The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “The man over there who’s ugly as sin?” Some of my folk up the gallery laugh again. But the men in the juror box are beet-faced.

  “Miss Pittman, I must insist—”

  I squint. “I never seen that man before in all my born life,” I say. “I swear it.” People all around the room gasp.

  The judge bangs his gavel. Buford’s lawyer with the round glasses stands.

  “Your honor, I move for an immediate dismissal of the present matter.”

  Later, it’s dark out. The bells of St. Louis Cathedral over Jackson Square ring out. This is how I know it’s round midnight when Buford shows his face at the exit of the district jail. A policeman shoves him out. Buford dusts off his coat and starts toward the cathedral. But he won’t make it. I doubt he was going to pray to the Lord anyhow. Don’t matter none. My basket is full of baguettes and oranges for my young ones. And I have a knife. A long one, too. I use it for gutting sow. When I pull it out, it shakes like it’s singing. Don’t matter if Buford was going to pray. I’m his Lord tonight.

  Bigsby

  That’s the way it was when I was younger. I never had a hard time getting a date—I’m not bragging. I’m not, I swear. Probably because I grew up with three sisters, y’know? The chicks always liked me. Black chicks, too. Man, if I went out, they’d give me the eye. You know women don’t just look a guy they don’t know in the face. Amirite? Yeah. I dated some. There was this one in college. I haven’t thought about her in some time. Aisha. She got closer to me than most. By junior year, I was staying at her apartment more than in my own dorm. We got along well. Did everything together for a while. Picnics in City Park. Day trips to the beach in Biloxi. People would stare. At first, I thought it was because she was so good-looking. She had this shape. I mean not just her hips and stuff. Her face was heart shaped. And those eyes. We fizzled out.

  That’s right, then I met Samantha. Those redheads, bro! Dammit. Why you always got to drag that ghost out the closet? You want to know what happened with us, Kyle? I’ll tell you what happened. Then don’t ever bring her up again. This shit whiskey is giving me a headache. Order something better. Don’t be so damned cheap. Samantha was perfect, and we fell in love quick. It wasn’t just the usual things like compatibility and looks. She was ambitious. She wanted to make an empire with me. Her father was older and had this company that put video poker machines in all the bars. I know it don’t sound like much, but do you know how many bars there are in New Orleans? That family was loaded, and she wanted to take over one day and keep expanding it.

  One day, I came home to our condo downtown. She was my fiancée by then. We were considering a June wedding. We were talking about buying a house in Old Metairie, starting a family. Her parents would cover the cost of everything. They would have to. My family had nothing to contribute. I had less than nothing. That day, the condo was so quiet. I thought Samantha was out for a jog or maybe down at the coffee shop. But she was sitting on the bed holding some paper. Her face was blotchy. She looked terrible. She asked how I could lie to her the way I did. She threw the papers at me, but they fell on the floor. I’m thinking she’s accusing me of running around on her, like she’d hired a PI or something. But I wasn’t like that anymore. I picked up the papers.

  It was one of those breakdowns from a company that checks your DNA. It wasn’t her idea. She said her mother must have swabbed a cup I drank out of or something. I was furious. I mean, who does that, bro! I could’ve punched a hole in the wall. The percentages were highlighted. I had plenty of points on the European side of things like Irish and Italian, but it also said twenty-four percent sub-Saharan Africa. This was news to me, and that’s what I told Samantha. She said she wasn’t a bigot. But she had to think of her parents. What would she tell her friends? Her Nana? I moved out about a week later.

  Yeah this better, Kyle. This real whiskey. No. I don’t think that sheet was right. I think all that computerized mumbo jumbo is bullshit. I know my family tree. My great-grandparents were still alive when I was little. They had roots in Sicily. I know my heritage. Fuck! Get me another shot of this. Don’t be cheap. Make it a double. Funny thing is, years later, I ran into Aisha at that festival they throw out in Ponchatoula. Yeah. The one with strawberries. And we kind of picked up where we left off. Eventually, one night I told her about those papers and she was all like, “I sho reckoned. You ain’t got no pink in yo’ skin. That’s why you so fine.” She didn’t really talk like that. She was snooty—had gone and got herself an English PhD. Taught at a college. Spoke better than I do. A couple of times, I told her that sheet was wrong, but she just nodded. We didn’t end up lasting that long the second time around. I couldn’t have her loving me for something I’m not.

