The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead

by Chanelle Benz

  He stared at the blood and boogers weighing down my upper lip. I wiped at it with my sweatshirt sleeve, which was still too big for me and hung over my hands, meaning I hadn’t grown this fall, meaning puberty was still avoiding me like I was some amateur stalker. “Yo, can I git some of those napkins?” I asked without crying.

  He furnished me with a hamburger’d stack. “Man”—he popped in a definite fry—“you got your ass beat. Oh shit, they take yo shoes too? Damn, that’s some Oliver Twist shit right there. Know what you need?” He finished off the last of his soda.

  “Mr. Brownlow,” I said, referring to the old man who saves Oliver in Dickens.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “No one,” I said.

  “You need ice.” He offered me his cup. “You shaking, man.”

  “I’m shivering,” I corrected him and sat down on the bench so I could steady my elbows on my knees. Now that I’d stopped running I was cold, the hair at the back of my neck damp and spiraling tight.

  “Damn.” He sat down next to me. “You just a little dude. Your feet don’t even touch the ground.”

  There was no point dignifying that with a response so I merely emptied the ice out onto two napkins. It was a common/alienating observation better ignored. If I wasn’t being called gay or a little bitch while getting punched in the side of the head like I used to at my old school, my policy was to let that shit slide.

  “This the wrong time of year to get your shoes took. And I’m thinking your nose might could be broke. It’s all cut right there.” He demonstrated on his.

  “I know.” I casually turned away from him, sliding the ice to that spot.

  “What grade you in?”

  “Ninth.”

  “Ninth? You don’t look like you in ninth. You go to Lower Merion? You know a dude named Tyrese?”

  “No.” I was so cold I couldn’t feel my toes.

  “Where you go?”

  “Friends.” I reached down and squeezed them, even though I could barely feel my fingers either.

  “What? I said where you go.”

  “Friends. It’s a Quaker school. Kinda religious, namsayin.”

  “Like the oats? Like—what’s that old dude’s name? Benjamin Franklin!” He leaned back. “Bennie, the man on the big bill.” He wiped his hands on his jeans then turned his baseball cap around.

  “He wasn’t a Quaker,” I said.

  “What y’all’s beliefs?”

  “I don’t know. I just go there.” I really did not feel like talking about peace and justice right that minute.

  “You don’t know?” he repeated, my fictitious ignorance paining him.

  “I’m not a Quaker,” I snapped, looking down the tracks for the train.

  “How long you been going there?”

  “Since sixth grade,” I muttered.

  “Sixth grade? Then you best know!”

  I sighed. “Man . . .” and switched up napkins. “In the priesthood of all believers. The light of God in everyone. Service. Peace.” My stomach did a hari-kari. I had to go to the bathroom real bad.

  He thought/chewed the lone, brown shrimp’d french fry left in his bag. “Yeah. That’s deep, man. I’m interested in shit like that. Quakers. I’m Wallace.”

  “James.”

  “Train’s coming.” Wallace hopped up and shot his bag into the trash can as the light of the train pushed through the dark to find us. “You going home?”

  I thought of how upstairs my little brother had been crying like he knew I was the only one who could hear him. “No.” I slipped off the bench, scanning the gloomily fluorescent parking lot. None of the cars were Mom’s. I knew she wouldn’t come but I had thought somehow she might come. “I can’t,” I told the light posts, the empty cars, the white paint keeping them apart.

  “Ey!” Wallace waved at me from the yellow-painted edge of the platform.

  I limped across the freezing concrete. “You think the conductor will be okay with letting me on?”

  “You ain’t contagious, is you?”

  “I’m serious, man.”

  Wallace looked me up and down. “You best throw them nasty-ass napkins in the trash. And roll up yo sleeves—you don’t want to be looking like you killed nobody.”

  “I meant I’m not wearing shoes,” I said as I hopped from foot to foot, trying to fight frostbite.

  “So?” He was mystified.

  “Ain’t that illegal?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Not wearing shoes in a public place—ain’t that illegal?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “You weird.”

