Friday Black

by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

  Last Black Friday, I sold almost eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of coats, fleeces, and jeans by myself. It was a store record. Also, they had a contest that year. Whoever sold the most got a PoleFace™ item. I got my mom a jacket. It didn’t fit right. She hardly wears it. Richard bought me an entire pizza. I didn’t share it with anybody in the store. I ate one slice waiting for the bus. I held the greasy box on my lap for the ride. That was my big prize for the day until they could work out the paperwork for my coat. I ate one more slice then, when the bus stopped and I got off, I left the pie with a guy sleeping on cardboard outside the station. I like to remind Angela and Richard and Florence and whoever’s around that I won’t be here forever. I can sell, but I am not one of them. Whenever they try to get me to do extra stuff, I have to remind them that even though this is what I do best soon I’ll be doing some other thing even better.

  I think of saying, Oh, I actually just came from break, to Florence. But I am tired. I’ve worked a long time. I look at the family and Florence. I say, “Well, all right, guys, Florence here will help you out.” I look for some sadness in the eyes of Father and Mother. They’re looking at Florence.

  “Well, I think I’m going to take this,” Father says like he had a choice.

  “Are you sure we can’t do anything about the price?” Mother says.

  “Well, if you think your son might like some of these ski jackets,” Florence says, “we do have an additional deal for multiple significant purchases.”

  Florence was late twice during her first week. Angela told her a third strike was a third strike no matter how good she was. Five minutes before Florence was supposed to punch in that weekend, my phone buzzed. I was sitting in the bathroom, listening to the swirl and hiss of the water beneath me. Flush, flush, flush.

  “Please, please, I need you. My babysitter was late. I need you to punch me in. I’m on my way, I’m coming, but I’ll be late.” All Florence’s words had tears on them.

  “Okay,” I said. I tried to make my voice sound unmoved.

  “That’s it?” Florence asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “If Angela finds out—won’t it be bad?”

  “Not for me,” I said. “And she won’t. Tell me your username and password.”

  “They’re both NaliaXO.”

  “All right,” I said. Angela never found out. Before that, I thought me and Florence were the same. We are not. She’s her. I am IceKing.

  At the register, I punch out for break. Angela smiles warmly at the massive winter coat and the colorful jacket approaching in Florence’s hands. The family trails her closely.

  “Did anyone help you today?” Angela asks, sweetly.

  “Absolutely, she even hauls the goods.” Father chuckles as he points his thumb toward Florence. From behind the counter, I smile weakly at the family. Mother, Father, and Son look at me and see a stranger. Florence looks at us all and sees food. Leah looks at me and smiles a wide, crazy smile. Angela stares off toward the entrance, and says, “Hey, Richard. How are you today?” Richard’s eyes bounce from Florence, to me, then back to Florence. My mouth waters.

  In Retail

  In retail, if you don’t wanna be a Lucy, you gotta find ways to make the bleak a little better. Lucy was that girl who jumped from the fourth floor last month on her lunch break. She used to be a cashier at Taco Town. Now she’s a verb—“I’m gonna Lucy if today doesn’t move any faster”—and a noun—“New girl never smiles. Looks like a Lucy.” I try not to disrespect the dead. It’s other people in the Prominent, from all different stores, who use her name a lot.

  I’ve been here a while now, and the most important thing I’ve learned is that if you wanna be happy here in the Prominent Mall you have to dig happiness up, ’cause it’s not gonna just walk up to you and ask you how you’re doing. That is, unless somebody who doesn’t speak the language walks up to you. That’s different.

  I love it when older Spanish ladies come into the store looking for something for their daughters, or sons, or nieces, or nephews, and none of the Spanish speakers are in, so they have to deal with me. I like it when they’re older women because a lot of us younger types aren’t so good at not being assholes to each other. I think having had money, and then having lost it, and had it again, and lost it some more, some older people kind of just say, Screw it, I’m going to smile. Maybe they’re just too tired to be mean.

