Midnight

  Before placing the roller on the first wall, I had to remove the old clippings, pictures, and magazine articles she had taped up. I figured if she was anything similar to me, she probably wouldn’t like no one fucking with her stuff, so I tried to take them down easy without ripping them. I placed the clippings into a neat pile on her dresser underneath the plastic drop cloth.

  The article on top caught my eye, through the transparent plastic. The title of the article was “CUT SHORT.” It read: “The life of Brooklyn teen Darren Sparks was cut short at age 17 yesterday. He was killed by a drunk driver on the evening of . . .”

  Right away, I knew this was the baby’s father, who Bangs had confided in me was killed by a drunk driver. I thought it was sad. At the same time, it pumped up my determination to do a good job to bring Bangs a little bit of happiness.

  The roller made it easy. I was finished by 1:00 in the afternoon. Still, the paint had to dry, and I wanted to be out before Bangs got home, probably around 4:00 P.M.

  I knocked at Granny’s door, not knowing if either she or the baby were asleep.

  “Ya finished?” she asked.

  “I finished painting, but it has to dry before I can remove the tape and put the furniture back. I don’t know how long that will take.”

  “Well, take your time. You have the key. The van is gonna come around soon and pick us up, me and the baby,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Where are you two going?” I asked. She smiled.

  “Well I’m going to take advantage of some of my old lady perks,” she said. “The nice people over at the Senior Center have a van that picks us up and takes us on local errands, shopping, and whatnot. Afterwards, they gotta drop me off over at the clinic. Tiffany is gonna meet me over there at 4:00 P.M. The baby gotta get her three-month checkup. I’ll be there already waiting on line. You know they give you an appointment but then they still take a hundred hours before they call ya in to see a doctor. They figure if you poor enough to be in the clinic, you shouldn’t have nowhere else to go or nothing to do. So they let us just sit and wait.”

  “Are you expecting anybody to come by your house while you’re away?” I asked her, thinking about the situation with Bangs’ uncle.

  “No, if somebody comes along looking for me, just let ’em ring and knock. They’ll figure out that I’m not here. If they know me, they’ll know I’m coming back.”

  “What about the uncle?” I asked.

  “My son?” she said. “That fool. He got a key when he hasn’t lost it somewhere. When he don’t have the key he just tries to knock the door down until we let him in.”

  “Does he live here?” I asked, double-checking Bangs’ story.

  “Nope. But he don’t live nowhere really. His wife has a house. But that’s her house. Every time they fight, she throws him out. He keeps drinking. They keep fighting. He keeps showing up here. I try to keep ’em out because Tiffany doesn’t like him.”

  “Why don’t you just change the locks and this time don’t give him the key?” I asked her. She looked puzzled for some reason.

  “Do you give everybody a key?” I asked her.

  “No, of course not,” she replied.

  But she had given me the key and barely knew me. I wanted her to think about that for Bangs’ protection, and the sake of the baby.

  “Did you give a key to Darren?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Darren,” I said. “Darren Sparks.”

  “Goodness gracious, who is that?” she asked.

  “I am sorry for bringing him up. I know he passed away but I’m just saying, Granny, you can’t give everybody the key to your house.”

  “I thought you were a nice young man. Now you’re trying to make me feel senile. Who is Darren Sparks?” she said, her hands now on her hips.

  “The baby’s father?” I jarred her memory.

  Her face darkened, like when someone walks by and steals the light away for a second. Her expression changed and then went blank.

  “The baby’s father is not dead. Now, I don’t believe in that, saying somebody’s dead when they ain’t. It’s like voodoo. You call ’em out dead, then it happens. I got a lot of disagreements with my son. But I don’t want him dead either,” she said.

  “And we don’t talk about that in here. The baby was born and that’s it. We take it from there. The baby is here. The baby didn’t do one thing wrong to nobody,” she said, seeming to have no idea that she had exposed the filthy truth.

  “Tiffany is your granddaughter, right, Granny?” I asked her to be sure.

  “Of course. She is my daughter’s daughter, God rest her soul. Now she’s dead. If I could have it my way—” Then she stopped herself on hearing the baby’s soft cry.

  I left out when they left, watched them get into the van, and walked back over to the hardware store while the paint continued to dry.

  What kind of family is this? I asked myself. The uncle, the one man who was supposed to be protecting the family, was fucking the family instead. The grandmother, old and confused, was welcoming the son, even though she clearly knew that he was fucking her granddaughter. Did she think not discussing it made it okay?

  I should’ve known when I seen her uncle the first time. He was the real rat, not the one I knifed and pinned up against the wall. He had to be about thirty-eight or forty years old. Bangs is fourteen. He had to be fucking her at least since she was thirteen, probably even younger than that.

  I felt a fire in my heart.

  When I returned, the paint was dry. No one was home and I was glad about it. I placed everything back into its place and removed the masking tape. While I was taking care of all that, I had the locksmith changing their front-door lock.

  In her room, I installed a dead bolt lock. This way, when she’s in her room, no one could get in unless she wanted them to, unless she turned the metal knob and allowed and invited them in. I even had the locksmith repair the window lock as well.

