Bang! Page 11

  Chapter 37

  WHEN YOU GOT stupid parents, you don’t got to listen to them. That’s what me and Kee-lee figure. So we take our money and our clothes and we go where we want—to his aunt’s place.

  Kee-lee’s Aunt Mary’s the one the rest of his family talks about. She runs a number house. She dresses like a man, acts like a man, and drinks like a man—that’s what Kee-lee says anyhow. She lives on the other side of town, and his other aunts like it that way. Kee-lee said they gave up trying to make her do right a long time ago. So now, they just pray for her and send her Christmas cards every year.

  When we get to her place, I’m thinking to myself that it ain’t so bad. Only that thought don’t stay in my head too long.

  Soon as you walk in, there are old ladies knitting by the corner window. They got a big pink-green-and-yellow afghan sitting in front of them, and little flowered cups sitting on saucers. Kee-lee says they drinking rotgut, not tea.

  I look at him.

  “Bootleg liquor. My aunt makes it.”

  Men my father’s age are lined up at a row of telephones, placing bets. Every few minutes one of them hangs up, and the phone rings. “That’s the bookie, double checking the bet,” Kee-lee tells me. Then he sneaks over to a phone and calls Keisha, but he doesn’t tell her where we are.

  The place looks big, since furniture you’d have in your house—coffee tables, living-room furniture, and couches—ain’t here. There’s just bunches of mismatched chairs, card tables, and phones. Women and men, young and old, are playing cards and laughing, and arguing over poker and gin.

  “All kinds of people come here,” Kee-lee says, setting his bag down at the door. “People be in church on Sunday and here on Monday.”

  I walk by one lady knitting a purple scarf. She asks the guy standing near me if he’s got a good number. “My luck’s turning,” she says, laying down her yellow knitting needles. “I almost hit last night.”

  Three other women are quilting a blanket. I ask Kee-lee why they here. “They waiting on the number to come out. Same as all the rest.”

  Music’s playing. People are laughing, talking, standing, walking. There’s a man by the phones who looks like he’d cut your throat though. He’s the bouncer. “He weighs four-fifty. Don’t nobody mess with him.” Kee-lee takes out some weed and lights up.

  Aunt Mary’s hand comes out of nowhere and smacks it out his mouth. “You planning on staying, you better act like you know.”

  She don’t look like no man to me. She’s got on a red dress down to her knees and skinny heels tall as cigarettes. You can tell she’s tough though; got a cut over her left eye and another on her right cheek to prove it. She puts her hand out to me. “Heard you wanna stay here awhile. It’s gonna cost ya.”

  When I go in my back pocket to get money, it all falls on the floor. A man standing by her with a cigarette in his mouth picks it up and puts it in his pocket. Kee-lee’s aunt winks, and walks away.

  “That’s mine.”

  He’s following every move she makes with his eyes. “And?”

  He’s a shrimp. Short, with a big, bald head. I’m thinking I can take him if I have to. He’s thinking what I’m thinking, I guess. A switchblade comes out. “Go ahead. Try it.”

  I’m backing up, trying not to trip. “That’s all I got. She wants me to pay to stay and I still gotta eat and . . .”

  Aunt Mary takes the money out his pocket and walks off. “Thanks, baby.”

  I been away from home two hours and already my money’s gone. I tell Kee-lee his aunt’s a thief. He says she do steal a little, but she can cook real good. I follow him to the kitchen. There’s a stove full of big blue pots boiling and smelling up the house something good. He picks up a lid. “She sells food too.” He takes a top off another pot. “Collard greens. My favorite.”

  I check out the next pot. “Pigs’ feet.” I lick my lips, break off a toe, and suck the bone clean.

  Kee-lee tells me to watch the door. Then he gets two plates, puts a fat, juicy pig’s feet on each one, scoops up some greens and more corn bread than we can eat, and him and me go out back and clean our plates.

  “Here,” his aunt says when we go back inside. “Try this.”

  Kee-lee drinks his first. “Taste like a Red Lion.”

  I sip my drink, then I set the glass down.

  The man that always follows Aunt Mary asks if I’m a girl or something.

  I punch my chest. “No, sir.”

  He laughs. “Sir?” He looks around the room. “The police here or something?”