  “Speak Spanish?” the lady will begin. She’ll say that much in English. But even those two words she’ll sing in a way English speakers just don’t. Here, I’ll close one eye, bring up my hand to measure out an inch of air between my thumb and pointer finger as I reply, “Muy poquito.” I say it with a smile and a half laugh. She’ll smile back, and say, “Un poco inglés,” and we’ll both laugh as if to say, I guess we’ll meet somewhere in the middle. She’ll carry most of the burden. Her English is way better than my Spanish despite the fact that I got an eighty-six on the Spanish Regents in high school.

  “Una camisa para . . . eh.” She’ll look around. And I’ll jump in, like, “Un niño o niña?” And the lady’s eyes will light up like blown coals, and she’ll smile honestly and widely, and say, “Niña, niña.” She’ll tap you on your shoulder gently as a way of telling you how well you’re doing. She’ll be more excited than she has to be, and so will you. Pay attention to this moment. Suck it in like the last sip in the juice box.

  Okay. So now, as we walk over to the women’s side of the store, we’ll be moving together in stride as if we’ve been friends for years. She might be saying a lot of words in Spanish now, and I’ll understand almost none of them. But I will know she’s being extremely friendly, and I’ll enjoy the sound of her. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch one of the words I’ve hung on to from those basic-level Spanish classes.

  There’s no way I deserved that eighty-six I got on the Spanish Regents. Ms. Ramirez, my teacher, was, at best, unorthodox and, at worst, absolutely bonkers crazy. She liked me because I pretended to believe all her insane stories.

  She once told the entire class that her dog, one of those little living-accessory dogs that spends most of its life in a pleather handbag, hung itself by slipping through the beams of her deck after securing the other end of the leash beneath one of the patio chairs. She said it was proof that even animals could think and feel. I think she wanted us to become vegetarians. After she told that story, some kids asked her to elaborate—surely she didn’t mean that her dog had literally hung itself because it was unhappy with the life she had provided for it. “Of course not!” Ms. Ramirez had said. It wasn’t actually her dog. Her dog (Paprika) had loved her dearly. The dead-by-asphyxiation dog was actually her neighbor’s dog (unnamed). At some point there had been a mix-up—well not exactly a mix-up but a switcheroo. Ms. Ramirez’s neighbor, Sydney (a recurring villain in Ms. Ramirez’s world), after seeing how much Paprika loved Ms. Ramirez, decided to get a dog of the same exact breed and size. When Sydney’s tiny new dog didn’t glow with the same delightful charm as Paprika, Sydney concocted and executed a scheme to switch the dogs, leaving Ms. Ramirez with an identical, though evidently psychologically troubled, mutt. Ms. Ramirez decided to allow the switch to happen without saying a word. “But why, Ms. R?” we’d asked as a class. How could you let that happen? And then she took off her glasses like she always did when she wanted more drama and used her other hand to point at her chest as she said, “Mi corazón es grande.”

  So Ms. Ramirez was not all there, but I got on her good side and I set up camp. I laughed at the supposed-to-be-funny parts of her stories. I scowled when she mentioned Sydney’s name. I treated her myths as history. She was pretty much talking to herself during the oral part of my exam, leaving me nodding and saying “Sí” while reaffirming that, regardless of what she was saying, “Mi comida favorita es pollo y arroz” and “Mi color favorito es rojo.” I think she needed us to do pretty well on the Regents to get tenure.

  And so, as we’re walking toward the women’s s
ide of the store and I’m listening to the chorus of Spanish I don’t understand, I’ll stop walking as this lady—who is, at this point, practically my best friend—says, “Rojo.”

