I looked at her, then down at the two kids and shook my head. She was in way over her head. “Is that all?” I asked.
“No. You have chores to do this morning. I need you to clean the bathrooms upstairs and wash the kitchen floor. Then do something with the pool. Your father said that you usually take care of it anyway, so do the chemicals and clean it out. The boys want to go swimming this afternoon and it’s a mess.”
“Yeah, swimming, swimming, swimming…” The two boys immediately started singing and jumping up and down behind her. They dug into her already folded clothes in the basket and pulled out shorts, then started stripping down. I smiled, knowing that she didn’t need me to give her grief, she had my father’s sons.
“Also your father and I are going out tonight, so you need to be here to babysit.” I smiled, knowing that none of that was going to happen, and she seemed to read my mind. I turned around and headed out, hearing her call after me. “I’m not playing with you, Kenisha, and I’m not putting up with your crap.”
I just kept walking. The last thing I saw were the two little boys dancing and jumping around stark naked.
“Swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming…” they sang, and began running around butt-naked.
“What the hell, pick those clothes up, stop it, get back here and put your clothes back on, I’m not playing with you…”
I almost felt sorry for her, but then again the more I thought about it, the more angry I got. Courtney actually thought that I was just gonna fork over everything just because my mom wasn’t around anymore. No way. And my dad was seriously losing his mind if that was what he thought, too.
So now instead of catching the Metro train to my grandmother’s house, I took the local bus into north west D.C. My dad’s office was in the heart of the business district, in one of those super-exclusive high-rise office buildings. It had been a few months since I’d been there and it looked different, but I guess it was the same. It just seemed different, or maybe it was just me.
As soon as I walked into his office, some of the people I knew came over and hugged me and gave their condolences and sympathies. The receptionist, Mrs. Taylor, said that my dad was on the phone, so I sat and talked to her while I waited. Well, actually, she talked.
“I remember Barbra when she first came here,” Mrs. Taylor started, like she always did with her “I remember when” stories.
“You do?” I said obligatorily, knowing that Mrs. Taylor, being the oldest person in the office, insisted on acting like everybody’s mom or grandmom. She was nice and all, and I even remember her baking cookies every Christmas when I was a kid and having them on the desk when Mom brought me in to visit.
“Lord, she was a skinny little thing back then. Of course she was just a teenager then, just a little older than you, tiny thing, so happy, but boy did she know computers, she could fix any computer in a matter of minutes, understood them real well, even taught me a trick or two. She was still in school then, was engaged to be married.”
“Married?” I asked, suddenly interested. “To my dad?”
“Oh, no, some other young man in school with her, I believe. Working here was her freshman internship and he—” she paused “—now, what was that boy’s name…”
How do you just drop a story to try and remember a name from over fifteen years ago? So I waited while she was still thinking. “Don’t worry about the name, Mrs. Taylor,” I said, “don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.”
“It’ll come to me, probably while I’m cooking dinner tonight. Anyways, he would stop by from time to time to pick your mother up after work. Nice young man, very mannerly, but when you mother saw you father, it was all over. I could tell right then she was already smitten, and your father was smitten with her, too.”
The conversation went on from there as Mrs. Taylor started talking about the company they used now for computer problems and how inefficient they were.
That was okay, since I was only half listening anyway.
Then my dad’s office door opened and this young woman I didn’t recognize walked out. They shook hands and she smiled that smile and I knew right then that he was on the move. He glanced around the office quickly as he pivoted to go back inside, then I guess he saw me stand up, ’cause he did a double-take as I walked over.
“Kenisha, what are you doing here?” he asked with a chill of stunned civility then he looked at Mrs. Taylor and smiled, welcoming me with open arms for appearance’s sake.
I played along, then walked into his office and sat down as he followed and sat behind his desk. “I don’t suppose the rest of the office knows about Courtney moving in,” I said.
“As a matter of fact, they do,” he said, but I could tell he was lying. “I’m glad you stopped by, did Courtney talk to you about the furniture?”
“What furniture?” I asked. He just looked at me hard. I guess Courtney had already called him about our little conversation. “Oh, yeah, that, I don’t remember.”
“That’s what she said.” I shrugged. “The storage bill is going to have to be paid eventually, so holding out isn’t going to get the money.” I shrugged again. “Kenisha…”
“If Courtney wants furniture, buy her some,” I said.
“That’s not the point and you know it,” he said. I shrugged again.
“All right, I’ve been trying to be patient with you because of the situation, but my patience is about to wear thin. You hitting Courtney was unacceptable, and you will listen to her and to me and do as we say. And if I want you to babysit the boys, then that’s what you’re going to do, do you understand me? You’re under my roof and there are rules.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“What?”
“Are you going to marry Courtney?”
“I don’t know.”
“She seems to think so.”
“That’s not the topic of discussion at the moment.”
