Where the Line Bleeds (23 page)

For all the bluster of the air conditioner in the trailer, the living room
was hot. Aunt Rita was sitting at the table slicing boiled eggs into slivers.
On the stove, a large pot of potatoes was boiling. Christophe smelled
cheese; he bet macaroni and cheese was in the oven. Aunt Rita was
sweating lightly around her hairline, and as Christophe bent to kiss her,
he saw it beading in little droplets on her nose. When his cheek came
away from hers, he felt the cool touch of moisture on it. She laughed at
him and wiped his face. Joshua walked in behind him.

"My favorite nephews."

"We your only nephews," Joshua grumbled as he hugged her. She
poked him in the stomach with the wooden handle of her knife.

"Same difference." Aunt Rita sniffed and brushed her hand underneath
her nose and waved them away from her. "Y'all smell like animal. Joshua,
you got that money you said you was putting in on the food?"

Aunt Rita glanced at Christophe, and Joshua studied his feet as
he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Joshua hadn't told Christophe
that they were contributing money to the family pot. Joshua placed the
bills on the table one by one, and he did not look at Christophe as he did
so. Aunt Rita's earrings, red, white, and blue plastic flags, shook as she
turned to Christophe. "bunny in the back. He probably trying on outfits
like a girl. He bought around three today." She covered her mouth and
sneezed.

"Bless you. We went with Uncle Paul to pick out the goat this
morning." Christophe wanted to surreptitiously lower his face to smell
his shirt. He balled his fists in his pockets. Everything was dirty about
him: his body, his money. In the dim house, even Joshua's shirt seemed
brighter than his.

"Thank you. Go ahead, now. Y'all making the kitchen stink like
hot animal."

"You making potato salad and macaroni and cheese?" Christophe
called out. "Yeah."

"Where Uncle Eze at?" Christophe heard Joshua ask this behind
him.

"I don't know. I think he went down the way by Ozene's house."

"Oh."

Christophe waited for Joshua to catch up with him and punched him
hard in the arm, joking to release the worm of spite, and ran to Dunny's
door. Why hadn't he told him? He yanked it open without knocking.
Dunny was on his knees on the floor in front of his dresser, and the
bottom drawer sat next to him. Dunny's back was to the twins and two
large QP bags of weed lay at his feet. Christophe saw him throw a small
sandwich bag into the empty maw of the drawer. It had been white.
Dunny turned to face them and Joshua reminded Christophe that he
needed to step into the room with a loud, "That's how you want to play,
huh?" and a stiff punch to his back. Christophe tripped through the door
and caught himself on the bed, and Joshua slammed it shut behind him.
Christophe felt Joshua's arm grabbing him around the waist and lifting
him up to bodyslam him on the mattress. Christophe's spine and back
stiffened; he wasn't laughing. Joshua must've felt this, because he let him
go. Dunny threw one of the QPs back into the slot, and then picked up
the other one and held it out toward Christophe.

"Here you go." Dunny was still wet from his shower. Christophe didn't
move, so Dunny threw the bag on the bed. It landed between Christophe
and Joshua, and Dunny began pulling on his clothes. He pulled his shorts
over his boxers so quickly that the fabric at the back ballooned over the
waist of his pants like the skin of a frog's croaking throat. He stubbed
his toe on the misplaced drawer. He knelt down and began shoving the
drawer into the slot; the rail was misaligned so he banged it with the heel
of his hand. It stuck.

"You should pull it back out. You keep banging on it, it's going to
jam." Joshua lay back in Dunny's bed and fanned himself with the front
of his shirt. Christophe sat dully, still.

"What you threw up in there?" Christophe asked.

Dunny stopped his shoving. The drawer shifted and squeaked in relief.
Dunny pulled a pair of socks from his top drawer and pulled one on; he
took his time smoothing the cotton fabric up and over his heel and ankle. His hair was freshly braided. Christophe knew perhaps that he should let
it go, that he should imagine that he imagined it, but he couldn't.

"You hitting the pack?" Christophe asked.

"Fuck no, I'm not hitting the pack!" Dunny glared.

"So you selling," Joshua jackknifed up in the bed, "and now Dunny
snorting powder?"

"You got me fucked up!" Dunny frowned at Joshua and waved toward
Christophe. "I don't know what he saw."

"Stop lying, nigga. Either you holding or you selling. Which one?"
Christophe said.