  “Una camisa rojo, sí,” I’ll say with a triumphant smile. And the woman will practically jump in the air with happiness. She might grab my shoulder again. This time it’ll be more than a tap. A hug of the hand. I’ll just barely feel her nails through my T-shirt. We’re like old friends now. The kind that know the worst about each other and don’t always speak but check in enough and decorate the internet with pictures of each other’s kids. Finally, we’ll get to the shirts, and there’ll be so many choices. I’ll run my hand above them like there’s a harp there and do a little dance. She’ll clap and smile and then touch me once more on the shoulder, and say, “Gracias, gracias,” and she’ll laugh. I’ll laugh, too. Both laughs will taper off because we’ll understand that this is the end of the road for us. We’ll smile at each other, and I’ll say, “Look for me if you need anything else,” and she’ll reply in her singing vernacular, “Okay, okay,” and I’ll walk off toward a mountainous wall of quarter-folded jeans that have to be counted before 12:30. Yesterday there were 1,598 pairs. Today there should be 1,595. We count them every day now since Richard is really trying to push on the loss-prevention side of things. Work is hard to find. There’s a tiny angel at home who needs me, so I work for her. And I’m good at this, getting people to buy things. So I count.

  I count the columns of jeans with my clipboard and pen to keep track. I count up each section then add the section totals together at the end. If what I get doesn’t exactly match the computer inventory, I’ll count them again, touching each pair of jeans, feeling the starchy blue denim pull the moisture from my fingertips. The Spanish lady sifts through the piles trying to find the perfect shirt. When she finally does grab a shirt she likes, you can see she’s pleased from the way she glides to the register. She is going to make someone happy. You have to grab for happiness in places like this because there isn’t enough to go around for everybody. Working retail is never gonna be the armed services or the police or anything. It’s a job at least. It could be worse. Everywhere is different. Some places, people eat alcohol-infused chocolate-covered strawberries. Other places, everything tastes like cholera. The idea is that even in nothing jobs like this, you need to think of ways you might really be helping somebody, or you could end up a Lucy.

  I hate using her name like that, but everybody in the mall does it. The best salesperson in our store told me not to think about it too much because pretty soon it would be somebody else. He said that every six months or so somebody takes the big dive. Before Lucy, he told me, it was Jenn from Radio Castle; before Jenn, it was Antoine who left Fleet Feet in the middle of his shift and fell backward from the railing, his hands still clasped in prayer. Lucy knows what gravity really is. Lucy went to knock on the door most of us pretend doesn’t even exist. The day it happened the mall was in a frenzy, a lot of stores were doing a midseason BOGO sale. You’d have thought the circus was back—which would have been weird ’cause it had just left two weeks before; they’d set up in the G and H lots. They smelled like animal life and candy for two weeks.

  Walking to the bus stop, I’d seen a bunch of people huddled around the railing. By the time I looked down, they’d already tossed a yellow tarp over her. You could see some red had seeped into the carpet around the yellow edges. And that wasn’t the sick part. The sick part was looking up and down—my store is on the third floor—at the people pointing or snapping pictures with their phones. I remember thinking, I just hope she died on impact. And I hoped that wherever she was she remembered what those seconds before the ground were like. People said she screamed the whole way down, but I don’t think she was afraid. I didn’t know her name then.

  Down below me that day, I saw two kids near Cone Zone joking with each other and, like, pretending to lean over and fall. They were only one floor above Lucy and her yellow blanket. You’d think the mall would maybe close for a few hours. Let people gather themselves. Maybe light a candle or something. Nope. Buy One Get One stops for no one. I held Nalia in my arms that night and fell asleep with her on the couch. When we woke up together that morning, her coo and cry made me forget some of the sick feeling I’d felt through the night.

  Go back to counting jeans. Think about anything and count. Don’t think about how a small part of you wishes you’d seen it. Her standing on the railing of the fourth floor. Lucy, flying. Count.

  As I tally up the Levi’s and think about how to not be Lucy, the beautiful lady who doesn’t speak my language will appear behind me and tap me on the shoulder. Out of her bag, she’ll pull a red shirt with some flowers outlined with gemstones on it. She’ll show it to me. It will be so red that it will look like it might be hot to the touch. She’ll say, “Gracias, gracias,” a few more times and tap my shoulder in parting, and I’ll say, “De nada, de nada,” which will be a lie, because she is everything.

