She holds my hand the rest of the drive.
I used to think the sun shone brighter out here in Uncle Carlos’s neighborhood, but today it really does—there’s no smoke lingering, and the air is fresher. All the houses have two stories. Kids play on the sidewalks and in the big yards. There are lemonade stands, garage sales, and lots of joggers. Even with all that going on, it’s real quiet.
We pass Maya’s house, a few streets over from Uncle Carlos’s. I would text her and see if I could come over, but, you know, I don’t have my phone.
“You can’t visit your li’l friend today,” Momma says, reading my mind once a-freaking-gain. “You’re grounded.”
My mouth flies wide open.
“But she can come over to Carlos’s and see you.”
She glances at me out the corner of her eye with a half smile. This is supposed to be the moment I hug her and thank her and tell her she’s the best.
Not happening. I say, “Cool. Whatever,” and sit back.
She busts out laughing. “You are so stubborn!”
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are,” she says. “Just like your father.”
Soon as we pull into Uncle Carlos’s driveway, Sekani jumps out. Our cousin Daniel waves at him from down the sidewalk with some other boys, and they’re all on their bikes.
“Later, Momma,” Sekani says. He runs past Uncle Carlos, who’s coming out the garage, and grabs his bike. Sekani got it for Christmas, but he keeps it at Uncle Carlos’s house because Momma’s not about to let him ride around Garden Heights. He pedals down the driveway.
Momma hops out and calls after him, “Don’t go too far!”
I get out, and Uncle Carlos meets me with a perfect Uncle Carlos hug—not too tight, but so firm that it tells me how much he loves me in a few seconds.
He kisses the top of my head twice and asks, “How are you doing, baby girl?”
“Okay.” I sniff. Smoke’s in the air. The good kind though. “You barbecuing?”
“Just heated the grill up. Gonna throw some burgers and chicken on for lunch.”
“I hope we don’t end up with food poisoning,” Momma teases.
“Ah, look who’s trying to be a comedian,” he says. “You’ll be eating your words and everything I cook, baby sis, because I’m about to throw down. Food Network doesn’t have anything on me.” And he pops his collar.
Lord. He’s so corny sometimes.
Aunt Pam tends to the grill on the patio. My little cousin Ava sucks her thumb and hugs Aunt Pam’s leg. The second she sees me, she comes running. “Starr-Starr!”
Her ponytails fly as she runs, and she launches herself into my arms. I swing her around, getting a whole lot of giggles out of her. “How’s my favorite three-year-old in the whole wide world doing?”
“Good!” She sticks her wrinkly, wet thumb back in her mouth. “Hey, Auntie Leelee.”
“Hey, baby. You’ve been good?”
Ava nods too much. No way she’s been that good.
Aunt Pam lets Uncle Carlos handle the grill and greets Momma with a hug. She has dark-brown skin and big curly hair. Nana likes her because she comes from a “good family.” Her mom is an attorney, and her dad is the first black chief of surgery at the same hospital where Aunt Pam works as a surgeon. Real-life Huxtables, I swear.
I put Ava down, and Aunt Pam hugs me extra tight. “How are you doing, sweetie?”
“Okay.”
She says she understands, but nobody really does.
Nana comes busting out the back door with her arms outstretched. “My girls!”
That’s the first sign something’s up. She hugs me and Momma and kisses our cheeks. Nana never kisses us, and she never lets us kiss her. She says she doesn’t know where our mouths have been. She frames my face with her hands, talking about, “Thank the Lord. He spared your life. Hallelujah!”
So many alarms go off in my head. Not that she wouldn’t be happy that “the Lord spared my life,” but this isn’t Nana. At all.
She takes me and Momma by our wrists and pulls us toward the poolside loungers. “Y’all come over here and talk to me.”
“But I was gonna talk to Pam—”
Nana looks at Momma and hisses through gritted teeth, “Shut the hell up, sit down, and talk to me, goddammit.”
