2022 AWP Intro Journal Awards Winner
King of the Hill, Top of the Heap
Da’esha
Snippets of song drift to Da’esha, trailing from passing cars. Hip-hop, salsa, reggae, competing from souped up and tricked out luxury vehicles, shined and oiled, drivers cruising slow, windows down halfway so you can still see the tint, the music so loud the cars vibrate. It’s Harlem, it’s summer, and 125th Street still belongs to the Nigerian hair-braiders, fast-food spots, tables of wares from incense to oils to knock-off purses, blankets spread under the awnings of Jewish owned businesses, ‘No Credit Needed!’ spray-painted in the windows. The major retailers have arrived: an Old Navy, a Nine West. There are plans to open a Target on the corner of Lenox next spring, the red bullseye adorning the scaffolding draped on the corner.
Da’esha’s mother always tells her ‘a pretty woman can’t come out no dirty house,’ and that’s what she thinks of the Target and the Old Navy and even the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Harlem isn’t Times Square. It won’t sit idly while the Revitalization Committees push the addicts and dope dealers and hustlers further downtown or into the shadows, or to some other hood full of Black and brown people, counting their days, so few places left to be poor in this city. Someone has taken spray paint to the bricked area under the large glass windows of the Old Navy. Someone has defaced Colonel Sanders, added a penis between his eyes. Da’esha agrees with her mother; no matter how they try to prettify Harlem, it’s still dirty, stinks of garbage overflowing from cans on street corners, and rat and pigeon droppings, and poverty.
Da’esha is sixteen and beautiful. She’s all long bronze legs and exposed midriff, braids dangling down her back, swaying as she walks. A man is hanging from the passenger window of a BMW and he sees her, catches her eye, and winks. Traffic is backed up, so the BMW is just sitting there, idling, one among a symphony of blaring horns. On his pinky finger there’s a large gold ring and he bends it in a ‘come here’ gesture, hanging out the window, smiling, his gold fronts glinting in the sun. Da’esha sticks up her middle finger, her long acrylic nails pointy and lacquered. The man laughs and slides back into his seat, already looking past her, so much to see, so many pretty girls to harass. Ahead, the light changes and the BMW pulls away slowly.
Da’esha continues up the street. She’s headed to the A train, headed to Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. It’s a childish thought, ‘boyfriend,’ because he is a man and she must remember what her mother said: ‘it’s time to put the toys down, it’s time to be a woman.’ His name is Jeff and he’s a security guard at her high school. He found her address, showed up to the apartment in the Manhattanville projects where she lives with her mother and little sister. She thought she was in trouble, but he was wearing regular clothes and holding flowers. He sat with her mother in their cramped kitchen, peeling linoleum and one bare lightbulb. Da’esha tried to listen from the living room, but the conversation was whispered and Da’esha had to wait to be summoned.
Her mother sat her down and explained that Jeff thought she was beautiful and wanted permission to take her on a date. Da’esha watched her mother fish through an overflowing ashtray trying to find a cigarette with enough stub to smoke. Da’esha thinks her mother is beautiful, but she’s faded, like a copy too many times through the copier, her edges smudged. Her mother gave up the search, pushed the ashtray away from her, sighed. She reminded Da’esha of the overdue cable bill, and how her sister needed summer clothes, and how about they take a little vacation, just the three of them, maybe to Coney Island like they used to, wouldn’t Da’esha like that? Her mother placed her hand on Da’esha’s arm, her nails caked with dirt, a fading strip where a ring used to be, gone months ago to a pawn shop.
“He’s nice,” her mother said. Da’esha was silent so her mother pulled her hand away, began drumming her fingertips on the tabletop. “It’s time you started contributing around here,” her mother said before pushing away from the table.
And Jeff is nice. He’s thirty-seven but stylish, wears Jordan’s and plays video games and knows the lyrics to all the new rap songs. He brings gifts:a Peppa Pig bookbag for her sister, bags of fresh seafood for her mother. Jeff presses folded bills into her mother’s hands. There’s a newness to the apartment, bags from the dollar store and trips to the hairdresser. Jeff doesn’t have a car, always takes the train to their apartment and they all watch tv and eat dinner together. After an hour or two her mother puts her sister to bed, leaves them alone in the living room. They mostly kiss but sometimes more, cuddled under a blanket, Jeff guiding her inexperienced hands.
