The Denouement: 5.2

2125

Grace didn’t have to ask where the JAMP was taking her. She had imagined Alltown Central Holding, but when they passed downtown Northtown and kept heading north, she knew that he was taking her to the Johnstontine mansion. She’d have rather been in Holding. She hadn’t seen the Johnstontines since she ran away from Huntley, but she remembered how vengeful and murderous they were. Grace’s politics were explicit now, so there would be no confusion about whether or not she and they were enemies. There was no accountability at the Johnstontine mansion. At least in the jail there were other inmates to hear her scream. Johnstontine waited for Grace at the door. James heaved Grace over his shoulder, hauled her to Johnstontine, and stood the daughter on her feet. “Excellent work, Bertram. You will be duly rewarded.”
“Thank you Mr. Johnstontine. Glad to be able to return a lost child to a loving parent. Your daughter is truly gorgeous.”
“Thank you. Would you enjoy tying her up in the basement?” James gave Johnstontine a spiced expression. “Of course, I expect you to be a gentleman. I’d do it myself, but I’m tired. I’ll have to rest up before dealing with her.”
“Yes,” James replied.
Grace wasn’t alone. Wisdom was in the dungeon, too.
“Wisdom?”
“Princess, baby. Princess.” She wrestled her way out of James’ grip long enough to run to Wisdom and give him a hug. Wisdom tensed in her arms.
“Daddy,” Grace did not fight as James grabbed her hair and dragged her away from the older man who just barely dangled on a chain, suspended from the wall by his wrists. “How long you been here?”
James tied Grace’s ankle to one leg of a cold, metal chair. “Stop talking to each other.”
“Just for a couple nights. They got me at customs coming back in from Havana. They want IM.”
“We don’t know where IM is. Don’t nobody. They don’t--”
“--Hoping we gon’ lead him here.”
“What they want him for?” Grace kicked at James as he grabbed for her other leg to tie to the chair. Once fastened, he pulled Grace to a seated position.
“The cure.”
“Why don’t they just come to the clinic?”
“They don’t have faith, and they don’t understand.”
James pulled Grace’s arms through the back rungs and handcuffed her wrists together. She looked him in the eye. “You gon let them kill my brother?”
“Yep,” the JAMP looked back in Grace’s eyes. He kissed her hard. “You can taste my lips on your way to hell.” He gagged her mouth and turned to go.
“James Bertram.” The J spun around on a dime. “James Bertram, I’m an old man, and I know you remember me better than I remember you. James Bertram loved plantains and Chinese cheese. You remember that, Princess?

Princess looked hard and realized that she, too, recognized the J. “Momma stay over there in Clarence Thomas Reasonable. Boy, I taught you how to read. James Bertram! Don’t act like you don’t remember me, and I taught you how to read.”
Bertram walked back into the basement. He pulled the gag from Princess’ mouth. He turned back towards the steps and disappeared. “IM always said that boy was a liability. His daddy was a J. His momma was selling anything, all she really wanted was the best for James, and believed we could teach him how to be a man. But she was never righteous; she’s probably proud of how he turned out. What you back here for, Princess? Ain’t nobody tell you to come back here.”
“Good to see you, too.”
“You bring too much heat. I didn’t raise you to lower your eyes and bow your head like these Southtown niggers. You stand out. Of course, I want to see you. I want to see you in the Bay, not here.”
“I’m looking for IM.”

“As am I,” Johnstontine emerged from the stairwell. “My daughter, Grace, the bandit, the renegade. In an ironic way, you make me proud.”
“What’s revolution?”
“’What’s revolution?’ I take it from your inflection that this is a greeting of some sort. Hmmm. I suppose this is your influence, Wisdom.” Wisdom said nothing. “We’ve been through this. I admire your Wisdom’s strong constitution. He sustained very severe beating, in silence. He was grateful to hang when I exhausted with him.”

