“Sorry to hear it.”
He shrugs. He has no expectations from his life. He takes what he’s given and he rolls with it.
“Listen,” I say, “about what happened. I was never gonna come right out and ask you to give Dre a kidney. It wasn’t like that. I really did want you guys to get to know each other. Once you knew what was up, if you decided you could help him out, great. If not, we would understand. Nobody would ever hold a gun to your head about it. You know what I mean? We’re not that way. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
He nods.
“Yeah, I feel you,” he says. “It was just a little weird, you know? Anyway, I had plenty of time to think about all that. Some stuff has happened, yo.”
“Like what?”
“Terrell, he’s dead. He got stabbed.”
LeVon’s face is so flat when he tells me this that he might as well be talking about the weather.
“LeVon, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea.”
He shrugs.
“Ain’t nothin’ but a thing,” he says. “He wasn’t nothin’ to me. We hardly even talked to each other. I guess someone had a beef. That happens in the joint. Anyway, it got me thinking. What you said in the car. About doing something noble.”
I can’t believe he actually remembers that. Hope begins to well up inside me. But I can’t say a word. I just have to listen.
“And there was something else. I feel like I owe you one. I don’t know if you knew me or not when you saw me the first time. But when you came up to me at the Fountain, I was, like, Uh-oh. There’s that lady I done robbed a while ago.”
“So you did remember me.”
LeVon nods.
“And I just wanted to say, that wasn’t right,” he says. “It was nothing personal. I had some numbers I needed to make up. Just business, you know?”
“You scared the hell out of me,” I say. “I thought I was gonna die.”
He nods again.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he says. “I’m trying to put things right in my life. Trying to turn things around. I don’t wanna die in this place like old Terrell did. So I kinda feel like I owe you one. I’m looking at a long time here. Maybe we can help each other out. You feel me?”
“You mean…”
“Dre can have it,” LeVon says. “He’s my brother anyway. I never had a brother to do for me. I can live with one kidney, right?”
“Right,” I say. “You could have a totally normal life. And so could he.”
“Maybe it would get me outta here early too,” says LeVon.
“Maybe it would,” I say. “I can talk to the parole board. Tell them how you’ve helped us. Let them see what kind of a person you really are.”
“Yeah,” says LeVon. “So let’s do this thing. Go ahead. Call who you gotta call. Let them know they can come get me whenever they want. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
I take LeVon’s hands and squeeze them.
“No touching!” yells a guard from across the room.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “You’re noble, all right. You’re the most noble man who ever lived.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There are tests that have to be done before we can be sure LeVon is a good match. These are the same tests Terrell failed. But LeVon passes them with flying colors. The drug question was an easy one, he says. He’s never shot up in his life. He only sold it. He never touched the stuff.
So it’s a go. There’s nothing stopping us now. Dre is going to get his kidney.
LeVon has been told by the parole judge that he’ll get a break on his sentence if he goes through with the donation. Seems they have some kind of special law about that. Besides, one of the witnesses who helped put him away is changing his story.
And it helps that I’m putting in a good word for him. I’ve told the judge that LeVon won’t be going back out on the street when he’s released. He can come and live with us if he wants to. He’s not a kid anymore. He doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. But everyone needs someplace to go.
LeVon has decided he wants out of the game. I guess seeing your father die in prison will do that. He wants to turn his life around somehow. He seems more scared about that than about the operation. Change is a scary thing.
The day of the surgery, they prep LeVon and Dre together. They have a few minutes to talk, lying side by side in their hospital beds.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” Dre says. “You know I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, I know,” says LeVon. “Man, I feel like I’m on vacation. Even a hospital is better than the joint.”
“What’s it like in there?” asks Dre.
“You don’t wanna know,” says LeVon. “Crazy. It’s never quiet. Never safe. You got to watch your back every minute. People be screaming, crying, fighting, yelling, begging, all kinds of crazy stuff. Man can’t hear himself think. It just goes on and on.”
“People be gettin’ killed too,” says Dre quietly.
“Yeah,” says LeVon. “There is that.”
They are both reflective for a moment. Dre knows about Terrell. I made sure I told him right away. I don’t believe in keeping things like that from my boys. They have a right to know what kind of world they’re living in. And Dre has a right to know what happened to his own father.
“Anyway,” says LeVon, “you get yourself right again, you got to do somethin’ with yourself. Not just sit around playin’ Xbox all day long. You feel me? Take my kidney and make it work for you. Use it to do somethin’ good.”
“Something noble,” says Dre, grinning at me.
“Yo, noble lady,” says LeVon, “you bring me any chicken? I never did get to finish my dinner.”
“After you get out, I’ll make you all the roasted chickens you want,” I say.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” says LeVon. “Roasted chickens day and night. I can hardly wait.”
“What are you gonna do with yourself ?” Dre asks LeVon. “When all this is over, and you get back out?”
LeVon shrugs. I can tell it’s bugging him he doesn’t have an answer for this yet.
“I dunno,” he says. “I been in the game a long time. Hard to imagine what all I might do if not that.”
“You finish high school?” Dre asks.
