yellow: “jaundiced” Mama called it, “jaundiced like C.J. when we brought him home from the hospital.” Mama’d put him by the window, even though it was so cold, there was frost on them. She’d scrape the frost off with her fingernails. I’d help her, too. I’d write on it first, the ice building up under my nails like a thin crystal ribbon. “I love Charles James,” I wrote and then drew a big heart around it. Mama smiled.
“That ain’t my baby,” Darius snarled at Mama. “I ain’t paying for him.”
‘Course anybody with any sense whatsoever can tell that is a lie. C.J. looks just like him: light skinned, nappy hair, and a broad forehead.
“He just don’t want to give me money, that’s what it is,” Mama said. That was before we moved here. Not long after C.J. was born, Mama went out looking for work. She left the baby with Darius because I was in school. Later, Mama got the record of the phone call Darius made to D.S.S. when she was out:
“I’m callin’ to report a baby abandoned. His mom just left him with me and run off.”
Mama came back to a social worker asking all kinds of questions. Darius left out the back door as soon as Mama set foot through the front. That was the last we saw of him for a long time.
Even if Mama wanted to see him again, which she didn’t, she couldn’t have anyway. That social worker told Mama in order for us not to lose C.J., she had to break all ties with Darius. That way, the courts would come after him for being an unfit parent. If she contacted him, even just to bawl him out, then she’d be part of what they call abuse. That’s when me and Mama packed up our stuff and moved up here. We got family up here, too. Not close ties, not like Aunties Reneta and Nellie and Faith or Granny or Uncle Bill, but distant kin.
“We’re just following the route a lot of people traveled coming from the South up North for opportunity,” Mama explained. “Even working in a factory is better than sharecropping.”
Mama got her first child support check for C.J. not that long ago. Seven dollars.
Auntie Reneta sends us money for groceries when she can. She and Mama’s other sisters even shipped a big ole box of clothes for the baby. They’d gone garage saleing and bought just about everything C.J. will need for along time.
“That is if he stops growing like a bad weed,” Mama teased.
That morning we woke up to the news: “After six in the morning, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern US state of Louisiana with 145 mile an hour winds and waves of up to 20 feet. There have been reports of substantial flooding and rain and winds have destroyed buildings and houses. Katrina has also caused serious damage in parts of Alabama and Mississippi. Reports this morning indicate at least 55 deaths already, with 50 of these in Harrison County, Mississippi. This figure will undoubtedly climb much higher as the death toll in Louisiana is counted.”
“Mama,” I ask holding C.J. on my lap, “Auntie Reneta’s outta there now, ain’t she?”
Mama nodded her head, but her eyes didn’t look so sure.
10
Tino
He cried one day over a flower. Imagine that? Abuelita lived on the first floor in Barberton and we all lived on the second. She always had a garden in the backyard in the summer: peppers and chilies and tomatoes. She even made tortillas in the yard sometimes. Now, that’s old school. Right up against the house, near her garden, Dad put some concrete bricks there in the shape of a square and Abuelita would make a fire from sticks and branches Tino and I would bring her. She’s start first with the sticks and get them going good, then add the bigger pieces of wood. Abuelita would rest her old cast iron skillet right on the bricks and mix up mesa and cook tortillas for us. Tino and I would stand still as soldiers, guarding the food, waiting for the first tortillas which we always took with greedy little hands and appetites.
“Es muy bueno, Abuelita!” Tino would clap. Abuelita would laugh until tears came.
Once, we were both outside playing. “Go play,” Mom would always say to me. “Take your brother and watch him for me.” I always took Tino with me. We were only 13 months apart. I don’t ever remember being little without Tino there by my side.
The sun shone down bright and Tino was watching the way it lit up on the tomato plants. As it descended, one plant, the smallest one of them all, was left alone in the shade, all alone. Tino started to cry.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, looking up from my army men I had set up by the garage.
“It’s so lonely, brother, so lonely,” he cried.
Abuelita used to say God takes the good early, that he takes the very best to be his angels in heaven. I believe her.
11
The Search
“Davey, plz plz write me back. Everyones looking for u,” I texted as we climbed back in the car.
