by Aletto, Anna
Angela stands up, starting after her. I grab her by the arm and take her out front for a cigarette. We stand by the front door.
“Why did you tell her we were together?” I ask, irritated.
“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to,” Angela says contritely. “It was just instinct … Plus, she was such a bitch.”
“That doesn’t matter. Your instincts could be costing me money.”
“I told you I’m sorry.”
Several minutes later the sorority girl who talked to us at the bar comes out holding the arm of her boyfriend. “I don’t think I can make it,” she says. “Can you go get the car and I’ll wait for you?” She sits on the edge of the sidewalk, and her boyfriend walks down the street. The sorority girl sets her purse on the ground beside her. She momentarily closes her eyes and rubs the side of her head.
Angela tosses her cigarette, swipes the sorority girl’s purse, and starts down the street in the opposite direction of the boyfriend. Stunned, I toss my cigarette and follow. The boyfriend pulls up and parks his car. The sorority girl notices her purse missing. She looks down the sidewalk, sees Angela with it, and screams.
The boyfriend jumps from his car and sprints after us. I take Angela by the wrist and we dart down an alley. We run a ways and duck behind a building. I pick up an empty beer bottle and bust the end off. With Angela beside me, I lean backward against the edge of the building wall and wait.
Down the same alley the boyfriend follows. He peers behind the buildings looking for us. His shadow, cast from the street lights behind him, nears me. The boyfriend gets within ten feet, but then gives up and walks back to his car.
I drop the broken bottle and take out a cigarette. My heart racing, I accidentally place it on my lip upside-down and reach for my lighter. Angela notices, takes the cigarette off my lip and puts it back right-side up.
Chapter Six
Living in a black neighborhood, going to a black school, my sister Ariel and I only had trouble for looking white one time as far as I can remember.
Starting in first grade, I had participated in all the youth sports – basketball, baseball, and football. I was fortunate to be well-developed at a young age, fast and strong, and I excelled athletically. As a result, despite being naturally unsociable, I won over friends by shooting baskets, hitting home runs, and running for touchdowns. Any reference to me being a “white boy” was done affectionately by my peers who were happy I was on their team. Having earned that popularity, my skin color became a nonissue.
My sister Ariel used sports to break the racial barrier in a different way.
In middle school a stout, dark-skinned girl named Jasmine began picking on Ariel for her light-skinned complexion. Female bullies, though, were unlike male bullies, Ariel explained to me. Jasmine and her friends didn’t beat her up. They usually didn’t even taunt her to her face. Instead, they would huddle together during recess and shoot Ariel mean looks and whisper about her. Or, in the hallway, one of them would “by accident” bump into her and knock her books out of her hands and say, “Oops, I didn’t see you there.”
But mostly, Jasmine’s assault of Ariel was not physical. It was psychological. Jasmine tried to convince all the girls that something was wrong with Ariel and to take sides against her. Jasmine’s ultimate victory would be to leave Ariel friendless, isolated, and thus believing there really was something wrong with her.
Yielding to peer pressure, some of Ariel’s friends began to abandon her. She realized she needed to act fast before she became a social outcast.
Unlike me, Ariel didn’t play sports. She didn’t even like watching them unless I was playing. Ariel took P.E. class and was forced to participate in basketball, softball, and soccer among other sports. She dawdled through them all, doing enough to get credit for the class while exerting minimal effort.
However, the day the class went outside to play field hockey, something was different. For weeks Ariel had been an emotional wreck. She loathed going to school. Every day she faced new rumors being spread. Every day she faced former friends now hating her. I suggested that she fight Jasmine. I thought if she stood up to her, maybe it would all end. But Ariel told me it wasn’t like that with girls. To stop the harassment, she needed to win the public opinion of the other girls over Jasmine, not to beat her up.
