“No, I’m just here to tutor your dumbass as a form of charity for the hopeless.”
The men sitting in the waiting chairs, folding sections of newspaper for a read, chuckle softly.
“Man, shut up and introduce me to your friend.”
“She doesn’t date down, Rob, but this is Emery.”
She waves.
“She single?”
“Not for you,” Emery says. “She also has ears and a mouth of her own.”
That’s it. She doesn’t even realize she’s won the entire crew at Daddy Mojo’s over just like that.
The oldhead in the corner folds his newspaper down. “What brings you back around this way, T? Thought you were our success story. Thought you made it out the hood.” That’s Uncle Rudy. He’s not really my uncle. I don’t think he’s anyone’s uncle. But that’s what we all call him, so I don’t question it and neither should you.
Mr. Jones tips my chair back and takes some shaving cream and a blade to my sideburns and cleans up my beard, the blade pressed heavy to my skin just close enough that it could be called a kiss.
Mr. Jones, even as a longtime fan of brandy, has the surest hands in all of LA county.
“You heard about the apiary?” I call over to Uncle Rudy.
“Yeah, I heard about it. Same thing happened over on Ninth to, what’s his name, the liquor store over there?”
I do my damnedest not to flinch at this. Still a blade sharper than Mrs. Xu’s tongue on my face. “They seized Mr. Jimmy’s store?” Jesus Christ.
“Yeah, Jimmy Wesley’s whole thing down there,” he says.
Another oldhead, fedora tipped at the only acceptable angle, chimes in, “Bought up that whole lot down there, too. Where all them apartments used to be. Too many people out here sleeping in them, I guess. Can’t let poor folks have nothing.”
If that ain’t the truth.
Mr. Jones finishes me up, raises my chair, then spins me around and hands me a mirror. I look but not to inspect. Just to appreciate. I don’t even have to wonder if he’s gotten it right. That’s just Mojo. Surest hands. Best eye. Largest heart.
I try to hand him some cash, but he grunts and turns to grab his probably-older-than-Methuselah broom to start sweeping up.
Emery stands, presses a kiss to Mr. Jones’s cheek, which he accepts with a grunt and the smallest smile. You’d really have to be looking for it to know it was there.
“We’re petitioning,” I say. “What’s happening out here isn’t okay. White people are literally targeting and buying up our neighborhood so they can give it a face-lift and then price it at three times what any of us can afford.”
“How is a petition supposed to help?” Uncle Rudy says, a laugh buried deep in his gut. “That’s just some paper, right?”
I knew when I came here with this plan in mind that I would have to explain this in ways that made sense to them. “I talked to a lawyer friend. He says—”
Someone in the corner, some youngish dude covered top to bottom in FUBU gear, calls, “Man, I ain’t trying to hear about that gay shit, so if that’s what’s about to happen, I’m cool on all that.”
No one else speaks up. Some laugh. A few of the barbers glance up for literally a second and then keep it pushing with their clippers, wrist jumping up the crown of a head.
I push on. What else can I do? This isn’t the place to confront homophobia. This is a barbershop full of cisgender heterosexual Black men who aren’t here for that shit.
“He says if there are enough signatures, enough shows of support from local businesses, that it might force the city to hear me out on an appeal. It could even halt a lot of what’s coming for any other businesses out here about to be torn down.”
That same dude in the corner mutters, “Good luck with that. Soft-ass.”
Mojo snatches up my clipboard, signs his name and contact info, then growls, “Both of y’all knuckleheads, get up on out my shop.”
I’m pissed enough that I don’t even bother going back the way we came. I just push my way out the front door, its bell screaming above me. We’re gonna have to walk all the way around the fucking block to get back to Emery’s car.
Oh, goddamnit. Emery. I turn around to go back for her but she’s right behind me. We stop and just stare at each other for a second. The look on her face … it’s familiar, but also it’s a little unwelcome. I hate getting that look from people.
