Storymania - Anastasia by Brotherman

Anastasia
Brotherman

For the longest time Bernard Lewis noticed that his uncle Melvin had quite a strange proclivity. Oh, it was nothing too freakish or sexual, for Melvin was a decent soul and Bernard respected him deeply. But ever since he was a little kid, he noticed that his uncle had somewhat of a Romeo and Juliet ballet fetish. When he would stay at his house and get up for midnight snacks, he would notice that Melvin would be downstairs in the basement watching tapes of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet interpolated by the Joffrey ballet. From the top of the steps he would watch his uncle, who would sit transfixed by the grace of the dancers, even going as far as crying at the end. As he grew up, the scene would play itself over and over, with him crying at the end every time. He would also also notice that next to his uncle's blues records, Stax eight tracks and dusty ebony magazines would be Romeo and Juliet paraphanalia. There would be poster scripts, several paperback versions of the play, a couple of saved tickets and a print of a Sir John everett Millais portrait of the death of the love struck couple.

When he was younger Bernard found his Uncle's obsession strange but when he went to college he began appreciate it. More than just one of his lovable quirks, he thought it was a sign that his uncle, a 78 year old retired army cook, was a man of great subltety and taste. He would brag to his intellectual friends that his uncle was a grand cultural pluralist, liking the master works of Shakespere as well as Muddy Waters masterpieces. Then one night, after he came home to visit his uncle and after they had ate, shot the breeze, played bones and watched the fights, Bernard drifted off to bed only to be woke up by the same sound of Romeo and Juliet playing downstairs. This time, he would get to the bottom of his unc's obeseeion, he told himself.

As went to the top of the basement steps, he could see his uncle in the dark, gracefully prancing around in the basement. He was dancing gently to the gorgeous, sensitive melody of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet; opening a wide smile to the english horns of the opening, twirling like a man half his age to the marvelous strings. Bernard went down the stairs quietly, as if to not disturb his uncle's mesmerizing trance, and sat down in a basement back chair observing his rapture with the composition and the balletic interplay. Dancing, he kept his eyes on the ballerina playing Juliet, showing an awe for her grace of foot, with his body expressing a gratitude for the romantic premise by going beyond the limits of his age. As he twirled around for a 10th time he noticed his nephew sitting in the back, and it stunned him.

" Boy what is you doing messing up my concentration" he told him. " You gotta let me appreciate the dynamics of this thing."

" Uncle Melvin, I think it's real hip and cool of you to like Romeo and Juliet so much" Bernard told him.

" Now thank you, but that aint why your a$$ come down her to talk to me tonight, eh?"

" Well uh."

" Boy it's a long a$$ story, and you ain't got the time to hear it. Plus you got things to do tomorrow. Now go to bed."

" Ok, uncle Melvin. Good night" as Bernard got up and started up the basement steps

" Wait" Melvin said as he was halfway up " sit down."

" When I first came here from Birmingham Alabama in 1942, this was when I was living in your grandma's basement, the first job was I had was a janitor for the Pantages theater. I would go there from 10 am to six pm monday through friday and clean the place up, your basic mop, sweep and shine job. There was this other boy that was supposed to work with me who thought he was a jazz hipster, but most days he'd be too strung out on that smack to work, so I had to do the job for two people. The Martha higganbotham ballet conservatory of Tacoma would practice from 7 to 10 monday through friday, and i'd get to work early to sneak and see em perform. Ms Higganbotham was a stern taskmaster, she even would hit the girls on several occasions, but lord those ballerina's were beautiful."

