CHAPTER TEN

 
 

The police questioned everyone for hours. What facts they could piece together from the jumbled statements was anyone's guess. Folks recounted little past fists flying and barely remembered glimpses of faces here and there.

  Lady G hadn't left King's side since the attack. Though he towered over her, a tremor of fear ran through him. Instinct fought against the connection he sensed with her. His gut told him to move along – run if need be – that she was trouble waiting to hurt him. Many times he'd encountered women like Lady G. Women who took one look at a darker brother and cast him aside like a lesion best scraped off. But maybe that was him being unnecessarily defensive. There was a familiarity to her, a piece of a puzzle he never knew was missing. Too much of that had been going on in his life lately, like a game was going on and everyone had a copy of the rulebook except him.

  "Can we get out of here?" Lady G slipped her gloved hand into his, soft, gentle, and unassuming. Struck by the mystery of the affection, King didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't wholly unpleasant.

  "Yeah, I only live a few blocks down."

  Lady G hesitated. She read his tone see if there was the hint of proposition, or worse, the expectation of one. The invitation wasn't what made her uncomfortable. It seemed genuine and despite there being little about his day to justify her feeling safe, she nevertheless did. No, what made her uncomfortable was being seen. Most times, no one saw her. People may have had a sense about homeless folks, the same way one could be in a darkened room and know that they weren't alone. People knew when to walk around them or speed out of the way of a possible solicitation of a handout.

  Like hunting deer, one didn't look for the deer themselves, but rather trained their eyes to detect movement or some evidence of presence. With homeless teens, one checked what didn't belong. Like wearing long sleeve shirts on an eighty degree evening. Why? Because it got cool under bridges even at night. Or duct-taped shoes. Or conspicuous backpacks, containing all of their earthly belongings. Nothing definitive, only clues to a greater story, once you know what to look for. If you bother looking at all.

  But King saw her.

  Lady G hiked her backpack onto her shoulder.

  "We ready to go?" Rhianna strode over to them, cutting a dagger-filled glance at Lady G's hand in King's. Percy, bruised and bandaged, followed behind her.

  "Nah, I think I'm all right," Lady G said.

  Rhianna continued to study King, wondering – though not having to guess too hard – what this oldass dude (he was what? Probably twenty-eight or something) wanted with her girl. "Where the spot be at?"

  "Round the way."

  "So is it just y'all or is there room for a few more?"

  "It's tight as it is."

  "It's like that?"

  "Yeah. I'll catch up with you," Lady G reassured her. "You be at the bank squat?"

  "Uh-uhn. I don't want every motherfucker knowin'."

  "I know a spot," Percy said.

  "All right then." Rhianna relaxed.

  "You sure?"

  "You giving me a choice?" Rhianna asked. Lady G shook her head. "All right then."

  Dismissed, Rhianna and Percy walked toward the bus stop. She turned around one last time to make sure her friend was OK only to spy Lady G leaning into King's casual embrace.

 

Big Momma sat on a plastic bench with her neighbor from across the way. Freshly coiffed gray hair, Big Momma's sculpted dignity was undercut by her ashy elbows. The slight heft to her gut actually matched her neighbor's. They didn't say anything, merely sat there. The night wind bit at them, unexpectedly cool for an August night. Lady G assumed a posture designed to keep her warm: arms pulled within her T-shirt. A security porch light lit the court of townhouses. They sat in white plastic lawn chairs. Bent over, King slowly rocked back and forth on the cooler that was his makeshift chair – letting Lady G have the last seat.

  "Who was that one girl who came up here halfnaked?" King asked.

  "Who? Alaina?" Lady G felt a pang of regret at belittling her dead nemesis.

  "Nah. Some spot girl, strolling on up talking about how she just got through letting another woman eat her coochie."

  "Around the kids?" the neighbor asked before taking another drag from her cigarette. That usually signaled a brewing shit storm if she built up a big enough head of steam. She had been married for six years to her high school sweetheart. After the birth of their daughter, their marriage had hit a rocky patch. He had simply had enough at playing grownup. The lure of whiling away his days running the streets proved easier than holding down a straight (read: boring) nine to five gig, but she had bills to pay. So she put his ass out. And took up smoking.

