by Nina Revoyr
"Jesus," Claudia said. "Why didn't she go to the principal?"
"That's what I said too. I said, 'Jennifer, why'd you let him get away with that? Why didn't you go talk to Dr. Shelton?'"
"And what did she say?"
"And she looked at me and kind of laughed and said, 'Wendell, Dr. Shelton was with him.'"
There was a moment of loud silence. Then I heard Claudia say, "Oh my God." She was quiet for another moment and then asked, "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. I mean, Eric's not failing my class at the moment, but I'm sure as hell not going to pass the kid if he doesn't deserve to be passed. And frankly, I'd be happy if he flunked. That would make him ineligible to play next year, and then the quarterback question would be settled."
"Well, what about Eddie?" Claudia asked. "What kind of student is he?"
"He's decent. B student. Nothing spectacular, but nowhere near failing."
"What does he think of all the stuff that's going on?"
"He doesn't know about the grade thing, of course. And as for the playing situation, I don't know. I talked to him after our end-of-the-season team meeting, and he seems to think that if he just keeps improving and outplays Eric in spring practice, Larry'll have to see the light and let him play." My dad sighed. "He's a good kid, and I don't think he wants to believe that someone would hurt him intentionally. It's the other kids who are more cynical. And pissed."
Just then we heard the sharp cracks of gunfire. It sounded like it was several blocks away, not immediately threatening, but I still jumped about a foot off the ground. The parents stood up and started to walk toward the living room, so I scrambled up the stairs and into my room. I heard them check to make sure that the front door was locked, and then my father called up to Raina and me. We left our rooms and went downstairs to join them, Raina still with one pen behind her ear. There was no more gunfire, but we all stayed sitting around the table for a while, drinking coffee and talking in quiet voices. I wondered if my father would tell me about the events of his day. He didn't. His mood for the rest of the night was sober and quiet, and Claudia kept looking at him, and touching his arm, and kissing the top of his head. I tried not to bother him, and surprised myself—and everyone else—by giving him a hug before I went up to bed. A few minutes later, as I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I wondered why I'd done that. It was because he'd looked so sad, I guessed, because he seemed to need it. But it was more than that, I realized. It was because I was proud of him.
* * *
Claudia had her own bad news just two days later. Raina and I got home from the park that night around seven, as we always did; my father was in a meeting at school. When we walked into the living room, we found Claudia yelling into the phone, and she was so worked up she didn't bother to switch phones or to lower her voice.
"Yes, exactly, Rochelle," she was saying. "She called and left a message at five, when she knew no one would be here. And she said she wasn't sure that I was suitable to give a talk at the conference. I mean, what the hell does that mean, 'suitable'?"
She was pacing back and forth, and didn't acknowledge us. Her face looked grim, her shoulders were tight, and her hair stuck out in tufts, as if she'd been pulling it.
"Well, that's what I'm saying," she continued. "She didn't even have the guts to tell me to my face. She doesn't like the man I live with, so she doesn't want me to speak at her event. I mean, what are we in, here? Second grade?"
Claudia finally looked up and saw us and made a wild gesture with her arm; I wasn't sure if she was waving hello to us, or telling us to leave. We started to walk away, toward the kitchen, and I could hear the buzz of Rochelle's voice through the phone. "Well, it isn't that simple, you know?" said Claudia. "She told the speakers' committee that I was being uncooperative and confrontational, so what am I supposed to do? Meet with each person on the committee and say that the chairperson's got a problem with my boyfriend? That'd make me look spiteful. And besides, I don't want to go behind her back like that."
I looked behind me, and saw Claudia nodding. "I know, I know, this is really unfair. But just because someone's doing me wrong doesn't mean I should act the same way."
Raina and I were in the kitchen by now, and Claudia's voice was slightly muted. "What the hell was that all about?" asked Raina, and I looked at her, surprised. Then I realized that she didn't know how Paula felt about my father; she hadn't had the luxury of eavesdropping.
"I don't know," I answered. "Ask your mom."
