The Bridge

by Solomon Jones

  “We’ll be following this story throughout the morning and providing updates as they become available. This is Jim Wright, Channel 10 News, reporting live from North Philadelphia.”

  The cameraman stopped shooting, and Wright snatched out his earpiece. Then, as they headed back to the news van, Wright was on his cell phone, trying to find someone who could confirm the identity of the child whose disappearance had set the day’s events in motion.

  As he did so, Kenya Brown was suddenly more important than she’d ever been.

  Lily sat still as the image of the crumpled car wreaked havoc in the quiet of her mind.

  She’d been sitting in front of her television since telling the policeman that she’d seen Sonny, praying all the while that they would catch him without a struggle.

  She never expected him to escape. Nor did she believe he’d leave so much damage in his wake. But she’d seen it all with her own eyes—from the crushed metal to the shattered glass to the bruised and bloodied face inside the car. She’d watched it all and shivered, because she knew it meant that Sonny was still out there.

  Lily turned to Janay, who lay next to her on the couch, sleeping. As she reached out to touch her, Janay’s brow wrinkled, and her mouth opened suddenly, as if to scream. It was like she understood, even in her sleep, that she, too, should be afraid.

  Lily turned back to the television, and as the Saturday morning cartoons replaced the images she’d just watched, Lily remembered the way Kenya would laugh at these same cartoons, then make some womanly gesture minutes later. She remembered the way Kenya would play dolls with Janay, then manipulate her to get what she wanted.

  Lily remembered that Kenya was struggling to be a little girl in a place where childhood was a liability, trying mightily to straddle the line between her age and her circumstances. Most often, Kenya succeeded. But in a place where the weak existed for the convenience of the strong, a single failure was more than Kenya could afford.

  Lily knew that. Because Lily was one of the weak ones, too. At least that’s what everyone thought. After all, a single mother trying to work her way out of the projects with two minimum-wage jobs was weak. A woman with her looks who refused to use them to do better was weak.

  But the very things that made her weak in the eyes of some, made her strong in her own eyes. That’s why Lily was not to be preyed upon. And neither was anyone whom she loved.

  As she got up from the couch to get dressed and search for Kenya, there was a knock at her door.

  “Lily,” someone said softly. “Lemme talk to you for a minute.”

  She paused when she recognized the voice, then went to the door and cracked it.

  “You seen Kenya?” Darnell asked through the cracked door.

  “I figured you woulda seen her by now,” she said with syrupy sarcasm. “Since you supposed to be her uncle and all.”

  “Can I come in for a minute?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lily said, looking him up and down and taking in everything the crack had taken out of him.

  “It ain’t about me, Lily,” he said, looking around before leaning in to whisper. “It’s about Kenya.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw fatigue. There was none of the quick and flinching desperation that always accompanied his lies, none of the darting eyes and dry-mouthed gibberish that came with his addiction. There was only a sad, deflated picture of something she hadn’t seen from him in years: the truth.

  She closed the door and unhooked the chain lock, then opened it and let him in, leading him past the sleeping Janay and into the hallway between the bathroom and bedroom.

  “How you been, Lily?” he asked quietly.

  She didn’t answer, but glanced at his sweat-stained clothes and the flaky residue that had dried to form scaly layers of gray skin on his face.

  “Look, I know you care about Kenya,” he said, fidgeting slightly as he spoke. “That’s the only reason I came down here. I needed to talk to somebody who cared about her.”

  He paused and looked down at Lily. “And somebody I cared about.”

  She stared into his eyes, and for a moment, the man he used to be shone through. But instead of exciting her, the way it used to, the thought of being in his arms saddened her. His arms, like everything else, no longer belonged to the man who had held her through the worst time of her life.

  In the fall of 1987, just weeks after Janay began first grade, her father died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Two weeks later, Lily lost her job as a receptionist. Left with only a night job as a part-time barmaid, she was trapped once again in the mind-numbing poverty she’d been working so hard to escape.

