by RM Johnson
Ally was about to climb off the sofa and head toward the bathroom, when she heard a dull rumbling in her bag.
She reached out, hooked her purse, and pulled it over to her. The phone was ringing on vibrate, and when she looked at the caller-ID, she saw that it was Henny.
She reluctantly picked up. “Hello, Henny. Calling to curse me out some more? Tell me that you hate me even more than last night?”
“No, Ally. I’ve been trying to call you all night to tell you that I’m sorry. I know that it wasn’t you who told Mama about Rafe. He told her himself.”
Ally was quiet for a moment, still hearing the hateful words her sister had said to her echo in her mind. “I told you I didn’t tell her.”
“I know you told me that. But I was just so mad at you that I couldn’t hear a thing you said. Ally, I need to talk to you, see you, so I can apologize in person. I didn’t mean what I said. I couldn’t mean it. You’ve always been my sister, always been my best friend. Always will be. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Ally wanted to tell her sister that she felt the same way, but for some reason she couldn’t. Not then.
“You know, you always say that I’ve been mean to you, but you’ve been mean to me a lot too,” Ally said.
“I know that, Ally.”
“You act like just because I’m not as smart as you, that I don’t want to do better, that I don’t want to have a nice life, that I don’t want to accomplish things like you. But I do, Henny. I do want those things.”
“Ally, I know. I know,” Henny said, and to Ally, it sounded as if her sister was crying. “Just come home so we can talk all this through. I have a bunch a stuff I have to tell you.”
“I don’t want to come home right now. I just need a break from being over there, all right.”
“Then let’s meet. Have you eaten yet?”
“No,” Ally said.
“Then let’s meet at Lenny’s. We’ll get some barbecue. My treat.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, twenty minutes.”
“Un-uh. Need more time than that. I gotta get all the way over there,” Ally said.
“All right, half an hour.”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Sounds good. I can’t wait to see you,” Henny said, and now it sounded as though she was smiling.
“Yeah. You too,” Ally said, then hung up.
“Damn, whoever that was, tell them to call me next. I wanna be happy like that,” JJ said, walking into the living room, seeing the huge grin on Ally’s face.
“What’s up, J? Sorry I woke you up last night.”
“Don’t worry about it. You my girl, and you ain’t wake Sasha up. She can sleep through an earthquake. You want something to eat?” JJ asked, walking toward the kitchen.
“Naw, but thanks. I’m supposed to be meeting Henny for lunch,” Ally called back into the kitchen.
A moment later, Ally’s cell was vibrating in her hand again.
“Hello.”
“Girl, where you at? I’m gonna come swoop you so we can do some shopping,” Lisa said.
“How you gonna come swoop me on the bus?”
“Well, see, this morning when I got up, I knew there was shopping that I wanted to do. And I was thinking which would be better: Bentley or bus? Bentley or bus? You’ll be surprised to find out I chose the Bentley.”
“Lisa, I told you to get rid of that thing. What if somebody sees you, or they report it stolen?”
“Like you said. Those guys were way out west, and shady-ass niggas like them ain’t tryin’ to go to the police to report something stolen when they probably stole the car themselves. Now are you rollin’ or not?”
“Not,” Ally said. “I’m supposed to be meeting my sister for lunch.”
“Let me guess. Lenny’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let me pick you up. You can roll to the ghetto rib spot in style,” Lisa said. “Everybody’ll be looking at you, asking ‘Ooh, who dat is?Whodatis?’”
“Not a chance. Dump the car, Lisa. Okay? Will you do that for me?”
“All right, all right. But, girl, if you could see all the heads turning to check me out. It’s a shame. A damn shame.”
FORTY-NINE
THIS WAS the life that Lisa always wanted to live. She made a slow right turn on Jefferson and thought that if she had just finished school, or if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, then maybe she would be driving a car like this on the regular, and not having to steal it from the guy it belonged to.
