Freedomland

by Richard Price

  Downstairs, some smart-ass sang out, “War-ri-ors, come out and play-ee-yay.” Another voice: “Brenda! Come down! We’ll get you on TV! You can talk to the guy direct!”

  Brenda put on a new CD, and the room exploded with the opening refrains of “Higher and Higher.” She closed her eyes, going slightly up on tiptoe, as if the soaring ecstasy of Jackie Wilson’s voice was enough to float her out of here, this room, this pain.

  Once, I was broken-hearted…

  She moved her lips to the words.

  Disappointment

  Was my closest friend.

  But then you came,

  And he soon de-parted

  She swayed to the tune, in a rapture of avoidance.

  And he never

  showed his face again.

  Because your love…

  “Your love keeps lifting me,” Brenda crooned in a high whisper.

  Lifting me high-er.

  “Brenda!” Another shout from outside. “Help us help you! Do it for Cody!”

  High-er…

  Brenda abruptly lurched for the window, shouldering Jesse to the side, then snapping up the shade, her sudden presence provoking a whirlpool of activity down there.

  “Brenda, whoa.” Jesse gently swung her around by the waist again, a square-dance move.

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “You think you do, but you don’t,” Jesse said, trying to sound flip and reasonable as she gently pulled Brenda back across the room to the boom box and turned down the volume. “Trust me. You have something to say, down there’s not where you want to say it, and those people out there are not who you want to say it to.”

  Brenda stopped and stared at her, not stupid, and Jesse told herself to tread lightly.

  “Come here.” She walked Brenda back to the drawn shade and made her take another peek. “Right now, those people are in a feeding frenzy, OK?”

  Three shooters were sitting in their collapsible chairs reading paperbacks, but others were pacing, still worked up by Brenda’s surprise appearance.

  “Those guys down there? They have deadlines, they’re under the gun, it’s hot, they’re bumping into each other, jacking each other up, and as a result—”

  “I just want to say how much I miss him.”

  “They’ll even fuck that up. You go down there, I don’t care what you want to say… Wait. Hang on.” Jesse grabbed Brenda by the hips and maneuvered her until she was positioned dead-center in front of the window. “Just don’t move. Just…”

  Jesse stepped to the wall and hit the pull cord, the shade flying up with a sharp zip, and she watched Brenda absorb the reaction downstairs, the abrupt transformation from contained restlessness to jostling bedlam. Counting to five, then pulling down the shade, Jesse provoked a round of exasperated entreaties. Brenda looked spooked now.

  “What I’m saying is, that those guys? They don’t have the time or the inclination to truly listen to you, do you know what I mean? You go out, open your mouth, they’ll cut you down to three, four sound bites, paint you black or white, and when you read what they write about you? When you hear what they say about you? Given what, you know, you said to them? God as my witness, you’ll be pulling out your hair by the fistful, you’ll be screaming into some black hole. And you know what? People are gonna read that shit, see that shit, and they’re gonna think they know you, they’re gonna think they have your number.”

  Seeing Brenda’s attention fading, Jesse forced herself to come to the end of her pitch. “You go down there, open up, it’s gonna come back to haunt you, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

  Brenda sat down, stood up, switched CDs.

  “God as my witness, Brenda.”

  A wrenching female version of “For Your Precious Love” filled the room. Brenda was back down on the edge of the opened couch, her face close to her knees.

  “Now, given all that”—Jesse took a breath, gearing up for the closer—“given all that, you still want to say something? There’s a way to avoid that whole shark pit down there—by telling me. Why, because I’m not like them? Because I’m the pick of the litter? No. No. If I was down there, I’d be biting anything that moved, just like everybody else. But I’m not down there. I’m up here, and you and I, we have put in hours together. I heard your dreams, I listen to your music, you’re a person to me.”

