Lady G snapped awake. Remembering the old hurts, she shivered in her bed and held herself. Not unlike when she woke from her two-month-long coma after the fire. January 22nd, 2001. The date burned into her mind. Pain reared up when least expected and had a way of never quite going away, but rather burrowed itself deep within. Like a wound healed over a piece of shrapnel, mended enough to make her drop her guard, but pain flared afresh when something bumped against it. She no longer wanted to feel, but only desired the lure of a morphine drip. The dreamy haze where nothing hurt as bad as it could. She just kept packing down the pain, stuffing it deep inside and moving on. Each hurt a tiny brick, each brick stacked upon one another, with her mother the source of many, many bricks in that terrible wall.
"I live with it, Vere." Her mother's name for her. Lady G hated her name and only ever recalled it whenever she had to fill out government forms. Or thought about her mother. She could still picture her mother on the chair across from her bed. Her first sight after she had clawed herself out of the darkness of her coma, struck by how small her mother looked. So very, very small. The fire had been ruled an accident, but Lady G knew. They both knew. The pain, the memories, they were too much. Lady G peered at her, a tube down her throat, her hands in soft restraints, probably to keep her from pulling the piece of plastic out of her mouth.
"I was so young when I had you. Children change your life. You love them and they drive you insane. Bit by bit. And you love them some more. But Michah… Michah had his father's eyes."
"Momma, did you ever love us?" Lady G's mind called out, needed to know. As always, her mother didn't hear her and went on about her own concerns.
"I remember those eyes. How they'd follow me when I walked past him. How they lingered on my behind or down my chest any chance they got. How they sneered whenever I shut his game down. How angry they got. How quick they were to fill with hatred and something animal. And dangerous. I just couldn't help but keep wondering: would Michah's eyes glaze over, see me as less than human, as a piece of property or meat? Would I just be a pair of tits, a piece of ass, or a slick piece of pussy for him to decide to take? He had his father's eyes, Vere, and I couldn't take him looking at me, needing me, or depending on me anymore."
Her mother collapsed into hard tears, hard because she never quite broke the way truly sorry people did. Her tears were defiant, sure, and angry, but tears nonetheless. She laid her head on the hospital bed. Lady G stretched out her hands. Her burnt hands. Third-degree burns, incisions had to be made to release the heat. In her last act as "Vere", Lady G stroked her mother's hair in hard forgiveness. Hard because she didn't forgive, though part of her understood, and knew that she needed to release her mother. Her touch feigned love, but was concerned, scared, and angry. She resolved at that moment, "I don't want to make someone else." And she vowed not to get involved with them.
Men.
They were brutal and couldn't help but use others. Bottomless pits of selfish need they vented upon women and called it love. Or sex. Or fucking. It was a silly vow, young and foolish, like love. Her "no men" rant became almost its own persona, a routine she put on for her friends. Going on about how she didn't need a man, how she was a princess who saved herself. How she'd remain single and unsullied by these dogs, these boys who played men games. She knew the image she projected, how people assumed that she was strong, capable, wise, and independent. Her life was her own. And she wanted to be the woman people guessed her to be. She presented that woman as if she had arrived. Yet she felt hollow.
A part of her believed she "doth protesteth too much" when it came to men, but another part of her was equally adamant. She really didn't want to make someone else. She had no interest in bringing another messed-up person into her messed-up world so she could mess them up and have them go off and mess up others. She simply opted out of that life plan.
Dreams and memories. Lady G seemed trapped by them, not knowing how to move past them, becoming entombed in a morass of emotional quicksand she couldn't escape. The need for love, to fill the ever-present hole inside her; she remembered desire, but she had forgotten how it worked. How to lower her guard, allow entry past her wall of bricks, and allow someone in to see the most precious parts of herself. She had forgotten what it was like to have someone touch her heart. She only knew the cold comfort of loneliness and had learned to grow comfortable with it. Her heart had numbed over.
Then King brought her back.
The months since finding him had been good. Made her whole and rekindled desire in her. She enjoyed the flattery of his attention. It drove her girl Rhianna insane with jealousy. And Lady G enjoyed being needed and seen as special. Things were cute early on, but they turned into something selfish. She didn't think she misrepresented her intentions. He wasn't enough. No, that wasn't quite it. He couldn't complete her the way she wanted to be completed. And she knew part of him resisted her. He wouldn't let her in, not all the way, not to his most precious part: he loved her the best he was able, she knew that, but it wasn't enough.
She wanted more.
