The Same River Twice Read Online Free PDF Page B

forever.”
    â€œCome on, Jahi. I don’t even write good letters.”
    â€œYou don’t know it but you will. You’ll reach a point where you have no choice.”
    â€œYeah, and I can be president too.”
    â€œYou can do anything you want. You’re a white American man.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œAnd I’m a nigger bitch who sleeps with Whitey.”
    â€œGoddamn it, Jahi!”
    â€œSee,” she muttered through a smile. “I knew I could get to you.”
    I stomped the floor. “I don’t care what you pull on the street. Go naked! Start trouble! You’re the only friend I’ve got, remember. There’s maybe fifty people who know me at home. Everybody in Brooklyn knows you, and half of Manhattan. I’m the nobody, not you!”
    â€œNot forever.” Her voice dulled to a monotone, “I traveled your dreams.”
    She stiffened to catatonia, eyes glazed, her fingers twined in her lap. She tensed her jaw to stop the chattering of her teeth.
    â€œYou will make gold from, lead, flowers from ash. Cut the scabs and stab them. Cut the scabs—”
    â€œStop it, Jahi.”
    I considered slapping her, but had never hit a female and wasn’t sure if it was different from hitting a man. Her droning halted before I found out. Jahi slid from the couch to the floor, limbs pliant as rope. The pulse in her neck throbbed very fast. She opened her eyes and rubbed her face with the back of her fists, looking around as if lost.
    â€œHas that happened before?” I said.
    â€œMany times,” she said. “You never asked about my family.”
    â€œSo what. You didn’t ask about mine.”
    She moved across the floor to my feet, gently stroking my leg. Her eyes were very old. I noticed gray in her hair.
    â€œI didn’t know my father,” she said. “My mother was an Obeah woman from the mountains. She died before I learned to control what she taught. I went to Kingston and hustled money. I came to Brooklyn when I was sixteen, too old for work down there. I can’t help what I am.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThey said I was a witch bastard whore in Jamaica. Here they just say I’m crazy.”
    She sighed and tipped her face to mine.
    â€œI feel the new gray hair,” she said. “Pluck it.”
    I obeyed. She flicked it with her fingers and the hair whipped, taut as wire.
    â€œStrong,” she muttered. “I see strong tonight.”
    She leaned against my legs and closed her eyes. Through the window and over the tenement roofs, the full moon gleamed like the top of a skull. No doubt she was a tad nutty, but I hadn’t met anyone in the city who wasn’t. New York appeared to be a voluntary asylum where all the cranks and sociopaths escaped from their small towns; nobody I knew had been born and raised there. Half the population was crazy and the rest were therapists.
    The moon disappeared into the neon glare. Jahi faded into sleep. I moved to the couch and opened my journal. It had begun as proof of my identity, but under Jahi’s onslaught, it began a transformation as I tentatively set my goal to be an actual writer. The standard rule was to write what you know, but I did not believe I knew anything worthwhile. The only thing I could write with any confidence was a considered record of daily events.
    Jahi found me on the couch, fully clothed. She was giddy with a plan to ride horses the following Saturday. When the unicorn came for her, she wanted to be ready. I bragged outrageously at my ability to ride. After two months of tagging behind her in the city, I was eager for a familiar undertaking.
    We rode the train to Prospect Park. Jahi wore a pair of brand-new jodhpurs given to her by her sugar daddy, a phrase I didn’t understand. We found a bunch of kids on ancient mares with cracked saddles. The guy in charge was a weight lifter named Tony, dressed in boots, Stetson, and fringed shirt.