“Tyisha Cooley?”
“This is me. What can I do for you, officers?”
The Cleveland police officers had left the window open a small crack. Not so I could hear, but probably so I wouldn’t suffocate. It was one of those cold, rainy, one hundred percent humidity days where it was impossible to get warm or comfortable. I was in a squad car on Brunswick Road in front of my best friend’s house. The police had walked to her door and knocked loud and long enough to get her to come out. All three looked at each other warily. I imagine none of them were what the other had expected: her—police, them—a black woman.
I wasn’t going to choke on my own breath, and I could see and hear what was going on as well as anyone could from fifteen feet away. I’d convinced the patrol officers not to issue a citation when they’d found me prowling the East Cleveland border looking for a fix. They agreed on the condition that they leave me somewhere with a responsible adult. While I wasn’t a truant fifteen-year-old, I didn’t protest because while a night with Tyisha might come with a lecture, a night in jail could come with any number of unknown dangers I wasn’t much in the mood for.
“Do you know that woman in the car?” One of the uniformed officers lifted a small pad myopically close to his nose. “Sarah Rose Pope?”
“What’s the issue?” Tyisha was being cagey—on purpose. Her dad always told these stories of how unsuspecting black folks could end up in a lineup and march themselves right into jail for something they didn’t do if they answered too many questions. Mr. Cooley had always said the best approach for cops was to be quietly cooperative while never giving any information.
While I appreciated the reason for the whole song and dance, I wanted to get out of this car where the rain was starting to blow in through the window crack, and into my friend’s house that I knew would be cozy and warm and maybe even have something good on the stove. Tyisha wasn’t as good a cook as Mary Cooley, but sometimes she came pretty damned close.
“Do you know her?” the officer asked again, gesturing toward me in the car. I turned my face to the window.
Everyone was quiet for a moment, then the screen door opened again. I almost groaned out loud. Or maybe I did, but not loud enough for anyone to hear me from my position at the curb. It was Tyisha’s boyfriend, Patrick Bailey.
He was as straight as an arrow and not my biggest fan. I had to wonder what he was doing at my friend’s house on a Wednesday. Bailey was the kind of man who adhered to a very strict schedule. Tyisha was Friday and Saturday. His mother was Sunday. Weekdays were dedicated to reading the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal or whatever he did to make himself more money to buy more furniture to put in his big Glengary Road house he lived in alone
“Pat Bailey.” He put most of his body in front of my friend’s. “How can I help you, officers?”
“We don’t want trouble, sir.” I couldn’t see the officers’ faces. But their backs stiffened. The one without the pad in hand rested his on the butt of his weapon, his elbow jutting back.
If I could have gotten out of the police car, I would have. But there were no handles on the inside of the back door. And the cage over the front bench seat meant I couldn’t escape the other way. Instead, I lifted my cuffed hands and banged on the window.
They both turned toward me with matching glares.
“Pipe down.”
I banged again. If I knew anything, I knew they wouldn’t hurt me. My father may have pulled a college education and even a safe place to rest my head out from up under me, but I could still exercise the friend of the family card. He’d left me that.
“Then what do you want if it isn’t trouble?” Bailey’s voice had gone from conciliatory to antagonistic.
“To know if you’ll take responsibility for Sarah Pope. The woman there in the car.”
Tyisha shouldered her way to the front again, stepping down one step. I couldn’t see much of her with three men towering over her, but I could still hear.
“Yes, you can drop her here. Thank you for taking care of her. I’m sure her father, First District Deputy Commander Francis Pope, will be grateful for your care and discretion.” Now she was using the friend of the family card.
“Yes, of course.” The one with the hand on the gun dropped his arm. “We’ll go get her.”
They turned on their heels and came down the walk. Pulling open the passenger door, they lifted me out a lot more gently than they’d put me in. One of them took the small key from his belt and undid the cuffs that held my hands to my front. I shook out my stiff arms, not minding the rain coming down on my head and shoulders now that I was free. They walked me up to the door and handed me off to my friend and her boyfriend without a word. We were all in the house, door firmly shut, before the squad car drove away.
Before I could explain what had brought me to their doorstep on a Wednesday, my eyes snapped to the muted television. On top of the CNN banner was a grainy video. It took me a good thirty seconds to figure out what I was looking at.
“Oh my God, is that video of police beating someone?”
“Some guy named Rodney King,” Bailey said. “Tried to run from the police.”
“Where? Here?” I couldn’t make out any familiar landmarks in the colorless video.
“Los Angeles.”
My shoulders dropped. “At least it’s not Cleveland.”
“Could be here or anywhere in America,” Tyisha said. She lifted the remote as if to turn it off or change the channel, but her hand dropped to her side. It was hard to look away.
