"That's okay."
"Take it."
She ignored him, dropped the coins in and called Lakeesha, while her father pocketed his cell and wandered to the curb, looking around the neighborhood like a boy in front of the candy section in a bodega.
She turned away as her friend answered. " 'Lo?"
"It's all over with, Keesh." She explained about the jewelry exchange, the bombing.
"That what was goin' on? Damn. A terrorist? That some scary shit. But you okay?"
"I'm down. Really."
Geneva heard another voice, a male one, saying something to her friend, who put her hand over the receiver for a moment. Their muted exchange seemed heated.
"You there, Keesh?"
"Yeah."
"Who's that?"
"Nobody. Where you at? You not in that basement crib no more, right?"
"I'm still where I told you--with that policeman and his girlfriend. The one in the wheelchair."
"You there now?"
"No, I'm Uptown. Going to school."
"Now?"
"Pick up my homework."
The girl paused. Then: "Listen, I'ma hook up with you at school. Wanna see you, girl. When you be there?"
Geneva glanced at her father, nearby, hands in his pockets, still surveying the street. She decided she didn't want to mention him to Keesha, or anybody else, just yet.
"Let's make it tomorrow, Keesh. I don't have any time now."
"Daymn, girl."
"Really. Better tomorrow."
"Wha-ever."
Geneva heard the click of the disconnect. Yet she stayed where she was for some moments, delaying going back to her father.
Finally she joined him and they continued toward the school.
"You know what was up there, three or four blocks?" he asked, pointing north. "Strivers Row. You ever seen it?
"No," she muttered.
"I'll take you up there sometime. Hundred years ago, this land developer fellow, named King, he built these three big apartments and tons of town houses. Hired three of the best architects in the country and told 'em to go to work. Beautiful places. King Model Homes was the real name but they were so expensive and so nice, this's the story, the place was called Strivers Row 'cause you had to strive to live there. W. C. Handy lived there for a time. You know him? Father of the blues. Most righteous musician ever lived. I did a 'piece up that way one time. I ever tell you about that? Took me thirty cans to do. Wasn't a throw-up; I spent two days on it. Did a picture of W. C. himself. Photographer from the Times shot it and put it in the paper." He nodded north. "It was there for--"
She stopped fast. Her hands slapped her hips. "Enough!"
"Genie?"
"Just stop it. I don't want to hear this."
"You--"
"I don't care about any of what you're telling me."
"You're mad at me, honey. Who wouldn't be after everything? Look, I made a mistake," he said, his voice cracking. "That was the past. I'm different now. Everything's going to be different. I'll never put anybody ahead of you again, like I did when I was with your moms. You're the one I should've been trying to save--and not by taking that trip to Buffalo."
"No! You don't get it! It's not about what you did. It's your whole goddamn world I don't want any part of. I don't care about Strivers whatever it is, I don't care about the Apollo or the Cotton Club. Or the Harlem Renaissance. I don't like Harlem. I hate it here. It's guns and crack and rapes and people getting fiended for a cheap-ass plated bling and drugstore hoops. It's girls, all they care about is extensions and braids. And--"
"And Wall Street's got insider traders and New Jersey's got the mob and Westchester's got trailer parks," he replied.
She hardly heard him. "It's boys, all they care about is getting girls in bed. It's ignorant people who don't care how they talk. It's--"
"What's wrong with AAVE?"
She blinked. "How do you know about that?" He himself had never talked ghetto--his own father had made sure he'd worked hard in school (at least until he dropped out to start the "career" of defacing city property). But most people who lived here didn't know that the official name for what they spoke was African-American Vernacular English.
"When I was inside," he explained, "I got my high school diploma and a year of college."
She said nothing.
"I mostly studied reading and words. Maybe won't help me get a job but it's what drew me. I always liked books and things, you know that. I'm the one had you reading from jump . . . . I studied Standard. But I studied Vernacular too. And I don't see anything wrong with it."
"You don't speak it," she pointed out sharply.
"I didn't grow up speaking it. I didn't grow up speaking French or Mandingo either."
