The Usual Suspects Page 4

  • use manners

  • be a good sport

  • be helpful

  • follow directions

  • USE EMPATHY!

  When I read them, the signs seem like another attempt at brainwashing from the teachers. That’s the thing—I have to constantly be on guard against all the messages they want to program into us. Again, I could almost hear Mr. Blackmon’s voice say how my hypervigilance and paranoia are an unnecessary defense mechanism. But of course he has to say that; the signs were his idea.

  “What are you thinking about doing with your life?” Mr. Blackmon asks.

  Like I said, he’s always about the feels. “I don’t know. If I make it to next week, maybe I’ll give it some thought.”

  “You’re telling me that a young man of the world, like yourself, as bright as you are, hasn’t thought at all about any future plans?”

  “Maybe I’ll be a drug dealer. Is that what you want to hear? That’s all anyone expects of me anyway.” Raising my voice a little, I nod toward Mrs. Horner.

  “That’s not true, Thelonius. I expect great things from you.” Mr. Blackmon rests a hand on my shoulder. He can be so corny sometimes.

  “Mr. Blackmon, you married?”

  “Yeah, nine years. To my high school sweetheart as a matter of fact.”

  “Who does that? You straight-up got no game.” I hunch over a bit more in my seat to pounce on this revelation. And convenient change of topic. “Any kids?”

  “Two, a five- and a six-year-old. Why?”

  “Just trying to figure out if you’re missing anything at home. The way you always coming over here to talk, I figured you were lonely or something. Are you lonely, Mr. Blackmon?” I clap my hand on Mr. Blackmon’s shoulder. I keep my face as solemn as I can for as long as I can before a smile cracks through.

  Mr. Blackmon swallows another gulp of water.

  The door swings open, and Brionna Davidson saunters in. A sixth grader with a thick head of serpentine braids, each of which has three white beads dangling from the tips, she breezes in and out of class at will. She and her teachers came to a bit of an informal agreement: whenever she began to get too worked up, too anxious or “full of energy” as she put it, they let her walk down to the Special Ed room to take a break. Mrs. Horner supervises the administration of her meds here rather than at the nurse’s office.

  “You need your pills, honey?” Mrs. Horner asks. She’s also softer with girls.

  “Yeah.” Brionna hops up on her desk to have a seat while she waits.

  “Can I use the restroom?” Nehemiah always tries to work Mrs. Horner when she seems distracted. The problem is that she is never so distracted that she doesn’t see him coming.

  “Have you earned any time by doing your work?” she asks.

  “Dang.” Nehemiah breaks the word, pronouncing it like it has two syllables. He crumples up a sheet of paper and throws it at her desk. Mrs. Horner reaches for the blue stack of papers, reflection forms to be filled out whenever a student misbehaves. A form means automatic after-school detention. Nehemiah stops himself, finds the piece of paper, and smooths it out for her approval.

  “Fine. I don’t want to hear your fussing.” Taking a casual survey of his work, she sets the blue sheet down and fills out a hall pass instead.

  Nehemiah trots toward the door but stops at my desk. Flexing his thin arms and balling his hands into fists, he lunges his chest forward. I duck backward.

  “You flinched.” Nehemiah punches me twice.

  “This is a stupid game. Of course I flinched. You ain’t exactly the most in-control dude I know. You might swing and hit me by accident.”

  “Whatever.” Nehemiah squints like he just noticed me for the first time. “What’s up? You got your scheming face on.”

  “If nothing else, we need to figure out who brought that gun to school before this whole situation finds a way to fall on us.”

  “What are we going to do? You got a plan?” Nehemiah glances toward Mrs. Horner before dropping to a knee pretending to tie his shoelace.

  “Not sure yet. I’m just at the thinking stage. First up, though, I need to talk to Moms before she hears Mrs. Fitzgerald’s message.”

  The bus driver snails through the streets, never in any particular hurry.

  First the bus lurches out of the school parking lot, belching black smoke, grumbling along the side street that winds from Persons Crossing Public Academy to the main road. Traffic backs up behind it. Cars are too scared to dart around it because this stretch of road is a well-known speed trap. With each stop, I recalculate what story to give Moms that might spare my life.

