by Tiana Laveen
“There were drug addicts, like me, standing outside your apartment sometimes. I’d make them leave… I knew what they wanted. Most of ’em was at death’s door. They’d look up at your apartment window like they was waiting for your ass to fall from the fucking sky and bless ’em or some shit. I started to watch you even better then—real, real close.” He sucked his teeth and rocked back in his chair. “I had to admit for sure now, something strange was going on. We could go almost nowhere without this phenomenon happening to you.
“You did not appear to notice, though. That is what was so fucked up. You were a smart little boy, man, intelligent as hell.” Bomb tapped the side of his head, a serious expression across his face. “You were mad curious, had a bunch of questions all the fuckin’ time. You took everything in…but this?” Bomb shrugged and shook his head, his bottom lip pushed out. “This went right over your damn head for some reason. I felt like I was going crazy. Fuck it, let me give you an example.” He leaned forward and took another puff of his cigarette, seeming amped up all over again. Saint remained quiet, loath to derail the man’s train of thought.
“One time, we were on the train right, and we were sittin’ in the back. I think I had to stop by and see someone, and I took you along wit’ me. Anyway, some old lady came up to us, some bag lady, dirty and stinking with cloudy eyes, like she had glaucoma. It looked like she could barely walk, and she gripped some paper bag real close to her, like it held her whole fucking life in it. I could see roaches ’nd shit crawling all over it. I saw her nasty ass approaching and told ’er to beat it, that I didn’t have no money. She ignored me and stretched out her dirty hands to you. She was hell bent on touching you! I pushed her and she fell down. I mean, she fell hard, Saint. But instead of reacting to the pain of sinking to her knees, she grabbed at your damn feet, crying and whimpering like some damn starving puppy. Then she rose up and gripped you, tried to kiss you on the cheek. She was begging you for healing, like you were Jesus or somethin’! You were scared…started crying ’nd shit. I had to pull a damn knife on an old lady, man! I felt real bad about that, real bad. But, in all that commotion, to this day, I remember what she said…”
Saint glared at Bomb for a second or two, debating on taking the bait.
“What did she say?” His voice cracked, as if he were sixteen all over again.
“She got up real slow, lil’ brother, gave me a dirty look and said in Spanish, ‘He’s an angel. He’s a real life angel.’ She pointed at you and glared at me, like she was telling me some shit that was real important. I never forgot it… I knew what she meant, but it made no sense to me. You were flesh and blood. I was taught Angels had wings ’nd shit…at least that’s how they showed it in the books. Besides, wasn’t no signs of angel activity in the fuckin’ South Bronx. If so, their asses were asleep, constantly off the fucking clock, right up there with God. No one was protecting us, guarding us, helping us…
“I looked at you, Little Pharaoh, and there was no halo over your crazy hair-covered head. Your hair grew so damn fast, it’s like you needed two haircuts a week ’nd shit. I was payin’ for some of ’em after you complained your folks ain’t have no money to get your dome taken care of and your mom was too tired to cut it. Plus, you said she ain’t do it right.” He toked his cigarette, blowing out more smoke as he drifted in memories. “…And then it was like you’d show up a day or two later, and your hair was long again…but that ain’t the point.” He laughed, slapping the table lightly. “You was a little muchacho, not an angel. You cussed like a grown ass man.”
Saint hung his head and grinned.
“You wanted to look at naked girls and drive big cars like the pimps,” he said, chuckling. “You wanted to dress like the drug dealers and join the Savage Skulls. You were just a normal little boy from our hood in so many ways.” Bomb smiled, a sad smile…
“I was… taking drugs before I met you Saint. My drug use got much worse, though, after I had self-appointed guardianship over you. I couldn’t handle life, couldn’t deal…but you were everything to me.” Bomb swallowed; his sincerity poured under, over, inside, below and above as he placed his hand over his heart, declaring it true. “Because people loved you, man…and because they loved you, that meant they loved me, too. You always thought it was the other way around. For some reason, you thought I was so fucking wonderful. You’d tell me that all the time.” Bomb smiled as his eyes glossed over. He leaned back in his seat and gazed up at that ceiling as if to say a silent prayer.