  “I don’t drink, sir.”

  He slaps my back so hard I belch. “Ain’t no sirs here. Just plain folk. So drink up. Be a man, Mann.”

  Kee-lee opens his mouth wide and pours his drink down fast. Right off I can see what it’s doing to him. His words come out crooked. And he laughs about nothing.

  I tell them I don’t want nothing to drink. But his aunt’s friend tells me ain’t no boys welcome here. And if I don’t drink, I can’t stay. “’Cause if you can’t handle your liquor, you can’t handle the rest of the stuff going on round here.”

  I look at the old ladies, at the men lined up at the phones, and the guy jumping up from a card table yelling for folks to pay him his money ’fore he shoot somebody. I watch the bouncer, wide as a poker table, go over and settle him down. And I think about my dad. How he said for me to be a man. Then I close my eyes. Open my mouth so wide it hurts, and pour that stuff down my throat, even though it burns and tastes as bad as the bug spray I sucked out a can like juice when I was seven.

  Chapter 38

  I BEEN HERE OVER a week, and here’s what I figured out: they don’t never sleep at the number house. People ring the bell all night long. They knock on the door and ring the phone and come and go and don’t never sit still, it seems. When they ain’t putting in numbers, they’re playing cards. When they ain’t playing cards, they’re sitting around, talking, drinking, and eating.

  Kee-lee and me don’t do all that much. We eat, we sleep, we get high off weed we buy up the street with money Kee-lee steals out his aunt’s purse, and we drink all the liquor we want. It’s fun. But it ain’t what my father had in mind.

  “Y’all come here,” Aunt Mary said this morning.

  Him and me both came at the same time.

  “You stink. Get yourselves some clean towels and take a bath.”

  I smell my underarms.

  She tells us that when we done she wants us to do something for her. “Make a run.”

  Aunt Mary’s house is next to a crack house, which is next to another crack house, which is next to three vacant houses with the insides gutted out. It’s nighttime, and she’s wanting us to go pick up some money for her, to walk past them houses and up the street, where dogs look too scared to walk at night.

  I twist my lips to the side and whisper to Kee-lee, “Tell her no.”

  He says we have to go ’cause we owe her. I’m figuring I don’t owe her nothing because she stole all my dough. Kee-lee don’t like me harping on that fact. “You gotta pay to live someplace.” He steps outside onto the porch. “So you gotta pay to stay here.”

  Aunt Mary follows us. Says for us not to smoke nothing, because she don’t want no potheads handling her money. Kee-lee and me ain’t listening.

  Soon as we get off the block, we light one up. It’s a fat blunt, thick as my thumb. It’s nighttime, but we smoking in plain sight, laughing, just hoping somebody’s stupid enough to tell us to stop.

  When we get to the corner of Chase and Graham we stop and light another one up. We check out the sights, get hungry, and go get something good to eat.

  Kee-lee laughs. “Now, what we supposed to be doing?”

  I’m sitting on the curb with my head leaning on the light pole and my eyes closed. “I don’t know.”

  Some guys are across the street talking loud. Pushing and punching each other. They, like, twenty-three, twenty-five years old. “Yo, punk!” Kee-lee shouts.

>   They say we better chill.

  I yell over at them next. “Hey. What you girls doing over there?”

  Kee-lee asks me again what his aunt told us to do. “I can’t remember.” He reaches down, picks up an empty soda bottle, and throws it across the street. “They baby, sissy girls,” he says, laughing.

  Weed makes you think you’re tougher than you are. So I throw another bottle across the street and laugh.

  We should run. I know that. But it’s like my mind is saying go, but my feet are saying, What we wanna do that for? So I stay where I am. Kee-lee lights up another blunt, and before he even gets his first puff they coming for us. Double punching me in the ribs. Kicking us in the back when we fall to the ground and cover up the best we can.

  Be a man, I hear my father say. So I’m kicking back, feeling around for a brick or a bottle to hit them with. Thinking about the whupping them white men put on me. Jumping up. Fighting back. Telling myself ain’t nobody never gonna beat me like that no more.

  Only these guys are bigger, stronger, and meaner than me, so what I do don’t matter much.

