“Don’t ’pologize to me, boy,” she called back. “’Pologize to your Lord and Savior. Who that is at the door?”
“It’s my friend. His name’s Cope.”
“Well, bring the boy in here, child. Let me see him. Don’t have him standin’ outside like he ain’t welcome.”
DeMichael turnt down his gaze real sheepish, like he was actually obeying another person not cuz he could get somethin’ out of them but from real obedience. “C’mon in, blood. Granny just wanna say hi.”
I followed him into a little rabbit hole of an apartment. Maybe I had been inside his place before, but if I was, I was probably so young that nothin’ looked small to me. Now I could feel how tight they apartment really was, a space way smaller’n the one me, Momma, and Daddy burst to the seams. The Bradley home’s tight rooms was crowded even tighter by all the objects: furniture, a walker, that loud fan, a bicycle without tires, a camouflage hunting jacket, a big old grandfather clock, and hella other shit stacked on the floor, tacked to the walls, and hung from the ceiling. I followed DeMichael, inching along into the everything. I wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about hoarding, or if it was just the smallness of the space that made it seem like the two of them owned too many things.
“Well, hello, sweetie.” Granny Bradley’s voice fell out sweet as syrup over me. She closed the little laptop where her show was playing and laid it on top of unopened mail that cluttered the kitchen table. It wadn’t Sunday, but you wouldn’t know it by her outfit. She was an elderly lady whose long floral print dress had outgrown her. It was stretched thin in places and pooled upon the floor so that you couldn’t see her feet. She wore an old-school church hat adorned with a spray of peacock plumes, which looked newer, like maybe DeMichael had bought it for her. “Your name is Cope?” she asked. “Is that short for Copeland? Yes, I thought so. Well, this be a first, now. Got one of D-Michael’s friends up in this apartment. Had me half thinkin’ this nigro ain’t got no friends.” I noticed the fray-edged Bible sitting in her lap.
I looked back at DeMichael, who stood beside me slump-shouldered. He lowered his head and scratched at it.
“So, what y’all two plannin’ to get up to today?”
I was about to answer when DeMichael’s head shot up. “Just kickin’ it.”
“Speak up, boy. I cain’t hardly hear you.”
“I’ma show Cope my room, what I do, then we fittin’ to kick it in the courtyard and whatnot, nothin’ much.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Copeland, did you know that my grandson is incredibly talented?”
“Granny!”
“Hush now. I am speaking to your friend. Now, I’m not talkin’ ’bout no book smarts. I could give a damn what they wanna lie about in a book. My grandbaby gots real skills. He’s a hunter, a marksman. Show him that shotgun, boy.”
“Do I have to? I mean, I apologize—I was fittin’ to show him exactly that!” He threw some fake excitement into his voice. “C’mon, Cope.”
He led me into a small side room where a bed and a washer/dryer stood side by side. A rifle leaned barrel up against the washer. I didn’t know a thing about rifles except for the facts Larry had dropped on me. I remembered his stories about hunting in the countryside somewhere far away and white, and I thought about that hunting jacket hanging in DeMichael’s front room. “You hunt?”
“Yessir. I can spot and dot a bird at a couple hundred feet, prolly more.”
“Where do you hunt that you can go shootin’ at shit hundreds of feet away?”
“Up in the hills.”
“You can hunt in the Oakland Hills?”
DeMichael shrugged. “Oakland Hills, Hayward Hills, Berkeley Hills. If you go up high enough, it’s clearings where on a good day without clouds you can see aye’thing flyin’. It’s not legal to shoot out there, but you know. It’s shooting ranges out here, too, where you can go and buck shots all legal. It’s whatever you want. If niggas can shoot each other in the hood and get away with it, you think you cain’t go off to the middle of nowhere and shoot at some birds and shit? That’s what yo’ ass should be doin’, go explore the hills, nigga, don’t be duckin’ these gang members in Ravenscourt. Ain’t they about to tear that motherfucker down? They should get on with it.”
“How often do you shoot?”
“Prolly once a month. It ain’t easy to travel all the way up there. Not like Oakland buses have it on they route.”
“How do you get there then?”
