“Let me see those,” I said. He gave the dice to me. I eyed them and shifted them in my palm. I actually had no idea what rigged dice looked or felt like, but I had the feeling that maybe I could learn. I held one to the light.
Nigel took them from me. “They’re fake, Dad.”
“What?” I asked.
“Loaded.”
I was astonished. My son was brilliant and wily, of course, but only a child. I never imagined him using his intelligence against me, even if only for a second. It was an inversion of our relationship. It was I who was supposed to clobber him at chess or embarrass him with feats of manly strength. It was my job to show him how cruel and uncaring the world could be, so that he would toughen up. Not vice versa.
“Why did you tell me?” I asked.
Nigel turned the dice over in his hand and threw them into the wastebasket. He shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Dr. Nzinga entered. “Ah,” she said. “Very well to see the happy family. Are we ready to start?”
Nigel glanced at me. “Yes, ma’am.”
29
One Blue Geisha Backrub will take you to seventh heaven. Two Blue Geisha Backrubs will reunite you with your maker. Three Blue Geisha Backrubs will cause your maker to throw you out of heaven for degeneracy.
My wet knees vibrated against the bathroom tile. Many hands held me by the shoulders and arms over a toilet full of expelled material. One would think that finally getting Nigel the help he needed would have calmed my nerves. Not so. If anything, since Nigel started his preliminary treatments with Dr. Nzinga, I’d been more on edge, gulping pills like penny candies. I couldn’t slow down no matter how hard I tried.
Someone slapped me. “Hey, guy,” the female voice said, “say something.”
I glanced at the palm of my hand, which was empty. “God only knows.”
“Good,” a male voice said. “He’s still in one piece, I guess.” I experienced the sensation of being lifted.
When I came to, it was the afternoon, although I couldn’t have bet on the day. I slumped out of the bed and lay face-to-carpet for a few minutes. I crawled to my feet and checked myself in the mirror. My hair was a mess, and my pajamas smelled like actual shit, but otherwise I would survive. Something crinkled in my hand. I unfurled an old to-do list with my wife’s handwriting on it: call City about speeding van. Disgusted. I crumpled the paper and tossed it to the floor.
“Hey, old guy.” It was the male from earlier, a youngish man, a ruddy, thin boy, one of the tribe that had been camped out back in Jo Jo’s yard. “He asked me to give you this.” The boy handed me a note. It was from Jo Jo. Jo Jo’s yard was outside the window. I was in Jo Jo’s house. This was Jo Jo’s bed.
Dear Buddy,
This is not me. I’ve got to get my life back on track. Making designer whim whams and short videos was fun to do back in my college days, but I’ve been stalling and hoping that Casey would walk back in with the boys. But that’s not going to happen, as you yourself have pointed out on more than one occasion. I get that now. Plus, I think maybe the DEA is after me. So I’m skating with Polaire. She’s good for me. She believes in things. And I’m starting to believe, too. (Imagine that!) So as nuts as it sounds we’re off to Oman to stand with the revolution. I hope I don’t get myself killed.
Best regards,
Your Faithful Jo Jo
P.S. I didn’t leave any more geishas because we had to get an ER doctor (the kid with the red cheeks, he’s a prodigy) to bring you back to life. You probably don’t remember. Lay off the Plums. Seriously.
Love and Rockets JJB
What of loyalty? What of brotherhood? What was friendship if a person could check out on a whim? In every instance, I had been there for Jo Jo. Held him up when his resolve turned to jelly. Acted as cheerleader, counselor, and concierge. And that Polaire—I blamed her. In a selfish, feminine display worthy of Yoko Ono, she was taking my man away just when I needed him. How would I ever get my Plums now?
I sat up in bed.
“You shouldn’t sit up in bed,” the kid physician said.
“No, thanks. I gave at the office. I appreciate you saving me, though.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Do you have anything for a splitting headache?”
