The Orange Houses (10 page)

Giant Jae put up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay Killuh, I don't want no trouble.”

Mik hooked Gale's arm. “Walk me to class.”

Mik's arm through his, Gale strutted. “Stomp that Romeo's punk butt.”

“Easy, hero.”

 

As Mik stepped through the school doors into the front courtyard a rock zipped past Fatima's head.

Crew Shanelle rolled up the sidewalk. “Deaf bitch can't get no real friends, she stuck with a Zulu terrorist.” Shanelle got in Fatima's face. “You ain't
nothin'
.”

Fatima reached into her shawl.

Shanelle reached for her back pocket, a bulge that said box cutter.

Fatima drew her hand from her scarf. A flock of Day-Glo butterflies spun in the breeze. In the afternoon light their sequined wings dazzled Sha's posse. The girls fell on the butterflies as if they were spilled piñata candy.

“It's newspaper,” one girl said. “Painted newspaper.” She drew her phone, keyed it for a new entry. “Yo,” she said to Fatima, “I got a birthday party coming for my niece. We was gonna get a clown, but y'all gonna work it instead. My sistuh got cash money, yo. What's y'all's numbuh?”

“Zero,” Fatima said.

“How's that?”

“I do not have a phone.”

“How y'all talk to your friends?”

“With my mouth.”

The girl nodded. “Cool.”

“Don't be talking to her,” Sha said.

“Sha
nelle
,
chill
yo. Why you gotta order everybody around all the time yo? I'm-a get suspended for
you
? You got a problem with her, then
you
step to her.”

“Step to you too—”

“What
ev
uh. You ain't all that. C'mon, y'all.”

All but two of the girls ditched Sha. The new leader wrote her number on a gum wrapper and slapped it into Fatima's hand. “Call me, I put you to work.”

“Y'all are trippin',” Sha called after her former crew. “Y'all are
loose
.” She backed off, miming a gun at Mik as she went.

Mik tried to stop trembling, then realized she wasn't. Her arm hooked through Mik's, Fatima was shaking.

 

“Today Mik will lead us,” Fatima said.

Fifty or so kids, adults, vets packed the room. One dude was catatonic in a wheeler, twisted in a mess of tubes and bags.

“Teacher, teach,” Fatima said.

Mik clicked on her old aids. “Today we're gonna make butterflies.”

“Nah, butterflies are for chicks,” a boy said.

“Butterflies are too easy,” said a girl.

“Let's make angels,” another girl said.

“All y'all ever want to do is make angels,” Mik said. “How about we make each other?”

“Too hard,” a boy said.

“We're angels without the wings. Pick a partner.”

Mik helped the kids create their parents. Fatima showed the parents how to put together their kids. Mik helped everyone draw faces onto the dolls. Drawing eyes came easily to her today.

A girl tugged on Mik's sleeve. “You have nice teeth.”

Within an hour, the dolls strolled a city street Mik and Fatima built from wrapping paper, rolled cardboard and tissue boxes.

The dude who ran the volunteer program watched from the corner, arms folded, his face grim.

He broke in by way of the back alley. His hands shook. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. What was left in the bodega was melted and smoked. Joe's body was gone but his old wooden chair was still here, an ash heap now. The charred skeleton of Joe's dog Tranquilito lay where Joe's feet would have been as he slumped dead in the chair. The skeleton looked as if it had been dipped into chunky tar.

Some of Joe lay in these ashes.

Jimmi scooped cinder and silt into a coffee can. He was dizzy when he stood too quickly from his crouch. He put the can in his backpack and staggered toward the side door. When he stepped into the alley, a flashlight drilled him. His hands were black with ash as he wiped his eyes.

The cops cuffed him, read him his rights. They were tired but nice, nicer when they went through his wallet and found his VA card.

“What say we let him go?” the one cop said to the other.

The other cop looked up at the apartment lights across the back alley, the people leaning out the windows. “Too late now.”

“You guys got any candy on you?” Jimmi said. “Gum? Gonna pass out if I don't get something sweet into me.”

“I'll write this up as trespassing,” the first cop said. “You won't lose your VA benefits.”

“Doesn't matter anyway,” Jimmi said.

 

“You're not gonna eat that?”

“You are?” The prisoner nudged his gluey detention center breakfast toward Jimmi, hungry for seconds.

Everyone else looked wrecked after the long night behind bars, but Jimmi felt great. Fed, rested, warm, his mind had cleared. The cops had arranged a shower for him. He felt new, shiny.

A guard nodded to him. “Let's go.”

At the desk they gave him what he brought in: his backpack and Joe's ashes. As he stepped out into the sunlight he felt as if Life loved him a little, but the feeling didn't last.

Mik and Fatima watched for Jimmi from the diner window. Fatima would get no closer to the police coming in and out of the courthouse. Jimmi helped NaNa down the stone steps, across the street, into the diner booth. He had listed her as his family contact. He was gaunt under the army uniform NaNa brought from the halfway house.

“Judge give him an earful,” NaNa said. “Woman made me swear we'd get him back to the hospital. You'd never let me break my word with God, James?”

Jimmi winked.

“Incorrigible,” NaNa said. “Order big now and eat up. Put the meat back on you.”

