Transcendence Pt. III
by JEDAH MAYBERRY
in Fall 2018
Rita Harper, "Clayton Discount Mall," 2018
Walls
People all around the world suffer one phobia or another. I run down a list of my favorites anytime I’m tasked with bringing a new soldier along. I use it to gauge whether the lad is ready, soft or buck.
Nyctophobia – fear of darkness. “We do most of our work under the cover of night,” I tell the youth. “We cannot have you running around afraid of the dark.”
Claustrophobia – fear of confined spaces. “Get over that shit, imedyatman – instantly. You get pinched, we’re gonna need you to stand tall, to do your bid without uttering a peep.”
Phonophobia – fear of loud noises. “There’s going to be a bang every now and again. The only bang to fear is the one you don’t hear coming.”
Necrophobia – fear of death brings me to the end of my sermon. “Fear no man. But maintain a healthy respect for death. Fear of death even more than a love of life is the thing to keep a man who chooses to live this life safe out in these streets. Lose sight of the prospect that your demise is but a heartbeat away and death will creep in, swift-like, and bring an end to your miserable existence on this earth.”
I suffer from severe aquaphobia – fear of drowning. My mother and I survived a great mudslide when I was but a youth back in Ayiti. It was before my sister was born. A wall of earth came slithering past, gathering everything in its path. My mother wrapped me in the hem of her skirt like a baby kangaroo. She floated on her back until the slither of mud saw fit to deposit us alongside a crumpled heap of cars and building debris before surging the remaining way to the sea.
The bulk of my trauma comes from pictures I have seen of the carnage, video footage. It was too long ago for me to recollect firsthand. But that makes the threat no less haunting. I shower and tend to my hygiene. But I have not set foot in anything more than a teaspoon full of water a day in my life since our brush with death at the bottom of a slide of mud.
These days, I live a frantic existence, like an animal trapped inside a box, framed on either side by the ways I view myself – my mother’s firstborn child, my sister's gran frè, her older brother, and the things I cannot escape having done. By the evils the outside world suspects I have committed and the things they can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that I have done.
Ned Turner has included me in his newspaper articles with such regularity that I worry for his health when a week has gone by where I have not seen him talking about me. Except in the headlines accompanying his articles, I have no name. Instead, I am labeled Known Associate of Haitian Drug Lord. It is Luscius he wants.
This Ned Turner called me a nefarious outlaw in his latest assault on the rise in the drug trade around town. It is a word I had to look up. This word he uses to describe me, like my height and weight, the color of my skin. But I cannot be this thing he calls me. I am my mother's son, my sister's gran frè, trapped inside a box.
The authorities, they cannot touch Luscius. I am the thin fabric that insulates him from prosecution. I in turn employ countless young strivers to maintain my thin veil of inscrutability. I told Javier, the half-Puerto Rican kid who banged that nigger, Steve, to assert himself. I told Steve to stay alert, to guard his block – winner take all. I eventually had some ambitious young buck bang Javier, the strong overtaken by someone stronger still to strengthen the family, fanmi an, to shore up any gaps. And again, references to me flood the headlines.
Today, my time came due – a bone from a rich chicken stew lodged in my airway, leaving the animal to die alone, walled in on all sides by the things I have chosen to do, by the way I have lived my life. I see Javier. I see Steve. I see Ned Turner, waiting in Limbo for their turn to plead with begging hands to be let inside.
I make no such plea. I visit Luscius. I tell him to remain vigilant, to keep the family strong. I visit my birthplace. Look in on my mother, my sister. The monies I have sent over the years will continue to sustain them. I wade into a pool of water, as high as my earlobes. I feel the current lap against my cheekbones. A rippling of water consumes my nose, splashes my eyelids. It is here that I shall rest pou letènite – for eternity.
Editor's Note: Transcendence is a three-part story. It finds three men, loosely connected through affiliation with Lucius (a character from The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle), outside the Pearly Gates awaiting a determination on their respective fates regarding the prospect of entering heaven. "Walls" is the final installment. The first two installments, can be found in our Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 issues, respectively.
Jedah Mayberry was raised in southeastern Connecticut, the backdrop for his fiction debut, The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle. The book won Grand Prize in Red City Review's 2015 Book Awards and was named 1st in Multi-Cultural Fiction for 2014 by the Texas Association of Authors. He has a second book due for publication late this year. He is also working on a sci-fi series entitled The Meek which features a young dark-skinned girl tasked with responsibility for saving humanity from its self-destructive ways. His work has appeared at Loose Leaf Press, Flashing for Kicks, Linden Avenue, and Black Elephant. He drops in to contribute occasionally to The Prose App and The Good Men Project. Jedah currently resides with his family in Austin, TX.