My heart thumps.
“Fresh haircut, too,” she adds. “Got both diamond studs in and—” she squints as she leans forward “—is that a new watch?”
I glance up, nod. “New watch.” Pause. “Fresh new K-Swiss, too.”
“Could be going on a date,” Lark says.
My heart thumps.
“I hate this,” I say. “What happened to this all working out just fine?”
“If you find out it only took him a week to move on from you…that’s working out fine, Ken. That’s some good-to-know info.”
Wonderful.
Knew I should have stayed home in my bed.
“Okay,” Lark says. “Follow him. But don’t crowd him. Stay a reasonable distance back.”
CSI. Damn CSI.
“This is so exciting, Ken.”
“A load of fun,” I manage through gritted teeth.
We follow for a while before Donnell pulls up to a 7-Eleven. I park across the street in an abandoned lot, turn off my headlights. Donnell gets out of his car. Lark and I duck down but keep our eyes trained on him. His strut looks labored. Shoulders slumped.
The slump of his shoulders makes me wonder if he’s mourning me after all.
Then I remember it started to fall apart between me and Ricky at a convenience store, too.
This has to be a bad omen.
“Wouldn’t mind a Slurpee right about now,” Lark says.
“You got me out here. Stay focused.”
“What’s wrong with black folks, Ken?”
“What’chu mean?”
She says, “I want a Slurpee. Craving one heavy. Trying to settle my mind on which flavor. And I keep thinking I have to go with red. But that’s crazy, some straight-up ghetto-slash-black folks thinking. Red ain’t no damn flavor.”
“Buffoonery.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
Donnell exits the store, interrupting our nervous chatter.
Lark taps me, nods at him. “Can’t see what he has. Can you?”
“I bet one of those ninety-nine-cent cans of Arizona. Mango Madness.”
“Damn, you’re right.” Donnell places the drink on the roof of his car, gets his keys together and fumbles with something. “You two know one another so well.”
That’s the worst part about starting over. You have to start over.
My stomach rumbles.
I deserve this, though. Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t so foolish. If I hadn’t rushed to break what wasn’t broken.
“Damn,” Lark says.
Damn is right.
In Donnell’s other hand: a bouquet of roses.
“I’m sorry, Ken. I feel worse than—”
I cut her off. “You mention one of the Jacksons, and we’re fighting.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats.
I nod, bite my lip. “It is what it is.” I start to laugh. “I’m sick of hearing people say that phrase. And here I go using it.”
But it’s true.
It is what it is.
Nothing I can do about the cards I’m dealt. But play ’em.
Donnell eases out of the 7-Eleven lot.
“You want to keep following, Ken?”
“Might as well see this through to the end.”
I ease out behind him.
He turns off the main highway. Takes a lot of side streets. Residential areas. Comes to a bend in the road, bisected by a man-made lake, and turns left. Back on a less traveled highway. A Red Roof Inn and a Holiday Inn sign are illuminated off to our left up the road. Donnell turns into that complex. My stomach does flips. I hear Lark’s heavy breathing beside me. Donnell passes the two inns. Follows the road out, turns left into a huge parking lot. A building before him.
“What’s this place, Ken?”
I frown. “HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, according to the sign.”
Donnell slides into a spot up close to the building as I hang back. He appears to hesitate in his car, and then he gets out. Same loping steps. Shoulders slumped. He stops by the front of the building. The doors slide open. He steps away. They close. He pulls out his cell phone.
That’s the play-by-play.
This feels like a play-off game in the NBA or something.
Stakes are high. For me, at least.
“He’s calling someone,” Lark says.
I feel a vibration on my hip and look down. “Yeah. Me.”
“Pick up. Pick up.”
I do. “Hey,” I whisper.
“Hey, yourself,” says Donnell.
His voice sounds weary.
I’ve never heard him sound that way before.
“You don’t sound well. Is everything okay?”
“Nope.”