  Rhinoceros

  After midnight, Shaquann and Freddie pedal the stolen glowing tandem bike to Magnolia Stables, a place where horses snort and dream. Along the way, they dodge potholes and cars full of weed-smoking white boys. At the stable door, a jeweled surgical mask over her lower face, Shaquann’s chest heaves and sweat collects at her brow. Freddie rubs her sweaty palms down the front of her jeans. There’s an electronic lock on the stable door. Freddie takes it as a sign. Sometimes bad things give you a little warning first, like a stern librarian wagging a finger.

  “We should go,” Freddie says. “They might have cameras.”

  “So, what if they do, little girl?” Shaquann says. “What they gone see? You looking like a ghetto astronaut.” Shaquann is joking, but Freddie can’t disagree. Afraid of the virus in the air, she wears many layers of protection: a face shield, disposable gloves, and two masks—one medical grade and a cloth scarf one that covers her neck, mouth, and nose—to say nothing of her large glasses, steamed from breath.

  Shaquann kicks the lock once, the hem of her yellow-flowered summer dress flaring on the humid air. Freddie told her to go all black, formfitting, hard to see, like herself. But Shaquann wasn’t hearing it. She tossed her hair. This exactly when you want to look good. When you making trouble.

  Freddie taps the stable door handle. “What do we do?”

  “Didn’t you pick up anything from me about how to take charge?” Shaquann asks. When Freddie doesn’t move, Shaquann exhales in exaggerated frustration. “Fine. Watch and learn. The sooner we do this, the sooner we get to the protest.”

  “Too many people,” Freddie says. She and Shaquann have been in a push-pull situation all day. The protesters have been down at Duncan Plaza every day this week despite the virus. But the thought of being in that crush of bodies, even masked and shielded, makes Freddie’s skin prickle. She told Shaquann she wasn’t going. But then again, she also told Shaquann she wasn’t coming to the stable.

  “Don’t start that talk again.” Shaquann disappears around the corner of the building and Freddie wonders if Shaquann hopped on the stolen bike and left. But she wouldn’t. Breaking in for the people is her idea. “Come around.”

  Shaquann is standing by a large open portal halfway up the wall. She gestures with a flourish. “See? They locked the door but left a whole hole.”

  “How’d you know this would be open?”

  “I didn’t. That’s the point. You ain’t looking, you ain’t finding.”

  “Are we really doing this?” Freddie asks.

  Even masked, Freddie can tell she’s smiling. “Is we alive, little boy?” Shaquann is playing with Freddie’s pronouns again. Of course, she had told Shaquann first. In fact, she had only told Shaquann. It was Shaquann who inspired her to put her thoughts down in the journal. In her palm-sized, three-for-a-dollar notebook, Freddie debated whether to keep it to herself that she didn’t need to be called she. She didn’t need to be called he either. So they is what you want? Shaquann would later ask. But Freddie hadn’t been sure about that either. She felt more and more lately that all of the words belonged to her. Having to choose felt unfair, like being made to leave several gifts because y
ou already had one in your hand.

  Freddie cups her hands, but Shaquann shakes her head. Freddie understands. Shaquann is taller. She must give Freddie the boost. With a quick move, Freddie is atop the portal.

  Inside the stall, a horse stands, nose to the interior of the darkened building. The animal’s tail flicks. Freddie goes to the stall door. The other horses are silent in their places. Their black eyes glisten like something from a painting. The Night Mares, Freddie thinks and chuckles at her easy pun. She has been near horses at Mardi Gras parades. The pungent, earthy smell of their bodies always surprises her. She hates the smell of her own sweat or of anything that gets sullied with funk or grime. But horses are the exception. Their scent makes her giddy. She wants to hug them all.

  “Don’t they sleep?” Shaquann asks.

  “They dream on their feet,” Freddie says. “But they’re awake now.”

