I floated through Tuesday in a blissful hungover state. The good hangover- not the pain and spinning - the one where you float through the day after a bender and nothing hurts or matters. There is no pain or regret or, worst of the worst, thoughts of tomorrow. There is only today and this moment of no worries. It’s the closest I ever got to a zen state. Despite being relieved of teaching Her section and maybe my entire career, I was only in the moment. I taught my two other sections, went home to Sharon, ate and slept. I actually slept! No nightmare visions to startle me awake. I rested. Being with Her cured all that ailed Curty Curt and the day was just grand! But Sharon didn’t like it at all. The turn around to happy, eating, sleeping, floating through the day Curt was too abrupt. She got on FaceTime with Mrs. Ella that night, I learned later, and got to work. Alright, time to tell you about Mrs. Ella. I don’t know why I have been avoiding it so far. Yes I do. It’s cause’ I am the reason she died.

Sharon got Mrs. Ella on FaceTime that night to figure out what the hell was going on with her husband. Mrs. Ella was Sharon’s Elder. That’s the way Sharon described her. When Sharon couldn’t see the way to go, when she couldn’t understand what was happening and what she should do; when the way forward was unfathomable, Sharon got in touch with Mrs. Ella. Don’t even start thinking about a palm reader or Ms. Cleo; Mrs. Ella was not that. She didn’t read cards or throw bones to divine the future for a dollar. She had a regular job, I don’t know what the hell she did, but it was normal and she got a paycheck, paid taxes and a mortgage and lived like a normal person. She was not a magical negro sitting in her bayou hut giving out harsh wisdom then going back to her life of boiling frogs ina cauldron. She was a normal woman of flesh and bone and boring real life with no “gift.” She didn’t have the sight. What she had was a deep love for Sharon, deeper than mine or anybody else, even Bootsie and Minnie in Newark.

Mrs. Ella was only a few years older than us, stood maybe five foot four, had caramel skin, a little darker than mine and a few dots on her round face. Kept her hair nice, always. By this time, she was living in Raleigh Durham, NC. I think she was from deeper south but had lived in NC for as long as I knew her. Sharon met her through background work for one of the books. I think the one on the white Butchers case in Louisiana, the first white folks to use the 14th amendment to say they were being oppressed; so, there you go, Mrs. Ella must’ve been from Louisiana originally. She was an amateur historian - genealogist - who didn’t get bent out of shape when the professor from up north called her to ask some questions. And Sharon wasn’t threatened by Mrs. Ella’s far more extensive knowledge of the family histories- she loved it. Sharon dedicated that book, The River Dried Up, to Mrs. Ella and their lifelong bond, based on their shared love of our history, was formed.

Mrs. Ella had that sense of humor that tied life to the bigger joke. She told me about her cousin who was a wild child, then became a panther or whatever the southern version thereof is, then bought a house and these days, was voting for Trump. Mrs. Ella said: “He had become a conservative, you see, cause’ he had something to lose now. And since he came from nothin and what he marched for didn’t get him nothin’, once he got that two bedroom dump he just knew it was because he worked harder than other folks. He had learned the game, you see. ‘I got mine, where’s yours?’ The conservatives, yea, they were the ones who could get him more. Maybe a three bedroom dump, that the bank still owned, someday. There he was, proving the old saying true: ‘You know what a conservative is, don’t you? A revolutionary ten years later.’”

Sharon trusted her and so did I, even if she scared the bejesus out of me. I don’t like people who can take a look at me, then sum me up with an old saying. I like to have people think I am mysterious. I keep my light hidden under my bushel; even when I am not having an affair with a white student. That night Sharon suggested Mrs. Ella have a look at me on their FaceTime call. “She might know something to help.” I was finally feeling better and I didn’t want any ‘help’ that would get in the way of my cure. I suddenly became very tired and went into the bedroom after a polite ‘hello’ to Mrs. Ella. Sharon picked up the laptop and came right in the bedroom after me. Sat down, pointed the camera at both of us and asked Mrs. Ella: “You think Curt has the new virus?” Now, how the hell was Mrs. Ella supposed to look through her computer screen and diagnose me differently than the doctor I had seen in person today? She couldn’t, but that wasn’t the point and we all knew it. Sharon wanted Mrs. Ella to have a look at me, hear me, to get to the real cause of my illness. I remember the exact conversation from this night.