“And, I saw more and more bad people trying to get a piece of you, get close. Good people, too…but the bad people stuck out the most to me. You know…a little boy like you wasn’t no fun to hang with, or shouldn’t have been—but you had this energy, this pull, this magnetism. I realized at that moment, my mother was right, man. There was such a thing as angels, and not only that, sometimes the person you least expect is supposed to help these people out in this crazy ass world. I realized at that moment, that person was me!” Bomb pointed at himself, his bottom lip quivering, as his chair slammed back down on the floor.
Saint resisted the urge to interrupt, to tell him how much he loved him, appreciated him, needed him…
“I didn’t let your little ass hang with me, like I thought all these years, Saint. Not until I got clear-headed, did I really understand what happened between us. After you forced me into sobriety, saved my life, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about shit I didn’t want to get into. The meetings encourage it, too. My counselor is all for it. And with all of that, things became crystal clear. Nah, I never let you hang wit’ me, little Pharaoh. No, you let me hang with you.” A tear fell from Bomb’s eye. He quickly swiped it clean.
“Wow, Bomb, shit…” Saint ran his palms over his jeans, heating them. “I don’t even know what to say to all of this. I’ve been sitting here listening to you and…damn, man.” Saint shook his head as he stared across the table at the man. “I think this is our first time having a conversation like this. This damn candid, this real. I feel like, after all these years, right here and now, you are really letting me in. Thank you. You have no idea how much I needed this. I think you needed it, too.”
Bomb nodded.
“And you’re right. I wasn’t aware of people coming around me like that,” Saint added. “I mean, I know now. I can see it, it still happens, but back then…”—he vigorously shook his head—“it’s like it wasn’t close to me. Like it was there, but blocked from my view. I think, considering how aware of my surroundings I am, in part, that is also thanks to you. This is all rather bizarre, I suppose.” Saint shrugged and sighed. “Maybe it’s like being a person, having skin. It’s just there, and you don’t think about it until someone else points it out. I want to tell you that…I really missed you when we moved away, man. I know I told you that before, but I want to tell you again, Bomb. I felt lost for so long without you. I wondered what had happened to you. I saw you one time, but…I knew not to bother you.”
Saint refused to go there, to discuss the drug deal he witnessed going down. It had twisted his heart up like a damn pretzel and squeezed it like soaking wet laundry set out to dry. Bomb had a horrible habit, and it had Saint fucked up for days…
“Yeah, about you leaving…” Bomb fidgeted in his seat, his eyes averted, as if nervous of a pending announcement. “I want to tell you something far out man, something crazy that happened. I know you sittin’ there talking crazy…” He chuckled, pointing at him with the cigarette steady between his clamped fingers. “We both sittin’ here talking crazy and after this shit is all over, we can pretend like this conversation never happened if you want. I might opt to do that anyway but uh…” He sucked his teeth, and paused. “…Since we’re both doing this loco shit, let me explain one more thing to you, Saint.”
“You can tell me anything, Bomb. I want you to.”
The man sighed loudly and hung his head, stared down at his white Reeboks. The same pair Saint had purchased him before sending him on hi
s way into a new life.
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“About what?”
“I’m going to tell you something, and you better not bring this shit up to me again! I’m never going to talk to you about this after today, for as long as I live! Do you understand me?” He angrily snatched another cigarette out the package, lit it and took a quick, clean inhale.
“Yeah, I got it.” Saint couldn’t help but wonder what the man was burdened with that caused him this much distress.
Bomb finally settled his gaze on him. “A few weeks before you disappeared on me, moved away and I didn’t know where you’d gone, something real fucked up happened, Saint.” He lowered his head for a spell, then looked at Saint dead on. “I used to see this kid hanging around you but I swear to God, it’s like you never saw him, didn’t even notice.” He took another puff of his cigarette. Scratching his scalp, he twisted a bit to the side, a strange expression on his face as if he himself couldn’t believe what he was about to say.
