I SAVOR THOSE WORDS AS MUCH AS MR. CHILDS’S. “Maxie, hold down the office.” It’s the stuff of dreams, of course.
The guys grumble their way to the back room, but I can already tell that Jolene’s right to make them sit down and work it out, like Patrice’s mom does if she catches us girls fighting over something. It’s ugly for a while, while the arguments are all out in the air, but later it’s easy to swallow the whole mess with no aftertaste.
Jolene unprops the back room door and closes it firmly. I’m left standing alone in the Panther office. This has never happened before. I’ve been in here with a crowd, all the way down to one or two people, but never alone.
I’m not sure what to do with the sudden burst of power I feel. There are about a million things that come to mind. Dial the phone. Peck on the typewriter. Look in the file drawers. But none of those things are truly off-limits to me. The thing that wins is the most mysterious.
I glide toward the gun rack on the wall.
Who knows what holding down the office is supposed to look like? But right now it looks like me lifting a shotgun off the wall, just to see how it feels. Heavy. I’m very careful not to set it off, because I know that it is most likely loaded.
The gun feels huge. I don’t know that they will ever let me be a policer, because I’m so small. Policers are supposed to be scary and tough. At least I can be tough. And maybe I’ll grow.
I put the weapon back in its place on the wall. I don’t know how long I’ll be alone, and knowing the Panther office, not that long.
At home that night, I think about the feel of that shotgun. I’m lying on the bed staring at the ceiling when Raheem pounds into the room. He sees me, stops. Everything stops. His movement. My breath.
The look on his face, it stills me.
“Heem?” I roll to my feet.
There’s a lot that passes between us unspoken. Something that comes from breathing the same air in our sleep for so long. I look at him and know something has wrecked him. It’s not my place to try and touch that, though. I’ve tried before and come away aching. Nothing doing. I can’t get to him in this place, where he’s wounded. Not at first. Only after he’s started in on whatever he’s going to do to make it worse.
Last time I saw this look on his face was the morning of Steve’s funeral. I came from the bathroom and he was sitting there on the edge of his bed. Frozen like a statue, only trembling head to toe. This gun on his knee, balanced beneath his gently arcing fingers. Curtain open, like he was inviting me in, so I went over. Lay my hand on top of his to stop it from shaking. All I got for my trouble was a lot of yelling. He slid the gun into his belt and stormed out.
We had been to our share of funerals, but that one was different. Steve was a better person, a younger person, a closer person to us. And stolen in such an ugly way, it still makes me shudder at least once a day. To be shot by a pig like that for doing nothing, well, it’s happened to Panthers before, just not anyone I know. No one who’s touched my skin or called my name, or given me advice on how to be a good girlfriend. I say I’m not scared of what could happen, because no one else is, and Steve wasn’t. But it’s awful. Everything that happened to Steve and a lot that happened after. We’re still caught in the after, at least Sam is, and Raheem.
I step toward him now, toward the untouchable space around him. Can’t help it. Something draws me there. Raheem looks at me, an icy, trembling gaze. Don’t come any closer.
“What?” I say, dropping it into a space not meant for words.
“Stay out of it,” he snaps, retreating to his half and drawing the curtain. Bed springs creak. Then silence.
I go to the kitchen, stare into the icebox. It’s not eating time, but I’m upset by what just happened. Something is going on with Raheem, but I shouldn’t think about it. I want to run in and shake him. “Did something happen? What’s going on?” I’d say.
I can count on one hand all the times I’ve seen Raheem’s danger face. The first time was when our real dad left, and Mama had to stop Raheem from sitting up each night, waiting for him to come home. After that, it was over some nameless guy who came up in the house all drunk and wailing on Mama. There was a third time, after I burned the living room rug—at least, I tried to. And then it happened after Steve.
I know what happened the day of Steve’s funeral. Sam told me later. The hard truth of it. Why he left the graveside service early, Raheem’s hand on his shoulder and Steve’s gun in his belt. That Raheem took him to kill the cop. In the end Sam couldn’t go through with it; even his love for Steve, his grief, couldn’t turn his blood that cold.
For a day or so after, we thought Raheem might have done it himself. He disappeared with the gun and didn’t come home. But there was nothing in the news, and Raheem showed up in the small, dark morning hours. No blood on his hands, but broken. I was awake, of course. I didn’t sleep for days after Steve died. Raheem stumbled in and dropped onto the edge of my bed. He let me put my arms around him and dropped his head low. I didn’t know what to do with him for crying so we just sat there until it passed.
I always knew what the danger face meant before, where it came from. This time, I don’t know. If it’s Ma, or the shooting, or the close call from earlier, or some other thing altogether.
I close the fridge. Nothing much in there anyway, and the air is starting to chill me. I close the fridge, and as I do it I think about doors. Opening them, closing them, passing through them. My mind turns backward, spurs me to dash to the front door, tug it open.
Raheem tries to be clever, but he’s not clever enough. My fingers go up and I pick at the scraps of clear tape on the wood. He tries to hide things from me, but I always figure them out.
I run back inside and peer into the cabinet under the sink, where we keep the trash. Beneath a banana peel, I find the evidence Raheem tried to destroy. Scraps of yellow paper, torn small, but not small enough to disappear. Thirty days before the landlord comes and kicks us to the curb.