The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “We need to show people we’re serious.”

  “Do we really?” Freddie says. “I just want to live.”

  “That’s the whole point,” Shaquann says. “Anyway.” Shaquann texts somebody on her phone. “I’m getting a ride.”

  “Why don’t we just ride our bike?”

  “I’m through exerting myself on the rig. I need to save something for the protest.”

  “But I don’t want to—”

  “Lookah,” Shaquann says. “Unless you want to walk again, you’re coming with me.”

  The light ring along the bike’s front rim partly obscures the tire. But Freddie sees the rubber pooling on the concrete. Freddie had complained about all the walking around town during their prior stunts. She’d worn a corrective shoe when she was younger, but her right foot still wasn’t quite like the other, and it hurt most of the time. Earlier that night, Shaquann had shown up with the two-seater bike, likely borrowed from one of the French Quarter vendors, Freddie assumed. Riding it with Shaquann in front of her felt like endlessly diving into a cool, clean pool.

  Within fifteen minutes, a gray SUV with tinted windows pulls up to the curb. The SUV has a low hood and is highly polished with chunky, muscular tires. The vehicle looks like a thick-skinned animal about to charge.

  Two boys get out. No. Not boys. Men. One of them wears a tank top and shorts. He has a round, childlike face and skinny legs but the tattooed, buff arms of a circus performer who walks on his hands. The other man is light-skinned in a crisp, collared shirt. He has a soft mouth that suggests sucking lemons.

  Freddie pulls Shaquann aside.

  “Uh-uh,” Freddie whispers. “I ain’t going with those dudes. They grown!”

  “I’m grown, too,” Shaquann also whispers. “I’m out of high school. Even if I had to get my diploma in the mail.” All the seniors graduated during a thirty-minute online ceremony Freddie watched while also viewing videos of a new challenge where young people went into their parents’ bedrooms and planked just before sunrise. The punch line was to catch their parents’ reactions when they found their child seemingly deceased.

  “They not even wearing masks,” Freddie says.

  “I ain’t crazy. They clean. They get tested bout every day for work. Look, that’s one of my boos. He the one bought me this purse.”

  “You don’t need a sugar daddy to buy you a purse.”

  “You ain’t never had nobody be nice to you?” Shaquann says it more like a statement than a question. Freddie sinks back into herself and stares at Shaquann, who is already looking over Freddie’s shoulder.

  “We good?” the buff one asks, leaning against the fender. Shaquann walks over and takes his hand.

  “Freddie, this my friend, Rocky. He’s a deputy at the parish prison. And this his cousin, Bee.” Bee throws a languid peace sign.

  “That bike won’t fit in my ride, and I ain’t got no rack.” Rocky’s chewing a gingerroot. It pokes out the side of his mouth.

  Shaquann looks at the bike. Freddie thinks Shaquann will say they need to find a way.

  “I ain’t sweating that, baby,” Shaquann says. “It wasn’t even mine.”

  Rocky opens the front passenger door and gives Shaquann a hand into the SUV. Once everyone is inside, they take off. Freddie admits to herself that the air-conditioned interior is a relief after hours in the dank hotness of New Orleans in summer. But the SUV is musty. It’s a creeping smell that unfolds in waves, sweat, garbage, mold. They turn onto St. Charles Avenue. A streetcar shadows them like a crocodile along a shoreline.

  “Thank you for the ride,” Freddie says.

  “You welcome,” Rocky says. He pats the dashboard. “This my baby. Just upgraded the seats. That’s Corinthian leather you’re sitting on.” Freddie touches the seat. It feels like skin.

  “Got a 460 under the hood,” Rocky says.

  “What’s a 460?” Freddie asks. Rocky laughs.

  “Y’all really trying to go to this protest thing?” Rocky says. “For what?”

  “People tired of all the bullshit,” Shaquann says. “All this brutality. We trying to get rights up in here. Rights for trans people. Rights for queer people. Rights for Black people.”

  “Mostly white folk out there what I heard.” Bee is holding his phone, his thumb streaking across the screen like a windshield wiper on the high-speed setting. “They going to try to cross the bridge.”

