Anger Is a Gift Sneak Peek

by Mark Oshiro

  Over 11th now, right past the spot where a bunch of the older boys hung out. If you paid attention, you could see what they passed one another during their handshakes. Moss’s mother told him to avoid that corner at all costs, but no one was hanging around that afternoon. When Moss’s house finally came into view, he reached down to squeeze Esperanza’s hand back. His home was small, painted like yellowed eggshells. It had two bedrooms and an attic that unnerved Moss so much that he never would explore it. It sat plainly in between two other small homes, all of them rentals and with tiny but respectable yards, a rarity in this part of town. Moss had desperately wanted a dog, but they’d resigned themselves to the neighborhood cat instead, since they didn’t have time for a pet.

  Moss stopped at the chain-link fence, and his mother crossed the yard toward them. Wanda Jeffries was taller than her son, and there were times he wished he had inherited her slender form. He definitely took after his dad in size, and some days, it was another reminder that Morris was no longer around. After Papa had died, Wanda had visited Martin’s shop and had one of the women cut off her long locs. It was a renewal, she had told Moss. When was that renewal going to come his way?

  She opened the gate, and Moss fell gently into her arms, wrapping his arms around his mama and breathing into her chest. They stayed that way for a few seconds, and then she pulled away from him. “How you feelin’, baby?”

  “Better,” he said. He smiled up at her. “Esperanza helped.”

  His mother nodded at Esperanza. “Nice to see you, Esperanza. You staying the night again?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Just one more night. My parents get back from their academic conference tomorrow.”

  “You know you’re always welcome. And thanks for taking care of Moss.”

  Esperanza beamed. “It’s the least I can do,” she said.

  Moss looked up the street toward 12th, and his mother let go of him.

  “You need to do it again?” Wanda asked.

  Her face held no pity, just understanding. “Yeah,” he said. “Only for a few minutes. I’ll be back once I’m done.”

  He let Esperanza move past him into the yard, and she winked at him. His mother took hold of his bike and wheeled it up the walkway. He watched them go up into his home, and then he continued up the street to 12th, where the market sat under two streetlights. Dawit, the owner, had painted it in the colors of the Ethiopian flag, all bright green, yellow, and red, and the beaming yellow star on a blue circle sat in the middle, right above the entrance. There was usually a group of men gossiping or playing craps outside, but not that evening, and Moss was grateful for that. As Moss crossed 12th Street, he could feel the sadness settle into his bones, pulling him forward and down. The door was propped open with a cinder brick, so he poked his head inside.

  Dawit waved and cracked a sharp smile, his long face full of joy at seeing him. But they said nothing. Dawit knew the routine well, and so he went back to watching the soccer match on the tiny television that he kept behind the counter.

  Moss sat on the single step outside the door. He reached down and ran a hand over it, remembering the sight of his father stepping out of the market, the paper bag in the crook of his arm. He remembered the excitement he felt as he waited across the street with his mother, wondering what treat Papa had gotten for them this time. Moss tried to forget the sound of the patrol car pulling up, the cop jumping out of the passenger seat and raising his gun, the shouting, the pop and the echo of the gun, the color of the blood. He had tried for many years.

  It never worked. But if Moss sat there and concentrated, he could push away the horror and find what he had lost. He tried to forget those horrible images, overlay them with other ones. Today, Moss tried to remember something new, and he shuffled through his mind like a Rolodex. His father’s hugs. His smell. The way a T-shirt sat on his torso. His eyes, impossibly dark, almost black, those wells of kindness and familiarity.

  His therapist, Constance, had taught Moss this technique, a way to calm himself whenever thoughts of his father or his anxiety or his terror started to get the best of him. She had gestured to the Rolodex on her desk during one of their earliest sessions, then turned the dial to flip through the contact cards. “Think of your mind as one of these,” she had said, and the sound of the device pleased Moss. “Each card is a memory of your father. Now, I know you were young when you lost him, but your mind is resilient, Moss. You still have a lot of him inside of you. More than you think.”