Johnstontine turned Wisdom around to show Princess his bloodied shirt glued to wide, swollen strap marks on his back. Grace gasped. “I grew sick beating him. I wonder how his constitution would be watching you beaten.”
Defiant, Grace pronounced, “Beat me. Beat me, but I can’t tell you where IM is. I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t know. And I’m not going to torture my own daughter. Even I am not that cruel. But when your brother arrives, I am going to persecute his body and soul until he releases the cure, reflexively. I will feed the three of you cornmeal and vinegar mush until I have tested the solution. If it does not work, I am going to torture him some more. Once I have a cure that I trust, one that I am assured works, I am going to kill him in front of you. Then I am going to kill Wisdom in front of you. Then I am going to let you starve to death, creating a tableau of devastation and familial love. Hmmm, well, I guess that is torture. Ha!” He neared Grace and tilted her chin to him, “spoiled bitch.”

Grace laughed, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you, Grace. I gave you Johnstontine. Where is your sympathy for your own father’s hard luck tale? Everyone in Alltown knows the story of Johnstontine. You, of every other resident, have the nerve to be unmoved. Where is your great humanity, Grace Johnstontine?

"What would you do if you came across an orphan like me? A heroin bastard? You’d have inducted me into your society and attempted to wash my brain as you attempted to brainwash James Bertram. I began as no more than those juvenile delinquents you play at saving. Why can’t you niggers support black power? Why can’t you buy into the dream? I worked as hard for mine as you worked for yours. Where is your empathy for me?”
“Empathy? Hell, naw, I don’t have any empathy for you. As a matter of fact, if I wasn’t strapped to this fucking chair, I would fulfill my moral obligations to the restoration of peace in this world and whoop your ass. Yeah, you came up hard, Johnstontine. You created yourself. Look what you became! You can’t be above anybody in this world, Johnstontine.”
“I am—“
“But, look at what you have to do to maintain it. What you struggle for is not for you.”
“That’s not a very wise—“
“Yeah, Wisdom, I know, but really. Father Johnstontine, you had to create an entire ideological apparatus to support your so-called superiority, and at the end of all your plotting and scheming, you are at the mercy of IM. That’s real. In the face of that, none of this other shit exists--not Knowledge, Wisdom, not you, not the military police, not this state system you created. This young upstart will overthrow your regime with the one true thing—the cure.”
“You don’t understand—“
“Naw, I overstand. You don’t understand. Johnstontine, people would respect you without the AMP. They could admire you for being a good man not a martinet. The good things you do mean nothing for the atmosphere of hate and suspicion you created. People hate and fear you. I don’t hate you, but I hate myself for loving you. I don’t want you for a father. Torture me. Torture the man who raised me. Torture IM. He won’t tell you shit. You educated yourself, but you hoard knowledge as power. For knowledge to be powerful, it must be spread, not contained.”
“If you study history, you will see there has been no extended period of peace since man and woman were ejected from Eden, if you believe in the Judea-Christian-Islamic faiths. And if you don’t, there has never been peace. You waste the Johnstontine genius on idle subjects, Gracie, the sad moral to your sob story.”
“I know history. That’s why I’m trying not to repeat it. Isn’t a return to Eden or a quest for peace a loftier goal than winning this game of Castle Risk you playing on Alltown? Ain’t living in harmony work? Peace is negotiating. Peace is compromise. Peace is trying to make things just for all people, not just getting even with God for your circumstances!” Princess had opened her mouth and let everything out. Johnstontine had her code switching, and it was ugly. He turned around and walked out. The cellar door slammed.
“I guess you say, he gon kill us anyway, huh Princess,” Wisdom asked?
“Look, sometimes somebody got to get told, and I got to be the teller.”
Before Princess’s heart rate could adjust, the cellar door squawked. “Grace Johnstontine, you stupid little heifer. I dare you to talk to my man that way, again. Who do you think you are, you spoiled little princess? Oh yes, I know your name. I’ve always known. Tell her, Wisdom. You were so happy.

