Dope Sick (9 page)

“
I CAN USE A HIT
,”
I said. “You holding?”

“You know I'm not holding,” Kelly said. “But let me ask you—what you need Lauryn for? All you want to be married to is your habit.”

“Ain't you married to your habit? Ain't you married to sitting up here shooting up being spooky? Or you just skimming and saying you don't have a jones?”

Kelly looked over at me, and his stare sent a chill through me. It wasn't mean but like he was looking right into me and didn't like what he saw. It flat out scared me, and I looked away from him. I could feel he had a power over me. All this crap with the
television, the questions he was asking me, he was knowing things about me I didn't even know.

“Hey, Kelly, where's all this going?” I asked him. I felt myself holding my breath.

“Yo, Lil J, check it out,” Kelly said.

He had turned off the television.

“Why you do that?” I asked. “Turn the sucker back on, man.”

“In a minute,” Kelly said. “But check this out. You say I'm getting off on being spooky. I can deal with that, Lil J. It ain't everything I would like, man, but it's something I'm being. Can you get next to that? You ain't being that stuff you getting from Dusty or the Girl you scored in Houston. That stuff is being you. It's telling you what to do. It's telling you where to go. It's telling you what to think. How are you dealing with that?”

“Put the television back on.”

“Why you need a hit?”

“If you ain't holding, what difference does it make?”

Kelly took the remote and put the television on. It was on a regular station. Some woman was
watching her children run around the room. Everywhere they ran some little germs or something was following them. Then she sprayed everything and the germs disappeared.

“Why you watching that?” I asked Kelly.

“What you want to watch?”

I didn't know what he wanted me to say. He had to know that I wanted to know what was on the street. I wanted to see the other stuff he was showing me, too. Stuff about my life and whatnot. I thought he knew more about me than he was saying, that when I talked to him about needing a hit, he would understand.

“What you want to watch?” he asked again. He was flicking through the channels. They were all regular channels.

“Can I tell you why I said I need a hit?”

“They're your minutes,” Kelly said.

“When I was a kid, I started carrying around some thoughts,” I said. “At first it was like I was carrying them around with me to think about now and again, but then it was a little like I just had them on my mind all the time.

“Maybe I'm wrong, but I think some people walk around and think about germs or something, like the woman in the commercial. I look at her and think she's got germs on her mind and then she'll switch to that spray stuff and then she'll be thinking about her children. When her husband gets home she'll be running her mouth to him, telling him about whatever little thing she was doing all day and he'll tell her what he was doing and they'll be thinking about that. Me, I don't think about nothing else but the things that get me down. It's like the sad part of me is taking over my whole life.”

“I got to go to the bathroom,” Kelly said.

“Just sit there, sucker!” I lifted the Nine and pointed it dead at him. “I'm trying to tell you something.”

Kelly stood up and started past me. “Go on and shoot, Lil J,” he said. “You got the power.”

He threw the remote in my lap and moved, almost like a shadow, past me and into the hallway.

I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what. I looked at the remote and then at the television. I put
the Nine down, knowing I didn't have no power. My thumb moved over the button, but I put that sucker down on the arm of the chair in a hurry. I didn't want to deal with my own life. No way.

I sat there, listening to see if I could hear Kelly. I wondered what he was doing, and then I felt my heart jumping in my chest. I was scared. It was almost like I was getting dope sick again. I was needing some help in a hurry.

“Yo! Kelly!” I called to him. “Kelly!”

I was imagining me on the roof with the gun upside my head. I was imagining me with my eyes closed.

“Yo, Kelly!” I called to him again. “Yo, please come back, man!”

Kelly came back into the room and took the remote from the armrest. When he passed me, his leg went right next to mine, but it didn't touch me, or I didn't feel it. He sat down in his chair and I felt myself breathing easier.

“I'm sorry I got uptight,” I said.

“You need some sleep?” Kelly asked.

“I'm not tired,” I said.

“You look tired,” Kelly said. “You sitting there all droopy looking. Your mouth hanging open.”

“You ain't the prettiest sucker in the world either,” I said. “What you checking me out so close for anyway? You funny or something?”

“Don't front me,” Kelly said.

“I'm sorry.”

“Hey, that's different. What you thinking about that cop's family? What you think they doing now?”

“Being sad,” I said. “Being miserable. Depending on how it turned out.”

“Yeah, there's a lot of sadness in the world, Lil J,” Kelly said. “I think that's because when you know your situation, you bring a judgment to it and it don't make a difference if that judgment is right or wrong. You own it either way.”

“Or somebody could bring their judgment and lay it on you,” I said.

“Yeah, like you were mad at that teacher because he didn't know your situation, and yet you weren't going to let him know what was going
down, because it made you feel bad, right?”

“Something like that at first,” I said. “Then it come to me that I wasn't really mad at Mr. Lyons—not mad at him personally. What I was mad at was the feeling that I was in a different place, a bad place, and nobody could get next to where I was.”

“The silence was creeping in,” Kelly said.

“I don't exactly know what you mean about that silence stuff,” I said. “But I knew I was mad when I left school that day. I went to the park and hung out. Then, for some stupid reason, I decided to stay in the park all night.”

“Spread the stink around so everybody know how you were feeling,” Kelly said.

