How It Went Down (15 page)

“Close enough.” I smile, easing the drink toward her. She takes the glass with timid fingers. Sips.

“Hmm.” She swallows half the liquid in a series of delicate gulps.

I drink in kind, surprised but willing.

KIMBERLY

“Let’s talk about the next few days,” Al says. I take a seat on the couch, and he pulls up a chair

I pull a small notebook out of my purse.

“In a couple of days, we’re going to hold a demonstration calling for ‘Justice for Tariq.’” He moves his hand through the air as if imagining a banner.

I take careful notes of the details he describes. Everyone will be asked to wear hooded sweatshirts. We will write press releases, organize speakers, post flyers, reach out on social media and more.

He recites it all in a low, insistent voice. I’m on the couch, and he’s in the chair alongside me. There is only one small light, over my shoulder.

I’ve been on dates, and this is how they go: drinks and a softly lit conversation.

It feels like any minute now, he’s going to make a move. Instead, he walks me to the door.

TINA

Things I have found in Tariq’s room:

Drawings I made for him

Homework, unfinished

A hundred and seventeen dollars

Wow. Plus:

Twelve dollars and ninety four cents in of coins

A postcard with Daddy’s handwriting on it

A magazine with naked ladies—ha ha ha

Tariq has lots of secrets

Stinky dirty t-shirts—ick

Stinky dirty socks—double ick

Stinky dirty undies—triple ick

But there’s no reason to wash them

A notebook with writing

My harmonica which he stole—I knew it

A knife as long as my elbow-to-wrist, with a red strap and a smooth case of leather

Ouch

It is not a toy

REDEEMA

Tina comes crying. A gash in her hand and a palm full of blood.

“Child, what did you do?” I declare, scooping her against me. Can’t get to the bathroom sink fast enough. It drips.

Water runs over the wound. Tina flinches. I steady her wrist under the flow.

“What happened, baby?”

“I cut myself,” she says.

“On what?” It’s a clean cut, swift and sure and deep enough that I start wondering how much them doctors charge you to sew up stitches.

Tina cries. Fat tears, the size of marbles.

The water washes away pink. I open her hand, which opens the wound, but I got to see how deep. It’s not so bad as it looked at first. I pour on peroxide till the whole line bubbles white. Tina whimpers and fidgets.

“It hurts.”

“I know, sweet baby. I know.”

In her palm, I stack up gauze drawn from the basket under the sink. Give her a round, thin perfume bottle to grip. “Squeeze tight, baby.”

She fists up her hand. I fold my old fingers around hers. I got the arthritis these days. Can’t put on that kind of pressure. But I gotta let her know I’m here. I’m always here.

TINA

“Mommy,” I cry.

Uh-unh.
Nana clucks at me.
Tell me what happened
.

“Mommy.”

Hush. Your momma doesn’t need to see any more blood on her babies.

“Tariq,” I cry.

Sweet baby
, Nana says.
You know he ain’t coming.

“Tariq,” I cry.

My hand feels bad.

My heart feels bad.

Tariq knows how to make things feel better.

JENNICA

The reporter and her cameraman come back into the diner. Her ponytail and her nosy smile haven’t changed.

“I don’t have anything else to say,” I tell her. The camera rolls anyway. The black glassy eye seems to be looking right into me. Earlier, Noodle stood in front of a whole bank of cameras and told a story that I know he doesn’t believe. He ranted over it all the way home, all lit up and energized. “
Fucking Tariq. Who does he think he is? Dying, and still coming back to be a pain in my ass.”
Similar chorus to what I’ve been hearing all week, except his tone was less angry, now that he had a role to play in it. “
Did you see me up there? You see what Brick’s making me do?”

“You did good,” I told him. He had a glow about him, almost like he was high. It was just the attention. All the lights and cameras. His ranting, just for show. He enjoyed himself up there. It makes me feel sick.

How can I talk to a reporter now? What if I say something that doesn’t match what Noodle said?

“With all the new developments in the Tariq Johnson case, what are your thoughts about justice for Tariq?”

