Children played on dirt patches where lawns should have been, and groups of men worked on cars that looked like they’d be better off sent to the wrecking yard.
As soon as I entered, every eye in sight was staring right at me without shyness or welcome. An old man stood from where he’d been sitting on the stoop nearest me, called hoarsely to the children playing in his front yard, and shuffled inside through the warped screen door. The kids streamed into the house after him like a pack of puppies.
“You’re him, ain’t ya?” a wide-eyed teenage white girl asked, standing right next to me even though I hadn’t noticed her approach.
I ignored her as I stumbled on. The only sounds I heard were papers fluttering in the wind all around me – flyers, posted on every door. Squinting at the nearest sheet flapping in the breeze, I saw ‘ORDER TO VACATE’ posted on it in big letters.
I was drenched in sweat and shivering. My cough had gotten much worse. And, in the blink of an eye, I was the only one on the street anymore. Except… down the block a group of young males stood in front of a stoop, facing me with intent postures.
It was deja vu: this wasn’t Oakland, I hadn’t been a street kid for years – but this crew appeared familiar. Like if I could just make it all the way to them without falling down, I’d see some of my childhood homies among them. Maybe I’d be as close to safe as surrounding friends could make you.
Of course, when I finally got close I didn’t recognize any of them. ‘What did you expect?’ a voice jeered in the back of my head. ‘All your home boys are dead.’
“You look like shit, dude,” one tall black kid with cornrows said.
I didn’t argue with him. My head commenced spinning and I sank to my knees. I started coughing and couldn’t stop, my booming lungs sounding like a broken washing machine.
I toppled over to lie on my side, which seemed to be becoming a habit for me. My empty left eye socket throbbed, blurring what was left of my vision; but with my good right eye I saw a circle of pants legs and shoes surrounding me.
“Hey, Natalie,” the tall black kid said. “Here’s Sam’s dad. Here’s the cracker who killed your man.”
“Bring him inside,” a woman said from the open door to the nearest bungalow.
With a feeling akin to flight, I was hoisted into the air by many hands. I felt myself being carried up the steps and onto the bungalow’s stoop, but I passed out before we got through the doorway.
Chapter 19
The next while was an endless fever dream. Movement and voices, doors slamming, people coming and going. An occasional hand touching me.
Even in my delirium I felt bone-deep shivering rack my frame. During one of my more lucid moments I felt something delightfully cool and wet mopping my brow. I opened my eye to see who was comforting me.
She was young: a tall big-boned Mexican girl with calm brown features and a long mop of curly black hair, a lit Newport cigarette dangling from her full lips. Her expression didn’t change as she saw I was awake, but she stopped mopping my brow to return my gaze. I drowned in the dilated pupils of those big brown unsympathetic eyes.
“I’m ruining your couch,” I said, embarrassed to be sweating buckets onto her furniture. A small black boy stood behind her, staring at me wide eyed.
“Go back to sleep,” she said.
“You should hate me,” I said.
“Who says I don’t?” she said, exhaling menthol cigarette smoke out her nostrils dragon-like. “You need antibiotics or you’re going to die, though.”
“No hospitals,” I said. “Please let me stay here. Don’t send me back to them.”
“I have to change the dressing on your wound or it’ll get infected,” she said. “It’s filthy.” She fumbled at it, but I slapped feebly at her hand and she stopped.
She started mopping my brow again and I fell asleep. Then I was awake again and on my feet. Somebody was on each side of me with my arms over their shoulders.
“Open your mouth,” Natalie said, fading in and out of focus in front of me. I obeyed, and she put this big horse pill on my tongue.
It was huge, and tasted like shit. I gagged, and then Natalie put a glass of water to my mouth. The glass clicked against my teeth as I guzzled that delicious water, the big pill tearing at my throat as I fought it down. I was out before they laid me back on the couch.
The ordeal with the pill was repeated again and again, I have no idea how many times. Then, out of the blue, I woke to realize my fever had broken. I felt almost fine lying there, except for the pulsing throb where my left eye had been.
The little black kid stood right next to the couch, looking down at me. He held a big butcher knife in his hand, its tip pointed at the floor.
“You killed my daddy,” he said.
“Uncle Moe says this man has to live,” Natalie said from behind us. “But I say it too.”
The boy sobbed, dropped the knife to the carpet and ran from the room. Natalie picked up the knife and laid it carefully on the coffee table instead of sticking it in me herself. She came over to the couch and dropped to squat next to me on her hams.
“You’ll make it now; you weren’t a waste of my time,” she said. She cocked her head to the side. “But you want to know why I’m doing this. You’ve got to be wondering.”
I sat up, naked except for the sheet, which I wrapped around my waist. She had a silver necklace around her neck, and she tugged it out from where it hung between her ample brown breasts. A cross dangled at the end of it, glittering and flashing in the light.
Natalie turned and looked at the wall. A big wooden crucifix hung there with a piece of palm frond wrapped around it. On a table below was a statue of Madonna and Child, staring rapt at each other.
A mirror hung on the wall next to the crucifix. I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in it: a stump-chested pale old white boy with red hair, and one side of his face bound up in filthy bandages. My pecs were still as veiny and shredded as a thousand pushups a day carved them inside. But I’d lost a lot of weight; I was pretty haggard and gaunted up.
“I’m Catholic,” Natalie said. “I was raised to forgive all trespasses against me, and to love my enemies. God is the judge, not me.”
She studied her silver crucifix. “Revenge never fixed nothing, and it sure won’t bring back the dead.”
“But how am I to find forgiveness, Lord?” she asked that cross. “It’s hard; it’s not in me right now. Least ways, not for this one.”
She slipped the cross back between those magnificent breasts and looked at me again. “My brother has use for you, or I think you’d be dead right now. Maybe it would be a mortal sin, but I still could’ve borne the weight of it.”
I couldn’t think of any comeback. “Where’s your facilities?” I asked, not trusting myself to look at her.
Chapter 20
Once I had the bathroom door closed and locked I removed my bandages, looking down as I did so as not to see my reflection in the mirror. There was some hydrogen peroxide in the medicine chest, and poured it in the open wound as I leaned over the sink.
Whilst clutching the edge of the basin to brace against the startling pain, I saw the peroxide’s foam swirling down the drain tinged with streaks of yellow. I could feel and hear the peroxide fizzing and popping on and in my face as I kept pouring until the foam finally drained a steady pink.
