You Don't Even Know Me (3 page)

“Do you think he cried?”

I look over at Llee.

“Do you think Grandpop Jenson cried when he got shot?”

I don't want to talk about this, so I ask them to leave. Only inside, way deep down inside, I hear a voice say,
If you don't find 'em, who will? If you don't handle your grandfather's business, who's gonna?

They get quiet, and then Kareem asks me if I want him to take me to Pokei's place. That just makes me mad. “We don't even know if he even did it! And what if he did?” I say, taking a bag of good candy and dumping it in the trash can. “Who's gonna say he did? Nobody. Because nobody tells on nobody around here, even when they kill a nice old man who gave candy away for free.”

Kareem knows when to back off, so he changes the subject. “What color uniform we gonna wear? Where we gonna meet?”

I'm thinking about Pokei now, not the Scouts. I go and sit down by Llee. “Is your uncle the only one saying Pokei did it, or did you hear it somewhere else too?”

He puts up two fingers like a Scout. I taught him that. “Everybody's saying it.”

Kareem digs down to the bottom of the egg jar. “If Mr. Jenson had a gun, he wouldn't be dead. Pokei would be dead. And the store wouldn't be closing.”

“
Bang. Pop. Pop. Pop
. Pokei's dead now, good.” Llee's got one knee on the ground, and a finger aimed at Kareem, who stands up and fires back.

I slap his trigger finger. “Quit it,” I say, “and go home. I have to fix my grandmother lunch.” I don't, but my stomach is a little queasy. That happens sometimes when I talk about this stuff too long. I'm wondering about Pokei, though. What if he is the one? What if he cashed in the nickel and still has the shoe?

“I can take you to his house,” Kareem says. “Right now if you wanna.”

Kareem isn't always wrong. Llee either. Once my grandmother lost her purse and they took her to the house of the kid who found it. The money was gone, but not the credit cards. “You two need to leave,” I say, picking up two big bags. “Come on, Llee, you're first.” I walk out the door. Llee's right behind me. If I go to Pokei's place, I'll take something with me, I think. Gotta protect myself.

Llee and Kareem live on opposite ends of the block, and neither one of them has brothers, so I don't mind looking out for them. Llee hugs me when I drop him off, and asks if I'll take them to the basketball court later. “Sure,” I say, heading back to the store.

When I come back for Kareem, I ask for Pokei's address, just in case. Then I pick up two bags and start walking him up the street. Kareem's older sister, Sahara, answers the door and asks if I'm nuts, giving him so much junk food. “You know he hyper,” she says, telling him to put that candy away until their mom gets home.

I'm halfway up the street when I hear Kareem yelling my name. “Take this,” he says catching up to me. The brown paper bag is wrinkled and greasy. “My father work at a garage and people leave stuff. You can have it 'cause you gave me all that candy.”

“What is it?”

He sits on the curb, opening the bag like it's lunch he's not sure he wants to eat. Out comes bunches of old newspaper. Kareem tells me to look in the bag. He's smiling. Proud of himself.

I've never seen a real gun before.

Kareem stares up at me. “One time Mr. Jenson bought me a coat. He said mine was too small. I still got it.”

He stares into the bag, reaching inside.

I stop him. “Don't do that.”

Kareem is like Llee. He'll do what I say. So he sits with his hands in his lap. “My father forgets about it,” he says. “But sometime I go outside . . . and practice.” He unties a shoelace.

“You do what?”

He asks me not to tell, then says how sometimes he sneaks out while his parents are working and pretends to shoot the trees. “But one day I'm gonna do it for real.”

“Shoot trees?”

“Shoot something. Something . . . big.”

My fingers can't tie his laces without shaking. “You have to put it back, Kareem.”

“But Pokei shot Mr. Jenson.”

“You don't know that.”

“Maybe he ain't do it. But I bet he knows who did.”

Since I came here last month I've been wanting whoever took out my grandfather to be dead too. Getting even, that's what's been on my mind; in my dreams. I can't talk to my parents about it. They'd say nice boys don't think that way. I can't tell my grandmother because she's got her own problems. My uncles are lawyers—two of them, anyhow. If I say something like this to them, they'll tell me that the law gets even for people. Only Llee and Kareem know what I think. They know what I want, what we all want: for someone to do what the police can't or won't. I swallow. I tell myself that people like me don't do stuff like this. But I ask for the bullets anyhow. “How do you put them in?”

