Leaving: A Novel (16 page)

“I just said hello. God.”

“Bitch motherfucker! Fuck you.” Love turned and walked on.

Ten minutes later he arrived at the West Oakland BART station. A BART policeman talked to the attendant in her booth. Love waited at a pay phone, picked it up, and listened to the dial tone until the guard left to go upstairs to the platforms. Another passenger got her dollar stuck in the ticket machine, and the attendant went around the corner to help her. Love put his hands on the stainless-steel ticket takers and leapt over the plastic barrier. This was enough to be sent back to Juvi if they caught him, but they’d probably just kick him out of the station.

He pulled his white jeans below his hips, revealing a few more inches of his blue boxers. He took the escalator to the platform and sat on a bench from which he could look over the passengers. If someone was going to start something, it would happen on the platform because you could still get out. The BART train itself was a trap. Each stainless-steel car had doors that could lock. He’d seen a train pull into a station and the doors stay shut while cops hunted down their suspect. One time the cops cornered an older White drunk in a stained jacket playing harmonica and asking for change. The summer before Love left to Juvi, three kids in fur-lined hoods came into the train spitting on the floor. At the Fruitvail station, the cops came on, grabbed the kids, and had them spread-eagled, facedown on the cement platform outside with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Everyone stared at them as the train pulled away, like on the tram at the zoo.

The Richmond-bound train arrived, and Love swaggered to the back, past a woman with two small children. One of the kids looked up at him and the mother pulled his face away and wiped the corner of his mouth. Love sat in the last seat against the wall so he could see anyone coming in before they saw him. This train had originated in San Francisco, picking up Gs from the Mission and downtown.

Love pulled up the collar of Easton’s black leather jacket. Most guys didn’t fuck with you if you weren’t slippin, unless you had done something stupid like take their bikes. You were also fucked if you claimed a rival, but you’d only do that if you had something to prove or if you were being challenged. There were a number of people in the car: one wanna-be G in the last seat facing the other direction, a light-brown-skinned dude with round sunglasses and headphones, but he never looked up. Another brother wore a blue sweater and a blue cap with the gold letters
CAL
embroidered on the front and was hunched over reading a paperback. There were a few other people, Sunday tourists heading into Berkeley. The only person worth consideration was a Mexican guy in a white and maroon Mighty Ducks jacket, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, his black and white sneaker stuck into the aisle. He looked at Love, and Love turned to the window as if something had distracted him.

He gazed over the houses in West Oakland to the docks and the giant metal structures shaped like white dogs that lifted cargo on and off the ships. The sky was blue all the way across the bay to San Francisco where a tidal wave of white fog rolled over the mountains toward the skyscrapers. But it was blue above the fog and the open space seemed to reach out forever. Then the train dove down into the underground tunnel. Love closed his eyes and let out a breath.

When they pulled into the yellow lights of Ashby Station, he waited to get up until the train came to a complete stop, so it wouldn’t make him stumble like a fool or let other people know where to get off if they wanted to follow him.

He got out and took the escalator up with the rest of the commuters but went over by the bathroom alcove. He waited until all the people had exited and then went out the bike gate, wiping his hands on his pants, like he’d just been let in to use the bathroom.

Outside in the fading sun, he faced the flea market, which took up the whole right half of the parking lot: lines of tents and carpets displaying incense holders, record players, irons, hand-me-down clothes, futons, shaving cream, old videos and books; and from somewhere in the center of the market, a pulsating beat of conga drums, clanking hubcaps and bottles. The left side of the lot was all parked cars, plenty of old Toyotas, but there was a police cruiser parked right on the curb out front.

Love walked into the market and eyed the goods. Most people were packing up slowly now that it was getting dark. One old man with a rough, tortoise-skinned forehead sat in front of a blanket loaded with old books and a sporting almanac with a picture of a baseball player on the front.

Love pulled a plastic box out of his jacket pocket and held it in front of his face. Inside was the Hercules Beetle.

“How much you give me for this?”

The man licked his chapped lips and shook his head. “I don’t buy bugs.”

“It’s the longest beetle in the world. Give me fifty bucks.”

“I can see what it is, but I don’t buy bugs.”

“All right, dog.”

