Dark
A novel by: kenji jasper
Acknowledgements
(Only a few are in any specific order)
I have to thank the Creator,
God my father, for the many blessings he bestows upon me daily, Mom, Pop,
Carla, Annia, Imani, Lil’ Jay, Tony and Grandma Sally, my editor Gerald Howard
for believing in my work enough to put up with all it took for me to get on at
Broadway Books, my attorney Georgia Murray for getting the ordeal done, Deb, all of my editorial readers: Tiffany Thompson,
Konata, Ms. Inge and Tasha Harris. Much thanks to my trainer Nic Stevens, Lisa
Pegram, Dr. Cindy Lutenbacher, Cipher (Mill, Shell, Juba, Gaff, Okorie and
Anika) for sharing their creative tables with me, Natalie and Gabrielle
LaRochelle, Coco and Joshua White, Chris Yates, Mike Karoma, my sisters Cheryl
Smith and Rebeccah Bennett, Maybelle
Bennett, Mr. Keith Wasserman, Mr. Stephen Pratt, Mr. Ken Cooper, Ms. Sheila
Solomon, Mrs. Mary Curtis, Mr. Bob Meadows, Professor Judy Gebre-Hewitt,
Professor Kimberly Wallace Sanders, Audrey Irons, Tahra, Knox, Ro and Dave,
Demetrius Pace, Bob Morales, Sabina and Erin, D-Gunn, Kerry Walker, Larmarrous and Katrisa Shirley (sorry if I
mispelled y’all names), The Caped Crusaders (Mike, Murph and Mark), everybody
that knew me from growing up in Fairfax Village and Hillcrest: Mark, Bo, Damon
Williams, Damon Hudson, Butchie, Nyere, John, and Rocky(R.I.P.) Much love to
everyone who loves me. And of course I can’t forget Marc Gerald, for seeing a
good thing and running with it.
Until…..
For Greg, Khari, Rob, Brian, Sparky and the crew we
all used to be
Prologue
Pop:
It’s Monday morning. I’m about to leave and I’m down here, trying
to figure out how this is going to end.
And when you’re at the point that I’ve reached you see that being a man
isn’t easy. Now I see what you meant when you used to talk about hindsight
being 20/20. If I had known that I was going to walk in on Sierra and Nick I
wouldn’t have even gone over to her house that day. If I had known that I was
going to pull that trigger I never would’ve gone to that party. And if I had
known that taking a week’s vacation was going to change my life forever I
definitely would’ve gone sooner.
See, Pop I’ve spent my whole life living
on our block thinking that there wasn’t anywhere else to go. I didn’t think
that there were other cities, or different kinds of people or fine older women
who came to your door in the middle of the night looking to get some. I didn’t
know that there were crazy fools running around who would do anything for love,
maybe even kill, and I especially didn’t know the truth about my Mama, the
truth you had kept from me for my whole life.
I’ve learned so much in this past
week. I’ve learned what it feels like
to be possessed by revenge and to make love on a living room carpet. I’ve learned that they are people who go to
sleep with ghosts over their beds at night and they drink them away whenever
they get the chance. There are people who kill for nothing and live for nothing
but themselves. They say it’s a small world but after this past week I’m not
ready to believe it.
But see now that I know all these things
I don’t know what to do with them. I got a
bunch of choices to make that nobody can help me with. Even Snowflake, E and
Ray Ray can’t get me out of having to find my way in life. Neither can you. I
don’t know if I’m going to mail this.
But I just want you know that I’ve learned everything you taught me.
Love,
Thai
Start
Of
the four of us, I was the smart one. I did the best in school, I got a few
awards and I even got to introduce Mayor Barry when he came to visit my junior
high school. E was the lucky one. Everything always went his way no matter what
the odds were. Ray Ray was the crazy
one. He would do anything just for the rush.
He’d smash somebody in the mouth at a party a half a city away from home
just to see the look on the man’s face when he took that first hit. But
Snowflake was the bad one. He did what
he wanted. And when you were around him, you did what he wanted too. If you
didn’t he caused problems. Even though he was our main boy, we didn’t want any
problems from him.
We all lived
in Shaw. And Shaw was a place where you didn’t come to play around. The threat of bullets and beatdowns always
hung in the air like the smell of burning tar. If you walked by the right
building at the right time you might hear the Washingtons arguing about their
son Damien’s crack habit or Mr. Harris on the third floor yelling at the
newspaper about how the Redskins wouldn’t make it to another Superbowl in his
lifetime. Or there was always Frank, who spent his days over on the playground
impressing the little kids by showing them the bullet scar on his calf and the
chrome-plated 9mm that gave him the scar when he dropped it on the ground while
running from someone he owed money to.
But Shaw was
a little different than a lot of the other neighborhoods in Northwest. We went hard but we weren’t anything like
the cats down in Southeast or the ones in Northeast off of Montana Avenue. We were right between downtown and U Street,
trapped between the suit and tie DC you saw in the movies and they place people
burned down after they killed Martin Luther King long before I was born. To me that made us special, something more
than just another name they called out at the go-go clubs on Saturday nights.
If anybody
asked us that was where we said we were from. Shaw was what we represented,
just like the dudes over in the Capper projects or anybody who lived in LeDroit
Park. For us life started and stopped in those three or four blocks that
surrounded the neighborhood playground, even though downtown DC was just a few
blocks away. If anybody had something to say about our neighborhood it came to
warnings, blows or bullets. That worked both ways. But what happened wasn’t
about us or the neighborhood. It was about me.
