Sanctuary Ch 02 1

This story is copyright 2006 of destinie21

Please don't view this story if you are under the age of 18 or if otherwise prohibited by local law.

* Just a note to the readers to let them know that this story is part 2 of what is currently a two part story. In order to understand the emotions, background and other such things it would be best to begin at the beginning and read part 1.*

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For the first time in a long time I rose before my lover. Probably because of my impromptu cat nap on the sofa. I was too restless to just lay in the bed, and once I emerged from the bathroom after taking a long shower I found that I wasn't content to just sit around either. Instead of waking Rafi I left him a note and then left our home for the solitude of my studio. I hadn't sculpted anything for quite sometime but today

I found myself pulling out the clay that I kept beneath one of the kitchen cupboards. It was wrapped in a thick black contractors bag and had to be kept moist so that it would remain pliable. I kept the clay moist but hadn't used it for months. I folded and kneaded it, working out the bubbles of air that would cause it to explode when it was cured. After the clay had been prepped I found myself working the large lump of clay into the vague silhouette of a woman. I had to constantly spray the messy material to keep it workable what had started out as only an inkling of an idea was now being birthed through my hands.

I worked for hours without even thinking about how much time had passed. I was so lost in my work I almost didn't hear the phone ringing. My first instinct was to ignore the shrill invasive sound but when it went on without interruption I found that I couldn't block it out. Rinsing off my hands and drying them on the makeshift smock I donned I picked up the noisy contraption with a sigh of exasperation. I hated having my artistic flow interrupted, and whoever was on the other end of this line was about to catch hell if there wasn't some sort of emergency going on.

Hello The single syllable managed to convey the full weight of my emotion.

The caller on the other end of the phone laughed a rich deep laugh. I'd only heard it once before, still I immediately recognized it as Zahriah's. Damn what the hell time was it? I'd forgotten my plans to meet her for an afternoon meal.

I'm sorry Raissa, The laughter carried over in her voice and I got the distinct impression that she wasn't at all sorry.

Am I disturbing you?

No. I lied with a smile.

So then you were just ignoring me?

What? No of course not I just lost track of time.

I managed to turn and glance at the clock on the wall. It was half past three.

I called your studio like four times girl. Again there was that laugh.

I shrugged even though she couldn't see the gesture and told her how lost I sometimes got in my work.

She assured me that she fully understood then asked if I happened to be hungry.

Yes.

I said realizing that I hadn't eaten all day long. Besides that I wanted to see Zahriah , for reasons I couldn't quite define. Her personality and conversation intrigued me. I couldn't wait to be in her presence again. We agreed to meet at Ambonisye's, a small Tanzanian café. I'd heard many good things about the restaurant but somehow I had never found the time to sample their cuisine.

I took the time to carfully re-wrap my newborn sculpture and then cleaned up my work space. I couldn't stand to leave a mess even when I was in somewhat of a rush. I ran a tub full of hot water and lavender scented soap. While the water was running I unearthed a clean wash cloth and towel from the linen closet which had become somewhat of a catchall closet. I'd promised Zahriah that I'd meet her in forty five minutes, I knew it would only take me five minutes to get there riding at break neck speed in a taxi, but I still was cutting it close. I didn't take the time to luxuriate in the water like I was wont to do, instead I made quick work of washing the sweat form my skin and scrubbing the ash colored clay from beneath my short nails.

When I was done I drained the water and dried my skin. Again I spared a few moments to clean up, and put the bathroom back in order. When I had done that I lotioned my skin and looked for an outfit to put on. Unfortunately none of the cloths that remained in my studio seemed right. I wished I had time to run home and find the perfect ensemble but there just wasn't time. Instead of agonizng and wasting even more time on indecision I quickly picked out a simple orange sundress . The dress was halter style and displayed more than a hint of clevage, while clinging in all the right places. It had been one of my favorites although I had forgotten all about it, putting it on I couldn't even remember why I'd left it in my studio instead of at home in my closet. I paired the dress with a simple pair of brown leather sandals and took the time to put on the little bit of makeup that I carried around in my purse. Again I found that I would have liked to go home and take more time getting ready but it looked like this was as good as it would get.