  The gray road gives way to rows of trees that tick by with the rumble of the bus as my soundtrack. I picture Moms stomping around my room like Godzilla, her yelling worse than any radioactive breath. The rows of trees give way to the houses of our addition. Though traveling the same route the bus always takes, it seems like the bus driver, Mrs. McGhee, has gone out of her way to snake through the neighborhood. She yields to the buses from other schools, which crisscross the subdivision. She stops at every house. She brakes to allow plenty of time for squirrels to scamper in front. What should be a five-minute trek adds several years to my life while I sweat what I’m going to tell Moms.

  Our house sits on a blind curve. Traffic can’t see through the thick stand of trees that guards the edge of our property. It doesn’t matter how many signs we plant or how often Moms yells at them, kids dash across the road like they can’t be hit. I find myself leaning to the side as if somehow I could then see around the final bend of my street. Moms drives a blue Prizm, a 1992 edition. She doesn’t care that the paint is peeling from the hood. The car runs well and is paid off. I pray long and hard that when we find our way around the curve that her car won’t be parked in the driveway like some predatory bird waiting to swoop down and snatch me up whole. On the other hand, if I do see it, I at least have a few moments to mentally brace myself for Hurricane Moms.

  I have a theory that the best way to control a story is to be the one telling it. It’s like a truth inoculation. You know, like when you go to the doctor to get immunized, they give you a shot that’s a little bit of the thing they’re trying to protect you against? A little bit of it triggers your body to protect itself. In this case, I need to give Moms a careful amount of the truth to protect her against the full truth. So actually this is for her own good.

  When we follow the bend, it isn’t the car in the driveway that makes me both sigh and send my heart tumbling into my stomach. It’s the sight of my mother squaring off against a teenage girl. While a growing crowd of neighborhood kids surrounds them.

  “Oh snap.” Nehemiah prepares to join me at my stop. He rarely rides all the way to his home since no one would be there, especially this soon after school. “Moms is about to go off.”

  I scramble to collect my stuff and slink off the bus.

  “Oooo,” the twins say at the same time. Tafrica Simone and Wisdom Monet aren’t related and don’t look like each other. Tafrica has skin the color of rich sepia, her hair styled into a nest of thick braids. Wisdom, short for Wisdom-Madonna, has the complexion of milk with a dab of butter in it. She has long blond hair woven into two braids and a face that’s perfect with her glasses. The two all but hold hands wherever they go, a continuous fountain of gossip.

  “Who’s that with your mom?” Wisdom blocks me, ignoring how anxious I am to get off at my stop.

  “Ain’t that RaShawn and his scraggily butt?” Tafrica asks.

  “With his sister. You know that can’t be good.” Wisdom nods with a somber tsking to her voice.

  “Triple OG, low-key to the max,” they say at the same time before slapping hands. They love to make up their own slang. If (though it’s more like when) others start using it, they’ll change it up. They also love drama, always wanting a front row seat to it, thriving on it like vampires in a blood bank.

  Trailed by the twins, Nehemiah and I push through th
e crowd. RaShawn’s sister’s loud voice cuts through the chatter of the neighborhood. Her skinny body gestures and postures with much fury in exaggerated anger.

  “Where he at? Where’s the little bully?” she yells. Pink flip-flops match her sweatpants, the word “Juicy” bedazzled across her butt. A large set of lips paint her T-shirt like a giant, overlipsticked woman had kissed her chest. The girl towers over Moms.

  “Get out of the street before you get hit. You know these fool drivers don’t slow down around that curve.” Moms prowls about the yard, her mere presence alone keeps everyone backed onto the sidewalk or edging the street. She remains unimpressed by all of RaShawn’s sister’s antics. Still, it’s a good thing it’s too early for her to have picked up my baby sister, Ahrion, from her school. It’s harder to pull off being intimidating with an eight-year-old clinging to your leg. “There aren’t any bullies around here. You need to calm your narrow behind down, coming up into my house like you got no sense.”

