By Any Means Necessary

by Candice Montgomery

  Sure, Mrs. Jericho is nice. She’s baked us gluten-free banana bread every year for Christmas for as long as I’ve lived with Theo. She’s not young anymore, though. She helps out of the goodness of her heart, but she and everyone else understands that her good heart could give out any day now.

  Then there are the twins, Mr. Finn and Mr. Turner (I’m really not sure on the validity of twinship or even blood relation at all, but they look an awful lot alike and so everybody just runs with it), brothers who never married and never left the city and now that they’re pushing sixty-plus, I’m not sure they have any intentions to change that. They take care of the farm’s upkeep and garden structure.

  Not gonna lie, a lot of the easiness of running the apiary was handed down to me along with its title.

  Still, I’m worried that if Lisa isn’t there to keep her eye and heart on the grounds, things will fall apart. Faster than they already are. I feel a hot iron sort-of throb in the back of my eye, and it’s bleeding quickly into my jaw.

  A migraine. Remember those little shits from earlier? Yep. It’s the beginnings of a good one that, if I don’t head it off now, will take me out hard.

  My phone’s in my back pocket for only a half second before it vibrates again.

  “Okay, ready?” Emery says, exiting the bathroom.

  Phone in hand, I mumble something noncommittal as I glance down to see that, yep, he texted back.

  GABRIEL: Hey, sorry. Got caught up trying to update family and stuff about move-in. So. Yeah. To answer your question. I’m dorming. I’m over at Cervantes Hall for now, till they reassign me to the arts dorm.

  Arts?

  GABRIEL: Where you at? Wanna grab a coffee or something?

  No. No, I really don’t. At the moment I kind of just want for someone to cut into me. I want to disappear. Which, I guess, is why I walk away from Desharu and Emery without a word and dial up my granddad.

  Excedrin Migraine, here I come.

  7.

  Pause right here.

  Theopolis James McKenzie spends his days in a backyard among plants and things as dead as he is, arguing with anyone who will let him about his need to return back home to the deepest of the deep south—Louisiana’s simultaneously quiet and loud streets, still just carefully arranged rubble after Katrina.

  He forgets that it was an argument that brought him and his young wife—my late grams, Belinda—here. A personal belief that he deserved to live in “an affluent neighborhood.” Like, him, specifically. He deserved that. Not poor Black people from the bayou’s hood, in general.

  And I understand why. I can tell the dust of his honey-soft drawl is his last reminder of what “home” actually is. He’s worked hard to deny it all this time. He’s lied to himself for so long that he’s maybe even started to believe it. That he could come here to this beachy, coastal sandpit and not look back at the things that made him great.

  It’s become my job to remind him that an airplane ride will likely kill him. He’s too old for anything that doesn’t promise him his own wings and a good burial. So he stays. He stays on the Hill, and he rages and he sits in that goddamn rusting foldout chair in the backyard with his breakneck posture, spitting at the idea that his only son is gone.

  And, selfishly, since Uncle Miles died, I’ve learned I’m not quite ready to be alone.

  So I do the same. Did the same. I stayed with Theo. With his just-shy-of-cruel demeanor and his judgment about who I am and who I love.

  Uncle Miles used to always make me promise I’d take care of the family. But he’s ruining that, Theo is. And if I lose the apiary because of him, I’ll make Theo sorry he ever brought my family here in the first place.

  It’d be nice to deny that Theo is my last resort for everything. But the truth is, I don’t even list him as my emergency contact for school because typically you don’t want an emergency contact who would answer the phone during an emergency with a delayed, “What are you on my phone for now?”

  He’s an “in case of death” contact. Emergencies don’t warrant enough of a fuck to give.

  So, me … this? Calling him now? That’s dumb. But Uncle Miles is the reason I did any of this at all. The reason I took over the care and handling of the apiary. The reason I did just enough to get away from the city but not leave the state entirely because of a promise to care, on any level, for his father.

