Criminal Read online

  “But, Dee, I can’t—”

  “You can, baby.” He put his arms around me, held me close. He murmured in my ear, breath swirling on my neck, fizzing everything inside me. “You can because we have to. Okay?”

  I clung to his back. He let go and stepped away.

  “I gotta get in the shower, all right? Go get cleaned up yourself. Take yourself to the movies or something. Forget about Bird. She’ll calm down too. There’s a lot of fuss right now, but I promise, those pigs can’t touch me. Us.”

  He was walking backward while he talked. I wanted him to tell me he loved me. He hadn’t said it in a while, but I knew he wouldn’t now. Not from this distance. He liked to say it to me close so that only I could hear.

  THAT AFTERNOON, I SLEEPWALKED THROUGH MY SHIFT AT the salon. When I got home, Cherry told me to clean up because she was having friends over. “A welcome home party,” she said, sarcastic. I watched as she put out a sorry plate of cheese and grapes and heated up salsa with Velveeta in it. She dumped some tortilla chips into one of Grandma’s crystal bowls. I went into the bathroom and stood under the shower for as long as I could.

  When I was dressed, three people were already there. Men. They sat around the kitchen table with Cherry, drinking and smoking and talking. I moved around them to get myself a beer and then tried to leave, but they had other ideas.

  “Aw, don’t go, honey,” one of them said. He had long gray hair and was wearing a puffy down vest and no shirt. “Sit down, tell us about yourself.”

  “She does hair,” Cherry told them, voice dry and flat.

  “You think you could do something about this mess?” the skinny, darker man said. I’d seen him before. I thought his name was Leroy. He was rubbing and rubbing the long-haired guy’s head, pressing it down all the way to the table. “Fuckin’ man’s got things living in there. You ain’t an exterminator too, are you?”

  Everyone laughed while Leroy and the guy in the vest fake wrestled a minute. I saw the third guy, much younger than all of them, watching me as I dunked a chip into the microwaved salsa-cheese mess just so I wouldn’t have to answer.

  Bo came in with Mary and Cecille, and the house got more lively. Cherry made me offer everybody drinks, like this was some kind of proper party. She cackled at nothing while I moved around, making me tell dumb stories she should be telling herself, like about the time I swallowed one of my own loose teeth when I was little. I hated talking, hated her asking me things she knew were embarrassing, hated all of them watching me. But after not very long, she lifted her eyebrows to Bo and stopped paying attention to me. They paraded back into her bedroom to snort. Her and Bo, at first, and then pairs of them every fifteen minutes, sometimes in larger groups. While Cherry was back there, two other women showed up, one of them talking on her phone nonstop, her face scabby though she’d tried to cover it with makeup. I let them in but made them get their own drinks. I took two beers and went to my room.

  Not that there was much to do, except get away from all of them. There wasn’t any TV, and we’d never had a computer. I didn’t have many books, and I hadn’t thought to bring any old magazines from the salon today either. I found a pack of cards in the bedside table and sat on my bed, sipping beer and playing Solitaire.

  After about an hour there was a knock at my door. When I opened it, Cherry was standing there, giggling.

  She crooked her finger at me, beckoning. “You gotta come out here.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  She laughed, bending forward. “Oh-ho, honey. You will be.” She looked down the hall and hollered, “Emilio! Emilio, get your narrow ass over here.” To me, she said, “You’ve made quite an impression, little girl.”

  Behind her I saw the younger guy step into the hall. He had his hands in his pockets, shy, but his eyes had the same druggy gleam my mother’s did.

  I shoved past her. “Leave me alone.” I pushed past Emilio too, into the living room, where Leroy and Bo and Cecilia were grinding to the music. Behind me Cherry called my name, but I didn’t even turn. I just went out through the kitchen, to the back of the house, and into the dark. I walked to the only safe place I knew—to Bird’s. I hadn’t even been at my momma’s for a day, and already it was starting: her selling me off to her friends. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go, either. Bird was my only hope. But I didn’t know how to make her not mad at me.

