'We a'ight.'
'A'ight? What's 'a'ight'?'
'We cool. She be sweating me for money. Wants some new gear.'
'Her babies need stuff, too.'
'Let her go to they babies' daddies then. Shit. I'll pay for my own, but I for damn sure ain't paying for anyone else's. This whole relationship bullshit's more trouble than it's worth. I'm a hitit-and-quit-it sort of man.'
A more introspective turn might have seen this as a case of the sins of the father and all that bullshit passed on to his son. And his son's son. From firing up some herb for social occasions, Red's folks graduated to the sometime line of coke, by which point they'd moved into an apartment. They owed everyone in the neighborhood. Shit, they owed everyone in the family. Some months they sold off their food stamps in order to make ends meet, as they smoked up the rent money again. He wasn't mad at being poor, but things didn't have to be as bad as they were. His clothes never fit. The house was never cleaned. There was never anyone doing any cooking. One day, he found a broken piece of antenna behind the curtain on the window sill of the Section 8 half of a duplex. Its intentional placement had the air of importance, laying on the altar of the sill. It took him a while to divine its use as a crack pipe.
The education system also taught him and passed on lessons. Early in his elementary school years, Naptown Red had been labeled learning disabled (LD). The educators shuffled him off to be in separate classes. When that freckle-faced Andy Baumer spread lies about his mother, Red bit the shit out of him and was labeled emotionally disabled (ED). His mother jumped all over that once she figured out she could get more welfare benefits. When the boys in his neighborhood began affecting the same look, he wore his hat to the right and was labeled a Gangsta Disciples (GD). Little more than a weekend gangsta, he ran with them for a hot second, flew his black and blue colors, broke into cars, boosted stuff from stores, smoked a little weed.
Then he decided to dream bigger.
'What's this business you trying to speak on?' Naptown Red asked.
'I heard you were the man to get with.' This here fool Fathead done brought around Prez. He never knew who he wanted to run with. Every time Red turned around, this boy was with someone else. He'd give this much to Prez: he was reserved, didn't raise his voice. A little soft for the streets, he still had a nice way about him, though it looked like the dragon had chewed him up and walked him around the block a few times. Still, he didn't act superior, but kept things low-key and played it smart. He knew who was taking over.
'I run this over here,' Naptown Red said.
'I'm looking to do some work,' Prez said.
'You think you can handle this here-ron.' Naptown Red exaggerated the pronounciation of heroin for old school effect. These youngbloods didn't know.
'I ain't tripping.' He could tell the way he spoke to Red irritated him.
'You vouch for him?'
'Yeah, he cool,' Fathead said. 'Not like his strung-out ass was Five-O or nothing.'
Fear made men bluster. Naptown Red trusted him because Fathead needed him to make things happen, just as Naptown Red needed someone with good street eyes. Information was gold. The man with the keys to the dope line was gold. Theirs was a relationship of mutual mining. Red studied his body language. When he was asked a sticky question, Fathead folded like yesterday's newspaper. He was all about protecting himself.
'All right, come on. I got a party to go to. You roll with me and I'll show you how it's done.'
Mulysa had to die. For Tristan the hunt was long overdue. The portrait Iz sketched of her, especially the smile on her face, mocked her. The front part of her hair was tucked down while the rear half flared into an Afro. Her features generous and sculpted. Gold eyes, dark skin, smile lines around her mouth. Iz always believed she was terrible at drawing hands. Yet there they were, strong but delicate. And powerless to stop the men in her life from hurting her or her own.
The thing Tristan resented most about her relationship with her father was how grateful she was to him. And for all that he'd done, she still wanted to turn to him. Thirteen years old, scared, alone… it had been a terrible Thanksgiving. It was just her and her father. She'd spent the day cooking while he laid back on the couch, slowly draining the bottle of Crown Royal, absently watching football. The game didn't matter. Nor did he stir for commercials. His was a slow-cooking stew of loneliness and self-loathing.
'Daddy, I have something to tell you.' Tristan unfolded a TV table and placed it in front of her father. With meticulous care, she arranged a plate and napkin. Fork, knife, then spoon. She slipped a coaster under the nearly empty glass. One by one, she brought out saucepans of food, as if for his inspection. Macaroni and cheese. Mashed potatoes. Fried okra. Greens. Turkey. Fried corn. Ham. Cranberry sauce. Each entree greeted with a barely perceptible nod or flicker of the eyes. Grief had swallowed him whole since her mother died. It took him in little bits, slowly robbing him of the will to work, go through the motions of life, or move. He neither made nor took calls. His friends, what few he had, rarely stopped by anymore. And he looked at her, with his bloodshot, rheumy eyes which looked too large for his face. The stink of alcohol on his breath. He slipped into her room at night and held her. She laid awake in panic not knowing whether to move or remain frozen, and the paralysis of indecision left her in his embrace. Each night, the entanglement became more familiar. More intimate. His hands resting on her waist. He breathed her in, or the memory of her mother. And she feared what new intimacy each night might bring.
'Daddy, I… I'm not like other girls,' she blurted out. Her heart slammed into her chest with a machine gunning thud. She could barely catch her breath. Her hands trembled with the weight of anticipation, so she gripped each pot handle firmer. She hadn't rehearsed what she was going to say. She wanted it to seem natural. Now she cursed herself for not better thinking it through.
'It's not a phase or nothing. I been this way as long as I can remember. I just… don't like boys.'
There, she had said it. The words hung in the air and it was too late to take them back. Nothing could be unsaid. Or unremembered. His slightly yellow eyes turned toward her, barely noting the food placed before him like a placating sacrifice before a bloodthirsty god. The eyes studied her with a gleam of unfamiliarity, clouded by a slight lascivious glint.
The plate of food slapped Tristan in the face. The gravy from the mashed potatoes scalded her eyes. She ripped the plate from her face, food dripping from her cheek in time to make out the blur approaching her. The fresh sting of her father's palm against her jaw sent her tumbling to the floor.
Tristan knelt there, kernels of corn falling from her hair and cranberry sauce trailing down her cheek like streaking blush. Her face warmed from where her father struck her. As if he could slap the gay out of her, her father — a tall man, looming like a wild grizzly above her — prepared to pounce on her. He never said a word. The Detroit Lions rumbling backward on the television screen was the only sound besides her father's labored breathing. She didn't know where the attack, the anger, came from. His daughter had declared herself a dyke. Her tacit admission that she was no longer his. His own grief finally devoured him. His self-loathing from not working, not being where he wanted to be in life, missing his wife, and being lost, all of it bubbling up and lashing out in a feral outburst. He would control one thing in his life and house.
Tristan.
He lumbered toward her.
Tristan had had enough. She was done with this world of pain and abuse at the hands of someone who was supposed to protect her. Her fingers balled into a fist. Her hair, slick with gravy, fell to one side of her face. Tristan's body heaved as if wracked with sobs. He pressed his attack, leaning low to scoop her up, to lay his hands on her, to act as if he owned her or her body.
She punched him in his throat.
Her father reeled backward, unable to catch his breath. She pounced into him, letting her weight and momentum do most of the work in toppling him backward. Next to the fork she had once so carefully placed on her napkin. She pressed the tines to his eye and waited until she had his full attention.
'You come near me again…' She shifted her position, drawing her knee into his crotch. 'You touch me again, and I'll kill you.'
'You are dead to me.'
Tristan put her full weight on her knee to push herself up, then ran out of the house. Into the waiting arms of the night. To the streets…
… where Mulysa found her.
'What's a fine girl like you doing out here?' Mulysa asked, his voice all silvery and polished in that way