He wants to show me. “Just tell me,” I say.

His father goes hunting, and takes him sometimes. He showed him how to load and unload last year. Kareem shot a possum, a raccoon, and three mice—nothing human, he tells me. But he's ready to, he says.

I dig down deep until I feel metal. The barrel. The neck. The handle. Then I grab the bag and start running. Kareem follows, like usual.

We run up the street and into the store, locking the garage door behind us. The bag goes on the counter. We sit on stools, staring at it. It's real, that gun. “And it kills,” I say, watching my fingers shake. I look inside. When I pick it up it feels like it's mine already. I relax a little.

“You can do it,” Kareem whispers.

“Huh?”

“They do it all the time on TV; around here, too.” He's got his fingers in the egg jar again. “I ain't scared of nobody . . . nothing. So when I'm your age and somebody mess with me, they gone.” He pulls his dripping wet hand out of the jar and turns it into a gun. “Let me show you how to do it.” Pink water drips on the stool like blood.

“Do what? I say.

“Show you how to kill.”

I sit myself down—so I don't fall down. Kareem keeps talking, asking if I think my grandfather's in heaven.

Before I answer, he's on to Llee. “I let him hold it once.”

I look at him.

“Llee's afraid of guns. But he ain't gonna be soon.”

Everything stops—the hum from the cooler, the water dripping from Kareem's fingers, even the ant sneaking across the floor. I think about Llee and Kareem all by themselves with guns and nobody to stop 'em from shooting each other.

Kareem can't keep quiet. He's been thinking, he says, asking me to promise not to tell nobody what he's about to tell me. But before I can promise, he's talking. His father's gun spent the night with Llee one time. “By accident. I forgot it. We play with it over there sometimes, but don't nobody know. I'm the cowboy . . . 'cause it's mine.”

All of a sudden, my bowels get so loose so fast I almost don't make it to the bathroom. I'm in there so long; Kareem knocks on the door three times, asking what's wrong.

By the time I finish and figure out what to do, Kareem is done eating half a box of donuts. I sit at the counter with him, telling him to wipe his mouth. I stare at the gun, and then at the frame with the dollar in it. I ask Kareem if he wants it. I don't know why. Then I hand it to him. “He never hurt anyone, Kareem.”

“I know. That's what I like about him. He was nice.”

I wrap the gun up in brown paper, like sausage, and put it in the bag. I do the same with the frame, making sure Kareem understands that he's got to take care of it. “Let's go,” I tell him.

He jumps down and follows me. He knows a shortcut to Pokei's place, he says. But he thinks we should check out the jitney station first. “He be there day and night.”

I'm locking the door, looking at the stuff over by the curb. Yesterday somebody put new shoes there. “So you can walk all over heaven, Mr. J,” a note says.

We stop in front of Westina's house. She worked at the store too. Then we pass the twins' house. They're in college. My grandfather would send them each twenty bucks a month. Llee's house is next. Then Kareem's. He passes it by, though, and doesn't look back until he's almost at the corner. By then I'm up his steps and ringing the bell.

“No!”

He runs back to the house, pulling at the bag while I lean on his doorbell again and again.

“Give me that.”

I hold it high over his head.

“I'll put it back. Promise.”

He jumps up and down, grabbing for it. “Don't get me in trouble.”

My feet get stepped on. My legs get pushed. I don't budge.

Kareem is a little kid, and all little kids cry when they know they're about to get in trouble. So does he. “I won't do it no more,” he says, hanging on to my legs, begging.

I hand his dad the bag. “Kareem gave me this.”

I hear Kareem just as clear as I hear my grandfather sometimes tell me to take care of things while he's gone. “Snitch,” he says.

His father opens the bag and looks at me. He stares at Kareem, pulling him inside with one hand. “Thanks,” he says to me. “His mother been sayin' we need to get him some help. Guess we better.”