“You want me to have yo’ back in Ravenscourt, right? Why you wanna know all these li’l details—unless you lookin’ to come with me next time I shoot?”
“As long as we ain’t gotta hitchhike to get there, sure.”
“You think anybody would open they car door and let a NFL— nigga fuckin’ large—lookin’ nigga like me hitchhike with them? My probation mentor be takin’ me up there.”
“For real?”
“For real, family.”
I didn’t think too much of all that probation mentor nonsense. I stayed the fuck away from my mentor and he didn’t fuss with me. But DeMichael sure seemed like he learnt a lot from his mentor: I watched as he took apart that weapon with a quickness, slapping sharp screws into my hand which snagged my skin. “Hold those. How ’bout this deal? If you gimme a fresh pair of Js, I’ll show you how to put this shit back together.”
He looked at me with bright eyes, and I realized that he had finally found somethin’ that he was good at, somethin’ that he cared about. More for him than for me, I nodded OK as I pressed my thumbs together to try and stop the bleeding from the little cuts that the screws tore open. “Go head, big bruh, go head.”
Like a teacher, he showed me how to slowly reassemble the weapon piece by dangerous piece. My hand was still bleeding a little when I finished putting the gun back together. DeMichael took me to the one window in the room, pulled back its thin blue curtain, and opened the sill and the screen, and we looked out at the dark marine layer above us and the gray birds sitting on the telephone wires, which ran into and out of thick trees. On God, Oakland cain’t even try and be safe about anything, I swear. DeMichael showed me how to load and hold the rifle, how to sight the birds, and how to ready my whole body for the shot. A little songbird was in my sights. I heard it go up and down the scales, singing different notes. My finger massaged the trigger. A breeze tunneled into the apartment and touched my face. “Shoot!” DeMichael ordered, and without thought I pulled the trigger. The song stopped and the bird scudded downward outta my line of sight. I raised up, expecting to see its body falling to the ce-ment, but instead I watched as it loop-de-looped and swerved and veered and disappeared unscathed into one of the thick-leaved trees. Then it hit me that I had just shot a gun for the first time. Had just shot a gun for the first time from an apartment window in the middle of Oakland. Stunned than I don’t know what, I dropped the rifle and turned and stared wide-eyed at DeMichael. “You made me shoot! Why’d you make me shoot!?”
“First of all, family”—he held his hands up like I was ’bout to pick the rifle back up and turn it on him—“don’t drop your weapon all careless like that. It might fire accidentally and hit one of us, or my granny. I just said to shoot. Ain’t force you to do it.”
“Why’d you tell me to shoot?” My breath came fast and hot. “Everybody on the Rock heard that! I’m not tryna go back to the Youth Control.”
“Family.” DeMichael lowered his hands, stepped forward, and pushed the rifle with his foot till its barrel was pointed toward the street. “Ain’t nobody gon’ say shit. They prolly gon’ think it’s fireworks. It is summertime.”
“It’s too early in the day for fireworks.”
“It’s too early in the day for yo’ scary ass. Ain’t nobody in the hood gon’ call the po-lice ’bout no gunshot ain’t hit nobody. I thought you grew up here. Private school must got you forgetful.”
“People here know the difference between gunshots and fireworks.”
; “So what if they do, family? Ravenscourt niggas be lettin’ off shots all hours. Ain’t nobody here know how to locate a concealed shooter. They don’t know what side of the street that came from.” A smile curved his lips and he shook his head. “Here you are, wantin’ me to go regulate on yo’ behalf, yet you mad at me cuz I asked you to put in a li’l work, huh?” He chuckled, or whatever it’s called when big dudes laugh and shake they head hella self-satisfied cuz they know you cain’t steal on them and knock them out. “At least you ain’t bitch out, Cope. At least you pulled that trigger. You are no coward.” He squatted down and disassembled the rifle with a quickness. “C’mon,” he said, hopping back up, leaving his toy in pieces on the ground, “I’m cookin’ lunch for Granny.”
