Scandalous Heroes Box Set (44 page)

She should never have made fun of that boy because he was different. He probably got it worse than she did. She never liked the way it felt when people pointed out her ‘white people hair’ and her narrow nose. For a while she had stuffed tissues into her nostrils hoping to stretch them but when her nose began to hurt and she sneezed blood she was forced to stop.

At recess she hurried to the girl’s clubhouse, which was under the stairs of one of the abandoned trailers. It was one of the few times during the day that she got to hang out with Jalissa who had been held back one year so she was in the fifth instead of the sixth grade.

There was a girl’s ‘gang’ and they were eight strong. Girls needed to band together for protection against the boys so all of the girls kept together during recess. Otherwise something bad could happen like what the boys had done to the new girl that had joined her class.

Donald Miller had caught her alone behind the trailer and had made her pull her dress up and her panties down and then all of the boys had got a look at her. Girls didn’t even wear dresses to school just for that reason. Why didn’t she know that even is she did come from a different school?

The girl never came back to school and none of the boys had gotten into trouble over it because no one could say which boys had been involved. For that reason the girls stuck together because now the boys were even bolder. Now the boys wanted to play tag and instead of hitting you they grabbed your booty or pinched your chest.

“Hey cuz,” Jalissa said while popping Fruit Stripe gum. She must have had the entire huge package in her mouth because all you could smell under the trailer was sugary fruit.

Vanessa ducked beneath the trailer and found a place to sit between her cousin and Carmella Green.

“Hey. You seen him?”

“Nope.”

“Seen who?” A girl with neatly braided hair asked. Her name was Sally but everyone called her Sal since they had to sing that song in music class that went;
I had a mule, her name was Sal; fifteen miles on the Erie Canal…

“Scotty Tremont,” Vanessa said while trying to avoid the loose dirt by her feet so they wouldn’t get her white sneakers dirty.

Jalissa glared at her and rolled her eyes.

“Nobody. Mind your business, Sal.” Jalissa said.

Sally gave her cousin a narrowed eyed look. “Who you showing off for, girl?” She then turned her attention back to Vanessa. “Why you looking for Scotty?”

Vanessa looked from Sal to Jalissa who silently threatened to cream her if she talked. Vanessa tried to think of a way to change the subject.

“We ain’t looking for him,” she muttered. “I just want to avoid him.”

“Ha, he steal something from you?”

“Aww!” Another girl hollered. “He stole money out of the teacher’s purse one time and then he got kicked out of school for a week!”

“He’s just trying to be like Tino.” Malinda said while spitting sunflower seed shells onto the ground.

Vanessa scowled in disapproval. “Why do you say that? Just because they’re both white?” She was about to declare that all white people weren’t dope boys and criminals like Tino—because if her suspicions were right Tino was more than just bad news, he was a killer. Malinda continued before she could.

“Nah, girl, because Tino and Scotty are brothers.”

Vanessa sank into misery at that news. Her heart began to thump painfully in her chest. She wanted to cry. Tino was real bad news. He was sixteen or seventeen and had dropped out of school long ago. All he did was shoot dope, steal and beat people up. He would do just about anything for money. He would snatch a chain off your neck or stick you up for your shoes. He’d been in and out of juvie and they said the next time he got busted he was going to jail.

They had to be wrong about that. The two boys couldn’t be brothers because Tino was a Puerto Rican and Scotty was white. Well she guessed that looks didn’t always mean anything. After all she looked like she was mixed and she wasn’t.

Vanessa thought the most frightening thing about Tino is that he was as gorgeous as he was bad. He looked like Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter. He even sported an Afro and sideburns that looked as good as any of the black guys that he hung with.

This time it was her turn to glare at Jalissa. “Did you know about this?”

Her cousin’s mouth popped open. “Well you should have never said his name, dummy!” Her eyes began to fill with tears.

“You two are cousins, don’t fight.” Theresa said. She was twelve like Vanessa but already had breasts the size of a grown lady. This only made her think that she should be the unofficial leader of the gang, which everyone pretty much agreed with. “Nobody’s going to get you while you’re in school. We’re gonna have y’all backs.” Both cousins suddenly looked relieved. “What did you do to him anyways?”