  Through the Flash

  You are safe. You are protected. Continue contributing to the efforts by living happily, says the soft voice of the drone bird hovering only a few feet from my window, as it has been for the last forever. Since I’m the new me, I don’t even think about killing anybody. Still, I touch the knife under my pillow.

  Outside, a blue sky sits on top of everything, and I try to think about it like this: Aren’t we lucky to have our sky? Isn’t it an eternal blue blessing? Even though seeing it makes me feel crushed a little because whoever’s on the other side of time has no idea how tired we are of the same.

  I get up and I brush my teeth. It’s the little things. Then I look in the mirror, and say, “You are supreme and infinite.” I take my headscarf off and let my hair breathe. I spritz and moisturize and finger-comb. The little things. After I’m dressed, I snap on a gray fanny pack and put Mom’s knife in it.

  I jump out my window to a tree branch, then across to the Quan family’s roof, and then onto Mrs. Nagel’s roof. I slip in through her window, and her house smells like cinnamon and old people as usual and always. In her kitchen I boil the water for her tea. The kettle whistles. I make Mrs. Nagel ’s favorite: elderflower and honey. I put the mug on her bedside and watch her sleeping uncomfortably. Her nose is stuffy, so she wheezes like an old truck.

  “Hey, Mrs. Nagel,” I say as gently as I can.

  “Hey.” She squirms in the bed a little, then opens her eyes. She sees me, and I like how she isn’t terrified. She almost smiles even. “Thanks, Ama. I appreciate it,” she says. I pick a box of tissues off the floor and give them to her.

  “No problem, Mrs. Nagel. Have a good one. Remember, your existence is supreme.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mrs. Nagel says. Then she blows her nose. I smile at Mrs. Nagel before I slip out her window and leap back home the way I came.

  Inside, I pass by my little brother’s room. He’s awake in bed. I can tell by the sound of his breathing. His sheets have trains all over them.

  “Hey, Ike,” I say. That’s short for Ikenna.

  “Ama, please,” Ike asks in his whiny voice. He wants me to end his day. He wants me to kill him. He didn’t used to be like this. He was six when the Flash hit, so his body can’t do all the things he wishes it could. He still has his small peanut head and cheeks you want to pinch. But I don’t pinch; he hates his cheek pinchies now. That’s another thing I have to think about as I’m being my new self. I am forever fourteen, and I can do more than anyone. I am blessed. But Ike’s blessed in his own way. “Ama, goddamn it. Just do it for me, please,” he says.

  “Why? It’s a great day outside,” I joke. I’ve made that joke more times than—well, I’ve made it a lot of times.

  “Do you hate me?” Ike asks. “You must truly hate me to deny me this.”

  No matter how much he’s crammed in his head, when I see him, I still see my kid brother. Ike’s one of the ones who can’t do it themselves; he’s a softy.

  “I love you,”
I say. Ike screams a bunch of bad words, but still I won’t kill him because even the old me never did that. Not him. He doesn’t leave his room much anymore. I let him be and go to the kitchen.

  “Hello, Daddy,” I say in a singing voice that sometimes makes him smile. My father is in his old-man slippers and his pajama pants. He is fidgeting, swaying, like always. He can’t be still hardly ever. He’s getting ready to cook something. Am I nervous around him? Yes. But I try not to be. Now that I’m the new me, I try to be appreciative. Appreciative and definitely not afraid. If I get afraid, then I get angry. If I get too angry, I might go back to being the old me and be just like Carl on Kennedy, who is a monster. A war god. A breaker of men and women and children.

  “Morning, ginger root,” he says. Then he turns to me, and he’s holding the knife he uses to cut meat.

  “Daddy,” I say. Then he slashes at me with the butcher knife. I have enough time to think some real thoughts as his arm moves to my neck. I could open my pack, grab Mom’s knife before Dad’s blade reaches me. But I don’t. Instead, I think, When will this ever stop? He’s quicker than most people. But I’m faster than everyone. Way faster. Much more lethal when I want to be. The old me would make him suffer greatly. Instead, I try to say Daddy again but can’t—not with my gashed-up neck and all—so I bleed out watching him watch me die. Then I die.