White Lines (22 page)

Jada wondered why his straightforwardness made her feel comfortable rather than repulsed. She didn’t like nosy people. But somehow, Born came across as genuinely interested, not prying. Without thinking about it, she answered him. “Me and my sister moved to Staten Island a little while ago. We moved out here from Brooklyn because they put my sister in a group home out here. My mom and my sister don’t speak, so I just came to see her by myself. Okay?”

Born nodded. “Okay. I understand now. Do you think she’ll mind if I steal your time for a few hours?”

Jada grinned slightly. “I’m not sure. Where did you plan on taking me?”

“Well, we had some lunch. Now let’s go see a movie.”

Jada thought it over. She wondered whether she should trust this handsome stranger, or if she should just go back and wait for Ava. She sat staring at her empty plate for several minutes before she looked up and saw Born staring at her.

“So, you coming with me or what?” he asked.

Jada shrugged. “I’ll roll with you for a little while. Just let me leave a note for my sister so that she knows I’m out here.”

Born nodded, agreeing. “You can give her my pager number and tell her to beep me when she gets home and I’ll bring you back to where she lives.” Jada watched Born summon the waitress and request the check. She liked his take-charge demeanor. She felt strangely drawn to his overconfident nature. While Born settled the bill, Jada quickly scribbled a note to her sister.

They left the diner, and drove back to Ava’s group home. Jada went inside and dropped off the note, and came back to Born, who was waiting patiently in the car. He drove off, through the Harbor, and on down Richmond Terrace. As they passed West Brighton—Jada’s old neighborhood—she stole a glance at her past. She wondered if her mother was still sitting in her apartment with the television turned off, pretending that she wasn’t home. She wondered if Mr. Charlie was still as conniving as he used to be. Jada was determined to never go back to rock bottom, where she’d been before.

Born noticed that Jada was quiet. He figured she was lost in thought, and he didn’t interrupt that. Instead, he continued to steal glances at her as he drove. Jada didn’t look at Born. She continued looking out the window,
a list of questions forming in her mind. Who was this guy? Why did he want to spend time with her? What would happen next?

At the same time, Born was wondering as well, wondering why he was so intrigued by this pretty girl he’d never seen before. Wondering what it was about her that made him want to break her guard down. He drove down Forest Avenue, close to the lustrous green lawn sprawled across Clove Lake Park. He turned into the parking lot of a small brick apartment building nestled discreetly between a doctor’s office and a set of homes. Once the car was parked, Born looked at Jada and said simply, “This is where I live.” He got out of the car, and Jada followed in silence.

They entered the quiet lobby, and Born bypassed the locks and security codes. Then they walked down a carpeted hallway to a small elevator, which they boarded. Born pressed five and they rode in silence until the doors opened up. Before they exited, Jada stopped Born, and she stood holding the elevator doors open. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked him. Jada figured he wanted some ass, and she wanted him to lay his cards on the table before they went any further.

He shrugged. “I thought you wanted to watch a movie. This is where I live, so I thought we could watch a movie here. I don’t go to movie theaters and shit like that.” Born looked at Jada’s face, noticed the guarded expression on it. He sighed. “You seem like you have trouble trusting people,” he said. “You jumped to the wrong conclusion when we ate lunch today, and you made me feel like I was putting pressure on you when I wasn’t. I tried to ask about your family, and you jumped down my throat. So I figured that bringing you here, where I live, would make you see that I don’t have nothing to hide. You can trust me.”

“Trust is earned. I learned that much from the streets.”

Born smirked. Here she was with this “from the streets” shit again. This girl sounding like she really thought she knew something about the streets. He knew she was still somewhat naive, simply because he could see it in her
eyes.
But for reasons that Born had yet to understand, he was interested in this particular young lady, more so than the countless others he spent time with. This one, he knew somehow, was special. “So let me
give you a reason to trust me by inviting you into my home. This is where I lay my head. It don’t get no more trustworthy than that.”

