by Pearl Cleage
When we settled back down in the front seat, I poured a cup of fresh coffee from the thermos she had brought, and Joyce leaned back and closed her eyes. The music playing in the house was another presence in the car with us. You could feel the beat inside your body.
“I wish they would turn it down,” Joyce said. “What if we can’t hear her if she needs us?”
“The windows are open,” I said. “We’ll hear her.”
“I’d like to walk up in there right now, grab Imani, and run like hell.”
“Plan A,” I said. “We tossed it in favor of Plan B. Remember?”
“Do you think she’s okay?”
“I’m sure she is.” I still had Eddie’s confidence draped around my shoulders like a Spanish shawl.
“I’m going to figure out how to make peace with Gerry,” Joyce said.
“You didn’t start the war, did you?”
Joyce shrugged without sitting up, but she opened her eyes. “I don’t care. This woman is crazy enough about something that she’s prepared to accuse you of molesting a kid and give Imani to a crack addict to make sure I don’t challenge her and her drunken husband. Well, they can have it, whatever it is. I’m going to stay so far away from them, they’ll forget they ever knew me.”
I opened my mouth to agree with Joyce when she held up her hand.
Listen!”
At first I didn’t hear anything, but then, down under all that bass, I heard Imani crying. Inside the house, Frank heard it, too.
“Shut that bitch up, goddammit! I’m not tellin’ your ass again!”
Mattie shouted something back at him that we couldn’t hear, but his answer came through loud and clear.
“Don’t think I won’t! I ain’t scared of them bitches! Kung Fu neither. Fuck ’em!”
We looked at each other. We were here for this moment, but now it was here and we weren’t exactly sure what to do about it. Imani’s cry was becoming a breathless wail, then we heard the sound of glass breaking and the music stopped. Imani did, too.
Joyce and I practically fell out of the car. We hit the ground running and started knocking on the door and ringing the bell. Imani started screaming inside the house and Joyce kicked the door so hard it cracked. The music started up again even louder and Mattie jerked the door open just enough for Joyce to get her foot in it.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Mattie shrieked. We could hear Imani crying so hard she was gasping. Joyce reached in and grabbed a piece of Mattie’s blouse, pulling her toward us outside on the porch.
“If you don’t open this goddam door, I’m going to—”
The door opened so fast, Joyce stumbled and I grabbed for her, but she leaned into the fall and tried to duck by Frank, who reached out and snatched her back without taking his eyes off me.
“Where the fuck you think you goin’?” He was very high and very pissed off.
“Give me my baby!”
“She ain’t your baby,” Mattie hollered. “You ain’t got no baby!”
“Give her to me now!” Joyce shouted.
Frank looked at her and twisted his face into a terrible smile.
“She’s asleep,” he said as if we couldn’t hear her crying. “Now, get the fuck out of my face.”
He was pushing us easily out of the doorway, and Imani’s sobs from somewhere back inside the house were desperate and terrified. I tried to look around Frank and Mattie to see if I could see her, but what I saw was old Mack’s black-and-white, rabbit-eared TV sitting on a table in the living room.
Joyce started begging. “Don’t do this,” she said, her nails clawing at Frank’s sleeve. “Please, please, don’t do this!”
“Do what?” he said, brushing Joyce off as if she were a child. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’. If I was doin’ somethin’, I’d be flashin’ this, awright?” He reached in his pocket and waved a nine-millimeter pistol in Joyce’s face. “But I ain’t did that. I ain’t did shit.”
“Please.” Tears were running down Joyce’s face and I was trying to calculate the odds against us if we rushed them. “Please.”
“You’re trespassing,” Frank said. “Get going. Especially you.” He leaned forward and nudged my shoulder with the gun. It looked huge and so did Frank. “I don’t want none of what you got.”
“Come on, Joyce,” I said, not knowing anymore if I was more afraid for Imani or for us. I half dragged, half carried her back to the car, but when I tried to push her in the passenger side, she wouldn’t go. She gripped the side of the car and held on.
“Goddammit, Joyce,” I whispered. “That fool is still on the porch waiting for us to get in this car. What good will it do Imani if he shoots us?”
“I can’t leave her here.” Joyce was sobbing.
“Just get in the car,” I said. “When he goes inside, we can figure out what to do.”
That made sense to her because she let go and jumped in the car. I ran around to the driver’s side, started it up, and took off. In the rearview mirror I saw Frank put the gun back in his pocket and go inside. I made sure we rounded the first curve so they couldn’t see us and then pulled over to the side of the road. Joyce wasn’t crying anymore. Now she was defiant, and since I was the only one there, she aimed it at me.
“I’ve lost two babies,” she said, opening her lips but not her teeth. “I’m not giving up another one.”
“He’s got a gun,” I said. “We need some help.”
“We’ve got a gun.” The shotgun was still standing in the corner of the closet in my room. I could tell by the way she said it that she wished we had it with us. I did, too, even though the idea of actually using it made me feel cold and queasy. I wondered if Frank had ever shot anybody.