  I throw a punch. I duck. “Kee-lee!” I yell. “They gonna kill us!”

  Kee-lee ain’t talking. He’s curled up in a ball, covering his head and his stomach.

  Brown boots kick me in the knees. “Cops!” the guy wearing the boots says.

  I hear the sirens.

  He slams my head into the ground and steps on me.

  “And because you got a big mouth,” a dude says to Kee-lee, “I’m taking these.” He pulls off the $130 sneakers Aunt Mary just bought him.

  The guy beating on me stops. “I don’t wear cheap shoes,” he says, kicking my foot and taking off.

  I’m holding my stomach. Holding my head. Listening to the blood in my ears roar. I get to my feet. “Cops.” I’m limping, dragging my right leg and running to hide behind an empty shoe repair shop.

  Aunt Mary throws me up against the wall. “Don’t tell me nothing about how you got beat up. Just tell me you picked up my money.”

  My bottom lip is swollen. My eye’s got a cut over it, and my body hurts all over. “We ain’t get there ’cause—”

  She pushes me out the front door. “Go get my stuff.”

  Kee-lee’s explaining. “They jumped us.”

  She smacks him upside the head. Her nails leave a long red line behind. “You let ’em beat you?” She goes to stomp his bare feet, but he jumps back. “And take my new sneakers?”

  Kee-lee’s holding his cheek. “It was six of ’em.”

  My head feels like I got hit with a pot.

  Aunt Mary takes an empty beer can and slams it into Kee-lee’s head. I duck when her friend reaches for me. Two big steps and he’s got me by the neck though—lifting me up, watching my legs kick, and dropping me to the floor.

  “Don’t you ever come back here beat down.” Aunt Mary’s fingers cross her throat. “Cut ’em, if you have to. Shoot ’em, if it comes to that.”

  My tongue wipes blood out the corner of my mouth.

  “But don’t never come back here telling me you got beat!”

  It’s midnight when we go back out again. I ain’t wanna go. I was scared and my face looked bad. Kee-lee and me both was limping, but his aunt said we had to have some more of the dog that bit us. So we did like she said. On the way over, I kept wondering what I did wrong to end up living like this. I brought it up to Kee-lee. He said for me to stop being a sissy. “So what if you get beat, long as you get back up and don’t let it happen no more.”

  I’m thinking about the white men. Thinking about the guys from tonight. “That was two times in a row,” I say.

  Kee-lee means it when he says there won’t be no third time. When we get to where we’re going, he doesn’t waste no time taking care of business.

  He knocks on the door. “Aunt Mary says to pay up.”

  The woman is smiling. Almost laughing at us standing there all beat up. She points to my black eye. “Who done that?” She stares at Kee-lee’s teeth.

  Kee-lee tells her to pay up or he is gonna pimp-slap her. She laughs and tries to shut the door. I kick it wide open. I tell her to pay up or else. “Or else what?” She is holding a butcher knife.

  We step back. Cut ’em. Shoot ’em, I hear Aunt Mary say. Only we ain’t have no knife or gun. “Kee-lee,” I say. “We better go.”

  “Sure better,” she says.

  “My aunt wants her dough.”

  The woman swings the knife. We jump back. “I ain’t got it. I’ll give it to her when I do.” She waves the knife again. “She knows I’m good for it. Tell her I’ll pay on the first of the month.”

  She tries to shut the door. Kee-lee’s foot stops it though. “We ain’t going back with nothing.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I ain’t . . .”

  You don’t hit women. My father taught me that. Only Kee-lee ain’t got no father at home, so he don’t know that, I guess. So he hits her. Punches her in the mouth like she’s a dude. I try to make him stop. It’s like he’s getting her back for what them guys did to us. “Give me the money,” he says, kicking her legs. “Now!”

  His fingers go around her throat. The knife she’s got in her hands falls to the floor. I’m pulling him off her. “Let her go, Kee-lee.”

  Kee-lee says he ain’t letting no one hit him no more. He tells me to go inside and look around for the money. I do what he says, excusing myself for walking in front of the television the kids are watching. I bring out a tan straw pocketbook. Ten bucks is in it.

  He turns her loose. She’s breathing like she ain’t got but one more breath left.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  He walks in the kitchen, dumping out flour cans and sugar bowls. Digging in her freezer and emptying out cereal boxes.

