How It Went Down (11 page)

“That’s okay.” I swallow. Volunteering’s like a job to me. I never miss a week. What kind of nurse am I gonna be if I can’t hang in there, right?

I go sit on the floor by Sheila. She leans her head on my shoulder. Snot-tastic.

“I cried when I found out too,” I tell her.

TINA

There is a way to open a locked door

You just get the key

From where Mommy keeps it hidden

On the hook inside the front hall closet

Stand on tiptoe

No big deal

Go right on down the hall

Turn the knob

Go inside

Tariq’s room is the same

Smells like Tariq

(Kinda funky)

All Tariq’s things

(A whole big mess on the floor)

I sit on the bed

The room is full of stuff

Why does it feel so empty?

Tariq’s room is the same

But not the same

Without him.

TYRELL

Nothing is as simple as it used to be. We had such good times, the four of us. Running and playing and laughing, certain that the bad things in the world would never touch us. Not like life was perfect; Tariq’s dad would disappear for months and years at a time, and Sammy never had a dad to begin with, and for a while Junior’s family was so poor we had to sneak him food out of our lunchboxes. But it was all so normal. It was just part of us.

The first time we had a sleepover, it was at Sammy’s house. Junior didn’t have a sleeping bag, I remember, and so he almost didn’t come, and then we had to go and get him because no way would we have as much fun without him, especially if we knew he was just sitting at home alone.

Between the four of us, we had three sleeping bags. So we unzipped them all and opened them up, then zipped them together into one super huge bag big enough for all four of us. We all got inside, first Junior then me, then T and then Sammy. Four peas in a pod, so to speak.

It turned out Sammy sleeps like a tornado. Arms and legs all over the place. So he ended up with about half the bag, and me, Junior, and Tariq all piled up in the other half. After that night, we learned to let Sammy keep his own bag, and to zip the other two together for the rest of us.

Sammy was the first to ditch us for the Kings, in the end. Too restless.

I don’t know when or how the rest of us stopped sharing one bag. We kept sleeping over, and it kept being fun; we would stay up half the night goofing. Maybe it just got weird, you know, three guys in a bag.

But those sleepovers were maybe the best times we ever had; safe and close. Nothing outside could touch us.

JUNIOR

Tariq and I were best friends in second grade. It was just the two of us that year; we were the only ones of our friends together in the same class. We sat next to each other at everything.

We used to share our fruit at lunch. When you went through the line, after you got the hot meal, there would be a pile of fruit and you could take one apple or one banana. Sometimes it was a pear or a peach or something like that, but usually it was an apple or a banana, and you had to choose. But we each liked both. So T would get the banana and I would get the apple and we would split them.

When I oathed in with the Kings, and Brick gave me my knife, I showed it to T right away. He was disappointed, I think. First Sammy then me, walking out on our pact. It was kid stuff, but T and Ty took it real serious.

T didn’t give me a hard time about it, though. He held my knife, in its sheath of red leather. Even made a joke out of it. “Damn, I guess I gotta join the Stingers now,” he said. “Get me a yellow one, and we’ll share.” We laughed, and I felt like from that moment on I had T’s blessing to go on and do what I had to.

I still think about that now, eating off the metal trays in the prison cafeteria. Sometimes there is an apple or a banana, and when there is I always think about him.

MS. ROSALITA

It is tempting to retreat to my small, private apartment. Fold myself into a book, or just appreciate the silence. But I head outside anyway. There is so much to enjoy in the world; how foolish to waste even an hour of it hiding away in avoidance of pain.

I take my place in the row of chairs along the fence outside the garden. The woven canvas straps are molded in my shape; I settle into place and the fabric sighs as if it was expecting me. Small comforts are all I can rely upon today.

There was a time, years ago, when each passing hour held no meaning. There would be another, and another after that. A day felt like a lengthy endeavor; a year, infathomably long.

I am no longer grasping great handfuls of time. A year seems long again now, not because so many stretch before me, but so few.

