By then I had a master’s degree and a metro card. Neither new development—supposed intelligence or cheap rides—stopped me from walking home after my shift at the Times ended around midnight. Yes, I had a shift, which in itself suggests back doors leading to alleys decorated with piss, cigarettes, and bonfires for bums. And also “breaks.” People who have shifts should probably get to take breaks. But it seems that people who have degrees and shifts do not. Gallivanting around town on foot and after the freaks come out was my idea of a good break.
I was just getting a handle on the night shift when it happened. Tuesdays were my Fridays, and on Fridays I came in at four and then left around elevenish if nothing “broke.” On one particular balmy Friday night (but not my Friday, which would’ve been Tuesday), I decided it was way too nice outside to be cooped up on the Green Line to Greenbelt and instead decided to walk from our offices on Sixteenth and I streets near the White House to my house on Ninth and T—about twenty-minutes away if I powered through. My usual route went first through Dupont, which I had deemed safe due to the high concentration of gays, and then on to U Street, which because of gentrification was also risk-free. Everything was going according to plan until I got to T and Tenth.
There’s always a stretch of one’s residential world that one considers either stupid or annoying. A chain-link fence messing up the order of wrought iron? Annoying. A wooden puppy hunched over in crapping position with “NO!” painted on its back? Stupid. In this case, on the well-lit Ninth Street, there was a stupid abandoned row house two doors down from my newly renovated basement, in front of which a bunch of annoying hooligans held a nightly game of concrete craps. Because walking through this foolishness meant no fewer than five hoots and three hollers, I’d decided months before that walking up the dimly lit and suburbanly silent T Street was the wiser choice.
Just a block away from home, I spotted two teenage boys walking at me. I got brief glimpses of them from under my umbrella. Oh, yeah, it’d started raining. They seemed harmless, although curiously alert given the hour. It was a little past midnight, and the tall one was rapping loudly down the pavement part of the street, while his partner provided the beats from the sidewalk. Too tired to switch sides, I made a note of them and kept it moving.
By the time we met in the middle of the block, our paths crossed without incident. They went their way and I continued on mine, already fingering the front door key in my coat pocket.
You know that feeling you get when someone is staring at you from behind? Evidence that there exists some type of spiritual kinetic energy between all human beings that we’re just too primitive to tap into and use to stir coffee with our minds? About two seconds after avoiding whatever situation happens after dark between two men and a woman on a silent street, that feeling hit me like a fist to the face. Thankfully, they didn’t use anything that dramatic.
“What the fuck?” They were on me in an instant, the tall one tugging on my purse before I had a chance to process the idea of being robbed. It was ridiculous. Who makes a decent living wage pickpocketing besides nineteenth-century British foundlings? Clearly this was not a mugging but this kid’s scary attempt at flirting. Sorry, homie, but I’m grown. Move along, please, I’ve got z’stocatch.
“Gimme the bag,” he said, the growing size of his eyes conveying his seriousness. His rapping partner closed in on the left side, and I was boxed out with basketball-camp-for-inner-city-youth efficiency. This is also around the time I first contemplated screaming “FIRE!” which, according to the self-defense class Frances made me take as a twelve-year-old, is what you yell when someone’s either trying to rape or murder you. Nobody wants to muddy up his or her house shoes running after a serial killer. But anybody will vault from naked Twister to watch a neighbor’s nest egg go up in flames.
“No!” Now see, this objection flew from my lips totally without my knowledge. In fact none of my subsequent actions were preapproved—yanking my purse strap back onto my shoulder, parking my free hand onto my hip, and assuming what can only be described as a ninja stance. Despite being well aware of the fact that my life was worth more than an XOXO bag circa 1999, I literally couldn’t help myself.
“Give. Me. The. Bag.” I finally let go with all the petulance of a preschooler just learning to share. Fine then! Here. The shorter one, feeling neglected, kept himself busy with my pockets, patting them down and asking three times for “the cash.” “Where’s the cash? Is there cash?”
