Birth of a Dark Nation Read online

  "Nigga, fuck you," I said, pointing my finger in his face. "And if you think I won't tell downtown everything I know, think again."

  I felt Steve touch my shoulder and try to pull me away.

  "Come on, Justin, let's just get out of here. We know it's all his fault."

  "What?!" Ernie exclaimed.

  "That's right, we knew it was all you. We always knew your incompetence would be the death of this organization," Steve said.

  "Case management hasn't had a raise in three years," Teresa said.

  "Neither has life skills," Geoff added.

  "And it's mighty funny how some consultants come-lately can come up in this place, get office space, and not even do shit directly helping the women we serve," I said.

  "Get out of here," Ernie said.

  "Oh, I will, don't worry," I said, exiting the conference room. Steve followed, as did Teresa.

  "You did the right thing," she said. I thanked her and hugged her tightly, knowing it would be the last time I'd see her for a while.

  We paused and glanced out of our front doors and noticed several police cars parked out front. A few men and one woman in business suits walked up to the door. I immediately opened the door when they showed their badges.

  "Good morning, I'm Agent Castro. We're with the FBI. We're looking for LaJwanne Mason and Ernie Moore," the first agent said. He was tall and light brown, around his mid-forties.

  Steve and I pointed to the conference room, dumbfounded.

  "Thanks," he said. We peered into the conference room and watched as Agent Castro led the arrests.

  "Ernie Moore, you are under arrest for embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, wire fraud, and conspiracy," an officer said.

  "LaJwanne Mason, you are under arrest for embezzlement, wire fraud, misappropriation, and conspiracy. You have the right to remain silent…"

  As Ernie and LaJwanne were led out in handcuffs, more people in suits walked up to our front porch.

  "Who's in charge here?" asked a woman in a gray suit. She had a thick Nigerian accent and long, thin dreadlocks.

  "Uh…" I paused.

  "Well, the development officer quit two weeks ago, the ED got arrested… I'm pretty sure it's Justin," Steve said.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Justin Kena?" the woman asked.

  "That's me, but…"

  "I'm Agent Ifeoma. Don't worry, you're not in trouble," she said.

  "Cool, but do I have a job?"

  "Unfortunately not," she said.

  "Oh."

  "We've been investigating your boss for the better part of a year now. Only Ernie and LaJwanne seem to be involved. I know the economy is tough out here, but if you need a referral, just let us know. This will likely be in the media and anybody working here is going to have a lot of explaining to do to subsequent employers. Here's my card."

  "Wow. Thank you," I said.

  "Yo, son…it's really over," Steve whispered. I nodded.

  The government was seizing the building, and even though we weren't in trouble, all we could leave with were our own belongings. No copy paper for the road. No spare computer parts laying around for me to tinker with at home.

  I had mentally checked out of Magdalene House long ago. There was nothing in my office that I needed or even wanted. I picked up my messenger bag from the floor and turned my computer off. I didn't reminisce or get sad or anything of the sort. It was just now noon and I needed to figure out where I would spend the rest of the day.

  "You good?" Steve asked me as we stood on the porch amid the rest of the staff chatting it up with the neighbors and other busybodies. I nodded.

  "I'll see you around, Steve," I said, giving him dap. I glanced across the street and saw Dante sitting on the stoop of the Masonic hall with his familiar black book bag. He stared intently at me.

  "Aye," Steve said to me, grabbing my shoulder.

  "What?" I asked. He smiled and nodded slowly.

  "Get your life!" he beamed. I smiled back, shook his hand, and pulled him into an embrace. Then I speedily walked toward busy Rhode Island Avenue in the direction of my man.

  It was hot. Beads of sweat were already forming on my forehead. As the traffic lightened, I jaunted across the street and casually leaned against the glass of the bus shelter near where Dante sat.

  "What's good?" he asked. I shrugged.

  "I seen a lot of cop cars out there a little while ago."

  I nodded.

  "Was that your boss getting arrested?" he asked.

