The Waiting Hours

by Shandi Mitchell

  The doorbell buzzed, long and hard. Her hands stiffened over the keys. Her eyes opened, but their focus was distant, still lost in the music’s fugue. Bereft of sound, emptiness pressed against her.

  The buzzer sounded again. An interminable bzzzzzzzzzzzz-zzzzzz.

  “I’m coming.”

  She peered through the peek hole, unlatched the chain, turned the deadbolt, unlocked the handle, and opened the door. Heat stifled her lungs. She pulled the door partially shut behind her, as though she could keep the sweltering air out.

  The boy who delivered her groceries stood on the step with two grocery bags in hand. His bike, with its oversized rusted wire basket bolted to the fender, was unceremoniously dumped on its side. Its front wheel was still spinning and a fresh tread mark of gnawed grass marred her lawn.

  “Got your groceries.” He hoisted the bags up like weights. His thin twelve-year-old’s biceps were surprisingly sculpted. His hair was shorn shorter than the last time she had seen him, and he had two blade cuts marking his left and right temples. One line was slightly higher than the other. The boy’s brow was damp with sweat. “Some hot out.” He peered over her shoulder gauging the temperature inside.

  She should have had the money in hand. She always had the money in hand. “I’ll be right with you.” She stepped back into the living room to retrieve her wallet.

  “I like your piano.” The boy had entered her house. “Was that you playin’?”

  She didn’t like that he had stepped inside. “No, I was listening to a CD.” She counted the bills, considering whether to tip him less.

  “You don’t have much stuff.”

  She surveyed her possessions: a worn couch, ten-year-old television, vintage record player, CD player, piano, four plants, and two walls of overstuffed bookcases that didn’t contain the surplus stacked on the floor. She thought, That’s right, you tell them I don’t have anything worth stealing. And then she thought, I need to get an alarm system installed.

  “You want ’em in the kitchen?”

  “No.” Too loud. “I’ll take them.”

  She set the bags on the floor behind her. She wasn’t going to turn her back on the boy even if he was a child. He smiled. He had a wide smile that made him look innocent. She fished a five-dollar bill from her wallet. It was prudent to bestow the full tip plus a little extra to keep him on her side.

  “Can I play you somethin’? I just learned it.”

  He was moving towards her piano. Before she could find words, he had sat on the edge of the bench and pulled it closer. The wooden legs scraped the hardwood. His untied laces swept the floor and his sneakered feet reached for the pedals. His hands plunked down on the keys. The juvenile plink of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” jarred her ears. His finger jabbed the notes.

  She tried to moderate the rage rising from her belly. Her ears flushed hot. The word STOP was stuck in her throat. The opening refrain finished and she was considering the repercussions of physically grabbing the child and wrenching him from the piano, when the boy’s posture changed. He shuffled his bum closer to the seat’s edge and launched into a second refrain.

  But this time, with his body cupped into the piano, the music exploded with a percussive rhythm as his hands jumped across the keys. His left foot thumped out a beat and his right depressed the sustaining pedal and the piano’s voice opened louder. His shoulders and head rocked with the sway. She wasn’t sure what she was hearing. It was still “Twinkle, Twinkle,” but his hands were slapping—pawing—the keyboard and the notes were licking each other into wildness.

  She could hear the rhythm-and-blues roll, but somewhere deeper inside of that she discerned the strains of Mozart’s twelve variations of “Twinkle, Twinkle.” The music galloped and the boy’s head nodded time. As he reached the third variation’s transition into the fourth, he stood up, pushing back the bench. His arms spanned the keyboard, faster and faster he grabbed the notes, wrapping them in a crescendo, the keys almost escaping his thrashing fingertips. Pulled back into syncopated pace by flopping wrists, the pounding heartbeat rose through the floorboards into the soles of Tamara’s bare feet.

  The boy reined the rolling notes into an abrupt stop and the sustain held the room. In its thin fade, he turned to her, grinning, saw the money in her hand, and took it.