“I guess it kind of fits in with what we’ve been talking about…you not noticing. Anyway, he was almost like a shadow. He just showed up out of nowhere and then hung around. No one knew his name or where the hell he’d come from. He blended in, but at the same time, he didn’t, if that makes any sense.
“One night this little mothafucka, about your age, maybe a year younger or older, approached me after I and my boys had finished up fighting with the Seven Immortals. This was waaaaay after that shit with the Ghetto Brothers. Did you know anything about that?”
“The truce?”
“Yeeeeeah, that shit happened way before you were even born, Saint. There was an agreement to stop, cease-fire so to speak. I don’t think you were aware of this, but I was way cool with the Ghetto Brothers after Black Benjie got killed.”
Saint swallowed and nodded. “I’d heard all about that. I had done some research after I became an adult to find out the history of the shit before I was born since no one told me. All I saw was the aftermath.”
“Right. We all had formed a truce down there on Hoe Avenue after that shit. There was a lot of respect for Black Benjie, man. That whole thing was fucked up.” He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. “Anyway, I never really had no beef with them but one night, like so many others, a bunch of us got into some shit. I don’t even know what the fuck it was about anymore…” He shrugged. “But, some shit popped off; we fought the Seven Immortals’—it was us and the Savage Nomads actually. We came back to our turf and was wiggin’. I wanted to get high so bad. That was typical of me after a fight though.” He paused, and then Saint noticed Bomb’s hand shake with the cigarette in his grip. A subtle reaction he may have been missed, but like a withered leaf on a tree tickled by the kiss of a soft breeze, it shook, trembled, and moved about as if a tiny bundle of nerves inside of his fingers had gone out of whack.
“My adrenaline was pumpin’. You’d think that would have been enough, but no.” He laughed and shook his head. “I beat their asses, man…beat ‘em bad, got a lot of praise for that shit, too. I was sittin’ pretty. All we all wanted to do was party after that, get into some mess, maybe find some pussy to bust out. So, we scoured around, tryna score some weed ’nd what not. The police were out pretty heavy because of the fight, so we had to kinda stay lowkey.” He sniffed, placed his index finger under his nostril as if expecting a sneeze, but nothing came. “So, uh, this little Chinese dude—hell, I don’t know if he was Chinese, he may have been Japanese, I just knew he was Asian—he was kinda standing around, the little kid…
“He pulled my jacket, and at that time, I was real protective of my Savage Skulls jacket.” He chuckled. “So I snapped at the kid and he was like, ‘Sorry’ ’nd shit. Then he pulled this little plastic bag outta his pocket and handed it to me. I opened that crap up…maaaaaan Saint!” Bomb laughed. “Every damn goodie gum drop pill you could imagine!” He threw his hands up as if speaking of the Promised Land. “Uppers, downers, you name it! A fuckin’ candy shop. There was even a few little bags of weed in there, rollin’ papers, too. Little kid says to me, ‘I stole it from my uncle. I want to give it to you.’ Well, me being the hype and fucker that I was, I didn’t question this mothafuckin’ gift horse in the mouth. Man, I ran off with that shit and shared it with my boys along with some warm beers we stole from some warehouse, and we partied all fucking night! We found some girls, took care of that business, too. I was so fucking high, I didn’t come down for hours!”
“Then, I caught my first fucking case, Saint. Yeah…I was so fucking high, higher than I’ve ever been, I went out and did some shit I don’t even fucking remember. My boys got wrapped up in some shit, too, but not like me. When the police got us, they complied. Word had it that I became…what’s the word…?” He snapped his fingers. “Belligerent! Yeah, that’s what was in the police report, and that I was swinging on a cop, almost tore his fuckin’ face off with my bare hands, man! I went to jail and when I got out, you were gone! Vanished!” Bomb’s voice escalated to the point that he was shouting.