  "Yeah. They got him for stealing from the organization. The city stopped funding us. The women are getting moved out and…well…I ain't got no job."

  "What?" Dante squinted his eyes and looked up at me. I shrugged.

  "Shit is fucked up," he said.

  "Yeah." I said.

  "Whatchu gonna do?" he asked me.

  "I don't know."

  He stood up, zipped up his book bag and slung it over one shoulder. I looked at him good for the first time today. I don't know why I felt this way about him. My mom would be so disappointed in me for falling for a common corner boy-one that sold bootlegs at that. Still, there was something clean about him, even under the sleeveless t-shirts, jean shorts, and big tennis shoes.

  "Come up the block with me," he commanded. I followed him around the corner of the Masonic hall and down Thayer Street. The silence of the Woodridge neighborhood was overwhelming. Something about the tall trees and density of the houses absorbed the sounds of the street behind me.

  A block away, we were at his house again. He opened the door and we walked in.

  "Why don't you ever lock your door?" I asked.

  "I lock it sometimes," he said.

  "Aren't you afraid of somebody coming up here and stealing your shit?" I asked.

  "I'm not afraid of anything," he replied, as he tossed his bag on the sofa. I gently placed mine by the door.

  "Everybody's afraid of something," I said.

  "Let me put it to you like this. I ain't afraid of no niggas comin' up in here."

  "That's fair," I said. I sat down on the far end of the tattered old sofa while he went to the kitchen. He came back out with a bag of Utz potato chips and two bottles of water.

  "Why are you always giving me junk food? You see how fat I am?"

  "Who doesn't like junk food on a bad day? And stop calling yourself fat."

  I looked at him sitting on the other side of the sofa as he gazed off into space. I looked away and opened the chips.

  "Don't you know you're beautiful?" he asked, suddenly without the thick DC accent.

  I looked at him again and he was already looking down on the ground.

  "Thank you," I said.

  "Yeah," he replied.

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "I'm Dante."

  "I know your name. Look at me."

  His dreadlocked head turned to face me.

  "Who are you…really?" I repeated.

  In a manner of milliseconds, he moved close to me on the couch. I was dizzy-he moved so quickly that he was a blur. His hands caressed my face.

  "Whoa," I muttered. His hands rubbed my cheeks, my lips, and my forehead. I could smell the oils he used on his hair and body. The smells, the touch, the sound of his breathing this close to my face intoxicated me. My mind became foggy and I began to find it hard to focus.

  "This is who I am."

  A roaring sound filled my ears and the room began to tilt.

  "Dante…"

  "Just listen."

  Lightning flashes filled the room. My heart began to palpitate and I grabbed Dante's arms to steady myself. I was panicking, but I couldn't move.

  "Relax. Listen to what I'm telling you."

  I closed my eyes. With each zap of electricity I felt around me, a different image filled my head. In fact, it wasn't so much an image-more like an impression. A memory, even. Smells, sounds, feelings.

  I was in the black belly of a slave ship, tossing back and forth in
a storm, the lightning briefly illuminating the shackled arms and legs of my brothers.

  I saw Dante's face again and he held me close to him. His heart was beating as fast as mine.

  Lightning flashed, and I was on a vast African plain, blood on my hands and an antelope at my feet. I tasted vile, hot blood fresh in my mouth and felt the hot sun against my back.

  His hands were against my back, caressing me as he kissed my neck.

  I looked up and saw, not the ceiling, but the pedestal of a humongous statue draped by a starry sky. It had the head of a cat and the body of a woman.

  His kisses turned into light nibbles on my neck as hieroglyphics detached themselves from walls and danced all about me. The roar reached a deafening volume and I felt myself falling backward into the sea, into the sand, into the grass, onto the couch, enveloped by the frigid waters of the ocean while being scorched in the burning sands.

  Pain pierced my neck. As the blood left my body, the sounds gradually faded into silence and the dancing hieroglyphics disappeared into the stucco ceiling of Dante's living room. Eventually, even that faded to blackness.

