Everywhere You Don't Belong

by Gabriel Bump

  I stammered as the white boys focused on me. I put my hands up and moved closer to Juna. Our hips touched. We shook against each other.

  “You look like Obama.”

  “You are a secret agent.”

  “You are what’s wrong with this country!”

  Their white faces turned red. Sweat slid from their foreheads. Their stench intensified.

  “I can’t take this anymore!”

  “This is our country!”

  “We want it back!”

  “We will take it back!”

  They started to come around the front desk.

  Behind us, the door slammed.

  The father appeared, shirtless, flat bat in one arm, rake in the other. He handed the bat to his daughter. They exchanged silent instructions and hugs and kisses on the cheek. The father pushed me out the way. Juna yelled for me to run, again and again. I couldn’t. I tried to wiggle my toes—nothing, except tiny needles moving up my legs.

  Father and daughter forced the white boys into the parking lot. I watched the standoff continue.

  “Go back to your desert!”

  “Jobs! Not hummus!”

  “I’m a Marine!”

  “He’s a Marine!”

  “You killed his brother!”

  “You killed my sister!”

  “You stole my father!”

  “George Washington!”

  “No terror!”

  “Freedom isn’t free!”

  “Al-Qaeda!”

  “Bin Laden!”

  “Radical Islam!”

  “Islam!”

  “Freedom!”

  “Freedom!”

  “Freedom!”

  “Freedomfreedomfreedomfreedomfreedom!”

  “Never forget!”

  “What time is it?”

  “Freedom time!”

  Juna and her father responded with confused fury. The women and their johns still filled the parking lot in various states of undress. They, like me, didn’t know what to do or say. Some of them threw rocks and tried to knock the white boys down. Some turned and went back to bed.

  After a few minutes, a woman in a baby-blue negligee yelled about cops coming, and the women and their johns sprinted to their cars carrying clothes and unzipped bags. It was as if someone had announced the approach of a tornado or nuclear bomb, sure to bring absolute destruction. With beautiful accidental coordination, the parking lot emptied. The white boys ran into the darkness as the sirens echoed down the highway.

  Cops.

  Janice.

  I jogged back to our room.

  Janice was spread across the bed, drooling in a real and deep sleep. The smell had deepened, grown in intensity and scope.

  Through our curtains, I spied Juna and her father standing in the same place, straight up, frozen, except for the occasional angry tremor moving up their spines.

  “What are you doing?” Janice asked, with her eyes half open.

  “The white boys came,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Janice said.

  “The cops are coming,” I said.

  Janice jolted upright. She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  “They’re not taking us alive,” Janice yelled through a tiny hole above the doorknob.

  “They’re not here for us,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Janice yelled.

  “The white boys,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Janice said.

  “They’re here,” I said.

  Juna and her father waved down the cop car. I recognized the cop from Martin’s. She hugged Juna and her father. She shook her head as Juna gesticulated. She patted the father’s back when he shrunk into the curb and quivered and sobbed.

  I joined Janice in the bathroom. She was huddled behind the toilet, small as I’d ever seen her. I motioned for her to join me in the bathtub. We pulled the curtain.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “What?” Janice asked.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “What?” Janice asked.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “What?” Janice asked.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said.

  “I know,” Janice said.

  We stayed in the tub for I don’t know how long. I waited for a knock at our door. I waited for the end.

  At some point, when the sky outside the bathroom’s tiny window turned a pleasant shade of fire, I closed my eyes. I squinted and buried my regrets and fears. I didn’t want to think about my current situation.

  Before I drifted off, I saw a pleasant Saturday morning, mist over a disheveled front lawn. I saw myself taking my coffee to a lawn mower. I heard my children yelling for me to hurry up, they were late for soccer, for ballet, for a playdate with our neighbors. I saw day turn to night. I heard Janice yelling for me to come upstairs, get off the couch, get into bed, love her. And I did. And I drifted off.

  Mom stood on a mist puff, looking down at me and the earth, holding a suitcase. Had her lips always puffed like that? And her ears, pointed at the tip and round at the bottom, sticking out like tiny wings—my lips, my ears. All this dust, she said. She turned toward me and her thick eyebrows—my eyebrows—turned into butterflies. This room, she said. This room is a mess, she said.

  The mist turned into an old Cadillac. I was in the backseat and Mom had the windows cracked. I noticed the highway: a long stretch of sick wheat and brown corn stalks. In all my dreams about her, there was never smoke. Why was there smoke now? Claude, she said through the rearview mirror, butterflies still there, her face, my face, older now. You’re a man, she said. The smoke was coming from an arm-length cigarette. She lit another one. There aren’t two ways to get where you’re going, she said. You’re going, she said, the only place you can. We pulled into Grandma’s living room. Grandma’s hair was black and her body was full. She shadowboxed on the couch. She beat the air to pieces. The scene shattered around us. Back on the highway: dark. Mom refused to put her headlights on. Mr. Strongman, she said. I look at you and see a mouse, she said. Mr. Strongman the mouse, she said.

  I’m not a mouse, I said.

