by Steve Paul
The front door of the house opened, and the ironwork swung outward. The woman’s face appeared, glistening with sweat. She studied the street toward Fairyland, the lot across the way. “Goddamn crazy-ass,” she yelled. She shook her head at her shoes. “Freak show,” she said. “Dead boys. Rollercoasters.” Backing the security door wide she waved to Hodge with a thin scabrous arm, then waved him off. A girl stepped to the stoop: lavender shift with a lace collar; not four, six maybe, seven, a head above her mama’s waist. She dragged a Big Wheel behind her like a rag doll, and by the time she reached the walk, the woman had let the ironwork slam, and the door bit shut.
The child boarded her ride, pink flip-flops firm on the pedals. At the scratch of plastic on concrete, the boy looked up, but already the girl was gone as if into the chain-linked forest of Fairyland itself. In old tales, lost children left a crumbled trail so they might be found. Hodge took a pull of Vess and set the can onto its sweat ring. The boy beat and beat to the rhythm of Hodge’s heart.
Finally, the girl skidded around the northwest corner of the block, legs pumping. Headed for the Futura, she came on, jamming the brakes, the fat front wheel punching the slab step. She fixed on the boy, who’d moved to the edge of the oak’s shade, and dismounted, taking every other step to the border of the vacant lot. Hodge set his hands at the door frame. She turned. Lilac polish had flaked from her nails. Her frizzed hair was parted clean and off-center, bunched to either side of her head with purple bands. “Why’re you here?” she said.
Lilah might have known his mind, but words hooked in his throat. He swallowed hard and put his hand to the cash. “Your mama’s got something I want back,” he said.
The girl shrugged. “Gets what she deserves.” She turned, shift swirling around her calves with flamenco condescension, and stooped, snatching up a stripped limb long and thick as a forearm. High-stepping through alien flowers, she closed in on the boy, who stopped labor long enough to nod. At his side she stood, eyeing him, the ground, him again. Hodge had the can of Vess to his lips when she gripped the boy’s downswing. With both hands she hefted the clean limb over her head—her turn.
At Pops the shades had been drawn against the southwest light. Hodge tried the driver’s-side handle, but the car drifted from him, the street rising in a swell so high he sidestepped in loose gravel and slipped, near to falling, before he regained ground. Hodge was standing. Hodge was standing, still.
PART II
CRAZY LITTLE WOMEN
THE INCIDENT
BY CATHERINE BROWDER
Northeast
They told her the bullet had passed through the right side of her body, miraculously missing any major organ or artery. She heard them but couldn’t respond. From the foot of the hospital bed a cheery voice emerged from a white lab coat: “The gods smiled on you, girl.”
Girl? She was thirty-four. And what did it matter what was “missed” when the damage felt so enormous?
“You’re okay, aren’t you, baby?” Juanita was leaning in from the left, her face a blur. Everything was a blur, and her eyes felt bruised and swollen. Ladonna recognized Juanita’s voice immediately but was too drugged to register any feeling, even fear. It seemed better not to be conscious or to try to figure out who or what or where. The lab coat hovered near Juanita and then withdrew. From time to time she heard muted electronic sounds, some sort of quiet machinery doing its job. She’d felt safe until Nita’s solid frame came too close, blurring what little sight she had.
Someone else entered the room and sat on a chair beside the bed.
“I don’t think you should be talking to her,” the voice said. A man’s. “You’re still on administrative leave, officer.”
Juanita’s shape pulled itself to its full height. Ladonna had forgotten what an imposing person Nita was: solid and broad-shouldered. Ladonna thought it was this solidity that had once attracted her, until one thing led to another. Love, Nita assured her. She’d never understood that part of it, understanding instead an attraction to Nita’s power and the confidence it gave her. The fact that Juanita was a cop seemed a mere sidebar, but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was part of the package. She’d once joked—I’ve fallen for a uniform. She was never sure Nita found it funny. Nita was so quick to take offense, and she’d wondered if all Latinas were so defensive. She would have liked to ask—an honest question—but was afraid of Nita’s reaction. Her own mixed-race parents never showed offense, even if they felt it. They were so cool when confronted, so quick and clever. Ladonna had always strived to be like them and was unprepared for Juanita’s volatile response to any perceived slight.
