The Orange Houses (3 page)

“Fatima, George heads up volunteer activities for the hospital. George, Fatima is an artist.”

George sighed. He turned from Jimmi to Fatima and sized her up with suspicious eyes. “Any teaching experience?”

Back in the refugee camp Fatima taught English to the younger girls. She lived to teach. She nodded.

“You looking for a job?” the sad George said.

Fatima squinted. “What are you paying?”

“Goodwill.”

Mik helped out part-time after school. She was doing inventory when the matted, panicked German shepherd nipped at her jeans. She followed him to the next aisle, where old Joe Knows sat slumped on a flipped crate. He'd fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth again. Mik pinched the cigarette and helped the narcoleptic limp to the back office, where he slumped into a folding chair surrounded by cases of expired Goya cans.

Here's why he was Joe Knows: You come in feeling like trash, eyes and nose runny with flu, Joe says, “Under the weather?” You want to hot key your phone DUH, but instead you nod politely. Joe taps his temple, says, “See? Old Joe knows.” He loved Mik, thought she should run for President of Everything. He paid her more than he had to, eight bucks an hour OTB. He knew Mik and Mom were saving for the surgery, the one Mik wasn't sure she wanted. She felt bad keeping Joe and Mom in the dark about her homework business money. But how else could she buy art supplies, paper, ink, that
pen
?

A flare outside the window itched Mik's eye. The magic man was cutting a curb rail on his double wide silver long-board. Jimmi Sixes did tricks on that plank to make a dull day gleam. He strode tall through the bodega door, put up his fist for a pound. “How you be, kid?” he said.

Mik winked.

A woman with a baby in her arms lugged a milk gallon to the counter. She hunted her purse for coins, didn't have enough. She grabbed the milk and started back for the fridge.

Jimmi stopped her with a five spot gently slapped to the counter. “On me.”

“I couldn't,” the woman said.

“How old your girl? She a girl, yeah?”

The woman nodded. “She about to make a year.”

Jimmi bagged the milk for the woman and got the door for her.

“God bless you,” the woman said.

“He does every day I'm aboveground,” Jimmi said. “I reckon.” He let the child squeeze his finger as the woman went. He nodded to Mik. “Think old Joe let you skip early?”

Key the phone: Y

“I'm-a hook you up with a friend of mine. Chick turns newspaper into seraphim.”

Mik cocked her head, put up six fingers, mimed fluttering wings.

“Yup,” Jimmi said. “Six-winged angels.”

 

His board skated the gentle grade downhill in slow arcs, the front wheels parting the rainwater. They rode as one, Mik in front. He had his hands on her shoulders. She wished he would put them on her hips. He was eighteen, but dreaming was free.

Mik was crushing on near every boy these days, but Jimmi was different. He was so perfect she didn't want to sex it up with him. She wanted to skip straight to what she dreamed came after, the holding, staring into his sad black eyes.

Jimmi wasn't like that, though. He was big bro to her since she was a little kid. His lady, Alyssa was her name—no, Julyssa, was older than Jimmi before she killed herself. Jimmi always dated up and dated pretty, much prettier than flag-eared
Meek
-a Sykes.

He steered the board down a side street past an abandoned warehouse where the police used to keep impounded vehicles. The side of the building was forever fresh-tagged with hatred, Crip-Blood battles, the Latin Kings and MS- 13. Four years back Jimmi pitched the precinct captain that he could round up kids to paint over the graffiti with scenes from the neighborhood. He would set the paint to rhyme. The captain loved it. Mik's contribution was the reservoir on a summer day, no people, no birds, just a clear lake reflecting empty sky—now buried after four years of taggers and bombers spanking the derelict garage. But one of Jimmi's lines still shouted out through the scrawl: LOVE KILLS TIME. From far away the letters seemed to come together from speckles of red and white paint, but when you got close you saw fist-sized hearts and clock faces with their hands stopped at midnight.