Now that’s Nana. She sits back in a lounger and fans herself all dramatically. She’s a retired theater teacher, so she does everything dramatically. Momma and I share a lounger and sit on the side of it.
“What’s wrong?” Momma asks.
“When—” she begins, but plasters on a fake smile when Ava waddles over with her baby doll and a comb. Ava hands both to me and goes to play with some of her other toys.
I comb the doll’s hair. That girl has me trained. Doesn’t have to say anything, and I do it.
Once Ava’s out of earshot, Nana says, “When y’all taking me back to my house?”
“What happened?” Momma asks.
“Keep your damn voice down!” Ironically, she’s not keeping hers down. “Yesterday morning, I took some catfish out for dinner. Was gonna fry it up with some hush puppies, fries, the whole nine. I left to run some errands.”
“What kinda errands?” I ask for the hell of it.
Nana cuts me “the look” and it’s like seeing Momma in thirty years, with a few wrinkles and gray hairs she missed when coloring her hair (she’d whoop my behind for saying that).
“I’m grown, li’l girl,” she says. “Don’t ask me what I do. Anyway, I come home and that heffa done covered my catfish in some damn cornflakes and baked it!”
“Cornflakes?” I say, parting the doll’s hair.
“Yes! Talking ’bout, ‘It’s healthier that way.’ If I want healthy, I eat a salad.”
Momma covers her mouth, and the edges of her lips are turned up. “I thought you and Pam got along.”
“We did. Until she messed with my food. Now, I’ve dealt with a lotta things since I’ve been here. But that”—she holds up a finger—“is taking it too damn far. I’d rather live with you and that ex-con than deal with this.”
Momma stands and kisses Nana’s forehead. “You’ll be all right.”
Nana waves her off. When Momma leaves, she looks at me. “You okay, li’l girl? Carlos told me you were in the car with that boy when he was killed.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m okay.”
“Good. And if you’re not, you will be. We’re strong like that.”
I nod, but I don’t believe it. At least not about myself.
The doorbell rings up front. I say, “I’ll get it,” put Ava’s doll down, and go inside.
Crap. Chris is on the other side of the door. I wanna apologize to him, but dammit, I need time to prepare.
Weird though. He’s pacing. The same way he does when we study for tests or before a big game. He’s afraid to talk to me.
I open the door and lean against the frame. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He smiles, and despite everything I smile too.
“I was washing one of my dad’s cars and saw you guys pull up,” he says. That explains his tank top, flip-flops, and shorts. “Are you okay? I know you said you were in your text, but I wanted to be sure.”
“I’m okay,” I say.
“Your dad’s store didn’t get hit, did it?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Staring and silence.
He sighs. “Look, if this is about the condom stuff, I’ll never buy one again.”
“Never?”
“Well, only when you want me to.” He quickly adds, “Which doesn’t have to be anytime soon. Matter of fact, you don’t have to ever sleep with me. Or kiss me. Hell, if you don’t want me to touch you, I—”
“Chris, Chris,” I say, my hands up to get him to slow down, and I’m fighting a laugh. “It’s okay. I know what you mean.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Another round of staring and
silence.
“I’m sorry, actually,” I tell him, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “For giving you the silent treatment. It wasn’t about the condom.”
“Oh . . .” His eyebrows meet. “Then what was it about?”
I sigh. “I don’t feel like talking about it.”
“So you can be mad at me, but you can’t even tell me why?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“Yeah, it does if you’re giving me the silent treatment,” he says.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe you should let me determine that myself?” he says. “Here I am, calling you, texting you, everything, and you can’t tell me why you’re ignoring me? That’s kinda shitty, Starr.”
I give him this look, and I have a strong feeling I look like Momma and Nana right now with their “I know you didn’t just say that” glare.
“I told you, you wouldn’t understand. So drop it.”
“No.” He folds his arms. “I came all the way down here—”
“All the way? Bruh, all what way? Down the street?”
