Nightcrawling(35)

“I don’t know,” I tell her, and I really don’t. Telling her would have been like saying this is my life now, like committing to the streets. Letting the streets have you is like planning your own funeral. I wanted the streetlight brights, the money in the morning, not the back alleys. Not the sirens. But, here we are. Streets always find you in the daylight, when you least expect them to. Night crawling up to me when the sun’s out.

“I just don’t get it, Ki. You know what happened with Clara, so why you being so stupid?” She shakes her head, looks out at the two boys still trying to do some trick on the railing across the slope from us. “Why you doin’ this?”

“Don’t got no other choice,” I say.

“Nah.” Alé’s head shake increases until it’s a full swing and she gets up, grabbing her skateboard, her whole body shaking. She stands in front of me now and says, “Nah,” one more time with her body tremors before setting her board down on the cement, climbing on, pushing forward again and again until she’s halfway down the block and I’m standing above a skate park slope with nowhere left to go.





I started walking home from the skate park after a group of teenage boys showed up with their boards and hollered at me. It’s different walking in the city midday alone. Makes me feel like I have to sprout eyes in every direction and learn how to walk with more leg, less hip. I end up on a bus after a couple blocks and now I’m being dropped off right by the Regal-Hi, which is an off-putting color at this time of day, so close to white I’m not sure if I’ve been tricking myself into thinking it was blue this whole time.

Almost immediately after I get inside the apartment, my phone starts ringing. I pull it out of my pocket as quick as I can, thinking maybe it’s Alé. Instead, the phone flashes shauna and I pick up, even though every cell of my body says not to.

“Kiara.” Her voice sounds tired, and I can’t tell if it’s that new-mother kind of fatigue or if there’s something else mixed in with it.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know what shit they on, but last week they showed up with new equipment and now Cole talking about some type of deal and how they real close to making it and I don’t know, girl, I don’t want no life like that.”

“What you talking about?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but they getting themselves into some shit and I don’t think this the kind they can get out of. You gotta help me out.” Shauna’s voice escalates in pitch.

I sigh. I know what getting caught up in the streets can do to you, but I don’t know how to get out of it, how to help no one, especially Marcus. “Look, I don’t know what I can do about none of that.” I tell her I gotta go, that somebody’s at the door even though they’re not, and I hang up when she’s mid-sentence, the whole apartment going silent.

We’re always trying to own men we don’t got no control of. I’m tired of it. Tired of having to be out here thinking about all these people, all these things to keep me alive, keep them alive. I don’t got no air left for none of it. Maybe Camila’s right, maybe it’s time to let go, to let one of them take over, take care of me. But I can’t stop thinking about Shauna’s call, if Marcus is alright, if maybe he’s got enough money to help us out. Part of me is still angry at him for not coming to see Mama with me, but with Alé not speaking to me, I need him.

It’s two p.m. now and even though it’s only early spring, the heat has found its way to us, an unexpected warm day among the cold. It’s still afternoon when the door to the apartment swings open and Marcus steps through, turning to look at me with the most glorious smile on his face, my fingerprint scrunched beneath the grin. Marcus comes right up to me and picks me up from the waist, does a spin. Coming down, I’m dizzy, don’t remember the last time he spun me like that, like I’m his little sister and we might still be young.

“What you do that for?” I laugh, swatting at his chest. He seems taller today.

Those eyes stare at me and they got the smile in them too, lit up.

“I been missing my lil sis, what you talkin’ bout?” He looks like he might just pick me up again. “I got something to show you.”

In seconds, Marcus has taken my hand, grabbed a backpack and his skateboard from the closet, and is leading us back out the door. Marcus pulls my wrist a little harder and it almost feels like I’m imagining it. He seems to have forgotten all the shit that’s built up between us in the past couple months. And I guess since he ain’t really been home much, maybe he hasn’t seen me scramble to fill the envelope with next month’s rent or felt the way the chlorine and feces have become part of the air, the natural scent of the apartment. I wonder if he knows where I’ve been, what I’ve done.

I grab my scraper bike, the one Marcus and I made out of duct tape and junkyard scraps, from its spot on the rack by the pool. We ride them proud all over East Oakland, our wheels neon and brighter than the sky. I mount my bike and follow him out onto the road. Marcus winds us through streets I don’t remember being on before, which is funny because I swear I’ve walked every inch of this city. Maybe I never looked up. Maybe I’ve been too busy searching.

I call out to him, “Where the hell you taking me, Marcus?”