After Tupac & D Foster (11 page)

“Y’all having a party?”

Neeka nodded. “Tash is coming home today. If we’d’a known how to reach you, we would’ve called.”

After a minute she said, “We missed you, D! You can’t be leaving your girls hanging like that!”

D looked at me and Neeka. Then she turned to her mama and said, “I’m gonna walk over there and talk to my girls a minute.”

D’s mama nodded, then checked her watch. “Our bus leaves in two hours, Desiree. We still have to pick up your things.”

“Desiree?” I said. “Your name’s Desiree?”

Neeka looked on like
Desiree
had grown two new heads.

“That’s my birth name,” she said. “Desiree Johnson. She’s the only one be calling me that.”

We walked a little bit away from
Desiree’s
mama.

“I thought your last name was Foster,” I said.

D shook her head. “Nah, it’s really Johnson. I just dropped the Johnson and added Foster because I was in foster care so much.”

“We didn’t even know your name,” I said, more to myself than to D.

“You didn’t tell us your mama was white,” Neeka whispered.

“I didn’t think that mattered,” D said. “What difference would it make? You gonna like me less or more because I got a white mama?” She looked at me. “Or because my name wasn’t my name?”

“We would have known you some,” Neeka said. “That’s all. We would have been able to put the D puzzle together a little bit more.”

D smiled.

“I came on this street and y’all became my friends. That’s the D puzzle. I talked about roaming and y’all listened. I sat down and ate with your mamas and it felt like I was finally belonging somewhere. Us three’s the puzzle. It’s just a three-piece puzzle.”

Neeka shook her head. “You never really told us who you were, girl. We was all the time trying to figure it out.”

“But all you had to do was ask.”

Neeka put her hands on her hips. “We
did
ask.”

“And now the answers are coming,” D said. She looked over at her mama. Her voice dropped down a bit. “And anyway,” she said, “the D puzzle ain’t never going to be all together. I ask her who my daddy is and she says,
A man who likes to roam.
I ask her what it was like when I was a baby and she says,
Alcohol erased that memory, but I don’t drink no more
. So the puzzle’s always gonna have all these missing pieces, all these
holes
up in it.”

Some church ladies moved by us, said hello and headed on up into Neeka’s place.

“Y’all know I ain’t coming to say good-bye,” D said. She was carrying a shoulder bag and she set it down on the curb and reached inside it. “I got something for you.” She pulled out a brand-new package of clothesline rope and handed it to Neeka. “The way I figure it, somebody else might come down this block one day and be wanting to be friends with y’all. If she don’t have a rope, at least you will.”

I felt my eyes starting to get stingy. I wiped them real fast and looked away from D. From
Desiree
.

“Y’all let me play with you once. And when I get upstate, I’m sure there’s gonna be some sisters looking for somebody to take the other end of the rope and it’s gonna be me all over again. And then I’m gonna get on a bus, head down here and show you how they rocking it up there. But I ain’t saying good-bye. I ain’t never saying good-bye to you.”

“We’re Three the Hard Way,” Neeka said softly. She was looking down at the rope in her hand, like it was taking her way back to the beginning.

“We always gonna be Three the Hard Way,” I said.

Neeka had the earphones draped over her shoulder. She took them off and handed D—
Desiree—
the Walkman.

“It’s Tupac,” she said. “Keep the whole thing. I know how you love his gangsta behind.”

Desiree didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she put the Walkman in her bag and threw her arms around Neeka. They stood there, holding each other for a long time. When they pulled away, they were both crying. Then D hugged me.

You’re a part of me,
she whispered, her mouth close to my ear.
You’re in my heart.Forever and always, all right?

I nodded. If I said one word, I knew I’d start crying and not be able to stop.

“Desiree . . . ” D’s mama called.

“I’m coming!” D yelled, not turning away from us. “She better cool it or else
I’ll
be telling her to step. Be my turn to leave
her
.”

Neeka smiled. “You know you’re going with that woman. You want a mama too much to let her get away again.”

