The Chaos

by Nalo Hopkinson

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dad was in the living room, watching his favorite 100 percent fake reality cop show on the TV. He loved those shows so much.

  He caught me glancing at the screen. “No television until after homework, young lady.”

  “Yes, Dad.” As if. Fat chance I’d be I doing any homework this Friday evening. He and Mom would be outta here soon. No way they would know whether I was watching TV or not. I could catch up on my homework on Sunday.

  “Come give your daddy a hug.” He opened his arms. He got his hug, but then I immediately moved away and sat at the other end of the couch. I ignored how his face fell. That was just the price he paid for what he’d done to Rich. I’d been making him pay it the whole time Rich was in jail, and I wasn’t going to stop now.

  “When’re you and Mom leaving?” I asked him.

  He sighed and turned his attention to the TV again. “In about twenty minutes.”

  All right! I only nodded, but inside, I was doing a victory dance.

  “I left dinner for you kids in the oven.”

  “In the UH-ven?” I said, teasingly. He always said it OH-ven, with a long O. Like he said “bowl” so it rhymed with “owl.”

  He gave me a sideways look. He knew that I’d just made fun of him. I’d better watch it. I asked him, “What’d you make?”

  “Oxtail. Peas and rice. Salad. Yellow yam. A plate each for you and Richard. And you going to eat all the yam I put on your plate.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  He put the remote down on the arm of the couch. “That is sufficient. You will not speak that way to me, young lady.”

  Crap, now I’d made him tetchy. Better deal with it now. Otherwise the next twenty minutes would be nothing but lecturing about how when he was a small boy, his father would have tanned his behind for speaking to him too familiar, and Young lady, is this kind of irresponsible behavior that got you into trouble, yadda, yadda. “I’m sorry, Dad. I promise I’ll eat it all.”

  “That’s better.” He turned his eyes back to the television. He muttered, almost as if I weren’t in the room, “Can’t afford to be wasting your mother’s hard-earned dollars.” He rubbed his twisted leg. Dad ran a construction company. He preferred to do some of the work with his own hands, but his leg hadn’t been the same since he’d fallen from scaffolding when I was a little girl.

  I heard Mom before I saw her. From the sound of it, she was at the top of the stairs. “Rich! Come down to the living room, please?”

  “Please,” question mark. Not her usual “please,” period. She was sounding a little bit apologetic around Richard nowadays. Good.

  “Cutty, is Sojourner down there with you?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “I’m here, Mom.”

  “That’s good, you’re on time. Come and help me with these bags, please.”

  I, of course, still got “please,” period. When they took me out of LeBrun High, they decided that I needed a more “diverse” school, as in a school where I wasn’t one of only five black people out of hundreds of students. That meant the big city; Toronto. Mom would never let on how much she’d hated to move all the way here, the long drive to work and back every day. How much she missed the town of Guelph. But ever since then she’d been starchier with me.

  “Coming, Mom.”

  Dad sighed. He shifted grumpily around on the couch, moving his leg to a more comfortable position. Mom had asked me to help her with the bags, not Dad. For all I was mad at him and Mom, I found myself shooting him a sympathetic look. He scowled and looked away.

  I took the stairs two at a time, until Dad ordered me to act more ladylike.

  Mom stood at the top of the stairs between her big red suitcase and Dad’s smaller navy one. She was going over something printed on a couple sheets of paper in her hand. She frowned at the list and shook her head. “I forgot to put down your aunt Maryssa’s number in case of any trouble.”

  “It’s in my cell phone, Mom. Don’t fret.”

  “Oh. Is it in Rich’s?” Mom had her hair done in that way I liked. She’d pulled it away from her forehead with a snug head wrap, leaving the soft mass of her nappy cloud of hair to poof out the back like a static explosion of pretty.

  “I don’t know.” My hair was a mixture of Mom’s and Dad’s; it was medium brown and fell in natural ringlets. Lots of girls envied it. “Hey, isn’t Auntie Mryss really our cousin?”

  “Your dad’s cousin. So, your second cousin once removed, or something.” She hadn’t even looked up from double-checking her blessed list. She was wearing a sensible beige skirt, a plain, sensible cream blouse, with a sensible beige jacket. The wishy-washy beige did exactly that; washed the color from her deeper brown face.

