Nightcrawling, page 16
The moment I am back in the swarm of them, another obnoxious eruption of their hollers begins. 190 shoots some of them looks that they don’t even seem to process, just tip their drinks back down their throats. 190 leads me through a couple hallways and I swear this house is as large and endless as the Alameda County Fair corn maze. There are a lot more people here than I originally thought, gathered in different rooms or lounging in doorways. I see a few women with eyes like mine, probably on their way back to their designated rooms, each of them fulfilling some kind of fetish. I see some women in suits and uniforms too, and I wonder if they know what I’m here for, but none of them lock eyes with me and I can’t tell if that’s because they don’t notice me or they’re trying not to look.
Finally, 190 pushes open a sliding-glass door and we are standing on the largest patio I’ve ever seen, stretching out with heated lamps, more couches, and a barbecue. Probably about twenty more people are scattered across the deck. I breathe in, look up at the sky. We’re in Berkeley and I think the stars might just be a little more visible across the city limit because after a couple minutes I spot the Big Dipper.
190 stands with me while I watch the sky for a couple minutes, then nudges me. “Is it cool if I leave you here? Head back in when you’re ready.”
I nod.
He leaves me on my own and it’s such a relief to be alone, the way my arms feel free and this patio doesn’t feel so alien because the sky’s been my friend for as long as I can remember. Spread out big. I think whatever is upward is only comforting when it is dark enough to imagine that there is a beyond.
Most days I say I don’t believe in nothing, except something about the way the night colors everything makes me want to. Not in an afterlife, heaven, or any of that shit. That just makes us feel better about dying and I don’t really got nothing to fear about dying in the first place. I just think that the stars might line up and trail into an otherworld.
Doesn’t have to be a better world because that probably doesn’t exist, but I think it is something else. Somewhere where the people walk a little different. Maybe they speak in hums. Maybe they all got the same face or maybe they don’t have faces at all. When I have enough time to stare at the sky, I imagine I might be lucky enough to catch glimpses of the something. Always get pulled back to this planet, though.
I don’t like when people touch me when I’m not expecting it, and the woman behind me does more than that, grabs my hand and pulls without a word. The sky dissolves into this woman’s face and I raise my other hand up to slap her. If I didn’t recognize her, I probably would have.
Purple Suit’s face is stained into my mind like my fingerprint is permanently tethered to Marcus’s neck. She won’t never leave it. Now, standing in front of me, Purple Suit wears jeans and a blazer and she looks younger than she did outside the HQ elevator. Don’t know if it’s just that I can’t see her that well in the dark or something, but she looks about the same age as my mama, maybe fifty.
She isn’t wearing makeup like she was at the headquarters, and I have to strain really hard to look at her eyes and not at the group of scars on her cheek. They trickle down like a snapshot of rainfall, this brownish color that is only a shade or so darker than her skin, so it almost blends in.
“What are you doing?” I pull her fingers from my wrist, step back from her.
She reaches her hand out, begging me to return. “Don’t go back into the light. Can only talk to you if you come back behind the lamp. Please.” She’s frantic, standing in the corner of the patio, shadowed by the lamp towering behind her.
“Don’t understand what you want to talk to me about. You know I already talked to your people at the station. Thought we were finished with this.” I step back toward her so I’m standing in the same shadow. I get a better look at her scars here anyway.
“You know why they called you in to talk?”
I nod. “Wanted to question me about some investigation.”
“It’s a suicide.”
I pivot to the side. “Don’t know nothing about no suicide.”
“Suicide isn’t the point. He left a note. An officer killed himself and left a note and he talked about you in that note. He talked about you and more men on this police force than I can name and when they found that note, they opened an internal investigation. My department does all the internal affairs investigations and all we got back was a transcript of your interview where you said the equivalent of ‘it’s my fault’ and left within the hour. Thing is, I saw you walk out of that office six hours after our cameras say you walked in and I’m going to guess you told less than the truth.”
A suicide. In the dark of the patio, it’s hard to even process what she’s saying, but that sticks. The word. How short and simple it seems, innocent, even though it’s really the bloodiest image I have ever seen. Not that Mama succeeded. I imagine some man squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the world to close on him, all because of me. I wonder how he did it, if he was smarter and richer than Mama and took some pills instead of trying to bleed his way to death. It’s hard to even believe any of them felt remorse for how tight they’d grip the back of my neck or how they’d buckle their belts and open the car doors, shove me out, and say I’m lucky they don’t arrest me. Hard to believe they’d bleed because of me.
Purple Suit is still standing and looking at me, waiting for me to tell her about that day in the station, when they kept me at that table, crescent marks on my wrists.
“Told them what I had to. Don’t matter to me what they know or don’t know. I ain’t getting nothing from telling them the truth.” I fold my arms across my chest, lean into my hip. I want her to walk away, to take the blood scene and the suicide with her.
She nods. “That’s the thing. The rest of this police department might not have a moral code, but I do. And I’m betting they’re doing more taking advantage of you than you even realize. Why you think they waited to interview you until you turned eighteen? Now you aren’t a minor and these men will do whatever they have to in order to cover up your age, but it’s unethical and unfair and I have too much respect for you to let them file this and forget about it. A man died and in his last hours he wrote about you.”
