“What in God’s name happened?” Leland’s mom shouts as soon as we enter the shelter.
She was sitting by the one public phone mounted on the wall, but in three large mama steps, she is right to us, with her boy’s face cupped in her hand as she examines his war wounds. Ani is in her other hand, also looking at Leland’s lumped-up face.
“We got jumped,” I say, since he’s not making a peep.
She turns to me. Looks me up and down. “You got it worse. And if your mama is anything like me, she won’t be happy.” She turns back to Leland. “Get your butt in the washroom. Now!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and sluggishly walks away.
“And where are your shoes?” she shouts, after seeing the full scope of him.
“They took our shoes,” I say.
“They took our shoes,” he says, and walks off.
She turns to me. “Now, why in the world would they take your shoes?”
“Just to do it, I guess,” I say.
“Come here,” she says to me.
“You going to spank me? Because I don’t think you’re allowed to do that.”
She laughs. “Looks like you’ve been hit enough. Come here.”
I approach her. She hands Ani to me. It feels so good to have an innocent ball of fur in my arms. I missed her, but I’m glad she wasn’t with me. That would have made things much worse. Ani is not a wolf yet.
Tessa cups my chin in her hands, just like she did with her son. Her palms are warm. And they don’t smell like cigarettes. They smell like coconuts. She examines my face.
“Your cheek is red, which will go down in an hour or so. But that shiner under your eye is turning purple. Your mama is gonna see that. What do you think she’ll say?”
“She’ll ask if the person that gave me this got it worse or not,” I say.
Tessa looks at me with a tilted smile, like she doesn’t know if I’m telling a joke or not. “Did he?”
“No. But to be fair, there were four of them and just two of us.”
“What did they look like?” she asks.
“You did the research. You know what they looked like.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you two,” she says with a cloud of sadness rolling over her skies, I mean eyes.
“It’s okay. I’ve been punched by Blacks, Mexicans, my brother, and now whites. And you know what? All fists feel the same. It’s kind of unavoidable, staying at cheap motels and shelters. For some reason, the cities always like to build these places in bad neighborhoods. Makes no sense to me.”
“You should go wash up too. Looks like you took a dirt nap,” she says.
I get three steps away from her when I hear a voice from behind me. A voice I recognize, with a tone that sends shivers down my spine. “Who did that to you?”
I turn and see Emjay. The marks on his face, from his recent fights, have pretty much cleared up. I guess the baton of bruises gets passed around from brother to brother as we grow up and move from shelter to shelter.
“Just some guys at the park,” I say, hoping what I know comes next won’t come next.
I don’t know where Emjay has been, but wherever he was, he sticks out like a lion in a room full of homeless hyenas. His pants are new. His shoes are new. His shirt is new. I’m starting to think I need to adopt his lifestyle a bit more. I’m covered in grass, shoeless, stained, and I smell like onions. “Hand the mutt to this nice lady, Opin,” he says.
And there it is. The inevitable. Emjay’s chance to lay a beating down on someone. A part of me likes the fact that he will defend me. His blood wants to protect my blood. If someone messes with me, they are messing with him. That’s how families should work. But another part of me knows that he’s not really doing this for me. He loves fighting. It makes him feel alive. And he’s good at it. Practice makes perfect.
“Opin, is everything okay?” Tessa asks, growing suspicious of Emjay’s tone.
“Yeah. This is my brother, Emjay. We have to go do something. Can you watch Ani a bit longer?” I say, not waiting for her reply and handing Ani to her.
“Violence doesn’t solve anything,” she says, looking me square in the eye.
“Of course it does, lady. Where have you been?” Emjay says.
“I beg to differ,” she replies to him.
“You can beg all you want. But I don’t think the white man just handed your ancestors their freedom, now, did he? No. They had to fight for it. Problem solved.”
Tessa doesn’t respond. I can’t tell if she’s offended or if she actually thinks my brother made a valid point. Personally, I just want to get this over with. “This is what we do when we do what we gotta do,” I say, and follow my brother out of the shelter.
We walk through the parking lot. He doesn’t say a word to me, or even look at me. His eyes are dead set on the park across the street. The asphalt is uneven, and it kind of hurts my shoeless feet as I try to keep up with my brother. He walks fast and focused, like a gladiator entering the coliseum. I bet this is how our Native ancestors walked when they were about to go to battle with the cavalry. They knew they could potentially die, but they didn’t care. And if they did care, it didn’t show in their steps. They were ready. Always ready. Like Emjay.