I head for the store. Summer won't be the same now. Everything's messed up. Kareem might not even want to join the Scouts. And Llee, what'll he do if he's not at the store, bugging me?

I open the store door, then close it right back. Before I know it I'm walking up the steps of my grandparents' house. I sit on the swing, thinking of ways to get my grandmother to change her mind. People need this store—I do too—even if it's not a real store; just a garage full of candy. Besides, can't nobody fill my grandfather's shoes but me. And can't nobody talk to Kareem and Llee about getting over getting even but me, either. Otherwise we'll all be trying to get even until the day we die. And Granddad would say that's a stupid way to live.

When I'm president of the world,

I'll move the White House to Harlem,

Outlaw guns—especially the ones they make to take out you and me.

When I'm president of the world,

Babies won't ever go hungry,

Pampers and cable TV will be free,

And houses in the hood will look like the ones on HGTV.

I'll fix the hole in the ozone,

Make it illegal to be grown and styling in the same clothes that your kids put on.

When I'm president of the world,

I will listen more than talk,

Walk
instead of ride.

That way I'll see America through other people's eyes.

When I am president of the world,

I will still come for dinner on Sundays.

But no chicken, please.

People might not understand.

IF YOUR AUNTIE WAKES YOU UP at four in the morning, telling you to get the heck on outta her crib now, you got the right to knock her upside the head—
pow!
Only I ain't that kind of dude. I got respect. Even though this little voice in my head says to clock this broad, I turn around, face the wall, and shut my eyes. “Awright, Aunt Philomena,” I say, pulling blankets over my head. “Get on up outta here.”

She's short, with legs as skinny as the branches on the artificial tree by the window in the basement. But she thinks she's tough. So she don't back down. She grabs the covers with both hands and pulls. I have to hold on to the window ledge not to get drug off, too.

Me kicking her arms slows her down, but it don't stop her. She pulls my right arm. I snatch it back. She grabs my left foot. I use my other one to get her off me. Then I take back what's mine—the Cleveland Browns blanket she bought for me last Christmas.

Out of breath, breathing hard like she needs that ventilator her friend uses when she comes visiting, Auntie leans against the wall. “God, God . . .”

She is always talking about God.

“God gave you ears, didn't he? Then get up . . . get out of here,” she says, holding her chest.

I'm yelling too. “This is my room! You get out!” It's hot underneath the covers; in the house, too. She's sixty-three, with arthritis in her joints, so it's always a thousand degrees in here. But I stay covered up anyhow, tucking my feet under the blanket and using my fists to hold down the other ends. “Stop pulling!” I curse at her. I have to.

“You cursing me, boy? You swearing . . . in my house?” Auntie pulls and my hammertoe feels air. But she ain't no dude, I'm stronger than her, so after my head is free and I'm breathing in deep, I reach back and jerk the covers again. She flies into bed with me this time, smacking my forehead, then my lips—aiming for my head. “What I say? What did I say? Get out!”

I warn her for the last time. “Just because you my auntie don't mean I won't hit you,” I say, pulling back the covers.

“You did everything else that you could do to me. Hitting was probably next on the list anyhow.”

For one whole minute she and me just stare at each other, neither one of us blinking. Ain't no hug coming from her this time. Ain't no apology finding its way to my lips, like it sometimes do. It's over, living here with her. No turning back now.

“Screw you.” I come out from underneath the covers. The sheets, too. Then I'm on my feet, heading for my dresser, showing her what I been trying not to show her all this time.

She stands up, her eyes squeezed closed. “Boy! I ain't your mother—cover up.”

Auntie Philomena is the crazy one. The one everyone warned me about when my father kicked me out and told me to go live someplace else—anyplace as long as it wasn't in his house, his city, his state. Auntie heard about that. She called me and asked if I wanted to come live with her. “Just you and me, baby.” Five bedrooms, two baths, and a pool. “What'll say?” Of course I said yeah. Otherwise I'd be homeless. No one else wanted me. And I never had my own room or a pool to swim in before—which is what I've done every day since I came here a year ago. Now this nutcase is kicking me out, like she and me ain't family. “Listen,” I say, pushing her so hard her head knocks against my bedroom door. “I didn't ask to come here. You asked me.” I open and close drawers, throwing new shirts on the floor, stepping on them like they rags our dog, Malcolm, sleeps on sometimes.