"I'm sick of hearing people say, 'Lemme axe you a question.' "
Her father shrugged. " 'Axe' is just an Old-English version of 'ask.' Royalty used to say it. There're Bible translations that talk about 'axing' God for mercy. It's not a black thing, like people say. The combination of saying s and k next to each other's hard to pronounce. It's easier to transpose. And 'ain't'? Been in the English language since Shakespeare's day."
She laughed. "Try getting a job talking Vernacular."
"Well, what if somebody from France or Russia's trying for that same job? Don't you think the boss'd give them a chance, listen to 'em, see if they'd work hard, were smart, even if they spoke different English? Maybe the problem's that the boss is using somebody's language as a reason not to hire him." He laughed. "People in New York damn well better be able to speak some Spanish and Chinese in the next few years. Why not Vernacular?"
His logic infuriated her even more.
"I like our language, Genie. It sounds natural to me. Makes me feel at home. Look, you've got every right to be mad at me for what I did. But not for who I am or what we came out of. This's home. And you know what you do with your home, don't you? You change what oughta be changed and learn to be proud of what you can't."
Geneva jammed her eyes closed and lifted her hands to her face. The years and years she dreamed of a parent--not even the luxury of two, but just one person to be there when she came home in the afternoons, to look over her homework, to wake her up in the morning. And when that wasn't going to happen, when she'd finally managed to shore up her life on her own and start working her way out of this godforsaken place, here comes the past to yoke and choke her and drag her back.
"But that's not what I want," she whispered. "I want something more than this mess." She waved her hand around the streets.
"Oh, Geneva, I understand that. All I'm hoping for is maybe we have a couple of nice years here, 'fore you off into the world. Give me a chance to make up for what we did to you, your mother and me. You deserve the world . . . . But honey, I gotta say--can you name me one place that's perfect? Where all the streets're paved with gold? Where everybody loves their neighbors?" He laughed and slipped into Vernacular. "You say it a mess here? Well, damn straight. But where ain't it a mess one way or th'other, baby? Where ain't it?"
He put his arm around her. She stiffened but she didn't otherwise resist. They started for the school.
*
Lakeesha Scott sat on the bench in Marcus Garvey Park, where she'd been for the past half hour, after she'd come back from her counter job in the restaurant downtown.
She lit another Merit, thinking: There are things we do 'cause we want to and things we do 'cause we gotta. Survival things.
And what she was about now was one of those had-to things.
Why the fuck didn't Geneva say that after all this shit she was booking on out of town and never coming back?
She was going to Detroit or 'Bama?
Sorry, Keesh, we can't see each other anymore. I'm talking forever. Bye.
That way, the whole fucking problem'd be gone for good.
Why, why, why?
And it was worse than that: Gen had to go and tell her exactly where she was going to be for the next f
ew hours. Keesh had no excuse to miss the girl now. Oh, she'd kept up her ghetto patter when they'd been talking a while ago so her friend wouldn't hop to something going down. But now, sitting alone, she sank into sorrow.
Man, I'm feeling bad.
But ain't got no choice here.
Things we do 'cause we gotta . . .
Come on, Keesha said to herself. Got to get over. Let's go. Bring it on . . . .
She crushed out her cigarette and left the park, headed west then north on Malcolm X, past church after church. They were everywhere. Mt. Morris Ascension, Bethelite Community, Ephesus Adventist church, Baptist--plenty of those. A mosque or two, a synagogue.
And the stores and shops: Papaya King, a botanica, a tuxedo-rental shop, a check-cashing outlet. She passed a gypsy cab garage, the owner sitting outside, holding his taped-together dispatch radio, the long cord disappearing into the unlit office. He smiled at her pleasantly. How Lakeesha envied them: the reverends in the grimy storefronts under the neon crosses, the carefree men slipping hot dogs into the steamed buns, the fat man on the cheap chair, with his cigarette and his fucked-up microphone.
They ain't betraying nobody, she thought.
They ain't betraying the person was one of their best friends for years.
Snapping her gum, gripping her purse strap hard with her pudgy fingers tipped in black and yellow nails. Ignoring three Dominican boys.
"Psssst."
