by Coe Booth
Cal and Tina leave the beach ’bout three o’clock ’cause Tina phone start ringing nonstop. The rest of us chill. Then ’round five, I start to get hungry again, so I tell Adonna we should get outta there and go find somewhere to eat. Patrick look like he wanna come with us, but we just leave them there ’cause he need to either get somewhere with Asia or bring the girl home and forget it. Whatever he do, he need to do it on his own.
I wanna take Adonna somewhere nice, but not someplace expensive like City Island, even though we real close to there. So we end up at T.G.I. Friday’s, and I gotta say, we have us a good time. We sitting on the same side of the booth, scarfing down chili nachos, then ribs and French fries, talking and laughing and kissing.
All I know is, right now, I’m happy. I need a girl like this in my life. For real. This the only thing that’s working for me right ’bout now.
MONDAY, AUGUST 11
TWENTY
It’s mad early in the morning when I hear him, and the only reason I do is ’cause I hafta get up and pee. I’m halfway down the hall when I hear the sound coming from the living room. It’s Cal, and he moaning and crying, sounding like a dog that got hit by a car or something.
I fly out to the living room and Cal is on the couch, laying there, and all I see is blood — on him, on his clothes, on the couch, on the floor coming from the door. It’s crazy. For, like, ten seconds I just stand there with my mouth open. What the fuck happened? Who did this to him?
“Cal.” I run over to him and bend down over him. “Cal, what happened?”
But all he do is keep on moaning.
“Shit. Shit.” I’m just standing there cursing to myself, but that ain’t helping Cal none. I get down on my knees next to couch so he can see me. “Cal, you gonna be a’ight, okay?”
Shit, Cal face is jacked up. He got blood running down from his forehead and landing in his eye that’s all busted up and bloodshot. And his lip and nose is bleeding too. And with all that, the thing he holding is his ribs. Shit, probably they broke too. Whoever did this fucked him up bad.
“I’ma call 9-1-1,” I tell him and get up, but he grab my arm.
“Nah. You can’t,” he say. “Andre gonna find out.”
“Fuck Andre,” I tell him.
“No, Ty. Hold on, hold on. I’m a’ight. Hold on.”
He actually try and sit up, but just by moving a inch, he practically scream in pain, and his face get all tight. That’s when I see the tears. Damn, I ain’t seen him cry since we was little kids.
“Cal, don’t move. How the fuck you even get up here?”
“I don’t know,” he say, then it look like more pain shoot through his whole body and he close his eyes for a second. Then he go, “Get Greg,” and it’s like he can’t hardly talk no more than them two words.
I go down the hall and knock on Greg door hard, but he ain’t there. I call his cell and I know from the way he sound that I just woke his ass up. Asshole was s’posed to be driving ’round all night keeping Cal and the other guys that sell for them safe out there, and he ’sleep. “Where you at?” I yell into the phone. “Why you ain’t doing your fuckin’ job?”
“Ty? What the fuck you calling me—?”
“Cal hurt. Somebody beat the shit outta him. He need a ambulance.”
Greg start cursing. “Where his weed at? Don’t call nobody ’til you make sure he don’t got nothing on him. Nah, Ty, matter of fact, don’t do nothing ’til I get there. I’ma be right there.”
I don’t never know Greg to do nothing fast, so after we hang up, standing there watching Cal in that much pain ain’t easy. ’Specially when it look like he can’t breathe all that good. I don’t know what to do. I don’t wanna call the ambulance up in here ’cause they be showing up with the police most of the time and I ain’t looking to get nobody locked up, including me. But I can’t just watch Cal die.
So I go to the kitchen and get a bunch of paper towels and sit by the couch with him, holding him ’round the shoulders, and telling him to try and calm down so he can breathe slower and it won’t hurt so much. Like I know what I’m talking ’bout. Then I wipe some of the blood off his face. Shit is thick and nasty. “It ain’t that bad,” I tell him. “You gonna be a’ight.” But I’m straight up lying to the dude. His face look like someone went twelve rounds with him.