"You didn't see shit." Dunny snatched the lotion from the top of his
dresser and pumped the head of the bottle.

"You lying to me like I'm one of these niggas out here that ain't family.
I ain't crazy, nigga. I know what I saw." Christophe said. He stood.

"What the hell?" Joshua said.

"Come on, Joshua. This motherfucker lying."

"I'm lying now?" Dunny threw his towel across the room. It landed
on the bed in a sodden heap. Joshua stood. Christophe turned from the
door and walked over to point his finger in Dunny's face.

"Fuck yeah. You put me on, you take care of me, and then you act
like you don't know me when I ask you a simple ass question. Fuck you,
Dunny. If you ain't going to be real with me, why should I fuck with
you? Why not fuck with any of these shady niggas out here? Blood,
remember?" Christophe hit Joshua with his shoulder as he passed him.
"Let's go, Joshua."

"Damn, Chris. Calm down." Dunny sat on the chair next to his
dresser. He crossed his arms and rubbed his foot over the carpet as if
it itched. Christophe turned back to the room and walked past Joshua
again, who watched both of them, his mouth puckered.

"It's like being a little kid. Sometimes you just lie cuz it's the easiest
thing to do." Dunny said as he rolled his eyes at them. "It's not like I'm
proud of the shit." He knelt and began pulling at the drawer. Between
small grunts that sounded like he was hurting himself, he huffed. "Y'all
niggas sit the fuck down." He wrenched the drawer free. Christophe
flinched at the noise. Dunny reached into the bottom of the dresser and fumbled; Christophe heard plastic bags sliding and rustling against each
other. Dunny had never told Christophe to get the weed for himself even
though he knew Christophe knew where the stash was. Christophe had
thought Dunny simply had control issues. Could he be snorting? It didn't
look like he'd lost any weight. Dunny threw a small plastic bag to the
bed between the brothers. It barely made a sound as it landed next to the
QP. It lay on its side on the bed next to the large, green QP like a small,
dirty yellow moon. Joshua picked it up. Christophe's jaw eased. It wasn't
powder. He saw four bits of opaque crack in the corner of the bag; they
looked like teeth.

"I told you I wasn't snorting powder." Dunny joked weakly as he sat.
Christophe stared at him dryly, and Dunny grimaced.

"So you ain't smoking it." Joshua threw the bag back to Dunny
across the room. Dunny snatched it from the air with one hand, and it
disappeared in his fat, large fist.

"Funny, Joshua."

"When you start selling that?" Christophe's voice sliced neatly through
the dry banter. He suddenly felt claustrophobic. Discarded clothes lined
the floor like wood shavings in a cage. Dunny folded his arms again.

"I told you I been thinking about leaving the game. I was just trying
to stack some more paper ...I mean, I know this house mine when my
mama go, but damn, I'm grown and Eze here and I know they just want
to be alone sometime." Dunny opened his arms to them and the bag of
crack glinted in his hand like a ring. "They got a piece of land, a couple
of acres, an acre over that way." Dunny pointed to his left. "My mama
hooked it up so I was paying the property taxes on it. It's going to be mine
if the owner don't come up with the taxes this year. I just need enough
to put a down payment on my own trailer... my mama said she'd co-sign
for it." He threw the bag in the mouth of the dresser with a small tap.
"I wasn't making the money fast enough. Javon put me on for a little
bit." He felt for the drawer's grooves; the muted muscles in his shoulders
jumped as he patiently adjusted it by centimeters, feeling out the mouth.
The drawer slid smoothly into the metal tracks this time. "Think about it.
I know y'all won't leave Ma-mee, and y'all shouldn't, but we could have
our own spot. To chill. To get fucked up. All our own. Y'all know what's
mine is y'all's."

"Dunny, you know what's going to happen." Christophe let the
sentence dissolve in the air between them like smoke.

"Nigga, I'm the one that put you on. Big Cuz. Of course I know
what might happen. But that ain't going to happen. These assholes ain't
catching me with shit. That's why I keep it in the bag. If I get pulled over,
I'm going to swallow that shit." He frowned. "Sides, I only been doing
this for about a month and a half. I started about when you did. I give this
shit another month, tops, and then I'm done. By then I'll have enough
saved up to make up the rest of the money for the down payment and
then that's it. I'm done."

"With everything?" Joshua asked. Christophe thought he sounded
hopeful.

