The Black Kids(83)
“No. Look at her arm. Her stomach, too.” I tell Principal Jeffries what Lana said about her mother, about the bruises and the scars.
She nods her head solemnly. “Thank you for coming to me. I’ll take care of it.”
I don’t know if I should believe her or not, but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.
In that same song from West Side Story there’s a whole joyful almost manic chorus about how there’s good inside of everyone, even the very worst of us.
That’s not how it ends, but that’s the part I like best.
* * *
After talking with Principal Jeffries, I feel super nauseous, which I guess is the price my bowels pay for doing the right thing. I rush to the restroom. Once safely inside the stall, I hear a familiar click click across the bathroom tile, and I know she’s right next to me. I know those footsteps almost as well as I know my own. The distance between us is a bathroom stall, which incidentally is entirely too close, given what I’ve done. Then we finish, and the distance between us is less than a foot, but it might as well be the whole wide world.
Kimberly and I stand at the sink washing our hands, side by side. She looks over at me once, when she thinks I’m not looking. For a moment, we catch each other’s eyes, and then we both look down and get super into washing our hands. We don’t speak. There are some things that, once said, you can’t unsay. There are some things that, once done, you can’t undo.
We let the weight of our history sit like so many rocks in our mouths, silencing us as we wash ourselves clean.
CHAPTER 22
THE ANCHORS POSE in rubble and talk about rebuilding. Some people are now saying that some of the fires have been set on purpose by greedy business owners looking to collect insurance money in the middle of the unrest.
Repeated like a chorus on every news channel: fire-gutted strip malls, debris-filled streets, emptied shelves, scored to the sound of politicians saying the things they think people want to hear and who or what they think people want to blame, ending with we will be stronger, we will be better. I’m not even a grown-up yet, but even I can see the truth is both swirling around in the middle of all those fancy speeches and somewhere just outside of them.
Anyway, since it’s an election year, everybody’s coming to see the damage for themselves, to walk their shiny leather shoes among the ruins and proclaim what’s wrong with Los Angeles and how their party’s gonna make it right, or how the other party made it wrong. Governor Bill Clinton is gonna come visit, which should make the Katzes happy.
The National Guard is withdrawing; the army and Marines, too. It’s like we were in a boxing match and got knocked out, only to come to and have to reorient ourselves. Everybody in the city is wondering how the hell we get back up.
Sometimes I have nightmares in which I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.
I ask LaShawn if he has nightmares too, after what happened to us, if he wakes up feeling that kind of fear again. He tells me that wasn’t the first time he’s had a cop pull a gun on him, and it probably won’t be the last.
“You get used to it.” He sighs. “Or maybe you don’t… but it happens.”
* * *
Jo sits across from a judge in a small, wood-paneled room. A janitor squeaks a cart along the linoleum floor outside. My pretty dress is itchy. Jo’s shoes are a tad too big; her feet slide forward in them, and then she readjusts to press them against the heels. Her hair is straightened and pulled up into an elegant ballerina bun that gives her the appearance of having had a face-lift, not that she needed one. It makes her look that much more beautiful, but also more severe.
Going through security at the courthouse makes you feel a little like a criminal, even if you aren’t one. The inside is various shades of dreary, and the harsh fluorescents make everybody look sallow and vaguely unsure of themselves. We walked through the metal detectors and gathered ourselves, dimmed lights all. I watched the people coming and going while my parents and Jo waited for her lawyer.
These are the kinds of people I saw: scary-looking. Wary-looking. Harried-looking. Trashy-looking. Douchey-looking. Bored-looking. Scared-looking. There were even a few children clinging to adults in Sunday-school dresses and little-man suits. I don’t want to think about why they might be inside. I tried to picture my aunt Carol walking in and out every day, making decision after decision on some of the worst days of other people’s lives.
My mother says Auntie Carol is always lording her power over my mother’s head, but I don’t know because we never see Auntie Carol, and I don’t know how somebody can do all that lording if you’re never around to see it. But what Carol said to Jo several days ago was that actually she doesn’t have the power. Not this time.
Auntie Carol and my cousin Reggie stopped by for a bit to discuss what she called Jo’s options, none of which were very good. Reggie’s slimmed down since the last time I saw him and is now a good-looking boy who carries himself like a newly good-looking boy, preening and flexing while doing things that don’t really require that much flexing. Even as we sat discussing Jo’s fate, out of the corner of my eye I saw him, muscles flexed, glancing at his reflection in the table.
“This is a really serious offense,” Auntie Carol said, and sighed.