Bang! (4 page)

IT WAS KEE-LEE’S idea. Sneak out tonight and get Moo Moo’s car. Ride it around town. Come daylight, take it to the park and wash it. That way Moo Moo would know we ain’t forget about him.

Moo Moo always kept his keys in the glove compartment. And he never locked his ride. So when we get to his car at two o’clock in the morning, it’s sitting there just like always—unlocked, waiting to hit the streets again.

Kee-lee’s mom’s got more sisters than I got fingers. Most of ’em live around our way so we ain’t have to go far to get to his Aunt Jessie’s place. Soon as we there, we see the tree they planted in Moo Moo’s name. It’s skinny, but there’s plenty of white flowers covering it. And right at the roots, there’s a bronze plaque with a picture of Moo Moo sketched on it. He’s got his arms folded and one foot on his car fender. Kee-lee did the picture. It looks just like him.

I’m reading the plaque. Kee-lee’s in the car, gassing the engine. Moo Moo woulda been mad at him for doing that. “Shirlee’s my sweet thang,” he used to say. “Can’t be rushing her, getting her all hot and bothered.”

Kee-lee guns the engine again. I open the passenger door and tell him to quiet down. He smoked a little something on the way over, so he ain’t in his right mind. “I’m doing this for my cuz,” he says, too loud for this time of night.

“Shhh.”

He puts the car in park, steps out and shouts, “Moo Moo!”

“Get back in, Kee-lee.”

He slaps his chest. “Moo Moo!”

The upstairs light in the house comes on.

“I ain’t forget about you, man!” He lays his face on the roof of the car. For a minute, I think he’s gonna cry. “Never gonna forget you, bro.”

The window goes up. “Who that?” A woman in a purple scarf’s got her head stuck out the second-floor window. It’s Aunt Jessie, Moo Moo’s mom.

We get in the car.

“Get out! That’s my baby’s car!”

The car’s backing up and headed for the tree. “Turn! Turn the wheel!”

Kee-lee can’t drive. He’s only been behind the wheel a few times when Moo Moo was giving us lessons. The car jumps off the curb. The back wheels are in the street, and the front wheels are in the grass, kicking up dirt. Kee-lee shifts gears without putting on the brakes. My chest bangs into the dashboard. He puts the car in reverse, right when his aunt runs up to the car and points to him through the window. “Kee-lee. I’m gonna kill you, boy!”

He guns the engine. Black smoke comes out the tailpipe. The car flies across the street backward, heading for a blue SUV. Kee-lee stops the car cold, and him and me almost go out the back window. His aunt’s following us, saying for him to get out the car. I’m staring out the other window, hoping she don’t recognize me. Kee-lee shifts gears. His aunt curses. I hold on to the seat. The car jerks forward; speeds backward. Stops. Kee-lee shifts gears again, driving up the street with his aunt banging on the trunk, running behind us, begging us to stop.

When we get to the park, Kee-lee gets out from behind the wheel, shaking. I’m thinking it’s because all the driving made him nervous. But he says it’s because he’s still high. “And my hands won’t do what my head tells ’em to.” We step out the car and sit in the dark under a broken streetlight. “You lucky you ain’t dead, Mann.”

“It was fun,” I tell him.

He’s lying on the ground, looking like he’s gonna be sick. “I ain’t doing that no more.”

I lean on Moo Moo’s ride and wonder what he’s doing right now.

Kee-lee and me remember a lot of things about Moo Moo. Like the time we played football with him and his college friends. Or the time he took us to some girl’s place and her friends kissed us on the lips and let us see their underwear drawer. It was never nothing big that Moo Moo did with us. It was a lotta small things; nothing that cost money or took up too much time. It was just being round Moo Moo. Him rubbing my head and telling me I needed a haircut. Him dropping by school and driving us home. Or him sitting by me at Jason’s funeral saying, “You still got a brother, Mann. Me.”

