Two sensations awakened him: wet heat on his leg, sharp pressure on the back of his neck.
Trent opened his eyes to find Ducky wrapped around him. “Damn, Ducky—you wet the bed. My bed.”
No apology. No whimpering. Just her breathing steady and hard in his ear, her little hands wrapped so tightly around his neck he could barely swallow. Then he heard noise from the kitchen: a shout, a crash, breaking glass.
His mother screamed.
Trent tried to pry Ducky off him. “C’mon, Ducks—I have to help her.”
His sister tightened her grasp. The last time Trent had tried to get between their mother and Fredo, Fredo had tossed the boy across the room like yesterday’s newspaper. Trent had hit the radiator hard and blacked out for a minute. When he came to, his mother, Ducky, and Fredo had all been standing over him.
“Told you he wasn’t dead,” Fredo had said, taking a drag on his tallboy.
The incident worried Trent. If he died, who would change the sheets when Ducky wet the bed? Who would get her shoes on the right feet? Who would open her SpaghettiOs? At six, she didn’t know how to use a can opener.
In the kitchen, Fredo’s voice rose from a low growl to a crescendo ending in “Lying fucking bitch!” Ducky flinched, burying her head in Trent’s shoulder. The sharp ammonia smell of her piss filled his throat. The pounding of his heart made it hard to think. What was the likelihood his mother’s phone was on her dresser, not in her pocket? What good would it do to yell “help” out the window at three in the morning in Flatbush?
A piercing shriek rocketed Trent out of bed, Ducky and all. He ran to the kitchen, his sister attached to him like an extra limb. On the threshold he stopped and covered Ducky’s eyes. Their mother lay on the yellow linoleum floor, blood pouring from her neck like milk from a knocked-over half gallon. Drops of red speckled the front of the white refrigerator and the chrome legs of the table. Fredo had walked through the spreading tide, leaving clear footprints. One hand held the bloody end of a broken beer bottle; the other hand clutched his shaking cell phone to his ear.
Trent yanked his T-shirt over his head and pressed it against his mother’s neck. Her eyes—apologetic, resigned—met his for a moment before flickering shut. Above him, he heard Fredo’s voice.
“You gotta come, Nicky. I just poked her a little bit, but there’s mad blood. Mad blood all over.”
Trent and Ducky went to school the next day; it was the best way to escape the coppery-piney smell of blood and cleaning solution saturating the apartment. Fredo’s brother, Nicky, and Nicky’s wife, Carla, were taking charge. Last night, Nicky had shoved Fredo against the wall, calling him a stupid fuck face and a moron whack job, but when the paramedics arrived Nicky calmly explained how Trent’s mother had tripped and fallen while holding a glass and accidentally cut her neck. His brother, Nicky told them, was too upset to talk about it. After the ambulance left, Carla, a woman who enjoyed giving a room a good cleaning, set to work wiping up the mess.
Now, in second period, Trent eased back in his seat and listened to Miss Snowden talk. Her voice rose and fell like the kind of music that doesn’t have words. Sometimes she got so excited about what she was saying she would wave her hands above her head, then spin around and start drawing on the board. Trent noticed that the old teachers, like Mr. Weiss and Mrs. Bonaventure, hated Miss Snowden.
“So the arteries carry blood away from the heart, bringing nutrients and oxygen to the cells all over our bodies. And the veins carry the blood back to the heart, where it picks up more oxygen and the process begins again.” Miss Snowden smiled out at the class. “I need an assistant. Teesha, come on up here and play the heart while I play the blood.”
All the other teachers knew to leave Teesha alone. Held back three times, she towered over her fellow eighth graders. Her boobs were three times the size of Miss Snowden’s. Teesha’s eyes narrowed to slits when the teacher pulled her to the front of the room. Miss Snowden didn’t care. She ran around the class passing out a stack of construction-paper oxygen molecules. Then she ran back to Teesha and begged for more. Then she ran around again. By the time the bell rang, everyone was laughing, even Teesha.
“Read chapter four, class,” the teacher called to them as they left. “Tomorrow we’ll continue our discussion of the circulatory system.”