  I stood at the curb at the edge of her yard, trying to picture myself saying something and knowing there was nothing I could that would make anything right enough for her.

  Except, of course, the truth.

  ONE HOUR, TWO. I’M NOT SURE HOW LONG I WAS THERE ON the curb outside Bird’s house, trying to get the courage to go knock on her door. Eventually the lights went out. I didn’t want to wake her or Jamelee up, not for this. As I walked—slow—back to Cherry’s, I told myself the daytime would be better anyway. She’d be fresher headed, and more time between our fight would’ve passed. I sat, numb, on the curb just down the street from our house until Cherry and her friends piled out the front door and into Bo’s car. They roared past me, not even seeing. Only then did I let myself in. I went straight to my room and locked the door.

  Sunday I stayed in bed as late as I could, listening for noises of Cherry coming home that never happened. I thought of Bird, at church, and later dinner with her grandma. I wanted so bad to be sitting at that table with them, listening to Rose’s stories and passing along more biscuits. But Bird wouldn’t want me there. So I waited. A shamed little corner of me hoped something about the Lord’s day would fill her with more forgiveness, too. Tomorrow. I would talk to her tomorrow.

  I could’ve gone somewhere on the bus, I guess, but I didn’t want to leave and then come back with Cherry and her crew around. So I sat on the couch and watched DVDs from her bootlegged collection. As I lay there, every inch of me felt ready to spring up at the sound of Bo’s car, rush back into my room, and lock the door. But even after the second movie, no sound came. Sometime around four, I found a box of macaroni and cheese in the pantry and made it for myself, though Cherry had no milk and there was no telling how long the butter had been in there. No beer left to speak of either, and no one around to buy me any. Nothing to do but feel sorry for myself.

  By seven o’clock I was bored and bleary eyed from so much TV. I paced the length of the living room a few times, trying to think. Cherry might have money in her bedside table, the pocket of her robe, but I was afraid to go in her room at all. The edge of the doorway was about as far as I went when it came to her space anymore.

  All I needed to get me through until tomorrow really was one little word from Dee. Yesterday had been so off, so wrong. The timing had been all bad, and we both knew it. I just needed one little hit now to make things right again, to get things straight. Just a “Hey, baby,” or “I love you”—something sweet from him since he hadn’t had a chance to say anything like that yesterday. Gaps between communication were normal, but never when things were this tense. Not when there was so much going wrong. I just needed to know he was all right, that he was thinking of me. That he knew I was going through a lot too and that all I had to do was keep hanging in there a little while longer. To be strong.

  It took a while for me to text him, but once I did, I couldn’t stop.

  NIKKI: D I just need 2 tlk 1 more time

  NIKKI: I dont want 2 mk u mad

  NIKKI: Its wrd here

  NIKKI: Where r u? Can u cm by?

  NIKKI: Im scared & alone

  NIKKI: D?

  After another hour of waiting without any response, I was about to climb the walls. This wasn’t like those other times when I was just missing him. I was at my momma’s. I’d had to talk to the police. Bird wasn’t speaking to me. He knew how bad things were. So why wouldn’t he even send me one little hey? The only explanation was that his phone had lost its charge. Or, more likely, something bad had happened. Something awful. I yanked open drawers an
d cabinets, looking around for a phone book, wishing I could call his house. Even if Cherry had one, though, I still didn’t know his father’s first name. So after another ten minutes, I dialed Dee’s phone.

  Before it rang even half a time, he was shouting in my ear. “Goddamn you.”

  “Dee—”

  “God, God, God, God, God, God damn you. You can’t do a single goddamn thing I tell you, can you, huh? Not one single thing. ‘We need a break for a while, Nikki,’ I say to you, and here you are, texting me fifty times, crying, messing everything up.”

  I hadn’t been crying before. But now I was.

  “Dee, I’m sorry, but I’m here at my momma’s and there’s no one, and I can’t go anywhere and I’m scared and I need you—”

  “‘I need you,’” he fake whined. “You thinking at all about what I need, Nikki? Huh? You thinking about that? While you’re sitting in your momma’s pretty house, no one caring where you are or what you do?”

