Alibi II (15 page)

She called out for Luis, who was nursing a scratch on his arm from Hector Gonzales.

“Would you take Mr. Guess here and show him his bed. He’s 3B.” She watched as Nard got up and walked out the door, following closely behind Luis.

I’ll give him two months tops,
she thought, betting with herself as she did with most inmates who came through the door.

Nard would be sharing room B with three other guys. He was bed three. He sat down, testing out the mattress. It felt better than the hard metal bunk he was used to sleeping on. Actually, it was quite soft. He didn’t have much to unpack, but there was a tiny floor dresser with two drawers at the foot of the bed. Luis showed him the house. They ate and did their laundry in the basement. They were free to go from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. unless they had night work; then they would be given different schedules.

“Make sure you’re back every night at seven o’clock or she’ll send you back to jail, my friend. Trust me, I see it every day,” said Luis, giving Nard the best advice he could think of.

In the social room there was plenty of seating, televisions, tables, and chairs, and it was where everyone gathered. Off to the side there was a telephone and a pen and pad.

“Always a line for the phone, I can’t never make a call when I need to. Shit, I might as well sign my name, too,” said a guy standing behind Nard who was waiting to sign the phone sign-in sheet. “How you feeling, brother, my name is Quinny, but everybody calls me Quinny Day. You just get here, brother?”

“Yeah, today,” Nard said, shaking the guy’s hand and welcoming the introduction.

“Well, I can tell you now, Ms. Gotling, that bitch, is on some straight bullshit. All she do is lock niggas back up every day for nothing. I think she must get some kind of extra bonus in her paycheck or something ’cause don’t nobody make it out this motherfucker. I got two more months left, and trust me, you got to stay one step ahead of Ms. Gotling or she’ll get ya.”

“Two months?”

“Yeah, state can’t hold you in this motherfucker but for six. I done did four and I’m telling you that bitch right there be trying to set me up every chance she can get. But she can’t get me,” he whispered as Ms. Gotling walked around the corner. “You looking mighty lovely today, Ms. Gotling, is that a new hairdo?”

“Don’t worry about how I look, you just worry about yourself,” Ms. Gotling snapped as she walked past them and down the long hallway.

“Bitch,” he whispered as he watched her. “Who’s fucking her? Who is fucking this bitch? That’s all I want to know? ’Cause that’s one evil white woman and whoever he is, he need his ass kicked, for real,” said Quinny Day, smiling as he passed the pen back to Nard. Nard looked down the sheet. There were at least fifteen names before his.

“Don’t worry, people be signing but they don’t stick around. It won’t take that long, old head,” joked Quinny Day.

Old head, who’s he calling old head?
Nard wondered if he really was looking that old.

It was no wonder Hector was going back to jail. If this is what you had to go through to make a call, Nard understood why the guy got caught with a cell phone.

“Why don’t they get more than one phone?”

“Then niggas wouldn’t need to sneak on cell phones. Shit is a trap to lock you back up, that’s all,” said Quinny Day, giving Nard the science and the math to the bullshit they were up against.

The two sat in the “social room,” as Ms. Gotling called it, waiting for the phone. Nard wanted to call home and let his mother know where he had been transferred to. Now that he was back in the city, it was nothing but a train and a bus ride to get back home. He’d be over tomorrow after he followed through on his job search. Ms. Gotling already had three job interviews lined up for him. So he was hopeful, really hopeful.

“You stick with me, old head, I’ll tell you what to do to get out this halfway house. You’ll be home in no time.”

“She said if I don’t get a job, I’d be back in jail in two weeks,” Nard said, wondering what he was going to do.

“Yeah, and how you gonna get a job? You think they just gonna give you one? You better get down with ShopRite. At least that bitch can’t send you back to jail,” said Quinny, shaking his head as if he knew he was right.

“Packaging groceries?”

“Yeah, you can go in there tomorrow and be working the same day.”

“Bagging groceries?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“’Cause, I ain’t doing that bullshit. You must be crazy.”

“Okay, well, I take it with your Harvard degree and long history of work experience, you’ll be working for a Fortune 500 company in no time, huh?” asked Quinny in all seriousness. “Old head, you better stop playing with these white folks out here and go get you a job at ShopRite. It’s right down the street, you can walk to work. It’s either that or street sweeping. And shit, it’s cold outside, what you gonna do?”

Nard couldn’t believe those were his only two choices, packing up groceries for tips or sweeping the streets with one of those street-sweeping machines.