“There’s no money in that bag, sir. Sir? Sir, there’s nothing to be had in my pockets,” I said, pleading in the most professional manner I could think of. Maybe I could appeal to their more genteel sides, or at least throw them off with my olde English and run in the other direction while they looked over their shoulders for whoever had on the top hat.
Then it was over. With my “leather” purse in hand and a fist full of lint, these two sixteen-year-old scalawags took off in the opposite direction like they stole something. With that simile forever ruined, I felt more disappointed than debased. That was it? Without a phone with which to call the authorities or my mother, I decided walking another block and a half to the metro wouldn’t be tempting fate. Plus, it’s not like I had anything left to lose. On the ride down the escalator, I kept looking around to see if people were staring—if I looked like someone who’d just been robbed by children.
I burst into tears only after asking the two officials behind the bulletproof glass if I could please use their official MTA telephone to call the police. One of the station agents, an older black man in a uniform hat, looked me in the eye and asked, “Oh, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” It’s a surprise they understood anything through all the stuttering and snot. “Someone-heehuh-justheehuh-stole-heehuh-my-heehuh-purse-heehuh.” The waterworks didn’t stop until Adrienne drove up with a steel bat. “We gonna ride around till we find these fuckers.”
A few days later, this white guy rang my doorbell, claiming to have found some things that belonged to me. Jumpy but newly armed with pepper spray, I stuck my free hand through the gate. In it he placed my address book, emptied wallet, Wicked, and a dog-eared copy of The Sex Chronicles that wasn’t mine, I swear. Quickly closing the door and thanking him through the window, I figured life didn’t suck so hard after all and immediately went back to my walking, which after the night in question provided an even bigger break from work, my head, my life, whatever. Pedestrian meditation was anything but. This time, however, there was the added bonus of it being banned, making my late-night rendezvous with myself all the more irresistible.
In time I had to lie about how I was getting home, since it was now everyone’s job to make sure I didn’t get murdered along the way.
“I’m just gonna go up to K Street,” I fibbed, waving a bus away while waiting for the light to change. “It’s easier to catch a cab from there.”
“Fine. Call me when you get home,” said whoever was assigned to me that night. A text an hour later was always good enough—“Goin 2 bed. Holler.”
It was in the middle of another lie—telling Gina that I was waiting for the bus to go home and definitely not walking there—when I got cut short by a burning sensation in my right bicep.
“Aaaaaah!”
“Dude, what the fuck?” she asked from the other side of the phone.
“This asshole with dreadlocks just grabbed my bag. I can’t believe this shit!”
“Dude, what?”
“He snatched. My effin’. Bag. From off. My effin’. Shoulder.” I was starting to get winded.
“And where are you?”
“Running after his ass.”
“What?”
“Don’t play yourself, asshole! Don’t. Play. Yourself!”
It was the 911 operator who convinced me to stop running. Something about her not being able to do anything for me over the phone if he decided to graduate from misdemeanant to felon. The police officer that showed up to my rescue grudgingly agreed to drive me home only after I admitted
to having been robbed just three weeks earlier. He called it in as I slid into the backseat, feeling like a badass. “Copy that.”
For obvious reasons, I was all too happy to get a real reporting job without hooker hours about six months thereafter. For equally obscure ones, I kept on walking, this time from our offices in the great state of Virginia through the popped polo collars of Georgetown and the striped button-downs of Dupont, on to the furry hoodies of U Street, then on through the designer jeans of Little Ethiopia and finally into the bat cave. I firmly believed lightning doesn’t strike thrice, or maybe I just couldn’t let the terrorists win. Either way, the four-mile trek soon became something like an addiction. I say “like” because admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery, and that was the one direction I wasn’t headed.
It was a headache that scared me straight.