“Something like that, but I didn't put it the way you putting it,” I said. “You can talk good. Not pretty, but you got a little weight on you. I bet I can outrhyme you, though. When I spit my rhymes, I sometimes get into a whole 'nother place. I'm like reaching and preaching on a new level. You ever try rapping? Maybe you could DJ if you were carrying enough tunes. What you got going on?”

“I got my place here and I got my television
and I got my remote,” Kelly said. “What you got is sleeping in the park all night.”

“No, I didn't sleep in the park all night,” I said. “Trees and stuff is too scary in the dark. You know, you see the branches moving or the wind, making the leaves rustle like they're whispering something in the dark, and it gets hairy. Plus, you be thinking about all those movies you've seen and you think that maybe one of those serial killers is hanging out in the park looking for his next victim.

“So I went to my apartment building, but I didn't go right home. I went up on the roof to sleep. Just like…”

“Just like you ain't got no place to go and you're not in a hurry to move on,” Kelly said.

“What you're saying is the same thing everybody else is running down and I can hear it's the word,” I said. “But—square business—I'm not out here looking for no garbage cans to curl up in. I'm looking for the same good dreams everybody else is hoping for, but I don't see where they are. Or maybe I see where they are, but I don't see how
to get there. I'm sitting up here rapping to some spooky sucker like you and I wouldn't even want to tell nobody about it, but I don't know what else to do. You can run down how weak my game is all you want, but that ain't making it stronger.”

“What happened that night you came home from the park?”

“It was about one o'clock in the morning. I knew that because you can look from my roof over to the funeral parlor across the street and they got a big blue clock in the window,” I said. “It was about one o'clock or maybe a little after. I was real mad, and I made a decision that from that moment on I wasn't going to care about nothing in the world—I wasn't going to care about my mother, about school, about nothing. It was like I gave up on living right then and there.”

“I thought you was thinking on change,” Kelly said.

“I would have run to some change if I knew where change was, man,” I said. “Can't you dig that?”

“You ain't no dog, brother,” Kelly said. “And you ain't no cat. You're a guy, and looking for a way out of your situation is part of the deal.”

“Whatever.”

“So you spent the night on the roof?”

“No, because it started to rain and so I went on downstairs into my apartment and went to bed,” I said. “That don't sound too good, but it was a different me. That was a me that just didn't care anymore. But I know you're too lame to figure that out.”

“No, I'm all over it,” Kelly said. “If you tell yourself you don't care, then you don't have to do nothing. Right? Get high. Cop a nod. Move on to the next high.”

“Yo, Kelly, why you so hard?” I asked. “On one hand you acting like you hip to the whole scene, and then you're sliding back like you didn't hear nothing but some verbs and nouns, man.”

“Lil J, listen to what you're saying. You're talking about how hard it is for you to make the right connections and how you see the right places but can't get to them, and I'm sitting up here watching all
this foul mess on television and digging on being spooky, and you think that you and me should be hooking up and making something good happen. Yeah, I can dig where you coming from, but I can't make you walk over to where I am and I can't get to you in no easy way. You talking about loving Lauryn and little Brandon—”

“Brian.”

“Little Brian, but you can't even get to them even if it only means walking down the block,” Kelly said. “Life happens, brother, but ain't nobody promised easy.”

He was right. I did want easy. More than that, I thought I was due some damned easy.

The sound of a helicopter surprised me, and I went to the window. It was daylight already, and I asked Kelly what time it was.

“Ten minutes past six,” he said.

“What kind of watch you got?”

“Timex.”

“Timex? That ain't saying nothing,” I said. “You should get you a Rolex. That helicopter is over a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Probably
talking about the traffic. I'm thinking about getting up out of here. About seven-thirty, when everybody hits the streets, I'll split.”

Kelly started flipping through the channels. He called me over to check out what he was watching. It was that guy on NBC with the long face.

Then my picture came up on the screen and the guy was still talking.

“They're gonna kill me, man. I know that. They out looking for me and they getting ready to kill me. Rico told them I was the shooter and there's no way I'm going to stand there and shoot nobody for nothing. All that's on Rico and his dope. Now my life is over. That's it, my life is over.”

“What you crying for if you don't care?” Kelly asked.

“What you mean what I'm crying for?” I asked. “Would you want your life to be over on some jive humble like this? They ain't going to believe me. They're going to believe Rico because he got his story all in the papers and on television. They're going to put his ass in jail for fifty-leven years and they're going to put me in jail for that much and two dimes more! What that punk Rico is thinking about is, if that cop dies they're going to be talking about the death penalty—like they got on that dude from Staten Island. He's going to keep on lying on me to save hisself.”

“So what you going to do?”

“Nothing to do. I can't stay here and I can't go out there because they're going to kill me,” I said. “That's what they really want to do. They don't want no trial. They want some chalk around my body.”

“So what you going to do?” Kelly asked again. “You're saying you can't stay here and—”

“Yo, Kelly, shut the hell up!”

Silence. Only the distant sound of the helicopter and the close-up sound of me sniffling. It was like my whole life was falling apart in one long,
horrible moment. All those times of not knowing what to do and feeling bad were being rolled into one straight-out nightmare.

“Yo, Kelly, you think this is how hell is?”

“How I know?”

“Fast-forward that picture again,” I said.