We poured glasses of Coke, and turned on M*A*S*H, to drown out Claudia's voice. As I stared at the screen, not really following the story, I wondered what Raina thought about her mother being with my father—and what she thought of my father in general, and of me.
* * *
The next Friday, a big group of us decided to see a movie. Telisa and Shavon said they'd pick up Q and then meet us at the theater in Manhattan Beach. Raina and I had an early dinner at home, eating the food that my father had made for us before he and Claudia left for the weekend—chicken-fried rice, and inari-zushi, rice packed into two-inch bean curd pockets that looked like little footballs. Then I fed the dog, who started tapping me with her paw at exactly six thirty, as she did every night to demand her dinner.
"She's like an alarm clock," Raina commented, "only cuter, and she don't need batteries, and you gotta walk her twice a day."
"And more importantly," I added, "she don't believe in getting up early."
We piled all our dishes in the sink, and decided to do them in the morning. Then the phone rang. I thought it was Stacy—we were supposed to give her a ride—but when I picked up the phone and said, "Hey," the voice on the other end said, "Lemme talk to Raina." I stood there for a moment, weighing the benefits of telling Toni that I didn't appreciate her rudeness, but in the end I just held out the receiver.
Raina took it, put it up to her ear, turned toward the sliding glass door. "Hey," she said, and the tone of her voice—happy, loving, intimate—made me turn and leave the room. I didn't know what to do with myself, so I took the dog on a quick walk. When we got back, Raina was still on the phone, but now I could hear her all the way from the door.
"Well, why not?" she said, and her voice sounded distressed. "It's not like you got anything else to do in the afternoons! Or maybe you do, and I just don't know about it!" She stopped talking, but I could hear her pacing back and forth, and I wondered what had happened while I was gone. "Well, fine then!" she yelled. "Maybe I'll see you later!" She slammed the phone down, and stormed into the living room, almost running me over. "Uh, hey," she said, composing herself. I'd seen her face, though. In the moment before she'd realized I was there, it had been furious, churning, naked.
"Are you okay?" I asked, stepping forward.
"I'm fine," she said. "Let's go."
I stepped closer. "Are you sure? I mean, like, do you wanna talk or anything?"
She glanced at me, startled, offended. "No . . . just leave me . . . I mean . . . no."
I pulled back, afraid that I'd overstepped my bounds, not entirely sure that she wasn't going to hit me. She put her jacket on, and yanked the zipper up like she wanted to hurt it. Then she walked out of the house and down to my father's car.
I followed her, got into the driver's seat, reached over and unlocked the passenger door. Raina got in and sat there with her arms crossed. As I backed out of the driveway I narrowly missed hitting the crack lady, who just kept walking without turning to look at us even though I'd come within an inch of her legs. In the rearview mirror I saw the indifferent swing of her bandanna, the way her hands seemed too large for her skinny arms. Raina wasn't saying anything. I took a few deep breaths to collect myself, and then drove over to the Lennox area to collect Stacy.
Stacy lived in a loud neighborhood—her place sat in the shadow of the 405 freeway, and was right beneath the constant stream of planes descending toward the airport. Her house was a one-story place with three bedrooms; there were seve
n kids in the family, and a grandchild on the way. Stacy's dad was in jail, but I didn't know why, and nobody dared to ask. Her mother worked at Hughes Aircraft, and I think she expected Stacy, as the oldest, to act as the surrogate adult when she wasn't around. Stacy only sporadically stepped into this role—yelling at the little ones every so often for making too much noise, halfheartedly asserting that maybe the older ones should do some homework—but since these commands were so irregular, and came without enforcement, the kids tended not to pay much attention. This frustrated their oldest sister, which, in turn, angered their harried mother. The household was in constant chaos, and so Stacy stayed out of it as much as she could.