  “How you know these things, Fredericka?” It takes them a minute to get Shaquann onto the animal’s back without a saddle. The creature is surly at first, this horse with the star on his forehead, but Shaquann isn’t flustered. The latest report of a vicious attack on a trans woman in Mid-City lit something in Shaquann’s brain that day. We going out tonight.

  She sits sidesaddle and places the tiara she brought on her head. She has a thin, sparkling scepter, too, which she flourishes as if to say Hurry, peasant. Freddie takes a bunch of shots with her phone. It’s not easy to see through the face shield, which is also fogging up. But the lighting is good enough, and the horse seems to like Shaquann. Woman and animal shift positions from left to right like they are posing on a fashion runway. Shaquann lifts her chin. “The camera loves us. Just like Jesus.”

  “Y’all look good,” Freddie says, “but don’t you think that’s enough horsing around?”

  “Hush, child, with your puns,” Shaquann says. “We are not amused. You don’t rush royalty.”

  After Shaquann climbs down, she reaches into her slouchy purse and feeds the horse baby carrots.

  Freddie adjusts her shield, which is nearly opaque with mist, looking over surprised at Shaquann.

  “You not the only one know how to Google horse care. I ain’t ignorant—”

  The sound of locks sliding out of position at the stable door they couldn’t open. Hinges creaking. Shaquann and Freddie stare at each other. Shaquann motions for them to go for the portal. Freddie shakes her head. She has a vision of clambering up the side of the wall but slipping and knocking herself unconscious. She took Ls even in her imagination.

  “Get down,” Shaquann says. Freddie ducks into the corner next to the stall gate and presses her back against the wall. Shaquann crouches in the opposite corner, clutching a sandal in her hand, as though to boomerang it at whoever is approaching.

  Footsteps thump closer. She feels like something small and furry curled inside a wall. A shotgun barrel, like an elephant’s trunk, enters the stall first, bobbing back and forth slightly, seemingly to the bearer’s heartbeat. The barrel is followed by the body of a white man in a thin T-shirt that reveals the shape of his gut. The man lowers the muzzle toward Shaquann. Freddie tries to will Shaquann to chill out. Not to do anything crazy. Not to say anything crazy. But Shaquann isn’t even looking at her.

  “You don’t belong in here,” the man says.

  “Mister,” Shaquann says, “you ain’t got to tell me. I was just going home.” She rises to one knee like she’s about to stand. The man’s pants pocket is overflowing with red and gold shotgun shells. The bulge looks like grapes.

  “Don’t move till I tell you to,” he says, leering at her. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

  “Because it’s hot. Why are you wearing a kindergartner’s T-shirt?”

  Freddie’s neck is hot. Why Shaquann got to joke? Freddie can barely inhale.

  “Shut up!” Freddie says. Then clamps a hand over her own mouth.

  “Who?” the man says, turning toward Freddie. “Oh!” Shaquann lunges shoulder first at the man’s legs. He slams into the stall doorjamb, head knocking into the wood door. His legs are splayed out in front of him, his grip is loose around the shotgun, but still holds on. His free hand lifts up to check for blood on the back of his head. Freddie and Shaquann step over his legs and scurry out.

  * * *

  —

  Shaquann’s head is in Freddie’s lap, as they sit on the curb outside of a pet groomer’s on Magazine Street. Shaquann’s long, storky legs are crossed into the street. Freddie absentmindedly strokes Shaquann’s hair. There’s a wild part that won’t lie down. Freddie and Shaquann don’t have to rush because they’re not expected in the places they live. Shaquann’s mama is a night guard at a skyscraper, while her daddy does maintenance at a hotel. Freddie’s mama works at a rich-people’s nursing home by the river. It’s where all the deaths in New Orleans started. Freddie’s mama didn’t want to spread the sickness—they said you could have it without knowing—so she slept most nights at the nursing home.

  Shaquann takes a ham-and-cheese finger sandwich from the aluminum foil on her flat stomach and pokes the triangle toward Freddie’s mouth. Freddie had made the sandwiches for Shaquann because she likes watching her eat. She shakes her head. Shaquann eats the triangle and talks fullmouthed.

  “You’ll need your strength for the protest.”