  “Wouldn’t Dad’s cousin just be our second cousin?”

  “Whatever she is, just call her ‘Auntie,’ dear.”

  “Cecily,” Dad called from downstairs. “You wanted to get on the road before the worst of the traffic.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. Rich!”

  Almost all her clothes made her look gray. Like I did, when I dressed in the colors she picked out for me.

  Rich opened his bedroom door. He didn’t make eye contact with her, just came and lifted the bigger suitcase. I got the other one, and he and I thumped them down the stairs with Mom following behind, nattering at us. “I’ve made three copies of this list. You each get one, and I’ll put one on the fridge door.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Rich and I sang in unison.

  “Keep your list with you at all times. In your handbag, Scotch. Rich can put his in his wallet.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Dad was waiting in the hallway, leaning on his cane. He’d barely seen Rich before he snapped, “Richard, how you could make your little sister carry that heavy suitcase down the stairs all by herself?”

  Rich boggled at him. “But she can—”

  I cut in with, “Mom told me to—”

  Mom overruled us all. “Cutty, she’s a strapping young woman. Let her do some fetching and carrying. She’ll need to be strong in this life.” She sighed and plucked a couple of envelopes from the letter slot on the hallway wall. Using the top of her big red suitcase as a table, she folded two of her precious lists into precise thirds and put each one in an envelope. She tucked the flaps inside and handed one to me and one to Rich. “Are you two sure you’ll be okay on your own?”

  Rich’s face hardened. “I was on my own in jail for three months.”

  Mom drew back a little, like he’d pushed her. “Rich, darling, I—”

  I gave him a play slap to the shoulder. “Hey! I came to see you!”

  He sighed. “Yeah, you did. You and Tafari.”

  Dad grunted, a bitter, one-note laugh. “You make your bed, you haffe lie in it. Bring those things out to the car.” He turned and limped toward the door.

  Mom said sadly, “I’ll just put this list on the fridge door.” She was darting her eyes everywhere, except in our direction. She bustled into the kitchen.

  Rich and I followed Dad outside to the car. Dad yanked on the lid of the trunk. It was locked. Mom had the key. “Chuh,” said Dad, frustrated. He used to like driving. Now, his leg wouldn’t let him. He leaned against the car, watching our front door for when Mum would come out. He didn’t say anything to us. He just stood there, a broad, medium-height white Jamaican man, grimly handsome with short, light brown hair going to gray. That old brown plaid jacket of his was all pills and thin spots, but he wouldn’t wear any of his others.

  I casually brushed away a Horseless Head Man that had chosen that moment to land on the suitcase I was carrying. And I felt it. Its skin was cool, but it felt alive and muscle-y against the back of my hand. I jerked my hand back. Jesus, now I was thinking I could feel them.

  The motion must have caught Rich’s eye. “What’s with you?” he asked softly. Mostly we tried not to let our folks hear us talking to each other. A little privacy, you know?

  “Nothing. I was
just remembering a boa constrictor some Animal Rescue woman brought to our class one time.” The Horseless Head Man was looping in cheerful circles around Dad’s head.

  Rich looked skyward. “You’re so weird.”

  “You’re weirder.” Not really a snappy comeback. It was the best I could come up with after the shock I’d just had.

  Dad started drumming his fingers quietly on the trunk of the car. He was still staring at our front door. “But where your mother is, ee? We supposed to be on the road by now.”

  We didn’t answer. His leg was probably achy from standing this long, but he would never say that. He kept drumming, in a steady syncopation. The Horseless Head Man was gone, heaven knows when or where. They were like that. After a while, Rich started humming, improvising a tune to Dad’s beat. Dad said nothing, didn’t even look Rich’s way. He kept his fingers moving, though. He let the car take a little bit more of his weight. Closed his eyes.

  Our front door opened and Mum came out. She took one look at the strain on Dad’s face and came bustling over. “Sorry, honey.” She unlocked the car doors and got in on the driver’s side. She waited while Dad got in and Rich and I loaded up the trunk with their suitcases. She fussed a bit more over whether Rich and I knew how to contact them in an emergency, and reminded Rich about his appointment with his parole officer. “I’m trusting you children,” she said.