The old man shook his head and Love put the box back into his pocket. He walked to the end of the aisle and climbed the ivy hillside out of the lot up onto the sidewalk. He crossed Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard toward a house covered entirely by pink shingles and turned down Prince Street, away from the traffic and the cops.

This was a mostly Black residential area of Berkeley, with huge houses and rock-bordered gardens of lavender and bougainvillea. There were shiny new cars parked in the wide driveways between each house and children’s toys on the lawns. He peered into one backyard at a twisted pipe sculpture in the shape of a pyramid. A calico cat rested on top of the fence and let Love pet him, purring and closing his eyes with a black, mustachioed smile. A small rat-dog tied with a rope ran out onto the back porch and started barking in a high-pitched yelp. Love kicked the wooden fence, and the cat flew off toward the dog. He walked away quickly and turned on to Harper Street, which was lined with high-leafed chestnut and palm trees.

His hands began to sweat and tingle as he looked around for a car. He saw an LTD with its window open, but Freight had said a Toyota. An older man walked toward him with a cane, watching squirrels run across the telephone lines. Love rubbed the tips of his fingers with his thumbs and looked down as the man passed him, yellow leaves crunching under his feet.

“Don’t look now,” the man said. “I might just smile at you.”

Love looked up and the man smiled. Love couldn’t help but smile back. But then the man was gone and it was getting darker. The conga drummers were still at it in the distant flea market, their rhythms faster and louder as the night approached.

He spotted a Toyota in front of a triangular-shaped house with a high wooden fence: a bashed-up white Tercel hatchback with a ski rack. As long as it was pre-’85, it would be easy to break into. He’d learned how even before Juvi. He wiped his palms on his pants and walked past it, glanced in, and continued to walk the rest of the block to Ashby. At the corner, he swung around on the pole with the big fish-eyed Neighborhood Watch sign, then headed back, looking around for witnesses.

A silver Honda pulled onto the street and parked a few spaces before the Tercel. Love slipped between cars and sat down on the back fender of a rust-colored pickup truck and bowed his head, his arms and chest shaking, waiting for the people to get out of the car and go away. He smelled chimney smoke and inhaled deeply.

“Pizza?” he heard a man from the car say. “I was thinking more like pasta, or a salad, a great big salad.”

“That’s fine with me,” a woman said. The car doors shut and Love looked over his shoulder. A man, woman, and little girl carrying a red purse entered a yard with a chain-link fence around it. The man lifted up the girl by a tree and she picked a lemon. The woman unlocked the front door and they went in.

Love got up and walked toward the Toyota. He must have gotten up too fast because he felt dizzy. He stopped at the fence in front of the house and wrapped his tingling hands around the top pole. He looked up at the porch. There was a pumpkin on the railing, carved with jagged teeth, and a brown ceramic lamp in the window between the crack in the curtains. In the garden, a tomato plant with small yellow tomatoes grew out of a bathtub up against the fence. He crouched down behind the plant and picked off a firm tomato, the vine pulling and snapping back. He spit in his hands and rolled the fruit around in his palms to clean off the dust, then popped it in his mouth and chewed, the sweet and sour juice squirting into his cheeks.

He savored the taste and rested on his knee as if he didn’t have anything else to do. There was only this moment, on this piece of pavement, in this hickory-filled air, the distant drums. He just might not do anything else all night but stay here in this neighborhood and listen to the drumming, and in the morning go from here to the next town. He didn’t have to steal the car. There were a million towns and families and gardens in the world.

The yellow streetlights flickered and Love jolted up as if he’d been discovered. At the same moment, a White boy with a Mohawk and chains hanging down from his belt loops came around the corner. His boots pounded on the pavement, and Love turned back to the house and pretended that he was heading inside. The boy was walking right at him with one hand in his jacket pocket. Love opened the gate quietly and went into the yard. The boy looked at him but kept walking. By the time he had passed, Love found himself halfway up the path to the house.

There he was, already inside. That easy. Another world, another life. He took a step toward the porch but then heard the front door opening and quickly turned around.

“Can I help you?” the man from the house asked. He didn’t sound angry or frightened, just interested. Love stopped but kept his back to him.