We drove through Stacy's 'hood slowly, noting how different it felt from ours. The houses were smaller and more dilapidated, there were huge craters in the streets, and every block had at least one empty lot filled with trash and old furniture. Skinny dogs ran through the streets, their coats covered with dirt, and sniffed at piles of garbage which sat uncollected on the curbs. Small buildings that had once housed liquor shops or corner markets had been converted into storefront churches. Jesus Saves, said the hand-painted sign on one of them. Sinners, Pray For Your Forgiveness, said another. There were other signs too, but they were in Spanish and I couldn't read them; gradually, the blacks were trickling out of the area, and being replaced by people from Mexico and Central America. Although the entire 'hood was unsafe at night, Stacy's block was especially hazardous—there was a shut-down school across from her house, whose open-air halls, which you couldn't see from the street, were used for drug transactions and gang meetings. Several shootings had occurred there in the last few years. And once, when a group of Latino gangbangers was scattered by the sudden appearance of the police, three young guys had forced their way into Stacy's house. They sat Stacy and two of her sisters down on the couches, pressed guns to their sides, and told the girls that if the cops came banging on the door, the girls had better swear the guys had been there all day. The cops never came, though, and the gangbangers left without further incident, one of them feeling so bad about scaring the girls that he promised to watch out for their house. He kept his word. Within the next six months he chased a burglar away, and then returned the radio that an acquaintance of his had stolen from Mrs. Gatling's car.
Nicki, Stacy's sister, pulled open their front door, then unlocked the thick metal screen door and backed up to let us in. Nicki had played basketball the year before, but she'd quit the team over the summer because she was pregnant. That night she looked tremendous, inflated, like the baby was going to pop out at any second, even though she wasn't due for another three months.
"Hey, ladies, wassup?" she said when she saw us. "Y'all gonna sign with a college, or what?"
"We plan to," Raina answered, sounding serious.
"That's great, homegirls," Nicki said, touching her stomach. "You better not fuck up, now. We all countin on you to make it."
"Girl, give it up," came Stacy's voice from behind her. Then Stacy herself appeared. "Who're you to be givin people advice?"
"I can say what I want, Miss Thang," Nicki replied, punching Stacy on the shoulder. "And you better not fuck up, either."
"Hey. Who the older sister here?"
"Yeah, yeah," Nicki said, pushing Stacy toward the door. "Get the fuck outta here and go see your movie."
We said goodbye and walked down to the car. Although it was warm that night, we rolled up all the windows. This was a precaution against carjackers, who were more likely to approach cars with open windows so they could stick the gun directly in your face. I was more afraid of getting carjacked than I was of anything else; in the last six months alone, both Q's sister and Pam's mother had relinquished their cars to armed young thieves at quiet intersections, and I couldn't get into a car anymore without thinking about what had happened to them. There were many little rules, besides the window rule, for driving in our parts of LA—like leaving space between yourself and the car stopped in front of you in order to have room for a quick getaway; and not pulling all the way up at an intersection, so you had a clear view of all the people on the corners. I don't know if my friends were as scared of carjackers as I was, but Raina and Stacy didn't seem too worried that night. During the twenty-minute drive to Manhattan Beach, Raina sat in the front seat quietly, while Stacy chattered on and on. I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Stacy was okay-looking, but she had a sweet, unassuming smile which increased her attractiveness and undercut all her efforts at coolness. Although she was taller than Raina, she'd always seemed shorter to me—less at home in her body, and in the world. The expression on her face that night was open and happy; her wet, heavy curls were like living things on either side of her face. She was telling us about a new job she had lined up, in the accounting office of a friend of her mother's.
"I'm gonna work there during Christmas vacation," she said, "and maybe some weekends. Then starting in January, I'll be workin every day after school."
"What about practice?" Raina asked.
"I'll just go after practice," Stacy said. She slid down and put her foot over the top of Raina's seat. "But I'm hella excited about this. Now that I'm eighteen, I think it's time I started makin some real money—especially with Nicki's baby on the way. My mama's always talkin 'bout I don't do nothin for the family—'cept steal a package of diapers now and then." She laughed. "But I'll be able to help her out now, I'll be gettin a paycheck. And this is an office job, you know what I'm sayin? No more flippin hamburgers and shit!"