  He was ten years old then, and in the six years that passed, he was still able to remember new things. It kept him going. So he focused again, turning them over in his mind, flipping from one to the next.

  There. There it was.

  I remember the way you used to give me that side-eye whenever I argued with Mama. You tried to get me to laugh every time. You knew it would trip me up.

  He smiled. There. That’s what he needed. He remained there, comforted by the memory, and he must have been there longer than he was aware of. When his mother shuffled up to Dawit’s, Moss rose without a word, let her pull him into an embrace. They walked back home in silence, but just before he shut the gate, Moss looked back at the market.

  His father wasn’t there.

  3

  Moss’s mother yawned as she opened the front door for them the next morning, and it was contagious. He yawned in response and then watched as Esperanza covered her own mouth. “I’m sorry to have kept y’all up so late,” he said, a soft shame building in him.

  Wanda squeezed his shoulder. “You know you don’t need to apologize, baby,” she said, and another yawn consumed her. “I think I can squeeze in a nap before my rounds this afternoon.”

  “Thanks for letting me stay again, Ms. Jeffries,” said Esperanza. “I think my parents will be home for a longer stretch once they’re back tonight.”

  “You know you’re always welcome, honey,” she said. She gestured with her head to Moss. “Would you give us a moment?”

  Esperanza nodded and headed toward the gate. Moss’s heart dropped when he looked at his mother’s face. There was something there, not quite like pity, but a weariness. He’d seen it plenty of times before.

  “I’ll be okay, Mama. I promise.”

  “I know,” she said, then shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t, I guess. I just wanna make sure you feel like you’re not alone.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better,” he said, “I’ll text you. When I get to school. When I’m coming home.”

  “You don’t need to do that, Moss. I don’t want you worrying about me either.”

  He laughed at that. “What are the odds that we’d both be so anxious all the time?”

  She hugged him and chuckled. “I’m sorry that happened to you yesterday,” she said, her face nestled against his. “Just as long as you know I’m here for you.”

  Moss gave her a kiss on the cheek after pulling away. “Love you,” he said, slinging his backpack around and stepping out the door. It closed quietly after his mother bid him goodbye, and he jogged up to Esperanza, the chain-link fence screeching as she shut the gate.

  He yawned again. The grogginess in his head gave him an ache behind his eyes. How late had it been when Esperanza had passed out on the couch? When did he and his mother stop talking? He couldn’t remember. He’d passed out as soon as he shoved himself into bed. He hadn’t slept well either; the residual anxiety had pinged inside his skull. He had tossed and turned, awoke often covered in sweat, images of men in black uniforms dancing through his dreams.

  “You know,” Esperanza said after trying to hide another yawn, “I had this cute outfit planned last week, and now I don’t even care. I’m too tired.”

  “Man, I was thinking the same thing this morning,” he said. “I’d been so worried about what to wear yesterday, but it doesn’t even matter anymore.” He pulled his maroon fitted cap down farther on his head. “Ugh, this day is gonna suck.”

  “Have you texted Javier yet?”
/>   He glared at Esperanza. “I’ll get there! It was a busy night for me.”

  “I get it,” she said. “But I think you should text him. He seemed pretty nice. And cute. And he called you cute, too.”

  Moss rolled his eyes. “Hurry up or we’re gonna miss the train,” he told her. It wasn’t exactly true, but it allowed him to change the subject.

  Their schools were up near the MacArthur BART station, so it wasn’t really within a walkable distance from his home. Moss and Esperanza had been lucky enough to attend the same junior high, but since freshman year, they’d attended different high schools. Esperanza lucked out, by virtue of living in Piedmont, because it meant she got to go to one of the best public high schools in the Bay Area. Moss, however, wasn’t exactly thrilled for the first day of his junior year. West Oakland High did not compare to where Esperanza went to school.

  Moss pushed the envy away as he and Esperanza stood on the crowded platform at West Oakland station. She nudged him. “Remember when that cute boy hit on you yesterday?”

