Between Heaven and Here

by Susan Straight

  The woman called herself Fly yelled, “I told you bitches, you played out.” Even the way she said bitches was New York. Sisia yelled something back. But Glorette just stood there, looking up at the sky like she was so bored. She didn’t even recognize. She was so beautiful that the same men would always want her. Chess, Sidney, a couple different white dudes who came every week, and guys cruising down Palm who just saw her face and stopped.

  Fly rolled her van right up behind the women now and hollered, “You two old and played out. You played out. Move long now, move long with yo yellow country ass.”

  That was for Glorette.

  Alfonso heard Glorette laughing when he headed back to the Navigator, and the van sped past him in a rush of dust.

  IF HE HADN’T had to go home on that Wednesday in May and give his mother some money for the twins so she could buy school pictures, he and Jazen wouldn’t have seen Victor walking down La Reina Road away from Sarrat, and they wouldn’t have picked him up, and he wouldn’t have started rolling with them now and then, and Victor wouldn’t have gotten Alfonso thinking about all those SAT words. The analogies. The damn analogies stuck inside his head like a bad song. Bad lyrics. Like when his mother played “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel.” That Tavares shit that stayed behind your forehead all night.

  Then every night when Alfonso saw Glorette, he kept wondering if Victor had taught her any of the words, whether she thought about the analogies when she lit up the pipe every night.

  Victor was carrying a big book. He got in the back and said to Alfonso, “Test is next Saturday. I been studying for two months. So many words rolling around in my head it’s like the lotto machine—I never know what word shows up.”

  “Like what?”

  “Magnanimous. It’s magnanimous that JZ stopped the ride for me, cause it’s hot as hell out here and I had a stride ahead.”

  “Like generous?”

  “Like generous with—something else. Generous with whip cream and shit.”

  They all started laughing, and then JZ turned the stereo down a little. The speakers were bumping next to Alfonso’s leg. Chamillionaire. JZ said, “Where your moms stay now?”

  “The Villas.”

  Glorette moved every three months. Sometimes she lived with Sisia. Whoever wasn’t being evicted. You could keep a place about three months without paying. So if Victor was staying with her, and walking out to Sarrat to hang with his grandpère, and studying for this SAT test, he—

  “Oh, shit,” Alfonso said. “You right. Magnanimous, anonymous, magnificent—all that shit you have to hear when you in English class.”

  “Or watchin CNN.”

  “I ain’t doin neither.”

  “You lucky.”

  But Victor looked out the window, and when Alfonso glanced back at him, his twists all sculpted so they looked messy—the way poindexters hung out back at Linda Vista High—he could tell V didn’t think Fonso was lucky at all. Thought he was a fool.

  IF HE HADN’T been such a good shot, and he hadn’t been so cut from playing football and working out, Jazen wouldn’t have pressed him. It wasn’t like you had an interview and shit. Jazen just kept pressing him, kept saying, “You the one, nigga, I need your time.” One day Jazen came by the parking lot after school and said, “You want to roll? I gotta make a run to Rialto.”

  Alfonso rode shotgun and knew something must be in the dash. Mostly he was just big. Football big. Guns showing in the t-shirt. Keep the arm out the window so they could see.

  And J gave him a hundred dollar bill.

  After that he showed up once a week or so, and then Alfonso had seen the pickup place and couldn’t really say Naw, man, I ain’t up for it, I got practice. And then one night in January they got stopped, and the cops took pictures of him and JZ up against the brick wall with shirts off and arms up, and he was a known associate.

  Riding with Jazen was like riding with some grumpy old man. Like Bernie Mac, only nothing was funny. All he did was complain. Sitting with Moms was like sitting with some nightmare doll that wouldn’t shut up. She could talk about shoes or Glorette or the twins or BET or Jada Pinkett Smith or the weather.

  But Victor was hilarious. He had always been hilarious. Like a cross between a comedian and a professor. He knew so many words and so many songs and so much shit that everything he said worked. Jazen had hated Victor since he met him. Back when JZ first showed up at Linda Vista as a freshman, when his moms moved back from New Orleans. They were all in freshman football together, and then Victor quit because he hated the coaches, and JZ quit because he hated practice, and Alfonso was the star at strong safety until he ended up at Juvenile Hall after patrol pulled them over the second time and found the gun.