Freddy
was dead. A kid named Aaron had shot two bullets into his face outside of the
Marlow Heights movie theatre two days before on the hottest Tuesday of the
summer. It was Thursday and the funeral was the next morning. But that night
Freddy’s little brother Daron and all his cousins threw a “rest in peace” party
in their basement in Congress Heights on the other side of the city. They threw
a party while their Mama was upstairs crying her eyes out and mumbling to
herself about what to do now that her first boy was gone. She had even told a
neighbor she was thinking about walking down to the precinct with Freddy’s old
.38 to shoot Aaron while he was still in the holding cell. I heard all of that
in the car on the way to the party.
I
didn’t know Freddy or Aaron or Daron or his Mama or the name of the girl who
opened up the front door for us. But Freddy was Snowflake’s cousin and
Snowflake was my boy and we were both from Shaw so I rolled wherever he needed
me to be.
I,
Thai Williams, the smart one, however, had plenty on my mind. Three hours
before I’d chased a light-skinned pretty boy named Nick through and out of
Wheaton Plaza before he turned around and opened fire on Snowflake and me with
a .22. Two days before he had fucked my girl in her living room fifteen minutes
before the time I was supposed to show up. I came early. He didn’t cum at all.
We
found out that he worked at the GAP in Wheaton and decided to pay him a visit
with three more of Shaw’s finest to express our disappointment with him.
Snowflake had wanted me to kill him from the start. But I wasn’t a killer. I
convinced him to settle for an ass-whipping in a public place.
I just wanted
him to know that I wasn't the one to mess with. He had fucked my girl on the
same floor in the same room where my baby was conceived, before it died. I put
all of that on Nick’s head when I walked into the GAP with three other people
behind me.
When he saw
me he broke for the back door. Snowflake and I chased him out the back and
through the parking lot until he pulled that .22 and let off five shots in our
direction. He shattered a few car windows but missed us completely and then
disappeared. That’s what had happened several hours before I walked into
Freddy’s ‘rest in peace’ party.
But
despite everything I’ve just told you I don’t want you to get the wrong idea
about me. I wasn’t the kind of dude you saw getting stuffed into police cars on
the evening news and neither was E.
Sure Ray Ray and Snowflake were knuckleheads, but when the time came to
do their dirt they always kept us out of it.
E and I did our homework and got our diplomas and talked about going to
college. Ray Ray and Snowflake listened and told us to do what we had to do to
get it done. But the summer after graduation something unexpected
happened. E left.
His
Mama, who was Indian, popped up after 14 years and asked him to move to
Charlotte with her and help her with her real estate business. The crazier
thing was that E said yes. He left and I had to fend for myself. So after working my eight hours days at the
Department of Public Works I spent my nights with the crazy one and the bad one
and that night they had brought me to the party to forget about Wheaton Plaza.
I
could see the force the girl was using to grind her plump derriere against me
as we danced. But I didn’t feel it. I was miles away from the dark cramped
basement where my dark body was moving to the beat of the Backyard Band tape
that played through the blown speakers. I thought about what had happened
earlier in the day and earlier in the week. What had I done to make Sierra want
to disrespect me like that? I had
called every other day and I took her out when I could and when she was
pregnant I made her my life, only to have her put a knife through my heart,
twist it and set it on fire. Now a coldness ran through me, as if my veins were
filled with ice water. So while I
danced with that girl with the big booty, pretending like nothing was wrong, I
knew that something was about to happen.
In
the dim basement light I could see Snowflake and Ray Ray and Ray’s cousin
Cuckoo on the other side of the room drinking the punch that was more Absolut
than anything else. The song changed and I walked over to them and planted my
roots in their line of wallflowers.
“You I-ight?”
Cuckoo asked me.
We
called him Cuckoo because he was crazy, crazier than Ray Ray. From what I had
heard he was a killer. He pulled triggers for whomever could afford it, even
for some of the Koreans way out in Maryland. He was Ray’s cousin, and his
inspiration for being crazy. Whenever he came through the neighborhood it
either meant a lot of laughs or a lot of drama.
“Yeah, I’m
straight,” I said back to him.
“Don’t
worry. We gonna get dat nigga. He from
around this way too. He ain’t got no time.”
I
didn’t say anything. I didn’t really want Nick to die and I really didn’t want
to kill him. But I was stuck on Sierra, and I wondered why she had made me do
all of this. I wanted revenge to replace something else. But all of that aside Cuckoo was right. Nick was living on
borrowed time. I hoped that he’d called into the GAP to say he’d quit because a
day wouldn’t go by when somebody could have been waiting for him.
Nick
had had on an Anacostia b-ball jersey when he did a Michael Johnson out of
Sierra’s house. So I knew what school he went to. Unless he was getting a new
name and a new face the fact of the matter was that he had shot at Snowflake
and Snow always said that if somebody shot at him that he’d shoot right back.
“Damn, this
nigga Freddy knew everybody. All these people came for him and he dead.” I said
to Cuckoo. I was about to light a cigarette but I’d left my lighter in the car.
“He was the
man up at Anacostia. He used to start
on the hoops squad at erry game,” he
replied.
The
word “Anacostia” echoed in my head. I saw Nick’s jersey on Sierra’s floor right
next to their naked bodies. Then like the Flash he threw it on, pulled his
shorts and ran out. And as if on cue, right after that very image, was when it
started.
“Wassup
Nigga!!!” a voice yelled over the music on the other side of the room. I
couldn’t see who the voice belonged to in the dark but I heard him slapping
five with someone else. He was too loud. I turned to Cuckoo.
“You know
‘dat nigga?” I asked.
