by Desmond Hall
“Hey.” Whoa, she smelled good—cedar and citrus.
“This a better time?” she asked, leaning one hip out.
His eyes linked up with hers. All the stuff he hadn’t said last time seemed like it was being said just by looking at her, some sort of weird transmission. At last, he laughed. She did too—a dimple popped on each cheek.
“I had a lot on my mind the other day,” Frankie said.
“I know.” She looked instantly concerned. “I heard you have some serious illness in the family. Sorry.”
“Yeah, thanks.” If she knew what it was… “It’s my dad.”
“Must be rough. He okay?”
“Yeah. Hope so. He’s in the hospital.” That treatment better come soon. “Gonna see him tomorrow.”
“No wonder you were all—”
“Hey, last time I…,” he interrupted. They both laughed.
“It’s okay. I get it,” Leah finally said.
He looked down, gathering a little brave—then back to her. “Well, ah, thanks, you know, for giving me a chance to give you another chance,” he said.
She nodded. “That was what I was doing, wasn’t it?”
“Sounded like it.” Cedar and citrus. “So, look, I gotta ask—why did you ghost me out like that?”
“I suppose like last time for you, I had a lot going on with my family.”
“Yeah, that I get. It all cool now?”
“No.” She shifted her weight. “My mom and dad separated.”
“Whoa. That’s not easy.” Definitely a bummer. But he couldn’t help thinking: at least she hadn’t broken it off because of him. “How you dealing?”
“Dealing?” She looked at the kids in Mrs. Gordon’s office. “Probably half the kids here are dealing.”
“Yeah.” She was right—a lot of his friends’ parents were divorced. Winston didn’t have a dad. Most of the guys in Troy didn’t either. He didn’t have a mom. Come on, Frankie. Leah and you are talking the same stuff. Ask her out, already!
“Sooo—heard you got a big scholarship?”
Shit.
“Frankie.” Mrs. Gordon was waving. “Can you come here a minute?”
Shit. Shit. He held up a finger. “Can you hold on?” Leah nodded, and he forced himself over to Mrs. Gordon. Now she was going to ask about the scholarship. Shit was falling out of the sprinklers.
But Mrs. Gordon merely said, “Can you take a look at this? I was going to call AV, but they take forever. I haven’t used this projector before, and I can’t make it work.”
What was it with adults and plugs? They couldn’t figure shit out. He looked at her PC and took hold of the cable leading from the laptop to the projector. It was plugged into the wrong place. “You need an HDMI to VGA adapter.”
She looked at him like he was speaking Latin, then pointed to the table, where a bunch of cables were tangled together. He picked up the right one and switched out the wrong one, pressed the key, and the projector started to work.
“I’m going to miss having you around,” Mrs. Gordon said admiringly.
“Uh… thank you?” he muttered uncomfortably, and ducked out before she could ask about the scholarship.
Citrus and cedar. “You’re pretty handy to have around. I was having a little trouble with my AirPods the other day and—”
“You flexing?”
“AirPods aren’t flexing.”
Frankie tilted his head. They were more fashion statement than user-friendly tech. He stood by that.
“Okay, sorta flexing.” No smile. Two dimples. “You do keep it real.” She liked that. Good.
He did keep it real. Pfft. Not lately, though. But he liked that even when Leah flexed, she could walk it back and be real herself.
“Hey, I gotta go. I have to get ready for an art review tonight. Why don’t you come?”
She was asking him out. She did the first time too. His ma had asked Samson out the first time also. She had loved teasing his dad about that. “Sounds good,” he replied, all casual, fronting.
“Cool. It’s in the gym. Seven. I’ll be a little stressed beforehand with all the crits there, but let’s hang out after.”
“Cool.”
“Later.” She walked away. She looked back. Dimples.
What the heck were crits? Guess he’d find out.