"That's great, Stace," I said. Then I started to ponder the fact that she'd turned eighteen. She was the first of us to cross that invisible threshold into adulthood; she could vote now, and join the army, and legally drink in certain states. In the course of one day, she'd taken on a burden of expectation and responsibility that was too overwhelming for me to think about, and that I certainly did not want to feel.
Raina had no further comment, and I wondered where her mind was; she must still have been thinking about Toni. I looked at Stacy in the mirror again and she was staring out the window, keeping time with the music on the radio. I hoped her job would work out, and that she'd go to a junior college. I hoped she would be all right.
When we got to the theater in Manhattan Beach, it took ten minutes before I could find a parking space among all the Porsches and BMWs. Compared to these cars, my father's creaky old Mustang looked like a bum who'd crashed a cocktail party. I noticed that the trees and grass here were a lush green, and not the yellowish tan which was the prevailing color of vegetation in the less affluent areas of LA. The cement was smooth, uncracked, and free of trash. Manhattan Beach was an upper-middle-class white community, and going there was like stepping onto the set of one of those snobby, glamorous TV shows I alternately laughed at and resented. We sometimes went to movies there because the theaters were nice, and because it felt like a field trip for us. It all looked vaguely unreal to me that night. People were not particularly dressed up—they wore polo shirts, blouses, khakis—but you could tell they'd spent a lot of money on looking casual. They talked and laughed and flipped their hair as if they were on camera. Adults were trying hard to act sprightly and young, parents were attempting to be cooler than their kids. I saw women in their forties wearing the tight, tapered jeans that were favored by their teenage daughters. I heard fifty-year-old men refer to each other as "dude."
We walked toward the crowd lined up in front of the theater, and I found my friends right away; they were easy to spot among the swarms of white people.
"Yo, wassup?" Telisa called out when she saw us. "What y'all doin here?"
"We just thought we'd catch a movie tonight," I said.
"What you come to see?"
"Jumpin' Jack Flash."
"Well, that's convenient," Shavon said, "'cos we just happened to buy three extra tickets."
"Cool," I said. "It can be like the family night out at the movies."
"Hey," Q protested, smiling, "speak for yoursel
f. Ain't all of us here in the family."
We made introductions—Shavon hadn't met Raina or Stacy—and then stood in line to get into the theater. I could tell right away that Stacy liked Shavon—she was grinning, and looking at her kind of slyly, and there was a teasing lilt in her voice when she spoke. There was a lot for her to like. Shavon was one of the stars of the track team, and her body, a sprinter's body, was muscular and tight. She had a smooth, open, caramel-colored face, with wide cheekbones and bright hazel eyes. Like Telisa, she was a good student, only without the smart mouth my teammate had. Shavon was mature and stable too, and sometimes, when I was feeling especially playful or envious of their personal attributes, I'd suggest that she and Telisa were hoarding all the good qualities that one could want in a girlfriend, and that they should split up and distribute the wealth. I didn't really mean this, though. Anyone could see that they were great together. Sometimes I'd catch them looking at each other, and it was such a loving, private look that I always felt like I was spying, and turned away.
"We should all go out sometime," Stacy said as we were waiting. "Get a big group of people and hit a club."
"That'd be fun," Shavon said, smiling at Telisa.
"Yeah," I agreed.
Telisa looked at me, surprised. "But Nancy, you don't like clubs."
"Well, maybe I just ain't been to the right ones," I said. Telisa was right—I didn't like clubs, but I wished she hadn't told everyone. What I was hoping was that we could set up a night to go out, and that Raina would agree to come too. Raina, however, was unresponsive.
"Well, I'll take you out," Stacy said to me. "No one ever sees you. You gotta stop it with this incognito shit."
I muttered something noncommittal and looked past her, straight into some familiar faces. Four girls were staring at us from beneath yellow hair and furrowed pale foreheads; their expressions varied from curious to hostile.
"Yo, T," I said, tapping Telisa's shoulder with the back of my hand, "who those girls over there?"