She heard him in her ear, a low, distant rumble, soothing but indecipherable. She clicked on her aids. “Say again,” she said. She could talk a little in front of Jimmi. He never would make fun of anybody.

“You know the If trick?” Even her lousy aids couldn't ruin his deep, gentle voice.

She shook no.

“Learned it overseas. Think of a place you wanna go.”

“Anywhere but here. Train ride.”

“Okay, now put If in front of it, and y'all are there.” He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable, somehow managing not to sound patronizing. “Close y'all's eyes.”

She did, trusting him to keep her from falling from the skateboard, letting him balance her, swaying with him, squeezing his hands.

“That's right, Mik. Now, If a train.”

“If a train.”

“See yourself standing on top of that train, girl. Let it get moving. You feel it now grooving? Clicka-clicka, wheels on tracks be soothing. Spread your wings, catch the wind of kings, lift yourself to the heart of things, swing moons and stars and galactic rings.”

She almost saw it: Tamika Sykes standing on a train, stepping onto a cloud, reaching up . . .

“Open your eyes, kid.”

The board stopped. They were by the highway overpass. In front of Mik and between a mound of garbage and a torched car was a stack of newspapers on an upturned milk crate. Behind the stack was a tall beautiful girl, her head wrapped in a shawl. She wore a curious smile. A scar on her cheek peeked out from the head-wrap. Her eyes were big and light brown against her dark skin. She wore a dirty hand-me-down coat too small for her, threadbare jeans and hole-shot sneakers. Despite the cold, damp day she wore no socks.

Jimmi took the girl's hand and brought it to Mik's.

The girl's hand was rough like the sackcloth the root vegetables came in on delivery day at Joe Knows's place. Her fingers were warm, strong.

Confused, the women turned to Jimmi.

Jimmi nodded. “Here's what I see: two artists. Y'all are gonna create the most beautiful thing in the world.”

And what's that?
Mik thought as her phone vibrated. She drew back her hand to pull the phone from her pocket. Caller ID said MOM, who always texted, never called. Mik turned away, cupped her hand to hide her voice as she said, “Yeah?”

Mom was screaming, her words wicked static in the cheap phone. Mik crushed the receiver to her ear, still couldn't put together what Mom was saying. Panicked, she hit speaker, yelled, “You okay? Where are you?”

“RIGHT BEHIND YOU,”
blasted from the phone. “
I
SAID,
Y'ALL GET AWAY FROM THAT CRAZY JIMMI. CRACKHEAD GONNA—”

Mik snapped the phone, spotted Mom running along the Target sidewalk toward her.

Jimmi made double peace signs, one for Mik, one for the paper girl, and sailed off on his board, no rush. “Don't sweat yourself, kid. Mind y'all's Moms.”

The paper girl stepped back, putting the stack of news between herself and trouble. She stared at Mik.

Mom spun Mik with a shoulder grab. “How many times I got to tell you, Mika? Y'all know how them vets are, coming back all whacked and jacked on drugs. Look at that poor boy. He got the itch all right. You don't know what they're liable to do, child. Just because he sick don't mean you got to share his ills.” Mom eyed the newspaper girl. “What happened to the little old Mexican man used to work this spot?”

The girl gulped.

Mom spun for the O Houses, shouting something.

Mik couldn't make out the words in the wind playing hell with her aids. She signed, WHAT?

Mom signed back stiffly, I SAID GET OVER HERE,
NOW
.

Mik signed, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ALL FREAKED OUT. RELAX.

Mom, coming back for Mik now: “I caught about half of that.”

The paper girl tucked a note into Mik's hand.

Mom grabbed Mik's arm. “Mika,
come
.”

Girls on the corner laughed at Mik as Mom towed her home. Two boys eyed Mom, early thirties and eye candy, even in her Target uniform. One boy put a peace sign to his lips, his tongue between his fingers. The other hollered, “Yo baby, my boy lick y'all's—”

Mik clicked off her aids. The boys' howling hushed. Mom's anger could not reach her. The nastiness evaporated.

Everything.

Just.

Faded away.