“I went to your old spot, it was empty, like y’all had gotten robbed. A bad feeling came over me, man. Real bad. I asked around; everybody said y’all had moved out. I started yelling, getting real upset! I knew I would not see you for a long ass time, if ever again!” The man’s voice broke in fragments and Saint melted right there in his seat. It was rare for him to see Bomb upset to the point of tears. He wasn’t certain if his sobriety and counseling was making the difference, but from a therapeutic standpoint, it was needed. The man needed to purge. Saint had no idea he’d been carrying so much heartache over an incident that literally took less than twenty-four hours—his parents moving him away…
“My heart was fuckin’ broken, man,” Bomb continued. “I was high from that shit that fucker gave me, and I got into some big trouble. I ain’t tryna sit here and say I hadn’t had my run-ins with the cops before that.” He laughed lightly. “You know, before that shit went down, but I’d never been in the slammer that fucking long up until that point. I was still under eighteen, so they couldn’t keep me as long as they wanted to, but it was plenty long enough. It was like some huge, underground plot. To this day, I don’t even fuckin’ remember all the details of what I did, Lil’ Pharaoh. They say I robbed a store too that night, that I was high on angel dust and some other shit, I don’t know…how ironic, angel dust…” He shook his head, looking almost ashamed. “I went crazy looking for you though. I had no idea your old man had moved you away from there.” He pointed sternly in Saint’s face. “Don’t think I didn’t try for a long ass time to find your ass—I did! Your mama and pops weren’t listed in the phone books, neither. No one seemed to know where you all went…”
“My parents didn’t tell anyone,” Saint explained, feeling pangs of guilt that he wasn’t able to somehow rewrite history.
Bomb scratched his nose and nodded.
“I knew.” His expression morphed into something that made Saint shudder. “That Asian fucker got rid of me, so I couldn’t watch over you anymore. He was just a little boy, but Saint, he ain’t have no fucking light in his eyes, man! I had never seen no little kid look like that before, but I was too busy tryna get high and have fun. I didn’t give it much thought at the time. They were black as coal. Never seen eyes that dead before…’cept on an actual dead man, and even a dead man lying in the damn street had more life and light in him than this cat.”
Saint’s stomach knotted in a tight ball that threatened to do him in. “Bomb, I have to ask you a question about this. You may not remember, consider the circumstances, but I have to ask…do you recall that little boy’s name?”
“Nah, I don’t. And the crazy part was, after that, nobody ever saw him again. After you were gone, it’s like he vanished around that same damn time. You know we didn’t have too many Asian people ’round there then, man. They stuck out, like your mama. Trust me, I wanted to know where his ass was, too.”
The room grew suddenly colder, causi
ng Saint to rub his arms as he swallowed down a foul taste that had filled his mouth.
I know who the fuck that was… Koki, you sly, slithering sneaky son of a bitch!
“Ahhhhh!” The pain in Saint’s gut increased, this time worse than before. He looked off into the distance then fell to the floor. Gripping himself, he screamed in pain, his eyes fixed on the strip of flooring in front of the stove. Curling cream linoleum blurred as his vision went in and out. He heard Bomb’s seat smack the ground as the man raced to him, once again pulling him up, forcing him to make eye contact.
“Saint!”
“Shit!” Saint spat between clenched teeth. “Oh God…Oh!” He gripped his shirt tight. “Just…give me a minute…it’s lessening again. I’m not sick, Bomb! It’s him!” Pressure and dull pain spread across his chest as if a mild heart attack had begun from his stomach and crawled its way into his ribs, refusing to let go. Bomb hoisted him up, placed him into the chair.
“He must be aware that I know now…” Saint gasped as his eyeballs rolled around in his throbbing head.
“What are you talking about?” Bomb leaned onto the table but kept one arm around Saint’s trembling shoulder, watching him, refusing to budge.
“Bomb…”
“Yeah.”
“Hold on, give me a minute.” Saint closed his eyes and caught his breath. He laid his hand across his chest, monitored his inhales and exhales, self-soothing, healing himself. After a couple of minutes, he deemed it safe to speak. “When I learn something about him, it hurts, because he can feel I’ve come into the knowledge. So, as we talk…about this…” Saint took another deep breath. “I’m getting hit, spiritually beat up.” They were quiet for a moment.