Jagger
It took me three days to return. Yes, I was in the country illegally. It’s a usual for me. And the pilot I secured to get me here was told to stay in the area, but he took that as taking other assignments.
Couldn’t go to Trick because he has a week before he is to see his niece.
Technically, Mikayla and I were to go with him.
We are, I tell myself with confidence. She’ll forgive me. She has to. I’ll make her.
My first stop in town is to drop off a duffle bag of money at the church my parents once dedicated their lives to. It’s enough to open the school Alisha had dreams of, and she refused to take it then. I think of it as tipping the scales of karma. Do something good for those people, Mikayla will forgive me…
I’m at the outskirts of Nivean. A local radio station is talking of breaking the soil this morning. Everyone is needed.
Would Mikayla help? No, she’s a Queen, now. Their police hate me. How will I get passed the lands that they’re working to get to the palace?
Last time I visited, I chose to give myself up for Mikayla’s safety above all else. This time, the sun has hardly risen when the streets just outside of town are packed with cars. Navieans young and old have garden hoes and shovels in their hand to soften the soil.
This is good. Mikayla has the solidarity of her people. I drive by slowly, looking at a sea of faces. Then I spot a familiar one. In a flash, I glimpse the guy who shouted for me to stop when I stole his woman.
He’s here. Her parents are, too. The other young woman from the Italian restaurant that flirted with me that night is nearby as well. They’re working the land. I press the breaks right in the center of the road.
Mikayla.
There’s a colorful hair wrap on her head, but a few pieces of her natural curly hair kisses along her jaw and cheeks. She’s in a long skirt that drapes over her curves and a shirt tied against her breast.
Then I can’t see her any longer because people are staring at me. Some in curiosity, others in anger.
I hop out of the car.
“Hello,” I greet them in Xhosa.
No response.
Before I can run across the field, two police officers stop me. The one who was related to Abayomi Okeke and another one I’ve never meet. Their guns are trained on me.
“You are not welcome here!” Mr. Okeke’s voice booms.
I hold up my hands. Just as I had before. “I need to speak with your Princess,” I grit out in as friendly a voice I can muster.
“Our Queen! She doesn’t not want to see you.” The other man says.
Mr. Okeke comes closer. “I don’t want to put you down in front of the children. Go or I will!”
I can hear Mikayla’s curious tone as she starts through the crowd. “What is–”
With the gun in my face, I react instantly. I grab his arm, twist it just enough to apprehend his weapon. The magazine falls, the bullet in the chamber pops up next. I’ve disengaged the other man just as the citizens make room for her.
“What are you doing here?” Mikayla glowers. “Mr. Johansson, you have been exiled from my country and that still stands.”
“I have to talk to you, Mikayla.”
“You completed your mission. Take another one.” She scoffs.
Now there are five officers beside her. They look to Mikayla for orders.
“Don’t do it, uthando lwami. Unless you tell them to shoot, I’ll probably get two maybe three down. They’ll have to shoot to kill because I’m going to talk to you!”
There’s murmuring.
“Did he just call her love?”
“Yes, he called her ‘my love’!”
Her beautiful gaze darkens. “I said I love you, Jagger. In front of a woman I have loved and respected since I was born. In front of an elder of my nation and another man I now consider my friend. You told me–”
“I lied!”
“Fuck you and your lying ass!”
One of the officers asks what they should do.
I step closer to her and now I’m staring at the barrel of five guns.
“It’s okay.” Mikayla murmurs to one of them.
“Mikayla,” I gesture, hardly able to breath. “When I met you, I loved two things. Two things only.”
“I can pretty much guess. No wait, it has to be three. Cars. Your job. And above all, yourself.”
“I agree. You taught me what it meant to give a damn about something again. I told you about my grandfather.”
“That doesn’t get you sympathy.”
Damn, what happened to my sweet, innocent uthando lwami? “I never realized why, until you said he died of a broken heart.”
“Still doesn’t get you compassion, Jagger. You had that already. From day one, I was dispensable to you. Now, if you’d like to apologize be done with it. It will be too hot to work soon.”
