Your Corner Dark

by Desmond Hall

  Frankie felt faint. “Okay, you’re staying?” He had to hear the actual words.

  “I just said so.”

  Frankie had to believe him. There was nothing else.

  Twenty-Six

  foolishly, Frankie had let Leah choose where to go on their next date on Saturday, so long as it wasn’t for sushi. But now she was so psyched up about her choice: an art museum—the National Gallery by the busy harbor, yet another place he’d never been before. To show him her world, why it was so important to her, she said. But how could he argue against all her enthusiasm? The girl had soul.

  As Leah bounded ahead, pointing at this painting and that painting, Frankie began to feel woozy. He couldn’t focus on the damn paintings. Now that he’d told Samson about Joe and the posse, he had to tell Leah. And all the rest of it, everything that had fallen on him like an ambush on a moonless night. He ran his hand over his face. He needed water. The room felt eerie. The paintings seemed to float off the walls like spirits from another realm. The sculptures seemed to jail shrunken Africans, reminding him of the duppy stories he’d heard as a boy. His grandmother, deformed by age, had told him about the rolling calf, about humans who walked with curses, and about the tortured bodies of dead slaves reanimated, stalking the night, chains rattling as they sought a flesh offering. Wo!

  He lurched out of the room into the hallway. There—a water fountain. He turned the knob, cupped the cold water, and splashed his face. He had to do it twice more before his thoughts would settle. What the hell! He had seriously freaked in there. Was that what an anxiety attack was? He took another minute to compose himself—glad Leah hadn’t come out—then headed back to the room.

  Leah was circling a massive sculpture of a man, probably a great man, looking straight upward. Was he praying for help from above? Would he get it? Frankie could surely use some.

  Leah looked so happy, so peaceful. He couldn’t bear to break that spell.

  He joined her at last. She turned and smiled.

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  “It’s called Negro Aroused.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Isn’t it? What does it make you think?”

  “He seems to be a great man, and—”

  “And…?”

  “I don’t know. It’s stupid. What do I know?”

  “You can’t be wrong. It’s your interpretation, so just say it.” She smiled in a way that made him get that she really wanted to know what he thought. Okay then.

  “Well, it’s like—to me, anyway—he’s looking up to the past. You know how most people feel messed up about the past because of slavery? But he’s looking back to a different past, a way back past… to… a time without slaves, when Black people were free. From the time before shackles… to a better past.” He blushed. Where had that come from?

  “You’re a poet, Frankie,” Leah said.

  “Oh yeah, that’s me,” he scoffed, embarrassed. He thought about her at her art review. There were so many questions he wanted to ask about it but had been afraid to. Yet she’d defended herself in front of crits, so he asked, “The night of your art review… How did you find the, whatever it was, to talk back to those crits like you did?” He couldn’t have done that—and yet he’d talked back to his father in the hospital yesterday, something, huh, he’d hardly ever been able to do before.

  She began inspecting the statue again. “That’s ancient history, Frankie.”

  “Well… this is an ancient history kind of spot, isn’t it? I mean, what better place to talk about it, right?”

  Dimples. “You have to speak from your heart. That’s my thing.” She came full circle, was back at his side.

  Was he more head than heart?

  “My canvases have intellectual truth, but they lack emotion,” she said, imitating an official voice. “My teacher told me I needed to be strategic in how I put out my canvases, especially since they were so political.” She shrugged. “She knew they’d hate that work; she wanted me to—advised me to—start with simple portraits and save my abstract work for last. But I didn’t listen. I had to present my line of caskets all the way to the prime minister’s house, first, right in the crits’ faces.” There was fire in her eyes.

  She had marched so defiantly to the crit table, then come away slump-shouldered, the fire in her step out. But it was back, that fire. “So, why did you do it?”

  “So here’s the thing. I knew my teacher was right. The crits are way conservative. But I just felt like doing it my way.” She picked at a smudge of paint on her fingernail. “I get like that when I’m close to things I want. A bit self-destructive, maybe.”