“I really don’t have anything to say.”

She pulls out her wallet, and I hold up my hands.

“I don’t want to be on TV again,” I insist. It calls too much attention. I just want to move on and forget the whole thing. If I work hard enough, maybe I can forget Tariq Johnson ever existed.

TYRELL

“Some reporter called today,” Dad says over dinner. It’s just the two of us tonight. Mom’s working late.

“Yeah?”

He forks rice and beans into his mouth. “I don’t want you talking to those people.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, don’t.”

“I said, I haven’t.”

“And I said, don’t.”

Dad used to smile at me, once upon a time. But it’s been a long time.

We eat in silence for a while.

Dad says, “I don’t want you getting tangled up in this Tariq mess.”

“He was my best friend,” I say. I’m as tangled as it gets.

DAY
SIX

11.
WHAT’S NEXT?

BRIAN TRELLIS

I’m never going to get out from under this thing. I can say it a thousand times and they just keep asking it and asking it again. I really thought he was armed.

“Thanks for coming in,” Chip Castleman says. He flashes me his trademark high-wattage smile.

“I’ve never done anything like this. I’m not really sure what to say.” The microphone clipped to my lapel is slipping. My fingers reach to straighten it, but Chip motions with a nod and other hands take over for me, quick and efficient.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’ll just be a few questions about the other night.”

Additional lights snap on overhead, and in front of me. All around, really. I blink into the brightness.

“This is your camera,” a voice says in my ear. The chair beneath me swivels. “Look right there, okay?”

“Right where?”

From above: “We’re live in five … four … three … two…”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Chip Castleman. Thanks for joining us here on Politics and Power. Tonight we have the latest in the Tariq Johnson shooting investigation.”

He turns to me. “Thanks for joining us, Brian.”

“Glad to be here, Chip.” That sounded okay. But should I really be glad to be here? I’m not glad to be in this situation. Glad is the wrong word altogether.

Chip is still speaking.

“What was going through your mind, when you intervened in a gang altercation?”

“Well, I don’t know what it was, on that level,” I say. “I heard Rocky—”

“The shopkeeper?”

“Right. I heard him shouting after Tariq. ‘Stop, get back here.’ So I tried to stop him from getting away.”

“It seemed clear to you that he needed to be stopped?”

“Yeah. Well, I mean, Rocky was shouting. And it all happened so fast.”

“Brian, it must have been terrifying to confront an armed gang member like that. What was going through your mind in those moments?”

“I—I didn’t really have time to think, I guess.”

“You just stepped up.”

“I just stepped up.”

“Words of a brave man, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you Mr. Trellis. It’s clear your actions might have prevented additional violence.”

Is that clear? I wonder.
Gun
, someone shouted. But when I looked, I didn’t see it. I’m sure it was there, but I can’t remember actually seeing it.

The lights on me go dark. Chip continues, onto some other guest. I’ve been waiting an hour. I may have to wait a while longer more, for the live recap. I’m never going to get out of here. Or away from this.

TYRELL

Brick rolls down the block with his familiar swagger, and a whole posse of 8-5s behind him. It’s only ten blocks I have to walk, but right now it feels like a gauntlet. There’s no realistic hope that they won’t see me.

I keep my head down, but nothing doing.

“Oh, Ty-relllllllllll,” Noodle calls in a sing-song voice.

Tariq would have told me to just keep walking. He’d have had some words to toss at them. I only have numbers swirling in my head. Sixteen school days left until summer. Third year in a row, I won a scholarship to science camp, way on the other side of the state. Six weeks out there, no 8-5s to worry about. Two years after that before I go away to college. But by the fall, I’ll get strong somehow. I’ll find a way to resist, like T did.

I just have to make it sixteen days.

“Yo, Tyrell,” says Brick. “What’s good?” He puts out his hand to slap skin with me. T woulda slapped. So I slap.

“Excuse me,” I say. “I don’t want to be late for school.”

A few of the 8-5s snicker.