“I guess it’s a good thing my father’s a cop. Saved my bacon a time or ten.”
“Including tonight,” Bailey concluded.
“They thought I was soliciting.”
“You weren’t?”
“I don’t…that’s not.” I tried not to be hurt that my friend’s boyfriend thought of me that way. More emphatically than necessary, I said, “No. I was just looking for someone on Euclid, near Shaw High school.”
“There was something in the paper the other day about an active police sting over there arresting johns,” Tyisha said, eyeing Bailey.
“Didn’t know that,” I said. It’s not like I had the time to drink morning coffee and read a paper. Most of the last days, I was just trying to hustle up enough money for rent. “Cops just said it was best if I wasn’t over there. Asked me if I had somewhere to go.”
Tyisha looked me up and down. I took my hands from the pockets of my hoodie. I didn’t have much with me. Some money hidden in my shoe. My ID was in my jeans pocket. A set of keys to a place I’d been evicted from were in another. There was a chance the landlord was too cheap to change the locks and I could squat there with him none the wiser.
“You didn’t drive. Where’s your car?”
I thought about lying, but we were far beyond that. My shame had left my body years ago.
“Impound right now. I’ll get it out as soon as I get the money together.”
“You’re wet. Why don’t you go back into my room and dry off. Shower if you want. Some of your clothes are in that pink box under the bed, okay?”
“Thanks. I…uh…appreciate it.”
“You hungry?”
“A little,” I said, though it was untrue. I was craving something altogether different, but would have to grit my teeth and hopefully make it through the night. Or at least make it until they went to sleep and I could slip back out. Without another word or looking either of them in the eye, I skulked back to my friend’s room. Kneeling on the carpet, I slipped the pink box out. There were sweats, jeans, and even pajamas. Some of the items were new. It made me want to cry. She had been a great friend all these years and I had never returned the favor. Filled with emotion, I started toward the living room ready to tell her how grateful I was to have her in my life, but the raised voices stopped me in my tracks in the hallway.
“I thought you said you were practicing tough love.” That question had come from Bailey.
When I could hear him talking, I realized I’d forgotten to close the door. But I didn’t think he was doing anything to try to keep his voice down.
“What would you have me do? Turn the cops away at the porch?”
“That’s an idea,” rumbled from Bailey’s chest.
“How can you say that? You’re watching the news the same as me. Leaving her with the cops is bad news.”
“For us.” When he said that, I knew he meant black people. He wasn’t wrong. I knew that as surely as anyone watching that video would, but—
“For her, too,” Tyisha interjected on my behalf.
“Her father’s a cop, for Christ’s sake. How can you say that?”
“She’s an addict. The police treat them like garbage. If they think a woman’s a prostitute, that’s worse. Most of these cops expect free favors. And when they don’t get what they think they’re due, they sometimes take it. The women have no recourse. I’d rather have her here than go through any of that.”
“Why can’t she go home to her people?”
“Where is that? Her parents chose her sister over her. I told you that. There’s always been something wrong in her house. I’m not sure if Rainey is clinically crazy or what, but once they kicked Sarah out, she could never go back. I am her people.”
“Let’s not talk about her,” Bailey huffed. Surprised that he was moving on from me so quickly, I froze in place as if being still would make my hearing keener.
“You were just getting to why you wanted to come over tonight,” Tyisha prompted.
“You know how I bought the house on Glengary…”
“It’s nice.”
“It’s a house for a wife and a family,” Bailey started. “We’ve been seeing each other for three and a half years, Tyisha, I think it’s time we made it official.”
“Official?” Her question ended in a high-pitched squeak.
There was a long moment when I couldn’t hear anything. Towel fisted in my hands, I stood frozen like a statute. I also really wanted to know what he meant by official.
“I know you think the house is too big, but the truth is that I bought the house for us. I want you to move in. I want us to get married. Start a family. All the things we both have talked about. All the things that we’ve both wanted.”
“Oh…I didn’t…”
“I love you, Tyisha Adea Cooley. I have loved you since practically the day I met you. But that wasn’t too soon after your brother. I knew your grief was a hard thing and wanted to respect you. Give you time.”
“I really appreciate that.”
“But you get to move on with your life. You don’t have to sacrifice your future because your brother didn’t get to have one.”
“I know that. I haven’t been doing it…on purpose.”
“No one said you have. But neither of us is getting any younger. If we want to build the kind of future we’ve talked about, then the time is now.”