  Man, she knew herself so well. How could she be so aware, and still do something self-destructive? And so he had to ask, “When you get close to guys you want, do you act that same way? Self-destructive?”

  She laughed, then gave him a piercing look. “We’ll see, won’t we? I’ve never gone with a guy before. Seriously, I mean.”

  He wasn’t head now—all heart.

  She strode toward a big bright painting and pointed. “Look at this one. Watson’s Conversation.”

  Three Jamaican women in head scarves, plain blouses, and skirts stood having a conversation. Frankie didn’t notice anything particularly unusual about the image. He’d seen women like this all his life.

  “See their hips, the way they’re pushed forward? Pride, right?” Leah gestured with her own hips. “Those hips are saying we’re going forward, and nothing’s going to hold us back. Damn right…” Her voice trailed off like vapor.

  Jeez. She got all that looking at one painting? He watched her move to the next painting, his brain in overdrive. For the past four years, he had been studying math and science, his whole goal to get away. Sure, he wanted to come back to Jamaica someday and make changes. But he could tell Leah loved Jamaica, her people. She loved this life. She was trying to make a difference now.

  And here he was, in a freakin’ posse. Frankie sighed, bumped his shoulder into Leah’s. “You all right?”

  “It’s just—this one is fucking perfect.”

  Frankie liked it, but “perfect” wasn’t the word he would choose. “Truth? I’d rather see more of your work.” And he wasn’t joking.

  “Shut up.” Her smile was crooked and beautiful. “You sure this isn’t boring the hell out of you?”

  Frankie touched her shoulder and suddenly, without even thinking about it, he soft, soft, kissed her.

  And for a moment she leaned in, soft, soft. Then, abruptly, she pulled back. What? She was rummaging through her bag. What? And then she pulled something out.

  “What, did I win something?” Frankie tried to joke.

  She opened her fist to show him a prescription bottle. Watching him warily, like a deer about to startle, she pressed the bottle into his palm, then reached back into the bag and removed another.

  Zoloft. Lexapro. He had heard of the first one. It treated depression, so he assumed the other was similar. Those were big-time meds. Whoa—what was she dealing with? He moved to pull her to him, but that would come off like pity. So he held back. “You are dealing with drama…,” he started, remembering what she’d told him early on. Family drama…

  “Don’t worry. I don’t take them at the same time. I used to use this one, and I just sort of keep it on me—” She took one from his hand. “Does it weird you out?”

  Frankie shook his head firmly. “Nah, everyone’s dealing with something.” Now it was his turn to open up! But he couldn’t. For some ridiculous reason, he thought of Winston unable to shoot and felt a wave of empathy. “Anything else in the bag?” He smiled.

  “Gum. Want some?”

  “My breath that bad?”

  In answer, she leaned forward and kissed him… longer this time. “No,” she said at last, pulling away. “Your breath’s all right.”

  His entire body was throbbing. “You want to talk about it—the meds?”

  She shrugged. “My mom is a freak and my
father’s an asshole.” She took back the other bottle and popped both in her bag. “You need to know more?”

  “No. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  “Let’s have dinner.”

  “You have money to just go to restaurants all the time, huh?” he teased.

  “At my house, dummy.”

  Frankie froze—that meant meeting Leah’s family. But there was no way he could refuse, so, “Sure, why not?” was what he said.

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

  “Meeting your girl’s parents isn’t exactly like going to a Vybz Kartel concert.”

  “He’s in jail. And don’t be like that.”

  Okay, so that wasn’t the best thing to say.

  “Besides, you’ll only be meeting my grandmother, maybe my dad.” She took out her phone, typed out a text, and hit send. “Let’s go. They know you’re coming.”

  Twenty-Seven

  leah’s house wasn’t a mansion up in Cherry Gardens or Norwood, but it was one of the nicer houses in Vineyard Town, a fancy Kingston area only five miles from the National Stadium and two miles from the American embassy.