I can picture some faceless cop scribbling, panicked, spelling a name he thinks is mine. Purple Suit needs to stop before he is all I can see, before I want to bleed too just so I don’t have to carry another death.
“I don’t know nothing about that. Don’t matter anyway, this my job. They pay me or they give me information that might as well be payment.”
“Bullshit.” Her tongue is quick.
I step back again, halfway in the light. “Why you even here telling me this?”
She looks at the ground and back up at me. Her eyes wobble in their sockets and she speaks softly. “Only way any justice is going to come around is if this goes public. Kiara, right? They call you Kia, but it’s Kiara?” I don’t respond. “Kiara, I’m going to leak this.”
The space between my lungs and stomach clenches and I feel almost seasick, like the bay has entered my chest when I wasn’t looking. I step closer to her again and speak between my teeth. “If you do that, you fucking my whole life over.”
“If I don’t, I’m still fucking you over and whatever other girls they’ll play with after they’re done with you. We both know they’ve probably already got their hands on a handful of other girls younger than you are that no one knows about. This is a chance at saving them.” Her eyes are pooling, but not with tears. Might be pity or guilt, but they’ve glassed over completely. “I’m telling you because I can take out your name. I think it’s best for everyone to know, so you can speak for yourself, but it’s your call.”
She waits. The heat from the lamp has turned my forehead into a sweat, my teeth grinding so hard they might just chip. I don’t look at her. I know she thinks she’s doing right by me, but she’s just another suit with a God complex and she’s sure as hell not saving me. The men in this house would kill me before they let me ruin them.
“What’s in it for me?” I ask.
Purple Suit shrugs. “A sense of justice? I don’t know what I can offer you at this point, but I’m here to help if you need it. Here’s my number,” she says, handing me a business card. “Honestly, Kiara, I’m going to have to leak this whether you want me to or not. It’s for the best, so I’m here to give you a choice: Do you want your name out there or not?”
I shake my head, can’t believe I’m being pressed back into a corner and told I have a choice. “Don’t you dare say my name,” I spit. I walk away, not bothering to say goodbye.
I retreat back inside, through the maze of hallways, up to the room that is mine for these few hours, and begin again. Head to pillow, my face pressed into the cloth, I let the tears stain my cheeks. No one’s looking at my face anyway.
The past few days a series of tingles have coursed across my forehead like that feeling when you’re blindfolded, but your body feels the eyes. Trevor and I go to the basketball court for Thursday evening pickup games and they are lurking. Couldn’t tell you where, but my forehead says they’re watching.
We lose the first game and Trevor’s face is patches of knots. He doesn’t say more than a couple words to me. We win the second game and the latch on his tongue undoes itself.
My forehead prickles in spirals and the grass fades to a stale green. I survey every corner: street to courts to grass and those eyes must hide good because they have completely bypassed my vision. I grab Trevor’s shoulder to maneuver him back toward home.
“Can’t we stay a little?” Trevor asks, and he don’t even know how the eyes are carving into his back. “Ramona say they getting popsicles.”
I glance around, lean down to him so I only gotta whisper for him to hear. “We gotta get home, Trev. Somebody following and you not safe where they can see you.”
I start pushing him into a full sprint and he’s turning around to whisper-yell at me, “You done lost your mind? Acting like Mama.” I don’t got time to let Dee’s face do more than flash through my head. Dee never tried to protect her baby like I do.
We are running again, like usual, but it isn’t no play sprint this time. There are moments along the race where I don’t feel the tingle, short spurts of street that we are free again. Then they come back. Chasing. The entire way home, Trevor groans and complains about how I’m ruining everything and I stay silent, but the moment we are inside the Regal-Hi gates, I grab the string of his sweatshirt, pull him toward me so he can taste my breath. “Boy, don’t you go calling me yo mama when I’m out here protecting you. Better get your ass upstairs and read a book before I really go acting like yo mama and bring out the belt.”
Trevor races up the stairs, bony behind sticking out in those shorts. I follow him up, go into my apartment, shut the door, close all the blinds until we are standing in darkness.
“How am I supposed to read if you gonna make it all dark?” his voice whines from maybe five feet in front of me.
“Use your head and cut on a light.”
* * *
It took less than twenty-four hours for the suicide note to be plastered all over the local news, article after article popping up in the Google search. As promised, Purple Suit blacked out the line that says my name in it. Still, it’s been less than two days and I’ve had eyes tracking me every moment I step outside, following me. I should’ve known the cops would figure it was me, that they wouldn’t just let me off. Only gonna be so long before they make themselves seen. Daddy always said fuck the cops, but don’t fuck with them, unless you got a reason. Guess I fucked some cops, fucked with some cops, and now I’ve been reduced to a paranoid buzz.
I’ve been too scared to go out at night and I don’t got much more money than Mama must. I called Lacy, asked if she could hook me up with a job, but she said she couldn’t, not after what Marcus did. Dee’s still leaving twenty bucks on the counter every week or so and Trevor and I have started buying cereal and ramen, exclusively. My stomach feels like a straight-up sponge, sitting in the dark. Trevor fell asleep as soon as he started reading and I’m on my own, slowly gaining night vision.