“Shouldn’t we stay at Uncle Eric’s, Mommy?” KiKi said crying in the backseat.
“No. He’s not there, baby. Davey wouldn’t go in the water,” Mom said backing out of Uncle Eric’s, carefully maneuvering Grandma’s car around the police. “Ok, let’s think,” Mom said. “He’s done this before, hasn’t he Julie?” Mom asked me.
I nodded my head and tried to will myself to stop the sobs that wracked my body.
“Oh, my God, Julie,” Mom said suddenly. “He could be headed back to Daddy’s. Call Daddy. No one’s called him yet. Ask him if he’s heard from Davey.”
“Daddy?” I started crying again. “Daddy, have you heard from Davey?”
“Julie? Julie, what do you mean, honey?”
“We don’t know where he is, Dad. Did he call you tonight?”
“No, no he hasn’t kiddo. He’s probably just run off somewhere, you know your brother.”
“It’s different this time, Daddy. He was with Uncle Eric. He was at Uncle Eric’s and the police are there and everything.”
“What? The police?” Dad yelled. “Let me talk to your mother, Julie.”
“Rick?” Mom started crying so hard she pulled over. “Rick, I can’t find our baby.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Davey’s missing. He asked to sleep over at Eric’s and then Eric called and said there was an accident.”
“An accident? What the hell? What did your brother say, Annie?”
“He didn’t say what happened. Nothing. Just there was an accident. And, there are police there looking in the water for him.”
“He’s afraid of the water.”
“I know he is. He’s not in the water, Rick. Tell me he’s not in the water. Oh, my God! Where the hell is he?” Mom bawled.
“I’ll be there in an hour. Let me know if you hear anything. Anything.”
“Wait, Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“Call his friends there and see if they’ve heard from him, can you?”
“Sure thing. I’ll see you in a bit. Everything’s going to be alright, Annie. We’ll find him.”
“Daveys missing! Let me no if u hear from him. PLEASE!!!” I sent to everybody’s address in my phone before Mom even hung up.
12
Pressure
“I’m not taking no for an answer, Davey. You’re coming out on that boat with us.”
“Yeah, Davey, come on, man,” Pat and Vince chorused, hopping up off the floor.
“I’m not going out. Are you guys crazy? Hey, though, I’ve got a better plan,” Davey grinned.
“What?” asked Eric.
“Pretend I’m there and then you guys come back and tell me all about it.”
“You’re a wise ass.”
“I might be wise, but I’m not an ass,” Davey laughed.
“I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t get up,” Eric said walking over to Davey on the floor.
“I’m up, I’m up.”
“Now, get your punk ass out there.”
“I’ll walk out there with you, but I’m not getting in the boat, Eric. I don’t care what the hell you do to me, I’m not going out.”
“I think Davey’d whip Eric anyway,” Vince laughed holding the door open.
“Yeah, right,” Eric said popping Davey on the head.
“Cut it out, Eric,” Davey said.
“Cut it out, Eric,” Eric mimicked. “What, you leave your balls in Columbus? Left them behind the counter in Jiffy Lube, did you?”
Davey shook his head.
The moon was full and the backyard was lit by its light, as though it was dawn, not midnight. The water of the Ohio River rippled quickly, the crests of each small wave glistening before flattening out as it hit the shore. The only surge of sound came from the dam 300 yards away.
If one could see the four of them standing there at that moment, one man in body and build, flanked by three lanky teens. Davey, the least of them all, even in the moon light, was all angles, at that age when a teen can change from the child he was to the man he’ll be right before your eyes. Tonight, he was a child, fearful, but trusting. Determined, but easily swayed, like a young sapling, bending under the weight of heavier branches.
“We’re going out,” Eric said. “We’re all going out,” he glared at Davey. “None of us is going to bitch about it either.”
The fear of Eric’s wrath, of somehow not living up to his standard of what it meant to be a man, to be the only one of the four who didn’t get in, Davey’s fear of all this, in that split second before he stepped foot in the boat, propelled him forward. His body felt leaden as one leg swung over the boat’s edge and the other followed. His muscle’s memory of walking and then sitting brought him to the point of no return. Vince and then Pat climbed in. Eric used his weight to push off, out of