Sarah and her daughter exchanged few words during the short walk from the church to their home. But that wasn’t unusual.
Sarah was most often withdrawn from her daughter. And Keisha resented it. That was why Keisha sat in silence while Sarah dressed the wounds she’d sustained in the attack, and afterward she stalked into her room, hoping that Sarah would stay away.
Sarah felt her daughter’s bitterness, and indeed she shared it. She resented Keisha because she still had youth and opportunity, two commodities that Sarah had long ago squandered.
But in spite of the tension between them, Sarah knew that her daughter needed her. now, because those men had attacked much more than Keisha’s body. They’d attacked her very soul.
Tapping lightly on Keisha’s door, Sarah twisted the doorknob and walked in.
Keisha, who was standing in front of the mirror, glanced at her mother and resumed staring at the bruises on her neck.
“Sit down, Keisha,” Sarah said casually. “I want to talk to you.”
Keisha hesitantly took a seat, though she didn’t want to be bothered. Sarah sat next to her, wearing a look of uncertainty that Keisha wasn’t used to seeing on her mother’s face.
“A lot of things are different than they were when I was sixteen,” Sarah began. “You see things we only whispered about in the girls’ bathroom. You hear things we never said out loud. I know that, so don’t think I’m sitting here trying to preach about things I don’t understand.”
“Mom, I’ve had a really long day. I just want—”
“I know what you want,” Sarah said. “You want me to leave you alone and let you see things for yourself. You want me to stop quoting the Bible, stop trying to make you into the kind of woman you need to be. You want to be like everybody else, right?”
Keisha lowered her eyes and didn’t answer.
“See, that’s the thing that hasn’t changed, Keisha. When you’re sixteen and your hips are round and your breasts are full, and men start looking at you like they want what’s between your legs, you start to wonder. You start to think, ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to try it.’
“You see your girlfriends riding around with drug dealers and wearing the finest clothes and going shopping every day. You learn that all you have to do is open your legs and the world is yours. And you start to think, ‘Maybe the streets aren’t as bad as they tell me they are. Maybe they’re trying to hide something from me.’”
“What does that have to do with what happened tonight?” Keisha said, sensing the accusation.
“I just want to know,” Sarah began, already regretting the question she was about to ask.
“What is it, Mom?”
“I want to know if things really happened the way you said they did. I want to know if there’s anything else you need to tell me.”
Keisha thought of Jamal. She wanted badly to tell her mother that she was wrong—that not every man wanted her simply for what he could take.
But Keisha couldn’t break her promise to him. And even if she could, she was too hurt by her mother’s suspicions to speak of anything else.
“Two men threw me down and tried to rape me,” Keisha said, a tear rolling down her cheek. “They choked me and punched me and put a knife to my throat. They told me they would kill me if I didn’t do what they wanted. And you’re sitting here saying that it might be my fault?”
“I’m saying that I know what it’s like to wonder,” Sarah said defensively.
“Wonder what?”
“What life would be like if your father wasn’t a pastor.”
“So you’re saying I went out looking for this?”
“No, I’m saying I did!”
Keisha reared back, the shock of her mother’s words hitting her like a sharp blow.
“I’m saying I did things when I was your age because I was tired of being a preacher’s daughter,” Sarah said, her words tumbling out before she could stop them. “I see a lot of myself in you, Keisha. The only difference between us is this: you still have a chance to change your future. I don’t.”
They sat in silence, each of them tasting the bitter truth of Sarah’s words.
“I wish you’d known your grandfather,” Sarah said with a sad smile. “He was a good man. But he didn’t leave me much breathing room, so I had to take it.”
“But that’s not what I’m doing,” Keisha said defensively.
“That’s what I told my parents, too,” Sarah said. “But I was just like you. Smart and pretty and mature. I had my own job and my own money and I didn’t have time for boys my age. I wanted men. So I sneaked around and got just what I wanted. And then I got a little something extra.”
Keisha felt a chill run down her spine as her mother turned her face away in shame.
“This man I knew took me to dinner at some fancy restaurant downtown,” Sarah said. “And when he drove me home, he went right past the corner where he usually dropped me off, and he took me out to the park.”
