THE SLIDING DOOR TO THE car snaps closed with a pop. I bite my tongue and taste blood behind gritted teeth. Uncle Max’s arms are locked around me tighter than a jailhouse straitjacket.
“Ain’t none of our business!” Uncle Max hisses into my ear.
“Like hell!” I spit, and try harder to get loose, but he’s older and he’s got that strength and strategy. I’m not the first man he’s had to restrain.
“He’s beating on her. We can’t let that stand,” I roar back.
“That’s family business. We’ll check on her in a bit. Let them calm down.”
“She could be dead by then. Beat to hell by then,” I say, losing steam at the thought.
“He won’t. He’s got too much to lose. Man like that loves his reputation. He’ll do right,” Uncle Max says solemnly.
“You can’t be sure, Uncle Max.” His thumb slips, and I’m able to pull my hand free, then my arm.
“She ain’t yours!” he shouts over the din of the train.
My chest is heaving from the tussle, but I still got fight in me. My blood rushes past my ears and my teeth set on edge like a dog ready to bite.
“She ain’t yours and she never will be. You always want what you can’t have. Been like that since you could crawl.” He draws in a deep breath, gathering himself. “It’s not your business,” he says with finality.
I know that. I never wanted to keep any girl. They were just girls. Fun to talk to, fun to touch and sneak around with. I ain’t never wanted to call any girl my own, never wanted to fight for any of them, except this one. I want to kill her father. I could pull his head from his body with my bare hands, and I can’t say why. I’m not even sure if she likes me, given how she acted earlier. But she looked at me. She looked at me, not with hope in her eyes, but relief, like I’d already saved her, like she knew I was gonna be there.
“Think, boy!” He’s pleading with me.
I turn my back on him. Uncle Max can pick his own battles. I’ve already picked mine. I pull open the door with a clash and rush in, expecting a fight, but the car is empty. I walk down the hall slowly, straining to hear any sound. Nothing. I press my ear against Tamar’s closed door. I don’t hear anything, but something tells me to check the room I slept in at the end of the car. That’s where I catch the faintest sniffle. I’m about to knock when I let my hand fall.
I clean up the mess of overturned tea glasses and ruined stationery—newspapers, too. I get a bowl of ice and a clean cloth and take a seat outside. Maybe Uncle Max is right. This ain’t my business. But I wait. I wait so long I fall asleep.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” she says quietly, softly waking me from a fitful sleep.
“You’re in the room I sleep in,” I joke.
She snorts. I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a puff of irritation.
Light spills out into the hallway from the room. Her back is pressed against the wall and she’s sitting on the floor just across from me on the other side of the door. She’s holding a cube of ice wrapped in cloth up to her eye. Her voice is ragged and raw like she’s been crying, but there’s no anger. She sounds like a sad little girl.
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“No,” she says softly.
The silence rocks between us, and the rhythm of the track starts to feel like music: somber, but welcoming.
“He do that a lot?” I ask. I don’t know where her daddy is, if he walked over me in my sleep or if he’s listening at the door. I don’t much care for my sake, but if he shows his face to get to her, I may not be responsible for what I do.
She shakes her head.
“No, not often. But…”
She stops and turns her head like she’s trying to catch a memory.
“For as long as I can remember, on Sundays when I was a little girl, I’d get up, brush my teeth, thank God for the morning, and make my way to Sunday school at Mother Bethel AME. There’s a candy shop on Sixth Street. They make lollipops, taffy, and caramel chews, and sometimes on special days they’d have these sweet buns. They’d bake them right in the store, and the entire street would smell like sugar and fresh bread and… oh! There wasn’t anything in this world that I wanted more than one of those sweet buns, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it. One day one of the church mothers gave me a dime because I’d played so well at the church picnic the Saturday before. I… I had to be eight, no, no I was nine, and it was the first time I had my own money. We were walking back from church, and Mama stopped to talk to someone. I don’t know where my sister was, but it was just me and her. I knew this was my chance, you know?”
I nod. I’m right there with her. I know that candy store. It was one of Fats’s operations, a candy shop in front and, for the right price, a speakeasy and numbers spot in back. Everybody knew what went on there. I can see why her mama wouldn’t set foot inside.
“I broke away from Mama and I ran as fast as my legs would take me. I got pretty far, too. But she caught me as soon as my hand met the door handle. She said, ‘Tamar, it doesn’t matter how bad you want it. Some things you are never gonna get.’ What kinda thing is that to tell your baby girl? I could see the buns; I could smell them; I even had the money. All that separated me from my heart’s desire was just a tiny pane of glass, and I couldn’t get there.” She sighs. “All my life, I’ve felt like the future I want is on the other side of that glass, and no matter how bad I want it, I’ll never get it.”
She looks at me, eyes shining, and my palms itch to touch her. “You’re going to tell me to have faith, aren’t you?” Her gaze shifts to the floor.
“No. I don’t have much faith to speak of, so I’d be the last person to say that. After my mam died, I felt like I didn’t have control of anything. I just moved day to day, drinkin’, shootin’ dice, kissin’ girls.”