While I wasn’t Pat Bailey’s biggest fan, his dressing like Mr. Rogers and not drinking alcohol or caffeine weren’t indictments of character. I tiptoed to the shower. I didn’t need to hear anymore. I half hoped my friend would take him up on it. If anyone deserved the kind of marriage her parents still had, it was Tyisha.
Clean and warm in my favorite sweats that I was grateful she’d kept plus fresh underwear, I moseyed out to the living room ready to congratulate a newly engaged couple. That’s not what I found. Instead, they were standing in the dining room, oblivious to my presence. The TV was still muted. Rodney King was still being beaten on repeat. Talking heads still looked shocked.
“So you want me to move in, but you want to put rules and restrictions on my life?”
“It’s for your own good.”
“I’m a grown ass woman, Patrick Kelvin Bailey.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea for our kids to be exposed to addicts?”
“Kids? Our theoretical but still nonexistent offspring? You’re worried about with whom they’d associate?”
“Yes, we’re not those black people.”
“Those?”
Pat Bailey was on thin ice. If there was one thing that the Cooleys hated, it was class divisions. They’d talked more than once about their belief in living in the heart of the black community. Mrs. Cooley talked about how they could live anywhere, but it was important for educated, middle-class blacks to stay in the neighborhood. That’s what she’d said when me and even Wayne and Tyisha had asked why they wouldn’t move out of Hough, which was going in the exact opposite direction of some other neighborhoods.
“The kind that live east of one sixteen,” he tried to explain. “Cycles of poverty and welfare.”
“Like my parents.”
“Obviously not, they’re different.”
“Different. Like I’m different because I went to Spelman? Like you’re different because you went to Middlebury up there in Vermont, huh? Are you blaming them? These people caught in the poverty cycle who didn’t have the advantages we did.”
“I’m not blaming anyone. If they choose not to get out of where they are, there’s no one who can really do anything about it. That said, I wouldn’t want our kids exposed to people like that before they have the wherewithal to figure out the right people to associate with.”
“So what? Hathaway Brown or University school until they shuffle off into the Ivy League?”
“I’d be willing to look at Shaker public schools. The real estate taxes are certainly high enough that the schools should be somewhat good.”
“Somewhat good?”
Part of me wanted to save Bailey from the hole he was digging for himself. Tyisha didn’t have many buttons, but he was pushing all of them. Poverty. Crime. Education. Fairness. She wasn’t one of those non-profiteers trying to save the world, but she very much believed in equality and justice. It’s who her parents raised her to be.
“We’re getting off track, Tyisha. I don’t want to argue with you. I was looking for you to promise me that nights like tonight wouldn’t happen. That Sarah’s not just going to pop into our house.”
“Sometimes she needs help. I wouldn’t just abandon her.”
“It’s not help that you can provide. That you’re qualified to give.”
“Who says?”
“Any book or article on the subject. I love you. I know you have this long and complicated history with your friend. So I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I went to the downtown library and took out a lot of books on the subject. They all say that she won’t give up the heroin or won’t get any better until she’s motivated to do it. In the meantime, all she’s going to do is wreak havoc in the lives of the people around her like she’s doing tonight.”
“Nothing’s happened. She got dropped off. Took a shower. I’ll make dinner and then she’ll be back to—”
“Her old habits. She looked like she’s jonesing now. I don’t think she was over at Shaw High looking to take some nighttime adult education classes.”
“I’m not saying that she’s clean or sober. I’m saying that I can’t imagine giving up on Sarah. She’s my best friend. She got dealt a bad hand. I got a good one. It’s only fair that I do what I can to even it out.”
“And what if one of our kids dies or even I die as a result?” Bailey’s voice was getting higher and louder. The Cooleys were a quiet family.
“What do you mean?” My friend’s voice stayed calm in the face of Bailey’s verbal onslaught. “She’s not sticking a needle into anyone’s vein but her own.”
“What do I mean?” His huff was one of exasperation. “Wouldn’t your brother be alive today if she hadn’t been at your house?”
“I can’t believe you…that’s a low—”
That was the moment I chose to show myself. I’d quietly tied on my damp sneakers and pulled my jacket back around my shoulders. I loved Tyisha, and would have really liked a warm bed, but the cost was looking like it was too high.
“I think I need to go. Thanks for the shower and change of clothes. I don’t want to be the thing that gets between you and a life of happiness. Ciao,” I said.
I marched to the front door. I didn’t want to, but I did take one thing on the way out that I knew I would never return—a large black golf umbrella—probably proving Bailey’s point. I took it to stay dry. To remind me of the best friend I knew at that exact moment was probably lost to me forever. She’d marry him and ride off into the sunset. I walked the mile back to the high school. This time there weren’t any police around and my dealer was there. I leaned against a brick wall and got my last dollars from my shoe.