“For now, but you don’t see me crying about it,” I say, sneering. I say it like I’m tougher, though no one is. Not anyone I’ve ever met.
She leans in, closer. So close I feel her hot breath touch my face. “You will cry, though. Your lesbo mama likes that prison. She don’t want to come for you. She’d rather stay dyked out in jail.”
My lips peel back, inadvertent. She knows the thing with Rhonda hits me low. I don’t want Kai to be so lonely that she needs a prison boyfriend, or worse, for her to trade her beauty and her sex for more phone time and outsize orange envelopes and stamps. That’s why this fight is so very dangerous. We know all each other’s soft places. I hit her back in one of hers.
“Well, your mama will go back whoring. They always do.”
“Who always does,” she says. It is a challenge, not a question. She is daring me to say it. There is the promise of pain in her voice, and I want it. I want her to come at me with tooth and claw. It would be better to feel this tearing outside, on my skin.
“Whores,” I say. It’s low and it feels good to be low. “Whores like your mama, the whore.”
I am ready in my body for her to come at me. I want her to hit and hit me. I deserve it. I’ve said the lowest thing that can be said.
I can’t imagine a force strong enough to keep her from launching, but she finds one. Her eyes gleam like chipped onyx. She tilts her head sideways and leans in, taking five long seconds, like she’s coming in slo-mo for a kiss. She slips sideways though, putting her mouth near my ear.
“You take it back. You be so sweet and kiss my ass, because I know what you did. You snuck your mama’s poem to her boyfriend.” This is harder than fists, this hot whisper of breath brushing my ear. “I could tell. I could beat you down right now, take that footlocker. You kept that poem, and it’s proof. Then she won’t get early release. They’ll keep her ass. You’ll be here until you age out.”
Everything in me goes dark. I don’t breathe or speak. She could do it. I’ve pushed her too hard.
Her body stays close and feels coiled, ready now for me to make it physical. I am bigger, but she is so damn tough. If I lose, I have no doubt she’ll do it. She’ll take the footlocker, and she’ll screw Kai to the wall.
I lean back, so she can see my eyes. I show no fear. I know Joya. Her instinct for finding soft spots is unerring. So I can’t have any, and that’s all. I stay cool, and shake my head, wry, like she’s said something so weak it’s funny. I make my mouth curl into a little smile.
“I don’t care if my mama dies in there. I’m the one that put her into prison in the first place.”
I say it soft, but even so, it comes out powerful. The truth always sounds so very, very true. She hears it, ringing clear and loud as bell song under my words. The truth at the center is the thing that sells the lie.
“What?” she says. She even blinks. I’ve shocked her out of the advantage.
“I called the cops, dumbass,” I say. These are the words I’ve never said out loud. This is the biggest truth, the secret one, alive in the bitter depths of me. It feels so good to say it, to confess it to this girl who will not give me absolution. She will hate me for it. I’ve done a thing that she would never do. “I turned Kai in.”
She rocks back all the way onto her heels, kneeling on the bed now. “Why?”
“Because she fucked with me,” I say. I let that sit there. Joya already knows one secret that could ruin us; now I am handing her another, even worse. It is a risky strategy, and this is the part I have to sell to make her back down. I lean in close. Each word is barely more than breath. “I kept that poem to be my leverage. I’ll show it to Kai’s damn parole officer myself if she tests me.” I pause. I want to be sure Joya understands this last part. This is the part that matters. “There’s no limit to what I’ll do to somebody who fucks with me. You understand? No limit. I sent my own mama to jail because she moved me out of Asheville, and I kept that poem so I can do it again. If you start with me—what do you think I’m going to do to you?”
She stares into my eyes, uncertain, teetering on the cusp of disbelief and violence. I don’t blink. Not at all. I don’t move or waver, and then her eyelids come down, shuttering closed.
“You a stone col’ narco bitch,” she says, her grammar and inflections gone into that way she talks with other black kids. It’s the way she talks to Candace to scare her and to shut her out. She’s never talked like this at me. She opens her eyes, and she is a stranger, waving a hand between us. “We done. I don’t need your sorry ass for nuthin’ anyhow, because I’m gon’ go home.”