Kee-lee interrupts my thoughts. “Who’s gonna look out for me, Mann?”

I don’t move when Kee-lee says that. ’Cause I don’t have no answer for him.

“I mean, your father dropped me after Jason passed. But Moo Moo, he was always around. Always checking in on my mom and us; driving past the house and . . . well.”

Kee-lee’s standing up and patting himself down, feeling around for a blunt. Pulling out a match. Striking it. I watch his fingers shake in the night. “He was my godfather.”

“I know.”

“We ain’t tell too many people. Didn’t want them to think we was punks.”

“I know.”

Smoke blows my way.

“They shoulda shot me instead of him.”

I don’t move. Not one muscle.

“I mean . . . they shoulda just shot me dead and got it over with, instead of taking people from me one by one.”

Kee-lee don’t have to explain nothing to me. I know what he’s talking about. It ain’t just his boys that keep getting killed; his daddy took a bullet too. That was long ago, when Kee-lee was seven; two years after his dad moved out.

Kee-lee walks over to me and slams his fist into my chest. “What you gonna do? Cry?” He jumps back, toting that blunt, his eyes closed and his head rocking side to side. “Don’t do no crying out here, you baby, sissy girl,” he says, sounding like my father. “You do, and you gonna get hurt.”

I throw a punch. He ducks. He aims for my head and misses. We boxing and talking about Moo Moo, how he taught us to fight. We laughing about the time he let us watch him make the moves on some girl. Kee-lee hands me the blunt. I take it. Smoke it. I’m glad when it clouds up my head and makes me forget about all the bad stuff that’s come my way lately. In a little while, everything’s okay. Kee-lee’s happy. I’m happy. And having Jason and Moo Moo gone don’t make us all that sad, for now anyhow.

I go to the trunk for the buckets and lamb’s-wool rags Moo Moo always kept there, and we walk over to the water spigot, fill up the bucket and head back to the car. We take our time washing Shirlee’s tires and hood, rubbing dust off her doors and dirt from underneath her belly. Then we rub her dry. Wax her till she shines. And when he thinks I ain’t watching, I see Kee-lee kiss her, right where Moo Moo always did— on the hood of the car, right on the driver’s side.

MY FATHER found out about us stealing Moo Moo’s car. He made me stand in the corner for two hours with one leg up. My mother got mad at him. Said he was being ridiculous and she wasn’t gonna put up with him being cruel to me. They argued about it for a long time. He did what she said, though, and let me go to my room. They agreed that I wouldn’t be allowed to watch TV or go over Keelee’s place for a month. But when she went to the store after supper, he took me on a little ride.

Kee-lee asks me sometimes why I don’t just clock my dad and get it over with. It’s coming, too. I know it. So I let my dad slide. Give him more rope than I should—for now.

My dad’s truck is packed with shovels, trash bags, and brooms. He don’t explain why he’s got all those things. But when we get to the corner of Seymour and Lincoln, I know why. There’s an empty lot there where people dump garbage and trash, couches and dead cats, bricks and bottles too.

He opens his door. Walks around and opens mine. “All right,” he says. “Get out. Get busy.”

I look at the lot. I look at him. “No.”

This ain’t no little lot. A four-story house used to be on it. And people do all kinds of things in it. Shoot up. Throw up. Pee it up. Junk it up. There’s rats in there. Cockroaches too, I bet.

Ain’t no expression on my dad’s face, so you can’t tell if he’s sad, glad, or mad. “You think you a man, huh?” He pulls my arm. My feet spread and press to the floor like I’m on a roller coaster headed down. I wrap my arms around the back of my seat. He yanks me by the arms like the chain on a stopper in a drain. I fly out my seat. Fall out the car. Stare up at him from the ground. Then I jump up swinging.

A punch heads for my stomach—but it don’t land on me. Fists go to my head, my chest, and my face, but they all pass by me. That pisses me off, ’cause I know what my dad is trying to say:
Anytime I want, I can take you outta here.

