Razorblade Tears

by S. A. Cosby

  “You still love him, don’t you?” Ike asked. Tangerine didn’t answer his question.

  “I just want this all to go away,” she said.

  “It ain’t going nowhere, girl,” Buddy Lee said, but Ike held up his hand.

  “Let’s get you some clothes. We gonna take you somewhere you can be safe, okay?” Ike said.

  He let her go and gestured with his head for Buddy Lee and Mya to follow him. They all stepped back outside.

  “You think you got a couple of spare shirts and a pair of pants me and her can borrow?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee nodded.

  “I don’t know about you, but my shirts should fit her. Jeans, too. You gonna look like you wearing your baby brother’s clothes if you put one of my shirts on,” Buddy Lee said.

  “I’ve got a couple of my T-shirts in the back seat,” Mya said.

  “That’s good, puddin,” Ike said.

  “She gotta tell us Ike. Preferably sooner than later,” Buddy Lee said in a hushed tone.

  “Her mama got killed right in front of her. A dude she loves is trying to kill her. She can’t tell us nothing right now. Let’s get her someplace safe. Give her some time,” Ike said.

  “We need that name, Ike,” Buddy Lee said.

  “And she needs to come to terms with the fact a man she was in love with punched her mama’s ticket,” Ike said.

  “Alright. You take her to a henhouse the foxes can’t find. I’ll stay here with Mya and Little Bit. But the clock is ticking. I ain’t gotta tell you that,” Buddy Lee said.

  “These men that killed her mama, are they the same people that followed me the other day?” Mya asked. Ike sighed.

  “Yeah.”

  “If you find this boyfriend, are you going to kill him?” Mya asked. Buddy Lee moved away from the three of them and inspected his undercarriage again.

  “Yes,” Ike said. Mya rocked side to side gently as Arianna played with her braids.

  “Good. Here, hold her for a minute. I might have some sweatpants in the back seat, too,” she said, handing Arianna to Ike. He swallowed hard and took her in his powerful hands. Arianna reached up and pulled on his chin.

  “You couldn’t have left her with Anna?” Ike asked. Mya stopped and leaned against the trunk.

  “Anna’s out. Nobody at the house but us. Couldn’t leave her there alone. Trust me, I didn’t want to bring her here for this,” Mya said before she disappeared in the back seat. When she reappeared she had a shirt and a pair of yoga pants. As she walked past him Ike grabbed her hand.

  “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry about everything,” Ike said. Mya gripped his hand.

  “Just get them,” she said before going in the trailer. When she came back Tangerine was with her. She had on the shirt and the pants. Both appeared two sizes too big. Tangerine swayed softly but she didn’t seem in danger of passing out again.

  “Can I get that shirt?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee hitched up his jeans and headed into the trailer. They could hear the shuffling of doors and the slamming of dresser drawers. A few minutes later he came to the door and tossed Ike a flannel shirt.

  “Belonged to my brother Deak. He stayed with me for a while a few years ago. He’s about your size.”

  Ike slipped on the shirt. It was tight in the arms but it would do.

  “I’ll take the truck. Y’all sit tight and wait till I come back,” Ike said.

  “Ike, that truck is full of blood and the back window is blown out. And it’s leaking oil like a racehorse pissing. She’s my baby but I don’t know how much longer she’s for this world,” Buddy Lee said.

  “I don’t want to leave y’all stranded without a car seat and with a truck that might seize up while you got Arianna with you, on the off chance you have to leave. And if you did have to leave, I don’t want her riding around in the night air. Trying to be a good babysitter, like your friend said,” Ike said.

  “We ain’t babysitting. We’re her grandparents. You could take the car and take her with you,” Mya said.

  “She likes to stay with you. I think she is scared of me sometimes,” Ike said.

  “I think it’s the other way around, but whatever. How long you gonna be?” Mya asked.

  “Fifteen minutes each way,” Ike said.

  “Go on then. The quicker you leave the faster you’ll be back,” Mya said.

  “Give me the heater and you keep the street sweeper,” Buddy Lee said.

  “No! No guns around my granddaughter,” Mya said.