D nodded. She put her hands in her pockets and looked over at her mama. After a moment, she brushed her hair away from her eyes with her hand, squinted into the sun and smiled.

Maybe I’d live to be a hundred. And if I did, I wouldn’t forget that smile. Her green eyes—that were her white mama’s green eyes and maybe her mama’s mama’s green eyes—got bright and sad. When the tears started coming, she didn’t wipe them away.

“These two years,” she said to me and Neeka. “They was all part of the Big Purpose, you know. We ain’t never gonna even try to forget each other. And when we grown and back together again, or when we’re all old sitting in rocking chairs somewhere, we gonna remember everything. Every single inch and day and hour and minute and piece of us together now.”

“You think we’re gonna remember all of it, D?” I asked.

D didn’t say anything. Just hugged me and Neeka again and headed back over to her mama. Her mama put her arm around D’s shoulder and D grabbed her mama’s hand. Only then did she turn around and nod.

“Yeah, girl,” she said. “Everything.”

Then me and Neeka watched them walk down the street.

“You better call us!” Neeka yelled. “You better write us and stuff.”

“You know I will,” D yelled back. “Three the Hard Way.”

“Three the Hard Way,” me and Neeka said back to her. Then Desiree and her mama turned the corner and walked on out of our lives.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jayjones’ first college scholarship offer came from a small school in Maryland. And by the end of the week, letters were coming from everywhere—including Georgetown, where, according to Jayjones, Patrick Ewing had played. I didn’t know Patrick Ewing from a can of paint, but Jayjones seemed to think he was something real special because he grabbed Neeka and spun her around their house like he’d lost the very last bit of his mind. Then he picked up Miss Irene and each one of the twins and even Tash. When he went to pick up his daddy, his daddy got there first, picked Jayjones up and spun
him
around. The whole house was dancing around and laughing and making all kinds of noise.

“Start deciding where y’all want to live,” Jayjones said. “The way I figure it, in four and half years, we’re gonna be moving in!”

Miss Irene invited Mama and some people from church. Tash invited some of his girls from the river and we had a small party that night. Miss Irene had gotten Tash a keyboard as a welcome home present, and when he plugged it in and started moving his fingers over the keys, it was like no time had passed since he was sitting at church making the women dab at their eyes.

Me and Neeka stood beside him.

“Sing ‘By and By,’” Tash said.

“Too churchy,” Neeka said, turning up her lip.

“You need some ‘churchy,’” Tash said, swatting her on the butt. So me and Neeka sang it, and somewhere over the summer, our voices had changed a little bit and grown closer to each other. Her low and my somewhere in between sounded like one voice with a whole lot of different things happening inside it. As we sang, I looked out at everyone and saw my own mama dabbing at her eyes.

“By and by, when the morning comes, You know all saints are bound to come on home . . . We will tell the story of how we’ve overcome and we’ll understand it better by and by. Yes, we’ll understand it better by and by . . .”

Neeka’s voice went down low and I followed up high. We looked at each other and smiled as we sang that song, watching to see where we’d take each other. We had a harmony going, a sad, new familiar harmony that was figuring itself out. Maybe that was
our
Big Purpose—to figure ourselves on out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We got through the first week of school with Miss Irene still taking us and being right there at the end of the day to bring me and Neeka home. I guess since there was other kids getting picked up by their mamas and babysitters and big sisters and brothers and stuff, we didn’t look all that strange, but it felt lame. Here we were, already teenagers, and every day, rain, shine or whatever, there was Miss Irene, standing there outside our school.

“Just keeping you safe,” Mama said when I asked her how come me and Neeka couldn’t just get home on our own. I’d asked the question a lot over the years and each time we had the same old tired dialogue.

“Safe from what? Ain’t nothing out there—” Mama shot me a look. “There isn’t anything out there trying to get us, Ma! This is Queens. Nobody trying to mess with nobody from Queens. They too busy messing with people in Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx. Nobody wants to take two trains and a bus to get out here and bother our sorry behinds.”

“Because Miss Irene’s there waiting for them if they do,” Mama said.

