by Richard Dry
Ruby leaned against the bus-stop pole. She felt a heaviness trying to fill her, and she pushed all her thoughts of Lida from her mind as quickly as she could. She stared at the pavement to keep the faces from appearing in her mind. But the heaviness grew, and the pole wasn’t enough to support her, so she sat down on the bench. The other women asked if she was okay, and she nodded and hung her head.
She heard the engine of the bus coming from down the block, and as always, the women stood up and got in line. The bus pulled to the curb and opened its doors with a long sigh. The women slowly climbed the tall metal steps, pulling themselves up by the metal bar, trudging into the bus like the oldest survivors of the longest war. Ruby waited until the last woman was through the doors, then stood up and got on.
SANTA RITA JAIL
TODAY, I READ to you from A Bad Seed: My Life as a Slave, by Branson White:
What is a crime for me? When I stole the kitchen knife and chicken, was I wrong? Was it immoral of me to steal the necklace to have money for my journey? Was it a crime, after a day of building, to run to my children’s home in Alabama? Yes, it was, and I was severely punished. Was it a crime to whip me for being late with the water? No, it was not.…
What is not justified action against those who enslave me? Was it a crime to kill my master and his family?.… Can I choose, now that I am a free man, to abide by my own conscience? Should I choose to abide by the laws of this nation? What will I teach my new child, and what will he know from my eyes? I escaped to the North by the light of the stars, but where is True North on my moral compass?
CHAPTER 13
JANUARY 1994 • LOVE 14, RUBY 56
LOVE DIDN’T GO into the shed to make the pickup anymore. He’d met a kid named Perry who hustled up at People’s Park and came by the store to score some smoke. He was a White kid the same age as Love, punked out with a leather jacket, black tips on his spiked blond hair, and thick circles of black eyeliner around his eyes.
Perry rode to Berkeley on the handlebars of Love’s bike. Love went inside the gate to drop off the money but then waited outside while Perry went into the shed. He came out with the bag and an extra forty dollars and everyone was happy.
One night on the way back to the store from a pickup, Love saw two police cars parked at the liquor store. Curse was lying facedown in front of his wheelchair, a policeman frisking him and kicking his limp legs open. As Love turned on to Cranston, he saw Freight against the wall with his hands cuffed. Freight yelled at the White cop standing next to him, but loud enough that it was clear he was yelling to the neighborhood:
“Fuck this racist shit! Oppressing the Black man for no reason! We oughta riot in this city.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the Black cop yelled.
“How can you do this to your own people?” Freight yelled back.
“I could ask you the same question.” The cop swung Freight around by the back of his jacket, “It’s fuck-ups like you—”
“Naw, it’s Uncle Toms like you,” Freight spat back.
As Freight was being pushed into the car, he spotted Love standing on the sidewalk. “What the fuck you lookin at, nigga?”
Love rode to his house and carried his bike upstairs.
In his room, he took the bag of coke out of his jacket, went into the closet, and put it into one of Easton’s old boots.
Ruby came to the open door in her nightgown. “What’s all that fuss at the corner?”
Love shrugged and closed the closet. Ruby came in and sat on the bed.
“You just came from there, but you don’t know?” She looked at the closet as Love stood in front of it. “You know I’ll go in there if I have the mind to.”
Love shrugged again and wandered away to the window. Ruby stayed on the bed.
“I’m telling you, little boy, don’t think God ain’t watchin. Don’t think He don’t know.”
“I hope He do, ’cause it’s scandalous down here.”
She shook her head and stood up to leave.
“Ain’t you gonna check the closet?” Love asked. “You can go ahead. See if I care.”
“I’ve been down that road before and t’aint gonna do no good. Things’d only get worse. You’d just up and go. Can’t be my decision. I’m jus here to help you choose to be a man.”
* * *
ONCE FREIGHT AND Curse had been arrested, Love became the main presence at the liquor store. At the end of the month, Curse got out of jail, but he couldn’t be caught holding or he’d get another strike and be put away forever, like Freight.
Love let Li’l Pit hang out with him on the weekends, but he wasn’t allowed to do any of the slinging. One Saturday, while Love stood out front tending to business, a thin, orange-striped cat, not a baby but not fully grown, ran up to the liquor-store building and rubbed against the sunny corner wall. It tilted its head and slowly shut and opened its eyes, flirting with Li’l Pit. He bent down and scratched behind its ears. It smiled and closed its eyes again. But then, as Li’l Pit pressed his hand more firmly into its body, it took off and ran up the block, suddenly frightened by the affection.
Li’l Pit followed the cat. It stopped and turned to let him get closer, then dashed off farther up San Pablo to a vacant lot covered with dry grass. The cat rubbed against an old cement foundation and Li’l Pit bent down again, reached his hand out and stroked the cat. It rippled its body and pointed its tail in the air. He moved closer, inching forward in a squat. The cat let him dig his fingers into the fur around its rump. He put his hands around the cat’s body and picked it up, held it close in to his chest, but the cat squirmed and bit him in the fleshy part of the hand.
“Shit,” he yelled, dropping the cat, and the cat ran deeper into the lot. Li’l Pit chased after it into the dry grass filled with broken bottles. As he got closer to it, he stumbled and screamed.
