After the Fire: The ‘Shorts’

by Forrester, Nia

  The men talked about what men talk about, and the women (or “girls” as Eamon referred to us) talked about the food, the diets we were cheating on, our work, and kids, and gripes about vacations canceled … the usual. I don’t know what I expected. They were like any other group of people who know each other well, getting together on a weekend afternoon except for when the men made occasional references to “the job” which everyone understood to mean police work.

  Domingo, Gideon’s partner, predictably turned out to be my favorite. He was shorter than Gideon, a little squat, like the guy that used to work out more but was letting it all go to fat. Even more than Eamon whose house we were at, Domingo, who all the others called Dom, checked in with me all day. He brought me a cool drink when the one I was nursing melted or was done, slid me a plate of whatever came off the grill before he served himself, and just after he handed a plate to his own girlfriend, Asia. To some, it might have looked like flirtation, but I knew it wasn’t that. It was something subtler, kinder. It was inclusion.

  Gideon and I went back to his place that night, dopey and slow from being too long in the sun; and from the beer and the over-eating. We dozed, smoky and sticky on the sofa in his front room with the television on in the background. He shook me awake at dusk and we showered together and afterwards, damp and naked in his bedroom he looked at me.

  “Shit,” he said. “Can you believe I’m hungry again?”

  I laughed “Me too,” I said grimacing.

  We ordered pizza and ate in bed. When were done, Gideon slid the empty box over the edge and gave me a look that I understood immediately. I pushed back against his chest and straddled his pelvis.

  “Okay,” I intoned, as if about to perform a chore. “Fine. I guess we can do that too.”

  Grinning, Gideon held me by the hips, lifting me up a little and guiding me forward and then down onto him.

  Afterward, I fell asleep, just like that. Him still partly inside me, me still lying on his chest.

  I woke up late on Sunday morning, alone in Gideon’s bed, realizing he had probably gone to the gym. I made coffee and lazed around waiting for him to get home. When I finally heard his truck, I went outside to let him know I had only been waiting for him to get back so I could leave to get some of my household stuff done.

  I found him kneeling at my rear bumper.

  “Hey,” I said. “Something wrong?”

  “Nope. Got some good sleep?”

  “Yes. Got a good workout?”

  “Yup.” He came toward me and pulled me closer. “And the gym wasn’t too bad either.”

  I smiled and twisted out of his arms. “Very funny. But seriously … is something wrong with my car?”

  I looked down at where he had been crouching and spotted the difference right away.

  “What’s that?” I asked, spinning to face him again.

  For a moment, Gideon looked sheepish, then resigned. He shrugged.

  “Nothing. A sticker.”

  “A sticker,” I repeated. I looked at it again.

  It was a simple blue line. That was all. A blue line about half an inch in width and spanning the length of the license plate, affixed just beneath the letters and numbers.

  Sighing, Gideon met my stare. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, okay? It’s just something that lets cops know that the vehicle owner is …”

  “Is what?” I interrupted. “Special?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Not a regular civilian? What?”

  Gideon sighed again, already walking away from me. Around me.

  On the very rare occasions when we were in open disagreement, he had one of two reactions: avoidance, or exasperation. Today, he was giving me both.

  “Well, I don’t want it,” I said, going behind my car and kneeling at the bumper. “I don’t want to be part of the little club that means maybe I’ll get the special treatment that, by the way, every taxpayer deserves!”

  “Kendra.” Gideon’s voice was firm. It stopped me in my tracks. “Leave the fucking sticker where it is.”

  I stood upright again, stunned by his tone and wanting to read his face. For a fraction of a second, I assessed whether I should be worried because of how deathly serious he sounded. But I could never be afraid of Gideon.

  “Look,” he said, his voice softening. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes for a moment as if trying to calm himself. “I’m not blind or stupid. I know there’s some officers … I know there’s some of ‘em out here who have no business carrying a badge and a gun. I know that, alright?”

  I said nothing.

  “And I know that sometimes shit happens that shouldn’t. But you know I’m not that guy, and I try as best I can to steer clear of them and just … do the job. But I know how you are, too, Kendra. That fucking … mouth you got on you, and that pigheaded attitude …”

  Gideon paused to shake his head and I tried not to smile.

  “It’s not funny.” He broke off and his chest heaved. “Add to that the work you do, sometimes I … I just … I can’t always be there to protect you. But I can do this much … make sure whatever happens, the people who need to know, know that they better not lay a fucking finger on you.”

  I stood there. I stared at him, not knowing what to say.

  I guess I could have tackled his belief that I needed someone to “protect” me. I could have challenged him on that. You know, girl power and everything. But I didn’t. Because all I could think about was how naturally he assumed that if I needed protection, it was his responsibility to provide it.

  Chapter Six

  While the kids sat around eating pizza and watching the action unfold on the news, I held myself apart, compulsively calling Gideon’s number and then Dom’s, and then the general number for the district. I even tried Eamon. Neither Gideon nor Dom answered and the operator at the district told me there was no information she could share with me.