“There has to be better jobs out there than that,” he said, looking at Quinny Day like he was crazy.

“There is, but ain’t nobody giving them to you, old head. You must’ve done bumped your head. You’re a felon, you ain’t never getting no good job. So, to get out this halfway house, you gonna have to pay six months of dues, but trust me, it’ll be worth it. These motherfuckers out here ain’t got shit for you, but ShopRite,” said Quinny Day, as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. “Let me know, I can get you an application from my boss and bring it home to you. I been there for the past four months, old head, bagging my groceries, minding my business, and I come sit in here every night and watch the news,
Law & Order Special Victims Unit
, and Ms. Gotling locking somebody back up, every night, but it ain’t me. I’m just telling you, six months, you can do it, man.”

The next day, Nard took the list of places Ms. Gotling told him that he was to go. Nothing was how he remembered it. He realized how the movement of the streets echoed on, far past his reach. Jail had somehow warped him from the movement of time and even though the streets were still there, Broad Street, Germantown Avenue, Lehigh Avenue, Susquehanna, Dauphin, they didn’t look the way he remembered them. Faces of strangers even looked odd to him at first, everybody was Muslim now, no more dope games. It was a different game, a different pace, and Nard felt just a little out of place. Identifying himself was harder when he looked in the mirror real good for the first time. Bright light showed the speckling of gray strands here and there on his face. While he at least could say he had kept himself in shape, his shell had truly aged. Prison had wearied and worried him, and he could see it now, really see it when he looked in the mirror at the reflection of his face. It was even worse for him when he looked outside at all that was around him. Everything had changed from what he remembered from twenty years ago. Even watching the people walk down the street was different. The way they dressed was different. Nobody had Jheri curls anymore; he saw not a one. But best believe the women were now wearing weaves, and the ones that weren’t wearing weaves were garbed and covered. The ghetto looked harder, with rows of dilapidated buildings. His halfway house was a few blocks from Broad on Lehigh, but closer to Germantown, and it was torn down. There were a lot of abandoned buildings and a lot of people strung out on drugs, like crack, heroin, and pills. Syrup was still a big seller in the city, as was “wet.” Nard saw the way the hustle was going down and how the young kids were deep in the gangs, but not the gangs he knew of. These were the new-school Bloods and new-school Crips. Nard was back on his Streets 101 classes every time he stepped out of the door.

He thought of the look on his mother’s face when she opened the door and saw him, a free man for the first time in twenty years. Her smile spread wide and the same open arms she always had for him found themselves finally holding her son.

“He’s here, my baby’s home,” she yelled, as everyone jumped from around the corners into the foyer and yelled, “Welcome home,” in unison, as if they had been practicing all day.

It was the nicest homecoming anyone could have asked for. Everybody was there, Beverly, Tyrone, Donna, her new man, Carl, and her three foster kids. Of course Uncle Ray Ray was there, his son Chris, and even Maeleen and Rev were there.

“Mia, this is my dad,” said Dayanna, hugging Nard as her girlfriend extended her hand. “Hi, Mr. Guess,” she said, as Beverly watched the girls. They were both attractive, both bright, and both boy crazy. Beverly remembered her obscure teenage days and raging hormones. Now, nothing was obscure, wearing jeans and UGG boots and tight thermal long-sleeved shirts, the girls sat down in the corner and began their usual “club house” gossip. It was here at home that Nard began to feel comfortable with familiarity. It was also here that Nard found out about Crystal, that she had gone on to have three more crack babies, and how bad she was still strung out on drugs. After all these years, Nard couldn’t believe she was still getting high. He still yearned to see her, though, crackhead or not. After dinner, Nard had to get going, he had a seven o’clock curfew and he couldn’t be late. He knew the rules.

Beverly and Tyrone stood at the door, as people filed out behind one another. “It’s cold out here,” said Beverly, closing the door behind Rev and Maeleen.

“Close the door!” snapped Uncle Ray.

“I am, Uncle Ray Ray, just settle down,” said Beverly to her sixty-six-year-old uncle, who was driving her more and more crazy the older he got.

“You want a blanket, Uncle Ray?” asked Tyrone, holding a crocheted baby blue blanket that Beverly had picked up at a yard sale out in Lancaster County for three dollars.

“I might as well, she’s trying to freeze me in here. She knows I’m old,” said Uncle Ray, glad Tyrone was around. Tyrone placed the blanket on Uncle Ray and covered his feet, tucking the blanket under them just like his mother used to do for him as a child.

