Maybe I’d live to be a hundred. And if I did, I wouldn’t forget that smile. Her green eyes—that were her white mama’s green eyes and maybe her mama’s mama’s green eyes—got bright and sad. When the tears started coming, she didn’t wipe them away.
“These two years,” she said to me and Neeka. “They was all part of the Big Purpose, you know. We ain’t never gonna even try to forget each other. And when we grown and back together again, or when we’re all old sitting in rocking chairs somewhere, we gonna remember everything. Every single inch and day and hour and minute and piece of us together now.”
“You think we’re gonna remember all of it, D?” I asked.
D didn’t say anything. Just hugged me and Neeka again and headed back over to her mama. Her mama put her arm around D’s shoulder and D grabbed her mama’s hand. Only then did she turn around and nod.
“Yeah, girl,” she said. “Everything.”
Then me and Neeka watched them walk down the street.
“You better call us!” Neeka yelled. “You better write us and stuff.”
“You know I will,” D yelled back. “Three the Hard Way.”
“Three the Hard Way,” me and Neeka said back to her. Then Desiree and her mama turned the corner and walked on out of our lives.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jayjones’ first college scholarship offer came from a small school in Maryland. And by the end of the week, letters were coming from everywhere—including Georgetown, where, according to Jayjones, Patrick Ewing had played. I didn’t know Patrick Ewing from a can of paint, but Jayjones seemed to think he was something real special because he grabbed Neeka and spun her around their house like he’d lost the very last bit of his mind. Then he picked up Miss Irene and each one of the twins and even Tash. When he went to pick up his daddy, his daddy got there first, picked Jayjones up and spun him around. The whole house was dancing around and laughing and making all kinds of noise.
“Start deciding where y’all want to live,” Jayjones said. “The way I figure it, in four and half years, we’re gonna be moving in!”
Miss Irene invited Mama and some people from church. Tash invited some of his girls from the river and we had a small party that night. Miss Irene had gotten Tash a keyboard as a welcome home present, and when he plugged it in and started moving his fingers over the keys, it was like no time had passed since he was sitting at church making the women dab at their eyes.
Me and Neeka stood beside him.
“Sing ‘By and By,’” Tash said.
“Too churchy,” Neeka said, turning up her lip.
“You need some ‘churchy,’” Tash said, swatting her on the butt. So me and Neeka sang it, and somewhere over the summer, our voices had changed a little bit and grown closer to each other. Her low and my somewhere in between sounded like one voice with a whole lot of different things happening inside it. As we sang, I looked out at everyone and saw my own mama dabbing at her eyes.
“By and by, when the morning comes, You know all saints are bound to come on home . . . We will tell the story of how we’ve overcome and we’ll understand it better by and by. Yes, we’ll understand it better by and by . . .”
Neeka’s voice went down low and I followed up high. We looked at each other and smiled as we sang that song, watching to see where we’d take each other. We had a harmony going, a sad, new familiar harmony that was figuring itself out. Maybe that was ourBig Purpose—to figure ourselves on out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We got through the first week of school with Miss Irene still taking us and being right there at the end of the day to bring me and Neeka home. I guess since there was other kids getting picked up by their mamas and babysitters and big sisters and brothers and stuff, we didn’t look all that strange, but it felt lame. Here we were, already teenagers, and every day, rain, shine or whatever, there was Miss Irene, standing there outside our school.
“Just keeping you safe,” Mama said when I asked her how come me and Neeka couldn’t just get home on our own. I’d asked the question a lot over the years and each time we had the same old tired dialogue.
“Safe from what? Ain’t nothing out there—” Mama shot me a look. “There isn’t anything out there trying to get us, Ma! This is Queens. Nobody trying to mess with nobody from Queens. They too busy messing with people in Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx. Nobody wants to take two trains and a bus to get out here and bother our sorry behinds.”
“Because Miss Irene’s there waiting for them if they do,” Mama said.
I folded my arms. It was Friday evening and Neeka was at church with her family. And D was gone. Wasn’t nothing to do but stand and argue with Mama and I wasn’t even trying to waste all my breath on that.
“Y’all act like me and Neeka babies.”
Mama was standing at the bathroom mirror, plucking her eyebrows. She didn’t even blink or turn and look at me.
“Oh, you’re acting like a real grown-up right about now, aren’t you?” she said. Then went back to plucking.
I turned and headed for the door.
“I’m going to the stairs,” I said, letting the door slam hard behind me.
It had rained all day and now the air felt muggy. But the stairs were dry, so I sat down and stared out over the street. A few doors away, some dads were sitting at a table playing dominoes. I could smell their cigar smoke. The dominoes made a hard sound when they hit the table and every once in a while one of the men laughed.
Can’t touch that, I heard one of them say.
I saw Tash walking up the street. When he got to the men’s table, he stopped and said hi to a few of them. I could see one of them get up and give him a hug. Two of the other men made faces at each other. As he walked away, I heard one of them say, Glad you home, Tash. The two men who had made the face leaned in to each other, said something, then laughed. And something about their laughter, the hollow way it echoed down the block, the way Tash tried to walk a little straighter and taller away from it, made me take some small breaths and press my fingernails into my hands to keep from feeling the sadness that filled me up.
