The Orange Houses (11 page)

“We got it covered.” Mom put a fat envelope on the man's desk.

Fatima begged, “No.”

“Yes,” Mik said. “Let us do this. NaNa'll be so mad if you don't. She passed the hat at church. Everybody wants you here.”

The church money would have covered only a bit of the cost. That and Joe Knows's money didn't add up to sixty-five thousand dollars. Mik and Mom had liquidated their savings. “I cannot let you do this,” Fatima said.

“Make Brother Joe Knows happy, child,” Mom said. “Make
us
happy. Fatima, this money? It's nothing until you let us put it to this.”

The lawyer studied the three women. “I have a good feeling about this one. In a couple of weeks we should have a temporary stay of deportation that'll let you be here legally while the rest of the paperwork goes through. Between now and then, keep out of trouble. You get found out, Immigration considers you a criminal, and all bets are off. You'll never get back in. Beware of rats.”

Fatima couldn't look at them. “I don't know how to thank—”

“Hush now,” Mom said.

Mik nodded and put her finger to her lips.

“I'll give the expeditor the money tonight,” the lawyer said. “Fatima, we'll start a regular application for your sister. It'll take a lot longer, but it'll cost a lot less, and you won't need money for that one for a few months. Now I have to ask you a tough question. Realistically, what are the chances she's still alive?”

“She is alive. She can be nothing else.”

Text from Gale: OUT SICK. MISS ME?

Mik's lips wrinkled. She texted back: SORT OF, but didn't get to send the message.

A knotted scarf gagged her from behind. A paper bag covered her head. Seven or eight girls were on her. They bent her arms behind her back and dragged her downstairs into the school basement. Their laughter was muddy in her old hearing aids. The paper bag came off in the jostling. Somebody grabbed her hair and twisted it to keep her from turning around to see her attackers.

They dragged her to the custodian's room, shoved her into a mop closet and slammed the door. Her hand vibrated. She'd been squeezing her phone the whole time. The display lit up with a text: SHA GONNA SMILEY U. A smiley was an ear-to-ear cut across the face.

She dialed 911, told the operator where she thought she was. The sound coming from her phone wasn't so much a voice as hiss and static. Ten minutes later she was past panic, wondering if the operator got the message. She banged on the inside of the closet door with her knees, her forehead. “I can't breathe. I can't breathe.”

 

“And you couldn't see their faces?”

“No.”

The principal nodded. “You have somebody to walk you home later?”

“My friend.”

“Stop by my office on your way out. I'll wait with you till your pickup comes.”

 

At three o'clock she went to the principal's office. The secretary said, “Somebody set off a cherry bomb in a toilet. He's out front with the police.”

Mik headed for the exit. A girl cut her off, flashed a box cutter. Mik spun back for the principal's office. Another girl with a box cutter. The only way out was the back door. She ran for it, blasted into the garbage bay. Between the Dumpsters a third girl waited for her. Mik sprinted for the park woods. When she turned back, the three girls had become thirty. All were new recruits, girls not cool enough to be in Sha's previous crew. They were eager to please her with their chains and broken bottles. One of them threw a Coke can at Mik's head. It exploded on a tree in a spray of copper and quartz. They had filled it with rocks and pennies.

Mik stayed off the paths, weaving through the thorn wood and weed tree thickets for the cliffs. Fallen leaves covered vines that tripped her up. A bamboo forest broke through what had been a basketball court fifty years ago. Trashed mattresses littered the woods. Clouds capped the sky and buried any hint of sun. She had no bearing on west, the way home.

She didn't look back for a long time. Breathless, she stopped to turn on her hearing aids.

Punches of static croaked like a recording of the human voice slowed down. Mik recognized the sounds as engine noise from a 747 booming northwest out of LaGuardia. She found sky through a hole in the dead trees.

Yes, it was a plane.

Something bit her forearm just beneath the elbow. Her leather jacket was slashed, underneath that her sweatshirt. Underneath that was slick red. She felt no pain for a second, then a searing sting. What made her scream was the sight of all that blood dripping from her sleeve cuff.

Hard hands punched her from behind. She tripped over a dead log, spun as she fell to land faceup. The back of her head smacked the frosty dirt. The wind knocked from her, she gulped, sure she would choke on the acid in her throat.

Shanelle's knees pinned Mik's arms. A backhand slap cracked Mik's face. Sha held her box cutter a shaky inch from Mik's eyes. “Read 'em: I win.”

“Why?” Mik said. “Why you hate me?”

“Getting me suspended, turning my crew away from me? You stole my man.”

“I didn't.”

“
Meek
-a Sykes. Y'all are just too . . . ”

“What?”

“Hell am I talking to you for?” Shanelle lifted the box cutter and swung down at Mik's cheek.

Mik shut her eyes.

Shanelle's weight lifted.

Mik opened her eyes.

Jimmi ducked. Shanelle slashed open his backpack. A coffee can spun from the bag and hit the ground with a small explosion of ash. Shanelle was fast with her cutter, but Jimmi's hands were faster. He ducked another swing, snatched Shanelle's arm, bent her wrist and dropped her with a leg sweep. He had her on her knees. “Don't make me break your arm,” he said, something like that. Mik's heavy breathing overwhelmed her hearing aids. In her head she heard a saw ripping metal.

“You're a'ready breaking it! Dag junkie, leg
go
. Crazy Jimmi, I will
scream
!”

“You're already screaming.” Jimmi pried the box cutter from Sha's clawed fingers, clicked the blade to safety, slipped it into his pocket. He released her. “Go. Run.”

She did. She didn't look scared. She looked as if she wanted to blow up the world.