  "Ain't no kids around here anymore," King said. "Folks have to grow up too quick."

  "She had to have been high," Lady G said almost to herself, her mind still mulling over Alaina suddenly bugging out the way she did. "Tweaked out on something. She could be bad, but she don't wild out like that."

  "She like that?" King asked.

  "Just saying. I hear they've got new stuff coming in, got some folks acting up."

  After his father, Luther, died, his moms, Anyay, went off the rails. He lost her in degrees, so no one noticed for a long time. She moved out her momma's house, declaring it time further to spread her wings. More to let the streets seep into her, to find a connection to Luther. Love was a cancer which crept into you unsuspecting, and by the time you realize you have it, it had metastasized into every part of you. And Anyay sought her own brand of chemo, breaking her mother's heart. She died not too long after.

  Two kids later, from men fueling her chemotherapy, it was a short jump to living in their car. They maintained as best they could: school in the morning, cutting out early so that King could do lawn work and odd jobs to get enough money for hotel rooms at night. King thought that his mother would get her act together if she only had the little ones to worry about. A good woman still lived within the fiend she'd become, she just needed a push. The chance to gain her footing in life and she'd pull it together. He knew she would. So he left them.

  She and the kids froze to death that winter, a spike still stuck in her arm.

  "Where she stay at?"

  "Over at the Phoenix."

  "Hmph." Big Momma was a trip. Hers was the only name listed on the lease, her daughter's baby staying with her most of the time so that she could go to a better school. Which was fine with Big Momma. She'd done as much as she could for her own girl. Raised her, put some Jesus in her, prepared her for the world as best she could. But all the good training in the world couldn't trump the ways of the heart and her baby girl kept trying to fill the hole in her spirit with a man. Big Momma was one of those women who had a lot of love to give and hated an empty house. She believed Prez had a good heart but fell in with them boys before she could get a hold of him. She feared she'd lost him for good.

  "I hear the police scooped up Prez," King said as if reading her thoughts. He still rocked on his cooler.

  "His cousin is bonding him out."

  "How much?"

  "Two thousand. I hate dealing with him cause now every time I ask him for something, he's gonna be like 'that's coming out of the money to get your boy out'."

  "'Your boy'. Like they ain't cousins," the neighbor added.

  "OK," Big Momma amen-ed. "Still, I'm lucky that he has that much. The first is around the corner and he could've started crying 'rent's due'. I tell you what though, when Prez gets out, we gonna have a barbecue for the whole neighborhood."

  "I guess that means I'm cooking," King said.

  "That's why I'm telling you." Though she smiled a rueful grin, she wasn't fond of having her business discussed on the street. Of course, neither did King. "How's Nakia doing?"

  King's eyes narrowed, moving from Big Momma to Lady G. Lady G turned toward him, eyebrow arched. His eyes softened as a stratagem of how to play the situation to his advantage sprang to mind. And he wasn't going to give Big Momma the satisfaction of seeing him sweat or scramble. "Let me ask you something. If your baby's momma was with some dude, would you ask to meet him?"

  "Yeah. I'd want to know who my baby was spending time around."

  "That's what I'm saying. I don't want Nakia up around just anybody, but her momma says that I'm too ghetto to meet him."

  "So what'd you say?"

  "I said that 'I'm over you, so it's not like I'm gonna fight him or start anything. I just need to meet him.'"

  "Yeah, but she's still your baby's momma," Lady G said. She found herself wanting to tease out more information from him.

  "So?"

  "So… you always gonna have feelings for her." The statement sounded more like a question to his ear.

  "Not true. I just need to meet him cause if I see my daughter walking down the street with some dude I don't know, then I'm gonna jump on his face for real."

  King couldn't make up his mind who he was mad at the most. His baby's momma for getting pregnant. Himself for dropping out of high school to support her. Big Momma for floating his business. Or God for letting all this mess happen to him.