30
I awoke to a synesthetic scenario: I somehow felt that I was being licked by a dog, a whimpering old beagle. But when I opened my eyes, I found no dog and no licking. Mama sat on a chair across the room from me, her occipitals moist from a fresh watering. My bedroom. What was she even doing in my bedroom?
“What are you even doing in my bedroom?” I asked, her banana bushel earrings clattering as she stood. I realized the sun’s shadow was older than I would have expected. “Where’s Nigel?”
“I brought him to school,” she said.
“You?”
She explained that he had called her for a ride.
I climbed out of bed, belatedly realizing I was naked. I clutched the sheet around my body and grabbed my device. The date meant that it had been days—no, weeks—since I woke up in Jo Jo’s bed, but that couldn’t be right.
“It’s a good thing I brought him. There was a government man here.”
“Why aren’t you at the Coop?” I stepped into the restroom suite to collect myself. It was late. I would have to forgo a shower and shave, but at least I could brush my grinners. I brushed vigorously. Where had I been last night? I vaguely recalled taking a Chill Pill or Plum. Or a couple of both. The last of a stash I had squirreled away in the pocket of an old suitcase we never used. I would have to find a new supplier.
Mama wedged her way into the restroom. I gathered the sheet around my body to ensure that I remained properly ensconced. My head really hurt.
“The City pulled the restaurant’s licenses. Too many violations, they said. We’re closed.”
“Are you serious?”
“I been telling you they had it in for us for months.”
I recalled no such discussions. “Well, this won’t stand. I’ll make some inquiries. Perhaps—”
“Don’t bother on that. You know how it is when they come after us. Even if we fix this one thing, they’ll just find some other thing. They made that fence, that Tiko fence, bigger, so now the Coop is inside the Tiko.”
“Inside the Tiko?”
“Least I still have my license for the Visions Festival. For now.” She sat on the lip of the claw-footed tub. It had been a favorite relaxation of—I never got into it anymore. I preferred the shower down the hall. I worried that if I soaked in the tub waters, all my grease and grime would swirl down the drain, leaving behind nothing of me other than a few kinky hairs.
“Oh. Don’t give up so easily,” I said.
Mama glared at me. I hadn’t seen her so angry since that time I left the Coop freezer open, spoiling a month’s worth of food. “You know what you shouldn’t give up on so easily? Your family.”
“My family is dead.”
Mama gripped her forearm and rotated her fingers around it in a wrenching motion, a habit of hers ever since she was injured that one time. I didn’t want to think about how she hurt it all those years ago because that meant I’d have to think about what had happened to Sir.
“Still hurts from time to time?” I twisted the hot water handle to the max. Steam escaped.
“It never stopped.”
* * *
—
Sir had enjoyed an early morning walk. Nothing too extravagant. Down the front steps of our building. Circle the building. Back. I wasn’t an early riser, and he, despite my requests, never called on me at the time he awoke, before our neighbor’s rooster crowed. But occasionally, through great force of will, I managed to rise from the depths of sleep, covered in clinging seaweed, and throw my shoes on t
o join him.
That particular morning I was woken up by Ms. Wendy Woods’s adopted son, Dee Soyinka, much later to be known as Supercargo, who moved in with us following the killing of his mother. Specifically, Dee, younger and smaller than my seven-year-old self, once again rotated in the bed we shared until his feet were kicking me in the face. I shoved him off the bed.
What a strange morning it was. It was cold outside, but my internal furnaces were lit by the Visions of Blackness Festival, a Tiko tradition filled with arts, crafts, and music. It was a big deal during my parents’ childhood but had been canceled in recent years due to permitting issues, which Sir called newspeak for the City didn’t want thousands of us gathering in one place.
There was a crackle in the air that abraded my skin and the smell of lemon house cleaner from Sir’s early morning efforts. The tub had cracked some time before, so I was responsible for washing off my face and armpits and doing the same to Dee.
“Ow, quit it.” Dee pounded my arm, but his little fist didn’t hurt. He was protesting the amount of force I used around the corners of his eyes. But you had to get in there good, or he would spend the day looking crusty. Mama would not be happy about that.