He looks at me. “Pick a spot. Any spot.”

I got one picked out right on the side of his mouth where his bad tooth acts up sometimes. “Don’t think I won’t hit you.” I swing and miss. Back up. Bounce on my toes like he taught me. I bob, swing, and hit him in the side of his head as hard as I can. “Yeah!”

A left hook, and I’m down on the ground and can’t get up. A few minutes later, I’m doing what he told me in the first place, and he’s headed for the truck. “Dopeheads live in this kind of filth all the time,” he says, throwing a box of trash bags at my head. “You wanna do dope, might as well start now living like they do.”

I look at him and try to figure out how he knows I been smoking weed. He gets in the jeep. Tells me to stop being soft and clean up the lot. “Otherwise you gonna be here all night long.”

My dad is super hard on me because he thinks he was too soft on me and Jason before. He says that most boys in our neighborhood are used to life being hard. When trouble comes, they knock it out the way. “Or at least run from it.” Jason just stood there— wetting himself. “Too many hugs,” my father says now. “Not enough butt-kickings.” My mother says that ain’t so. My father disagrees. “The hard knots don’t die. They kill and survive. The ones that have been hugged and kissed and loved too much—they being picked off like cotton from a pod. They soft. Momma’s boys,” he says. “And ain’t no more momma’s boys coming out
my
house.”

People watch. They shake their heads and say it’s a shame what my father’s doing. But nobody calls the police or gives me a drink or says for him to stop. And four hours later—after I worked two whole hours in the dark—my dad says I can quit. There’s ten garbage bags on the ground. “Load ’em,” he says, sitting in the truck, eating chips, and holding on to the book Cousin gave him.

I pick up the bags and dump them into the back of the truck. My dad says I stink, so he don’t let me ride up front. I’m sitting in back with the trash, holding on tight with one hand, dropping bags in the street with the other. When we get to the dump, I unload the rest of the bags. My father listens to the radio. When we get home, I’m too tired to climb out the truck.

He hollers. My mother cries. I can’t move. And finally, my father helps me in the house. “Boy,” he says, pulling my dirty shirt over my head when we get upstairs, taking down my pants, and throwing my underwear in the trash. He walks me to the shower and stands me under the warm water. “Boy,” he whispers in my ear, “I can’t lose no more . . .”

The water stings like alcohol when it hits the cuts on my fingers and legs. I open my mouth and drink it down like warm tea.

My dad squeezes soap over my shoulders and cleans under my nails. “Boy, I can’t bury no more sons.”

I SMELL NOW THAT Idon’tgotoschool. I stink, really. My mother asks how come that is. “You shower every morning. I hear the water.”

I go in and sit down on the john and smoke weed out the window. But I don’t shower.

“Comb your hair,” she says, picking lint out my ’fro. “That’s the style? Well, I don’t like it.” She hands me her deodorant and says to put some on in front of her so she can see me do it. “You’re changing out them clothes. Right in front of me.” She sits at the kitchen table and tells me to slow down. “Stuffing food in your mouth like you haven’t eaten in months, when late last night you ate everything in sight.”

My mother and me sit and talk for a while. I’m high, but I can still tell she’s having a good day. She’s wearing her favorite dress—the light green one with the pink flowers. And she’s got her hair fixed nice, and lipstick on too. “You look pretty.”

She spoons eggs into my mouth. “The closer we get to Jason’s birthday, the worse things get here.” She wipes my mouth with her napkin. “But I can’t let the whole house fall apart.” She breaks off bacon and sticks it in my mouth. “I gotta get back to who I was before: a good mother, a good wife.”

My father walks into the room with his uniform on. He’s just a security guard—nobody important— but he walks so straight and tall, and his clothes are so neat and pressed, you’d think he was leaving home to run the world or something. “How come your eyes are red?”

I lie. “I ain’t sleep good.”

