Mr. Lewis’s left eye is swollen shut and blood drips onto his shirt from a slash on his cheek, but he refuses to go to the hospital.
Daddy’s office has become an examining room, and Momma tends to Mr. Lewis with Daddy’s help. I lean against the doorway and watch. DeVante stands even farther back in the store.
“It took five of ’em to take me down,” Mr. Lewis says. “Five of ’em!
Against one li’l ol’ man. Ain’t that something?”
“It’s really something that you’re alive,” I say. Snitches get stitches doesn’t apply to King Lords. More like snitches get graves.
Momma tilts Mr. Lewis’s head to look at the cut on his cheek. “She’s right. You’re real lucky, Mr. Lewis. Don’t even need stitches.”
“King himself gave me that one,” he says. “He ain’t come in till them other ones got me down. Ol’ punk ass, looking like a black Michelin Man.”
I snort.
“This ain’t funny,” Daddy says. “I told you they was gon’ come after you.”
“And I told you I ain’t scared! If this the worst they could do, they ain’t did nothing!”
“Nah, this ain’t the worst,” says Daddy. “They could’ve killed you!” “I ain’t the one they want dead!” He stretches his fat finger my way,
but he looks beyond me at DeVante. “That’s the one you need to worry ’bout! I made him hide before they came in, but King said he know you helping that boy, and he gon’ kill him if he find him.”
DeVante backs away, his eyes wide.
I swear, in like two seconds Daddy grabs DeVante by his neck and slams him against the freezer. “What the hell you do?”
DeVante kicks and squirms and tries to pull Daddy’s hands from his neck.
“Daddy, stop!”
“Shut up!” His glare never leaves DeVante. “I brought you in my house, and you ain’t been honest ’bout why you hiding? King wouldn’t want you dead unless you did something, so what you do?”
“Mav-rick!” Momma breaks his name down real good. “Let him go.
He can’t explain anything with you choking him.”
Daddy releases, and DeVante bends over, gasping for air. “Don’t be putting your hands on me!” he says.
“Or what?” Daddy taunts. “Start talking.” “Man, look, it ain’t a big deal. King tripping.” Is he for real? “What did you do?” I ask.
DeVante slides onto the floor and tries to catch his breath. He blinks real fast for several seconds. His face scrunches up. Suddenly he’s bawling like a baby.
I don’t know anything else to do, so I sit in front of him. When Khalil would cry like that because his momma was messed up, I’d lift his head.
I lift DeVante’s. “It’s okay,” I say.
That always worked with Khalil. It works with DeVante too. He stops crying as hard and says, “I stole ’bout five Gs from King.”
“Dammit!” Daddy groans. “What the hell, man?”
“I had to get my family outta here! I was gonna handle the dudes that killed Dalvin, and shit, all that would do was make some GDs come after me. I was a dead man walking, straight up. I didn’t want my momma and my sisters caught up in that. So I got them some bus tickets and got them outta town.”
“That’s why we can’t get your momma on the phone,” Momma realizes.
Tears fall around his lips. “She didn’t want me coming anyway. Said I’d get them killed. Put me out the house before they left.” He looks at Daddy. “Big Mav, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you the other day. I did change my mind ’bout killing them dudes though, but now King wants me dead. Please don’t take me to him. I’ll do anything. Please?”
“He bet’ not!” Mr. Lewis limps out Daddy’s office. “You help that boy, Maverick!”
Daddy stares at the ceiling like he could cuss God out. “Daddy,” I plead.
“A’ight! C’mon, Vante.”
“Big Mav,” he whimpers, “I’m sorry, please—”
“I’m not taking you to King, but we gotta get you outta here. Now.”
Forty minutes later, Momma and I pull up behind Daddy and DeVante in Uncle Carlos’s driveway.
I’m surprised Daddy knows how to get here. He never comes out here with us. Ne-ver. Holidays, birthdays, none of that. I guess he doesn’t wanna deal with Nana and her mouth.
Momma and I get out her car as Daddy and DeVante get out the truck.
“This is where you’re bringing him?” Momma says. “My brother’s house?”
“Yeah,” Daddy says, like it’s no big deal.
Uncle Carlos comes from the garage, wiping oil off his hands with one of Aunt Pam’s good towels. He shouldn’t be home. It’s the middle of a workday, and he never takes sick days. He stops wiping his hands, but the knuckles on one of them are still dark.
DeVante squints against the sunlight and looks around like we brought him to another planet. “Damn, Big Mav. Where we at?”