For field hockey, Ariel and Jasmine were pitted against each other. Jasmine was the opposing team’s goalie. After all the torment, Ariel only wanted one thing: to score a goal on Jasmine. So for the first time, Ariel actually played and played hard. Nearing the end of the class period, drenched in sweat, Ariel finally broke away toward the goal. She shot the ball which soared past Jasmine and into the net.
But it didn’t matter. Jasmine looked at one of her friends and made a face mockingly. Jasmine didn’t care, nor did anyone else. Regardless of the goal, Ariel was still a social pariah. Disheartened, Ariel felt like she’d never be able to win over the public opinion. So instead, she took my advice and swung her hockey stick hard and swept out Jasmine’s feet from underneath her. She clubbed Jasmine a couple times before the P.E. teacher pulled her off.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the teacher asked.
“She called my mom a bitch,” Ariel said innocently.
Ariel was let off with a warning while Jasmine was taken to the principal’s office and scolded.
The next day as Ariel and I walked into school, a girl approached Ariel about the field hockey incident and said, “I didn’t know you were down like that!”
Ariel glanced at me and then smiled. She shrugged and said, “I guess I am.”
NEW ORLEANS, La. – In the late afternoon we check into Hotel LaSalle on Canal Street, a half block from the French Quarter. Angela and I, exhausted, lie on the bed and fall asleep on top of the bedspread with our clothes on. I don’t wake up until nine-thirty that evening, Angela nudging me.
“Hey, what are we doing tonight?” she asks.
I sit up and say, “Let me see what clothes you have.”
She hands me a small duffel bag, which I’ve loaned her, containing her belongings. Angela showers while I pick through her garments and assemble an outfit for her. Out of the shower she puts on her underwear which she brought into the bathroom with her. She peeks from the cracked bathroom door and says, “I need the rest of my clothes now.”
“Come here real quick and tell what you think of this,” I say.
“I can’t” she exclaims. “I’m hardly wearing anything.”
“You have your underwear on. Just come look at this outfit.”
Reluctantly she disappears momentarily into the bathroom and then comes out with a white terrycloth towel draped over her shoulders. Underneath the towel she tries to cover her black panties with pink trim and a black bra with pink pinstripes. I have her pull back her blond hair into a ponytail. I dress her in a black headband, a nondescript black T-shirt, a denim skirt, black leggings, and her sneakers.
Outside the air is crisp and we walk together to the French Quarter. I explain the plan to her. The mood between us is sparked with excitement. A comfort between us is developing. Navigating our way through the mobs of Bourbon Street we enter a popular karaoke bar. On the first floor, of the two-story building, throngs of people are jammed from the stage to the large bar across the room. Small tables are lined right in front of the stage and along the walls. The second floor is more relaxed, darkly lit, with a few sofas and many more tables, the ambience of a lounge. On one side is a hole in the floor in which to look down to the first floor’s stage and watch the show. In the back of the second floor, almost hidden, is another bar which is much smaller and attended to by only a single bar maid. This bar maid, along with one downstairs, is dressed very similarly to Angela.
I sit on an unoccupied sofa and watch Angela.
She walks to a table near the hole in the floor. At the table college kids, two guys and a girl, observe the karaoke singers and poke fun at them. On the way Angela picks up an empty
beer glass from an abandoned table. “Hey, excuse me,” she says to them. “I wanted to know if you could help us out. We’re running a bit low on change on the register downstairs. You don't have two tens for a twenty by any chance, or two fives for a ten?”
The guys check their wallets and the girl checks her purse. Together they give her thirty dollars.
“Thanks so much. I’ll be right back,” she tells them.
Angela walks back toward my direction but hits another table along the way. Two men, both in their fifties, sip cocktails and seem to enjoy the atmosphere though they look somewhat out of place. Both men are husky, have patchy white and grey hair, and wear golf shirts and slacks.
“Excuse me,” Angela says to them, having picked up another empty glass. “We're struggling downstairs right now running low on change. If you could help at all we’d love to bring you a round of free drinks.”