Unlike me.
We cross the street and enter the park. His eyes scan the area. He sees the basketball players. “Them?”
“No,” I reply.
His eyes turn to the skateboarders. “Them?”
“No … them,” I say, and point to the four guys across the park. They are sitting on a picnic table, and there are now four girls with them.
I guess while they were waiting for their dates, they saw us and decided to beat up a couple of kids to pass the time. Big mistake. They had no idea I have a fighting-machine brother who fears nothing. And no one. And has never lost a fight because he’d rather die swinging on his feet than accept defeat. It’s not that he’s bigger or stronger than everyone else. It’s because most people know when to quit. Emjay doesn’t. I almost feel sorry for these four guys … Almost. They are so going to regret not going to school today.
Emjay heads toward them. Each step he takes, I hear thunder. I know the lightning is coming next. And instead of running for shelter, I follow the storm. My body tenses up. I hate this feeling. No one should have to feel their hearts beating so hard. My hands shake. My knees shake. But Emjay shows no signs of nervousness. Instead, I see joy. I see a pride that I wasn’t born with. I see a hungry lion hoping his next meal puts up a worthy fight. It makes the meat taste better, I guess.
We reach the picnic table, and I stop just before Emjay does, leaving me a step behind him. The four guys see my brother. Then me.
“This is my brother,” Emjay says to them.
They get off the picnic table and face Emjay. They don’t look afraid. Dumb gazelles.
“It’s the little Jap kid. He went and cried to his brother,” one says, and the others laugh. Even the girls are amused. “But you don’t look Jap. You look more … I don’t know, what are you? Mongolian?” he says, and his friends crack up.
“They look like Aztecs,” one of the girls says.
“What the hell is an Aztec?” the guy asks.
“We are Ojibwe,” I say aloud. “The direct descendants of Chief Shawano of the Anishinaabe—”
“Shut up,” Emjay snaps at me.
The group laughs. “An ojib-what? What’s that?” one asks.
“I’m about to show you,” Emjay says.
They move closer to us. They still don’t realize how bad their day is about to become. “What did you think would happen? You’d come here, and we’d what? Say sorry for beating his ass?” the taller one says with a smirk. “Because that’s not happening.”
“I didn’t come here for an apology,” Emjay says, and rolls up his sleeves.
The group laughs again. It’s always chuckles before knuckles. They inch closer. They are within striking distance. It’s like four muscle cars playing chicken with a tank.
“It’s four on one. You really want to do this?” one of them asks.
“Too bad for you. You should have brought more friends,” Emjay says, and before they have a chance to react, Emjay throws a right, down the middle, slamming into the closest guy’s nose.
Blood splatters the guy’s face, like a red butterfly spreading its wings. He drops to his knees, cups his face, and makes the sounds of an animal caught in a steel trap.
The other three guys charge, but Emjay lands a kick right into the nutsack of one of them. The kid buckles in pain.
Emjay is tackled down by the remaining two. They all hit the ground. Emjay is the first one back to his feet. He’s always the first one up. Always.
My brother lands a knee into the face of the guy on his knees cupping his balls, which sends him crashing down into the grass. Emjay takes a few punches from the two guys—but their swings are sloppy, which allows my brother to counter, easily, and knock both to the ground with a series of combinations he learned by watching boxing fights whenever we were at a place with a TV.
I watch in awe as my brother starts kicking them while they’re down. Four on one. It wasn’t a fair fight at all. The girls start begging my brother to stop; even I try to tell him he’s done enough, but Emjay is done when Emjay is done. Never a second sooner.
I wonder if our ancestors are watching this. Are they proud? Disappointed? Entertained?
Emjay starts removing their shoes. One by one. And tossing each pair to me. “Take the best fit,” he says.
I notice the symbolism here. He just went to battle with the white man. He won. Now he’s taking their souls by taking their soles. These shoes look new. I bet they all have rich parents. Or at least middle-class parents, but from where Emjay and I are sitting, the middle class is rich to us. I try the shoes on. They are all way too big for my feet. “Fine. Pick them up. They’re mine now,” Emjay says, and approaches me. I see his lip is swollen and leaking blood.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He punches me in the stomach. I buckle. I drop to my knees. I drop all eight shoes. I lose my breath. “That’s for not fighting your own fight,” he says, and walks away, back toward the shelter.