“Nah,” he
said, “but he rollin’ up in here like he’s the man or somethin’ when Freddy’s
supposed to be the
man tonight.”
“You right,”
I said. Cuckoo turned to Snowflake and mumbled something. Snowflake nodded to
him and took a puff from the blunt Ray Ray had rolled in the car. Then the go-go tape cut off and the basement
lights came up.
“Hey, somebody tell that nigga Nick he
left his lights on!” Daron yelled.
First people
giggled and then there were a few shouts to turn the music back on. But for the
four of us time stood still. The basement lights went back out. But before they
did we had seen him and he couldn’t have been more than five feet in front us.
He was talking to the
girl who I had just finished dancing with and he had on the same shirt and
slacks from the mall. The rest of the wallflowers turned to me with a knowing
look. But I didn’t know what they were looking for me to do. I was busy dwelling on the fact that he had
been stupid enough to show up at a party after he’d let off shots at four dudes
he didn’t know in the middle of one of the biggest malls in the DC metropolitan
area. Our city was too small for that.
We could have
been anybody. That was the underlying
rule in DC. The enemy was everywhere
except for on your own block, but you even had to watch your back there. The enemy could turn up sitting behind you
in the movies or he could be bagging your groceries or sitting across from you
at your main boy’s dinner table. But he was always at the parties, especially
that one party where you least expected him to show up.
In
the low light I watched Nick’s profile shift and turn. Watching his bald peanut
head made me cut back to the same footage of him on top of Sierra on the living
room floor with Jodeci playing in the background. I didn’t remember the song
but I knew it was Jodeci. He did that Michael Johnson through the back and off
of the porch and I didn’t chase after him. That
was where my movie memory had stopped. I ran that same snippet over and over
again as I watched him shift and bob his head to the music.
I watched
until I couldn’t watch anymore. I wanted to move and something moved me.
Something took my body and pushed it past two or three people and that
something led my right fist to crack across his jaw and make it rattle. But he
was ready and he tagged me back and we traded blows until I was on top of him,
punching into the blackness of the carpet, connecting only once or twice.
A foot kicked
me in the back and I knew that Nick hadn’t come alone. But that was the only
foot I felt which meant that my boys were doing their job. Nick pushed me off
of him and scrambled away. As I began my pursuit through the parting crowd
someone on my team placed something heavy in my left fist as I moved. I carried
that something heavy with me when the crawl turned into a chase out the back and
through the yard.
I
tripped over a wood bench and fell into the sparse grass while he went over the
fence. I got to my feet and kicked the
back gate open and barely missed his left hook. He had been waiting for me on
the other side. I tagged him with a hard jab of my own and he hit the pavement
flat on his back. I looked and there
was a gleaming chrome .380 in my grip.
He had seen
the gun before I had. I saw the recognition on his face that I could take his
life. He laid there like a deer staring
into headlights wondering if this was it or if he’d live to be light-skinned
pretty boy for one more day.
I wanted to say something but I didn’t have
the words. I didn’t feel anything
except for the fresh blood running down my lip. He’d gotten me good. He’d really gotten me good. He’d fucked my
girl (who after the fact had more of less told me she never wanted to see me
again). He’d outrun me on two occasions. He’d shot at me and most recently
stole me in the mouth in the middle of a house party. But I wasn’t stuck on those things. I was stuck on him being
inside of Sierra, him being in the place where my baby was born and while I was
stuck on that I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in his head, a lake of
crimson forming on the pavement beneath his lifeless skull.
It
took me more than a few seconds to realize this wasn’t something I was watching
on TV. I had seen it before in real
life but I was never a participant.
Even though the gun was hot I still felt the ice water rushing through
my veins and arteries.
Murder wasn’t
what I had meant to do when I kicked that fence open. It definitely wasn’t what
I had to do. But I had done it and I had to deal. Multiple hands pulled me into the trunk of Snowflake’s station
wagon. They took the gun away and I stared at Nick’s corpse as it grew further
and further away from me down the alley.
I tried to close my eyes but I was too scared to stop looking. Those
multiple hands pulled me into the back of the wagon, and after 19 years and
three months they’d finally brought me into the dark.
Dining
"I hope
you're not afraid of the dark," she said to me as I stood in the doorway
of her apartment and watched her light the candles. I don't remember what I
said in reply but whatever it was made her laugh. I wasn't pressed to make her
laugh. I was even less pressed about being there: in the doorway of a white
girl’s apartment in a town I didn't know.
She wasn't the black white but the whiter than white white. She was the white that was so white that I
found myself thinking about the Partridge Family or 90210 and Party
of Five on Wednesday nights. Plus she had this fake naive look plastered
across her white face that let me know that if I was down to switch teams,
she’d at least be willing to polish my bat. But I was fine with the team I was
on. And while I could talk all day about the intensity of her whiteness the
reality was that she was human, breathing and she had a pulse. She had offered
me a home-cooked meal after I'd driven seven hours on I-85 with nothing to eat
except for what I could find in gas stations. I had wanted to get to Charlotte
before the dark hit.
She glided to each corner of the studio like a ghost. Her lighter bounced off of the clusters of scented candles and set the room ablaze. I stayed put in the doorway and contemplated whether or not I should just walk down the one flight of stairs to the emptiness of my new place or whether I should stay and get my grub on. I didn't want the neighbors to think I had jungle fever. But I wanted to eat. She had food. I stayed where I was.
It was strange to just stand when I'd spent
the last two days in perpetual motion. I'd been packing bags, screening calls
and making excuses so that I could make the trip. The worry was that the trip might make me into a fugitive.
