My mind went back to the doctor’s office. I didn’t remember taking anything but the prescription pads. It was a storefront office with the entrance on Frederick Douglass Boulevard. There was one of those decals from a security service in the window plus a gate that came down over the door. In the alley, which you could get through from a building on 147th Street, there was a back door that just had one lock on it. There was a decal on that, too. Earlier I had gone past the place with Freddy and sat outside while he went in. When Freddy came out, he showed me the prescription pad with the numbers printed on it.
“That’s his official New York State number,” he said. “He put the pad back in his upper right-hand drawer.”
That night I took a jimmy bar to the alley, found the door, and waited for a while until I was pretty sure that everything was clear. The doctor wasn’t American and didn’t live in the nabe, so I knew he wouldn’t be there.
Three minutes. That’s what I had given myself to get in, find the pads, and get out. By the time the alarm went off and the police arrived and looked at the front door, it would be at least five or seven minutes, I figured. Then they might just split because they would think it was a false alarm. It would take them at least five minutes if they checked the back door, and I’d be in the wind.
I said a quick prayer before I went after the door. I popped the door real quick and I was in. Soon as I got the door closed, I looked around and saw that I was in the doctor’s back room. I tried his desk and it was open. The first pads I looked at didn’t have the numbers Freddy had shown me, but the next three did. I snatched them, put them in my pocket, and was thinking about looking for some more when I thought I heard something out front. I panicked and got up out of there. There had been a few bills on the desk, but I didn’t even stop for them. I knew I didn’t pick up any drugs and I knew that all I gave to Freddy were the prescription pads.
I was innocent, but it didn’t matter if the police said I was guilty. Soon as the jury looked over and saw you sitting at the defendant’s table, they figured you must have done something.
CHAPTER 28
Sunday. Mr. Cintron called and said he wasn’t coming in after all, but he told Mr. Wilson to let me take my breakfast into the administration office so I could use the phone.
“Hey, Icy, what’s up?”
“I’m up, Willis is in bed, Mommy’s in bed, and Sheba is up.” Icy’s speech was clear and precise. “Ask me who Sheba is.”
“Okay, who’s Sheba?”
“The woman who owns the bodega on the corner gave her to me,” Icy said. “She’s smoky gray with a small white spot on her chest. She doesn’t say meow yet. She just kinda squeaks.”
“A kitten. How old is she?”
“The woman said she’s six weeks old but I took her to school and my teacher said she’s closer to four weeks.”
“You have to take good care of her,” I said.
“I will. You want to know what I found out about Freddy?”
“Didn’t I tell you…” The girl was getting me upset but I didn’t want to yell at her. “Icy, didn’t I tell you not to be checking out those thugs?”
“Okay, so I won’t tell you what I found out,” Icy said. “Even though it’s kind of interesting.”
“You know if I could get to you, I’d have to give you a punch in the nose, right?”
“So what do you plan to do today?” she asked.
“Probably play some ball, watch some television, check out the planes passing by,” I said. “I like to watch the planes flying overhead and wondering where they’re going. Other than that, I’m just killing time.”
“You ought to catch a bird and raise it,” Icy said. “I saw a movie—”
“The Birdman of Alcatraz,” I said. “We saw that in here about two months ago and everybody was glad they weren’t in no Alcatraz. If I do something long term, it won’t be raising birds for your cat to kill.”
“It’s beneath Sheba’s dignity to kill birds,” Icy said.
“If I get that much time on my hands, maybe I’ll write a book about you.”
“And we can get Spike Lee to do the movie,” Icy said. “And I’ll get a real cute baby to play me just born and then I’ll play myself when I get older and I’ll have Evan Ross play my boyfriend. Then when they have the Oscars, I’ll wear an eggshell-white gown covered with white lace.”
“Whoa…you got your acceptance speech all figured out yet?” I asked.
“No, but I will by next Sunday,” she said. “Can you call me every Sunday?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’ll try.”
“You still don’t want to hear about Freddy?”
“What about him?”
“Well, his cousin’s best friend is in my best friend’s class, and she told her that Freddy got arrested because he sold some dope to a white girl—a rich white girl—and she died.”
“Get out of here!”
“They arrested Freddy, his half-brother, his uncle, and some West Indian guy who was just over at their house having lunch,” Icy said. “His cousin’s best friend said that they can’t prove it, but they’re arresting everybody they can until they get the right evidence.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. Okay, but don’t be asking anybody any more questions,” I said. “Can you make me a promise not to do that?”
“Okay.”
“Yo, Icy, don’t have me sitting up here in this place worried about you, okay?”
“Okay, I won’t,” she said. “You want to say hello to Sheba?”
“She near the phone?”
There was a moment of silence and then Icy said, “Now.”
“Hello, Sheba.”
“She heard you,” Icy said. “You have to put her into the book. I don’t know if I’m taking her to the Oscars, but you can put her in someplace. I don’t really know if I want to go into acting first or college first. I probably won’t be able to go to college.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Icy said. “Not a lot of people from our block go to college.”