  At least you’re not your father, she said.

  I’m not a mouse, I said. I’m not my father, I said. I’m not my mother, I said. I’m not a runaway, I said. I hang around. I help.

  Our old Cadillac with black leather seats didn’t have a roof. There were stars out here, constellations that didn’t exist. Michael Jordan was up there playing one-on-one with Michael Jackson for charity. The moon wasn’t a basketball. She screamed at me through the rearview mirror; her butterflies turned into hawks, flew away with squealing mice in their talons.

  Mom disappeared.

  Blink: Sixty-Third Street beach facing Lake Michigan, a party laughing out there on the water, on a sinking barge.

  Wake up, Claude. Wake up.

  Blink: a raft far from shore.

  More constellations underwater: Chester Dexter chasing down a moving train, pumping his legs, gaining speed. Renaissance, the conductor, telling him to jump, catch up—fly, fly. Jonah too, in the darkness, shining, floating, bigger than everyone else, above me, silent, benevolent. Simone, Whitney, Connie, and Kenneth beneath me, stuck in thick weeds, waving up—come on, come on, come down, stay here. In another current, far away, Bubbly and Nugget just wanted to say hello, see how I am doing.

  Wake up.

  Claude.

  Blink: Paul beating a pot and pan together. His opened robe. His lucky Purple Rain boxers.

  Wake up. Come on. Claude.

  Blink: Janice, hiding in plain sight, behind a skinny tree in an open field.

  Claude. Come on. Wake up.

  Blink: Grandma wiggling on a crowded dance floor, swinging her hips, smoking a cigar, waving goodbye, kicking her feet above a handsome man’s head, cracking up, breaking down.

  WAKE UP.

  When I opened my eyes, Janice had her palm raised in the air, poise
d to slam downward into my face. She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub wearing fresh clothes and makeup.

  “What are you doing?” I asked

  “Wake the fuck up,” Janice said.

  “I’m up,” I said.

  “Let’s go,” Janice said. “It stinks in here. Let’s go for a walk.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Morning,” Janice said. “Early. A new day. Let’s seize it.”

  “We can’t do anything reckless,” I said.

  “You can use my toothbrush,” Janice said. “Your breath stinks.”

  “That cop,” I said. “Those white boys. We should leave this place.”

  “Just for a morning,” Janice said, “I want to forget about doom.”

  I agreed and got ready. Janice took some bills out of the duffel bag and tossed it back in the closet.

  “Are you bringing your phone?” I asked.

  “I turned it off,” Janice said. “Broke it in half and smashed it to bits with a Bible.”

  Outside, on this new day, we found Juna and her father standing in the parking lot, crying together. The white boys had come back at some point, after the cops went away. There was a pile of sand at their feet, about two feet high. At the mound’s summit, a small banner was planted with the words Sandniggers Go Home scribbled on it in red marker.

  “Why?” Juna asked.

  “Why?” her father asked.

  And, it seemed, they would’ve kept asking for eternity, if Janice hadn’t interrupted.

  “Someone should kill those fuckers,” Janice said.

  “They’re idiots,” Juna said, regaining herself. “They will get themselves killed.”

  “The cops don’t know what to do,” the father said.

  “They’re coming back,” Juna said.

  She looked at Janice and me with understanding and pity. She knew about us; she knew there was something she didn’t know about us. I wondered what possibilities were running through her head. I wondered how wrong she was.

  “They’re coming back, now,” she repeated.

  Janice and I took our cue, headed away from downtown, toward the outskirts.

  Fringes

  When I broke down the white boys to Janice, as we headed onto a wooded trail, she stopped and told me to wait a minute.

  “That type of thing still happens?” Janice asked.

  “I saw it,” I said.

  “Why aren’t those people in jail?” Janice asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Of course, I knew. I understood the difference between how society treats misbehaving white teenagers and misbehaving black teenagers. Those parties on frat row: broken windows, puke and human shit on the sidewalk, broken bottles, loud bad music and cheap cigarette smoke polluting the night air, those cops showing up and offering warning—just turn it down, bring it inside; those black kids arrested for smoking weed in a parking lot. Those cashiers in the campus grocery store looking at me walking down the candy aisle; those white students pocketing beer cans without hesitation. I could’ve told Janice why those people weren’t in jail and would never see jail. I could’ve told her all the bad things about Chicago are present around the world in varied degrees, racist cops in South Shore are a lot like racist cops in Missouri, white boys are the same everywhere, racist social structures loom like malevolent skyscrapers. I thought about Janice’s gun. I thought I could use it on the white boys without hesitation. I would’ve told her if she didn’t already know.

  “Can you imagine?” Janice asked.

  “I know,” I said.

  “If they tried that shit back home?” Janice asked.

  “I know,” I said.

  The trail was slim and named after a colonel I didn’t know. Fallen leaves crunched and squished as we walked. I jumped whenever a squirrel surfaced with a nut. Janice jumped when a dead snake greeted us at a bend. I screamed.

  “Why do people like this?” Janice asked.

  “Walking around?” I asked.