On the way to lunch, Trent fell into step with Teesha. Although she had a good thirty pounds on him, he wasn’t afraid of her. “That Miss Snowden’s something else, isn’t she?”
“She nice, but she’s dumb.”
It didn’t pay to directly contradict Teesha. “She knows a lot about science.”
“But nothing about important stuff. Otherwise, why would she be workin’ here?”
Teesha had a way of getting to the core of things. That was why Trent thought she might be useful. “I think maybe ACS might come to my house,” he blurted.
“Hmm. Them caseworkers bad news. Your mother smokin’ crack?”
“No. Fight with her boyfriend. She’s in the hospital.”
Teesha nodded. “Sometimes they put you in the system for that, sometimes not.”
“I wouldn’t mind foster care, as long as my sister and me could stay together.”
“Huh! That ain’t gonna happen. I’ve seen you with your sister—little girl with yellow hair, right? She don’t look like you.”
“Looks like her father. He OD’d a couple a years ago.”
“They’ll find a foster home for her right away, but nobody’s gonna want you.” Teesha elbowed him. “Everybody knows teenage boys are trouble. You probably go to a group home.”
“Then Ducky would be alone.”
Teesha looked down the long corridor toward the cafeteria. “Your sister’s real pretty. Somebody might mess with her.”
“Mess how?” Trent asked.
Teesha turned. Her dark, dark eyes held his without blinking.
Just what he figured.
That afternoon when they got home, the apartment looked totally different. Not only had Carla mopped up the blood, but she had also emptied all the ashtrays and thrown away all the beer bottles and Burger King wrappers. In Trent’s room, the wet sheets were off the bed, replaced by a set with blue stripes that he’d never seen before. When he walked across the floor, his shoes didn’t stick. Carla was still in the kitchen, banging around and singing to the radio. Trent and Ducky hesitated in the doorway.
“Don’t this place look nice?” Carla asked. “Now try to keep it this way, wouldja?”
Trent didn’t answer. Carla knew well enough it wasn’t him and Ducky who spilled beer on the floor and flicked ashes on the sofa cushions.
“You kids wanna snack?” Carla peeled off her yellow rubber gloves and opened the refrigerator door. Ducky’s eyes goggled. Milk and juice and eggs and cheese and a whole roasted chicken fought for space on the shelves. “Scrambled eggs,” Ducky whispered, and Carla set about making them.
“Your mother’s getting out of the hospital in a couple days,” Carla said, her eyes never leaving the pale-yellow mound of eggs forming in the frying pan. “Now, it’s important that she don’t have any stress in her life right now, know what I’m sayin’? Some damn social worker person is coming over today to make sure this is a good home for kids. So don’t you guys talk about what happened last night. It was just an accident, and everything’s okay now, right?”
Carla banged the loaded plate on the table in front of Ducky.
“Trent and Demetria. Where’d your mother ever come up with names like that? Maybe from watching the afternoon TV, huh? Or maybe she saw those names in the movie magazines they got near the checkout at the supermarket. She ever read them while she’s waiting in line?”
To Trent’s knowledge, his mother had never been to a supermarket, only the bodega on the corner where there was never a line except for lottery tickets on a day when the prize went up over ten million.
“Well, Ducky’s a better name for a little girl. That name Demetria is bigger than you are.”
Ducky finished her eggs and was staring at a bowl Carla had set in the middle of the table. “What are those?” Ducky asked.
Carla cocked her head. “Whattaya mean? They’re pears. Haven’t you ever seen a pear before?”
Ducky shrugged. “In books.”
After science class, Trent lingered in front of Miss Snowden’s desk.
She smiled, her teeth as white and perfect as the strand of pearls around her neck. “Did you have a question?”
“I—I was wondering,” Trent stammered. “How much blood is in your body?”
“Five-point-six liters—about six quarts.” Miss Snowden answered without hesitation.
“How much can you lose before you die?”
“People have been known to lose almost all their blood, but if they get medical help right away and have a transfusion, they can survive. But without help…” Miss Snowden shook her head.
“Can all your blood pour out of one hole in your body?”
The bright enthusiasm in Miss Snowden’s eyes dimmed. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” Trent slung his backpack over his shoulder and turned toward the door.
“Trent.”
He paused but did not turn.