You know the one—brows pushed together, lips pulled in as close to the teeth as they’ll go, shaping some kind of smile-frown that says, I’m sorry. But for what? What should Emery be sorry for?
I curse and she pulls me into a hug, but it’s a quick one. I think she knows that’s all I’ll accept right now.
“Which way back to the car?”
I point and we start down the hill, the heavy LA sun licking up the back of our necks as we trek along.
Back in the car, Emery blasts the AC and then exhales as she backs out.
There’s a headache creeping right up under my left eye.
“Creep.” Left Eye. Hilarious.
We spend most of the rest of the day hitting up the major businesses in the neighborhood.
Mr. Mark’s discount tire shop, Tires By Mark—he is very original that one—Ms. Ollie’s bakery, Ms. Sima’s, the lady who does threading and waxing just above the old check-cashing spot me and Moms used to always hit up.
Not all of them sign. Some lecture me about messing with stuff I have no business trying to touch. Others say they can’t risk getting involved in anything that’ll bring the government or the cops to their door. A few more joke that if the money’s right, they’re taking it.
For niggas in this part of the hood, any amount of money is “right.”
We’re speeding down the hill, into the neighborhood when Emery speaks again. “Are we gonna go see your bees?”
I shake my head. “Nah, it’s getting dark. Nothing much to see when the sun’s down.”
“Okay, so … to Theo’s?”
I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. “Yeah. To Theo’s. Take a left here and cut through the alley.”
Christ, this neighborhood. I really hate this.
17.
Walking up the steps to my house feels like a lie. The porch no longer sings memories or nostalgia. Instead it reminds me that I spent too many triple-digit afternoons sitting on the warm, weather-roughened surface alone all because Theo wouldn’t let me inside. It always happened after some supposedly effeminate thing I’d said or done. That was always the punishment.
Sit on the steps, legs crossed over the knee, and no talking. He’d say, “That’s the way a bitch should sit.” A display, not a noisemaker.
This house doesn’t feel like a home anymore. And as I think back to being a bony thirteen-year-old kid, I realize it never did.
Auntie Lisa’s in my face and in my arms, all wrapped around me, fussing the second I twist the knob and cross the threshold.
And then she hugs Emery, too, despite not having met before.
But that’s Lis.
“Hi, Lisa,” I say. “You owe me twenty dollars.”
“Negro, shut up and come inside,” she says, holding onto me like I’ll leave her and float away forever if she doesn’t.
“Twenty dollars?” Emery says.
“She bet me she wouldn’t cry.”
As she walks by, Lisa lands a swift swat to the back of my head. My shoulders kick up to my ears.
“Y’all ate?”
“We went to Daddy Mojo’s.”
Emery slips onto one of the bar stools at the counter. As a kid, I always remember them being a set of four. They’re still four now, but two of them don’t match, one of which isn’t even really the right height.
“How’d it go over with Mo n’ ’em? They sign your petition?” Lisa shakes ice from inside a large 7-Eleven cup into her mouth and chews louder than armageddon.
Also, sidebar: Lisa’s the best at codeswitching, I love it. Okay. Carry
on.
“Mr. Jones signed, but everyone else over there was skeptical.”
Lisa nods. She knew it’d be an uphill battle. That’s what the nod says to me. “You’ll have a smoother time with the others.”
“Ms. Nettie’s gonna be a cake walk, she loves m—”
Lisa shakes her head. “They shut her down, T baby, the flower shop ain’t up there no more.”
My chest tries to twist its way off my body. “They closed it?”
“Took it. Closed it. Sold it. And then chopped it down.”
Emery and I glance at each other.
“What’s gonna happen with the land then?”
Lisa exhales. “Your guess, my guess, same difference.”
The feeling that hits me isn’t shock so much as … I don’t know, remorse, I think. Moms and I used to walk by there a lot. Ms. Nettie was always real nice to us. To Moms. That was important to me. Because not many people in the neighborhood were willing to do things like bring us half a pot of leftover spaghetti or give Moms a few days of work when cash was tight. Or when cash was just straight-up nonexistent.
