And he was so sweet to me. Like, all the time. Never said nothing mean, or in a mean way. And as much as he called me Nat, he also called me girl, and baby, and it all felt so natural.
We went to the movies one day and there was hardly anyone there. It was supposed to be a good story, like funny and everything, but Kane and I sat in the empty back row and just about as soon as the opening titles were done we stopped eating popcorn and candy and started making out. We were the clichéd teenagers in love. Him feeling me up and me stopping him going further. Both of us trying to be quiet, me stifling my giggling as good as I could and then him trying to convince me in a whisper it would be a good idea if I went down on him. I found this so funny that I shook in almost-silent fits of laughter until my stomach hurt. Then Kane acted all offended, moving a seat away, crossing his arms, saying ‘Whatever, girl,’ and ‘A man’s got pride,’ but also laughing because I was. Someone halfway down the theatre yelled at us to shut up, so Kane moved back beside me, and we went back to just making out, tasting salted buttered popcorn and the sweetness of M&M’s in each other’s mouths.
On school mornings, rather than walk by Kane’s locker like I used to do, I’d stand with him until the bell went for class. He wasn’t robbing houses, and he wasn’t dealing drugs. He was selling stolen car parts. He’d arrange everything at school: get addresses and take half the money from other guys at school who were buying on behalf of those wanting the parts. Then Kane and another guy would deliver the goods in the early hours of the morning and collect the rest of the money.
We got to know more about each other pretty quickly. He already knew about my sister, of course, but I told him a lot about my parents as well. Then he told me about his mom. Showed me the photos he had of her, and then told me his one memory of her. Of his mom singing, and how she kept walking past him with her arms full of stuff. He was playing with a blue truck on brown carpet. That was it. That was all he could remember of her.
I stayed close with Melissa. We got each other. It was weird to think I’d known her most my life without realizing my best friend was right there, outspoken, and kind, and funny as hell. We’d hang out, just the two of us, but I stopped spending time with her friends. I stayed friendly with them at school though. I even sat with them all at lunch sometimes, but only if Kane was busy.
I was always thinking about Kane. If I wasn’t with him my mind would be filled up with where he was, what he was doing and who he was with. I was constantly texting him, except late at night when I was asleep – but even then my phone would wake me every few hours with a text from him. The screensaver on my phone was a picture of him smiling at me as I took his photo. A photo of the side of my breast, which he’d taken so closely you couldn’t really tell it was my breast, was the screensaver on his phone.
One freezing cold fall day when the streets were full of windblown trash and Kane and I had nearly frozen walking from the bus stop to his place, I asked Kane who his best friend was. We were lying under his blankets by then, fully clothed and trying to warm up in his room, which seemed just about the same temperature as it was outside.
Kane took his time answering my question, finally saying, ‘Wayne.’
‘No, I mean, guys at school.’
‘Don’t have friends at school.’
I had been beginning to suspect that was the case, but I pushed it further.
‘You got friends out of school?’
‘Some.’
‘You never talk about them, and I haven’t met any of them.’
‘You don’t need to meet them. And you’ve met the guys at the gym.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t like me.’
Kane smiled across the pillow at me.
‘Baby, they just don’t like women in the gym period. But, it didn’t help none that you yelled down the phone to Mel the whole time you were there.’
‘I couldn’t hear her over the music.’
‘That means she shouts, not you. ’Sides, they put that music on to drown you out.’
‘Whatever,’ I said, looking up at the ceiling.
Kane moved over on top of me. I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘Baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘You grumpy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I show you something?’
My eyes flicked to his. ‘I’ve already seen it.’
He laughed.
‘This is something different.’
‘Fine, show me.’
‘You gotta be cool. ’Cause it looks permanent but it don’t have to be.’
I frowned. He was smiling, but he was also looking a bit nervous.
‘What have you done, Kane?’
He sat up, and then pulled his hoodie and his t-shirt off in one go.
Inked on his chest were intricately designed letters, the A linking the N and the T directly over his heart. NAT.
It was still healing, fresh scabs in the places where the needle had gone deep.
‘That’s my name,’ I said in disbelief.
‘You good with that?’
I looked up from his chest into the steady gaze of his eyes.
‘I can always cover over it,’ said Kane.
‘No, that’s staying forever.’
The following day we were back in his bed. This time unclothed.
Beginning with my name on his chest, I’d traced just about every tattoo on his body. At the base of his neck, Richmond, which was the street he’d lived on with his mom. Below that, an inked pattern he’d designed, which he said didn’t mean anything. It traveled across to his right shoulder, where it wrapped around the head of a nasty looking snake with huge fangs. Covering the ribs Wayne had bruised at the beginning of summer break was Da Vinci’s drawing of what Kane said was the first design of a helicopter.
‘Half a millennium ago, Nat, and he thought up a design for a helicopter. Can you even imagine?’
I had to ask him what a millennium was.