“You don’t know how it is, Don,” Juanita had said more than once. “It’s hard enough being a woman on the force. But being a brown woman on the force …” Juanita would shut her eyes and shake her head, repeating herself until she’d made sure of Ladonna’s support. Ladonna always offered her support, all the while thinking Juanita’s people had been in this country for generations and were as diluted as she was. So why couldn’t she just get over it? Nita had chosen to become a cop. No one made her. Did she think it would be a bed of roses? Besides, from what she’d heard, things weren’t all that bad in the PD. They were very careful down at headquarters, wary of discrimination suits. Nita probably took more abuse from civilians than her fellow officers.
“Are you listening to me, Don?” Nita’s voice always rose when she told the story.
She gave her stock reply: “I know it’s hard. But why torture yourself. It’s hard for lots of people.” It’s hard for my people, she wanted to say but didn’t.
“No, it’s not hard for everyone,” Nita would answer, her voice growing cold. “It’s not hard for your standard-issue male cop. It’s not hard for your standard-issue white cop. It’s not—”
“I absolutely hear you … and you’re right.”
Whenever Nita started in on the it’s-so-hard-for-me speech, Ladonna turned away with a shudder. This might even have been the content of their last conversation before the fabric of their lives unraveled. Just before “the incident.” Now her head was a muddle and a male voice to her right was asking questions her mouth couldn’t shape to answer. She would like to see his face, but couldn’t turn her head. She had a feeling he wore a suit and tie—someone from Nita’s headquarters. What could she possibly say until she could remember what happened? Nita must still be in the room because the suit said something intended for her.
“It’d be best if you not come here until we can talk to you both. Alone.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Ladonna heard the anger in Nita’s voice, “Miss Price is like family.”
“Officer Juarez, I’m asking you politely to stay away. If you don’t, we’ll post a uniform at the door.”
At least her hearing was in no way impaired. There was steel in his voice. Nita didn’t reply, and a slight gap of air opened up in the room. Then somewhere beyond her view, Nita cursed softly and a door swung open.
The suit shuffled some papers. A pen clicked open. A hard surface like a clipboard pressed against the side of the bed, touching her arm, which she could not withdraw.
“I need to ask you a few questions.”
Funny, how blunt they were. Not even an apology for the circumstances. Not even the tiniest sorry.
“If you can say yes or no, that would be great. If not, shake or nod your head.”
No niceties. All business. And how could she answer when she wasn’t sure herself?
Would she be pressing charges?
She shook her head.
Did Officer Juarez deliberately fire her service pistol?
Another shake.
Was there a struggle?
A nod.
Could she explain?
A shake. Slowly Ladonna opened her swollen mouth and whispered, “Accident.”
The man leaned forward, his ear hovering unpleasantly near her mouth. His hair was reddish blond and clipped short, and she thought she saw tufts of hair
in his ear. Acid rose to her throat.
“An accident?” he repeated. Ladonna caught a tone of disbelief.
Ladonna nodded and repeated faintly, “Yes.”
* * *
She learned later that Juanita didn’t tell her family for three days. How she managed to withhold that information, Ladonna never knew. Maybe because Nita was a cop, the hospital people took her at her word: I couldn’t reach them. Much later, the enormity of the lie would take her breath away. When her brother Troy arrived at the hospital, the nurses had to send Nita away because of the shouting. Ladonna could sit up but was still too weak to raise her own voice against theirs. She looked at her brother, swollen with anger and fear, as if he were the older and responsible one, and not one year younger. He’d always been protective, even when they were babies. “Little Ladonna and tall Troy,” Nana called them, as if their physical stature described their relationship. Troy was six feet like their father, and Ladonna was small—five feet two, smaller than their mother. So small that even today people felt entitled to call her girl. Before Troy shot up to his full height, he was fending off anyone who bothered her, anyone at all. From the sandbox to the schoolyard, Troy was there. And he had never liked Juanita.