“Hey,” Brick says, and they silence. “Our man Ty here’s got a bright future. Someone’s gotta take care of all the book learning.”

“What’s your GPA these days?” Noodle says.

I can’t tell if they’re making fun of me, or what. “Three point nine.”

“Outta ten?” squeals Noodle. “Homes, I thought you’s supposed to be a genius or some shit.”

“Out of four.” I try to skirt around them, but they’re all over the sidewalk. I’d have to step into the street to get past, and then it’d be too obvious how bad I just want to get on my way.

“That’s great, man,” Brick says, in a voice that sounds almost serious. “Look, we don’t want to mess anything up for you, we just want to let you know we’re around.”

As if I could forget.

“Why don’t you come by my place tonight?” Brick says.

“No, thanks.”

“You should come. It’s a great party. Music. Refreshments. Plenty of honeys.”

“You can get your little freak on,” Noodle says, pumping his hips so the other guys laugh. At least now I know for sure they’re teasing me.

“No,” I say.

Brick slugs my arm. “Come on, man. I never see you hanging with anyone but T. You even got other friends? What are you gonna do with yourself now?”

He coulda stabbed me; it wouldn’t have hurt this bad. “I’m okay.”

“You know we can hook you up with some easy coin, too,” says Noodle. “All them college applications.”

“I’ll get scholarships,” I mumble. It burns, because I worry about it all the time.

“Homes, you know it costs money just to
apply
to them fancy schools.”

“How would you know?” I blurt. I want to bite my tongue, but it’s what T would have said. No holding back. For a second I feel like he’s with me. It doesn’t make anything better. Because really, he isn’t.

Brick laughs, throws his arm around my shoulder. The other guys hoot, and start ragging on Noodle.

“Really, I don’t—”

“It’s just one party,” Brick says. “Not a lifetime commitment.”

I stay silent.

“You’re coming,” Brick insists. “Be out front of your building. We’ll pick you up at nine.”

They part and move on around me, down the block to the next stop on their harassment tour.

Sixteen days and counting.

TINA

Daddy’s here.

Daddy’s
never
here.

Count on the calendar:

Two years plus

Seven months plus

Nine days

Since he was here last.

One postcard to Tariq

No postcards to me

Mommy says,
Get the
BAD WORD
out
!

Daddy says,
Tina, sweetie, come to Daddy.

Mommy says,
Get out right now.

In a loud voice.

I cover my ears.

Daddy kneels down.

Don’t you remember me?

Mommy says,
You leave her be.

I don’t forget

I never forget

REDEEMA

That fool thinks he can just waltz back in here, after all these years. He got another think coming.

Tina cries at the sight of him. That’s right on, baby girl. The babies always know.

I know, too. I know that man. I’ve seen. He walks in the door without knocking, like he owns the place. Like it’s still home to him, when his hide ain’t darkened our door for what? Two, three years? Didn’t even bother to show his face at his own son’s funeral.

Vernesha ain’t having it. For a minute she yells at him. But he wades right through. He’s the calm
and
the storm, that one. When he folds her up in his arms, she sure enough lets him.

Lord, what are you doing to my babies? They’s suffered enough.

VERNESHA

Mom reminds me that Terence has hurt me six ways to Sunday. As if I don’t know. “Nothing but a shadow of a man,” she says. “No substance.”

I know his shadow well.

Terence never left this house; he was always in Tariq’s face. In Tina’s pencil drawings. I hate that I ever loved him, hate even more that I can’t be rid of him because of how they carry him, and they are everything to me. He has their love but never has to do the hard things. In his shadow state, he hovers over us, a thousand times removed. Every meal I served. Every cut I ever kissed. Every time I had to answer “Why doesn’t Daddy love us?”

I know he can’t feel what I feel. Like a piece of my heart has been carved out and set on fire. But he has to feel something. That’s his son too.

My father died young. Mom raised us without him; she’s a force of nature. I’m not like that, although I’ve had to be. She just doesn’t get it—a man is good for some things.

The kitchen faucet has dripped for two years. “Fix it,” I tell Terence. He does.