“My boys,” she said softly.
She came towards us on the couch. She sat on the armrest beside my brother and said she was sorry for being away so long, but Francis turned his face back towards the morning show on television as if the baking demonstrated on the screen was the most important thing in the world. I remember Mother gently rolling into a tight baton the very same newspaper Francis had read, and that she too had likely read on the way home. I remember her trying to touch Francis but my brother shifting away. She looked so tired. She smelled of sweat and detergents.
“Let me take you boys somewhere,” she said.
—
We caught a bus and then a commuter train, and we arrived at a mall that was big and bright and had polished marble floors. All around us were fancy shops, selling clothing and cosmetics and showing life-sized images of beautiful people, a few with light brown faces. As we moved from store to store, the clerks seemed especially attentive to us. Mother hadn’t changed out of her uniform, and her sneakers sounded her approach on the marble floors with a funny squeaking sound. Another clerk approached unsmilingly and said, “Can I help you?” “No thank you, just window shopping,” Mother said brightly. We walked by a big sculpture of polished steel, and in it I caught our reflections and realized that Francis and I weren’t looking our best either.
“No thanks, we’re just window shopping,” Mother explained again and again.
There was a cinema in the mall, and Mother took us to watch an action movie. It was the usual thing, lots of gunfire and flowing-haired heroism, explosions in some tropical setting, with the jeep of good guys speeding free. It all ended happily, but it somehow seemed to exhaust us, drive the air right out of our bodies. Afterwards, we were lucky to spot an empty table right underneath a wall-mounted television, and we scored it for ourselves amidst the bustle. Mom bought us hot dogs and Cokes and a cup of coffee for herself.
Nobody spoke. We had all missed a night of sleep, and everything that had happened to us now seemed to weigh heavily. My brother still wasn’t speaking or meeting Mom’s eyes. In the air around us were mysterious soft voices, and I was confused and even a bit panicked until I realized it was just a news update coming from the TV mounted above us. Mother held her styrofoam cup of coffee without drinking from it. Cradling it with both hands. As if drawing all her energy from its weak warmth. A thin skin of white floating on the surface.
There was an announcement on loudspeakers that the mall would be closing and that the food court would have to be cleared, but she didn’t seem to hear. Three white boys had been looking at us.
“You’re supposed to go now,” one said. “They’re closing the mall.”
“We are preparing to go,” said Mother.
“Hey,” said the other boy. “He just told you. You’re not supposed to be here anymore. You people better listen for once.”
“Leave us alone,” said Francis.
“Francis!” said Mother.
There was a smile from the boys. “Francis,” they repeated, smirking.
Francis stood and walked towards them, but he was easily pushed away, and he fell back hard on his bum. He got up and went to them again, but Mother pushed herself in between. The boys had their hands on her, grabbing her clothes and tugging and shoving for position and balance, and Francis and I started screaming. One of the boys seemed determined to put Mother in an arm lock, but she broke from it and slapped him hard. He held his cheek and finally backed away. “Nigger cunt,” he said.
When the defenders of the mall were gone, Mother quickly smoothed her uniform and patted her hair. She brushed at the streak of dirt on Francis’s shirt, and she held each of our faces.
“A couple punks, that’s all,” she said, and tried to smile.
—
When we got home, Mother made butter sandwiches for everyone, but nobody was hungry, and afterwards, for the first time ever, none of us felt like watching TV. We got into our pyjamas, and at last Francis’s resentment melted away.
He asked Mother to stay with us, and she allowed us both to lay beside her on the bottom bunk, sharing her warmth although she still smelled of the previous night’s work. It was a smell faint and vague but nevertheless there, not only of sweat and the throat rot of exhaustion and missed meals, not only of the vapours of chemicals on her skin and in her hair, but something else. Something old, forever clinging. She stroked our heads, and she began telling us one of her stories set long ago and in a different land, a legend this time about children who were lured into a forest by wicked little creatures, but she kept stopping, kept losing track of the tale she wanted to tell. “I’m sorry, I’m so tired, I can’t remember, I can’t go on.” She stood and asked Francis to return to his top bunk and then she turned off the light. I lay there with Francis in the dark. That first dark since the shooting.
