Your House Will Pay

by Steph Cha

  “Daddy!” Dasha leaped up, springing forward and running to meet him as he came out the fenced gate. Darryl and Nisha followed after her, their eyes shining as they waited their turns. Shawn hung back and took pictures on his cell phone, knowing they’d want them later.

  Ray put the box down and hugged his daughter tight, sinking his face into her shoulder. Shawn could see his eyes close, his tears darkening the yellow fabric of her dress.

  “Thank God,” Ray said, nodding his head as he held her. “Thank you God for this day.”

  “Hey, Dad,” said Darryl, with a shy little wave. He was sixteen, and Shawn knew that lately, he fancied himself a man.

  Ray laughed and let go of Dasha. He mimicked the half-assed wave, scooped tears away from his eyes with his other hand. “What was that?” he said, opening his arms. “Come here.”

  Darryl allowed himself to be folded in by his father, his arms held straight by his sides. When Ray didn’t let go, the boy raised an arm to pat his father’s back, and Ray hugged him all the harder.

  It struck Shawn that he couldn’t tell who was taller, his nephew or his cousin. Darryl was in the midst of yet another growth spurt, his tender bones stretching longer by the week. It surprised Shawn, sometimes, how fast the kids could change, and he saw them every few days, for one reason or another.

  “He drove,” said Nisha, beaming. “He wanted to be the one to pick you up.”

  Darryl pulled away from Ray and shrugged. “It was good practice.”

  Ray stared at his son, still holding him by the shoulder. “You can drive?”

  “I get my license next month.”

  “If you pass,” said his mother. “Don’t get cocky now.”

  Darryl had gotten his learner’s permit in January. Shawn had taught him how to drive: cruising their neighborhood in Shawn’s Grand Cherokee, doing loops around Mall Ring Road, where they could practice around other drivers at under twenty miles an hour. In the last couple of months, Darryl had started driving freeways. This trek to Lompoc was his longest trip yet, and the kid did great. Shawn was proud of him.

  He was, in a lot of ways, as much of a father to these kids as Ray. It was taboo, but he suspected everyone but Ray felt more or less the same. Lompoc was a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Palmdale. When the kids were younger, Nisha had taken them whenever she got the chance, but she had a job, and as they grew up, Darryl and Dasha started having plans of their own. Their lives revolved less and less around their dad, locked away where he couldn’t bid for their attention, far enough and long gone enough that whatever guilt they felt became easy to overcome. Sometimes Shawn took them, but he figured they only went as often as he did. Three, maybe four times a year. Ray had watched them grow up in time lapse.

  Shawn had been incarcerated, but he still couldn’t quite imagine what it meant to lose a decade inside, while the world barreled ahead. He’d never done federal time, but he spent his youth in and out of jail, with stints in Central Juvenile and Twin Towers, and finally a three-year stretch in Lancaster. That part of his life had been disjointed, sometimes hellish and always uneasy, the ground never quite safe beneath him. Each release was disorienting, like waking up from a coma, the time he might have had outside beyond recovery. He remembered being jealous of other people’s memories: their quiet days, their friendships, their Christmas dinners. It was a mercy, maybe, that Ray didn’t know what he’d missed. Darryl’s soccer games, his Star Wars mania. The hubbub when Dasha got her first period, Aunt Sheila’s celebratory red velvet cupcakes. The hard nights when Nisha couldn’t sleep. When she and Shawn stayed up talking in the kitchen, their fear and loneliness bonding them into true family.

  Ray let go of his son and gazed at his wife. She looked good, Shawn thought. She’d done her hair and makeup, and her clothes were smart. She’d even cleaned her wedding ring. The metal glinted like new. Nisha was Ray’s age, and she’d aged, of course, since Ray went away. Today, though, she glowed like a pregnant woman.

  “Big D, Little D,” said Ray, his eyes fixed on Nisha. “Look away a minute.”

  The kids looked right at him instead, puzzled by the order or by the nicknames—if anyone called his nephew Big D, it was news to Shawn. They were still looking when Ray planted a deep, wet kiss on their mother, and Shawn laughed as their expressions quick-changed from confusion to performative disgust. The irrepressible delight of seeing their parents together.

  Ray resurfaced, his arms around Nisha’s waist. He nodded back toward the prison. “That’d keep me going another six months in there.”

