by Yasmin Angoe
But Keigel’s gang business had nothing to do with her, though she hoped one day he might think of the African Tribal Council as family, like he did his gang. Maybe eventually, he’d work for the African Tribal Council and make the pledge to unite all African countries—and by association all Black people of the diaspora—and work to make them a strong, legitimate force, equal to all the other supreme forces of the world.
That conversation, however, was for another time, because Nena was hungry and Jake’s was calling her.
Only two other patrons were in the diner, a Hispanic man and a White one, both finishing up their dinners as she took her usual booth in the back corner of the restaurant. She liked that spot because she could see who came and went. The two men paid the waitress, Cheryl, bestowing some jokes on her that elicited her laughter. It was the kind of laugh a person made when the joke wasn’t funny. The men, both wearing County of Miami-Dade sanitation-department jumpsuits, busily discussed their time sheets as they exited through the front doors, the bell chiming their departure while the buxom Cheryl began wiping down the table where they’d eaten.
When she was done, Cheryl approached Nena with a smile that said she recognized her. Nena put down the menu, giving Cheryl her full attention.
“What’s up?” Cheryl asked, waiting for Nena’s usual.
“Hi,” Nena replied. “Could I have a bacon cheeseburger, Coke, and onion rings?”
“And a chocolate milkshake to go?” Cheryl cracked a smile.
Nena nodded. “Please,” she added, not meaning to be rude. “And thank you.”
“Gotcha.” Cheryl smiled down at her, and the tiny diamond stud in her nose seemed to sparkle. She returned to the counter with a sway to her ample rear. Little at the top, big at the bottom. Keigel’s words popped into Nena’s mind as she watched her.
Nena’s order was prepared quickly, since she was the only customer, and she devoured it just as quickly. As she was working on the last onion ring, Cheryl brought the milkshake and a refill of Coke. At the same moment, the door chimed. Both women looked up to see a young girl with a head of wonderfully natural hair, giving off #Blackgirlsrock vibes as she walked in, trying to pretend she belonged there.
Nena waited for the rest of the girl’s party to waltz right in after her, but there was no one. The girl couldn’t have been local. If she was, she would have known Jake’s was about to close for the night. Nena took a moment to study her, her slight build, no more than five feet four, the way she looked around the diner with wide-set eyes against a creamy-brown complexion, taking in the red-and-white decor and the checkered floor. If Nena had to guess, she was thirteen, maybe a year older.
The girl considered where to sit, her gaze sweeping over Nena. Their eyes met briefly, and Nena’s head cocked to the side, transmitting a silent question: Why was the girl here, and where were her people? The girl blinked, still wide eyed, and chose a stool at the counter.
Nena resumed perusing her iPhone, still wondering what the girl was doing there alone. She had an inkling that maybe she should stay, but all she really wanted was to go home. She remembered the Cadillac parked outside. Surely there would be no problems. The girl had likely passed the car without incident. If there had been something, she and Cheryl would have heard it.
Nena was deep in her thoughts when the girl’s dinner arrived just as quickly as hers had. No doubt Cheryl and Jake, who manned the kitchen, wanted to close the grill and get home. Nena checked her text messages. One was from Elin, complaining about Mum being too nosy about her love life. No surprise there. Another was from Mum, asking if Nena could explain why Elin was so hardheaded and to talk some sense into her sister. Probably not a good idea to tell Mum that she and Elin were more alike than they’d care to know. Nena sighed at the irony. The killer of the family was also the one who kept the peace. While their powerful dad ran from the line of fire as much as possible.
She was reading a Twitter rant by a well-known author when the door chimes sounded again. The wind gusted in, as if out of a bad movie. Nena glanced up, expecting that the girl had left, but instead, she saw a young man, a member of the Royal Flushes, sauntering in.
He ambled toward the counter, not looking Nena’s way. His demeanor read pompous, and Nena labeled him one of the soldiers of the gang, not a leader. Curious, she took a long sip of her milkshake.