  Viv sat with the kids and Ray, and with Malik, who seemed excited to be around the teenagers and young adults, all of them including him in their conversations, making him part of the group. Neither Ray nor Viv said anything about it maybe being time for Malik to get home and to bed. I think Viv didn’t want to leave me alone, and Ray didn’t want to leave Viv, maybe fearful that I might persuade her to go back out into the fray or do something equally stupid.

  Viv left me alone because she knew I wasn’t the kind of person who felt better if someone sat next to them holding their hand and telling them everything was going to be alright. Ray left me alone because we had exchanged harsh words, and he was probably still angry but knew anger was an inappropriate emotion to direct at me given everything that was happening.

  I hadn’t been able to bring myself to call my sister. Saying that there had been two officers shot and that I hadn’t heard from Gideon would have made things real in a way I didn’t yet want to face. Right now, there was nothing to tell, that’s what I had to keep saying to myself. He was out there, somewhere, working and too busy to call and that was all there was to it. I told myself that, though my heart was still racing, and that vague tightness at my temples persisted.

  “Miss Kendra.”

  I looked up. Demetrius had finished his slices and was wiping his hands clean on a wad of napkins. He stood.

  “We gotta go,” he said baldly.

  Viv and Ray looked up at him as well, and the other kids stopped their chatter, stopped paying attention to what was on television.

  “We can’t be in here sitting around while …” He motioned toward the television.

  Buildings and cars were still burning, but the protestors seemed to have regrouped and formed a phalanx, arms locked and walking down the center of the street, chanting.

  “Demetrius,” I said, my tone impatient. “With everything going on, now is not the time for you all to be out there.”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “With everything going on, now is exactly the time for us to be out there.”

&
nbsp; Viv stood. “Demetrius,” she said. “Kendra has some things going on that …”

  “No.” I stopped her. “That doesn’t need to be his concer…”

  “What?” Demetrius looked from Viv to me.

  “It’s nothing,” I said quickly. “But two police officers were …”

  “We know. But for all we know they shot each other,” one of the other kids said, laughing.

  For a moment, the room fell silent except for the sound of the television. I swallowed hard, surprised at the flash of anger I felt. Not at the words so much as the dismissive tone.

  ‘Someone might be dead!’ I wanted to scream. But what I would really mean was, ‘Gideon might be dead.’

  But these kids were no strangers to death. The scale of the shock and outrage that accompanied police officers being injured or killed was rarely offered to their friends, and to their families when someone they loved died under similar circumstances. That manifest injustice was part of what had them out in the streets in the first place.

  “Whatever point y’all were out there to make tonight,” Ray spoke up. “I think it’s been made.”

  Demetrius made a rough sound at the back of this throat.

  “You think so?” He shook his head and looked levelly at Ray, then at Viv and finally directly at me. “‘Cause, for real-for real, we think we’re just gettin’ started.”

  * * *

  “You ever wonder if we know these kids?” Viv asked. “Like, really know them?”

  We were sitting side by side on the floor of my office, our backs against the wall, knees up to our chests. For the moment, everything was in a holding pattern—no one was going anywhere, no one was saying anything though Demetrius was furiously sending and getting messages on his phone. It was obvious that the only reason he and the others hadn’t left after eating was out of respect for me and Viv, or maybe just out of fear for Demetrius’ job.

  But his job was safe. Of course it was. How could I fire or even reprimand him for being a community organizer who was organizing these kids around one of the few issues that really mattered to them right now?

  “What d’you mean if we really know them?”

  I glanced at Viv but just barely. My phone was still in my hand, and I was fidgeting with it, every few seconds checking to see whether any of my messages to Gideon or Dom had been answered. I was hardly listening to her at all.

  “It’s just … Gideon said something to me once …”

  She had my attention now. Since Gideon was all I could think about anyway, hearing his name said aloud was just about the only thing that could get me focused on the person who said it.

  “Since when have you ever cared what Gideon said?” I asked her. “You don’t even like him.”

  “Stop it. I like him fine,” Viv scoffed. “It’s his … job I sometimes have a little trouble with.”

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  And then we were both laughing. Viv reached over and squeezed my hand reassuringly.

  “Anyway, what did he say?” I asked, tugging my hand free.

  “One time he came by to see you and you were a couple blocks over getting lunch or something, so he was waiting and Elissa came in. And you know how she is, with that squeaky voice, like she’s thirteen and just needs someone to take care of her …”

  I nodded.

  Elissa was almost twenty-two, but at about four-foot-eleven she could have easily passed for a sixteen-year-old. She had been doing sex work since she actually was sixteen and had only recently left the life. To look at her, with her auburn hair, freckles and large limpid blue eyes, it was tough to picture her walking the streets and turning tricks. But she had, and her clientele consisted mostly of men who liked underage girls, or those who looked underage. The details she shared were enough to turn your stomach and cause you to look at every man with suspicion thereafter.

  “So, Elissa came in while Gideon was here and asked if she could borrow some petty cash because she was just fifty short on that room she rents. Had this whole detailed sob story, so I gave it to her, and she left. And then Gideon looked at me and was like, ‘you know she was workin’ you, right?’”

