Chapter FOUR
I’D MISSED A LITTLE MORE THAN TWO WEEKS of work at Mickey D’s. Then I found out from Deshawna that my father had given her a C-note to help take care of Destiny Love while I was in the hospital. He never said anything to me about it. And that was the first time he hadn’t flattened me with his mouth over helping out with money.
“I wasn’t the one who had any of that bedroom fun, but I’m the one who’s got to pay,” Dad would say. “I’d have been happier to give you the money for condoms, son. It would have been cheaper.”
But mad as my father would get, it all melted away any time he bounced Destiny Love on his lap.
Deshawna went to Carver High, too. Only she’d dropped out of regular classes just before she had our baby, and was taking a GED class in the school’s basement, along with Asa. We weren’t planning on getting married or anything. At least I wasn’t.
I still wasn’t 100 percent sold that I was in love with her, and other shorties were always catching my eye. But I knew for certain I was in love with my daughter, and that she’d always be a part of my life, no matter what.
I’d been dating Deshawna for six months when she got pregnant.
She never had a thought that she wouldn’t keep the baby. So there was nothing I could really say on the subject.
Deshawna was scared to death to tell her dad and wanted me to be there with her.
“I’ll break the news,” I said, acting confident. “I can handle it.”
I even had the words laid out in my head from practicing them over and over—It’s not something Deshawna and me were planning, but it happened. She’s pregnant, and I’m the baby’s father. So I’m going to do what’s right—what a man’s gotta do.
But when I looked Deshawna’s dad in the eye, I turned paralyzed with fear and couldn’t say a thing.
Deshawna finally burst into tears, screaming, “I’m pregnant, Daddy! I’m sorry, but I’m pregnant!”
Then she jumped into his arms. He was hugging her tight, grilling the shit out of me with his high beams tattooed onto mine. And I felt like less than half a man standing there alone.
We didn’t even have to tell my family when we got to my place. Deshawna had been crying all day. So when they saw her red, swollen eyes and the two of us holding hands, they figured it out straight off.
Mom and Grandma both blamed Deshawna, like she should have been ten times smarter about it than me.
“Girl, don’t you know these boys only got one thing on their minds?” bristled Mom. “You need to have the brains that they don’t!”
I wanted to stick up for myself, but I didn’t.
“A lesson too late for the learning, child,” Grandma told her, plain.
But Dad was pissed at me, and knocked on my head with his knuckles like it was hollow inside.
My first Friday back at Mickey D’s, kids who worked there crowded around me, asking how I was. Maybe it was my imagination, but there were two white kids on the outside of that circle who looked like they couldn’t care less if I’d come back a cripple. Then the manager, a white dude named Gavin Munch, barked at everybody to get back to their stations.
Munch was always a crab, acting like we were in the army, instead of serving up fast food. That’s because he was almost thirty years old, and this was his real job.
“Can’t you cover that?” said Munch, pointing at the patch of stitches in my skull. “It’s the customers that are supposed to get the attention. Not the workers.”
Munch had a buzz cut, and I’d even dreamed of flipping burgers off the top of his flat head. But I just held my tongue and pushed the paper hat part of my uniform over to the side.
“There you go, boss,” I answered, pissed, walking over to the deep fryer. “All covered up. Like it never happened.”
About an hour into my shift, the girl on the drive-through register got sick, and Munch hollered for me to take her place while she was in the bathroom.
People ordered over the squawk box, talking into a clown’s face. Then they’d drive around to the side window where they picked up their food and paid.
My Mickey D’s is off the highway exit, just outside of East Franklin and a few blocks from the start of Hillsboro—close to Carver High. So the customers are mostly mixed. But every kid I knew, white or black, called that space no-man’s-land, because there was no hood you could lean on for backup if you ran into any drama there.
That whole time I was on the window, I was uptight listening to people’s voices, trying to figure out who they were. I’d never stressed over anything like that before I took that beating with the bat.
Then a bunch of rowdy dudes drove up, yelling their orders over each other’s. They changed around everything they wanted—twice.
“Got it right now, clowny?” one of them asked, nasty.
“You’d better or it’s free!” snapped another one.
I knew in my bones they’d be white, and they were.
The total came to twenty-three bucks and ninety-nine cents.
They looked through every bag, like I was too stupid to get their order right.
I went to hand them the penny change and the driver cracked, “Keep it, bro. Buy your family something nice.”
The five of them howled like a car full of hyenas, and pulled away with me holding that brown penny. I looked Abe Lincoln dead square in the face. But he just stared off to the side, like my problems weren’t his. Then I slammed that penny to the ground wishing I’d spit into their food.
I got home that night around six thirty, tired as anything. But I opened the front door and saw Grandma feeding Destiny Love her bottle. That picked me right up.
Destiny Love slept over at our apartment every other weekend and this was my weekend to have her.
Deshawna was there, too. We were going out and my family was going to babysit. Then Mom called me into her bedroom and handed me a long, thin box with a blue bow. Deshawna’s birthday passed while I was in the hospital, and I’d forgot all about it.
“Am I more interested in this girl than you are?” Mom whispered to me, sarcastic.
Deshawna loved the wristwatch inside, and I took her by bus to the new multiplex in Centreville. Before the flick, she caught me checking out a shorty in the next row, but I started talking fast and said, “Nobody else’s watch looks as sharp as that one on you.”
And she backed off, half smiling.
There were some steamy sex scenes in the movie, and the two of us started kissing. Then I let my hands take a walk where they wanted. We were both into it, but we didn’t have any place to go. Since our daughter was born, we’d only had sex twice—both times at Deshawna’s house, while her dad was at work.