I examined the results in the full length mirror that was suspended on the back of the bathroom door. I wasn't quite satisfied but I wasn't really unhappy with my appearance either. I couldn't put my finger on exactly why and I didn't have time to mull it over. I had an appointment to keep.

When I arrived at Ambonisye's Zahriah was already there. Checking my watch I saw that I was right on time. Still I hated having kept her waiting, I was so impatient my damn self that I hated to keep other people waiting on me.

The woman stood and greeted me with a smile. I smiled in return, but my first inclination was to blush. The way she was looking at me somehow made me feel shy. As if I had accidently showed up naked, and just suddenly realized. I couldn't even meet her gaze, so I lowered my eyes as I sat down.

"You look beautiful" She said.

I suddenly felt beautiful once she had spoken. Again I knew I was blushing. Is Zahriah James actually flirting with me? Yes I think she is. I think I kind of like it too. Damn. I looked up again she was still watching me. For a moment I felt like a deer must feel beneath the sudden bright beams of oncoming headlights. I couldn't help but stare, transfixed even as danger rushed toward me. She spoke first ending the silence that had stretched between us since my arrival.

"Why don't we try the Mchuzi wa bata."

"And what exactly is that?" I asked

She went through a long explanation about the preparation of a Tanzanian recipe for duckling, while I watched the way her lips hugged the words that were leaving her mouth. When she finished I answered with a simple.

"Sure."

The waiter showed up bearing menus only to find that we had decided on a dish which would be more than enough for the two of us to share. He smiled and commended our choice and then inquired about drinks and appetizer. Once the ordering was taken care of he disappeared only to return moments later bearing our beverages. Then once again we were left to keep one another company.

Just as with the day before time seemed to fly by as we talked about everything and nothing at all. Part of me wanted to deny the attraction that I knew was between us, if I were more niaeve or even just able to trick myself into thinking I could be that naieve I know I could have pretended not to feel the link between us.

It was almost easy to ignore because it was only slightly stronger than the pull and affiliation I felt for any of my other female friends, but it was different too. I knew that like I knew my own name. I had never been attracted to a woman before but I had been attracted to men and I knew the tell tale signs of my own attraction. Knowing that I wanted her should have been like a lighthouse sending out a warning beacon, instead of straying from the light she threw off I was headed right for it. I shouldn't have been surprised when I crashed against the rocky shore and found my life scattered in bits and pieces around me.

I guess the best way to explain it was simply that I was curious. Not about what she could do to or for me and not about what it would be like to be with a woman. No my curiosity like everything else in my small world revolved around me, I wanted to know exactly what it was that was making me feel her like I was. Just like with my art I was searching for answers, even when I wasn't sure how to phrase the questions I was looking and searching for the answers.

I guess that's why I kept Zahriah in my life, when I should have walked away without a backward glace. At that point I didn't even plan on being with her, not sexually and certainly not emotionally. I was willing to treat the whole thing like an carefully controlled experiment. Once I found out why she evoked these feeling in me I could let it go, and walk away with my answers and my self assurances about who I was. Even at 28 I didn't have sense enough to realize that I couldn't control people and events, this wasn't some damn chemistry set I could play with and then put away.

Five months later I knew it hadn't become a question of if I would be with her, the question had become when. She had pulled me into her life and I had opened the door for her to stroll right into mine. The most enticing thing about her was how she would spend hours just listening to me talk or conversing with me. Even though I didn't want to make comparisons between her and Rafi I just couldn't help it. Rafi and I communicated and talked but one thing he couldn't understand was what it was like to be constantly in the spotlight and constantly living up to the expectations of an entire race.