  “Mya, we have people looking for us. Those people have guns,” Ike said.

  “That’s why you need to get going and bring your ass back. We’ll be here. Go,” Mya said. Ike looked at Buddy Lee. Buddy Lee shrugged his shoulders. He was not stepping between a man and his wife. Better to step between a hungry wolf and a rabid dog.

  “Mya, I’m leaving the gun with Buddy Lee. I trust him,” Ike said. He went to the truck and grabbed the MAC-10. When he handed it to Buddy Lee they locked eyes. Buddy Lee nodded.

  “This all we got. That .45 is empty. You pulled on that thing until it went click. Give me the keys,” Ike said.

  “There’s a spare under the visor. I’ll keep my regular ones so I can lock the door,” Buddy Lee said.

  “Let’s go, Tangerine,” Ike said. Ike got in the truck. Tangerine got in the passenger side.

  “Bye, pretty lady!” Arianna said. Tangerine smiled and waved at Arianna.

  “Bye, sugar button,” she said.

  “Hurry back now. Don’t pick up no stray hookers or wooden nickels,” Buddy Lee said.

  “Watch your mouth,” Mya said.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Buddy Lee said.

  “Thirty minutes,” Ike said. He started the truck and backed out of Buddy Lee’s truncated driveway.

  As the taillights receded down the road, Buddy Lee, Mya, and Arianna went back inside the trailer.

  Buddy Lee gripped the MAC-10 with one hand and locked the door with the other.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Ike dialed Jazzy’s number as he headed for the northern end of Red Hill County. She picked up after three rings.

  “Hey, Ike, what’s up?” Jazzy said.

  “Jazz, I need a favor.” Ike said. Jazzy must’ve picked up something in his tone because instead of “sure” or “no problem” she said:

  “What is it?”

  “I got a friend who needs a place to crash for a few days. She’s been hurt and she got a bandage that she gonna need help changing. I know you was a CNA before you came on with us at the shop,” Ike said. Ike thought he heard the line hum, but he knew that was his imagination. Cell phones didn’t have landlines that could hum.

  “Ike, I was a CNA for three weeks. Lord, I don’t know. I gotta ask Marcus.”

  “I’ll give you two extra weeks on your last check,” Ike said.

  “Two extra weeks? Really?”

  “Really,” Ike said. Jazzy sucked her teeth.

  “That got to do with them biker boys from the other day?” Jazzy asked. Ike almost lied.

  “Yes, but you’ll be alright. No one knows where you live and no one is following me.” Ike said. He was doing his best to make sure that wasn’t a lie. He took the long way down back roads that made it hard for someone to hide a tail.

  “I don’t know, Ike,” Jazzy said.

  “Three weeks. Three extra weeks. Please, Jazzy. She needs help. If you don’t want to do it for me, do it for Isiah,” Ike said.

  “Them biker boys got something to do with what happened to Zay?” Jazzy asked.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure they did,” Ike said. More silence. It floated between them, deep and oppressive. Finally Jazzy spoke again.

  “Okay. Bring her over. How long you say she need to be here?”

  “Just a couple days. Thank you, Jazzy,” Ike said.

  “I’m gonna have to buy Marcus two new PlayStation games with my check to keep him from running his mouth,” Jazzy said.

  “See you in a bit,” Ike said. He hu
ng up.

  “You didn’t tell her,” Tangerine said.

  “I don’t think it’s my place to tell her anything,” Ike said.

  “You sure my mama is dead?” Tangerine asked. The question almost made Ike run off the road. He chose his next words carefully.

  “I don’t know. Everything was happening so fast. But I don’t think she made it,” Ike said, his voice hoarse. Tangerine leaned her head on the window. Cool air filled the cab of the truck through the shattered rear window. Tangerine’s hair danced and cavorted around her head like dark fairies.

  “She only let me come home after I gave her half the money Tariq had fronted me. Twenty-five hundred dollars, and she still kept calling me by my dead name,” Tangerine said.

  “Did you tell her you was running for your life?” Ike asked.

  “Yeah. That’s why she didn’t take all of it,” Tangerine said.