She laughs. “Sounds fun.”
“Not as much as you think. My mama used to say that whenever you make a choice, there’s another you somewhere making the opposite decision.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.
“I guess it means that someplace, somewhere, you are getting what you want, or maybe this life is the best scenario. I’m not really sure.”
She hums deep in her throat and then bites her lip. A few tears slide down her cheek, and I can’t help but inch closer. I hand her another cloth from my apron and fit myself into the doorframe, my good knee up and my bad one lying straight just outside the door. I wince a little at the effort. Sleeping crouched on the floor didn’t do my knee any favors.
“What happened to you?” Her eyes travel to my leg and I shrug.
“You ain’t the prizewinner of terrible fathers. It’s a sad story. I don’t want to make you any sadder than you already are,” I say.
“Tell me, please. I need to not think about myself for a second.” She places a warm hand on mine and I forget how to say no.
“I told you I ran numbers, but there’s only one person still alive who knows why. King Fats is the biggest banker in Philadelphia. Sure, there are other big-time numbers suppliers in the city, but he’s the biggest, and from the time I was six years old he was like a father to me. He took me to Hilldale Club ball games—you know, the ones with the Negro baseball league? He bought me clothes, introduced me to people, everything. He was sweet on my mother, so he did it to please her. He might have even done it because he liked me. I can’t say either way now.” I pause. “You sure you want to hear this?”
She nods, eyes wet and searching, an inscrutable expression on her face before she turns and leans her head against the wall, closing her eyes.
“He would take Mama out, buy her flowers, cover the rent, all of that, but he wouldn’t marry her. I was twelve when she got sick, thirteen when she stopped walking. She couldn’t get around on her own, so I took care of her. Fats stopped coming around. As a favor, or for nostalgia’s sake, he brought me onto his team. I needed the money, and I was the best runner he had. One of his soldiers told me he really was my daddy, but he’d never admit it ’cause the competition might kill me. I don’t know if I ever believed that, but I was still too stupid to see I was just an employee. Mama got real bad, and the money I’d been making helped make ends meet, but it wouldn’t pay for all Mama’s treatments, so I went to Fats. I told him that he owed her, that he owed me. You think I’m cocky now, you shoulda seen me before my leg got busted up.”
A hint of a smile plucks at the corners of her lips.
“The man laughed in my face, laughed so hard I thought he might fall out of his chair. Told me that he didn’t owe us anything and that he’d paid for what Mama was giving him fair and square, and now that she ain’t have nothing he wanted, their business was over.”
The memory of it makes my temples throb. My fists begin to clench, and I have to loosen my tie so I can get a bit more air.
“I did not take it well. I said some choice words, took a few swipes at him before his security pulled me off. It was a baseball bat that crushed my knee. He laid down the blows himself. I’ll say this for him: Everybody else who’s taken a hand to Fats has ended up dead. I just ended up in the hospital.”
I could tell her about the side hustles I ran to keep food on the table while Mama melted away to nothing. How King Fats came lookin’ for me after I started makin’ money with one of his rivals, hell-bent on killing me for leaking trade secrets, but I don’t. I’ve already shared too much. Too much of the pain I’ve sealed away.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Me too. You’re the only person I’ve ever told what really happened.” I lift my head and we lock eyes.
I don’t know what it is about this girl, but she makes me feel like I felt when I had a mother, when I had a family and a place that was mine. She feels like home.
“Thank you for telling me. What do you tell people when they ask about your leg?” she asks.
“That I broke it jumping out a preacher’s daughter’s window.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re too much.”
“I try to be just enough,” I say, and wink.
“He’s marrying me off,” Tamar says. Her voice is even, but it knocks me back just the same.
“What?”
“Tomorrow. In the morning. We’re not going to Atlanta. Maybe we never were. We’re going to visit one of his fraternity brothers. I will meet a man who will decide if he can tolerate me, and I will be expected to marry him,” she says solemnly.
“He can’t force you to do that,” I say, angry on her behalf.
“Can’t he? I have no money. I have no means to take care of myself. If he wants to drop me off at the side of the road, he can.” Tears slide down her cheeks.
This time I don’t stop myself. I lean in and pull her toward me. I let her sob into my chest and soak my shirt and I squeeze harder. She smells like rosewater and Overton’s face powder, clean and sweet like Easter flowers.
Tamar pulls away and I get a good look at her. Her lip is swollen, but, thankfully, he didn’t split it.
I take the cloth with the ice from her hand and dip it into the bucket of cold water. I wipe the tracks of tears from her cheeks. She’s so beautiful it hurts.
“You’re staring again,” she whispers.
“I just can’t get over how lovely you are. I know you don’t like me to say that, but it’s true.” She drops her gaze, bashful for just a moment. I’m a little embarrassed, too. I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone lovely. “I could kill your daddy for what he’s done, and since you’re a modern woman, you can help me.”
At that, she chuckles. “I don’t want to kill Daddy.”
“So, what would you like to do?” I ask.
“This.”
As her soft lips meet mine, the first thing that crosses my mind is that up until this moment, I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed before.