“Are you looking for someone?” the man called out again. “Can I help you?” Already the smell of dinner came from inside the house. Love noticed that there were yellow flowers on this side of the tomato plant along with the fruit.

“Naw, man, I was just mixed up,” Love said with an accentuated drawl. He wanted to say something else. But what? Maybe something that would get him invited inside, so then something else could happen—he could show them what a nice kid he was, and they’d want to help him, want to keep him. But what could he possibly hope for from this complete stranger? What about Li’l Pit? What was he thinking?

“Naw, Man. Wrong house. Sorry.” He walked out the gate and waited around the corner until he heard the door close.

The front seat of the Toyota was torn up so badly that the foam was missing in the middle. There was no club or alarm. He tried the door handle just in case, but it was locked. The screwdriver fit in the driver’s door with a little wiggling. He jammed it into the lock and the button popped up. This only worked with an old Toyota. He opened the door, got in, closed the door, and lay down across the front seats. His eyes moved about in the dark car and his fingers felt for the ignition. He shoved the screwdriver into the keyhole and pushed hard. Something clicked and he tried the steering wheel. The wheel was loose, but the ignition wouldn’t turn. He sat up in the driver’s seat and worked the handle back and forth, his foot ready over the gas.

After a few tries, the starter turned over and he revved the engine. He’d watched other guys steal cars, but he’d driven a stick only once, on an outing to 7-Eleven with Tom from Los Aspirantes.

He put it in first and pressed the gas, but the car was in gear with the parking brake on, and he stalled. Two bicyclists with helmets turned on to Harper and stopped at a car across the street. They glanced over at him and then looked away. He started the car again and took off the parking brake but let it idle with the clutch in. The bicyclists put their bikes up onto the roof of their car, glancing his way every so often. Love kept the clutch in and put it in first. He turned the wheel and then pressed on the gas. The car revved loudly and then he let out the clutch too quickly, but the car jerked forward into the street.

“Hey,” one of the bicyclists yelled and ran toward the car. Love sped up.

“Hey, your lights. Your lights.”

Love couldn’t bother looking for the light switch. He drove through the stop sign at Prince and kept going on the residential streets, all the way back to Cranston, in first gear.

SANTA RITA JAIL

TODAY, I READ
sections in
From Plantation to Ghetto: An Interpretive History of American Negroes:

The Black Laws regulating the behavior of free Negroes in the Old Northwest were in fact based upon the slave codes of the Southern states. For a period the legislatures of Illinois and Indiana evaded the antislavery prohibition of the Ordinance by enacting laws placing Negro youths under long-term indentures. Thus was perpetuated in modified form the practice of Negro slavery known previously in the Northwest Territory when it had been under French and British rule. The Illinois constitution of 1818 expressly provided for the hiring of slave labor at the saltworks near Shawneetown. Nowhere in the Old Northwest or the newer Western states could Negroes exercise the right to vote or serve on juries. They could not testify in cases involving whites in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, or California. Most of the Western states also banned intermarriage. The Northwestern and Western States attempted to discourage Negro settlers by requiring them to register their certificates of freedom at a county clerk’s office and to present bonds of $500 or $1,000 guaranteeing that they would not disturb the peace or become public charges. Toward the end of the ante-bellum period, Illinois, Indiana, and Oregon excluded Negro migrants entirely. Only Ohio, after a long battle, repealed its restrictive immigration legislation in 1849. Though such anti-immigration statutes were only erratically enforced, nevertheless they intimidated Negroes. In 1829 an attempt to enforce an 1807 law requiring a $500 bond precipitated a race riot at Cincinnati and a mass Negro exodus to Canada.

In the Northeast, none of the states provided by law for discrimination in the courtroom and Negro testimony was admissible in cases involving whites. Social custom, however, barred Negroes from sitting on juries, except in Massachusetts where a few Negroes served just prior to the Civil War. Negroes enjoyed the same voting rights as whites in all the original Northern states for a generation after the American Revolution. Then, one by one, between 1807 and 1837, five of them—New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania—enacted disfranchisement provisions. The laws of Connecticut and Rhode Island did not disqualify those already on the rolls, and in Rhode Island the prohibition was repealed in 1842.