when she took the plunge, she discovered it was indeed cathartic
she came to appreciate that as the oldest girl in a family of ten, she’d had to mother the younger ones when she’d been deprived of being properly mothered herself
as soon as she was born, her mother was pregnant with another child, and each newborn baby had to have her mother’s full attention
Dominique worked out she’d been drawn to Nzinga because she was subconsciously looking to be mothered
then mothering had turned into smothering, and Mummy turned out to be Daddy, as she told Amma, who disagreed and said it was about bad luck rather than unresolved childhood issues, you’re becoming too American, Dom
Dominique kept in touch with Gaia until she passed away, she’d written that Nzinga had been evicted from the community soon after Dominique left, had raged across the property trying to find out where ‘Sojourner’ had gone, threatening people and smashing windows
the police were called, the women didn’t press charges
rest easy, she doesn’t know where you are
Dominique still spent years having nightmares about Nzinga coming at her through a crowd or driving into her as she crossed a street or appeared in a public place, even during her opening speech for the Women’s Arts Festival she founded after a few years in LA
Nzinga would be berating her for leaving her when she’d so kindly taken her on as an apprentice, shown her how to be fully womanist in a misogynist world
I gave you everything, everything, you’d be nothing without me, Sojourner, nothing
many years later, Dominique was told that Nzinga had died some twelve years after she left her
her last girlfriend, Sahara, introduced herself at the festival, she’d become lovers with Nzinga at a women of colour spirituality retreat in Arizona
she talked about you a lot, Dominique, she’d heard about the success of this festival and totally took credit for it, she was your mentor and had made you, she said, you’d used her, no thanks, no public acknowledgement, no belated payments for her extensive investment in your personal development, she was planning to come to LA to confront you, but it was never the right time
I now think she was scared that the person she’d thought of as weak had become powerful
I totally bought her story about you until a few months into our relationship she started treating me like a disciple instead of a lover, and became possessive, aggressive and played mind control games
I was in my twenties, she was in her fifties
she wouldn’t let me out of her sight, said I should be grateful that she’d rescued me, from what? who knows, I never got an answer that made any sense
I was ready to leave her within the year when she had a major stroke, became immobilized, and I couldn’t
she was so utterly alone in the world except for me – no home, friends, no family to call on, she said everyone always left her
when she died, I felt released
hearing of her former lover’s death, Dominique also felt released, sad, too, that Nzinga’s life really had been one of abandonment
and she’d not been capable of seeing that the fault, as an adult, lay with her
Dominique met Laverne in her counselling group, as the only two lesbians they gravitated towards each other
Laverne was an African-American woman who liked to blend into the background, who spoke softly and thought deeply
originally from Oakland, now based in LA as a sound technician, her previous girlfriend had been violent
she left her the third time she ended up in A&E
Dominique found Laverne pleasant and easy company, she’d studied international relations, was well-read and passionately interested in global current affairs
Dominique began to expand her reading beyond women’s literature into non-fiction books about the world at large
they could spend hours discussing the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union
or the marriage war played out in the media between Princess Diana and Prince Charles
or the wars in the Middle East, or the Brixton and LA riots
or the relationship between climate change and capitalism
or the histories of postcolonial Africa, India, the Caribbean and Ireland
their friendship deepened over time and eventually became physical
they respected the free will of each other and made no demands
they were lovers for four years before moving in together, even then Dominique worried that the equilibrium of their relationship, from seeing each other several times a week to seeing each other every day, would throw their relationship off-balance
it didn’t
they wanted children, adopted baby twins, Thalia and Rory, whose parents had been killed in a gangland shooting
they became a family, married each other when it became legal
Dominique moved to America nearly thirty years ago
she considers it her home.
Chapter Two
Carole
1
Carole
walks through Liverpool Street station with its inter-galactic glass and steel ceiling propped up by towering Corinthian columns
she’s headed for the escalators and the soaring windows that let in a holy glow of morning light
she passes underneath the timetable board listing departures and arrivals
articulated through the medium of glowing alphanumeric, text flipping and updating as announcements bellow from the clustered boom boxes informing passengers about platform numbers and itemizing all stations on routes to final destinations
where this train will end
and the numerous delays due to vandalism on the tracks or leaves on the line or sun on the line or a body under a train
how very inconsiderate, not to her
to choose to throw yourself in front of a mechanical iron beast weighing thousands of tons and racing at a top speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour?
to choose such a brutal and dramatic finale
Carole knows what drives people to such despair, knows what it’s like to appear normal but to feel herself swaying
just one leap away
from
the amassed crowds on the platforms who carry enough hope in their hearts to stay alive
swaying
just one leap away from
eternal
peace
these days, however, she feels very much alive, very much ‘looking forward’ as they say at work, to the next ‘window of opportunity’
these days she’s a willing orchestral player in the cacophony of London’s busiest station with a footfall of nearly 150 million pairs of living feet every year, the anonymous convergence of commuters who are 99.9% genetically identical regardless of their visual packaging, regardless of their psychological wiring – warped, tangled, shorted, electrocuted
all of them so perfectly composed, so poised and in control, socialized to be out in public as reasonable members of society this Monday morning where all dramas are interiorized
look at her
in her perfectly-tailored city clothes, the balletic slope of her shoulders, straightened hair scraped back into a martial topknot, eyebrows plucked with calligraphic flair, her discreet, no-nonsense jewellery of platinum and pearls
Carole
whose daily lexicon revolves around the orbit of equities, futures and financial modelling
who loves to immerse herself in a universe where fiscal cells split off to create gazillions of replicas of themselves spinning off into beautiful infinity
the glittering stars of wealth that make the world go around
her idea of bedtime reading is to scrutinize the profitability of businesses and oversee investment plans for the commodities of the African and Asian markets