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Authors: Paul Griffin

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BOOK: The Orange Houses
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“But where's your mother?” Mik's mom said.
Fatima pointed to her heart.
Mom shook her head. “Child,” she said.
“Oh child.” The kindly NaNa took Fatima's hand.
“Fatima, sixteen, living alone?” Mom said. “That won't do.”
“I'm-a ask around the church for a place for her.” NaNa popped the rest of her fritter into her mouth as she studied Fatima. “Lovely headdress. What's that like, being Islamic?”
“I am not Muslim.”
“You're not Christian.”
“No.”
“Then daggit, what are y'all?”
“I am human.”
NaNa thought about that. “I guess that's all right. What's the scarf for?”
“To keep my head warm.”
“Worse goes worst, you come stay with me. I got enough room up there for a
village
of Muslims.”
“Thank you, but I must remain uphill. I am safest there.” These Americans were wonderful people. She was hesitant at first to answer their questions, to accept Mik's invitation. But now she was glad she came. Back in the camps she told herself she would be fine on her own, but now she knew she had been lying to herself. She missed her sister.
Mik had been watching her. She broke from the table to clear the dinner plates. Fatima helped. After, they went to Mik's room. Mik showed her a sketch.
Fatima ran her fingers over the dried ink. She caught a tear with a cupped hand to stop it from splattering the empty cityscape.
“That bad?” Mik said.
“Beyond wonderful, but your streets, where are your people?”
Mik yanked the sketchbook away and hid it under her pillow as Mom came in with clothes and sneakers. “Try these on, girlfriend,” she said. “I can let down the pants.”
Fatima took in the embroidered jeans, the plush sweat-shirts, a leather jacket broken in just right. The sneakers were big on her, but so luxurious with their padding.
“Thank you, Mom.”
“You look adorable,” Mom said.
Mik fiddled with her hearing aids.
chapter 11
JIMMI
The cave, Thursday, twenty days before the hanging, 3:00 a.m. . . .
Jimmi Sixes folded the colored construction paper into tiny shapes.
“Night patrol,” he whispered. “Night vision goggles. They call it night vision, civilians without sin, grenaded to ruin, collateral mayhem, won't happen say them, green blur and wasteland.”
He flashed back to the desert and his armored tank rolling over towns held together by mortar thinned with dust and husk, everything ancient, so durable and fragile at the same time.
He regretted he'd dumped all those antipsychotic drugs down the halfway house toilet.
He fed cracker bits to the rats. “Food,” he whispered.
He went where he'd been going since he was a kid whenever he was hungry and out of money. He went to Joe Knows.
He waited in front of the locked roll gate. Joe and his old dog Tranquilito limped uphill with the sunrise, like always.
Joe stopped at the sight of Jimmi. He threw an arm over Jimmi's shoulder. “Ah kid,” Joe said. “Joe knows. Joe knows, son.”
“Joe, was it like this for you, when you came back from your war? Was it this bad?”
 
Joe made Jimmi breakfast. He smoked his Camel deep into the filter, his lids heavy as he watched Jimmi eat, though Jimmi didn't eat much.
“Jimmi, you gotta let me take you back to the hospital, son.”
“Can't go back there, Joe.”
“Lemme get that coffee hot.”
When Joe turned to refill Jimmi's cup, Jimmi slipped away.
chapter 12
TAMIKA
The Sykeses' apartment, Thursday, twenty days before the hanging, 6:00 a.m. . . .
She woke with an ear infection. This happened once a month. She was used to the pain. She went through the drill: scrub the ears and aids with hot soapy water, then peroxide, then coat them with Neosporin. She popped the first of the ten generic antibiotic tablets that were always on hand, always liable to upset her stomach.
On her way to school she stopped for a daily. Fatima wouldn't let her pay. She gave her a paper angel painted violet. “When will I see you again?” Fatima said.
“Have to work this afternoon. Dinner tomorrow?”
“My house this time.”
Mik was supposed to notify the principal's office when the speech therapist didn't show. She didn't. She unfolded and refolded Fatima's paper angel. By the time the class was close to ending, she knew how to make the angel from fresh paper.
She hated when folks felt sorry for her, but she liked to feel sorry for other folks. She wasn't sure why. Being sixteen without a Moms? Scary. The bell stabbed her ears.
She ducked into the bathroom, took out her aids and pressed her ears to the sides of her head. If God was real, someday he, she, whatever would answer her prayer and her ears would stay down when she took away her hands.
Today was not the day.
She rolled out Mom's bunched braids and ponied her loops low to tie back her ears. Her hair was kinked, maybe even pretty.
The new boy Jaekwon was in her art class. Punk. “Then why y'all sweating the hairstyle?” she asked the bathroom mirror.
 