Da’esha is nearing the entrance to the train. She’s headed to Jeff’s apartment. She thinks she knows what to expect, is both excited and apprehensive. The street is crowded, and she has to keep dodging strollers, and groups of children, and tourists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a white man, red-faced and sweating in a suit, yelling, as he holds up a copy of Dianetics. There’s a man selling loose cigarettes, and some girls about her age chatting and laughing with each other. Da’esha stops and stares at the pretty girls enjoying their summer without burden, wonders when it will be their time to be women, hopes they will be ready. Suddenly, the man selling cigarettes grabs her roughly by the wrist–
Two-Tone
–and she rushes into the train station away from him. He laughs and keeps hawking.
“Loosies! Loosies! Two for a dollar! I got Newports!” He’s bouncing baby, he’s on the balls of his feet, up and down, up and down. He did a line earlier. He’s feeling it now man, can’t keep still. At least he’s in the shade. A great spot, right on the corner. His back is to the wall. He has a view of the entire street, can get a head start if the police try to rush him. Brisk business all day. At this rate he’ll sell out of the packs he brought with him, cut out before the sun goes down. Maybe get some Chinese food, spicy chicken, pork fried rice. Definitely some weed. He needs to come down a bit, mellow out, smoke a joint. He’ll turn the fan on, open the window in his rented room, burn some incense, stuff a wet towel under his door so he doesn’t have to hear his landlady’s mouth, always threatening to kick him out.
“Hey Two-Tone! Let me get one for fifty cents!” A local bum, words slurred, the stink rising off him like steam.
“Man, get away from me! Two-Tone got a business to run man.”
Two-Tone turns his head away from the man, breathing through his mouth. People are giving them wide berth, most not even looking up from their phones, the New Yorker’s instinct to avoid the homeless, the deranged, the beggars. This man in his tattered clothes and matted dreadlocks is about to ruin Two-Tone’s plans for the evening, drive his customers away. Two-Tone reaches into one of the pockets on his utility pants and pulls out a pack, bounces it off his thigh, forcing a few cigarettes toward the opening. He grabs three and hands them to the man, careful to not let their hands touch.
“Awww man thank you.” He’s already shuffling around the corner.
Two-Tone knows he’s just been hustled but he doesn’t care. He thinks of it like an investment. ‘You gotta give to get,’ he says under his breath. He does some quick math:
-he pays $6 for each pack
-sells the cigarettes 2 for a dollar
-20 cigarettes per pack
-that’s $10 earned a pack
-a profit of $4
-he brought 9 packs outside with him
-he’s sold 8
-he’s got $80 in his pocket
-a profit of $32
“I shoulda been a banker or some shit,” Two-Tone says. One of his regulars is approaching, holding up two fingers.
“What you talking about Two-Tone?” He’s wearing a fast food uniform. He smells of grease and his apron is streaked brown.
“I’m good with math, man!” I could’ve been a banker. Or a mathematician.” He’s bouncing again, up and down, and he drags the word out, adding syllables- MATH-A-MA-TISH-EE-IN.
The regular hands him two crumbled bills and bursts into laughter. “Nigga, please! You sell loosies, you can’t be shit.” Harsh words but good-natured, and he’s still laughing as he palms the cigarettes and walks away.
Two-Tone is wounded. He is good at math, always has been. He may have to skip the weed, see if he can find something stronger, something to chase away the ache. Something to make him forget about his rented room and loose cigarettes and the bad skin that gives him his nickname; something to make him drift and daydream, make him go back in time, not steal from Best Buy, not end up in juvie, not get caught stealing again, this time grand larceny, three years upstate; maybe do better than his G.E.D., maybe his high school diploma, maybe a job as a bank teller or janitor. He can’t even dream bigger than this. He can feel a whole world that doesn’t belong to him, surrounding him, simmering below the surface of his existence.