Jada stood for another few moments, thinking. Then she stepped aside and allowed Born to walk past her, off the elevator and down the hallway to the last door. He turned the key in apartment 530, and they entered his domain.

Jada looked around at the brown sofa, the plain glass tables, and the simple lamps. The place was littered with CDs, the table was covered with them. “Wow, you need to hire a maid.” Jada frowned at the clothes on the floor, and the boxes of new sneakers scattered throughout the room. She looked at the larger-than-life speakers with food wrappers and empty bottles perched on top.

Born shook his head in dismay. “You just never have nothing nice to say, huh?”

“How old are you?” Jada asked, out of the blue.

“I’m twenty-three. Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”

She smiled, shyly. “I think it’s impressive that you have your own place in such a nice building and you’re such a young man. That was a nice thing to say, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Born nodded, agreeing. And then he smiled at her. There were those dimples again. “Yeah, that was nice,” he admitted. “Make yourself at home.”

Jada did, sitting beside him on the sofa. She saw the huge television set that seemed to take up half of the living room. She saw the piles of VHS tapes lined up at the bottom of the entertainment center, and figured she could have her pick of what she wanted to watch. She decided to make conversation first. “So, can I ask you some questions?”

“Go ‘head,” he said. “I told you I ain’t got nothing to hide.”

Jada sat back, and crossed her legs. “What’s your real name, Born?”

“Marquis Lamont Graham.”

“Damn, you gave me your whole government name, huh?” She smiled. “What do you do for a living?”

His smile began to fade somewhat. “I don’t work.”

Jada was smiling now, since they both knew he was a hustler. “Okay. You don’t work. So what do you do?”

Born shrugged. “I’m just surviving, you know what I’m saying?” He tried to act like he wasn’t uncomfortable with her line of questioning. But he really was.

“Born, when did you get involved in selling—”

“Don’t ask no more questions.” Born sat back, his long legs spread wide apart. “I showed you all there is to see about me. You know more than you should already. So now it’s your turn. Tell me what you’re all about. I’m listening.”

“That depends on what it is you wanna know.”

Born shrugged his shoulders. “Start with telling me about your sister. Why’s she in a group home?”

Jada looked at Born. He was asking tough questions now. She swallowed hard, lit up a cigarette, and told Born about all the drama—Ava’s suicide attempt, the accident that killed J.D., and about the move from Brooklyn to Staten Island. When she was done, she sat back and looked at Born, trying to gauge his reaction. Born’s expression was blank as he watched her try to read him. She continued. “So we moved out here to be closer to Ava, and I been staying in touch with my sister ever since.” She sat back, feeling she had tidily summed up the less seedy aspects of the past several years of her life. Sure, she’d left out a lot of the story. But she had answered his question. Born wasn’t so easily satisfied.

“So where do you live now? With your moms?”

Jada looked at Born, long and hard. “No. I don’t live with my mother.”

“So who do you live with? You live by yourself?”

Jada shook her head. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “I live with a friend of mine. She has a place of her own. But I’m only gonna be there until I get on my feet and get a job and everything.”

Born listened to Jada. He had seen a dozen other girls just like her: young, pretty, lost, and searching for something. He wondered once again what it was about Jada that seemed so different from the others. He thought she had potential, though he hardly even knew her. “So you’re
twenty, you live with your friend, and you don’t have a man?” Born nodded. “But what’s the
whole
story?” He watched Jada’s eyes flutter his way.

Jada didn’t know what to make of this question. Born couldn’t be a mind reader, but she wondered how he sensed that there was so much more to her story than the abridged version she’d just given him. She found herself wanting to tell him, and she couldn’t figure out why. But just then, Born’s pager began to vibrate, and an unknown number appeared. He dialed the number, held a brief conversation, and handed Jada the phone. It was Ava. And after assuring her sister that she was fine, that she was on her way to see her, Jada hung up. Strangely, she was disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to finish her conversation with Born. She asked Born if they could continue it some other time. “I like talking to you,” she said.