Eighteen
eight hours later, after having raced home to put on his good blue shirt, Frankie was staring at seven paintings Leah was arranging on the easels in the gym, while several other artists did the same. When he first got there, he couldn’t stop casing the place, checking the stands to see if anyone waved to her—a parent, friend, or another guy she might have invited. Someone ahead of him, waiting in line. But no one else seemed focused on Leah, at least not like he was.
Taking in her work now, he decided everyone should have been staring at her. The painting she was putting up was an in-your-face political statement, an almost kid-like drawing of a long line of wooden caskets leading from the ghettos of Trench Town to Vale Royal, the garden-perfect mansion home of Jamaica’s prime minister. The one next to it was also really political: a yellow steamroller driven by a man in a suit had just flattened a bunch of shirtless teenage boys. Strange roadkill. Frankie’s favorite, though, was at the end of the row. It looked like Leah had used charcoal to draw a shanty house patched together with corrugated zinc for walls—walls covered with images of dead bodies and graffiti, pointed statements about the JLP and PNP. The art made Frankie uncomfortable, which meant it was powerful. Yeah, people should be staring at Leah.
It was a full twenty minutes of artists shifting what canvas sat on what easel, and where—was it for better lighting? At last they stopped rearranging and stood solemnly by their canvases. Two young-looking female teachers, one with crazy long extensions, the other with close-cropped hair, entered the gym. A gray-bearded male teacher followed them. Carrying notepads, the trio made their way around the gym floor, taking notes, evaluating the work of all fifteen artists. These must be the “crits” Leah had spoken about. He liked how proudly she stood beside her art, not show-offy, like some of the others, but not all fidgety, nervous, which he would have been.
After making their rounds, the crits sat behind a long folding table and took turns summoning artists one by one to the table for their reviews. The way the crits did their evaluations reminded Frankie of presenting engineering projects—he had to set up his work, then listen to the teachers’ review, and everyone there could hear the critiques. That was always tough for Frankie, and for every engineering friend he had ever spoken to about it. It must be just as painful for the artists here. Difference was, with engineering there was a right and wrong, the concepts either worked within the laws of physics or they didn’t. The crits here said a bunch of stuff that seemed like it was just opinions, as far as Frankie could tell. He wouldn’t have a clue about how to react.
When they reached a young, dark-skinned woman all in white, even her boots and hat, Frankie realized his palms were all sweaty. Leah was next. Frankie looked over at the girl in white’s canvases. They seemed to be a series of painted-over drone shots of Jamaica’s cockpit country—the middle of the island, filled with thick vegetation, hills, and gullies. It was called “cockpit” because the area looked like places where people had cockfights. The colors were cool, every kind of green imaginable, but the art didn’t make him nervous like Leah’s did. It felt like art that rich people would have all over their houses.
All-white-clothed girl was saying, “The classical approach to landscapes, as manifestations of the sublime, presses together pain and terror. But this definition comes from the human gaze. The individual sees the pain and danger, and it’s only when seen from a distance and particular angles that the landscapes show hope. In my paintings, I’ve eliminated the human viewpoint. I show the environment acting on the environment: in other words, nature’s gaze upon nature.”
The crit with the short hair nodded crisply. “In all your work, th
e clouds seem ambiguous, always morphing into new shapes, sometimes two shapes at once. The wind affecting the clouds,” she said intently.
“I might add that in a few pieces we can see heat rising from the ground, warping the air, if you will. It’s a sort of atmospheric perspective. The detail gives a real, and provocative, sense of a tropical climate, without human intervention. It’s quite fantastic.” This was from the bearded crit, who seemed to use his glasses for emphasis.
“I agree also. Bravo,” the third crit said. As the girl in white walked away from the table, she blew a kiss to a woman sitting in the stands.
Frankie rubbed his nose against his knuckles, smelling his own sweat. How many times had he heard Jamaicans go on about Jamaica’s problems, but then proudly claim that nowhere was more beautiful? The land was one thing and the people another. Still, this gave Frankie a lot of hope for Leah. He imagined similar praise for her work.