She heard "booty." She heard "bitch."
"Pssssst."
Keesh reached into her purse and gripped her spring knife. She nearly flicked it open, just to see 'em flinch. She glared but left the long, sharp blade where it was, deciding she'd have a world of trouble when she got to the school. Let it go for now.
"Pssst."
She moved on, her nervous hands opening a pack of gum. Shoving two fruity pieces into her mouth, Lakeesha struggled to find her angry heart.
Get yourself mad, girl. Think of everything Geneva done to piss you off, think of everything she be that you ain't and never gonna be. The fact the girl was so smart it hurt, that she came to school every single fucking day, that she kept her skinny little white-girl figure without looking like some AIDS ho, that she managed to keep her legs together and told other girls to do the same like some prissy moms.
Acting like she better than us all.
But she wasn't. Geneva Settle was just another kid from a mommy-got-a-habit, daddy-done-run-off family.
She one of us.
Get mad at the fact that she'd look you in the eye and say, "You can do it, girl, you can do it, you can do it, you can get outa here, you got the world ahead of you."
Well, no, bitch, sometimes you just can't do it. Sometimes it's just too fucking much to bear. You need help to get over. You need somebody with benjamins, somebody watching your back.
And for a moment the anger at Geneva boiled up inside her and she gripped the purse strap even tighter.
But she couldn't hold it. The anger vanished, blew away like it was nothing more than the light brown baby powder she'd sprinkle on her twin cousins' buns when she changed their diapers.
As Lakeesha walked in a daze past Lenox Terrace toward their school, where Geneva Settle would soon be, she realized that she couldn't rely on anger or excuses.
All she could rely on was survival. Sometimes you gotta look out for yourself and take the hand somebody offers you.
Things we do 'cause we gotta . . .
Chapter Thirty-Seven
At school, Geneva collected her homework and wouldn't you know it, her next language arts assignment was to report on Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, the 1928 book that was the first best-selling novel by a black author.
"Can't I have e. e. cummings?" she asked. "Or John Cheever?"
"It's our African-American sequence, Gen," her language arts teacher pointed out, smiling.
"Then Frank Yerby," she bargained. "Or Octavia Butler."
"Ah, they're wonderful authors, Gen," her teacher said, "but they don't write about Harlem. That's what we're studying in this segment. But I gave you McKay because I thought you'd like him. He's one of the most controversial writers to come out of the Renaissance. McKay took a lot of flak because he looked at the underside of Harlem. He wrote about the primitive aspects of the place. That upset DuBois and a lot of other thinkers at the time. It's right up your alley."
Maybe her father could help her interpret, she thought cynically, since he loved the neighborhood and its patois so much.
"Try it," the man offered. "You might like it."
Oh, no, I won't, Geneva thought.
Outside the school, she joined her father. They came to the bus stop and both closed their eyes as a swirl of chill, dusty air swept around them. They'd reached a detente of sorts and she'd agreed to let him take her to a Jamaican restaurant that he'd been dreaming about for the past six years.
"Is it even still there?" she asked coolly.
"Dunno. But we'll find something. Be an adventure."
"I don't have much time." She shivered in the cold.
"Where's that bus?" he asked.
Geneva looked across the street and frowned. Oh, no . . . . There was Lakeesha. This was so her; she hadn't even listened to what Geneva'd said and had come here anyway.
Keesh waved.
"Who's that?" her father asked.
"My girlfriend."
Lakeesha glanced uncertainly toward her father and then gestured for Gen to cross the street.
What's wrong? The girl's face was smiling but it was clear she had something on her mind. Maybe she was wondering what Geneva was doing with an older man.
"Wait here," she told her father. And she started toward Lakeesha, who blinked and seemed to take a deep breath. She opened her purse and reached inside.
What's the 411 on this? Geneva wondered. She crossed the street and paused at the curb. Keesha hesitated then stepped forward. "Gen," she said, her eyes going dark.
Geneva frowned. "Girl, what's--"
Keesh stopped fast as a car pulled to the curb past Geneva, who blinked in surprise. Behind the wheel was the school counselor, Mrs. Barton. The woman gestured the student to the car. Geneva hesitated, told Keesh to wait a minute and joined the counselor.