  It wasn’t Alfonso’s gun, but he was a known associate.

  IF VICTOR HADN’T been so funny, and Jazen hadn’t been so bored, they wouldn’t have picked him up after school a few times in the first week of June. “Loquacious.”

  “The fuck that mean?”

  “Somebody who talks a lot.”

  “My mama.”

  Victor laughed. “Yeah. I was out there cause my moms told me Grandpère was sick and I had to hang with him, and I kept trying to study and your moms was all up on everybody’s porch all the time.” Then he made his voice cautious. He stopped smiling. Scared of us, Alfonso thought. “I mean, she just—”

  “Shit, nigga, she crazy. My moms is fuckin crazy. She just drink that Hennessy and talk. Every minute she ain’t asleep. Why you think I try not to be out there?”

  If his own moms didn’t talk so fuckin much, she wouldn’t have driven every human out of the house. Even the twins tried to stay in the groves most of the day. Tavares and Tenerife. Named for the band, and some city her cousin Fantine told her about. Canary Islands.

  Alfonso had turned eighteen, and now his mother was talking yang about he was the man of the house. That was bullshit. She had the twins with some fool from San Bernardino named Tommy and he was doing five years for little shit. Driving the twins without car seats, got a ticket for that and for speeding, and then the tickets went to warrant, and then he got pulled over for expired tags, and then they found out he didn’t pay child support. Tommy was man of the house.

  His father Alphonse was man of his house. He lived in Rialto in a shitty studio apartment. They hadn’t let him back in Sarrat for ten years, since he brought the cops down there to the orange groves when he was running from some deal. Enrique had told his father he could never come back. Enrique didn’t want cops there. Which is how they all knew Enrique had done some shady shit in his own past, way back when he bought the land.

  Sarrat was ten houses in the orange groves, and his moms would wander up to anybody’s porch so all those words he imagined like gallons of fucking alphabet soup could come rolling out of her mouth.

  “You goin out to Sarrat, or you headin to The Villas?” Jazen asked Victor.

  “Villas.”

  The Navigator headed away from school. Jazen said, “Y’all some country-ass niggas. Out there in the trees and shit.”

  Alfonso always had to think ten seconds before answering Jazen. All day long. It was tiring. You never knew whether Jazen wanted to argue or laugh or just talk and talk. “We ain’t in the trees now.” Was that enough to remind JZ of why he wanted Alfonso to ride shotgun? It wasn’t a shotgun in the glove compartment.

  Gloves. Who in the hell gon have gloves in there now?

  “The whole book fulla words?” Alfonso said.

  Victor opened to a page and said, “You got analogies. A whole section. They give you two words and you figure out the relationship, like this: Debater: laryngitis. So you go, a debater needs to talk, and laryngitis means he can’t. You got five choices: Pedestrian: lameness. Actor: applause. Doctor: diagnosis. Swimmer: wet. And writer: paper.”

  Jazen said, “Pedestrian: lameness. If lameness mean the motherfucker can’t walk. Cause if the motherfucker just lame, then it could be player: lameness.”
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  Everybody was laughing when they turned onto Palm, near the 7-Eleven and the Launderland. Victor said, “Ligneous: wood.”

  Alfonso said, “You gotta know science to do the English part? Damn.”

  Victor said, “Cellular: microbe. Nautical: water. Igneous: rock. Osseous: bone. Fossilized: plant.”

  Jazen said, “Shit.”

  Alfonso said, “Osso Buco. Some dude was cookin that on the food channel when I was at my moms’ the other day. So that had bones and shit. Nautical is, like, boats. They always got boats in them ads for Nautica. How long you get for each one?”

  “Not very long,” Victor said. “Igneous is a kind of rock, and sedimentary I remember is the one with layers, like sand. Igneous was the other kind.” He turned the page. “It’s D. Osseous. Bone.”

  “Give me another one,” Jazen said, pulling into the 7-Eleven. The Villas were two blocks away, down Hyacinth, one of the narrow side streets where all the complexes got named for flowers. Jacaranda Gardens, Jessamine Villas, Hyacinth Court. Like SAT words.

