New Orleans Noir

by Julie Smith

  Tyronne was trying so hard to be helpful and patient and considerate. But Rita knew the details, and the ultimate impact of all of this was way beyond his understanding. So much of Rita’s reality was based on events she would never reveal to Tyronne, such as the fact that Sammy’s father was Silas Moore, Snowflake’s oldest brother, and that she and Snowflake knew each other in ways that were hard to explain.

  “Stand up, baby, show this boy what a woman look like.”

  “Silas, I don’t have any cloth—Silas, I’m naked.”

  “I know you naked. This my little brother. He ain’t nothing but ten years old and he ain’t never even seen no pussy.”

  “I done seen it before.”

  “Yeah, when?”

  “Joanne showed me her thing.”

  “Who you talking ’bout?”

  “Joanne dat live ’cross the hall.”

  And Silas had laughed at Paul. “Bo-Bo, that ain’t no pussy. Bet she ain’t even got no hair on it good yet. How old that girl is?”

  “She eight and it’s still pussy, it just girl pussy.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m talking ’bout real pussy. I’m talking ’bout a woman’s pussy. Rita, stand up and show this boy what a woman’s pussy look like.”

  “Sil, I don’t want to.”

  “Do it for me, baby.”

  “She ain’t got to show me nuthin’, I done seen pussy befo’.”

  “Rita, I said stand up.”

  As Rita recalled standing up that day with Silas, she turned around to see if Tyronne was still there looking at her, but he was gone. Rita lowered herself into a sitting position in the closet doorway and another wave of memories flooded over her.

  When she was seventeen, the fact that twenty-two-year-old Silas “Silky Sil” Moore considered her a woman filled her with pride. Sil was the biggest player in the courtyard. He always had money—had a big car and could have any woman he wanted, and he wanted Rita.

  “Why you like me?”

  “Look here, Rita, let me give you some good advice. When you hit a streak a good luck, don’t question why. Just ride it long as it last, and when the luck leave you, get up off it and be thankful you got what you did.”

  “You saying you gon’ leave me?”

  “Naw, baby, I’m saying life is like the weather—it’s always changing. Sooner or later, everything gon’ change.”

  “I ain’t gon’ never stop lovin’ you.”

  “Now, nah, girl, you can’t say that. Don’t be judging tomorrow by what’s happening today. Suppose I take to liking another girl? Would you still love me?”

  “As long as it was liking and not loving, what I care? My love for you ain’t got nothing to do with you liking or not liking somebody else.”

  “You don’t sound like no seventeen-year-old. That’s one of the reasons I likes you.”

  “Yeah, and what’s another reason?”

  “Come here, I can show you better than I can tell you.”

  Rita could see her silly little seventeen-year-old self trying to act so womanish, and really doing nothing but being a stone fool for a man who was just using her.

  No matter how hard she tried, Rita could never forget that day. Sil had pulled her close and kissed her. As her tongue flickered into his mouth, he sucked it hard, almost to the point of hurting her, and then released her.

  Sil unbuckled his pants and let them drop at his feet. He slid his shorts down and sat on the side of his bed. “You want a mouthful of this?” he said, while guiding her hand to his erect penis.

  Rita knelt quickly and started to give him head—she knew he liked the way she did it. She practiced doing it, sucking on a banana sometimes for five minutes straight without stopping, strengthening her jaw muscles. And other times she would chew five sticks of gum at a time, over and over, and over and over, and over, building up her stamina.

  Some of the girls said they didn’t like it but they had to do it to keep a man, but Rita liked it. She liked feeling him in her mouth and liked the soft, slightly salty taste of his sperm. As with most of the girls she grew up around, Rita knew there were only two ways out for most women: one was to hitch your wagon to a man on the move and the other was to luck up and get a good job if somebody put in a good word for you, or somebody who was related to you got you on somewhere. There generally wasn’t no other way out, and usually finding a good job, when all you had was, at best, a public high school diploma, was harder than finding a good man. At least every young girl had a body and most of them could attract a man for a good six or seven years after they made eighteen. There wasn’t nothing they taught you in high school that lasted that long.