"Now there was certain things I couldn't do with lookin. This was 1942, 13 years before Emmett Till, and if did anything too fresh, id risk not only losing my job, but my life. You think i'm stretching, but boy i'm telling you the truth, these was the times. And I didn't want to lose my head or my job so I kept my head down when I went past them to clean the floor. Some of them was mean, they'd get me in a corner and say 'n!gguh dance or well tell ms higgunbotham you touched me' And In the hope that they would leave me alone, my black azz got to huffin. But the majority of them was real nice to me, they'd tell me I had good manners and the like. "

" But The lead ballerina was this beautiful, godly creature of an ungodly body named Anastasia Harper. A lovely work of art, I tell you: skin as pretty as milk and a body symmetrically beautiful in all dimensions, one of those women that you just cant keep your eyes off of. And I couldn't, even at the risk of losing my job,"

" So one day I do the sweeping the floor of the front row, I see her doing these piroettes, and I was in a trance. Lord, time stopped when she was dancing. I was just enthralled in her motions. Grace is just too vague a word for how beautiful she danced. Boy I was simply transfixed." as he smiled, paused and laughed for a couple seconds.

"So what happened next unc" Bernard said

" I was transfixed until Ms Higganbotham hit me with her shoe" Melvin told him. " when she saw that i was looking at her ballerina, that woman got madder than a hen with it's foot cut off. She started cussing, screaming, and said "n*gger" more times than Lester Maddox at a black panthers meeting. This big fat ol woman was running after me and I just got scared as hell, cause she could sit on me and kill my a$$. "

"Unc, unc cmon what happened" Bernard told him

" boy be patient. So what happened was that I got on my knees and begged for her forgiveness. ' lordy ma'am ah's never gonna do it again' I told her, and I kept my hide. she said if I looked at her girls one more time, id be thrown In jail, So I breathed a sigh of relief."

" just when i'm starting to clean the stage, here come's Anastasia, and im thinking ' oh lord i'm in trouble now she's gonna tell her daddy and i'm gonna be either in the slammer or sent back to Birmingham'. but she came to me tears telling me that she was so sorry mrs Higganbotham treated me that way and she was so sorry that she called me that name.

'what name ma'mm' I asked

' you know the N name' and she winced when she said it. I didn't care, lord, I heard it so many times it just ran off my back. But she was all broken up about it, like that was the first time she heard it. She had an innocent soul ."

" so we struck something of a friendship. She began to practice at nights while I worked. She would ask me how she was doing, and I would tell she was wonderful. I didn't know anything about ballet, but she would have been beautiful doing the funky chicken in a Donald Duck suit. We'd talk about other things, like the war, the depression, she'd ask me questions about how it was being a negro like she really cared, and I appreciated that. But I would notice she would start practicing later and later. First til 12, then till 2 in the morning, then till 4. And then one day I had to leave and she was still dancing. She was dancing so much there was blood on the floor from the corns on her toes, who had burst from eight consecutive hours of pressure.

So I rush down to the basement shed grab my mop, clean up the blood, and tell her in the nicest way possible that I need to leave and so does she. but she starts sobbing, And i'm thinking 'lord lord what am going to do now'. If that one thing that gets me emotionally to pieces, it's a woman crying. Boy, it just hurts my heart. So what I do is tell her that maybe we could work out something over coffee at Mr Rubenstine's , the bakery across the street from the theater. I say this also because I know she must be hungry cause if anyone works for eight straight hours at anything, they'd be famished.

"So she agrees and just as i'm about to close the front door of the theater, I hear her callin me, saying that she needs help getting outta her garter belt. Now in them days they put that belt over women so tight that your lungs and your throat gotta have a 10 minute auxilary meeting between breaths. So I rush down to the stage and yell ' Anastasia where is you!'

"Over here" she calls from the womens dressing room. So I go to the stage and she's jumping up and down, furiously trying to pirohette herself out of the the belt. So I go help , and we twist and twist for about 3 minutes and in mid air we finally snap that bad boy off of her, only to land on top of the costumes pile, right on top of each other. Boy you fill in the rest"

" oooooh" Bernard said.