Every time he try to talk, I tell him to relax, that he can tell me what he wanna say later, but he wanna talk now. But all he doing is mumbling and moaning.
Greg show up ’bout forty minutes later and I’m like, “What the fuck?”
“Shut up, Ty.” He go over to the couch where Cal at and try talking to him and shit. Cal can’t hardly breathe now, so he kinda panting.
“What we gonna do?” I ask Greg. “He been like this for a while.”
“Ty, shut up and let me think.”
Shit. If I let him think, Cal fucked. “I’ma call a ambulance if you don’t do something, Greg. He your brother, man.”
“I know. Shut up.”
I sit on the chair ’cross from Cal and watch Greg and Cal talk. Greg ask him what happened, and it take a while, but Cal finally tell him two dudes came up on him and tried to take all the money he had on him. Cal say he tried to fight but they was both bigger than him and he ain’t know if they was strapped. They ended up taking all the cash and the weed and said something ’bout how they was doing this to teach his brother not to go where he ain’t s’posed to be. Then they kicked him ’til he couldn’t hardly move.
When Greg get the whole story outta Cal, I can tell he don’t know what to do. “Andre gonna go off,” he tell Cal, like Cal need to hear that shit right ’bout now.
“Don’t tell him,” Cal say.
Greg shake his head. “He gonna find out.”
Cal let out this long moan, and I don’t know if it’s ’cause he don’t want Andre to know or if the pain getting worse. Or both. He look bad. How long Greg gonna have him dealing with it?
Finally, Greg decide to take Cal to the hospital, but he don’t want no ambulance people in they apartment, so me and him hafta get Cal out to Greg car by ourself. Crazy thing is, on the way downstairs we see all the blood Cal left in the hall and elevator and lobby when he came upstairs. Damn.
By the time we get Cal outside, me and Greg can’t hardly hold him no more and keep him walking. His ribs must be broke for real ’cause he damn near doubled over in pain. And his face is so fucked up. We barely get him to the curb when Ms. Lucas from Building D come down the street and I’m like, shit. That woman known for running her mouth. Now the whole Bronxwood gonna know what happened to Cal in ’bout a half hour. Shit can’t get no worse for Cal.
At the hospital, they don’t make us wait, but the nurse yell at us for not calling a ambulance. Even though we don’t tell her what happened to Cal, she know. She like, “It doesn’t matter what he was doing when this happened. You all should have called an ambulance. He could have a punctured lung.”
While they checking Cal out, me and Greg sit there in the waiting room not even hardly talking. What I wanna know is this, where was he at while Cal was out there? Wasn’t he s’posed to be driving ’round? This whole thing just prove my point that Andre and Greg just using Cal to do all they work for them.
But I ain’t looking to fight with Greg now. He worried ’bout Cal just as much as me. And he worried ’bout what to tell Andre who probably gonna wanna know where Greg was at too. I mean, that’s the fucking question.
It take almost two hours before the doctor come out to tell us how Cal doing. I was thinking she forgot ’bout us out there, but she ain’t. She say two of Cal ribs is fractured and he got a sprained wrist and all kinds of cuts and shit. He even had to get five stitches over his right eye.
“We’re going to admit him for a couple of days to monitor his breathing and his pain,” she say. “Then he can go home and finish healing there. He’ll be alright. We need to talk to his mother.”
“I called her,” Greg say. “She com
ing now.”
“Can we see him?” I ask her.
“Are you family?”
“We his brothers,” Greg go.
The doctor don’t look like she believe us, but she let us go in. Cal still in the ER ’til a room could get ready, so we gotta walk past all these other people that be bleeding and shit. Cal in a small room with the curtain closed. The doctor open it for us and say, “Your brothers are here, Calvin.”
Real fast, Cal open his eyes wide, scared. Then when he see it’s only us, he close them again. I go over to him, looking at his face all swole up with this big bandage over his eye. The rest of his body is under the sheet, but man them dudes broke his ribs. That shit gotta hurt like hell.
