“Your aunt lives there?” I said. James nodded.
“Hope so,” he said. “Least she used to.” James suddenly crouched down and started sifting through some trash, as if he had spotted a rare and delicious mushroom. It was hard to tell where the trash ended and the ground began. “Cash money,” he said triumphantly, showing me his booty. It was a hypodermic needle, still fresh in its hospital wrapper.
Chapter Twenty-One
The sight of the projects seemed to give James a boost. The closer we got to them, though, the farther back Silvia and I fell. Silvia kept telling me to just leave her behind, but it was appalling to picture her asleep on that open littered ground. James was too excited to wait up for us. In fact, he started jogging, and then, in the shadow of the building, he broke into a run.
Silvia and I picked our way through the broken glass and the mildewed mattresses, their foam spilling out like white guts. We climbed in slow motion through the barbed wire fence, which in most places wasn’t even a fence, just a series of forlorn concrete posts, many of them broken. I stepped in a busted umbrella. Its pointy little ribs bit into my ankles like rats as I worked my feet free. I screamed “Get off!” The brick building seemed to magnify every sound and throw it back at us like an insult.
James waved to us from the entrance, a battered steel door set in a wall of pock-marked metal, as if a war had been fought here and the damage had been left to commemorate the battle. James held the door open for us. It was inconceivable to me that it wasn’t locked.
The lobby—if you could call the rat maze from the front door to the elevator a “lobby”—felt like one of those check-cashing stores you see in bad neighborhoods, the kind with bulletproof glass everywhere. There was one like that near my Mom’s house. The people who worked there always looked exhausted and scared, as if they constantly expected someone to stick them up.
The lobby stank of bacon grease and pee. James was by the elevator, pressing the “up” button every few seconds. It was already lit. I was mad at him for bringing us here. I felt like calling him an idiot for pressing a lit button. Silvia was sagging against me like a stack of firewood. The elevator was taking forever. I heard laughter outside, but I didn’t want to believe it was people.
The front door flew open and slammed against its stop. A gang of boys burst into the lobby, as if the force of their laughter was a battering ram. I listened but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, not even a single word. They treated the lobby like a locker room. They were celebrating. When they saw us, the noise stopped. Their faces went blank. They crossed their arms in front of their chests and fell into some kind of pecking order, like soldiers, with the leader out front, a massively muscled boy with two gold front teeth and a green plastic earring like a shower curtain ring. The other boys formed a wall behind him, their shoulders jammed together, their faces all frozen in a row like Mount Rushmore.
James stepped away from Silvia and me, and I thought: You treacherous runt! But actually he was standing between us and the boys, hardening his body into an aggressive little pose, just like them. He looked so puny. In my mind, I named the green earring boy “Goliath.”
“Hello, hello,” Goliath said. He was young enough that his voice hadn’t completely changed. It amazed me that someone so young could be so in command. James didn’t say anything. Silvia wanted to, but I squeezed her hand and kept her quiet.
“Check it out,” Goliath said. “There’s a baby soldier in our house.” He came forward. The other boys didn’t move. Their bodies just got more tense. Their gleaming sneakers flexed. “You bitches got something for me?” Goliath asked. He was talking over James now, to Silvia and me.
James didn’t budge. “They with me,” he said.
“They with him,” said Goliath, over his shoulder. “The little man pimpin’.” Then he laughed. The other boys waited a few seconds before joining in. They weren’t sure when it was safe to start laughing. “Where you going, nigger?” he asked.
“Aunt house,” James said. “Twelfth floor. Miss Officer Debbie.”
The name startled one of the Rushmore boys. “Ain’t she the one”— he said, but Goliath cut him off.
“You Miss Officer Debbie’s family?” he asked. James nodded. Goliath put his hands on his hips, then broke out laughing again. “This little nigger Miss Officer Debbie’s family!” Like magic, the tension broke. The boys started up with their wrestling and celebrating again, as if Silvia, James, and I had just vanished.
The elevator came. It was enormous, the size of two parking spaces. We all filed in. There were security cameras, but the lenses had been spray-painted black. Graffiti covered the walls: mysterious symbols, body parts, weapons. There were buttons for forty-two floors. James pushed twelve. One by one, the Rushmore boys pushed the buttons for their floors, which surprised me. I had assumed they all lived together in one big apartment.
The boys behaved themselves, shoving each other and cracking jokes, but staying apart from us. They didn’t say goodbye when we got off on the twelfth floor, but there was an explosion of laughter when the elevator doors shut behind us. We burst out laughing, too, at least Silvia and I did, even though nothing was funny. James didn’t laugh, but he smiled for the first time since I met him. “Miss Officer Debbie,” I said, slapping the hallway’s cinderblock walls. “That was perfect!”
“So what if she is?” James said.
“So what if she’s what?” I said.
“Police. She works for the Man.” He said this with pride, although it sounded like something from a TV show.
I didn’t want to think about this. I was so tired of thinking about consequences! I had been leading Silvia around like a mule. I pulled her to a halt. “James,” I said, “you’re taking us to the police?”
“To my aunt house,” he said.
“Who happens to be a cop.”