“Let me get a couple cheeseburgers,” he demanded, pounding his fist three times on the counter as if Cheryl weren’t standing right in front of him.
Cheryl pointed at the red-and-white Coca-Cola clock on the wall. It read 10:05. “We’re closed,” she said flatly.
“Fuck that, you still got two bitches up in here. You open,” he said. “Now get my motherfucking order if you know what’s good.”
Nena assumed he was counting her as one of the bitches. The slur didn’t rattle her. But the fact he’d disparaged the girl shrinking away from him rankled Nena. He was going from zero to a hundred quickly, and it didn’t bode well. She slipped her phone into her rucksack.
Cheryl left quickly, likely going to find Jake. While she was gone, the Flush took a long look at the girl, slithering onto the stool next to her. The girl tried to ignore him and focus on the Cherry Coke in front of her, but he was persistent.
His voice rang through the room as if he were sitting right next to Nena. “Do you know who the fuck I am? Who you’re fucking with?” he asked the girl. “You know what set I rep?”
The girl was on the edge of the stool, one leg on the floor as if she were preparing to run. Not a bad idea, Nena thought. Jake appeared from the kitchen, catching the tail end of the Flush’s big talk.
“We’re closed, man,” Jake said behind a thick, mostly gray mustache. “Catch us tomorrow during hours. We’ll get you right. Now leave the girl be and get on.”
The Flush wasn’t hearing any of that, and the two of them had a go at each other for a few seconds, the young man becoming more incensed with Jake’s unflappable calm. What if the Flush drew a gun on him? People had been hurt for lesser offenses, and Nena weighed intervening. If she did, there would be questions. Too many questions and too many witnesses she wasn’t sure would keep quiet.
The Flush hopped off the stool, pulling his sagging white jeans over his nonexistent hips. “All right then,” he said to the room. He walked to the door; all the while Nena watched for him to make a move for a piece hidden on his body. He didn’t, opening the door to the chime of the bell.
“All right then,” he repeated as if making a last stand. “That payback, though . . .”
Is a bitch, is what he didn’t finish. He sucked his teeth, casting one long, menacing glare around the room, before backing through the doorway and slinking off into the night like some tacky villain.
As Jake spoke to the girl, Nena took her leave, leaving a hefty tip on the table for Cheryl and the trouble that had found them all. On her way out, she heard the girl explaining that her dad was on his way to pick her up.
“I was at the library and took the bus here to grab a bite, but I just texted him. He’s coming.”
Jake eyed her suspiciously. “Library’s a ways off.”
He was right. The library was twenty minutes out of the way from here.
“And you came here to get a bite?” he clarified.
She shrugged, rolling her eyes with the annoyance only a teenager could muster. “Heard this place had the best burgers around,” she said. “And like I said, my dad’s on the way.”
Nena knew no one was coming for her except those Flushes. Because when a little man-child like that took offense, he’d burn everything down to get retribution. Even his very soul.
8
BEFORE
Through the waves of heat and smoke, recognition flickers within me. The men call him Attah Walrus, a name befitting his enormous girth, but Papa had called him by his name, Desmond. It was not a month ago when he and two others—Paul, who I had taken to be the leader among them, as he had done the most talking
, and a younger man they called Kwabena, or Bena for short—had come to our home for an audience with Papa.
“Do you recall my last visit, Michael? Do you recall the unwise choice you made? My offer was most beneficial to you and your people.” Paul paces slow circles around my father. He spits on the ground. Seeing spit always makes me queasy, and I force myself not to stare at the splotch it makes in the dirt.
Papa scans the crowd of interlopers, his gaze lingering on Kwabena, then Attah, then finally steadying on Paul. Even from where I stand, I can see how troubled he is at Paul’s words. “Do you recall, Paul, what I said your so-called offer sounded like? Sounds like hundreds of years ago. Will you have Ghanaians spirited away on ships from Elmina using my people as conduits in some modern-day Atlantic slave trade?”
