How It Went Down (8 page)

When Tina came along, I guess, that’s where all my fretting went.

Other mothers worried more. About the gangs, and the drugs, and the police, and the violence.

Tariq was going to be fine. I didn’t worry nearly enough.

WILL (AKA EMZEE)

I never think anything of wearing my hoodie. Throw it on, go outside. It’s what people wear, you know? You gotta have a hoodie to fit in. Let your pants hang low. Like the other guys.

My mom and Steve want me to be wearing all the preppy clothes, the khakis and the polo shirts with the collar and whatnot. But I can’t be seen fronting that. My grades are too good. I already have to worry about making my speech sound street when I’m out, and making it sound proper when I’m home. My mom’s all proud of me for being smart, but most of my homies don’t know I’m on the honor roll. I can’t be going around dressed like a geek, or they’ll catch on.

I’m pissed about what happened to Tariq—there’s enough around here to be scared about without having to be to be scared about how I dress. Now I got another thing to juggle. I hardly get any sleep as it is, because I have to hang with my homies in Underhill after school while my mom thinks I’m at the library, then I come home and do my homework after dinner or on the bus, and then go back out to tag once she thinks I’ve gone off to bed.

But my mom took away all my hoodies last night. Says I have to make do without them, so I won’t get shot. I tried to tell her, I’m not gonna be stupid like Tariq was, running around with the hood up, sporting colors. She took them anyway. Then she cried. I gave her a hug and all, but in the morning I went down to the corner and paid this guy from school to lend me one of his old hoodies, just until the heat wears off the Tariq situation and my mom relaxes. I know how much she loves me, but she doesn’t understand. I gotta fit in if I want to survive.

TYRELL

I keep thinking back on shit that happened a long time ago. Dumb shit, too, like how pissed I was at Tariq for stealing the nickname “T” before I could get to it. I was so damn mad over that, I remember. It was kind of a phase we went through, where everyone was called by their initial. Sammy was S, Junior was J, and Tariq became T.

T became T immediately, before I even got a chance to try it out. Everyone just started calling him that. I didn’t think it was fair. And no one seemed to notice it except me. So we’d be walking down the street and other guys would be like, “Yo, S. Yo, J. Yo, T. Yo, Tyrell.”

I threw a punch at T one time over it. Way back, when the initial thing was new. He just walked up to me and was like, “Tyrell—” and I hauled off and punched him. It happened out of the blue, for both of us.

His nose started bleeding. I covered my head in case he decided to hit me back. But he just grabbed his face and said, “Shit, man.”

So I said, “Sorry.”

“What gives?”

“How come you get to go by T?” I said. Really, I think it was a whole stew of things that had me feeling roughed up that day—stuff from home, stuff from school. But some things were fixable, and some things weren’t.

“Well, it starts my name…?” he said slowly. He pulled up his shirt and dabbed it on his face.

“Mine too.”

T cleaned himself up best he could with us standing on the stoop. “You can be T,” he said. “Is that what you want?”

I didn’t know what I wanted. I sat down and put my head on my arms. T sat down next to me. “Ty, my man,” he goes. “You so much bigger than one letter.”

After that he started calling me Ty. Other guys picked up on it. It made me feel good. I got a nickname like the others, but it was bigger, like T said.

That was years ago. New shit happened and I forgot all about that punch. Sammy became Sammy again. Junior became Junior again, which frankly was a nickname in the first place. But I’m still called Ty to this day, and T stayed T, for some reason.

TINA

The phone rings and rings and rings.

Not usual.

Tariq’s bedroom door is closed and locked.

Not usual.

The counters and the tables and the kitchen chairs are covered with baskets and platters and foil pans and plastic cartons of food.

I can eat anything I want.

Not usual.

There’s fruits and crackers and cheeses and cakes and noodles and weird-looking salads and chicken and pie and potatoes and macaroni.

I open them all and nobody yells.

Yummy.

But not usual.

The phone rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings.

Mommy picks it up and throws it,
crack
, against the wall.

It’s quiet in the house.

Very, very unusual.

REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN

Vernesha sits with fingers knotted together. I have sat with a hundred grieving women and this is what they do. Sit quietly with folded hands while the world rips their sons, husbands, sisters, loved ones to shreds. I wonder if the power of their own hands holds them together.

She follows my gaze to the lump of shattered plastic and metal on the floor beneath the window. “They won’t stop calling.”

She wears a half smile. I can’t imagine where it comes from in the midst of the tornado she’s standing in.

“No, they won’t stop,” I tell her. “Sometimes the best thing to do is to get out in front of it.”

She nods, distant. “I want to speak.”

“It’s smart to have Marvin doing the talking right now.” Vernesha’s brother has made some statements, defending Tariq’s character and decrying the general wrongness of how this whole thing went down. “He’s making sure your voice is being heard, but it’s quite soon for anyone to expect you to speak. And I’m here now.” As if that’s any reassurance. “I made one statement on my way in here, and I’ll be holding a press conference in a couple of hours.”

“I’ll come,” she says, squeezing her fingers tighter. “I want to speak.”

I have known in my life but a shred of the power of women’s hands. For a moment I feel as if Tariq himself is folded between her palms, unable to slip away.

“You don’t have to.”

Her eyes turn sharp. Dangerous. “I have to. I’m his mother.”

“Well, you can’t really go wrong,” I tell her, stopping short of the truth:
Whatever you do, they’ll eat it up.

The little sister comes out. “You’re on TV,” she says. “Reverend Alabaster Sloan.” She pronounces every syllable.
Rev-er-end Al-a-bas-tuh-er Slo-a-n.
“Civil rights activist and senatorial candidate.” She parrots the byline they typically run beneath my face.

“Hello, Tina.” I haven’t inquired about her condition. It seems beside the point. She’s charming, more so with each curious peek into the room.

“You’re on TV.”

“Yes, you would have seen me on TV.”
And soon, you’ll be on there, too.
I put out my hand, to shake. Tina gazes disdainfully at my open palm.

“Be polite,” her mother says.

Tina shakes her head. “You’re on TV. Do you want to see?”

“Are you watching the news channel?” her mother says.

The little girl twists her hands. She becomes a small shadow of her mother, yet it’s hard to know whether she really understands the situation. “Nana is.”

“Mom, for heaven’s sake!” Vernesha calls. She plucks a few crumbs off Tina’s shirt. “Go tell Nana it’s time for your cartoons.”

“It’s not time,” Tina says. “Twenty more minutes.”

“Watch something else until then, okay?”

Vernesha turns back to me. “I want to speak,” she repeats. “I want them reporting the truth about Tariq. Not these lies.”

“All right.” Secretly, I’m glad. Secretly, this is why I came here.

“Whatever I have to do,” she says. “Just tell me.”

I admire women like this. I don’t know where they get the strength.

REDEEMA

I cut the volume low. I need to know what they’s saying about our boy. I know Vernesha don’t want Tina watching this. I don’t either. But it’s the only TV, and I gotta know what they’s saying. I got a right to know.

I send Tina off. “Go on to your room.” She’ll come right back though, like one of them spinning tops. The harder you set it off, the faster it spins back at you.

It’s the same with anything you try to push away. That’s why I keep on watching the news, although I’d rather shut it off and look after my babies. But I gotta know what they’s talking about, so it don’t sneak up and hit us.

TOM ARLEN

Doorbell rings. It’s the last person I’d expect to see standing on my stoop today. I grab his arm. “Get in here.” I glance up and down the street before I slam the door. “What the hell are you doing here? If the Kings catch you, they’re liable to knife you.”

“I have protection,” he says, patting the holster at his hip.

“Jesus Christ.” I’m eyeing the gun now. A gun that killed a boy. Now it’s under my roof. “They didn’t take it?”

“Yeah, they took it when they brought me in,” he says, “But I got it back.”

He follows me into the living room and I pour us a couple of drinks. I turned off the news coverage when I went to answer the door. Good thinking, it turns out.

“Look, can I stay here for a couple of nights?” he asks.

I’m shocked. “You want to stay in Underhill?”