  In the kitchen I emptied and rinsed out a jar. It worked perfectly as a vase for the flowers I brought for her room. I arranged them, filled it with water, and left them on her dresser.

  I threw out her dirty old window curtain. For now the blinds would have to do. I thought of how easily Umma could zip through making a proper curtain for Bangs. Then I pulled the thought back. The reality was that this was the last stop for me with her. These gifts made me feel okay about my good-bye.

  She ran around to the gym to see me like I knew she would. Basketball practice had just begun. I had just arrived.

  “Hey, we’re locked out. It’s crazy. Granny’s key won’t work. It won’t open our front door,” she said with her usual excitement. I could see she was beginning to depend on me as her problem solver.

  I gave her Granny’s key ring with the new keys to the new locks I had installed attached. “Here, your grandmother gave me her keys to hold,” I said.

  “Why? When?” she asked. Her questions let me know that Granny didn’t spoil the paint surprise.

  “I gotta go, Bangs. I can’t keep the team waiting.” She left reluctantly, as always. But I knew her grandmother and baby were waiting for her as always too.

  I also knew she would come back and try to catch me after practice was over. So I left early and headed to the dojo.

  50

  THE ROPE

  “I meant to ask you, Chris, how did you convince your father to let you come back to the dojo?” We were all seated on the floor. The entire class awaited Sensei’s arrival from the back room.

  “It wasn’t me. It was you guys. My mother kept saying how great she thought it was that you guys came to the church. Even my father was impressed that you stayed and helped add up the receipts. To tell you the truth, he thought we were all back there playing and pretending. When he saw the figures matching up with his accountant’s calculations, he respected that. He had to,” Chris said.

  “So are you back in the league? ’Cause you know the blacks play the greens for
the season opener. And I wanted to apologize for doing all the dunking I’m gonna be doing on you on May third,” I said, laughing.

  “You might be dunking. But I ain’t gonna be nowhere around,” Chris said.

  “I’m still on punishment. I can do the martial arts because my father thinks I already put so much training into it and he already put so much money into it. Besides, he thinks that you guys are good and have ‘redeeming qualities,’ ” he said, laughing.

  “But I can’t play in the league ’cause my father said it’s ‘high risk.’ I can’t even go out on weekends until school ends and that’s not till June thirtieth.” He looked tight about it.

  “Well, at least you’re here,” I told him.

  “Who’s the red team playing for the opener?” I asked Ameer.

  “The orange suckers from Crown Heights. But I took your advice, man. I sat my team down, we smoked some weed and talked about shit. We made plans, big plans. I told them I’ll never get used to losing, so we had to get on point,” Ameer said. “They took me seriously too. ’Cause if we ain’t in the running to get the money, none of this shit makes any c-e-n-t-s.” He laughed at his joke. I knew he was serious about that money.

  “You got time. The scrimmage didn’t count,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, it was good we lost. Now that we got real games every week I’ll get the gorillas worked up and we’ll sweep this thing,” he said with a smile.

  “Yeah, I’d like to see that.” I smiled back.

  Being four doors down from Akemi’s family store had me crazy. It wasn’t just a physical thing. I missed her. I missed seeing her. I missed trying to talk to her. I missed her trying to talk to me. I missed watching the unique things she did and ways she went about it. While working, every now and then I’d look out to see if she would breeze by.

  I resolved that until she was finished with that art show, I was on a back burner. I just told myself it was the same position she was in, when I was hard at work on the wedding job. She handled it and chilled out with Umma. I could accept and handle it too.

  I could tell Cho had been observing me. I guess it was easy for him to see I was a bit anxious. Holding his reliable old knife in his thick swollen working hands, he took a side look at me and said, “Japanese girl make you into nervous wreck.”

  • • •

  Friday evening after Umma and Naja were secured, me and Ameer met up and went over to Chris’ house. Since he couldn’t get out, we went to him. His family was at church. He was home alone.

  We kicked back at first and listened to some music. Ameer had some cassettes of new joints that weren’t even released on radio yet. It wasn’t so hard to get his hands on them, since all of the rappers coming up were straight out all of our hoods and could even be living in the same building with us even after their joints were banging on the radio.

  Chris’ refrigerator was stacked, and the cupboards too, with juices, sodas, chips, and cakes. Seemed like they had more shit than the corner store. All of us chose something different than the other to eat and we each made it ourselves.

  “Nice house,” Ameer said as he made a roast beef sandwich. “You over here living like a king. Don’t you know better than to let some project niggas in your place?” He laughed.

  “This is my father’s house,” Chris said. “Don’t you remember the speech? Everything in here belongs to the Christian Broadman Corp. That’s dad. If I want something, I got to start up my own business and make it happen,” Chris said.

  “It can’t be that bad. You got more than what I got. And your pops pays your expenses too,” Ameer said.

  “Hold up. Far as I remember, I’m the only one here who has to go to work in the morning. Ameer, your pops pays your expenses too,” I joked for true.

  “Yeah but I’m living like Hotel Six. Chris is chilling like the Hyatt Regency.” We laughed.

  Later we played ball on his court. While I shook Ameer to the hoops, I told him, “Now me and you is gonna have to work even harder to win that money. If we get it, we still gotta cut it three ways.”