  Nisha laughed, and her face shone with happy tears. “Don’t even say it, Ray Holloway.”

  Shawn took more pictures. It was the first time he’d seen the four of them together in years—since Ray’s fortieth birthday, when they had all made the drive to Lompoc. They were a beautiful family. Smiling. Complete.

  “Look at me,” he said, holding up his phone.

  They all turned, and Ray nodded at Shawn, as if noticing him for the first time. “Who invited you?” he asked.

  “I love you, too,” said Shawn. He took their picture as Ray’s face broke into a grin.

  He’d thought about staying back. His girlfriend, Jazz, was at Aunt Sheila’s, helping her get dinner ready, and he knew she would’ve been happy to have him there. There was a lot left to do—according to Aunt Sheila, anyway—and Monique needed tending. Jazz’s daughter had just turned three, and she had the kind of energy and fearlessness that required unflagging vigilance.

  But Darryl and Dasha asked Shawn to go with them, and Nisha said he would have to, since Darryl insisted on driving—she made Shawn promise not to let her son get them killed on the way up and to take the wheel for the drive back home. They all wanted him with them, so of course he would be there. And besides, Ray was as much his brother as his cousin. He and Aunt Sheila were the closest blood Shawn had left.

  Shawn walked over to join the family huddle. He hugged Ray, and neither man let go until they were both sniffling and laughing. Shawn picked up Ray’s box.

  “Come on, man. It’s time to get out of Lompoc.”

  They piled into Shawn’s Jeep, Ray in the front seat, Nisha and the kids in the back. Shawn started the car.

  “I’m starving,” said Ray, when they were on the freeway. “Can we get something to eat?”

  “You didn’t eat lunch, Daddy?” asked Dasha, poking her head between the front seats.

  “Baby Dash, I ain’t had a good meal in ten years.”

  Shawn remembered the vile taste of stale prison meat, discolored and chewy and wet smelling. For years, food had brought him no pleasure, only sustenance. Powdered potatoes and canned beans. Endless slices of plain white bread turning to mush in his tired mouth.

  “If you can wait till we get home, Mom’s getting a feast ready,” said Nisha. “I swear she’s been cooking since last week.”

  Ray was silent for a few seconds, and Shawn knew he was thinking about a cheeseburger with bacon and French fries. “How long’s the drive?”

  “Three and a half hours,” she said. “It’s your day, honey. We’ll do what you want.”

  He stroked his chin as he weighed his options, and Shawn could see the satisfaction he took in making a choice. “Alright, I can wait,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  Home was the house on Ramona Road, off the 138 in Palmdale. It was nowhere Ray had ever been before, but it’s where his family had landed. Shawn remembered the first time he saw the house—the day seven years earlier when he left prison, for good if he could help it.

  Aunt Sheila had come to get him. Alone. Ray was in Lompoc, and Uncle Richard had died of prostate cancer while both of his boys were incarcerated, a fact that still filled Shawn with shame. With all the men gone, Aunt Sheila had moved in with Nisha, to help out with Darryl and Dasha. They bought the house in Palmdale after the recession, leaving Los Angeles for the Antelope Valley, dusty desert land at the far reaches of the county. Nisha worked at LAX, and the move k
icked her commute from ten miles to seventy. But it was affordable and quiet, a long way from the gangs and bitter memories of South Central. It also put them within twenty miles of the California State Prison in Lancaster, where Aunt Sheila visited Shawn every chance she got.

  Palmdale was a far cry from the old place. No hustle, no bustle. No corner stores, no helicopters, no laughing teens running wild. Just arid suburbia with a coarse, plain face. It was boring here, and Shawn had come to love the bland peace of it over the years. But he knew it was different, and he felt Ray shift as they passed the sign announcing the Palmdale city limit. There wasn’t much around: a warehouse, a wire fence, scrubby bushes on hard yellow ground, power lines draped across an empty, burning sky.

  “So this is it, huh?” Ray said, as they got off the interstate and drove down the Pearblossom Highway, tract houses blooming along the tapered road.

  “It’s not that bad,” said Nisha. “It’s only fifteen minutes to the mall, and they got a lot of the same things we got in L.A. There’s even a Tommy’s now.”