The men open their wallets. One of them in particular eyes Angela excessively and makes a comment, some lame attempt at flirtation. Because of his generosity and desire to impress Angela, she walks away from them with over a hundred dollars.
Back on the first floor, on the way out, Angela hits a couple more tables along the wall. She yells her words, her voice barely audible over the cheering crowd and the karaoke singer’s screeching rendition of Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” They hand her some cash. In total, from all four tables, Angela has about two-hundred and fifty dollars. She sets the empty drink glasses she’s picked up on the floor alongside the wall. We leave.
Down Bourbon Street we enter more crowded bars and repeat the exact same routine. Angela performs perfectly as I supervise. On the night we net over a grand.
Before we return to the hotel we stop at a small seafood diner. We share a bowl of gumbo.
“I really think I’m starting to get the hang of this,” Angela says. She takes her headband off and lets her hair down. “Don’t you think?”
For our entrées I have crawfish spaghettini and Angela has the crabmeat salad. For dessert we split a slice of Lemon Ice Box Pie.
Back in our hotel room she drops all the money we made onto the bed. I sit down and count it while she changes into a white undershirt and silky blue shorts.
“God, this is exciting. See, aren’t you glad you let me come with you?” She pushes my arm playfully and sits on the bed beside me.
“You definitely have potential.” I look at her. “You’re able to lie and cheat people to their faces without any remorse. And you seem to lack any sort of conscience. All traits I admire.”
She laughs.
Our legs touching, I lean forward to kiss her. My lips graze hers, only brushing them, before she pulls away.
“I told you,” she says quietly, looking downward self-consciously. “I don’t want to sleep with you.”
I smile at her and ask, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m … your partner. To make money,” she says. “Not just someone to have sex with. If we’re going to help each other you need to respect me.”
“Trust me,” I tell her. “With the amount of money you’ve earned in the past two days I’m already a big fan of yours. You don’t have to worry about respect.”
She breaks a smile.
I put one hand on her waist and lean forward and kiss her neck. I brush the hair from her face and kiss under her ear and then her earlobe.
She moans very softly, on the verge of giving in, but then she grabs the wrist of my hand. “Really, don’t.” She pulls her head away.
We sit there, still face to face. I stare at her. I look into her eyes, glance at her lips, then back into her eyes.
Her body tenses a little.
I grab her by the arms and push her backward and hold her down against the bed. She starts to scream but I kiss her hard on the lips. She scrambles to push me off her. With a firm grip I press her arms over her head. I go to strip off her clothes. She twists her face away from me and screams, “STOP!”
I relent and let go of her.
She jumps up and pushes me hard in the chest. “You motherfucker!” she yells. She stands and catches her breath a moment. “If you ever do that again I’m leaving and going to the police.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I wasn’t sure if you really wanted me to stop.”
“Bullshit.”
I stand and say, “If I really wanted to hurt you, do you really think you’d ever get out of this room?”
She looks at me, taken back. “I would,” she says feebly, trying to reassure herself. “And not only would I tell the police you tried to rape me. I’d also tell them you kidnapped me in the first place by threatening to kill me and my entire family.”
I exhale a chuckle. “You know, you’re really a bad person …” I smile and look at her. “I like it.”
She turns away from me, though I think I see the corner of her mouth smile. “Let’s just go to bed and get up at a good time tomorrow, okay?”
A string of break-ins occurred in our neighborhood during my sister Ariel’s and my eighth grade year. Everyone knew the perpetrator was probably someone from our neighborhood or nearby. No one who lived around us was even close to middle-class, so this person was poorer and more desperate than the rest of us. He would grab whatever meager items of value he could and scamper away into the night.
On schooldays after three o’clock I usually had football practice. By middle school I had grown to my full height and was chosen to play linebacker and wide receiver. I began to live on the field and in the gym, practicing and lifting weights, getting faster and stronger. Ariel and a friend of hers would often sit on the bleachers and watch my football practices, talking to each other and doing their homework.