“I’ll go get it,” I said, before I knew I was going to say anything. But it was out there now and Joyce was looking at me like I was in charge. “You go back and watch the house,” I said. “Don’t let them see you.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Joyce nodded, opened the car door, and headed back toward the house. I watched her and wondered what the hell we were doing. I drove to the main road with every intention of turning right toward our house, but where I went was left, straight to Eddie’s.
• 5
the rest of the ride is a blur. So is whatever I told Eddie. So is the ride back to Mattie’s house until we pulled up in the yard. Then everything slows way down the way it does in a bad dream.
The red lights of the ambulance. The paramedic rushing out with Imani on a tiny stretcher with an oxygen mask over her whole face. Joyce with frantic eyes running behind them, leaping into the ambulance before they think to question her right to be there, turning her ruined face to tell me that Frank broke the baby’s legs before the attendant slams the door and they race off into the night, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and we are left standing there, trying to understand.
But no explanation is possible. Frank and Mattie are gone.
• 6
when me and Eddie finally got back from the hospital, the sun was coming up. Joyce had checked into a motel across the street from the medical center to grab a few hours sleep until they brought Imani to a postop room where Joyce could sit with her, which is what Joyce intended to do. Mattie and Frank were still missing, and Joyce wasn’t taking any chances. I was supposed to stick by the phone in case anybody called with news.
The three of us had spent the night in the windowless emergency room, talking to doctors, giving statements to cops, comforting each other, praying for Imani, trying to piece together what happened.
When I pulled off toward Eddie’s, Joyce had headed back to the house, trying to stay out of sight, but as soon as she rounded the curve in the road, she could hear Mattie screaming.
“Are you crazy? What did you do?”
Frank shouted back, “She fell, okay? The bitch fell! Why you screamin’ at me?”
Joyce ran around to the back of the house and the door wasn’t l
ocked. Mattie sounded hysterical.
“She hurt bad, nigga. Do somethin’!”
“Nobody tole you to bring the bitch up in here in the first place,” Frank said.
Joyce saw the telephone on the kitchen wall and dialed the number at the hospital without caring if they heard her. She thought Frank was going to kill her when he ran around the corner and saw her shouting into the phone, so she screamed at the dispatcher to send the cops, too, because there was a man threatening her with a gun. He grabbed the phone, ripped it out of the socket, and sent it flying across the room so hard it shattered when it hit the far wall. Then he snatched the gun out of his pocket, cocked it, and pointed it at Joyce’s head.
Mattie was still screaming. Joyce looked at Frank and she said right then she stopped being scared. She didn’t care what he did to her. If he was going to shoot her, that’s what he was going to have to do, but he was going to have to do it on her way to Imani.
“Why you keep fuckin’ with me, huh?” he said. “You think you made of steel or some shit?”
“Get out of my way,” she told Frank, and took a step toward him.
“She called the cops, fool!” Mattie was tugging at his arm. “We gotta go, man. We gotta get the fuck out of here!”
Frank glanced at her and back to Joyce, who took another step in his direction.
“Let’s go, Frank!” Mattie grabbed her purse, swept a counter full of crack paraphernalia into a drawer like any cop worth the badge wouldn’t find it in his sleep. “Cops, man! Let’s go!”
Frank seemed to hear his sister for the first time. He looked at Joyce and lowered the gun slowly.
“You ain’t seen the last of me, bitch,” he said. “Count on that shit.”
Then they both headed for the door and Joyce ran to find Imani.
When she did, she almost lost it. Imani was lying on her stomach on a blanket spread out on the bare floor. She wasn’t moving and at first Joyce thought they had killed her, but when she put her hand on her back, she could feel Imani breathing. That’s when she saw her legs. They were splayed out at weird angles they never would have found on their own and dark bruises were already forming where Frank had twisted them so hard he broke the bones. Imani had passed out.
It took Joyce a long time to say all this because she was crying and shaking so bad she almost couldn’t talk. When she saw what he had done, she was afraid to move Imani because she didn’t want to make the injuries any worse. So she covered her up with part of the blanket and just sat there with her, praying that the ambulance would get there quickly, and it did.
By early this morning, they had operated on Imani’s legs, set the broken bones, and put two tiny casts on her. The left leg was broken at the thigh, and the right one just below the knee. Both ankles were severely strained, but neither one was broken. The X rays hadn’t shown any other internal injuries and the doctor said she had probably passed out from pain and shock when her legs were hurt and not from any blows to the head.
Joyce was sitting there, listening intently to the doctor, but she was squeezing my hand so hard I wanted to pry her fingers loose, but I didn’t. She needed somebody to hold on to and that somebody was me.
The truth of it was, we couldn’t get close enough to suit me. I knew I could have lost both of them tonight—Joyce and Imani. Frank had been moving in the wrong direction so fast, we hadn’t been able to figure out how to head him off before it was too late. I knew it was a miracle that he hadn’t shot everybody in the house, including his sister.
