Pop come up behind me when I look through the window to see Darnell’s car go down the street. “What the hell were you doin? You never even came after work to eat.”
“John, she never come home on Fridays, I been told you that.” Mama’s sitting at the dining room table picking through a bowl of beans, sorting out the rocks. “Darnell always pick her up since he workin for the Forest Service.”
“You didn’t have any business bein on the Westside tonight, Brenda,” Pop go on. “When this Conservation Crap over?”
“At the end of summer,” I answer. “Was it on the news, even in L.A.?” Rio Seco’s close enough to get on TV sometimes, but not usually.
Pop sit back on the couch. “City gettin bigger, and bad stuff always play on the news.” He turn to the nine o’clock early broadcast. “It was on the TV back in ’73,” he say.
The blonde lady doesn’t smile. “Police are following several leads in Rio Seco tonight in their search for murder suspect Ricardo Ronrico, who is believed to have shot and killed two police officers late last night. Officers Terry Kimball and Gregory LaDonna were attempting to serve Ronrico with a warrant to appear in court for sentencing on a parole violation when he allegedly shot them in this residence on Eddy Avenue.” They show the house, the neighbors standing around, cop cars everywhere.
“Bastard get us all in trouble,” Pop say. “How in the hell he get a name like that? He your age, Brenda?”
“He’s older than us, about twenty-five. Darnell say his brother name Falstaff after some beer and his sister Virginia Dare.”
“Oh, and how in the hell Darnell know him if this fool older?”
Mama say, “John, why you always assume the worst about Darnell?”
“Cause she don’t need to be drivin around with him and him only. His car looks like hell. He musta done somethin to get in all that trouble last summer,” Pop say, and I’m tired of hearing this.
“He was just sitting in the driver’s seat, playing the radio, I been told you,” I yell. “Him and Londale were taking down the election posters for Mack Ellison. Someone you didn’t vote for cause you said a brother couldn’t win for county supervisor.”
“Then why the cops take him in? Cause he didn’t have no driver’s license and no business bein there in that rich neighborhood.” Pop’s voice echoing.
“At least they was taking down the signs,” Mama say. “You always complainin about them bein up for months after an election.”
“Darnell don’t have a license because of that insurance shit, cause that white dude hit him and Darnell didn’t have insurance. Yeah, they had warned him, gave him tickets, offa that. You know how high insurance is on the Westside. You were laughing when you bought it last time, too, because of your address.” I feel that water pushing behind my eyes, starting to come up my throat, so I go in my bedroom and shut the door.
Mama come in a while later. “Did you eat at Darnell’s house?”
“I wasn’t hungry. I had a big lunch at work.”
“You sit outside in that nice plaza they got in front of the county building?” Mama lean against the edge of the bed. “I always think about you sittin out there with all the other secretaries, and them cute little cafes and boutiques they got now. Look like L.A.” Every time she even mention the county building, I hear how proud she is about my job. I had to stop telling her not to call me a secretary, I’m only a clerk, because she won’t listen.
“Yeah, Mama, I sat in the sun. I’m going to sleep now.” After she close the door, I look outside my window, listen for the helicopter. It takes off from the top of the county building, where they got a helipad. Sometimes when I’m at Darnell’s, in the front yard in the dark, the police shine the spotlight from it and cut over us jagged as lightning. Circling loud and angry as a wasp, make the whole street silver. Mama always asking me what new flowers they planted in the county plaza this month. I sat out there today, next to the fountain pale blue like glass. People popping open their soda cans loud, little rifle shots. I can’t stop thinking about Ricky Ronrico, about what those red flashing lights in my bedroom would look like now, me in Darnell’s blankets on the couch. I lay in the bed for a long time, hearing the helicopter then, humming distance, hoping Darnell went straight home and didn’t run into Tiny or someone else who loved to instigate, just stand on the corner and talk smack.
When I wake up, I know they still haven’t caught him. I could feel it somehow, almost see Ricky Ronrico’s face, and I call Darnell right away. He say the Westside still steppin light and drivin slow, but not too slow, and I can hear a smile in his voice, know he’s thinking about last night.