“So what?” said James.
Silvia knew what it meant, too. She sank down to the sticky linoleum floor, put her hands over her ears, and started to cry.
“We can’t stay there,” I said.
“You can’t. Don’t mean I can’t,” James said.
“No, no, no, you should,” I said. “Of course you should. It’s just we can’t.”
“Let’s just stay, Chica,” Silvia said. “Please. I’m too tired.”
“You want to stay?” I said. “Fine. Have a nice life in Mexico.”
James shushed me. “People live here,” he said.
Silvia was crying harder now, cradling her belly as if she were comforting a child. “I’m allowed to rest,” she said. “I’m not a guilty person. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
We were stuck that way for a while. I didn’t want to say anything because I knew it wouldn’t come out right. I was pissed off, but I didn’t really blame Silvia for being illegal. We just stood there in the hallway, frozen.
James was the one who finally got us unstuck. “I know a place you can sleep,” he said. “I’ll take you. But I’m coming back.”
I thanked him and went to help Silvia up. She refused my hand. She took James’s instead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Then it was down the massive elevator and back out into the night. Silvia refused my help, even when we went through the heavy front door. She preferred to let it hit her belly rather than have me hold it open for her. I couldn’t really blame her for being mad. I felt like a coach who had refused to let one of her athletes quit a race. Part of me hoped she’d stay angry. I thought it might give her some extra strength.
The place James knew about was a park. He told us it wasn’t too far away. Once we got out of the foul lobby and into the night air, which was heavy but still pretty fresh, I found I was less scared. Exhaustion wrapped itself around me like a blanket, weighing down my shoulders and tripping up my legs. Nothing could hurt me because nothing seemed real: not the scraggly bearded drunks asleep on the ground in their filthy stiff clothes; not the defiant sewer rats with their slicked-b
ack hair; not the sidewalks shimmering with broken glass. I felt like a car with the windows rolled up.
We heard gunshots, but no sirens.
It was like walking through a bombed-out city, where the bombs had been dropped by stealthy American jets. There were gaping holes in the streets with weeds growing in them. The sidewalks were all broken and heaved up, but there were no tree roots to blame, no trees. I imagined furious men pounding the sidewalks with sledgehammers. Charcoal from old cooking fires moldered in the gutters. James saw me looking and said: People live here.
James waited for us at a mutilated stop sign. You could tell it was a stop sign from its shape, but the word “STOP” had been erased. All the paint had been blistered off, as if someone had tortured it with fire to shut it up. “Almost there,” James said. I could tell he was looking forward to getting rid of us. He pointed down the street to a decrepit park lined with derelict townhouses. Silvia planted her feet when she saw it, as if she wanted to take root in the broken sidewalk.
“At least there are trees. Which is good,” I said, but somewhere in the night I had lost my gift for lying.
“This was so stupid,” Silvia said, but I couldn’t tell which “this” she meant.
James took us into the park. It was as ruined, in its way, as the worst part of the river. The park was built on uneven ground. There were lots of rock outcroppings, perfect for climbing on if you were a kid, but from the adult look of the trash, this wasn’t a playground, at least not for kids. “Quick. In here,” James said. I didn’t know what he was talking about until he was practically pushing me down in the dirt.
“Hey, take it easy,” I said, but then I saw the hole, which was basically a shallow scooped-out cave under one of the biggest outcroppings.
“I’m not getting in there,” said Silvia. “There could be animals.”
Which meant that I had to get in first. I backed my way into the cave, kicking spastically every few inches, just in case. I felt around with my feet. “See,” I said. “Piece of cake.”
Silvia didn’t fit at first, so James and I had to scoop out some more dirt. I couldn’t do much. My wrist was starting to hurt again. I remembered what Dr. Locke had said at the hospital about losing my hand. After everything my wrist had been through, I was suddenly afraid of getting it dirty.
“You got a quarter?” James asked. At first I thought he wanted a tip, on account of his having to work so hard digging, but that turned out to be an insulting thing to think. I gave him one. He came back a few minutes later, his arms stacked to the chin with newspapers. “Make it a little nicer in there,” he said, setting them down. The paper was still warm from the presses. The ink gave off a sharp smell, but a clean one, like shoe polish. It was better than the hole’s general wet clay smell, which I associated with open graves. We spread out the newspapers and then Silvia and I settled in on top of them.
The newspapers helped, but the cave still felt like a roomy coffin. I lay back and tried not to look at the cobwebby slab, which was only a foot or so above our noses.
The last thing James did before he left was to pile up some junk in front of our cave, so that we could still see out, but other people couldn’t see in. “Don’t talk to nobody,” James said, as if we were toddlers. I was really grateful to him, for everything, especially for talking with me back at the mill. “Can I give you some money?” I said. “Just to say thanks?” I tried to say it in the least insulting way possible, but money talk always ruins everything. James rose above it. He shook his head, and then, as a final salute, he did a handstand and walked away like that, balanced on his fingertips. “Be careful!” I said, thinking of all the glass on the ground. It was the last I saw of him.