  “Well, I ain’t feeling it,” Rocky says. “But I know Shaq’s got to go. She’s all into that white meat.”

  “Boy, you play too much.” Shaquann play-slaps Rocky’s shoulder. He smiles at her. When they stop at a light, Rocky tongue-kisses Shaquann.

  “I’m not going to it,” Freddie says. “That sounds like a mess.”

  “Your friend got sense. They probably gonna be shooting people.”

  “Nobody ain’t doing all that,” Shaquann says. “It’ll be peaceful.”

  “Some of this about that girl who got trampled last night? I know all about that. My dude at the corner store said it was mistaken identity. The guys thought she was a girl girl.”

  “What that even mean?” Shaquann asks. The video—videos—were all over and Freddie didn’t want to watch, but once Freddie started watching last night, she couldn’t turn away. The way the men punched and grabbed the woman as if to stun and dismantle. They pulled her hair, yanked her clothes, grabbed her earrings, snatched her purse, all while onlookers recorded and ooo’ed.

  “People need to know what they working with,” Rocky says. “Those girls should wear armbands or something.”

  “You being so rude right now,” Shaquann says.

  Freddie leans forward in her seat. She grabs the back of Rocky’s headrest for balance even as her seatbelt’s tension pulls at her waist. “If someone is freaked out about another person’s body that gives them the right to attack them?”

  “It wasn’t even personal. It was a reaction, is what I’m saying. Like slapping a mosquito on your arm.”

  “That’s sick, Rocky,” Shaquann says. She twists her upper body around to address Bee. “What do you think?”

  Bee glances up from his phone and watches Rocky for a moment. “I don’t know. You never know how someone gonna come at you, especially round here. You might be chilling and then they about to run right over you.”

  Shaquann sits straight in her seat. “So, you would have done me like that if I wasn’t what you expected? Would have had me looking like I got beat with a bat?”

  “Nah, baby.” Rocky places a hand on Shaquann’s leg. “You know I don’t see you that way. You just you.” He runs his hand up her thigh.

  Shaquann smacks her lips. Outside the SUV, the shadowed mansions give way to bright storefronts where ball gowns hang and advertisements for cellphones promise incredible speed.

  “That kind of thing happens every day,” Bee says.

  “What’s that?” Rocky asks.

  “People getting fed up with the situation they in.” Bee turns on the light over his head. Suddenly, the reflection of his face appears in the window. As though he wants to see himself while he talks. “Remember Ms. Cola?”

  “At the place where they pay your electric light bill?” Rocky says.

  “You mean, People’s Community Action?” Shaquann says.

  “Right,” Bee says. Freddie’s mama had brought her there several times over the years. It was a warehouse full of desks and lines of people asking for what their jobs didn’t pay enough to provide. A lake of people in hats, shower caps, or work overalls. Freddie’s mama brought her last time for a school uniform voucher. Freddie felt somehow that she was in two places at once. PCA where the voices of people like hers echoed off the aluminum ceiling and Ellis Island where immigrants once waited for whatever justice the land might provide.

  “I know her,” S
haquann says. “She has them cat-eye glasses.”

  “My gramma friend,” Bee says. “She worked there for thirty years. Then about a month ago before all this mess with the virus started, she just got up from her desk and said she had a vision. She was getting a train ticket to Chicago where things ain’t so crazy.”

  “How it’s less crazy there?” Rocky asks.

  “I mean she used to sit behind that desk,” Bee says. “Paying people’s bills day in, day out. And she bounced without even turning her computer off because of something she didn’t even see with her eyes. See you later. I’m gone. Poof.”

  “What was her vision?” Freddie asks.

  “Something about singing on a field of grass on a hill.”

  “Child, they ain’t got no grassy hills in Chicago,” Shaquann says.

  “How would you even know?” Rocky lowers his rearview mirror to get a view of Bee. “Bee’s Ma used to have visions before they put her away.”

  “Don’t trip, bruh.” Bee lowers his gaze back to his phone.

  “Maybe that lady at Community Action had family in Illinois,” Freddie says, changing topics.