But the real thing I’m thinking is what Cal must be going through, and I ain’t only thinking ’bout the pain neither. Cal ain’t no punk, but two guys beat him anyway. If it was me, I would be feeling like a big pussy.
So when Cal say, “Y’all shoulda went home already. You don’t gotta watch me.” I get it and I don’t blame him.
I don’t know what to say to him neither.
So for a while I don’t say nothing. I just stand there watching him breathe. Every time he take a breath, I can see how much that shit hurt.
Me and Greg don’t stay there too long. We just sit on these chairs next to his bed, not really talking or nothing. Just being there with him.
When Cal and Greg moms get there, the second she walk in the room and see Cal, she start crying. Then she look at Greg and start yelling at him. “What happened to your brother? What you let them do to him?”
Before Greg can answer, I get up to leave. “Cal, I’ma see you tomorrow, a’ight?” I don’t wanna stay and listen to Cal moms act like she care ’bout him ’cause she ain’t all that good a moms, you ask me.
First of all, she don’t live with him. Andre got her a apartment in Co-op City and he pay her rent and buy her whatever she need. She living okay and don’t even see Cal ’cept for when he decide to stop by her place, which is only ’bout every two, three weeks. Not only that, she just let Cal live with Andre and Greg and get caught up in they business. She know what he doing and don’t never tell him to move in with her.
Now she gonna come to the hospital and put on this big show, but she not doing what she s’posed to be doing for Cal neither. Nobody is.
They got a McDonald’s inside the hospital, which kinda seem weird for a place that’s s’posed to be all ’bout making people healthy, but still that’s straight where I go after I leave the ER. I’m sitting there eating two Egg McMuffins when my cell ring. My pops.
I click my phone and say hello.
“Ty, I need the storage room key. You got it? ’Cause I been looking all over this apartment and it ain’t here.”
For a second I think ’bout lying to the man and saying I don’t got it, but then he probably just gonna go to the storage place and get them to open the room for him anyhow. So I say, “Yeah, I think I got it.”
“I’m coming by for it,” he say.
“Nah, I ain’t home. I’m at the hospital. With Cal.” Then I tell him all ’bout what happened to Cal and how messed up he is, and how we don’t know when he gonna get out or how long it’s gonna take for him to get better. All that.
When I’m through talking, he go, “His brothers better find out who did that to him and take care of it.”
“Nobody know who did it, not even Cal.”
“Let me tell you something, Ty. When somebody do something wrong, there gotta be a consequence. Every time. Somebody gotta pay for what they did to Cal, or folks ’round there is gonna know they can get away with shit like that and it’s gonna keep happening.”
“I know,” I say ’cause I don’t want him to go into that thing he do where he think he always gotta teach me stuff ’bout life. Piss me off.
“I’m gonna be coming by the hospital for the key,” he say, like nothing I just told him ’bout Cal matter to him. Or even that I’m living in the middle of all this violent shit. “You sitting in the waiting room?”
“Nah, don’t come. I don’t got the key on me. Why you need it?”
“Don’t worry ’bout that. When can I get it from you?”
Damn, now I’ma hafta try and dodge this man ’til after Jasmine party or I’m screwed. “I could bring it on Wednesday, to the agency visit,” I say.
“Okay, that’s good.”
We hang up and right away I know I ain’t showing up at the agency on Wednesday. I’ma hafta go see Troy at camp today ’cause I need this key. I don’t wanna be the one to fuck up Jasmine party.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 12
TWENTY-ONE
I go to the hospital to see Cal the next day, ’round two o’clock, but when I get there, a nurse on the floor tell me he don’t wanna see nobody. I’m like, “Tell him it’s me, Ty.” She go in his room and come out shaking her head. “He’s very tired,” she say. “He hasn’t wanted to see anyone today.”
I tell her thanks, but part of me just wanna bum rush the door to Cal room and tell him he don’t gotta do this. Nobody blaming him for what happened and he ain’t do nothing wrong. His brothers was the ones that was s’posed to have his back.
I leave the hospital feeling bad for Cal. He probably laying in that bed feeling like shit. And there ain’t no need for that.