You’d think that Silvia and I would have fallen asleep instantly, but we didn’t. We didn’t talk, either. We just slithered around like snakes for a while, trying to avoid lying on rocks. We were extra polite to each other, saying, “Excuse me,” when our knees bumped. I wanted to apologize to Silvia a thousand times, but instead I was pulling away when my fingers brushed up against her cheek.
Then she was snoring, and I was left to face the night alone. I squirmed over to the edge of the cave and watched some rats forage, trying to imagine they were crabs. There was definitely an underwater feel to this place, as if the city was an ocean, and its whole crushing weight was resting on this park. A few homeless men drifted through the park like seahorses, stopping here or there to dig around in a wire trash can or laze on a bench for a while before drifting away. A gentle tide seemed to be moving them. I understood how it felt to try to set your own course but then to be pushed wherever by the invisible hand of the night.
I would have been happy to rest in my cave and think my gloomy thoughts, but I was distracted by the arrival of a small group of black people at the far end of the park. They were mostly men, but a few women, too, which surprised me. They were all dressed up, and talking and laughing politely, as if they had just come from church.
Two of the men stuck out—one because of his incredible height, the other because he was so handsome. Everybody treated the handsome one like a king. His head was shaved bald and he was wearing one of those fuzzy Kangol caps, which gave him an attractive exotic look. He was wearing a purple exercise suit, the kind that looks like it was made from a parachute, and spit-polished leather loafers. There was a huge gold ring on his left pinkie. He walked with a girl on each arm. I found the girls annoying. They were fawning all over him in their miniskirts and deep cleavage. I wondered why he put up with it.
The incredibly tall man was always by his side like a Secret Service man. It was the middle of the night and he was wearing sunglasses! His head scanned the park like a security camera. He was tall enough to be a basketball player, maybe seven feet, but that was judging from where I was, so low to the ground. He was wearing a pin-striped suit and an old-time hat, which made him look like an alien trying to blend in among earthlings.
The handsome one sat on the bench nearest to me, about twenty feet away. He was close enough for me to see that his ring was in the shape of a human skull, with rubies in the eye sockets. No one else sat down. They just kind of crowded around him. I heard someone call him “King D,” and then, later, I heard him refer to himself that way. He talked about himself in the third person, like a politician. He kept saying “King D” this and “King D” that. It was like me walking around saying, “Chlo” this, “Chlo” that. But somehow it wasn’t so strange coming from him. It made him sound more official.
It would go like this: King D would ask the tall man, “Who we got next, dog?” He said “dog” with affection, but I could tell it bothered his sidekick. Everyone else called the tall man “Lieutenant,” or just “Tenant.” Tenant would make a sign, waving his long elegant fingers, which, for some reason, made me think of a giraffe. Then a man or a woman would appear. The man’s hat, if he had one, would be crumpled in his hands in front of his crotch. The woman would curtsy, or, if her skirt was too tight, maybe just bow. I finally figured it out: King D was a judge.
I couldn’t hear most of what they were saying, but it was obvious that King D was settling complaints. He would listen, relaxing on the bench. His exercise suit made a high “wisp, wisp” sound when he shifted his legs. He looked like an old man feeding pigeons. At times, he would lean forward, nodding gravely, and say, “I hear you, player.” He let the people speak until they were finished, even if what they were saying annoyed him, which it often did. At that point, he would raise his arms in the air, as if to say, “Enough!” and give his decision. Almost everyone kneeled down and kissed his ring afterwards, even if the decision went against them.
Justice at his hands was so swift, the opposite of what I had seen in the courtroom with my grandparents. Everything there took forever. Most of the time, the judge couldn’t do what he obviously wanted to because of some stupid technicality. Even if the judge did what he wanted, a lot of things fell through the cracks—the restraining order against my mother,
for instance. I liked the way King D just listened, thought about the case for a minute, and decided.
Later that night, I saw something which changed my mind. King D had decided all the smaller cases. No one came forward when Tenant waved his giraffe fingers. King D looked tired. He got up to go, but Tenant whispered something in his ear. King D was shocked by the news. He started pacing. He rubbed his temples. He spat. He asked Tenant some questions. He told one of his bimbos to shut up. He told the other to bring him some mineral water. Then he nodded wearily and sat back down on his bench.
Tenant came back with a prisoner, a young man in a black hood. His hands were tied behind his back and he was barefoot. He walked delicately, as if his feet had eyes. Every few steps, he tried to clean off the soles of his feet, wiping them on his shins, but Tenant kept pushing him. The prisoner was brought in front of King D and made to kneel down.
King D began to ask him questions. He was very alert talking to the prisoner. Tenant kept a big hand wrapped around the man’s neck, and shook him when it was time to answer. The questioning didn’t take long. One time, the prisoner didn’t answer, and Tenant punched him in the back of the head. After that, the prisoner was crying. I could tell because the hood was getting wet where it gathered at his chin.
King D sat for a while in silence. It was time for the verdict. King D didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he silently made the shape of a gun with his thumb and fingers, held it up to the prisoner’s hooded face, and pretended to pull the trigger. Tenant nodded and took the man away. From the way he struggled, he must have known what was in store.
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