She swears if I don't put something on and pick up them good shirts she bought, she'll wring my neck. I take my time stepping into a clean pair of undies that I ironed myself. “I was doing you a favor, coming here.” I sit on the side of the bed, checking out the bags under her eyes. They so black and heavy she puts cucumbers on 'em sometimes. “Who wants to live with you anyhow?” I point to her belly that always looks pregnant. It was my job, she said, to make sure she ain't eat after eight p.m. To keep her hands off the chocolate milk and out the cookie jar. “Get stanky fat,” I say. “See if I care.”

She sits, staring out the window, not trying to explain why she putting me out.

“What I do?” I want to ask. But I don't. I walk into my closet and come back with suitcases. Then turn on the fan to cool us both off.

I am always packing; always leaving someplace. So it don't matter, leaving her too. It's just this time I didn't see it coming. I screwed up; forgot myself. Thought this was really home. That won't happen no more.

Auntie keeps her eyes on me. “I know how to pack,” I say. “You don't have to watch.”

She is stubborn. Everyone in our family is. So she just sits, ignoring Malcolm when he walks in and lies by her feet. Ignoring me too when I say for the ninetieth time for her to leave. She's so talkative usually. This morning her lips are sealed, except to tell me what I need to do to be out in the next two hours.

“Fake.” The word comes out long and slow. I wanna make sure she hears me, so I say it again. “Fake.” It's like a smack to the face. It makes her hold her cheek, then wipe her lips with the back of her hand.

Auntie pats her head, checking for rollers that fall out like her hair sometimes does. Then she's out of the chair; hot as red peppers. “I'm just as good as they are! A lottery winner's money spends as good as a doctor's money do.”

Once I told her she was fake for living in this neighborhood like she some kind of executive, or a doctor, like the woman from Pakistan who lives up the street and got a lawn as big as the new kiddie park the city built. But that's not what I'm talking about now. I say it again, looking at her the way the man up the street looked at me once—like I was lower than the slug holes I find in the lawns sometimes. “You a fake. The biggest one ever.”

She picks at the eczema on her hands and the side of her face. Sometimes it was me that put medicine on it. “I know they talk about me,” she says, scratching too hard.

“I know they think I don't belong up here.” She's quiet for a while. Thinking about
them
, I guess. “But I earned the right to be here.”

“So did I.”

Auntie was the one who said there was nothing I could ever do to get kicked out of her house. That was one whole year ago, the longest time I've ever stayed with anyone except my dad. I thought it was forever, her and me. But grown-ups change the rules when they want.

I go to the closet, take out more pants. I shut her up, for a little while anyhow. She hates when I talk about her living in this neighborhood. She wants to fit in. She never will. Me either, I guess.

Auntie points to the attic. “You got more suitcases up there.” She bought them before I got here; before she drove me across three states, showing me places I never seen or heard of before. I look at the Statue of Liberty she bought for me. And pack it. Then sit it back on the dresser that I dusted yesterday. “Why don't you just get out?” The plastic statue hits the wall and breaks.

I got a temper. She's got a temper. When we both get angry, it's like World War Ten up in here. One day after we finished arguing and making up, we watched a television show on Greek gods. For a while she called me Zeus—the god of love and thunder. I'm never gonna forget that, 'cause it was like she was comparing me to someone important; powerful, too. And when I hooked up with my crew, that's the name I took—Zeus—'cause when I'm pissed I spit fire, and when somebody do me wrong I'll destroy 'em, one way or the other.

“I just . . . need to be by myself doing this,” I say, feeling tired from getting up so early.

Sometimes Auntie listens. She gets out of the chair. Tells Malcolm to come and eat, and leaves me alone. I keep packing, thinking, wondering. Where to next? I'm running out of relatives. My father has three other sisters who pretend to care about me too. They send cards on my birthday. They always have. And they call every few months or so. But they don't want me living with them. No one does.

I lock my door. I sit on the bed. And think about what I did. Nothing. I didn't do nothing. She's just old. Mean. Fronting.

