IQ(13)

The paramedics wouldn’t let Isaiah ride in the ambulance so a cop took him to Long Beach Memorial. In the waiting room he couldn’t sit down, pestering anyone who went in or out of the authorized personnel doors. Is Marcus okay? He’s still in surgery? When’s the doctor coming out? Could I go talk to him? Isaiah called Marcus’s friend Carlos, who was there in ten minutes. “Marcus is gonna be all right, he’s a tough guy,” Carlos said. “He’s going to be fine, wait and see.”

After a three-hour wait, a doctor came out. He had a Jamaican accent and looked young even with the receding hairline and rimless glasses. He said they’d done everything they could but Marcus had suffered massive internal injuries and had passed.

Isaiah shook his head and smiled like he knew the doctor was messing with him. “No, forget it,” he said. “Marcus is in there, I know he is, just let me talk to him—just let me—” A sound erupted out of him; raw, searing, and so sorrowful he could have been a conduit for a prisoner in hell. Carlos tried to hug him but Isaiah pushed him away and sobbed into his hands.

Carlos said Isaiah could stay at his house. His daughters could double up and Isaiah’d have a bedroom to himself. Lucy had dinner waiting for them. Isaiah told Carlos his grandmother was coming in from El Segundo and that she’d meet him at the apartment. Carlos didn’t know there was no grandmother and Isaiah’s only other relatives, whom he’d never met or talked to, were in North Carolina.


Isaiah got up from the sofa, went to the bathroom, and threw up in the toilet. He stayed there a long time, his head resting on the cool edge of the bowl, freeze-frames blinking behind his eyes. Blink. The car coming. Blink. Marcus hit. Blink. Marcus folded in half. Blink. Marcus tumbling through the air. Blink. Marcus on the pavement, crushed and broken, his head pressed against the curb.

How could you do that, Marcus? Why didn’t you look? You’re so stupid, man, why didn’t you look?

Marcus’s girlfriend, Sarita, showed up. She banged on the door and called Isaiah’s name but he didn’t answer. What were they going to do, hug each other and cry and say how much they missed Marcus? He couldn’t deal with that.

The afternoon sun was blazing through the windows. Isaiah shut the drapes, unplugged the phone, turned off his cell, and sat in the corner under the spider plant. He kept still, hugging his knees, trying to make himself small but the pain found him anyway, hitting him as hard as that car hit Marcus, demolishing thought, reason, spirit, everything. He rocked back and forth and said Marcus Marcus until it was dark outside and his throat was sore. He’d almost nodded off when he heard that impact sound, sickening and final. He lurched and threw up again but nothing came out. He was empty. A birdcage without a bird.

Marcus had a policy from the Neptune Society. A nonprofit organization that provided low-cost cremations. Isaiah got Carlos to call the Society’s 800 number and make the arrangements. They moved the body from the morgue and took it to the crematorium. They handled the death certificate, the disposition permit, and the rest of the paperwork. A few days later, Carlos came by and slipped Marcus’s last paycheck and a note under the door. The note said UPS would deliver the ashes.

Isaiah stayed in the corner under the spider plant, his world reduced to sounds: TV chatter, doors opening and closing, sirens, crows squabbling, somebody yelling at their kids. At some point he began to tremble. The last thing he’d eaten was a Snickers bar just before the game with Carlos and Corey. He ate a can of tuna, got a bottle of water, and went back to his corner. He lost track of time. Dozing, waking up with a start, wondering where he was, where Marcus was. He’d stand up like an arthritic old man, crying and cursing, trudging to the bathroom or the kitchen, and back again. He ran out of food, nothing left in the kitchen but condiments. He forced himself to go to the store, the wheels of his brain turning in sludge as thick as his heartache.

School. He’d been absent eight days and the maximum number of excused absences permitted in a school year was ten. After that, a note wouldn’t be acceptable. The school would want to talk to Marcus and if they found out he’d died they’d send a social worker and Isaiah would get shipped off to a foster home. Isaiah wrote himself a note and went back to school but it was impossible to act normal, his friends coming up to him. Where you been, Isaiah? What happened to you? You got stuff all in your hair. Are you high? You look high. He told them he was getting over the flu.

Some things were impossible. Eating lunch in the noisy cafeteria or hanging with Dante and his friends or working in the computer lab with the other kids who had great futures. The note said he had laryngitis. That got him out of PE and speaking in class. He sent Dante a text saying he was quitting the academic decathlon team and told the kids he tutored to find somebody else.

The prospect of leaving the apartment terrified him. Sharing a room with kids he didn’t know, strange adults telling him what to do. Out there in the world without Marcus backing him up. Without Marcus. The apartment was all he had left of him. His brother was in the air and embedded in the walls, his smell in the bedsheets, his sneakers on the floor, blue blobs of his shaving gel still on the sink. Whatever happened, Isaiah wasn’t leaving.

Money. Marcus worked for Carlos exterminating termites when he couldn’t find other work. The check Carlos slipped under the door was for fifteen hundred dollars, more than Carlos cleared in a week and he owned the business. That plus the eight hundred dollars in the checking account wouldn’t last long. There was rent to pay. He remembered what Marcus said, to take the initiative, dictate the action, not let his emotions call the shots. If he wanted to stay in the apartment he had to get a job.