“Hell, no. You kidding me? I stopped going to school when I was nine.”
“Nine?” Dre is in shock. “You been working that long?”
“Yeah, that’s the way it was,” says LeVon. “I had to eat somehow. I wanna go straight, I’m gonna have to go back to school first. And that’s gonna be hard.”
“Worry about one thing at a time,” I suggest. “Today is a big day. You don’t have to solve everything all at once.”
Dr. Wendell comes in. He’s wearing surgical scrubs.
“How you guys doing?” he asks. “Ready to get going?”
“Ready as I’m gonna be,” says Dre.
“Me too,” says LeVon. “Let’s do it.”
“You’re both going to be fine,” says Dr. Wendell. “When you wake up you’re going to have sore throats and sore incisions. But you’ll be up and around in no time. You’re young and healthy. You have long lives ahead of you.”
It’s true, I think. A month ago, you could not have said that about either of them. Now, thanks to what one is doing for the other, they both have a second shot.
A nurse comes in and puts a needle in LeVon’s arm. They will use this to put him to sleep. They don’t have to put one in Dre’s because he already has one.
“All right,” says Dr. Wendell to me. “We’re going to take them now. You can wait in the reading room if you want. We’ll call you when they’re out.”
I hug and kiss my boy. Then I hug and kiss LeVon too. He acts embarrassed, but I can tell he likes it. I wonder when the last time was that he got kissed by his mother. She doesn’t even know what he’s doing today. I asked LeVon if he wanted to tell her, but he said no. She’s tucked into a bottle somewhere, drea
ming her life away. Maybe she’s even dead by now herself. LeVon doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. I can’t understand how a mother could abandon her own son the way she did.
“I’ll see you boys in a little while,” I say. “I’ll be praying for you.”
“Okay, Mama,” says Dre. “Here we go.”
“See you, Linda,” says LeVon.
The nurses wheel their beds out of the room and down the hall. I skip the reading room and go straight to the chapel. This is where I’ll spend the next few hours, until they come get me. On my knees. Praying as hard as I know how.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
These days, getting over an operation doesn’t seem to take as long as it used to. I remember when I was a kid, they would keep you for a whole week if you had your tonsils out. Now they can remove a breast and send you home the same day. Not for a kidney transplant though. They want to keep both these boys in for three or four days, just to make sure everything went all right. And that won’t be the end of it either. They will need regular checkups. They have certain restrictions. But they can lead full lives.
The first day seems to go fine. They come out of surgery and wake up a little bit later. Both of them are groggy. Both of them are in pain. That’s normal. They sleep a lot. That’s normal too.
The next day Dre gets up and tries walking around. He does fine. He complains he’s sore. There’s a drainage tube in the incision that’s bothering him. But that will come out in a few days.
LeVon is not feeling so great. He says he feels hot all over. The nurse takes his temperature. He’s got a fever. That’s not terribly unusual, she says, but she looks worried. She calls the doctor.
Dr. Wendell comes right away. He orders stronger antibiotics for LeVon. He’s got an infection, he says. This is fairly common. It’s not good, but it doesn’t have to be bad news either. If they keep an eye on it and treat it with drugs, it should go away.
It doesn’t.
“Man, what’s wrong with me?” says LeVon the next day. “I feel horrible.” He’s got a high fever now. He says he’s cold all the time. But he’s sweating.
“This happens every once in a while,” says Dr. Wendell. “It’s not the end of the world. Don’t worry. We can treat it. We’ll give you stronger antibiotics. It should go away very soon.”
But it doesn’t.
“This is not good,” Dr. Wendell says to me in private. It’s day three after the operation. Dre is doing great and is almost ready to leave. They’re not allowing him in the same room as LeVon. This bothers him a lot. He wants to thank his brother in person. He wants to be with him while he gets better. But they won’t let him, because they don’t want him to get sick. His system is still too vulnerable.
“What’s happening?” I say.
“It’s a superbug,” says Dr. Wendell. “They’ve been cropping up lately. The germs that cause infections are evolving to fight the drugs we use. They’re getting stronger and tougher. This is one of those new kinds of bacteria. It’s winning the fight.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
“We’re not giving up,” says Dr. Wendell. “Not by a long shot. But I can’t give him any more antibiotics. We don’t have anything stronger. I’m doing everything I can for him. We have to trust that because he’s young and healthy, he’ll pull through.”
A little later I go into LeVon’s room. He’s not awake and he’s not asleep. He stares at the ceiling, his eyes half closed. His breathing is shallow. I pull back the sheets and look at his toes. They’re starting to curl.
Oh no.
“Listen to me,” I say. “It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re not even twenty years old. You can beat this thing. You can fight it. You’re tough. You made it this far. You beat gangsters and drug dealers and life on the street. You mean to tell me a little old bug is gonna get you? Come on. Get real. Get your ass up out of this bed right now.”
LeVon doesn’t answer. A nurse comes in. She and I look at each other. Nurses see it all. They are very practical people. And I can tell by the look in her eyes what this lady is thinking: Pretty soon this room is gonna have a free bed in it.