“Where are we?” Uncle Carlos corrects, and offers his hand. “Carlos.
You must be DeVante.”
DeVante stares at his hand. No manners at all. “How you know my name?”
Uncle Carlos awkwardly lets his hand fall to his side. “Maverick told me about you. We’ve discussed getting you out here.”
“Oh!” Momma says with a hollow laugh. “Maverick’s discussed getting him out here.” She narrows her eyes at Daddy. “I’m surprised you even knew how to get out here, Maverick.”
Daddy’s nostrils flare. “We’ll talk later.”
“C’mon,” Uncle Carlos says. “I’ll show you your room.”
DeVante stares at the house, his eyes all big. “What you do to get a house like this?”
“Dang, you’re nosy,” I say.
Uncle Carlos chuckles. “It’s okay, Starr. My wife’s a surgeon, and I’m a detective.”
DeVante stops dead. He turns on Daddy. “What the fuck, man? You brought me to a cop?”
“Watch your mouth,” Daddy says. “And I brought you to somebody who actually wanna help you.”
“A cop though? If the homies find out, they gon’ think I’m snitching.”
“They’re not your homies if you gotta hide from them,” I say. “Plus Uncle Carlos wouldn’t ask you to snitch.”
“She’s right,” says Uncle Carlos. “Maverick’s really serious about getting you out of Garden Heights.”
Momma scoffs. Loudly.
“When he told us the situation, we wanted to help,” Uncle Carlos goes on. “And it sounds like you need our help.”
DeVante sighs. “Man, this ain’t cool.”
“Look, I’m on leave,” says Uncle Carlos. “You don’t have to worry about me getting information out of you.”
“Leave?” I say. That explains the sweats in the middle of the day. “Why’d they put you on leave?”
He glances from me to Momma, and she probably doesn’t know I see her shake her head real quick. “Don’t worry about it, baby girl,” he says, hooking his arm around me. “I needed a vacation.”
It’s so, so obvious. They put him on leave because of me.
Nana meets us at the front door. Knowing her, she’s been watching through the window since we got here. She has one arm folded and takes a drag of her cigarette with the other. She blows the smoke toward the ceiling while staring at DeVante. “Who he supposed to be?”
“DeVante,” Uncle Carlos says. “He’s staying with us.” “What you mean he’s staying with us?”
“Just what I said. He got in a little trouble in Garden Heights and needs to stay here.”
She scoffs, and I know where Momma gets it from. “A li’l trouble, huh? Tell the truth, boy.” She lowers her voice and asks with suspicious, squinted eyes, “Did you kill somebody?”
“Momma!” my momma says.
“What? I better ask before y’all have me sleeping in the house with a murderer, waking up dead!”
What in the . . . “You can’t wake up dead,” I say.
“Li’l girl, you know what I mean!” She moves from the doorway. “I’ll be waking up in Jesus’s face, trying to figure out what happened!”
“Like you going to heaven,” Daddy mumbles.
Uncle Carlos gives DeVante a tour. His room is about as big as me and Seven’s rooms put together. It doesn’t seem right that he only has a little backpack to put in it, and when we go to the kitchen Uncle Carlos makes him hand that over.
“There are a few rules for living here,” Uncle Carlos says. “One, follow the rules. Two”—he pulls the Glock from DeVante’s backpack
—“no weapons and no drugs.”
“I know you ain’t bring that in my house, Vante,” Daddy says.
“King probably got money on my head. You damn right I got a piece.”
“Rule three.” Uncle Carlos speaks over him. “No cursing. I have an eight-year-old and a three-year-old. They don’t need to hear that.”
’Cause they hear it from Nana enough. Ava’s new favorite word is “Goddammit!”
“Rule four,” Uncle Carlos says, “go to school.”
“Man,” DeVante groans. “I already told Big Mav I can’t go back to Garden High.”
“We know,” Daddy says. “Once we get in touch with your momma, we’ll get you enrolled in an online program. Lisa’s momma is a retired teacher. She can tutor you through it so you can finish the year out.”
“Like hell I can!” Nana says. I don’t know where she is, but I’m not surprised she’s listening.
“Momma, stop being nosy!” Uncle Carlos says. “Stop volunteering me for shit!”
“Stop cursing,” he says.
“Tell me what to do again and see what happens.” Uncle Carlos’s face and neck go red.
The doorbell rings.
“Carlos, get the door,” Nana says from wherever she’s hiding.