“How come you ain’t at church?” I said when Tash was close up on me. I wanted to drown out the sound of the laughter behind him, wanted him to forget that men who could laugh at you like that lived so close.
He jumped a little.
“Girl, you trying to scare me half to death. What are you doing sitting out in this darkness by yourself ?”
Tash was wearing a light green silky-looking shirt. The top two buttons were open and I could see his skinny chest muscles. He’d gotten his hair twisted and the locks were done up in a crown on top of his head. He looked beautiful—not like a beautiful woman. He looked like a beautiful man—like something you wanted to run your hand over and stare at for a long time.
“You looking good, Tash.”
Tash rolled his eyes at me. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m alone because your mama took my girl to church. How come you ain’t there playing the piano?”
Tash waved his hand at me and sat on the bottom step.
“Because it’s Friday night and this sister is going out to get her club on! When have you ever known me to step up in church on a Friday night? Shoot. If you see my fingers flying over the keys, the only thing you can be sure of is that it’s Sunday!”
I smiled.
“Y’all hear anything from your friend?”
“Nah.”
I looked back off down the street. The men were all laughing now and I could see one slap another on the back.
“I know you and Neeka be missing her like crazy.”
I shrugged.
“She says she’s gonna write us or call when everything settles down. I figure it ain’t quite all settled yet.”
“As they say up in church—Well . . . !”
I smiled. Me and Tash sat real quiet for a few minutes. He looked at his watch, then leaned back on the stair and worked the cuff o
f his shirt for a bit.
“Tash?”
“Yeah, baby,” Tash said, not looking up at me. He’d moved on to the other cuff. When he’d folded them both up just right, he looked at me.
“You ever think about what happened to Randall?”
“No. I know what happened to Mr. Randall. I wouldn’t be home if it wasn’t for him.”
I frowned. “Come again?”
Tash lifted one of his eyebrows and smiled.
“Neeka ain’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Mr. Randall’s the reason I got my appeal finally. He got his mind back down in them Georgia hills and let the authorities know it was just some more of that gay-bashing bull that got us all tore up. My stupidity was believing that Sly was trying to get with me. And the stuff that happened at Rikers, they already knew that was self-defense.” Tash gave me a fierce look. “I hope you and Neeka ain’t trying to mess with any of these wannabe gangstas out here, because it’s no good. I’m not trying to be your mama or nothing, I’m just keeping it real.”
“Ain’t no real gangstas in this neighborhood.”
“That’s why I said ‘wannabe.’ Those the worse kind. Try harder than the real ones.”
“If Mr. Randall would’ve died,” I said slowly, “you would still be in jail.”
“Girl, don’t even try to go there. I seen enough jail for two lifetimes.”
“You ever see Sly? After that night in Randall’s house?”
Tash shook his head. “They weren’t trying to put us in the same jail. They knew if they did, only one of us would be walking out alive.”
“Which one?” I said. Even though I already knew.
“The one you talking to, Miss Honey. The one you are talk-ing to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Saturday night, Jayjones came running down the street with the news—Tupac got shot again. Four times in the chest by a drive-by in a Cadillac. Critical condition. Some hospital in Las Vegas.
All day Sunday, me and Neeka sat on my bed listening to the radio station, listening to the news.
Surgery.
A lung removed.
We leaned in close to the radio, waiting for more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Early Monday morning, the phone rang. I heard Mama walking slow toward it. I heard her call my name. Then I heard D. I heard Desiree saying real soft and real sad, Hey girl. Our boy ain’t gonna make it.
And it didn’t matter that all those weeks had passed and D had come and gone again. Didn’t matter that she’d never told us about her real name or her white mama. It was our girl. It was D. Across all those miles and all that time. It was D up in my ear, all regular, all familiar.
“Girl,” I said. “Where the frick-frack you been?”
And then I could feel D smiling.
“It’s all complicated with my moms,” she said. “But she’s trying and I’m trying and I’m up here in these crazy mountains with a phone that don’t have no long distance! And every day’s like a battle just to get through.”
I leaned back against the wall in the kitchen and listened to D’s voice. I tried to picture her up there in those mountains, wearing a ton of layers and still freezing. Walking the streets with her mama. Roaming.
“Me and Neeka be missing you crazy, girl.”
“You were supposed to find another person to hold that rope,” D said, trying to sound all serious.
I sucked my teeth. “None of these double-handed sisters know how to hold a rope like you.”
“I hear that.”
“You really think he’s gonna die, D.”
D got real quiet. Then I heard her say Yeah,her voice all shaky and high.
“Me too,” I said.
“My moms says people die to make room for other people. She’s all up into crystals and afterlife and meditating—that kind of crazy-ass stuff.”
I stared out the window. The rain was still coming down and the sky was dark gray and hard-looking. It looked like it was mad at the whole world.