  Well, shit was weird. I had no phone, no shoes, no glasses. Nothing but a ten-dollar bill in my khakis. But even though I might’ve looked like a crackhead, I was more like a martyr, and ten dollars were enough to get me to Aunt Bernice.

  As the train cars rattled by, Wallace said, “Here man, let me give you my card.” He handed me a glossy black business card. “You might be in need of my services.”

  The train stopped and the conductor stepped out as I turned the card over. “This just has your name and e-mail. What services do you offer?”

  “Son, you name it, I can provide. For a price,” he said and hopped up on the steps.

  On the train, Wallace swung into his own seat, stretching his legs across the cracking blue vinyl. I took the row behind him and put up my hood worrying, would Mrs. P. give me another extension on my courtly love paper? She liked me. Thought I was the next Terrance Hayes. I didn’t know who that was but I told her Yeah. Ostensibly, I would have to lean on this scholastic partiality.

  Wallace pushed himself up so his chin hooked the top of the seat. “Man, let me tell you one thing.”

  I was stroking my nose, trying to find which part hurt the worst. As my skin began to thaw, my ears burned.

  “Pain lets you know you alive,” he said and flopped back down.

  I exchanged glances with my reflection and wished I could talk to my dad.

  Sometimes at night I woke with my back stuck to the sheet, remembering finding Dad asleep on the couch. I guess him and Mom were having issues even then. The windows open and a white curtain blowing on his face. Air so cold it was wet.

  “Dad?”

  In Grandmomma’s stories, men died of drafts. Sometimes they’d crossed an Obeah woman, or been cursed by some dude in love with their wife. But most times the draft meant a duppy was coming cuz somewhere, sometime these men had done something bad.

  I slammed the window shut to wake him.

  “J?” Dad said, hitting back the curtain. “What you doing?”

  “Why are you sleeping on the couch?”

  “Your mother said I was snoring.”

  I saw he was still wearing his shoes. “Where were you?”

  “Out. Why you up?”

  I’d knelt at his head, knowing he might dodge/comfort me. “I’m thinking bad thoughts.”

  “Again? Boy, you know you got to get your sleep. You got school in the morning.” He made room for me on the couch.

  “What do I do?” I asked, getting under.

  “Think good thoughts.” He’d yawned, tucking me in.

  Sometimes at night, I imagined he was still there sleeping under the white curtain in that cold, safe room.

  When we got to Suburban Station, I saw Mom in the crowd on the platform. A copper-headed woman getting on as I was about to step off. I pushed my way to her, knowing it was impossible, but because I have never not known her, I sometimes made her have superhero powers. When I squeezed close enough to brush her coat, I didn’t need my glasses to see that this lady couldn’t have even been Mom’s cousin. She wasn’t black—she was like Mexican or something.

  “Ey, James!” Wallace called down to me from the escalator as it carried him up and into the city. He grinned as my eyes found him. “You alive, son! You alive!”

  According to the homies in puffy coats on the plastic chairs around their stoop who took one look at my nose and ag
reed I was too fucked up to fuck with, it was eight-thirty at night. On the real though, I had found and tied two plastic bags over my feet, was legally blind, and all I had left in the world were bloodstained sweatpants with seven dollars and fifty cents in them. And still, I didn’t cry. I did have this feeling like I was being followed, but when I randomly/anxiously turned, all I saw was that the way I had come was dark.

  I hobbled down Fitzwater and Eighteenth, passing flat-fronted brick row houses with long white windows and worn stone steps on my way to Aunt B’s. But my rush was in vain: no one was home. Not even a damn Welcome mat for my ass. I slumped on the bottom step, perching my Pathmark heels on some weeds coming up out of the sidewalk and wiped at my dripping/clogged nose. There was no way I was gonna cry even though I was kind of starting to cry.