  Just before she rolled up the window on her side, Dad called through it, “And I don’t want any of your friends coming to visit while we’re away, you hear me?”

  We both said, “Yes, Dad.”

  And finally, the small, neat navy Subaru drove away, taking our millstones with it. We kept waving until Mom rounded the corner out of sight. Even then, although we were grinning like fools at each other, we did a calm, well-behaved walk back into the house. You never knew when nosey Mr. Walter from next door was watching. But the minute the front door was closed, we whooped and hollered and started dancing around the room, crazy Muppet-style. “They’re gone!” I yelled, “They’re gone! For two whole days, they’re gone!”

  Rich gave me a high five.

  “Freedom for the stallion!” I bellowed. “Or . . . I dunno . . . stallionette?”

  Rich grinned at me. “You are such a goof.” He mimed holding a mike. “Freedom for the stallion, freedom from the chains, freedom for these young foals, freedom from the pains, t’aint no thing to take this life for a spin . . .”

  I wheeled into a spinning running man on the tiles lining our entranceway. I sang counterpoint to Rich’s rapping; “T’aint no big thing, to wait for the bell to ring . . .” And one! I leapt, dead on time, into the move I’d been struggling to get right at the Raw Gyals practice this afternoon!

  Rich watched with that bemused grin he got when his li’l sis acted weird. “You know,” he said quietly, “that first day you visited me, I was never so glad to see anybody in my life.”

  I stopped and stared at him. “But you acted like you didn’t care.”

  He perched on one of the sofa’s padded arms. Dad would have had his hide for that. “That first month, I was frightened all the time. Waking, sleeping; always scared.” He saw my face. “No, not for the reason everybody always tells you. Wasn’t about guys trying to step to me.”

  I sat on the sofa beside him. “Then why?”

  He shook his head. “Girl, you and me, living in this nice, safe house with three squares every day and nobody beating on us, and we have all our teeth and none of them are rotting?”

  I made a face. “Eww.”

  Rich sighed. “We don’t know shit, Scotch. Some of the stories I heard from guys in there, some of the things I saw . . . They told me I was rich, that I had it easy. Some of those guys could barely read. Couple of them told me they’d never tasted a vegetable that wasn’t out of a can. They all had cell phones, but half of them didn’t know which end of a computer was which, made like they were too tough to be bothered with that kind of fairy shit, but the truth is, they were scared to look stupid. They don’t know how to Tweet, or Google. They can’t walk into a store without security following them everywhere.”

  “Well, neither can you.”

  That surprised a bleak laugh from him. “True that.”

  “You’re darker than me. You got that ‘breathing while black’ thing going on. Makes you instantly suspicious.”

  “Thing is, they were right. We have it easy. And a lot of them resented me for it. That was the real danger in there; getting ganged up on by a bunch of tough-ass, mean sunnabitches who’d never had what I had and knew they never would. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Not a single one of them had had their parents toss them in jail for having one joint.”

  “Rich, I—”

  “I mean, Doggie, he’d like, beat his dad unconscious. So his moms called the cops on him. But that was different.”

  “His name was Doggie?”

  Again with the little smile. “Doug. Dougie. But everybody called him Doggie. His dad had been smacking him and his mom around for years. Doggie only beat his dad up once.”

  Oh, God. That’s where our parents had sent Rich. Into a place like that.

  He looked up from the floor. “Jeez, Scotch, don’t cry. Or at least go get some tissue. Don’t want you near me with snot all running down your face and shit.”

  I sniffed back the tears. “Bite me.”

  “Now, that’s just wrong.” He aimed a play tap at my head. I blocked it and made like I was going to elbow him in the belly. He pushed the elbow away, grabbed my wrist, and then we were both falling out laughing, and everything was okay again, sorta. Except for the hard knot like a rock in my belly.

  “Li’l sis, you are such a brat.”