  I wiped my face. Hearing him, even if he was mad, was better than not. “Of course I am. That’s why I called—I was so worried.”

  “I don’t think so. I think all you’re thinking about, all you ever stinking think about, is your fat self and what can I do to pull you up. What you can get out of me.”

  “You know I’ll do anything for you, Dee, I just—”

  He chuckled, low. “Yeah, well, what I really need is to just get the hell out of here for a while.”

  “Anywhere, Dee. Anywhere. I have some money. It’s not much, but it might last a little bit. We could get into South Carolina, maybe go to the beach.”

  Another laugh, this one meaner. “I ain’t taking you nowhere no more.”

  “I don’t . . . understand.”

  “Understand this, you hear me? I. Never. Want to see. Your face. Again. I’m changing my phone number, so help me God, if you try to call it one more time. You hear me, Nikki? I’m getting out of here, and if you so much as send me one tiny text or do anything else to mess up what I been trying to take care of, I swear to sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, that I will smash this phone so deep into your skull that it’ll print on the back side of your brain. You get me? Or do you need me to spell it out?”

  I was shaking. He was mad, scared, sure. Just like me. But it was because of everything going on. We just needed to calm down. This was what happened when we couldn’t press our bodies close.

  “Dee, I—”

  “Do not. Call me. Again. You understand? And don’t think of saying anything to anyone else. You fucked it up. You fucked everything up. Now leave me alone, keep your mouth shut, and just don’t fuck it up even more.”

  “Don’t, Dee, please. I swear, I’m sorry—”

  But then he was gone.

  I WOKE UP WITH MY CLOTHES STILL ON, THE LIGHT BY MY bedside burning. My phone was still in my hand, pressed up under my stomach. I’d fallen asleep hoping Dee would call back, tell me how sorry he was, but it never rang and everything was blank. Dee was gone. I didn’t know where, and I didn’t know when he was coming back. How long it would take him to cool off this time. It was morning, early. Seven thirty. I tiptoed to my door and opened it a crack, looking down the hall to Cherry’s room. But the door was wide open and no one was inside. She and Bo still bingeing, I guess. But it wasn’t going to be long before she needed money again. I wondered, now that I was eighteen, if I’d be as valuable to her as before.

  I showered quickly and got ready for work, where I had to be at eleven. Plenty of time to talk to Bird, get it all worked out. After what Dee said last night—even if he didn’t really mean it—I needed her now even more than ever. I had to have someone around me who could at least partly understand, who could help me get through without him for a while.

  Outside, it was warm and muggy, so sweat beaded immediately on my lip as I walked down to Bird’s, stood on her step. I listened to the sounds of the TV inside, trying to get the nerve to knock. I was going to tell her everything. Everything. But I couldn’t be sure if she was alone in there right now or not. Kenyetta lived close enough to walk over, and so did Bird’s cousin, along with several other folks Bird did regular sewing jobs for. Anybody else could be in there, even this early, and I didn’t want company.

  The final thing that made me knock was thinking if someone else was here, maybe it would keep Bird from getting really angry.

  Her face in the little window of the front door clouded as soon as she pulled back the curtain and saw me. She shook her head and tried to say something.

  “Bird, please,” I said, loud. “I need to talk to you.”

  She looked into the room behind her and said something else. Then she faced me and shook her head again.

  “Bird, I really need to talk. About everything. The truth, I swear.”