“You’re going,” I said. “I’ll pay for it.”
“You will?”
“What school you want to go to?”
Mr. Wilson looked in and motioned for me to cut the phone.
“Look, I’m going to try to call you next Sunday,” I said. “You take care of yourself and remember that promise you made me.”
“I love you, Reese,” Icy said.
“I love you, too, Icy,” I answered. “I love you, too.”
“Princeton.”
“What?”
“Princeton is the school I want to go to,” Icy said.
“You got it,” I said. “Princeton.”
CHAPTER 29
Mr. Wilson was getting on everybody’s case on Monday during inspection. He was making sure all the beds were tight, and if they weren’t he just yanked them out and threw the bedding on the floor.
“Whose room is this?”
“That’s my room,” Play said.
“What’s this?”
“My toothbrush broke,” Play said. “No shit, it just broke, man.”
“I’m writing you up,” Mr. Wilson said.
“You can beat that,” Leon said. “Unless it got file marks on it.”
Play would have a hearing, but there was no way he was going to beat it. If your toothbrush broke, you were supposed to turn it in for a new one right away. Or else they would say you were trying to make a shank.
I didn’t know when the detectives from the city were going to come, but I was glad when Mr. Wilson turned me over to Mr. Pugh to go to Evergreen.
Being cuffed in the back of the van was foul, but I felt free at Evergreen. The staff treated me good and I had thought about working in someplace like Evergreen, taking care of senior citizens. Mr. Hooft had talked to me about me being a baker. That was good too. I didn’t know anything about baking, but I thought I wouldn’t mind giving it a t
ry.
Mr. Pugh had taken me into the lobby and was about to go when the receptionist called him back. She handed him an envelope.
“This is Mr. Anderson’s paycheck,” she said, looking from me to Mr. Pugh. “We don’t know how you handle it.”
“He gets paid?” Mr. Pugh asked.
“I get paid?” I asked.
“If you work here, you get paid,” the receptionist said. “We get paid once a month.”
“Okay, I’ll take it to the facility,” Mr. Pugh said.
“See how much it is,” I said.
“You probably won’t get any of this,” Mr. Pugh said, shoving the envelope into his jacket pocket. “You owe society—we don’t owe you.”
I was smiling when I went upstairs. I hadn’t even thought of myself as having a job or making money, but I guess I was. When I got to my floor, Simi was pushing a pail of water across the floor. It was a large aluminum pail and had wheels on it.
“You want me to take that?” I asked.
“Oh, you’re so big and strong!” she said. She felt the muscle in my arm and rolled her eyes.
A woman down the hall had died, and Simi had to clean out and disinfect the room. She said that was the policy. She said Mr. Hooft could wait if I wanted to help her.
We scrubbed every bit of the room with a brush and disinfectant, which she poured into the hot water. It stunk something terrible, and once or twice I thought I was going to throw up. We scrubbed and washed until eleven o’clock and then opened all the windows to let the room air out.
When I got to Mr. Hooft’s room, he was mad.
“So you come anytime you want to now?” he said, looking away from me.
“You missed me, man?” I asked him. “I was helping Simi clean the room down the hall.”
“If the Japanese had captured you, they would have killed you right away,” he said. “They called us all criminals, but with you, they would have been right!”
“You know what I was wondering?” I sat in the corner chair. “I saw some pictures of people in a German prison camp and they were skinny as anything. What did you get to eat?”
He looked over at me for a second, then away. Then he must have remembered something, because he gave a little jump and started laughing.
“You know what rijsttafel is?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s a big bowl of rice with lots of side dishes. You can have curried meats, or vegetables, sweet or not sweet, soups, whatever you want,” Mr. Hooft said. “But when the Japanese had us, they gave us strontstafel, little brown balls of rice mixed with cabbage. It was awful. We were always hungry, but no one died of hunger among the children or the women. Some of the men died from being worked so hard, and some died from the beatings or if they got sick. Some just gave up.”
“It must have been rough,” I said.
“Life is rough,” Mr. Hooft said. “You didn’t know that?”
“I thought you had it easy after you got out, the way you were talking and everything, but you just made some of that up, right?”
“Everything in life is made up,” Mr. Hooft said. “You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don’t make up your own life, who’s going to make it up for you? It’s bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you.”
The doctor came in with Nancy Opara. He asked Mr. Hooft how he was doing.
“Why, do you need somebody to practice medicine on?” Mr. Hooft asked. “Maybe you have an extra needle you need to stick somewhere.”
“Don’t be so mean, old man!” Nancy said. “The doctor just has to check you out.”
“I would rather be mean than be an African!” Mr. Hooft said.
“Yes, darling.” Nancy started to close the door, then pointed at me and motioned for me to leave.
“Come back later, Reese, and help me count my fingers and toes so these thieves can’t get them,” Mr. Hooft said. “You’re the only one I can trust in here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Simi was in the hallway and asked if I wanted to go to the cafeteria. I said yes, and we went up and she bought two orange sodas. She’d started to tell me about her grandson when her pager went off.