  Jesse reached over and touched one of Brenda’s trembling knees. “Look, you say to me whatever you want, I’ll get it right. You’ll help me get it right. Believe me, when I get it down? When we get it down? The way we want? That’s the way it’s going out, and they’ll all pick it up. But we have to control this at the source, OK? Otherwise…”

  Jesse faltered, experiencing a swoon of exhaustion, an amorphous rush of love—for her job, this woman, this situation—and, knowing it could leave her as fast as it came, she threw everything she had into the punch line. “Brenda, I just want to be with you all the way.” She was surprised to feel the words catch in her throat, surprised to hear the ardent, if selective, honesty of her declaration.

  Brenda looked off, muttered, “Nobody could be with me all the way.”

  “I don’t understand. Why not?” The set of Brenda’s mouth told Jesse that she was pushing too hard again, talking too fast, and she forced herself to sit upright, give this woman some air.

  Brenda turned to the CD player, slipped on a fresh disc, jacked up the volume, and retreated to the bathroom. Jesse lighted another cigarette, telling herself to back off or at least find some way of advancing that would look like a retreat. Brenda came out again, her face brightened by water.

  “Where did you give birth?”

  “You mean what hospital?” Jesse responded, on her toes. Brenda stood there waiting.

  “In Florida,” she murmured.

  “You know where I gave birth? In a bathtub.”

  “What, that underwater-delivery thing?”

  “I was living by myself in New York, one of those old walk-up tenements on the Lower East Side? It had this half tub in the kitchen. I was alone and I could tell he was coming. It was… There wasn’t any time. I climbed in and I just, like, squatted. I just did it. Me and him, we did it.”

  “Jesus, Brenda.” Jesse was momentarily awed, trying to slip under the skin of pain like that.

  “Listen.” Brenda cocked her head, raised a finger.

  Love is a stranger

  And hearts are in danger

  On a smooth street paved with gold,

  True love

  Travels on a gravel road…

  Jesse scribbled down the lyrics, her notebook filling with snatches of songs.

  “Percy Sledge,” Brenda announced, helping out.

  “Bathtub,” Jesse unconsciously mumbled, thinking about isolation, vast isolation giving way to a most profound and delicate intimacy. The umbilical cord—how did she cut the umbilical cord? “You say the word mother and people are supposed to weep or something,” Brenda said, bowing her head and running her fingers through her tangled crop. “The mother, the mother…I never felt that way about mine, that sentimental way. You know, you do word association, someone says ’mother,’ you’re supposed to say ‘Love. Warm. Comfort.’ You know what I say? ‘Dog biscuit.’”

  Jesse drifted off, thinking about her own parents, the way political dementia led to years of second- and third-party child abuse.

  “You get mad at Michael, what do you do?” Brenda asked abruptly.

  “What?”

  “You ever give him the silent treatment?”

  “No.” Jesse ran a finger across her brow. “Of course not.”

  “The silent treatment. I would have rather”—Brenda paused—“I would have rather my mother beat me with a fucking club. I would do something, right? Steal, mess up, anything, and she’d start in, ‘Why do you torture me like this, why—the person who loves you more than anybody. Why do you hate me so much, because you know how it kills me when you do this, things like this. I know you know
this is stabbing me in the heart, these things you do. Why, Brenda, why. What have I done to be punished like this. Why is God punishing me for loving you. Why’”.

  Jesse watched, fascinated as patches began to bloom on Brenda’s throat and cheeks.

  “And, you know, she’d start in on me like that and five minutes into it I’d be belly-down on the floor, you know, writhing, and this one time I just said to her, ‘Mommy maybe you shouldn’t love me so much.’ I was like eight, nine, and she stopped for a minute, you know, beating her breast, and she looks at me, like…” Brenda narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side in an attitude of sinister assessment. “And she says, ‘You don’t want me to love you so much? OK.’” Still playing her mother, Brenda nodded to herself as if making some internal decision. “‘OK’—and I swear, that woman did not talk to me for three days. Three days, until I was pulling on her, begging her, ‘Mommy Mommy’ And then she looks at me, gives me one of those smiles, says, ‘All right. Just remember this the next time you think I shouldn’t love you so much.’”