  “Thanks! See ya later.” He ran out the door, leapt off the top step, and mounted his bike in a move worthy of an action hero. Pedalling up the street, he looked back and waved.

  Tamara shut the door and secured the locks.

  * * *

  —

  She tried to calm herself with the unpacking of groceries and the orderliness of her fridge. Beverages to the right and condiments to the left. Fruit, vegetables, and meats in their appointed bins. Milk in the milk receptacle. Butter in the butter tray. She placed the orange juice container to the right. The boy had brought “with pulp” rather than “no pulp,” as if there wasn’t a difference. She shut the fridge and made a mental note to mention it to the grocer on her next order. She wanted to support the family-run store, 57 years in business their sign said, and loved that each year they hand-painted over the number to add another. But she’d been a customer for three years—always “no pulp.” She expected better. She expected people to do their jobs. She looked at the piano. The bench was askew. This irked her more than the botched order.

  The fan hummed a disinterested metronome. She straightened the bench and checked the keys for smudges. For good measure, she wiped them with the soft hem of her dress. The piano appeared untouched. With one hand, she walked the notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle” up to star, and slid the fallboard shut.

  The boy had disrupted her precious quiet time before shift and thrown off her schedule. She went into the bathroom and tried to forget his small hands thrashing her piano. She craned to see the top of her head in the mirror. Her fingers traced the tracks of bare scalp between her tightly woven rows. The pressure made her follicles ache dully. Losing her protective head scarf had caused two braids to tangle and frizz. She would need to have them redone.

  Her face scowled back at her. It was the same scowl she had perfected in childhood when Granny Nan pushed her head to the side to leverage the hairbrush. Her hair had always been her grandmother’s bane. When she was a toddler, Granny Nan preferred a multitude of short, stubby pigtails interwoven with pink ribbons. By the age of six, she had taken to pressing Tamara’s unruly curls straight with her cheek pressed to the ironing board. When she was ten, Tamara cut off her hair with the kitchen scissors.

  Granny Nan didn’t punish her. She swept up the freshly ironed locks, threw them in the garbage can, and didn’t speak to her for two weeks. Tamara didn’t understand then that Granny Nan was trying to protect her. Trying to make her look like the other girls, the white girls, so her life would be easier. She was grooming her for better jobs and a way to move through the world without drawing attention. Tamara didn’t understand that she was afraid for her or that the pain came from love.

  Through junior high, she wore her hair natural, high and wide, using only a pick to keep it from tangling. But then came high school and boys, and they liked girls with straight hair. When she asked for help with the chemical relaxers, hot combs, and flat irons, Granny Nan wept. Praise Jesus, hallelujah. The lye brews burned her scalp and fumed their eyes, but her hair was smooth. Granny Nan cupped her face in her hands, looked her in the eyes, and told her she was beautiful. They both ignored the lingering pungent smell of burned hair.

  She missed Granny Nan’s strong hands roughly tugging her hair. She missed hearing her pounding out Jesus on the piano. That boy had the same natural ease. The music came easy to them. They didn’t have to look for it. Granny Nan had tried to teach her, but couldn’t name the notes she was playing. As a child, Tamara would sit beside her grandmother and attempt to memorize her hands flittering over the keyboard. She spent hours transcribing the music, but when she would play the pages back, they sounded nothing like Granny
Nan. She pushed away the notes repeating in her head. All the years, lessons, practice, and money invested as an adult to achieve her Grade 8 level, and the boy had just sat down and diminished all her work.

  She roughly worked apart the two thin braids, though she knew she should be gentler. Her stylist would reprimand her. She had finally found one whose work she liked. Edie was expensive, but her salon used only the highest-grade East Indian hair, nothing synthetic, and after a botched glue-in and three months of bad wigs, she was willing to pay. She did her best to protect her hair. She avoided rain, showers, and humidity, and slept religiously with a silk head scarf and pillowcase. Grannie Nan would be proud of her. Even so, she was lucky to get five weeks between appointments.

