The Black Kids

by Christina Hammonds Reed

  “Well… I should probably get to class,” I say.

  As I get up to leave, I hear the reporter’s high-pitched squeal as she thrusts her microphone into the face of a passing looter—same voice, same scene the channel keeps playing over and over: “Don’t you know that it’s wrong?”

  * * *

  Michael walks up behind me as I head toward my sixth-period class. He grabs me by the wrist and pulls me into the art room.

  “What are you listening to?”

  He leans in closer to my headphones, and we press our heads and arms and legs against each other. We lean into some poor freshman’s oil painting. I can feel his breath across my collarbone.

  Out of the itty-bitty speakers, Bono sings about all the things you say you want and you’ll give. Jo used to love U2, but now she thinks Bono’s a twat.

  “How’d this happen?” He runs his finger along the length of my new scar.

  “My neighbors were going to shoot my uncle, so I had to jump off the roof to stop them,” I say.

  “Fine, don’t tell me,” he says.

  “Are you in love with Kimberly?” I ask.

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

  “You can’t just pretend like she doesn’t exist whenever it’s convenient.”

  “Yeah, well, what about you?” he snaps.

  “I’m leaving,” I say.

  “Don’t go.” He grabs me by the wrist and pulls me closer to him. “Please.”

  The lights go out. There have been large power outages throughout the city since the riots began.

  “Everything’s falling apart.” He sighs. “What do you think is gonna happen to LaShawn?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I kinda get what LaShawn did, you know?” He fiddles with the strap of my tank top.

  “Because Dustin’s an asshole?”

  “Just, sometimes it feels like I got all this love about to burst out of me,” Michael says. “But, like, also I hate everyone.”

  Inside my headphones, the violins swell and the guitars began to wail. Bono’s voice pines and breaks at the crescendo. When the lights finally come back on, the back of my shirt is covered in damp bits of blue and pink and orange, like the sunset over the ocean on a clear day.

  * * *

  After school, the black kids stand in the quad, their fists raised, defiant like Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the ’68 Olympics.

  Lil Ray Ray’s still absent. Mildred too. Fat Albert raises a pudgy brown fist to the sky. Candace too, though she temporarily brings her hand down to shift her pink backpack straps before raising her fist back up into the air. Her nails are like candy talons.

  “What is that about?” I ask Heather.

  “LaShawn’s been temporarily suspended,” she says gloomily.

  “What? Whatshisface wasn’t even really hurt.”

  “Zero tolerance.” She sighs.

  The black kids are resolute, all eight of them in the quad together. They look like a rainbow of Negro, from the pale of Margie’s freckled half-breed arm to Candace’s blue-purple skin reflecting the sun.

  “Like, honestly, if they hate us so much, they should go to their own school,” some girl passing by us says to her friend.

  “This is their own school, dipshit,” Heather says to her.

  The girl purses her lips and gives Heather the side-eye.

  “Shit! I forgot something in my locker. I’ll catch up with you in a bit,” Heather says to me before jogging away.

  Candace stares at me. It’s either a challenge or an invitation. She can’t possibly know that I’m the one who started the rumor, can she? Maybe she’s imploring me to join them. I should join them. Jo would.

  Instead, I sheepishly smile and walk past like everybody else.

  CHAPTER 11

  LANA DOESN’T SMELL like wine coolers after all, just cigarettes. I know because she sits next to me on the front steps while I’m waiting for my friends after school. Her flannel shirt rolls down her arm a bit, revealing a plum-colored circle of hurt.

  “What happened to your arm?” I ask her.

  She quickly buttons the sleeve so that it won’t roll down again.

  “You wanna come over?” Lana says.

  I’m supposed to join Kimberly, Courtney, and Heather at Heather’s house. It’s a Friday, so we’ll drink and smoke and float in her pool and watch television and invite the boys over. Courtney’s mom will make us snacks and ignore the alcohol and the weed, because she says, “I’d rather you girls do that in front of me than out there in the world.”

  Lucia is always telling me I need to make new friends. A month before the end of high school seems a little late to heed her advice, but I guess better late than never. Also, I don’t really want to go home to Morgan and her judgy eyebrows.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Cool,” Lana says. “We have to walk a bit, if you don’t mind. My mom has the car today.”

  Courtney, Kimberly, and Heather plop down around me, edging Lana out of the way.

  “Hi,” Lana says to them.

  “Hey.” Heather drapes an arm over my shoulder. Courtney and Kimberly kinda glance and nod at Lana.

  “Let’s go,” Kimberly says.

  “Actually, I think I’m going to go to Lana’s tonight,” I say.

  “Wait, what?” Kimberly says. “Her?”

  “Gee, thanks,” Lana says, but she doesn’t seem particularly bothered.

  “It’s the day before prom, Ashley,” Kimberly says in that tone of voice she uses whenever somebody challenges the natural order of things, like when somebody thinks Coke is better than Pepsi.

  “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Promise.”

  Kimberly rolls her eyes so far back that by the time they return, I think they’ve filled their passports.

  “Suit yourself,” she says.

  “Let’s go,” Lana says.