At that point I realized for the first time that I had no idea who this man was. I was just about to respond when his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. I could tell it was Courtney, so I got up and walked out. I’m sure he didn’t even know I was gone.
“Jaden, Jaden,” Mrs. Taylor said as soon as I came out of the office. “His name was Jaden.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Taylor, see you later.”
As soon as I got outside I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with clean, fresh air. The stagnant stink of his trash-talking was stifling. I headed to my grandmother’s house to talk to Jade.
CHAPTER 18
Unconnected-Connected
“I want to make it right, so I have to start at the beginning and unravel everything I think I knew, then somehow start knitting together a new vision of my life, drawing yarn from all around me.”
—myspace.com
So I got off the Metro and of course there were these guys hanging out on the corner. They weren’t doing anything, just standing there laughing, joking and messing with anybody passing by. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with their crap, so I decided to cross the street to avoid drama. Then don’t you know, one of them crossed the street to walk directly toward me. Did I really need this drama now?
I don’t think so.
“Hey, baby, how you doin’?” this one guy said as his friends started whooping and hollering and cheering him on. I just walked by him, ignoring him, refusing to break my stride. I must have been seriously moving ’cause the brotha had to hurry to catch up with me.
“Yo, shorty, wait up, let me holla at ya,” he said, taking a long drag of his cigarette while tugging at the oversized jeans that hung at least six inches below his narrow hips. I don’t know why guys think that looks hot, ’cause it don’t.
Of course I didn’t answer, I never did. I figured that if I didn’t reply, he’d eventually get the hint, I was wrong.
“Whoa, baby, you are packin’ some serious heat back there.” I glanced across the street in an effort to ignore him. “A’ight, a’ight,
I’m just messin’ wit ya, you a’ight, for real. So what’s up, where you going to?” I began to roll the image of me pushing this no-talking fool up underneath this bus coming down the street and started smiling to myself.
“Uh-huh, I see you grinning, a’ight, a’ight, that’s cool, you ain’t gotta talk, you’re going my way, so mind if I walk with you, these streets can be dangerous sometimes,” he said, adjusting the trifolded red and white scarf tied on his head so that the tied knot was poking through his left eyebrow.
So we started walking and he started talking and I wasn’t paying any attention until he started talking about hanging out at the pizza place with Tyrece Grant and how the two of them were tight and all.
“Yo, yo, snaps, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“No,” I finally snapped, still walking.
“Jada, right, that’s your name, I remember, Jada something.”
“No, my name isn’t Jada anything.”
“A’ight, a’ight,” he said, seemingly breathless from the forced march and the cigarette hanging from his lips, “I gotta check you later, my cell’s ringing.” He slowed down, then I guess eventually stopped, because by the time I reached my grandmother’s street, I was walking by myself.
Four houses away, I could see that there were people over, ’cause of all the parked cars on the corner. And nobody parked there unless they were going to her house. So since I wasn’t ready to see my grandmother after I’d just left her like that at the cemetery, I decided to slip in the back door.
I opened the front gate and walked around to the side of the house, then got to the back steps. The screen door was open and I could hear voices, then I saw that several women were in the kitchen, including my grandmother. I stepped back to try and figure out what to do next. Then I heard somebody call out.
“Hey, shorty.”
“Can’t you take a hint, leave me alone,” I snapped, turning around, expecting to see the guy with the scarf over his eye. But instead it was lawn mower guy. I didn’t know why I felt relief in seeing him, but I did. Then I guess what I’d said hit him ’cause he backed away. “No, no, wait, not you, I thought you was some other guy. You know, somebody on the street.”
He nodded. “Come on, this way,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. I did.
We walked toward the shed in the backyard. Behind it was a gate leading out onto the small patch of land between my grandmother’s house and the next street behind her. “Where are we going?” I asked, looking at the narrow walkway with a few young boys tossing a football.
“Come on,” he said, opening the gate for me. I walked through, then stopped and waited for him to lead again. I followed him along the back fence to the house next door. He opened their gate and we walked into the yard, then over to the back steps and sat down.
“You didn’t look like you were ready to go in there.”
“I wasn’t, thanks,” I said.
“How you doing, you okay?” he asked. I shrugged noncommittally. “Never mind, dumb question,” he added, then paused as we watched a butterfly flutter past then settle on a bright yellow flower. “I’m sorry about your mom. She was nice to talk to, I liked her.”
“You didn’t even know her,” I smirked.
“Yeah, I did. She came around all the time.”
“She did? Like, when?” I asked, looking at his profile as we sat side by side on the step.
“On the weekends mostly, in the afternoon, her and Jade would hang out in the yard or I’d see them out talking or shopping or something, or she’d be at Freeman.”
That surprised me. Talking, shopping, hanging out. How was it that my mom visited Jade when I was hanging out with my friends and I knew nothing about it? I went quiet, thinking to myself and trying to figure out my mom and everything.