  He stuck his tongue out at her as the train arrived. They made their way into the car and headed toward the center, squeezing past people who crowded the aisle. There was space to sit down in the middle of the car, and Moss tried to get around a tall man in a suit, his legs spread wide in an absurd stance in the aisle, his attention lost in a newspaper.

  “Excuse me,” Moss said.

  The man did not move.

  “Well, you tried,” Esperanza muttered under her breath. She moved around Moss, then nudged the man aside so she could squeeze past him into the seat. “Excuse me,” she said loudly. He lowered his paper. “What?” Esperanza said as she sat down. “You’re in the way.”

  The man glared down at Esperanza. This did not have the effect that he wanted, because Esperanza refused to break her stare with him. “If you need to get by, just be a lady and ask someone to move,” he said.

  “I’m glad that you’re now the arbiter of all things ladylike,” she shot back. “Why do dudes always have to take up as much space as possible on the train? This isn’t Manifest Destiny, man.”

  The man didn’t take her bait any further, and Esperanza gave her attention to Moss as he sat down next to her. “So, Moss,” she said, “tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. About being on the train. Or last night. Or Javier.” She emphasized the name more than anything else.

  “Ask me about Javier later,” he said, waving it off. She gave him that look—mouth curled up on the right side—and he said, “I swear I will text him!”

  “All right,” she said.

  “And I feel … okay, I guess.” Moss sighed. “No, that’s not right. I’m tired. But otherwise, things could be worse.”

  “That’s … good? I guess?”

  Moss laughed. “Look at us,” he said. “We’re both a mess.”

  “We should just get married and get it over with at this point.”

  “Seriously!”

  Esperanza laughed. “My mom is convinced you and I were destined to be together, sexuality be damned.”

  “How are your parents, anyway?”

  “Good, I guess. I mean, their book is doing well. Though I must confess to not understanding hereditary biology as well as they think I do.”

  The brakes squealed, and Moss and Esperanza attempted to stand up to leave. The man with the newspaper hadn’t budged again, and Esperanza gently tapped him on the elbow. “Excuse me.”

  No response.

  “Excuse me, sir, we need to get off here,” she said, and Moss knew it was coming. Esperanza had her own brand of anger that Moss found entertaining, mostly because she didn’t take shit from anyone. That included the businessman standing before her, who had more than enough room to move to the side. Esperanza reached up, grabbed his silk tie, and used it to pull herself upright. As Moss laughed, the man, exasperated, lapsed into a long bout of expletives about what role Esperanza should play. But he had moved out of the way. Slipping by the stranger before they could do anything about it, Moss yelled back, “Go post about it on Reddit!”

  They spilled out of the train with everyone else, and Moss saw a couple of his friends exit a car a few doors down. Kaisha moved ahead of the crowd, and Reg Phillips hobbled over to Moss and Esperanza on his black crutches, a smile on his face. “Yo, dudes,” he said. “What’s good?”

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” Moss replied, patting Reg on the shoulder. “You ready for school?”

  “I’d rather not be,” Reg said. “Hey, Esperanza! You look too happy. Did you spit on someone again?”

  “Excuse me, I am a lady,” she said. She paused, and a wicked smile appeared. “I used a dude’s tie as leverage, though. Totally different thing.”

  “You’ve been missed,” Reg said. “And remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  The four of them rode the escalator down to ground level, and Moss felt a rush of relief at the sight of the rest of his friends standing beyond the turnstiles. Kaisha was trying to navigate while texting at the same time. Njemile, Bits, and Rawiya rushed up to the others after they passed out of the station, and they all started greeting one another. He had missed them. His group was spread all over Oakland, and despite them not living all that far away from one another, their lives hadn’t intersected as much as he wanted over the summer.

  It was at this point that Esperanza said her hellos and then immediately followed them with goodbyes. She had a shuttle bus to take over to Piedmont High, and Moss couldn’t resist having a little fun. “Enjoy your luxury limo ride to school!” he yelled after her. “Let us know if there’s caviar this morning!”

