“Come in.”
And just as he thought, it was his father. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “They’re looking good, man,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“So, we need to talk.” Miles sighed, but his sigh was cut short by his father’s next words. “About tomorrow. I just wanted to check in with you, make sure you were still up for it. If you’re not, that’s totally fine.”
“For the prison? Yeah, I’m up for it.” Miles, relieved, set his shoe down. “You still up for it?”
Now Miles’s father sighed. “Yeah.” He came over to the bed, took a seat. “Let’s just make sure that we’re good with whatever happens. In case we find out he’s not who we think he is. Or if he says something upsetting. Prison, it…does things to you. Trust me, I know.” Miles could hear the discomfort in his father’s voice, could hear his throat drying. But Miles didn’t respond. Just looked at his dad and nodded. His father slapped his hands on his own thighs and rocked up from the bed. “Okay, that’s all I wanted to say.” He leaned down and kissed Miles on the forehead. “Good night.”
As he opened the door, he turned back. “Oh, and thanks for the pizza.” A sly grin wiped across his mug. “Though an anchovy or two would’ve been nice.”
With the weight of the day heavy on Miles, sleep slipped into his room as his father slipped out. It wasn’t long before Miles was overcome by it—dream state—and when it happened, it happened seamlessly. Miles didn’t remember lying down, or snuggling in. Just sitting on his bed, then suddenly, as if in a blink, sitting on a couch. A leather couch. But not in his house. That house. The one Miles had never been to, but knew so well. The small window of his room, now palatial with off-white linen curtains snatched closed. His bare feet on mosaic tile floors. The smell of dirt, and wet, and tobacco smoke. Strands of cat hair floated through the air like tiny spirits.
“You know the issue I have with you, Miles?” The voice came from the seat beside him. He hadn’t noticed anyone sitting there, despite how large the chair was. It was Mr. Chamberlain. All yellow and flimsy-skinned. All mustache and chapped lips. He sat with his hands together, his nails bitten down to the cuticles. “It’s your arrogance. You believe that you can really save people. That you can do good. Superpowers don’t belong to branches that come from a tree like yours. Because your tree is rotten at the roots. You, my man, are meant to be chopped down.”
Miles couldn’t speak. It was like his tongue had been cut from his mouth. In a panic, he slid to the far end of the couch, the leather grunting with each inch. Just then, a white cat pounced onto the backrest. Miles looked at it. Then back at Mr. Chamberlain, who had now become an even more ghostly figure. Long white hair hanging from his chin. Sharpened nose. Teeth like grilled corn kernels. “Spider-Man.” The man spoke, his voice haunting, his smile disgusting. “You don’t know me, but I know you. And I will come for you.”
“You don’t know me. I know you!” Miles’s father yelled playfully down the hallway. Miles woke up, his heart beating like a wild animal trying to break free from his chest. “If you come, Rio, Miles is gonna come home with cuts in his eyebrows and parts all over the place.”
“Ha! Jeff, this ain’t the nineties. Kids aren’t getting cuts in their eyebrows anymore.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, you would let the boy do whatever he wanted.”
“Well, that’s because it’s his hair, papi.”
“Yes, I know.” Knock, knock, knock. “Miles, get up, man! We need to get you a haircut before we head up to the jail.” Miles’s father continued down the hall. “Yes, baby, I know. But he goes to that school, and I just don’t want them saying nothing crazy about our boy. Let’s just keep it clean until summer. Then I don’t care if he shaves his eyebrows off!”
“Why you keep talking about eyebrows?”
Good morning, Miles said to himself, his hands covering his face as his eyes adjusted to the sun pouring in through his window. But one eye wouldn’t open. He rubbed it and rubbed it until it watered, but the tears still didn’t flush out whatever it was. He went to the bathroom; using two fingers to pull the skin around his eye in either direction, he used his other hand to pick out whatever was in his eye. He held it up in front of the mirror. A long white hair.
Which led to a long hot shower.
But not long enough before his mother was banging on the bathroom door.