  King always had a path. Too many folks wanted everything handed to them, but he knew what he wanted, but all paths had the occasional bump. King had no reason being with his baby momma, especially for as long as he was. They knew each other from around the way and hooked up for no more reason than they were there. Then she turned up pregnant. King didn't know what it was, maybe the idea of being a father, but he saw things differently. He wanted to be there to hold Nakia, be a part of her life, show her how a man was supposed to be, so he tried to make it work with her momma. Like an arranged marriage, they had nothing in common except Nakia, he wasn't sure they even liked each other all that much. It was a relationship of convenience: he could be with his daughter and his baby momma had someone to pay the bills. Duty held them together. All this "being in love" bullshit was for poets and chick flicks. Real love went beyond the passion and hype and he had real love.

  For his baby girl.

  Eventually the relationship got old and his baby momma, bills or no bills, came to the point where it wasn't working and threw him out. Despite her getting on his last nerve, he had gotten kind of used to her. He almost missed her sorry ass, though mostly the empty space in his life, and that distant ache he felt was the absence of his daughter.

  "Man I wish next Wednesday would hurry up and get here," the neighbor said, trying to change the topic.

  "Why? You don't get paid till Friday," Big Momma said.

  "Wednesday's the first." Welfare check day.

  "I couldn't handle it if I got paid every other week. I couldn't budget right."

  "Me either. Had to learn." The neighbor flicked her cigarette butt in the bush just past King's head. "Still wish it would hurry up and get here, though."

  With the conversation devolving into the travails of budgeting, King nodded to Lady G and she followed him inside. Big Momma eyed them. Their court of opposing townhouses lived by its own code. Folks minded their own business as long as they were good neighbors. Even drug dealers: as long as they brought no drama to the court and were polite, a blind eye was conveniently taken. Them throwing the occasional barbecue spurred goodwill also.

  Dragging his cooler inside, he had a chair. Walls painted white, though they required a second coat of paint to cover the graffiti of folks who'd broken in previous. He left the condo unlocked. The back door and window King secured once he moved in. Upon entering, he locked the deadbolt behind them. The water still ran, but the power and gas had been cut off. King unfurled his bedding to form what passed for a couch. In the corner a stack of books propped up a large, quite full, backpack.

  The quaver of sexual ache shocked her. Her pulse quickened at his nearness and it turned her stomach. There was no mystery to boys. Simple creatures that delighted in the friction of lust. Rhianna's constant quest to bask in their attentions baffled her. To be the object of their desire, their conquest, was no difficult feat. She feared that part of her wanted – and feared even more that she needed – their attentions. Her sense of needing to belong. Perhaps to be owned. And wasn't that what relationships were? Two people owning one another, chained by the heart, the genitals, or however they chose to define love in the breathless moments between sheets. The content capture of heat and presence and temporarily satiated need. King must've stood six-six easy, half a foot taller than her. His goatee-framed lips – both pouty and sure – like a confident model. He wore his black shirt with two too many buttons undone, revealing a necklace of Mary and Jesus, except both were black. That was what she stared at when King's eyes caught hers.

  "Would you like something to drink?" King asked.

  "What do you have?"

  "How old are you?"

  "Why?"

  "Had to know if I only had water and Kool Aid."

  "As opposed to…?"

  "Beer."

  "I can vote, but you'd better serve me some water."

  Her contagious smile – a wide, even thing with teeth too small in her mouth – masked the pain just under her face. The pain that formed her skull. That writhed beneath her skin, a living hard thing. But her face hadn't asked for pity. It wore the veneer of an independent woman, quick to show affection in tiny ways if she felt safe. And she rarely felt safe beside any boy.

  Lady G wandered around the room, the space seeming that much greater without any furnishings. All of the townhouses in Breton Court had the same basic layout: a great room – the family room/dining room combo – with a small kitchen in the rear. The stairs at the entrance led to the two-to-three bedrooms. Lady G had no interest in a tour of upstairs; however, King's library fascinated her. Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, WEB DuBois, Paul Dunbar, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison. The title of a book on film caught her eye and made her giggle. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks.