"So
what are you doing in Charlotte?" she asked me as I closed the door and
made my way towards the fluorescent yellow bean bag chair next to the window.
It was a nice window, a big wide bay one overlooking Tryon Street. I sat and
lost myself in the eerie way the candlelight illuminated the art on the
opposite wall, reflecting on how I had ended up at her place.
“Just
down here to see my friend,” I replied. “He moved down here a year ago and I
decided to spent my vacation hangin’ out wit’ him. His Mom owns the buildin’.”
“Oh
that Indian lady. I never remember her
name.”
“Neither
do I,” I said in hopes of moving away from the topic.
The white girl had seen me emptying out the trunk of my Maxima when she
was coming in from the neighborhood gym and had decided to be friendly. Her
idea of being friendly was to spend most of our conversation telling me about
how she was trying to quit her bartending job at a strip club for something
less immoral. I gave her the nods and the yesses she needed to feel like I
really cared and the next thing I knew I was following her up the steps to her
apartment on the third floor. Still dressed in her amply-filled sportsbra and
tights, she clattered a few pots on the stove and asked me if I liked chicken
parmigian. I nodded even though I'd never had it before. Like most white girls
she didn't have much of a booty. So there was that much less to entertain me
while she cooked. I closed my eyes and without wanting to went back into the
nightmare.
Three days, a .380 and one shot had brought
me to Charlotte at the end of the summer when I should've been trying to start
college at UDC in the spring. I had put
college off since graduation. If I didn't start soon it was only a matter of
time before I let it go completely.
“So do you
have a girlfriend?” she asked as we took seats at the neatly set table.
“Nah, but I
ain’t lookin’ for one either.” I replied.
“Why’s that?”
she asked.
“Cuz they
don’t seem to bring me nothing but trouble.”
“Or do you
just let them get you in trouble?” She gave me a joker-faced grin but my eyes
buried themselves back in my empty plate.
After the deed was done on the night in question Snowflake's wagon had
taken twenty twists and turns through the unfamiliar streets of Southeast. Then Snow pulled us into Anacostia Park,
took the .380 from Cuckoo, got out and pitched it into the river like a
shotput. Then he got back in the car and we headed towards the freeway that
lead us home.
I was scared
but I wasn't trembling the way I had been at first. I didn't know what to tell
Pop or how many people in that party might snitch or how I was going to get out
of town without losing the best job I'd had in my 19 years. Every voice in the car had an opinion but I
turned deaf to every single one because none of their opinions made any
sense. But by the time I put my key in
the front door I knew I would tell Pop that I was going down to visit E for a
few days because I had to use my vacation time and the summer was almost over. I would call the job and say I needed to
take my vacation without notice for a family emergency. Since I'd done more in my department in a
year than some had done in three my supervisor would cut me some slack. Then I would call E and tell him that I needed
a place to lay low. He always came through and this would be no exception. I
couldn’t tell him the meat of the matter over the phone. The cops could have already had it tapped. Some loud mouthed cat from the party might
have already been giving the cops a description. They could have been already dragging the river for the gun.
“I just broke
up with my boyfriend,” she said as she poured herself another glass of wine,
“and I’m not looking for another one either. It seems like love makes
everything way more complicated.”
“I couldn’t
tell you nothin ‘bout that. I ain’t never been in love.”
Shock
washed over the fake naïve look on her face and her jaw drooped.
“You’ve never
been in love?” she asked, sounding like a dumb blonde with hair dyed a deep brunette.
“Nope and I
don’t think I’m missin’ anything. From what I know love make you do stupid shit
and I’ve done enough stupid shit already.”
E
called me back the next morning and told me he’d sent a Fedex with a set of
keys and the address to one of the apartment buildings his mother owned. It was
on the porch the next morning. E always knew how to hook it up.
But
getting that envelope was the only time I stepped out of the house for those
two days. I spent most of the time up
in my room. I tried to sleep for as
long as I could but kept seeing the blood oozing onto the sidewalk and that
final look on Nick’s face, a last appeal for mercy that went unheeded. I smoked the last of a dime bag Snow had
given me a week before but I never left the ground. I imagined SWAT teams gathering just outside the front gate. I
pictured Nick’s brother or cousin or maybe even his high school counselor
loading up the artillery and coming after all of us. I imagined a driveby where
we all got killed. They would even find Cuckoo out in Maryland. I knew fate had both feet on the gas and
would pop the curb to drive straight into my living room. I didn’t even think
I’d live long enough to see that envelope on the porch. But when it came I knew it was time for me
to go.
"So is
this your first apartment?” she asked me.
“Yeah, first
time I ever left home. But it’s just me and my Pops at home and he works all
the time. So I been on my own before.”
“So you don’t
get lonely?”
“I don’t
know,” I said, thinking about it. “ For me that was always the way it was. It
was always just me and maybe my boys. So I guess I ain’t ever had enough people
around me to make me know what lonely feels like.”
“You regret
that?”
“That’s just
the way it was. I don’t really regret nothin’. Well, almost nothin’.”
Then
dinner was served and as I sat at the white girl’s dinner table two hours after
I had gotten into town, I still didn't have it all together and I felt like it
showed. My clothes stuck to me from the
humidity and I had been chain smoking Newports for more than 36 hours. I just needed to lay low. But I hadn’t
expected that anyone else would be there, that others would be trying to lay
low with me.
The white white girl was named Qualie Madison. She hated her name. She’d
learned to cook chicken parmigian from her mother when she was 15 and she
wanted to be an accountant when she finished school. She was 20 and she had
moved in a month before me to the day and she said that she liked it, even
though her parents said that all the black people in the building made them
uncomfortable.