  If she could pull off the powerful look of popular celebrities, she would crop it short again. But that would require being a foot taller, twenty pounds lighter, and possessing a different face, with high cheekbones and oversized eyes. She puckered her lips. She had nice lips. And she was a nice colour. Not too dark. That’s what Granny Nan said. Easier in this world.

  She could see the boy’s small hands against the white keys, his fingers barely spanning the scales. His hands were dark, darker than hers. He used his thumb to play the black keys and his fist to pound out chords. She squeezed the tube of dry shampoo. Her nose crinkled at the antiseptic smell. She rubbed her fingertips along every exposed bit of her scalp, paying special attention to the hairline because it was most vulnerable to breakage. Softly, she towel-patted away the residue as she dissected the notes the boy had played.

  She repeated her hair care process with a tube of unprocessed castor oil, then again with moisturizer, and finally sealed the shafts with coconut oil. It took forty-five minutes and she was no closer to understanding how the boy had bent the music and her hair was still fuzzy. She pulled out a small pair of scissors and clipped away a flyaway strand that wasn’t her own. The extensions were beginning to shed, which she blamed on her headset at work.

  It was supposed to be high-grade virgin hair that had never been cut. At least that’s what was advertised. She pulled on a single loose strand. It came out long and kinked. It amazed her that a woman in India had the same hair colour as hers. The shops said it was hair willingly donated as an offering of thanks to their gods. But she knew that wasn’t true. When sourcing cheaper suppliers online, she had found articles with a different story.

  The hair wasn’t a joyful offering. It was a plea for mercy, a sacrifice to heal an only cow, dying child, ailing parent, or a broken heart. The women were giving up their beauty, their desirability, and future prospects in return for a miracle. And it wasn’t just women, it was children, too—girls and boys—ten thousand penitents a day bowing their heads on the steps of the Temple of Tears to the specially appointed cutters. Their hair swept away as it fell. Unaware that behind the holy walls, it was being sorted, washed, sun-dried, baled, and sold. She wondered if there was a sound to all that hair falling, or only the swish of straw brooms on ancient stones.

  The boy’s brilliant notes tumbled in her mind. The gods were cruel.

  She dropped the loose strand of virgin hair into the trash bin. She didn’t know this girl. The girl had given her hair willingly. The tears had been washed away. For all she knew, maybe this girl’s prayers came true.

  * * *

  —

  “911. What is your emergency?”

  Monday night—no, Tuesday morning now—and Tamara had already logged twenty-three calls. The heat was drawing the crazy out of people. She was grateful for the next three days off. She glanced at the time: 1:26 a.m.

  “Ma’am, did you get the licence plate number?”

  No. It was almost always no.

  “What kind of vehicle? Do you know the make? Colour? Closer to blue or black?” Her voice didn’t betray her impatience. She rolled her neck side to side, stretching the muscles to consciously lower her shoulders.

  “Blue, you think. How long ago did you pass the vehicle? An hour?” She stopped typing. “Yes, I have the information. Yes. Thank you for your assistance.” She disconnected the line.

  She was thirsty. The air was dry in the room tonight. She scanned the hive. Every call-taker was engaged; even fire dispatch was monitoring a burning dumpster. She pivoted to the snack carousel and grabbed a water bottle. Her lips were parched. She needed to remember to take vitamin C and D tomorrow. It had been five days since she had been in the sun for any length of time.

  Active and incoming calls scrolled down her monitor:

  10-68 Impaired Driver

  10-81 Break and Enter

  10-30 Mentally Unstable

  She checked her other monitor for the responses: On site, false alarm, arrived at scene…

  The security door buzzed and Constable Mike entered. A wave of welcoming hands, including hers, lifted to greet him over their half-walled partitions. He was carrying two trays of coffees and teas and a handful of raffle tickets.

  “For you, lovely lady, two sugar, no milk, as you like it.” He placed the cup on Tamara’s console with a flourish.

  “How much is this going to cost me?” It always cost something.

  “May I suggest five dollars and three chances to win a dinner for two? All proceeds going to a good cause.”

  “It always is.” She reached for her purse.

  “Or ten dollars for seven chances…?” He fanned open the tickets.

