Apple Brown Betty (35 page)

“What are you planning on doing?”

Desmond smiled. “Why is everyone so worried?” Jacinta held her eyes on him. “Just having a word with him,” Desmond told her.

“Don't go writing a check your ass can't cash.”

“That sounds like a line from one of those seventies blaxploitation movies.”

Jacinta smiled. “I am foxy…and brown.”

Desmond nodded. “I just want to have a word with Slay, see if he knows anything.”

Jacinta processed it all for a moment, staring at the determination in Desmond's posture and on his face. She was glad in a way to see him. Disappointed that things didn't work out between them, but that was to be expected, she'd set it up for failure from the get-go, she'd given herself to him with a promise of no strings attached. He'd done what most weak-willed men would do in that situation. Jacinta motioned to the bartender and asked him for a slip of paper and a pen. She wrote the number down and handed the slip of paper to Desmond.

Desmond took the paper and held it in his hand. “Can I ask what dealings you had with Slay?”

Jacinta rose to her feet. Her eyes were sad and her lips held several secrets. The work she did for Slay, and the baby, Desmond's, she'd aborted after that fateful day by the weeping willow. She smiled weakly and patted Desmond's hand. “Take care of yourself, Desmond.”

Jacinta walked off through the side door to the back of the building. Desmond watched her stride away. He finished off his Coke, rose, and left for what he knew would be the last time. Hot Tails had been good while it lasted, but it was time he moved on to something else. Cydney Williams.

But first, he had a call to make.

 

The traffic light was still a shade of orange as Slay approached it, but he pressed down on his brakes and came to a stop rather than ride through. Despite his mother's worsening condition, seeing Kenya had put him in a relaxed state of calm. He had his music turned down low and rode with the exaggerated lean that marked young black males for profile targeting of racist cops. In his world, though, cops were the least of his concerns.

At the same time as the light turned green his cell phone chirped for an incoming call. Slay turned his stereo even lower and picked up the line.

“This is Slay.”

“Shammond Slay,” a foreign voice said, dragging it out.

Slay gave his car some gas, moved through the intersection with the phone pressed to his ear. “Yeah, who is this?”

“You know who this is,” the voice said.

“No, I fucking don't. Who is this?”

“Desmond Rucker.”

A smile crept across Slay's lips. “The mighty, infamous GQ Smooth.”

“See,” Desmond said. “I knew you knew me.”

“Look,” Slay said, “if this is about your sister—”

“This
is
about my sister. It's about your sister, too, right? What you mad because I'm hitting it and you aren't.”

“What did you say?”

“You're a sick guy, Slay.”

“Whatever,” Slay said. “I told Cydney and I told the cops, I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Felicia. I'm sorry about what happened.”

“You got to do better than that.”

“Look, B, I was planning on fucking your sister, just how you fucking mine, but that's it. I wanted to show you how that feels, but I wasn't there when Felicia got raped and I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“You're a liar.”

“What's that saying?” Slay said. “Pot calling the kettle black, someshit like that. You got nerve calling me a liar, Mr. GQ Smooth. Running around with your nose up in the air like you the shit. Meanwhile, you be tossing your dollars at hoes on the side. Bet your family would love to see that side of you, Rucker. I told Cydney about your little fascination with Hot Tails and a certain Latina we both know.”

“You don't worry about that, Slay. I talked it over with Cydney. We're all clear on that. Now, you and I got to get clear on what you did to Felicia. Me dating your sister—who's a grown woman—is a heck of a lot different than you messing with an eighteen-year-old girl, setting her up to get raped.”

Slay pulled his car over to the side of the road. The only thing Desmond said that registered was that Cydney and Desmond were going to be okay in their relationship. “Cydney let you off the hook on that shit with Jacinta?”

“Cydney cares a whole lot about me, like it or not. Now, about my sister—”

Slay growled like a wounded animal. “This is someshit. Cydney let you off the hook on that?”

“We need to focus, Slay.”