"So what
are you going to be doing down here?" she asked cheerfully while pouring
me another glass of wine. I had never actually had wine before, not good wine
at least. I took gulps instead of civilized sips. My idea of drinking was
getting faded off of malt liquor at a party or in front of somebody’s building
and then throwing up on the sidewalk across the street from my house at the end
of the night. Now in Charlotte I was having wine with dinner. Up until then I
thought that was the kind of thing that only happened in those three-floor
townhouses up on 16th street where all the paid people lived. I
definitely was not at home.
"Just
chillin with my man. But..so..are you from here?" I asked to show her that
I was actually interested in the conversation. I spoke with my eyes still
focused on my nearly-cleaned plate. She giggled and shook her head. Her buzz
was obvious.
"No I'm
from Chattanooga but my folks and me moved up here when I was in high
school."
"What's
the difference between here and Chattanooga?" I asked.
From what I
knew everything in the South was the same. It was all supposed to be dirt roads
and tobacco fields.
"Charlotte's
going somewhere. Chattanooga isn't." she replied matter-of-factly.
There was this tension around
her eyes that told me she was somewhere west of the truth. She was telling me
what she thought I wanted to hear. That bothered me even though I was doing the
same thing.
Charlotte
was the furthest I had ever been outside of DC. The city seemed artificial,
like it had been grown in a lab. It didn’t have a voice or a tradition. But at
least it was quiet.
From the
highway all I could see was suburban turf. There were stretches of houses and
trees and shopping areas and grocery stores. But then it looked like they had
just dropped six or seven blocks of large buildings and tall skyscrapers in the
middle of it so that they could call it a city. That didn’t fit. When I drove
through what they called downtown a little after seven it had been deserted.
There wasn’t a single person on the street. To me that wasn’t how real cities
were. It definitely wasn’t like that at
home.
E’s Mama’s apartment building was on Tryon
Street. Tryon stretched from the middle of downtown all the way out into the
suburbs by UNC Charlotte. It was one of
a few remaining buildings that sat on the thin line of structures between the
mostly suburban and supposedly urban parts of Charlotte. I had never seen buildings as tall as
downtown Charlotte’s before. But that
still didn’t make Charlotte a real city.
But to be honest I wasn’t concerned about
Charlotte and it’s pseudo-city status.
I didn't think I could find anywhere on the planet that was better than
home. I had everything I needed on my
block and in my city.
Qualie said
that when she graduated from high school it was like she finally had a chance
to see the world. For us graduation just meant that you stopped going to school
and you started working. That was it and that was why it surprised all of us
when E decided to break the mold.
Her hair was cut a little shorter than a bob,
like a black girl’s, and her eyes were a creamy green like jade. I was sure plenty of men had wanted her. She
looked like a girl I might have seen on the movie of the week playing
somebody’s too stupid for her own good mistress. I hadn’t been that close that
kind of girl before and the words flying out of her mouth meant almost nothing
to me most of the time we talked. But I wanted to know more about her world,
the one I never wanted to live in.
“I know
you’re barely moved in and all. You can
stay up here tonight if you like. I have a sofa bed….”
“Nah, that’s
alright,” I said. My apartment’s got furniture in it so all I gotta do is lay
down.”
“You sure?”
she asked, “ I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”
“Nah, I’m
alright,” I said. “So what school you say you went to?”
“UNC
Charlotte. It’s really nice. I wish I could go full-time but I gotta pay the
bills you know. Maybe if I get a scholarship or somethin’ I will but I’m just
getting started so I want to take my time.”
“Don’t work
too hard.” I said. I had cleaned my
plate and every few minutes I peeked over at the stove to see if there was
anymore left. From what I could see the pan looked empty. I frowned.
“I just keep
working at it because I don’t want to be bartending in strip clubs for the rest
of my life.”
“My Pop’s a
bartender. There’s worse jobs you can have.”
“I didn’t
mean it like that. I’m not even a good bartender. I mess up drinks all the
time.”
I
had had five glasses of wine and my head felt like a cinderblock. I started
looking at the door but I didn’t want to move. The drive and the stress and all
the cigarettes had taken their toll.
Her couch started to sound like a good move.
“My Pop never
messed up a drink.” I said, “He likes drinking too much.”
“Is he an
alcoholic?” she asked.
“Nah, nothin’
like that. But he can drink a lot though. He likes mixing things together to
see what he can come up with. He always tries to come up with somethin
special.”
“Can you make
anything special?” she asked. It wasn’t what she said but the way she said it.
She had leaned her body towards me as the words parted her lips, as if my
answer would take our dinner to some new level. That was when I knew it was
time for me to leave.
“Thanks for
the dinner but I’m ‘bout to be out,” I said as I struggled to get up. My legs
felt like they might fold under me but they held.
“You sure you
don’t want to…”
“Nah, I’m
‘bout to get some sleep,” I said. She
practically had to jog to catch me as I got to the door.
“Well maybe
we can get together again sometime.”
“I don’t
think so,” I said, “but I’ll probably see you around. I closed the door behind me and in her face at the same time.
My
head felt 20 pounds lighter in the hallway. I had killed a man and I didn’t
know what to think about it. She had cooked me dinner hoping to get something
else and I don’t think she knew what to think about it. I’d never had dinner
with anyone white before. To me all white people were like her, ghosts that lit
candles in their apartments and felt uncomfortable in my neighborhood. I wasn’t looking forward to dining with them
again.