“Hey, sis,” he said, and sat down in the chair vacated by Juanita. He reached his long, athletic arms around her and kissed her on the forehead. Tears stood in his eyes. They might have been twins with their identical hazel eyes, the splash of freckles over a small nose, and what their darker Nana called “café au lait skin.”
“What did she go and do this time?” he said
Nita had never gone and done anything at all before now. Ladonna shook her head, pinched her eyes shut, and spoke carefully. “Accident. Tha’s all.”
“Accident? A bullet through your side?”
“Troy …” she whispered. “Don’t.”
“The nurse said you were lucky it passed right through. Missed all the important stuff.”
She tried to smile. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t look one little bit okay to me.”
The scowl set in—the famous Troy scowl of disapproval. She knew what he wanted for her, and it wasn’t Juanita. He couldn’t accept she was “like that” and professed she was “going through a phase,” thinking she was “bent” when she wasn’t. Maybe she’d had a bad experience with a boyfriend? When he first said this, she laughed out loud. He knew everyone she’d ever been with. He’d never not been a part of her life, shouldering his way in whether she wanted him there or not. He’d chased away anyone he didn’t approve of, until Juanita. Nita stood up to him, and Ladonna wondered if that wasn’t one of her attractions. She couldn’t spend her life with a little brother smack dab in the middle, playing gatekeeper.
“You here alone, all these days. It makes my blood boil!”
Since when did his blood not boil? Even Troy’s wife Jeri held a brief against Nita. Ladonna had asked Jeri once, as nonconfrontationally as possible, “Tell me, do you dislike Juanita because she’s a cop or because she’s a lesbian? I’m a lesbian too, Jeri. And that isn’t going to change.”
Another time, when she was at Troy’s while Nita visited her own family—no one’s family seemed happy with them—Jeri had sniffed over the Sunday roast and said, “Well, the department will promote her quick, won’t they? She’s a female and a minority—they’ll get two for one.” Ladonna shouldn’t have been so startled that this had come from Jeri. To look at her, you couldn’t be sure Jeri was black. But the most outrageous remark came from her brother.
“Remember when Liberty Memorial was the gay hookup spot?”
She didn’t remember, and neither did Troy. It was before their time. He must have read about it somewhere.
“Police had to cruise because the gays were getting jumped and beaten and robbed. Imagine their surprise if they’d found one of their own up there.”
“Lesbians don’t cruise that way,” she’d told him without raising her voice. He couldn’t grasp it, or wouldn’t. He kept speaking as if she were just a bystander, as if she weren’t gay at all. Besides, if he’d been paying attention, he’d know that Liberty Memorial wasn’t the “gay hookup” place of choice any longer and hadn’t been for some time. Since it had been refurbished and the museum installed, it was a tourist destination, a future national park.
“How do you explain it to the police department?” he’d asked.
“Explain what? This isn’t the army, Troy. They don’t care. There’s no don’t-ask-don’t-tell. Okay?”
* * *
In her depleted condition she couldn’t be sure when the unraveling began. Three days before the incident? A week? The first evening Juanita hadn’t come home from work on time, Ladonna went to bed, assuming something on patrol had tied her up. It had happened before. Nita would tell her about it in the morning. Instead, she was awakened at two when a light went on in the kitchen, and she’d heard Nita clanging around: a cabinet opened, glasses clinked, the tap ran, the squeaky fridge door opened and closed. Since their bedroom was downstairs, she heard everything. She got up, pulled on a robe, and went down the hall to the kitchen where she found Juanita making a sandwich. Her movements appeared strange. Sluggish. When their eyes met, Nita’s were red and bloodshot. Nita turned away from her angrily. Something unpleasant on the job, Ladonna thought.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“You went to bed.”
