“As long as she’s Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow, please.” She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.
Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.
Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. “Is anything I know about you true?”
He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.
“What are you talking about?” He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.
“Maybe you’re that brother from another planet,” cause she didn’t know any brothers from the ’hood who talked to the police without a lawyer.
They had called him, he repeated. They’d asked if he wanted to clear things up. “I felt it could easily be resolved. This woman is my best friend. We’re used to talking a dozen times a day.”
“You broke up and still talked a dozen times a day?”
“Yeah.”
“But she was cool with you not fucking her anymore, and you believed that?”
Nina started remembering threads of their early conversations last fall. Calling himself a free agent. Admitting, only when Nina pressed, that he did see one sister more than anyone else…
…and that Isaac had been in her car when an old boyfriend called to apologize for ancient misdeeds. It was one of those twelve-step-make-amends things. Isaac had said he thought that was nice. She’d agreed. “Especially since I stabbed him.”
“She’s my best friend,” Isaac repeated.
Nina batted the air and a bit of forgotten strawberry flew. She needed to wash the smashed fruit off her hand. “Say goodnight, Gracie,” she muttered, walking back to the kitchen.
“What?”
“Way before your time.”
“Thanks for dinner,” he called out from the doorway.
She ignored the lame farewell and wiped the fruit off the floor. The downstairs door slammed shut.
The night was cool and windy. Nina raised the slats of a shutter and watched Isaac disappear in the dark. It was a ten-minute walk to Dudley Station, past some very sketchy territory. Nina had escaped Boston in the ’80s, the years when crack was king and a Roxbury zip code meant perpetual violence. Before the plague, she’d traveled Interstate 90 from Albany to attend Berklee, and had lived at a series of Roxbury addresses with no problem. She loved the familiar swagger and grace amidst despair. Some of those blocks had crashed and resurrected. Some meant constant crossfire still. Her new address was safe in the daytime, but a game try at night without klieg-light battalions. Nina wouldn’t hazard a night stroll. But a Marine might make it.
It was past 11:00. Too late to take that second pill. The mood elevator needed to drop a few floors. Nina made a three-bag cup of Sleepytime tea and spiked it with thirty drops of valerian root. Better than Xanax and safer. She stuck a straw in the thermos mug she kept in the crib-the other stayed in the car-and popped a white noise CD in the boom box. Waves crashed. Seagulls cried. She logged on and sent an e-mail to Darcelle, the judge. Nina gave her the short of it, then wrote:
Don’t know the “truth” of the situation, but his life story is admirable. Foster kid from the ’hood, East St. Lou
She stopped typing, grabbed a large pink Post-it, and scribbled a note to herself: Legal name? Isaac Elimu Sayif? She circled it, then wrote,
Works at Popeyes for years, looks in the mirror, decides to wipe off the grease, joins the Marines, goes to community college, St. Louis U, then chemical engineering at M.I.T. He’s all but dissertation. Plans to teach at U of Cape Town this fall. Would hate to see him derailed by B.S.
Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon.
Nina
Nina had received a Welcome back message from Darcelle last month. An invitation too: the judge’s annual Fourth of July Louis Armstrong Birthday Bash. Nina had been happy to get it but surprised. She certainly hadn’t announced her return to Boston. She’d worked the East Coast as a jazz singer and the world as a backup singer all through the ’80s. But touring wore her out. Lost too many friends to drugs. And she’d deliberately been under the radar for a decade. Teaching mostly. Private piano lessons. Music theory and history courses at assorted colleges. She’d just finished teaching a jazz history course at Roxbury Community College. But she got the biggest rush teaching music to disabled kids in the public schools. That had brought her back to Berklee. She was studying music therapy.
She wiggled deep into the feather body pillow on the futon and settled on her side, hands in prayer position between her drawn knees. “ East St. Louis,” she said out loud. What part of East St. Louis don’t know not to talk to a cop? A seagull cried. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she told the bird. “Ain’t he never seen Law & Order?” The woman who adopted him used to be crazy with the electric cord on his ass, Isaac had told her. “She bang your head up too, baby? That the problem?”
Her phone rang before the alarm clock. She ignored both and slept past 10:00. Her body required eight or nine hours of sleep and took it. That’s one reason she’d stopped touring. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, gargled with hydrogen peroxide, then popped her morning elevator. She took her ritual cup of hot lemonade with honey to the computer and found a message from the judge. Darcelle was out of town but gave Nina the name of a female attorney in Roxbury. Nina forwarded it to Isaac, then tried his cell. She ignored his voice mail and tried the house.
“Hey, Miss Nina,” Devon answered before the second ring.
“Now that’s how I know you love me. You screened me in. What you been up to?”
“Working, working, working.”
“One would have been enough. More makes me suspicious. How’s the grades?”
“I’m passing.”
He was a grown hard-back man now-or thought he was. She had to tread lightly. Concern without badgering. She asked about his plans for the summer.
“I’m going to work the rest of the year and go back full-time next spring.”
She feared he would never make it back. “Not many students live rent-free. Do you really need to work full- time?”
“The rent’s free, but that’s not exactly money in my pocket.”
Nina always thought his living arrangement curious. He and Isaac were quasi-superintendents. Handled trash, shoveled snow, showed units to prospective tenants in their building and other properties Mrs. Sheridan, the landlady, owned.
“What’s the gig?” she asked.
Property management, he said. He was still showing Mrs. Sheridan’s units. Painting them too. And he was getting his real estate license. “It’s crazy out here, the money from flipping houses. Mrs. Sheridan’s been cleaning up.”
That’s her main thing now? Nina wondered. Houses? Nina knew her as the wig lady. She owned one of the biggest wig and beauty supply stores in Roxbury and another on Central Avenue in Cambridge.
Of course, Devon didn’t need a license to flip houses. But she told him it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have one in addition to his degree.
“Exactly.”
“Listen, I’m trying to catch up with Isaac.”
“He was gone when I got up.”
Nina didn’t want to assume what Devon knew about Isaac’s legal difficulties so she didn’t mention the attorney. “When are you coming by so we can really catch up?”
Sunday’s were usually good, he told her, though not today.
“Next Sunday work for you?” she asked. “Around 6?”
He said he’d be there.