The
apartment was the same as it was two hours before. In the dark I found my way
over to my duffel bag and took out the Baretta. It was heavy in my hand. I
tucked it behind the pillow on the futon. I didn’t feel safe but I was too
tired to care.
Ray
Ray had given the gun to me in my room right before I was about to leave. It
was his favorite gun and 9mms weren’t cheap to come across. It was brand new and had never been fired
and he wanted me to have it.
“If you get
into some shit I want you to do it how we do it,” he said as I tucked the piece
into my bag.
“Hopefully
there won’t be nothin’ to get into,” I said, “I been in enough already.”
I slapped his
hand and locked it and in ten minutes I was on my way towards 95 south.
But holding
it was all it took. Whenever I even touched
the steel I was back in that Congress Heights alley trying to recall how
it had happened so fast. Part of me had a permanent residence there. After all
it had been Nick’s fault. Hadn’t it? He had pushed me further than I'd ever
gone. He'd fucked my girl and he'd shot
at Snowflake and he was the kind of pretty muthafucka that got on my nerves
just for existing. That was the how when and why and enough to switch all my
morals off. But now my morals were back in place and I was on the run. The run
was going to kill me slowly.
When I stretched out on the futon my eyelids
were propped open by an unknown force. I was up for another hour before the
darkness in front of my eyes started to blur. I heard the voices in the
darkness of that basement and I felt my finger tighten on that trigger followed
by the kick from the pistol as it fired once. "It only takes one
shot," Pop used to tell me. He was
right.
Monday
The
noise at the door sharpened the darkened room into focus. When the deadbolt
clicked I tumbled into paranoia and grabbed for the Baretta under the pillow. I
had it cocked and aimed by the time the door creaked open.
"You better get the fuck outta
here!" I said loudly. My heart beat like a kick-drum.
"Good
thing I wasn't the super," the voice replied calmly.
It was a voice I knew too well.
It had a little more bass and a tiny bit of a southern twang but I knew
it was E. I let out a sigh of relief and lowered the pistol.
"Nigga
don't you know how to knock?" I asked.
"Not
when I got a key to every apartment in the building. Shit, you should be
lettin’ me shoot your ass after what I went through to get you in here. Moms must
really love me to let me give up one of her places when she only met you
once."
In the dark there seemed to be miles and
years between us, even though it was really only a few feet and a few months
since he’d come back to the neighborhood for New Years. The silhouette of his
arm dug into his left pants pocket. There was a flicking sound and a stream of
flame rose from his fist that momentarily gave his bearded face an orange glow
while he lit his cigarette. He had on a shirt and tie and dress pants. Looking
at him I almost forgot that he and I had run the neighborhood together for most
of our lives.
In
the dark he walked back towards the doorway where the light from the hall crept
into the room. I got up and followed. The light hurt my eyes but they
adjusted.
Enrique hated
the dark. He’d used to leave all three lights on in his room at night while he
slept. I think it was psychological. Before he moved to Shaw he told me he had
spent close to a month living in a one-room studio apartment with no lights
over in Southeast because of some problem his Dad had with the power company or
the landlord or somebody. After something like that I’d always keep the lights
on too.
"I gotta
thank your Moms for lookin' out," I said as I tucked the gun into my
shorts. I felt along the wall for the light switch and found it. The ceiling
light washed over the room and E sighed for relief and moved back into the
apartment.
His cornows
were gone with only a close Caesar in their place. He had gotten a little
taller and he wasn’t as skinny as I remembered him. Instead of the old E he
came off like a fifth grader who'd been stuck in his picture day clothes for an
extra nine years.
“So what’s
up? What's all this surprise visit stuff about?" He sat down and folded
his jacket over the arm of the couch.
"It's a
long story," I said. My stomach growled even though the chicken parmigian
hadn’t fully digested. "Get me sumpin' to eat and I'll break it down for
you."
"You
tryin’ to eat in Charlotte at eleven'o clock at night in the middle of the
week? We ain't got too many choices except for IHOP or somethin."
"You
know I don't care." I replied, resigned to consume anything edible.
"Then
let's roll." he said grinning as we jetted out. I locked the door behind
me.
The first time I met E he'd almost whipped my
ass in a fight on the playground. He had just moved on the block from Southeast
and I'd decided to show him that being down with the neighborhood was a
privilege you had to earn. He called next on the basketball court while we were
playing and when his time came I knocked his skinny nine year-old frame down on
the first play. After twenty seconds of talking out of the sides of our necks I
hit him. Then he hit me. Then I hit him again. But he just kept coming back,
each time faster and stronger.
Kenny and
Frank and some of the other little dudes I hung with tried to jump in but I
signaled them to back off. After I blocked his last blow and connected with
mine I told him that he was cool. He obviously didn’t get that it was over
because he kept staring at all of us like we were about to kill him. He had
fought for his life while I had taken it as just another scrap. That was the
difference between us.
He started coming over to my house. I went to see him and his Dad over
at their apartment and by the time the sixth grade rolled around if you saw one
of us and not the other there was a problem. We were two parts of the same
whole, little ghetto boys looking for mothers that weren't around and neither
of us wanted to end up like the kids that got sent to Oakhill and receiving
homes and never came back.
E's
sparkling periwinkle 4-Runner was double-parked in front of the building. The
humidity outside made the air so thick that it could have been liquid. I might
not have been so hot if I wasn’t wearing a black t-shirt, jeans and boots in
the stifling heat. I’d forgotten my
shorts and tennis shoes when I was packing.
His
jeep was perfect. It was buffed and
polished like a trophy and I was a little jealous when I compared it to my '88
Maxima with the missing hubcap that was parked a few cars down. Before I saw
him I was happy to have new tires, but E had a brand new ride.