Back in the cluttered kitchen, DeMichael fried eggs and cooked bacon, his head hitting every hanging plant and light fixture as he moved in tight little patterns in the tight little space. Meanwhile, Granny Bradley patted at her Bible with one hand and held the other still on her knee with one of them old oximeters latched to her pinkie finger. “I need to monitor my lungs in case they make another one of these viruses. All the viruses is made to kill black people. It’s all we can do to check our health and pray. Do you have a church home, child?” she asked me.
I was still stuck on shooting the rifle. Had Granny Bradley somehow not heard it fire? Did DeMichael shoot at enough shit from his bedroom that she was used to it and just ignored it? I couldn’t call it, but this was the kind of craziness I shoulda known to expect from a fool who had been in and outta juvie since he was nine years old. “Nah.”
“Well, me and D-Michael go to the li’l old tried-and-true Baptist church right there on the corner. It’s served me well all my life since I moved here from Lou’siana as a young woman. And as you can tell, that was a long time ago.” She laughed, so I laughed with her, cuz I didn’t know what else to do.
DeMichael set three plates of bacon and eggs on the small table and took his seat next to us.
“Copeland, I would appreciate it if you would do the honors,” Granny Bradley said.
“The honors?”
“Pray, nigga,” DeMichael translated, kicking me under the table.
Jacq, I cain’t tell you when’s the last time I prayed over some food. “Dear God,” I said, “thank you for this food and for my friend DeMichael and for his grandmother Bradley—”
“My name is Charlene, thank you.”
“My bad.”
“Say it to the Lord, child, not to me.”
“Forgive me, Lord. Lord, thank you for DeMichael and Charlene and for this food and for my health and safety and freedom. Amen.”
“What about our health and safety and freedom?” Granny Bradley asked. “You ain’t used to prayer, am I right?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re right.”
“Well, you should come to church with me and D-Michael on one of these Sunday mornings. Or on a Thursday night.”
“All right,” I said, knowing that just like with DeMichael’s parole mentor, I wouldn’t go nowhere near that church. As we finished the bacon and eggs, the itis started to come over Granny Bradley. We watched her drowse off little by little. When she was all the way out, DeMichael nodded at the door and we both got up. I was out the door first. I let him lock the apartment door behind hisself. We had made our way across the courtyard and out to the street when Miguel called to us. “Hey, where y’all headed?”
I hadn’t seen my old ace boon in almost a year. It was just the memory of his lessons rattling around in my head that had had me checking off boxes, hopping on trains and whatnot. But to see him was different: the Youth Control had done somethin’ to him, hardened him. His face had thinned out like the rest of us so that he looked as raw and rugged as everything else on the surface of the Rock. He wadn’t quite as much of a pretty boy now, even though his braids had came back in. He looked like a lighter-skinned Iceberg Slim in the powder-blue tracksuit he sported.
“Nowhere,” we answered.
“Crossing the street,” DeMichael said.
“When’d you come home?” I asked.
“It’s been a minute I been back. I wadn’t in there on nothin’ too serious. A nigga just been traveling around a little bit, seeing if it’s better business other places, na’mean? It is better other places, but I missed my soil. This is home.”
I woulda stayed gone if a better opportunity elsewhere presented itself. I wondered about Miguel’s schooling, if he still went at all. But I didn’t ask.
“I hear you got in on that shoe hustle somethin’ real, blood,” Miguel said, slapping me on the shoulder where I stood, tilting on my toes on the curbside edge. I almost fell into the street.
“Just a little bit. Not too real.”
“Real enough. How you think he got me to agree to go to Ravenscourt with his ass?” DeMichael laughed. “Gotta be the shoes, money.”
“Ravenscourt?” The playfulness fell outta my man’s demeanor. The housing project stood facing us from across the boulevard. It towered there within rock-flinging distance, but none of us ever went there, not inside they gates, and vice versa for them coming onto the Rock: it plain was not happening, not unless you was bringing your own security.
“Ravenscourt’s across the street,” my security said.
“Fact,” I said, lookin’ across the busy road at the baddest buildings in deep East Oakland.
“Y’all two be careful,” Miguel said. “Them boys let off some shots this morning.”
“We’ll be careful, dog,” DeMichael assured.