“Miles, we have to pay for that hot water!” And “Miles, your father’s getting impatient, and you know what that means!”
That meant that Miles’s father would eat Miles’s breakfast. Just out of spite.
Eventually, Miles shook off the strange nightmare, finished scalding his skin, got dressed, scarfed down breakfast—eggs and microwaved waffles—kissed his mother, watched his father kiss his mother, then set out on Saturday Mission #1: The Barbershop.
“Listen to what I’m saying to you.”
“No, you listen to what I’m saying to you. I been comin’ here since I was a kid, and now you got me paying thirty dollars for a daggone cut, House? A number one with a shave? Thirty dollars?”
“Well, that’s fifteen for a cut, fifteen for a shave. Ten for kids. And eight for geniuses.” House nodded at Miles.
“Uh-huh. Robbery.” The complainer groaned.
“Robbery? You know what, y’all jokers kill me. Michael Jordan says, today I’ve decided to charge three hundred smackers for my sneakers, and y’all don’t never have a problem buying those spaceships for shoes. Out here looking like your feet are in the future and the rest of your dusty butt is still in the hood. But the one minute”—House, the owner of House’s Cut House, put a finger in the air—“the one minute I raise the price on haircuts, everybody whinin’ and cryin’. Not to mention, ain’t nobody getting their butts whipped over a fresh fade.”
He was cutting the hair of a man dressed in construction clothes—dirty jeans and clay-caked boots. He ran the clippers over his head, hair rolling off in clumps, snowflaking to the floor.
“Look, I just feel like there’s gotta be a loyalty discount.” The man barking about the prices was sitting next to Miles and his father. He looked like one of those guys who was pushing fifty but played pick-up basketball with hack-boxes like Benji and Mucus Man every weekend to keep him young.
“Loyalty?” House turned the clippers off and pointed them at the man. “You don’t know nothin’ ’bout loyalty. If I don’t charge you what I do, then I can’t make the rent on this place. Are you gon’ call me and invite me over to your dee-lux apartment in the sky for me to touch up your hairline and shave your face? You suckers talk all this trash like New York City ain’t the new Disney World, and when was the last time Mickey Mouse offered you a free pass into that castle thing or whatever the hell they got down there? Huh? Never!”
“Man, just hurry up so the rest of us can get cut. Always talkin’.”
“Oh, you gon’ get cut, alright. Keep yappin’. Plus, you know the deal—you either wait or skate. You after Shorty Forty over there, anyway.” House was talking about Miles. “Y’all know why I call him that, because he always gets a four-point-oh. One of the smartest people in the whole hood, and definitely the smartest in this barbershop.”
Mr. Frankie, whose jeans were covered in paint splotches, was playing chess with Derrick, one of the younger barbers who didn’t have any clients at this point in the day. He usually cut the little kids’ hair because he knew how to do a funny helium-toned voice that always made them stop crying, and they didn’t start coming in until around eleven. Ms. Shine was also in there. She had a mini bush and always came to House to get it trimmed down.
“My Cyrus was a four-point-oh student back in the day. The biggest nerd y’all ever wanted to meet,” Ms. Shine said, a shaky sweetness to her voice. “Let that be a lesson to you, Miles—leave that dope alone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Miles answered. Ms. Shine nodded and pinched her lips.
“Where’s old Cyrus the
se days?” House asked. “Ain’t seen him.”
Ms. Shine stared blankly. “Me neither. A while ago the cops came to the house and took him away. I ain’t heard from him since, but I figured he’s better off in there than he was out here. At least in there he can maybe get some help. Get clean.”
“Yeah,” Miles father said. “I’m sure he’s okay.” Then silence. The discomfort seemed to lower the ceiling of the shop. Finally, House spoke up.
“You know who else I haven’t seen? Backseat Benny.”
“Who?” Ms. Shine snapped out of her trance of sadness.
“Benny. Homeless dude who sleeps in the car around the corner. He used to come here and I’d give him a cut in exchange for him sweeping up the hair.”