“Something bit me!” he yelled. He held up his ankle, hopped out of the lot, and sat on the pavement. “Get it off me. Get it off me.” Love walked around the corner and sat down next to his brother.
Li’l Pit lay on his side and held his foot up in the air. Love pulled a thistle from the ankle of his sock.
“What is it? Ow, ow. It’s biting me.”
“Lay still, dog. You’re such a baby. You need some lotion. Look at your skin.” Li’l Pit lay silently now, his chapped leg in his brother’s hand.
A beeping went off, two quick chirps again and again. Love looked at his beeper, but there was no number flashing.
“You got a beeper?” he asked Li’l Pit. He reeled his little brother up by the leg like a fishing net. He got to his hip and lifted his jersey.
“Stop that.”
“What the fuck is this?” He pulled a neon-green beeper off his little brother’s hip.
“That’s mine. Gimme my beeper.”
“What do you need a beeper for?” Love read the number on the top of the digital readout. He didn’t need to ask about the number. He knew it by heart from his own beeper, the number to Curse’s house, where Freight was relaying all his orders from jail.
Li’l Pit pulled his leg away and stood up. He reached for the beeper, but Love switched hands and held it from him.
“Who gave you this?”
“It’s mine. I earned it.” He slapped at Love’s arms and reached for it.
“How’d you earn it?”
“It’s mine. I rapped for it.”
“We’re going to call this number and find out. And this better be your school calling to say you got an ‘A’ on your math test.” Love stood and walked to the pay phone on the corner by the store. He took a quarter out of his pocket and dropped it into the slot. A bus pulled up and let off a kid about Li’l Pit’s age wearing a green backpack with a Bart Simpson patch on it. Li’l Pit stared at him and the kid kept his face down as he walked toward the store.
Love dialed general telephone time and listened to the operator say, “At the tone, the time will be three-forty-seven and thirty-five seconds.”
<
br /> “Who’s this?” Love yelled to the recording on the phone. “Curse? What you want? Why’d you give my brother a beeper? I ought to kick your ass. You’re scandalous, man. He’s only ten years old. All right, what you want?” Li’l Pit pushed into the phone booth and pulled on the metal cord.
“Let me talk. Tell him I’ll do it,” he yelled. “It’s my beeper. He gave it to me.”
“He thinks you have something for him to do. I don’t want my little brother slinging, Curse.”
“I can do what I want.” Li’l Pit hit his brother in the stomach.
“Okay. Okay. Hold on.” Love turned to Li’l Pit. “I can’t hear what he wants you to do.” Li’l Pit stopped and waited attentively, staring at Love’s face as he spoke into the receiver.
“All right, tell me what you want us to do.” Love nodded. “Okay. Uh-huh. I’ll tell him. All right. We’ll do it. I’ll tell him. How much? Okay. Where should we do the pickup? You want me to go too? Okay.”
“But it’s my job,” Li’l Pit whined.
“It’s his job,” Love said into the receiver. “I don’t want to go. You want me to go along for backup? You’re sure? I’ll let him go on his own if you want. All right. If Freight wants me there, then it has to be that way.”
“Let me talk to him,” Li’l Pit whined. “Give me the phone.”
“Okay. We won’t call again. The cops got the beeper numbers. Okay. Go then.” Love hung up.
“What’d he want me to do?”
“I can’t say out here, dog. You want to get yourself locked up? We got to go home and I’ll tell you. We can’t call him anymore, though. Your beeper might be bugged.”
“Let’s go. Come on.” Li’l Pit skipped ahead down the block and then ran back to him. “Come on. I got a first job. Hurry up.”
Li’l Pit ran up the porch stairs and waited at the top for Love to unlock the front door. Love took his time trudging up, thinking of a plan. Even with only two keys, he put the wrong one in each hole and then put each one in upside down.
“Tell me what I got to do,” Li’l Pit begged.
“Just hold on. We’re not inside yet.” When the door was finally open, Li’l Pit went running into the living room almost to the kitchen, as if it were only a matter of getting inside to find out about his job and he could just leave Love behind.
“Where’s that black rag Mama gave you?” Li’l Pit asked. “I’ve got to show my colors.”
“First off, that’s wrong. See, that’s all wrong.” Love closed the door and locked it. “You got to not show anything. See. This is why I’ve got to give it to you slowly, so you know every part of it. You can’t make a mistake or else you’ll have Freight on us.”
Li’l Pit went silent and nodded up at his older brother. Love couldn’t help but smile at the earnestness in his eyes.
“How come you want to do this so bad?”
Li’l Pit wrinkled his eyebrows and yelled, “’Cause!”
“You think this is going to be like some TV show. This shit gets dangerous.” Li’l Pit smiled and nodded eagerly. Love shook his head.
“Alright. This is what you’ve got to do: first, Nanna is home, so you got to shut up. Now, what you’ve got to do is this.” He started to speak more slowly, word by word, to give his brain time to think. “Go upstairs into your room. In your room, look around for something. We need something for the pickup.”
“Like what?”