“Did something happen? Did you see someone get hurt?”
Trent shook his head and kept walking.
In the middle of fifth period, Trent was summoned to the Guidance Office. The other kids in math class went “O-o-o-o” because a trip to Guidance meant that the dogs had found weed in your locker or the cameras had caught you fighting, but Trent knew neither of those things could be the reason for his call. The secretary sent him straight in to Ms. Jackson.
Ms. Jackson had long fingernails, a headful of braids, and round gold earrings. She was about as wide as a Jets defensive lineman, but not quite as tall. The last time Trent had been in her office it was because the cafeteria said he and Ducky couldn’t have free lunch because their mother hadn’t filled out a paper. Ms. Jackson had pounded a lot of buttons on her big black phone and said things like “Let me speak to your supervisor” and “That is not acceptable,” and after about half an hour, he and Ducky were allowed to have lunch again.
Today Ms. Jackson smiled at Trent and told him to sit next to her on the little blue sofa with flowered pillows. This couldn’t be good.
Ms. Jackson told Trent how, because of his mother’s accident, the social worker from the hospital had called the school to check on him and Ducky. She said Miss Snowden had mentioned his questions. Ms. Jackson leaned forward and the beads in her braids made a little clicking sound. “It’s very important that you answer my questions truthfully.”
Trent focused his eyes on a spot above Ms. Jackson’s left ear and began to talk. He and Ducky had been asleep when their mother got hurt. They did not see her fall. They did not see Fredo hit her.
Ms. Jackson did not ask, “Did Fredo call your mother lying fucking bitch?” She did not ask, “Did you see Fredo standing with a bloody broken bottle in his hand?” She did not ask, “Was your little sister so scared she peed on your leg?” She was quiet for a while and Trent thought she would soon let him leave.
Abruptly, Ms. Jackson spoke again. “Trent, what made you wake up that night?”
Trent didn’t want to say about Ducky wetting the bed. He knew she shouldn’t still be doing that at six. Maybe bed-wetting was something they put you in foster care for. He shrugged.
“Use your words.”
He could hear her breathing, swallowing.
“Noise,” Trent whispered.
“What kind of noise?” Her dark eyes seemed to look right inside him.
“Loud voices. A chair falling over. Glass breaking.”
“So there was a fight.” Ms. Jackson stood and reached for her black phone. “If you and your sister have been exposed to violence in the home, I’m obliged to report it.”
“No!” Trent lunged for her arm. “Ducky can’t go to foster care.”
“The best way to prevent that is to get this violent man out of your family’s life. Tell the police what happened and they’ll arrest him.”
“I’m no snitch,” Trent said. “I can take care of my mother and sister.”
“Trent, sometimes the strongest thing a man can do is ask for help.” Ms. Jackson’s face was so close to his he could count her eyelashes. “Tell the police and let them put this man in jail where he belongs.”
“They don’t put guys in jail for stuff like that.” Trent knew there were men even worse than Fredo who had beat their raps and were walking around Flatbush.
Ms. Jackson rubbed her temples. “What he did was attempted murder. He’ll be in jail long enough that you and your sister and your mom won’t have to worry about him anymore. But the police can’t do their work unless you tell them everything you heard and saw that night.”
Trent looked past Ms. Jackson to the small window behind her. Outside was a brick wall. If it was Miss Snowden telling him to snitch he wouldn’t pay attention. But Ms. Jackson didn’t talk with a lot of big words. She didn’t have information in her head about things that happened a thousand years ago. She just knew what was what.
“If you’re brave, it will help your mother be brave.” Ms. Jackson spoke softly.
This idea wormed into his head and stuck. Could his mother catch something from him, the way he caught colds from wiping Ducky’s snotty nose? Was that all it took? His gaze fixed on the dim, dirty window. “So go ahead and call them.”
After Fredo’s arrest, Trent noticed that his mother seemed more like a TV mom. She got a new haircut that hid the scar on her neck and started waking up in time to make breakfast for them before school. She sang songs with Ducky and went to see Trent’s exhibit in the science fair. Sometimes when her phone rang, she would glance at the screen, then switch her phone off. Soon Mr. Patel hired her to work the cash register at the Dollar Store. After that, she would bring treats home from the store: pink barrettes and a little plastic tea set for Ducky, baseball cards for Trent. The cards showed Matsui and Cabrera still playing for the Yankees, but Trent liked them anyway.