Vanessa glared at her cousin again. “Jalissa called him a honky.”

There were several ooohs and aahhs. “Damn J. You got guts.” Theresa cussed in admiration.

Suddenly Jalissa didn’t look like she wanted to cry but puffed out her chest. She resumed popping her gum, “I was like ‘Whatchu doing up here whiteboy!’”

The girls oohed and aahed again, impressed by the gutsy eleven-year old. From there the conversation moved to how cute Tino was. She’d seen Tino do two things that would never allow her see him as anything but someone to run from.

The first thing is that she saw him throw a match into someone’s car. He was just casually walking down the street and lighting a cigarette. As he walked he tossed the lit match into the open window of the car…and just kept walking. Later she heard that the car had caught on fire and people said that it could have blown up. What she found most unnerving about it is that Tino hadn’t been with anyone. He’d done something like that and it wasn’t to impress his friends.

The second reason she was terrified of Tino—and by far the worst thing is that she suspected something very bad about him, something that he didn’t know she suspected.

There were many things that scared her about being in the ghetto; boys that might catch you and do something bad to you, the dope man…and the vacant building where they had found the dead little girl.

Chapter 2

Mama was waiting for her when she came out of the trailer after school. A smile crossed her face when she saw the white Cadillac with its red interior. Mama was wearing sunglasses and she looked hip like Pam Greer from the movie Coffy. They had seen it at the drive-in even though it showed women with their shirts off. But she didn’t care about that. They always showed that kind of movie at the drive-in and at the Regal Theater and she’d always watched them.

People said that her mother was beautiful and she agreed but was more impressed with just how cool she was. Her mother had to be the best-dressed person at Cincinnati Bell Telephone where she worked in collections. Some nights she also worked at a club where she tended bar whenever they needed the extra help. That meant a lot of times she was gone at night and on the weekends, which is when Vanessa missed her most.

“Hi baby,” Leelah White greeted her daughter with a big smile as Vanessa climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Hi.” She slammed the door and then threw her jacket into the backseat. Leelah slipped a tape into the deck and Sly and The Family Stone’s If You Want Me To Stay began playing. “You hungry? Let’s go to Tico Taco for dinner. How’s that sound?”

“Yeah!”

As they drove Leelah began to sing and then Vanessa joined her, both mimicking Sly’s screams and shouts and laughing as they did so.

That night while her mother soaked in the bathtub Vanessa watched for the streetlights to go out. Once all of the kids had gone in for the night Vanessa turned off the lamp in her bedroom and stood just behind the curtain. She waited there until she saw the glint of spokes on the hill heading out of the ghetto and toward the hilltop.

Her heart began to hammer in her chest and she stepped back from the curtain. She stood in the shadows but could still see out. A moment later a lone figure could be seen pedaling a bike towards the townhomes of Garden Hilltop.

Scotty Tremont pedaled fast as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. He never stopped to rest but once he got to the parking lot right outside her complex he stood and coasted expertly balancing on the ten-speed. As he ended his circuit, he began pedaling rapidly again, climbing to the second level parking lot where he disappeared from sight long enough to complete the second circuit. She didn’t realize that she was holding her breath until he reappeared and it came out in a gush.

Blonde hair flowed in the air behind him as he pedaled down the steep incline. If she was riding her bike down that hill she would have applied breaks but he didn’t. It seemed as if he wanted to break a speed limit, that maybe he was trying to fly…

~***~

Scotty barely felt the chill in the air even though he was just wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. The elements didn’t much bother him after so many years of no heat in winter and no air conditioning in the summer.

By the time he got to the court where he lived he was winded. He had raced a car and nearly won except that the asshole had burned rubber to get past him. The door was unlocked—as always and he wheeled his bike into the living room and propped it up against the wall out of the way so no one would trip over it.

Somebody was crying while someone else was having an argument with another someone else. He tuned out the sound of his little brothers and sisters and walked into the dirty kitchen.