A woman is approaching, taking her time coming up the stairs, resting every two or three, leaning on the railing. She’s heavy-set, not unattractive. He bounces toward her, up and down, planting himself in her path. He grabs her wrist and she says–
Ms. Ward
“You gonna grab the wrong arm one day.”
She doesn’t yank away, doesn’t raise her voice. She speaks softly, intimately, and makes eye contact with the man holding her arm. She watches something in him crumble, watches his eyes go big and wet before he drops her wrist. He lets her go and takes two steps backwards. She almost feels sorry for him but she’s just too tired. There are patches of discolored skin on his neck, his hands. He leans on the brick wall of the building behind him, stares at her for a moment before turning away, bouncing from one foot to the other, blocking paths, holding up cigarettes and screeching his singsong, ‘loosies, loosies,’ repeatedly.
She hates cigarettes. She grew up in an unincorporated backwater Mississippi county, so poor some of her neighbors didn’t have running water, shared a lopsided outhouse infested with so many flies you could hear the thrumming of their collective wings before you pulled back the wood flap that served as a door. Blacks, whites, even some Natives, all mixed up in a hodge-podge of loose chickens, rusted out cars up on cinderblocks in front yards, roadkill scraped from the freeway that ran a few miles south, skinned and cleaned and served to barefoot children, playing cops and robbers with sticks and rocks. She remembers the hand-rolled cigarettes, tobacco tins, wads of snuff spit everywhere. A landmine of chewed dip scattered through the dead grass and patches of bare dirt, brown and dried like animal turds. She watched the adults around her shrivel up like raisins, their gums receding from their rotting teeth. Some had chunks of their lips removed, rotten from decay, or worse, parts of their jaws taken. When they finally died, they died brittle.
The streets are busy, overflowing, busting at the seams. It’s the middle of the afternoon and the sun is at its brightest. So many people make the sidewalk almost impassable– many have resorted to simply walking in the street, blocking traffic. She makes her way slowly, passing the Apollo theatre. Tourists are snapping pictures, babbling in unrecognizable languages. She approaches Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd (which she still thinks of as 7th Avenue, like most of the old-timers, the native Harlemites), where she owns a brownstone. The calls to sell have increased in frequency lately, bordering on harassment. Men (and a few women) have begun showing up in person, suits and briefcases, yelling numbers through the door she slams in their faces. The numbers though–whew! Enough to retire, move to Santa Barbara near her sister, buy a little cottage, maybe a boat, take a cruise- or three.
She’d purchased the home back in the eighties when the crime rate was so high the bank almost denied her loan. But she had impeccable credit and a stable job as a librarian. She was determined to live in Harlem, the home of Baldwin, Hughes, and Hurston, to walk the same streets as her idols, to see in living color the hangouts and speakeasys and clubs, Black folk draped in furs and jewels. Books had saved her life, taken a poor girl from Mississippi and let her dream big. She’d clawed her way out, pulled her sister along also. She couldn’t dream a bigger dream than Harlem. The reality though was boarded up businesses, chasing addicts off her property with a baseball bat, and shootouts between rival gangs over crack territories. Still, she’d stayed. Block by block: tenant associations, harassing elected officials, collective clean-up projects, rezoning, and historic designations. Eventually, the neighborhood began to thrive.
The first offer was in the high six figures. Developers were suddenly pouring into Harlem, sensing an opportunity. She didn’t think it would last; she was wrong. Neighbors she’d known for decades began selling, ‘for sale’ signs on every other lawn like litter, moving trucks clogging the way one-way street and coughing exhaust every weekend. There were just a few holdovers, and less each year. The most recent offer was a little over two million dollars. She remembers leaning on her door, breathless, her heart fluttering in her chest. The woman who delivered the offer was still on her doorstep, waiting, like she could sense Ms. Ward on the other side, debating, for the first-time considering selling. The woman eventually slid her card under the door, and Ms. Ward listened to the tip-tipping of her heels as they clicked down the steps.