Around the end of May the carnival arrived in the parking lot of the Church of the Holy Savior: rides, games, funnel cakes and cotton candy. Trent couldn’t be seen there with Ducky, so she went with their mother and he went with the guys from the neighborhood. As Trent and Justin and Phil made their way from the Viking Ship to the Tilt-a-Whirl, Justin started laughing. “Yo, Trent—your mother throws like a girl.”
Sure enough, his mother was trying to win a goldfish for Ducky by throwing Ping-Pong balls at an openmouthed plastic whale. She flung weakly from her wrist, and each ball bounced off the target. Trent went over and took the balls from her. As his friends cheered, he tossed the first two balls neatly into the whale’s mouth. As he prepared to throw the third ball, he noticed Ducky studying him, biting her lower lip. He was Jeter: bases loaded, full count, bottom of the ninth. He wound up with his right arm and stepped forward on his left foot. The ball arced out of his hand, sailed through the air, and disappeared into the whale’s mouth. Ducky’s eyes lit up when the man behind the counter put a big orange-and-white fish in a plastic bag full of water and handed it to her.
Later, as the sun set and the parking lot was lit only by the neon of the rides, Trent saw his mother talking to another woman, who had her arm around his mother’s shoulders. Sometimes his mother nodded, but her lips never moved. The goldfish swam around and around in the plastic bag his mother clutched in her hand.
As the woman turned and walked away, Trent saw that it was Carla.
In the middle of one night soon after the carnival, Ducky appeared beside Trent. He should have known Pirates of the Caribbean right before bed was a bad idea. It would be best to make her go to the bathroom before he let her into his bed, but he was too sleepy. He dozed despite the twine of her arms around his neck.
“He’s back,” Ducky breathed in his ear.
“Mmph. Pirates and skeletons aren’t real, Ducky. Go to sleep.”
“He’s back. Listen.”
Trent heard it. The rhythmic thump, thump, thump of his mother’s bed bumping the wall. The urgent squeak of the springs. A grunt and a low moan. Ducky’s hand tightened on Trent’s arm. He pulled the covers over their heads.
In the morning, Trent entered the kitchen and sat across from his mother. Her head drooped over a mug of coffee as the milk formed a scum on the surface. Fredo was chatty. “DA decided they didn’t have a case against me.” He leaned toward Trent as he spoke, the red and green and blue of his full-sleeve tattoo gleaming against the worn beige of the kitchen table. “Not enough evidence to go to trial, that’s what my lawyer said. See, one person’s story ain’t enough to get a conviction. They need some corroboration.” He tapped Trent’s cereal bowl. “Know what that word means?”
Trent shook his head.
“Means someone else gotta back you up.”
Trent’s mother kept her eyes on her coffee.
“No one backed you up, boy. So here I am.”
Ducky straggled into the kitchen, her wispy blond hair in tangles, her T-shirt inside out and backward with the tag right under her chin. She made a big detour around Fredo, hugging the wall as she edged toward her spot next to Trent.
She’d made it past the fridge when Fredo spoke. “C’mere, Ducky.”
She stopped, her eyes darting from Fredo to their mother. Ducky wanted to know what to do. Their mother wasn’t saying. Trent tried to pull his sister toward him with the power of his stare. She held his gaze for almost as long as it took for the B train to rumble by.
“Ducky.”
That was all Fredo said. Just her name, not even loud. Ducky walked straight to him, never looking up.
Fredo pressed Ducky to his chest and rested his stubbled chin on top of her pale gold hair. His right index finger traced up and down her bony spine. “Missed my girls,” he murmured, staring hard at Trent.
Bouncing Ducky on his knee, Fredo slid a bowl of Apple Jacks in front of her. She made no move to eat.
“What’s the matter, little girl? You want some protein in your breakfast? Protein makes you strong.” Fredo got up and crossed to the window. Behind him, the goldfish swished back and forth in its bowl. “Your brother knows all about that, right, Trent?”