  “Walking around in this.” Janice pointed down the leaf-strewn path protected by shedding trees. Green, orange, red, and brown blended into a pleasant sight, I guess, for most people.

  “The fresh air,” I reasoned. “I understand the fresh air. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “Just look at that.” Janice pointed at a bird, dead, on its back, with flies circling around its tiny talons.

  I looked away.

  “Everything is dead,” I said.

  “That,” Janice continued. “That is going to kill us all.”

  We continued on in sustained panic and unease. We collected ourselves on a bench overlooking a dried-up river.

  We found running water, up the trail, bubbling out of a hole and sliding down a tiny hill. We stared at the hole, waited for it to tell us something about gravity and falling and miracles and freedom.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Janice said to me, while keeping her eyes on the bubbling hole.

  “Yes,” I said. “Please.”

  The trail brought us back to the start.

  “Where should we go?” Janice asked.

  “The moon,” I said.

  “That doesn’t help,” Janice said. “Your jokes aren’t funny.”

  “We can’t go back to the motel,” I said. “The cops might still be there.”

  On the curb of an unknown road, we looked in every direction for an exit. Between a set of thin clouds, I caught pieces of the moon. Up there, I thought. Why not, I thought.

  We found a neglected dog park after walking for an hour. Flaking piles of dog shit hid under fallen leaves. A mangled squirrel was decomposing at the edge of a small pond. Janice saw the water from outside the fence.

  Like tumbleweeds, balls of fur floated across dying grass. We were alone and, for the moment, hidden. We sat at a picnic table, underneath an old tree stripped of leaves and bark, gathered our thoughts.

  “When I was little,” I said, “all my friends disappeared. They all went away.”

  “Me too,” Janice said.

  “And then you,” I said. “And you found me down here.”

  “I hate it down here,” Janice said.

  “I thought you’d run away from me,” I said.

  “Why would you think that?” Janice asked.

  “Everybody does,” I said.

  “Don’t act depressed,” Janice said. “It’s not a good look for you. Are you going to cry? Don’t cry. Don’t make everything worse.”

  I stopped myself from crying.

  “Before you came down here, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I missed you.”

  Something troubled the tiny pond’s surface. We missed the action, just saw ripples expand and crash into the shore.

  “I missed you too,” Janice said. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “What were you thinking?” I asked.

  Janice slid closer to me. I put my head on her shoulder, my hand on her knee; I exhaled into her neck. She curled her arm around my head, cradled my head in her bicep; if she wanted to, she could’ve snapped my neck. I was at her whim.

  “Where should we go?” Janice asked.

  “Remember?” I asked. “When we used to have these conversations? About running away?”

  “This is for real,” Janice said.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m happy.”

  “What about Florida?” Janice asked.

  “What about India?” I asked.

  “How would we get there?” Janice asked.

  “I’m just thinking out loud,” I said.

  “This is serious,” Janice said.

  A large white dog shot into sight, sprang into the water. In happy delirium, it paddled in a circle and snapped its large teeth at the turbulent wake. A short white-haired woman with a messy ponytail strolled to the shore, applauded her dog’s excitement. She didn’t notice us until we stood up.

  “Where’s your dog?” She yelled at us, even though a whisper would’ve suffic
ed. She tensed her shoulders, looked uncomfortable.

  “We lost our dog in a tornado!” Janice yelled back.

  “Oh, no!” the woman yelled. She shook her head and ponytail.

  “He was a beautiful baby!” Janice yelled.

  “God bless you!” the woman yelled. She went back to applauding—her dog had found the rotting squirrel, ripped it like a sock.

  Janice and I made our way to the exit, careful to avoid shit and other lifeless flotsam.

  Grandma called me. We were at a gas station. Janice was trying to use the bathroom without buying anything.

  “Speakerphone,” Grandma said. “Paul’s here.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You tell me what’s up,” Grandma said. “What the hell did you do?”

  “What type of shit tsunami have you conjured?” Paul asked.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Baby,” Grandma said, “they came here.”

  “To our house,” Paul said. “They came to our house.”

  “They had guns,” Grandma said.

  “They stole our fancy plates,” Paul said.

  “They wanted Janice,” Grandma said.

  “They told us about a wedding,” Paul said.

  “They told us their friends were arrested,” Grandma said.

  “You ruined their good time,” Paul said.

  “Someone tipped them off,” Grandma said.

  “Some got away,” Paul said.

  “They know it was Janice,” Grandma said.

  “They put a gun in your grandmother’s face,” Paul said.

  “They punched Paul in the stomach,” Grandma said.

  “They tied us up with old towels,” Paul said.

  “We just got free,” Grandma said.

  “Is she with you?” Paul asked.

  “What kind of nonsense are you two peddling?” Grandma asked.

  “She’s in the bathroom,” I said.

  “Baby,” Grandma said, “they’re coming for you. They know where you are.”

  “They’re riding chariots of death,” Paul said.

  “What were you thinking?” Grandma asked.

  Both of them were out of breath. As they collected themselves, I closed my eyes and considered walking in front of an 18-wheeler headed toward the highway at high speed.