How Are You Going to Save Yourself

by JM Holmes

  There was a minor chorus.

  “Yeah, Brown Bear, just say grace.” Kalli smirked.

  “You g’wan say it,” I said. She ignored the comment. I put my fork down.

  Say it, bitch, Kalli mouthed.

  I smiled. Bill and Lucy held out their hands, which felt warm and dry in mine. My mom’s family varied in their Catholicness. Mom wasn’t the grace-saying type herself, but I wanted to eat so I got on with it.

  “Let us bow our heads,” I started. “Lord God, we’d like to thank You for this bounty. This beautiful blessing You’ve laid before us. To thank You also for the hands that prepared it.”

  I opened my eyes. Everyone else’s were closed tight, even Kalli’s.

  “Thank You for the love we share,” I said, “and the family we share it with. And thank You for the fortune you’ve bestowed upon us.”

  I was thankful that my family could throw down in the kitchen and afford food this nice. That I was still alive when men in my pops’ family were prone to die young. That my sister’s head was above water. I was thankful for a lot, really. My lungs were clear. People’s heads were still bowed. Bill’s hand felt weird in mine. We’d never touched before. My mom’s side wasn’t the touching type.

  “Thank You, Lord, for Your protection.” I was far from being worthy of God’s protection, but I still prayed for it. “And please protect those who need it more than us. So many need it more than us on this day, Lord. Those without the blessing of food. Those without the greater blessing of kin.”

  My family stirred. Bill tried to squeeze the hippie out of my hand. All of a sudden I could hear the clock-hand tick of a sprinkler in the neighbors’ yard. I zoned deep into prayer, like something tipping and pouring.

  “Lord, bring us justice. Bring it to all of us.”

  Eyes were still closed. Bill’s hand tightened even more, but it didn’t shake me. I thought of Kalli sitting across from me and kept going.

  “Guide those who need guidance to do right by You. ’Cause Your law is not our law. Our laws serve a few and Your laws serve many. Please bring us into the light so that we may understand Your divine will. Bring us into the light so that we may live up to Your image. Let us not just speak justice’s name, let us live it. And punish those who’ve not upheld their duty to protect.”

  “Okay—” Lucy said.

  I stopped and my family opened their eyes and started to eat slow. No one looked at me. Kalli said, “Amen,” and I wanted to laugh—her sense of humor hadn’t changed. Bill was attacking a chicken breast before I could even make sense of the shift.

  “Dela, get me more Sambuca,” Sheila said.

  “Ma, I just got you some,” Dela said.

  “It’s gone.”

  Eddy glared at me as I started in on the dry-ass sausage. Nonna was already deep in hers. Kalli drank and turned to my auntie Mary, whose basement my boys and I used to chief in back in high school. She had either turned a blind eye or was blind for real, and either way I appreciated her for it. Conversations started up again. Sheila sucked on an ice cube and Eddy downed his drink.

  Lucy turned to me and nodded across the table. “You should marry that one,” she said. Lucy’d stayed with my mom, nonna, and me for a while when we first moved back east. She was up-front about that kind of shit.

  Then, while we were all loud with the sounds of eating, Eddy said, “Gio, why are you so angry?”

  The table fell silent.

  “It was grace, Eddy,” I said.

  “Do you have a problem with how I make my living?”

  “It was just grace,” Liza said. She squirmed a little and pushed some food around her plate. As the youngest, Liza was the peacekeeper.

  “If you’re gonna say it,” Eddy told me, “then fucking own it.”

  “Eddy!” Sheila said.

  “Hold on, Mom,” he said. And then he turned to me again. “Why do you blame everyone else for your problems?” he said.

  Kalli wasn’t smiling anymore. No one spoke. My cotton mouth was back.

  “You attack the police?” Eddy said. “You need a cause so you make one up?”

  “Attack the police? Ha,” Kalli said, belting the ha that I’d always loved. It was the same one she belted when you were around your boys and talking big about how you hit it like a porn star and she overheard your bullshit lie and said you always got too high and wanted to cuddle.

