The Black Kids

by Christina Hammonds Reed

  On the news this morning before I left for school, they showed how stores were running out of wood planks, so business owners were going to Home Depot and buying and using actual doors to board up windows and other doors.

  “What is happening to us?” an older lady says to the cashier, and looks at her like she’s actually expecting an answer.

  “I don’t get it.” Brittany nervously flips her blond hair. She and Marla look exactly like the kind of California girls who wind up on the postcards tourists send back home—like, somewhere in Italy somebody’s nonno is looking at a photo of Brittany’s blissed-out butt cheeks on the beach.

  “This country is going in the wrong direction.” The older lady shakes her head mournfully.

  * * *

  When activists argued that choke holds were proving to be unnecessarily deadly force, Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates actually said this about how blacks and Latinos responded to choke holds: “We may be finding that in some blacks when it is applied, the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people.”

  Normal people.

  That was ten years ago, and he’s still the police chief. Yesterday, when the verdicts were announced and the city was a powder keg, he left LAPD headquarters to go to a fund-raiser in Brentwood to fight police reform efforts.

  The Beach Boys are famous Californian “normal people” from Hawthorne, which isn’t really on the beach itself but is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the water. They built the 105 through the area where their house used to be.

  Jo made me listen to what she said is arguably their best album, Pet Sounds, a few years ago. We stretched out across the carpet in her bedroom and she turned the dial on her turquoise record player higher and higher so that we could feel those surfers’ harmonies all the way in our eyeballs.

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “Hear all the layers.”

  Like every song was a really good lasagna.

  Then she told me that back in the day, Hawthorne used to be a sundown town, which means that they didn’t want black people around after the sun went down. There used to be an actual sign posted outside the city that said, NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN HAWTHORNE.

  So I guess there’s always been good vibrations for some, but not all.

  “I don’t get it,” the California girl said.

  * * *

  As we pull out of the parking lot, a middle-aged black man, his gray fuzz in a crown atop his head, crosses the street in front of us. His clothes are faded but proud.

  “Lock your door, mija,” Lucia reminds me.

  I know the man hears the lock click into place, because afterward he looks over at me, puzzled, then saddened, and I feel ashamed of myself.

  Lucia grew up in the middle of a civil war and carries that with her in her bones. She’s always a little bit on edge in public places. Even when we’re in an empty parking lot, she has me walk just a little bit behind her, her body as a shield.

  “Just because you can’t see the danger doesn’t mean there isn’t any,” she says.

  Sometimes it feels like Lucia is a single mother and I’m her child, and we’re just two girls in the world trying to figure it out together. My parents are very busy, and so Lucia has taught me a great many things: how to ride a bike; how to tie my shoes; how to throw a punch (the latter of which she taught me when the boys at school took to calling me “Hooters!” because my chest had grown into two hard, painful knots under my skin seemingly overnight).

  In her village, she said, the girls knew how to fight and the boys didn’t mess with them, until eventually they got older and didn’t want to fight and did want the boys to mess with them. There were other people to fight by then.

  “Who got kidnapped and killed?” I ask her as we drive along PCH.

  “What?”

  “You were talking to Daddy about it the other day. You said, ‘They kidnapped and killed all of them. The women and children, too.’ ”

  “You’re too nosy, babygirl,” she says, and shakes her head at me. Even so, she tells me the story as we drive.

  While Lucia was on bed rest waiting to have Umberto and Roberto, the people in the Mayan village a few miles from hers just vanished one day.

  “They all just disappeared, mija. And for a minute we asked ourselves if they’d even been real. Then the boys were born, and they were so beautiful and perfect, and I felt guilty for feeling so happy.”

  “Who did it?”

  “The military.”

  “Why? How could anybody do that?”

  “They hated the indios. They wanted their land. They thought the indios were more likely to be guerillas, or at least to sympathize with them. All of these reasons. None of these reasons.”

  “What’d you guys do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they disappeared, what did you guys do?”

  “We didn’t do anything.…”

  “But, like, what happened after that?”

  Lucia shakes her head and grows quiet. I’m used to it by now, these stories she starts but never finishes, like a bunch of half-woven blankets.

  A lone seagull screams across the sky.

  Somehow, Lucia is always both afraid and fearless. I wonder if growing up in a war zone disarms you so you can’t even tell why your heart races, just the constant awareness that it does.

  The radio station takes calls from around the city. If yesterday’s calls were full of anger, today’s are full of fear. The power is out in several areas. People are shooting guns into the air without regard for the fact that there are children around. The businesses on fire are dangerously close to family homes. There’s too much danger in this anger now, people, they say. Stop.

  * * *

  As Lucia and I turn into the driveway, I watch in the rearview mirror as the simple Parker paces his front yard, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. His rifle is on the ground. He’s definitely not staying vigilant. It’s weird to see a gun out in broad daylight on our sleepy street, something that could tear right through you and turn your insides out. It never occurred to me that anyone here might own one. It’s not that kind of neighborhood. But I guess now maybe it is.