What the hell, she thought. She was driving the Bentley right now, and most people can never say that they’ve ever done that.
She turned into the parking lot of a Pier One store, thinking she was going to need some stuff for her new place, and once again some brothas were scoping her. They were in a nice car themselves. She didn’t know what kind it was, but it was red, sporty, and had a little crown emblem on the hood.
Lisa parked the Bentley, and the red car pulled up behind her. The brotha on the passenger side threw his elbow out the window.
“Whassup, baby? Dope-ass ride.”
Lisa blushed, smiled, giggled, and took the compliment as though the car was really hers.
“Thanks, sweetheart. So’s yours.”
“You doin’ some shopping today?” the brotha asked.
“Yeah, probably pick up a few things. Why you wanna know?” Lisa prepared herself to go into her purse, reach for her pen and paper, because she knew he would ask for her number next.
“Just askin’,” the brotha said. He gave Lisa and the car another look, pulled his arm back into the window, and the car sped off.
Lisa watched them as they raced out of the parking lot.
“Stank Negroes,” she muttered, still watching the car as it cruised into the busy flow of traffic. “Just because they got a nice car, they think they can act any way they want. Well, I got a nice car too.” Lisa hit the switch to enable the alarm, then walked into Pier One.
THE RED Maserati stopped at a red light as the brotha on the passenger side spoke into his cell phone. “Yeah, it’s yours,” he confirmed, craning his neck to look back at it. The car was now parked across the street, facing the direction of the Pier One store.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Same plates. Yeah,” the brotha said. “So what you want us to do?”
The brotha received the instructions. “All right. Well, if she move, then I’ll ring you back and let you know what’s up. Otherwise, I’ll just wait ‘til you get here. Peace.”
FIFTY
LIVVY walked into her apartment from spending the night at Wade’s. She had to get ready to go to the hospital and hand in her essay. But when she looked up, she was shocked. The place was clean! Not just straightened up, the cushions readjusted on the sofa, or the clutter stacked in neat piles on the coffee table. The place was spotless, like someone had come through with a huge vacuum cleaner and a bucket of disinfectant, sucking up and wiping away all the grime. All that remained was the faint scent of pine freshness.
Livvy stepped farther into the apartment, the smile on her face growing wider and wider with each step. She hesitated to lay her purse on the couch for fear of cluttering the place up again. She walked through the living room and headed for the kitchen to see just how far this trail of spotlessness went.
The kitchen was immaculate. The toaster, the fixtures on the sink, even the floor gleamed as though it was covered with glass. Livvy told herself not to do it, knowing that she would be asking too much, but she pulled the door to the fridge open anyway, and instead of the pile of food that was normally thrown any which way in there, everything was neatly organized. Eggs were placed in the egg bin, fruit in the fruit crisper. Everything was in its proper place.
Unbelievable! Livvy thought, closing the door, and resting her back against it. This was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time, and it was just what she needed after all that nonsense that had gone on with Carlos
. Thankfully Wade had been around, and thankfully they had gotten past their differences, and everything was cool with them now.
Seeing her place clean like this, knowing that one or both her daughters was responsible and remembering the night she had had with Wade, she realized that life now really wasn’t so bad.
Livvy called out to her daughters, wanting to thank them. She would take them out to dinner that evening to show her appreciation.
“Hennesey, Alize,” Livvy called, walking down the hall toward their room. She clicked on the light, peeked into the bathroom on the way, and yes, that was clean too.
“Hennesey, Alize,” she called again. She knocked on the girls’ door, and when she received no answer, she walked on in. The room wasn’t as neat and tidy as the rest of the place, but they were entitled to a little mess, Livvy thought, smiling. This was their private space.
She wondered where both of them were, but she wouldn’t worry about that right now. She had to jump in the shower, put on some clothes and … Livvy froze. She stood there in the middle of the girls’ room, trying her hardest but almost afraid to remember all she had seen when she walked in the front door of her apartment. Or rather, all she had not seen.
