Divide and conquer, his father said. That’s how they do. My kid ain’t gon’ be one of those few. Takin’ his little bit of what every damn Black kid in Oakland should be getting.
That was about as close as Ibrahim’s father ever came to social consciousness. But the older he got, the more he believed that had been a rationalization because his father was afraid of having one of his sons grow up under conditions he could not control and did not understand. Or maybe he was just plain ol’ frightened that after all that fancy schooling, one day Ibrahim would come home more of a stranger than he already was.
Apparently, Jada’s parents had a different philosophy, and none of his father’s fears. So she was at Crestlawn, and she and her classmates were the melting pot that America pretended it wanted the entire country to be.
Ibrahim’s own school had been more than seventy-five percent Black, twenty-something percent Mexican and the rest a smattering of white and Asian kids. The school was almost more dangerous than the neighborhood where it sat. With its locked compound, it was a concentrated space where the same grievances that existed out on the streets among adults could fester over the length of a school day, among young people who had fewer emotional restraints, and little appreciation for consequences.
When he turned sixteen, Ibrahim took the CHSPE, the California High School Proficiency Exam, and qualified for an early-exit from high school. It wasn’t like getting a GED which was what both his older brothers had done. The CHSPE meant he could still go to college without the stigma of being a dropout, a secret dream of his that he’d been grinding for the last couple of years till interrupted by the need to do Isaac’s time.
He didn’t leave high school because he didn’t like going to class, he left because of the drama. School had been a place where people got stabbed, and if you attracted the wrong kind of notice, ‘people’ could be you.
To Jada, high school was where you played sports, and spent the year inveigling your parents to pay for a senior trip to Barbados. Maybe because of where she went to school, Jada had a broader worldview than any other girl he knew. She talked about the news. The news. At a party where who might next get dropped or arrested was the most common subject of conversation (second only to who had actually gotten dropped or arrested) a girl talking about current events in the world was like seeing an albino elephant wandering across the backyard.
Jada talked about how crazy it was that just weeks earlier Huey Newton had gotten shot down in the very streets where he had built the Black Panther Party.
I feel like … maybe people can’t escape their destiny, she said, chewing the corner of her lower lip, brows knitted. Know what I mean? Maybe he was always destined to die in these streets like so many Black men before him. And everything he did up to that point—all his activism, all of what he did to change Oakland and the world—that was just delaying the inevitable.
Conversations about fate and fatality, Ibrahim couldn’t have imagined having with anyone else he knew. But that was probably what living in a safe home and neighborhood and going to a safe school did. It gave Jada space and time to think abstract, existential thoughts. Instead of worrying about whether she, or someone she cared about, would make it home at night.
“I liked talking to you that day,” Ibrahim said now, reaching forward to tip her chin upward. “At the sideshow? You weren’t wrong. I liked our conversation. And at the party before that, too.”
“Yet, that week after the sideshow when I stopped by to hang out with you …”
Whatchu doin’ over here? he’d demanded, hurrying her away from the front gate of the house. Who told you where I was at?
It had been a shock, that was all, having her roll up to the stash house, still in her sweatpants from basketball practice, wearing her maroon Crestlawn t-shirt with the gold lettering. Her face had a post-exercise glow, her hair in the same thick braid, but this time a ponytail high atop her head, swinging from side to side as he held her by the arm and pulled her away.
The other guys had looked on, curious and intrigued, knowing just from how she was dressed that Jada was not one of “their” girls. Ibrahim didn’t even want them to get a good look at her. And Breonna had been there as well, watching it all go down.
Dee tell you where to find me? he’d demanded.
No. She doesn’t know I’m here. I … I just took a chance. I remembered at the party when you said this was a place you hang out most days. So I thought …
You don’t need to be comin’ ‘roun’ here, he said. Go home.
Her eyes had grown watery with unshed tears and she bit in her lower lip, her front teeth visibly pressing into it so hard it was almost white.
Ibrahim shook his head. How’d you even get here?
BART, she said, her voice wobbling. And the bus. I thought …
Wait here, he told her. Here. A’ight? Don’t move. I’ll be right back.
He’d had to go back inside the house, get rid the shit he was holding, and borrow a ride. When he returned, it was with keys in hand.
I’ll take you home, he said, leading her to the nearby parked car.
He opened the door for her, held it open so she could get in and then got in on the driver’s side. Sitting next to her and staring straight ahead, he asked for her address. They didn’t speak again until he pulled up about thirty minutes later, a few doors down from her house.
You should get out here, he said quietly, still not looking at her.
Prophet, I’m …
I gotta get back, he feigned impatience. This ain’t my whip.
He saw from the corner of his eye as Jada’s shoulders sagged in defeat, and she opened the door. When she had gotten out and shut it behind her, she was only three steps away from the car before he gunned the engine and screeched away.
“That wasn’t a place where you just stop by, Jada,” Ibrahim said now. “You know that.”
“Okay, maybe. But I knew you wouldn’t let anything happen to me,” she said matter-of-factly.