" shut up boy! his uncle told him. " you ignint bastards have this straight prissy attitude about sex. What we did wasn't nothing to " oooh " about like you passed some gas. What we did was graceful, beautiful and gentle. You young boys watch them rap video's and think that sex is all rough and hard and junk. Sex can be gentle too, boy! What we did was graceful, like a great ballet performance."

" So we end up at mr Rubenstein's who who was such a nice man. Not prejudiced or nothin. He would let me in to eat, give me the pick of his freshest baked goods. He'd give me half off cause we was " brothers under the skin" he'd tell me. You see this was before you young fools got under this yacub junk and drove them away from us, but I digress"

" No argument from me" Bernard told him.

" where was I, well we was at Ruby's, that's what I liked to call him, and she was telling me her story about her father, who owned four banks in Tacoma, would do these horrible things to her, and that her momma was just like that smacked out jazz boy, stoned out of her mind. Now I had no grudge against that boy, but that damm needle takes your soul away and makes you ignorant as hell. And when she was telling me all these horrible things that her parents did, my heart felt so much for her. She had more blues than I did and I grew up in " bomingham" Alabama."

" So what happened" Bernard asked, slightly impatient.

" for six months we had the most wonderful relationship in the world." Melvin said, as the memory seem to enliven every muscle in his body. " She would practice till two , And I would go faster than Carl Lewis to finish my work. And when we both got done, we would be together, and not just sex. She would read to me the great poets, I would teach her some dances I learned at the club, and we would dance together. You see, dancing is like any relationship, there is a subtle give and take that a proper one must adhere to. There's what the buddists call the yin and the yang. You cant be to hard or too soft, you must find the middle."

And as soon as he said that, he raised up from his chair and began to dance as if he was a boy again "Lord we had that connection. We did! WE DID!" he said . And in the dark, with the light of the tv the only luminicence in the room, he danced as if he was reliving it all over again. Twisting around chairs and cabinet's with the grandest of agility, with his gazed fixed on the mirage of the great woman that he was dancing with, that he and only he could see.

And as Bernard saw him, he had tears in his eyes, not just because he saw his grandfather so vulnerable, but because he had to ask the inevitable question. For uncle Melvin didnt retire as a ballet dancer but as an army cook, and there was no pictures of an aunt Anastasia in the family photo's or on his walls. So he knew he had to ask the question.

" so uhhhhh...ummmm uncle Melvin" he softly asked " what happened"

And just as he asked it the rapture and the dancing stopped and suddenly uncle Melvin was a 78 year old man again, feebly walking to a chair that only minutes ago he was leaping out of. He looked down on the ground, looked at his nephew with sad eyes and said " We forgot who we was"

" We had spent all this time building a dream world in a place that was all too real. One June night we overslept. we had spent the night dancing, and we had made love in the same spot that we did the first time. I was having this dream, that I was a championship boxer in Paris France, and I bought her this big ol house. See that's the place we'd promise each other we'd go when we got grown, cause they'd accept us there. In the dream, I remember I had suprised her, I had bought her this beautfiul cottage and we were riding on a horse drawn carriage And I had blindfolded her, and just as I was about to open the blind fold." he said with a tremor in his voice, his right hand shaking and his eyes staring in to space.

" and what unc" said Bernard.

" And then I get a kick in the forehead that spins me around to my side" he says as he grabs the left side of his head and starts to shake violently. " I open my eyes and I see this big man kicking and kicking me with this big steel boot. He hit me in my head,in my face and all over my body. I look up and I see Anastasia screaming, and ms Higganbotham slapping her. I roll over my body, which hurt me cause I got a thorn in one of my open rib wounds, grab my clothes, and then I roll over to the trap door. I escape falling down the steps into the basement."