He grinned, because he had also enjoyed their conversation, and found Jada easy to talk to. He found her to be a kindred spirit, someone whose life had seen plenty of ups and downs, just as his had. Born and Jada gathered their things, and he dropped her off at Ava’s group home. On the way their conversation was easier. Born told Jada that he understood how it was to have concern for a family member’s well being, as Jada seemed to be concerned for Ava. He told Jada that he admired her for coming to see her sister. Jada thanked him as he pulled up outside the group home. She let him know that she was grateful that he had been such a gentleman. He gave her his pager number. And this time, he didn’t worry that she might not call.

Born picked Jada up from Shame’s place on Steuben Street one day in August 1995. Jada had paged him from a pay phone at the corner store. He called the unfamiliar number right back, and was glad to hear her voice when she answered it. Ever since their initial encounter, he had waited patiently for this very phone call. Jada hoped that he would be free that day, since Shante’s boyfriend was back at her apartment. Jada needed to get out and do something to occupy her time. But Ava was going to take her SATs that day, and Jada had no money to occupy herself while Shante and her man played house. Born was glad that Jada had paged him, since almost a week had passed since their first unexpected date. He suggested that he come and get her, so that they could watch the movie they never got to watch the first time around. He pulled up in his Benz just as she came outside.

Jada walked over to the car, wearing a red T-shirt and some Guess jeans. Born saw potential in her. She was so pretty that he was eager to see what she would look like all dressed up, with her hair done professionally and wearing some jewelry. He noticed that she wore no earrings, no jewelry of any sort. She was plain, and still stunning, as she climbed inside his ride.

“Hello,” she said.

Born grinned. “Wassup, pretty girl? You ready to pick up where we left off?”

Jada grinned right back. “Yup. Let’s go.”

Born drove off, and headed for his place. He was curious to find out which movie Jada had brought to watch on his large-screen TV. So he asked her. “You said you were gonna bring the movie. So let me see what you got.”

Jada pulled a movie out of her bag and showed it to him. Born looked at the movie in her hands, then looked at her as if she was crazy. He looked back at the movie, hoping his eyes were deceiving him. Then he looked at her again. “You’re kidding, right? You want me to watch
Grease?’

Jada laughed. “Yes, I want you to watch
Grease
with me. I love this movie.” Jada knew Born would be reluctant to watch a movie about two white kids falling in love in the 1950s. But it was Jada’s favorite movie.

“Why do you love that movie?” His face was contorted, as if he was really puzzled by this.

She laughed again.
“Grease
is about two people from opposite sides of the tracks who fall in love. And in the end, they’re both willing to change so that they can be together. That’s a beautiful story, right?” She smiled.

Born sighed, exasperated. “Next time, I’m picking the movie.” Jada laughed, and sang along quietly with the Anita Baker song playing on the radio. He glanced at her from time to time as he drove, still amazed by her beautiful facial features and her glowing light brown skin. She seemed a little less edgy than she was the first time. “I don’t think me and you are from opposite sides of the tracks, though.” He said it as he turned down Forest Avenue.

Jada looked at him. “No? You think you come from the same type of shit as me?”

He nodded. “I know I do. You told me that your sister was in trouble, and she tried to kill herself. You said you been on your own since sixteen, been through all kinds of shit, seen all kinds of shit. So that says it all right there. I’ve been through my share of bullshit, too.” He looked at her as they stopped at a red light. “I think we have more in common than you think.”

Jada shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe we’re not from opposite sides of the tracks,” she said. “But you can still enjoy
Grease Γ

Born laughed as he turned into his building’s parking lot and found his usual space. He parked his beloved automobile, and then he and Jada headed for his place. When they got inside the lobby, Born pressed the button for the elevator, and looked at Jada from head to toe. She noticed his scrutiny, and she frowned. “Don’t do that,” she said.

He smiled, innocently. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t look at women like that. We don’t like it.” Jada boarded the elevator when the doors opened. Born followed her, his eyes glued to her ass.