After Tupac & D Foster (8 page)

“There’s millions of people in the world, though. And more getting born every day. And some of them blow up—like Tupac did. I think that’s why he’s so cool by me, because he didn’t come from any rich people like a lot of those celebrities be coming from—with their mamas or their daddies already movie stars.” Neeka leaned her head against the window. “I mean his parents were out there being Black Panthers and whatnot, but they was struggling too. Didn’t always have money. Didn’t always have food.”

Neeka looked at me. “I want to blow up. Have people knowing my name. I want to walk inside a subway car and have white people be giving me big respect instead of looking at me and my family like we some kind of circus act or something.”

Someone was eating something good—I could smell the flavors drifting through the bus. I could hear wax paper crinkling and an old lady’s voice saying,
Take a piece of this, honey. I know you hungry.

“I want people to see me,” Neeka said. “And know I’m
somebody
.”

“Too bad you can’t sing,” I said.

“I can sing.”

“Not good, though.”

Neeka jabbed me in the side but she was smiling.

“You know what I want to do,” she said, her voice getting real low. “I been thinking about it lots.”

“What?” I leaned a little closer to her.

“You can’t laugh at me.”

“Do I look like I’m gonna laugh, Neek?”

“I want to teach at a college. I want to be a college professor.”

I felt myself starting to laugh, but Neeka’s face got real serious, like she was daring me to.

“What are you gonna teach?”

Neeka turned back to the window and shrugged. “Maybe like math or law or something. I want to be in one of those big lecture rooms like you see in the colleges on TV. Where there’s all these kids and they’re listening to every single word the professor is saying. And the professor has those little half glasses that make him look real smart and every time a student asks him a question, he knows the answer.”

“Don’t you have to go to law school or something to teach law?”

Neeka shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“You’d be good at it, Neek. You’re always arguing with Jayjones. And usually you be winning.”

Neeka smiled. Then, real fast, her smile went away.

“If I was a lawyer already,” she said, “Tash wouldn’t be in jail probably. That lawyer didn’t even know what he was doing because my brother didn’t do nothing wrong. That’s what’s so messed up.”

“I know.”

“Tash didn’t know that guy was gonna rob anybody. Else he wouldn’t have been with him.”

“I know.”

Tash was doing time for an assault crime he didn’t commit. Neeka always said he was doing time for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everybody—except the judge and the jury—knew Tash wasn’t the kind of guy to assault anybody, unless they were messing with us. He always threatened, since we were tiny, to slice in half anybody that tried to mess with me and Neeka. And even though I’d never even seen him with a knife, I believed him. But he wasn’t in jail for slicing somebody who was messing with us.

“We all know,” Neeka said. “But we ain’t the ones that need to be knowing. Us knowing don’t do anybody any good.”

I started to say
I know
again but didn’t. Knew I didn’t have to.

Outside, the sun was up now. There were trees everywhere and the big green leaves on them looked heavy, like they wanted to pull the branches down. Every now and then, we passed a farm. I’d learned in school that the high dome-looking things were called silos. There was something so beautiful about the way they looked with the sun rising up over them and the farm looking all quiet and the cows barely moving—it felt like somebody somewhere was making the world a promise, a promise that there’d be a new day and that we’d have milk to drink. Always.

Seemed wrong to be seeing all that beauty outside with Neeka feeling sad and us going to see Tash in jail. Where Tash was, the walls were all painted the same sorry gray and there was always the sound of somebody yelling. The windows were real small and had bars on them. I couldn’t even imagine how it felt to look out on a beautiful new day through some bars.

I put my head on Neeka’s bony shoulder and we stared out the window, watching the farms move by us. Someone had put on some music—oldies songs. Behind me, Albert was still sitting next to Emmett and both of them were reading Emmett’s comic books. The girls had fallen asleep on each other. Behind them, Jayjones and Miss Irene were sitting together. Miss Irene was doing a crossword puzzle and Jayjones was listening to his Walkman and staring out the window.

“It’s all quiet now,” I said to Neeka. “You can start working on planning your Big Purpose.”