There were twenty-two tattoos on Kane’s body. I counted them. Kane said most of them had been done by his friend, Chuck, who was a tattoo artist. There were a couple on Kane’s left arm though that Chuck had let Kane use his kit to do himself. Like his tattoo of Shys’ name.
I ran my finger over each letter.
‘Who shot him?’
Kane moved his arm away, and I didn’t think he was going to answer.
‘You don’t want me to know?’ I asked.
‘Not that. No one knows who it was. Shys was just chillin’ with Bey, his brother, and some of the boys in the park. Some motherfucker pulled a gun on them.’
‘Did anyone else die?’
‘No. Bey, he took one in the arm trying to reach Shys, but he was already dead. Bey stayed with him though. Everyone else ran but Bey stayed.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Home. Wayne didn’t let me do shit by then except homework and train. And he hated Shys’ dad. Shys and me were tight. Met when we were eight, and Wayne was fine for a while but after a few years me and Shys were mostly only allowed to hang at school.’
‘Why didn’t Wayne like his dad?’
‘’Cause the nigga was evil. He dead and I still hate him.’
‘How old were you when Shys died?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Shys was eleven?’
‘Yep. Bey was fourteen.’
‘Where’s Bey now?
‘He around.’
‘You see him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did their dad die?’
‘He weren’t Bey’s dad. And he just got what was coming. The whole thing was fucked up. Their mom killed herself when some asshole at the hospital said Bey wasn’t gonna make it.’
I frowned at him.
‘From being shot in the arm?’
‘No. From Shys’ dad beating the shit out of him. He fucked Bey up real good, just about kicked his head all the way in. But Bey, he’s tough as hell.’
I took
a moment to digest this, then I said, ‘How come I haven’t met Bey?’
‘Lots of reasons,’ said Kane.
‘Like what?’
His eyes met mine and then he pulled me on to his chest.
‘I’m glad about you,’ he said.
‘What are you glad about?’
‘You. Meeting you.’
Another afternoon in bed I asked him about Wayne.
‘So, did he just get you when your mom died?’
‘No. I was put in a foster home and he took me from it. They wouldn’t give him custody of me because he’d just done a stint, and he didn’t have a job he could tell them about. But he said where I was, was a shithole. All these kids, dirty, with sores and everything, and he knew he could do better. He just took me one day when he was visiting.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Two.’
I paused, thinking maybe I shouldn’t ask, but then went ahead and asked anyway.
‘Why do you have to sleep down here and not in the house?’
‘Nat, he my uncle.’
‘So?’
‘I owe him. He didn’t have to take me, and he did.’
‘What’s that got to do with why he kicked you out?’
‘Baby, some things between me and him.’
I thought about that for a moment. ‘Okay.’
Kane sighed, pulling me closer. ‘I’ll tell you about it. But we ain’t having a discussion about it. Fact is, I stopped boosting cars last year. Wayne didn’t agree with my decision.’
‘He had you stealing cars?’
‘Didn’t have me doing it. Was just what I did. You know, helping out. Keeping me ain’t cheap, you know. Eating, fighting, traveling.’
‘You’re working now.’
‘Had to pay the rent while Wayne was away, and you know, he still ain’t got no work.’
‘Why didn’t you move back upstairs when he was in prison?’
‘If your dad kicked you out of your house, would you move back in without his say so?’
‘Even now he won’t let you back upstairs?’
‘Not if I want company.’
‘I’m the reason? You’ll freeze down here in winter.’
‘Be glad to,’ said Kane, his brown eyes looking deep into me. ‘I swear, Nat, I can’t get enough of you.’
‘I love you,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
That’s what happened to me, with him.
But another thing that happened was that now, moments spent away from him felt like torture. Being in my house, a mausoleum to my sister, and a tomb for the rest of us, it was killing me. Some nights alone in my room, I would see my old self stare back at me in my bedroom mirror; blank eyes, shadowed face, and that feeling of there just being nothing inside me. I’d have to look down at my hand and delve for the image of what it looked like when Kane held it. That was how I could remember that away from home I had something that wasn’t nothing.
I told Kane I hated, hated being at that house. He said we should find our own place. Then he looked indecisive, and I knew he was thinking about Wayne.
‘Maybe one day we could live together,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but not “maybe”. More like “soon”,’ said Kane. ‘Once I’ve finished school, and got a job, then we will.’
I smiled because the thought of it was amazing. Us living together, and eating together and sleeping in the same bed. I’d never yet had Kane fall asleep beside me.
But for now, each afternoon I had to leave him. Had to go back to that house where my rapidly aging father was diminishing in size and person; where my dead sister still occupied the bedroom beside mine. Where my mother was holed up in the darkness, and wanted nothing to do with me.
7
Kane was smart. Like, real smart. Because of his having to earn money, as well as all his K-1 training, he’d miss plenty of school, but he never got any mark below an A. He always did every required reading, every essay and every assignment, and if he missed a test he always made it up. It was pretty much known that the guys in Kane’s shop classes learnt more about cars from Kane than from their teacher. Same went for design. Kane knew computer programs his design teacher had never even heard of, and when it came to art Kane could draw just about anything.