  I thought about how Madie would’ve been sitting across from me, silent, watching, taking tight sips of wine, or maybe just focusing her eyes on me with a look begging that I be quiet.

  “You’ve been an officer?” Eddy said and glanced at Kalli.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Sheila said.

  “Gio’s right,” my mom said, but soft, and I was mad that she didn’t offer more.

  Kalli’s voice got louder. “Watch the news,” she said.

  “Do you feel persecuted?” My uncle put his fork down real deliberate and stared at Kalli.

  “Don’t patronize her,” I said.

  “There’s a video of a black man strangled to death on camera,” Kalli said.

  “He had a heart condition,” Eddy said. “And you know the officer in charge was a black woman, right?” He picked up his pork rib bone and took a massive bite.

  Of course Kalli’d known, but she hunched a little in her seat.

  “You don’t think she felt pressured?” I said.

  “She wasn’t under fire,” Eddy said.

  “Pressured to fall in line,” I said.

  “She was in command.”

  “So?” Kalli said. “She could’ve been influenced.”

  “What, you think the academy teaches us to be racist?”

  “No, America does,” I said.

  Eddy bit off some cartilage, spat it out. “You know how fucking dumb you sound?”

  “He was choked to death,” Kalli said, straightening up again.

  Eddy put the bone down and picked a piece of meat out of his teeth. “Gio, remember when you got pulled over for drunk driving and Ricci had to call my cell to ask if you were my nephew? I told him you were, right?”

  The sound of utensils scraping plates was loud. All other conversation and motion ceased. Here was a story that’d never been told. My mom stared at me, her worst fears confirmed. Kalli looked away.

  “Right?” Eddy said again. “You don’t even need to answer, of course I told him you were my nephew. I told you my badge number the day you got your license. He stopped you on the Newport Bridge, let you drive into Jamestown and park. He gave you a ride home, thirty minutes in the cruiser. You know what he’d have done if you weren’t my nephew, drunk as you were?”

  The sprinkler shut off in the distance.

  “I knew your badge number,” I said. “He didn’t have to call you.”

  “You were drunk enough to drive off the damn bridge.”

  “No, I was a nigger in a Nissan,” I said.

  Eddy didn’t miss a beat. “The police have done nothing but give you breaks,” he said. “You are about as much a nigger as Derek Jeter.”

  My family looked at me but I went mute. Content to pretend it hadn’t happened, they returned to eating. My mom avoided my gaze. She had told me the same thing many times with different language. If Kalli was light enough, she would’ve blushed for me.

  I wanted to say something, but it was over. To them it was deaded. Eddy was already onto his second pork chop and talking to Bill.

  I got up. “You want a ride home?” I asked Kalli.

  “Sit down,” Bill said.

  “Sure,” Kalli said and stood up, thanked my family for the food.

  My aunts tried to say some things to get us to stay. When I got near the patio door, my nonna called out, “Brown Bear, please take some more to eat.”

  MADIE AND I lived in Seekonk, where the three-family homes stop and the lawns brighten up. It wasn’t far from Kalli’s. The houses where Sammy lived in Warwick were all Sopranos-type McMansions. In the dark
summer night, there was only the sound of the tires on the road—too much quiet. It felt good to slide back into the city, I took a left on York and saw the cars spilling down Kalli’s folks’ driveway in the distance. I asked about her situation again.

  “Why do you want to know about my love life?”

  “’Cause I do,” I said. I pulled up alongside her mailbox going the wrong way, put the car in park.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fuck, either tell me or get out.”

  “He lives in Philly.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s a Kappa. Went to Harvard.”

  I unlocked the door.

  “You heard enough?” she said, fucking with me.

  “You’ll have to introduce us,” I said.

  She threw me a look, pulled the handle. The lights in front of her house came on. “My dad told me to invite you in,” she said.

  “Tell your pops I said mi know.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What’s Kappa’s name?”

  She had one foot out the door and her orange shirt rode up again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bishop.”