Slay slammed his fist on the dashboard. “I ain't have nothing to do with Felicia, motherfucker! And she's a grown woman, too. She came on to me, yo. She's a little fast ass just like these girls in the street. Still, though, I didn't do anything to her. Like I said, I was going to, but I changed my mind. I didn't even go to the hotel. I went to see my girl instead.”

“I don't believe you, Slay.”

“Believe it,” Slay said. He slapped the flip of his cell phone closed and tossed the phone on the seat next to him, on top of his mother's sweater.

It rang back in less than a minute. Slay picked it up, anger flashing through him that he couldn't control. “I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Felicia, man!”

Dead silence.

“You heard me!” Slay hollered.

“How many dudes' girls you messing with, Sham?”

Slay lowered his voice; the anger left him. “Boom?”

“Yeah, nigga.”

“Kenya spoke with you already?”

“Yeah, she couldn't wait to tell me you were running up in her while I was locked down.”

“Yo, look, Boom, I—”

“Nah, Sham, I ain't trying to hear it. You broke your word, Sham. That's some foul shit you did.”

“You know me and Kenya go back like—”

“I know your word ain't your bond,” Boom said. “You got her taking care of
your
seeds by herself, me pitching in like I'm they real daddy and you off doing your thing. I go down in the belly and you run over there and play daddy, and hit off my girl. Our understanding was since you left her hanging with those boys you were to stay gone—on the motherfucking periphery. That's some foul shit you did, Sham.”

“It's complicated, Boom, I know. I always thought those boys were better off not having me in their life as a father. I don't know nothing about being nobody's father. And I admit I haven't always appreciated what Kenya is to me. But look, I'm going through some stuff, I can't deal with all this right now.”

“You got no choice, Sham. I don't care how big these shook-ass niggas around here think you are. I'm making you deal with it. Ain't nobody ever pulled your card before…I'm fiddin' to test you and I think your ass is gonna fold. You think I'm some bitch nigga gonna let you disrespect me like this. Nah, Sham, I'm on you.”

“Boom, come on, man…” Slay's voice trailed off as the other line went to static. “Shit!”

Once again Slay slammed his phone down and immediately it rung back. Slay let it ring, gritted his teeth and looked out the window at a couple of kids horsing around on the sidewalk outside the 1 Hour Photo shop. The bigger of the two kids held the smaller one in a headlock that the smallest couldn't break from and that the bigger kid refused to release. Life was nothing but a big fight. Life beat, punched, kicked and bit at you until you either fell in defeat or closed your eyes for that eternal sleep. Life was a pesky son of a gun that refused to lose.

The bigger boy finally let his grip around the other boy's head loose. The smaller boy fell to his knees, rubbed at his neck, and then, on the sly, jumped up and swung wildly at the bigger boy. His punch missed by a country mile and he quickly found himself locked in the wrestling hold again.

Slay was sick of it all. Everything was coming to a head, quick fast and in a hurry, and he was struggling to keep up, struggling to even care about the outcome of the fight any longer.

“I
'm gonna see to getting you something, Nan,” George says to me.

He leans down and kisses me on the cheek. I'm sitting on the couch watching television, pretending that I'm keeping up with the story, picking at the bowl of soup George had placed in front of me an hour before.

“I'm just waiting on a callback,” George says to me. “I left a message with the guy a short while ago.”

I look up at him. He is serious about this. He is serious about holding me up. I smile even though I know the missing teeth in my mouth take away from the love and warmth I desperately want to show him.

“We not gonna stay this route forever, mind you,” George continues. “I want you to start preparing yourself for a better fight, you hear?”

I nod. My head feels as if it's too big for my neck, as if nodding would make me break apart. George pats my head, closes his eyes, prays out loud for God to understand that “right on time” is approaching like a bullet.

“How?” I force myself to ask after George's prayer. I rarely talk nowadays because I hate how distorted my voice sounds. Swollen lips, rotted-out teeth and a mangled brain capacity wreak havoc on the voice.

“How what?” George asks me.