“You suggesting you still pick me up at the usual time?” I say, and he laughs. He always come about two o’clock, so we can go by the park. I clean house for Mama; Pop already at work, doing an extra shift. He already talking about property taxes due pretty soon, even though it’s not till December. Me and Mama make a peach cobbler since we had all these peaches from my Aintie Mae out in Perris. Mama sew up a hole in Pop’s other work pants, and I fix the rip in my white blouse. When Darnell come over, Mama’s done. “How are things on Picasso?”
“Quiet. People doing a lot of talking, but mostly it’s nothin but a long wait.”
We tell her we’ll just stay at Darnell’s and play cards, and won’t go cruising or looking for parties.
“Well, why you don’t stay here and play cards then?” She turn her head at me like she does when I know she know why we don’t stay here. We sit around at Darnell’s, and people come over to watch the basketball game or wrestling, and everybody’s laughing and talking about everybody else. Nobody come up here. Nobody borrow an egg or bring over some extra greens, and the phone might ring, but the doorbell doesn’t. “I won’t be late,” I say, and she shake her head.
But when we on the Westside, it’s not Saturday any more than the day before was Friday. Nothing seem natural at all. The sky was tinged all brown, like usual, but even the smog seem angry, and the palm trees hanging dusty, sorry-looking. The streets gray and glittery, rising in the heat almost, and everything faded, like the color been drained out. The houses and cars pale, people’s lawns sand-color; we in one of those old-time photos Mr. Tucker has from Oklahoma, from where he grew up.
The heavy chains are up blocking the parking lot by Jackson Park, and not a brother in sight. “Daddy didn’t want me to come and get you,” Darnell is saying, but he put his hand on my arm. “I’m tellin you, I had to think twice about it.” He smile at me careful, touch a knuckle to my neck. “Good enough?” he whisper.
His father’s inside watching TV, talking on the phone. Darnell and me play dominoes in the back, and Tiny comes in after a while. “Man, it’s definitely cooler back here than in the front room with your old man, homes. He so pissed, put you in a world of hurt you say the wrong thing.”
“I know. And everything wrong. You in the streets, hot as it is?”
“Just kickin it.” Tiny anything but tiny. Six-two, got a big natural even though nobody wearing naturals anymore. He just love his own hair, and everything else about himself. “Man, when Johnny Law pull your hooptie over,” he say, “you put your hands like this.” Spread his fingers out wide. “You put them hands on top of the wheel and pray with em apart.” He was driving his mother’s car an hour ago, got stopped on the way from the liquor store on Third.
“The wheel ain’t good enough for me,” Darnell say. “Remember when I was at that gas station last year, six in the morning and the cashier trip that silent alarm by accident? Shoot, seven black and whites and I hadn’t even picked my pump. I had my hands outside the window, man.” He slam down a domino. “Least you wasn’t wearin that nasty John Shaft leather piece you call a coat. Lucky it’s summer. You usually look so bad cops stop you on G.P.”
“My middle name, homey. General Principle.”
“You ain’t marked down my fifteen, baby. Oh, I know it hurts.” He look up at me. “We ain’t goin nowhere today, I can see
that.” I give him the points, and Tiny go into the kitchen for some Kool-Aid. No air is moving at all.
Miss Ralphine from across the street is sitting at the table with Darnell’s mama when we come out the bedroom to walk Tiny to the front yard. Her face is small like a baby’s under her wig, and even though she must be seventy, the only wrinkles are on her forehead where she raise her eyebrows all the time. I know what she’s fixing to say. “Brenda! How you and this boy? When y’all gettin married? I needs to go to a weddin soon.”
She been asking for two years now, since we graduated together. I smile and tell her I don’t know, while Darnell and Tiny pass under the fan and look up for some air.
“Where you think you goin?” Mr. Tucker say. Him and Mr. Lanier just outside the front door, looking at a battery recharger.
“Damn, give me a break,” Darnell say, and then he lift up his hands. “Sorry. The feet stops here.” I see Jane Jones walking down the sidewalk, wearing her uniform. She works at Church’s Fried Chicken on Sixth Avenue. “Tiny, Darnell. And Bren-da,” she call out, saying my name all slow. She still won’t forgive me.
