'It takes a certain kind of self-loathing to be here. Maybe you know what it's like. You feel isolated. Apart. Trapped. The whole experience made me feel so different. As if everyone could see my shame. So I never wanted to feel weak or alone again.'
'Black protects you.'
'I love the nation.' La Payasa hand-stacked the letters of her clique. 'They my family. They took me in and taught me that they had a code. The leaders chosen had to be strong. Mentally, physically, and emotionally.'
'They made you strong.' Percy struggled to follow, but thought he understood.
'I held their guns and drugs from the beginning. I could use my looks to lead fools into an ambush. Women ain't trusted to go with men on hits. With me, I can go solo. No one challenges my word.'
'So you ain't scared anymore.'
'You… understand.'
'It's like me with King. I'm not afraid. I want to live… like he does.'
'I'm tired. You always got someone who wants to test you. And that gets old real quick.' She wanted out of her life. She loved the power and the community her life afforded. And the respect. But her loyalty to her gang was also her biggest obstacle. Besides enlightened self-interest, she could give up the folks she didn't like, who were rivals in their way, or frankly, she didn't give a fuck about. But treason was the worst sin, punishable by death. A subtle shift of light in her eyes, the flicker of resignation. She took the lid of a can and began to scrape off her tattoo.
'Stop! You're gonna hurt yourself!' Percy yelled.
'The life, it don't give you time to think back on what you've seen or done. You live in the right now with the goal to survive to tomorrow.' Rivulets of blood filegreed her shoulder. 'I won't give the cup to you. I will put it in the hands of its true keeper. And maybe talk to this King of yours.'
'What about…?'
'Come on, your friends are waiting on you.'
Big Momma swept her porch. A little four-by-eight concrete slab set before her door and the adjoining condos door. Her hair done up in pink rollers, gray strands mixed with black in a gray jogging suit knowing full well she barely jogged to the refrigerator door. However, she hated house dresses, believing they were for old ladies ready for nursing homes. And she was neither. Two green plastic lawn chairs leaned against the brick artifice of her condo. A plastic bench upturned into the bushes while she swept. She arranged the furniture back to her porch, scooting the bench out into the lawn for a better view. From her porch, she could spy the entirety of her court, a cul-de-sac of condominiums forming the letter U facing Breton Drive. On the other side of the street was Jonathan Jennings PS 109 elementary school. The park next to the school was in her full view, the vista cut off by the row of bushes that grew along the creek that separated the school and Breton Court from the rest of the neighborhood. The comings and goings of Breton Court happened under her watchful eye. She knew who lived where, who belonged in the area, and who didn't. she watched over it. Protected it.
A dog barked then skittered around the corner of the bridge that crossed the creek and limped directly for her. It favored one side, had some wounds which had been tended to but were still sore. Lott, Had, and Percy trailed behind it, none of them moving quickly, especially Lott. Trouble followed that boy and he was all too happy to find his way into it. A girl, a pretty little thing, followed a few steps behind them. They all stopped at Big Momma's stoop.
'Big Momma,' Percy said. 'La Payasa.'
'This belongs to you.' La Payasa handed her a chalice. Unadorned and simple.
'It does?'
'It always has.'
'Why me?'
'Because you're magic,' Lott said. 'It's what you do. You see us, who we really are, the way nobody else does. That's your magic.'
'If you're not ready to be helped, you won't get better,' Big Momma said.
Everyone wanted a happy ending to their story. To believe that no matter how far gone they are, their story wasn't over and there was still time to write a new story. 'I think we have a stop to make.'
Night shrouded a fog-filled world. King marched about a few tentative steps at a time. Uncertain. Almost lost. A hand reached out to grab him before he stumbled again. His brown leather jacket remained opened enough to reveal the gold chain along his black turtleneck. His brown eyes brimmed with compassion. Side burns, thick but tight, framed his wistful smile. He could almost see his reflection in his polished knobs. Yet King couldn't quite focus on him, as if he wasn't entirely there.
'Dad.' King knew though he hadn't seen his father since he was two and had no real memory of him. But he looked exactly as he had in the pictures his mom kept.
'Yeah,' Luther said. 'Look at you. All grown up. You've become quite a man.'
'I don't understand. You're dead.'
'Yeah.'
'But you're here.'
'And you're lost.'
'I'm always here. I came to you. A father loves his children.'
King shifted in discomfort, a closeness to a father he didn't understand. There were times when it was easier to believe the seemingly irrational. King wasn't sure about a lot of things.
'You're confused. You have a lot of questions and soon we will have all of eternity for me to answer them. For now, take in my healing waters. What's broken can be made whole. What's dirty can become clean. Drink deep and know that you are loved. You are quite special to me. For who you are. You don't have to do anything to prove yourself to me. Just be the man I intended you to be. As for me, I'm already pleased with you, just as you are.'
With that, King awoke.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The glow of the computer screen lit Garlan's face as he checked his Facebook page from the library computer. He debated whether or not to add his mother as a friend. Everything taught him that he was meant to live and die alone in the streets. The beatings he took from his mom's boyfriends. On the streets. A different kind of beating in school, by the teachers, as they either told him or assumed that he wouldn't amount to shit. And he seemed determined to prove them right. The lingering memory of his mom was how bottles lined the shelf of what she called 'Club Nouveau'. In an alcoholic's reflex, she counted her drinks and memorized the levels of the bottles. She knew each bottle as intimately as her own hand, knew if they had been watered down or out of place. She treated those bottles with more care and attention than she did her own kids.
Whenever someone got up or walked down the aisles of the library, any movement at all, it drew his attention. He set his jaw and eye-fucked them so that they gave him a wide, respectful berth. He wasn't one of those old heads, always nodding to each other like all black folks was related or some shit. So Five-O stepping to him was recognized long before they locked onto him.
'Garlan?' Cantrell sipped from a fresh cup of coffee from Lazy Daze, a local coffee shop, as he was 'done supporting The Chain' as he called it, though he'd still sooner spring for Starbucks than choke down the watery sputum which passed as station house coffee.
'Who asking?'
'Come on, Garlan. Why you going to do us like that? I thought you were my dude. We've shared times. Surely you got some love for your peoples,' Lee mocked, adopting the 'brother-brother' affect he so despised.
'My partner, Detective Lee McCarrell.' Cantrell cut him a caustic glance. Garlan certainly wasn't a tax-paying citizen, but he hadn't given them any cause to go hard at him yet. The thing was, sometimes Lee's pit bull approach, irritating as it was, cut through the mess. 'Can we step outside?'
Garlan pushed away from the table and met the gaze of anyone who glanced his way until they averted their eyes. No one would see him if he didn't want them to. He touched the ring on his left hand, a nervous habit, as if to