Fredo grabbed the bowl and tipped it. The fish flopped into his palm. He popped the goldfish into his mouth and bit down. His big, dark head loomed over Ducky’s shoulder.
He opened his mouth and spat the fish into Trent’s cereal.
On one of the last days of the school year, Miss Snowden was on about scientific method.
“Class, the beautiful thing about science is that we’re always making new discoveries. That’s why an open mind is essential to scientific inquiry. Because even ideas that we were certain we were right about can sometimes turn out to be all wrong. Who can give me an example?”
Teesha gouged her name into the desktop with a broken pen; Jamal rested his head on his folded arms; Phil read a text on the phone in his lap.
“Jamal?”
Without raising his head, he answered, “Dudes used to think the world was flat.”
Miss Snowden clapped her hands. “Yes! Good job! Who else?”
There were no more takers. Miss Snowden plowed ahead.
“Medicine is full of theories that were proved wrong. From the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece, scientists believed that the human body was controlled by four humors: blood, green bile, black bile, and phlegm, and if there was too much of one element, a person would become sick.” Miss Snowden got excited and started pacing around. “They believed a person could be cured by draining off some of the excess humor. So oftentimes doctors would make a cut in a sick person’s arm or leg and drain out some of his blood. It was called bloodletting, and doctors believed this was a valid medical remedy for almost two thousand years before scientists tested the theory and proved it wrong.”
How did Miss Snowden know all this stuff? Sometimes Trent wondered if she made it up. He raised his hand. “If the bloodletting wasn’t curing people, how come doctors kept doing it for so long?”
“Excellent question!” Miss Snowden flung her hands over her head. “Doctors had so few resources in those days—no antibiotics or fever reducers or pain relievers. But the patient believed that doing something was better than doing nothing. So because the patient believed the bloodletting would make him better, he sometimes did, in fact, get better. And the scientists who proved bloodletting wrong had to fight against the common perception that bloodletting worked. After all, it’s just as easy to believe the blood carries humors as it is to believe it carries oxygen.”
Trent looked at the veins crossing the back of his hands. Who knew what was really in there? Maybe the four humors were… evil… and fear… and craziness.
And rage.
A freakish heat wave gripped the city. Trent’s mother spent her days selling no-brand suntan lotion and flip-flops at the Dollar Store. Fredo partied all night with his crew, then crashed all day at the apartment. Ducky got into the summer enrichment program run by the church ladies at Holy Savior. Trent shot hoops on the playground with the guys. In the middle of the day, when the asphalt got too hot, he sought out the air-conditioning and the computers in the Brooklyn Public Library on Linden Boulevard.
On the fourth day of the heat wave, Trent sat in his sweltering bedroom and waited. He listened as Fredo staggered in at dawn, and listened as his mother and Ducky left at nine. He listened as the morning routine of his neighbors gradually wound down to silence. At two-fifteen in the afternoon, the scorching streets of Flatbush were oddly deserted. Trent opened his bedroom door.
Even the dragon breath of the Fulton Street subway station smelled better than the air of the apartment. Puke, spilled beer, and closer to his mother’s bedroom, Fredo’s sweat and the burned plastic scent of his crack pipe. Through the open door, he saw Fredo sprawled naked on his back across the unmade bed. A half-empty bottle of vodka and a scattering of pills stood amid the clutter on the nightstand. He was coming down off a long high, and snored lightly through his open mouth.
“Fredo,” Trent said.
He didn’t stir.
Trent went into the kitchen. He took off his basketball shoes and left them by the door. He switched on the radio and turned up the volume. From under the sink, he got Carla’s yellow rubber gloves and put them on. His hands trembled and he took a deep breath. In his mind he saw Ducky walking across that kitchen straight into Fredo’s arms. He saw his mother sitting silent at the table. He heard Miss Snowden’s voice.
From the top of the stove, he got the frying pan and took it to the bedroom. He listened to Fredo’s snoring. He walked over to the mirror hung on the closet door. With one strong swing, he struck. The glass shattered into long shards.
Fredo’s breathing never changed.
