“It’s not deep, A. I’m just trying ... to remember ... all of it. Few days later David showed me the slipper spoon, only it wasn’t a slipper spoon no more. He moved it real light across his finger and one drop of blood came out. Reddest blood I’d ever seen in my life. I mean, he like barely touched his finger and that drop of blood was there. His finger was real pale, and that blood just stood out on it. All thick and red. I looked at that blood and knew the next person come in contact with that slipper spoon was never gonna hear the words ‘happy birthday’ again.”
“Who he kill?” Aaron asked again.
“Yeah,” Newcharlie said. “I’d have to put David higher on the totem pole than other white boys.”
Aaron grinned. “You ain’t gonna say ‘cause of Lala?”
Newcharlie nodded.
“I know he didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “I know the C.O. found that shoehorn under David’s pillow one day while ya’ll were out in the yard and David got sent off to another place—worse than Rahway.”
Newcharlie gave me a dirty look. “That’s what you think, stupid. That’s what Ty’ree says to tell you, but that ain’t what happened. And since you think you know so much, I’m really not gonna say. I almost said, too. Then you had to go and open your fat mouth. That’s what you get, you little ...” I waited for him to say it, but he didn’t and I felt my stomach relax.
He turned back to the mirror. Newcharlie was wearing a plaid long-sleeved shirt and baggy jeans. He unbuttoned the top button, then buttoned it again and checked himself out one more time.
“You ready?” Newcharlie asked.
Aaron nodded.
“Then let’s step.” He looked at me. “When Ty’ree gets home, you tell him we just left too, you hear me?”
I kept staring out the window.
“Your brother talking to you, man.” Aaron said.
“Yeah—I hear you.”
“Later, Milagro killer.”
“Oh shoot.” Aaron laughed. “That’s cold, man.”
“It’s true,” Charlie said.
I swallowed and looked down at my hands so Newcharlie wouldn’t see my eyes tearing up. I could hear the door slamming in the living room and him and Aaron running down the stairs, taking them two at a time the way they always did. A few minutes later I heard Newcharlie calling out to somebody. It was gray out. I stared at the sky and tried not to let his words sink in. I stared until the window blurred.
“I didn’t kill her,” I whispered.
Then I lay back on my bed and prayed it would pour down rain.
TWO
OUR DADDY HAD BEEN A HERO. WHEN MAMA was still pregnant with me, our daddy was sitting in Central Park reading the paper. It was wintertime, but he liked to go over to the park and sit. He liked the quiet and the cold together. He liked the sound his newspaper made when he turned the pages in the wind. Ty‘ree says this woman had been jogging around the lake near where Daddy was. She was jogging with her dog when the dog decided to take off after a bird. The lake was frozen, so I guess the dog just figured it could run straight across. But right in the middle the ice started cracking away, and the dog went under. Daddy looked up to see the screaming lady running after the dog—saw the dog way out, bobbing in and out of the water. Ty’ree says Daddy pulled the lady out first, then the dog. The dog and the lady lived, but my daddy died of hypothermia.
“He went out stupid,” Newcharlie always says now. “Saving a dog and a white woman is a stupid way to die. Only thing in the world you need to save is your own self.”
“You used to want to save stray animals,” I remind Newcharlie. “You used to pray to St. Francis.”
How do I do it, Cha? I’d asked that first night a long time ago, the night he told me about St. Francis.
Charlie sat up in his bed and put his hands together under his chin. Like this. “Dear Lord and St. Francis of Assisi. Me and my brother know you both love animals as much as we do. We know how you saved that dog that was drowning in Central Park. You sent our daddy in there. We’re not mad about it or anything. Not anymore. We don’t have another daddy, but there’s a lot of other animals need saving. So please don’t let none get killed by starving or freezing to death in the cold. Don’t let none get hit by cars or beat up by stupid kids. Just let them all have food and someplace warm. And if you could, could you please give dogs nine lives the same as cats?”
And turtles too, I added. Please.
Turtles too, Charlie said. Amen.
Amen, I whispered.
Charlie unclasped his hands and lay back on the bed. Now watch, he said. When you dream, it’s gonna be full of happy animals.
He was right.
