Guarding Lacey
Kris Nelscott
Copyright Information
Guarding Lacey
Copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Chicago Blues,
edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann, Bleak House Books, 2007.
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2012 by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Andy2000soft/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional,
and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Table of Contents
Guarding Lacey
Copyright Information
About the Author
Guarding Lacey
Every other morning, my dad drives me and my cousins to school, except he’s not really my dad and they’re not really my cousins. My dad — his name is Smokey — he says we’re family, and I guess he’s right about that.
He sure guards us like family. When Smoke drives I known Smoke since I was three; I just can’t get used to calling him Dad), he lines us up like little ducklings, and makes us walk hand-in-hand into the school.
The duckling thing is hardest in the winter. It’s the beginning of 1970 — a decade Smoke says’ll be better than the last one — and there’s been ice. We lose our balance if even one person slips (and it’s usually Noreen, who’s six, and never pays attention), and we just look plain silly.
I’m tired of looking silly, but I know the dangers if we don’t.
Last year, the Blackstone Rangers tried to recruit me and my cousin Keith, and Smoke, he beat up a Stone so bad they ain’t bothered us since. Or not much, anyway. Smoke’s a big guy and now he’s got a knife scar on his face and he can take on just about anybody. The Stones look away when they see him. I think he scares them.
They hang in the playground and smoke cigarettes and they watch us all, especially my cousin Lacey. Smoke says she’s thirteen going on trouble, and he don’t know the half of it.
Our school is on the South Side, which the news says gots the worst schools in Chicago. Smoke agrees, but he’s weird about it; his girlfriend, Laura Hathaway, is rich and white and has what Smoke calls clout and she says she can get me into one of them private schools and she’d even pay for it. But Smoke says we gots to do what we can afford and we don’t take charity from nobody, not even if it’s from someone like Laura.
Besides, he says, we got to do for everybody, not just make one of us special, so that’s why him and my Uncle Franklin started the afterschool program for anybody who wants to come and really learn.
Sometimes I wish Smoke would come inside our school though instead of staying out front. He thinks we’s safe inside, but that’s not true. Some of the gang kids still go to classes just to cause trouble. Last week, Li’l Dan sat in the back of history class and just snicked his knife open and closed. I almost turned around and took it from him, but that would get me noticed, and I been noticed enough.
Lacey and Jonathon, they say it’s worse in the junior high part of the school, which is an attached building at the other end. They come in with us, go down the hall, and then go through the double doors which get locked until school’s over since the teachers don’t want no older kids coming in and “corrupting” us younger ones. But they forget: most of us gots brothers and sisters who’re older or friends or neighbors and we get corrupted all the dang time.
I don’t like school much.
Especially this year, and that’s because of Lace. I’m the only one who sees the problem, and I ain’t sure what to do.
***
Ever since she got into junior high, Lace has been weird. I mean, she’s always been stuck-up and stuff, and she’s always worn make-up and clothes that my Uncle Franklin don’t like at all. This year, Uncle Franklin and Aunt Althea, they make Lacey change dang near every morning before school, and they’re threatening to ground her.
But it won’t do no good.
Once Smoke or Uncle Franklin drops us ducklings off at school and we get inside those dented metal doors, Lace heads to the girls room. If she can’t smuggle her clothes out of the house, she takes what she’s already wearing and changes it. She rolls up her skirt and tucks the fabric under the waistband so the skirt is short and double-thick. She ties off her shirt to show her tummy, and she puts on so much make-up you can’t see her face at all.
Lately she’s been gluing on them fake eyelashes and wearing hot pants like Twiggy and big ole clunky high heels. That kinda stuff is expensive, and I know her family don’t got that kinda money.
The problem is she looks good in it too. When Lace dresses up, she can pass for eighteen, maybe twenty. Most of her friends look just dorky in the same clothes, but Lace looks slutty-gorgeous. She got big tits last year and a waist and a fine ass, so she looks like a grown-up girl, which is why Uncle Franklin is so worried, I think.
Or maybe he knows what Lace really looks like.
When she dresses up like that, Lace looks just like my mom.
***
I ain’t seen my mom in almost exactly two years. She skipped January 8, 1968. I remember because that’s one week before my birthday. When I turned ten, my mom was gone and my older brother Joe was out toking with his buddies. That was Memphis, not Chicago, and Smoke, who was just this guy down the block who kept an eye on me, bought me lunch and told me I needed to get to school.
He didn’t know it was my birthday, just like he didn’t know Mom ain’t paid the rent—again. We got evicted—or really, I did—and that was the end for Smoke. He’d been watching over me for a long time, making sure I studied, making sure I ate. But the eviction, that’s when he took me in.
Mom ain’t got no idea where I am now, not that it matters. She stayed gone from January to April, and even Smoke, who’s a private detective, couldn’t find her (not that I think he tried real hard). Mom ran off with one of her johns again, or maybe she knew the rent was due. She said she was gonna send money but she never did.