He turned on
the radio and the Wu Tang Clan shredded the silence. I fiddled with the Newport
he had given me on the stairwell and pushed in the lighter next to the ashtray.
Then we pulled off.
"What
you so nervous about?" he asked me, his eyes focused on the road the whole
time. "You only play wit’ your smokes when you nervous."
"I'll
tell you about it when we get there," I said as I pulled the lighter out
and lit the cigarette. A thin puff of smoke pushed its way between my lips and
hung in the hot liquid air.
"You
don't even know where we're goin." he replied.
"Wit'
erything I been through it don't make no difference. "Long as it’s gonna
be food." I looked out the window at the barren streets. We drove past the
moonlit silhouettes of a few abandoned buildings and warehouses. Everything
seemed dead. I once again asked myself what I was doing there and what I could
possibly find 500 miles from home.
"It sure
as hell ain't home is it?" Enrique interrupted as if he’d read my mind. I
figured with me sitting there he was imagining his new city through my eyes.
"At home
this time of night in the summer shit is
just gettin' started. You know, last summer when I first got here and me and Ma used to get into fights all the time, I’d go out but I could never find anything to do. So I’d just end up drivin’ forever. It ain’t been easy getting used to livin here. After all, when I first came down I sorta hated my Moms. Well anyway Charlotte ain’t DC."
"Ain't
dat the truth." There was very little in my life I hadn’t done without him
there. I remembered the many nights he and I had spent stretched out on my
porch trying to get sober before we faced our fathers. He had more to worry
about. His Dad had been an alcoholic. My Dad was a bartender. What could Pop
really say to me? But still I didn’t want to press my luck. And that had all
happened in a different place, a different life for him.
"You
like it down here?" I asked him as we turned onto Interstate 77.
"It's
good and it's bad," he said, grinning to himself. "It's safe down
here. Not like they don't be shooting
as much here. Plus nobody knows me. I ain’t got nothin’ to worry about like I
do at home and when I’m out workin’, even the white boys call me Mr.
Mitchell."
"That sound alright to me. Don't
nobody call me nothin at my job."
"Man, names don’t mean nothin’. We
both getting’ paychecks at the end of the week and that's all that matters. But
I ain’t gon’ lie. I kinda miss home. I miss it every day." He reached for
my cigarette and took a drag. "So what you here for anyway?"
I
paused for a minute, unsure of whether or not he wanted the long or the short
version. I wasn't even sure of which was which myself.
"Just
trying' to chill out for a second," I replied as I exhaled another
whirling cloud of smoke. This time it got sucked out of the open window.
"Guess you don't like to use the air?"
"Burns
up your gas and jeeps use too much gas anyway," he said. We took an exit off of 77 and ended up
cruising into a string of residential districts. Somewhere along the way E had
decided on a change of plans. We were heading somewhere else. He told me there
would be food there so I didn’t complain.
I
wanted to tell him about Nick. I had almost let it out of the bag on the phone
with him the first time I had called but something had stopped me. It was the
same unknown thing that had me fiending for another cigarette so that I could
exhale more smoke in the place of reality. But we both appeared to be out of
cigarettes and I was never good at hiding anything from E.
"I
killed a nigga!" I blurted out so fast that I don't think he really heard
me.
"What the
fuck are you talkin' about?" he said laughing.
"That's
why I'm here. "Cause I killed a nigga."
He laughed harder this time.
"Who the fuck did you kill?" he asked jokingly. I didn’t say anything at first and that somehow
made him see that I was serious. The smile faded from his face. "Who the
fuck did you kill?" he asked me again.
“You know
Sierra right?
“You killed Sierra?” he asked in more of an alarmed
tone than I’d ever heard him use.
“No,
shut up and let me finish. I walked in
on her fucking some other dude over at her house.”
“And
you shot’em both?”
“Nah
man. He ran the fuck out the house and
I just stood there. And you know I had
to tell Flake and Ray about that shit.
So when I told’em they was like we should go up to that nigga’s job and
do what we had to do. But we went up
there and the cat ran out. We ran out
after him and he started shootin’ at us wit’ a punk ass .22. And he thought he
got away but we seen him that night at party for one of Snow’s cousins who
died. I ran up on him and we started
boxin’. Then either Cuckoo or Ray put a
.380 in my hand and when I chased him out back I just ended up shootin
him. I don’t even remember decidin’ do
it. Next thing I knew I had pulled the
trigger.”
E didn’t say
a word for awhile. I was surprised he hadn't pulled over or slammed on the
brakes but he just stared off into space. We finally came to a stop sign and he
turned and looked at me.
"You sure you ain’t fuckin' 'wit
me?" he said making sure that I wasn't joking.
"How I’ma joke about killin a
nigga?"
He paused again and pulled a brand new pack of Newports from the tray on
the driver’s side door and handed me one. He took another for himself and lit
us both up again.
"Well
it’s done now, nigga. Fuck it,” he said in trying to convince his best friend
that it was just something that had happened back at the neighborhood. But he
knew what it meant. I’d now
inadvertently crossed the line we’d drawn between us and Snow and Ray. “But you
know you got a place to stay if you ain't ready to go home for awhile. I know
that place ain't the Ritz-Carlton or nothin' but it's a roof." Even if I was a murderer I was still his
best friend.
E’s reactions
gave me the relief it had intended. I was still the same man. I’d just made a mistake. Sure it had cost
someone his life, his family a loved one, Sierra a lover. But nonetheless it was a mistake. And mistakes could be forgiven.
