Hidden Past

Themba pulled this thick, busted, overly bookmarked notebook out of his desk drawer and peeled back the stiffened leather cover to reveal a carefully kept table of contents. I watched over his shoulder as he ran his finger down the page, stopped at “Game Plan”, and turned to the marked page. There was a mess of scribbles that I could only describe as chicken scratch. I hope he didn’t expect me to transcribe that. One thing was for sure, he ain’t have to worry about nobody stealing that hoe. Themba gripped his pen and checked off the first three mystery items and diligently deciphered the fourth, cause I know he had to be struggling to read those too.

“It’s about to get really rough for us,” he sighed.

“Rougher than the fuckin’ burning cross and the cousin caressing crusaders throwing themselves in the lawn,” I worried. By then, Themba was in full work mode and wouldn’t hear anything but the pounding of his keyboard until his task was done.

While we’d started a the crack of dawn, he sat at his desk for most of the day. At first, he was reading reports, but then he completely switched gears. I watched as he pined over a document, his back hunched as he committed an actor terror with how hard his fingers were demolishing that poor keyboard. Each letter felt heavier than the last as the clacking rang out as though there wasn’t carpet in the Oval Office.

“I love seeing you two at work, well, one of you,” Malcolm sang, wheeling in a tray of food he’d probably wrestled from one of the staff. He gently placed a kiss on Themba’s scrunched forehead, scooping one of his hands from the keyboard and wrapping it around a cup of tea. “Drink,” he ordered sweetly.

“Sit up straight too, lookin’ like a question mark,” I added while attempting to decipher Themba’s notes. I had just gotten to the point of being able to read when Malcolm showed up. As the chicken scratch started to look like actual letters, I began to learn things about my friend I never thought possible.

He’d written journal-like updates revealing traumatic, tragic events of his life in excruciating detail that he’d never talked about, next to doodles of Killua with an electrified afro dashing through the words. I felt my fists clench around the edges of the pages as I read about the men who’d assaulted him or abused him. The same men I’d shake hands with and call my friends. I’d wished to go back in time and beat the brakes off them fugly bitches, but as a member of a Presidential family, I’d have to let someone else do the punching at least.

“Okay, my loves,” Malcolm announced. “It’s time for cuddles. Take an hour off. Both of you,” he bit towards Themba, who was still typing with his free hand. Malcolm giggled as he nibbled Themba’s neck, stopping his hands cold in their fierce, heavy tracks and earning a presidential whimper.

Knowing those two were gonna show the Oval Office something it hadn’t seen since 1994, I packed my desk for the evening. I stood with my (thrifted) briefcase in hand just to be stopped by Malcolm.

“No taking work home with you,” he commanded. “Leave it.”

Themba’s moaning and Malcolm’s giggling faded into the distance as I walked the empty hallways back towards our living spaces, with my guard on my heels. As I recounted Themba’s pain, shakily written in his most guarded notebook, I could hear my teeth grinding together. I saw him sometimes completely dissociated, thinking it was just some good weed, now knowing he may have been remembering a pain he’d kept from me. Some part of me felt betrayed, as if his pain was mine to know and make sense of. Other parts of me felt an anguish in knowing I may not have made him feel safe enough to tell me something like that. As I stood organizing my thoughts in front of my room door, Dani stepped around me and opened it.

“Oh, sorry. You didn’t have to do that,” I chuckled nervously.

“I had the staff bring your dinner here while we walked, and I have to open every door,” Dani reported, still holding the heavy door.

I walked through the threshold, still not used to the cavernous room, and took a deep breath as the door slammed shut behind me. Alone in the soundproofed space, I turned to face Dani.

“I have a personal question,” I declared suddenly.

“O-okay,” they stammered. “How personal is it?”

“If you found out your best friend had been abused and assaulted and they never told you, would you feel hurt?” My voice cracked as the words almost jumbled to free themselves from me. I felt my hands shaking as I sat down on the bench a the foot of my bed. “Would you feel like there was some other part of them that you’d never had the chance to know? Would you be able to look at them the same way, knowing they were hurting in front of you and you didn’t even notice? No, not only didn’t you notice, you did nothing.”

Dani gently took my hands, pressing a few tissues into my palm and setting the box beside me in case I needed more (I did). They returned to the corner of my room before they spoke, as if they were carefully choosing their next words.