“Oh yes. I didn’t know that was his name. I used to leave coffee cans full of cookies on the trunk on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I haven’t seen him.”
“Me neither,” Derrick said, moving his queen to the other side of the chessboard.
“I’ve seen him,” Frankie said. “Maybe two weeks ago. He was getting yanked out of his car and thrown in the back of a paddy wagon.”
“What he do?” House asked, swiping the smock from around the construction worker’s neck and brushing the extra hair from his sweatshirt.
“I have no idea,” Frankie said. “But that was the last time I saw him.”
Miles thought of the poem he had written for Ms. Blaufuss’s class about Backseat Benny, “Disappearing Men.” He’d been there for so long, yet so few people knew his name. Same went for Neek. He rarely left his house, so if you didn’t live across the street from him, where you could see him peering through the blinds, you’d never know he was there. And Cyrus Shine was a zombie most days, ignored by most people. “Invisible Men” would’ve fit just as well.
The whole barbershop broke into a fit of head shaking, and afterward the conversation rolled on as usual. House sprayed sheen on the construction worker’s hair, the smell of coconut and vanilla filling the air. Then House used his hand to lay the man’s waves, before holding the mirror up in front of his face.
The man nodded. Paid. Tipped. And left.
“Shorty Forty, you up!” House said, slapping hair from the barber chair. As soon as Miles sat down, his father blurted out, “Low Caesar. A number one. Nothing special, please.”
“Whoa. Relax, Jeff. Why you actin’ like I ain’t never cut his hair before? When he sit in my chair, you turn it off, and I turn it on,” House said. “Anyway, how’s school, Miles?”
“It’s okay.” It sucks.
“You figure out how to build a teleportation device yet?”
“I wish somebody would.” Derrick moved knight to jump pawn.
“Nah, not yet,” Miles said. “I’m just trying stay focused and get up out of there.” Also, I think my teacher might be trying to kill me.
“I know that’s right,” the argumentative man next to him said. “I want House to stay focused because I’m trying to get up out of here!”
And on it went, the chatter about haircut prices, the gossip about how much so-and-so sold their house for, and how much the new house down south cost. The occasional pumping of the radio volume whenever one of House’s jams came on, offbeat eighties tunes that were used for hip-hop samples, as Miles’s father always liked to remind him. And the feeling of the plastic guard gliding over Miles’s head, hair falling in his face, the hot blade on his neck, then on his forehead, and the familiar sound of the buzzing in his ear. When his cut was complete, Miles’s father stood up to pay, but Miles pulled out what was left of his money from the ridiculous showtime moment on the train the day before.
“I got it,” he said to his father, counting out the ones.
“Are you stripping, son?” House asked.
Derrick and the mad man both laughed. Ms. Shine turned away to hide her grin.
“No.”
“Better not be,” Miles’s father added.
“I’m not.” Miles slammed the money in House’s palm. “But I do need a job. And since Benny is missing—uh, arrested—maybe I can come sweep up on Saturday.”
House nodded, still holding Miles’s hand, the money smashed between their palms. “What you charge?”
“Ten dollars an hour and free cuts for me and him.”
House looked over at Miles’s dad, who looked on, proud. “What are you, thirteen?”
Miles flashed to Mr. Chamberlain’s class. Him on the floor at the broken desk.
Thirteen.
Except as a punishment for crime…
“Sixteen,” Miles’s father answered for him, jolting Miles back into the barbershop.
“I know, but he’s brutal like a thirteen-year-old. My grandson’s in the eighth grade, and he tries to hustle me every time I see him.” House scratched his chin. “How ’bout this. Eight-fifty, and free cuts for you.”
“Deal!” Miles’s father jumped in again, unable to control himself. “He’ll start next week.”
“Great, glad we got that settled,” the back-talker from earlier grumped. “Now can y’all please…please get out the way so this fool can cut my hair?”
Time for Saturday Mission #2: Visiting Austin.