  Uncle Miles is worth this. He’s said the same damn thing about me time and time again.

  You’re worth it, b. You’re worth the world, kid.

  That mattered.

  Alright. You can hit play.

  “This is Theo,” he answers at his own pace.

  I know he’s not busy, but I ask anyway. “I catch you at a bad time?”

  Wish I could say it’s a wonder he didn’t feel the need to give me the heads-up that all the work I’ve done for four years—since freshman year—is going being swallowed by the city’s need to gentrify every viable part of the hood that young Black kids use to stay out of trouble. The community center was first. Then the local playground. Mr. Johnson’s parking-lot garden was uprooted—no pun intended—and is now, to my knowledge, going to serve as a small, insignificant piece of the new mall’s three-story parking garage.

  “Thought I told you not to call me ’less you was dyin’.”

  “It’s important. About the letter?”

  He’s silent. But not because he’s unaware. He just always feels the need to make me work for shit. Maybe it’s the only entertainment he ever gets.

  “Off top, Theo. I’m talking about the apiary right now,” I continue. Really, this is no way to speak to your grandfather, but the man makes me call him by his first name and that’s not even the weirdest part of this relationship.

  It’s always been that way between him and me. His name is on the space Uncle Miles built his dream on. I worked two and a half jobs—one of which was the apiary—and kept my head down while I tried to graduate from high school without a drug habit or an arrest record. And as far as I was aware, Theo was keeping everything legitimate on his end, too.

  “You read the thing?” he asks. As though I’d have called him without doing exactly that.

  “Yes, Theo, I read the letter.”

  I hear him lean back in that same rickety old foldout chair he’s always in. That same chair that’s practically become a part of the backyard he planted it in a decade ago.

  “What’s it say, Torrey?”

  I roll my eyes. If I weren’t all but trapped inside the walls of this school, he might’ve reached through the phone and snatched my ass.

  Because I know—I know—he can tell I just disrespected him that way.

  And do you know what? So much of that shit just becomes irrelevant when your skin starts to feel like it’s holding in raging storms, and earthquakes start to erupt just behind your eyelids.

  “It says the farm’s property is being seized, Theo,” I say, begging now. “Jesus Christ, please tell me this didn’t all happen without me knowing about it?”

  He would have had to get first notices, second notices, appeals information—if he even bothered to go that route and file the paperwork properly—all before this appeal denial that basically meant my soul was getting put up for some white people’s “I’m an ally of the gangsters, too!” sale.

  None of which Theo was inclined to care about. The only person it would really mean something to … is me. And I guess, just like every other person who decides I don’t deserve to matter, the root of my soul isn’t worth him putting in the work for.

  “Boy, quit playing on this phone. What’s done is done.”

  I’m squeezing the phone so tight, my knuckles feel as though they’re splitting, the skin peeling away from itself the way my lips want to part on a scream.

  “You fix this. You need to fix this, Theo—”

  “I’m old and I’m tired and don’t you dare raise your voice at me like you ain’t got no sense, boy. I’m ’bout ready to be done with this
farm and these bees and your ass, too. Been in this too long watching your Nancy ass dance around this hell-city talking about honey. My boy is gone, and now that Echo Park dirt trap will be, too.” He’s breathing hard. That whole outburst took a lot out of him, and I’m just sick enough to be happy about the fact that he is physically suffering here.

  But, still, he’s not finished. “You want information? Here’s all you gon’ get. I did fix it. I fixed it so that someone else can come in and take over and get that farm out this neighborhood. I fixed it so that I won’t have to die before that farm does. I fixed it so that they’ll come and essentially lock you out of that mess within the next thirty days. I don’t give a gray rat’s ass what happens with that farm, which is exactly why it’s all set to be auctioned off. There is your fix.”

  And he’s off the phone before I can really understand the way my chest has fractured irreparably. Thirty days and they’re going to claim the land and close it off? Thirty days? Auction?