Big Momma fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat. Every quarter she attended the condo association meetings. Every meeting played out the same way. Roger Stern, president of the board, sat front and center. Officious glasses rested on the tip of his nose to not only study the papers before him, but to be able to peer over them in his condescending manner at whoever was speaking. His wife Holly, a frumpy, pear-figured woman, dressed in floral patterns too bright for the season. Any season. She took the minutes as vice president and secretary. Lipstick smeared across her mouth with a clown's sneer, and blush applied by the brushstroke, she obviously got made up for her appearance as First Lady of Breton Court. On the other side of Mr Stern sat Neville Sims, the groundskeeper for Breton Court. The only black person at the table, but also the only one of the three who did any real work. His cap pulled low on his head, lifted whenever he wiped the sweat from his forehead. His matching blue coveralls had a thin film of grime on them. Leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him, he spoke with a hint of hesitation and appeared as uncomfortable as Big Momma.
A reporter from the community paper scribbled her notes. Perhaps the reporter's presence caused Mr Stern to go through the motions of paying more attention. Big Momma upticked the side of her mouth in mild derision, making a note to have her niece show up in a skirt, sensible shoes, and waving a notepad around during the next meeting.
The crowd went through the usual litany of concerns every meeting: the trash bins were ugly, unsightly and not emptied often enough; the street lamps along the parking lots needed to be fixed; the whole place required a face lift, something more cheery and inviting; the patios were in need of repair and uniform appearance because with half knocked over, the wood rotting through, others unpainted or with huge holes in them, they looked like a thirdworld nation.
Big Momma played the "remember whens" of the neighborhood. Remember when he used to be clean? Remember when she used to be pretty? Remember when they did good in school? Remember when the neighborhood was calm, with none of this shooting? Remember when they played real music? Ironically, none of those memories were as true as she believed. He was never that clean. She was never that pretty. They never did that well in school. The neighborhood was always jumping and the music played was complained about by their parents, too.
"What are we going to do about them boys?" A dapper-dressed older gentleman asked. Big Momma knew him as Old School, one of the barbers from up the way. She had no idea he lived around here. Gray salted his beard, but not in an unattractive way. But his eyes roved a little too much for her tastes. Even as he asked his question, he had time to check out the hem line of the reporter.
"What do you mean?" Mr Stern made what appeared to be a note on his sheet of paper, either noting the issue, checking it off his list, or doodling for the appearance of paying attention.
"They play their loud music at all hours of the day and night. They congregate on porches, on the
sidewalk, in little packs."
"We can't punish people for being in a group."
"A gang is more like it."
"And we can't go around treating every group of boys like a gang." Mr Stern wasn't a liberal by any definition of the word. He didn't care about political correctness, civil rights, profiling, or anything like that. He was, however, lawsuit-averse.
"So you ain't gonna do nothing?"
Mr Stern met eyes with the reporter. Her pencil raised, poised for his next words. "We will talk with the police. Increase patrol runs. Maybe look into private security." He smiled at her.
"Talk, talk, talk. I'm tired of talking. We need to do something." Old School turned to the audience for approval.
"Or get someone who can," someone echoed.
"Mmm-hmm," the rising chorus began.
The same song every meeting. Frustrations rose to a crescendo, peaking with the calls for elections. Mr Stern caressed the stack of papers in front of him. A political animal firmly in control of his little fiefdom, the elections were already locked up. For all of their talk about nominating and running someone else, the idea never occurred to anyone before a meeting. The actual occupants attended the meetings; the votes were cast by the homeowners. The paper stack in front of Mr Stern were the homeowners' proxies and allowed him to do whatever he wanted.
Big Momma rose. Her pudgy fingers folded the paper detailing the meeting's agenda. Slowly, but with intent, she made her way to the center aisle. Diabetes stiffened her movements, but she remained stout and formidable. Her eyes focused on Mr Stern.
"Folks around here call me Big Momma."
"We know who you are, Big Momma. You're a fixture around here," Mr Stern said with a grimace of indigestion.
"Exactly. So I know the neighborhood and its people." She nodded to the reporter as if checking to see if she spelled "Big Momma" correctly in her notes. "Don't pity us. Don't condescend to us. Don't hold us to a lower standard."
"I don't–" Her hand wave cut him off. She would be heard. Mr Stern could just turn beet-red and glower over his glasses until she was through.
"We live in a community. We here every day. We see what's going on because we live here. Here in this community. Where do you live, Mr Stern?"
"I don't think that's–" Another hand wave. Another deepened glower.
"I've always lived in the community. We may not have much, but we have each other. We share what we have, we look out for each other as best we can, and we help each other as much as we can. That's the way folks around here brought me up. My parents had their problems. Abandoned me. But the adults in the neighborhood decided to raise me and hid me from CPS whenever a social worker came around, because they would just have sent me to foster care. The people here moved me from spot to spot so I could stay in the neighborhood and go to the neighborhood school. That's how I finished high school. So I know the value of education and I preach it to everyone I take in. I got married to a man from the neighborhood, God bless his soul. And when he passed, some five years ago, I stayed. In the community. I'm Breton Court through and through.
"You want to make us promises? Fine. You want to talk to folks? Talk. But in the end, we're a community. And we take care of our own."
The room burst into applause.