I lick my lips and close my eyes, swallowing as if my throat was sore.

“Oh,” George says, realizing. “I asked around.”

I'm glad he did.

“Much better than going out there willy-nilly, hoping for lightning to strike,” George says to me. I want to say it wouldn't be so hard for me if you gave me money, but I don't.

“I'm gonna draw you a hot bath, Nan. You want a bath, baby?” George asks me.

I nod. A bath would be good.

George kisses my cheek again, rises and goes to prepare my bath just the way I like it—plenty hot. I try to focus on the love I have for this man and the love he has for me but I can't. All I can think about is sucking. Sucking some more life back into my system.

T
he nurse at the ARU floor's main desk straightened her posture and gestured to a passing nurse as Slay made his burdened lope in their direction. The nurse who'd been walking stopped, looked over her shoulder and put her hands in her pockets as she waited for Slay to reach her. She tapped her feet and kept stealing glances at the other nurse behind the desk.

Reverend Jameson Pinckney sat at the end of the hallway on a flowery couch that sat next to the pay phones. It was as if the reverend could feel the air leaving the hallway, could feel a change in the corridor, for he looked up from the newspaper he was reading and caught the eye of Slay moving down the hall. The reverend folded the newspaper and placed it on his lap, his high-riding pants showing off the pasty skin of his shins and those clunky black shoes. His fat red cheeks contrasted with his downcast eyes and the always smiling reverend had his mouth closed for a change as he watched Slay approaching the nurse.

“Mr. Slay?” the nurse called to Slay as he moved to pass.

Slay turned to her. “Yeah?”

“I need to have a word with you.”

“Let me go put this sweater on my mama,” Slay told her. “And I'll come right out.”

“I need to speak with you first,” the nurse insisted.

Slay looked at the nurse closely. She turned away. He turned and noticed the reverend, down at the end of the hall, looking up with concern. The reverend tapped the folded newspaper against his leg, twice, and rose slowly and began walking in Slay's direction. Slay turned back to the nurse. He shook his head. “No, no, no, no.”

“It was a peaceful surrender,” the nurse told him.

Slay rocked on the balls of his feet. He could feel a horrible, indescribable type of pain rising up through him. His breathing became a labor. “Peaceful?”

The nurse nodded. “We attempted to reach you but your cell phone—”

Slay wheeled and started walking toward his mother's room. The nurse followed on his heels. Reverend Pinckney was waiting by the door as Slay neared it.

“God in his infinite wisdom has called her home,” the reverend said as Slay stopped and looked through the window of the door.

Slay brushed the reverend aside and walked into the room. He stopped a few feet in, the nurse and reverend at his shoulders. “Why ain't she covered or something?”

“She expired just a few minutes ago,” the nurse told him. “The doctor has to come and make it official. Do you have a funeral home in mind? We can call and ask them to pick up the body later.”

“I waited for you so we could say a prayer over her,” the reverend said.

“Will y'all shut the fuck up?” Slay barked. “I can't hear myself think over y'all.” He took another step forward and stopped. This was a one-step-at-a-time process.

“I'll be at the front desk if you need me,” the nurse said.

Slay took another baby step forward. “Damn, man. I brought your sweater.” He groaned. The sweater was balled in his fist. “I brought your sweater. I brought your sweater…”

“I'll let you have a moment with your mother. I'll be right out in the hall,” Reverend Pinckney said, backing from the room.

Slay took the last step that put him up next to the bed. His mother looked peaceful, happy. He hesitated as he reached forward to touch her. She was still warm. He blinked his eyes as it looked as if her chest was still rising. He turned his head and let out the breath it seemed he'd been holding for the past few minutes.

R.I.P.

Pour out a little liquor.

This kind of hurt couldn't be extinguished with a cute phrase or some ghetto tradition. He'd seen senseless deaths and murders since he was a little boy but this was the first time it touched him this close. “Damn, man. I brought your sweater.” He couldn't come up with any other words. He couldn't release the sweater from his clamp-tight grip either.