  Brenda looked at Jesse and barked out a laugh. “Whoo!”

  “Jesus,” Jesse whispered, assigning that one to a back burner, only to be used if Brenda went to jail.

  “You know what growing up was all about for me? It was the journey from I would die without her to wishing she were dead—to not giving a shit one way or the other as long as she keeps her distance.”

  “My mother was a Communist,” Jesse volunteered, unsure if her words were audible.

  “What you give your children is who you are. You make them suffer in any way that involves a choice of action on your part, you make them suffer from any behavior of yours that you could have, mastered, then you’re an obscenity. You’re shit in God’s mouth.” Brenda’s voice was as raw as her words, full of self-loathing.

  “I hear you,” Jesse said mindlessly, scribbling furiously, writing down “Silent Treatment,” writing “Power,” writing “Control,” the pencil slipping out of her fingers as she succumbed to a wave of fatigue.

  As she stooped to pluck the pencil from the rug, she became aware of a distinct silence from the street below—a roaring, implosive silence that was familiar to her, the nonsound of an abrupt funneling of energy from a vast, vague field to a focal point—and she anticipated the clicks and whirrs seconds before she actually heard them.

  Racing to the window, she saw Ben on his knees, Danny Martin standing behind him, struggling to snap cuffs on his oversized wrists, every image-starved shooter down there working in a purposeful arc. A low, tense murmur now rose as the shooters began to ask one another what exactly they were documenting here. Jesse imagined the scene five minutes before—Ben, claiming he was family, trying to stop Brenda’s brother from entering. She was frightened now, knowing she had only a few minutes left before she got tossed out the window, unless she could come up with a way to neutralize this bastard at the door, find some way to seize the reins. If she couldn’t, if she was on her way out no matter what, then she had the same few minutes to hit Brenda with some last-ditch, nothing-to-lose questions: “What do you know that you’re not telling me. Where is your son” all the way to “Did you kill him,” the questions leaving nothing behind, scorched earth bombers. Jesse was frantic, trying to decide: play it cool and get bounced; play it cool and make it through this; throw a match in the ammo box, step back, and watch the fireworks.

  Brenda stood over the boom box by the far wall. “What,” she said, trying to read what was going on downstairs in Jesse’s eyes.

  “Your brother’s coming up.” Brenda opened her mouth but nothing came out. She raised a hand like a stop sign. “He’s going to try to throw me out. If you want me gone, that’s how it’s going to happen. If you want me to stay, you got to remember this is your house,” Jesse said, hearing Danny on the stairs, bracing herself, rehearsing: “Danny, I was taking care of her all night.” “Brenda, where’s Cody?” “Danny, I was put here by Lorenzo.” “Brenda, you killed your son, didn’t you…”

  The door was unlocked and Danny just walked in without breaking stride, Jesse smelling his all-night breath from across the room. Brenda worked her mouth soundlessly while Danny stared at Jesse with half recognition, having seen her at various crime scenes over the years. Jesse knew he’d put it together in seconds.

  “Who’s this?” he asked his sister, his eyes still on Jesse.

  “She’s a reporter,” Brenda said, then sucked air. Jesse sensed that she hadn’t meant to say that but…

  Danny took a step toward Jesse. “Out,” he said, gesturing toward the door. Jesse stepped back and shot Brenda a desperate look.

  “She’s been helping me,” Brenda offered.

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Danny shocked Jesse by grabbing her wrist. She didn’t think he’d get physical, and her reaction was to lean back from his grip as if she were water-skiing, digging her heels into the carpet.

  “This is my house,” Brenda said, trying to put some heft in it.

  “This is what?” Danny let go of Jesse’s wrist, wheeled to face his sister. “Meaning what. What the fuck is wrong with you. After what you put us through, you buddy up with a reporter?”

  “She’s helping me.” Brenda kept bobbing forward and then rearing back; Jesse feeling for her, So hard to be brave.

  “What, you don’t have one friend? You have to go out and…Are you sick or something?”

