“Do it really matter, man?”
“What? Did you steal it from somebody?”
“Naw, man. Not really.”
“Not really?”
“I borrowed it, man.”
“You borrowed it? With the permission of the owner? With the owner’s blessing?”
“I was going to put it back before the owner missed it.”
“I bet you were,” Courtney snapped.
“Whose gun is this, Arnold? Say? Where’d you get it?”
“It used to be Gordo’s. I borrowed it. He won’t care. Ima put it back before Gordo gets back home.”
“Why in the world does a boy like Gordo need a handgun?” Courtney asked.
“From here on out, this gun belongs to me,” Truely said. “You understand me? I’m going to put it right over here, see?” He walked over to a wall of library shelves and placed the gun on the highest shelf. “You don’t touch this gun without asking me first — and chances are ten to one I’m going to tell you no. You got that?”
Arnold nodded.
“Don’t test me on this, Arnold,” Truely said. “I mean it. We can all look over here anytime and see whether or not this gun is where it should be. If we ever look over here and see that this gun is gone — then that means you’re as good as gone too, you understand me?”
Arnold nodded again.
“How do we know he’s not going to get up in the middle of the night and shoot us both in our sleep?” Courtney said. “How are we supposed to trust him now?”
“You can trust me.” Arnold was almost indignant.
“This changes some things, Arnold,” Truely said. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“If you’re going to live here you got to tell the truth whether you think we’ll like it or not. We stop trusting you and there’s no way you can stay here. Is that clear?”
Arnold nodded.
“Anything else you want to say to Arnold, Courtney?” Truely asked.
Before she could answer, Arnold spoke up. “There’s something I got to say.” He paused then as if to collect his thoughts. “Since y’all already mad I might as well go on and tell you what I got to tell you — I hope you ain’t going to take it wrong.”
“Oh, shit,” Courtney said. “What? You killed somebody? You stole a car? You robbed a bank?”
“It wasn’t no bank,” he said.
“Go ahead.” Truely nodded for him to continue.
“Y’all know Vonnie been calling me. You know she got a lot of problems — with my mama and all. Now with my grandmama too. My grandmama got behind on her rent. Vonnie trying to get some money together — she calling and crying and begging me to send some money.” Arnold paused.
“Go ahead,” Truely said.
“So, I go in your wallet, man. I slip three hundred bucks out your wallet.”
“You little thief,” Courtney said.
“That ain’t all,” he said. “I got in Courtney’s pocketbook too. Took two hundred dollars. I sent the money to Vonnie.”
“I ought to wear you out,” Courtney said. Truely couldn’t help but remember that this was a phrase his mother used to use when he and Courtney did something wrong — when they deserved to be punished but most likely would not be.
“Thing is,” Arnold said, “neither one of y’all ever notice you missing no money. You got so much loose money that if a couple hundred come up missing here and there you never even know it. It don’t mean nothing to y’all — that little bit of money — but it make a big damn difference to Vonnie and my grandmama.”
“You know that’s not the point, right?” Truely asked.
“It’s still stealing, Arnold, no matter what your reasons are.”
“I know that,” Arnold said. “It ain’t like I steal on no regular basis. Just this once. This emergency.”
“Did it ever occur to you to ask us?” Courtney said. “You think we’re too mean to help you out? You think we’re so coldhearted we’d just let your grandmother and Vonnie get put out on the street? Damn, Arnold. Is bad judgment the only judgment you’ve got? You just got your heart set on messing up your life, don’t you?”
“No,” he said.
“Why you confessing now?” Truely asked.
“I get scared you gon throw me out if you know. But now I worry you liable to find out,” Arnold said. “I was planning to pay y’all back when I get my next check, you know. I give y’all two hundred every payday until we settle up.”
“Yeah, right,” Courtney said. “You know all the verses to that song, don’t you?”
“You don’t believe me?” Arnold said. “I swear. Soon as I get paid I was going to put that money back.”
“Talk is cheap,” Courtney said.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s why I keep quiet about it.”
“You got an excuse for everything, Arnold. I swear. It’s not normal.”
“Y’all always acting like I don’t know how to act normal. Thing is, I am acting normal. Normal mean different things to different folks. Y’all think it’s normal to drop two hundred bucks on some hamburgers at lunch at a fancy restaurant. Damn, that freak me out the first time I seen that. Me, I think it’s normal to carry a concealed gun. When somebody draws a gun on you — then you need a gun to defend yourself. You don’t have no gun, then people mess with you. They don’t take you serious.”
“Rules of the jungle?” Courtney said sarcastically. “Maybe that’s how it works in the ghetto or whatever, Arnold. But this is not the ghetto. We don’t play by those rules.”
“Just because you don’t like it, don’t mean it ain’t the truth.”
Truely shook his head. “So how do we resolve this then?”
Arnold was quiet a minute, glancing at the gun up on the library shelf. “Maybe y’all give me another chance?”
“And what do you do to deserve another chance?” Truely asked.
“Whatever y’all want me to do.”