“You do not want to pass on this,” Paul says assuredly. “You want to be on the profitable end.”
“Profitable in what way, eh?” Papa inclines his head, dismay washing his face in the light. “I want no part of this. And I think it best you and your men leave back to Kumasi or Accra, wherever you came from, and stop all of this.”
Paul chuckles. “Ask your people.” He holds his arms out and raises his voice. “They will want the riches this venture brings. They will want their children given the opportunities living abroad can bring them. It is your responsibility as chief to take it to your council of elders for a vote. Let them choose to get off this mountain and into the real world.”
Papa gives Paul his hard look. His tone flattens. “Leave this place, Paul, and never return. The village council is already aware of your offer, and they want no part of you or your dirty dealings.”
There is a finality in Papa’s tone that causes a niggling inside me to sprout from a little seed to a bud. These men are beyond rebuke. They have killed already. They will not leave just because Papa wills it so. Even I know that.
Paul says, “You would deny me again? Take what’s mine from me once more?” The fires crackle and spit in the background. The square is unnaturally quiet.
Confusion breaks on Papa’s face. What has Papa taken from this man? Papa, who is the most giving man I know.
Pained, wounded, Papa says, “I never took from you, Paul. You cannot possibly believe . . .”
“If it wasn’t for me,” Paul cuts in, “you would not have passed the exams or been chosen for uni.”
Papa acquiesces. “Yes, you tutored me well, but it wasn’t me who prevented you from taking the exam and going to uni with me.”
“No, my father had that pleasure,” Paul seethes. “And I promise you I have thanked him for his prevention in kind.”
In kind. The way he says it sends icicles down to my toes. Coupled with the laughter of his surrounding men, it makes me suspect Paul’s “thanks” to his father was unpleasant.
“But you, you owe me, Michael. Permit this deal. Let me finally prosper as you have. It is my time, brother.”
Papa shakes his head. “Not like this, Paul. Not on the backs of people, of children, I cannot. I will not let you run routes through our roads to ferry people into twenty-first-century slavery. A true brother wouldn’t ask it of me.”
Paul stares at him for a long time. It’s a stare so full of malice it makes me quake where I sit. His voice is so low I strain to hear. “You have made an unwise decision, o.”
Papa says, “Then so be it. Leave our village.” His voice is heavy with the burden he carries. “Leave our home.”
Paul looks at him as if he has suffered an affront. “You do not get to kick me out twice in a lifetime, Michael. I go and stay where I please.”
“We would never participate in selling our brothers and sisters!” someone shouts from the crowd.
My father drops his head. “My people have done nothing to you.” The traces of despair threaded in his voice unnerve me. If Papa is worried, then I need to be terrified.
Paul breaks into a gregarious smile that is so disconcerting my stomach drops. He gives Papa a mocking half bow, saying, “They do as you wish, Chief. Then your people have wronged me.”
His smile falls, changing his looks from movie-star handsome to something monstrous. The change is so rapid I involuntarily cry out, wondering how a human can change so quickly, quicker than a chameleon. My sound must be louder than I think, because Paul instantly searches for the root of the noise and finds me. Malevolence emanates from him like a death shroud, and in the second our eyes connect, I know what evil looks like.
Papa believing a man like Paul would take no for an answer was a gross miscalculation—the first mistake I have ever known my father to make. Nothing between them was over.
Not then.
Not now.
9
AFTER
Nena wasn’t sure what she was doing or why. She left the diner and got in her car. She kept telling herself none of it was her business. The Flush’s temper tantrum wasn’t her business. The girl was not her business. She shouldn’t have been out in the city going around to places she had no business being at this time of night.
Nena had nearly convinced herself to get the hell on out of there when the Cadillac with the Royal Flush insignia again caught her eye. It was farther down the street now, closer to the bus stop, hidden in the shadows where the streetlight was out. Nena sighed, knowing her decision was made whether she liked it or not. Cloaked in darkness herself, she slid into her Audi, tossing her rucksack inside.