“How could you know that, though?” he asked, eyes narrowed. Her naivete was exasperating, her trust in him confounding.
“Because you said so.”
She looked at him and Ibrahim scratched his jaw, shaking his head.
“Okay, so that’s true, alright? But some things aren’t in my control, though. It was just … some places you ain’t s’posed to be at. Even the party tonight …”
“I know you didn’t write me back a lot …”
She spoke over what he was about to say, obviously not wanting to hear it. Ibrahim was getting the impression Jada Green had a little more stubbornness in her than he would have thought. There was much more to her than sweetness and light, and he was digging it.
“I know you didn’t write me back a lot, but I feel like maybe we got to know each other a little better while you were away,” she continued. “Don’t you?”
“Away,” he said, shaking his head again. “I was in jail. Why don’t we just go ahead and say it? I was in jail. And as far as you and me getting to know each other, do you even know why I was there? Why I was locked up?”
She shook her head.
“In all those letters, you never asked me. Do you care?”
She started to shake her head then instead shrugged.
“Well, you should care. Possession with intent,” he said, holding her gaze. “To distribute. A narcotics charge.”
She said nothing but held his gaze.
“I’m just sayin’. Maybe we know each other a little better now because of the letters, but you didn’t know me at all back then. When you just showed up at the spot that time, you had no idea who I was, or what I might have …”
“I had some idea. I knew you weren’t a rapist, or homicidal maniac or anything. I know you aren’t that now, Prophet.”
“Ibrahim,” he said. “That’s my name. Only certain people call me Prophet. And I don’t … That’s not what I want you to call me.”
“Okay.”
> He reached for her hand again. “Prophet is the dude who went in,” he explained, curling his fingers around hers. “I’m hopin’ he’s not the one who came out.”
“Is the guy who came out someone it’s fine for me to be around?” she challenged. “Like, would it be safe for me to come see him in his … ‘hood?”
She said the last word with a hint of mockery. Like the word itself represented some fictional concept.
He grinned and shook his head. “We might not know each other real well, but one thing I do know about you? You got a smart mouth sometimes.”
Jada stuck her chin out a little and Ibrahim saw that stubborn streak surface again.
“I do wanna be around you,” he said, staring directly into her eyes. “I wanna be around you as much as I can. But nah, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come see me over by that house. And not even over here. Not unless I bring you myself.”
“So, where would I see you?”
“Where would you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Jada shrugged. “The beach. I go to the library a lot after practice … wherever you want.”
“Wherever I want, huh?” he asked.
She nodded. She didn’t even seem to know what she was saying. Or how a man might interpret it.
“Yes,” she said. “Just tell me where.”
~~~
Ibrahim listened to the grunting and moaning through the thin walls, punctuated by Desiree’s occasional high-pitched whelps. He had only dropped Jada off at home an hour earlier, this time at her gate, waiting until she went in and waved from the front door. When she told him her parents were away for the night, he felt a flash of impatience with Desiree who he knew good and well probably wouldn’t make it back to stay with Jada in the empty house, but would end up precisely where she was right now.
Beneath his irritation, he was hella-horny. Hearing his brother next door putting in some work wasn’t helping, either.
For the first time in over a year, he could have pussy on demand. There had been rumors in GDJ, of female COs who pushed up. They gave an inmate a look and if he returned it, later arranged to be alone with them someplace so they could get each other off. Rumor had it those arrangements never turned out to be quite the benefit they might have seemed in the beginning. Possessiveness plus power in a woman sometimes added up to a whole lot of drama.
So Ibrahim had avoided eye-contact with all the female guards, even those who seemed to seek it out. It wasn’t worth the inevitable bullshit.
Just being close to Jada in the car, smelling her sweet, girlish perfume, then sitting across from her and watching as she licked chicken grease from her fingers had been plenty to get his engine revving.
When they were headed to her house, he stopped and bought her ice cream. He got some for himself as well, but while he took his in a cup, Jada wanted a waffle cone. From the corner of his eye while he drove, Ibrahim watched her lick her ice cream and tried to control his imagination.
But now, to have that memory and then listen to Immanuel digging out his girl less than twenty feet away? That was cruel and unusual punishment.
Before Jada showed up tonight, a few of his old chicks had been checking him out. They circled him coyly, smiled from across the room and a couple made their approach even before he considered whether he would do it himself. And now, it didn’t matter that it was after two in the morning, he could call any one of them up right now to enlist their help to lessen the pressure that was building in his groin.
Running through the names mentally, he lingered on thoughts of Breonna, as he almost always did. Breonna was what they called a “mutt.” Racially mixed in so many different ways—Black, Mexican, white—that even she couldn’t say with complete certainty what her heritage was. She was the kind of girl who got a lot of attention because guys were basically lazy. She had the superficial, stereotypical markers of attractiveness, fair-skinned, long hair and no obvious defects, physical or otherwise.