  The woman’s got herself together now. “Boy, if you don’t . . .”

  Kee-lee shouts so loud he drowns out the TV. “I ain’t no boy!” He runs into her bedroom and comes out with a dresser drawer. “Thought you ain’t have no money? Thought you was broke?” He takes out the money and throws the drawer at the TV.

  I’m looking at Kee-lee because he’s smiling, liking what he’s doing—knocking cereal bowls out the kids’ hands and stepping on their toys. I’m listening to their mother tell them to call the cops.

  He laughs. “Call ’em. They just might get here next week.”

  On the way home, Kee-lee’s making up raps about stealing money and smashing knees. “Next time,” he says, “I might just really hurt somebody.”

  Chapter 39

  WE WAS BORED, so Kee-lee called Keisha again. He told her about the money he’s making, and how he can smoke all the weed he wants. Then he asked her, just about begged her, to let him come visit. “I don’t care if I get in trouble neither,” he said to her. No. Keisha always says no. Only it’s taking her longer and longer to get to no— fifteen minutes the first time. A whole hour the last time they spoke. “I keep telling that girl,” Kee-lee said, “she gonna be my wife.”

  Yesterday he snuck off to meet Keisha someplace. He came back and didn’t talk to me the rest of the day. I figured she didn’t show up. She did. Then I figured she wouldn’t talk to him, or kiss him like he wanted. She did that too. It turned out that Kee-lee was just mad: mad at his mom, at my dad, at everybody. “She likes me now, and I can’t go back home and see her like I want.”

  I told Kee-lee he should just go, forget about his mother and just go. “Why don’t you go then?” he said.

  I went outside and lit up a blunt. I called home. It was the first time I called home since coming here weeks ago. I didn’t want to talk to my father. I wanted to talk to my mom. She didn’t answer. He did. But he knew it was me. “Mann. I been thinking.”

  I don’t care nothing about what he thinks anymore. So I hung up and tried to forget that I had a stupid father, a crazy mother, and no place to live anymore.

  It’s September. School started three weeks ago. I think about
what the kids at school are doing. What they’re eating for lunch and stuff. I don’t tell Kee-lee. He never did like school. But getting high and doing nothing all day ain’t much fun neither. “Kee-lee,” I say, “I wanna paint something.”

  He tells me to go back to sleep. Me and him sleep on the floor, on the second floor right by his aunt’s room. The wallpaper is brown and peeling off like burned skin. “I ain’t painted since we got here four weeks ago. I need to though.”

  He turns over. I get up and go downstairs. It’s five in the morning and his aunt’s still up. There’s a whole table full of people eating breakfast and playing cards. “What you want, Mann?’

  “Paint.”

  “Huh?”

  “I wanna paint something.”

  “Whole house needs painting,” someone says, laughing.

  “Don’t need no paint. Need a bomb. Boom!” her boyfriend says, shaking the table with his hands. “Maybe that way the roaches’ll die and the stink of this place will go away.”

  His aunt splashes her drink in his face. He gets up, mad. “Woman, I’ll . . .”

  “You wanna get cut?” she says, reaching under her blouse. “I ain’t cut nobody in a while. Needles needs a little blood,” she says, pressing the blade to her lips.

  There’s paint in the basement. Buckets of old paint with thick skins on top. I pull back the skins and stir up the watery paint. “You’ll do,” I say, pouring some in an empty egg carton. I got yellow, dark blue, green, orange, and purple. I take the paints upstairs. On the wall, I make the brightest sun I ever seen. Then there’s tiny pear trees and grass, and cars and trucks rolling up a highway. I mix purple and yellow and make brown for Jason’s face and arms. “Run,” I say, drawing his legs, making him run in the grass. “Run,” I say, thinking about what I shoulda said the day that man came on our porch and shot him dead. “Run,” I tell Jason. But he just does what he did that day—nothing.

  Aunt Mary says she don’t want me painting no dead boys on her walls. “It’s bad luck.” So she makes me paint over Jason’s picture. “And since you ain’t got nothing better to do with your time,” she says, waving her arms, “paint the whole room.” She wants it green. “No blue. Make the woodwork green.”