK. OK.’ I snap at 911, ‘I’m waiting with her. I won’t leave her.’
Betsy wraps her arms tighter around my winter coat and I drop my groceries and school bag onto the pavement to avoid falling over. We wait for a long time, and then the police come, and as they exit the car they are already cooing, ‘Come on Betsy, we’re going to get you home, let’s go Betsy.’ They know her. She may not know them personally, but she knows the drill, and lets them cajole her into the police car. I want the police to recognize my upstandingness, but they don’t. This is the first time I’ve ever really felt offended by the police.
*
I grew up with hungry cops. Their weapons and their uniforms barely concealed their lack of power, or that they were malnourished, or at least undernourished. They have come a long way. I have been driving without a license since I was 15 without consequence, but this past summer at a roadblock on the airport road in Chelston, I was apprehended for my misdemeanor. I was detained by two officers in a police car parked in the generous shade of an acacia. I lingered with the police because they wanted to know about my life in New York. We got cozy and over familiar with one another, and as I counted out my fine, I told the policewoman that I was very proud of her, and that I should have joined the police force when I graduated from the University of Zambia in 1996 but I lacked courage. The policeman, her supervisor asked me if I was married, and I told him that if he wanted to marry me he should go talk to my father. We glanced across the street, at my father, the retired Lieutenant General, waiting in the passenger seat of his detained vehicle. The policeman chided me, ‘Professor, this is not the village, and anyway there are women’s rights in Zambia too now, first I must spend some time with you, take you out, win you, and then if you want I can talk to your father. I’m not afraid of your father.’ I felt a damp and hot blush tickle my earlobes and underarms.
My American cops are fat, even the muscular ones who pose topless on e-harmony – flexing breasts and thick necks. Some of them pose with their big, tall guns, usually group shots. They are looking for ‘someone beautiful inside and out, loving, adventurous and no BS or games please ladies coz I don’t need anymore of that.’ More or less the same type of lady the guys in finance, the lawyers, and the techies in my income bracket are looking for. I would like to date a policeman but I lack courage.
*
Rescuing Betsy has given me a head cold. It’s as if I have a towel, heavy with cold water, wrapped around my head. Breathing is laborious and I’m shivering in bed even with my hot water bottle lying between my feet.
I know better than to shower with a head cold, but I sponge bath at noon and step out to get some medicine from CVS. I keep inspecting my fingertip after wiping my leaky eyes because I don’t understand how they are not bleeding when the pressure behind them is so intense. The wind chill is murder, but I have to squint to lessen the sun’s glare. Sunglasses are in order, but I hate to look like a poser.
There are kids on the bridge having a riot, throwing lumps of snow onto the highway below. They are not black, they are not white, they are everything in between that you can imagine. The adults rushing across the bridge are white and old enough to be afraid of urban youth, so it’s on me. ‘Cut it out. Stop that. You guys know better than that.’ They stop immediately, they are probably relieved to be stopped. They turn on the one who ignores me, he is busy making a really big ball, lifting it up carefully, cupping it right before the drop. They scream at him, ‘Cut it out James! I told you man! Nigga stop!’
He is still holding the snowball when he glances at me. He's the tallest of the boys and that is enough to make him the leader. He says in a phony Spanish accent, ‘Me no speak English.’
‘No, no, no, that’s not right!’ I’m incensed. ‘I’m calling the police now!’
‘The police!’ They scream – they are taller than me, but their voices are still as high as girls.
‘Yes, you are going to hurt someone. Imagine a nervous driver gets a big ball of snow on her window and veers out of her lane, and hits someone. Where’s your brain?’
James drops the snowball at my feet. They apologize, call me ma’am and disperse. Some cross the bridge towards Independence Avenue and the others head toward Netherland Avenue.
There’s a fire truck on Netherland and I tell the firemen about the snow on the bridge. I tell them someone needs to clear the snow, and they tell me someone needs to call the police on the kids, but yeah, what would be the use?
*
I have a week off work because of the Presidents’ birthdays. It’s time to look at my hair and the bald spot the size of a thumb print on my crown. I have started to cry in the mornings, afro combing bent over the bathtub, wiping up the fallen curls with a wet tissue. I am this close to going to Jerry’s on 242nd by van Cortlandt Park and letting him shave it all off. I look at the pictures of myself with a shaved head, I looked tough and pretty at the same time, but it takes Attitude. I don’t think I could raise that Attitude again – I’ve fallen pretty deep for the Bronx hyper-feminine performance of beauty and I’m not going back. I call Khadija. She doesn’t remember me, but she tells me to come to her shop in Mount Eden.
The Cuban barber and the Dominican women doing hair and nails are still there, but the lads playing at a huge pool table are new. ‘Hi guys,’ I call out, and they respond politely, ‘Hello mami.’
Khadija has a fresh new baby asleep on her back. She still looks pregnant and her hair is cut short like a schoolboy’s. The baby is breathing through her mouth, her nose is dirty, poor little thing. ‘What happened to your hair?’ I ask Khadija. ‘Perm. Now I say no more chemicals in my hair sister. Perm breaks my hair like crazy.’ She rubs my bald spot and asks, ‘What happened to your hair?’ I shake my head sadly. ‘Problems Khadija, I have problems.’ This makes us laugh, because we know that people like me don’t know anything about problems.