I tried closing my eyes, but dreamed, as maybe Francis did too, of those wanted men, their formless dark faces. Outside the trees were clawed with ice and the wind blew and rattled the windows and brushed sleet on the panes.
A shout from outside. The gunning of some powerful machine on the avenue.
Francis climbed down from his bunk and helped me up from my own and led me down the hallway towards Mother’s bedroom. Mother wasn’t sleeping, she hadn’t even changed out of her uniform. She was just sitting on her bed in the dark. Her face turning towards us.
“He’s afraid,” Francis said, touching me.
“Come here. What is he afraid of?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the black murderers.”
“The…who?”
“The murderers. In the news. The black men…”
She closed her eyes, pressed her temples. She recovered. “The criminals, Francis. The criminals will be caught by the police and punished. They do not stand a chance. Please try to understand. We’re lucky here. We’re very safe.”
“He doesn’t believe we’re very safe.”
“We are, Francis.”
“We’re not. We never were.”
“You are confused and tired. You must please, for me, calm down.”
“You’re not telling him the truth.”
“Yes I am, Francis.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“But I need you to believe me.”
She was gripping him by the arm and shaking him. Pain upon his face but sudden terror when he met her eyes. Mother touched her face, realized she was crying.
—
“What happened?” asked Raj. “Can someone just tell me? Who did this?”
I had run after Francis and caught up with him just outside the strip mall, passing shopkeepers arriving in the dark for work and now staring at the bloodied young man. I helped him into Desirea’s and the boys joined me at once and got him into a barber’s chair. For a moment, they stood staring too. But suddenly Dru was doing what he could with gauze and medical tape. Francis was uncooperative. He seemed drunk, shifting around and talking to himself.
“Sit still, homeboy,” Dru said. “Just a little longer.”
“I don’t get it,” said Raj, turning to Jelly. “You said it happened at the audition? Were you jumped?”
Jelly didn’t answer. Dru managed to patch up some of the ragged flesh on Francis’s face, blooms of red showing through the bandages. When he tried to touch another wound with alcohol on a cloth, Francis cursed and jerked away.
“Easy, homeboy,” said Dru. “You’ve got to calm down.”
“He needs a hospital,” said Jelly. “His eyes…his pupils don’t match.”
Francis rose unsteadily from his chair and started towards Raj, but Dru stepped in the way, telling him gently that he needed to sit. Jelly said the same, touching his arm. Francis swayed at bit, glaring at Raj.
“What’s your problem?” said Raj, carefully.
“What’s my problem?” said Francis. “Look at yourself. Look at all of you.”
Raj blinked, looked at Jelly and Dru, looked around at the others all up
on their feet now. Trance, Kev, Raj, Dru. Gene. Had I recognized it only then? We were losers and neighbourhood schemers. We were the children of the help, without futures. We were, none of us, what our parents wanted us to be. We were not what any other adults wanted us to be. We were nobodies, or else, somehow, a city.
“We’re all just dreaming,” Francis said. “It wasn’t ever going to work.”
“Homeboy,” said Jelly, pulling him down.
“Nobody’s listening. There’s no way forward.”
Jelly didn’t answer my brother in words. He didn’t argue. He just touched him, stroked his back and neck. He held my brother’s face and rested his forehead on his.
—
They were still touching when the cops showed up, and on one of the uniformed men was a look, a curled lip. There were many cops this time, more than the last time, and they were geared up, sweating in their vests. One announced that they were responding to a call from a shopkeeper, something about a fight, a boy badly injured, and Dru began explaining that nothing was going on. The cop pointed at Francis.
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing,” said Dru. “He’s just hurt. We’re handling it.”
“Okay,” said the cop. “I want to see ID from everyone. Stand back near the wall, all of you. You know the drill.”