  “What did I tell you about smoking? Are you trying to light the whole neighborhood on fire?” his mother yells from inside the house. He extinguishes his cigarette in a nearby planter before picking up his rifle and heading back inside.

  Fat squirrels chase each other in fat spirals around the trees outside. Normally, the pool guy would’ve come today; instead, the leaves float across the surface and collect in a pileup by the gutters. Inside the house, our air tastes like artificial lemons. I set my backpack down, take off my shoes, and Risky Business–slide across the newly waxed floors.

  Onscreen, the looters run into and out of stores cradling televisions, their cords trailing behind them like tails.

  “You’ll split your head open.” My dad peeks over from the couch. Nobody ever actually splits their head open. Jo fell off a roof and didn’t even split her head open. Grown-ups act like we’re all just walking watermelons.

  Neither of my parents went to work today because the riots have everyone afraid to do everything, even make money. Even though they made me go to school. It’s weird seeing my parents so undone at this hour. My father lounges in a pair of gray sweats and a faded white V-neck. His normally slicked-down hair is curly and wild like Einstein’s. I ruffle my hands through it before plopping down on the leather next to him.

  “Animals,” my father says under his breath. “How was school?”

  “It was… school.” I lean over and give his belly a big slap like a drum.

  My dad’s clothes are usually tailored so you don’t see the soft of his belly. That’s a newer thing, like the grays. If before he was like a board, now you can grab a handful of him and give it a good shake. My mother does this to him a lot. Each time she giggles and giggles at my father’s new pudge like it’s a three-piece co
rduroy suit.

  “Have the Parkers been out there all day?” I ask.

  “Those idiots…” My father sighs.

  “My physics teacher was telling us about Watts during the riots.”

  “I didn’t know you had a black teacher.”

  “He’s white. Or half-white, I guess. Syrian. He said his mother made them move afterward. Do you remember the Watts riots?”

  “We didn’t live in Watts,” he says distractedly, watching the screen. “But your grandma Shirley was worried about the store. There was a curfew in place in the black areas. You couldn’t go anywhere. Back then people wrote ‘Blood Brother’ on the walls to let people know that black folks owned it. Your grandma sprayed it around the building in deep red letters as a precaution. I remember that specifically, ’cause when she came home, she had red on her hands and smudges all on her face and her dress, and Ronnie and I rushed over to her hollering, thinking something awful had happened. But it was just paint.…”

  On TV, a stubby black man staggers around on broken glass. He stands in front of his emptied business. BLACK-OWNED, the handwritten yellow placard says.

  “I’m from here,” he yells. “I tried to make it.”

  His pain is visceral as he yells at everyone around him. He is a grown man in the middle of a mob crying over his dreams. They back away slowly like he’s an injured wild animal. He could almost be Uncle Ronnie, but without the good hair.

  “How’s Uncle Ronnie doing?” I say.

  “He’s all right… he’s doing Ronnie.” My father sighs. “You know how he is.”

  I don’t, not really, but I nod anyway.

  The fighting continues. President Bush comes on screen and tells everybody that anarchy will not be allowed.

  Next, we watch footage of a bunch of Koreans firing guns at the looters.

  “Good for them,” my dad says. My dad is a man who values order. He and Lucia talk in rapid-fire Spanish about the rioting, and my mom stands there trying to figure out what the hell they’re saying. I could translate for her, but I don’t.

  Latinos are out there rioting and looting, too—this is what Dad and Lucia are talking about. Her friend’s son came back with a big television, and her friend beat the crap out of him for doing it but kept the new TV, Lucia tells my father, and they laugh.

  On television, the people cluster in ant mounds around storefronts. There’s almost a collaborative effort in it, the passing of goods between friends and neighbors, until the police come and everyone scatters. I look carefully at the screen for my sister.

  “Have you spoken to Jo?” I ask.

  “She’s letting all my calls go to her answering machine.” My mother’s hand shakes a little as she sips from her wineglass.

  “I spoke to her,” I offer.

  “What’d she say?”

  That she’s fomenting rebellion.

  “She’s okay,” I say.

  “Good,” my mother says, and leaves it at that, even though I know she’s worried sick.

  Bill Cosby appears via a prerecorded PSA and tells the rioters to stop what they’re doing and watch the final episode of the Cosby Show on NBC. And I know everybody loves Cosby because Dr. Huxtable and Jell-O or whatever, but it’s condescending as hell. Even to me. And I’m not burning anything here in my living room overlooking the ocean.

  On another channel, they show everyone in line at this gun store in the South Bay; people like us who don’t live anywhere near South Central. California’s gun rules mean that not any old person can go out and get a gun and ammunition whenever they feel like it, so some of the people on TV are mad. Besides, the only guns left are antiques, like World War II–surplus rifles.

  I think about the Parkers on their lawn, lying in wait for something or someone that Mr. Katz says isn’t coming. The only gun we have in our house is a pellet gun. My father said he bought it in case of mountain lions. Sometimes they crawl through the hills and into backyards, where they eat people’s precious pets.

  Once Jo had to take care of the class hamster, Giggles, and left her outside to get some fresh air.

