Free My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due Page A

knowledge of world history was limited to Spain sending Columbus to “discover” America in 1492. When David went off, she felt like a moron.
    “Try as I might—and I do, Jess, I really do—I can’t muster that something you feel … that concern, or whatever it is, that drives you and your bonfire. But Peter does. And for that reason, he can move a part of you I can never hope to touch. The world is too much with him, to paraphrase Wordsworth … And I’m …” He paused, but didn’t continue.
    “The Brother from Another Planet,” Jessica said, smiling, using Alex’s nickname for him.
    “Make light if you want, but I almost fell asleep when Peter was here last week. Bill Clinton, blah blah blah. Jesus Christ.”
    “I know,” Jessica sighed, massaging his scalp with her fingertips. David was a history whiz, but he was so indifferent to current events, pop culture, and even racial issues. This barrier between them was getting harder to ignore. She could drop names like Louis Farrakhan or Clarence Thomas and get a blank gaze from David, so he definitely couldn’t deal with discussions about any thing her friends were talking about at work. Nothing. And forget about new music or television—except the sentimental old love stories, like Casablanca, that he watched on videotape. David lived in a world of books and jazz music.
    She didn’t understand how a man who was so damn smart could choose ignorance. She read her Sun-News and New York Times every morning before going to work, and when she came home she found the newspapers wherever she’d left them, untouched.
    “Whether you admit it or not, Peter wants to pull you away. He wants to do it with this first book, and then another. He doesn’t share our priorities, like family,” David said.
    “That’s not fair.”
    “Isn’t it? What does he have? Whom does he have?”
    “David …”
    “I’m only being honest. He has voter surveys and a yen for buried secrets. That’s all, Jessica. That’s all.”
    Jessica was surprised to realize that her eyes were stinging with tears. This was cutting to her core for some reason. She really wanted to write this book. Yes, maybe she did crave the chance to bond with Peter, who gave a damn about the things everyday folks talked about at the beauty shop and on their lunch breaks. So what? Why couldn’t David see that their book might help people and make a difference? Was he really so oblivious to life outside their El Portal street?
    Despite their differences, Jessica wanted to believe with her heart that she and David were soul mates. But sometimes their reliance upon each other scared her. Often, at bedtime, instead of making love or going to sleep, they spent hours talking about deep subjects like how the legacy of the African slave trade had transformed the world, or the essences of men and women, or the nature of love. And she learned something new from him every day, whether it was an unusual word in Spanish, the unsung conquests of some African emperor, or a verse from an Elizabethan sonnet. He even knew the Bible and the old-time spirituals inside and out. They had to work at it, but they found their common ground.
    Ultimately, though, their differences returned, and she wondered how deeply they ran. How could she continue to overlook them, when they loomed so large?
    Jessica didn’t notice at first that David had slipped his arm around her shoulder, and that his head was nuzzled against her neck. “Don’t go write a book now, Jess. Not now,” he was repeating in her ear softly, barely audibly, as though begging for his life.

6
     
    “Your man is tripping, Jessica.”
    “You’re telling me.”
    Jessica had tried to reach Alexis at her job at the UM medical school’s hematology lab all morning, and her sister finally called her back at the newspaper at ten minutes to noon. Peter planned to have lunch with Jessica to hammer out details for the book proposal he wanted to send his agent by midweek.