“Well,” they started, their voice lighter and raspier than I’d expected. “They might not have told you when it happened, but it seems like they told you now. Maybe they waited until they were ready to have that conversation,” they reasoned. “Though I do think you should allow yourself to feel these feelings before asking your friend about them.” Dani’s eyes left me for the first time since they’d been assigned to my care. Their eyes almost seemed to glaze over as they watched the window. “It takes a lot to open up about your traumas, especially if they’re violent. Your friend must trust you quite a bit.”

Trust. That’s right. Themba trusted me with their notebook. The one they wrote in so sloppily that even if it was stolen, no one would be able to decipher it, yet he trusted me to be able to make sense of it, and to know things about him no one but Malcolm probably knew. I wiped the tears from my eyes and finally moved to the dining table, where my dinner was getting cold.

After I inhaled my food, I started to think about how heavy Themba’s shoulders must feel. Who knows how much processing of those traumas he’d done, and now he had to carry the height of this nation's government on top of that. I could barely carry the weight of all this ass up a flight of stairs without getting winded, and he had the body of a twig. He carried an Atlas beside me with his small, breakable body, and I never saw an ounce of it.

“Y’know,” I’d say as we hotboxed his car. “If there really was a city of Atlantis, we’d never find it.”

“Bold uh you to assume we haven’t found it already,” Themba’d retort.

“Our scary ass scientists ain’t been that far under the ocean! They still finding new regular-ass fish!” I spat, taking another bong rip before passing it back.

“Or we found something so scary the government made the scientists shut the fuck up about it,” he argued.

“They weren’t so secretive when they were telling us about Anglerfish. Them mu’fuckers is nightmare fuel,” I chuckled.

“Nightmare fuel, yes. A problem we’d ever have to deal with, I think the fuck not,” he sassed.

Now I sat wondering if all the weed we smoked was to mask his pain. Did I sit beside him as his emotions bubbled inside him like thick tar, mucking in his still frame as he numbed his facade with substances we’d tell funny stories about later? How many days did we spend speeding on 75, weaving through cars, doing the speed limit like this wasn’t Detroit? How many of those days did he wish were his last?

I felt myself growing heavy as I sat staring at my empty plate. I finally forced myself to stand and trudged to the huge, king-sized bed I’d have to call mine for the next 4 years. I flopped on my back and stared at the ceiling, letting sigh after sigh leave my emotionally drained body.

“I don’t know if this helps,” Dani piped up from the corner, scaring the shit outta me. “Seeing you like this from wanting to help your friend is oddly comforting. I’d be happy with a friend like you on my side.”

“First of all, I forgot you were there. Yo scared the fuck outta me. Don’t make me put a bell on you,” I joked. “B, thank you. I think I need that.”

We briefly shared a laugh before my thoughts took over again, blinding me to the world around me just before my heavy eyelids whisked me off into a dream.

I saw myself in the car alongside Themba, back in Detroit. We sat with our seats all the way back, our eyes bloodshot as usual. There was a silence as we processed how high we were, then we chuckled into a giggle, into a laugh, and a cackle. We laughed until tears streamed down our faces, but something about Themba’s laugh changed. His tears seem to spill and spill, his laugh contouring into a deep sob. It was as if his feelings had spilled like a can of paint on the dashboard. His arms held his frame tight as he wailed and squirmed, a cloud forming above him. He sobbed until he laughed and laughed until he sobbed as if the vicious cycle would never end.

When I say I jolted myself from sleep so hard I farted and hit the floor. I’d never gone from horror movie to romcom so fast in my life.

“Are you okay?” Dani asked, holding a glass of water.

The water was gone before the question was fully out of their worried lips. I let out an unruly belch and looked Dani in the eye. Their short locs were just long enough to not all stick straight up in the air, and their uniform black suit was tailored to perfection. They were taller than you’d expect just looking at their face, and their deep mahogany skin made them stand out against the other Secret Service members.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you,” I said finally. “I just had a strange dream.

“Was it about your friend?” They asked carefully.

I nodded, the dream coming back to my mind like a flashback. Part of me started to think I was remembering something. Some parts of that dream felt too familiar to be made up. Maybe there was some event I’d forced myself to forget, or the weed made me forget, or Themba made me promise to forget. As the dream swirled in my thoughts, questions arose alongside it.

Why did I hesitate to hug him? What was keeping me from supporting my friend in his time of need? Why didn’t I notice a change in his behavior? He wasn’t that good at hiding things from anyone. Why did it work on me? He couldn’t even keep a surprise party secret. How was he able to hide something like this from me?