  “Be free!” Jo said, and left her to wander around the backyard, and Giggles got so free she disappeared. After Giggles may or may not have gotten eaten, my father decided to get the pellet gun. For our safety, he said, and he and my mother have been arguing over it ever since.

  My mother and my father argued over the gun yet again last night. But this time it felt different.

  “It’s more dangerous to have that gun out to all of us than it is to anyone or anything that might be out there.”

  “It’s a pellet gun,” my father said.

  “Somebody could lose an eye.”

  “The kids made it all the way to adulthood and didn’t neither of them shoot the other one’s eye out,” he said.

  “Technically I’m not an adult,” I said. “It could still happen.”

  “Be quiet, Ashley.”

  “How many times have I told you I don’t want that thing in my house?” my mother said.

  This morning, my father took it out and placed it by the front door.

  “Just in case,” he said.

  My mother said nothing and walked away.

  * * *

  I leave the television to go upstairs and call Jo from the roof. The air tastes faintly of char, even all the way over here. On the news, they were telling everyone to stay inside. The National Guard has even shut down the beaches as a precaution. The beaches!

  I enter Jo’s number into the pink phone.

  “Hello, this is Jo… and Harrison! Leave a message… or don’t.”

  “Yo. It’s your sister. Pick up. I just want to know that you’re safe.… Don’t be an asshole,” I say into the phone.

  I linger, hoping that Jo will finally answer, but she doesn’t.

  Before I can crawl back inside, the phone rings.

  “Jo?”

  “What? No. It’s me,” Courtney says.

  “I haven’t done the homework yet,” I say.

  “I don’t only call you for homework!”

  “Yeah. Kinda. Now, anyways. Not before, maybe.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s… this shit’s, like, really hard for me,” Courtney says. “Like, harder than I think it’s supposed to be… I can barely make it through high school. If I’m this stupid, how the hell am I supposed to make it through college?”

  She sounds genuinely afraid.

  “You’re not stupid, Court. Nobody’s gonna ask you about trinomials after this.”

  “It’s not just math. It’s everything.” She sighs.

  “College is different. They’ll let you major in watching and writing about movies and TV and shit if you want! Plus, there’s more to life than being smart.”

  “It feels like school is this maze and they keep giving you cheese to help you find your way through it. But then they release you out into the world and you have to figure out how to be your own cheese. Do I want to be, like, brie or cheddar or mozzarella or that random fancy moldy shit my mom brings out for parties? I just want somebody to tell me what to do.”

  “When in doubt, get moldy,” I say.

  Our conversation is interrupted by yelling. From up on the roof, I can see the Parker boys across the street, their hunting rifles aimed at their prey.

  My uncle Ronnie’s silky braids fall down his back, and his hands stretch up to the sky as he yells, “Don’t shoot!”

  “I gotta go.” I hang up on Courtney.

  Mr. and Mrs. Katz run out into the cul-de-sac.

  “This man was pounding on our door, trying to break into our house,” the Parkers yell.

  “Should I call the police?” Mrs. Katz says.

  “My brother lives around here,” my uncle says. “Craig. Craig Bennett.”

  The Parkers keep their rifles aimed steadily at Uncle Ronnie’s head.

  “I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding.” Mr. Katz walks very slowly toward them. The Katzes are wearing near-m
atching pastel-yellow polo shirts, like they just got back from a doubles match. But that’s just their life.

  “How come you don’t know where your own brother lives?” the simple Parker says.

  “That’s my uncle!” I stand up and yell from the roof.

  “I had the wrong house.” Ronnie talks very, very calmly to the Parkers, like he’s talking a man off a ledge. “It was a mistake. Please, my daughter is in the car.”

  Inside the truck, my cousin Morgan watches, paralyzed. It’s been some time since I’ve seen her, and my first thought is, Her arms have gotten kinda pudgy.

  I wiggle down off the roof so that I land in the bushes below. Barefoot, I run through the backyard toward the street. The bushes scratch along the length of my arm, and it starts to hurt as it hits the night air.

  “Stop!” I pant.

  Morgan starts to open the car door, and Uncle Ronnie yells at her to stay in the car.

  “What’s going on here?” My father stumbles out the front door of our house with the pellet gun.

  “Craig!” my uncle says.

  “Ronnie?” my father says.

  “You know each other?” the Parkers say.

  “He’s my brother,” my father says, gun still raised.

  “See, he belongs to the Bennetts,” Mr. Katz says, and exhales deeply. Like Uncle Ronnie is a pet or a slave, or, I guess, family.

  “I said that already,” my uncle snaps.

  The Parkers lower their rifles and shrug. “Sorry, yo.”

  Mrs. Katz looks over at me. “You’re bleeding, dear.”

  Morgan gets out of the car and walks toward us. Up close, her freckles make it look like she’s been tanning through a screen door. Her hair color looks like it came out of a box—wine or dye—but that’s from the shameful Scotsman buried deep under the family tree. When I go to hug her, you can still feel the fear in every freckle. Every inch of her trembles.