Also around this time our mother lost one of her jobs at the mall. She frantically looked for work while our already tight budget became tighter. Most of our money went to paying the rent on our house. The rest went for food which was barely enough to cover our meals. We had no money to go out and do anything. No shopping. No movies. No video games or bowling. We didn’t have a television in the house. The three of us ate ramen noodles for eighteen nights in a row one month. On that eighteenth night Ariel looked at me nauseously after we’d eaten and said, “I think I’m gonna vomit.”
The next morning, early on a Sunday, Ariel shook me awake.
“Stop,” I said grabbing her arms. “What are you doing?”
“I have an idea,” she said.
We walked to the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, on the outer edge of our neighborhood. Cars arrived. People in cheap suits and garish dresses greeted each other as they filed inside. Ariel and I sat nearby, watching. Once services commenced and we’d waited for a handful of stragglers to arrive late, we walked over to the parking lot. We began moving from car to car. We’d try to open the driver-side door. If it was locked, we’d moved to the next car. If it was unlocked, we’d quickly scour the car and take anything valuable. Ariel and I had completed the entire lot in probably ten minutes. We didn’t walk away rich but we did have a little over thirty dollars. We proceeded to the supermarket and bought hot dogs, a roll of frozen hamburgers, and boxes of macaroni and cheese.
Our mother, who had been deepening into a depression, woke late that morning around eleven and walked into the kitchen. Noticing the new food she asked Ariel, “Where did this come from?”
“Me and Brandon went out this morning and bought it.”
“How did you pay for it?”
“Brandon had some money.”
Later that day I ran into my mother and she asked me, “How did you pay for this food?”
I shrugged. “Ariel had some money.”
My mother looked at me. I prepared for her to ask me what was going on, to call Ariel into the room to ask that we tell her the truth. But she didn’t say anything, probably relieved not to be eating ramen noodles for the nineteenth straight night.
By the next week Ariel and I smartened up and didn’t return to Pleasant Grove Bapti
st, realizing we were robbing poor people at a poor church. On the next Saturday we read the phone book listings for churches. We scouted large ones in wealthy neighborhoods. After deliberation we chose Independent Presbyterian. Ariel called to get the times for their worship services.
Sunday morning we rode the city bus as close as we could get and walked the remainder. Ariel and I each wore our nicest clothes so as not draw any attention to ourselves. The building itself was enormous brick entity with large white beams before the front door. On top was a steeple that stretched to the heavens. The lawn featured a collection of perfectly sculpted shrubbery. Ariel and I looked at the parking lot filled with Mercedes, BMWs, and Cadillacs. Once the lot was unattended, we went to work. Bolstered by our adrenaline, we made record time despite the number of cars in the larger lot. In a park nearby, we found a shady spot under some ivy-covered trees and counted our money. Together we had a few hundred dollars. We designated half as grocery money. The rest we split between us.
We continued scouting new churches for future weeks. To minimize our chances of getting caught, we’d change churches every week and we’d wait months before ever going back to the same church. We also expanded to the parking lots of shopping centers and malls, taking advantage of anyone careless enough to leave valuables in an unlocked car.
Since we’d been born, Ariel and I always shared a bedroom. However, as we’d reached adolescence, Ariel complained about not having her own room and her lack of privacy. The problem was that we only had two bedrooms in our house, ours and our mother’s. Though we still shared a bedroom, I countered this by, since the age of twelve, sleeping most nights on the couch in the living room. It wasn’t something that our mother forced me to do. Nor did Ariel ask me. It was just something I did hoping to make my sister happier.
In three weeks the number of break-ins in our neighborhood was up to seven. As such, every night before I went to bed I double-checked the locks on our front door, which led into the living room, and the back door, which led into the kitchen. I was sleeping on the living room couch when I woke up. Our house was totally dark. It was three o’clock in the morning. I heard someone trying to open the back door. The doorknob jiggled some before going silent.