One of the lads calls out, ‘I got you some pizza but they say you don’t eat pork, Khadija.’ I am seated with my face pressed against Khadija’s belly, I can’t see his face, so I can’t tell if this is a sex joke or a Muslim joke. I argue with Khadija about the cheap wig she wants to use on my head, and the price of the job. I leap out of the chair when she begins to separate my hair with a pick comb. I apologize and leave. It’s not really about money or the wig, it’s the sick baby and the traffic of boisterous young hunks – I can’t be around them for four hours.
I take the 1 train back to 231st and Broadway, and pop into Mustafa’s African Crafts & Company. Aisatta and her daughter are there, and when I tell them I’m on my way to the barber at 242nd, they charm me into the back of the store where they make their money, and in no time, the first braid is installed. They rub Sulfur-8 onto the bald spot, and reassure me, ‘Don’t worry sister, even this will grow.’ They are more expensive than Khadija, but they are not as unhappy as she is, and the four hours fly.
In the first hour, we talk about raising kids in America. ‘When my son starts school the teacher tell him not to play with the black boys, they’re bad. And he didn’t listen. My husband beat him, almost to death. He said, “I didn’t work hard to bring you from Togo so you can ruin yourself.” And now there’s no problem. Only school. My son is a good student.’
In the second hour, we watch videos of west African leaders’ state visits. I glance up at the screen and see a young man with a stunning afro. It’s Samuel Doe in Accra. He descends from a plane and is received by a dashing military leader in full dress. I sigh, ‘They were so young.’ Aisatta asks me if I have seen the video. I know she means the torture video where Doe’s captors hack off his ears, fingers and toes. ‘No. I was just a child when it happened.’ And just in case they have the video I hiss, ‘It’s a shameful thing!’ She agrees but then adds, ‘Samuel Doe did the same thing to his own uncle. He killed him like a dog. He didn’t know God was watching him.’
In the third hour, we talk about God. Aissata holds her smart phone in front of my face and I see a man speaking in Fula. It takes me a while to understand that the massive sack in his lap is a testicle, swollen beyond belief. I close my eyes and make a sound of protest. ‘Asho!’ She keeps the phone in my face. She really wants me to see this.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He sinned. He went to Mecca but he didn’t really believe in God, this is sacrilege. He could not fool God. She puts up the volume. ‘He is saying it himself, God has cursed him.’ She tells me about another man who stood with unwashed feet on the holy book, and he suffered the same fate, an engorged testicle. She removes the screen and says with solemnity. ‘Sister, God is good.’
We say it together. ‘All the time.’
*
It’s not always winter. I was walking down the street, feeling very womanly, in a clingy sun dress, massive $4 sunglasses, Ethiopian silver jewelry and beadwork, and a headful of braids knotted in a bun on my head. I crossed the street at the intersection of Corlear and 231st when an old white man called out from his convertible, ‘Yeah! Shake that fat ass!
I was the only dark woman at the expensive supermarket on Broadway and 239th, opposite Staples, buying fruit, when a pedestrian of indeterminate race and class, shouted ‘Slut!’ I looked around to see who he was talking to, but everyone else knew, they had all turned and looked at me.
In Harlem a black man, ruined by hard living, asked me to give him a smile. I didn’t smile because I’m afraid of black men in Harlem. He screamed after me, ‘Fuck you you think your pussy so hot!’
And that’s it, that’s the best the street can give me.
*
I promise myself, this is the last dream. It starts off happy and high. I’m at the Sunday Salon, speaking eagerly with a white girl, about her poetry about cancer, anger, and loss. We are like sisters, finishing off the other’s sentences and clasping each other’s arms and wrists to emphasize our points.
And then I drop.
This is not the falling dream, it is as if someone has pulled the bed out from under me. I land hard and petrified, and I am as still as the chalk man at the murder scene. But I am lucid and I can whisper, ‘Get up, go hide in the closet mama.’ And then, ‘Stand up go fight him. He’s here.’ And then, ‘No mama. We are not going to live like that.’ It takes time, an hour and a half, before I can put myself under again. I’m thankful for my regimented years in boarding school. Institutional life taught me how to swallow the dark, to resist the urge to rise before the prefect rings the rising bell.
There is a beep. It’s a WhatsApp message from Mommy to her daughters.
‘Am blessed have a blessed day all of you.’
Chiseche Salome Mibenge is the author of Sex and International Tribunals: The Erasure of Gender from the War Narrative (UPenn Press) and a co-editor of the book series, Human Rights Interventions (Palgrave MacMillan). Her short story The Protected Party was the winner of the Columbia Journal’s 2016 Winter contest for creative nonfiction (judged by Eula Biss). She is a gender and human rights expert and works in the faith-based development sector. She has taught at Stanford University and the City University of New York. Chiseche is working remotely, alternating between her two hometowns, in the Bronx and Lusaka.