  He laughed regular at first then his laugh grew louder and louder.

  “What? If me and Chris won in the league, you’d want your cut too!” I told him.

  “Yeah, but if he’s not even putting in work in the league no more, then it’s like he’s getting more free gravy.”

  “True, but remember you said three is better than two. Two is better than one,” I reminded him.

  “What the fuck does that have to do with this situation?” Ameer asked.

  “We gotta stick together, watch each other’s back, keep our word to one another,” I said, and sunk the ball in the net at the same time.

  “Oh yeah, what’s up with you letting us in on what Sensei been teachin’ you. You haven’t showed us shit.”

  I turned to Chris. “You got any rope?”

  “Yep, in the garage.”

  “Go get it. I’ll show both of y’all something.”

  51

  SIDEWAYS

  Late Friday night when I got back on the block, everybody was outside like it wasn’t almost 1:00 A.M.

  I couldn’t miss Heavenly seated sideways on the back of DeQuan’s Kawasaki. DeQuan was deep in a conversation with one of his brothers, named DeMon, full grown and twenty-two years old now, but DeQuan was still telling him what to do and how to do it, and how much heart and intensity to put behind it.

  “You got something for me?” Heavenly asked softly as I walked by. I didn’t answer her or bother looking her way. I acknowledged DeQuan instead.

  “Hold up, let me get in your ear,” DeQuan said to me.

  “I’ll be back,” I told him as I kept it moving.

  When I came back down I handed him the gold chain with the “Heavenly” pendant on it, wiped clean and wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. I finally had a chance to get it out of my hands without stepping into one of her traps. Since Conflict’s only been dead for two weeks or so, she probably had not had enough time to start fucking with DeQuan’s head and to cause a rift between me and him who been cool for all these years.

  “Take this,” I told him. “I found it.”

  “It’s cool, man. I know her. She don’t give out gold. She collects it,” he said with a smile.

  “What was it you wanted?” I asked him.

  “Oh, sorry I couldn’t get up to watch your game. We had to work a lot of shit out at the wake. Some of Conflict’s side girls was up there fighting in front of his moms. Superior was tore up about his loss. The shit was fucked up,” he said.

  “When’s your next game?” he asked.

  “Next Saturday, May third,” I told him. “Brownsville Park, nine P.M.”

  “A night game in the Ville, huh? A’ight, I’m in there.”

  “I see you got Conflict’s girl on your bike,” I said, without looking at Heavenly.

  “War booty,” he responded and gave me a pound.

  I wanted to warn him but I didn’t. I knew that he was street-smart and used to dealing with the snakes. But she was a snake with no rattle and no hiss. She strikes, but there’s no warning or clues. By the time a man finds out something is wrong, she has already injected too much poison in his system and he can no longer be saved.

  There was really no way for me to express it, without it seeming like I had something to do with her.

  52

  WARMER

  “I was speaking to Temirah Auntie last night,” Umma said at the breakfast table after Fajr prayer early Saturday morning. “She wanted me to come by her house tonight and discuss an idea that her husband had for her and I to offer a culture class for the Sudanese daughters who are growing up here in America. She says that people would pay to have their daughters properly trained and are scared to death of the changes they are seeing in their children who are being raised living in this country. What do you think about a class? Do you think it’s good business?”

  “I’ll come home from work and take you over to th
eir house this evening. Let’s sit down and see what they’re talking about,” I answered.

  It was warmer today than it had been any other day this season. No use for a jacket, hoodie, or sweater. The sun took over the sky, flaunting its power.

  I knew it was a good day when at around noon, Cho mashed his finger onto his picture on the wall, the one with him standing at the helm of a fishing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and asked me, “You coming?”

  I smiled and answered, “No doubt.”

  “Yes or no?” he asked again.

  “Most def,” I told him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Yes, Cho, I would like to come along on your boat. When are you taking it out?”

  “On U.S. Memorial Day. The whole day, me, brother Chan, brother Yin, and you,” he said.

  I was ecstatic. Nine months of dedication and hard work had finally brought forth the invitation I wanted to receive from the start. It was the birth of a real camaraderie between Cho and I, outside of cutting and cleaning fish and hauling boxes.

  At quitting time, I was feeling sticky. It was too warm to wear my usual heavy rubber apron and plastics over my clothes. So I rocked today with only a T-shirt and jeans. My welding glasses were dangling from my neck. My gloves were stuffed in my back jeans pocket and I was sweating some.

  I washed the guts off of my counter and hosed everything down.

  In the bathroom I washed my face, arms, hands and feet just to cool down, feel comfortable, and smell good enough to ride the train. At home I would jump in the shower before taking Umma to Mr. Ghazzali’s house.

  My gun was stashed and locked in Cho’s basement.

  Downstairs, Cho’s cat must’ve been feeling the heat. She was giving up a constant purr. Or maybe she was just talking to the other two new cats who were trapped in the cage while she was walking around free. Maybe she was trying to figure out how to get her boyfriend out of the cage so they could make sweet noisy love in the dark corridors of the basement. I laughed at my own imagination.