Nightcrawling(3)

“You know I could kick you outta here real quick.” Alé strides closer, looks like she’s about to perform the black man’s handshake, until she realizes I am not my brother and instead opens her arms. I am mesmerized by her, the way she fills up space in the room like she fills up that drooping shirt. Here, I settle into the most familiar place that I have ever lived, her chest against my ear, warm and thumping.

“You best have some food in there,” I tell her, pulling away and turning to strut into the kitchen. I like to swing my hips when I walk around Alé, makes her call me her chava.

Alé watches me move and her eyes dart. She starts to run toward the kitchen door just as I rush there, racing, pushing each other to squeeze inside the doorway, laughing until we cry, spreading out on the floor as we step on each other’s limbs and don’t care about the bruises that’ll paint us blue tomorrow. Alé beats me and stands at the stove scooping food into bowls while I’m on my knees heaving. She chuckles slyly as I get up and then hands me a bowl and spoon.

“Huevos rancheros,” she says, sweat drip-dripping down her nose.

It is hot and fuming, deep red with eggs on top.

Alé cooks for me at least once a week and, when Marcus is with me, he always asks what it is, regardless of whether or not she’s made it before. He likes fucking with her as much as he likes rapping off-beat and smooth-talking.

I hop onto the counter, feeling something seep into my jeans and ignoring it. Spooning the food into my mouth, I let the heat take over my tongue, while I watch Alé lean her back against the stove across from me, the steam from our bowls floating upward and forming a cloud around the ceiling.

“You found a job yet?” Alé asks, her mouth smeared in sauce like she’s drawn outside the lines of her lips.

I shake my head, dip a finger into the bowl and lick it. “Been everywhere in this city but they all so hung up on the high school dropout shit that they won’t even look at me.”

Alé swallows and nods.

“Worst part is, Marcus won’t even get off his ass and try.”

She rolls her eyes, but doesn’t say anything, as if I won’t catch it.

“What?” I ask.

“It’s just, he doing his best, you know, and it’s only been a few months since he quit his job. He young too, can’t blame him for not wanting to spend all his time working, and y’all are fine for now with you taking a shift at the liquor store a couple days a week. You don’t gotta dig up this shit.” She speaks with her mouth full, red sauce leaking from the corner.

I’m off the counter now, fully aware of how soaked the back of my jeans are. I slam my bowl on the table, hear it clink, and wish it would have shattered. She has stopped eating and watches me, twisting her chain around her finger.

Alé makes a small noise, like a gurgle in the throat that turns into a cough.

“Fuck you,” I spit.

“Come on, Kiara. You don’t gotta do this. It’s funeral day, we should be twirling in the streets but you over here about to break a damn bowl ’cause you mad you ain’t got no job? Most of us out here just tryna get some work. You ain’t special.”

I glance between her and the floor, her shirt glued to her skin with sweat. In these moments, I remember that Alé had her own world without me, that there was a before me and maybe there will be an after. Either way, I’m not about to stand in this steaming kitchen while the only person that got any right to say my name refuses to see how close I am to falling apart, to letting loose like Dee.

Alé steps forward, grabs my wrist, looks at me, like Don’t do this. I’m already pushing out the door, my legs betraying my breath, moving quick. She is behind me, reaching out her hand and missing my sleeve, trying again, and finally grasping the fabric. I am being spun around, her face too close, looking at me with all the pity of an owned tongue looking at a caged one. I’ve let her save me more times than I’ve forgiven Marcus and I can almost see her slight shake under that shirt.

Her lips barely move as she says it. “It’s funeral day.”

Alé tells me this like it means shit when her fingernails are short and smell like coriander and mine are sharp and dangerous. But then the pit of her chin dimples and she is everything.

“You don’t even get it,” I say, thinking of the paper on our door this morning. Her face stitches together.

I shake my head and try to wipe off whatever look has imprinted on my face. “Whatever.” I exhale and Alé frowns, but before she can continue to fight me on it, I reach up to the tender patch on her side and tickle her. She shrieks, laughs that surprising girly laugh she produces when she’s afraid I’m gonna tickle her again, and I release her. “Now we gonna go or what?”

Alé swings one of her arms around my shoulder and pulls me with her out the door, toward the bus stop. We pass the construction and start to jog until we are suddenly sprinting, racing down the street, not stopping to check for cars as we cross, the singsong of horns trailing us.





Joy Funeral Home is one of many death hotels in East Oakland. It sits on the corner of Seminary Avenue and some other street nobody bothers to learn the name of, welcoming in bodies and more bodies. Alé and I frequent it every couple months, when the employees turn over because they can’t stomach another brushing of a corpse beside a plate of Safeway cheese. We’ve been to enough funerals in our lives to know nobody grieving wants no damn cheese.