He purses his lips and leaves to answer. As he comes back I can hear him talking to somebody. Then somebody laughs, and I know that laugh ’cause it makes me laugh.
“Look who I found,” Uncle Carlos says.
Chris is behind him in his white Williamson polo and khaki shorts. He has on the red-and-black Jordan Twelves that MJ wore when he had the flu during the ’97 finals. Shoot, that makes Chris finer for some reason. Or I have a Jordan fetish.
“Hi.” He smiles without showing teeth. “Hi.” I smile too.
I forget that Daddy is here and that I potentially have a big-ass problem on my hands. That only lasts about ten seconds though because Daddy asks, “Who you?”
Chris extends his hand to Daddy. “Christopher, sir. Nice to meet you.”
Daddy gives him a twice-over. “You know my daughter or something?”
“Yeah.” Chris stretches it kinda long and looks at me. “We both go to Williamson?”
I nod. Good answer.
Daddy folds his arms. “Well, do you or don’t you? You sound a li’l unsure ’bout that.”
Momma gives Chris a quick hug. All the while Daddy mean-mugs the hell outta him. “How are you doing, sweetie?” she asks.
“I’m fine. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I saw your car, and Starr wasn’t at school today, so I wanted to check on her.”
“It’s fine,” says Momma. “Tell your mom and dad I said hello. How are they?”
“Hold up,” Daddy says. “Y’all act like this dude been around a minute.” Daddy turns to me. “Why ain’t I never heard ’bout him?”
It’s gonna take a hell of a lotta boldness to put myself out there for Khalil. Like “I once told my militant black daddy about my white boyfriend” kinda boldness. If I can’t stand up to my dad about Chris, how can I stand up for Khalil?
Daddy always tells me to never bite my tongue for anyone. That includes him.
So I say it. “He’s my boyfriend.” “Boyfriend?” Daddy repeats.
“Yeah, her boyfriend!” Nana pipes up again from wherever she is. “Hey, Chris baby.”
Chris glances around, all confused. “Uh, hey, Ms. Montgomery.”
Nana was the first to find out about Chris, thanks to her master snooping skills. She told me, “Go ’head, get your swirl on, baby,” then proceeded to tell me about all of her swirling adventures, which I didn’t need to know.
“The hell, Starr?” Daddy says. “You dating a white boy?” “Maverick!” Momma snaps.
“Calm down, Maverick,” Uncle Carlos says. “He’s a good kid, and he treats her well. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“You knew?” Daddy says. He looks at me, and I don’t know if that’s anger or hurt in his eyes. “He knew, and I didn’t?”
This happens when you have two dads. One of them’s bound to get hurt, and you’re bound to feel like shit because of it.
“Let’s go outside,” Momma says tightly. “Now.”
Daddy glares at Chris and follows Momma to the patio. The doors have thick glass, but I still hear her go off on him.
“C’mon, DeVante,” Uncle Carlos says. “Gonna show you the basement and the laundry room.”
DeVante sizes Chris up. “Boyfriend,” he says with a slight laugh, and looks at me. “I should’ve known you’d have a white boy.”
He leaves with Uncle Carlos. What the hell that’s supposed to mean? “Sorry,” I tell Chris. “My dad shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“It could’ve been worse. He could’ve killed me.”
True. I motion him to sit at the counter while I get us some drinks. “Who was that guy with your uncle?” he asks.
Aunt Pam ain’t got one soda up in here. Juice, water, and sparkling water. I bet Nana has a stash of Sprite and Coke in her room though. “DeVante,” I say, grabbing two apple juice boxes. “He got caught up in some King Lord stuff, and Daddy brought him to live with Uncle Carlos.”
“Why was he looking at me like that?”
“Get over it, Maverick. He’s white!” Momma shouts on the patio. “White, white, white!”
Chris blushes. And blushes, and blushes, and blushes.
I hand him a juice box. “That’s why DeVante was looking at you that way. You’re white.”
“Okay?” he asks more than says. “Is this one of those black things I won’t understand?”
“Okay, babe, real talk? If you were somebody else I’d side-eye the shit out of you for calling it that.”
“Calling it what? A black thing?” “Yeah.”
“But isn’t that what it is?”
“Not really,” I say. “It’s not like this kinda stuff is exclusive to black people, you know? The reasoning may be different, but that’s about it. Your parents don’t have a problem with us dating?”
“I wouldn’t call it a problem,” Chris says, “but we did talk about it.” “So it’s not just a black thing then, huh?”