“Anything I can do?”
“You can park. Then you and Lark can come up with me to visit my moms.”
“You spotted us?” Then I realized what he’d said. “Your moms?”
Donnell sighs. “Wasn’t hard spotting you. You have that stuffed dolphin I won you hanging from your rearview mirror.”
Seaside Heights. Boardwalk. We walked hand in hand that Saturday night he won the dolphin for me. The boardwalk was crowded. Donnell seemed so proud to hold my hand, let everyone know I was his girl. I felt the same way.
“I followed you,” I confess. “I know it’s wrong.”
“You can tell me later why you’ve been following me,” Donnell says. “I have to deal with my moms’s situation right now.”
“What happened to her?”
“Cerebrovascular accident,” he says.
I hear the hurt in his voice. The disbelief.
I repeat that medical jargon, ask what it is.
He doesn’t answer.
“A stroke,” Lark says. “Who had a stroke, Ken?”
“I’m parking,” I tell Donnell. “We’ll be right there.”
He says the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Breaks my heart.
Just one word. “Hurry.”
Chapter 5
Eric
1154 Sycamore Avenue.
That was the address of my friend Benny’s house. Fool-ass white boy I just couldn’t seem to shake loose. Through thick and thin, for better or worse, we somehow remained friends. We were like an old married couple. We’d fought, literally, actually threw punches at one another. We’d bickered verbally. We’d gone through cool-down periods where we didn’t even speak for months at a clip. But in the end, we remained friends. Probably would be that way forever. It wasn’t always easy, or comfortable, but I was glad just the same.
There were times when I seriously struggled with the friendship. Especially when I wasn’t cool. When I was trying desperately to fit in. Posey the Poser and his white sidekick: that wasn’t a good look. But after Fiasco came into my life, and the popularity that soon followed, what others thought didn’t seem to matter as much. I became a leader, not a follower. I set the trends, established the new cool.
Damn near every cool black kid in my school would have a white friend they’d be ride or die with by the end of the year. Rainbow Coalitions popping up everywhere. I was Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, better still, Barack Obama. Changing the world from my little corner.
Yes, you can. My motto, too.
But 1154 Sycamore Avenue, Benny’s address, still left a bitter taste in my mouth. I remembered standing in the doorway of Benny’s grandmother’s room just last year. She was a sick old lady. Fingers gnarled by arthritis, an unhealthy gray-yellow pallor to her skin. And the room smelled like six degrees of death. Her foot was on a banana peel, and she was toeing the line between this world and the afterlife. Dementia stole pockets of her day. But when she saw me standing in her doorway she seemed as lucid, as clearheaded, as she’d ever be.
She spoke on my mama.
Spoke about her in a way that would get most people slapped.
I was a punk at the time, not at all a fighter, but Mama was off-limits.
Regal dark skin, Vivica Fox frame, warm sm
ile. Yeah, Mama was definitely off-limits for ridicule or disrespect. You didn’t disrespect my shero and get away with it.
But Benny’s grandmother did. To my face.
Offered my mama a job caring for her because “wiping a white ass is a job for a Negro woman.”
I was too shocked to respond, too weak to defend Mama’s honor.
I’m still ashamed of my reaction that day.
I left 1154 Sycamore Avenue angry, slack-jawed, determined that I’d never return, adamant that my friendship with Benny had gone the way of the dinosaur.
Benny’s grandmother died a few months later.
And as evil as she was, as set as I was that my friendship with Benny died at the period of his grandmother’s hateful comment, I attended the funeral. Benny and I clasped hands after the service. “Thanks” was all he could manage. Nothing else was said. Nothing else needed to be.
I could have told him that my mama, she of the regal dark skin, Vivica Fox frame and warm smile, had pressed it upon me to attend the funeral, offer my condolences and support to a good friend. Even after I’d told her what happened with Benny’s grandmother, the hateful words the old lady had uttered. I could have told Benny all of that. But I didn’t. Mama made me promise I wouldn’t make him feel any worse than he already did. I didn’t break my promises to Mama.