  “Wait a minute, baby. Go close the door, this is something for just me and you.”

  When Rita turned away from Sil’s dick and made her first move toward the door, she saw little Paul standing there wide-eyed. She never said a word to him, just closed the door in his face.

  How could she tell Tyronne about all of that?

  By the time Rita discovered she was pregnant, she and Sil had already broken up. Her turn was over and it was time for another high school cutie to hang on Sil. And when Samuel was born, Sil was in prison. Rita didn’t even bother trying to contact him. You ride it till it’s through, and when it’s over you let it go.

  Rita snapped back to the present and began pulling clothes, boxes, and whatnot out of the closet, setting them on the floor beside her in three distinct piles. One pile was clothes she would give away. One pile was stuff she would throw away, sneakers, two old pairs of underwear, stuff like that, and a third pile—well, not really a pile, just a couple of things—a third stack was memorabilia she would keep. Sammy’s drawing notebooks mainly and a neat stack of comic books he liked to read. Rita didn’t know why she felt it important to keep the short stack of comic books, but somehow these things reminded her of Sammy more than even his picture on the bedroom dresser.

  Rita lovingly looked through Sammy’s notebooks. He had two that were full and one only partially complete. The partially complete one had the best drawings and also had a phone number written on the inside cover.

  She had noticed the number immediately, because, unlike everything else in the notebook, it was written in ink and underlined.

  Maybe this number held the key to who killed him. Rita believed it was Snowflake but she had no proof.

  “Girl, he like you. Look how he looking at you.”

  “LaToya, I got a baby already. Less he ready to be a daddy and a lover, I don’t even want to hear nothing.”

  “Girl, he kinda cute. I wish he would look at me like that.”

  “Yeah. Whatever.”

  “What you mean, ‘whatever’? That man got a job. He a security guard.”

  “Yeah, and since he got a job, he probably got a woman.”

  Rita and LaToya went up to the window together to cash their Shoney’s paychecks. LaToya kept eyeing Tyronne. He was kind of built, too. LaToya cashed her check first and stepped away while Rita cashed hers.

  When they got outside, LaToya burst out laughing.

  “Girl, what’s so funny?”

  “You gon’ see.”

  “No, tell me now. What up?”

  “You gon’ see, when he call you.”

  “When who call me?”

  “Tyronne.”

  “Tyronne who? What you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that security guard in the bank who had them juicy lips.”

  “Call me … What you talking about? He don’t even know me.”

  “Well, he got your number.”

  “How he got my number?”

  “’Cause while you was cashing your check, I told him that you liked him but you was shy and that you told me to give him your number.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “586-8540. Rita Deslonde.”

  “Oh, you wrong for that,” Rita said, and chased LaToya a quarter of the way down the block.

  Now, as she held Tyr
onne’s revolver in her hand, Rita had to smile as she thought back to how they had gotten together. He had called. He had asked for a date, and Rita decided he was all right when he didn’t hesitate about taking her and her eleven-year-old son Samuel to the Audubon Zoo.

  What she liked most about Tyronne was the way he talked to her about his life and his experiences—not just his dreams but also his fears.

  “So, Tyronne, I can’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend already.”

  “Believe it or not, it’s true.”

  “How come?”

  “I guess ’cause a lot of girls think I’m kind of square or something.”

  “Well, after what all I done seen, square seems kind of nice to me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Rita smiled, thinking about just how square Tyronne actually was. He wasn’t much of a lover. He would roll on top of her and be through almost as soon as they got started. But that was okay, she could teach him how to take his time.

  She also had to teach him how to get high. He said he never like smoking “that stuff” all that much. With him around, a nickel bag lasted a long time. They might smoke once a week or so. Gradually, Rita just gave it up, unless she was under a lot of stress.