“You need something to carry stuff in, something big, ’cause this is a big job, it’s going to be very dangerous.”
Li’l Pit nodded his head. “Like that old trunk?”
“Yeah. Okay, take everything out of that green trunk at the bottom of your bed. All them clothes and anything else. Yeah. We have to get that trunk ready. I’ll come up when you’re done. And put on some of them clothes I got you.” Li’l Pit leapt up the stairs by twos and disappeared.
Love looked around the living room in desperation for some inspiring object. Ruby’s purse was next to the Bible on top of the table by the rocking chair. The Bible was supposed to be filled with inspiration and advice, but it never kept him from doing something wrong, so it surely wasn’t going to keep his brother from it. The canvas notebook of insects was on the coffee table. He hadn’t had to take any more out since he started up with Freight. Instead, he’d bought new ones to add to it, a large red ant and a fuzzy caterpillar. He had new black jeans and he even had a savings account at Wells Fargo on Shattuck with four hundred dollars in it, but the account was in Freight’s name and he had to get permission every time he wanted to take out money. He got twenty dollars for every run he made, and now he got forty dollars for just standing at the store and giving directions.
His beeper went off and he grabbed it from his pocket. It was Curse calling him. He was bound to come look for them if they didn’t respond. He set both beepers to vibrate and took them to the kitchen. He considered putting them in a drawer, but ended up wrapping them in tinfoil and putting them in the freezer.
Ruby came out into the living room and looked around, then spotted Love in the kitchen.
“What you boys up to?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She sat in the rocking chair and picked up the leather Bible next to her purse. She opened it and took out the red string that marked her place.
“Come here and help me say this word,” she said. Love walked up and looked over her shoulder.
“Which one?”
“This here: ‘sour’?”
“Sower.” He looked up the stairs, checking for Li’l Pit.
“‘Behold a sower.’ Like myself. Why don’t you read to your grandmother?”
“Naw. I don’t like to.”
“Just this little part.”
“I’m busy.” He wandered over to the living room windows, which he’d replaced with his own money. He looked out through the curtains, then paced back to the kitchen.
“Too busy to read the truth of the Lord? Now, you must be in real trouble. But there ain’t no mess too big for Jesus. No, sir. Read me this here story and I guarantee you’ll find your way.”
Love looked up the stairs again. “Nanna, how many bad things can you do before you can’t get into heaven?”
Ruby shook her head. “The Lord has just got to see that you are trying the best you can and he’ll always forgive you if you start doing right.”
Love picked up the carved giraffe bookend on the table and slid his fingers up and down its smooth neck.
“I already killed one boy.”
Ruby turned and looked at him. “That was a long time ago, and it wasn’t your fault. You can still go to heaven. That wasn’t none of your fault. Now come and read what Jesus has to tell you.”
Nothing else was coming to him, so he went up behind Ruby and read over her shoulder again. He read in a monotone, going right through all punctuation:
“‘Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.’” Love shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Just keep on.” Ruby had her eyes closed and was smiling like she was listening to peaceful music. He read more carefully this time.
“‘And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.’” Love stopped reading. “There, that’s all.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Ruby nodded.
“This is all about farming stuff,” Love said. “It doesn’t do any good for us in the city. That’s a whole different kind of world than it is here.”
“Can’t no plant grow in bad ground. That’s what it’s saying. Just like the cotton ruin all that land back home. In good earth, any seed can grow up and be strong. That
goes for city and for country.”
Love walked to the front door, checked that he’d locked it, walked back to the bottom of the stairs, then meandered over to his insect notebook. He opened it and tapped a beetle back into place. Ruby rocked and looked at her Bible. There was a sound at the door, and Love stood up straight, but it was only the postman putting mail through the slot and then wheeling the cart away.
“How much does it cost to go to college?” Love asked.
Ruby looked up at Love, a smile bursting in her cheeks, but then she looked back down in her Bible.
“Depends where you go. Could be different now than back then, but Love E used to go to Merritt and didn’t hardly cost him nothing. But the university, that may be thousands of dollars.”
“Oh.” Love nodded and went back to turning the pages of his notebook.
Li’l Pit came running down the stairs, but slowed when he saw Ruby. He was dressed in a new sweater and blue jeans, looking like any other ten-year-old kid on the block who was not part of the crew. It was amazing how much clothes could change his appearance and make it seem like he had never done one thing wrong in his life.
“I’m done. It’s all ready,” he said.
“What’s that?” Ruby asked.
“Nothing.” Li’l Pit and Ruby both looked at Love.
“What?” Love said. “Why you always looking at me like I’m doing something? It makes me feel like doing something.” He walked up the stairs in feigned resentment, and his brother followed him into his room. Love shut the door behind them and looked at the mess. Lida’s old dresses were on the floor and bed. It looked as if Li’l Pit had tried to pile them, but they weren’t folded. The green trunk was open and completely empty.
“Give me the key. And take off your sweater.” Li’l Pit did so faithfully. “We have to see if this will be big enough. Just get inside and curl up.”
“How come?”
“Just get in and I’ll tell you.”
Li’l Pit stepped into the box and then lay down. It was too small for him, so he pulled his knees up to his chest. “Is this good?”