I don’t want to get too close to the windows in case they’re there, watching, but I’m hungry. Eat every part of the chicken hungry.
I stare at my phone for a while before I finally dial Alé’s number. She picks up, says, “Hey.”
“Hey.” I know she doesn’t talk much, but the silence makes my stomach bubble. “Glad you picked up.” I try to sound nonchalant, except there’s nothing chill about me right now and my voice cracks.
She coughs. “Yeah. What you need, Kiara?”
I pause. Maybe I shouldn’t run to Alé when everything else starts shattering. She done picked up enough pieces. “I’m hungry.” I whisper it into the phone, sort of hoping she won’t hear.
Alé’s laugh is a familiar jingle. It recedes into her voice. “You hungry. Damn, aight, come in and I’ll cook you something.”
I suck in my breath. “Can’t leave the apartment.”
“What you mean?”
“Listen, I’m being followed and I can’t leave and I need you to come here because I don’t got no money and I gotta feed Trev and I’m so hungry, Alé. Please.” My words are so tangled I don’t know if she heard right.
“Give me twenty.” She hangs up and I don’t have the guts to say I love you first.
Twenty minutes turn into an hour real quick and my vision is now sharper in the dark than it is in the light. I sit by the door, knees to chest, watching Trevor across the room curled into a ball sleeping.
The knock rocks my diaphragm and I raise my hand up so quick it hits the wall. I cuss, wave it around until the initial shock of the collision reduces to an ache, then stand.
“Who is it?” I call, ear to door.
“Alejandra, who else?” Her voice fades to a mumble she probably doesn’t think I can hear. “No seas cabeza hueca, ay.”
I open the door enough that she can slip through. She’s carrying a bag that smells like her mama’s kitchen and all I wanna do is snatch it out of her hand and begin devouring, but then I take a second to stare at her. Alé is a picturesque image of herself, the whites of her eyes the brightest thing in the room. She is scared.
“Damn, you not even gonna turn on a light for me?” She walks slowly, arms out, like she’s walking a tightrope, and I bet she thinks she’s clouded in dark, but for me she is just as clear as ever. Almost too easy to see. The paper bag is clutched tight in her hand and it’s wrinkled. “Can’t get your food if you don’t gimme some light.” She isn’t even turned toward me, facing Trevor across the room, and she’s real close to running straight into the counter. I turn on the closest lamp to me and a dim orange illuminates half of the apartment.
Alé straightens her body and turns to face me. This must be the first time she’s really seeing me because the lines in her face turn downward and her skin becomes this tender softness, rippled and babyish.
“Good to see you,” I say, still standing by the lamp in the corner. Corners are safer, I think. Two walls instead of one.
“Yeah.” Alé sighs. “Said you were hungry?”
I nod and she puts the bag on the counter and opens it, lets out this whirlwind of steam and the scent of fish and carnitas and food I’ve been dreaming of since the day “normal” suddenly faded to this. She lifts out three plastic boxes. “Snuck it past Mama like I was doing a delivery and she didn’t say shit.” She laughs, small bubbles of sound escaping.
“La Casa don’t even deliver.” I laugh with her.
Alé reaches into the bag again and takes out a purple spray paint can. “Happy birthday, by the way.”
I smile. “Thank you.”
“You coming?” She’s still standing in the kitchen, her eyebrows lifted.
“Maybe you could bring it here?” I stare at the cracks in the lampshade, slivers of sharp light that break the subtle warmth of it.
Alé sighs. “You scaring me now, Ki.” She piles the boxes and paint into her arms and walks over to me. “At least sit down.” The usual light in her voice—the witty note at the end of each of her words—is gone and she just sounds exhausted.
I sit on the floor and Alé follows my lead. I want to just snatch the food and begin gobbling, but she’s gripping tight and I know she won’t let me eat until I talk. Quietest girl I know wants to talk. I nod my head to Trevor, place my finger to my lips to tell her we gotta stay quiet so he don’t wake up. She nods.
“You gonna get right up and leave again if I tell you.” The only thing left for me to stare at is my hands. All the lines in my palm Alé used to read are cut; some of them bleeding, some of them scabbing, some of them too deep to decide how to heal. I’ve been clawing at them, after I finished gnawing on the nails.
Alé puts the boxes beside her and leans toward me, legs crossed, coming closer until her knees are touching mine. She angles her head so that it is directly in front of my hands, looking up into my face. Makes sure she has my eyes. She does.
“I shouldn’t have left in the first place. You tell me to stay and I stay. Say whatever you gotta say and I’ll stay. Siempre.” She doesn’t blink.
I cough. “You heard about the story? Cop who killed himself?”
Alé’s eyebrows do a quick wave and her eyes glaze a little. “Oh shit.”
I can tell she wants to look away from me, can see the way her eyelids flutter like the last thing she wants to do is stare into my eyes, and I can’t blame her because this is everything she ever told me not to do and I bet I’m splintering her bones like Mama splintered mine. If only some Sunday Shoes and a funeral could mourn all this shit, bandage us up.