You can tell how good a school we went to by the fact no one ever did anything about all the classes he’d miss. I guess there were just too many students with major problems at our school. Students who threw desks around; students with obvious signs of abuse on their bodies, or in their eyes. Students who weren’t able to plain read or write. There was one guy in my year who couldn’t even spell his last name. Seemed as long as Kane kept doing well in his subjects, and never caused any trouble, the school was happy to turn a blind eye whenever he missed a class or two, or six.
Unlike Kane, I went to all my classes, and was barely managing to pass any of them. I didn’t do homework. I didn’t do the required reading. Math was particularly bad. Somehow I’d managed to pass math at the end of my sophomore year, but now I was failing big time. When Kane found out he became determined to help me, but that never worked out. I didn’t want him tutoring me. If it was just the two of us, I didn’t want to be doing math – and it ended up that I could always persuade Kane away from my math homework.
Everything about Kane was new to me back then. I put him first in just about everything during those first months, but that didn’t mean I didn’t keep some of my life for myself. At least once a week I’d put Kane off and go to Melissa’s instead of his place. And if I felt Dad wasn’t doing so great I’d go straight home after school. Sometimes it was Kane who chose to sacrifice our afternoons together for the sake of his job.
He was working toward being in the chop shop rather than selling and running parts for it. That meant putting in some time for nothing and showing what he could do.
What with training, school and working through the night, Kane got to the stage where he was completely exhausted. So exhausted that sometimes he would miss all his classes and sleep half the day in the storage room of the old gym. Sometimes he was too tired to even come near me. Times like that I felt he needed to reprioritize.
But Kane being that busy made it easier for me to keep part of the new life I’d established during my ‘Lisa’ period. Of course I now turned up as Natalie, not Lisa. No knee-length skirts, button-down cardigans and ballerina shoes. My style was more short skirts or tight ripped jeans. I always layered my tops, and I always bought ones with low necklines, revealing more of my breasts than Kane was happy with me showing.
My black eyeliner was a constant. Apart from lip gloss, it was the only makeup I wore. It was nice to be me, even if on a couple of occasions Melissa looked at the length of my skirt and asked if it was my intention to look like a prostitute. It was Melissa who allowed me to stay friendly with her friends. I knew she must have been doing some work in the background on my behalf, because her friends never made me feel unwelcome around them.
By the same token they never ever asked about Kane. See, the thing was, they were in awe of him, but they didn’t want to know him. From their perspective he was bad news. I can understand it. Kane’s associates at school tended to be the guys with the worst reps. Also, this thing had happened a year earlier where a guy from our school got stabbed as he got off the bus in the city. Someone, who probably wasn’t even there, had said Kane did it, which immediately went around the school and everywhere else. So the police went round to Kane’s, but he wasn’t there because he was out of town that week for a K-1 tournament, which immediately put him in the clear. The thing was, the guy who got stabbed, Stephen, he died. And even though the cops ended up charging the guy Stephen was running drugs for, Kane got tainted by the whole thing. I mean, Kane never even carried a knife. It wasn’t his style. I remember him saying he could take out anyone holding a knife – there was only a chance he might get cut once on the leg or the arm
. The other thing he said was that if he pulled a knife on anyone he knew, he was just about guaranteed that they in turn would pull a gun on him.
One day, Kane wanted to meet up at lunch. We hadn’t seen each other the afternoon before, and he was going straight to training after his design class because he had a big fight coming up.
We were on our way to the storage room, and were just about to head past the stands, when someone called out to Kane. Seeing who it was, Kane said to me, ‘I gotta have a word with these niggas.’
Dropping his arm from around my shoulder, he walked off toward a group of guys I didn’t know.
I should have waited for him. But I didn’t want to be the clingy girlfriend hanging around in the background while her boyfriend took care of business. So I left him talking, knowing he’d catch me up.
Rounding the side of the old gym, I walked right into the middle of a group of boys. Freshmen. I could smell the dope they were smoking. One of them immediately closed the gap between him and me.
‘Damn, girl!’ he said, looking me up and down. His gaze came to a standstill on my breasts.
He was skinny and small, and apart from the fact his face was covered in acne, he didn’t look old enough to be at high school. He also looked unstable and dangerous. The pupils in his bloodshot eyes were so big you could see more black than brown.
He turned to his friends, then back to me; looked me up and down again and then reached out a hand to touch my waist. I preempted his movement, and took a step back. Then I kept taking steps back, putting as much distance between him and me as possible.
He followed me, though. This time, he managed to put his hands on me. I was nearly overwhelmed by the smell that hit me. He stunk. He stunk so bad I had to fight the impulse to retch.
‘Don’t leave me, girl?’ he said as I turned my face away from the stench of his breath hitting my face. ‘Damn, you is fine! I know you like me calling you fine. What else you like to be called?’
After Nothing Page 5