  “What’s a dead name?” Ike asked. Tangerine drew her legs up under her thighs.

  “The name I was born with, not the name I chose,” Tangerine said.

  “The pictures on the wall. Are they…?”

  “That was before. Before I found myself,” Tangerine said.

  “Oh. Okay,” Ike said.

  “My daddy was half Black, half Mexican. All man, like my mama used to say. He caught me wearing my mama’s high heels one time. He punched me in my chest so hard I spit blood for three days. He made me walk in high heels the rest of the weekend. Around and around our house until my feet bled. Bleeding from my mouth, bleeding from my feet. Hurting all over. That was when I really knew,” Tangerine said.

  “Knew what?” Ike asked.

  “That they got it wrong when I was born. That I was always a girl. It was the people around me that wouldn’t accept it. All that shit he did to me and all I could think about was one day I’d find some heels that fit. Soon as I could, I got out of Bowling Green and headed for Richmond. Got into doing makeup and hair for people. That’s how I met Tariq. Did the makeup for a couple of his videos. We started hanging out and he started letting me tag along to parties. After a while the parties got fancier and fancier until one night we was at some ball for the city and I met Him there. Capital H. From the start it was different with Him. Like Tariq, he knew, but he never seemed like he could accept that he liked me. We’d do stuff, like not even sex stuff, just going out to the club, and then later he’d get high. Hurt himself, slap me around, then apologize. When I met Him, he went old-school and slipped me his number on a piece of paper. We got down a couple of times before I told him. I was so scared. You never know how a guy is gonna react. He didn’t care. That was the thing he always said. ‘I don’t care about what’s between your legs, just what’s in your heart.’” Tangerine took a breath.

  “I’ve been the fucktoy before. This felt different. It was different. Oh, shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe because I’ll probably be dead in a week and it don’t matter,” Tangerine said.

  “That’s not gonna happen,” Ike said.

  “Oh, you don’t think so?”

  “No, I don’t,” Ike said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because once you tell me who it is, I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna take my time and I’m gonna make it hurt. And I think you know I’m telling the truth, and I think that’s why you won’t tell me. Because you keep telling yourself you still love him,” Ike said. Tangerine didn’t say a word. She squeezed herself into a tight ball and put her chin on her knees. The truck hit a bump and she winced as her arm bumped against the door. She put her good hand to her face and trembled all over.

  “I keep trying to tell you, you don’t understand. He cares about me. He can’t be who he really is. His family won’t let him. It’s complicated. He’s married. His family has this public persona that they’ll do anything to protect. You could never understand this. No one judges you because of who you love,” Tangerine said.

  Ike gripped the steering wheel tight as a vise.

  “I don’t know how many times I have to say this to you. He had my boy killed. Buddy Lee’s boy, too. He sent people to kill you and they killed your mama. That is who is he is. You think he loves you. I get that. But a man don’t hide what he loves. And he sure as hell don’t let a son of a bitch try to put her six feet under,” he said. Tangerine dug around in the pocket of the yoga pants.

  “You hid from loving Isiah,” Tangerine said. Ike sucked at his teeth.

  “I hid it from him. Not from anybody else. I gotta own that. I learning how to own it,” Ike said.

  Tangerine licked her lips.

  “Here, look at this. Read this and tell me he doesn’t care,” she said as she scrolled through her phone. When she found what she was looking for, she handed Ike the phone. She had pulled up a text message. The number she had been texting was saved in her phone as “W.” Ike flicked his eyes down at the phone as he scanned the black single-lane road that unspooled in front of him like an oil slick.

  There is no one that understands me

  The way you do. When we are together

  I can be my full self. No masks. And yes

  The sex is amazin

  Ike handed her back her phone.

  “Let me ask you a question. He talks real nice, but has he ever taken you anywhere besides a motel? Has he ever even taken you to the motel, or do you have to meet him there? Do you even have a picture together?” Ike asked.

  Tangerine was quiet.

  “That’s what I thought. I ain’t gonna pretend to know how hard this is for you, but you gotta know there is only one way this ends. It’s either him or us. All us,” Ike said. He turned down Crab Thicket Road. Jazzy’s trailer was the last one on the left.