  Esperanza stuck her tongue out at them before parting.

  The rest began their trek over to West Oakland High. They passed corner markets with fruit and vegetables overflowing from displays outside, and at one point, the group had to wait for Bits, who had stopped to buy a mango for lunch. “Perfectly ripe,” they had said, the only thing offered as an explanation. Bits had gotten their nickname solely because of their succinct way of speaking. They didn’t talk much, but when they did, “bits of brilliance shined through.” Njemile had coined that one a long time ago, and the name had stuck.

  Names were important for all them. Moss was thankful for his nickname, because it now allowed him to push away the painful memories of his father. Njemile’s mothers, Ekemeni and Ogonna, had helped Njemile choose her name when she came out a couple of years prior. Njemile had wanted something that reflected her Nigerian heritage and would be her own. Kaisha was named after her grandmother; Rawiya shared a name with an aunt on her mother’s side; and Reg’s shortened name helped him feel like he wasn’t just a copy of his older brother.

  Moss was thrilled to see them all, but the previous night’s confrontation still haunted him. He stayed at the back of the group, watching the others converse, anxious about returning to school. Maybe it was unfair of him to imagine this, but he saw their ease, witnessed their comfort, and he wished his head were as calm as others’.

  He stayed silent as they came upon their school. West Oakland High itself was a massive structure in the northern part of what was technically not West Oakland at all. Moss never knew who named the school or why. It rose deftly from a small neighborhood of duplexes, laundromats, and mom-and-pop restaurants, mostly Korean and soul food. The building must have been a beacon of hope at one time; it was taller than everything else around it, stately, huge.

  Those days were long past. Paint peeled off the doors and overhangs; the American and California flags had both torn over the last couple of years, so much so that if you glanced at them the right way on a windy day, it looked as if someone had just hung a thrift shop on the flagpole. Most of the windows on the second floor had been broken by unruly students or in after-hours fights. Some were taped over, and one of them still had a nice rock-sized hole in it. No one had bothered to patch it up.

  They called it the “Wes
t Oakland aesthetic.” As Moss ascended the front steps to the school, he glanced at the grease, grime, and years-old gum lining the concrete and railings. Someone had scrawled SCHOOL KILLS across the wall near the base of the front door, but SCHOOL had been crossed out with spray paint and replaced with OPD. School Officer Frank Hull stood right next to the graffiti; another year had passed, and he’d not noticed it.

  Hull was young, perhaps not older than twenty-five, one of the few white faces in a sea of black and brown students. He looked at Moss and inclined his head, trying to imitate what he’d seen the other students do to one another in the hallways, across the quad. Moss never responded. Hull did it every single day, singling out certain kids as if they were the gatekeepers to some greater friendship. It was creepy, and even after two years, Moss still felt unnerved by him. He would never win Moss over, and yet he still tried. Hull had been commissioned two years earlier to take over the school’s disciplinary measures by their principal, who had sought out some sort of tax break that could save the school money. Hull even had an office on campus, a place Moss had strenuously tried to avoid in his time at West Oakland High.

  He remembered how his mother’s family had balked at the idea that the police had a permanent presence at school when they’d heard at Thanksgiving the past year. “Honey, that’s not normal,” his auntie Briana had said.

  Normal was different for Moss and everyone else who attended West Oakland High. Hull nodded again, thinking that Moss hadn’t seen it the first time. Moss did not return the gesture. Instead, his eyes dropped to the hand Hull had at his hip, which rested on his holster, his black gun sitting in it. Moss shuddered. That was something he wouldn’t ever get used to.

  Ignoring Officer Hull, Moss moved inside, where the view was no better. Doors hung awkwardly on hinges that creaked and screamed. Panels in the ceiling were often missing or stained. In the center quad, where the lockers, food carts, and tables were located, the skylights cast a yellowish glow into the room, making everything look sick and rotted.