  It’s going to be sold off to the highest goddamned bidder? It feels like that abrupt end to the call has completely obliterated my ability to breathe. Maybe all the damage that’s been done here will end me. I have to. I have to do it. Thirty days to fix things, and everyone is working against me.

  8.

  The cool thing about living with Desh is that, although he’s a cyclone of a human when it comes to cleanliness, I’ve noticed that at night, when it’s just the two of us hanging in there, not quite feeling the whole six-to-eight-hours-of-sleep thing, he’s a really nice presence to have around.

  My head’s been in turmoil basically since the second I got here. And I suspect that Desh has calculated this plan to keep me as occupied as possible during the day and then letting me process and internalize at night. I’m glad he’s in that bed across from mine, the blue light of his entirely-too-close-to-his-face phone the only other light in the room aside from my own.

  I pull my phone out, knowing I should have returned Gabriel’s text long before now.

  ME: For sure. Coffee could be cool. Wanna go on campus or off?

  Coffee could be cool? What is wrong with me?

  Please don’t answer that.

  I text Lisa again because I need somebody. You know that feeling, right? Where you just need somebody, anybody really, to care about you down to your marrow. Someone who’ll make you their number one. That’s Lisa for me. It was Uncle Miles, but I think Lis got passed the buck when he died. Guess she inherited me just like Theo did. Only difference is, Lisa isn’t a two-faced son of a bitch.

  ME: Love you, Lis.

  LISA: I love you, too, buggy. You alright? Settled in okay? Need anything? I can look up directions to see if there’s a Target or something nearby so you can get whatever you need, maybe I can gift it to you online somehow. I miss you already.

  ME: I’m good, Lis. Thank you tho. I miss you, too.

  ME: I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t be mad at me. You love me, I know you do.

  LISA: I do. Which is why I can say this: Don’t come home to deal with the farm. Please don’t ruin what you’ve got there. This is big. The first generation in the family to even go to college? Yeah. Keep that for yourself. Don’t let this neighborhood take that from you.

  She’s right. It’s not a fact I’ve forgotten. Just one that I occasionally need to be reminded has some pretty heavy significance.

  Slauson Avenue will take everything from you if you let it.

  ME: Okay. I promise. I’ll stick it out.

  And no sooner do I get that out to her, an email dings on my phone.

  The subject line and email preview tell me it’s one of my professors emailing about the textbooks and reading required for class on the first day. I’ve been a college student for two whole-ass days and already I have homework? Dormwork? Educational BS that I have to prioritize?

  Lisa has this thing about priorities. Hers are usually pretty sordid. Like, she’s all about her hair appointments over paying whatever bills she’s got sitting on her neck.

  But that’s Black women. Hair and nails and skin over everything.

  It’s nice that she’s helped me see the value in creating my own. But right now, I gotta say this is the first time I’ve ever really felt like I don’t know which items on my priorities list go in what order.

  Although, after having just promised Lisa that I’d keep my head down and keep it pushing, I need to commit to at least getting through the first week or so. Admissions has been packed since I got here, anyway. So the only way I’m talking to them (sans a two-hour wait time) about disenrollment is when classes officially begin and things have evened out.

  So I resolve to wait a week before I try to talk to anybody about withdrawing or postponing or whatever the hell my options are.

  I click into the email and find a link for the ENG 101 course I’m in for. I barely passed that part of the entry exam. My scores were on their last gasping breath, just high enough to get me above the you-need-to-take-the-basic-ass-prerequisites point.

  I need five whole-ass textbooks for this class. Five of them.

  And the least expensive of them is $48.

  Christ. My financial aid barely covers tuition, dorm fees, move-in expenses, and my meal card. I’m back at square one. I have $100 in my pocket, and that was just what Lisa gave me as a graduation present.

  The email does contain a number of short essays and literary pieces that I would otherwise have to purchase separately, and I still can’t afford that shit. Lisa, of course, has been financing everything over here. And won’t accept any “I’ll handle it” Black man machismo bullshit.