"Hey, Geneva. I just missed you inside."
"Hi." The girl was cautious, not sure what the woman knew and didn't about her parents.
"Mr. Rhyme's assistant told me that they caught the man who tried to hurt you. And your parents finally got back."
"My father." She pointed. "That's him right there."
The counselor regarded the stocky man in the shabby T-shirt and jacket. "And everything's okay?"
Out of earshot, Lakeesha watched them with a frown. Her expression was even more troubled than before. She'd seemed cheerful on the phone, but now that Geneva thought about it, maybe she'd been fronting. And who was that guy she'd been talking to?
Nobody . . .
I don't think so.
"Geneva?" Mrs. Barton asked. "You all right?"
She looked back at the counselor. "Sorry. Yeah, it's fine."
The woman again studied her father closely and then turned her brown eyes on the girl, who looked away.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?"
"Uhm . . . "
"What's the real story here?"
"I--"
It was one of those situations when the truth was going to come out no matter what. "Okay, look, Mrs. Barton, I'm sorry. I wasn't completely honest. My father's not a professor. He's been in prison. But he got released."
"So where have you been living?"
"On my own."
With no trace of judgment in her eyes the woman nodded. "Your mother?"
"Dead."
She frowned. "I'm sorry . . . . And is he going to take custody?"
"We haven't really talked about it. Anything he does he has to get it worked out with the court or something." She said this to buy time. Geneva had half formulated a p
lan for her father to come back, technically take custody, but she'd continue to live on her own. "For a few days I'm going to stay with Mr. Rhyme and Amelia, at their place."
The woman looked once more at her father, who was offering a faint smile toward the pair.
"This's pretty unusual."
Geneva said defiantly, "I won't go into a foster home. I won't lose everything I've been working for. I'll run away. I'll--"
"Whoa, slow up." The counselor smiled. "I don't think we need to make an issue of anything now. You've been through enough. We'll talk about it in a few days. Where're you going now?"
"To Mr. Rhyme's."
"I'll give you a ride."
Geneva gestured her father over. The man ambled up to the car, and the girl introduced them.
"Nice to meet you, ma'am. And thanks for looking out for Geneva."
"Come on, get in."
Geneva looked across the street. Keesh was still there.
She shouted, "I gotta go. I'll call you." She mimicked holding a phone to her ear.
Lakeesha nodded uncertainly, withdrew her hand from her purse.
Geneva climbed into the backseat, behind her father. A glance through the back window at Keesh's grim face.
Then Mrs. Barton pulled away from the curb and her father started up with another ridiculous history lesson, rambling on and on, you know I did a 'piece once 'bout the Collyer brothers? Homer and Langley. Lived at 128th and Fifth. They were recluses and the weirdest men ever lived. They were terrified of crime in Harlem and barricaded themselves in their apartment, set up booby traps, never threw a single thing out. One of 'em got crushed under a pile of newspapers he'd stacked up. When they died, police had to cart over a hundred tons of trash out of their place. He asked, "You ever hear about them?"
The counselor said she thought she had.
"No," Geneva replied. And thought: Ask me if I care.
*
Lincoln Rhyme was directing Mel Cooper to organize the evidence that they'd collected from the bombing scene, in between reviewing some of the evidence-analysis reports that had returned.
A federal team, under Dellray's direction, had tracked down Jon Earle Wilson, the man whose fingerprints were on the transistor radio bomb in Boyd's safe house. He'd been collared and a couple of agents were going to bring him over to Rhyme's for interrogation to shore up the case against Thompson Boyd.
It was then that Bell's phone rang. He answered, "Bell here . . . Luis, what's up?" He cocked his head to listen.
Luis . . .
This would be Martinez, who had been tailing Geneva and her father on foot since they'd left Rhyme's to go to Langston Hughes. They were convinced that Jax, Alonzo Jackson, was her father and no threat to the girl, and that the terrorist had been working alone. But that didn't mean Bell and Rhyme were going to let Geneva go anywhere in the immediate future without protection.