  Ray laughed, reaching into the back seat to take her hand. “Baby, you know where I been. This might as well be heaven.”

  The house was beige and boxy with a sloped clay roof, identical to three others on the block. Cookie-cutter, built quick and simple, but it was big enough for the kids to get their own bedrooms. For a sofa bed for Shawn.

  Aunt Sheila came out the instant they pulled into the driveway. Shawn sensed she’d been waiting for them, watching from the window. Ray stepped out of the car into his mother’s open arms. They embraced for a full minute, while everyone else watched, Nisha recording this time on her phone.

  “My baby, you’re home,” said Aunt Sheila, pulling back just enough to cradle her son’s face in both hands and shake it for emphasis. “Don’t you ever. Leave. Again.”

  If it hadn’t been for Aunt Sheila, Shawn might be back in prison by now. She convinced Nisha to let him stay until he got back on his feet; it would be good for the kids, she said, to have a man around, and if he managed to get into gangster nonsense this far from his old hood, she would boot him out herself. This house had become his home, a safe place that let him breathe while he found a new grip on a slippery world.

  Monique trailed Aunt Sheila and broke into a run when she saw Shawn, her hair in dandelion puffs bouncing on her tiny head.

  “Papa Shawn!” she shouted. “Up! Up!”

  He scooped her up and she swung her legs from the seat in his arms. She had known Shawn since she was grown enough to make memories.

  “Hey, Momo,” he said. “I want you to meet Uncle Ray.”

  Her eyes widened, seeing Ray for the first time.

  “You must be Monique. I like your hair.” Ray’s voice was sweet, and he wiggled his fingers at her. She smiled, showing gums and milk teeth, then buried her face in Shawn’s neck.

  “Monique, baby, say hi.” Jazz appeared behind her daughter, laughing at the girl’s bout of shyness. She put one hand around Shawn’s waist and extended the other to Ray. “I’m Jazz,” she said brightly.

  Jazz had wanted to meet Ray. Had insisted on it, actually. One of their only fights in the nearly two years they’d been together was over Shawn’s refusal to take Jazz along to Lompoc. It seemed to her that if she and Ray were both so important to him, Shawn should want the two of them to meet. But he knew what it was like to be in a visiting room, wearing a uniform and an invisible leash, under the eye and thumb of hawkish guards. He didn’t want her to see Ray that way, not when she hadn’t known him before.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Ray said, taking her hand. He’d always been good with women, and he still had his old charm.

  “From him?” Jazz looked up at Shawn with evident skepticism.

  “Nah, you know Shawn.” Ray made his face unexpressive and deepened his voice. “‘Jazz is cool. She’s a nurse. She has a kid.’”

  Jazz cackled and pulled Shawn closer.

  “But my mom and Nisha think the world of you. Don’t dump him, unless you want to break all our hearts.”

  They went inside, where Aunt Sheila had cooked up enough food for forty people. The table sagged with mac and cheese and fresh buttermilk biscuits, potato salad and baked beans. There was a whole tray of pork ribs glistening with barbecue sauce, another of roast chicken. A large Domino’s pizza, too, with pepperoni, jalapeño, and pineapple. That was Shawn’s touch, about the only thing that wasn’t homemade. It was their favorite pizza, ever since they were kids, and Shawn remembered how good it tasted after years of prison food. Ray ogled the spread, his tongue showing wet in his open mouth.

  “Well, I’m ready to eat,” he said. “Let’s pray.”

  They held hands in a circle, bowed their heads down, and waited on Ray, as if he always led them in grace. The truth was Shawn couldn’t think of another time. They grew up going to church—for years, Aunt Sheila and Uncle Richard didn’t let them miss one Sunday—but his cousin came by his religious passion in Lompoc. It was annoying sometimes, getting lectured by Ray, but it seemed to do him good. There were worse things a man could find in prison than Jesus.

  Ray started to pray. “We thank you, Heavenly Father, for bringing this household together. Thank you for my wife, for keeping her strong. Her steadfastness and her love have been my rock these long years. For my children, who are so good and beautiful—”

  His voice caught, and Aunt Sheila and Nisha chimed in with soft amens. Shawn opened his eyes and saw Ray swiping at his tears. Nisha found his hand and held it again, stroking his wrist with her thumb. Darryl and Dasha were watching, too, their faces cracked open with awe.