When one suitcase is filled, I start on another one. Open more drawers; stare inside. My shirts and sweaters are perfect—sitting in my drawers the way they sit on department store shelves. I'm good like that. She never had to tell me to vacuum or clean up—I did it just for fun. I clean like a thousand-dollar-an-hour maid, my father always said. But I can fire you up like Zeus.

This is real.
The words come into my head like a warning.
You gotta leave. And you don't have nowhere else to go.

“Shoot.” I pat my pockets, check underneath my bed for my cell. Then I remember. “Dag.” She took it last week. I was on punishment and she grabbed it while I was in the shower. When my punishment was over, she said Malcolm got to it. It looked like a hammer smashed it; not like a shepherd chewed it up. But she said she'd buy me a new one this week. “All that time, you was lying to me!” I shout. Sitting down, holding my stomach, feeling sick. We talked and laughed and joked around. And all that time she was planning to kick me out.

“Think. Think. Think,” I tell myself. But all my numbers were in my phone. She stepped on it once before— right in front of me. “Because of them,” she said. “Bad influences.” She's putting me out because of them too, I guess.

I open the door and lean over the hallway railing. “You crazy, you know that?”

She keeps singing about Jesus. Auntie ain't never been married. Who would want to marry her? Big mouth. Know-it-all. Think she's hard. Think she's blessed 'cause she hit the big one for six million. Man. I seen her bank account. I've watched her writing checks to that stupid church and putting money aside for my college education when I don't even want to go to college. “Your mother would want you to.” She always said that.

My mother left when I was three. For four years they told me she had died. But she wasn't dead, just gone. By the time my father decided to tell the truth, she was living in Nevada, married to a man from Jamaica who had two kids before he gave her three more. She asked if I wanted to come and live with her. For what? That's what I tell her when she calls twice a year. If she wanted me, she would have taken me with her. But she left me with him. And he never liked me. Maybe that ain't true. Never got me; understood me. That's it. He was ex-military, a workaholic who stayed gone more than he stayed at home, so by the time he knew anything, I was twelve and a half and had my own way of thinking and doing things. Military dudes only know how to do things one way—their way. So I skipped school, stayed out whenever I wanted, and got to liking blunts and the taste of gin—straight up. He couldn't make me do what he wanted, and the cops couldn't either. So he said I had to leave. I tried living with my mother for a while. But it turns out I ain't like her much either. Then there was Auntie Marcella and Auntie Champagne. The uncles on my mother's side all passed on me. They said I'd make 'em hurt me. I lived with Aunt Chrystal on my mother's side for three days. But she said if I didn't get out right that minute, she was turning me in to the police. My dad picked me up and kept me for twenty-four hours. I got here, I guess, by way of my father's baby sister, whose house I ended up at next. The family had a conference call about me. Auntie Philomena was on the line, saying she'd come for me. They warned her not to. They said foster care or a group home might be just what I needed. In the middle of the night, Aunt Philomena showed up anyhow. She had to drive all night. But she did it. “ 'Cause family do that kind of thing,” she said.

I changed—tried to anyhow, once I came to live here. I didn't sport no colors. I didn't go to the mall unless it was her and me. I never asked to go to the neighborhoods that kids like me live in. I stayed in the house. I didn't mind the quiet or the stares or that time someone called the cops 'cause they didn't know I lived around here.

I tried so hard to do good; to do right. But high school ain't nice like they always portraying it on TV. It's hard-core. Scary. Even here in the burbs. The school was so white. And the teachers and classes were so different. I been behind since first grade. Ninth grade just means I'm plain lost. So they might as well be speaking Portuguese at that school.

Cutting class is easy for me. Hitching a ride is like breathing: I do it all the time. Besides, they live in every city, in every town, on just about every block, I bet. Here wasn't no different. So one day, it happened. They found me. Or maybe I found them. You have to have somebody, even if you don't want to, I guess.

“Auntie.” I open the door. Close it. I can't ask her to let me stay. She'd just say no. But I don't have no place else to go. I open the door wider. “I'm not going to live with her.” I throw the words into the hall. They fall down the steps and she catches them.