Sometimes I think she’s dead. I seen a lot of hookers before I moved to Chicago, and they get hurt lots. Knifed or beat up or worse. Sometimes they get beat so bad they die. That last Christmas, I was mopping up after Mom all over the apartment, she was bleeding so bad from her female parts. I ain’t never told Smoke that. He’d give me that shocked look like he does when I mention my mom, like he can’t believe anybody would ever do the stuff she did.
But Mom explained it to me and Joe. She said you have the kinda life she had, you gots to do the best you can. And if she had it to do over she wouldn’ta chased all them boys when she was twelve and she wouldn’ta gone with the older guys, and she wouldn’ta never had kids.
Mom, she was only a year older than Lace when she had my brother Joe. She knew who his dad was, but she never said. Me, my dad coulda been anyone. Sometimes my mom would take on four or five guys a night—and that don’t count the quickies in the alley behind our apartment.
Sometimes her pimp, this guy named Thug, used to get her to train the new girls. He’d say he could break them in but he couldn’t teach them the ropes. Mom was in charge of the ropes. She’d talk to them and by the end, they’d be crying and she’d be yelling at them: If you’re crying now, you ain’t gonna make it. You’ll die before the year’s out. You gotta be tough.
Lacey ain’t tough and she ain’t hooking—at least not yet. But the guys she meets in the schooly
ard during lunch ain’t junior high boys. They ain’t even high school boys. They’s men, and they’s way too interested.
***
It’s so cold in Mrs. Dylan’s classroom that I’m wearing my coat, and I’m glad Laura gave me real sturdy boots for Christmas. Still, the tip of my nose is freezing and I can see my breath.
Mrs. Dylan’s going on about fractions. I had that a long time ago, so I keep doodling on my notepad while I look out the window.
Lace is standing underneath an archway. The graffiti on it is mostly basic crap—Jud loves Susan, stuff like that, but Lace’s standing under some spray-paint that says Blackstones Are Stone Cold. She’s wearing a miniskirt and open toed high heel shoes and a top tied under her tits. She’s teased her hair into a afro—I got no idea how she’s gonna get that out before we get to the afterschool program at the church—and I can see her eye makeup from across the yard.
Her hands are cupped as she leans forward to light a cigarette. That’s another new habit, and one I’m surprised Uncle Franklin and Aunt Althea haven’t figured yet. Lace stinks of cigarettes most of the time.
She’s gotta be cold, but she don’t look cold. She looks like she’s waiting for someone, just like my Mom used to do, only there ain’t no road here for them to drive up to, and no way for some guy just passing by to ask her into his car so she can make a quick twenty.
I can’t tell her none of this. I swore to Smoke I’d never talk about Memphis ever because I might slip and the secret’d be out. And the secret’s an important one. I seen something I wasn’t supposed to and people tried to kill me for it.
Smoke saved me, and then he brought me here. Thanks to Uncle Franklin, we get to use his last name (and his kids all think I’m a real cousin) and Smoke got fake i.d.s and stuff. People are searching for me, but Smoke says we’re safe if we stay quiet.
Still I get nightmares and I know if we slip we might gotta leave with a moment’s notice. Smoke hates it when I even think of Memphis because then I can’t sleep and stuff.
But seeing Lacey like that, all tricked out and me not able to say anything for fear of hurting me and Smoke, scares me to death.
I talked to Smoke about it last fall, when things wasn’t quite so bad. We was in the car after dropping off Lacey. He’d seen her tricked out—well, wiping the crap off her face anyway—and he tried to tell her what happens to girls who look like that from our part of town, but Lace didn’t listen, not really.
After everybody got out of the car except me and Smoke, I asked him, “You don’t think Lace’ll end up like my mom, do you?”
He looked at me. He’s got this measuring thing, where he can see all the way inside you, and he was doing that to me then. He could tell I was worried.
He said, “She won’t end up like your mom. Lacey has too many friends and family for that. But she could get hurt.”
I remembered how Mom laid in bed for days sometimes with ice pressed on her face so the bruises would go away, or that last Christmas, cleaning up the blood she left all over the apartment because she couldn’t afford no doctor. I didn’t want none of that to happen to Lace.
“Some trick’ll hurt her?” I asked.
“Some boy’ll hurt her. He’ll think she wants to do what your mom used to do. Lacey won’t understand and—”
“He’ll just do her. I know,” I said real quick because I didn’t want to think about Lace like that.
That’s when Smoke gave me that shocked look, like he can’t believe half the stuff I know. Then he blinked, and the look went away.
“We can’t talk her out of dressing like this,” he said. “We’ve been trying for nearly a year. She’ll do what she wants. But if she does get into trouble — if she starts crying a lot, or acting really angry for no reason, tell me okay?”
I hated that. I hated telling on anybody, even for a good reason. There was lotsa stuff Smoke should probably know, but I’d make my friends and my pretend cousins mad at me if I said something, and they wouldn’t like me no more, and worse, they wouldn’t trust me.