  The SUV rounds the traffic circle that borders downtown. Freddie presses her face shield to the window and follows the line of the concrete plinth upward to the empty pedestal. Once a Confederate statue stood there until they brought in a crane, looped a noose around the idol, and ripped it off. At the gas station, a group of men made jerky movements with their hands as if in a rap battle. Freddie blew to leave condensation on the glass of the SUV, but it just fogged her face shield again.

  “What you is anyway?” Rocky asks. He’s angled the mirror to watch her now.

  “What?”

  “I mean you got all the junk on. You might be a woman, an undocumented immigrant, a Russian hacker. I can’t even tell. Makes me nervous.”

  “Don’t be rude, Rocky, baby,” Shaquann says.

  “Shaq said you’re in a ‘transitional phase.’ ” Rocky laughs.

  “I said Freddie is exploring her identity.”

  “What? Like you lost it on the bus?” Bee asks.

  “How you not know who you are?” Rocky says.

  “Excuse me,” Freddie says, “I need to get out.” The SUV was in slow traffic. Freddie pulled the door handle, but it was child locked.

  “Hey, I was just playing,” Rocky says, the gingerroot sliding in and out of the corner of his mouth.

  Shaquann glances back at Freddie. There’s a look of uncertainty in Shaquann’s eye.

  “Chill out, girl,” Shaquann says.

  Freddie unbuckles her seatbelt. She moves to the lip of the bench seat. She leans into the space between Shaquann and Rocky.

  “I’m giving you five seconds to stop, unlock this door, and let me out.”

  Rocky stops the SUV in front of an office building. He gets out and pulls her door open, all the while shaking his head.

  “You being crazy,” Shaquann says.

  “You can stay,” Freddie says. Even as the SUV pulls away, Freddie can hear Shaquann calling after her as though from the far side of a river.

  Freddie jogs several blocks. She comes to a large, darkened plate-glass window and sees her reflection. The black skinny jeans. The formless black T-shirt. The layers of protection around her head. The phrase armored shadow flits through her mind. She pulls off the face shield and both masks. Holding them in either hand, she leans forward, hands on knees, breathing deeply. She swings at her reflection and the face shield slams off the glass. The shield skitters across the ground. She kicks it.

  A noise draws her attention back down the block. The gray SUV screeches at the intersection and the front passenger door pops open. Shaquann gets out. She slams the door. The tinted rear passenger rolls down. Bee dumps the contents of Shaquann’s purse onto the ground.

  “This my ride!” Rocky says. The SUV’s engine roars, but the vehicle stays in place.

  Freddie runs to Shaquann. Shaquann’s cheeks are wet, her face contorted.

  “Come here.” Freddie hugs Shaquann and wipes her cheek with her sleeve.

  “They can go to hell,” Shaquann says. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” Freddie takes her hand.

  “You know,” Shaquann says. “Look at you.” They both laugh.

  Freddie notices the SUV hasn’t moved from where it stopped a few yards away, exhaust spitting from the tailpipe. She sees the aggressive curves of the fenders and bumpers. The chunky, muscular tires. The flat planes of the door panels polished to a mirror sheen, waiting to be shattered.

  Ghetto University

  You would think a black man with two advanced degrees, who had once lectured at the Sorbonne, who shook hands with Noam Chomsky and Shirin Ebadi, who prefers Enya to Kanye West, and who will never willingly watch a Tyler Perry film, would not spend his evenings mugging tourists in the French Quarter. And you would be wrong.

  For instance, take this couple ahead of me. It’s early evening, and they’re strolling toward that awful tourist trap, Café Du Monde. I peg them for Midwesterners, probably Minnesotans, with their button-down shirts and matching mom jeans. They’re distracted by an argument, easy prey for me. On earlier nights like this one, back before the budget cuts that led to my termination from the university, I would have politely greeted this couple, even cheerfully so.

  “I don’t want no trouble,” I say, tugging my sweatshirt hood forward. With my black medical-grade mask, I imagine I look suitably intimidating. But I’m using the mask for an off-label use. It’s a holdover from many months ago when the pandemic began.