She got to art early and sat by the window. The Jaekwon dude just had to torture her by sitting across from her. The assignment was to sketch each other. She surprised herself by getting him dead-on except for his eyes, which she left blank like those in a Greco Roman bust.
He drew her with footballs for breasts.
She tried to think of anything but knocking boots with him.
“So you death, huh?” he said to her chest.
She imagined kissing his lips as she read them. She cleared her throat. “Death?”
Jaekwon tapped his ears. “You kind of can't tell. Like, you talk good. Like, not like a mental I mean.”
“Um, like thank you.” She wondered if he was lying about her voice. Did she really sound okay?
“Yo, you got a nice body.”
She frowned as she felt his sneaker tap hers under the table. “Y'all best get back to your drawing,” she said.
Tap on her shoulder: security guard chick, hand out, palm up, Mik's hearing aids. “Left these in the bathroom again, Mika.”
Mik forced herself to smile thanks, tucked the aids into her pocket, buried her face in her sketchpad.
Jae tapped her hand. “Do it hurt? Straining to hear and all?”
She studied his eyes undressing the girl at the end of the table now. “No,” she said. “It doesn't hurt.”
She pressed her palm to her ear. Damned infection left her feeling as if an angry carpenter were driving at her head with a nail gun.
 
At lunch the janitor was painting Mik's stairwell spot to cover the scratchiti that still showed through: LATIN KINGS RULE, BLOODS SUCK. The paint stink dizzied her. She grabbed a bench in the cafeteria. From the far corner she watched Shanelle nuzzle Jaekwon.
Mik dumped the usual gluey PBJ and a past ripe apple out of her brown bag. The same old note from NaNa said: HAVE A BLESSED DAY ☺
The G swung up to her table. “Yo, how's my shorty?” He tripped as he sat.
Mik hurt for him. She keyed her phone: LETZ SEE IT.
The G took out his homework, frowned at somebody behind Mik.
Jaekwon plunked next to her, grabbed her sandwich, bit in. He leaned close to her, his eyes too pretty, cruel.
Shanelle and her crew came over. Jae's boys followed. Folks crowded around the table, lots of talking, whispering, hissing in Mik's aids, too much going on, sensory overload.
Shanelle gave Mik slit eyes as she slid into Jaekwon's lap.
Jae told everybody, “This chick can
draw
. She
mad
good.”
Sha grabbed Jae's arm. “Jae, you come over my house, I show you my drums. Play you my set, private concert style, na-mean?”
“Chicks don't play drums, girl, c'mawn.”
Shanelle finger popped in Jae's face. “I so
do
. Teacher said I got skills. Gonna be mad famous someday. How 'bout you,
Meek-a
? You play mu-sic?” Sha exaggerated her mouth and eye movements. She turned to Jae, showed him her fingers, calluses thick from hand drumming. “Check 'em out. I'm a wild woman on the slaps. Touch them tips. Feel how hard they are? Them's musician's scars, baby.”
“You probably burned them on your curling iron.” Did she actually speak that thought? She was
so
dead.
Laughing, screaming came from mouths stretched in long ovals. Girls snapped fingers. Boys pounded the table
, bock, bock, bock!
The concussions blew out Mik's aids in half-second pulses, but she didn't dare turn them off—not with Sha's brows angled down, her lips trembling.
“She just
read
you, Shanelle,” some chick said. “She read you from here to filth.”
Jaekwon laughed, “Dag.
Dag
.”
Mik scanned the cafeteria for The G, lost in the crowd.
Hard fingers grabbed her chin to turn her head.
“Ey!” Sha said. “Ey, Mika, you readin' my lips
now
, you elephant-eared bitch?”
That got everybody
ooh
-ing. Kids circled to watch the coming brawl.
Mik left.
Shanelle followed. She gave Mik a flatsy, kicked away Mik's sneaker, snapped Mik's ear.
Mik swung first but Shanelle swung harder and decked Mik. The girls rolled over the floor in a vicious smack fight. The G got in there to try to break it up and caught a Sha slap that made his head wobble. He slumped to his knees.
Mik glimpsed Jaekwon grinning with his boys. “I ain't gettin' in on that,” he said, something like that, hard to tell with all the noise polluting Mik's junky hearing aids. “
You
bust it up.”
Mik put herself between Shanelle and The G, took another shot from Sha as she protected the kid.
A few seconds later the lunch ladies had Sha in arm locks.
A tug at Mik's cuff.
The dazed G was on the floor. Shanelle's handprint was a bright sting on his cheek. His bloody lip stuck to his braces. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Mik said. Her ear throbbed where Sha smacked it. She helped The G to his feet. He was near tears as everyone laughed at him.
Over his shoulder Jaekwon was smiling. “How I do love a cat fight,” he said.
 
“Just hear me out,” the principal said. “Shanelle will be suspended. A police report will be filed.”
Mik keyed her phone: NO RPRT
“You don't have to file charges, Tamika, but I have to file a statement.” The principal frowned. “Look, I know it's not easy for you here—”
“She can handle it,” Mom said.
“Mrs. Sykes, as I believe I told you, we have options. The special programs school where Tamika can be with kids who—”
“As I believe I told
you
, sir, regular school is just fine for my daughter. Right, Mika?”
 
Mik marched out of school into the bright cold day, peeled off as she signed, I'M LATE FOR JOE'S.
Mom followed Mik uphill. “So am I.”
Mik stopped. HE CALLED YOU?
“How come you didn't tell me, Mika? The man is offering you a chance at a normal life.”
“
Nor
mal.”
“Wait up. I don't want you walking alone from school anymore. That Shanelle don't play. I saw what she did to that girl last year, that buck fifty down the side of her jaw. Y'all have that Fatima pick you up from now . . . ” Mom looked up as an orange dragonfly floated past her. She jumped back as another—purple—landed on her shoulder.
BOOK: The Orange Houses
7.82Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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