“Crying doesn’t make you weak,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m just saying, crying is okay.”
“Yeah, I know, I get that.”
“Being angry is okay, too.”
“What are you, some kind of fortune-cookie dispenser?”
“And everybody feels pain in their own way, in their own time.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, then watched the butterfly flutter away.
“I know you probably don’t feel much like talking. I didn’t, either, when my brother died.”
“When was that?”
“It’s weird, it was almost four years ago, but it seems like a lot longer. You know, it’s funny, well, not funny, but strange. After he died I expected everything to be different, like the world was supposed to stop or something. But nothing changed, nothing happened, traffic kept moving and kids in the neighborhood were still outside playing. It was weird.”
“I know, it is strange. It’s like my mom died and nobody cared. And now I find out that she had a whole life that I knew nothing about. She had these dreams for me, my future, so now she’s dead and I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now. It’s not fair.”
“No one ever said that life was fair,” he said.
“Yeah, true, that,” I said.
“Are you going to stay with your grandmother still?”
“I don’t know,” I heard myself say, “I don’t know. I guess it’s according to my dad. But I’m not about to deal with all that right now.”
“Sometimes life just screws with you. You wake up one day and everything you think you know is just wrong.”
I looked over at him. He was staring out across the yard like he was seeing something that wasn’t there. “So when did you get so profound?” I asked, being slightly sarcastic.
He smiled, cracking his dimple deep, then turned to look at me. “Are you kidding me, shorty? I’m a philosophical maven, seriously profound.”
“Oh, really, that’s not what I heard.”
“What do you mean, what did you hear?”
“I heard about you. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, I’m just saying.”
“So what did you hear?”
“That you’re a bad-boy gangster player.”
He laughed again, darting his dimple at me. “Nah, that must be someone else, not me.”
“No, they said it was you, even pointed you out.”
“All right, yeah, maybe I had a few things going on a while back. I had some drama, was even in the youth detention center for a while.”
“A youth detention center, for what?” I asked.
He paused, then looked away. “I stabbed somebody.”
“You stabbed somebody?” I asked as a chill went through my center. He nodded. All of the sudden the cute guy I was sitting with turned into this dangerous thug, and I wanted to move away. “Why?” I asked cautiously.
“He deserved it.”
“So it was like some kind of street cred or something, or a gang initiation thing?”
“We can’t all be rich saints like you, shorty.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“I told you, life’s not fair.”
“Fine, I gotta go,” I said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.
“So what, now you leaving, right, I’m a thug, you scared ’cause I stabbed somebody and went to youth detention, I’m a degenerate, right? Doesn’t matter how it went down.”
“No, it doesn’t, you tried to kill somebody, you just admitted it.”
“Yeah, I did, so what, go.” He stood up and started to walk away.
“Wait, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry, it’s just that, I mean…”
“Yeah, I know your type.”
“That’s unfair.”
“You prejudge me and then you say I’m unfair,” he said.
“Point taken.”
He didn’t leave. He just stood there.
“Did they die?”
He looked back at me with sincerity in his eyes. “No, he’s still around, last I heard he was doing some serious time someplace in upstate New York.”
“So what was it, an
accident?”
“No. I intended to do it.”
I nodded acceptingly. “Okay, why?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Yeah, it does, I want to know.”
“He killed my little brother for seven dollars and fifty-three cents, so we fought and I tried to kill him,” he said simply. I looked at him, but instead of being nervous or scared, I kinda understood his anger. “So you still scared of me now?” he asked, rubbing at some fresh scratches on his face.
“No.”
“Good.” So we sat back down for a few minutes in a comfortable silence.
“So what happened to your face, some girl scratch you, or you get in another fight?”
“Oh, you gonna act like you don’t know, huh?”
“Know what?” I asked, having no idea what he talking about.
“You frontin’ on me like that, huh?”
“Seriously, what?”
“You scratched me.” Okay, I was about to go off, then he started laughing, so I figured he was joking. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what? I didn’t scratch you.”
“You ran out the house that night and I followed you. Shorty, you can run, no lie, ’cause I was on track in high school, and I could barely catch up with you. So then I guess you were having asthma problems, so I called your grandmother’s house and your mom came and got you. I was talking to you, telling you that your mom was coming, then you said something about CSI, then scratched me.”
“No I didn’t,” I said emphatically, then I kinda vaguely remembered, so my mouth dropped open. “Oh, man, I did that for real? Ohhh, I’m sorry, my bad, I thought I was dreaming. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…I thought…”
“Yeah, I know, dreaming.”
“Sorry, is it bad, does it hurt?”
“Nah, I’m cool,” he said, rubbing the scratches again.
“Good,” I said, then started laughing.
“You’re laughing? You’re sadistic, aren’t you?”
“No,” I added, still grinning. “So do you go to Penn High now?”
“No.”
“The detention center still?”
“No.”
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