“It’s still there. It’s still there,” Livvy said softly to herself, but starting to panic because she knew that it wasn’t. She commanded her feet to move out of the room, down the hall, and in the direction of the living room.
She continued to tell herself that it was still there, because she knew that if it wasn’t, then all her hard effort, all the time she’d devoted, would’ve been lost. What would hurt her most would be losing the opportunity to dream. Livvy’s head had been in the clouds ever since she had undertaken this challenge for the scholarship, thinking about all the possibilities for the future. Getting an education, a new job, more responsibility, self-respect, and respect from others. So many nights before going to bed, she couldn’t help but smile, hoping, almost knowing, that she would win this scholarship to nursing school. She knew how strong her essay was, and for all the sacrifice she’d made, all the hell she’d been through, if there was anything fair about the world, then she knew she deserved to win.
Livvy stopped just before turning the corner that would give her full view of the living room. “Please, God, let that stack of old magazines still be there, and let me just have missed them when I walked in, because I was so taken with how clean the place was. Please, God, please,” she prayed.
She closed her eyes, walked out into the living room, and then opened them. What she saw was an empty book shelf cleared of all the magazines that had been there just a couple of days before. Her heart sank, and all her hopes and dreams drowned with it. But wait! There were four or five magazines stacked neatly on top of the television. Maybe …
She practically ran across the room, hoping that one of the magazines would be the old ‘88 Ebony with Billy Dee on the cover. But when she stood over them, she saw that they were all recent issues.
Livvy picked up the one on top. It was a copy of Essence. Jada Pinkett and Will Smith were both smiling on the cover, looking as though they had not a care in the world.
Livvy focused on the attractive short-haired actress, her white teeth, her flawless skin, the man’s arm around her, holding her close, as if protecting her from even the slightest little trouble that might come up.
“Life must be nice for you, hunh?” Livvy said to the magazine cover. “Ain’t got a fucking worry in the world. Got you a good man, got you money, got you a big-ass house, and you never have to worry about your kids, ’cause I know you got motherfuckers paid to take care of ’em,” Livvy said, clutching the magazine in both her fists, becoming angrier and angrier with each step she took across the living room floor.
“Everything’s fine with you, because you got a job. You a big-time actress, but you don’t even have to do that, because your husband can do it for you. You don’t got to worry about your kids gettin’ pregnant, or gettin’ raped, or gettin’ shot, ’cause you don’t live in the ’hood. You don’t have to worry about if you gonna make rent next month, or if you gonna still have a job tomorrow ’cause you two seconds from going off on some bitch for treating you like you they child when you know ten times more than they do,” Livvy said, tears falling from her eyes. She pushed them away with the heel of one of her hands.
“You don’t got to worry about that, because you didn’t get pregnant with twins when you was sixteen and sacrifice your whole life for those girls. You didn’t have to give them everything you had, even shit you don’t got, make them your priority, put them first, because you love them so much. Then when you try to do something for yourself, try to make it out of the hole you been digging yourself in for all your life, you don’t have to find out your children are the ones killin’ your chances, burying you in that hole.”
Livvy stopped her pacing, looked back one last time with tear-clouded eyes, just to make sure that the magazines really weren’t still there. No. There was nothing, and Livvy felt her heart drop lower than she ever thought imaginable. She looked at the magazine in her hand, thought she saw Jada wink up at her, then she slung the thing with all her force across the living room, into the big mirror, hoping it would break it, but it didn’t.
“Fuuuuck!” Livvy screamed out, hysterically.
FIFTY-ONE
RAFE dropped Henny off at the train station. “Why you want to ride the train? Just let me take you home.”
“Because I’m not going home. I’m meeting Ally for lunch, and you know I like riding the train. It’ll give me some time to think about everything we’re about to do and find a way to tell my mother about this in a way that even she’ll understand.”