“Point made.”
We sit at the counter, and I listen to his play-by-play of school today. Nobody walked out because the police were there, waiting for any drama.
“Hailey and Maya asked about you,” he says. “I told them you were sick.”
“They could’ve texted me and asked themselves.”
“I think they feel guilty about yesterday. Especially Hailey. White guilt.” He winks.
I crack up. My white boyfriend talking about white guilt.
Momma yells, “And I love how you insist on getting somebody else’s child out of Garden Heights, but you want ours to stay in that hellhole!”
“You want them in the suburbs with all this fake shit?” Daddy says. “If this is fake, baby, I’ll take it over real any day. I’m sick of this!
The kids go to school out here, I take them to church out here, their friends are out here. We can afford to move. But you wanna stay in that mess!”
“’Cause at least in Garden Heights people ain’t gonna treat them like shit.”
“They already do! And wait until King can’t find DeVante. Who do you think he’s gonna look at? Us!”
“I told you I’ll handle that,” Daddy says. “We ain’t moving. It ain’t even up for discussion.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
Chris gives me a bit of a smile. “This is awkward.”
My cheeks are hot, and I’m glad I’m too brown for it to show. “Yeah.
Awkward.”
He takes my hand and taps his fingertips against my fingertips, one at a time. He laces his fingers through mine, and we let our arms swing together in the space between us.
Daddy comes in and slams the door behind him. He zeroes straight in on our joined hands. Chris doesn’t let go. Point for my boyfriend.
“We’ll talk later, Starr.” Daddy marches out.
“If this were a rom-com,” Chris says, “you’d be Zoe Saldana and I’d be Ashton Kutcher.”
“Huh?”
He sips his juice. “This old movie, Guess Who. I caught it when I had the flu a few weeks ago. Zoe Saldana dated Ashton Kutcher. Her dad didn’t like that she was seeing a white guy. That’s us.”
“Except this isn’t funny,” I say. “It can be.”
“Nah. What’s funny though is that you watched a rom-com.”
“Hey!” he cries. “It was hilarious. More of a comedy than a rom- com. Bernie Mac was her dad. That guy was hilarious, one of the Kings
of Comedy. I don’t think it can be called a rom-com simply because he was in it.”
“Okay, you get points for knowing Bernie Mac and that he was a King of Comedy—”
“Everyone should know that.”
“True, but you don’t get a pass. It was still a rom-com. I won’t tell anyone though.”
I lean over to kiss his cheek, but he moves his head, giving me no choice but to kiss him on the mouth. Soon we’re making out, right there in my uncle’s kitchen.
“Hem-hem!” Somebody clears their throat. Chris and I separate so fast.
I thought embarrassment was having my boyfriend hear my parents argue. Nope. Embarrassment is having my mom walk in on me and Chris making out. Again.
“Don’t y’all think y’all should let each other breathe?” she says. Chris blushes down to his Adam’s apple. “I should go.”
He leaves with a quick good-bye to Momma.
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you taking your birth control pills?”
“Mommy!”
“Answer my question. Are you?”
“Yeeees,” I groan, putting my face on the countertop. “When was your last cycle?”
Oh. My. Lord. I lift my head and flash the fakest of fake smiles. “We’re fine. Promise.”
“Y’all got some nerve. Your daddy was barely out the driveway, and y’all slobbering all over each other. You know how Maverick is.”
“Are we staying out here tonight?”
The question catches her off guard. “Why would you think that?” “Because you and Daddy—”
“Had a disagreement, that’s all.”
“A disagreement the whole neighborhood heard.” Plus one the other night.
“Starr, we’re okay. Don’t worry about it. Your father’s being . . . your father.”
Outside, somebody honks his car horn a bunch of times.
Momma rolls her eyes. “Speaking of your father, I guess Mr. I’m- Gonna-Slam-Doors needs me to move my car so he can leave.” She shakes her head and heads toward the front.
I throw Chris’s juice away and search the cabinets. Aunt Pam may be picky when it comes to drinks, but she always buys good snacks, and my stomach is talking. I get some graham crackers and slather peanut butter on them. So good.
DeVante comes in the kitchen. “Can’t believe you dating a white boy.” He sits next to me and steals a graham cracker sandwich. “A wigga at that.”
“Excuse you?” I say with a mouth full of peanut butter. “He is not a wigga.”
“Please! Dude wearing J’s. White boys wear Converse and Vans, not no J’s unless they trying to be black.”