“There you go, Uncle Ray, you should warm up now.”

Beverly walked into the family room where her uncle was watching television and sat down on the sofa.

“I’m going to take a shower and lie down, I got work in the morning,” said Tyrone, leaving the two of them alone together as Beverly waved him on.

“Nard seems different, don’t he, Uncle Ray?”

Uncle Ray Ray had aged over the years. He had his ups and downs with his gout and had to watch his diet. He needed glasses now, and Beverly kept telling him that he had to get a hearing aid, but other than moving a little slower, he was still good to go.

“What you expect, twenty years, anybody would be different. That boy did hard time, shit, they kept him in the damn hole half the time he was locked up. He knocked one guy’s eye out his head and damn near ate some other guy’s ear.” Uncle Ray stopped for a moment and looked at his niece in all seriousness. “He’s changed, I just ain’t figured out what it is he’s changed into.”

E
very single person from human resources with whom he interviewed said the same thing.

“I’m sorry, you just don’t have enough experience.”

They had a hundred and one reasons not to hire him. If they didn’t say he didn’t have enough experience, they said that the position was filled already or the position was already taken, and of course they all finished with the same last line, “But, we’ll keep your application on file and call you if something opens up.”

He had heard only rejection at his ill-fated attempts to find gainful employment. He was running out of options, and before he lost his freedom again, he decided it would be best to mosey down to ShopRite and fill out an application.

Sitting at the table, he watched the store’s manager scribbling notes as he glanced at Nard, then his application.

“You can start immediately?” the manager, Mr. Henley, asked.

“Yeah, right now if you want me to,” said Nard, not having much to do.

“No, come in tomorrow. You have to be here at eleven o’clock every night. Can you do that, eleven to seven?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Nard, as if pulling an all-nighter was a walk in the park.

“Um, excuse me, sir. How much does the job pay?” Nard asked wondering what kind of money he’d be making.

“Six dollars and fifty cents per hour,” said Mr. Henley, as if a man could survive on that.

Nard quietly counted in his head. And if that wasn’t enough, he heard Mr. Henley in the distance speaking to the assistant manager as he was leaving.

“I hired a new stockboy. He starts tomorrow.”

It was a fact, Nard was ShopRite’s newest stockboy. Fortunately for him, he had to work the night shift, which was even better. He could work all night and be in an empty halfway house sleeping all day and talking on the phone. The lines in the phone room weren’t as long during the day as they were in the evening when everyone was around.
A ShopRite stockboy, I can’t believe these white folks got me doing this bullshit.
And he really couldn’t. It was unfathomable, to say the least. But, what choice did he have? None! So stocking shelves at ShopRite became his livelihood. He was able to build a tight little ShopRite stash with most of the money he made. If not for Dayanna, who claimed she needed child support, he would have been all right. She had a hundred and one excuses for why she really needed the money, too, from her hair to her nails. She requested money to go to the movies, or the mall, and was seemingly needy regarding everything she yapped about out of her twenty-year-old mouth. He worked faithfully every night, five nights a week, in that wretched grocery store. He at times seemed tormented by his past. And while he had now been home for over three months, he hadn’t found anyone to spend his time with. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t trying, either. Every Friday when he got paid, he’d hit the local bar in the neighborhood, sometimes he’d venture down South Street for a few hours before curfew. He was always polite to the ladies, always offered to buy them a drink, tried basic conversation, but not being the most attractive man on the planet, and with a night job at ShopRite, no car, no dough, and residing in a halfway house after spending half of his life in prison wasn’t exactly getting him any closer to a one-night stand or a relationship. Actually, no one seemed interested in him past casual conversation, and only two women had given him real numbers, but every time he called them, they were busy.

Tired of being rejected in bars and clubs and wasting his hard-earned weekly money and getting nothing but blue balls, he retreated downtown to an XXX shop that sold videos and sexual devices and offered peep shows. It had become a weekly tradition of sorts. He’d leave the halfway house a little early before he had to go to work and hop the train to center city, making sure to be at ShopRite by eleven.

Four months later the day was slowly approaching that he’d be able to leave the halfway house and move home to his mother’s. He couldn’t wait. No more bitch-ass Ms. Gotling and no more worrying about being sent back to prison. She was hell on earth, the gatekeeper for Satan himself. He saw exactly how viciously the game of freedom was being played. It was just three weeks before Quinny Day was supposed to be released from the halfway house when his mother collapsed, suffering a fatal heart attack. Quinny stayed by her side, rushing her to the emergency room with the EMT workers. With his mother barely alive, he left her side to return to the halfway house, unable to reach Ms. Gotling. Taking a hack instead of the train, he got jammed on the Roosevelt and was thirty-seven minutes late. Ms. Gotling was waiting and so were the sheriffs.