The reporter kept taking notes.
Near the heart of downtown, on 16th Street just east of Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the major prostitution boulevards in the city, Herron High School provided a classical liberal arts education. With an emphasis on the arts, it steeped their students in great historical thought, the school aimed to prepare them for college. According to the brochures, the school's curriculum was structured around an art history timeline and emphasized the classic art and literature of many cultures.
The five minutes until homeroom bell clanged, sharp and grating. Isabel "Iz" Cornwall closed her locker after slipping her backpack into it. Sunken cheekbones bookended a face with a long nose with a stud, slightly notched where it had been broken in the past. Slim, short, hair dyed black, she had an unadorned face of simple beauty which would rise to gorgeous with the right make-up application. A tattoo of a dragon crawled along the base of her back. This was the third day this week she wore her blue jeans. Her nose was no longer sensitive to her own smell. She pulled a white cardigan over her pink T-shirt, covering her braless, small breasts. The T-shirt was worn yesterday, but she hoped no one would notice under the cardigan. She pressed her books to her chest, eyes downcast, slouching to be unnoticed.
"Damn girl, you wearing those clothes out." A black girl with a thick frame, large breasts, and thighs like oaks, her thick black hair had been processed into straight hair. Blue contact lenses didn't hide a wide nose and full lips which faced her in the mirror, and she took out her self-loathing on the world around her.
"Leave me alone, Andret."
"Just saying, you may want to give your outfit a rest. It's getting ripe enough, I bet them jeans could find their own way to school by now."
Iz lowered her head to push by. Andret hooked her arm in front of her.
"What? You too good to speak to me now?"
"She ain't got nothing to say to you. I might have a word or two though." Tristan Drust spoke with the timbre of command though she chewed a piece of gum with an open-mouthed flourish. Draped in a hoodie, her head crested with a thick nest of braids, most of which were dyed mauve. Big-boned and sturdy, without a trace of fat, anyone who knew anything about posture would have noticed how balanced her stance was. She knew more about fighting than most men. Her amber eyes with gold flecks counted off the girls with military precision. Andret was the mouth, the alpha of the group. Her wing girls could tussle, but if Andret was taken out quickly, they'd lose heart for a fight.
"Enter the dyke," Andret said.
"Now you've gone and hurt my feelings." Tristan squared up against Andret. Her eyes flashed challenge, a silent push. Andret inched forward, a tacit shove back.
In the end, much of life could be reduced to lessons learned on the playground. Random encounters, bullies and bullied, friends and foes, the workplace of life all gathered in the same place. There were those who were simply not meant to get along with one another. Spaces not meant to be inhabited by both parties without rage bristling off each other, ready to jump off. Without boiling up in them, a living fire that needed to lash out and scorch the earth about them just under the surface, a seething they didn't know what to do with; once the veneer was scratched it erupted.
Iz appealed to Tristan's better nature, preaching about finding better ways to respond to hostile situations rather than let them control her. "Blessed are the peacemakers" was a luxury Iz could indulge, but there was a reality she didn't understand: not everyone played by the rules of peace and some people just needed to be knocked on their ass. Folks who believed others infringed onto what was theirs and what the world owed them. Otherwise the world walked over you, the way so many had abused Iz. People like Iz needed people like Tristan.
Moving her weight to her back foot, Tristan knew how to throw a punch. She struck with her shoulder, not her arm. She pivoted her hip into her blow, punching through her target. The jab flew with an angry whisper, not wasting any more time with idle talk or the pantomime of threat. She wasn't one to waste a shot. Andret's neck snapped back, nose exploding on impact. At heart, Tristan was a fighter. The other thing about fighting was knowing how to take a punch. Tristan loved going up against people who sparred against heavy bags or practiced shadow boxing, because no matter how exquisite their technique, a fight was won or lost based on how well they handled having their bell rung. Andret fell into the arms of her compatriots, the group piling onto the floor. Students crowded around them as Tristan loomed over them. She read their eyes: they wanted no part of her.
"You OK?" Tristan asked Iz. Whenever they were together, the rest of the world retreated.
"I'm a full-time student, so I got to lay it off." As a kid, she wanted to study math. She had a head for
numbers and loved their patterns and symmetry. Numbers measured the world. Unfortunately, the path of education was discouraged by her father. As far as he was concerned, she was an incubator on legs: he regularly informed her that her duty was to get married and have kids. As her brand of rebellion, she became studious and intense and developed a love of reading.
"You takin' notes?"
"Right here."
"All right then." Tristan took her in her arms and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"What's going on here?" A teacher popped his head out of his classroom.
"Nothing," Tristan said.
"You know her?" He glanced at Andret, who cradled her face and slinked off with her friends.
"I don't know anyone."
"Go to the office, young lady."
"I don't even go to this school." Tristan flipped her hood over her head, turned on her heel, and flashed two fingers. "Deuces."
King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 Page 8