I pull off my button up. “I’ll help.”
“No.”
“We could use help,” MamLalumi says.
I grin at her. “Thank you, MamLalumi.”
“We have it covered,” Chumi cuts in as Mikayla makes her way back to her spot and much of the crowd disperses. He reluctantly adds, “But if you must, make your case while you work.”
I glance at him, bewildered.
“You didn’t pass the same test I gave Mikayla. She should’ve fought for her people on the first night. You didn’t have much to do to fight for her love last week. Although, I understood your reasoning was to help her focus. But you do now.”
I move passed the rows that are already being dug. I ask her cousin, who is next to Mikayla now, for the shovel. She and the rest of Mikayla’s family weren’t aware of our argument in Xhosa. But she readily holds it out, while warning, “You’ve put my cousin through a lot of danger in the past, Humph! I knew it was you from day one. You fix it, or I have some very good friends back in Long Beach. It’s a very long plane ride to you, but they’ll get here.”
Brittany lets go of the shovel. Their guy friend chuckles.
Joyce Bryant nudges her head to her daughter with a smile.
She knows everything….
“Really?” Mikayla asks through a harsh breath as she continued to put her forearms into it.
“I can help you,” I tell her, attempting to step behind her.
“You have your own. If you’re going to work, then work.”
I start next to her. The ground is hard and unyielding. Chumi was accurate about the fight in Mikayla now as she has to be digging deep just to complete what she has done.
“I don’t know how to fight for your love, but that’s okay. I’ll learn,” I begin.
Her exerted breathing is all the response I receive.
“I will fight even if it takes forever to win you over because then, I’ll be fully versed on how to keep you happy.”
She grunts. “And if it takes forever and a day—“
“I’ll do that.”
“Ha, we'll be old and dead before I forgive you.”
“You remember my mentioning my mother, Alisha. She was named after the midwife. She was what people would call a good Christian woman. Whenever I’m working, I use something of my parents. Windhoek was my father’s favorite beer brand.”
Mikayla continues at her task.
I press my boot onto the head of the shovel and dig deep into the ground. “Then I met you and as I made our reservations, you reminded me of her. Of this goodness I once knew.”
“Jagger, just stop…” she murmurs, “you’re just trying to get sympathy. But I know that you are a selfish man, and I guess,” she shrugs. “I’m a challenge. You want me now. But, for how long?”
There hasn’t been a day that has gone by in my adult years that I haven’t put myself first. I try a different tactic. “When I got my job, my father tried to talk me out of it.” I mention how he had the same job as me. Though I don’t say assassin, Mikayla understands.
“He changed because of her.” I tell Mikayla. Searching for a similar hope in her.
“That was them.”
Every part of me wants to go animalistic, ape shit crazy, grab her and take her to a place meant for just us. Just like I did when I abducted her, I got her alone. It helped.
I continue to be civilized and tell her all about my parents. “They needed money. I took every assignment. It made me a worse man for a good cause. My father found out. Wouldn’t take a dime. He told my mother who asked me to repent, for almost eight years I wasn’t in communication with them.”
“What happened?” Mikayla asks. “You’re clearly in the same field as you were when she begged you to stop.”
“They died. The job is still there,” I shrug.
Mikayla puts down the shovel and wipes her hands. She sighs. “Jagger, I cannot help myself, I love you.”
I start to reach for her until she adds, “Every part of me wants to believe you love me, but I… I’m not sure if it’s a mixture of me stuck in the twilight of you saving me–”
“Saving you?” I rub the stubble of my chin. “All I’ve done was place you in harm’s way.”
“You brought me here… you might have taken the scenic route, but I’m home because of it.”
Her words fill me with a rush of relief until she continues with, “I like that your mother changed your father for the better. But I have an entire country of people to put first now, Jagger.”
“No… no… don’t say that. I’m right here, Mikayla. It hurt so bad letting you go. I didn’t think I was good enough for you. For this.”