“What if she don’t want me to?” I asked.
“Tell me that too.”
“Feels like tattling,” I muttered.
Smoke ignored that. “If someone just — does her — then she’s not going to want to tell her parents. Maybe she’ll tell me. We can make sure it won’t happen again. We’d be protecting her, Jim, not tattling on her.”
Made sense, but it still scared me. I seen them guys with my mom. There was no protecting. There was just getting by, surviving, and trying all over again.
But I didn’t say that to Smoke. I don’t say a lot of what I think to Smoke. He don’t need to know all the details of what happened before. I try to forget a lot of them too.
But it’s dang hard when I see Lace standing under that arch, smoking, when she’s supposed to be in class. She’s just waiting, and I don’t know for what. Then some guy comes up and he’s tall and thin and wears a long cloth coat. The thin guy puts a gloved hand on Lace’s arm, and she smiles up at him like he’s God.
Just then, Mrs. Dylan calls on me, and I have to turn away from the window. Mrs. Dylan always looks tired. She’s not as old as Smoke, but she has these big bags under her eyes, and even her voice sounds a little wispy, like she can’t get enough energy to use it right.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to remember what she’d said before she called my name. “I forgot the question.”
“When I called on you,” she says all precise, which makes her seem madder than she probably is, “I asked you to add one-half and one-fourth.”
“Three-fourths, ma’am,” I say.
She frowns at me, and I realize I answered too fast. I don’t want nobody in this school to know how easy it is for me. I feel my cheeks getting hot.
“Maybe I heard the question after all,” I say with just enough attitude to make my friends smile, but not enough to make her madder.
“Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you kids,” she says and goes back to talking about how when you add fractions you got to make the bottom numbers the same.
I turn back to the window.
Lace is gone.
I hope she’s gone back inside, all alone, and is in some class now, shivering and wishing she was dressed proper.
But I know she’s with the guy in the coat. And I know she feels cool.
None of this is cool. And I know at some point, he’s gonna hurt her.
But what I don’t know is when’s the right time to tell Smoke? And what if I’m wrong? What if the guy in the coat is somebody nice like Smoke was to me, trying to talk Lace into the right path like the rest of us been doing?
Lace’d never forgive me.
But she’d never forgive me if I wait too long too.
I wish this all was as simple as adding fractions. But it ain’t. And I got no idea what to do.
***
The answer comes at lunch. What would Smoke do if this was some case? And that makes the answer easy.
Smoke would make sure he knows what’s going on before he does anything. So I gotta know exactly what’s going on.
The lunch room is near the back doors. They’re locked during school hours, even though Smoke says that ain’t legal. There’s windows to the right side, but they’re marked up with soap so no one can see in.
We can’t see much—sunlight or snow or nothing—and the lights overhead are that regular kind not the fluorescents like in the classroom, so it’s pretty dark in here, which is okay with me.
I always sit as far from the windows as I can get. My cousin Keith usually joins me. He’s my age. My younger cousins, Mikie and Noreen, they know better than to even smile at us. We don’t want no little girls anywhere near us, though I always make sure I know exactly where they’re sitting, so I can keep an eye on them.
Keith sits down across from me. He’s smaller than me but not by much. Smoke says I’m coming into my growth. I got taller last year and Keith didn’t. He don’t
seem to mind. He thinks I’ll get as big as Smoke, not knowing that we’re not really blood.
He opens the brown sack his lunch comes in and I do the same. None of the kids here have them fancy metal lunch boxes because you can hide a gun in em so the school banned em. We check our sandwiches (both peanut butter), our desserts (he’s got three homemade chocolate chip cookies that I want and I know he won’t trade for my Nilla Wafers), and our extras. I hand him my carrots and he gives me an apple. There ain’t much more to trade, so we settle in.
“Lace dating some older guy?” I ask.
Keith frowns at me. “Lace can’t date.”
“Well, some guy picked her up this morning.” I tell him what I saw. He’s more upset about the cigarettes because he don’t know what I know about the way the world works.
“Can you find out where the guy takes her?” I ask.
“Why’s that so important to you?”
“Because he might hurt her, that’s why.” I don’t want him to ask no more because then I’ll have to just shut up. I can’t explain.
Instead he grins. “You know Lace. Any guy tries to hurt her, she’ll just hurt him right back.”
And he don’t say no more. Me neither, not then. Because Smoke taught me if you want to get something out of somebody the best way is to not push. So I don’t push. I wait.
Just before the bell rings for the next class, Keith crumples up his lunch bag and tosses it into the garbage can across the room. He makes it, and grabs mine to do the same.
But he stops, frowns at me because I don’t complain, and says, “If I find out who Lace’s with, what’re you gonna do?”
I shrug.
He crumples the bag harder. He knows me too well. “You’re going to be Smokey, aren’t you? You’re going after her.”
“This guy’s too old for her,” I say.
Guarding Lacey: A Smokey Dalton Story Page 1