"You ought to have been grateful we took you back in. We gave you what you cried to Whitley for. We gave you Huntley. We gave you an extra dimension. Unlike the real disadvantaged people that you minister to on your missions, you have had access to power and prestige. You shun our welcoming arms out of self-righteous spite! You are not gonna save them people. The only people who are going to be saved are the one who are going to save themselves.
“You have so much potential. It will be a shame to kill you, but if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. You won’t stop this, Grace. You are dangerous. You are trouble. You stir up shit! Learn your history. It has always been the middle class that has led change in society—the preachers, the college students, the doctors, lawyers, bankers, politicians.
“You had the best of anything. I’m talking about cloth diapers, healthy milk, vitamins, medical care, five meals a day. Who the hell do you think afforded you that? Everything around you was love. If it wasn’t me, it was somebody who loved you as much as me, maybe even more. You’re right, Grace, maybe even more. You could never live in the luxury our sacrifices afforded if we were to take your attitude and spread the wealth. Spread it to whom, them junkie Southtown niggers? One would think you all would have gotten your fill of the deaf, dumb, and blind.”
“Pushing me out your pussy don’t make you no kind of mother.” Mrs. Johnstontine slapped Princess so hard that her jaw clicked. “Shit!”
“Little girl, you are pencil thin to me. I will snap your ass in two.”
“Look at all this hate. You are supposed to be my fucking mother. Is this bullshit worth it? Have you ever tried just being happy? Not powerful? Not beautiful? Not rich? Just happy?”
“Happy. No one is happy, Grace.”
“Then kill me, now.”
“Now you know how it feels to be me. To wonder what worth there is to this existence. To wonder why happiness is never within grasp. To look out that damn twelfth story window every day and wonder, why not jump? To gaze longingly at the pool and imagine endless sleep against the bottom.”
“That’s how you really feel?”
“Yes, Grace, yes. Does that make you feel better? Every day since I lost my baby, yes! What else was there for me, Grace? Offer my advice to Johnstontine on the affairs of the entire World? What value did my opinion have in that concern? I concentrated on making my man feel strong and sane.
"When I lost you, I blamed me. He blamed him. Then we learned…I saw you before they bombed the Jamaican Spot. I was following Solada Ka’s lead, and I saw you in the window of the kitchen. A little boy stroked your hair while you drummed a big, red bowl. A man cooked, Wisdom. In that window, you looked like a closed circuit tearjerker.

"I couldn’t bring you back here to this miserable world, just yet. I grew up poor. Your father grew up poor. When he and I were caught making love in the park, those were the happiest days in my life. Yes! I knew!”
“I’m sorry. You really hate being you that much, Ma?”
“Ma!”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“What do you know about pain, Grace? What do you know about responsibility? It’s real easy to be the redeemer, the liberator, but there must be leaders in order for there to be order. Someone must create order.”
“Why?”
“Why? Wake up, little girl. It is human to want order. Even Wisdom wants order. Even Wisdom has designs for the people. And he may not vie for the top, but if thrust into the lead, power would corrupt him as power corrupts everyone.”
“That’s true.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, you are right. You’re right. You’re right. I never tried to understand. I guess, we all want at least to control our own lives, and in order for that to happen—
“--We must find ways to manage the variables of our existence.”
“I guess that’s why I’m here. The man I love wants to die in solemn dignity, and I have endangered everyone close to me, including myself, to keep it from happening because it is not what I want. I put Wisdom at risk, IM, my own life. Because I won’t let the man I love die. I must think that I can control the hour.”
“Grace, your father, Johnstontine, is dying from the same disease!” The revelation stole Gracie’s wind. She gasped, and spun her head to Wisdom who looked down at his feet.
“You knew, Wisdom!”
“Yeah, Grace.”
“Wisdom, can I ask you something else?”
“What Grace?”
“Did you know I was really Grace Johnstontine?”
“Your mother contacted me after I sent you away with IM. She wanted to know where you were, and since then I have been sharing your letters with her. I didn’t know until then, I guess. I just didn’t want to know. Love at first sight, Princess, I wanted you. I wanted to shape you. I loved Corduroy. I found him in that same alley. Same alley. I thought you were… Corduroy loved you right off, instantly. I never saw him respond that way to anything feminine. We needed that balance.”
Grace turned back to Mrs. Johnstontine. “Why are you doing this then, to Wisdom?”
“I’m not doing it, Grace. Do you think I want to see Wisdom like this? Johnstontine loves me. I love him. He is dying. That is very hard for him.”
“Come to the clinic? We can work this out during treatment—“
“--We don’t want a visit. We want the cure.”
“You not gon’ get that.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? IM would sooner come in here on some kamikaze, suicide bomb shit before he gave you his research.”
“Why?”
“Because you gon sell it.”
“So? Shouldn’t you want the world to know?”
“That’s right. That’s why he not selling it.”
“Selective treatment can be used as ethnic cleansing. Mighty Johnstontine of you, dear.”
“This is a cure, not a drug. It must be free in order to eradicate the disease. It’s--”
“It cures?”
“Over time, with consistent treatment.”
“He’ll give it to us?”
Wisdom knew more about this than his daughter: “The clinic will create a healing diet specifically for your husband, Mahogany. Along with that will be some exercises and meditations. After that…come on Mahogany, don’t cry.” Wisdom reached, reflexively, for Mrs. Johnstontine’s face, though he was across the room from her. “You all can do this, Mahogany, but the onus is on you all to be faithful to the regimen . As the disease changes its attack, the exercises and diets will change.