He sniffs my shirt. “You been smoking weed again? In my house?”

My mother leans over and smells me too. She tells my dad that they have to do something about me. He says he tried two weeks ago when he made me clean up the lot. “You called it abuse. Happy now?”

She walks over to the stove and cracks six eggs in a hot pan. “It
was
abuse.” She comes over to me and rubs my cheek. “He should be back in therapy. I’ll call somebody today. Anybody.” Her lips kiss my cheek. “We need help.”

When the eggs are done, she goes and puts a cake sticker on the calendar. Jason’s birthday is in two weeks. She rubs the shiny paper like it’s his face she’s touching.

My dad sits down. He says that our neighbor, Miss Lucille, saw me talking with Ace. He sells weed. Killed a few people too.

I jump up out my seat. “I wasn’t with no Ace!” I reach across the table and get more bacon. “Can’t I just eat without y’all bothering me?” I grab four pieces of bacon, stick ’em in between a buttered biscuit, and shove half the sandwich in my mouth. Butter drips down my lips like blood.

My father pulls me up from the table by my collar. Biscuit mixed with bacon falls out my mouth and onto the kitchen table. “I told you if I ever found out you was smoking in my house . . .”

I laugh. I don’t mean to, but I do.

My mother acts like she’s just figuring everything out. “That boy’s high.”

My father pulls off his thick black belt and starts whupping me. My mother don’t stop him. She covers her mouth and bites down on her fingers like she’s watching a scary movie.

When you getting beat, you gotta keep moving. So I’m running in circles. Jumping up and down. Ducking when the black strap swings at my head. Laughing because he’s hitting hisself right along with me. Then the belt buckle hits me in the lip. And while my father is apologizing to my mother, and I am holding my busted lip, I say, “That ain’t hurt.”

My mother tells me to keep my big mouth shut. I don’t know why I keep talking, but I do. I tell my dad I’m calling Child Welfare. I sit down in the chair. Put my feet on the table and pick up that book he’s always reading now. “What kind of mess you reading?”

Right then my dad tackles me. He knocks me to the floor. Drags me by one arm through the living and dining rooms and over to the front door. He opens it wide. Picks me up by my shirt and pants and throws me onto the front porch.

Weed makes you do stuff you shouldn’t do, like get your dad so mad he don’t care no more that you’re scared to touch the porch with your baby finger, let alone put your whole body on it.

Soon as I hit the floor, I stop breathing. All the air in me dries up like the blood on our porch. “I can’t . . . breathe.” I’m pulling at the skin on my neck, trying to get air.

My mother holds me. Whispers in my ear for me to calm down. “You’re all right. Just calm down. Just . . .” She stares at my dad. “Get him up.” She rubs my chest. “Mann. The blood’s all gone.” She’s talking to my dad again. “You don’t get my boy off this here porch right now, I’m gonna carry him off myself, and when I’m done, I’m coming back for you.”

Air sneaks into my lungs. I take a long, deep breath, coughing hard and trying to get up. My father and mother carry me. “It’s okay,” they say, together. “You’ll be okay.”

Mann!

I turn to see who’s calling me.

Play soldiers with me
.

My hands and feet get ice-cold. “Jason?”

My father looks around. My mother does too.

Catch me. Okay?

I ask my parents if they hear Jason. If they see him.

My dad looks at me. “See what happens when you smoke that dope?”

I close my eyes tight. But I still see blood. And I still hear him laughing, just like that day when he got shot.
Mann
, he said, when I went for the hose.
What you get when you cross a pickle with a pencil?

Little-kid jokes ain’t never funny. So I told him I didn’t know, didn’t care. Then he walked over to the steps and sat down.
You get
, he said, laughing real hard like it was gonna be a really funny joke.
You get . . .

I didn’t hear the answer, because Journey was thirsty. She needed a drink. So I left Jason all by hisself. And that’s how come he got killed.