The ride to the prison consisted mostly of Miles’s father talking loudly over early nineties rap music about how happy he was to see him “take some initiative” and ask House for a job, and how he and his brother started trying to make money for themselves at Miles’s age too, but that they did it illegally. Meanwhile, Miles was texting Ganke.
11:51am to Ganke
YO YOU MADE IT THRU DINNER OK?
11:52am 1 New Message from Ganke
IM STILL ALIVE. NO TEARS
“If only we were as smart as you, Miles. Nothing wrong with making money slow, son. Always remember that,” Miles’s father said.
11:54am to Ganke
COOL. HEADED TO THE JAIL NOW
“You hear me, Miles? You listening?” his father asked.
“Yes. I hear you. Money, slow,” Miles said.
11:55am 1 New Message from Ganke
NEVER EVER TEXT THAT AGAIN! IT’S LIKE A JINX OR SOMETHIN
Miles leaned forward and knocked on the wood paneling that lined the dashboard in his dad’s car. He wasn’t sure it meant anything or that it would do anything, and he even felt a little stupid about it, but just in case. Knock on wood.
Almost an hour later, the car bumped onto Old Factory Road in the most barren part of Brooklyn Miles had ever seen. Lots of land. No big buildings. Well, one big building. They pulled up to the prison and were greeted by a big cement sign. DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. Guards stood post outside the giant windowless block. There were cranes and bulldozers, cones and tape, on one side of the building.
“This place is always under construction. Shoot, I think they were working on it way back when me and Aaron used to pop in and out of here,” Miles’s father explained. “It was much smaller back then.” He killed the engine. Miles couldn’t stop fidgeting, and he tried to calm himself down. “Before we go in here, I need to reiterate that prison changes people. So I don’t want you to have high expectations or anything like that. Let’s just meet him where he is.” Miles nodded and reached for his door handle. “And also,” his father continued. Miles paused in the middle of opening his door. “I know I mentioned this before, but I just need you to know that whatever happens, if he’s related to us or not, I’m proud of you for wanting to come see him. Y’know, me and Aaron sat in the juvie ward with no visitors. Our mother couldn’t bear seeing us in jail, and our father was…y’know.” Miles nodded, pushed his door open. “So…I’m proud of you for caring,” his dad finished.
After walking through the metal detector and being scanned by a man the size of a metal detector, Miles and his father moved through the sterile check-in room to the clerk.
“Who you here to see?” she asked through a small window.
“Austin Davis.”
“Sign in, and ID, please.”
&n
bsp; Miles and his father signed the clipboard perched on the ledge in front of the window. Visitor Name. Visited Name. Date. Time In. Miles’s father slid his ID through the window. The lady made a copy and handed it back.
“Okay, Mr. Davis. Somebody will be out to get y’all in a second.”
“Um, sorry, but this is visiting time, right?” Miles’s father asked, looking around the empty room.
“Yes it is, sir.”
“Where is everybody else?”
The lady behind the desk shook her head. “Looks like you’re it.”
Miles watched as his father looked around the gray room of nothing again. It was like he was examining the corners, the cameras, remembering what it felt like to be there. Miles wondered if his father was thinking about his brother going in and out long after he’d given up the life. That his brother didn’t have any visitors because he wouldn’t come.
On the ashen walls were three frames of signage aligned like expensive abstract art in a gallery. Miles took a closer look. The first, in bold black letters above a sheriff star, read:
KINGS COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
IMPORTANT NOTICE
VISITATION SCHEDULE
SATURDAYS: LAST NAMES STARTING WITH LETTERS A–L
SUNDAYS: LAST NAMES STARTING WITH LETTERS M–Z
The next one was a layout of the rules.
PARENTS
• Visitors who appear intoxicated may be denied access to visitation
• Visitors who are inappropriately dressed (sexually or gang affiliated) may be denied access to visitation
• Parents must stay with their other visiting children at all times
• No styling or braiding of youth’s hair in the visiting room
Miles Morales Page 14