Tears filled Sarah’s eyes, and her voice broke.
“Then he raped me.”
Sarah broke down. Keisha wanted to hug her, but she couldn’t. The gulf between them was too great.
It hadn’t been bridged by the scripture they’d shared, or the sermons they’d heard. It wouldn’t be bridged by their common experience.
When Sarah stopped crying, Keisha looked her mother in the eye. “I didn’t ask for what happened, Mom. You have to believe that.”
Sarah searched her eyes. “I know you didn’t. But I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“Promise me you won’t let yourself get sucked in by these streets. Because once you do, getting out will be harder than you could ever imagine.”
“I promise, Mom,” Keisha said.
But as soon as she’d said it, Keisha knew it was a lie.
As Sarah exited the room, she knew it was, too.
A half hour passed, and Keisha was still reeling from Sarah’s accusations. The revelation that her mother had been raped was of no small consequence. But it wasn’t enough to win back Keisha’s respect.
Keisha had spent years watching her mother wither under the strain of being a pastor’s wife. And listening to her tonight made Keisha even more determined to follow a different path.
It was with that thought in mind that she snatched the vibrating phone from beneath her pillow when the call she’d been expecting from Jamal came through.
“Hello?” she whispered into the receiver.
“Meet me outside,” Jamal said. “I’m at the end o’ the alley, on Twentieth Street.”
The call disconnected, and Keisha felt the blood rush to her face. The secrecy of their meetings was as exciting as the taste of his lips. But tonight’s rendezvous would be different from the ones they’d been having since he’d shown up in her life again. Tonight he would have to tell her why.
Lifting the thin sheet that covered her, Keisha took off her cotton nightgown, revealing the tight jeans she wore underneath. She slipped on a T-shirt and crept down the hallway, past Sarah’s locked bedroom door. She could hear Sarah talking on the phone—probably to one of the sisters from church.
Taking a deep breath, Keisha descended the steps, walked to the front door, unlocked it, and went outside. She moved quickly down the block and rounded the corner.
Jamal stood in the shadows and watched as her eyes lit up at the sight of him. The look on her face made him think of the first
time they’d met, five years before, during one of his rare visits to North Philly.
He still remembered every detail.
He’d walked down Fifteenth Street and peered through the playground gate, where he spotted her playing double Dutch.
Her long, curly hair fell against her back each time she jumped, and her honey-brown eyes sparkled in the sun. Even then, when she was eleven and he was thirteen, he believed that she was beautiful.
He’d stared at her from a distance until he walked through the gate. And when he passed by her with a look in his eyes that conveyed a message beyond his years, she’d lost her balance and tripped between the ropes, falling to the ground in a heap.
Rushing to her side, he’d helped her up. And that simple act of kindness led to a first kiss, beautiful and sweet, between two children on the cusp of adolescence.
He never told her where he’d come from. And to Keisha, it made no difference. She defied her parents, who forbade her to date, and continued to meet with him secretly in the heat of Friday afternoons. That summer, she and Jamal shared the innocence of first love.
They stared into each other’s eyes, whispering things that only they could hear, and talking of plans that only they could know. They held hands and shared laughter. And sometimes they just sat in comfortable silence, knowing that there was no need to fill it with words.
When the summer ended, Jamal’s mother forced him to stay away from North Philly and, consequently, from Keisha. But, of all the girls Jamal had known in the five years since, Keisha was the only one to show up in his dreams.
But he wasn’t prepared for what happened when she showed
up in the flesh, looking like a woman, though her parents treated her like a child.
It amazed him that she was willing to sneak away to be with him, when she knew that her parents would never approve of her spending time with a boy who was clearly from the streets.
“Come on,” Keisha said, breaking into his thoughts. “I don’t have long.”
They rushed into his black Lexus, and once they were behind its tinted windows, their lips joined in a lingering kiss.
Jamal pulled away, and looked into her eyes. “Are you all right?” he said, genuinely concerned.
Keisha nodded. “I will be.”
“I’m still tryin’ to find out who them dudes was,” Jamal said. “When I do, I’ll take care of it.”