"Shit, you can't expect me to stop cold turkey." Dunny laughed and
the sound of it dropped like stones from his mouth. He rubbed at his sole
before he pulled the other sock over his naked foot. "Really though, I'm
giving it up. Weed, too, by the end of the summer." He hesitated. "I'm in
the game until my nigga's out." Dunny looked at Christophe meaningfully
as he picked up his shoe. "I make enough money so that I don't need this
shit. Want, yeah-need, no. I mean, I might still get a couple of QPs
to smoke every once in a while, and sell a couple of dimesacks out my
smoking sack, but fuck all this moving QPs. I'm tired of riding around
shitting on myself whenever I see a cop car in St. Catherine's. Shit, I can't
get no pussy if I'm always ducking and dodging the police whenever shit
getting good."

Joshua surprised Christophe with a high-pitched laugh. "You can't
get no pussy noway." Christophe looked down at his pockets. Dunny
had given him a deadline. The weight of Dunny's words bore down on
the curve of his skull, the angled slope of his shoulders, to rest in the dry,
veiny skin of his dark hands. It rested in them like something palpable,
something material: like the heavy, sawdust-filled medicine ball they'd
thrown to each other in basketball practice.

"Y'all want to go by Javon's house?" asked Dunny.

"What for?" Joshua said. Christophe pocketed the QP and flexed his
hand over the bag; it crunched and gave in his fist.

"I ain't got time to go out to Germaine tonight and wait around on
Lean. I need another QP, and Javon got some." Dunny pocketed a roll of
cash bound with a rubber band.

"Man," Joshua hesitated, "I told Laila I would stop by and see her
tonight before I went home."

"Shit, we can pick her up, too." Dunny shrugged. "We just going by
Javon house. He always got a gang of niggas over there anyway."

"You drive," Christophe said.

"Fine." Dunny led the way out of the door. Christophe barely resisted
the urge to crush the bag of weed in his pocket, to flatten it into a pancake,
a disc that he could sling across the room like a Frisbee. He wondered if it
would fly far, and if the drawer on Dunny's dresser was open, if he could
sail it into the hiding spot from the bed. After Christophe watched Joshua
walk out the door, he rose and felt his way along the wall until his hand
hit the light-switch. The room went dark, and Christophe pulled the door
shut behind him.

Joshua stood on his toes before Laila's window and reached up and
knocked. The side of the house her room was on was shadowed, and the
woods leaned in so close that he felt the touch of underbrush at his back.
A leaf caressed his ear. The light clicked on in the room, and he prepared
to duck as he saw the curtain flutter: Laila's face shone at the window
and she smiled at him. She disappeared. Dunny had parked on the curve.
Joshua waited for her at the ditch. Surreptitiously, he lowered his head to
sniff at his shirt, to gauge his funk. Yeah, he stunk like goat and musk.
She had called often after the kiss. He had waited until Christophe left
the house and called her back because he wanted to see her again, wanted
to pull her into his lap and feel her weight, soft and sure, wanted to feel
her mouth opening, wet and warm beneath his, wanted to cup the back
of her head and pull her to him by her soft, curly hair. He didn't want to
do any of this in front of Christophe, muted and solitary as he was these
days. It was why he hadn't mentioned the money; he hadn't wanted to
shame him. Joshua watched her run to him across the lawn on her toes.
She ran like a girl, her legs kicking out to the side, and it made him want
to pick her up when she stopped before him.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You want to come with us by Javon house? Or you going to get in
trouble?"

"Naw, my mama don't care. Y'all ain't going to be over there all night,
is y'all?"

"Naw." He wanted to touch her. Joshua crawled in the backseat. Laila
followed him. Joshua glanced at Christophe as they pulled away from
the ditch. Christophe was slouched down in the seat so far Joshua could
only see his hair, blowsy as a jellyfish in a current. He was ignoring them.
Dunny tossed a cigar and a small sack to Joshua over the backseat, and
Joshua began to cut at the cigar with his fingernail over an empty shoebox
top he picked up off the floor. Laila had scooted over so her leg was
against his own. The moon was high in the sky: it lit her thigh. He could
barely see her face as the stereo boomed and dropped the rhythm, but he
could feel her, dense and small next to him. Joshua realized he was leaning
into her, pulled by her gravity, so he hunched over the platter of weed on
his lap and tried to concentrate. He could smell honeysuckle coming in
through the window, and he immediately associated it with her, as if she
were blooming.