I sink back, too, shrugging like it makes no nevermind, but there is truth inside her blow, weighting it. All Joya really has to do to win is leave me here, and we both know it. She jerks her chin down in a single nod, and we are done with each other. She gets up off my bed and goes downstairs to wait with her bags. I am Rome, burning behind her. She doesn’t look back, and I don’t cry. The Gotmamas are char and ash, so wrecked it’s like we never were.
I never saw Joya again. I didn’t talk about her, and I tried not to think her name. Not until I got all that good, free university therapy while I was in school. My Emory counselor was the one who said the way we ended things was not uncommon for kids like us. She said we’d lost enough in our short lives to want to cauterize our wounds before they happened. We burned our connection closed before we felt the holes.
Years ago, I had a client who reminded me of Joya. One of my earlier pro bono girls, a payback to karma on top of Kai’s monthly checks. This one was barely eighteen, built small with milk-chocolate skin and eyes so dark brown they looked pure black from any distance. She’d been Stockholmed into calling her pimp her boyfriend, and she was about to eat a ten-year sentence, covering his ass.
By the time I was done, the pimp did his own time, while my client walked with court-mandated counseling and five years’ probation. She hugged me when it was over, trembling, her body as delicate and small-boned as a sparrow’s. That night, I drank a little too much bourbon, and I called Birdwine. I told him I had a job that billed to me, not the firm, which usually meant it was part of a pro bono case. I gave him Joya’s name.
I should have known better. Hell, I knew the recidivism rates, knew how seldom stories like Joya’s got a happy ending. Statistics said once her mama got back in her old environment, she would find old friends, slip back into old habits, and sink Joya with her. The daughters of crack addicts and prostitutes almost never find their way to dental hygienist school, much less Yale. But Joya was so tough. I hoped. Hoped stupidly and very hard. Hard enough to ask the question.
Birdwine found her fast because she had a sheet. Drugs and prostitution. She’d died in south Atlanta at nineteen, caught in gang crossfire.
He said, “I don’t have a lot of details. A black working girl, it’s not like the paper’s going to spend the inches.” His gruff, blunt voice was suspiciously gentle. “Want me to keep digging?”
There was the briefest silence on the line between us. On my side, it was filled with the most foolish longing; I wanted him to track down the waiter who had served Joya’s celebration dinner at Demy’s Blues-N-Burgers all those years ago. I wanted to know if she and her mama had a good time. I wanted proof that our breakup hadn’t soured her pleasure in seeing her mama’s car pull up or spoiled the taste of those cheese and chive potatoes.
But almost as fast as I could feel it, it was laid to rest. I knew better. I understood firsthand how much it took to mar the joy of someone—the best and dearest someone in the world—coming to get you, just as promised. Whatever happened later, that dinner would have been so good.
I said, “No. Send me a bill.”
“This one’s on me,” he said, and then added, right before he hung up, “Sorry about your friend.”
Either his investigation had been thorough enough to connect us, or
he’d simply read me and decided it was personal. Either way, pretty savvy. That was when I decided he was worth working round his binges. I’d since used him for everything that mattered, and I’d never regretted it. Not until now. Not until he emailed me that he’d lost Hana. She was free-falling, lost in the same world that had eaten Joya. I wanted to interrogate Birdwine, dig through his file, see if anything would resonate. But Birdwine was unavailable.
I knew where he was. When Birdwine went missing, it was never a mystery. He always went to the same place: Drunk. Drunk wasn’t on Google maps, and a trip to Drunk took as long as it took.
I was impatient, but not angry. Birdwine was what he was, and anger wouldn’t change it or get me what I wanted any faster. As soon as he surfaced, I would jolly him along and get the information. If that failed, I’d peel it right out of his hide.