The doctor told Joyce that Imani was going to be pretty doped up for the next couple of days and she was going to need therapy for her legs once the casts came off, but that she was a strong baby and would probably make a complete recovery.
“If we’re lucky,” he said, “she won’t even have much of a limp.”
• 7
since we were too keyed up to go inside, me and Eddie walked down to the dock and laid out full length side by side in the sunshine. It was still early and the breeze off the water was fresh and cool. The birds were singing, the water was lapping at the shore, and there were black-eyed Susan’s and Queen Anne’s lace growing up the sandy slope to the house. It seemed impossible that Frank could have done what he did in a world that felt as sweet as this one.
I used to feel like I had a pretty accurate picture of what we were like, us black folks. I knew we weren’t perfect, but I still hoped we weren’t terminally fucked up, even though sometimes the evidence to the contrary is so overwhelming, it’s hard to avoid that conclusion.
I had met enough good brothers—a small number, but enough—not to think all black men were unworthy of my time and affections. I had been around white folks long enough to know they weren’t as smart as they thought they were, but a whole lot meaner than they admitted to being. I knew how to make a living, get where I needed to go, and balance my checkbook, but none of it made any sense anymore.
I thought there was a limit we would reach. A cutoff. A damn bottom line. We used to almost brag about it. There were certain crimes we considered ourselves incapable of committing. When we would read in the paper that somebody had stabbed their mother to death or raped a two-year-old, we would shake our heads and cluck our tongues and turn the page because we knew it wasn’t one of us.
Not anymore. We do it all, mostly to each other, and when we get caught and the six-o clock news shows us in our bright orange prison coveralls with our hands cuffed behind us and lint in our hair, we don’t look sorry. We don’t even look scared. What we look is bored.
“What was he thinking about?” I said to Eddie, whose fingertips were just touching mine where our hands lay between us on the dock’s weathered boards.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter? How can it not matter?”
Eddie sat up and squinted out across the sunlit lake. “I watched a brother in ‘Nam rape a pregnant woman,” he said. “When she aborted before he was finished with her, he slit her throat and stomped the baby’s head. What was he thinking?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t have a clue.
“I don’t either, but I don’t have to know. I don’t think it matters anymore. What matters is what he did, and what Frank did, and what we’re going to do about it.”
That’s when I knew he was going to go look for Frank and Mattie. We both figured they hadn’t gone far. They were too scared and too high and too broke.
“The way I figure it, they’re probably scuffling around trying to raise some cash,” Eddie said. “Once they do that, they’ll head for Detroit or Chicago and we’ll lose them.”
He was right about that. There were so many people wanted for so much evil shit in the city, some young fiend breaking a baby’s legs in some little town a couple of hundred miles up the road wasn’t going to get anybody to send out an all-points bulletin.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find them and make sure they stay put long enough for the police to come.”
“How are you going to do that?” I was trying to sound cool, but he was making me really nervous.
He smiled at me. “I used to do this for a living,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“I’ll worry.”
“Aren’t you already worried?”
He had me there. “Maybe they’ll just go on to the city, like you said.”
He shrugged. “And maybe they won’t.” He stood up and reached down for my hand. I let him help me up and put my arms around his neck.
“I don’t get a vote on this, do I?”
He shook his head and kissed me. “I can’t love you if I can’t protect you.”
We walked back up into the yard. “You still got the shotgun, right?”
I nodded.
“Loaded?”
“Loaded.”
“Good,” he said. “I don’t see them coming back here, but if they show, do what you have to do. Don’t take chances.”
“I wo
n’t,” I said, feeling like we were at war, and maybe we were.
“I’ll take a look around town and see what I can see.
You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said, and kissed him again before he swung up into the truck and started the motor.
“Eddie?”
“What, baby?” He reached out for my hand through the window.
“I thought all the warriors were dead or crazy.”
“Just biding our time,” he said. “Just biding our time.”
I watched him until he was gone, then went inside and locked the door.
• 8
i don’t know how much rest Joyce got. She called right after Eddie left to see if we’d heard anything from the police, who were supposed to be looking for Frank. I told her no, but that Eddie was out trying to see what he could find out, too. Then she called to tell me that Imani was now in a private room and the nurse was going to let her stay there as much as she wanted. I asked how Imani was doing and there was such a long pause before she answered, I knew she was crying.
“Oh, Ava,” she finally whispered. “She’s so tiny. She’s got tubes everywhere.”
“The doctor said she was strong,” I reminded her. “She’s going to be fine.”
“I never should have let them take her, even for a minute.”
I knew trying to talk Joyce out of feeling guilty was going to be impossible until Imani opened her eyes and Joyce could hold her and feed her and rub her legs to help their healing. Joyce was waiting for Imani to wake up so she could apologize and promise that nothing bad was ever going to happen again. I wanted to tell Joyce it wasn’t her fault. That all you can ever do is try and make the best choice based on what you know. Promising that everything is going to be okay is just asking for trouble no matter how much you want it to be true.