  Frankie kept close to Leah on the litter-free sidewalk, wondering if people came and cleaned it. He knew he’d better make a good impression at dinner, but he also knew he wasn’t sure how. “So, what’s your grandmother like?”

  Leah gave a short laugh. “Be ready—she’s not easy. She’s retired but used to be in real estate. Sold a lot of expensive houses, but she thinks she bought them, if you know what I mean.”

  “So she’s stush?” Frankie joked in patois.

  “One of the most stuck-up women you’ll ever meet.”

  “Your mom and dad—are they divorced? You mentioned that they were separated.”

  “They should get it over with, but no… not yet. My mom doesn’t live with us, though. Haven’t seen her in a year, actually. She has a lot of problems, emotionally, I mean.” She looked away. “Dad—he’s a control freak…” Her voice trailed off as if she didn’t want to say more about her family. Huh. So her mom wasn’t around either. Did Leah miss her as much as he did his own ma? His thoughts were interrupted by Leah elbowing him. “That’s my house.”

  Frankie gaped. How many thousands of millions did that cost? It was a sprawling white ranch-style house, completely gated in. The metal grilling protecting the windows was expensive enough, but there was also a large cooling unit—central air—at the side of the house. The copper pipes alone must have cost a fortune. “Guess you’re not starving.” Gah! What an idiot thing to say!

  And she called him on it, stopped at the gates. “What’s that supposed to mean? Yes, my family has money. Can you deal with it?”

  “Yeah, I can deal,” he assured her.

  She pushed open the gate. “Now, don’t get freaked out by what my grandmother might say.”

  “She doesn’t mean it?”

  “Oh, she does.” Leah gave a wry smile, led him past an East Indian mango tree and a carport. “Just don’t get freaked out.”

  She paused in front of an open window. “Damn, left it open again.”

  He thought of Samson’s security device. “You get burglars in this neighborhood?”

  “Not really. My dad just gets on me when I let the AC out.” She continued walking. “But I like fresh air, don’t you?”

  “I get that. I live on a mountain. Best air there is.”

  The front door, all carved in walnut, was so heavy it whined on its hinges. The foyer was paved with maroon-patterned tile—his mother would have loved it. She’d made a border around their small garden in the backyard with cast-off pieces of tile she’d found here and there. She’d have flipped over this. Off to the right, the living room looked massive, twice the size of Frankie’s whole house, at least. The bowed legs of the table in the dining room—mahogany—made him think of the one Samson once made for Mr. Brown. The paintings on the wall looked real, in ornate gold frames. He felt like he was at the museum. But oddly, none of Leah’s paintings were on the walls.

  He spied a framed poster in the entryway to the dining room. The poem on it was one of his mother’s favorites: “Footprints in the Sand.” Back in Troy, church ladies—his mother among them—had often quoted the words to him: “My precious child, I love you…. During your times of trial and suffering, when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

  A woman, a shade or two lighter than Leah, with the same high cheekbones, wearing tight pants and a white shirt that clung to her rail-thin frame, swept into the room. She looked at Frankie the way salespeople in Kingston stores always did—the type who watched his every move; made him feel guilty, even though he hadn’t done anything.

  Leah tapped his arm. “Frankie, this is my grandmother, Penelope Bradford.”

  Frankie walked forward and extended his hand.

  Her grip was soft. She let go too fast. “So, you gave up your scholarship?”

  Frankie nearly choked in surprise. A hardness settled into the sides of Leah’s mouth, but before she could say anything, Frankie responded with, “Things happen.” He should explain, but if he explained the problem, he might have to explain the solution. Plus, his father being shot was proof enough that he didn’t belong here—they wouldn’t have the bad taste to let such a thing happen in this neighborhood.

  Penelope huffed. “Nothing more useless than a man who gives up. I’m going to microwave the dinner. It’s gone cold—you young people have no concept of time. Frankie, have a seat.” She watched him until he sat at the dining table, then left the room.

  “I warned you!” Leah said with a grimace. “I should help her. Just wait here.”