“Yo, be easy, man, my mother had a heart attack and I been at the hospital with her. Look, I even got a note and a copy of her intake sheet for you. I even tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up,” said Quinny, shrugging his shoulders at her as if there was nothing he could do. Literally, what could he do—his mother had had a heart attack.

“You know the rules,” she said sternly.

“Oh, no, tell me you not, I got three weeks, three fucking weeks and I get to go home,” he said, his tone now changing.

“Sheriffs!” she called out, and from out of the side room they immediately appeared, ready to whisk him away as if his life and his mother’s life meant nothing.

“Yo, bitch, hold the fuck up, what the fuck is wrong with you, my moms had a heart attack, look at the paper, look at the paper. I been at the hospital.”

She turned her head quickly and faced him, “I don’t care where you’ve been. You broke curfew, you know the rules.”

For one split second Nard’s eyes met Quinny’s. The words broken, destroyed, and devastated would not adequately define or describe the look on that man’s face.

Nard thought Quinny was going to pounce on Ms. Gotling like a cougar attacking his prey and rip her heart out, if she had one. Nard couldn’t believe it, and that wasn’t the only time. She sent a black man back to prison every other week for some bullshit. One guy got sent back to prison ’cause he couldn’t find a job.

“Too bad, you know the deal. I told you to find a job,” she’d snap without blinking.

It was sad, and the bad part was, Quinny was a good guy. He simply had one thing that hindered him. He stuttered. It wasn’t his fault, it just wasn’t working out for him on those job interviews, especially sounding out his words when he was nervous. Nard watched as Quinny started crying and pleading with the gatekeeper, Ms. Gotling. It was no use; she had the sheriffs there ready and waiting. Nard looked on as the sheriffs escorted Quinny away and back to jail, like it was nothing, all because his momma had a heart attack and he had taken her to the hospital.

“Yo, homie, I got you. I’ll tell your sister what happened,” said Nard as the sheriffs grabbed Quinny’s arms and walked him down the hall. Nard already knew that it would be days before Quinny could get to a phone. His family would be sick with worry because, of course, among all the things that Ms. Gotling had to do to lock a nigga up for nothing, she didn’t have to notify next of kin, family, or friends. Poor Quinny, he’d do nine months before getting in front of the parole board to explain what happened to his momma and how she died five days later. Of course, they would decide that under the circumstances it would be appropriate to void the incident from his record and allow him to be released again. But because of the overcrowding caused by the number of inmates being released into halfway houses and the lack of facilities, there weren’t enough beds. Unfortunately, Quinny would sit in prison another six months waiting for a bed even though the parole board had found in his favor. Nard would never forget prison or the halfway house as long as he lived. He would never believe the operation they had set in place and how he had been used for free labor. He would never forget what happened to him. He had nightmares and dreams to remind him every night.

Officially, he was still on parole, but he had made the six months work for him. And now that he was home all he had to do was report to his parole officer within ten days of leaving the halfway house. He had no more curfew, no more anything. All he had to do was stay clean and check in at his parole office on his assigned days.

Beverly was happy to have her son back home with her. It was the middle of August and they decided to have a barbecue to celebrate in the backyard. Family and friends gathered, celebrating and toasting Nard’s homecoming.

“You home now, son. Glad to have you back.” Uncle Ray Ray gave Nard a welcome-home hug, let him go, and patted him on the back. “To new beginnings,” he said as he held up a glass and toasted his nephew’s homecoming.

Now free from the halfway house, and able to venture out without a curfew, Nard had a few places and a few people he needed to track down. The first on his list was Sticks. And even though he had been as good as dead for over twenty years now, Nard still needed to go back to where he had left off. He wanted to go to where his friend Sticks used to live. He remembered the block like the back of his hand. He had grown up there, playing basketball every day in the park around the corner, running to Sticks’s house for ice pops or needing fifty cents for the ice cream truck.

“Who is it?” asked Kay Ross.

“It’s me, Ms. Ross, Nard, Sticks’s old friend,” said Nard, wondering if the family even still lived there. A few seconds later, he heard the chain pop and the locks turn, and the door opened. A tiny, elderly, frail woman opened the door.