“My father said the same thing,” Keisha said worriedly. “I hope he doesn’t do anything crazy.”
At the mention of her father, Jamal’s facial expression turned hard, and at the same time terribly sad.
Keisha hated it when he looked that way. At times like these, his true feelings were obscured by the mask of anger that he’d learned to wear over the years.
She didn’t want to deal with the truth beneath his scowl, so she quickly changed the subject.
“You know, Jamal,” she said with a smile, “these last few weeks have been wonderful. It’s almost like it was when we were kids.”
“Yeah, but we ain’t kids no more. It’s a whole lotta stuff we gotta deal with now.”
Keisha glanced at him, confused. “What kind of stuff are you talking about?”
“Your father, for one thing,” he said, without returning her gaze.
“Jamal, it doesn’t matter what my father thinks about us.”
“That ain’t what you said three weeks ago.”
“Well, this isn’t three weeks ago!” she said heatedly.
Jamal was surprised by her fire. She was, too.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to explain. “Jamal, I’ve spent my whole life in a little box—worrying about what my father thinks, or what my mother thinks, or what the church folks think. All I want to do now is be free. Free to choose who I am, free to choose what I believe, free to love who I want to.”
She reached out her hand, gently touching his face. “And I love you.”
“You don’t even know me,” he said, turning to face her.
“I knew you the first time I kissed you, Jamal,” she said, as a smile spread across her face. “I never forgot the way it felt. Maybe that’s why, when I bumped into you when I started working at Strawbridge’s, it was like nothing had changed. It was easy to sneak away with you, the same way we used to sneak away and watch the sun set when we were kids.”
Jamal shook his head. “You don’t understand, Keisha.”
“You’re right,” she said, searching his eyes. “I don’t. I thought I was the one who had to run and hide.”
She reached for the handle and opened the door.
“My mother’s not right about much,” she said. “But she’s right about men. I guess I’m not giving it up fast enough for you.”
“It ain’t about that, Keisha.”
“You’re not ready for me, Jamal,” she said bitterly. “Hopefully, I’ll still be around when you are.”
She was about to get out when Jamal grabbed her arm. “Wait, Keisha.”
“You’re hurting me, Jamal,” she said, looking down at his hand. “Let me go.”
Jamal stared into her eyes menacingly.
“Close the door,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
Keisha felt a surge of fear overtake her anger, and she did as she was told.
Jamal released her arm. And as his heart and mind engaged in a tug of war, he told her the truth he’d thus far managed to avoid.
“Two months ago, your father started talkin’ ’bout gettin’ crack outta North Philly,” he said, staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. “Frank asked me to make him stop.”
Keisha’s face creased in a look of confusion. “Frank Nichols?” she said in disbelief. “What, do you work for him?”
“Yeah,” Jamal whispered. “You could say that.”
Jamal paused as if to detach himself from the cruel reality of his admission.
“We sent your father money. He sent it back. We sent him women. He ignored‘em. We sent threats. He ain’t budge. For a while we thought he ain’t care about nothin’. But we was wrong. He cares about you.”
Jamal avoided looking at Keisha’s eyes as he spoke. He didn’t want to see the hurt they contained.
“I started followin’ you,” he said matter-of-factly. “I learned what you did, where you went, and what you liked, so if we ever needed to put our hands on you, we could.”
“Is that what you were doing at my job a few weeks ago?” she asked suspiciously. “Following me?”
“Yeah.”
“And were you following me tonight, too?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So that’s all I was to you?” Keisha said angrily. “Something to report back to Frank Nichols about?”
“Keisha, you don’t understand.”
“You keep saying that!” Keisha shouted. “But I do understand.
I understand that you work for the biggest drug dealer in North Philiy—the same man my father’s wanted to bring down for years. I understand you acted like you cared about me when all you were doing was keeping tabs on me for your boss.”
“Frank Nichols ain’t just my boss!” Jamal shouted.
“Well, who is he, then?”
“He’s my father.”
The words hung in the air between them. They answered Keisha’s questions about Jamal’s penchant toward secrecy. And it raised yet another question that Keisha was forced to ask.