  The only thing they ever fought about was keeping a gun in the house. Rita knew having a weapon went hand in hand with being a security guard, but she just didn’t like the idea of one in the house with a child who was always snooping into everything. Finally, Tyronne hit on the idea of keeping the gun in a lock box. She had a key and Tyronne had a key. Rita could live with that.

  Rita slid Tyronne’s gun into her purse, closed the box, covered it back up with clothing, and slid the second dresser drawer fully closed. Then she turned around in the dim bedroom. It would soon be dusk. She had no words to tell Tyronne about Sammy, about his father—well, she had told him that Sammy was the result of a brief fling when she was seventeen years old and that she had never told the man that he was the boy’s father. That was true. However, Rita hadn’t told Tyronne that Silas Moore was the father, or that Silas was in prison. Nor, of course, had she told Tyronne that Snowflake was Silas’s baby brother. New Orleans was such a small town, all the poor people knew each other, or knew somebody who knew some …

  Her past wasn’t pretty and there was no way she wanted to share the foolishness of her youth with Tyronne. He wouldn’t be able to deal with it. It would haunt him. He was a good man but … well, it would hurt him too much to hear certain details of her life. Plus, he had no way of understanding some things. Rita remembered a conversation about a news show on Channel 4.

  “Well, goddamn, look at that. That girl can’t be no more than sixteen or seventeen and she caught up in a drug ring.”

  “Tee, when it’s all around you—”

  “It was all around me when I grew up. But I mean, she’s a girl …”

  “Well, the drug dealer is probably her pimp. But sometimes it ain’t even about being no prostitute or nothing. Those girls just be starved for affection and those guys give them dresses and jewelry and stuff and they think they’re in love.”

  “Yeah, and after they get pre—”

  “You mean like I got pregnant with Sammy?”

  The question hung in the air for a long time.

  After about a minute of silence, Tyronne spoke up: “So, I guess you’re telling me you’re like that girl.”

  “No, I’m telling you I understand what that girl is going through and I don’t think you do. I think you see the condition she’s in only from the outside, and me, I feel the condition she’s in on the inside.”

  “I guess I’m thinking of how we used to mess over them young girls in Vietnam and it’s hard for me to imagine them growing up and coming out okay after all that stuff …”

  “Well, if you live, you grow up. You got no choice about that. As for it being okay, who’s to say what’s okay?”

  After another long pause, Tyronne looked at Rita. “Baby, there’s a whole lot I don’t know, but I know you’re okay and I love you.”

  Tyronne’s love was disarming and sometimes uncomfortable. He was so honest about his own shortcomings and so accepting of hers. Rita used to wish she could start her life over with Tyronne, wish she had met him when she was fourteen instead of meeting Roger, wish she had gone with him in high school instead of Sherman and Bekay, wish she had waited for Tyronne to father Sammy. But what was the use of wishing? Life was what it was, not what you wished it to be. She should just count her blessings and feel lucky she and Tyronne had eventually hooked up.

  The whole time they were discussing the girl on Channel 4, Rita had been standing next to the chair where Tyronne liked to sit while watching television. She bent and kissed him lovingly. “I love you back, Tee, with everything I got. I love you too.”

  Everything I got, Rita thought to herself. The rub was, there were things she no longer had because they had been taken from her. Rita wished she had those missing things so that she could love Tyronne with everything, just like he loved her. But that was only a wish. The reality was both more complex and much more repulsive.

  Clearly, Tyronne had never been molested as a child, so he still had some innocence in his loving. Rita had no innocence left. To Rita, the fierce reality of her childhood was unsparing and unforgiving. Rita was certain if Tyronne knew all the sad and sordid things that had happened to her and all the silly and stupid things that she had done to herself, no matter how much he loved her, he would probably leave her. Everything in Rita’s life told her, no matter what they said or how much they loved you, men didn’t tolerate their women making too many mistakes and indiscretions, especially if sex was involved. Tyronne was a man and, deep down, was probably no different.