Taking shelter in the near silence, Mik looked back at the papergirl. She was waving. No, she was signing, HELLO, GOOD-BYE, I LOVE YOU.

I
love
you?

Mik looked down at what the girl tucked into her hand: a paper angel with six wings.

Mom jerked Mik forward. The angel fell from Mik's palm into the rain stream washing toward the sewer.

 

“Mika, I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say?” Mom popped a Relpax.

NaNa stroked Mom's hand. “Sandrine, my hairdresser, she got the migraines too, she goes to the acupuncture, headache gone, girl.”

“My junk insurance doesn't cover the acupuncture, sweetheart.” Then to Mik: “You hear what I'm telling you, right? I know it isn't Jimmi's fault, but he is what he has become, dig? Are your aids on? Turn, them,
on
.
Now
. Those boys see things over there . . . I don't know. Crazy Jimmi Sixes means himself every flavor of harm. You don't want to be there when he snaps.”

Mik spooned chili onto three plates. “He's nice to me.”

“The devil's sugar will rot your soul,” Mom said.

“Now-now, Drine Sykes, I wouldn't pin the devil on Jimmi,” NaNa said. “Con
fu
sion yes, Satan no. I sat that child how many nights when he wasn't in foster care, his poor mother scrambling all over God's world. Jimmi is sweet and he is good.”

Mom rolled her eyes.

Mik signed, WE OWE THAT PAPER GAL AN APOLOGY.

Mom massaged her left eye. “I don't know what she said,” she said to NaNa.

“Speak, child,” NaNa said.

Mik cleared her throat. “I think we should have that newspaper girl over for dinner.”

Mom squinted, cocked her head.

Mik avoided Mom's look. Exactly why was she drawn to this paper girl?
Must be something in her eyes. Something nobody else has.
That newspaper angel was pretty hype too. More than that, the chick signed, but she wasn't deaf. Her hands were slower and clumsier than Mom's even. Mom was mediocre on a good day despite Mik's constant teaching. Why would the girl know hand language?

“Imagine that.” NaNa picked her teeth with a postcard from the junk mail left out on the kitchen table. “I do believe at long last Mika's getting lonesome.”

“Tt, chili's getting cold,” Mik said.

The food was inexpensive and delicious. Fatima savored each french fry as she wrote her sister a letter that ended with
Good-bye, I love you
—

—HELLO, GOOD-BYE, I LOVE YOU. This was all the sign she knew. What had passed between Jimmi's friend and Fatima as they shook hands? Something intense and immediate. Something—

“Something else?” the waitress said.

“Please tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty.”

“Serious?” She called to the other waitress, “Carmen, how you get to the Statcha Lib'dy?”

“Never been. I think you got to take a boat.”

Shouting from behind the counter. Two men who had been sitting at the next table escorted a handcuffed dishwasher from the kitchen. They seemed tired, distressed, not as distressed and tired as the dishwasher begging, “Por favor, tengo dinero. Te pagaré. Te pagaré.”

The waitress said, “No te preocupes, Guillermo. No llores.”

The other waitress, Carmen, whispered, “They prob'ly shut us down now.”

“What happened?” Fatima said.

“Immigration police.”

Fatima fought the urge to hide her face in her shawl. “May I have my bill?”

Jimmi weaved in and out of the trackside trash. He wanted to rip away his skin. Was this physical withdrawal or his spirit's hunger? A knock of crack would help him get through to tomorrow—

He was low on money, but he wasn't going back to the house to pick up his VA check before he beat the pill habit. If he could outlast the gnawing another week or so, he could go back fresh and tell the doctors he was done with the drugs, the therapy, the halfway situation. He would insist he was moving on into the Full Now: a good clean job that supported a family he would never let down.

But not yet. He needed time away from all the old routines and places, the sad faces. Some alone time would clear his mind enough to keep him sober. The thought of going back to his part-time janitor gig at that depressing hospital made him queasy.

“Soup,” he said to no one. “Get some heat into you.”