Neeka stared out the window. And nodded.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The loudest sound in the world is the soft click of prison gates locking behind you.

Maybe it’s how final it is—the loud slam of the gate, then the quick, gentle click. Then the scary feeling of it all being forever.

So many gates slamming shut. So many locks clicking. One after the other until you’re all the way inside.

And the only way out is at the hands of a prison guard, who has to press a button. And turn a key. Then press another button and turn another key. All the while staring at each of you. And you know what he’s thinking:

Remember this place good, y’all. We got a spot waiting for you.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Shoes and belts off,” the guards yelled.

We moved down the line slowly, waiting while the guards went through Miss Irene’s bag, searched inside the girls’ shoes, glared at Emmett and Albert and Jayjones. Albert wore wire-frame glasses and the guards made him take them off and put them through the metal detector. Albert looked tiny and a little afraid without his glasses on. He looked around the room real quick, then rubbed his eyes. His glasses were kinda thick, so I knew without them he couldn’t see much. When the guard handed them back, Albert whispered,
Thank you
, wiped them off on his shirt and put them back on.

Then when we were all signed in, the final gate slammed behind us and we joined a bunch of other families in a big room as we waited for Tash to be brought down.

All around us, people were hugging and kissing each other. I watched one old-looking woman hold a young guy like she’d never let him go, her eyes closed tight but the tears pushing through anyway. I heard him say,
Ma, don’t cry. Ma, please don’t cry
. But the tears kept falling like they never planned to stop.

A young couple across from us pressed their foreheads together, a boy about three years old dancing circles around them.

The room was crowded and hot and loud. I stared at the door where Tash would come through.

The first thing I noticed about him this time was how skinny he’d gotten. Tash wasn’t a big guy to begin with, but in the months since I’d last seen him, the tiny bit of meat beneath his cheekbones had disappeared and his beige uniform hung all big on him. But when he saw us, he let go of that big Tash smile and inside that skinny face I could see the Tash I’d known forever.

“Girl, you are
not
stepping up in here looking like Miss Thang now, is you?” Tash grinned and gave Neeka a big hug. “All tall and almost-grown. Come here and let Tash spin you around.”

Then he was hugging everyone and everyone was hugging him back and I felt the same old stupid huge stone rise up in my throat and the same stupid tears coming down. Neeka was crying too. So was Miss Irene. I saw Jayjones pull his hands across his eyes.

“Don’t even,” Tash said, waving his skinny finger at us. “You know this girl is getting out of here soon. Don’t come up in here crying now. I ain’t having it.”

We found a place at a long table in the back and Miss Irene started pulling food from the shopping bags. There was roasted chicken, mac and cheese, corn bread, potato salad, salad and corn. She’d brought paper plates and plastic spoons because they wouldn’t allow plastic forks for some dumb reason. After we’d all filled up our plates, Tash started telling us, between tiny girlie bites, how he was getting out soon.

Jayjones was sitting directly across from him. He just kept looking at Tash and grinning, like he couldn’t believe he was getting to be right across from his big brother.

“Mama, when you talked to the lawyer, he ain’t tell you about them reversing it?”

Miss Irene chewed her chicken slowly and swallowed. “Tash, you know I don’t understand half the things that man be saying. Only thing he seems to know how to say so real people can understand is how much to write his check for!”

Tash smiled, lowering his eyes slowly and waving his hand at Miss Irene. “Hush, girl!” he said. “Don’t we know that for a fact.”

Miss Irene nodded. She glanced over at Emmett and Albert, then back at Tash. Miss Irene didn’t like Tash acting sissyish around the boys. Tash saw her look and tried to sit up a little bit straighter. Emmett and Albert didn’t seem to care, though. Mostly they grinned when Tash talked.

“Well, it’s all working out,” he said.“And the way I’m thinking, I should be out of here by the end of summer. But you know we won’t know till we get there. And when I get out of here, first thing I’m gonna be working on is finding a way to pay you and Daddy back for all these . . . these
legal
fees.”

This time, Miss Irene waved her hand. “Just work on coming home, Tash.”