“Torr,” Lisa begins. And I know she’s about to say something I won’t like. “Maybe we need to just figure out how to get through this shit, instead of trying to get from up under it.”
“Okay, Lis. You tell that to Miles.”
Emery stands. “I’m gonna go call Kennedy.”
Aunt Lisa gets up, walks to the sink, and leans against it as though she can push the entire thing, counter and all, into the street just beyond the window. “I just want more than the hood for you, Torrey, and Miles would have wanted that, too. Even above the apiary.”
I feel a river of hot resistance try to grab me and drag me under.
“I can’t,” I say on a rasp. A wheeze. A whisper that is trying hard to be something more like a rush of tears. Crying around Lisa isn’t usually an issue. But after today, at the barbershop, I don’t feel like crying is a thing I’m allowed. What kind of man …
“You can. Miles would not want—”
“It’s not about Miles; it’s about me and how much I owe him for having to raise some gutter kid who ain’t even his!”
It’s quiet a moment. Emery comes back in.
Probably intentionally. Em is a mediator. She’s like the Spider-Man of shutting down arguments.
Her Emery Senses were probably tingling.
“We’re cool,” she says. This tactic always works for her because she fucking says it does.
So Lisa and I disengage from whatever knock-down-drag-out was about to happen.
“I love you,” Lisa says. And I feel like shit. She continues, “And I love the apiary. But if there’s an ultimatum, it’s you, Torr. Every time. I hope you know that. You matter, too.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. I’m a breath away from breaking.
Theo walks in, and my breaking point morphs and becomes something entirely different.
I knew he was home. He’s always home. But I’d held on to something resembling hope that I wouldn’t have to see him. Usually he keeps his distance, even when I lived here twenty-four hours a day. Probably thinks gay is contagious.
Lisa ignores him as he walks in. She used to try and engage him, but that effort quickly died. “Pray on it, Torr. Honestly. I know we joke about this, but just give it to God, okay?”
As he drops his coffee mug into the sink, Theo says, “God don’t deal with y’all little sweet boys. Ain’t no reason to go His way because He don’t swing yours.”
And then he’s gone, up the stairs to his cave of a bedroom, where he will not exit until he realizes he is a human male and has to eat eventually.
Lisa shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Torrey. You know he just—”
“Do not make excuses for him, Lisa, I swear to God. He not just anything, unless you were going to say he’s a homophobic shitbag of a human.”
I glance over at Emery, who’s standing completely still with her hand over her mouth. She’s in shock at what just happened. I sometimes forget that’s not normal behavior from someone who is your grandfather.
“Okay,” Lisa says. Now she will try to de-escalate the situation. “Okay. Let’s just sit down and figure out what spots we can hit up for signatures.”
I exhale and gesture for Em to come sit next to me on the couch. I feel like I should have protected her from seeing that just now.
She sits. And though there’s a ton of room on the couch, she all but sits on my lap.
She laces our fingers and squeezes twice. I squeeze twice back and plan out the route we’ll take to keep my bees safe, too.
18.
The rec center is where I spent most of my time before everything with Moms went down. It’s where I spent most of my time afterward, too.
Now, getting signatures from the people here just seems like a no-brainer.
They know me. They understand me. I’ve been refereeing for the local rec center’s youth sports programs for about three years now. I fell into it after Lisa and Uncle Miles found me ditching school at the beginning of sophomore year and forced me to do this as a punishment.
Aunt Lisa disciplines like a Black mom, so when she sets restrictions, you take that as bond.
I’d ref two games a week on Saturday mornings.
Since the kids are all ages eleven and under, the games can get pretty emotional, and there’s clearly some latent skill, like this one short Black kid, Marc Antony—Mr. “Call me ‘MA.’”
Just before the buzzer goes off to end the game, he launches the ball toward the basket in an arc that should have been impossible for that shrimp of a child.
Two kids more than twice his size make a leap intended to distract his shot. MA’s all game, all focus, and I keep an eye on his hands to gauge the timing of it.