She stops in front of her home, takes a moment to admire it. Her flowerbeds, the marigolds and peonies thriving; the curtains, sewn herself, loved even more for their imperfections; even her doormat that reads, ‘Fo Shizzle Welcome to my Hizzle’--how her friends get a kick out of it! Then she stares at the five cement steps leading to her door. Her house is wedged between two other brownstones, both sold within the last year, the new occupants pleasant but not what she would call sociable. She thinks of her sister’s house, close enough to the ocean to smell the salt, tracking sand into the kitchen, giggling together like when they were school children. She starts up the stairs slowly. She thinks about the card she never threw away. It’s safely in her junk drawer, and with each step her resolve deepens. She is going to call her sister first, then maybe her boss, start discussing her departure. She wanted to be part of a new Renaissance but honestly, her feet just hurt. Her neighbor’s son is sitting on their steps, head bent over his cell phone. She means to speak to the boy but–
Marley
–he is too busy texting Charlotte. When they head back to school, Charlotte will be an eighth grader; Marley will only be in the seventh. He’s sweaty, he’s so excited. An eighth grader! He’s not ready to go inside. His mom will take one look at him and ask, “what’s wrong?” and she’ll feel his forehead and say, “Do you have a fever?” And he’ll say, “No,” but then his mom will call his dad and say, “Babe, does Marley have a fever?” And this his dad will be all in his business too, and he’ll be forced to admit that yes, yes, he does have a fever. A fever for Charlotte. His parents are inside right now waiting for him, and his annoying sister, and they’ll be all kissy-kissy, “Welcome home! How was soccer practice?” He wants to text his best friend but is scared to move from the screen, doesn’t want to ruin this magic. A text comes in from her:
What kinda name is Marley
He writes back immediately:
Like Bob Marley the singer
She doesn’t respond. He wants to vomit, wants to throw his phone. Maybe he insulted her, maybe she knows who Bob Marley is…why would he say the singer? Everyone knows Bob Marley! He has ruined everything; she will never speak to him again. At school, she’ll giggle behind her hands, surrounded by her crew, and her friends will make eye contact with him, burst into laughter, and the entire school will know he’s a dumbass–
Cool
It’s just the one word but Marley is so excited he lets out a whoop, startling Ms. Ward. What will he say? He was so worried she wouldn’t text back but now she has, and he just wants to tell her that her eyes are like diamonds but that’s corny. His sister would laugh at him and tell her friends, “My little brother is a cornball” and his best friend would shake his head and say, “Marley man, what is wrong with you?” His phone vibrates.
U like him
He loves Bob Marley. His sister’s name is Jasmine- nothing special about her name and she’s the oldest. His parents fell in love in Jamaica. They like to turn his music loud and dance and sometimes he catches his dad rubbing his mom’s butt and he goes “oh gross” and “get a room” but he imagines listening to Bob Marley with Charlotte, in his living room, his parents gone, she’s wearing her hair down, and he cups her butt the way his dad does his mom–
U still there
Yeah
He cool
I could play you something
Another long stretch of nothing, then:
Cool
He hears the door open behind him and his sister emerges. She slaps the back of his head, and he glances up at her. Usually, he would hit her back, and she would hit him back, and then they would laugh, maybe some Netflix. He just sits there, staring at his phone. She shrugs, then continues–
Jasmine
–heading down the street. She’s on FaceTime with her girlfriend, Naomi. Jasmine can see the crowd around her, the rush of people jostling to get through the turnstiles.
YOU BEAUTIFUL, Naomi signs, raising her eyebrows up and down. Jasmine laughs and signs back THANK YOU.
MOM. DAD. HOME NOW? Naomi asks, touching her thumb to her chin, her forehead. Jasmine rolls her eyes.
YES! EXCITED. WANT SEE YOU.