Garden Heights Starr is all up in my voice right now.
“Yeah, down the street,” he says. “And guess what? I didn’t have to do that. But I did. And you can’t even tell me what’s going on!”
“You’re white, okay?” I yell. “You’re white!”
Silence.
“I’m white?” he says, like he’s just hearing that for the first time. “What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“Everything! You’re white, I’m black. You’re rich, I’m not.”
“That doesn’t matter!” he says. “I don’t care about that kinda stuff, Starr. I care about you.”
“That kinda stuff is part of me!”
“Okay, and . . . ? It’s no big deal. God, seriously? This is what you’re pissed about? This is why you’re giving me the silent treatment?”
I stare at him, and I know, I know, I’m straight up looking like Lisa Janae Carter. My mouth is slightly open like hers when I or my brothers “get smart,” as she calls it, I’ve pulled my chin back a little, and my eyebrows are raised. Shit, my hand’s even on my hip.
Chris takes a small step back, just like my brothers and I do. “It just . . . it doesn’t make sense to me, okay? That’s all.”
“So like I said, you don’t understand. Do you?”
Bam. If I am acting like my mom, this is one of her “see, I told you” moments.
“No. I guess I don’t,” he says.
Another round of silence.
Chris puts his hands in his pockets. “Maybe you can help me understand? I don’t know. But I do know that not having you in my life is worse than not making beats or playing basketball. And you know how much I love making beats and playing basketball, Starr.”
I smirk. “You call that a line?”
He bites his bottom lip and shrugs. I laugh. He does too.
“Bad line, huh?” he asks.
“Awful.”
We go silent again, but it’s the type of silence I don’t mind. He puts his hand out for mine.
I still don’t know if I’m betraying who I am by dating Chris, but I’ve missed him so much it hurts. Momma thinks coming to Uncle Carlos’s house is normal, but Chris is the kind of normal I really want. The normal where I don’t have to choose which Starr to be. The normal where nobody tells you how sorry they are or talks about “Khalil the drug dealer.” Just . . . normal.
That’s why I can’t tell Chris I’m the witness.
I take his hand, and everything suddenly feels right. No flinching and no flashbacks.
“C’mon,” I say. “Uncle Carlos should have the burgers ready.”
We go into the backyard, hand in hand. He’s smiling, and surprisingly I am too.
TEN
We spend the night at Uncle Carlos’s house because the riots started again as soon as the sun went down. Somehow the store got spared. We should go to church and thank God for that, but Momma and I are too tired to sit through less than an hour of anything. Sekani wants to spend another day at Uncle Carlos’s, so Sunday morning we return to Garden Heights without him.
Right as we get off the freeway, we’re met by a police roadblock. Only one lane of traffic isn’t blocked by a patrol car, and officers talk to drivers before letting them pass through.
Suddenly it’s as if someone grabbed my heart and twisted it. “Can we—” I swallow. “Can we get around them?”
“Doubt it. They probably got these all around the neighborhood.” Momma glances over at me and frowns. “Munch? You okay?”
I grab my door handle. They can easily grab their guns and leave us like Khalil. All the blood in our bodies pooling on the street for everybody to see. Our mouths wide open. Our eyes staring at the sky, searching for God.
“Hey.” Momma cups my cheek. “Hey, look at me.”
I try to, but my eyes are filled with tears. I’m so sick of being this damn weak. Khalil may have lost his life, but I lost something too, and it pisses me off.
“It’s okay,” Momma says. “We got this, all right? Close your eyes if you have to.”
I do.
Keep your hands visible.
No sudden moves.
Only speak when spoken to.
The seconds drag by like hours. The officer asks Momma for her ID and proof of insurance, and I beg Black Jesus to get us home, hoping there won’t be a gunshot as she searches through her purse.
We finally drive off. “See, baby,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”
Her words used to have power. If she said it was fine, it was fine. But after you’ve held two people as they took their last breaths, words like that don’t mean shit anymore.
