The Orange Houses (9 page)

Interesting.

You come looking for drugs and you find a pistola.

He hadn't held one since his time in the desert. He hadn't wanted to use it, but he did. He told Joe about that night, the botched raid. Joe understood. Joe'd had to bust a few caps in his day. Joe
did
know. Not anymore though.

Now there was nobody to talk to.

Maybe this was God's way of telling Jimmi the time had come to end this life filled with too many lousy surprises.

He checked the safety, then the wheel, chock-full o' bullies. He tipped the cylinder, letting the slugs backslide out of their chambers. The .45 caliber bullet was a showstop per all right. He pocketed the slugs and tucked the gun into his waistband.

Creaking behind him, the bedroom door opened. The lights popped on. The dealer's big dude brother, tall as Jimmi and twice as thick, said, “Kill you, junkie.”

Jimmi swung past the dude for the back bedroom, kicked the door shut behind him, jumped the sill as the door blew in. Clear of the window he rolled hard onto the fire escape. He dropped down to the back courtyard and sprinted into the alley. The dealer's brother chased, a nine in hand.

Out on the street, kids were playing punchball in the dawn light. A five-year-old—maybe—ran hard into the street to catch a fly.

Jimmi doubled back and pushed the little kid clear of a cab skidding sideways. The cab clipped Jimmi. He rolled up the hood, over the shield, dropped off the back. He would ache everywhere tomorrow. He looked at the kid. “Tell me you all right.”

The kid's shock gave way to tears of embarrassment. He was clean.

Jimmi scrambled for the dropped gun. He ducked into the highway traffic to lose the dealer's brother. Out of breath the dude stopped chasing. He yelled, “Crazy Jimmi, you a dead man.”

The morning sun took a bite out of the tenement cliff. Jimmi disappeared in the glare. He limped into the underpass and dropped into the gutter alongside the Amtrak rails. He whistled “Amazing Grace” as he studied the Colt. He cocked the hammer,
ka-click
. “How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

She stared at the bank check Mom put in her hand that morning. The audiologist had called. The new hearing aids were ready for pickup. She calculated how much of Joe Knows's money would be left after she paid the doctor and wondered if that plus her savings from her homework business would be enough for the immigration lawyer. No. She'd need help from Mom and then some.

A velvet box floated into her lap. She followed the string up to Gale. He winked to her from the stairwell landing. She had been hiding from him, but now she tapped a spot of bench next to her. He sat.

Mik eyed the book-size box. “Big engagement ring,” she said.

“Better than that,” he said.

She opened the box: a pen. It was not the one she wanted. It was nicer. She fought a want to cut her lip on his braces again. “I can't accept this.”

“Why?”

“Homeboy, you can't buy your way into making somebody love you.”

“Why not?”

“Gale, I can't commit to a, you know, whachamacallit.”

“Relationship?”

“Can y'all settle for us being friends?”

“I still love you, though.

“Lemme see your homework.”

“Please keep the pen?”

She mussed his fledgling braids. “You got a lot of free math coming your way.”

Life was getting complicated. Now she had
three
friends to worry about. She gave him half her PBJ. They ate in silence.

 

Fatima waited right out front. So did a girl from Shanelle's posse. The chick waved to Mik, the wave turning into a salute, middle finger only.

“The universal sign,” Fatima said.

 

“You don't want to try them on here?” the doctor said.

Mik shook no.

“But we should calibrate them.”

I'LL FIGURE IT OUT. I WANT TO BE HOME THE FIRST TIME, Mik signed.

The doctor frowned, looked to Fatima.

Fatima shrugged.

THANK YOU, Mik signed. She put the new aids in her pocket and left.

 

Back in the O Houses, they hung in Mik's room. She slid the new aids out of their case. A quarter of the size of her old bud-style aids, they were two thin tubes that left her ear canals wide open.

“You should wait for Mom, no?” Fatima said.

Mik clicked on the aids. If sound were color, everything was too bright. If it were a hand, it scratched the backs of Mik's eyes with sharpened nails. The metallic sizzle in her throat reminded her of the time that girl in second grade tricked her into licking the top of a nine-volt battery.

Someone was clinking dishes as she washed them in the apartment across the breezeway. Mik felt as if the woman were smashing the plates over Mik's head.

A baby screeched from another apartment. He might as well have been screaming in Mik's ear.

Every sound in the world demanded Mik's full attention. Hundreds, thousands of fingers poked her,
Hey, Yo, Check me out, Yo I said, Listen to
me
, Hey—

Everything was “too real.”

She clicked off the aids. Her ear canals open, the sound didn't cut out.

No more silky silence.

Everything far away but not far away enough. Unclear.

She felt naked. She cupped her ears.

Fatima nudged her. “No?”

Mik put her old aids back in. “Why'd she make me do this? Wasting all that money.”

“Maybe you will try again later.”

“Maybe not.”

Fatima nodded. “Regardless of whether you wear the new aids or don't?”

“Yeah?”

“Love Mom.”

 

DOC LIED, Mik signed. THEY'RE UNCOMFORTABLE.

“What?” Mom said.

Mik hung the dishtowel and went into her room. She pulled out her sketchbook and the new pen. She didn't care that Mom followed and watched her from the door.

“Mika, you just have to get used to them. Can you at least take the old ones out of your ears?”

“
Mom
, just . . . Can you leave me alone? Please, okay?”

Mom nodded. “I just want you to know, you hurt me, girlfriend.”

“It has to be my decision—”

“Not that. Y'all do what you want with the aids. But the fact that you didn't wait for me to be here with you when you turned them on? After all that time, the two of us working to get you to this point? All those hours I'm double-shifting, Mika? The
years
? How could you do that to me?” Mom left.