  Self-snitching: crying had been a problem since I was nine. But back then, people were cool with it. I had earned my tears. Cuz when I was nine, my dad went to prison, my parents got divorced, and Mom and me moved out of Philly to her ex-boyfriend’s house in Bryn Mawr. But three years later to still be getting all inconsolable about negligible shit? Like when I misspelled remainder on the floor of the State Spelling Bee? (A gaffe I ascribe to it being 6 a.m. and a fear of large white crowds.) I mean, people at Friends paid more in tuition than people in my old school paid for rent in a year—what was to cry over now?

  The fuzz of a woman in lavender scrubs with some animal on them stood over me. “Lord child, you scared me.” Aunt Bernice hugged me quick but just as quick pulled back. “What happened to your face?”

  The concern in my aunt’s voice disturbed my weak hold on ocular dignity. “Nothing.” I looked down. “I got in a fight after school. Tenth graders. Way bigger than me.”

  Aunt Bernice turned my chin as my cousin, Nahala, slammed the car door, saying, “Oo you got hit good, huhn?”

  “Your nasal passages blocked?” asked my aunt, decorously ignoring my cousin.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Then in rapid fire: “You been throwing up? Your neck hurt? This happened at your school? Does your mother know?”

  I thought back to Mom, waiting in the pickup line at school, the flags at the top of the flagpole on the side of the gym snapping. I had spotted her leaning out the window of our black SUV in aviator sunglasses, seeing me and smiling then spitting out her gum. Behind her was Jacquon, trapped in his car seat, looking happy to see me when I climbed in front and gummy smiling to let out some drool. Today it had seemed like going home would be okay. I wondered what Jacquon was doing.

  “She ain’t home yet,” I said. “She went out. To dinner. With a friend.”

  Aunt Bernice unlocked the door. “Well, it don’t look too crooked.”

  Soon I was deep in the scratchy cushions of Aunt Bernice’s couch where back in the day I had made some dope-ass forts. I swaddled myself in one of Grandmomma’s quilts with an ice pack until Nahala tickled my feet.

  “Stop it.” I kicked.

  “You were dreaming,” she said.

  “I’m just resting my eyes.”

  “Ew, you sweating over everything.”

  “No, I’m not.” I sat up and my damp sweatshirt peeled from my back.

  “You can’t call or nothing before you come over? This ain’t no motel.”

  “I forgot my phone,” I said.

  Aunt Bernice came out from the kitchen where she was reheating coffee. “Nahala, give your cousin a clean shirt and socks.”

  “You forgot your shoes too?”

  I looked at my dirty cracked feet. “They stole them.”

  “Sure,” drawled Nahala. “C’mon. Somebody have to kill me before I let them take my shoes.” I followed her into her room where she had flung open her closet. “First, we need to get you up out of that crusty-ass sweatshirt.”

  I sat on her bed and raised the hoodie she’d thrown at me to my eyes. Just as I’d suspected: glitter. “This is not really me,” I said.

  “You right, beige isn’t so good with your skin. You darker than your mom. Yasmine kinda look mixed.”

  “So?” I heard a dish fall without breaking in the kitchen.

  “So what you need”—she said need too loud—“is bright colors.”

  Aunt Bernice stepped in holding a thermos. “J, you want to come and have them take a look at your nose? Nahala, don’t you have something a little more . . . for a man in there.”

  “Not that are gonna fit his fat ass,” my cousin said.

  “Girl, ain’t nothing ever easy with you. Just find him something in my stuff. It’d be good to have a doctor make sure, honey,” she said to me.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I said.

  “I find that hard to believe. I’ve got to get to work. Call your mother and let her know what’s going on,” Aunt Bernice said and went out.

  Nahala listened for the front door then rolled her head to me. “I know, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know what goes down in yo house. Yasmine told me Karl’s been tripping. But she let him beat on you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, you ain’t his son. But none of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t got up in his face.”

  “Who?”

  “Your moms.” She made a sound of disgust. “Nigga, don’t play dumb. If you wanna be with a crazy-ass dude like Karl, you don’t go popping off at the mouth.”

  “You’re retarded,” I said, my face blank/combusting.