  “Please don’t shoot us,” the woman says instantly.

  “Nobody has got to get shot,” I say. “You know what to do.” I throw in a “whitey” for effect, even though I know that lukewarm racial epithet hasn’t been popular since the 1970s, but how exactly does one insult white people? Hey, Casper? Fork it over, paleface? There simply isn’t a word equivalent to the N-bomb when you’re trying to make Caucasians feel uncomfortable, unless you count the most terrifying noun, my skin.

  My take from the encounter is modest but satisfying. A couple hundred dollars and passes to a reenactment of the 1811 German Coast Uprising. I keep the cash and toss the passes. I’m in the middle of my own uprising. I don’t need to observe one.

  Back home, my wife, Dell, preps her face at the dresser mirror. She’s a chemist for one of the oil companies and often takes the graveyard shift, monitoring that certain necrotizing chemicals don’t leap from their containers and dive into the water table. Her recent attention to cosmetics is odd to say the least, since for most of our marriage she cared little about fashion, but who can account for the mercurial whims of women? I do hope she’s not cheating on me.

  Yes, I’ve been in a snippy mood, and, sure, I’ve put on a few pounds over the years, but my recent nocturnal activities combined with a reduction in my consumption of HoHos has led to promising gains, or, rather, losses.

  “How did you do today, darling?” she asks. I show her my booty—the money, that is. “That’s it?” She pinches her nose, that unhappy, nervous tic of hers. “For the whole day? Seriously, James. If things weren’t going so well at the lab, we’d already be out on the street, homeless and shaking a cup. When are you going to find real work?”

  Dell doesn’t know what I’ve been doing. I spent the first week of my disenfranchisement inquiring at other local institutions of higher learning, even the vocational schools. Yet, as you can imagine, a city with a 30 percent illiteracy rate isn’t exactly aching to employ a professor of English who specializes in the verse of Alexander Pushkin.

  Since my leads dried up, I’ve been tutoring trust-fund babies on how to ace their college admission essays. Or so Dell thinks. I actually tried the tutoring madness once. It was mostly discouraging. My pupil was the daughter of a wealthy
uptowner, the owner of a plantation turned resort west of the city. I couldn’t disabuse that girl of the notion that the reading of literature was not, like, a total waste of time and why can’t I just, like, draw them a picture?

  “Everybody likes pictures, right, instructor?” she asked, not wearing a mask because her father told her the pandemic was a political hoax.

  “Professor,” I said, straightening my posture.

  “Like, whatever. All I’m saying is people get more out of art and music than some words on a page.”

  Dell brushes her eyebrows. She’s always brushing her eyebrows these days. No one’s eyebrows in the history of the world have been subjected to more rigorous brushing than hers. “I know you think online teaching is beneath you—”

  “I’m not doing that,” I say. “It’s hard enough to help students learn while they’re sexting each other in the classroom. How much more difficult will it be when they have Big Bootied Bitches open in the web browser next to mine?” My whole body quivers. Dell is right, of course. We have no savings, evictions are allowed again, and the rent is weeks overdue. The landlord crammed a crude letter through the mail slot earlier today. The missive couldn’t have been less eloquent if it were scribbled in crayon. How he managed to spell “eviction” properly I’ll never know. He wants this month’s and next month’s rent by tomorrow morning.

  Dell places a hand on my cheek and frowns. “Oh, darling,” she says, “you look tired. There’s mac and cheese in the oven. Get some sleep. Bye.” Then she’s gone. I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile.

  After consuming copious chunks of Dell’s ambrosia, I return to the streets. This is a good time of year for mugging. The convention trade is only half as good as it used to be, but the discount rates have drawn out bargain-hunting organizations. Last Wednesday, the World Commission on Peace stopped by. Next week, the NRA. Tonight? The International Association of Lepidopterists, even though there are virtually no interesting butterflies in New Orleans. I wear a butterfly brooch on my hoodie to blend in. The brooch is somewhat in the shape of a blue morpho. The silhouette is correct, but the spots are all wrong.