  Victor hadn’t even looked up from the book. He read, “Lullaby: barcarole. Choices are birth: marriage. Night: morning. Cradle: gondola. Song: poem. And carol: sonneteer.”

  “The fuck?” Jazen said, hands on the wheel. “You gotta know Spanish, too?”

  Alfonso looked at the hundreds of pieces of darkened gum on the sparkling cement in front of the 7-Eleven. Black moons. The sun was going down. Victor’s moms Glorette would be out here soon, with Sisia. Victor wasn’t paying attention. He was murmuring to himself. Christmas carol. Sonnet was a poem, right? What the hell was a barcarole? A gondola was a boat. In Venice. “It’s C. Cradle: gondola.” Victor looked up. “So barcarole must be a song about water. Lullaby and cradle.” He blinked at the face watching them through the 7-Eleven window. Mr. Patel. With his arms folded, frowning at the music bumping from the speakers.

  Jazen got the three lines on his forehead. He was pissed. Bored. He lifted his chin and Victor opened the door, and Alfonso watched him hike the backpack up on his shoulder when he headed fast across the alley and down toward the Villas.

  That was Friday night.

  Alfonso heard shooting around one in the morning. Then the Blue Bird circled over the apartments, and patrol went racing over there.

  He heard what happened Monday. Sisia had taken two fools back to Glorette’s apartment for some extra money, and the fools got in a fight and one shot up the place. Patrol took Victor, too, cause he was in the bedroom asleep. With the book, Alfonso thought. Probably had that book under his fuckin pillow. Victor was still seventeen, so they took him to the Hall and no one showed up to get him for three days. The SAT had been Saturday morning. Eight am.

  IF HE HADN’T seen Victor tonight at 7-Eleven, he wouldn’t have the analogies stuck in his head again. “Hey, man,” Alfonso said. Victor was buying pistachios and coffee. “You drinkin coffee? It’s August, man, fuckin 106 today.”

  Victor poured hazelnut creamer into the coffee. “I got registration for city college tomorrow. I’m still thinkin about my schedule and I got a lotta reading tonight.”

  Alfonso got another Coke. “What you reading?”

  “James Baldwin.” Victor held up his pistachios. Pink. “These damn things keep me alive, man. Salt and coffee. You know what Baldwin said? Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

  Alfonso looked at the nuts. What was he supposed to say—I saw your moms in the alley earlier and she had a bag of ramen? She said ten for a dollar, over at Rite Aid, and you go through them motherfuckers.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “City college. Like thirteenth grade.”

  Alfonso had seen Victor’s eyes the week after he’d missed the SAT. Small and pink-rimmed like he’d cried in secret for days. The last test he could take before applying to USC or UCLA. He said the fucking words wouldn’t leave his head. They were all floating around there like moths that come out the cupboard if you buy some flour with worms in it and then they hatch. “What you takin?”

  “Psych, English lit, world religions, and world music.”

  “Damn,” Alfonso said. He remembered the quad, the old brick buildings, the big jacaranda trees.

  He’d checked out the football team, junior year, back when the coach was recruiting him. One of the players took him around and when Alfonso said, “You gotta take English class, right?” the quarterback said, “I speak that language fluently already, my brotha.”

  “Where you stay now?” Alfonso said. “You need a ride?”

  Then Victor grinned and shook his head. “See? Where do you live is a standard construction. Because most white people live somewhere. But we always say where do you stay. Because historically we’re used to being there just for a brief time, Fonso. A minute. I stay in Jacaranda right now. With my moms.”

  Alfonso laughed, and then Victor said, “You still live with your moms?”

  Alfonso looked out at the traffic on Palm. “I stay in the damn Navigator most the time. I hate bein at my moms’, and I’m startin to hate ridin with JZ.”

  “For real?” Victor frowned.

  Alfonso nodded. “Yeah.”

  Victor lifted his chin toward Jacaranda Gardens. “Save your money, dude, and let’s get a place. But not down there. By the college.”

  Alfonso laughed again. “Save my money. Man, my moms get all my cash.” Then he stopped.