“Her posse was swarming the woods,” Jimmi said. “I followed the racket. They're circling in from uphill.” He had Mik up and running south for the road.

She couldn't catch her breath, was sure she would puke. She had to stop at the wood's edge. Her blood trickled onto the sidewalk.

Jimmi drew Shanelle's box cutter. He cut away Mik's sleeve at the elbow. Mik's skin pulled apart to expose the meat beneath. Jimmi took off his jacket, then his T-shirt. He cut the tee into strips and bandaged Mik's wound. “We get you to the hospital. I piggyback you.”

He started up the road, stopped when he saw Shanelle and her posse rounding the corner. Mik on his back he ran downhill for the highway.

She thought she would throw up on him with all the bouncing.

More of Shanelle's crew cut them off downhill.

Jimmi ducked into a cut in the off-ramp wall. The rusted gate swung into the gray underneath the highway and then a stairwell. “Mik, your aids on?”

She groaned, “Yuh,” the acid pushing into her mouth. Her wound throbbed.

“Might want to turn 'em off for this next bit. Just hang on to me. I got you. No fear.”

They descended into darkness. The stairwell echoed screeches and booms from the trucks pounding the highway overhead. Sewer water charged fat pipes below. She didn't dare let go of him to turn off her aids. “Where we going, Jimmi?”

“Where they'll never find us.”

The dark was absolute. She had no sense of distance. She could have been in a coffin or a void between galaxies. A train's hum and rattle echoed over the fading highway noise as they dropped deeper into the blackness.

Mik hyperventilated until she sensed she was slipping from Jimmi's back, falling. She passed out.

Fatima paced the sidewalk in front of the school. Mik was nearly an hour late. Fatima approached the security guard. He said he was pretty sure he hadn't seen Mik leave. He gave Fatima a visitor's pass to the principal's office. The secretary said she was certain Mik had gone.

Fatima found a working pay phone and called Mik's cell phone, no answer. She called the Sykeses' apartment. The phone rang and rang.

She searched the streets in a panic. She and Mik were supposed to teach today. Fatima hurried uphill toward the VA.

She came to on a sleeping bag in a half-finished subway station lit blue by camp stove light. He'd left soup and soda for her, and rebandaged her arm. She lifted the gauze. He'd cleaned the wound and sealed it with what looked like glue. Next to her lay an army pack full of medical supplies: sterile dressings, peroxide, a ripped packet of Dermabond adhesive, and morphine sticks. One of the cases was cracked, the stick gone. She'd taken morphine once, an IV drip when she was hospitalized a few years ago for a serious ear infection. She was not on morphine now.

Behind her in the stove light was a newspaper opened to a full-page ad for travel to Costa Rica. Jimmi's words rode the crinkles in the puffy clouds into the margins:

Just past the newspaper, in the dark, twin moths fluttered. No, eyes.

Mik rotated the stove to light them.

Jimmi sat against the wall, a spent morphine stick in hand. On the floor next to him was a silver gun.

“Sorry, Mik.” He was pale, sweaty. He held up the morphine stick. “Forgot I had it. Needed just a little bit to take the edge . . . off.” He pushed himself to his feet, tucked the gun into his belt.

“Jimmi—”

“I gotta find Fatima. She ain't safe up there with those girls and their box cutters about.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“No, kid. You're safe now. Down here, we're dead to the world. I'll come back for you.” He drifted into the dark.

“Jimmi, please, don't leave me.” Her voice box was knotted. No way he heard her.

She grabbed the stove by its handles and hurried into the tunnel. Jimmi was gone. She tried one offshoot tunnel, then another. She forced herself not to run, get lost, die in this maze. She checked her phone, no signal down here. She made her way back to the cave and balled up on the sleeping bag. She clicked off her aids to block out the stove lamp's hiss. She closed her eyes and hugged herself. She couldn't block out the chattering inside her head. She was shaking to break her teeth. She gritted them to keep from biting her tongue as she whispered, “Fatima, please, be okay.”

Sandrine Sykes mopped up a Target aisle. Some kid had flipped a soda. Over the PA Sandrine's supervisor called, “Drine S., please come to the manager's office. Immediately.”

“What did I do wrong this time?” Drine muttered.

The manager met Sandrine halfway. “I'm so sorry, Drine.”

“What?” Sandrine said. “Somebody's dead, right? Oh God, don't tell me.”

 

Half O House tower #4 crammed into the apartment. Someone from NaNa's church led folks in prayer. Someone else yelled, “Y'all hush. Check it.” The man dialed up the TV volume.

The local newscaster said, “. . . abducted on her way home from school by an emotionally disturbed veteran. What makes this story especially horrible is that Mika, as she is known to friends, is hearing impaired. Semprevivo is thought to be armed with a box cutter—”

“Turn it off,” Drine yelled from the hallway. “Please, turn off the . . . sound.”

Somebody muted the TV. In the hush, Drine Sykes backed into the bathroom and closed the door. Her back to the wall, she slid to the floor. The noise came back, the praying, the TV blasting the news.

A round of
Bless-eds
rang out from faraway, then muffled knocking on the bathroom door. This was it. Someone had come to tell her that her daughter had been raped and murdered and left a mangled corpse on the reservoir slope.

She watched the doorknob turn. NaNa's lips moved but no sound came from them.

NaNa closed the door and knelt before Drine to be at her eye level. She took Drine's hands away from her ears. NaNa's voice was soft but firm. “ . . . onna be okay.” NaNa held Sandrine's hands. Both women's hands seemed old for their age.

“Everybody says he's crazy.”

“Everybody
says
, but nobody knows. But you and me,
we
know Jimmi since he was a kid now, don't we? We
know
him, Drine.”