Jimmi's smile was a lie. His eyes were tired as he looked first at Fatima, then Mik. “What y'all working on?”

“Mik is teaching the children with me,” Fatima said. “She is a wonderful teacher.”

Jimmi's smile was genuine for a moment before it died. “Word from your sister?”

Fatima shook no.

He nodded, his eyes on a sunburst caught in a parked car's windshield.

“Let us take you to the hospital, Jimmi,” Mik said.

“So they can drug me back into the great big lie?”

“What lie?” Mik said.

“That everything's okay.” He kissed NaNa's cheek as he left.

“Shouldn't we stop him?” Mik said.

“Only he can stop him,” NaNa said.

The women watched as Jimmi paused in the middle of the concourse sidewalk. He reached into the glare reflecting off the car and pulled a flyer from a windshield wiper. He folded it into an angel, set it in the diner window's outer sill so it looked in at Fatima. He hurried away.

Fatima went out for the angel, but the wind had taken it.

Mik followed her, signed, YOU ALL RIGHT?

Fatima signed, I WILL HAVE TO BE.

Mik headed out.

“Showered and dressed at this hour?” Mom said as she dressed for work, her eyes on the TV.

“Helping Fatima with her papers.”

Closed captions flashed over the TV screen as a senator said: WE OVERRODE THE FIRST VETO, AND WE'LL OVERRIDE THIS ONE TOO. THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL WILL BE A VICTORY FOR THE AMERICAN WORKER, NOT TO MENTION OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. The news anchor said the new law would force local cops to report illegals to Immigration.

This young, the day had a strange feel. The dealers and gangbangers were done for the night. The early shift zombies yawned as they marched for the train. The overnighters yawned as they limped off it. The rummies were off to the side, sleeping on the heat grates. The light from the street-lamps was intense. With fewer folks' shadows on them, the sidewalks were both brighter and lonelier. Mik's want for more people on the street surprised her.

She turned the alley corner into Fatima's yard. Fatima was at the doorjamb trying to coax the old cat inside with cheese.

“Sister Mik, you bring me the sunrise.”

Mik wondered if she should tell Fatima about the new immigration bill. What good would knowing about it do? She petted the cat. “Still won't come in, huh?”

“Soon, when the weather turns colder.”

 

They lugged the leftover Sunday editions uphill to the hospital for next week's doll-making classes. Few words passed between them, but Mik felt no pressure to fill the quiet. They went to church to help with NaNa's soup kitchen.

 

A young homeless man said, “Miracle. Hot food. Thank you, darlin'.” He let Mik put just one pancake onto his paper plate. Hunched and head down, he shuffled out the door and into the sun whiting out the sidewalk.

“What's wrong?” Mom said. She was still in her Dunkin' uniform.

“Worried about Jimmi,” Mik said.

Mom frowned.

The reverend tapped the microphone. “Let's do the scripture. Who's got a song?”

Folks grabbed their books and sang.

“Fatima has a lovely singing voice,” Mom said, her eyes darting from Mik's left ear to her right, the old aids still plugging them up.

He hunted the sky for a patch not milked with streetlamp and found a fading scrap of dark. He wondered if the dim pinpoint in it was a star or a plane. “Or an asteroid come to blow away our troubles.”

He stepped into the park a wanderer. Since Saturday he was looking for a place to lay Joe Knows's ashes. Determined to find the most peaceful spot, he would know it when he saw it. He would travel the park's eleven hundred acres if he had to. He knew many of them. He'd been coming here since he was a kid, whenever he felt lost.

He watched a girl scream laughter as her mother pushed her swing.

Jimmi tried not to think how he would feel when night came and everybody disappeared. He scanned the sky. The sun was in the west. He couldn't recall the hours that had passed as he tramped the trails from one wildwood grove to the next.

So many folks were in the park this warm fall afternoon—kids running, mothers chasing. Where were all the fathers?

He headed for the cliffs, remembering from years ago a slant of sunset that lit the fields up there reddish gold.

Nobody ever came up this way. The climb was steep and the path unmarked as it curved with the ledge. Joe would find peace here.

No.

The field wasn't as he'd remembered. Here were boosted cars now. Stripped and torched they would ugly the meadow for ages. Methamphetamine vials crackled under his soles like bubble pack.

He figured he should just step off the cliff. He took a last look at the world, his eyes stopping on that abandoned NYPD garage just east of the O Houses. The angels had blessed it with a six-winged Statue of Liberty.

The girls were doing it, creating the only thing that mattered—not the mural, though that was stunning with its flying Liberty. The only thing that mattered was what had made them paint it.

Maybe this bit of wonder would be enough to carry him through the night into another day of wandering with Joe's ashes.

Maybe.

He watched a hawk bullet the dying sun and thought of the Colt .45 waiting for him in his cave. He'd fire it right after he buried Joe. He'd do it tomorrow night.

“Your only shot is an emergency asylum petition,” the lawyer said. “No promises.”

“How much?” Fatima said.

“Sixty-five grand. I'm
pro bono
, but you'll need that much for the application fees, fines, and the expeditor. And like I told Mrs. Sykes on the phone, the minute he takes your cash—and it's got to be cash—that's it. Win or lose, you don't get it back.”

“I appreciate your kindness,” Fatima said, “but I will never have that kind of money.”