The weather in Washington is something akin to a “domesticated” lion let loose in the wild after years of drinking from a toilet—unpredictable. On this particular morning, it was freezing outside, so I wore a huge black puffy coat to work. But by the time I left that evening to start my hour-long walk home, the temperature had shot up to hot as balls. Unfazed by this, I strapped my twenty-pound laptop to my back and said my goodbyes. About twenty minutes in I sensed something might be wrong when I felt something warm and wet run down my thighs. I bent over for a second to peek between my legs to see if I’d had an “accident.” Nope, just sweat. Lots and lots of sweat. Realizing then that I probably had a Rorschach inkblot of perspiration shaping up nicely on my ass and back, I decided leaving my coat on would be best. It would also be a fitting penance for not taking the metro, or the bus, or a cab, or a rickshaw.
Once I finally got home, I threw that fucking coat off like it was on fire, flinging it across the living room with one hand and freeing myself from my now-gazillion-pound laptop with the other. I’ve never been thirstier in my life. I downed three highballs of Brita in as many seconds and then headed for the door again. Thirsty and starving. My mouth watered for a personal pan pizza from Duccini’s, about twelve blocks down the street. I could’ve had a larger pizza delivered, I could’ve taken the 90 bus straight down, I could’ve grown my own organic tomatoes on the windowsill and made a pizza using those and rat meat, but I didn’t, okay—I walked.
By the time I got inside, the temperature in my head had to be at least 187 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a new girl taking the orders up front, which pissed me off because the African guy with the Mets cap always gave me a free Fanta. Two ten-year-olds in Catholic school uniforms played with dolls under the counter, and the brunette behind me got her order taken before mine. Pissed, I walked up to lean on the counter more than I should’ve been, my eyelids way heavier than they should’ve been. I had an epiphany about the word throbbing being an example of onomatopoeia, and everyone in there suddenly became stupid, fat, and ugly.
“Excuse me? Hello? Are you gonna take my order? Jesus.” I couldn’t friggin’ believe how rude the new girl was being.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t know you were ready.” If she was shocked by my volume, she didn’t let on.
“Obviously! An eight-inch pepperoni.”
“No problem, ma’am. Let me just—”
“I mean, can I pay now? Jesus!” Why the hell was this chick so slow on the uptake? I looked around for some sympathy and came up with nothing but dirty looks.
“Right. Sure. That’ll be five dollars.”
Reaching into my coat pocket (yes, I put that coat back on) for my wallet actually felt like digging for clams. I took a tiny step back to steady myself, and then everything turned gray. The woman with the dark hair yelled, “No no no no,” and I woke up on the fake linoleum.
Fainting is your body’s inconvenient way of telling you to take a time-out. I had never fainted before and never want to faint again, despite having previously thought the act romantic and Elizabethan. The new girl was on the phone with 911 (me again), and the African guy was on his way with a cold Fanta. I told them I was fine, no really. Just a little hot and tired. I thanked the brunette for catching me and shooed her hand away when I got up off the floor. They charged me for the pizza. I ate it on a stool in the corner, holding each piece up to my mouth with one shaky hand and a grape Fanta to my head with the other. Pleading the fifth, I won’t say how I got home.
Frances forbade me from walking for a month and made an appointment with my primary care physician, who one EKG and some blood work later said that I had been tired and hot.
For a while I was good—taking the metro to and from work, staying hydrated, carrying my pepper spray with the safety off, and ordering my pizza in. Really, I was just too embarrassed to show my face around town, seeing as how it had played me so tough. I’d been held up by teenagers, made bruised and bagless by someone else, and then collapsed in front of strangers and to-go boxes. Perhaps I should lay off the walking for a while, I thought, if only to trick Washington into believing I was gone. Then maybe whatever hoodoo had been placed on my hobby might get lifted—hopefully in time for the cherry blossoms.
I had to ease back onto the street, hopping off the train a few stations before I was supposed to or catching the bus a few blocks away. Duccini’s was the last stop on my comeback tour.
It’d been a while, so I had a speech prepared. It began, “So, it turns out I’m not deranged, just a little dehydra…” Fortunately, I didn’t need it. The African guy spotted me mumbling to myself outside and was shouting by the time I got my foot in the door. “Hey! My friend. I was worried about you.”