  “You need to get your hands out of my face.” The girl steps backward. Her left hand on her hip, she raises her other hand to finger wag. The roar of the bus driving off draws her attention. “Look, there he go now.”

  I stop, my heart thumping in my chest, when I trace her gaze to Nehemiah. He often hangs with us after school until his mom, grandma, or whoever was staying at his house that week got home. Moms considers him a second son, which is good since he’s like my brother. Moms took to him immediately. I don’t know—it was something in his eyes, the same way you can find a puppy and know it had been hurt in the past. She understood that they may try to be the best puppy they could be, but something might set them off and remind them of the bad times. Her “adopting” him also had a downside since most folks don’t realize just how protective Moms is of her children.

  “I’m going to say it one more time: there aren’t any bullies here.” Moms is still in control, but I can tell she’s reaching the limits of her . . . politeness. Like an engine revving into the red, each word spills out of her mouth pronounced with an edge. She might not want to admit it, but she’s a lot like Nehemiah. Moms may be older, with a longer fuse, but once lit, she could go off like a Roman candle.

  “He got in a fight with my little brother.” The girl clutches RaShawn, waving him about like a prop doll. His sister is many things, concerned is not one of them. That girl can’t find a maternal bone in a cemetery of mothers. This doesn’t seem like a “no one messes with my brother except me” thing. She simply needs something to justify her storming around the neighborhood, an excuse to shout and remind everyone who she is.

  Apology lights up RaShawn’s eyes. He clearly regrets involving his big sister. That’s not good for his look.

  On his end, Nehemiah casually spits into the grass.

  “Who? RaShawn? I heard about that. I handled it,” Moms says.

  “Handled it how? You ain’t his momma,” RaShawn’s sister yells to everyone watching.

  “I’m better than his momma. I’m actually here.” Moms lets that line sit in everyone’s ear for a minute, like she wants it to travel the neighborhood, before she continues. “And RaShawn, with his little wannabe hood self, gave as good as he got. He started the fight last week. Nehemiah and his angry excuse for a behind started it this week. I saw it, I stopped it. It got dealt with.”

  “Well, I’m here to see it gets dealt with better,” RaShawn’s sister blusters, but her voice falters a little bit, not quite convinced of her own words.

  “And who. Are. You?” There it is. That vessel in my mother’s neck throbs like it’s keeping beat to that old jazz music she loves so much. She’s on final countdown, soon to launch. “In fact, why am I out here explaining myself to a child? Someone who needs her own momma to do a better job of checking her hoochie outfits before she steps out of the house. You want things done better? Why don’t you start by keeping your little hoodlum at home in the first place?”

  “He over here ’cause everyone hangs out here.” That’s the second time RaShawn’s sister checks herself. Her voice lightens up as if she is no longer sure of where to step.

  “Not everyone. Not no more. He too through.” Moms crosses her arms, a judge delivering her verdict. She stares down every kid present, daring them to say otherwise.

  Sensing a change in the direction the wind is blowing, RaShawn’s sister knows she’s losing her audience. “That’s fine. I’ll just get my other brother and unleash him.”

  Uh-oh, I think. All a person has to do to jump-start the fury in Moms is just hint at a threat to one of her children. The sky might as well turn faint green with the sound of a rumbling train in the distance signaling the imminent touchdown of a tornado.

  Moms’s brow knits. Her lips quiver. The large veins in her neck tighten like thick cords. Her lips curl. Her body quakes. Moms’s head ticks to the side. She starts reaching for her earrings, even though she doesn’t actually wear any. Her eyes focus like a missile lock signaling “target: acquired” as she switches into a walking nuclear warhead scanning for a head to drop onto.

  “Why wait? I’m right here.” Moms slams her fist onto the hood of her car, buckling the old, paint-faded metal. Moments like this scare me. Not because I fear for my safety, but because in this state Moms is liable to do just about anything. As far as Moms is concerned, anyone can be a threat, so if the person is at least her height and in her face, they are danger enough for her to defend herself.

  RaShawn’s sister retreats a few steps, not quite wanting to turn her back on my mom. Better to just wander down the street with her butt intact. RaShawn’s sister might have bark, but Moms has rows and rows of teeth. To save face, the girl mutters something loud enough to let everyone know she is still talking but incoherent enough to not draw anymore of Moms’s temper in her direction.