“I can’t go home,” he says. “My lawyer says not to talk to any reporters, but they’re camped outside my house. They’re shining lights in my fucking windows, trying to see if I’m there. I don’t think I could even get in; they’ll swamp me.”

“The reporters come by here, too. I’m a witness on record. They know you borrowed my car.”

“Thanks for going on record, by the way. Lawyer says it helped me out. I told them ‘self-defense,’ right away, but they still questioned me. They said they had some conflicting statements, but they never made it sound like a big deal. I didn’t know the whole world was gonna come after me.” He chuckles, but I hear the nerves underneath.

We sip drinks and he tells me his story. Being hauled downtown, questioned, released with no charges pending. I’m interested in how it all happened, of course. Lived here twenty years, and I’ve never known a gunman in Underhill to walk away that easy, no matter the circumstances.

“You know I can’t go back out there,” he says. “Not till things cool off.”

“Well, sure, you’re welcome to stay, pal.” Though I can think of a dozen reasons why it’s a bad idea. Reporters. Kings. Damned inconvenient.

JENNICA

That Reverend Sloan is on the news again. He’s not even from here, but he’s quickly becoming the face of this thing. It’s so weird.

“Jen, can I get some more coffee?” says the regular at the end of the counter. His name is Cliff. Heathcliff, actually. He told me that one time.

It came up because he noticed I had changed my name. My nametag says Jen. J-E-N in big block letters that come on stickers. They have rolls of stickers in the back, different sizes because some people’s names are longer than others. You have to make your own tag. Mine used to say Jennica, but I changed it after the first month. People always wanted to strike up conversation about it. “Oh, that’s pretty,” and so forth. Especially some of the jerks who come in and think I’m into them because I smile and bring them food. Like they don’t even get that it’s my job, they just think I’m doing it for fun or something, like I’m doing something special just for them. The manager wouldn’t give me a new nametag unless I paid for it, so I had to peel off the last four stickers and scrape off all the gum. It was worth it.

Going to work is like playing a role now. It makes it easier to pretend that “Jennica” can someday be something else.

I warm Cliff’s coffee. I usually try to stay on top of it, without him having to ask. But it’s the kind of day where all I can do is stare at the TV screen or out at the street and try to put the two together. The whole picture of what’s happened to Tariq. I blink and blink but it doesn’t gel.

The bells above the door jangle. A man and a woman come in. She has a tan satchel over her shoulder and a notepad in her hand. He has a video camera on his shoulder hefted with one hand while he uses the other to open the door for her. I automatically reach for two menus, although right away I can see this is going to be something else.

The woman smiles, showing perfect teeth. “Hello, Miss Brewer?” She’s a breezy blonde with a ponytail and a smooth voice.

“Yes.”

“Great. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I understand you were present when Tariq Johnson was shot.”

“I’m at work,” I say. “I can’t talk to you now.”

“It would just take a minute. We’re putting together footage for tonight’s news.”

“It’s not time for my break. I can only talk to paying customers.” I hear myself say it, like a robot voice from the back of my head. My lips feel dry. Immobile.

The woman’s ponytail swings as she takes a seat at the counter, at the opposite end from Cliff. The cameraman doesn’t sit, he just moves to stand closer behind her. I stare into the lens. It’s both black and clear, a giant unblinking eye.

“I’ll have some coffee, then,” she says. Her wallet comes out. I glimpse a wad of green bills that seems unfairly thick. She lays a crisp, flat twenty on the table. “This should cover it.”

I have no choice but to set a mug and saucer in front of her. The coffee steam rises as I pour. I used to enjoy the smell. Now I’m immune. “Can I get you anything else?”

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions,” she says. The cameraman already has the camera on his shoulder, the lens glaring right into my face.

“I really have to work.”

Two more twenties appear.

“I don’t have anything interesting to say,” I tell her.

“I’m sure that’s not true.” She extracts two more.

At this point I’m looking at all the money I’m going to make this shift, doubled. I take the stack, fold it into the tips pouch on my apron. The woman swirls one finger in the air in a circle motion. A light on the camera blinks on, blinding me.

“Where were you, when it happened?”

“Across the street. We were just minding our own business, and then we heard the shots.”