I couldn't fully explain it then and I don't know if I can do so now but I'll try. See the black community is just like one big fucked up ass family. We had our black sheep who you just didn't acknowledge. The drug dealers and drug addicts were like the cousin you knew was a crack head but you just never said shit about it in public, still you made sure to keep your money tucked inside your bra just in case he started to wild out. Then there were the achievers the ones who were your family's pride and joy, half of the family just wanted them to succeed to bring some sort of credibility and pride to the family name. The other half pretended to want to see you do good but they were just watching for you to trip up or fall down, just so they could wispher about how you wasn't shit anyway or how it served you right for thinking you could do better or be better or expect better.

When I did well I felt that pride but just like the haters I was clocking my time on top and wondering when and if I would fall. My own personal achievements became those of my entire community because one of "theirs" had done well. Still the pressure of being a success was getting to me I didn't want to let the "family" down but I wasn't sure if I could keep on making them proud. The fucked up part about the community was the fact that there was no unity or solidarity. In that area we differed from a real family unit. Anybody that grew up around the way knew for sure that if you messed with somebody it was open season for their older brothers, sisters, or cousin and friends to beat you down like a Hebrew slave. The community on a whole didn't care or give a damn who caught a beat down as long as it didn't personally affect them. That's why nobody but the police gave a damn about the 12, 13 and fourteen year olds tricking on the boulevard.

They own mamas probably didn't care, and nobody said a thing when drugs started infiltrating and taking over right out in the open, and young boys went from playing cops and robbers to running from the police. If you told you were a snitch if you tried to stop it you were a hater, and you might come up missing and nobody would even try to look for you, lest they catch a bullet on your behalf. If you wanted to move you were a straight up sell out and all of sudden you were beaugious for not wanting to be all up in a place filled with crime, violence, drugs and God only knew what else.

Everybody wanted better but when somebody got it the same folks that were struggling to get out was trying to pull you back in.

We were competing and back biting and hating each other while at the same time we were loving and praying and hoping for each other. I guess that's the reason drama was always popping off in predominantly black areas. There was such a thin line between love and hate, with both of the emotions being equal things could turn volitaile in a second.

Zahriah and I would talk about the community and how it felt to be a success, sometimes we would discuss the many stresses that living in the public eye could bring and more than anything else we each spoke about our fear of failure or not living up to the expectations that were constantly and silently being set before us. We also talked about being down for the cause. We wanted things to be better for black folks and got mad that so many of them didn't seem to want better for themselves. She speculated on things being a constant struggle because black people on a whole were still living with a slave mentality.

"Why you think that?" I asked her after she had said the black community was stuck in a slave mentality.

We were sitting in her apartment, the place was her all over, from the books that lined her many book shelves to the collection of records she had alphabetized inside of an entertainment system with tinted, and leaded glass doors. Even her scent invaded the entirety of her apartment like she took her smell from it instead of the other way around. She was standing up pacing the floor while I sat on her deep dark, so brown it was almost black leather sofa

"Because even though "we" talk about being sick and tired of being sick and tired, we still have people focusing on light skin and good hair like we trying to make house nigga or something. Instead of cleaning up the community you see people aiding and abetting criminals, and letting drugs and guns come up in the places where we rest our heads. You know like I know the epidemic of drugs is in the suburbs just like its in the ghetto, there's crack heads and coke heads and weed heads everywhere but you wont catch those white folks bringing the shit up in their homes and offices."

She paused to take a breath before going on

"They leave that to us. Hell they don't even have to kill us and rob us and rape us anymore, they set us up to do that to ourselves. Just like marionettes we jump every time they pull those damn puppet masters pull those puppet strings. We need to cut loose and be our own masters but we to focused on keeping the next person down to go on ahead and get up."

I nodded thinking she was right, her answer was thought out and on point. I wanted to disagree with all the negative things she had said but I just couldn't because they were right. I was amped up on her passion and the fire in her eyes when she spoke. I found myself getting her into political or racial conversations just to see her all up in arms.