  The fog began to lift. My eyes could barely open, but I knew I was enveloped by some of the softest cotton sheets I'd ever felt in my life. My neck was sore.

  I couldn't move my body. It was almost as though I had been drugged. My eyes fluttered open.

  Dante sat on the edge of his bed, his back to me, while I lay in a catatonic state. He was arguing with Victor.

  "Everything is going to be okay, why are you freaking out?" Dante asked.

  "You brought this outsider to our house and showed him who we are? And fucking fed on him? You are so selfish!"

  "No more selfish than you are. No matter how many times we come back, you always want to be some sort of music superstar. This time, you're on your own son. Don't you think people will be suspicious?"

  "People can be suspicious all they want. Difference is I would never bring one of them into our house and tell them everything."

  "I haven't told him everything…yet."

  I fell back out of consciousness.

  ~

  I felt Dante's strong hand shake my shoulder.

  "Wake up. You gotta get something to eat."

  I opened my eyes and saw him seated at my right side. My vision was somewhat blurry, but I didn't feel as drugged as I had before.

  "Can you sit up?" he asked. I nodded and slowly slid into an upright position. I still had a sharp pain in my neck. I felt it and discovered that it had been bandaged.

  "What did you do to me?"

  "Eat some soup." He picked up a plain white bowl filled with a vegetable soup. He stirred it with a spoon and scooped some out.

  "Open," he commanded.

  "I can feed myself," I said, reaching for the spoon. Looking almost disappointed, he handed the spoon to me. He continued to hold the bowl. The first spoonful was strong and aromatic.

  "What kind of soup is this?" I asked.

  "Vegetable. Cabbage, mostly. Some other herbs in there."

  "It tastes really fresh."

  "You don't like it?"

  "I do. It's good."

  He held my bowl and allowed me to eat in silence. It really was a good bowl of soup. It seemed like my strength was returning with every helping. Before too long, the bowl was empty.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Okay. But I'll be even better when you tell me what the fuck you did."

  He put the bowl back on his nightstand.

  "Did you drug me?"

  "I would never drug you, man. And how could I drug you? What was I gonna do, put PCP in a closed bag of potato chips?"

  "Don't act like nothing happened."

  "I know what happened."

  "Will you stop beating around the bush and tell me what's going on?"

  He sighed.

  "I showed you who I am. I'm not from here."

  "Where are you from?"

  "Africa."

  "Africa's a really big place."

  "I am from a very small village in a remote area of what is now Nigeria."

  "Okay. So why did I see a slave ship? In fact, why am I seeing things at all? Was I hallucinating?"

  "You were not hallucinating. I…gave you that vision. You saw a slave ship because that's how I got here."

  I blinked.

  "Get the fuck out of here," I laughed. He smiled.

  "I'm not joking, Justin."

  "You're trying to tell me that you came to America on a slave ship? As in the transatlantic slave trade? Nigga, please. So how old are you supposed to be?"

  "Centuries."

  I laughed some more.

  "This nigga… Okay, so I'm having some kind of psychotic episode right now, clearly."

  "No, you're not. Really."

  "So how can you explain the savannah? With the dead calf or whatever?"

  "That was outside my village. We had to make our first kill out in the plains as our rite of passage to manhood."

  "And the big ass statue?"

  "Egypt. I've never been there, though."

  "See, gotcha nigga! How are you going to be 'giving' me some memories of a place you've never been?"

  "I didn't show you where I've been. I showed you who I am."

  "Dante, for the last time. Who the fuck are you?"

  He smiled again.

  "My real name is Aragbaye. My people are the Razadi."

  "A…aruh…who now?"

  "Say it like this…ah-rah-gbye-yay."

  "Ara-gbaye. Okay. And your people are Razadi?"

  "Yes."

  "And your people came over here on slave ships centuries ago and you killed and ate animals raw. But somehow, you're really from Egypt."

  "In a nutshell."

  "Yeah. I'm leaving." I had a lot more energy now and it was time to go. I don't know how long I had been sleeping but it was already dark outside. I found my shoes and put them on.