“Nard, is that you? Boy, you done turned into an old man,” she said, smiling from ear to ear and letting him inside.

“Yes, ma’am, I sure have,” he said, happy to see the closest thing to his best friend.

“It’s been many, many years,” said Ms. Ross as she sat Nard down in a chair by the television. “You want some tea? Or some coffee?” she asked.

“Um, no, ma’am, I’m okay. You know, I always think about Sticks. He was my best friend.”

“Mine, too, not a day goes by I don’t think of him either.” She smiled.

The two shared stories going back some thirty years, and for that short while, Nard forgot the hard knocks life had dealt him.

“You know, son, I got boxes up here in the closet of Sticks’s clothes and what not. I never knew what to do with them. I’ve been holding some of this stuff for years. Why don’t you take the boxes? I’m sure if you go through them, you’ll find some things you can use. It’s all kinds of stuff in there. Go on, take it.”

Unable to say no, Nard called a hack and took the six boxes home to his mother’s house.

The next day, there was another person on his list that he wanted to reach out for, a place in time he needed to visit once again—his other childhood friend, Poncho. There wasn’t one night that he didn’t think of that fateful evening so long ago that changed his fate, forever.

He could see the long arm stretched around Poncho’s head, securing him tightly in a headlock. He could hear Poncho’s voice pleading to Nard to take his captor out. The two men had snuck through an open bathroom window, grabbed his man, and were demanding money and cocaine in exchange for Poncho’s life.

“Nard, take this nigga. Take him. I know you can, baby boy, take him,” Poncho yelled.

“Let him go, let him go. Let him go and I’ll let you live,” said Nard, meaning every word he spoke, but trying to be calm as he tried to talk Jeremy into letting his man go.

“Nigga, give me what the fuck I came for or both you motherfuckers is gonna die,” said Jeremy with lots of heart, pushing the gun harder into the side of Poncho’s head as the gun fired a single deadly shot. He looked down at the floor. Lance was dead.
Oh, my God, he killed him, he killed Lance.

“Motherfucker, I ain’t giving you shit. Let him go!” Nard yelled.

“Take him Nard, what the fuck is you waiting fo—”

Poncho’s blood and fragments of his head landed all over the wall and covered the entire side of the room. His blood even splattered on Nard, all this within a matter of seconds.

Nard couldn’t sleep without waves of memories, silently haunting him every night of his life. He had to visit, if for no other reason than to pay his respects to his man’s family. To let them know that he was sorry for what happened to Poncho that night so long ago. And that he tried to do everything in his power to save his life.

The next day off from stocking shelves at ShopRite, he made it a point to cross town and take the Septa bus up to Germantown Avenue where Poncho’s family last resided.

Sure enough, he recognized his sister sitting on the porch stoop as he walked up the block.

“Karla-Jae, is that you?”

“Bernard Guess, you’re home. How have you been?” she said, hugging Nard as his penis got hard from her body press.

“Yeah, I’m home, Karla-Jae,” he said. He had always had a yearning for his man’s sister, but never did get with her.

Karla-Jae looked just like she did when they were young.

“Damn, you ain’t changed one bit,” said Nard, smiling.

“You neither. It’s so good to see you. Wait till I tell Liddles,” she said, looking up at her brother’s friend.

“Damn, you know I must’ve had a crush on you all my life,” she said as she let him go, standing back to take a good look at him. “You look good, you been taking care of yourself,” she acknowledged.

“Yeah, that time took a lot from me, though. Shit made my ass gray.” He smiled, showing her a few strands he had on the side of his face, next to his ears.

“Awww, that ain’t nothing, my whole head is gray, child. I got to color it, every week, damn near,” she said, smiling, as she opened her cell phone and dialed her brother’s number.

“Wait till he finds out you’re here, he’s gonna go crazy, watch,” she said. Nard couldn’t take his eyes off her. And the fact that she had had a crush on him half her life was the ego booster he had needed.

He watched as she spoke into her receiver, smiling her pearly whites and blinking her mascara-brushed eyelashes.

Liddles stopped what he was doing when he heard Nard was over at the house and came straight there. He had always looked up to Nard. He was Poncho’s best friend, his closest friend. The way Liddles saw it, Nard was a hero. He had gunned down and killed his brother’s assailants. He didn’t flinch or give up anything to those bastards. And Liddles knew that if not for Nard’s killing them, they would have gotten away and no one would have ever known who took his brother’s life.