“Shut it, you clod,” I said.
Mama was in the kitchen doing something to our grits, the smell of butter and salt overtaking the other house smells, the thoroughbreds of nourishment outgalloping the quarterhorses of soaking pans and stale potpourri. I forgot to brush my teeth, so my mouth tasted of sweat and cotton from biting my pillow through the night.
“This food ain’t done, y’all,” she said. It sometimes seemed that everything Mama made was in a state of coming but never arriving.
“Come on, Dee. We’ll just starve for now.”
“That’s right.” Mama stirred a small pot. Her face was fuller then. Chipmunk cheeks that I didn’t inherit. “Y’all starve for ten more minutes.”
“What’s all this whining that’s happening?” Sir asked. “Tell me, Lil Dee.” Dee was five—old enough to talk—but he didn’t. Not anymore. Sir was always trying to get him to speak up.
“It’s a travesty,” I said. “An aberration.”
My recollection of what really happened—what I actually saw, that is—is, and always has been, unreliable. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, or perhaps it’s just how my software operates. You could tell me that when we stepped outside, my family left standard reality. You could say that Sir became an animated boy, Mama a bird, Dee a cat, and me a dull duck, following along a wooded path. You could say that we were followed, hunted from the threshold of our door, by a creature made entirely of yellowed eyeballs, tusks, and filthy fabric fragments. That would all be perfectly fine and metaphorically true.
But I must think in terms of what I recall from this reality: that ripping cold breeze; the vibration of big commercial trucks skirting the outer limits of the Tiko for downtown; and the hand-drawn Tiko pride banners strung up in trees, on light poles, and on fences. They weren’t allowed to build stands and counters, so the festival was a rickety, bedraggled affair. Not the products but the presentation. Women in head wraps sold earrings lovingly laid on a hand-quilted blanket, which lay on the ground. Men in wide-shouldered suits offered vials of perfume from the insides of their jackets. A girl pulled a cooler full of foil-wrapped pies.
“Oh. What kind is this one, baby?” Mama asked. The pie looked like a tiny moon pinched between her fingernails.
“Punkin,” the girl said.
“That’s different,” Mama said.
The girl smacked her lips. “My daddy say they ain’t have no sweet potatoes at the food salvage.”
“Should we get any, Lil Dee?” Sir asked.
Dee smiled.
“Don’t just smile, kid,” I said. “Use your words.”
“You’ll hurt his feelings,” Sir said.
“Get two,” Dee said.
Mama gasped. Sir handed me a twenty-dollar bill. I told the girl to give me change.
“Give me a second.” The girl unfurled a small roll of ones. Then she ran, pulling her busted cooler.
“Hey!” I said.
“Let her go,” Sir said. “That’s Magic Mose’s daughter. I owe them.” Dee pointed and began to cry. It was the City Police. Sir scooped up Dee, and we got out of there. We were safe. Or so I thought.
“Hold it right there,” Douglas said. An electric current along my soft, hairless forearms.
“I live here,” Sir said. “You know that.”
“Leave us alone, you big ape,” I said. Most of the people near us cleared out.
“Quiet, boy,” Sir said. “Remember what I told you. Respect.”
What had he told me? I would have been lost in that moment to condense it to a cohesive theory of the case. But it went something like this: You are an angel. Fate, in the guise of ordinary people, conspires to pull the wings from your body. To break your grasshopper limbs. To leave you crippled in loam. To maniacally adjust the shape of your skull. To bleed your life’s blood onto concrete. To destroy you, destroy your future, to destroy your children’s future. Other peoples could rely on our nation’s fundamental fairness as a starting point for any hopes or dreams they might have. But you, Black Boy, were born weak but breathing and tossed into an open grave. Three quarters of Fate’s work was done in our reaction to the world. In attempting to back away from hissing fauna, a rattler, or a jaguar, we find ourselves stepping off a mountaintop and falling to the jagged rocks below. Never bow to anyone, Sir would say, but don’t let fools bring you down. Respecting yourself means respecting even those who don’t deserve it.