Alone.

He moved over by the window and pulled out his cell phone. Hospital regulations forbid the use of cell phones but he was beyond caring about hospital regulations.

He dialed the number to Kenya's apartment. She picked up on the third ring.

“Kenya,” he said. “Is Boom there? Anywhere around there?”

“No, he left,” she said. “I told him.”

“I know.”

“He was angry but—”

“My mama died.”

“What?”

“Yeah…she's gone. You're my heart now, Kenya. Always was. You all I have left. I'm gonna do right by you and the boys. I'm gonna fix things.”

Kenya was too concerned with Slay's well-being to bask in the wonderfulness of the things he was saying. “Where you at?”

“The hospital. I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything,” Kenya said.

“Call my sister. Call Cydney—”

“Slay, I can't be telling her your moms died.”

“No,” Slay said. “I want you to see if she'll let me come see her. I'll tell her this myself.”

“Okay,” Kenya said, relaxing. “You're at the hospital, you said. You want me to get a cab over there?”

Slay shook his head as if Kenya could see the gesture. “Nah, I'm coming to you.”

“That ain't a good idea, Slay. Boom was crazy mad, he might—”

Slay flipped his cell phone closed.

He turned and looked at his mother's lifeless body. “I'll see you again.”

 

Officer Jackson was sitting on the steps that led to Cydney's second-floor apartment as she walked up. In one hand he held a disposable cup, in the other a pink rubber ball that captivated his attention as he squeezed it. Cydney started to turn and head in the other direction, but what was the use of that, Jackson looked determined, as if he'd sit here waiting for her until the sun set and rose again if he had to.

Jackson wore dark blue slacks and a disgusting shade of brown sweater covered in lint balls that looked like flakes of snow. As Cydney crossed over from the grass to the sidewalk, the clack of her heels made Jackson look up from that pink rubber ball. He pocketed it and stood.

Jackson flexed his hand as Cydney stood before him. “Carpal tunnel syndrome,” he said. He pulled the ball he'd just deposited in his pocket back out and showed it to her. “My doctor suggested this might help with my wrist strength. If not, then I have no choice but the knife.” He put the ball back in his pocket again. “So, how are you doing, Ms. Williams?” he said in an effort to pull some words from her. His breath, a heavy mixture of coffee and mints, touched her at the same time as his voice.

“I'm good, Officer…?”

“Jackson.”

She nodded.

“I've been sitting here waiting for you for a good hour, hour and a half. You're the first soul I've seen the entire time.”

Cydney looked around. “It's quiet here.”

Jackson sucked his teeth, picked at them with a ragged fingernail. “Ominously quiet, you ask me. You know they identified that body they found on that construction site up the street?”

Cydney nodded, but her eyes showed she didn't know anything about a found body.

Jackson, great observer that he is, picked up on the admission in her eyes. “You didn't hear about that? Some construction worker came up with a body part while working his backhoe. Turned out to be a fifteen-year-old girl from Nicaragua that had only been in the States a couple of months. She went from Nicaragua to Mexico, and walked across to Texas. The INS released her into the custody of her aunt who was already here. The girl got mixed up with the wrong crowd apparently. The last anyone saw of her, she was coming from some seedy little bar in Asbury Park.” Jackson shook his head. “Arbitrary violence, it's a shame. And then whoever did it to her goes and buries her in a construction site. A couple more months, if she wasn't found, her cemetery headstone would have been a Home Depot, Target, maybe she gets lucky and it's a Wal-Mart.” Jackson shook his head. “Crime is everywhere, dear. It's disheartening.”

Cydney agreed by way of raising her eyebrows into a rainbow arc and pursing her lips. “That it is.”

“Which brings me to why I'm here,” Jackson said.

“You mind if we take this discussion upstairs to my apartment?”

Jackson stepped to the side, extended his arm. Cydney passed and climbed the stairs. Jackson crumpled his cup and tossed it in the trash receptacle next to the stairway, and then he tackled those stairs.