  “The nigga from Juice?”

  She turned to avoid laughing.

  “How long are you in town?” I asked.

  “A few more days.” She closed the door and took a couple of steps toward her house. The porch light turned her to a silhouette. Another ghost was born between us. The same one that stood next to her at the anti–police brutality rallies I never attended. A ghost that would’ve avoided a cookout of loudmouthed wops, or maybe stayed to scrap.

  WHEN I CAME in, Madie was on the couch in her panties and one of my T-shirts. It felt too hot for any clothes at all, but she was calm and comfortable, listening to reggae while she read. She was going through an Americans-in-Paris phase—Stein, Dos Passos, Cole Porter. Senior year of high school, I used to cut class and sit in the empty gym reading Manhattan Transfer.

  After a beat, Madie looked up from her book. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  My bloodshot eyes shone heavy in the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. She patted the seat next to her. She always told me the smell of my clothes made her wet. I imagined her touching herself with my clothes on. I sat and leaned my head back.

  She massaged my temples. “Dinner was rough?” She moved her hands down to the base of my skull. “Take some cleansing breaths.”

  I remembered the day cops had rolled up on Dub and me in my own driveway. We were fourteen and had just finished a game of one-on-one on the hoop outside. My mom would park on the street every day so I could get some shots up. Dub and I were sitting on the asphalt throwing pebbles at each other and talking shit about the game.

  He saw the lights instant and told me to get up and walk inside slow. He knew what was going on before I could even clock it.

  I hadn’t made it ten yards when the cop asked me where I was going.

  “Home,” I said.

  He laughed.

  I wished I’d told Eddy that story, but I thought that if Dub hadn’t been there, maybe it wouldn’t have been anything.

  Madie stopped massaging my head. The apartment windows were open. The summer insects hummed heavy.

  “You don’t have to stop that,” I said.

  “It’s all or none. You have to communicate, baby. I’m a package deal.”

  I got up and she asked where I was going.

  “To get a glass of wine,” I said.

  “Don’t angry-drink,” she said.

  “I feel like a drink.”

  “Talk to me.” She looked straight into me.

  “You want one?”

  “Yes.” She smiled like I’d caught her stealing cookies. Her whole face brightened.

  I leaned down and kissed her. She knew how to make me hard with just her lips, barely touching me, staying almost out of reach. She would let her lips hover near mine, wait for me to lose control.

  I came back with two large mugs of wine and the bottle, downed mine, then poured another.

  “Relax on the shine, General,” she said.

  She had a thousand phrases like that. She said her family in South Carolina used them but they sounded like make-believe. She went hard on her own mug and asked again what had happened. She rubbed the base of my neck and asked if it was about her. I stayed silent, starting to feel good and relaxed from the wine.

  “Gio?”

  “What?”

  “What happened?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “I’m too tired.” I held up the bottle of wine. There was about a third left.

  “How is Labor Day contentious?” she said. “The Fourth, sure. Christmas, of course. But what did you argue about? Unions?”

  I just wanted to sit with her, but I kept replaying the night. “It got heavy,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes and started to lick my ear. I loved when she did that and she knew it. She gave me the backs of her hands to kiss, then her palms, then the tips of her fingers. Blood rushed back into me. She swung one leg over and felt me. Her bare thighs were so pale. She kissed me for a while in her teasing way before she unbuckled me. My focus shifted quick. I rolled her onto her back, kissed all the way down to her feet, and stayed there kissing the tops of her toes and massaging her legs. Licked the arch of her foot. I made my way back up slowly. She raised her hips so I could slip her panties off. I caught her scent again and turned so hard it almost hurt. I kissed her between her legs, but I couldn’t wait. I finished undressing myself. My body—broad and brown—reflected in the mirror that hung across from me. I pulled her up and made her look at us in the mirror, my body even darker beside her milky frame. I didn’t feel like a king, I felt like a pillager. I bent her forward on the couch.

  “Beg me,” I said.

  She gasped and closed her eyes.