Three times a day, before work, at lunch, and after a working dinner at my desk, I went and sat at Birdwine’s place. I didn’t wait in my car, either. The first morning, I’d wormed through the dog door and gotten Birdwine’s spare key out of his office desk. Looper would have eaten the face off any stranger who tried this move, but he was thrilled to see me, thrilled to nap beside me on the sofa, thrilled to breathe in and discover afresh that the world was full of air. Dogs were such easy marks.
The third day of my vigil coincided with one of Julian’s days off from Mellow Mushroom. He appeared at noon for more “internship.” I was slammed, and so I gave him to Verona. Around seven, I sent him to pick up Chinese so I could work through dinner, and I asked if he would stick around and go with me to Birdwine’s.
I’d meant what I had promised in my car at Oakleigh’s. On the days he came to work with me, I took him for meals, asked him questions, got used to his spastic tendency to dart at me and hug me every time we said hello or good-bye. I hugged him back now, trying to let him be my brother in a realer way than updating the How do you know Julian field on Facebook. But I also thought that it would do the kid some good to visit Birdwine’s sketchy neighborhood.
The neighbors were a mix: black and white and brown, young and old, some squatting briefly on their way up, others scrabbling for a hold on their way down. Across the street from Birdwine’s shabby craftsman, a taquería that smelled like horse meat and roach spray shared a building with a run-down barber shop. Two doors down, a thriving drug house did a busy trade. The whole street had an unstable danger vibe I knew well from most chapters of my childhood. Hana would know it, too.
As we turned onto Birdwine’s block, I saw that the front door of his house was hanging open. Looper sat in the middle of the patchy front lawn, looking worried and long-suffering.
“Shit! He’s home,” I said, and pulled over to park. I hadn’t expected to see him until tomorrow, at the earliest.
Julian had barely registered the ratty streets as we wound through them, but he sat up very straight when he realized we were stopping.
“This is where he lives?” Julian asked.
“Yep,” I said.
As we got out of the car, I could hear a terrible crashing sound coming from inside. Looper ran to me and thrust his giant, square head into my hand. I patted him, and he immediately turned and ran a few steps toward the door, pausing to peer back, his eyebrows set to anxious.
“I know, buddy. Timmy’s in the well,” I told him.
Julian paused, half out of the car. “Is that—the big guy? In there?” He sounded nervous. I’d forgotten—the first time he met Birdwine was in my office. I’d had a panic attack and Birdwine had stepped to him, violence limned in the angles of his body.
“Yep.” We heard a whomping crash from inside. Birdwine wasn’t making a great second impression. “If a stranger was wrecking the house, Looper would be in there scrapping,” I said. Looper’s tail wagged when he heard his name, and he took another step toward the door, trying to get me to follow. I leaned against the car. “Not yet, buddy.”
“How are you so calm?” Julian asked. He still had the passenger door open, and his head swiveled back and forth, peering up and down the street. I reminded myself that at dinner the other night, this kid had gotten in a lather because a Marietta neighbor let the dandelions take over his lawn. Baby steps.
“He’s never killed anybody yet,” I said. I’d seen Birdwine on the back end of his cycle before. I had no girlish notions, either fearful or romantic, about what was in the house. “It may not be pretty in there, but it isn’t dangerous.”
“I feel like we’re being watched,” Julian said, looking around uneasily, but he shut the door and came to stand beside me. “Do you feel that?”
“No,” I said, but after he mentioned it, I realized that I did. I’d felt so watched at the office recently, I’d gotten used to the faint electric crawl across my skin. “It’s probably the one-stop pill shop two doors down. The dealer keeps a close eye on the street.” Not only for cops—sometimes ancient Mrs. Carpenter, who owned the house between them, went wandering down the sidewalk in her bra. Birdwine and the dealer both looked out for her.
My explanation did nothing to set Julian at ease, but at least it had gone quiet inside. I waited another minute, then decided to go in. I didn’t want to give Birdwine time to pass out.
“You can wait here, if you like.” I boosted off the car and held my car keys out. “I’ll let you play the radio.”
Julian paused and swallowed. The sun was almost down. “No. Let’s go.”