Her parents love Naomi. They met at an “ASL Night Out” event, hosted in a McDonald’s on the Lower East Side. Jasmine usually avoided these gathering–she hated being stared at, people pointing, the bolder mocking them, imitating the signing. One of her friends begged her, didn’t want to travel alone. She noticed Naomi immediately, dark brown and bald. Striking. They’d spent all night signing, tucked away in a booth, their fries long cold. Jasmine’s friend kept dramatically sighing, staring at her watch. At one point that night Naomi signed:
ME. YOU. SAME.
HOW?
WOMEN. BLACK. GAY. POOR.
Except Jasmine isn’t poor. Her parents are wealthy, and they own a very nice house, and she wants for nothing. Her parents took the time to learn to sign and have advocated for her since birth. She’ll learn that Naomi’s family simply excludes her, their conversations a silent babbling surrounding her. Naomi had to learn to advocate for herself, bold and brass, demanding interpreters, boycotting businesses that wouldn’t provide accommodations. Jasmine’s parents accepted Naomi, welcomed her into their home, signed with her. Jasmine’s mother even helped Naomi complete her application to Manhattan Community College, where she’s working toward an accounting degree. Jasmine is spending the summer home from Florida A&M. They only have a few more weeks together before they both head back to school; they want to spend as much time together as possible.
Jasmine can see Naomi trying to hold the phone far enough in front of her so that she can sign widely, especially since she’s signing with only one hand. People jostle her and throw her dirty looks. They’re about a block from each other, and Jasmine can just make her out through the crowds of people. Then, it’s like a movie, timed perfectly, suddenly there’s Naomi, and they jog toward each other and hug in the middle of 127th street.
STORE. PLEASE. Jasmine signs. MOM. NEED. BREAD. She grab’s Naomi’s hand and they head toward the bodega. Jasmine knows that regardless of what happens between them that they will be fine. The world isn’t big enough to contain them, isn’t big enough for their signing space. Holding hands, they enter the store and wave to the man behind the counter–
Eduardo
–who’s spinning to the bachata. Romeo Santos is blasting from the boombox: No te asombres! Si una noche! He spins again, doing a tap-tap-tap on his thigh to the music. The store is crowded, groups of loose children touching everything, filling the counter with sweets and sodas and chips, their voices hopscotching over each other. A few people are queuing to check their lotto, waving their scratch-offs and pre-filled maroon slips. The bell above the door jingles constantly. The store cat jumps up on the bread display and he watches a skinny kid in denim shorts lunge at the cat to scare it away.
“Mira!” Eduardo yells at the kid. “Wha’chu doing now? Leave the cat. Maricón!” The boy runs out of the store, laughing. The crowds, the kids–nothing Eduardo isn’t used to. His family owns this bodega, opened by his grandfather, a Dominican immigrant who didn’t take a day off until he retired a few years ago. The bell jangles and his cousin saunters in, holding a case of water above his head.
“Eh ¿que pasó? His cousin shouts above the music. “Wha’chu need?”
“Ayudamé, por favor!”
His cousin pushes through the swinging door that separates the counter area from the store proper and sits the case of water on the floor.
“Los changitos!” His cousin stage-whispers, laughing, as he begins to scan the lotto being thrust in his hands.
Eduardo cringes. The term loosely translates to little monkeys. Eduardo doesn’t care for the old school, the machismo, the colorism, the cultish clan mentality of his extra-large family, spread across New York like tentacles. His newest girlfriend is Black, dark-skinned. He hasn’t had the balls to bring her home yet. When he introduced her to his cousin, he was pleasant, even welcoming. Afterwards, however, he looked at Eduardo like he had three heads.
“Bro, you crazy?! Abuela will cut your head off!”
Not crazy, but maybe in love. Her lease is up and at dinner tonight he’s planning to suggest they move in together. Just thinking this and he has butterflies in his stomach. She’ll never think he’s a man if he can’t even stand up to his own family.