“I’m for real, Mama. You know how many more rich Negroes there’d be if we wasn’t all the time trying to pay off some lawyer or bailing a brother out. That’s one thing I’m truly guilty of—giving hard-earned money to
the man.
One person mess up, legal system got the whole family on lockdown.”

Tash looked around the room and rolled his eyes.

“Ain’t just black folks either,” he said. “Look at us.”

We all looked. There were people everywhere.

“Puerto Ricans and white guys,” Tash said. “Indian brothers over there and some Chinese guys over in the corner there. Most people stick with they own kind, but we all in the same place—doing the same thing—
time.
And I’m telling you, time is a
bee-atch
.”

“You really coming home, man?” Jayjones asked. He shook Tash’s arm and made him turn back toward us.

“Yeah, man!” Tash said, deepening his voice to imitate Jayjones. “I’m really coming home, man.”

Jayjones grinned and took a big bite of his mac and cheese.

Tash ate delicately and laughed whenever one of us did or said something halfway funny. A long time ago, he’d started locking his hair and now the locks were long and he’d pulled them back into a ponytail. His eyebrows had always been tweezed perfectly when he was on the outside, but they’d grown in now. He and Neeka had the same dark, big eyes. The same long lashes. The same long straight nose and pretty lips. I stared at Tash. When he caught me staring, he winked at me and smiled. When we were little, we’d beg and beg until Tash did our nails or hair, and when me and Neeka walked out onto the block, seemed everybody we came across had something good to say about how we looked.

“You and Neeka sure are growing up before a sister’s eyes.”

“Tash . . . ” Miss Irene said.

“Before a
brother’s
eyes,” Tash said.

“And you getting skinny,” Neeka said. “You okay?”

“Heck no, I ain’t okay,” Tash said. “I’m in jail and I’m a
queen
. You know that means a sister’s gotta fight for her right to party. But no, I don’t have the Monster—this body is HIV free and staying that way. Don’t be a gay boy and get skinny—people start giving you the death look.” He made a terrified-looking face, then smiled. “I’m still walking and talking and eating Mama’s cooking. That’s all you gotta worry about, Miss Neeka!”

“Tash, you know I don’t like—”

“Mama, I’m in jail. Give me little bit of joy. I ain’t hurting nobody. I ain’t
never
tried to hurt nobody who wasn’t hurting me first. I know who I am and you know who I am and every one of these kids knows who I am. Ain’t that good enough?”

Miss Irene took a deep breath and put her hands in her lap. She looked down and didn’t say anything for a moment. I could feel everybody at the table holding their breath. We’d had this same talk the last time we came to visit Tash.

“Ain’t I good enough?” Tash said, softer.

Miss Irene dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and nodded. “You know you are, baby. You know you are.”

“Then let me be this way, Mama. Let me be this way.”

After another minute passed, Miss Irene lifted her head and nodded. “Well, you don’t have to just be skin and bones being
that way
,” she said, piling more food on Tash’s plate. “Have some more of this mac and cheese, baby.”

Neeka looked at me. The moment was over and we all let out a breath.

The girls got up and ran around the table a couple of times. Jayjones gave them some money and they headed over to the vending machines.

“They don’t know how to work those,” Emmett said, getting up to chase after them. Albert just watched him go, then moved a little bit closer to Tash. Tash put his arm around Albert and kissed the top of his head. Tash was eleven years older than Albert and Emmett. Albert had been a little bit sickly as a baby, so Tash used to sit up with him late at night, telling him stories about how great the world was and how he needed to get himself healthy so he could enjoy it. Albert didn’t remember any of it. At least not in his head. But he loved Tash more than anything.

“What’s happening in the world of basketball?” Tash said, turning to Jayjones. “And please make it interesting, ’cause you know I can’t stand sports.”

Jayjones grinned. “I shot three hundred and fifty baskets the other day. My arms be aching, yo. But I just keep going.”

“Especially if a girl’s watching,” Neeka said.

Jayjones ignored her.

“Got a good feeling about going pro. I mean, you don’t be seeing a lot of us getting there, but I got the advantage because my grades is good and I’m still growing and stuff.”