But that was a long long time ago. Back when we were a family. Back before Rahway and Mama dying. Back before ... before Charlie became somebody else.
“I never cared about no dogs,” Newcharlie says. But he doesn’t look at me when he says it, because he knows I know he’s lying.
All we got now is one other brother—Ty‘ree. Ty’ree’s just the opposite of Newcharlie. He’ll tell you in a minute he’s got a soft spot for me and don’t care what people say about it. Newcharlie would never call me Lala in front of Ty‘ree. He just knows better. People who knew Mama say if Ty’ree was a woman, he’d be her twin, even though two people made him, he’s all Milagro’s child. Milagro was my mama. Her name means “miracle” in Spanish, and maybe it was a miracle that she had a demon-seed son like Newcharlie.
Mama was born in Bayamón—that’s in Puerto Rico—but her family came here when she was real little. I can only speak a little bit of Spanish, because Mama used to say it was better if we learned good English. But I’m taking Spanish now. Figure if I learn to speak Mama’s language, I’ll have a little bit more of her to hold on to.
My great-aunt Cecile’s all the time saying dead don’t have to mean dead and gone, and I like to believe that. I got two scratched-up pictures of Mama left. One of the pictures is of me and her outside on the stoop. Mama’s sitting and I’m standing bending over her to show her something I got in my hand. Mama’s wearing a light-blue dress and she has her hair out so that it’s all curly around her shoulders. In the picture she’s smiling at the thing I’m showing her like she’s real proud. I look real close at that picture all the time, but I still can’t remember what it was I was showing her. The other picture’s of me and Charlie and Mama. We’re all dressed up and smiling. Maybe it was Easter. Mama has her arms around me and Charlie’s shoulders. We both look a little bit like her in that picture, but I’m much darker—like Mama said my daddy was. There used to be a lot of other pictures but they got burned. Newcharlie had a fit one Saturday and burned them all, but we’re not allowed to talk about it.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to that lady and that dog my daddy saved. There’s always stories about people getting saved and then giving the people who saved them money or people coming along years later and naming their kids after the people, but none of that ever happened to us. My daddy’s name was Lafayette too, and I wonder if there’s a little white kid somewhere named after him. Maybe the lady is still jogging around Central Park. Maybe she keeps her dog on a leash now though. And maybe once in a while she sees in her head my daddy running toward her on a half frozen lake. Or maybe she didn’t have any kids and doesn’t remember my daddy at all.
THREE
AFTER NEWCHARLIE AND AARON LEFT, I WENT into the living room and turned on the television. On Friday nights Ty‘ree let me watch it as much as I wanted as long as I took one weekend day for homework. I usually chose Sunday—usually starting in the late late afternoon or the minute Ty’ree started getting after me—whichever came first.
I flipped through the channels for a while, then sat back against the couch and watched music videos. I couldn’t really tell one from the other. Most of them had some guy standing there rapping and a lot of pretty girls dancing around him. Or the guy was driving a fancy car with pretty girls in it. Once in a while the guy would be i
n a swimming pool with pretty girls. That was the one on now—a guy with a lot of rings on his fingers rapping to some pretty girls in bikinis.
Newcharlie liked listening to music and said he was gonna be a rapper. Aaron said he was gonna be one, too. Either that or a car salesman. I guess he figured he’d sell cars to rappers who would fill them with pretty girls. Thing about rapping though, Newcharlie said, is you gotta do it now. Most rappers weren’t much older than him. Sometimes he and Aaron sat in our room all day long, making up rhymes and slapping each other five when something came off sounding right. But I hadn’t seen them taking any real steps—like making some tapes and calling up a radio station to ask for a few minutes on the air.
I turned the volume down low. The apartment felt big and quiet with nobody in it. It’s not that big—just four rooms: me and Newcharlie’s room, then Ty’ree’s room right next to us. His room used to be Mama’s. Then there’s a long hallway leading to one big room that’s both the living room and the dining room. If you go right, there’s a dining-room table and chairs. If you go left, there’s the couch and stuff. The door to come in and out is between the couch and dining-room table. You walk through the living-room side to get to the kitchen. You have to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom.