“Well, yes. Wouldn’t you? I assumed you got tied up.”
“You didn’t wait up.”
Ladonna felt her stomach sink and knot, like a fist clenching. “I’m not following you, hon,” she said.
Juanita stared at her and then turned her back, stuck a butter knife in a jar, spread mayo over bread, and slapped the sandwich shut.
“What did you expect?” Ladonna said. “You didn’t even phone.”
“Am I supposed to check in every little hour?”
Ladonna felt her mouth drop open, and she closed it tight. “Excuse me?”
Nita was drunk, she realized with a jolt. She’d never known Nita as a drunk, had only known her sober, for over three years a stalwart twelve-stepper. It would turn out to be her fault, she imagined, and she felt a hole inside fill with bile.
“I’m going back to bed. You eat your sandwich.”
She left the room, her legs weak and shaky. Seeing Juanita this way made her pulse race and her breathing turn shallow. She didn’t even want to know the details. She lay down in their bed, rolling onto her side, facing the windows, dreading the moment when Nita came in. Hours seemed to pass before the door opened. Still awake, Ladonna kept her eyes closed, forcing herself to breathe slowly. Nita sat on the side of the bed to remove her boots instead of the little rocker where she usually sat. Deliberately, Ladonna thought. If Nita wanted some sort of consolation, she was taking the wrong approach. Ladonna would not respond.
One by one the boots dropped to the floor. Nita groaned as she removed her leather belt, the police accoutrements, handcuffs and keys jangling as if someone were beating a gong. She dropped the heavy belt on the floor beside the boots. When it hit the carpet, Ladonna felt the vibrations through the bed. The Kevlar vest came off next. Nita grunted as she pulled off her work trousers, and a wave of revulsion swept through Ladonna. Were men this gross? One advantage of being the way she was, she thought, was that she didn’t have to deal with the unpleasant physicality of men, their gasses and low-pitched groans and too-hard bodies. But here, in her own bedroom, her partner of nineteen months was producing every pathetic sound she associated with menfolk, and for no other reason than to get Ladonna’s attention.
The next day, Ladonna was in the kitchen cleaning her lunch dishes when Nita finally made her appearance. It was noon, and it was Saturday. Ladonna did not need to be at work, but when she saw Nita, she suddenly wished she were there.
“Do you go in today?” Ladonna asked.
“You know I do,” Nita said with a curt little bite.
&n
bsp; Ladonna put down her dishtowel. “Don’t take that tone with me. I put up with you last night, Nita. Don’t carry it into today.”
Juanita gaped at her. How seldom she’d stood up to Nita because there’d been no need. For nineteen months they’d been considerate with each other. Now this.
“There’s coffee,” she said, and held out a cup.
A cloud had come into the kitchen with Nita and hung there, dank and poisonous, taking up space. Nita glowered at her and got her own mug off the cup tree on the counter and filled it, leaving a trail of coffee drops across the countertop. Instead of sitting, which Ladonna hoped she would do, Nita leaned against the counter, held the cup in two hands, and blew into it. Ladonna wavered, her desire to get a handle on Nita’s problem pushed aside by irritation. Slowly, she picked up a sponge and wiped the spilled coffee off the counter. She wanted to avoid a row, wanted Juanita to share what was bothering her, but even that word share had a conciliatory quality she did not feel.
Ladonna pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. “Join me.”
Nita wouldn’t look at her, examining the exterior of her coffee cup. “Nope. Don’t think I will.” Cup in hand, she left the kitchen and headed down the hall, closing the bathroom door behind her.
* * *
Troy was leaning too close. Everyone who visited hung too close, even Nita and the sergeant from the department who’d come to squeeze out any statement he could. A shiver ran down her arms. How often had Nita returned? She seemed always to be in the room, except when Troy was around. Ladonna thought she’d heard the investigator tell Nita to stay away.
