Knockout Games

by G. Neri

  Finally, a man stood up with a card in his hand. He introduced himself as Joe’s brother. “Joe asked me to read this. He thanks you for all your support and prayers, and says that if Alice was able to talk to us today, she would forgive those who did her wrong.”

  A murmur ran through the crowd.

  “Joe admits that although he had the right intentions, perhaps his own pride helped spur on those who ended his beloved’s life. For that, he is sorry.” The brother cleared his throat. “But Alice would still feel the need to reach out and help all of those kids because that is what she did her whole life: help kids. Her students were everything to her. She never judged them and always gave them the benefit of the doubt because she believed there was good in all of them, no matter how troubled they were. And now, she’d ask all of you to be open to the possibility of forgiveness too. Thank you.”

  I wish I could feel that about myself.

  As they lowered the coffin into the ground, one by one, people rose, grabbed some dirt from the pile, and dropped it gently into her grave. I started walking.

  “Where’re you going?” whispered Destiny.

  I didn’t answer her. I just kept moving until I was standing in a line of about ten people, each moving slowly toward the grave. I grabbed a handful of dirt from the pile. As I moved closer, I knew that dirt would be the dirt that buried her forever.

  When it was my turn, I stopped short of the edge of her grave. I’d never seen a coffin up close before. My hand began shaking; my legs weakened. Suddenly, it felt like the grave was sinking deeper into the earth, sucking me in too.

  A hand grabbed my arm.

  Joe.

  Seeing him up close was shocking. One eye was really swollen and bloodshot. The bruises on his face and his broken jaw made him look like he was wearing a Halloween mask.

  He grunted, guiding my hand over the grave. I dropped the dirt. It landed with a soft thud on her coffin.

  He was unsteady, but he was staring at me intensely.

  I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to tell him it shouldn’t have happened. I wanted to ask for his forgiveness.

  But my mouth went dry.

  His brother came up and took his other arm, guiding him back to his seat. “Come on, Joe, you need to sit.”

  He let go of my arm and moved slowly back to his seat. But he kept staring at me as if he knew something.

  39

  Afterward, Destiny walked me home, where we ended up shivering in front of my house. “I still can’t believe you live here.”

  “It was cheap, what can I say?” I said.

  She looked around at the empty lots surrounding our house. “You gonna be OK?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I just have to wait things out, I guess.”

  “And hope things don’t get worse.”

  I laughed, but she wasn’t joking. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” she said, hesitating. “It’s just things haven’t exactly gone your way lately.” She didn’t know the worst of it.

  Destiny kicked at the sidewalk. “I kind of worry for you is all.”

  “I worry for me,” I added, wondering where she was going with this.

  She had something else on her mind. “What if . . . things go bad at the trial?” she asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Um,” she cleared her throat. “Like what if . . . Kalvin and them . . . get off?”

  I didn’t want to think about that. “Did you hear something?”

  “It’s just that it kinda . . . happened before.”

  This was news to me. “When?”

  She kicked at a rock in the dirt until it skittered across the sidewalk into the tall grass. “Why do you think they’re so hot for Kalvin?” she asked. “Three years ago, there was a knockout where some old guy ended up in a coma. Rodney Graves happened to be the one who found him. He had just passed this group of kids who did it. When he was waiting for the ambulance, he noticed a girl watching from her stoop. She had seen the whole thing; she knew those kids too. Graves convinced her to be a witness. Checked up on her every day to make sure she was still willing to do it. It was an open-and-shut case. This was back when my brother was king.”

  Heavy. “Is that how come he ended up in juvie?”

  She laughed bitterly. “No. An hour before the trial, the girl disappeared. The boys had gotten to her, convinced her to not testify. Kalvin . . . made me hide her at Prince’s cousin’s house till the judge had to finally throw out the case, a mistrial. Everyone got off, made a big show of it. People were pissed.”

  “So how’d they get your brother, then?”

  “’Cause he was an idiot. Thought he was invincible. He hit a reporter who asked the wrong question, right outside the courthouse! In front of everybody!”

  “And that’s how Kalvin took over?”

  “Yep.”

  She kept kicking at the ground. “They’re not going to take any chances this time.”

  “Who? Kalvin?”

  “No, the city. If they’re not 100 percent convinced you can win the case for them, they will drop you and walk away. They can’t afford to be embarrassed again.”

  “And why didn’t you bring this up before I agreed to testify?” She gave me the stink eye. “Um, because you ran away?” Right.

  Dad was drinking coffee and working at the kitchen table when I walked in.

  “The police raided the school today,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Graves called me. Quite a list of charges they had. Assault, collusion, witness intimidation, second-degree murder.”

  I’d never get used to hearing that word murder. “How did they know Kalvin intimidated me?”

  Dad studied me for a moment. “Not you. Joe Lee.”

  “What?”

  “Online stuff. Plus making threatening calls and leaving messages in his mailbox. Stupid stuff.”

  I thought of Joe sitting by his wife’s grave. The man had no recollection of the attack, but still, they had to make sure he got the message.