  King enjoyed her laughter. "I like to know what I'm dealing with when I watch a show. Can't just let folks brainwash you."

  "I just try to enjoy a movie. Leave the deep stuff to folks who look for deep stuff."

  "You can't just let folks slip anything they want into you."

  "That's not what I'm saying. You see, there's two kinds of folks: simple and complex. I'm a simple girl. That ain't the same as dumb. I just don't make things complicated. To me, a movie's a movie. I ain't trying to find any social meaning, not trying to look for metaphors, or any of that other stuff. I'm just looking to kill a couple hours. You complex folks like to burn yourselves up looking for hidden meaning in everything."

  Lost in his thoughts, King hadn't realized how angry he always was. The knot that clotted his stomach and congealed in his veins had become such a part of him, he'd grown used to it. If he had to name the source of his anger, he'd be hard pressed. He had grown up with it for so long, it was all he knew. His constant companion. He doubted he would have even noticed how much it defined him until the constant churning leveled. His rage suddenly quelled. The darkness which shadowed the fringes of his life receded. Around her. And the implication frightened him. And the fear was every bit as uncomfortable as the anger. Something new to get used to. The fear wasn't so bad.

  Her forthrightness appealed to him. She wore a family reunion T-shirt, though it wasn't for her family, but a shirt she'd gotten from Outreach Inc. The tattoo on her shoulder was what he was staring at when her eyes caught his.

  "What are you looking at?"

  "The tattoo. BMG?"

  "Big Money Ganger." A regretful tone underscored her voice. She turned her shoulder from him.

  "A girl like you runs in a set?"

  "You have no idea what it's like to be me." Lady G stood by the window. She pulled back the venetian blinds to take in the evening scene.

  "True. You do seem to be quite the mystery."

  "Forget you." An unbidden smile betrayed her.

  "You make a brother work to talk to you." King sat on the cooler, inching it forward but not threateningly close.

  "If I don't want to say something to you, don't say nothing to me."

  "And if you do want to say something?"

  "Oh, you'll know."

  He nodded at the tattoo. "This what you saw yourself being when you were little?"

  "It feels like my kid life is gone outta me… if I ever had one. I want to own my own salon one day. One without all the gang and drug money all up in it. Baylon must own half a dozen by now."

  "You know B?" King's voice grew sharp, not that Lady G acted as if she caught it or the overly familiar recognition of Baylon as "B". They all came with the baggage of the past, not that any of it was his business, so she simply moved on.

  "He was trying to go with me, but he wasn't my type. He put that 'L' word in there, hit me too quick with that. I don't play that game. I don't put out signals and I don't read them terribly well. I feel something, I tell you. Problem with the rest of the boys I deal with, is that there's not enough truth in them. They can't just say 'I got feelings for you, I'm digging you. You kind of tight.' They can't admit that they want to treat you dirty. Do better."

  "I will," King said as if her "do better" was aimed at him.

  "Do you believe that some people are just… connected?"

  "What do you mean?" He knew what she meant.

  "Like how you can think of a friend and they just show up."

  "Or how you can be in need and they just know to come over or have the right thing to say."

  "Exactly."

  "Do you want to go out sometime?"

  "You ask out all the girls you rescue from a fight?"

  "Only the interesting ones." He stood up to kiss her, but she pulled away.

  "I keep myself to myself. I can give you a hug, though," she said with the crooked smile of a child who'd been caught in a lie.

  King saw the little girl in her then. The light and potential, the fragility and strength, that innocent part of her she still tried to cultivate as well as protect. The one who'd been fucked over too often by life along the way. And he felt as if something in his chest was broken, as if just realizing it for the first time.

  Both of them stood rigid within the embrace, as if neither knew what to do with the display of affection. He was pissed that he gave up something personal about himself within a few minutes of talking, but it happened right away like that sometimes. When he peered into those damaged almond eyes of hers, however, he belonged to her and she knew it, too. Their eyes smiled, hopeful despite themselves.

  They all had to play their roles.