Newcharlie had put plants in all the windows—spider plants and ferns and some other ones I don’t know the name of. He’d learned a lot about plants at Rahway. It was strange to see him messing around them on Saturday mornings, taking off the dead leaves and giving them water. Sometimes he put these little sticks of plant food in the dirt. Once I even caught him talking to them, telling this sickly-looking fern that it better toughen up if it wanted to make it in the world.
The sun had come out again, and I watched it bounce off the plants and sprinkle itself over the dining-room table. When I closed my eyes to just a sliver, I could see Mama sitting at that table, playing with her eyebrow the way she did when she was worrying, her hair coming loose from its braid. I watched my ghost mama for a while. She looked peaceful sitting there even if she was worrying.
“Hey, Mama,” I whispered. “Can you make some chicken for dinner tonight?”
Mama looked over at me and smiled, a quiet, far-away smile. I blinked and she wasn’t there anymore.
I got a thousand dollars in my pocket, the guy in the rap video was saying. I leaned back against the sofa and watched him do a sort of swim-dance around the girls.
After a while, I heard Ty‘ree coming up the stairs. He always whistled the same song—a song our mama used to sing to us called “Me and Bobby McGee” about a woman hitchhiking with her boyfriend in Louisiana and how free she felt whenever she played her harmonica. When Ty’ree sang the words sometimes, it made me want to get a harmonica and get out onto the road. Maybe see a sunset. Once Ty’ree took me to Central Park and we watched the sun go down over the lake my daddy got hypothermia in. It was real pretty. Pretty and sad. Most times, though, it just sets and then it’s night and what you notice is the day and the night—not the sunset in between. On the highway you probably get all four parts—the sunrise, the day, the sunset, and the night.
“Yo!”Ty’ree yelled.
“Yo back,” I said, holding up my hand without turning my head. I felt Ty’ree slap it and smiled.
“Where’s your brother?”
I shrugged.
Ty‘ree sat down on the couch beside me. He was tall and skinny-looking but not really. When he wasn’t wearing a shirt, you could see all his muscles. But with his clothes on he looked skinny. He used to have locks, but he cut them off when he started working full-time, and now his hair is short and neat like an old man’s even though he’s only twenty-two. He leaned back against the couch and loosened his tie. I guess Ty’ree’s like our daddy. He works and pays the rent and buys groceries and stuff. After Mama died, the people at the publishing house let him start working full-time. Now he’s the mailroom manager there and says the work isn’t so bad, but once in a while people blame you for stuff that isn’t your fault. Ty’ree says it’s not even worth getting mad about really. He says that’s how it is in the whole world, people always looking for someone else to blame, so he might as well get used to it.
“Where’s your brother, Laf?” he asked again.
“Just left.”
Ty‘ree looked at me, a slow smile coming to his face. He had the best smile in the world. Everybody said so. When he smiled, it made me think about when I used to go to church, how I’d sit there staring at this stained-glass window of Jesus with all the kids around him. Jesus was smiling and the kids were smiling and everything seemed peaceful and right. That’s what Ty’ree’s smile was like. Peaceful and right. Once I heard Mrs. Williams who lives downstairs call him St. Ty‘ree, and I heard Ty’ree laugh and say, But I ain’t dead yet, Mrs. W.
“That what he said to tell me?” Ty’ree raised his eyebrows at me.
I shook my head and glued my eyes to the TV.
“Yeah, right!” Ty’ree rubbed my head and I smiled, taking a swing at his hand and missing.
“He really did just leave, T—like maybe a half hour ago.”
“He say where he was going?”
“Nah.”
Ty’ree frowned. “Boy better not be out there getting in any more trouble, that’s for sure. And you better not be getting into any trouble either.” He tapped the back of my neck.
If Newcharlie got into trouble again, they’d send him off to someplace worse than Rahway. The social worker said that she’d also have to send me either down south with Aunt Cecile or into foster care, ‘cause if Newcharlie got into trouble again, it meant Ty’ree couldn’t handle us.
“You hear me, Laf?”
“Do I look like I’m getting into trouble, man?!”
“Looks can be deceiving, li’l brother.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m not Newcharlie and I’m not getting into trouble. Just sitting here watching some TV, that’s all. A little TV never hurt nobody.”