I was right. He didn’t fight them to defend me or to honor our ancestors. He was just a shark that smelled blood. I catch my breath. The four guys are still on the ground, in pain, but not seriously hurt. They got lucky. If Emjay was in a bad mood today, they’d all be in the hospital. I stare down at their shoes. Eight empty shoes. Then I stare at my feet. Dirty socks. I know I should just do the right thing and leave these shoes where they are, in the grass. An eye for an eye or a shoe for a shoe never ends well. But instead, I pick them all up and carry them toward Emjay, because if I did leave them, I’d most likely get another punch in the gut from my brother. And I’m done with punches. There’s been too many today.
I catch up to Emjay at the street. We’re near a bus stop. A large trash can is propped beside it. Emjay tosses all eight pairs of shoes into the trash. It’s not like he didn’t want these souvenirs as a reminder of his epic victory in the Battle of Stockton Park. Eight trophies would have looked nice on his wall. It’s just the reality of our situation. Emjay has no wall. These shoes would just take up space. Space that we don’t have.
We get to the parking lot, and I see that Mom is back. Our car is parked in the same spot she drove out of this morning. My mind doesn’t race through whether or not she’s going to be mad at me for getting beat up or mad at Emjay for fighting again, no, my mind goes straight to wondering if she was approved to get the food stamps she’s been hoping for. Don’t get me wrong, Taco Bell and Burger King and all those other fast-food places are fine, but I miss the other foods we used to eat. The good foods. The apples. The grapes. Corn on the cob. The real bread. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cereal with milk in it. Shelters only have Cheerios. I don’t know why. And they’re always out of milk. I’m so sick of stale Cheerios in a bowl of water. I want to eat those fun ones. Fruity Pebbles. Cap’n Crunch. Lucky Charms. Apple Jacks. Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I want to drink orange juice and apple juice again. I want to eat Salisbury steak and green beans and pancakes. I miss those instant ramen noodles in the Styrofoam cups. I know it says to microwave them for three minutes, but I like to do it for only one minute, because it keeps the noodles crunchy. I want a Hot Pocket. I want macaroni and cheese. I’m sick of KFC and cheeseburgers and French fries.
With gas being so expensive and us constantly driving, topped with no refrigerator to keep real food cold, we haven’t been grocery shopping lately. The closest we are to getting non-junk food is the occasional trip to 7-Eleven for a banana or a packaged tuna sandwich. And maybe, if we’re lucky, they still have a couple pizza slices left.
Before we enter the shelter, Emjay turns and heads to the car. “Aren’t you coming in?” I ask.
“I’m not going in there,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“That place is for bums. I’ll be in the car,” he says, and opens the passenger-side door.
I watch him get in and recline the seat. I bet he’s exhausted. Battles do that to him. He always sleeps after he fights. Mom says he fights way too much, but at least he’s getting enough sleep.
I enter the shelter and walk down the hall. There’s no mirror around for me to check how bad my face looks, so I just bite down on my bottom lip and open the double doors. Mom will see what she sees. There’s no hiding it.
Deep breath. I open the doors. The large room is mostly full of people. Strangers. A bunch of families that can’t catch a break. I walk over and see my mom sitting on the bottom bunk. She’s going through a stack of papers, while Ani hops around it, trying to get her to play. The blankets we own are folded neatly on the edge of the bed. I know what that means. We’re leaving.
“You should see the other guy,” I say, trying to break the ice about my broken face.
She looks up and sees me. She studies my face. Her eyes move up and down my clothes, briefly stopping at each stain. “I did see the other guy,” she says, her gaze stern. “Leland.”
“I meant the other guys,” I say.
She takes my hand and sits me beside her. Ani licks my arm. I scoop her up and kiss her. Her little body in my arms makes everything feel a bit better, even my recent punch to the gut.
“They did a number on you,” she says.
“Emjay did a number on them,” I reply.
She sighs. “See? Your brother loves you.”
“I never said he didn’t love me. I said he doesn’t like me.”
She pulls me in and hugs me. “Stockton isn’t for us. You ready to hit the road?”