Inside, the living room looked like a bear had gone crashing through it. A wooden chair was reduced to kindling, and the coffee table was overturned and shoved half into the fireplace. There were gaping holes and shatter-spots in the drywall. It looked like the whole room had pissed him off, and he’d taught it better with a baseball bat. The bat itself was cracked and lying in the middle of the floor.
I could hear humming, loud and tuneless, coming from the kitchen. He seemed to be done breaking things, but he was still conscious. Good.
Looper jumped up on the wide plaid sofa and flopped down in a sprinkle of wall plaster, the flakes catching like snow in his dense fur. He put his shoe-box head on his paws and gazed back and forth from me to Julian and back again, eyebrows twitching. Whatever was happening at the back of the house was clearly a human problem. He would wait right here.
“Coward,” I told him, and he thumped his tail. So be it.
As I walked back to the kitchen, Julian crowded up on my shoulder. He was nervous, but I got the sense he had my back. I’d underestimated him, again, thinking he’d chosen to come in with me because it was getting dark outside. The kid was a better dog than even Looper, loyal through and through.
We found Birdwine by his hideous avocado-colored stove. One of its electric eyes glowed deep orange, and a fry pan full of smashed eggs sat on the dead, gray burner next to it. Birdwine had his back to us, rattling the pan and humming, stirring eggs that weren’t cooking at all. He peered owlishly over his shoulder as we came in. He was beat all to hell. His left eye was almost swollen shut, and blood had crusted at the corners of his lips.
“Mmm, Pau,” he said, which I took to be a greeting. He was so drunk that turning his head set him swaying, like a man standing on a little boat at sea, riding the swells. “Ahmmakineg.” I’m making eggs.
“I think you might be making deadly house fires,” I told him.
He gave me a sloppy version of the big grin I’d always liked, the one that showed the gap in his front teeth. They were all still in his mouth, from this angle, anyway.
“God, I’m scared to see the other guy,” Julian whispered, blinking rapidly.
“There is no other guy,” I said.
Birdwine came back from binges with cracked ribs, loose teeth, and new, exciting angles in his long nose. I used to worry that he’d accidentally kill someone. He was so big, and he knew how to fight. But he never once had broken fingers or
even bruises on his knuckles; he closed his sprees by pissing people off, and then taking the beating.
The kitchen was large, with room for a butcher block table and two chairs near the door. Birdwine’s old laptop, a huge slow thing I called his Craptoposaurus, was sitting on it, open. I went over to it and checked the screen.
He was logged into Facebook, which was odd enough to make me do a double take. Not a social media guy, that Birdwine. Unless he had been trying to work, drunk, and this page was related to Hana? I wanted to slide into the closest chair and start digging, but Birdwine’s sleeve was dragging dangerously near the lit burner. I left the browser open and went to get him.
“Julian, would you finish the eggs? You can make eggs, right?” I said, taking Birdwine by the shoulders, turning him away from the stove.
“Everyone can make eggs,” Julian said, overly hearty.
I steered Birdwine across the kitchen. He was unwieldy and out of balance, but he shuffled in the direction that I pointed him.
“Look, Birdwine, it’s Julian, remember him?” To Julian I said, “And get him some water.”
I dumped Birdwine in one empty chair, then went back to the other myself, the one close to the computer. Facebook was open to the page of a woman named Stella Martin. Her feed was full of pictures from what looked like a family beach vacation. I didn’t know any Martins, but the first name rang a faint bell.
“There’s so much shell in here,” Julian said. “I think it’s all the shells.”
I glanced at Birdwine, swaying in the chair.
“Forget it. Turn the stove off and bring the water,” I told Julian, and then muttered to myself, “Stella, Stella, Stella. Who are you?”
“Stellaaaaa!” Birdwine bellowed, sudden and loud, in a drunken Marlon Brando. Julian jumped and dropped the egg pan into the sink with a clatter. Birdwine cackled to himself.
I gave him a stern look.
The Opposite of Everyone Page 18