“You sure about this?”
“Of course, baby.” Henny took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. “So you’re gonna start packing, right? Because that’s what I’m going to start doing as soon as we get back from lunch.”
She was so excited that she could barely contain herself. All they did on the way to the station was talk about how wonderful things would be once they got down to school, how they wouldn’t have to worry about what Henny’s mother said or have to worry about this guy who was tormenting Rafe.
“And you better not change your mind” was the last thing Henny said when she jumped out his car. That’s one thing she didn’t have to worry about. He was just as excited as she was. The first thing he did was go to the store and buy some luggage and some other things he needed for the move. He wanted to get everything out of the way before he got rid of the car. He would park it somewhere, didn’t know for sure where, and call the job, leave a message for Smoke, letting him know exactly where it was.
Rafe was riding through an area near his old neighborhood and decided to stop for gas, considering the fuel light had been on for some time.
He jumped out the car, swiped his debit card, and was about to grab one of the pumps when someone stepped up behind him.
“Pump that gas for you, sir?”
This happened every time Rafe used to stop for gas in the ’hood, and more times than not, he would always allow whatever kid or old man was down on his luck to pump the gas for a dollar or two.
“Go ahead, man,” Rafe said, stepping away from the pump.
The weathered man stepped around Rafe, “Thank you very much. Thank you,” he said, looking up into Rafe’s face quickly, then grabbing the pump.
He didn’t know if it was paranoia or not, but Rafe felt the man looking out the corner of his eye, studying him.
“Is there a problem, man?”
“Rafe, that you, man? Raphiel Collins?” The man turned to face him.
Rafe took a good look at the man. He appeared to be in his forties, painfully thin, his long hair a mess on his head. He wore clothes that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in months, and the same could’ve been said for his body. He shuffled closer up to Rafe, grinning.
“Man, how you doin’? Remember me?”
>
Rafe looked at him, trying to place his face.
“C’mon, Rafe,” the man said, showing a smile that lacked about half a dozen teeth.
“I was your biggest customer ‘til you got sent away.”
Rafe knew now. It was Jimmy Kingsly. Never had any money, but Rafe would toss him the occasional dime bag of weed to wash his car while he and Smoke took care of business.
“How you doing, Jimmy?”
“Fine, man. Glad to see you out. Look like you rollin’ even better now. Got that fine Jag,” Jimmy said, salivating over the convertible. “You need that washed? I see a little dirt trying to stick to the hood. I can get a bucket and some water from the gas station,” he said pointing in that direction. “I can get started right now.”
“Sorry, Jimmy. I really got to be running. I got some stuff to do.” Rafe opened the car door.
“How about a complimentary bag, then? I’d really appreciate that.”
“I’m out of the game, man. I don’t do that no more. Sorry.” Rafe gave Jimmy a couple of crumpled singles, then got into his car.
“It’s because your brother got killed doing it, messing with them drugs, ain’t it?” Jimmy said, replacing the pump and screwing Rafe’s gas cap back into the car.
Rafe closed the door of the Jag, but not before he had heard what Jimmy said. It took a moment for it to register, but when it did, Rafe threw open the door. “What did you say?”
“Yeah. I know about that, and I’m really sorry.”
Rafe jumped out the car and grabbed Jimmy by the arm, looking intently into his face.
“Know about what, Jimmy? What do you know?”
“That Eric was running drugs for Smoke. I stopped him one time after I ain’t seen you in a while. He said you was locked up, but that he was running for Smoke, you know, carrying weight. He said soon Smoke would be lettin’ him sell. So I told him that it wasn’t no big deal that he ain’t have no car yet. I’d wash his bike every now and then if he kicked me down with a dime bag. Know what I’m saying?” Jimmy chuckled through his missing teeth. “It was a damn shame. He got shot by those Puerto Ricans up on the West Side. A damn shame,” Jimmy said, bowing and shaking his head.