I am not ready to hit the road. I earned this place. I took a beating for it. I have a friend now. Leaving means I’ll take another beating from people in the next city. At the next shelter. And maybe at the next one I won’t make a new friend. “Do we have to leave already?” I ask.
“We can’t stay here. Emjay has enemies now. The HUD-housing list is too long. Plus, someone complained about Ani. No dogs allowed. But … I have some good news,” she says.
“What?” I ask, not even trying to hide my disappointment.
I knew we were going to be leaving soon. We never stay long. But still, every time we do, it feels like tearing off a scab. Maybe the next place we can let it heal. But we never do. It’s not painful, necessarily. But it sure is disappointing.
“I was thinking, there’s a city about thirty miles south from here called Modesto. I got a hotel voucher. Good for two nights. What do you say we stop at the laundromat, for obvious reasons, then go grocery shopping before we check into our room?”
My eyes light up. Even my bruised one. “You got the food stamps?”
“They thought I didn’t qualify at first, but you know me. I was able to talk them into giving me an emergency pack. Seventy-five smackaroos’ worth,” she says, and tosses it onto my lap.
I flip through it. It’s like a coupon book. Every amount is a different-colored coupon. The green ones are worth ten dollars. The purple ones are worth five. The blue ones are worth two. And the yellowish-brown ones are worth one dollar. US Department of Agriculture is printed on all of them. It looks like play money. Which is fitting, because it sometimes feels like this life is just a game. This colorful play money will feed us well for the next few days.
There’s no point in asking if we can stay longer. We’ve gone through this so many times. I know how this works.
This was never my home. It’s time to go.
“Can I go say bye to Leland?”
“You do that. I’m going to go tell Emjay the plan. Is he in the car?”
“He’s sleeping.”
She piles all her paperwork into her purse, scoops up Ani, and manages to take both folded blankets with her as she leaves the large room.
Here I am again. The same place I am always at, just at a different location. About to say bye to someone I really like and will probably never see again. Making friends is easy. Keeping them is impossible.
Leland and his mom are in a bunk a few rows over. He’s lying on the bottom bed, reading his Wolverine comic. It’s all taped up. Tessa sits beside him, reading a book. How cool. They have reading time together just like me and my mom do.
“Is it any good?” I ask.
He looks up and sees me. His face doesn’t look too bad. And he is in a new outfit, blue jeans and a navy-blue hoodie. His mom sees me and closes her book. “I’ll give you two a few minutes,” she says, and gets up.
Mom must have already told her the plan. She knows this is goodbye.
“It’s pretty good. Wolverine has issues, dude,” Leland says.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry you got beat up today.”
“I’m sorry you got beat up too,” he says.
“If it makes you feel better, my brother did them worse.”
He smiles. “It kinda does.” I smile too. “You’re leaving? I heard your mom talking to my mom.”
“Yeah. We saw enough of this place, I guess.”
“I think we did too. Mom thinks we’re going to head east tomorrow. Drive through a place called Yosemite, then try our luck in Nevada,” Leland says.
“Cool.”
We both just stare at each other. This is the hard part. The awkward part. The last part.
“How about one more outer space fact before I go?” I ask.
He smiles again. “Did you know that Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after a god?”
“I did not. And that’s weird because we are the only planet that thinks there is one,” I say.
“I’m sure aliens have their gods too. Or maybe the aliens are the gods. I guess I won’t know until I’m up there.”
“How did Earth get its name?” I ask, not yet ready to say the words I came to say.
“It’s from an old English word. It means ‘ground.’ Isn’t that funny? All the mountains and oceans and deserts and jungles, and to give it all a name, we went with Ground.”
“It makes sense for you astronauts,” I say. “It’s all you’ll see when you’re floating up there with the stars. Just a big round ground.”
And that’s that. There’s nothing left to say but … “See ya, Leland.”
“See ya, Opin,” he replies, and hands me my Ninja Turtle comic. It’s taped up.
“Turtle power,” he says, and holds out his fist to me.
“Turtle power,” I say, and bump his fist with mine.
I turn around and walk away. Away from Leland and this shelter and Stockton and the bullies in the park and everything that was my life for the last day or so. With each step toward our car, this place gets smaller and smaller. And by the time I am in the back seat, this place will no longer exist.