"You
ain't even got to say all that," I replied to his offer and pledge of
allegiance. "The rules ain't changed." With that E grinned and he seemed comfortable again. He shifted the car back into drive and we
finally pulled away from the stop sign.
We parked in front of a three-story house
with a few people out in front of it.
I’d confessed to an innocent party and the complications of being a
murderer hit me like a sledgehammer. My
chest tightened and my feet started to tremble. I took a deep drag from my
square and tried to relax. I breathed in an out and tried to look calm for my
friend, the one who had accepted me even after knowing my crime. Just then I
envied him. He’d gotten out in time. "You glad you left ain't you?" I
asked.
"Right
about now I most definitely am. I wish you had left wit’ me." He sucked in
the last half of his cigarette and flicked it out the window towards the
street. A white cloud erupted from his nostrils and he grinned to himself.
"What's
so funny?" I asked.
"You."
he said. " I gotta be honest. I ain't never figure you'd be able to do it.
I know I couldn’t have."
"Neither
did I," I replied remembering the bulletpunching that hole through his
frontal lobe, the bloody redness visible beneath the streetlight above. “You never know what you gonna do.
"Life's
full of surprises, ain't it?" He
took his key from the ignition. "Let's go." He ejected himself from
the jeep and I followed. The doors power-locked themselves behind us. E spoke
to a few of the dudes outside before I followed him to the front door.
It
was a thick oak door with a brass panther on the knocker. I hadn’t even seen
anything like it on TV. E brought it down twice with two loud thuds and I
jettisoned the last of my cigarette towards the lawn. There was a long pause
and I listened to a million crickets sing the same song from all sides of the
house. But when the door finally opened the last thing I was thinking about was
the crickets.
She
was tall and slender like a track star. Her hair was a medium brown with blonde
streaks in it and her exposed stomach was rippled. She reminded me of that
singer Aaliyah but her lips had more of a pout to them. I didn’t know who she
was but I was closer to love than I had ever been before.
"Took
you long enough," she said with more of a southern accent than I had
expected. She stood in the doorway without any sign that she planned to let us in.
"Sorry
baby, but I had to pick my boy up from his place over on Tryon. You know how
out of the way that is," he said.
"I'll
let you slide this time but next time you won't be so lucky." She smiled.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into a kiss. It wasn't a
short kiss either. It was one of those kisses that you give your girl in public
to let every man know that not only had the property been sold but so had all
the land that was anywhere near it. My hopes withered like a dream deferred.
Then their lips released them.
"Oh I'm
sorry, I'm Yvette." She reached out and shook my hand, " It’s nice to
meet you. What's your name?"
"That's
my boy Thai." E said. For the first time in a long time I had actually
wanted to answer myself.
"What,
he can't speak?" she asked.
"Yeah I
can speak. He just like to hear himself talk." I replied.
"Ain't
that the truth," she said followed by the smile, "Come on in,
sweetie."
It
was a house straight off of the Cosby show. Cliff and Claire Huxtable were only
things that came to mind when I saw the books and the art and the spotless
sofas and all the woodwork that surrounded us. Whoever Yvette's parents they
were rich and being rich was one more thing I knew nothing about.
Everyone
was piled into the living room. There were at least twenty people and all of
them were wearing something they would have gotten them robbed where I was
from. Most of the girls were on the rug sitting too close to the big-screen
watching Purple Rain. I had never seen the movie before but I knew
what it was. There weren’t too many movies where a black man had on purple high
heel boots.
One
of the girls on the floor was pregnant. Her round belly poked out of her Dolce
and Gabbana t-shirt. She looked up at me but cut her eyes away before she
thought that I could notice. The dudes sat on the couches behind the girls, or
they stood in corners watching the girls watch the movie. A couple who looked a
little older than the rest were snuggled up on the far couch in the corner. Two
heavy-set girls came out of the kitchen with glasses of something clear that
probably wasn’t water. But there was
someone in the background who caught my attention.
She seemed
tall for a girl and when I saw her I forgot about my hunger. E tapped me on the
shoulder and leaned over.
“Look before
you touch,” he said. It was a code that
meant a lot of the girls had men and that they were the kind of dudes I
shouldn’t take lightly. Rich girls loved thugs. I nodded to him and then
started across the sea of the uninteresting people towards the center of my
attention. E was plotting to get Yvette upstairs. I envied him. Pussy was going
to be a lot harder for me to come by.
As
I moved towards my mystery woman I thought about E. He had changed. He wasn’t
the kid I had met on the basketball court who only had three pairs of pants,
four shirts and a pair of beat-up British Knights. But I wasn’t the same
either.
From the
living room she had looked like a mannequin. Now she looked like a dancer, the
kind from The Nutcracker or a musical. I saw the Nutcracker on a school trip.
Her hips and shoulders were perfectly rounded like a sculpture.
I didn’t know
what I was going to say as I approached. Looking around me I was definitely out
of my element. That meant that she probably wasn’t my cup of tea. But one had
to try a different flavor now and again. I was sure that one of the usual
tactics would suffice.
“What you
doin’ over here by yourself?”
“Mindin’ my
own business,” she said without even looking at me. “You should do the same.”
Apparently the usual tactics weren’t too effective. And of course I had my
pride to consider.
“I am mindin’
my own binness,” I said. “You’re blockin my view.”
“Your view of
what?” she asked. She looked in my direction for the first time.
“The outside.
You know? It’s what you look through the window to see from the inside.” She
smiled. That meant I had scored a point somewhere.
“Yeah, I know
that,” she said, “ but ain’t nothin out there but the dark.”