“Well, if there was ever a boy who needed an education — it’s you, Arnold.” Courtney stepped up to her imaginary pulpit and started preaching her familiar sermon. “Damn if you don’t need to learn some new ways of thinking, son. If you live here with Truely, you have got to educate yourself — get that GED. Maybe even go on to community college. Become a citizen of the world. Make something out of yourself. I’m going to insist even if Truely doesn’t. Otherwise you might as well take that silly gun of yours and go back down to San Diego and be a foolish little gangster playing deadly games with the other foolish little gangsters. If you’re lucky maybe you can end up spending the rest of your life locked up in prison somewhere, living out your life in a small cage with some child molester covered in tattoos. Now there’s a great aspiration — that’s a life well spent. It’s just too ridiculous.”
“Go on and load me up with them damn books on tape then. I listen to all of them if you want me to,” Arnold said.
“Okay, guys.” Truely waved his hand to get their attention. “I think we need to institute some basic rules around here. It’s my house, so I guess I make the rules. Anybody object? No? Good. So listen up. You too, Court.”
“You know I love rules.” Courtney was totally serious.
“No guns,” Truely began. “No activities involving guns. No hanging out with other guys who pack guns, deal in guns, think guns are normal or bring guns into this house. Period.”
“Okay,” Arnold said.
“Likewise, no drugs.”
“Except all them drugs Courtney got,” Arnold added.
“Okay. No illegal drugs,” Truely amended. “No street drugs. No using. No selling. No hanging out with people who use or sell.”
“Okay. What else, man?”
“When you go out, you let somebody know where you are. You leave a note, you leave a phone message. We do the same. You come in at a reasonable time — don’t make people worry and wonder where you are. If it gets late, you call. We do the same.”
“It’s a good thing too,” Courtney said.
“Everybody contributes around here,” Truely said. “Everybody helps out everybody else. Nobody complains.”
“Say something about Arnold studying,” Courtney said. “Make it a rule.”
“You work toward the GED,” Truely said. “You get your high school equivalency before the end of the year. No excuses. When the day comes we’ll all celebrate — big-time. Maybe you can get Courtney off your back — but there’s no guarantee, of course.”
“This is not a boy who needs to be freed from expectation, Truely,” Courtney insisted. “His expectations are so low now it’s practically a crime by itself.”
“Court,” Truely snapped at her.
“Excuse me,” she said, “for giving a damn.”
“After you get your GED,” Truely said, “then if you want to, you can get your driver’s license. Maybe you can use that old truck of mine sitting idle downstairs in the parking garage — you know, help you come and go to school or work, one or the other.”
“Truely,” Courtney complained. “That’s not a punishment. That’s a reward. You’re bribing him.”
“I’m handling this my way,” he said. “You ever hear of motivation, Court?”
“My God, Truely, the boy brings a gun into your house, steals money from you — and you want to motivate him? What’s wrong with giving him a good old-fashioned ass-kicking, that’s what he needs.”
“Ignore her,” Truely told Arnold. “She’s having a Mississippi moment.” He turned to Courtney. “Will you let me handle this, please?”
“Whatever,” she shrugged. “But you’re letting him get away with murder.”
“This no kind of murder,” Arnold corrected.
“If Truely’d ever pulled a stunt like this, our daddy would have skinned him alive,” Courtney said. “He knows it too.”
“This is not helping, Courtney,” Truely said.
She pantomimed zipping her mouth closed again.
“Listen, man,” Truely said to Arnold. “You got to think about your life here — decide what you want to do with it. Get started in that direction. You understand what I’m saying? You can’t just live day to day waiting to see what happens, waiting to see what goes wrong next — then scrambling to survive whatever it is. That’s not any way to live. That’s miserable, Arnold. It’s a waste too. You’ve got to make something good happen for yourself.”
“I know.”
“You don’t just do what a bunch of fools do just because they do it — not unless you want to be a fool too. A man has got to have a plan, Arnold. Of his own. You need a plan. Get yourself a plan.” Truely ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. He knew he was in over his head. “That’s a new rule around here — everybody’s got to have a plan.”
“Okay then,” Arnold said.
“I still say you’re getting away with murder,” Courtney said.
“You just gon stay mad at me no matter what I do?” Arnold asked Courtney. “You act like you gon hold a grudge.”
“No holding grudges,” Truely added.
“It’s not a grudge,” Courtney insisted. “I am crazy about Arnold — about who he can be. He knows that. He’s got so much potential it makes me crazy. I just refuse to watch him make a mess of things and throw his life away.”
“That’s the way my old football coach used to talk,” Arnold said.
“You should have listened to him,” Courtney said.
IT TOOK SEVERAL DAYS for the high tension to dissipate. The gun sat up on the bookshelf in plain sight. Courtney watched Arnold like a hawk. He knew it too, which made him unnaturally quiet and cautious. Courtney made the three of them suppers as usual, meatloaf, barbecue chicken, pork chops. It was awkward to sit down together to eat. The food was good, but the conversation was strained. Truely gave up on trying to lead them out of their conversational quagmire.
One night when Courtney was serving them scoops of bread pudding she had bought at Whole Foods, she suddenly put her spoon down and leaned over Arnold, putting her arms around his neck. He jumped, like he was afraid she was going to hit him or choke him. “I’m only mad at you because I care,” she said.