  “Big bro, you are such a pain. And let go of my wrist. I have a new spot there.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” he said airily. “If it was catching, the whole family would have it by now.” But he let go. I wished I could be so certain I wasn’t contagious.

  Rich said, “Hey; wanna come to an open mike with me tonight?”

  “You mean it? For real?”

  “Yeah, T’s meeting me at Bar None. I’m going to sign up to get on the mike.”

  “Wow.” Rich choked up whenever he tried to do any public speaking. I’d heard him spitting his rhymes softly alone in his room, and sometimes he’d do it for me and for Tafari, but he’d never performed on a stage.

  “You came to see me when I was in jail. Mom and Dad didn’t. Will you come and hang out tonight, too?”

  “I dunno. I mean, me and Tafari . . .”

  “Yeah. Someday one of you’s gonna tell me what the hell’s up with all that. Why you guys suddenly broke up, I mean.”

  He paused so I could answer, but I just crossed my arms and rolled my eyes at him like it was beneath me to even talk about it. Would this scraping feeling in my heart every time someone said Tafari’s name ever go away?

  Rich shook his head. “Okay, but you’re both grown enough to deal with being in the same room at the same time, right?”

  I could have said I wouldn’t go to the club with him. I should have. But I wanted to prove to him that I was grown enough. I wanted to be a good sister. And I kinda wanted to see Tafari, too. So I said yes. I asked him, “When’re you going?”

  “Soon as I’m dressed.”

  “I’ll be ready in five minutes. Ten. Hey; can I stash a couple blouses in your closet?”

  “I’m running out of space.”

  “There’s only four. Mom and Dad never check your room anymore. Mom’s always scoping mine out. Come on, Rich. Please?”

  “Four new shirts?”

  “I think they don’t search your room cause they don’t want to have a reason to send you to jail again.”

  “Scotch, did you buy more new clothes? You have enough cash for that and rent?”

  “What’re you, the twenty questions fairy? Trust me, Bro. Everything’s okay.”

  It would be
. I clattered up the stairs to change. I could wear my new boots. This was going to be great!

  I sat on the edge of my bed and texted Ben and Glory:

  MY BRO’S TAKING ME TO BAR NONE! DOWNTOWN!

  In seconds the answer came back:

  SRSLY? RICH’S SO COOL!

  That was Gloria. I could practically feel the blush over the phone.

  AND CUTE!

  That second one was from Ben. I texted him back:

  TELL U EVERYTHING 2MORROW!

  I’d barely hit send when I got back:

  YOU’D BETTER!

  I smiled and closed my phone. Things were back to normal. It was going to be a good term after all. Now, where the rass had I put that new blouse? “Rich!” I bellowed. “I gotta come get a shirt out of your room!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I waved at the bartender until I caught her eye. She came over. “Yeah?” she yelled over the drum ’n bass pounding out over the speakers.

  “Ginger ale and lemon!” I yelled back. No booze for me. If I got caught out in here, at least I could say I hadn’t been drinking liquor.

  The bartender narrowed her eyes at me. I looked away, playing like I was so old it wouldn’t even occur to me that she might think I was underage. She went to get me my drink. Nice tat she had; bear claws on either side of her breastbone, just above the neckline of her T-shirt. I wanted a circlet of briar roses around my left elbow. Soon as I got the lump of black stuff off that elbow. Would probably hurt like hell to get it done, but there’s no beauty without pain, right? Mom ’n Dad would just about shit themselves if I so much as mentioned a tattoo, though. I’d start saving up for it tomorrow. Maybe I was diluting that nighttime goop from the naturopath’s too much. Tonight I’d start putting it on full strength.

  And in a few more weeks I’d be outta my parents’ house. I’d be sharing a place with Rich, doing what I wanted to do.

  So this was a bar. I could smell decades of beer rising like stale bread dough from the worn carpeting. It wasn’t nasty or anything. Just old-smelling. Big tables everywhere, some rectangular, some round. All covered with cheap plastic tablecloths. Heavy, old-looking wooden chairs. The place was filling up with people chatting, drinking. Lots of pitchers of beer on tables. That’s it. Except for the booze, it was nothing special. I’d kind of expected it to feel more, I dunno, illicit. Wicked, even.