“Come on, Fran,” said Jelly.
He tried to get Francis up from the chair, and I helped too, although my brother’s limbs were now stiff. He was clearly in pain and as he got to his feet he swore and pulled his arms away from us. He kicked the little metal stand where Dru kept his clippers and scissors. It toppled noisily to the ground.
“You three,” said the cop, “stand apart.”
“He’s hurt,” explained Jelly. “We’re helping him up.”
“We’ll handle that. You do as we say.”
“What did we do?” shouted Francis, his voice cracking.
He shook off our hands, struggled to stand, and he took a wobbled step forward to steady himself. Even to my eyes, he was a sight. He had broken into a sweat with the new pain. He coughed and spat something from his mouth, but badly, something thick and stringy clinging to his lip. I saw a cop undo his holster.
“You sit back down, sir,” the cop said.
“Do it now,” said Dru.
“Do it now,” said Gene, her voice lowered.
“No,” Francis said. “You tell me. What did we do?”
He stumbled with stiff limbs.
“Stay where you are,” I heard a cop say. “Don’t come any closer.” Another clasp was taken off a holster. And when a gun was drawn, I got vertigo, the world spinning around the weapon. I couldn’t move. Jelly still hadn’t listened, he hadn’t left Francis’s side, but Francis was pushing ahead with him, pushing closer to the cop who had commanded. My brother was trembling, but there was an energy in him that wouldn’t be stilled. His eyes had begun to grow wet, and as he smiled a scab broke open on his lip and streaked red upon his teeth.
“You think I’m crazy,” he said. “You think I’m dangerous.”
“I think I want you to sit down, sir,” said a cop.
“Don’t call me sir. Don’t go around pretending anymore. You answer my question. You give me an explanation.”
“We’re not asking you a second time,” a cop said.
“Do what he says,” another cop said.
“Fran,” said Jelly. “Please.”
My brother stumbled once more. His eyes were bleeding water. His smile grew. “It’s happening today,” he said. “You’re going to tell me what I’ve done.”
“Don’t move.”
“Now. Not later.”
“Do. Not. Move.”
“Francis,” I whispered.
I think I said this. I think I said his name. I’d seen a cop grab Jelly’s arm. “Don’t touch him,” Francis said, and it was over. I don’t even remember hearing the shot. My brother just fell.
SEVEN
It’s early morning in the emergency ward, and a nurse has just updated me on Mother. Physically, there’s nothing more serious than the hairline fracture of her femur. The car was likely slowing down when it struck her, and she is reasonably healthy. She’s been given something strong for the pain, and so she may not be able to fully communicate just yet. In a short while, the doctor will be around to offer final updates before her release. The nurse can’t say exactly when. It has been an unusually busy night, she explains. There have been other pressing cases.
I know about one of them. A couple hours ago, a boy was rushed in on a stretcher to the station across from us. He was unconscious, his head and neck in some stabilizing device. Two others came with him. A boy, probably his brother, wearing the sort of bomber jacket every kid around twelve seems to wear these days. A woman too, definitely his mother, dressed professionally in a skirt and white blouse. The boy on the stretcher was quickly hooked up to monitors, an oxygen mask applied to his face, a second IV started, while the nurses and doctors asked questions. His age again, ma’am? Medications taken? Known allergies? The mother had the voice of someone who uses it with authority, and also a vague Caribbean accent, but her voice wavered and her answers were hesitant, her eyes riveted only upon her son. A nurse with a clipboard asked the mother for an address, if she happened to have any ID for her son, preferably a health card, and the mother suddenly sharpened, pronounced it clearly.
“He is a citizen.”
The nurse tapped the drip of the intravenous, checked on vitals. A doctor arrived with news of the X-rays, and he tried to reassure the mother. Her son had sustained a concussion, but no more serious head trauma. He had a broken collarbone, but his back and neck were apparently all right, and he would recover.