  “So what do we do now?”

  Dad collected his papers and put them in his briefcase.

  “Now we wait.”

  We were told it’d take two months for it to go to trial. The prosecutor was hoping a few of the younger ones would turn on Kalvin, after spending some time in a cell. There was very little evidence, I guess, so the case seemed to rest with me. They needed more, but no one else was coming forward. Even Joe was hesitant to say anything, because his memories were playing tricks with his head.

  Meanwhile, life went back to normal, except all I had was time to think about what I was doing. Graves checked in with us every few days, making sure that I wasn’t getting cold feet. He’d just drop by, as he was always out patrolling the neighborhoods, looking for certain kids before they got too deep into their criminal ways. He always brought us something: donuts, candy. And he always had the same message: “You’re doing the right thing.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  40

  Graves wasn’t the only one counting days and checking in. I finally looked up online how long you could go without a period and not be preggers. Ten days.

  Today was the tenth day.

  I called Destiny. She knew it was important because I was calling, not texting.

  “I haven’t gotten my period yet,” I told her.

  She knew what that meant. “Are you late?”

  “A little....”

  She thought about it. “You been under a lot of stress. That can fuck with your insides.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If you’re worried, we can find out. If you want to.”

  I swallowed hard. I had pushed this out of my head long enough. But now it came roaring back in.

  She was not one to bullshit me. “Come on, no use adding extra worry to that head of yours. The last thing you need is to be Kalvin’s Baby Mama.”

  She took me to a drugstore where we headed for the home-pregna
ncy-test section. She scanned the selection and picked one in a blue box.

  “You seem to know what to look for,” I said.

  She gave me a glance that said it wasn’t her first time in this aisle.

  “Come on.” She led me back to the bathrooms.

  “Aren’t we gonna pay for it?” I asked.

  “You don’t think you been paying for this yet?”

  She came in with me and locked the door.

  “How come we always end up in the bathroom together?” I asked.

  “’Cause you always fucking up,” she answered without thinking. She tore open the box and pulled out a plastic thermometer-looking thing and held it up to the light. “I didn’t mean that....”

  I took it from her. “I know.” I looked at the “thermometer.” Two options: pregnant and not pregnant.

  “You gotta know,” she said, seeing my hesitation. “You don’t wanna be carrying around his seed in you.”

  “Nice way of putting it.”

  “Just—”

  “I’m gonna do it,” I said. “Fuck . . .” I stuck the thing in my mouth.

  She just looked at me like a child and pulled it out of my mouth. “You pee on it, idiot.” She handed it back to me.

  I knew that.

  I waited for her to leave, but she stayed put. “You just gonna stand there?”

  She sighed and turned around. “You ain’t got anything I don’t.”

  I sat and waited for the pee to come. “What if—”

  “There is no what if. There’s only what is. But either way, there’s options.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I thought back to that night on the roof. It felt like forever ago, but everything changed in three weeks. I remember staring up at the moon with him. This was not where I expected to be.

  Destiny stood there waiting for that plastic thing to reveal the truth. I saw her eyes straining for the answer.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Hold on . . . it’s coming.”

  I couldn’t take it. “Tell me!”

  Her face was all tense and then . . . she dropped it and took two steps toward me and wrapped her arms around me tight.

  I looked down at the thing on the ground.

  Not pregnant.

  The next day, I got my period.

  41

  Christmas happened, but I can’t say it was merry. We did our best to have a normal family holiday, with the gifts and the tree. It even snowed for about twenty minutes, but soon that turned to brown mush.

  For a present, Dad got me some fancy drawing paper and new pens, hoping maybe I’d take up drawing again—like that would cheer me up.

  As soon as I could, I’d donate it all to the new art teacher.

  My phone vibrated with a blocked ID. I answered anyway.

  The operator said there was a collect call and then I heard this tiny voice say, “It’s me. Tyreese.” An image of him curled up under his bed in that cell flashed in my mind.

  The operator asked if I’d accept the charges, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He’d just make me cry, and I was tired of crying.

  “Sorry, wrong number.”

  Shortly after, I received an e-mail from Destiny. I guess it was too personal to text.

  She’d talked to Tyreese. He told her how hard it was in juvie. Fights broke out all the time. The juvenile authorities kept trying to get him to turn against Kalvin. But Kalvin was there too, waiting to be transferred to an adult facility, so that made it impossible. He was sure Kalvin was out to get him in his sleep or something.

  Kalvin kept telling Tyreese that in Missouri, a twelve-year-old could be tried as an adult for murder (it was true; I Googled it). Tyreese was begging Destiny to help him. He promised he was done with the TKO Club, done with fighting. He said he couldn’t stop thinking of Mrs. Lee—it had been an accident; he just wanted to knock her out, not kill her. He was scared, scared that Kalvin would do something if he said any more.