“My husband. I know what he wants. He works in a restaurant in New Rochelle and he’s going to try to convince me that whatever they’re having there on special he should bring home for us to eat tonight. What a cheap man. I’m going to go get my cell phone and call him.”
Simi left, and I watched as two women in wheelchairs came off the elevator and rolled up to the counter.
Sitting alone in the cafeteria, watching some of the residents getting their lunch on the far side of the room, I felt a sadness come over me. It was like a window had opened and a bad wind was pouring in from the outside. This was what I wanted, to be alone and not having someone watching me or locking a door behind me or cuffing me to a wall. I didn’t want to have to fight anyone or watch my back every minute of the day. But that wasn’t what my life had become. I wanted to be alone, but everyone I came into contact with had something over me, able to put me in detention or in juvy for more years.
My mind went back to the call from the detectives. I wondered if they were going to come pick me up this evening. I imagined them in their car driving along the highway, talking about what they did over the weekend, listening to the news. I knew I hadn’t done what they were saying, but it really didn’t matter. Some girl had died and they were making sure that somebody was going to pay for her death.
On the street, before I got arrested, I was Maurice Anderson. I wasn’t living no big-time life, but I was me. Now I wasn’t me but what I had done. The rules were different for a felon.
Three years or twenty years, the detective had said. What kind of choice was that? Just thinking about twenty years was like dying. Mr. Pugh had once said that I should get down on my knees and thank God I was in a juvenile facility.
“This is paradise,” he had said.
It wasn’t no paradise. There were rolls of barbed wire along the fences, doors that slammed shut behind you, and doors that were locked in front of you. And guards. I imagined them going home every day to their families. Maybe they talked about Progress. Maybe they just showered and tried to get the stink of us off their bodies. I don’t know.
Twenty years had to be dying, had to be hell. Being in a prison with grown men, with gangs, and knowing that the whole world thought you were garbage.
Three years was the good thing they were offering. All I had to do was say yes and move my head away from going home. Just stop looking out the window wishing I could take a walk without thinking about where I was going and start thinking about how I was going to manage to keep myself in one piece for three more years.
Crying wanted to come. In a way it was like Reese was dead and it was me, whoever I was, whatever I was, grieving over him. Maybe I should get a tattoo, R.I.P. on my chest, so whenever I looked in the mirror I could see it.
I started thinking about my case again. When I first got arrested, I thought maybe I would walk. Then I saw the list of charges and I thought it was a joke. Nobody was laughing. If Freddy and his people all testified that I gave him drugs, I was dead meat.
And what I didn’t want to think about, the thing that was like chewing on my insides, was what I would do if I did get out. They’d probably put me in some wack school where you didn’t learn nothing and just sat in class all day wondering where you were going to get some pocket money. They said that most of the people from ’round my way who go to jail once, go back again. Maybe even when they were out, there wasn’t nothing there for them but a road back.
“Everything in life is made up,” Mr. Hooft had said.
I wanted to make up a life. I could imagine myself walking down the street holding my head up high like I wasn’t concerned about anything. I tried dreaming up a nine-to-five deal making maybe six or seven hundred bucks a week. But e
very time I started imagining what I might be doing, the detective’s voice kept coming through.
“We’ll be up there Monday to bring you back to the city,” he had said.
I thought I could get up and just walk down the stairs and out into the street. What would happen? Someone would miss me and the police would start looking for me. Where would I go? What would I do?
Tired. Tired and sad. It was better to get mad at somebody and fight than just to feel so tired and sad all the time. The idea came to me, came like I should have known it all the time, that tired and sad was how I always felt. I knew I had to get to someplace else, someplace where I wasn’t tired and I wasn’t beat down and sad.
Miss Rossetti and people like her didn’t seem sad, but they didn’t have my life, not knowing what was going down next or what was going to be shaking when you went home, or the mirrors where you look in them and don’t see nothing you like.
I could walk out and let the cops come and get me. Maybe I would pull my hand out my pocket real fast and they would think I had a gun. Maybe that would be better than twenty years. Or maybe the same.
CHAPTER 30
Icy didn’t deal with stuff the way I did. She was all about what was going to go down and wasn’t tied down to what had already happened. That’s what I would have liked to have. Put Progress out of my head forever and move on like nothing had happened. No break-in, no getting arrested, no sitting in the courtroom listening to people talk about how much of my life they were going to take away, no crying in the van up to the facility.
Before I got to Progress, I didn’t know time had a weight to it. My sentence was already too heavy to carry around all the time and I was praying for a release date. I couldn’t wrap my head around getting out from under three more years. That was just too much of a load.
I thought about detention. I had dealt with it even though some dudes cracked up from being by themselves all the time. Maybe I could learn to deal with three more years. Then, when I got out, I’d move to another city. Maybe in the South, because I had never been there. I’d do any kind of work, sweep floors or mop and live in a small room, and I’d send any money I’d make to Icy so she could go to college. In three years, Icy would be twelve. I’d work until she was eighteen to help pay for her education. Then, if I kicked off, she could make up good stories about me.
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