Really? “My bad. I didn’t know shoes determined somebody’s race.” He can’t say anything to that. Like I thought. “What you see in him anyway? For real? All them dudes in Garden Heights who would get
with you in a second, and you looking at Justin Bieber?”
I point in his face. “Don’t call him that. And what dudes? Nobody in Garden Heights is checking for me. Hardly anybody knows my name. Hell, even you called me Big Mav’s daughter who work in the store.”
“’Cause you don’t come around,” he says. “I ain’t never seen you at a party, nothing.”
Without thinking, I say, “You mean parties where people get shot at?” And as soon as it leaves my mouth, I feel like shit. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He stares at the countertop. “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” We quietly nibble on graham crackers.
“Um . . .” I say. The silence is brutal. “Uncle Carlos and Aunt Pam are cool. I think you’ll like it here.”
He bites another graham cracker.
“They can be corny sometimes, but they’re sweet. They’ll look out for you. Knowing Aunt Pam, she’ll treat you like Ava and Daniel. Uncle Carlos will probably be tougher. If you follow the rules, you’ll be okay.”
“Khalil talked ’bout you sometimes,” DeVante says. “Huh?”
“You said nobody knows you, but Khalil talked ’bout you. I ain’t know you was Big Mav’s daughter who—I ain’t know that was you,” he says. “But he talked ’bout his friend Starr. He said you were the coolest girl he knew.”
Some peanut butter gets stuck in my throat, but it’s not the only reason I swallow. “How did you know—oh. Yeah. Both of y’all were King Lords.”
I swear to God whenever I think about Khalil falling into that life, it’s like watching him die all over again. Yeah, Khalil matters and not the stuff he did, but I can’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me or it’s not disappointing. He knew better.
DeVante says, “Khalil wasn’t a King Lord, Starr.” “But at the funeral, King put the bandana on him—”
“To save face,” DeVante says. “He tried to get Khalil to join, but Khalil said nah. Then a cop killed him, so you know, all the homies riding for him now. King not ’bout to admit that Khalil turned him down. So he got folks thinking that Khalil repped King Lords.”
“Wait,” I say. “How do you know he turned King down?” “Khalil told me in the park one day. We was posted up.” “So y’all sold drugs together?”
“Yeah. For King.” “Oh.”
“He didn’t wanna sell drugs, Starr,” DeVante says. “Nobody really wanna do that shit. Khalil ain’t have much of a choice though.”
“Yeah, he did,” I say thickly.
“No, he didn’t. Look, his momma stole some shit from King. King wanted her dead. Khalil found out and started selling to pay the debt.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That’s the only reason he started doing that shit. Trying to save her.”
I can’t believe it.
Then again, I can. That was classic Khalil. No matter what his momma did, he was still her knight and he was still gonna protect her.
This is worse than denying him. I thought the worst of him. Like everybody else.
“Don’t be mad at him,” DeVante says, and it’s funny because I can hear Khalil asking me not to be mad too.
“I’m not—” I sigh. “Okay, I was a little mad. I just hate how he’s being called a thug and shit when people don’t know the whole story. You said it, he wasn’t a gangbanger, and if everybody knew why he sold drugs, then—”
“They wouldn’t think he was a thug like me?” Oh, damn. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“It’s cool,” he says. “I get it. I guess I am a thug, I don’t know. I did what I had to do. King Lords was the closest thing me and Dalvin had to a family.”
“But your momma,” I say, “and your sisters—”
“They couldn’t look out for us like King Lords do,” he says. “Me and Dalvin looked out for them. With King Lords, we had a whole bunch of folks who had our backs, no matter what. They bought us clothes and shit our momma couldn’t afford and always made sure we ate.” He looks at the counter. “It was just cool to have somebody take care of us for a change, instead of the other way around.”
“Oh.” A shitty response, I know.
“Like I said, nobody likes selling drugs,” he says. “I hated that shit. For real. But I hated seeing my momma and my sisters go hungry, you know?”
“I don’t know.” I’ve never had to know. My parents made sure of that.
“You got it good then,” he says. “I’m sorry they talking ’bout Khalil like that though. He really was a good dude. Hopefully one day they can find out the truth.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
DeVante. Khalil. Neither one of them thought they had much of a choice. If I were them, I’m not sure I’d make a much better one.
Guess that makes me a thug too.
“I’m going for a walk,” I say, getting up. My head’s all over the place. “You can have the rest of the graham crackers and peanut butter.”
I leave. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know much of anything anymore.
