smoothed the material of the dress and smiled. “As a matter of fact, this leather jacket looks nice on me, too, now that I think about it.”
Amina started looking through the box. “You’re welcome to anything you want in here. I still can’t fit in Karla’s clothing. She was always taller and thicker. As a matter of fact, she was about your size. But I have never seen you in a minidress. As a matter of fact, you rarely wear anything short. You wear those long crunchy granola crinkle skirts all the time or jeans and them damn Birkenstocks and those political T-shirts. I swear you must have a T-shirt for every political cause known to man.” Amina rolled her eyes dramatically.
Karen looked down at the black T-shirt she was wearing that had her favorite Rebecca West quote from 1913 on it in purple letters. The T-shirt read “I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” She smiled because she was also wearing her favorite purple Converse sneakers, not Birkenstocks.
Karen held up her leg and wiggled her foot.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to add your collection of colorful Converse sneakers to your wardrobe selections. Oops.” Amina laughed. “This should be good though… Make sure you take a picture of yourself if you ever wear that minidress out someplace. This is something I have to see!” Amina started laughing.
“How you gonna call my clothes crunchy granola, and I’m helping you clean out your attic?” Karen sucked her teeth in feigned outrage as she put the minidress, leather jacket and black beret in her keeper pile along with an old sterling-silver name ring of Shemar’s from back when they were in high school and neither one of them could afford the nice flashy gold ones with diamonds in them. She remembered when she and Shemar purchased the name rings the summer before her freshman year.
She kept digging through the box to see if any of the other clothes caught her eye and pulled out a book wrapped in kente cloth. The cloth was nice and thick and had an authentic feel to it. It felt old, not like the mass-produced stuff she purchased from the Harlem Market when she was feeling particularly ethnic. She unwrapped the cloth and found an old, worn, leather-bound book inside. It seemed to be older than the cloth. She flipped through it and noticed various handwritings throughout. It appeared to be a diary of some sort but one that different people had used.
She ran her hands across the leather. It had that soft, smooth, buttery feel that only really used leather could attain. She wanted to just put it in her keeper pile and not say anything. But something as personal as a diary or journal was probably not something Amina was going to want to get rid of. And it was really too bad because something inside of her was telling her to take the journal, to just put it in her keeper pile and take it home.
“Man, I haven’t seen that thing in years! I remember when my sister, Karla, found that thing at a rummage sale. It was right before she met the man she called the love of her life, her soul mate.” Amina gave a sarcastic chuckle. “As if such a thing even exists. And if they do exist, I’m doubly pissed off because I haven’t found mine yet.”
Karen laughed at Amina’s suddenly disgusted expression. “So this journal belonged to Karla?”
“Yeah, she found it at a rummage sale at one of the churches where we held our free breakfast programs. I can’t remember which one, though. I just know she started writing in it all the time after she met Daniel.” Amina smiled and smacked her lips. “Now that was one fine man! He was one of those hustlers with a heart. Used to give money to the Black Liberation Army, give away turkeys in the hood to needy families during the holidays, toys to kids at Christmas, that kind of thing… Real smooth brother… Used to say he couldn’t get all the way down with the revolution because those berets would cramp his style.”
Karen smiled and tilted her head to the side. “Um, seems like you had a little crush on your sister’s man.”
“Girl, every woman with blood pumping through her body had the hots for that man. But once he met Karla, he only had eyes for her. I’ll tell you what, if soul mates do exist, those two were certainly soul mates. Once they got past their differences, they were inseparable. Heck, they were damn near magical. Made me sick!” Amina started laughing again.
“Sounds romantic. I’d sure like to find me a superfine, supersmooth brother to be my soul mate.” Karen realized that her voice was getting wistful, and she actually meant the words she was saying.
Where the hell did that come from?
She frowned and rubbed her hand across the soft scuffed leather again. The last thing she needed was a soul mate. A soul mate would mean a relationship. And a relationship would mean time away from her beloved youth center. And all her time and energy was wrapped up in her “hood work,” making the neighborhood a safer and more productive place for the youth. She didn’t have time for love or a relationship. And she certainly didn’t have time for any kind of soul mate.
Perish the thought!
So why did she all of a sudden want one more than she wanted the money to buy all new computers for the technology room in the Shemar Sunyetta Youth Center?
She scrunched up her face as she continued to rub the journal and let the leather lull her into thoughts of finding the one. “What are you going to do with her journal?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to just give it to Goodwill. Karla found her man after she found the journal. I had that thing for years after she and Daniel were killed in that freak automobile accident back in 1980.” Amina shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment. She frowned as she stared at the journal before shrugging and continuing.
“The journal didn’t bring me a soul mate or even a halfway decent man to warm my bed at night.” Amina rested her finger on her chin in contemplation. “In fact, since she died and I took her book, all I got was eight years of Reagan, four years of Bush, the end of the Black Liberation Army, the blissful, almost willful ignorance of the Clinton years, a revolutionary’s worst nightmare in eight years of W and the murder of my only child. That journal has probably been jinxing me! Nothing has gone my way personally or politically since I took it. I don’t know where that journal is going, but it’s not going with me to South Carolina and messing up my new start. Call me superstitious if you want!”
“Hey, but we have change we can believe in now. So maybe the tide is turning, at least politically.” Karen shook her head and laughed. Then she realized that if Amina didn’t want the journal, maybe she’d be willing to let her take it.
“I could take the journal off your hands. I want to read all about your sister’s love affair with her soul mate.” She flipped through the pages, noting the different handwritings and the hearts drawn on some of the pages throughout. “It looks like a lot of different owners have written in it. Maybe I can live vicariously through them, because Lord knows I don’t have time to have a love life.”
“You can have the journal. Maybe it’ll bring you a man.” Amina twisted up her face and stuck out her tongue. “Because Lord knows you need one.” Amina laughed and ducked when Karen threw the kente cloth at her.
“Girl, you better go on and get you some love! Don’t wake up my age and alone. It’s not a fun place to be. Whatever happened to that Saul guy you met in college that used to work with you at the center? Didn’t you and he have something going on? What happened with him?” Amina frowned. “I never really liked him, but he seemed like he was stuck to you like glue.”
“Saul finally saved up enough money to take a trip to the