It was such a corny thing to say that Truely nearly laughed. “What the hell is this — a soap opera?”
But he saw that Arnold wasn’t laughing. He was listening. “I’m treating you the same as if you were my own boy,” Courtney said. “I would say to my own child everything that I am saying to you.”
“Thank you,” Arnold said, cautiously.
The spell was broken.
Twenty-two
OVER THE NEXT WEEKS Courtney intensified the torturous GED study sessions with Arnold as captive. Already it seemed he was complaining slightly less. The last few weeks instead of Courtney heading home to Saratoga on Monday mornings she had stayed on until Tuesday morning and then come back on Thursday afternoon. She was in the city with Truely and Arnold now more than she wasn’t.
Arnold was orally answering questions that Courtney was calling out to him from a U.S. citizenship worksheet she got off the Internet. Arnold’s listening comprehension was impressive. They were interrupted by the sound of the loft buzzer. “Oops, that must be your tutor.” Courtney glanced at her watch.
Within a few minutes a tall, young black man stood at the door with shoulder-length dreads, a keen look in his eye and a gracious manner. “You must be Terrance.” Courtney shook his hand. “I knew from your Web site you were smart, but I didn’t know you’d be handsome too. Come in. Meet Arnold Carter, your student.”
Terrance entered the room, looked around and walked toward the table where Arnold sat with his books and papers scattered about. Arnold stood up and looked Terrance over suspiciously. “You didn’t tell me the dude was black,” he said to Courtney.
She seemed startled. “Arnold, that’s because I didn’t know. His Web site is not racially specific. For heaven’s sake, what difference does it make?”
“You don’t fool me,” he said. “I get what you doing here.”
Terrance paused, unsure, and looked at Courtney for an explanation.
“What I’m doing is — I’m hiring you a math tutor. I forgot any math I ever learned. I was an art major, remember?”
“She put you up to this, man?” he asked Terrance.
“Up to what?”
“You coming over here to set an example — right? Show me an African American dude being a college man. College — that her thing. She want you to plant the education seed — like she says. I know how she do.”
“Like the lady told you, I’m here to go over some algebra. That’s all.”
“Arnold, you’re embarrassing yourself — and me too,” Courtney said. “I told you I found Terrance online. He’s a math major at City College. I e-mailed him. We set a time. He’s here. And now you are acting a fool.”
“When you talk about a math guy from City College I’m thinking some Asian dude. All them math guys over there are Asian.”
“Arnold, stop it. Terrance is a math guy. And he’s not Asian. Okay? Honestly.” She shook her head to exaggerate her exasperation. “Ignore him,” she instructed Terrance. “As I told you in my e-mail, Arnold is a smart guy who’s afraid to be a smart guy. He’d rather be a dumb guy, right Arnold? Because, you know, the sky is the limit for a dumb guy. Everywhere you look you see dumb guys living the good life.”
“I didn’t say that,” Arnold corrected. “I just say you don’t have to get a degree to prove you’re smart. Plenty of smart people never went to college.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Courtney said. “College has ruined more lives than you can count, right? That degree, that meaningless piece of paper, is just destined to set you on the path to ruin. What do you think drove all those homeless folks to have to camp out on the street out t
here — it was that damn education that messed them up and caused their downward spiral, right Arnold?”
“Maybe I should leave,” Terrance said.
“Absolutely not,” Courtney said. “Arnold needs help with algebra — and you’re here to help him.”
“Maybe you two should work this out and call me later.”
“It’s worked out,” Courtney insisted. “Arnold is taking the GED in a matter of weeks and we want him to ace it.”
“She means she want me to ace it,” Arnold said.
“See, Terrance,” Courtney said sarcastically, “it’s not just black people Arnold doesn’t like — he doesn’t like white people either. Nothing is a pain in the butt like a middle-aged white woman trying to interfere with a guy’s fabulous, outstanding ghetto life. Us white women, we don’t get it. We don’t know shit. Right, Arnold? That’s why Arnold doesn’t really care about that silly GED — because it’s just a stupid old white lady thing. Maybe he’ll just fail altogether. That will show me, won’t it? And get him off the hook.”
“I ain’t on no hook,” Arnold said.
“Have you ever heard of self-fulfilling prophecy, Arnold?”
“What?”
“I bet Terrance has heard of it, haven’t you, Terrance?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“See, Arnold?”
“Maybe Terrance here got that love of learning you talk about. And maybe I don’t have it. You trying to make me a book guy. Maybe I ain’t no book guy. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Bull,” Courtney said. “You’re just afraid if you ever find out that you’re not stupid like you’re hoping — if you find out you’re really smart then maybe you’ll have to do something about it. That scares the hell out of you.”
“You don’t know what scares me,” Arnold said.
Terrance took a few steps backward as if he were leaving. “I’ll come back some other time.”
Courtney folded her arms and stared at Arnold. She didn’t speak, just drilled him with her intense stare.
Arnold rolled his eyes. “No, man. Don’t go. This none your doing.”
Courtney continued to glare at Arnold, raising her eyebrows as a signal.
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