“How is he doing?” Dre asks me later, when I’m back in his room.
“He’s not doing so good,” I say.
“What? Are you serious? I can’t believe this.”
“I know. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
“Won’t they let me see him?”
“Baby, if you pick up what he has, it could kill you. That’s the plain truth. So you stay away from him. I’m sorry. I know you want nothing more than to see him right now. But it ain’t gonna happen.”
There is no one else to be with LeVon as he lies in his bed, waiting to get better or not. He has no one else who cares. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be alone. So I sit there with him, holding his hand and talking to him.
“You know, you changed a lot of lives with what you did,” I say. “This is one of the greatest things a person can do for another person. Whatever wrong you think you might have done in your life, this takes care of it. You’re even. You’re clean. You can hold your head high.”
He doesn’t answer. His hand is dry and cool.
I’m sitting with him just like this when he passes. It’s three o’clock in the morning.
My practical side takes over. I call the nurse. She comes in and begins to try to revive him. It doesn’t work. The doctor on duty comes rushing in and does the same. There is nothing they can do. They pronounce him dead a little before four am.
Dre is asleep down the hall. I’ll tell him in the morning. No need to wake him now.
Suddenly I don’t know what to do with myself. So I go into the bathroom and lock the door. And I cry for LeVon, and all the LeVons of the world. The ones who never had a chance to begin with.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It’s over a year later. The date is September 1. It ’s morning. Dre is getting ready for school. After a long delay, he’s about to start his senior year, and he’s never been more excited.
“Mom! Have you seen my tie?” he asks for the third time.
“It’s on your bed,” I tell him, also for the third time.
“Oh yeah, right.”
“How come I can’t wear a tie?” pouts Marco.
“Because they don’t wear ties in first grade,” says Dre. “You’d probably get it caught on something and hang yourself.”
“Dre! That’s terrible,” I say.
“Sorry, Mama. But you know it’s true.” Dre finds his tie and puts it on. I help him straighten it. Just as I finish, a car pulls up.
“My dad’s here!” Marco says. He’s all excited.
Ernest gets out of the driver’s side. Yvonne, his new wife, gets out of the passenger side. She’s slow and awkward. Being pregnant will do that to you.
“Hey, buddy!” Ernest says to Marco. “You almost ready to go?”
“Are we gonna take a picture first?” Marco says.
“That’s why I’m all dressed up,” says Ernest. “I wouldn’t miss your first day of big-kid school for anything.”
“Hi, Linda, how are you?” says Yvonne.
“I’m fine, Yvonne. You feeling all right?”
“Pretty good. The morning sickness has passed.”
“Glad to hear it.” I smile. I like Yvonne. After I broke it to Ernest that it would never work for us to get back together, he realized he had to move on. And move on he did. Yvonne was someone he met through work. She’s good for him, I can tell. I don’t worry that Ernest is going to screw this one up, either. He’s learned a lot from his past mistakes. Too bad he didn’t figure that out sooner. But none of us is perfect. And I’ve learned it’s important to forgive people. It’s the greatest gift you can give yourself.
“Looking good, Dre,” says Ernest. “Excited to start your last year of high school?”
“Excited is not the word,” says Dre. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
It hasn’t b
een an easy year. There were a couple of health setbacks for Dre. While they were not life-threatening, he did have to miss a whole year of school after his transplant. He had the option to get home-schooled, and that’s what we did. But there were some things he couldn’t do at home if he wanted to pursue his new goal of becoming a doctor. Not just any doctor—a kidney specialist. My kitchen doesn’t make a very good chemistry lab. Besides, he also wanted the experience of going to real classes, of being a normal kid again. He’s going to be a year older than everybody else, but that’s not a bad thing. A little maturity will serve him well.
We all go inside the house. Marco gets bossy, lining us all up in front of the couch for the picture. Yvonne holds his camera. She has to back up to fit us all in. My house is so small she’s practically in the front yard. But finally she’s ready.
“Wait!” says Dre. “I almost forgot.”
He runs to the door and takes down a picture that hangs there. Then he gets back in the shot and holds the picture up.
It’s a shot of LeVon. Marco took it the day he came here. LeVon is looking up at the camera. He doesn’t look anything like a gangster. He looks like a big kid sitting on the floor, video game controls in his hand, hat on sideways. He’s even got a half smile on his face.
“Okay, now we’re all here,” says Dre. He holds the picture up in front of him.
“One, two, three!” says Yvonne. She presses the shutter. The flash goes off once, twice, then three times.
“Okay, let’s go,” says Ernest. He’s taking Marco to school. I told him he could have this moment with his little boy. I’m going to have my own moment with Dre.
He doesn’t know it, but this day is just as big for me as it is for him.
Ernest, Yvonne and Marco leave first. Then it’s just Dre and me.
“You ready?” I say.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” says Dre. He hangs LeVon’s picture up again next to the front door. “Let’s go.”
Dre grabs his book bag and his jacket. On his way out the door he reaches up and touches the picture. He doesn’t say anything. But he does this every time he leaves the house. I know what it means. It means Thank you.
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