  Jesse saw Brenda begin to tremble, and against her better judgment, she opened her mouth. “Look, I’ve been in this house since four in the morning. Lorenzo Council put me here. I’m not gonna screw anybody. My brother’s down there keeping people away for the last five hours. I haven’t done nothing but watch your sister’s back, from the jump.”

  “Lorenzo.” Danny nodded, a bad sign. Jesse found herself backing up, as if to hold on to something. He stared at her for a long moment, then snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Yeah, OK, sure, you’re the one that got him on the Rolonda Watts show.” He tapped his head. “Duh. Now he puts you in the cockpit on this,” he said, tapping his head again, turning to Brenda.

  “She’s gonna write a fuckin’ book on this, Brenda.”

  “On what,” Jesse snapped.

  “You’re fucking pathetic,” Danny said to his sister in a near-whisper, eyes half closed with passion. Brenda responded by cocking her head, birdlike, staring at her brother until she had his full attention, then swiveling on one hip like a discus thrower, swinging her left arm in a full backhand arc across the front of her body, and slamming that injured hand into the metal door frame of her son’s bedroom.

  Both Danny and Jesse went up on tiptoes at the sound of the impact, Danny seizing his head and hissing “Jesus!” Brenda, impassive, held his eyes, then did it again—swivel, swing, and crack, the second collision making Jesse nauseated. Jesse forced herself to stay put—let the brother stop her; it would be good for him. But Danny stood rooted through a third smash, when the pain caught up with Brenda and she slowly sank to her knees, quiet and stunned. Danny followed her down.

  “Brenda, Brenda.” His voice was calmer now, the violence having done its work. Brenda cradled her reinjured hand and gazed off as if no longer interested in pleading her case. “Brenda.” On one knee, Danny reached out with both arms as if to embrace her but never made contact. He turned to Jesse and jerked his head toward the front door—Get lost—but Jesse turned away and busied herself looking out the window, hoping he was incapable of rising to his feet right now and ejecting her himself.

  Downstairs, Danny’s car was being mobbed by shooters. Jesse envisioned Ben cuffed in the backseat, staring at his knees, patient, immobile. She turned to the sound of a closing door, turned to a now-empty room, and for a moment she panicked, thinking that Danny had taken his sister out. Then she heard their voices from the kid’s bedroom.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I said it ten times.”

  “Say it again.”

  Jesse turned dow
n the music and stepped closer to the closed door, since Danny’s voice was coming through softer now, pleading.

  “Brenda, we’re chasing ghosts out there. Where’s the kid, where’s the car, we can’t even find… Are you doing dope again?” Danny’s question sounded almost tender.

  “No.”

  “Please, I won’t yell.”

  “No.”

  “No, you’re not doing dope? Or no, I won’t tell you,” he said. Jesse could hear him begin to steam up again.

  “No!”

  “Brenda, I’m your brother. I love you. Just tell me what happened.”

  “No!” Brenda’s voice was taking on timbre.

  “I fucked up with you, didn’t I.”

  “Please.” Brenda was doing the pleading now, as if Danny’s self-castigation were more hurtful than his anger.

  “I always fuck up with you, I’m so hard on you. I should know better. I should be more understanding. I don’t know why I can’t—”

  Jesse jumped back as the bedroom door banged open. Brenda stood there wild-eyed, desperate to escape, racing to the CD player, putting something on and jacking up the volume, calling on the power of Soul to blast her brother out of the house.

  11

  The Dempsy County jail stood half demolished, and the only surviving section of exterior wall, the southwest corner, was a grotesquely defiant crumble of plaster and brick, a raised fist thrust into the flawless blue of a hot summer morning. The prison bars, running the entire length of the building but hidden from view for ninety years by a sooty gray facade, had now, in these final days, revealed the building for what it truly had been: a seven-story cage. Those bars were naked to the sun, intersecting in a grid pattern, with seven layers of sheared prison cells hanging open and raw. A century’s worth of graffiti, startlingly legible to anyone walking by, marked the plaster back walls, a titanic bulletin board shot up from hell.