The baby was in the high chair eating soupy Ramen noodles, which were congealing on the tray of the high chair. His seven year old sister Ginger was dunking a hotdog bun into her soup and EJ was arguing with his twin sister over something that had happened on T.V. Scotty quickly counted heads and saw that two of his younger siblings were missing.

“Hey!” He shouted over the racket. “Where’s Phonso and Beady?”

“She’s with her Grandma,” Ginger said while twirling noodles with her fork. “And Phonso’s still outside.”

His jaw clenched. “I’m going to kill him,” he muttered as he headed for the door. It opened just as he reached for it and Tino entered.

“Hold up, where you going?”

He tried to slip past his brother. “I’m going to look for Phonso.”

Tino gripped his arm. “Leave him. He’s with Jaydog. He’ll be home when he’s done eating.”

Jaydog was Tino’s buddy and he worked in a greasy spoon where they sold something that passed for soul food. Scotty noted that Tino was holding a bag, which carried the aroma of warm food; food, which included meat. He followed his brother back into the house and into the kitchen where Tino tossed the bag of squashed hamburgers onto the table.

EJ was the first to reach it and he dug his hands into the sack only seconds before Erica snatched it, ripping the paper and causing foil wrapped burgers to rain down onto the table.

Scotty retrieved one and watched Tino tickle the baby’s chin before opening the fridge and searching for a nonexistent beer.

“I don’t know why I bother trying to keep beer in the house.” He slammed the door. “Where is she?” He barked out in annoyance, referring to their mother. Ginger shrugged her shoulders her mouth filled with delicious burger.

“I want to go to Beady grandmother’s house,” she said.

EJ, who was 9 and therefore older, scowled. “You can’t because she’s not
your
grandmother.”

Ginger’s green eyes which held a perpetually confused cast, settled at him. “So. Her grandma is nice and she buys her dolls.”

EJ scoffed. “She don’t want you. You’re white!”

Ginger frowned. “I don’t care-”

“Well she don’t want nothing to do with you so case is close.”

“Shut up EJ,” Scotty said while taking a second bite of his burger. He was just going in for the next bite when Tino knocked it out of his hand and to the floor.

“Why and the hell did you do that-?”

Tino smacked him playfully in the head only it really did hurt. “Let’s go make a beer run.” He was bigger than Scotty although both boys were nearly six feet. But it seemed that where Tino probably wouldn’t become much taller, Scotty was destined to be the height of a successful basketball player. And where Scotty was wiry with a slight build, Tino was built like a football player.

The differences didn’t stop there. The older boy had a darker complexion matched by dark brown eyes and thick unruly hair, which he wore in an Afro. His Latin good looks had also created a young man who was charismatic and who could talk his way into or out of any and everything that he wanted.

Scotty, on the other hand was fair with grey-blue eyes and blonde hair, and since he stayed outside more than inside his paler skin had a golden cast. Although the two brothers physically had very little in common they still bore an unmistakable resemblance to their mother, which marked them as related.

Despite the fact that Scotty had better things to do than to run around with Tino—he was nearly finished with a book that he wanted to finish tonight, the brothers went out into the night. The older boy lit a cigarette and passed it to Scotty who accepted it but didn’t return it. They walked toward Winton road even though King’s Run had several Quick Marts, however Tino and Scotty had long ago been banned from entering those stores after being busted shoplifting one time too many.

“I need food.” Scotty muttered, thinking about his burger, which was probably still scattered over the kitchen floor. His stomach grumbled and Tino put his arm around his neck.

“Pussy.”

Scotty pushed his brother away. He knew that Tino could go from playful to insane in a flash so he knew to keep hold of his annoyance. Tino had beaten him up more times than he could remember—sometimes just for opening the door to the bedroom when he wanted privacy.

The bigger boy released him, losing interest in harassing him as he spotted some of his friends. “Come on!” Tino headed for the street where a group of teens were smoking and laughing. Scotty reluctantly followed. He just wanted something to eat and then to chill with his book, but it was going to be another long night. The group of teens and young men slapped hands, greeting each other loudly.