  She dropped the curtain down. Another wait, and finally the front door came open. But it wasn’t Bird. It was Kenyetta. She exploded out of the house, into my face, pushing me back down the steps before I even knew what was happening. “Oh, no you don’t!” she yelled, her long, hard nails scraping against my shoulders and chest as she shoved. “Oh no-ho, you don’t. Bird got too good a soul to call the police on your sorry ass this minute, but I don’t got no trouble doing just that. She don’t want to hear nothing you got to say anymore now, you hear me?” I was stepping back, but she kept coming at me, finger pointing. “You so stupid, telling her ain’t nothing else going to happen, thinking the police will just come take a glance at her car and then leave her alone like they’s nothing else. Like they won’t slap her with charges if they find one scrap of anything connected to that boy. Like this ain’t the beginning of just a whole world of trouble. They could take her baby, bitch. You ever think about that? They could ask Meelee’s daddy, did he give up his custody legal. It happened to my cousin. Bird could be in court for the rest of her life. She won’t say it—she too good—but I can, and I say you the most low-down, selfish, no-good whore I ever seen. You get out of here and don’t you never let me see your face. Not in this yard, not on that step, not even on this street, or so help me I’ll make you sorry you even looked at that nasty-ass, cop-killing gangbanger you fooling with.”

  Bird had come out onto the front step and was watching us. “That’s enough, Yetta,” she said, tired but calm. “We don’t know any of that’s going to happen.”

  Kenyetta whipped back around to glare at me. “I do. I know. From more than one example.” Her hands were on her hips, but she looked like she might lunge at me again. “My sister’s ex-husband had this man working for him in his air-condition business. Man got busted for weed or some such and the police were all over that office, looking at papers, hiring records, and all that. He had to pay some big-ass fine just not to go to jail himself. Those police don’t mess around, girl. It ain’t like you just say, ‘Oh, but, Officer, I’m a good person,’ and they leave you be.”

  I didn’t know if what Kenyetta was saying was true, but even if she was lying about her ex-brother-in-law and her cousin, something cold in me knew it would end up being true about this, about Bird.

  “Bird, I just wanted to talk to you,” I said over Kenyetta’s shoulder. If she would just listen, just hear me out and let me explain, I knew we would figure out a solution. We would get out of this mess.

  “She don’t want to talk to you, whore-ass trouble,” Kenyetta muttered.

  Bird wasn’t looking at either me or Kenyetta but somewhere else, far off.

  “Bird, please.”

  “You get out of here,” Kenyetta said. I kept watching Bird, begging her with my eyes, my thoughts, my heart, to please just talk to me. But she wouldn’t. She told Kenyetta to come on and went inside without looking my way.

  I WALKED BACK TO CHERRY’S TO GET MY PURSE. SHE STILL wasn’t there, but I didn’t leave a note. Mostly because, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking of anyone else but Bird. Bird and what Kenyetta had said, about them maybe being able to take Jamelee away. I couldn’t let that happen. Not aft
er everything Bird had done for me. I knew at least that much. But it was like I didn’t know anything else. Not then, and not while I was sitting on the bus, or during the long, hot walk. I wasn’t thinking, and I wasn’t crying either. I just was. Like a sleepwalker. Or like someone who has accepted a thing that she knew all along Fate was going to wind up making her do, and now it was time to do it.

  I pulled the glass door open. It was dim inside. I told them, “I need to talk to Detective DuPree.”

  IT TOOK A WHILE FOR THE DETECTIVE TO SEE ME, BUT WHEN he did, it wasn’t just him. Like he knew I was going to have something important to say. He took my name, my age, and asked me a few questions to determine whether I was crazy or on drugs, and then I started the story. They began writing at once, all three of them. During this, a part of me was there, in the room, telling them what they needed to know, but another part of me was reliving the whole thing in more detail than I’d remembered before. Much more than I was actually saying out loud.

  Dee picked me up from work at four thirty on Friday. He doesn’t do that often, and the other girls all looked at me with knowing, jealous pride. My man. Coming to take me out on a Friday. I waved to them and giggled. They clucked behind me. Dee and I drove to get beer and then the drive-through at Checkers to get dinner. Food for Bird too.

  Of course the beer part I didn’t say. Or even about the girls at the salon. Just the time he picked me up, and that we’d gotten food, went to Bird’s. It felt important to tell them those things since, for me, it was when the whole weekend started.

  Dee had weed, so we all smoked up—even Bird a little—all of us chilling, watching TV. The baby rolling on the floor. Laughing. Us all getting silly. Eventually the baby went down to bed and we played this drinking game Dee knows called the Pope Is Russian before we all went to sleep ourselves.