Trent chose the longest, sharpest piece of mirror and carried it to the bed. Standing naked in the bathroom, Trent had practiced finding his own femoral artery several nights in a row. Now he studied Fredo’s legs. After all the prison weightlifting, Fredo had no fat on his thighs. His veins and arteries coursed clearly under his hairy olive skin.
Trent raised the glass shard over his head and plunged it into Fredo’s thigh. The blood shot out like a pit bull released from its cage, angry and eager to be free.
Fredo awoke, more puzzled than pained. “Wha—? What the fuck?”
He rose from the bed and took a few steps. Blood pooled around him, thick and hot. It soaked the gray sheets and puddled on the uneven floor. Trent watched from the doorway. There was a lot of blood, but not all six quarts. Not yet.
The injured leg buckled. Fredo’s eyes met Trent’s. “Call for help!”
Trent took two steps backward as Fredo crawled toward him and the broken mirror. He threw the piece he had used into the pile of glass on the floor.
Understanding dawned in Fredo’s glazed eyes. “You little bastard. You did this.” He pressed his thigh with blood-slicked hands.
Fredo’s healthy young heart pumped blood out of his body, emptying it with great efficiency. His eyelids flickered and Trent thought he might faint. The boy’s fingers unclenched inside the hot rubber gloves.
But Fredo didn’t faint. With a sudden burst of power, he flung himself at the bedside table. Too late, Trent saw what he’d overlooked: Fredo’s cell phone. Fredo was weak enough now that Trent could have wrestled the phone away, but he couldn’t afford to be found covered in Fredo’s blood. The death had to look like an accident, like Fredo had crashed drunkenly into the mirror. For himself, Trent didn’t care. He would happily have gone to Rikers or even Attica if it meant getting rid of Fredo. But he couldn’t leave Ducky. She couldn’t protect herself from whatever guy was bound to follow Fredo. As Fredo clawed for the phone from the front, Trent knocked the whole nightstand over from behind.
The phone fell to the floor. As Fredo scrambled toward it, Trent kicked it cleanly into the hall.
Now Trent was trapped by the spreading tide of blood. Once Fredo was dead, Trent could pick his way carefully out of the room. But he couldn’t get between Fredo and the phone, not without Fredo grabbing at him with his bloody hands. He looked at the digital clock glowing green on the floor. 2:37. Fredo had been bleeding for four minutes. How much longer would it take?
Trent and Fredo heard the sound at the same moment: the click of a key turning in the front door lock.
Ducky’s sneakers pounded down the hall. “Trent? Trent? The power’s out at Holy Savior and we all had to leave. They sent me home with Elena, but her mom said to see if you were here.”
Fredo dragged himself slowly toward the hall. Trent could see him open his mouth and draw breath.
The apartment door slammed shut as Ducky sailed past the bedroom, heading for the kitchen. “Trent, where are you? Can I have a snack?”
Trent felt his throat swell with panic. Ducky couldn’t see this. But how could he stop her?
Ducky had made it all the way to the living room and was doubling back.
“Trent? Tren—” She stopped outside the bedroom door. Her gaze rested first on the trickle of blood flowing steadily across the sloping floor. Curious, she squinted into the dim interior and saw Fredo prone, propped up on one elbow. Raising her head, she caught sight of her brother.
“Stay right there, Ducky.” Trent tried to keep his voice calm, but it felt like Ducky was on the far side of Van Nostrand Avenue separated from him by six lanes of speeding buses and trucks.
“Phone,” Fredo wheezed. “Ducky, get my phone.”
Ducky glanced down. The phone lay a few inches from her pink sneaker. Then she looked back at Fredo.
“No!” Trent shouted. “Leave it, Ducky. Run into the living room. He can’t follow you. He’s too hurt.”
But Ducky wasn’t paying attention to her brother. Her eyes, pale and bottomless, stared unblinkingly at Fredo.
“Bring me the phone. Now.”
Trent saw his sister bite her lower lip, the way she did when she was trying hard to color inside the lines. Slowly she crouched until her right hand closed over the phone.
Ducky rose. Stepping forward with her left foot, winding up with her right arm, she threw the phone overhand.
When all three heard the distant crash, Ducky gave a little nod. She faced her brother, ignoring what lay between them.
“I’m going back to Elena’s, Trent. I’ll tell her mom you weren’t at home.”