  Plus, Tyronne was nice and good-hearted, the very kind of man who always has a hard time dealing with people who fuck up over and over again. Tyronne got upset if she threw a Coke cup out the car window. Rita could imagine what would happen if he knew about some of the other things she had thrown out the windows of her life.

  He believed that most people were basically good and a few people were evil-minded. Rita knew that everybody could go either way, it just depended on the circumstances and what they felt their chances were of getting what they wanted versus getting caught.

  Rita paused briefly in the doorway and hoped everything would be all right for Tyronne. He deserved good things. He was a good man.

  Even though he had killed as a soldier, Rita could tell, from the way Tee talked about his ’Nam experiences, that he would never kill anyone in cold blood nor would he understand being a cold-blooded killer, and that’s why right now she couldn’t share with Tyronne that she had decided she was going to kill Snowflake.

  She wasn’t going to talk about it and she wasn’t going to think about it. She wasn’t even going to cook up no scheme about how she was going to do it. She was just going to do it.

  Some things are best never said, Rita thought to herself as she passed through the front room. It’s bad enough we act on some of the evil thoughts and fucked-up desires we have, we don’t have to talk about them; or, at least, that’s how she rationalized walking out the door past Tyronne without telling him anything other than, “Tee, I got to get some air. Walk around some. I’ll be back.”

  Tyronne looked at her. He ached to comfort her but knew her well enough to recognize that there were areas of her life she refused to allow him to touch. All he could do was wait, helplessly wait, until she was ready to open to him. “Rita, be careful.”

  “I’m just going for a little walk.” If she stopped to say any more she might not do it. She had to do it now, while the smell of Sammy was still in her nose and the fuck-ups of the past were lingering in her consciousness.

  Twelve blocks later, Rita stood in the gloaming looking at Snowflake’s house across the street. Lights were on. A Jeep was in the driveway and a fancy car was parked out front. She knew he was home.

  Should she go knock on the door
? Should she just stand and wait? Was it safe to just stand on the sidewalk? Maybe he was checking her out right now.

  Sheltered by the darkening dusk, Rita simply waited for something to happen. A light shower began. She’d had the presence of mind to bring an umbrella and she raised it above her head. She stood in the rain for twenty-eight minutes, her eyes fastened to Snowflake’s house. Then she saw the door open. He was standing on the porch locking the door.

  Rita quickly dashed across the street, holding the umbrella in her left hand and reaching into her dangling purse to pull out the revolver with her right. She had no plan. She was just going to flat-out kill him.

  They almost bumped into each other as Snowflake ran toward his BMW. Snowflake had seen the woman running across the street in the rain but had paid her no mind until she was right on top of him.

  “Paul Moore, this is for Samuel Deslonde.” Bam. The first shot caught him square in the chest. He had no time to react. The force of the bullet hurled him over the hood of his car. Rita stood over Snowflake and shot him twice more. Bam. Bam. Once in his right side and the other in the back of his right shoulder. He slid off the car, a bleeding heap of inert flesh in the street.

  The rain was falling steadily. Rita froze momentarily. Not sure what to do now, she looked around. A few people near the corner were standing under a sweetshop awning, looking at her. She put the warm pistol back in her purse and swiftly walked away. No one said anything to her as she passed.

  Rita took the long way home and did not stop until she was standing, wet and distraught but dry-eyed, in their living room. When she came in, Tyronne rose slowly. He had Gloria in his arms, she was sleeping. He gently set her down in the chair and rushed silently over to Rita.

  He quickly surveyed her from head to toe, wiped her damp hair back from her face, and gathered her up in a huge embrace.

  “Tee, I—”

  “Shhhh, shhhhh. Don’t say nothing, baby. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. I don’t care. We’ll deal with it.”

  “I shot Snowflake.”