Eleven
DRY V-WEDGIES
I’ve got a bag of Adaoha’s stuff going stale on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. Next to that is a bundle of unopened mail with her name on it. They’ve been there for a while now, since before and way after her funeral. I refuse to open either, much less make direct eye contact. I threw out bravery for such things with my Amy Grant tape and sadistic sleepover games.
Adaoha has become either Bloody Mary or the Tooth Fairy, depending on whether I miss or hate her. Some days she makes me afraid of my own reflection, and I have to sneak past the bathroom mirror to get in the shower, embarrassed and dirty. Afterward, with the room all misty, I squeegee only the skinniest slice of mirror with my right hand, wiping the shower sweat away with one swift karate move. Despite the badass technique, I’m still too scared to look for too long. Even the thirty seconds it takes to wash my face freak me out. Something could easily materialize behind my back while I’m bent over the sink with my eyes trapped shut by soap. Once I’ve straightened out, I still don’t look.
“Helena? Hey. Do you need a ride?” The voice on the other line was feathery soft, almost ephemeral, reminding me of a grade-school teacher’s after a problem child has saturated his or her pants. More than an inside voice, this was a voice inside my head.
I happened to be taking a mental health day that afternoon. Too scared of what I might do with access to the Internet at work—continue refreshing certain people’s Facebook pages and writing biting one-liner away messages—I’d decided to spend the day more sanely. As I furrowed into the farthest reaches of the bat cave better known as the bedroom of my basement apartment, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone about anything unless it was a certain person named Dex begging for my forgetfulness. The calls kept coming.
None of them were him. Each time the phone rang, I’d wait a few rings before pulling it from my pillowcase. Three-oh-one. Somebody from Maryland. Ignore. That became impossible as the calls kept coming. Four in an hour. Fine, fine, I stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to answer. It was a friend of Adaoha’s and a club friend of mine at best; thus far our telecommunication only involved the very occasional text. I must have forgotten something major—another Dirty Thirty birthday celebration, perhaps. Smooth. See what this dude was making me do? I was fucking up on my friends! I was missing out on a chance to scream, “Woo-hoo, you’re old, bitch!” at a woman
I didn’t know but felt sorry for in a crowd of twenty-somethings too busy belting out Beyoncé lyrics to care that they were next. An excuse was worked out in my head by the time I reached into the pillow.
“Oh, uh, hey lady,” I croaked, attempting to come off equal parts drunk, germ-infested, and sleepy. “What’s going on? Am I supposed to be getting dressed?”
“What?” She sounded lost, possibly doubting my ability to go from zero to sexy in minutes.
“Seriously, I can put some clothes on in…” An outfit was worked out in my head by the time my feet hit the floor.
“No. Helena, you don’t know?”
“What?” It was my turn to be skeptical.
“Adaoha died last night.” And rip goes the Band-Aid.
Ignoring the invention of the perm, black chicks are not susceptible to magic. We don’t go up in clouds of smoke. We don’t disappear down suspect rabbit holes. We don’t walk into coat closets, never to be heard from again. Plans have to be made, hair has to be pressed, and bags of stuff have to be packed.
Black chicks don’t do this. They aren’t supposed to just up and leave, because they have expert knowledge about just how much that shit sucks. They know how much no one wants to be the asshole getting left. The one standing at the edge of responsibility, too tired to lie down and too reasonable to leap. The one on the receiving end of all those tears and snot and spit and shit and piss and blood and cum and whatever other carnal fluid nature makes a living getting rid of.
She got rid of us. I would do the same to her, except I have this bag of Adaoha that I’m actively ignoring right now. It’s my new thing. Some days I pretend to forget it’s there.
Those same nights, I think she might come for me in the middle and sneak something special under my pillow or maybe snatch me away to the place that only she knew about. Maybe she’ll show me the secrets she kept there. Because this whole time, she had to have known something we didn’t about whatever was on the other side of that fall that was so much fucking better than staying on solid ground with us.
Bitch Is the New Black Page 14