  That autumn, the loneliness of it all began to consume her. She was mourning. She was vulnerable. And so she did what she’d seen many others do. She lost herself in the pulverizing grind of the projects.

  During the lazy afternoons when Janay was in school and the Bridge paused in preparation for its nightly ruckus, Lily would sometimes walk to the seventh floor to visit Judy. She knew that Judy’s niece was in the same class as Janay, and that’s what the two of them talked about at first.

  By winter, Lily was revealing bits and pieces of the grief she felt over the losses she’d experienced, and Judy was listening. By spring, they had shared laughter and tears, gossip and secrets. Their friendship was genuine, and the trust was real.

  When Kenya began to spend nights at Lily’s apartment, Judy would send Darnell to pick up Kenya.

  It was then that Lily saw something about him that she hadn’t seen before. The way his broad shoulders gave way to the hard muscle of his arms and chest. The way his dark skin poured over his languid body like syrup. The way he looked at her when he arrived at her door, asking for his niece, but wanting Lily.

  He was young enough to be Lily’s son, but with the eyes of a man. He used them to see the soft caramel that was Lily, to take in the voluptuous curves that lingered beneath the cheap, silk dresses she’d wear on the mornings when he would come.

  His hunger and her loneliness made their coupling inevitable. And when she took him, it was because they both wanted it to happen.

  Lily didn’t tell Judy at first, because she didn’t think she would understand. But as she grew closer to Darnell, their relationship became more difficult to hide.

  By the time Judy saw it in their eyes, it didn’t matter that she knew. Everything about her relationship with Lily had already changed.

  Judy chose the crack trade over friendship. And Lily, who had stopped coming to Judy’s apartment because of the drugs, chose Darnell over gossip-filled afternoons.

  Judy was resentful. She felt that Lily had only befriended her to get closer to Darnell. She thought that she was taking advantage of her nephew, that the age difference between them was too great.

  Lily could do nothing to tell Judy otherwise. She knew that a black woman never lets go of the boys she raises. Perhaps that’s why, a year into the affair, the mother in Lily wouldn’t allow her to continue. When she suddenly broke it off, Darnell was never the same.

  He poured his loneliness into other women. When that didn’t suffice, he poured it into a crack pipe, slowly at first, then with increasing abandon. His magnificent body fell away to nearly nothing, and the spark in his eyes that had drawn Lily to him faded away slowly.

  Before long, the deep, abiding loneliness that had always consumed him shone through. His mask of self-assuredness dropped into the pipe with everything else. He seemed to be a different person. And so did his aunt, Judy. She began to treat Darnell like all the others who filed in and out of her apartment, feeding him crack as if it were candy and despising him for what he had become.

  Lily watched it all from a distance. By the time she decided to reach back for Darnell—to pull him from the loneliness that had drawn them toward one another—it was too late. He’d already surrendered to addiction. His youthful hunger had given way to deception and lies. His desire for companionship had been sated by the pipe.

&nbs
p; All that Lily had left of him was his niece, Kenya. So she tightened her grip on that child, praying that she could keep her from being consumed by the flames around her.

  Now, Lily realized that in spite of her best efforts, she couldn’t save Kenya. She was gone. And the man standing in front of her was so depleted that she hardly knew him anymore.

  It saddened her to see him that way. But as her mind came back to the moment, she knew that she couldn’t show it. So she concealed it with the harshness she’d learned from all her years in the Bridge.

  “I ain’t got time to be talkin’ about what used to be,” she said sharply. “If you got somethin’ to say about Kenya, I’m listenin’. But if you don’t, get out.”

  For a second, Darnell’s face looked as if it might crumple beneath Lily’s stinging words. But he quickly recovered and looked around uncomfortably as he tried to find a way to ask the question that he must. When he realized there was no other way to say it, he was straightforward.

  “Did you know about Sonny and Kenya?”