I remember Mama’s words.
“Some things you do because it seems right. Some things you do because you know God would have you to do them. You’ve reached your full potential when you know the difference.”
And so I attended the funeral.
Even more surprising, I was back at 1154 Sycamore Avenue.
“Come, Eric. Gotta show you something.”
That was Benny. The excitement in his voice was real; it had fingers. That meant that what he had to show me must have something to do with a video game. Benny was a one-track dude. When he watched television, it was all about G4, the gaming channel. His room was littered with magazines: GamePro and EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly).
So I wondered why he’d bypassed his winding staircase. Why we weren’t climbing toward his room, the hub of the most extensive video-game collection in North America. No exaggeration.
I followed Benny down the foyer, toward the kitchen.
“What’s up, Benny? You hungry or something? Grabbing a snack?”
I was worried he’d offer me some food. That would make me uncomfortable. I didn’t eat in everyone’s house. No disrespect, that’s just the way Mama raised me.
He didn’t answer. Didn’t look back. Tiptoed. Of course, I tiptoed, too.
“Benny.”
He looked back at me then. Quickly. Put a finger to his lips, demanded my silence. When he made it to the edge of the kitchen, he stopped, rubbed his hands together. Benny only had one interest besides video games that aroused this kind of excitement.
I came to his shoulder. “Who are you about to prank call?”
“Chill with that,” Benny said. “I’m not about to crank call anyone. Get ya mind right.”
Benny had gotten picked on and beaten up so much at school, it warped him. He changed how he talked, trying desperately not to be that sore thumb that stuck out. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to him looking like Carrot Top and sounding like T.I.
“What’s going on, Benny? Why are we whispering?”
“Will you chillax, Eric? I’m getting there. I’m getting there.”
He pushed the swinging door to the kitchen forward just a crack. The smile on his face made his cheeks bulge. He looked like he had a mouthful of food.
“Peep this, E,” Benny said.
I peered over his shoulder into the kitchen.
My immediate reaction was to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I’m sure I drooled.
There was a woman in Benny’s kitchen that defied all laws of…everything. She was incredible. Eye candy of the highest order. And I immediately developed a sweet tooth.
She was wearing capri-style cargo pants and a wifebeater. She had the kind of body that would wipe your mind completely blank, make you stutter to come up with any coherent thought. Thick, strong legs. Tight, high-set butt. Pancake stomach, big, firm breasts. Her skin was the color of a Hershey’s Kiss. Her black hair was braided in a thick knot and hung to her waist.
“I swear to God, every time I peep her out I get hard as a Democratic Primary race,” Benny said. “Sorry, Father.”
Video game. Prank calls. And now sex.
Puberty had kicked in Benny’s door waving a four-four.
Looking at the woman in the kitchen, I could understand fully.
“Dang, Benny. I don’t know what to say.”
“Ain’t nothing to say, dawg. You just appreciate someone that fine and let her sexualize your mind. Sorry, Father.”
“What’s she cooking? Smells good.”
“Carne gizado, canja, couscous, who knows. It will be good, though. She hasn’t failed us once so far. Homegirl be putting her foot in it.”
“What is she? Spanish?”
“Cape Verdean.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Me, either. Until she came. Then I had my head in Wikipedia like they had cheat codes to Halo 3 posted on that mug.”
I smiled. Looking at the woman in his kitchen, I could understand.
“It’s a country off the west coast of Africa,” Benny went on. “The Portuguese settled there back in the day. Brought over slaves from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau. Her peeps were from Guinea-Bissau. Her mother was a performer. Her father dealt in textiles. They’ve both since passed. She has a brother still over there.”
“You know a lot about her.”
“I googled her.”
“You found out all of that about her on Google?”