  I reached my hand down and teased her—just a fingertip. I stopped. Her blue eyes were wide and I flipped her in one motion.

  “Beg me,” I said.

  “Fuck me,” she said.

  I slid a hand down to her throat and the words came out: “Tell me to fuck you like a nigger.”

  Her face twisted. “What?” She tried to sit up to get away from me, but I was on her, my right hand moving from her throat to her collarbone.

  “Say it.” I reached my other hand down to tease her, touch her with my fingers. She sagged under the pressure of my body and winced. “Tell me.”

  “Please stop,” she said. Her voice trailed off, so weak it got lost in the reggae still playing.

  “You like it,” I said. “Tell me you like it.” I held her down and kept repeating myself until her skin started to turn red under my weight and I thought she was going to cry. I went to go inside her. “Tell me I’m your nigger.”

  She was squirming wildly to get away, but my size made it difficult. She tried using her feet to push me off but couldn’t. Our bodies were too close.

  “Say it!” I had my hand on her throat again, stronger now. She reached up to push my face but my arms were too long. She clawed at my shoulders. I let go of her throat and pinned her arms down at the biceps and she whimpered, then bit my forearm deep enough to break the skin. I let go for a second. She slapped my face and I fell back on the couch from shock. Her legs draped over me. We were both short of breath. She stared at me.

  I looked down at myself, still hard from the thought of it. I lifted her left ankle and felt the softness of her skin there. I kissed the bottom of her arch. She pulled her foot away and curled into a ball, her therapist-calm spent.

  Some strands of her brown hair were visible in the mirror barely above my jawline. I went to kiss the top of her head but she kept me at arm’s length. I was too spent to push further and rested my head on her raised hip. She got up and left to the bedroom. After a few seconds, there was the sound of something being dragged out of the closet and thrown onto the bed. The pull of the heavy zipper came first, then
the scrape of hangers being pushed along the bar in the closet, methodic and slow. She crossed the small hallway between our bedroom and the bathroom. The vent fan turned on almost loud enough to drown the noise of her emptying the cabinet of her things. My stomach was tight with nerves. I pulled the shirt she’d left over my eyes. But there was no sleep, only my breath inside the shirt on a hot night. Madie dug in the bowl where we kept change and phone chargers and keys. The screen door slammed closed behind her because I’d never fixed the spring.

  The night filled to the top with making and changing plans and grand gestures to get her back that would never work because she wasn’t that type of woman, with me editing every memory of us and every story that came before, back to my childhood, down to the immutable. She got sick of being haunted by ghosts she’d never even met.

  Acknowledgments

  I promised some homies if this day ever came, I’d be on a Kanye “Last Call” type tangent with the acknowledgments. I don’t want to break that promise. So first and foremost, let me reiterate that this is through the grace of the dearly beloved ghosts—I hope they would’ve been proud of this work. I miss you immensely.

  I won’t do these acknowledgments numbered ’cause it’d be inaccurate. With that being said, I owe my life to my mother and grandmother for both their undying love and foresight. My mom told me the ball would stop bouncing. It still bounces, but I don’t jump very good anymore (the homies will say I never did, but they’re full of shit), so she was right on that one. I’m glad she kept putting books in my hands when so many folks around me were on a different path. To my grandma, thanks for the help with everything when times were tough and for being a fountain of wisdom throughout the years. Phillip is thankful even if you think he stays complaining.

  I am endlessly appreciative for my cousins, outstanding men in a world that needs them. They are more like brothers, truly, guiding stars, blessed with my aunts’ warmth and strength. In this country we are inundated with images of black men as criminals, but my cousins held it down with love, straight talk, and honesty. And for that, they are invaluable role models to me.

  Thanks to my other brothers: Zig, Ryan, and Ryan, and Es dot. For the couches to crash on and the support throughout the years. This book wouldn’t be possible without the things we got into and light you all possess. So happy to see you all doing your thing too. Es, good looks on the artwork for this book too. Even if we don’t meet the deadlines. I’m joyous that we could link and make that happen. The work was beautiful.