  "Dude, it's the middle of the night. You've been asleep for like twelve hours."

  "Twelve hours?! Dante…Aragbaye…whoever you are, what exactly did you do to me?"

  I touched my bandage again and suddenly remembered that in between the hallucinations, Dante had kissed me. Then he bit me.

  Then he sucked my blood!

  "Dude! You're totally a fucking vampire!" I exclaimed.

  "I am not a vampire!"

  "Oh, but you are! You bit my neck, didn't you?"

  "Jive like."

  "And did you taste my blood?"

  "Yeah."

  "Dante, did you drink my blood?"

  "Yeah."

  "I don't know what they call that back in ancient Africa, but in the United States, in this century? That's a goddamn vampire."

  He walked toward me and I threw my index fingers in front of me in the sign of the cross. He smirked.

  "What's that supposed to do, homie?"

  "Hey! Stay back. The power of Christ compels you!"

  "Justin, I am not a vampire!"

  "I said the power of Christ compels you!"

  I ran past him and down the stairs, almost tripping on the last few. I grabbed my bag and bounded out the front door.

  "Justin!" Dante called to me from the sloped roof.

  "You stay away!" I called back.

  "Justin, it's like one o'clock in the morning. Can you please come back inside?"

  "Inside with a vampire?"

  "Will you hush?" he hissed.

  "Inside with a vampire?" I whispered back.

  He rolled his eyes and leapt off the top of the building. Within a second, he was on the ground in front of me.

  "How'd you…"

  "You're coming with me." He grabbed me from the side with one arm and leaped straight up and forward to the roof of the house. We landed gently on the roof.

  "Go in that window into the attic," he directed.

  "You're going to stop talking to me any kind of way, Dante."

  "I'm sorry Justin. Can yo
u please use that window right there to go into the house? I want to show you something else that will help you understand."

  "That's better. Watch your fucking tone in the future."

  I climbed into the window and rolled out into the attic. It was dark and dusty, but roomy. Boxes and trunks were all over the place. A single, incandescent light bulb that hung overhead struggled to illuminate the whole room by itself.

  I was scared. If he bit me once, he'd certainly do it again. I really didn't know who this guy was anymore or what I had gotten myself in to.

  "You weren't ready to see what was up here." He found a big, black trunk, blew the dust off the top, and popped it open. He reached inside and pulled out an old leather bag.

  I walked up beside him and looked at the bag. He gave it to me.

  "Open it."

  I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

  "Please?" he added. I opened up the satchel and reached my hand inside. In my hand were a stack of papers and cards: a 1984 DC driver's license belonging to Spencer Payne; a 1971 French passport of Michel Guillaume; a 1955 funeral program for Bo Williams; photographs of men in zoot suits.

  These men all had Dante's face. I looked at him.

  "That's really you, huh?"

  "Yup. Reach further in the bag though."

  I carefully put the stack to the side and reached in the satchel again. I felt something cold and hard, like a gun. I paused, looked at Dante, and then carefully pulled out the heavy metal item.

  Shackles.

  My eyes widened. Everything he had said was true.

  "These shackles…" I stopped mid-sentence, unable to muster the words.

  "They were mine. I kept them."

  "So that you would never forget." He nodded. I couldn't say anything more for a long while. I put his shackles back in his bag with his photos and placed it all back in the trunk. I closed the trunk and then sat on it. He sat next to me.

  "You're not anything that I thought you were," I said. "Your accent isn't even real. The slang you use…just an affectation."

  "It's real. You might call it 'code switching' though."

  "A couple of hundred years. That's a lot of code."

  He chuckled.

  "Why did you bite me?"

  "I'm sorry."

  "Were you hungry?"

  "No. Well, kinda. It's complicated."

  "Make me understand."

  "Well…it was time that you knew who I was. And the way we do that is through intimacy. Touch. Giving you access to my essence, my thoughts and feelings. And in that moment, anything can happen. I didn't mean to bite you or take your blood. But it was one of those things where I felt closer to you than I'd ever been. And it just felt right. I'm sorry."