Mik followed her to her bedroom, knocked. She tried the door, locked.

He was having a full-blown conversation with himself. “You won't. I
will
. You ain't got the heart. I won't in a second.”

He put the gun to his heart, pulled the trigger,
click
.

He'd been doing this on and off for the last day, rehearsal for the real deal.

He'd seen friends and enemies do it overseas. The rope and knife left grimaces on the corpses. The gun left no sign of regret. He slipped a bullet into the chamber and put the gun to his temple. He asked God to send him a sign about whether or not to snap the trigger. None came.

He cocked the hammer, clamped his eyes, said, “If a better world than this.” He tried to see that world. He couldn't. Instead he sensed what a blindworm must feel when it digs too deep: gritty dark.

In that dark came a flash of Joe Knows, a scrap of memory: Joe laughing the time Jimmi brought him a cake for his birthday.

Jimmi put the gun down. He had to do one last thing for Joe.

While Mik was in the bathroom Fatima studied a free Spanish paper. Articles were translated into English on the opposite page. Fatima taught herself the language as she hunted for news from the east. Word of Africa's troubles had dropped from print for the most part, at least from the rag Fatima sold, but sometimes
El Día
covered world events.

Not today.

Mik came back. Fatima showed her how to make a dog out of a burger wrapper. This would be today's lesson at the VA. YOU WILL LEAD THE CLASS? Fatima signed.

NEXT TIME.

“You have been saying ‘next time' many times now. But no pressure.”

“No, never.” Mik squinted. “That dude at the hospital, the head volunteer guy, he kind of creeps me out.”

“Why?”

“You don't worry he'll rat you out?”

“Never. He is, how you say, off the hook cool.”

“‘Off the hook,' huh?”

“I am becoming very down with it. Now you must punch my knuckles.”

Mik bumped her.

Two cops came in. One checked out Fatima's headscarf. He looked away to the dollar menu, no big deal. Still, Fatima said, “We should get to the hospital.”

Outside, Mik said, “Let's check with Jimmi's boss to see if he came back to work.”

“I worry that he . . . ” Fatima's eyes stopped on something across the street.

They crossed the strip to read a poster taped to the whitewashed glass of a vacant storefront:
DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU COULD MAKE 5-10K/MONTH WORKING AS AN INFORMATION SPECIALIST FOR THE U.S. DEPT OF IMMIGRATION?

“Informants,” Fatima said. “They are recruiting informants.”

Mik ripped the poster down.

She studied the paper dolls she made that afternoon with Fatima and the kids at the VA: elephants and baboons, animals Mik had seen only behind zoo barricades but Fatima had seen in her country's streets. She laid out the figures on top of her newest sketch, the Orange Houses as seen from the roof of the abandoned doctor's house behind Fatima's.

Mik shut her eyes, whispered, “If a city without walls . . . ”

She saw herself in her dream world. As she walked the streets they turned from ink to pavement, the penned buildings to brick and glass. She touched the newsprint animals and they came to life. A zebra herd grazed the park lawn. Monkeys hung out in the playground. Pelicans and pigeons flocked as one over the Orange Houses. A gust spun the birds—

Mom created a draft when she opened the bedroom door. She was dressed for work. “I left the Lean Cuisines in the microwave on thaw.”

“NaNa down yet?”

Mom shook no.

“I'll bring her dinner up.”

Mom eyed the new hearing aids on Mik's desk as she closed the door.

 

NaNa nursed her cold in bed. Mik brought her soup. NaNa took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Swear I'm going blind. Child, I'm in a jam for my Bible study tomorrow. Read this for me. Micah 7, let's do 18 and 19.”

Mik read, “‘God, who are you, that you pardon and forgive us? You show us mercy. You show us compassion. You throw away our sins and banish our crimes to the bottom of the sea.'”

“I must tell you, it's so nice to hear you speaking again. When you were young we could not get you to hush up. Been awful quiet these last ten years.” NaNa flipped the book to another dog-eared page. “And this, the underlined.”

“Psalms, 104, verses 15 and 16. ‘Man's days are like grass. He blossoms like wildflowers. Then the wind blows over the field and the flowers dry up and fade and are forgotten. '”

“What all you think that means?”

“Bible study, huh?”

NaNa blew the heat off her soup. “Sort it out for me.”

Mik rolled her eyes. “I'd say the psalm means time is short, do what you got to do.”

“What about the Micah?”

“
I
don't know, NaNa. I got homework—”

“More than God, you know whom you got to ask for forgiveness? Whom you got to go to for compassion, to show mercy? To give all y'all's love?”

“Who?”

“You.” NaNa nailed Mik with bright eyes.

“Me?”

 

The next day Jaekwon waited out in the hall for Mik. “I got news you need to know.”

“Step off.”

“Why you gotta be such a hater, yo? Ever hear of forgive and forget? You fix your hair different or something?”

She ran her hand over her do: same old crow's nest. She hooked into the stairwell.

“I came to warn you, Shanelle getting ready to posse up on you.”

“What I ever did to her?”

“Getting her suspended ain't enough? Her aunt belt-whipped her. She got drunk and crying last night, say you make her feel stupit.”

“
I
do?”

“She knows you're going places she ain't. She say she catch you without that bodyguard chick, she-a dead you.” Jae shrugged. “Sha got mad head problems, man, you don't know. Chick is
wack
.”

“Then why y'all hang with her?”

“I really gotta tell you? Yo baby, that's what being a boy is all about.”

Gale rolled up, wimpy chest puffed out. “I
know
you ain't stepping to my Mik, son. You step to my girl, you step to
me
.”