I folded my arms. It was Friday evening and Neeka was at church with her family. And D was gone. Wasn’t nothing to do but stand and argue with Mama and I wasn’t even trying to waste all my breath on that.

“Y’all act like me and Neeka babies.”

Mama was standing at the bathroom mirror, plucking her eyebrows. She didn’t even blink or turn and look at me.

“Oh, you’re acting like a real grown-up right about now, aren’t you?” she said. Then went back to plucking.

I turned and headed for the door.

“I’m going to the stairs,” I said, letting the door slam hard behind me.

It had rained all day and now the air felt muggy. But the stairs were dry, so I sat down and stared out over the street. A few doors away, some dads were sitting at a table playing dominoes. I could smell their cigar smoke. The dominoes made a hard sound when they hit the table and every once in a while one of the men laughed.

Can’t touch that
, I heard one of them say.

I saw Tash walking up the street. When he got to the men’s table, he stopped and said hi to a few of them. I could see one of them get up and give him a hug. Two of the other men made faces at each other. As he walked away, I heard one of them say,
Glad you home, Tash
. The two men who had made the face leaned in to each other, said something, then laughed. And something about their laughter, the hollow way it echoed down the block, the way Tash tried to walk a little straighter and taller away from it, made me take some small breaths and press my fingernails into my hands to keep from feeling the sadness that filled me up.

“How come you ain’t at church?” I said when Tash was close up on me. I wanted to drown out the sound of the laughter behind him, wanted him to forget that men who could laugh at you like that lived so close.

He jumped a little.

“Girl, you trying to scare me half to death. What are you doing sitting out in this darkness by yourself ?”

Tash was wearing a light green silky-looking shirt. The top two buttons were open and I could see his skinny chest muscles. He’d gotten his hair twisted and the locks were done up in a crown on top of his head. He looked beautiful—not like a beautiful woman. He looked like a beautiful man—like something you wanted to run your hand over and stare at for a long time.

“You looking good, Tash.”

Tash rolled his eyes at me. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m alone because your mama took my girl to church. How come you ain’t there playing the piano?”

Tash waved his hand at me and sat on the bottom step.

“Because it’s Friday night and this sister is going out to get her club on! When have you ever known me to step up in church on a Friday night? Shoot. If you see my fingers flying over the keys, the only thing you can be sure of is that it’s Sunday!”

I smiled.

“Y’all hear anything from your friend?”

“Nah.”

I looked back off down the street. The men were all laughing now and I could see one slap another on the back.

“I know you and Neeka be missing her like crazy.”

I shrugged.

“She says she’s gonna write us or call when everything settles down. I figure it ain’t quite all settled yet.”

“As they say up in church—
Well . . . !
”

I smiled. Me and Tash sat real quiet for a few minutes. He looked at his watch, then leaned back on the stair and worked the cuff of his shirt for a bit.

“Tash?”

“Yeah, baby,” Tash said, not looking up at me. He’d moved on to the other cuff. When he’d folded them both up just right, he looked at me.

“You ever think about what happened to Randall?”

“No. I know what happened to Mr. Randall. I wouldn’t be home if it wasn’t for him.”

I frowned. “Come again?”

Tash lifted one of his eyebrows and smiled.

“Neeka ain’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Mr. Randall’s the reason I got my appeal finally. He got his mind back down in them Georgia hills and let the authorities know it was just some more of that gay-bashing bull that got us all tore up. My stupidity was believing that Sly was trying to get with me. And the stuff that happened at Rikers, they already knew that was self-defense.” Tash gave me a fierce look. “I hope you and Neeka ain’t trying to mess with any of these wannabe gangstas out here, because it’s no good. I’m not trying to be your mama or nothing, I’m just keeping it real.”

“Ain’t no real gangstas in this neighborhood.”

“That’s why I said ‘wannabe.’ Those the worse kind. Try harder than the real ones.”

“If Mr. Randall would’ve died,” I said slowly, “you would still be in jail.”

“Girl, don’t even try to go there. I seen enough jail for two lifetimes.”