The door opens. The local vagabundo enters, his stench preceding him like a mist. He smells like rotting fish. They even share the same glass-dead eyes. Children are waving their hands in front of their noses and his cousin is gesturing at the man, cursing in Spanish, yelling at him, “Get out, sal de aquí,” and the man is mumbling, asking for matches, and Eduardo sits the matches on the counter and snatches his hand back quickly, and una hija says “Ewww he got the cooties” and how can Eduardo be a man, a real man, when he can’t even get this bum out of his store, can’t even stop the lies with his novia, can’t tell the truth to his family, and he resolves to forcibly remove the man, hold hands with his girl and go to Sunday dinner, watch the faces of his family contort. Then, he is sighing with relief. He doesn’t need to decide now. The man is–
Joshua Moore
–emerging back into the afternoon. People scurry away from him and a girl on a scooter yells, “He stank!” Her friends cackle, kicking up dust as they take off. He walks down the center of the sidewalk and people fall to his left and right. He thinks of Moses (red sea, red sea) parting the water and he raises his hands above his head, stretches his arms wide, and begins to mumble. Incoherent to others but he is Moses. All-important. A police cruiser rolls by and the officer in the passenger seat makes hard eye contact with him and he puts his arms down and leans on a lamppost (quiet) and allows the cruiser to pass him. Then he shuffles toward 126th street. He searches his tattered clothes until he finds the remnants of a cigarette, just the butt at this point. He continues down the street.
He puts his arms up again. He is Moses. (Wait.) He remembers that he isn’t Moses, that he can’t be Moses, because his name is Joshua Moore. Joshua Moore is on his paperwork. The doctors at Bellevue always say ‘Mr. Moore.’ He’s sitting on an uncomfortable twin bed in a windowless room and the doctor is saying ‘Mr. Moore you have to take your medicine.’ He will tell them next time, let them know he can’t be ‘Mr. Joshua Moore’ because all he has to do is hold up his hands and he can part the world like a trick. Like magic (abracadabra/take your meds/red sea/boy with yellow crayon). The voices are loud. He needs to mute them, needs to hear himself think.
There’s a commotion to his left, yelling and pointing. He can hear sirens in the distance. He looks around. People are heading in that direction, their voices excited. He has to make sure it isn’t in his head, that the voices are real. He heads that way.
He had a wife once. She is gone.
He is Joshua Moore. No one knows his name (JoshuaJoshuaJoshua). It’s on his paperwork. There are so many people here now. He might leave Harlem, maybe head to Grand Central, that bustling underground, a tent town full of homeless and dope fiends and dealers and prostitutes. He will be safer there.
He had a son once. His son was a Junior.
(boy with yellow crayon)
There are stories everywhere. He can hear them. He knows they’re not all just voices, that the doctors are wrong. He imagines every person on Earth has a sparkle that floats above them, a shimmery strand of essence, and all these strands float above their heads, and they mingle, and they head out to space, and it continues repeatedly.
They may have been a happy family; he doesn’t always remember. (Wife? Wife! Wife.)
He is Joshua Moore. He is everyone and no one and everyone is no one and everyone. He is overwhelmed. There are so many people, so many strands.
“–I told that motherfucker he better have my money before–”
“–the youngest! All grown up now–”
“–when is the funeral? I hope I can–”
“–I like the one downtown better, their dumplings–”
“–such a cute puppy–”
They are strands. He can see them though he will never see them again.
There’s a crowd so he stands several yards away. An ambulance pulls from the curb, slowly, not bothering to turn on the siren. Two women are talking with their hands, gesturing, their faces animated. Two more stories, two more strands. He can’t always differentiate the voices in his head from the voices in the world. It’s such a large world, full of ghosts. How many more? How many like him? He cries out. A group of men, their faces menacing, yell at him. He veers into the gutter and a car horn shrills at him, must swerve to avoid him, and the driver spits out the window, a phlegmy wad that lands at his feet.
So unnecessary. An older woman. She repeats herself. So unnecessary. She means the driver and the spitting, but she might mean this life and this living. She has a face etched with experience. She could be his mother. He could lay his head on her breast and suckle and be revived and start over. (Moses/red sea/boy with yellow crayon). But there is no starting over. His name is Joshua Moore, and he is tethered to the voices that comfort him. People hustle and they bustle and maybe they’ll make a brand-new start, and the strands continue to float, multitudes, and the world continues to spin.