  “You got something to say? I can’t hear you.” Moms chops at her own throat with the edge of her hand acting like an ax head. “Here’s my neck. Come on with it.”

  “Moms, she gone.” I tug at her arm not wanting to make eye contact with her myself. The hope I cling to is that this scene has spent her supply of tactical anger. Otherwise, she might be too hot to charm at the moment. There’s still a crowd gathered in our yard, but we have entertained them enough for one day. “Can we go inside?”

  Tafrica and Wisdom grin and clasp hands like pleased diners pushing away from a buffet.

  “What you all looking at?” Moms yells. “Show’s over. Everybody off my property.”

  “What?” the twins say at once.

  “Everybody. Out.” Moms locks on to each of them with her “target: acquiring” gaze. The kids scatter, though they grumble with disappointment. On most days they know that Kool-Aid and pizza rolls await them at casa de Mitchell. They will probably take their frustration out on RaShawn tomorrow. Thems are the breaks for letting someone else handle your business.

  “Here’s my neck?” I ask Moms with the door barely closed behind us. “What does that even mean?”

  She inhales and exhales deeply, like she’s shedding a skin. Her mood changes and her face softens once the door closes. A couple jokes is all Moms needs to calm down. “I have no idea. I was in the moment.”

  “You were really feeling it.” Nehemiah offers a crooked smile. Partly in sympathy, since he so often gets caught up feeling it, and partly appreciative of her “feeling it” on his account.

  She plunks her purse on the counter and starts to riffle through the cabinets. “Look here, feelings weren’t meant to be hidden behind walls. You need to bring out the right ones at the right moments. I’m grown and I’m still learning how to do this better, just so you know.”

  “You all overprotective,” I say.

  “Don’t give me ‘overprotective.’ Other moms can ‘not know’ where their kids are, but I’m going to know. And you’re going to know that I know. I don’t care if I have to fight the whole neighborhood if that’s what it takes to make sure you’re safe.” Moms whirls around and grips Ne
hemiah’s head to drag him over. “That goes for your grapefruit-sized head, too.”

  Moms opens a few cabinets, spreading out bread and turkey and condiments, before stopping. Both her arms press against the counter like she’s desperately trying to hold herself up. Then she starts talking.

  “I remember when there were good days. Every day it seems like violence touches someone near us. Neighbors. Family. Friends. Even people that I don’t know. But each one takes a piece of me. Every. Day. I don’t know what to do.”

  Me and Nehemiah huddle near the kitchen, neither of us saying anything, because it’s like she’s not really talking to us and we don’t want to interrupt.

  “I go to work. I pay my bills. I make sure my kids are okay. I make sure they’re respectful. I don’t know what else to do. People want to say that mothers aren’t taking care of their kids, but I’m out here taking care of my kids. I’m trying, but I’m also scared. There’s so much violence out here. Around any corner. Any. Corner. Don’t matter where you live. I just don’t want anything to happen to my babies.”

  “It’s okay, Moms.” Not knowing what else to do, I reach my arm around her to give her a hug.

  I think if Moms had it her way, she’d write me a letter—no, a book—with all her advice assembled in one place. And she’d fill it with things like I had to know when to leave “one world” behind to enter a different one. Like what it means to be us, not just how but when. Or how when I was at home, I had to “talk like I had some sense.” All these rules to live by. Survive. Be . . . civilized. It sounds so complicated out loud, but in my heart I know what she means. She just wants to make life smoother for us and gets a little heated because she knows she can’t.

  “It’s not . . . but it will be.” She pats me on my back and wipes her eyes as she comes down, regaining herself. “I’m just tired of crying.”

  Moms finishes fixing the two of us turkey sandwiches. When we’re done eating, she adjusts the front burners of the stove to let us roast a few s’mores over them. Once we wash up from being a gooey mess, we drop onto the couch in front of the television, ready to battle out a season of Madden on the Wii. I had just grabbed the remote to power on the TV when Moms snatches it and switches the Wii off.