Ty’ree looked at me for a moment, then smiled again.
“Well it didn’t. Not like watching a video’s going to teach me how to hold up a candy store.”
“Hey, we don’t need to talk about that, all right?”
I nodded. Our house was full of stuff we didn’t need to talk about.
“How come you ain’t outside, Laf?”
“First you tell me don’t be getting into trouble, then—”
“Little outside never hurt nobody,” Ty’ree said, mimicking me.
I tried not to laugh but couldn’t help it. Ty’ree could always make me laugh.
“PJ and Smitty visiting their cousin this weekend,” I said.
“Out in Brooklyn?”
I nodded. Me and Smitty had been friends forever, been in the same class since third grade. Him and his little brother, PJ, lived right down the block, and we all hung out once in a while. But sometimes Smitty’d get to asking questions about Mama dying—stuff I didn’t care to talk about.
“Can you make chicken for dinner, Ty?”
He jutted his chin toward the kitchen. “I read your mind. Took it out the freezer before I went to work this morning.”
“You gonna fry it?”
“Yeah.”
We sat watching TV for a while. Ty’ree wasn’t really watching though. He looked like he was thinking deep about things.
“You thinking about Mama?” I asked.
Ty’ree shrugged. “Not really. Kind of, I guess. Why do you ask?”
“ ‘Cause I’m always thinking about her.”
“Me too.”
Me and Ty’ree stared at the TV, feeling Mama somewhere nearby, and the house and my head chock-full with things we weren’t allowed to talk about.
FOUR
NOBODY KNOWS WHERE CHARLIE GOT THE GUN he used to hold up Poncho’s candy store three years ago. Not even Ty‘ree. When the cops showed up at our house that night, Mama and Ty’ree were sitting at the dining-room table. Ty‘ree had just cashed
his check from the publishing company where he worked part-time, and Mama was filling out a money order for the rent. Ever since I can remember, Ty’ree had sat with Mama at the table, the dim light from the floor lamp in the corner turning them both a soft golden brown. While Mama filled out the money order and figured out how to pay some of the other bills, Ty’ree made grocery lists and school supply lists and added and re-added the cost of everything. Some evenings he’d sit clipping coupons for the cereals we liked and the laundry detergent Mama used. He’d put these in an envelope on top of the refrigerator and take them down when he and Mama sat at the table, figuring and re-figuring.
That’s what they were doing the night the cops knocked on our door looking for Charlie.
I was sitting in front of the television watching the news, because on weeknights Mama’d let us watch only one hour of regular television and then as much news as we wanted. I didn’t really care for watching the news, but it was better than nothing.
Charlie had told Mama he was going to an after-school program to get help with his math homework. When he came in at seven that night, the news was going off and me, Mama, Ty’ree, and the cops were all waiting. Charlie had been too dumb to get rid of the gun. The cops found it and two hundred and fifty dollars in his pockets. Charlie was twelve and a half. Too young for real jail. So they sent him to Rahway Home for Boys.
It was one of the few times I’d ever seen Mama cry.
I turned and eyed Ty‘ree now. He was leaning against the back of the couch with his eyes closed. I turned the TV down a bit more. I had been twelve for only three weeks but it felt like forever. Every day Ty’ree found a way to remind me not to end up like Newcharlie. But I wasn’t Newcharlie. I was Lafayette. I had a bit more sense in my head.
I could hear kids running up and down outside in the street and some girls playing jump rope. I heard a fire truck go by and a little kid crying for his mama. We live on the sixth floor. If you hang out our window and look way over to the left, you can see Central Park, the very edge of it near the ice-skating rink. You can see the tops of the trees—they were turning all different colors now. And you can see lots of cars. If you look to your right, you can see the George Washington Bridge. Early in the morning you can hear the traffic coming over it. Right across the street is a bunch more buildings like ours—old gray-and-beige buildings with lots of floors and lots of apartments. Years and years and years ago the buildings used to be fancy, Ty‘ree says. But not anymore. Now they’re just buildings filled with people getting by. That’s what me and Ty’ree and Newcharlie were—people getting by.
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