  Still, a new bucket of stress is poured down the back of my neck. It is slimy and it is cold and it is also ridiculously heavy.

  GABRIEL: Might as well stick with on campus since we really should know where that shit is at, no?

  The little notification slides its way down the top of my phone then gets sucked back up, and I swap over into it from my email app.

  Next to me, Desh is falling asleep in five-minute bursts, then waking up to resume the watching of a thread of Vines that’s been posted on Twitter.

  I only know because he keeps quote retweeting them and tagging me in them. There’s been, like, fourteen so far.

  ME: Haha, yeah for sure.

  GABRIEL: I mean, lissen. If you don’t want to, it’s cool you know.

  Shit. My mood is bleeding into this conversation. I’m just still in a haze about the cost of these textbooks for only one of my five classes this semester.

  And all the reading I gotta do beforehand? That’s almost fifty pages.

  ME: No, I do. Sorry. I’m barely away rn.

  Lie. I am not going to find sleep anytime soon.

  ME: *awake

  Gotta make it believable.

  ME: I’m just stressing it about the price of these textbooks only white people can afford.

  GABRIEL: Right? I got an email this morning that was basically like: READ 80 PAGES WITHIN THE HOUR AND ALSO BUY 80 TEXTBOOKS ALL PRICED AT $80 EACH.

  ME: Oh, that’s verbatim or?

  GABRIEL: I mean, yeah, pretty much that is kind of exactly what the email said mostly.

  ME: I see.

  A little of the trash that’s been forcefully kissing its way down my neck is lessened by a fraction. A very noticeable, extremely Gabe-tinged fraction.

  ME: I’m surprised you’re up

  GABRIEL: Are you.

  Not a question. Just, oh, are you. Wondering. About me during this filth hour of the night? I love it when boys do this.

  I whisper, “Torrey, what?”

  “Huh?” Desh says, startling awake. But he’s asleep again before I can even get some kind of lie going.

  ME: It’s not exactly standard business hours. What’s got you burning the midnight oil?

  Burning the midnight—what the hell is wrong with me?

  Like, listen. I’m not new at this. People have this tendency to joke about being eighteen and in lo
ve and shit. But I know my way around some flirty banter. I was twelve when I had my first boyfriend. Whatever that means at twelve. We held hands under the table at lunch. We were partners for group projects. We saved each other seats during assemblies. That kinda thing. His name was Tristan Quirk and we “dated” for like, I don’t know, however long it took for us to graduate sixth grade and head off to different middle schools.

  Anyway, neither Tristan nor I was out at that age. One of Theo’s favorite pastimes was—and remains to this day—making gay jokes, using the word as an insult, and calling men who use body wash over bar soap the kind of slurs that run red across a gay kid’s vision.

  The same went for Uncle Miles and all his older friends that I, beyond all reason, wanted to be cool enough to kick it with. It’s probably a thing that should’ve made it really hard for me to love and worship my uncle the way I did. The way I still do.

  But the thing is, that’s just what it means to grow up gay in the Black community. It’s like homophobia is the cishet Black community’s lifeblood.

  Anyway, I digress.

  My point: With one look, I got Tristan Quirk to walk home using a different route than our friends. One “what’s up?” lift of my chin. A different route—my route—delivered on whatever finesses was inherent in my twelve-year-old body’s crooked smile.

  So, burning the midnight oil … that’s new. A trip. Confusing. And not a super great look.

  But then, I guess, maybe it wasn’t such a bomb? Because, Jesus Herman Christ, he sends me a picture, and I am not ready.

  He is on his bed—fully clothed, don’t worry, your pearls may remain unclutched—smiling as some kid behind him, another Black guy, tries to hang a Deadpool banner up behind him.

  GABRIEL: My temp roommate is a comic book fan. I almost want to ask Admissions to let me stay in this dorm. Business majors are hilarious.