  “Us? We’re an ‘us’ now? You didn’t want nothing to do with your own son, but now I’m supposed to believe I’m a part of the team?” Tangerine said. The words shot out of her mouth like shrapnel.

  “You on the team because I can’t let what happened to Isiah and Derek happen to anybody else. I ain’t gonna lie and say I get you, because I don’t. I can’t even pretend I know what it must be like to be … you. But if all this has taught me one thing, it’s that it ain’t about me and what I get. It’s about letting people be who they are. And being who you are shouldn’t be a goddamn death sentence,” Ike said.

  “I think about Isiah and Derek a lot. If I had just kept my fucking mouth shut they would still be alive. Now my mama is dead, too. I can’t do this anymore,” Tangerine said as Ike passed a field full of hay bales being loaded on a flatbed truck. The sun was setting quick, and the men in the field were moving fast to beat old Sol before he vanished behind the horizon. The sky was full of ambers and magentas that ran together like melted wax.

  Ike pulled into a long driveway covered in crushed oyster shells that was lined on both sides by a throng of blackberry thickets and wild daylilies, their orange petals standing out in sharp contrast to the verdant green leaves of the blackberry bushes. At the end of the driveway was a white double-wide with red shutters. Jazzy’s car was the only one in the front yard. Ike pulled alongside it and cut the engine.

  “I’m sorry,” Ike said.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say that because you trying to butter me up,” Tangerine said.

  “No, I mean … I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it did and now this is where we at. A man once told me we can’t change the past but we can decide what happens next. That’s where you at right now,” Ike said. He got out of the truck.

  “Come on. Let me introduce you to Jazzy.”

  “You sure she ain’t gonna mind having me here?” Tangerine said. She was still in the truck.

  “I’m thinking she’ll be okay with it. She ain’t a dinosaur like me. And her and Isiah were good friends in school. She knew he was … gay a long time before I did, and she never turned her back on him,” Ike said.

  “I told you, I’m not gay,” Tangerine said.

  “Jazzy is as cl
ose as we gonna get to an ally in Red Hill County,” Ike said. Tangerine took her good hand away from her face. She used it to open the door. She followed Ike over the stepping stones to the front door of the double-wide.

  * * *

  Buddy Lee used the neck of the bottle of beer he was drinking to move the curtain of his living room window aside. The sun was dipping lower than a ballroom dancer. The tribe of country critters began to chant their nightly prayers. Frogs, crickets, and mockingbirds all sang songs of praise to their various gods.

  A cough seized his chest like the pincers of a blue crab. Dots danced in front of his face as he tried to force the sputum and phlegm out of his rotting lungs. A strong hand slapped his back. Buddy Lee put his hand against his mouth and caught what his lungs had tried to hoard.

  “Thank you. Got a bit of a bug in my throat,” Buddy Lee said. He didn’t want to wipe the blood and spit on his pants, but he also didn’t want Mya to see it. Her smooth, impassive face appraised him with the cool detachment of a woman who had heard her share of death rattles.

  “Cancer? Or emphysema?” she asked.

  “Can I have a tissue?” Buddy Lee asked. Mya went to the kitchen and came back with a paper towel. Buddy Lee wiped his hand, then balled it up and put it his pocket.

  “Just a bug in my throat,” Buddy Lee said. Mya put her hands on her hips. She seemed ready to call him a liar. Instead she shook her head reproachfully and sat down on the couch with Arianna. Buddy Lee peered out the window again.

  Come on, Ike, Buddy Lee thought.

  * * *

  Jazzy waved to Ike as he backed out of the driveway. They’d given Tangerine a sleeping pill and put her in the back bedroom. Tangerine had been nervous about Marcus coming home and kicking her out, but Jazzy had assured her it would be fine.

  “Girl, as long as he got his Call of Duty and a bag of potato chips, he don’t give a damn what’s going on. He probably won’t even notice you here,” Jazzy had said. Once they had put Tangerine in the bed, Ike had questioned how confident she was in that assertion.

  “I don’t know. He can be weird. I guess them three extra weeks will make him feel better about it,” Jazzy had said.