We went to work experience at school together, for a year. Bank of America took us for clerk/tellers, and we figured out how to talk different, talk white, dress right. Like I do at work now.
But Jane was twice my size, her shoulders big as Darnell’s, and dark. Brother Lobo, the poet, used to call her “the real thing.” Ebony. I was always jealous of her face and skin when we were little; her jaw was so smooth, her neck so long, and she never had marks on her skin like I did. Mine light enough to show nicks and scratches for months. When it came time for the county and the banks to call us for jobs, though, I saw how they checked Jane out. We were both talking right at the interviews, but her hair, her shoulders. She could relax her hair every day, and it would still be African; she wear a short fade, and it make her neck even longer.
She never asked me about the job at the county. I didn’t see her for a long time, and Darnell told me her mother had gotten sprung, started smoking that rock cocaine. Jane had to take care of her, so she got a job at Church’s.
“You gon walk with me, Tiny,” she say over her shoulder, “or Brenda gotta have a harem?”
“Don’t be opening your mouth tonight just to see if your tongue work, boy,” Mr. Tucker holler at Tiny’s back.
We stay in the back room then, and Darnell mess with my hair, tease me about my neck. “What if I give you a most embarrassing souvenir of my love?” He try to pinch my neck, and then he’s kissing me, but Sophia and Paula keep running in and out to get something. We give up and go in the front to help Darnell’s mama cook, because everybody who barely knows the Tuckers could come by and eat on a Saturday. We make chicken, fry up with pepper and onions, string beans, macaroni and cheese, neckbones and blackeye peas for Mr. Tucker. Yellow cake with chocolate icing. That’s how she cook every Saturday.
All the kids eat, and Mr. Tucker, Mr. Lanier, and then Roscoe Wiley comes from down the street. They all sit in the living room and watch TV, Sophia and Paula and they friend Takima go singing out the back door, and Darnell take me out to the side steps by the kitchen. The night got hotter instead of cooling off, it seems, and we can smell the greens tree tangled up the chainlink like it’s cooking in the air. Pop told me about a storm he sat through once in Tulsa, time going fast but in circles.
Nobody walk by, and then we hear the helicopter again for a long time, over near Seventh Avenue where all the hotels and restaurants are. Miss Ralphine come over to say they got a SWAT team at the Holiday Inn; they plan to find Ricky Ronrico tonight, and that’s headquarters, she heard on her police radio. They must think he’s in the Westside for sure.
Only Mr. Tucker left in the living room now, and Darnell and me watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” with him. “Not a dark face on the screen,” Darnell say, and he keep getting up to drink something, sit down careful so he don’t touch my leg. “This shit getting old,” he say, “and we out of soda.” The helicopter circles around like a race car on a track in the sky. When I wake up, the phone ringing and the movie’s been off. The police just raided Mr. Wiley’s house on the corner, and he talked big trouble when they tried to take his son for questioning. Said they heard he had evidence in the house, and went through all the rooms. Darnell’s mama tap her foot on the linoleum fast as a cricket, and when Tiny come in the screen door everybody jump. “Boy, what in hell you doin out?” Mr. Tucker say, his whole face pomegranate red. Red Man. “Get your ass on the couch where it belong on a night like this.”
“Man, this ain’t Alabama,” Tiny say, but then he smile. “I couldn’t miss the food, now.” He don’t even eat, though, just sit on the floor far away from Mr. Tucker. “Lester and Jimmy and Birdman say blood cool and they hope he get away with it. He probably in L. A. anyway. Ain’t no place to hang in this country-ass…”
“Shut up, boy, fore I shut you up,” Mr. Tucker holler; I feel tight in the chest. If we say Ricky Ronrico’s name, they’ll come busting in for us.
“You call your mother, Brenda. You won’t be home for awhile.”
On the phone, Mama sound mad, but she say he’s right. Anther TV show is gone, and I think Darnell asleep, but he staring at the wall. The old beige stereo sits quiet next to the fireplace, under the picture of the African queen. She’s even darker from all the years of smoke settled on her.