  “I’m not the issue. I’m the type of chick dealing with what God’s given me. Your mom—”

  “Shut up!” I rolled up and ran blindly at Nahala, trying to ram her backward into the closet, but she reached up and grabbed the top of the door frame and thrust me back with her foot so that I fell and rolled off the bed.

  “Oh hell no! Ain’t you had your ass beat enough already? Come on now, I ain’t about to fight no nine-year-old.”

  “I’m twelve,” I fumed, scrambling up.

  She patted the bed. “Come on, I ain’t mad at ya. Look J, all I was trying to say was that I feel yo mom. I do. Yasmine just trying to hold down her man. I mean, she has love for you, obviously. But who you think is paying for your fancy-ass school?”

  “I have a scholarship.” I stayed where I was.

  “That don’t pay for it all.”

  “My dad pays the rest.”

  Nahala snorted. “Yo dad can’t pay for a phone call. My mom puts money in his account every month. Your dad . . . listen to your cheesy ass.” She slapped her thigh, cackling.

  I digested this. Then my next step was clear. “I’ll pay you to take me to see my dad.”

  “Boy you must be out your mind.”

  “Fifty dollars. C’mon, you’re eighteen, you can take me. Please?”

  “You got fifty dollars?”

  “Not on me—at home.”

  “Who you foolin?” she said.

  “Seventy-five? I swear I have it. Drive me in the morning when your mom’s asleep.”

  “Seventy-five dollars?” She pretended to hesitate. “Karl do this to you?”

  “Maybe.” I sat down on the corner of her bed, pressing my nose where it hurt the most. “Maybe I did something to him.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said and pulled a suitcase down from the shelf at the top of her closet. “I got something that’ll fit you.” She unzipped it and threw me a shirt. I put it to my face. The letters N.W.A.

  “This is yours?” I asked, surprised.

  “Your dad’s.”

  “It’s dope.” I swallowed and was glad to be blind, running down the hall and into the bathroom where I squeezed his T-shirt to my chest and did not cry.

  We drove our dead granddaddy’s faded blue Buick sedan over an hour and a half to get to the prison in a rain that cut silver. We didn’t try to talk over the acrobatics of the radio’s R&B until the storm got so heavy Nahala had to pull over. She turned the radio off and we passed a two-liter bot
tle of Cherry Coke back and forth, listening to the beating the roof was taking.

  “This kind of weather gets me moody.” Nahala burped and began picking at the steering wheel. “Thunder in the morning. Don’t make no sense.”

  “Stop hogging.” I pulled the bottle from her. “How old is this car?”

  “Older than both us put together.”

  “What if the roof starts leaking?”

  “Hope you can swim.” She handed me the bottle cap. “Why didn’t you call your mom?”

  “Why didn’t she call me?”

  “You think she knows you with us?”

  “Why not.” I put my forehead to the window, looking up into a sky of dirty-looking rain. Sometimes after one of her fights with Karl, Mom would come up into my bedroom and look at me like she didn’t know which one of us was in trouble. “She’s probably fine,” I said.

  “Damn, now I got to pee. You seen bruises?” Nahala asked.

  “Not on her face.” A red smear of brake lights glowed in front of us.

  “What about Jacquon?”

  “Never.” I flushed and right away I could picture his sad face—how he pushed his bottom lip out before he cried. “Karl’s never touched Jacquon.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I couldn’t take him—he’s a baby and I’m a kid. Mom will watch out for him.”

  Nahala gave me a look. I pointed to the car in front of us. “I believe they’re moving,” I said and turned up the music until I couldn’t hear the rain.

  “Hi,” I said to my dad/mystery man who was a hunched blur behind the Plexiglas. “What’s up?” Meaning I had totally forgotten what to say. Maybe this was the wrong move. What could Dad do? He was more helpless than me: a neon’d prisoner of the state, segregated from my low-grade worries.

  Nahala snatched the phone from me. “Hi Uncle James.” She handed it back, still facing my dad but eavesdropping on the girl next to us crooning to her man.

  “I want to know what’s up with you,” he said to me.

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to see you, I guess.”

  “Now you see me.”

  “No, I don’t actually,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t have my glasses.”