  “Sitting on the hot seat,” he added, trying to laugh it off. He watched her leave, feeling like a kid in detention at school. A chair sat at the head of the table but not at the other end. That seemed kind of weird. He moved to that chair, taking up the posture of a king. He would show Leah’s grandmother that he wasn’t afraid of her. Then he heard a voice behind him.

  “Who’s this sitting in my chair? Can’t be Goldilocks. He’s too black.”

  Frankie couldn’t even react to the insult because—that voice! He knew it! He whipped around. No. It couldn’t be. Shit. SHIT.

  There in the doorway stood Sergeant Bradford. The very same Sergeant Bradford who’d come to Joe’s camp before Frankie’s initiation.

  “Frankie, right?” Bradford went on. Dude was still in uniform, still armed. “Wondering how I know your name, right? Eavesdropping. Part of the job. Don’t worry, I’m not tracking you… yet.” He walked over and stuck out his hand. Frankie’s brain was sending off sparks. Leah’s father… was… a cop? This cop? Oh my God. Had Bradford told Leah about Frankie being in the posse? No, probably—not yet. No way would Leah not mention that.

  Bradford’s hand hung in the air.

  Frankie’s arms felt frozen.

  The sergeant’s strange, light brown eyes went icy. Finally Frankie reached up to shake the man’s hand.

  “I like a man who can take charge,” Bradford said, crushing Frankie’s hand in his grip. “But not too much charge, right?”

  Frankie pressed back, trying to hold his own. He stood up, their hands still gripped. The man towered a good six inches over Frankie, taller than he remembered, and creepier. He recognized Frankie, no doubt. He knew who he was. Bumboclot!

  “You been out in the sun?” Bradford asked.

  Huh? “Why do you say that?” Frankie said in surprise.

  Bradford released Frankie’s hand. “You look well black, mon. You should use sunscreen. SPF 400 might do you.” He wasn’t joking; he was trying to cut Frankie down, just like some light-skinned kids at school had tried to do once. No way Frankie could snap back, though—he had to be cool about it.

  “This is as dark as I get, and as light as I get.” And not for nothing, Bradford’s own daughter was way darker than Bradford was. Leah’s mom must have been dark-skinned, like Fran
kie. Where the hell was Leah, anyway?

  Bradford sucked air through his teeth as if trying to dislodge a piece of whatever poor sucker he’d just chewed up. Then he surprised Frankie by saying, “Good, you shouldn’t take shit, not even from your girlfriend’s father.”

  When Frankie’d thought about making a good impression, this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Then Bradford’s words struck him—Leah had told him he was her boyfriend?

  Bradford pulled him back to reality by telling him to sit back down.

  Frankie eyed Bradford’s gun in his holster.

  “No, sit where you were sitting. I want you to.” Bradford smiled. No warmth there.

  “It’s okay, I can—”

  “No, I insist.” He rubbed his holster with his palm, as if scratching an itch.

  Frankie sat back down when Leah came in with a tray piled high with chicken.

  “Dad! You’re home early,” she said, looking worriedly at Frankie.

  Bradford swiped a chicken leg off her tray and bit into it, not taking his eyes off Frankie for an instant.

  “We have a guest,” Leah said smoothly, setting the tray on the table, “but it looks like you two have already met.”

  “Not formally,” Bradford said, his mouth full of chicken, “but your guest seems to have made himself right at home.”

  Frankie was ready to bolt out the door.

  Leah put on her full-wattage smile. “Dad, this is Frankie Green. Frankie, this is my father. I guess you can call him Lloyd.”

  Leah’s father just stood there, gnawing his chicken. Finally he smacked his lips and corrected her. “You can call me Sergeant Bradford.”

  Penelope walked in bearing a gleaming teak salad bowl. “What’s everybody standing for? Sit down, please.”

  “I need to take a shower first,” Bradford told her.

  “Can’t you do that later?” Leah sat to Frankie’s right. “I mean, you were so hungry you couldn’t wait for the rest of us.”