  Lily searched his eyes and tried to understand what she was hearing. Because it couldn’t be what she thought it was.

  “I just found out,” she said. “But you knew? You knew, and you didn’t say anything?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know ‘til this mornin’, when I heard the cops was lookin’ for Sonny. But Judy knew.”

  “Look, Darnell, don’t be comin’ in here on that shit talkin’ all crazy.”

  “Look at me, Lily. Do I look like I’m high? I been walkin’ around since seven o’clock this mornin’ lookin’ for my niece, tryin’ to figure out what happened to her.

  “Now, I know she told some people about Sonny. And I know she was gettin’ ready to tell some more people—maybe even the cops. My niece was tired, Lily. She was tired o’ watchin’ me smoke, tired o’ watchin’ Judy sellin’ crack, tired o’ watchin’ all that madness that went on in between. But mostly, she was tired o’ Sonny doin’ what he was doin’.”

  “So Sonny did somethin’ to Kenya to keep her from tellin’?”

  “Sonny ain’t the one sent her out there ten o’clock at night to go to the store.”

  “What you sayin’, Darnell? Just say it.”

  “I’m sayin’ Judy couldn’t have Sonny goin’ to jail, ’cause Judy can’t hustle by herself. So she sent Kenya out there and paid somebody to make sure she ain’t come back.

  “I’m sayin’ the only thing that mattered to Judy was money, and if she had to get rid o’ my niece to make sure her money kept flowin’, then that’s what she was gon’ do.

  “I’m sayin’ Judy did somethin’ to my niece,” he said, cradling his head in his hands as the emotion of the moment overcame him.

  He paused, and when he had gathered himself, he looked Lily in the eye.

  “I just hope she ain’t kill her.”

  Chapter Six

  Judy looked at the dingy cinder-block walls of the locked room in Central Detectives and hoped that the minutes wouldn’t pass too quickly.

  She was afraid that time would allow things to spin out of control. Her fear wasn’t about the possession charges that she knew would be filed against her. It wasn’t even about Kenya anymore.

  The thing that frightened Judy the most was the possibility of losing Sonny—a possibility that grew more real with every passing second. She knew that if she didn’t get out and find him soon, she would never see him again.

  Judy knew this because she loved Sonny in a way that allowed her to crawl into his skin and become what he was. She had studied him in the night, when their lovemaking was over and he lay spent. She had listened for him in the day, when the drop and slide of his feet announced his arrival. She had breathed in his essence when he awakened in the morning and tasted it when he lay down in the evening. She could sense his moods and experience his pain, rise with his smile and sink with his anger.

  So when Lynch had asked her if she knew where Sonny was, Judy was certain that she did. She could feel it in that space where she had the ability to become as greedy and selfish as he was.

  She knew that he had gone back to the projects to take the money they’d stashed there. And she knew that he would disappear once he had it. But she also knew that wherever he went, she would find him, because Judy could always close her eyes and feel where he would go next.

  That thought reverberated in her mind as a police officer came to look in on her.

  “Excuse me,” she said, banging on the door when she saw his face in the square window. “I really need to go the bathroom.”

  The cop looked her up and down, his blue eyes lingering on the full breasts and hips insistently pressing against her thin cotton dress.

  Judy let her eyelids droop slightly, then smirked seductively and placed her hands on her hips. “Please?”

  The cop smiled before his face disappeared from the window. Judy heard keys, and then the sound of the door being unlocked. When it opened, he was still smiling.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her by the arm and leading her down the hall to the bathroom.

  As they passed through the hall, Judy looked into an adjacent room and saw several detectives, seated at scarred steel desks with ancient word processors, looking up at her through a haze of cigarette smoke. Most of them were drinking coffee and sitting behind foot-high stacks of paperwork.

  Judy counted six detectives and two uniformed officers in the room. The detectives appeared to be bored and entrenched in a daily routine. The two uniformed officers, on the other hand, were engaged in easy banter. They acted like they were only there to visit.