  Lana and I stand and start to walk across the street. While they’re walking away, Courtney turns around, sticks her pointer and middle fingers up into a V, and darts her tongue back and forth between them.

  * * *

  Lana and I walk deeper into the hills along a tiny sidewalk. Every so often a car will drive by at twice the speed limit and Lana will protectively crowd me into somebody’s hedges. We don’t chat much, but it’s a comfortable quiet.

  “We’re here.” Lana stops in front of a carved wooden door amid yellowed hedges.

  From the outside, the house itself is very California: mission architecture, big windows, Spanish tiled entrance. The yard is littered with multicolored pots containing various flowers and succulents. A fat orange tabby sprawls across the front steps. Lana scoops it up in her arms.

  “This is She-Ra.” She laughs. “Wanna pet her?”

  “I’m allergic,” I say.

  She puts She-Ra back down, and She-Ra scurries off somewhere into the property.

  “Your house is cute,” I say.

  “Oh, that’s not my house. That’s the owner’s house,” she says.

  “Oh. Oops. I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t apologize. You didn’t know,” she says.

  I follow her down a path of flat stones to a backyard. It’s neatly manicured, and mostly empty save for a huge trampoline toward the edge of the yard. Next to the trampoline is a guest house. It’s about a third the size of the front house, with similar architecture. Two Adirondack chairs stand guard at the entrance with a planter full of cigarette butts. One of the two orange trees drops its cargo, and the orange rolls in front of the chairs.

  “Welcome to my humble abode,” Lana says as we enter.

  Usually when the people I know say this, it’s ironically. In Lana’s case, it really is quite humble. Everybody at school thinks Lana is richer than the rest of us, since her parents paid for a whole new library so the school would let her back in. This place makes it look like th
ey blew their life savings on the library. The furniture is mismatched and faded, but all around there are interesting things to look at—carved wooden statues, a hanging tapestry. The wall is painted an uneven bright blue around a crumbling fireplace. I point to one of the statues.

  “That’s really pretty.”

  “My mother got it when she was in Nepal,” Lana says.

  “What does she do?”

  “A little of everything. Never enough, though,” Lana says.

  “She must be pretty cool,” I say.

  Lana doesn’t respond.

  The small kitchen is visible from the living-room area. An old stove abuts the cabinetry like an afterthought. The kitchen table is a deep brown, its legs carved in ornate shapes, its top marked up from a child’s carelessness with a pen. Matching bright-green cushions fight to unite cacophonous chairs.

  “Who lives in the front house?”

  “Two of my mom’s friends from when she was with my dad. She got them in the divorce. They’re fun. Artists. Brad and Pham. Brad owns a gallery in Mid-City. Pham is a tiny Cambodian refugee and used to be an artist. I’m not sure what he does these days. He’s a great cook, though.”

  “When did your parents get divorced?”

  “Technically, they were never married. Least not officially. We used to live in this huge house a few blocks over. But when they broke up, he kicked her out, and I went with her. He pays for my tuition and whatever, though.”

  He must’ve been the one who paid for the library.

  Lana takes the scrunchie out of her hair and lets it fall down around her shoulders.

  “Want something to drink?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Red okay?”

  I’m used to cheap beer and wine coolers and those little bottles of airplane alcohol Courtney sneaks from her dad’s suitcases. I have no preference. Lana pours red wine into two blue crystal glasses that refract the light in geometry around the room. There’s not enough for two full glasses of red, so she adds some white wine to the top. I don’t know much, but I’m pretty certain that’s not how wine is supposed to work.

  “Cheers!” she says.

  Lana’s room is very small, and mostly sparse. Her bed is a low wooden thing, and instead of on a nightstand, her lamp rests on a pile of hardcover art books.

  “Who are you going to prom with?” I ask.

  “I can’t go.”

  “Your mom won’t let you?”

  “Nah. It was a condition of the school’s letting me back in. I can’t do anything like prom and Grad Night and all that stuff.”

  “That sucks.”

  “That shit’s lame, anyway,” she says, but I’m not convinced she means it.

  She pushes play on the stereo, a big silver monstrosity on the floor under her window. Atop the stereo is a burst of primary color in a series of toy figurines from McDonald’s Happy Meals. A young woman screams out of the speakers, followed by a rush of angry guitars. Wine still in hand, Lana begins to flail with wanton disregard for the actual beat.

  It sounds like some shit that Jo would like. I finish my wine in one great gulp, and then I too begin to move jerkily across Lana’s floor. She jumps up onto her bed and reaches her hand out to me, and then we’re both up on her bed flapping around. We dance in exorcism until the song ends and Lana jumps off the bed.

  “Trampoline?”

  “Fuck yeah!”

  If with my friends there’s stillness and talking, with Lana there’s movement, across the room, up and down, and now we rush back outside. Lana doesn’t sit still for very long. I like it for now, although I can see how it might get annoying.

  We jump and jump, and then we collapse into the black and lift our faces to the sun as it descends. It’s the happiest I’ve been in a long while, here on this trampoline with a girl I barely know.

  “What would you be if you could be anything?” she says.

  “A fish.”

  “If you could only wear one color for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

  “Yellow.”