He has to hold onto truth. His name is Joshua Moore. He had a wife. He had a son, a junior. He is sure they were happy. He wants to remember more but there is someone standing in his path. The woman! His mother? She is holding out money and she says–
Ms. Ward
“–it’s not a lot but take it.”
She hands the homeless man a ten-dollar bill. He mumbles a thank you before snatching the money and shuffling off. It isn’t much considering she is most likely a soon-to-be millionaire. She made the call while she still had the nerve. She left it to chance: if the woman was rude, or belittling, she would hang up; if the woman was nice, she would discuss a sale. The woman turned out to be warm, engaging. Ms. Ward remembers the clickity-clacking of those stilettos, a noise she thought could only come from a brittle woman. The number she offered was higher than the last. Ms. Ward had to sit. She called her sister after, and they screamed and cried. Her sister emailed her the itinerary for a Caribbean cruise. For the first time in a long time, she must think about leisure, maybe even a bathing suit. She’s proud of her legs. They are strong, the varicose veins a testament to her endurance. Now they will serve her in a two-piece on the deck of a ship.
She had to take a walk. She wanted to take in this world while she still had the chance, wanted to experience it like the first time. Then, not even two blocks from home, she sees the man who was selling cigarettes laying in the street, blood running from his head. How quickly fortunes change. One day you’re a poor Black girl with a cardboard suitcase and 2 pairs of panties. The next, you’re discussing scheduling an inspector to visit your home. She waited for the ambulance. She waited until the cops came, draped yellow tape around the intersection. She waited because the least she could offer that man was attention. The least she could offer him was an acknowledgement. She wonders who will mourn him.
She sees a young girl headed her way. The girl is just lovely. Ms. Ward wants to tell her to protect herself fiercely, that life will be hard but that’s okay. She doesn’t want this girl to wait until she’s half-dead to change course. She wants to tell her to enjoy her beauty, the ripeness of time, but simply smiles at her and the girl–
Da’esha
–smiles back.
She’s not going to Brooklyn. She texted Jeff, told him she wasn’t coming. He kept texting her and then her mother was texting her and then she put her phone on silent.
She’s not a stupid girl. She knows she’ll go to Brooklyn, maybe even tonight. Right now though the sun is shining and beads of sweat are running down her spine and the bodega is blasting music- it’s Spanish, she can’t understand it- but it has a beat. She jerks her hips a bit, snaps her fingers. A fire hydrant is open, the sprinkler cap making the water arch over the heads of screaming children. A boy about her age nods his head at her, and she nods her head back, tosses her braids over her shoulder, sways her hips a bit more, looks back to make sure she still has his attention.
“I see you,” he says, smiling.
She’s stumbled into a block party, and she shoves aside the police-issued sawhorse, waves at a man sitting behind a grill. He holds up a hot dog. She shakes her head. Someone with their window open turns up Rihanna–wild, wild, wild, when I’m with you all I get is wild thoughts–and she’s yelling the lyrics, but she can’t hear herself over everyone else. She joins a line of teenagers running through the water, the chilled droplets a balm on her skin. Maybe she’ll go home and get her sister, bring her over here, let her laugh unabashedly. Her mother always tells her ‘a woman does her duty,’ and Da’esha will do hers. Eventually. Right now, she just wants to hold her sister’s hand and let her experience this world on this day. She spies two women signing with each other and one leans over and kisses the other on the mouth and no one cares. It’s summer in Harlem and the possibilities are endless. Two boys come running by her and one accidentally steps on her foot, and he yells–
Marley
“–sorry!”
He keeps running until he gets to the corner, then slows.
“So…all she said was cool?” His best friend asks when he catches up with him. Marley can tell he’s skeptical.
“Dude. She said I could play her music.”
His best friend shrugs, bouncing the basketball under his arm off a nearby gate. They’re headed to the courts on 128th street.
“You know what would be cool? If you taught me to sign so I could talk to your sister!”
Marley punches him in the arm and grabs the basketball. “Race you!” He yells, not waiting, darting through the crowds, his laughter carrying through the city.