Redeema comes down the block toward me. She steadies herself with the cane she uses occasionally. I find myself smiling. It’s funny; I still so often think of her as a girl, but today she looks like an old lady to me. We have become elders together, and yet, I remember when she was born.

I was, for many years, the one the women turned to. I held her mother’s hand through the pains and the pushing, helped to ease her troubled breaths. Redeema’s was one of a thousand beautiful brown faces I was the first to lay eyes upon. I have a thousand children, though I never carried one of my own.

“Hello, Miss Rosalita,” she says, and I hear the voice of a child. She settles alongside me, hooking her cane on the chair arm. It’s just the two of us for now.

“Looks like rain,” I tell her, in an effort to keep things normal. The sky is cloudless, but gray.

“It is already raining,” she answers.

I suppose. We rest in silence for a while, thoughts caught in each of our imperfect minds.

The pain is great today. As is the beauty and the joy. The young people who pass by wave to us. The smallest ones greet us with kisses and show-and-tell. “
I got an A, Miss Rosalita.” “Hey Mrs. J, look what I made.”
They are excited, undamaged. They are our joy. We pat their cheeks and view their treasures with pride.

They spin away, always away. Too fast to understand, sometimes. They rush on, but we remain. They will come back, and we will be still here, as they expect us to be. We are the guardians.

In between each small flurry, we rest. We breathe. Redeema raises her face to the sky. “My children,” she murmurs, and the sound of it aches.

I am expected to be wise. But it gets no easier, with time, to speak about a tragedy. We sit. After a long quiet moment, she puts out her hand. A very small move, little but a slight shift of fingers along the white plastic arm of the beach chair. My own fingers walk and bridge the gap to cup hers. We sit.

SAMMY

I polish up my piece real nice, in honor of Tariq. When I’m alone, I take it out and hold it in my hand, just feeling the weight of it. Thinking about next time I’m looking down someone else’s barrel. Practice slipping it in and out of my belt.

I wanted a piece, because the best way to get made, and move up in the organization, is to ice someone. An enemy. As a show of loyalty. Prove how far you’re willing to go. Jack Franklin woulda been a prime target. I’m never gonna miss an opportunity like that again.

Over at Brick’s place in the afternoon, there’s a bunch of us just chilling. It’s mostly higher-ups, I realize after a while. Getting some business done. Brick never used to have this kind of time for me. I guess you can luck your way into moving up the chain too.

I smoke a little J when someone lights up and hands it around. Just a sip.

“Yo, Sammy. Let me holla at you a minute,” Brick says. He motions me over with a flick of his fingers.

I follow him into the bedroom. He closes the door behind us. Just me and Brick. We’ve never been alone like this before. He has a secret layer of drawers behind his closet that he opens with a clicker like a garage door. Hidden right in the wall. The drawers slide out. Smooth row after smooth row of knives and guns. A top-shelf arsenal.

“Whoa.”

Brick grins. “Yeah.”

I move closer to peer at the collection. I don’t know much yet about different kinds of weapons, but it’s a bit like looking at an expensive car. You can just tell it’s high end. Somehow.

“Why don’t you show me what you’re carrying.” Brick’s low voice, its too-casual tone, starts my heart pounding.

“What?”

He doesn’t speak again. He knows I heard. I lift my shirt. Brick ignores the red-sheathed knife holstered at my waist. His eye goes to my opposite hip. Where the gun is tucked.

“That’s a decent piece. Where’d you get it?” Brick asks me.

“What do you mean? I paid a guy for it.” This piece is mine, fair and square.

“What guy?”

I grin. “Why? You need a referral?” One glance around at his arsenal says that’s not likely.

“I’m trying to figure…” Brick murmurs. He moves his hands out flat in front of him. Like he’s running a turntable, or moving puzzle pieces around on a table. “… based on where everybody was…”

He has a glinting look in his eye. I swallow.

“… who coulda picked up T’s gun.”

“T didn’t have a gun,” I say.

“It was a smart move,” Brick continues. “Whoever done it, I’d like to thank him.”

His posture isn’t thankful. I can only repeat it: “T didn’t have a gun.”