Still, a moment after the ball leaves his hands, the buzzer sounds, and the ball sinks into the net like it was running home.
MA’s team loses the game, but their side of the sweaty gym still goes wild. Moms and coaches and attempting-to-be-supportive siblings everywhere cheer.
That’s half of why I used do this thing every weekend, three years long.
I forgot how much I miss it.
“Hey,” a voice says from behind me.
My cousin Rhyan, all of five-foot nothing. She grabs me in what she thinks is a firm grip by the arm.
“Wow,” I say. “I thought a fly was running repeatedly into me or something.”
She rolls her eyes. “I wish that was funny, but it didn’t even make sense.”
That’s my cue to wrap my arm around her very-low-to-the-ground shoulders.
“Oh, my God,” I croon. “Did you have a growth spurt, RhyRhy?”
“Oh, my God,” she mimics. “Did you consider shaving your patchy beard, Tor-Tor?” She wiggles from underneath my arm toward her sister, who is the only girl on the winning basketball team.
“Good game,” Emery says to Parris.
Parris is a nine-year-old of few words. She holds up her hand for a high five and says nothing as she reaches to her side and slides her slender arm around my waist with a murmured, “Hi, Uncle Torrey.”
We’re cousins but don’t ask me to clarify the way Black familial relationships work.
“Good game, shorty mac.”
She rolls her eyes. I know she learned that mess from Rhyan, who is almost twice her age. And then she walks off toward their mom. My aunt. A fierce-ass woman I gained by way of the world’s most toxic marriage. We were all glad when my uncle Phoenix left them and never came back. We’d have found a way to trade Aunt Aimah for my verbally abusive, short-tempered shitbox of a human, Uncle Phoenix.
They say there’s one in every family, but mine had Phoenix and Theo, so I often wonder what the rest of us did to deserve that.
“Who’s your friend?” Rhyan says.
I turn and completely forget that Emery has been right there with me this entire time. Hard not to get lost in this place. In this
town, in this city.
“Rhyan, this is Emery. She goes to SFSU with me and has agreed to turn me straight. Emery, this is my cousin Rhyan, we found her behind a Wendy’s and decided to keep her.”
Both of them hit me. Multiple times. More times than I deserve, IMO. But then they’re shaking hands.
“How’s it going with your Gore stuff, Rhy?” I say.
“You really don’t want to know that. I know you’re just asking because you left and you’re feeling like you have to.”
“I’m not. I honestly want to know—”
She laughs. “No, you don’t, Torrey. It’s okay. You can’t even call it what it is. Gore Whoring. I am a Gore Whore. It’s what I do. I like it, it’s fine, and I’m not ashamed of that at all.”
Nor should she be. It’s just weird for me as her older cousin. Even if it’s just older by not that much. I don’t even really know what it is. As far as I can tell it’s just a lot of cosplay that involves fake skin, colored contacts, and scantily clad photo shoots and Twitch streams.
It’s a whole community, according to Rhyan. Those are her people, which is interesting since she doesn’t really have any, like, real-life friends that I know of.
“Fine, how’s the Gore Whore stuff going?”
Yep, I get another eye roll. “It’s going, Torr. What do you need?”
Nothing much, I think. Just need to know that there’s something in this city worth coming back for that isn’t about the bees.
I wipe away whatever expression I know is on my face and paste a Band-Aid over it in the shape of a smile. After Emery and I make several circuits around the rec center, clipboard and a little hope in hand, I make my way back to the basketball courts to hug Rhyan, Auntie Aimah, and Parris for a few good, long heartbeats.
Most people don’t know that there are more than twenty thousand species of bees, only four of which are honey bees. And why should they? I mean, did you know that? It’s okay if not. It’s a useless fact, for the most part.
Unless you’re me.
The vast majority of our hives make somewhere around four hundred pounds of honey each.
I mean, we’re not making bees our indentured servants or anything, but the stuff we harvest and jar is some of the best honey in the greater LA County.
By Any Means Necessary Page 11