  After that, I saw Destiny less. Seeing her made me think of Kalvin, which made me think of Tyreese. Instead, I tortured myself by watching all those movies we never finished with Kalvin—A Clockwork Orange, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde. Now I knew why we never saw the endings: things ended badly for the “heroes”—all winding up dead or in prison or brain damaged. Now suddenly, I could see the movies for what they were: tragedies.

  I guess the joke was on us.

  A couple days before New Year’s, I was walking home from the market when I saw Joe Lee struggling to carry his shopping bags. He no longer had a walker or the neck brace. But his arm was wrapped in a sling and he limped so badly, he needed a cane. It was a fight just to carry his three plastic bags.

  It was cold and a little icy. I was going to walk away before he saw me, but after watching him struggle for a few seconds and seeing nobody was offering to help, I found myself next to him.

  “Do you need some help?” I asked.

  He had two bags on the ground and was leaning against a light pole, resting. “No thanks. I’ll manage.”

  “Really?” I said.

  He laughed at that. “No. I just . . . doctor won’t let me drive yet and my brother couldn’t make it and you know . . . gotta eat!”

  I looked around for a taxi or a bus he could take home. “Well, don’t they have one of those dial-a-ride things?”

  “That’s for old people. I’m not old.”

  “But you’re—” I was going to say disabled, but he grunted. “So . . . how far are you going, then?”

  “Oh, not far. Maybe five blocks or so—”

  That’s when he looked at me for the first time. “Do I know you?”

  My shoulders tensed up, my feet itching to run. But I held my ground. “No. But I know you. I . . . came to your wife’s funeral?”

  “I remember you.” His hand reached out for my arm. I had that same panicked feeling as when he was lying on the ground and grabbed my leg. My hand turned into a fist. I was shocked to feel my body ready to hit him to get away. His hand gently held my fist as he used me to help regain his balance. “You came to say good-bye.”

  I relaxed my fist. “Yeah. She was my teacher.”

  He looked into my eyes. “She had that effect on you young people. They flocked to her. . . .” he paused, struggling to remember.

  “I’m sorry,” I said so quietly, I don’t think he heard me.

  “I still don’t get much sleep,” he said. “Nightmares. They keep you awake.”

  “Do you remember much?” I blurted out. I don’t know why. Did I want to know if he remembered me at the scene? “I mean, it’s not my business.”

  He glanced up. “No. Nothing. They even showed me a surveillance tape and it was like watching two actors in our place.” His gaze fell to the ground. “I am grateful that my last memory of that day is of her, in the library. Her smile. That’s what I remember.” He choked back the thought. “But I regret getting so caught up in my cause that I forced their hand. Some of the things I said . . . stupid. I should have just—”

  “No, you were right,” I said. “It was right to stand up.”

  He went silent, lost in his own head. I needed to tell him. “I was there,” I said suddenly. “When it happened.”

  He seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

  I caught my breath. “I . . . saw it happen.”

  I could see all kinds of thoughts racing around his brain. “You saw it?”

  “I—”

  He moved toward me. “You saw them? You know who they are?” He was getting manic. “Did you tell the police?” He was only a foot away now. I could smell his desperation.

  I nodded slowly.

  Then his eyes went wide. “You’re the one who identified them?”

  I nodded again, unsure.

  He wrapped his arms around me and started crying. “Thank you, thank you . . .” he kept saying, rocking me back and forth. “You will help keep these boys off the streets so th
at it doesn’t happen again. And then we can start the healing process, help bring them back from the ignorance that’s set in their minds—”

  “No!” I said. “No, I—it wasn’t like that—”

  I pushed myself away from him. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  “It wasn’t like . . . that,” I said again.

  “What do you mean?”

  I was one of them.

  I started to back away and he just stared at me, confused.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  It was my fault.

  “Where are you going?”

  Suddenly, I couldn’t face him anymore. I turned and walked away quickly.

  “Don’t leave!” he shouted.

  People in the parking lot had their eyes on me. I didn’t want to face any of them.

  “Hey!”

  I ran. Hard and fast. I slipped and fell, scraping my knee.

  “Wait!”

  But I got up and kept going until I couldn’t hear him anymore.

  42

  I don’t know how I made it home. I was shaking badly when I stumbled through the front door into Dad’s bags.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Are you leaving?”

  He seemed distracted. “I have some work I have to attend to back in Little Rock. I’ll be going back and forth until the trial.” He gestured toward the couch. A woman in a suit was sitting there. “This is Ms. Hallstrom. Remember, she’s the one from the family court? You do what she says and you’ll be OK.”

  “Where is Mr. Graves?” I asked.

  “I’ll be handling your case from now on,” she said, slightly dismissing her partner.

  Great. The last thing I needed was another handler. I was still trembling when I shook the woman’s hand. Hers was dry and steady.

  “Erica. We have a little problem we need to clear up.”

  We sat. She took out her iPad. “There’s this video—”

  I knew what she was talking about. Metal Detector Man.

  “Now’s not a good time.”

  Dad was in a bad mood. “Erica, I need to get back. If there’s a problem, we need to deal with it while I’m here.”