  Ray cleared his throat and began again, louder this time, nearly shouting the words. “And I thank you, Father God, for delivering me. For keeping me sane, for keeping me safe. For taking me out of the darkness and bringing me home, where no man can ever drag me back away.”

  Shawn closed his eyes. He could hear Nisha sniffling, Aunt Sheila murmuring more amens.

  “And I pray for those we’ve lost. Watch over them, Father God.”

  Jazz squeezed Shawn’s hand, and he squeezed back.

  “Protect this house, oh Lord,” Ray thundered. “Let nothing tear us apart again.”

  The kids were on cleanup duty while the adults shared a bottle of champagne in the living room. Ray got up to get more dessert, and Nisha caught Shawn’s eye and nodded after him. Shawn had promised her he’d take care of the nagging tonight, and this was as alone as Ray was likely to get.

  Shawn hopped over to the dining table and watched his cousin stack fresh chocolate chip cookies on his plate and carve out a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  “Take it easy, man,” Shawn said, laughing. “You’re gonna wreck your stomach.”

  Ray smiled at him. “I don’t care if I spend the next three months on the toilet. I’m eating all of this.” He ate half a cookie in one ferocious bite.

  “It’s all set up with Manny,” said Shawn. “He wants to meet you, just to make sure you ain’t crazy, but you can start right after.”

  Ray nodded while he chewed on his cookie.

  “I’ll pick you up Friday morning. We should leave by four thirty to be safe.”

  Ray laughed, spraying crumbs on the floor. “Damn, that’s when you leave for work? You an industrious Negro.”

  “I’m a Negro with a commute, and so are you.”

  Shawn had been working for Manny’s Movers for seven years now, since right after he got out of Lancaster. Manny Lopez was Shawn’s parole officer’s cousin. He was a generous man who believed in second chances, and he’d hired Shawn as a favor to his cousin, as he’d now hire Shawn’s cousin as a favor to Shawn. It was a good job, especially now that Shawn was the most senior employee, tasked with leading and supervising his moves. The only downside was that Manny’s office was in Northridge, the moves spread out all over L.A. The bottom of the hill, as they said in Palmdale. Shawn’s commute was almost as bad as Nisha’s.

&nbs
p; Ray swallowed. “Alright, four thirty it is then. You know I appreciate it, Shawn.”

  “I gotta warn you. The first week’s gonna be rough. We get a lot of guys, like young buff guys, and they quit after a week.”

  “I ain’t afraid to work. I’m afraid of falling back, know what I’m saying?”

  There was a good chance the job wouldn’t stick. Shawn knew it; Nisha knew it; Ray knew it. Sure, a fresh parolee could only be so picky. But there were other options, ones that paid better and didn’t involve trucking across the county with other people’s belongings. Most of these happened to be illegal.

  Ray hadn’t had a legit job since high school. Shawn hadn’t either, until Manny decided to give him a shot. They’d spent all their time with the Baring Cross crew, messing around, getting in trouble, moving dope and running capers when they needed money. It made it hard to find work even when they wanted to go straight. The last time, Ray got so demoralized he held up a bank with a toy gun he’d bought for Darryl. He got caught three hours later, still carrying his $7,000 take in cash, stashed in a duffel bag with the fake gun. That was armed robbery. One dumb-ass federal crime that bought him a twelve-year prison sentence, reduced to ten for good time. Now here he was.

  “Look at you, though. You got your shit together,” said Ray, pointing a cookie at him. “I like Jasmine, by the way. She’s good for you.”

  “I like her, too.”

  “Can’t believe Mom hooked that up. They oughta give her a Nobel Prize for that hustle.”

  Shawn laughed. It was true. Aunt Sheila had gone to the hospital to check out a breast lump one day a couple years back. She made the most of her visit, chatting up the pretty black nurse with no ring on her finger. She found out the nurse was divorced, and by the time she was done with her appointment, Aunt Sheila had managed to sell Jazz on a blind date with the ex-con nephew who lived on her couch. The lump, it turned out, was benign.

  “You should lock that down,” said Ray. “Be the man of your own house.”

  Your own house. It was a jab, but Ray had just enough shame to pretend otherwise, stuffing his mouth with another cookie.