“Why are you telling me this?”
Jamal turned to her. “I’m tellin’ you ’cause it ain’t just a job to me, Keisha. I loved you since I was a little boy, and I’ll be damned if I‘ma sit here and let somethin’ happen to you ‘cause o’ my father.”
“And what about my father?” Keisha asked.
Jamal paused. “That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you, Keisha. Your father might be in trouble.”
After leaving Frank Nichols’s bar, Reverend Anderson wandered Diamond Street, thankful that the streets were bathed in a quiet that was rare for a North Philly summer.
The stillness allowed the murderous rage within him to subside. But it also brought back memories of a time he’d taken pains to forget.
Anderson had seen this type of silence before, in the days when he was destined to live a life like Frank Nichols.
It was nearly forty years before, when his father’s bootlegging and speakeasies and numbers running had finally given way to heroin dealing.
John Anderson Sr. wasn’t like other dealers of the sixties.
There was no credit, no competition, and no mercy. He was before his time, really, in that he was the most ruthless man North Philly had ever seen. That would have been bad enough. But he was training his son to be his successor. So when competitors rose up to overtake them, or when customers took too long to pay, John Junior, who was just seventeen years old when he joined the family business in 1962, was sent to do his father’s bidding.
He broke arms with his hands. He cracked heads against sidewalks. He broke ribs with baseball bats.
He had done other jobs on the very block he was now passing through. Jobs that kept him looking over his shoulder even now.
John glanced behind him and saw a blue car rolling slowly along the street, its windows sliding down about halfway. When the barrel of the nine-millimeter poked out at him, John hit the ground and rolled. And as the bullets hit the sidewalk, sending sparks into the air, he jumped up running, keeping his body low as the bullets whizzed over his head.
There was the hum of the car’s engine as it rode alongside him, then the quick, repeated tap of the gunshots, then the unmistakable and sickening thud of a bullet hitting flesh. Someone screamed, a body fell, and he felt something warm and sticky running down his face.
He kept running, half expecting to feel the burning sensation of a bullet boring into him. When he didn’t, he ran right, onto Sixteenth Street, then ducked left, through the alleylike street that ran from Sixteenth to Seventeenth. About halfway through, he heard the car skid to a stop behind him. A door opened and shut, and footsteps slapped against the sidewalk as someone gave chase.
John knew he couldn’t outrun his pursuer, so he stopped and dived into a vacant lot that had overgrown with pungent, tree-sized weeds.
He tried to hold his breath, and listened as the man walked
the length of the alley. He wanted to look out and see the man’s face, to remember it so that he could repay him for the attempt on his life.
But a look might cost him too much. So he waited. And when he heard the footsteps go past him again, he glanced out from behind the weeds and saw the back of the shooter’s head. It was covered in thin dreadlocks, tied together and hanging to shoulder length.
As the sound of sirens drew closer, the shooter got back into the car and drove away, turning the corner with screaming tires and heading west on Diamond toward the projects.
John reached up and touched his head, and when he looked at his hand, he saw blood. He reached up again to find the wound. That was when he realized that the blood wasn’t his.
“Mama!” The bloodcurdling scream split the air, and John Anderson ran back toward Diamond Street.
When he turned the corner, he saw an old woman sprawled on the sidewalk, close to a large brownstone.
As he approached her side, he saw blood crisscrossing her chest like thick, red spiderwebs. He saw her arms stretched out at her sides. But it wasn’t until he saw her face that a sick feeling overtook him.
He walked up to her and knelt down next to the middle-aged woman who sat on the ground, crying uncontrollably over her mother.
“Oh, Mother Johnson,” he said to himself, as he looked at her soft brown eyes, staring skyward, and her lips curled in a satisfied smile. “You’re in a better place now.”
“What happened here?” said a cop who jumped out of his car and ran over to the victim.
“Somebody was shooting and this lady got hit,” John said. “I
guess she was coming home from bible study and she got caught in the crossfire.”
“And who are you?” the cop asked, taking out a notepad.
“I’m the one they were shooting at,” he said, standing up to move as Fire Rescue workers arrived and ran over to the body.
“I’m her pastor.”