Mr. Tucker asleep in his big leather chair, and Mrs. Tucker go into their bedroom. Tiny still on the floor, and me and Darnell the only ones awake. He doesn’t have a bedroom; he’s slept on the couch since I’ve known him. He put his arm around my neck for a minute, and I rest my chin on that soft part by his elbow, but then he shift away again. “Too hot,” he say. Huh.
On the eleven o’clock news, the blonde lady starts out with, “Rio Seco police have captured murder suspect Ricardo Ronrico, the object of an intense manhunt since Friday.” He was in a house on Gate Street, way back on the south side where he shot the two police. On the screen, his hair is all nappy, his eyes flat and red, lips with a gray ring around them. “My man sprung, seriously sprung. Rock daddy,” Tiny say, and I didn’t even know he was awake.
“Clues as to his whereabouts were found in a raid of a house earlier in the evening,” she go on, and Darnell say, “Yeah, tell me. Treasure hunt time. How many stolen TVs and shit you think they found?”
“Blood knew better than to hang out on the Westside,” Tiny say. “Nothin but a anthill. Stompin easy.” He look at me. “Unless you want to move to the Ville like Brenda.”
“Shut up, Tiny,” I say. “Don’t start on me.”
“Wasn’t nobody bangin on your daddy’s door, huh?” he keep on, and the blonde lady smiles. “In our next story, children learn about the great outdoors in some of the Southland’s many summer camps.” The little white kids race around, building fires, hiking in the woods, and Darnell say, “Please.”
He pull me up from the couch. “I be back soon, Tiny. Brenda’s daddy gon be breathin fire, so it ain’t like I’ll be lingerin.” I’m about to say something, and I hear Mr. Tucker’s chair creak.
“They got him,” Tiny say to Darnell’s father, and I’m pushed out the door.
The car seat warm as the couch was. I kiss Darnell’s neck, give him problems driving. I won’t see him again for another week. I look out at the streets, see Lester and Jimmy walking, and Darnell honks, but he doesn’t slow down. It feels strange driving, like we still in a bottle even though the car windows are open. I unbutton Darnell’s shirt, and when we’re getting ready to pass the canning plant, I pull on the wheel. “Stop for a minute,” I tell him, and he let me turn into the parking lot.
I feel like things should be all messed up, tumbleweeds and palm fronds and boxes thrown around like after the winds come in winter. I want to tell him I’m afraid for him every day, but he won’t listen, I know. “Go close to the building,” I whisper, and it’s the weekend, so I can’t smell the spicy breeze I want. I pull D
arnell down onto the seat, and he say, soft, “You know I don’t have no protection. I didn’t think about it.”
“I know,” I say, and kiss his eyelids, put my hands like fans on his back. I think if the helicopter flew over now, shone the floodlight on us, they’d see my arms covering the back of Darnell’s neck, where the skin so soft and blind.
cellophane and feathers
ROSCOE / FEBRUARY
MOCKINGBIRDS MUST HAVE BEEN fighting over the territory at the edge of the prison, because Roscoe had heard them singing frantically, at their best, some time after three that morning. He lay there until daylight and couldn’t go back to sleep, listening to the birds twitter, call, warble, each song more anxious and perfect than the last.
He knew what they were doing only because his son Louis had come home years ago from the junior-high library to tell him that the mockingbird who sat on the telephone wire above their fig tree wasn’t singing for joy all day and night that spring, but fighting to keep other birds away. By the time the road crew got on the bus, Roscoe’s head banged against the glass when he fell asleep; he sat next to the window, trying not to think about Louis, and shook his cheeks to the left and right to wake himself up. But Jesus Trevino’s hair was black and iridescent, feathered as a crow’s wing, in front of him. Damn, he thought, birds all night, birds all I’m likely to see today. Crow time right now, when at home on the Westside the only people who would be up were Red Man, Floyd and him, the ones who worked outside and started early. Roscoe let himself wonder what Louis was doing this early, where he was sleeping. Louis was the one who called it crow time, had his father thinking of it that way ever since. The huge black birds thought they owned the streets this time of morning, stalking up and down the asphalt and into the yards, diving and calling to each other. Louis used to come into Roscoe’s bedroom, wake him up and ask, “Daddy, what are they saying to each other? They talking about something, huh? But I don’t know what it is.”
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