Sandra’s emotions are tied in a butterfly knot. Her mother hasn’t spoken to her the entire drive because she’s apparently as uneasy as Sandra is. Little Dre is a welcome distraction, and he occupies both of their motherly graces on the eighteen-mile ride from Martin Luther King Drive in Jersey City to Upper Mountain Avenue in Montclair.
By the time Mrs. Horton creeps through the foothills of the Watchung Mountains, Little Dre is spent from all of the correction in coo-speak. Mrs. Horton parks her 2011 Mercedes E550 beside a spotless 1993 Dodge Dynasty LE. The circular driveway and stately Italianate Victorian are lorded over by mature oaks that populate an ample-sized lot. Mrs. Horton is out of the car and unsaddles Little Dre before Sandra has a chance to move. Sandra closes her eyes before heading inside.
Please let there be peace tonight.
Mr. Horton’s face brightens the instant Little Dre appears. Mrs. Horton holds him in front of her as a weapon of conciliation.
“Come on over here and see ol’ Gramps!”
She hands him off.
Sandra leans in the doorway of the parlor with Little Dre’s baby bag slung across her shoulder. She watches her parents smother Little Dre with affection. Mr. Horton pauses and says, “Baby Love, are you just going to stand over there the whole night?”
“Happy sixtieth, Daddy.”
“Thank you, Baby Love.”
Sandra places a small gift box on a plush table that showcases a menagerie of tiny framed photographs of Sandra at different stages of her life.
Snaggletoothed Sandra minus two front teeth.
Sandra at her first dance recital.
Sandra in her Montclair High School cheerleader uniform.
Sandra graduating high school with a yellow satin honor stole draped around her neck.
She takes a seat in what was her favorite chair when she was growing up, a turn-of-the-century occasional armchair that rests on casters. She looks around the parlor.
Nothing ever changes here.
The mantel of the baronial oak fireplace features colorful wax flowers under glass domes. Mr. Horton is perched in his domain, an Italian, fruitwood, upholstered sectional with handmade doilies draped across the arms. The thick floral carpet blends seamlessly with the wild floral highlights on the striped wallpaper.
“Daddy, turning sixty is a big deal. Don’t you think you should’ve invited some people over?”
“Baby Love, you’re here. And that’s the best present I’ve had in a long time. Besides, with people come their problems, even when they’re the bearers of birthday wishes. Wilda, take that young fella in the kitchen and get him some of those goody bars I made.”
Mr. Horton removes a neatly folded kerchief from his breast pocket and cleans his bifocals. He is quite handsome once you get beyond the black square glasses, receding hairline, and ample folds in his raw umber face.
“So tell me, Baby Love. How are things with you?”
Sandra hasn’t seen her father in sixteen months, despite the fact that Mrs. Horton babysits Little Dre here at the house on nights when Sandra works. So she knew that he was going to isolate her at some point during the visit. She just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
“Daddy, are you really interested in how I feel?”
“Of course I am. Why would you ask that?”
“Because if I tell you things are good, you won’t believe me. And if I tell you things are bad, you’ll say I told you so.”
Mr. Horton replaces his glasses. “I’m extending an olive branch. Why are you rejecting it?”
Sandra holds her peace as she sifts through the mental list of offenses that she has kept over the last seven years.
“How about we start with you not letting Mommy have a baby shower for me?”
“Do you know why I didn’t let her have the shower?”
“And I’m not just going to forget that, Daddy. Now you try to act like you love Little Dre so much.”
“Baby Love, you didn’t answer my question. I said, do you know why I didn’t allow your mother to have the shower?”
Sandra shakes her head.
“You chose to start a family in a way that was contrary to how you were raised. And having a baby shower would be honoring that and celebrating the consequences of the sin that you chose to get into.”
Sandra closes her eyes tight.
I will NOT cry in front of him.
She takes a deep breath and says calmly, “Andre is a baby, not a sin.”
Mr. Horton touches Sandra’s chin and gently guides it toward his. “Andre is my grandson, Baby Love. And no human life is a sin. But fornication is. And this has never been about Little Andre. This is about you and his father.”
“You can stop talking about me and his father, because we’re not together anymore.”
“So now what, you’re just another statistic? Your mother and I poured our whole lives into you. And you throw it away on a lowlife who doesn’t have the decency to marry you and then leaves you?”
Sandra stands, but not before a tear sneaks out. “Mommy, I’m ready to go.”
Mrs. Horton appears. “What’s wrong?” She looks at Mr. Horton. “Dewey, what did you say to her?”
Mr. Horton looks deflated. He says softly, “If she wants to go . . . go ahead and take her.”
Little Dre’s wide eyes go back and forth between his grandfather and his mother. He finally lays his head on his grandmother’s shoulder and says, “Pa-pa. Ma-ma.”
Sandra swipes him from her mother’s arms and leaves the room. In an instant she’s back to snatch up Little Dre’s baby bag.
“Baby Love, you know I love you,” Mr. Horton says.
“Goodbye, Daddy.”
Andre fingers the bumps on the inner arc of the steering wheel of number 5201. When he slips the key in the ignition and turns, the bus quietly springs to life. He releases the gearshift and the transmission glides into drive. Together, Andre and the bus are ready for the wiles of the night.
Tonto raps on the door. “Dominick wants to see you.”
Andre hesitates.
“Everything cool?” Tonto inquires.
“Yeah.”
“I hope so because y’all interrupting my dinner.”
Andre trails Tonto into the building. Dominick doesn’t look up when Andre knocks on the door. “Sit down,” he says.
Andre does. He can’t recall ever conversing with the top of a meaty, balding head. Dominick has strategically stretched several wisps of hair across the brown splotches flecked across the surface of his pink scalp.
