Free Buck by M.K. Asante Page B

neither do I. I think he is ashamed of me. It is hard for me to acknowledge this but it is true. He doesn’t want to be seen with me. He doesn’t say anything but his actions tell me that.
    True, I am terribly overweight and I am not the small dancer that he met a long time ago. It is a hell that I seem to have imposed on myself. Why? There are probably many reasons. I resent him for being ashamed and I draw farther away from him. Every houseguest and visitor is my responsibility but our world is a secret. The façade of a marriage and a happy home is just that. Perhaps the houseguests are distractions and keep the attention away from us. I only know that the silence has me basking in invisible rhythms and I have disappeared.
    My weight is another mask for the pain. Am I conscious of it? Yes and no. I run away from my image but it follows me, and even when I am not looking, others are looking and sometimes those looks usher in comments. “I didn’t recognize you; how did you gain so muchweight?” “Why did you gain so much weight?” “How in the world does a dancer gain so much weight?” They were questions I had asked myself a thousand times. “Pain” is all I can say. Chaka hates it, I hate it, but we all dance around it.
    God, give me strength.
    Amina

13
Midnight Train
    The coldest day of the year. That disrespectful
brrr
. Outside it looks like everybody’s blazing big blunts. Swirling dark clouds roll in like waves.
    I’m in the living room watching Kung Fu Theater on Channel 48. I hear my mom and dad in the kitchen, their voices rising, falling, crashing like distant thunder.
    Maybe all this arguing is good
, I think. Maybe it means they still care. Like, it shows they’re still willing to fight for each other. Maybe not fighting is worse.
    This flick is called
Shogun Assassin
. Samurais in straw hats sword-fighting in the desert. A little boy flashes on the screen:
    When I was little my father was famous. He was the greatest samurai in the empire and he was the shogun’s decapitator. He cut off the heads of 131 lords. It was a bad time for the empire. The shogun just stayed inside his castle and he never came out. People said his brainwas infected by devils. My father would come home; he would forget about the killings. He wasn’t scared of the shogun, but the shogun was of him. Maybe that was the problem. Then one night the shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father but they didn’t. That was the night everything changed.
    I hear fists slamming on the counter—my cue to see what’s going on.
    “He’s leaving,” my mom screams as I walk in the kitchen.
Leaving to go where?
I think.
    I see my dad. His face looks cold and tight. He’s wearing a black dashiki with an ankh on it. The ankh symbolizes life in Egyptian mythology. Death in Philly reality.
    I remember something my dad said when my grandfather died: “He thought of leaving for good every time he heard the long, mournful whistle of the train.” He told me it’s called “wanderlust”—that need to go, to bounce—and that all the men in my family have it.
    My mom hangs on him like a peacoat. He drags her, slow and determined like a wounded soldier. Mom’s tears flowing like the Schuylkill River. I’ve never seen them like this.
    “Hold up.” I hold my hand out like a crossing guard. “Where you going?”
    “We’ll talk about it later,” he says.
    Later? Who does he take me for, hitting me with later, like I’m some little kid? I know later never comes.
    “Nah, we gon’ talk about it now!” I get loud. His mind is made up, though.
    He’s rushing to the door, whooshing like wind through vents, gripping a beat-up black leather bag. That bag’s been everywhere; it spends more time with Pops than I do.
    “How can you? How can you? Leave us … like this?” my mom sobs, looking right at me, her heavy eyes begging me to do something. The movement is moving and there’s nothing I can