“That’s what you tell other people,” Brick says. “This is between us.”

“What do you want me to say? You wanna meet the guy I bought it off last week? I’ll take you over there. Anytime.”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

I shake my head, having nothing to add. “All I saw was Jack Franklin. All I did was run.” I’m not going to tell him how I thought about firing. I’m not going to put myself on the spot for having failed. It’s hard enough in my own head.

Brick shifts toward me, real subtle. “I think you seen T with a gun. You seen him drop it when he got bit. You was closest. While we was all distracted by Franklin … Tell me, Sammy, am I looking at that gun right now?”

“T didn’t have a gun,” I stammer. Then I realize I’m still holding up my shirt. I let it drop.

“You’d lie to protect him, wouldn’t you?” Brick says.

I look him straight in the eye. “Yeah, I would,” I answer. “But not to you.”

BRICK

“He got out of the car and fucking shot T,” I tell Noodle. “That ain’t self defense.”

“Stingers cut our guys down for less.”

“It’s different,” Brick says. Because it’s Tariq, I want to add. But I don’t. Him and Noodle never got along.

“No, it ain’t.”

But it is. If the Kings are about anything, it’s standing up for your brothers.

Noodle’s right, we’ve lost plenty of other brothers. Why’s it so much harder than usual to imagine life without T? I don’t understand this need to re-sculpt the world in my mind.

Maybe it’s just the history. Maybe I’d feel this way about any of the closer guys to me. Or maybe T felt more like an actual brother, because of our sisters.

We used to walk Sheila and Tina down to Roosevelt Park in the afternoons together. You get to know a guy in a different kind of way, sitting on a park bench side by side, watching little girls play.

You gotta chat about something, or be bored out of your skin, so we pretty much talked about everything. The side of me that my sister knows is different than most people. You got to be more open, around kids like them. I think T was the same. So we got deep, and pretty easy. That softness we hide striding down the street—how do you hide it when you got to bandage up a skinned knee and kiss it to make it better?

They liked it when we would push them on the swings, and sing silly songs at them. In front of another dude, that shit’s just embarrassing. We did friggin’ harmony. But if you gotta do it, you might as well own it, right?

One day, I remember, we were sitting on the park bench, when all these cops rolled up. We witnessed a bust of King dealers at the other edge of the park.

T laughed. “Weren’t we saying just the other day that they were prime for a bust?”

“Yeah, they got no organization,” I agreed. “You can see the exchange from a mile away. Do they think they’re subtle?”

“That’s a management problem,” T said. “They’re just being stupid.”

“Someday I’m gonna run that joint.”

T laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“I could do it better.”

“Well, duh.”

I grinned. “You can be my back-up.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Just one problem. I’m never joining up with that. I got other plans.”

That was how it started. We came up with a whole new strategy for the organization those afternoons. I was already doing some low-level running. It wasn’t out of the question that I was gonna move up. And soon enough, T stopped saying “never,” and started saying “if.” And soon enough after that, “when.”

NOODLE

I gotta be honest. Ask me three days ago, I’d have said I wanted that little fucker to hang. Now I gotta go out front and talk to people? Just like I told Jennica not to.

I’m so steamed over it, it’s hard to even tell her.

“I hated that punk.” I pound the steering wheel, driving her to work. “Damn it. Why couldn’t he just die normal?”

“Or not at all,” Jennica says softly.

“Brick’s making a mistake,” I tell her. “We oughta let well enough alone.”

“It’s not a bad thing to stand up for someone.”

“He wants me to get up there and lie.
Tariq was innocent. Tariq was unarmed.
What the hell is that?”

“You think he had a gun?” she says.

“How come you didn’t see it? I don’t know where you could have been looking.”

She stares out the window.

“Asshole punk,” I mutter.

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Jennica says. “It’s bad luck.”

As if my luck can get any worse. I thought things were looking up for me when Tariq went down. Maybe he’s bound and determined to bring me down with him.

JENNICA

It’s not like we were friends. That’s what I keep thinking. I gotta snap outta this. I feel heavy, like I’m walking through water, or waist-high sand.