Look at me she did me and started in: “Looks like he feelin’ much better today, I can see that.” I nodded a little and smiled a half-smile; tried to keep my eyes down and shaded. “Yes, lookin’ much better than what Sharon said you were, just yesterday. You been draggin for the last few days, right Curt?” I came back with: “Still, feeling poorly, Mrs. Ella.” “No, you lookin' bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today sir. What’s wrong with that? Would think you’d be happy.” Of course I was happy, I was ecstatic, but I couldn’t let her see that. “Well, I’m happy I don’t have the virus, Sharon took me to the doctor today and made him do every test she could think of, but I’m clean.” Mrs. Ella laughed a little then got real serious: “Sharon loves you Curt.” I looked at Sharon and said: “I know that.” Mrs. Ella watched us, I thought, judging but I was wrong. “You do know it Curt, I see you do.” I remember the moment held like that for a while. Me looking at Sharon, Sharon looking back, loving me and Mrs. Ella watching us. Like the eye of the hurricane passing over us when it was still and sunny; safe with the surety that we are going to survive because we are bound together. I love this moment. You remember this, honey? This moment kept me alive a few nights last year in solitary. I don’t want to remember anything else from that night; just want to be with you. Loving you and you loving me.

The eye passed and the storm began to come back over us again. I brought it back because I was afraid of being seen. I acted tired and tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, they left. Went back to Sharon’s office and continued their call. I was alone again. Like the rotten scum I am, I laid there and thought of Her. Laid there pushing away the last loving moment I would ever have with my wife. And in the office, Mrs. Ella and Sharon took the first step in finding the truth of my disease. Sharon went into my online credit card statements. She saw the charges to websites over the last three months. She saw that I had bought tokens.

***

Wednesday, November 16

I met Her in The Sarah Reade building again. The pattern over the next two weeks was always the same; I would go down to room three and wait. Sit there alone in the cold of afternoon or early evening listening to the sounds of students in the dorm across the path. Just sitting. Hoping. On this second day of our ‘affair’ I started to shake again. Thought at first it was the cold but after I got up and moved around to warm up and the shakes were still there, I knew it was the jones for her. The sick shakes. They were back after only a day, less than twenty-four little hours, without Her. Uh oh, it was worse. After the first class with Her I held out three days before It got real bad. Now, after I had been with Her the first time I couldn’t even make it through a day without the jones coming down. I was in real trouble; more trouble than I already knew I was in. I couldn’t survive without Her.

Just when that truth was settling, burrowing, into my soul, she appeared. Same thing every day for those two weeks. I sat and waited and she only came when I had hit the point of desperate misery. She was called by my longing for Her but it had to get sweet; had to get to the point where I knew I was going to die if she didn’t come. I don’t know how long it took that Wednesday, but that day trained me like a beaten dog, that I had to go down deep into longing and fear before she would come. And then I would hear Her. Coming down the stairs, across the dusty floor and to the door of room three. Waiting outside the door, before I could see Her, that last few moments while I writhed a little bit more. Then she came in. And seeing Her made it worse. She smiled. Didn’t come any closer, just stood inside the room and smiled. I sat in the corner holding my shoulders shaking, desperate for Her to come and make it stop, but she just stood there, smiling. I started to sob. She was so close but she wasn’t coming. She wasn’t going to let me touch Her again. She just wanted to look at me, pitiful, in the corner of the dusty old room that wasn’t being used anymore. I was part of the old, crumbling room covered in plastic sheeting and old dust that was waiting to be torn apart.

She smiled and waited. I wasn’t broken enough just yet. My sobbing was too quiet. She wanted wailing. She wanted heaving, snot flowing, wracking sobs tearing through me and out to Her. She waited. I broke. I cried for Her. Reached out my arms like a little child on the playground who took a hard fall and needs momma to pick him up. Reached for Her to come to me, Please! Begging for Her! Please! Dying withering inside as the screams ripped out of me and went across that dusty room to Her. She smiled. I knew she wasn’t coming. She was going to watch me crush into myself; the longing pit in my chest would become a black hole that sucked in all the rest of me and all that would be left would be the hollow echoes of my screams in that broken old room. I screamed one last time and knew that was the last one. I had no life left to call out to Her; was spent. Cold and dead in the middle of my chest as the sucking hole pulled the rest of my earthly body in. I was gone.

Her fingers touched my chin. She was colder than the November air and even the cold hole inside me. Like icy little knives under my chin, pointed at my throat, the fingers lifted my head. My neck cracked. I was in a huddled ball pulled in tight with arms around my knees and head burrowed deep into my chest- how did Her fingers get to my chin? How did the slightest touch from those cold little knives have the strength to pull my head up to look at Her breasts, then Her chest- neck cracking and straining all the time as the hole tried to pull my head inside my chest- up Her neck with porcelain, lithe, tendons not straining at all, up to her pink lips pulled slightly back over her white teeth and turned up to that hungry smile. No higher. Never above the lips and smile. Then the lips part and the porcelain teeth look sharp as they come down on me. I am going to be eaten. She opens Her mouth even wider and the teeth are dripping with something thick like a gel. I can’t scream because I am done, but my soul cries out, under the sucking hole inside and gives up the light of life on this earth.