"I guess." I said like I was speculating even though I agreed with her one hundred percent.

"What do you mean you guess?" She asked placing both her hands on her hips like she was about to jump bad on me. I knew she hated indecisive answers but I just couldn't resist teasing her a little bit.

"Dang girl what are you gonna do beat the answer out of me?" I smiled and searched her eyes. She relaxed her pose and a smile drifted around the corners of her full lips.

"Why do I always let you get me all revved up?"

"Because you like what I do." I let my smile get bigger while I watched her watch me.

"Yeah I do." She said pulling her eyes away from my face and looking off in another direction.

She was always doing that when the attraction got to strong, it had been damn near six months since I'd first met her and a little less than four since I'd tried to let her know she could have it anytime and anywhere that she wanted it. She hadn't turned me down exactly but she made it clear that she wasn't about to be unfaithful to her girl friend.

I had never met the woman but I didn't like her just because she was stopping Zahriah from being with me. Her name was Ayana Wakefield. She was a photo journalist or something like that. She was always off on some assignment so it wasn't her physical presence that got in my way. Even now she was in Hati slumming it in some village. She had been home for two weeks last month but never seemed to make it more than 14 days on shore without jetting off to some foreign country.

Zariah had a few pictures of the woman around so even though I had never met her I knew she was light skinned and slender. She had light brown eyes and kinky black hair that she was sporting in a nappy and happy afro. She was smiling in every single shot , showing off the slight gap between her otherwise perfect teeth.

There was one picture that drew my eyes every time I came into her home. It was an eight by ten with the two women hugging in a more that friendly embrace. The both of them were smiling like crazy. You could see their love and happiness even in the stillness of the photograph. Part of me hated myself for wanting to break them apart just so I could get in but a bigger part of me wanted to be the girl in Zahriah's arms sharing and adding to her happiness.

Forget the fact that I had Rafi, women were always complaining about not being able to find a good black man who had a steady job no kids no records no drama. I had found just that, even now I was wearing his ring on the third finger of my left hand. I had promised to be his wife and his helpmeet and now here I was cheating. True indeed that I hadn't touched, kissed or even held Zariah, still I was having an emotional affair with her and as soon as she opened the door things would get physical. I never consciously thought about what I was risking every time I went to her house or to meet her somewhere. Instead of thinking about what I was doing I put Rafi from my mind and went ahead and did what I wanted to do.

By the time she met my eyes again the lust I knew I had seen there only moments ago was gone. I sighed and stretched, I didn't miss the way her eyes drifted over me when she thought I wasn't looking. I smiled to myself but didn't let on that I had caught her looking. I knew she was feeling me and wanting me but it looked like I still couldn't have her. It both enticed me and put me off that she wasn't giving me what I wanted. I checked my watch and saw that once again the hours had passed us by. For the first time I noted that the sky outside of her windows had darkened. It was winter so it tended to get dark early but the glance at my watch had told me it was well past eight o clock.

I had been here for four and a half hours. Rafi thought I was at my studio because I had allowed him to think so. I had in fact gone to my studio in the morning just like I told him I would but I'd cut out at 3:30 knowing he would think I was working.

Still I was frustrated and I knew I needed to go on and go home.

"I'm about to go." I said letting her know my intentions.

"Oh so just because I won't give you none you about to go get some from "your" man?"

She had hit the nail on the head but I was still mad about it. She hardly ever bought Rafi up but when she did it always ended in anger. I didn't want her throwing how wrong I was up in my face, I didn't want to think about that part of our situation and certainly didn't want to own up to my own dirt.

Like I said it was true that I was never more ready to make love to Rafi than when I left Zahriah. She kept me open and wanting but her constant refusal to be there for me physically left me sexually frustrated. I would leave her and be ready to jump on Rafi and ride his dick like I was a jockey and he was a prize winning thoroughbred. He didn't notice or he didn't care because he was always ready and happy to have me.