Leah stood motionless, almost regal. The whole time she was setting up, she hadn’t looked at Frankie, not even once. He wished she would now, so he could show her some support. It was what he would have wanted for himself.
“Leah Bradford.” Leah squared her shoulders, raised her chin. Her stride was strong, her Air Jordans squeaking on the floor.
Frankie leaned forward, surprised at how nervous he was, like he was walking to the table himself.
Leah opened her mouth and paused.
Oh no, she was freezing. He wanted to shout something encouraging.
Then she put on a smile, seeming again fully in charge. “My showing is inspired by the works of the Jamaican artist Kapo. As you know, he was the leader of the Intuitives, the self-taught Jamaican artists. My project is to reinterpret Kapo’s spiritual and church-based work into an indictment of colonialism that depicts the crimes against African Jamaicans.”
It was just a string of words to Frankie, their meaning escaping him. He wished he could see Kapo’s art, see what Leah was talking about. Her emotion was pulsing, wave after wave.
But the extensions crit seemed to have a different look on her face. She leaned back. “I appreciate your intentions, Ms. Bradford, but exactly as you said, Kapo was self-taught, and you are classically trained. So I don’t see how your work can truly connect to his.”
Leah waved her hands in disagreement. “I’ve imitated the—”
Gray Beard cleared his throat. “Ms. Bradford, may I remind you that there is no rebuttal allowed during reviews, only opening statements.”
The short-haired crit added, “I have to agree with my colleague, Ms. Bradford. By definition you cannot be an Intuitive. And beyond that, your work does not feel primitive, as Kapo’s indeed was. It comes across as intellectual instead of authentically painted. It’s just pure politics.”
Now all three professors stared, grim-faced. But Leah stepped forward anyway. “Excuse me, but I don’t agree with what you just said about my work, and I think I have a right to be heard.”
The crits were clearly speechless. The silence that followed was excruciating.
Leah broke it by saying, “You all are so conservative. You don’t want anything that talks about our political problems as a country. You just want things that have some… tourism value.” She looked back at the artist who had presented the landscapes. “I’m not disrespecting it.” She looked again at the crits. “But… it’s like more of the same. It’s like… tourist advertising. I just think there’s a lot more to say.”
Frankie covered his mouth with his fist. Could this be worse?
The short-haired crit raised her chin haughtily. “Are you quite finished, Ms. Bradford?”
Leah’s nostrils flared, yet she managed to say, “Thank you for your time,” before turning on her heel and returning to her paintings.
Frankie was as stunned as he was awed. Leah knew her stuff, what was going down in Jamaica. She must read a lot. He read a lot too—that was his only way to really get a full understanding of things. He yearned to make eye contact with her. But she stood there by her paintings like a statue of resistance and never looked once at Frankie, the crits, or anyone else.
When it was over, another excruciating twenty minutes later, Leah quickly but carefully packed her paintings and headed for the gym’s exit.
“Leah!”
She looked up, surprised, as if she’d forgotten he’d be there. Her portfolio banged against her thigh. “Not such a hot ticket, after all,” she said, her voice high and pained.
Frankie shook his head, disagreeing. “I don’t know anything about art, but I think your work says a lot. It said something to me.” When she didn’t dismiss him, he added, “Most people I know don’t understand where we come from or what we went through. But you were trying to deal with all that. We need to know it.” He wanted to reach out, reassure her, in the worst way, at least hold her hand, but that wouldn’t be right.
Leah rocked side to side, a ship on rough waters. She was a competitor; she wouldn’t have argued with the crits otherwise. He could tell she wouldn’t let them knock her down.
“How about a movie Saturday?” Frankie offered.
She nodded at last. “Sounds good.”
His first posse mission was Sunday. At least he’d get one final day of good before his life turned on its side.
Nineteen
sitting by the hospital bed, the air thick as always with the smell of urine and ammonia, Frankie studied his father’s jaw. It looked even larger than usual. Had he lost weight and had that somehow made his jaw seem bigger? The nurse had said he was fatigued—his body was fighting the infection. Keep fighting, Dad. Where the heck was that treatment? The nurse said delivery had been delayed because of some mixup, but this was getting critical.