I haven’t let go of the car door handle when we pull into our driveway.
Daddy comes out and knocks on my window. Momma rolls it down for me. “There go my girls.” He smiles, but it fades into a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“You about to go somewhere, baby?” Momma asks, meaning they’ll talk later.
“Yeah, gotta run to the warehouse and stock up.” He taps my shoulder. “Ay, wanna hang out with your daddy? I’ll get you some ice cream. One of them big fat tubs that’ll last ’bout a month.”
I laugh even though I don’t feel like it. Daddy’s talented like that. “I don’t need all that ice cream.”
“I ain’t say you needed it. When we get back, we can watch that Harry Potter shit you like so much.”
“Noooooooo.”
“What?” he asks.
“Daddy, you’re the worst person to watch Harry Potter with. The whole time you’re talking about”—I deepen my voice—“‘Why don’t they shoot that nigga Voldemort?’”
“Ay, it don’t make sense that in all them movies and books, nobody thought to shoot him.”
“If it’s not that,” Momma says, “you’re giving your ‘Harry Potter is about gangs’ theory.”
“It is!” he says.
Okay, so it is a good theory. Daddy claims the Hogwarts houses are really gangs. They have their own colors, their own hideouts, and they are always riding for each other, like gangs. Harry, Ron, and Hermione never snitch on one another, just like gangbangers. Death Eaters even have matching tattoos. And look at Voldemort. They’re scared to say his name. Really, that “He Who Must Not Be Named” stuff is like giving him a street name. That’s some gangbanging shit right there.
“Y’all know that make a lot of sense,” Daddy says. “Just ’cause they was in England don’t mean they wasn’t gangbanging.” He looks at me. “So you down to hang out with your old man today or what?”
I’m always down to hang out with him.
We roll through the streets, Tupac blasting through the subwoofers. He’s rapping about keeping your head up, and Daddy glances at me as he raps along, like he’s telling me the same thing Tupac is.
“I know you’re fed up, baby”—he nudges my chin—“but keep your head
up.”
He sings with the chorus about how things will get easier, and I don’t know if I wanna cry ’cause that’s really speaking to me right now, or crack up ’cause Daddy’s singing is so horrible.
Daddy says, “That was a deep dude right there. Real deep. They don’t make rappers like that no more.”
“You’re showing your age, Daddy.”
“Whatever. It’s the truth. Rappers nowadays only care ’bout money, hoes, and clothes.”
“Showing your age,” I whisper.
“’Pac rapped ’bout that stuff too, yeah, but he also cared ’bout uplifting black people,” says Daddy. “Like he took the word ‘nigga’ and gave it a whole new meaning—Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished. And he said Thug Life meant—”
“The Hate U Give Little Infants F---s Everybody,” I censor myself. This is my daddy I’m talking to, you know?
“You know ’bout that?”
“Yeah. Khalil told me what he thought it means. We were listening to Tupac right before . . . you know.”
“A’ight, so what do you think it means?”
“You don’t know?” I ask.
“I know. I wanna hear what you think.”
Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.”
“Us who?” he asks.
“Black people, minorities, poor people. Everybody at the bottom in society.”
“The oppressed,” says Daddy.
“Yeah. We’re the ones who get the short end of the stick, but we’re the ones they fear the most. That’s why the government targeted the Black Panthers, right? Because they were scared of the Panthers?”
“Uh-huh,” Daddy says. “The Panthers educated and empowered the people. That tactic of empowering the oppressed goes even further back than the Panthers though. Name one.”
Is he serious? He always makes me think. This one takes me a second. “The slave rebellion of 1831,” I say. “Nat Turner empowered and educated other slaves, and it led to one of the biggest slave revolts in history.”
“A’ight, a’ight. You on it.” He gives me dap. “So, what’s the hate they’re giving the ‘little infants’ in today’s society?”