“C’mon, blood,” I said, seeing a break in the traffic. I didn’t want Miguel, who was smart as hell, school or no school, gettin’ all investigative on me and asking a bunch of questions about my role as a reporter. He was the type to dead anything that even suggested dry snitching, and, truth be told, all reporting, no matter how minimal the story seems to be, is pretty much dry snitching.
I bolted into the street and raced to the other side. I stood there and watched DeMichael conversate with Miguel another minute. Then his slow ass finally ran for it, diving di-rectly into the traffic. A busted old Lincoln Continental braked in front of him, inches from clipping him and coming up totaled. Black Hercules breathed heavy as he found safety on the Ravenscourt side of the street. He huffed past me and immediately began scaling the fence that separated the Ravenscourt apartments from the street. He huffed up the fence and huffed on over it like a six-foot-plus, two-hundred-fifty-pound-plus Catwoman or some shit. Who knew dude could climb like that? I watched him drop into enemy territory and followed him over.
Then we was in. I took a second to scope it out and soak it up, Ravenscourt, the infamous stomping grounds of Oakland’s old drug dealer kingpin, Felix Mitchell. After selling more drugs’n the pharmacy back in the day, Felix Mitchell was arrested and sent to prison in Kansas, where he was stabbed to death over some Oakland shit. The famous funeral procession began here, this tenement: limos and a black Cadillac hearse led the way, followed by a horse-drawn carriage where the great man’s body lay in state like the president. President of East Oakland. People crowded the boulevard. Meanwhile, the national news reported on how messed up black people was for stepping out they doors and doing the same damn thing—lookin’— that they had sent newspeople from all over to do. Try and have that happen today. It’d get shut down so fast on account of a report of looting or a virus or some other shit.
DeMichael tapped me on my back shoulder. “Family, you see them jokers cross the street? Stay woke now.”
I checked the scene: a big open courtyard in the same design as Rockwood’s except that this one had no basketball courts, no benches, no nothin’. Clearly created for poorer people. DeMichael nodded at three female Jehovah’s Witnesses. They was going door-to-door. I watched as curtains was peeled and then shut closed with a quickness when the people behind the curtains seen who was knocking.
“It’s practically an I-raq war up in here,” DeMichael whispered.
As we was wandering lost thru the empty, mostly vacant, stripped-clean concourses of Ravenscourt, we came upon the Witnesses again. Each woman was dressed in a big black gown and a black head wrap. They reminded me of the Musliminas, but instead of lookin’ away or droppin’ her eyes, one met my gaze. She nodded at me and DeMichael. DeMichael nudged me with his big shoulder, knocking me off stride—his way of messaging me to drop my eyes: No eye contact with Witnesses. The nudge worked cuz I almost fell into the third-floor railing. “You don’t know your own strength, big bruh,” I hissed at him.
“Brothers, good afternoon,” one of the women, a pleasantly parchment-complexioned sister said. I could tell by the way she floated in her gown how small she was, and somehow that made her big, ellipse-shaped eyes all the prettier.
I cut my eyes at DeMichael and then smiled at the woman as she and her sisters approached, the other two with covered heads bowed.
“Be careful of your surroundings, brothers,” the pretty Witness said. “Some of the residents told us that it was a gunshot fired this morning from across the way. Everybody is trepidatious of a gang war.”
“We’ll be careful,” DeMichael said, which surprised me cuz I thought he was anti–free speech. Then I realized he had the situation studied a couple steps ahead of where my mind was: he spoke to the woman over his shoulder and kept moving so that she would have to double back from her sisters and pursue us if she wanted to proselytize. “Not to trouble y’all,” he said, “but y’all know where apartment 13-2B is? This place is organized real wild.” He stopped walking then, but now we was at the opposite side of the concourse from them.
“Oh, that’s easy,” the pretty Witness said, and proceeded to explain how to get to the apartment we had got very lost trying to find.
“Jehovah Witnesses always know how to find they way around,” DeMichael whispered under his breath as we passed thru double doors and onto a separate section of the walk. It was true.
I rapped on the apartment 13-2B door. No one answered. I knocked harder. I knocked a third time. My hand started to hurt so I used the big brass door knocker to wake the dead, or whoever happened to be lying up in there. I figured I’d come this far, I should at least see Sherrod.
The Confession of Copeland Cane Page 19