Frankie didn’t want to talk too much about the treatment for frear of goading his father on. Knowing Samson, he’d start up the jabbering about cerise tea again. Speaking of bush medicine… the leaf of life! Frankie pulled it out of his pocket. “Daddy, look.”
Samson’s eyes lit up. “Leaf of life! Where you get it?”
“Up the mountain.” The day he was jumped in… Frankie shook that thought off, in case his father was clairvoyant like his sister. “Guess what, though? I found it under a patch of banana trees. It can grow in the shade.”
Samson looked well pleased. “Will you look at that?” He took it, rubbed a leaf with his fingers. He almost sounded like his old self.
“When you get back on your feet, we can plant some in the yard.”
“A good idea, that,” Samson said, shifting his shoulders, as if uncomfortable against the pillow. How much did a gunshot wound hurt? Frankie wondered. Now that he was in the posse, was he going to find out?
Samson turned the leaf of life around between his fingertips thoughtfully. “Me should just take my cerise tea and boil up some roots instead of waiting for this damn medication.”
“And carry a four-leaf clover, too?” It slipped out of Frankie’s mouth. But the damn cerise tea—
His father gave Frankie a pitying look. “It’s not no superstition. Don’t fool yourself. Most of the cures in this world come from the bush.”
“Not from laboratories?”
“You’re the technical man, and that’s all you see. But wait till them cut down all the forests. That big one in Brazil, too.” He smoothed out his sheet. “Mon, you going to see lots of trouble, plenty diseases won’t have any cure.”
“Science has done pretty good so far. Man-made cures are everywhere.”
Silence. It wasn’t so uncomfortable this time. They had been talking, really talking.
“Hmm.” Samson’s eyes darted, seemingly evaluating Frankie. “So, how you doing? And where did that bruise come from?”
Frankie’s hand moved to his cheek. “Tripped bringing up water.”
“Looks like it hurt,” Samson said, his tone surprisingly warm.
And Frankie relaxed a little, decided to share something with his father, something else that would make him happy. “So�
�� I met this girl.”
Now his father grinned. “Hmm, me could tell it was something like that.”
“Get out of here. You didn’t know that.”
“I was young once too, you know.”
“Ever catch a dinosaur?” Frankie teased. His father’s chuckle was everything.
“She at your school?” Samson stretched his neck.
“Yeah, she’s an artist.”
“Her family have money, then?”
Frankie thought about Leah’s AirPods. She probably had money, but most kids at his school did, except for him and the few others who tested in from “lesser” neighborhoods. But Leah never carried that air. “Why do you think that?”
“If she’s an artist, she isn’t worrying about having a real job. Her parents must have money to support that.” He dragged out the last words, coated with remorse. “We, your ma and me, always wanted to give you more.” Now he was blinking hard. “Sorry me couldn’t give you more, but at least you get that scholarship.”
Frankie squeezed the strap of his backpack, squeezed down the guilt. “You gave me a lot, Daddy.” He wanted to grab his father’s hand, but that wasn’t what they did.
His father suddenly looked pensive. “All that reading done you good. Look how far you come.”
And there it was, the pride in his father’s voice. Damn. No way could Frankie ever tell him about the posse, about the scholarship, no way. He hopped up. “Better be getting home—more reading!” He lifted his backpack, his ribs giving a pang. “Okay, it was good seeing you.”
“You too, Frankie. Be careful.”
“I will. I’ll be back in a day or so.”
Just before he left, his father called out, “What’s the name of the girl?” His voice was almost tender.
Frankie pivoted. “Leah.”
“Nice name.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
“No, mon. Don’t tell her that. If you lay out an easy road for her, she might prefer the harder one.”
It was cautious, old-school advice, but Frankie smiled. Because it was his dad, being his dad.