Dominick looks up. “Why didn’t you tell me you hit somebody?”
Andre is blindsided.
“Bird got your tongue?” Dominick asks.
Andre rehearses what he said to Detective Jackson. “Mr. Dominick, I was scared. I wasn’t thinking straight. A man got killed right in front of me. I realized later that I needed to report what happened, but I thought it would only get me in more trouble since I didn’t mention it right away.”
Dominick toggles his noggin from side to side. “This whole thing is putting us in a very bad light, Andre. The JCPD thinks a driver of mine is withholding information related to an unsolved murder. That’s why we have protocols in place, to prevent this kind of thing.”
Andre is quiet.
“Automatic suspension. Two weeks. No pay. You’re a hard worker and I like you, and that’s the only reason I’m not firing you. But rules are rules and I have to follow them. You got anything to say for yourself?”
Andre doesn’t.
“I need your keys.”
Dominick sticks out a king-sized paw and accepts Andre’s key ring.
Tonto’s head pops out of the break room as soon as Andre steps out of Dominick’s office.
“Yo, Dre, I forgot to tell you. That night you didn’t come in? A guy in a snappy suit stopped me in front of the garage and started asking me a bunch of questions about your route. Said he was your cousin. He must think I’m stupid because he never said your name. What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know,” Andre says.
“Dude creeped me out with his eyes, though,” Tonto says. He peers closer at Andre. “Everything cool in there?”
“No.” Andre turns up his collar and steps onto the street. He shudders from apprehension more than cold as he searches up and down the block. Streams of light from the streetlamps suddenly run together. He tastes tears at the corners of his mouth. Andre wipes them clean and steels himself.
On the bus ride home, Andre opens his tiny spiral notebook to a blank page bookmarked with an ATM receipt that shows a balance of $1,287.23. His $800 rent is due in six days and the $500 for Sandra will be automatically transferred into her account the week after that.
Andre scratches out a verse.
When he gets home, he splits open the Dark Poet notebook and transfers the rough lines of the fledging poem. Next, he forces his way into cordoned-off portions of his mind and drags out stanza after stanza. When he is finished, Andre does something he hasn’t done in a long time—he stands in front of the mirror and gives life to his words by speaking them.
I look at life through the eyes of one who has danced with misery.
I am death. Waltzing with vexation—serenaded by a dissonant dirge in a minor key.
My world is not my world—but terror remains real.
And laughter is but temporary respite from a tangible gloom.
But I cannot take my own life.
What prevents me?
The sea of tears my son would cry,
Seeing his father lowered in the ground with his own blood on his hands.
So I press on.
Steer clear of my person—you that are wise,
Lest you too be afflicted by my reckless masquerade.
The tears are all gone now.
Escaped on the wings of aborted youth.
There is no life here.
Only eternal darkness and the flame
Of a cold shame. That never ceases.
Hakeem delicately places the poem on his desk. Andre tries to shroud his face in a tenuous, emotionless gaze.
“Wow.” It’s the shortest sentence Andre has ever heard Hakeem speak.
Andre looks down because he has never been sure of how exactly to accept praise. At the same time, he expected his work to be applauded. If it wasn’t, he became palsied by a deep-seated insecurity.
He wants to scream. The oppressive frustration of constantly being ripped between conflicting emotions is taking a toll on his mind.
“What inspired such dark, powerful words?” Hakeem asks.
Andre distends his cheeks and expels all of the carbon dioxide from his lungs. “I lost my parents when I was nine.”
Hard-boiled pity is never the reaction that Andre desires. Rather, he hopes, even against hope, that someone can help him return to the life that he knows is gone forever. So he monitors the reaction of Hakeem, who stares back at him without a trace of pity.
“What happened?”
“An accident.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Any particular reason why?”
Andre sorts through the many.
Does it still hurt? Yes.
Will discussing it make it any better? No.
However, it’s too late because the mere mention of the accident gives Andre’s mind license to drag him back to the night.
He recalls the smell of gas and the eternal wait. Still and all, it wouldn’t have mattered because his parents were dead and he knew it. Andre never cried because his father always told him to be solution minded instead of problem focused.
He unstrapped his seat belt and tried the back doors. Jammed. He crawled to the front and those were stuck too. He was relieved because it would have been too scary to venture out into the dark by himself.
What if there were monsters out there?
So Andre huddled between his parents’ mangled bodies. One of his mother’s hands was twisted behind the seat, but the other was free, so he held fast to it. He lay on his father’s lap and closed his eyes so that he could block out the sight of their injuries. He wanted to remember his parents as they were.
“Would you want to talk about it if it were you?” Andre says curtly to Hakeem.
“I don’t know,” Hakeem admits.
Andre sits silently for longer than what feels comfortable. “It’s the images.”
More silence.
Finally, Hakeem asks, “What kind of an accident?”
“Auto.”
“Where did it happen?”
“Virginia. The Dismal Swamp Canal. A two-lane road that runs alongside the water.”
“You ran off the road?”
Andre nods.
Hakeem doesn’t fill in the long pause with words. “How did you feel when help eventually came?” he asks finally.
“Like I was alone in the world.”
Hakeem looks down at the poem. He reads through it again and unconsciously drums his index finger on the desk. “I am death,” he says and looks up at Andre. “What did you mean when you wrote that?”
“That’s how I feel.”
“Describe that for me.”
“It’s like . . .” Andre smiles in an attempt to lighten the heaviness that has settled in the room.
Hakeem notices. “It’s okay for you to feel uncomfortable. You lost something that you can never replace. But death, even when it’s tragic, doesn’t have to keep you from rebuilding a full life.”