“Officer Douglas,” Sir said. “How can I help you, my man?”
“I got a report of a stolen beach bike, and you’re the focus of our investigation.”
“A beach bike,” I said. “My dad didn’t steal some stupid beach bike.”
“Shut him up, or I’ll shut him up.”
“Hush.” Sir squeezed my hand, hard.
The buildings of the Tiko emitted a special kind of energy. I couldn’t see whether we were being watched by our fellow Tikosians up in their apartments. But we were. A screen door slammed somewhere. The voices of others far away, perhaps as far as three or four buildings over, hummed. I squeezed Sir’s hand back. As soon as I did, he let go.
“Obviously, there’s a misunderstanding. You see. I don’t ride bikes. I have this old track and field injury that absolutely—”
“Nigga. Shut your stinking trap.” Douglas’s baton slapped against his palm, producing the sound of flesh on flesh, like a big happy kiss. “I know you with your murse bags and funny shoes. You think this is a conversation, but this a soliloquy.”
“You mean a monologue,” I said. “If it was a soliloquy, you’d be talking to yourself, Mr. Douglas.”
Douglas shoved the tip of his club against my throat. Mama yelled. I went to swat Douglas’s club out of my face, but I didn’t need to. Mama had already pushed her way in.
There is a point of order that I’m sure you’re aware of regardless of whether you are brown as mud or white as milk, that you’ve encountered regardless of whether you’re male or female. In physical confrontations, a woman can get away with a lot more than a man. A guy who flinches while literally under the gun better be wearing a steel chest plate because he’s going to take one to the heart. But in all but the most extreme circumstances, a woman has some freedom of body. She can shout, dance, and even attack without fear of reprisal.
This was what I believed. Of course, I was wrong.
In the scrum, Douglas pushed Mama to the ground. She fell awkwardly on her arm and screeched. Sir shoved Douglas. But Douglas didn’t fall—he was like a reed in the water. Douglas stretched the baton to its maximum reach and pressed the tip tenderly against Sir’s chin, like he was reenacting that painting where God touched naked Man. The ba
ton flicked Sir’s fedora from his head. Sir’s hat grazed my shoulder like a stricken sparrow on the way down. I, like Sir, was frozen in time waiting for some music to tell me I could move again.
“What?” Douglas said to Sir. “You going to cry now? Well, go ahead and cry for me.”
Sir kept his chin up. I held Dee’s hand. He had the calmest head in the bunch.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mama grimaced, clutched her arm. “This is how you act. Terrorizing your own people?”
“You ain’t none of mine,” Douglas said. “And I’m just checking out suspicious activity. Y’all the ones can’t fly right.”
A couple of other cops, one tall and white, the other tall and black, made their way over. Their name tags were the opposite of what one would expect.
“What’s this all about, Dougs?” White, the black cop, asked.
Sir knelt by Mama.
“He didn’t say you could move.” Black—the Caucasian one—pulled out his gun.
“Don’t,” Mama said. I thought she was talking to the cop with the gun. But it was my father she was talking to.
But Sir wasn’t listening. All the coolness and restraint he had exercised throughout our lives was gone. His forehead was bright with sweat. All I saw in his eyes was a lust. He stood up and went for Douglas, and it was a dance. Someone knocked me down. I skinned the back of my hand. The other two stepped in and grabbed Sir’s arms. Douglas brought his baton down on Sir’s forehead. I was amazed. I didn’t know that beneath that skin I knew so well was a river of blood, a river that had been freed to flow down his forehead and onto his light brown blazer. Douglas cursed, but he struck again. The other cops let go, and Sir slumped, a chunk of pink face flesh exposed. A dollop of red collected at his chin, where it dangled.
“Tell me you’re sorry,” Douglas said. “ ’Less you want some more.”
“Say it,” Black said.
We Cast a Shadow Page 22