Grace,” he turned to his daughter, “don’t you have some tissue for your mom? I mean, I guess not.” He dismissed the younger, turning his full attention again to the mother.
“Eventually, with discipline, Johnstontine’s disease may combust. He will become sicker than you have ever seen. It will be all he feared AIDS would be, and it will last 3 to 6 weeks. That is his body purging the disease. If he survives, he may be cured. It is like a holistic chemotherapy that he must endure. Without discipline, or if he stops, he will fair almost as any other unmedicated HIV positive person would. With each failure, the regimen must become more aggressive to reinitiate the healing stages.”
“Have you been tested, Ma?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if Johnstontine will be content with this. If it happens this way, no one can know about it.”
“Everyone is going to know. He will be in treatment. He still looks healthy, and his chances at recovery are clearly high, but he is going to get much sicker. Everyone will know. You cannot lie your way through this. And,” Grace ventured carefully, “you gonna have to cut all this autocratic bullshit out if you want to see daddy heal. Carrying all of that tension and anger around will destroy his immune system.

"This isn’t like a western medical cure, where the medicine poisons the illness to death without regard for the body. This is going to require a lifestyle change on the part of you and dad. All of that fire and fury needs to be redirected to healing, and you gonna have to let the world go. You hear me, Momma? But, you said something important. You have to be like Paul after the conversion. You have to learn the secret of contentment.”
“And what is the secret of contentment?”
“Princess’ favorite question,” Wisdom smiled. “Like mother, like daughter. Contentment is the secret.”
“Perhaps, Wisdom,” Mrs. Johnstontine conceded.
“I think so, but, in order for us to be content with the world, we have to become content with ourselves,” Wisdom went on.
“And, I, for one,” Grace entered, eyeing Wisdom and Mrs. Johnstontine conspicuously, “know that I need to forgive some people, and one of those people is you.”
“I have not apologized,” Mrs. Johnstontine stiffened.
“You may never apologize, but the time I wait for you to feel sorry for what I believe you have done wrong is time devoted to desire not satisfaction. I want to forgive you. You don’t have to accept it for it to be valid to me. And, having said that, I can start to forgive me for craving you and hating you. I gotta heal myself to be a healer. You know what I mean?”
Thud. Thud. Thud. Heavy, metal banging sounded against the door.
“Yo,” shouted Gracie, “call off your troops!”
Thud. Thud. Whap! The door banged against the cement wall. James Bertram fell into the basement.
“James!” Mrs. Johnstontine yelled. “What the…” James crawled backwards across the floor, scrambling. His left ankle bled, badly. IM stalked slowly in, driving James back into a corner. They maintained a constant distance, one crawling, the other looming into the shadows of the cellar.
“Corduroy!!”
IM wore a holster. A gun remained in it. He scanned and spied Grace handcuffed to the chair and Wisdom dangling from the wall. He pulled the other gun out of the holster. He trained it on Mrs. Johnstontine.
“Take your gun off her, Son,” Wisdom upbraided IM.
“Oh, it’s like that?” IM raised an eyebrow, then put the second weapon away. He darted forward and kicked James’ ankle. IM yelled, “uncuff my sister, you stupid little fuck. I remember when you was a punk kid. I didn’t like the way you looked at Princess, then. I knew you was a duck snitch.”

James scrambled across and released Grace, who ran across the room and jumped into her big brother’s arms. “Grace. I got guns.” IM and Grace looked over to see James releasing Wisdom. IM nodded. “You getting good at this, old chap.”
“She told me to do it,” he nodded at Mrs. Johnstontine.
“Corduroy, you have something that I desperately need.”