I didn’t have money for a motel or anything like that. And I wasn’t about to do my baby’s moms on some park bench. So I let all that heat just pass.
Later, Deshawna wanted to stop for something to eat. I was working a double shift at Mickey D’s the next day, and I didn’t want to see another Big Mac. But there was a Taco Bell close by and we went inside for a burrito and soda.
“I’m going to get my nails done tomorrow with my girls,” she said from across the table. “Then on Sunday, Daddy’s taking me shopping for new jeans.”
“I got no work Sunday. I’ll probably take Destiny Love to the playground and push her on the kiddie swings,” I said, sipping my soda as I noticed Deshawna’s eyes focusing behind me.
“Noah, look at what that girl’s got on,” she said, jutting her jaw towards a corner table.
There were some white girls sitting there, and one of them was wearing a T-shirt that read FREE SPENELLI!
“I feel like tearin’ the shirt right off that snow bitch,” growled Deshawna.
But I wouldn’t let her. And I got us out of there quick before she started something, or somebody recognized me.
“What’s with you, Noah?” she asked. “I know you ain’t scared of those girls.”
“I seen enough drama lately,” I answered. “And we don’t need them calling the cops on us now.”
I took Deshawna home, and her dad watched me tight all the time I was there.
When I got back to my place, my father was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper.
“Looks like the city’s gonna let the detective’s son—that Rao kid—walk for testifying,” said Dad, scowling.
Only it felt more like a swipe at me, like I was supposed to do something about it. So I didn’t even tell him about the T-shirt, before I took the blame for that, too.
I knew part of that anger from him was about me planning to steal that car.
“It’s just a big game to them,” I said, heading for my room.
“But it’s about our lives—what we’re worth in this city that’s hanging in the balance,” I heard him say from behind me.
I was already feeling a ton of pressure and I didn’t even think about saying something back.
There was a night-light on in my room, by Destiny Love’s crib. The light was in the shape of a black angel with wings blowing a horn.
I kissed my daughter on her forehead while she was sleeping. Then I wrapped my hands around the wooden bars of her crib, watching her chest rise up and down, breathing peaceful.
It was just after midnight, and I set the clock-radio alarm on low for 6:00 A.M., to make the breakfast shift at those damn golden arches. My head hit the pillow and I was out cold. But at 3:31, Destiny Love shook me out of my sleep when she started crying for her bottle. Only that formula wasn’t enough. She needed me to hold her, too. And every time I put Destiny Love back down, she screamed like the whole world was coming to an end.
I tried to leave her be. But I couldn’t.
“Noah?” Mom called out. “You taking care of that?”
“Right away,” I answered.
Whenever Mom got woke by Destiny Love in the middle of the night, she’d say things like, “Now if I wanted more children I’d have had them myself,” or “I thought I’d get a longer break in between being a mother and a grandmother.”
I had to walk the floor with Destiny Love on my shoulder for almost forty minutes, looking at the clock and trying to figure out how much more sleep I could get if I got back into bed that second.
Finally, Destiny Love fell asleep. Then I laid her down in her crib and went back to bed.
Less than two hours later, I woke up to the alarm, half dazed.
I left Destiny Love sleeping and the door to my room wide open so Mom or Grandma could hear if she needed anything.
But I’d got dressed in the dark and didn’t realize I put on a regular T-shirt and not a blue uniform shirt till I’d closed our apartment door behind me and was halfway down the stairs.
CHARLIE SCAT
(Alone in his cell doing sets of push-ups, sweating)
Six feet by ten feet. Every time I pace it off, it’s the same.
Cinder-block wall, cinder-block wall, cinder-block wall, and iron bars.
A metal sink and stinking toilet bowl.
For what? What did I do?
Protecting the damn neighborhood. That’s all.
They had to kill that fuck twenty years ago. I’m paying for that now.
Locked down alone twenty-three hours a day, and one hour out for exercise. Like I can’t make it in here, because jail’s nigger country.
Bring them on. Bring them all on. I don’t care.
I’ll hold my weight.
Come on. Another set. I can do it.
Forty-one . . . forty-two . . . forty-threee . . . forty-fourrrr . . . forty-fiiive.
Those black bastards couldn’t stay in the projects. They couldn’t keep themselves in East Fucking Franklin.
Then they get their ass whipped and go crying to the cops.
“Oh, it’s a hate crime. He hates me because I’m black.”
What shit! Stay where the fuck you belong!
And Tommy Rao. My friend—a rat, first class.
Like he didn’t do shit that night.
“Charlie, niggers were at Mario’s like they owned the place, eyein’ Joey’s chain. Let’s kick their asses back to the projects before more of them get ideas.”
All because his father’s a cop. That’s why the special treatment.
Fuck his whole scab family. I hope they run every Rao out of Hillsboro.
Rat bastards, every one of them, out to save their own skin.
No honor.
Now I’m the fall guy. Well, fuck that.
So if my dead father, rest his soul, was a detective, I wouldn’t be here. Right?
Blue or black, that’s what you have to be in this city.
I’ll stare laser beams through that punk if he ever testifies against me.
The cops are probably trying to flip Joey against me, too.
A setup. That’s all it is.
My mother better mortgage the house to get that big-time lawyer. That’s all I know.
Do it, Charlie. Do it. One more set. Watch those biceps pump up.
Look at those guns, big boy.
Forty-six . . . forty-seven . . . forty-eighhht . . . for-ty-niiiine . . .