Inside, Cydney asked, “Would you care for something to drink?”

“No, I better not,” Jackson said, patting his stomach. “That coffee will be running through me soon, as it is.”

Cydney nodded. “So what can I do for you, Officer Jackson? I take it you want to talk to me about Felicia Rucker's attack?”

Jackson took the liberty of finding a seat for himself on the couch. Cydney sat in the chair across from him. “Your boyfriend didn't want to give me your name when I spoke with him. I'm bad with names, you know. But then, as I was going through our investigation file something clicked as I kept looking over the name we had for Shammond Slay's sister—Cydney Williams, Cydney Williams. And then I remembered the night at the hospital. I wasn't sure, but something told me that's what Desmond had told me your name was. I knew something was wrong anyway by the way you hightailed it out of there.” Jackson massaged his bad hand and frowned. “I'm glad my sixth sense hasn't left me.”

“What's your sense telling you?” Cydney asked.

“Shammond Slay is your brother.”

Cydney nodded. “Yes, he is, unfortunately. You knew that from your file. That's fact, not some kind of sixth-sense hoodoo.”

“Your brother's a charismatic young man,” Jackson said, smiling, “Why the disdain for him, Ms. Williams?”

“I don't approve of the life he's chosen,” Cydney answered.

Jackson's eyes crested. “Oh, really, what life would that be?”

Cydney simply smiled.

“Other than the problems he had as a juvenile your brother has a perfectly clean adult record,” Jackson noted.

“Wonders never cease.”

“And a rock-solid alibi for his whereabouts the night of Felicia's attack.”

Cydney sat silent.

“Let me venture a guess if I might,” Jackson said. Cydney didn't object, so he went on. “Shammond was completely cool when we talked to him except for one moment. I asked him point-blank how he felt about young women being raped and he went off on a tangent talking about his love for black women. He mentioned your mother and he mentioned you. He kept going on about how you two were his heart and soul and that he'd never harm a black woman because of that. He was quite strong in his opinion about the topic. So strong I decided to check and see what you and your mother had to say about his character.” Jackson stopped and cleared his throat. “Now, as I'm sure you're aware, your mother wasn't in any condition to tell us anything. And then when I had you looked up…and I remembered the name. It all began to make sense why Mr. Rucker was so evasive when I asked about you. I knew something was wrong from the night at the hospital, like I said, but I wasn't expecting it to be that you were Shammond Slay's sister. I also wasn't expecting to find that years ago you had a restraining order against your brother.”

Cydney shrugged. “So?”

Jackson forced a smile. “Your brother wasn't too fond of your seeing Desmond Rucker, was he? In fact, my guess is he's not too fond of you seeing anybody.”

“Shammond can be overprotective,” Cydney admitted.

Jackson nodded. He could tell it was best he leave this alone. “Do you think he'd harm Felicia Rucker to get back at Desmond?”

Cydney looked off around her apartment. “I'm not sure what he'd do.”

“Let me put it a different way,” Jackson said. He moved forward on the couch, his backside barely in contact with the leather, and leaned in to Cydney. He looked like a man apologizing for wronging his woman; she looked like a woman scorned and milking the apology for all she could. “Would you put it past him to harm Felicia Rucker to get back at Desmond?”

Cydney thought about innocent Felicia Rucker and Desmond's despondency the night of the incident. She thought about the poor acting job her brother had put forth when she questioned him about Felicia. She looked at Officer Jackson. “No, I wouldn't put it past him.”

Jackson settled back into the couch. “I thank you for your truthfulness.”

“Are we done here?” Cydney asked him.

“Yes.”

Cydney stood. “I hate to be rude but I desperately need to take a hot bath and get myself some rest.”

“Oh, of course,” Jackson said, rising to leave.

Cydney followed him to the door. Jackson stopped before crossing out into the hall and turned back to Cydney. “Your brother is responsible for his own actions. Don't believe for one minute that you could change him, or by telling me what you have that you've done him an injustice.”