I remembered when my moms said the same thing. I was little then—trying to understand why the two goldfish I’d only had for a week were floating at the top of their bowl. My moms said they’d left this world to make room for other fish. Maybe all mothers learned the same way of talking about dying to their kids.
“You believe her?”
“I guess I do. I hope I do. That would be cool, you know. Then you don’t have to be sad—you could just sit around thinking about who’s gonna come next. You know if they following Tupac they gotta be bad-ass.”
I smiled.
“My moms says you can see where they’re going—the people who die. You can meditate and, I don’t know, follow them or something.”
“That sounds really, really crazy.”
D laughed.
“You telling me?! I know my moms is like three fries short of a Happy Meal, but she my moms, so I take what I get.”
My mother hollered at me to get off the phone and start getting ready for school.
I told D I had to go.
“You gonna call again? Or you got a number I can call you?”
D gave me the number.
“It works most of the time,” she said. “But they be stressing you if you don’t pay the bill on time and my moms isn’t good about that stuff. So if it don’t work, just keep trying. She don’t let it stay cut off toolong.”
“You called Neeka?”
“Ching-ching. This call is costing me crazy. I got a ten-dollar phone card and I’m sure this call ate it all up! Tell her I thought she’d be at your house where it’s quiet.”
I laughed. “You better come home soon, D.”
A moment passed. And then D said real soft, You know I will.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
On Friday the thirteenth—Tupac died.
In the morning, the sun was out. By noon, the rain started coming down. And just kept on coming.
Me and Neeka sat on the stairs letting ourselves get wet. We must’ve looked like fools, two girls in rain jackets, our hair all stuck to our heads, ourselves shivering. Maybe we wanted the rain to wash the shock and hurt and confusion away.
Maybe we wanted to go upstairs, dry off and believe Tupac hadn’t really died.
When we dialed D’s number that night, the phone just rang and rang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Winter came and Jayjones went off to visit Georgetown. When he came back a few days later, he was wearing Georgetown everything—sweatshirt, cap, even his socks said Georgetown. His grin wide. His basketball spinning on the tip of his pointer. When the ball stopped spinning, he looked around—at me and Neeka sitting on the stairs, wearing the caps he’d brought home for us.
At Tash, across the street, leaning out Miss Irene’s window, a pillow on the sill.
At Neeka’s sisters playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.
At Albert, his hands in his pockets, leaning against the stair railing, staring off quietly down the street.
At Emmett, standing near him, trading comic books with his friends.
At my mama, coming down the street, a shopping bag in her hand, saying, How you doing?to the people she walked past.
Jayjones held the ball in the crook of his arm. Then he spun it again. Slower, though. And this time, he looked sadder as he watched it turn. Maybe he was already halfway away from all of us. Maybe, inside his own head, he was already shooting baskets and scoring high for Georgetown. Maybe the frown that was between his eyes now was about remembering the summer before and the summer before that when people weren’t dying or moving away or losing some big part of themselves.
He bounced the ball once, real hard. Then stuck it back under his arm and headed across the street and on into his house.
“He thinks just because some tired school wants him that he’s all that now,” Neeka said. “He better remember Tuesday is stillhis day to do dishes!”
I put my arm around Neeka’s should
er and pulled her closer to me.
“You are a true-blue nut, Neeka.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m your girl anyway.”
“True that,” I said. “True that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was hard to read anything about Tupac dying and not think about D. Seems D was right—you listen to Tupac’s songs and you know he’s singing about people like D, about all the kids whose mamas went away, about all the injustice. Brenda throwing away her baby, the cops beating some brother down, the hungry kids, sad kids, kids who got big dreams nobody’s listening to. Like over all that time and distance he looked right across the bridge into Queens, New York—right into Desiree’s eyes. Strange how he saw her.
He sawher.
Some people say Tupac ain’t really dead, that he’s on some Caribbean island someplace far away from people wanting to shoot him up all the time. And I guess, maybe, I’d do the same thing, I don’t know. I mean, how many times can you get shot and get lucky, and be A Miracle like he was?
Jayjones said, “I bet my boy’s still somewhere writing songs.”
Says he thinks Tupac faked his own death to get away from all that drama.
I don’t know. Most days I’m still trying to figure it all out. I call D’s number and the phone still rings and rings. I check the mailbox and there’s never any letter from her. And a part of me gets real sad with the missing of her.
But some mornings, I look out my window and see the sun coming up all crazy orange and gold behind the houses across the street. And sitting there watching it, I have to start smiling. It’s hard not to get to hoping that maybe hey’re together ... finally . . . somewhere. Finally meeting each other. Across the miles. Across the years. All the dramaand chaosof their lives dropping away.
D and Tupac. Tupac and D. Walking along some beautiful beach like they be having in the videos. Tupac all dressed in white, his shirt open and blowing in the wind, his beautiful brown chest soaking in all that sun. His sad eyes finally laughing. And D with her hair blowing, her green eyes brighter than anything. Her sweet half smile . . . finally whole.
After Tupac & D Foster Page 9