“I have to ask,” said the doctor. “Why on earth were you boys up on the roof of your house at night?”
“To see,” the younger brother admitted softly.
Now, behind the light blue drape, I hear the mother speaking discreetly into her phone. “Yes, he’s all right. Yes, he’s very lucky.” And it’s true, for this family at least. Sure as day, there’ll be scolding and punishment, but no funeral. No “complicated grief,” no greater meaning in this everyday accident. Just two boys hoping to see.
ON THE MORNING OF FRANCIS’S FUNERAL, Mother and I took a long time getting dressed. I did the buttons on my shirt wrongly and stared at my mistake failing to understand it for what seemed a full minute. Mother ironed her black dress so slowly I smelled the fabric burning. She fixed her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, redoing her work at least three times, and she must have applied her Chantilly perfume more than once, forgetting the times before, because the smell of it filled the cab as we travelled to the funeral home. Mother turned to me, asked me in a whisper if I’d remembered to turn the lights off. I said yes and tried to read her face as she touched her temple with a dampened tissue.
“Did you put on clean socks?” she asked.
Mrs. Henry was there, in a midnight-purple hat, no doubt reserved for occasions like these. Dru was there, of course, and also the Professa, Gene, Raj, Kev, even little Trance. A day before, they had come as a group to our door, and when I answered there was awkward quiet before Dru cleared his throat. “We would like to offer our condolences,” he said. I couldn’t even say thank you. I just nodded and closed the door, and now they just nodded at me from their seats, in their borrowed suits either too tight or too big. They looked so stiff and quiet, so unlike the boys I knew. Jelly wasn’t among them. When Francis was shot he wouldn’t stop screaming and struggling, he had been charged with resisting arrest, and he still hadn’t posted bail.
Aisha was there, with her father. The day before, she too had tried to visit me. I’d opened the door and dropped my eyes when I saw it was her. She had moved to hug me, and I’d flinched so strongly that it startled us both. I’d told her it wasn’t a good time, and I’d closed the door and didn’t open it the second and third time she knocked. Now I felt her eyes upon me, and i
t became convenient for me to look elsewhere in the room. In a seat near the back, away from others, I noticed a man in a well-fitting tan suit. He might have been one of those people in the Park who made a strange habit of going to funerals. But there was something about this man; he seemed somehow familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I didn’t want to stare, but I studied his earlobes, which I suddenly wanted to touch as proof. He noticed me looking, and nodded.
It was a simple Pentacostal ceremony, arranged by Mrs. Henry, and the pastor was thoughtful with his words and kind in his acknowledgement of Mother and me. After a hymn that I never really heard, the service was over.
I remember helping Mother to rise to sign some papers. And I remember watching, mesmerized by the time she took with the script, the immense and terrible care, the elegant loops at the beginning of her name, at the beginning of the month, the perfect even slant of the letters, a crossed t, a dotted i.
When I looked again, the man in the tan suit was gone.
—
When Francis and I were young, as small a matter as a spot of food on our shirts, or a crust of toothpaste around our mouths, could raise fury in our mother. “You don’t listen!” she might shout at us. “You all don’t pay attention to what I tell you. You all is harden! Too too harden.” If we ever hurt ourselves, she would promise to “corn our backsides.” She vowed to whip the life force back into us if ever through sheer foolishness we cut ourselves and shamefully bled our lives away. And after Francis’s death, and in the terrible quiet and composure that now set upon her, I hoped she would find that threatened rage, even if she directed it towards me. A rage that, I knew, wouldn’t ever rouse Francis back to life, but might do that for her.
The rage did not come. And on the cab ride home from the funeral, Mother sat as still as before. We returned to our door at the Waldorf, and she retrieved a bill from the mailbox and placed it carefully on the kitchen table as she always did to remind herself to pay it. The weather had begun to cool, but our place was still hot. She went to her bedroom to lie down, and I checked on her at least a couple times, putting a wet cloth on her forehead. Her eyes were opened each time, but she never spoke.
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