  Constable Mike was a good one. He took the time to drop by and acknowledge they were part of the team. He didn’t complain about the GPS systems recently installed in the squad cars, or talk too much, or flirt. He just dropped in and said hi. He had their respect. She sifted through her wallet. She only had a ten-dollar bill, having used her last fiver to tip the grocery boy.

  “I want my change.” In fourteen years, she had never won a raffle. She swung around on her chair. “911. What is your emergency?”

  “Help, you gotta help us!”

  More than one person. A man was sobbing, choking on his own tears.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Antoine!”

  The voice cracked high. A boy.

  “Antoine, how old are you?”

  “Fourteen. We need help!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “He’s shot!”

  Tamara’s hand flew up in the air, a signal for assistance. Something big was going down. Her supervisor came to her side and peered over her shoulder.

  “Tell me where you are, Antoine.”

  “The park.”

  “What park?”

  “By the water.”

  “Which side of the harbour?”

  “The dark side.”

  Slang for this side of the harbour. “What do you see around you, Antoine?”

  “I don’t fuckin’ know! Oh—There’s blood everywhere!”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “There’s a school…”

  “What else do you see?”

  “…the bridge…I don’t know what to do.”

  “Are you in the park, Antoine? Is the school beside you?”

  The boy was hyperventilating.

  “Talk to me, Antoine. Help me find you. Is there a school?”

  “Yes.” He choked on the word.

  “Are you at the turn to the bridge?”

  “Yes!” he wailed.

  Constable Mike read over her shoulder as she typed:

  10-34 Shots Fired. 14-year-old boy reporting shooting incident. Possible wounded.

  She nodded confirmation as she typed in the address located just down the road, minutes away. Mike headed for the door, leaving behind the drinks and the bag of raffle tickets on her desk. Her fingers raced to trigger the response. Code 3. In the cubicle across from her, Colleen took over logistics. Tamara glanced to her left and saw her call hit “active” at the top of the screen. Red alert. Police and ambulance dispatched.

  “Who’s been shot, Antoine?”

  “My friend!”
>
  “What’s his name?”

  “Devon!”

  “Are you injured, Antoine?”

  “No.” Snot and tears choked his throat.

  “The police and ambulance are on their way.”

  “He’s dying, he’s dying.”

  “How old is Devon?”

  “Twelve. He’s my friend.”

  12-year-old boy shot, name Devon.

  “Do you know who did this, Antoine?”

  “No! Noooo! The blood won’t stop!”

  “Can you see where he’s been shot?”

  “He can’t breathe…his neck. Blood’s squirting all over.”

  “Antoine, if I talk you through it can you help Devon? Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know…it’s all coming out.”

  “Antoine, the ambulance is en route, but we want to slow the bleeding. Can you put your hand on the wound?”

  “Like the doctors on TV?”

  “Yes, like on TV. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.” The voice sounded so small.

  “The ambulance will be there soon.” She looked to the screen and hoped it was true. The vehicle markers were converging. “You’ll hear the sirens soon, Antoine.”

  “He’s—he’s—he’s making sounds.”

  “Is Devon on his side?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re doing really good, Antoine. Put your hands on the wound.”

  “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “You won’t hurt him. You’re going to slow the bleeding. You can do this.”

  Tamara heard a clunk and then nothing. She leaned forward, straining to hear. A gasp gurgled in her ear. In the distance she heard, I’m doing it! I’m doing it! She realized Antoine had dropped the phone beside the wounded boy. It was his breathing.

  “Devon? Can you hear me?” A low moan. “Devon?” She leaned closer to hear the whimper of a reply. Her ear cocked towards the ground. A choking cry responded. “Devon, I don’t want you to talk. Help is coming. The ambulances are coming. I’m going to talk to you.” She could hear a rasping inhale, sucking inward, starved for air. Two boys, twelve and fourteen. In the park. At 1:36 a.m. Black boys. Antoine and Devon. She knew the moment she heard Antoine’s voice. The breath exhaled, a stuttered gargle, followed by a broken inhale. It was wet and suffocating.