Benny shook his head. “Nah. I googled her. Asked her a million questions about her homeland, her upbringing. The equivalent of a Google search. I just say I googled her because…well, it sounds freaky. And I’m sixteen and horny.” Benny laughed nervously. “Sorry, Father.”
I nodded. “She’s like…” I let it hang, couldn’t come up with an apt description.
“I know. One day she was telling me about her native music—morna. And then her native dances—passada, funaná.” He paused, licked his lips. “Coladeira. My goodness.”
“Coladeira’s hot?”
He grabbed my arm. “Dude, it’s nuclear thermal.”
I smiled. “Nuclear thermal? Not cool, Benny. Not cool at all. What would the kids at school think if they heard that? A very unfortunate lapse in ghettospeak, my friend.”
Benny waved me off. “I don’t care. You see this woman, Eric. She makes you use words out of a dictionary. I’m inspired by her. If the kids at school don’t like it, they can kiss my modular coupling.”
I laughed. Benny didn’t. He was caught up.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Jule Gonsalves.”
I repeated the name.
“She’s fine as frog hair, E. The things I’d do to her if I did those things.” Benny shook it off. “Sorry, Father.”
“She’d have me praying, too,” I said. “Girl like that lets you know how much you need Jesus.”
Benny frowned. “Praying? What’chu talking ’bout?”
“Sorry, Father. You keep saying that.”
Benny shook his head. “Not that father.”
“Who then?”
“My father, E.”
“Your father?” I knitted my brows. “I’m lost, Benny.”
He pointed to the kitchen. “Miss Goodbody in there. She’s my father’s new girlfriend.”
My mouth fell open. Benny’s father had a black girlfriend.
The opening in my mouth was large enough to fill with Benny’s dead grandmother.
I left 1154 Sycamore Avenue with two clear directives from Benny: Call Endia, and see if she had a pretty friend willing to be Benny’s date for a double. Jule, the brown-skinned Cape Verdean vixen, h
ad my boy in an uproar.
Me, too.
My hormones jangled around like M&M’s in a bag. I’d waited several days since seeing Endia, all to appear calmer and less affected than I was, but Benny was right. It was time to call her. I’d been waiting for that moment since she flipped my phone closed in the Americana Diner.
Old days, I’d have hesitated before dialing.
Old days.
But I’d reached the pinnacle of my confidence. No hesitation.
She picked up on the third ring.
“Hey, girl,” I said right away.
“Eric?” I’d never felt a baby’s bottom, but I doubted there was one softer than her voice.
“Yeah. What’s good, Endia?”
I heard movement, like she was settling herself in bed. “Nada. Laying down. Reading.”
“Sounds like my sister. What you reading?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’d never laugh at you, girl.”
“Hmm. If you say so, Eric.”
I loved how my name sounded on her lips. “E,” I said.
“E?”
“Yeah. That’s what everyone calls me. E. Or E.P. Know what I mean?”
“Mmm,” she said.
“What was that for?”
“I don’t know…E. You’re different from when I first met you.”
“True dat. That a problem?”
“Nah. Nah.”
“So what you reading? Don’t think I forgot.”
She chuckled. That was a new sound for me. A development in the months since I’d met Fiasco. Prior to him, prior to me getting my swagger, it was full-blown laughter when it came to girls. Girls laughed at me, not with me, and they didn’t chuckle. For the cool boys, but not me.
Oh, how things changed.
“If you laugh when I tell you, I’m not speaking to you again,” Endia said.
I said, “Whatever. You just talking. You know you can’t get enough of me.”
I’d had enough conversations with females in the past six months that it was second nature. I was the teenaged version of Will Smith in Hitch. Smoove. With a ve not a th. Smoove.
“Well?” I asked when Endia wasn’t forthcoming with the info.
“Ian Fleming.”
“James Bond.” I laughed.
“Eric,” she screamed.
“Said call me E,” I chided in my stern voice.
Dirty South Page 7