As he said that, he shrunk in his chair,looked up to the ceiling as if to reenact the whole event and mumbled in a dark whisper, with anguished eyes. "So I'm sitting here, blood all over my body, hearing Anastasia scream in the back ground, thinking I was going to get those dirty bastards. So I garnered every fiber of energy that I had in my body "

"And what did you do." Bernard asked him

Melvin went to the steps with a wild twitching eye, looking at his nephew while simulating his motions " and I climb up them steps, and I was gonna fight him!" he trembled again and 2/3rds of the way up the steps, pointed at his nephew and bellowed. " Joe louis couldnta stopped me!!!! I had prepared to die in fighting that giant man! I had the wrath of God in my right hand, the madness of the devil in my right and the pain of mother Mary in my heart! I was going to give them their penance! So I go up the front of the door" he said with his eyes twitching harder, and with raskloniovian sense of madness in his tone

" What did you do, uncle Melvin, what happened" Bernard whispered

Just then he bundled up in the top two steps in the fetal position and starts sobbing uncontrollaby. Disturbed, Bernard raced up the steps to try and pick him up. " Cmon unc, dont be crying like this, what happened"

" just...just ...just" " just when I opened the door I see him taking his closed fist..... and beat..... her right in the street". Almost posessed with sorrow, he started to shake violently forcing Bernard to pick him up, " lord that sound, that sight. it's the most evilest thing to hear and see in the world, I don't wish that pain on my worst enemy" and as he started to convulse in his nephew's chest,already soaked with Teardrops's, he mumbled incoherently.

" Cmon unc, it's gonna be allright, now dont be crying it's over." he tried to assure him

" no it wasnt boy!" he shook him and replied half crazed " NO IT WASNT!!! He takes her into his car, and I see her face so battered beaten and bruised. She was naked in the back seat of that car and covered with blood. Mr rubenstein came out with a bat and just as he was about to smash the window of the drivers seat, Harper drove off."

" Ruby took me in and nursed my wounds, and let me call your grandfather. I spent the whole day plotting a way to rescue her. I got all my money in my savings, took your grandaddy's shotgun and planned it to rescue her if bodies had to fall! And I was going to take her to canada. We'd have no money, but we'd be better off than where we was. So I drive in your grandfathers car to her house, with my shotgun, plannin to save my Anastasia or die in a blaze of glory. I walk to the front door and with with gun in hand, I knock twice and wait. "

"Their black butler opens it. afraid of what he sees, he yells ' Dont shoot me, n!gguh, I'll give you his money'"

" 'I don't want the god damm money, I want Anastasia' I tell him"

" he jumps and he says ' boy you crazy they done put her in a mental hospital today'.I went to the hospital and she didn't know who I was. she lost her mind, She had lost her mind." And he looked at his nephew with those eyes, those misbegotten eyes that looked like they had seen the fires of hell and been burnt by each ember.

" Cmon dawg, cmon unc" said a visably shaken Bernard " I'll drive you back there tomorrow. Don't cry unc, we can fix this."

" No we cant " replied Melvin in a quickly sombered fashion. "she died two months later of a overprescription of pills by the nurses. It was about the most humane thing to happen to her by that time."

Just then the tv showed the the final scene of Tchaikovskys' Romeo and Juliet, where the dancers playing the Montagues and the Capulets come together and realize their massive human error has cost the lives of the lovestruck couple, set to that mornuful musical reprise that could bring a stone statue to it's knees in sorrow. "See boy, this is the realest piece of art ever made." Melvin told bernard as he pointed to the television "Cause it shows that pure love is the most fragile thing on this earth, and the sensitive people on this earth get hurt over and over again. there is too much pain in this world, boy just too much pain!"

As the program ended, Bernard helped his uncle upstairs to his bed.

" Goodnight, unc " he told him. And as he saw the faint glimpses of sunlight seep out of his uncle's living room window, he prayed for his uncle's old yet sterling soul. He prayed that he would meet his Anastasia someday, and he thanked god for his existence. If vulnerable souls take the brunt of the world's pain, as his grandfather said, they are also one of god's most exquisite creations, he told himself. Warm, gentle and subtle, ever so seeking the vin and the yang, ever searching from that great median