  Viv shrugged.

  “He said, ‘she was workin’ you like she does those dudes out there in the streets. None of what she just told you was true. Not one word of it.’”

  I shook my head. “That’s just because he knew her story.”

  “No. He didn’t. Not from me he didn’t. I didn’t tell him anything about her. He wouldn’t have known unless you …”

  I shook my head right away. “I don’t tell our kids’ histories to anyone. Not even to Gideon.”

  “Well he knew. He read her like a book, Ken.”

  “How do you know she was lying?”

  “Because he pissed me off. I never said anything at the time, but he pissed me off. I thought he was just being a cop, y’know what I mean? Suspicious of everyone, trusting no one? So, I checked out Elissa’s story with one of the others later, and he was right. She was full of shit.”

  “Elissa lied to you one time, so now you doubt we really know any of them?”

  Viv sighed. “Come on, Kendra, you know she isn’t the only one. You know they lie to us all the time, right?”

  I said nothing.

  “They lie because it’s a survival tool, they lie because …”

  I opened my mouth to protest but she held up a hand to stop me.

  “Not all of them. Of course not all of them. But … a lot of them. They lie. Not because they’re bad people, or even dishonest people, strange as that sounds. But because they’ve learned it’s not always safe to tell the truth. And because at the end of the day, they don’t see us as helping them fight against the system, they see us as part of the system.”

  I exhaled, letting my head fall back against the wall and looking up at the ceiling. “No. That’s …”

  “Yes, Kendra. You know I’m right. Look at us. Two, college-educated, wine-drinking, latte-sipping …”

  “What’s your point?” I snapped.

  “That they are the experts in their own lives. And we’re just playing catch-up. Except that we never will.”

  “And the reason you’re giving me this lecture now?” I said. “When I’m wondering where …”

  “Because maybe … maybe we oughta let them go, Ken.”

  I jerked my head upright again and looked at her. “Let them …”

  “Demetrius, Nathan … Lucy … They want to go out there and protest and only because I hauled my ass down there to get them did they come back. But this is their choice. And we don’t have the right to rob them of it, just because we’re … helping them.” She made air-quotes at the word ‘helping.’

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying, let’s not try to be their fucking saviors. It’s condescending. And the way we call them our ‘kids’? Most of them are over eighteen. They get to make their own decisions now. Hell, most of them have had to make their own decisions since they were eight.”

  “Even if we think they’re going to fuck up their futures? Maybe complicate all the work they’ve put in to get their lives on track?”

  “Yeah,” Viv said, even sadly. “Even then. I mean, look at Demetrius. Do you think he’s incapable of, I don’t know, assessing risk and weighing benefits?”

  “To some degree, yes! These are not kids who …” I stopped myself, realizing I was using that word again. “They don’t have the life skills … what? What’s that look?”

  “Don’t have the life skills? Jesus, Kendra. Now you’re sounding like those well-meaning white women who work in social services, who try to tell Black women who manage to feed a family of six on thirty bucks a week that they need financial literacy classes to learn how to manage their money better.”

  I swallowed and shook my head, laughing a little at her analogy despite how much it stung. It only stung because it was apt.

  “You know what you need to be doing right
now?” Viv continued.

  “No,” I said, sensing that I wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “What do I need to be doing now?”

  “You need to be at home, with a large glass of red wine, sitting on your sofa, calling everyone and their mother who might help you find out where you man is, and whether he’s okay.”

  My eyes filled with unexpected tears. Because until Viv said it, I didn’t feel like I could admit that that was precisely what I wanted to be doing.

  “You’re worried about him. And you get to be worried about him and only him. That’s okay for you to do, Kendra. These ki… these young people know you care about them. They get to decide who and where they want to be in this moment. We gotta step aside and let ‘em make their own way. Especially right now.”

  I swiped at my eyes with the back of a hand.

  “Shit, when we were eighteen, or nineteen or twenty, who’s to say that we wouldn’t want to be out there burning shit down?” Viv added.

  I laughed through the blur of my tears.

  “We’re the old heads, girl,” she said, laughing with me. “Their time has come.”

  “Their time …”

  “To lead, Kendra. Their time has come to lead. And all we gotta do? Is step aside.”

  * * *

  “This feels weird. I don’t know if I feel comfortable …”

  “Get over it. It’s fine.” Gideon pulled me back against him and pressed his face into the back of my neck.

  We were in his boyhood bedroom, crowded together on the full-size bed where he slept until he was eighteen and left home for college at Fordham University, a mere twelve miles to the northwest of where he grew up in the Bronx.

  He told me he had moved into the dorms even though he didn’t have to, so he could get “the full college experience.” And after Fordham he got his Master’s in Criminal Justice at John Jay College and moved to Philadelphia to become a police detective because two of his brothers, Gabe and Ricardo were already on the NYPD and he wanted to be different. The third brother, Antonio, the one closest to him in age was a high school History teacher.