  “And my moms gives all her cash to you,” Victor said softly.

  She gave it to JZ. Or somebody bought rock and handed her the little pebble instead of a twenty. “I’ma come down there with you tomorrow,” Alfonso said. “Check in with Coach Ken.”

  “If you ain’t just talking shit, meet me up there at the quad at nine, man,” Victor said, and held out his hand.

  IF HE HADN’T taken the first hundred, he wouldn’t be ridin right now. What the youngsters like Tiquan didn’t know was how hard it was just to listen to people talk all day and night. They thought his job was the easiest—ride in the Navigator most of the night, then chill at his mother’s house during the day. But that meant watching every minute for who might try to run up on Jazen. Like last year when the LA fool showed up to stay with his cousin in The Riviera and wanted Launderland and the whole alley because he thought Rio Seco was country and Jazen would just back down. He came up on the Navigator with a .45 one night, talking about city mouse, country mouse, and he’d be back tomorrow.

  All night Jazen talked about it while Angie redid his braids, and Alfonso wished he would shut up so he could see the way the scenario would play out. How would the fool approach? He could take out an animal fifty feet away that had frozen and crouched in what it thought was camouflage. Wild grapevines under the cottonwoods. Oleander bushes with their nasty poisonous leaves.

  Uncle Lafayette said that was how his own father had killed the man who tried to take the orange groves and the land away. Back in 1950-something. Oleander and scorpions. Said he overheard some Indian dude tell his moms the story one night. Dude was drunk. But he said he and Enrique buried the white man under cement and he’d left a sign. A round black stone with a white eyespot in the south corner.

  Alfonso had seen the stone, on the old rockwall shed near his mother’s house.

  Enrique had killed like five guys. He was an old man who just watched everything. His eyes moved first, then his head, when he checked you out. They said he could still shoot gophers in the dark, he was that good. But Enrique said, “Never shoot nobody, me.”

  He’d killed them. With his hands. Bullet or no, they were dead.

  That was all the story anyone cared about. TV, movies, books. Victor had told him that once. What you learn from Russian novels and American movies is that there’s only one story—how somebody had to kill somebody else, and did they get caught or not. He said the world was only about punishment. And sex.

  The LA fool came up the alley from Jessamine, walking toward the Navigator where it was parked beh
ind Sundown Liquor while JZ was talking to Chess in the parking lot under the pepper trees. Chess bought rock for Glorette every Friday night. It was a trip.

  The LA fool had his right hand in his coat pocket. Alfonso leaned both hands out the car window and shot him in the ankle from nearly a block away. He went down like his bones turned to jello. The ankle bone. Must have hurt like a motherfucker. JZ stayed cool. He got in the car and drove away slow.

  What Tiquan and the youngsters didn’t know was his mother woke Alfonso up after he’d only slept maybe three hours, so she could talk about his father, and about the man she was seeing now who sold bootleg DVDs and was always trying to get Alfonso to carry some in the car, like the Navigator was a little Mexican pushcart with mainly paletas inside but also ears of boiled corn and cotton candy dangling from the sides. With those little silver bells so you could hear the man coming from blocks away. The Navigator had woofers and Lil Wayne.

  Alfonso just wanted to save up enough money to get his own apartment. A big ass bed and headphones in his ears with that ocean-wave shit playing, and sleep all day. Pull down the shades and turn off the cell. Nobody talking. Twenty hours of sleep.

  IF HE HADN’T had to pee again after midnight, and hadn’t wanted to talk to one more damn person, he wouldn’t have been in that part of the alley when the one called herself Fly started messing with Glorette again. Jazen was calling girls in front of Launderland. Only a little product in the third dryer from the left.

  No bathrooms in Launderland or the 7-Eleven, and unless you bought something in the taqueria, no bathroom, and even then the two Mexican ladies looked at Alfonso like he was crazy if he went in there more than twice in one night, and it could be fools from Siete Street Locos in there, and even though Alfonso wasn’t Westside Loc Mafia, Jazen claimed them when it was useful, and Siete would shoot anybody black now anyway. They called it snail hunting.

  Or he could go to Angie’s apartment in The Riviera, four blocks away. But there were always girls there, and he was tired of talking.