  “I guess.” Wispy clouds skid across the sky.

  “Why you pouting?” Shaquann asks.

  “I’m over going to that protest,” Freddie says, “and all these stunts, too.” When she says stunts, she is speaking of all the things they have been doing lately. Shaquann seems to think protest art and social progress go together like prayers and answered prayers. They put a black hood over the head of the John McDonogh statue last weekend. Before that, Shaquann spray-painted a black fist on the window of a building where rich old white men meet to divide spoils. Each time, Freddie and Shaquann had been observed, because New Orleans was a city where people were always out and watching other people, even during a pandemic. They didn’t care about being watched. That made them take their time.

  Shaquann rolls and sits upright. A row of bushes ring the front of the pet groomer’s. The bush leaves rubbing together in the breeze sound like rain.

  “You scared because of that guy at the stable,” Shaquann says. “I knocked him on his butt. You know I look out for you.”

  This was true. Before the schools closed, Freddie was coming out of the first-floor boys’ bathroom, her three-ring library club binder pressed to her ribs. She was wearing the uniform skirt she hated. The Catholic school policed what she wore on her body down to the millimeter. It was against the rules to wear pants, but she also got chastised if the skirt’s hemline rose above her fingertips as if there were some golden zone of flesh revealing that pleased God. Freddie was adjusting her skirt when that skeevy cop, the officer, a brother, who was supposed to look out for suspicious intruders, called to her from the water fountain.

  “You seem confused about a few things,” he said with a grunt-laugh. The girls’ bathroom was a single stall and always occupied by adult staff, so Freddie gravitated to the boys’ bathroom when it was empty instead of trekking to the other girls’ upstairs. But really who cared what bathroom she used? Who actually cared? The cop was doing elevator eyes. He started at her shoes. Scuffed Mary Janes. He stopped at her hair, which the prior night, after seeing too many depressing stories on Twitter—Black people filling the ICU wards of the city, second line dancers mobbed by the police, dead construction workers haunting a collapsed building—Freddie had buzzed down. It was liberating to move without elaborate braids weighing at her neck. She wondered what her mama would say next time she saw her. But the feeling of air across her shorn nape was a new kind of freedom.

  “I think you should bring that hair back,” the cop snickered, walking alongside her. He was stocky with a two-inch fro. His eyes, s
mall and quick. He stuck out his arm to block her.

  “Leave me alone.” Freddie ducked under his arm and kept walking. She had moved from the hallway to the cafeteria area that branched off to the side. Assemblies were held there, but the tables where students ate and talked were empty. Everyone was in class.

  “No need to get uptight, baby. I’m just here to help. I got a daughter, too. She seven.” Freddie wanted to respond, wanted to say that she felt sorry for his daughter. But she didn’t want to set him off. She strode away without slowing. “Hey, don’t ignore me!” He grabbed her arm.

  “Ow!” Freddie said.

  “Oh hell no.” It was Shaquann. Freddie knew of Shaquann because she was popular, a majorette for the band who spoke on MLK Day. But Shaquann was a senior and Freddie just an honors-student junior so they didn’t interact. Shaquann wore bland khakis during school hours, but they couldn’t stop her from pressing and curling her hair like Big Freedia.

  “This ain’t your business,” the cop said.

  “Listen. You don’t put your hands on anyone’s child in my school.” Shaquann was nudging the cop’s shoulder.

  “Now hold on,” the cop said.

  “You better step, little man, or I’ll have you in pedophile prison with no shoestrings.” The cop looked around and left.

  “Are you okay?” Shaquann asked. Freddie was shaking, biting her lip. “That was good. You stood up for yourself good.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Freddie said. “I don’t do anything.”

  A bus with people in work clothes passes the pet groomer’s. Freddie edits one of Shaquann’s photo and uploads it. Immediately, the notifications spill in. And they should—Freddie is proud of the way she doctored the ambient light. Shaquann’s masked face is blurred, but haloed, light beams spreading out behind her. Freddie scribbled and shaded letters below and behind the horse: Blk Trns Lvs Mttr. The words look like they’re in the stall with Shaquann. The post is already up to a thousand likes within a few minutes on their anonymous Instagram account.