Ibrahim liked her because she was fun. He could sit on the stoop with Breonna and talk shit all day long, sipping from a forty, passing a blunt and clowning her like he might a dude. Unlike most girls, she wouldn’t even get upset. She laughed along and even did some clowning of her own.
And she made sex fun, too. She never acted like she was allowing him to get some, she wanted to give it to him. A couple weeks after he first started messing with her, back when they were both fifteen, Ibrahim had seriously considered making her his girl. They had been hanging out for a while, at the arcade, chilling in the mall and at parties all around town. She didn’t press or pressure him or ask where he had been when they weren’t together so he thought maybe she was the type of chick where it might be cool to chill with just her for a while.
Then Isaac pulled on his coattail and let him know that when she was fourteen, some dudes over by Fitchburg ran a train on her.
Seven niggas, dawg, Zac said with chilling emphasis. Seven.
The implication was clear. Breonna was a girl you boned when you needed that kind of release. A girl you might kick back with sometimes. But she was not the girl you made your girl.
And because he was young and insensitive, Ibrahim asked her about the rumor. Worse yet, he had asked her about it when they were in his room and naked, just about to get busy no less.
For a moment, Breonna blanched, then she shrugged her thin shoulders. I ain’ have no business bein’ over there in the first place, she said, her eyes dancing away from his.
Ibrahim was angry. Not because she might have believed it was her fault, but because at the time, he believed it was her fault as well.
Later, when he was no more than a year or so older and saw firsthand a couple situations like that unfold, he remembered the look on the girls’ faces. Each time, they scanned the room, desperately searching for that one dude. Just one, who would help her find an escape route from something that had spiraled well beyond what she wanted or imagined would happen.
Ibrahim, to his later shame, had never been that escape route. He had only absented himself from the proceedings, finding it unimaginable that he would dip his nib in the same honeypot his dawg had just vacated moments earlier. But sometimes he had been there just long enough to see the look in the girl’s eyes go from hope to resignation; and to watch as she reached for someone, pointing, maybe saying something like, him first, deciding that maybe it was better to take what little control of an uncontrollable situation she could, than try to fight them all off.
He was no hero. And probably had just as little honor as the guys who stayed behind to take their turn.
After hearing what Isaac told him, and getting Breonna’s confirmation, it was out of the question that she would ever be more to him than she was now. She was cool and all, a girl he kicked it with, and who came when he called. She would never be more to him than she was now, not just because she’d been ‘ruined’ but because he knew that after what happened to her, Breonna wouldn’t be able to help herself—it might take a minute but she would turn into the kind of girl, and later the kind of woman who laid waste to everything good in her life. Just because she could no longer believe that anything good was also real, or true.
But Ibrahim wasn’t thinking about any of that now when he got up from bed and crept into the hall. He moved past Immanuel’s door, where things had finally gone quiet, lifted the receiver off the wall phone and dialed Breonna’s number from memory.
Part of him hoped she wasn’t home. Because after spending the evening with Jada—an evening that felt purer than any he had ever spent with a girl—he almost believed that his time locked up had instantly transformed him into someone new. And abstinence was beginning to feel like his superpower, until he heard all the action in the next room.
The phone only rang twice before Breonna answered.
12
Then
“I was wondering if you were busy. If you might want to hang out today.”
The voice on the other en
d of the line, returning her ‘hello’, was immediately recognizable, and Jada had clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from emitting a squeal or something stupid like that.
“Hang out?” she managed, after a deep swallow.
“Yeah. Maybe at the beach or something. You said you might want to go to the beach, right?”
She couldn’t be sure, but was there a slight tremor in Ibrahim’s voice? But no, that couldn’t be right. Maybe it was just the connection, because she couldn’t imagine that he would be nervous calling her of all people. And even his choice of words sounded uncharacteristically formal for him, like he was reading from a script scribbled by someone else on the palm of his hand.
“Sure,” she said right away, then closed her eyes, mortified by how eager she sounded, even to herself. Speaking more slowly and deliberately, she added, “I mean, I have basketball practice but after that, yeah, I could … I would love to.”
“Where’s your practice?” he asked. “And what time? Maybe I could pick you up from there.”
If he picked her up from practice, the other mothers would notice. Calls would be made.
Dinah, I missed you over there by the school today when Jada got out of practice. Was that your nephew who picked her up? Handsome young man, in a fancy car?
“Or I could meet you,” Jada said. “I’d want to come home to shower and change anyway, pick up a bag and stuff.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’d be cool, too. Where should I meet you at?”
Jada felt her face grow warm.
She didn’t want to lie to him, nor to make him think she was ashamed to be seen with him. She wished she was bold enough to admit how giddy it made her that he was asking her out on a date, something she didn’t imagine he did very much of.
Even after the night of his welcome-home party, when she had given him her phone number, she was afraid to hope she would hear from him. Almost two weeks had passed, and she had been planning and scheming a trip to his neighborhood with Desiree where she hoped they would run into each other.
Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel Page 10