  “What’s your favorite cheesy song?”

  “ ‘Home,’ from The Wiz. That was my favorite movie as a little kid.”

  “Where would you live if the world was your oyster?”

  “It isn’t?”

  When it’s nearly dark, she turns her body to face me.

  “My mother’s the one who did it,” she says.

  “What?”

  “The bruise.” She pulls up her sleeve. “There are others, too.”

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say.

  “I’m almost out of here; I can make it through a few more months.” She rolls the sleeve back down. “I think… sometimes maybe she doesn’t know how strong she is.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s complicated,” she says. “Aren’t all families? It’s like, I hate her a little bit, but she’s my mother and I love her. Anyway, don’t tell anybody.”

  “What about moving in with your dad?”

  “Fuck that guy,” she says.

  This girl has offered me so many bruised pieces of herself, and so finally I offer her something in return.

  “I did something really bad the other day,” I tell her. I can’t quite bring myself to say what out loud. Actually, there are two things. But one is worse than the other.

  “Did you kill somebody?”

  “God, no.”

  “Maim somebody? Help dump a body? Sell yourself for money?”

  “Jesus, Lana.”

  “All I’m saying is, I can’t imagine anything you did could be that horrible. Just… make it right,” she says. “That’s all there is to it.”

  “You don’t want to know what I did?”

  “Only if you want to tell me.”

  A light floods the backyard, revealing a body in silhouette. Lana’s whole being tenses up beside me.

  “Lana, babycakes! I made your favorite!” The man’s thick accent sounds like the swell and pop of blown bubbles. Upon hearing the sound, she relaxes, and with two bounces launches herself out of the trampoline.

  “Ashley, this is Pham,” Lana says.

  “Lana never has people over. You must be special girl.” Pham reaches for my hand. He’s compact but strong. His face is big and broad, the color of toasted almonds. His eyes smile, a deep dark to them.

  “You must have dinner with us, new friend,” he says with a flourish. “I insist.”

  I should maybe call Lucia and tell her where I am, but usually I’m at Kimberly’s on Fridays anyway. What difference does it make, really? Unless these people are murderers, but I doubt it. I watch too much Dateline with Lucia sometimes, so I know murderers are almost never who you’d expect, and somehow also exactly who you’d suspect. Even so, I’ll take my chances. I’d much rather stay here than go home just yet.

  * * *

  Brad and Pham move through their space in tandem, Pham finishing with a cutting board, Brad placing the used knife in the sink, Pham taking the silverware out and putting it on the counter, Brad picking it up and setting the table. Brad is balding; his hair is a silver donut in need of a trim. He’s got the body and carriage of a ballerina, gliding through space as though even setting the table is a reason to dance. His light balances Pham’s heavy footsteps.

  Brad and Pham and Lana are a force together. They discuss art and the presidential race and Arthur Ashe and Magic Johnson and Chechnya. Brad and Pham ask what Lana and I think about all of it. It’s intoxicating, being around people who see the whole damn world as something to inhale.

  “It’s very upsetting, what’s going on now,” Brad says, “but not unforeseen.”

  “How do you feel about it, Ashley?” Pham asks.

  “I don’t know how to feel,” I say. It’s the truth. How do I tell people I barely know that I’m angry and sad, but also embarrassed? That I feel that anger along my spine, holding up the very shape of me, and in my fingertips like a curled fist. That the sad
ness is like a dull ache, heavy in the muscles fighting to keep my head up. That I feel ashamed that black people are both the agents and the victims of this chaos, and I don’t want to be thought of like that. But I’m also ashamed of myself for thinking I’m somehow better. The shame I feel in my guts, pulsing, spiraling; but also everything feels very far away. I’m black, but my black is different from that of those rioters on TV.

  “How did you two meet each other?” I ask between careful bites.

  Pham and Brad look at each other.

  “My parents were professors. The Khmer Rouge, they didn’t like anybody with education, you know? My mother very smart woman. My father too, though not like my mother. And we are Vietnamese in Cambodia, so even worse.”

  He drifts over somewhere else, the way Lucia does sometimes when she talks about home. Brad takes over for him.

  “My wife and I sponsored Pham and his sister,” Brad says. “My wife was very religious, and I was too, then. Or I tried to be, anyway.”

  “So you, like, adopted them?” I say.

  “Not quite. We paid for them to come to the United States. For their schooling here. We were kinda like their American family. There were so many people in need. My wife said we had to do something.”

  “I had to lie about my age,” Pham says, “so they would take us both.”

  “I just thought he was wise beyond his years,” Brad says. “In that way some kids are when they’ve been through a lot.…”

  “But I was twenty-year-old!” Pham laughs. “I’m just…” He holds out a flattened hand and lowers it to the floor. Short.

  “We would talk to practice his English,” Brad says. “Sometimes we would stay up for hours talking.”

  “Even though my English was very bad then,” Pham says.

  “And then Brad and Pham fell in love,” Lana interjects. “Messy, messy love.”

  Messy, messy love. I think of Jo and Harrison singing their pretty song, and my mother’s sheer stocking in a ladder running up her heel as she and Jo both push against the door between them.