  Beyond the officers, on the other side of the room, Judy saw a door leading out of the office space, which she knew led to another hall and at least one interrogation room. She looked behind her. There was a door at that end of the hall with a red exit sign above it. In front of her, there were two bathrooms and a door that appeared to lead to a broom closet.

  “Right here,” the officer said, opening the door to the bathroom.

  Judy walked in. The cop walked in behind her and closed the door. She heard a latch click as he locked it.

  “Y’all ain’t got no female cops to take women to the bathroom?” she said, turning to face him. “I mean damn, you act like you—”

  And then he was on her, pushing her against the stall and pulling up her dress, his hands grabbing her thighs and moving up hurriedly to the soft flesh above them.

  One hand grabbed her everywhere, hungrily seeking out the warm places and finding them with his palms and fingertips. The other hand gripped her hair, holding her in place and forcing her against the stall as he ripped at her dress and squeezed her breasts.

  She didn’t resist. Instead, she reached down and touched him, caressed him, then squeezed gently. He stopped long enough to look in her eyes. Even with the fading bruises she’d suffered at Daneen’s hands, Judy’s eyes were still hypnotic.

  She placed a finger against her lips and another against his pants. Then she loosed him, slid down the stall and touched him, then kissed him with every part of her mouth. He looked down at her, then threw his head back with pleasure, moaning softly as he gave in to the moment.

  Judy looked up at him, licked him slowly, then without the slightest hesitation, pushed him as hard as she could. His head hit the side of the sink with a dull thud. Blood oozed from the back of his head as he slid down to the floor and was still.

  Moments later, Judy walked out of the bathroom wearing his uniform. She ambled down the hallway and out the door with the red exit sign above it. Then she went down a flight of steps and out into the parking lot to find the car that matched the registration she’d found in the officer’s wallet.

  As she reached down to unlock his door, Judy looked behind her to see if anyone had followed her. When she saw that they hadn’t, she got in.

  Judy was going to find her man. After that, she was going to get her money. And then, one way or the other, Judy was going to get wha
t she wanted.

  She was finally going to get out of the Bridge.

  Sonny was seeking a bridge of a different sort.

  He found it just a few blocks from where he’d eluded the police and parked the green Mustang beneath the rusted structure that stretched across Thirteenth Street at Cumberland.

  Snatching the backpack from the passenger seat, he looked around him before getting out of the car, then slid out into streets that knew him well.

  It was a neighborhood where vast lots of packed earth filled spaces once occupied by row houses, a place where crack prostitutes lurched by like ghosts, and hundred-year-old buildings fell down, piece by tired piece.

  As Sonny passed through, only one or two of the people on the nearly deserted morning streets noticed him. Not that it mattered. If anyone asked, no one with an ounce of sense would ever say they’d seen Sonny. The reward wasn’t worth the punishment.

  Still, something gnawed at him as he walked into the main entrance of his destination—the Fairview Apartments housing project. When he boarded the rickety elevator that would take him to Dot’s eighth-floor apartment, the feeling grew-stronger.

  It wasn’t fear. Sonny rarely experienced that. It was desire—the same thing he always felt for the seventeen-year-old girl he kept for the nights when Judy wasn’t enough.

  When he’d met Dot, she was fifteen and living with her mother in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bridge. But even then, she was long black hair and firm, round flesh. Legs, thick and shapely. Eyes, wide and innocent. And a throaty laugh that revealed enough of her soft, pink tongue to make her delectable.

  Sonny had quietly approached her, then paid a bribe to a Housing Authority supervisor to move her from one housing project to another. He assured her mother that Dot would be taken care of, and backed his promise with a two-thousand-dollar gift. She protested weakly, even tried to convince Dot not to go. But she was already overwhelmed with five other children—three of whom were under the age of five. So when Dot left, she really had no choice but to take the money and accept her daughter’s decision.