She searched the back. She had nothing but her backup gun, sans silencer, and her push daggers concealed in her belt. She was weighing her options when the diner’s chimes alerted her someone was leaving. It was the girl. She looked both ways, as if about to cross the street, but seemed to decide against it. She tugged at her backpack straps and began walking in the direction of the bus stop. Maybe she was a runaway, though she didn’t give Nena those kinds of vibes.
The girl was passing a couple of large metal city trash containers when a figure materialized from their shadows. It was the Flush from the diner. He spoke to her, and while he did, one of his colleagues sneaked up behind her. He grabbed her, silencing her scream with his hand. A third man appeared as they dragged the girl into the alley.
Nena waited another moment, thinking of one of those clown cars and wondering how many more Flushes would tumble out. When no more did, she got out of her Audi and followed.
Like idiots who thought they had all the time in the world, the three gang members were standing in the alley debating which was better: robbing the diner as retaliation or just kidnapping the girl and making her one of their bitches. They were so engrossed in their bickering that they didn’t notice Nena as she moved stealthily toward them, keeping to the walls.
One of them threatened to rape the girl. Why was the first thing men resorted to exacting dominance over women through violation or defilement? Why did it always have to be rape? Because, Nena thought mirthlessly, that was all these types of males knew.
The girl said, “If you kill me, I’ll haunt your dumb asses until the day you die. Which probably won’t be very long anyway.”
It was a weird thing to say, at the weirdest time, when anyone else’s fear would render them silent. The girl was a fighter, and Nena liked that immediately. But her high voice betrayed her true feelings. Though she was a fighter, she was a terrified young girl.
“Well, if you’re gonna haunt me, guess I’ll call you Casper,” the Flush from the diner snarled, slapping her hard while the others stood by.
“’Cept I’m not friendly.”
The girl’s bravado was impressive, even in the presence of imminent danger.
They laughed at her.
Nena knew the laugh well. It was the laugh of people when they thought you were nothing, less than nothing. It was a laugh a person would never forget. And it was when Nena announced herself.
“Let the girl go and there won’t be any problems,” she said, stepping to the middle of the alley. “This is Keigel’s turf.”
They gaw
ked at her, likely trying to figure out who the hell she was and where the hell she’d come from without them seeing. They didn’t care about the options she’d given them. They had retribution and lust on their minds. Had they been thinking clearly, they might have chosen better.
“Bitch, fuck you,” the diner Flush said, advancing on her. “Just like a bitch to not mind her damn busine—”
He was close enough. She stabbed him in the throat with one of her daggers, leaving her gun holstered in the back of her belt. As if on cue, the girl bit the hand of the big treelike Flush holding her. He yelped, yanking her, then sent her slamming into the wall. She crumpled to the ground, curled and whimpering in pain.
The diner Flush hadn’t yet realized he was a dead man when the other two surrounded Nena.
He gurgled out, “Bitch,” as he held his hands to his throat, blood seeping through his fingers. She should have saved him for last, since he was to blame for what she was about to do.
Nena was no longer a fourteen-year-old girl, cowering at every movement of the men around her. This time, she was thirty-one, with a whole lot of death notched on her proverbial belt.
These boys wanted to play at being killers, but she was the real thing.
The diner Flush dropped to his knees, his life spilling out of him. The giant one lunged at her, his force throwing her onto her back. He let loose a flurry of blows, as she attempted to dodge the brunt of them. She twisted her hips upward, springing her feet out at his midsection to buck him off. She got to all fours, scrambling behind him before he could gather his bearings. She wrapped one of her arms around the back of his neck, the other beneath his chin, one hand locking over the other wrist in a reverse choke hold that quickly had him upside down and staring at the building rooftops.
Systematically she began squeezing off each breath he tried to take, pulling, contracting her muscles in her arms like a boa constrictor. He flailed at her, as they always did, trying to tug her arms away, but she had the upper hand. She could feel panic rising in him when he couldn’t get her off, while his energy, his breath, oozed out of him like his partner’s blood.