All last night I was thinking ’bout what happened, just sitting in that hot-ass apartment making myself madder and madder. The situation just feel heavy on me, like something that’s so messed up, but something I can’t do shit ’bout. That’s a feeling I don’t like.
I don’t know what Adonna is doing today, but she could probably cheer me up. She answer the phone on the second ring. “What you doing?” I say to her.
“I’m on Fordham Road shopping with Asia. She’s taking forever picking out a pair of jeans. It’s crazy!” She giggle. “What about you?”
I tell her ’bout what happened to Cal and how he don’t even wanna see nobody. “Don’t tell nobody ’bout this at Bronxwood,” I say. “Even Asia. He don’t need this getting out.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything.” I can tell she feeling real sad for Cal, just like me.
“Good,” I say, hoping she keep her mouth closed. Then I ask her, “What you doing later? Wanna come over for a little while?”
“Okay, but something tells me I won’t be done shopping anytime soon. I’ll try to come over around five.” “Cool. See you in a while.”
Talking to Adonna definitely help. I can’t say Cal out my mind all the way, but least when I’m with Adonna I can think ’bout somebody else for a while.
I stop by Troy camp again, but he ain’t there. They on a trip to the science museum and ain’t getting back ’til after six, so I stop off at the bodega to get a two-liter Sprite and some barbecue chips for Adonna, then go back home to wait for her to get there. Second day of being in this apartment without Cal and it ain’t the same. Nobody home to complain to ’bout shit, which is what it seem like me and him do all the time now.
Guess we gonna have more to bitch ’bout now.
I paid Keisha to come clean up this morning before I left for the hospital, so least the place ain’t nasty. I’ma try and keep things slow with Adonna ’cause I can tell this plan is working on her. After Sunday, me and her is close. Course if she wanna go in my room and let me give it to her, I ain’t gonna be the one to say no.
A brotha can dream, right?
Something after five, the doorbell ring and I’m like, good, she right on time. But when I open the door it ain’t Adonna standing out there. It’s Novisha.
Before I say anything to her, before I can even think of something to say, Novisha go, “I heard about what happened to Cal.”
She still standing in the hall, and I ain’t gonna let her come in neither, not with Adonna on her way over. “What you want, Novisha?”
She look kinda surprised by how I’m acting, but that don’t make no sense to me. She know why I’m
this way. She the one that made me like this. “I want to know if Cal is okay, and if you’re safe, living here with those guys. I’m—”
“Oh, I get it. You worried ’bout me.” I gotta laugh at that one. The girl that hurt me worse than anybody else is worried ’bout me. Shit is funny.
“What?” Novisha ask. “Why are you acting like this?”
“Novisha, you gotta go. I don’t have time—”
“Talk to me.”
Why she sound like she begging me? Why can’t she take a hint already? “Look, Novisha. I’m okay. Cal okay. Just stay outta this, a’ight?”
“But—”
“Your moms know you here? ’Cause you know how she feel ’bout Cal and them.”
“Of course she doesn’t know I’m here, but when I heard about what happened to Cal, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It sounds horrible. How’s he doing? Is he in the hospital?”
“Novisha, you gotta go.” I step out into the hall and push the button for the elevator.
“I wanted to talk to you about something else,” she say. “I want to tell you something.”
I shake my head ’cause I shoulda knew she wasn’t coming over here for what happened to Cal. All this ’bout how she worried ’bout Cal ain’t nothing but bullshit. Yeah, her and Cal know each other, always did, but they ain’t friends or nothing. She don’t care ’bout him. I press the button again, but don’t say nothing.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like this, Ty. I just want to tell you something.”
“Keep it to yourself,” I tell her, and finally I hear the elevator coming. “Go home, Novisha. Just go.”
The elevator doors open and before Novisha can even move, Adonna come out. She look at Novisha and then at me and the look on her face say it all. She fucking pissed.
And me, I can’t believe this shit. Adonna looking at me like I’m the lying asshole she thought I was, and with me standing out here in the hall with Novisha, I can’t say nothing ’cause nothing I say gonna change what she thinking.
