Daddy goes to the refrigerator. “You want some grapes?”
“Yeah. How come you and Uncle Carlos always fighting?”
“’Cause he a buster.” He joins me at the table with a bowl of white grapes. “But for real, he ain’t never liked me. Thought I was a bad influence on your momma. Lisa was wild when I met her though, like all them other Catholic school girls.”
“I bet he was more protective of Momma than Seven is with me, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Carlos acted like he was Lisa’s daddy. When I got locked up, he moved y’all in with him and blocked my calls. Even took her to a divorce attorney.” He grins. “Still couldn’t get rid of me.”
I was three when Daddy went in prison, six when he got out. A lot of my memories include him, but a lot of my firsts don’t. First day of school, the first time I lost a tooth, the first time I rode a bike without training wheels. In those memories, Uncle Carlos’s face is where Daddy’s should’ve been. I think that’s the real reason they’re always fighting.
Daddy drums the mahogany surface of the dining table, making a thump-thump-thump beat. “The nightmares will go away after a while,” he says. “They’re always the worst right after.”
That’s how it was with Natasha. “How many people have you seen die?”
“Enough. Worst one was my cousin Andre.” His finger seems to instinctively trace the tattoo on his forearm—an A with a crown over it. “A drug deal turned into a robbery, and he got shot in the head twice. Right in front of me. A few months before you were born, in fact. That’s why I named you Starr.” He gives me a small smile. “My light during all that darkness.”
Daddy chomps on some grapes. “Don’t be scared ’bout Monday. Tell the cops the truth, and don’t let them put words in your mouth. God gave you a brain. You don’t need theirs. And remember that you didn’t do nothing wrong—the cop did. Don’t let them make you think otherwise.”
Something’s bugging me. I wanted to ask Uncle Carlos, but I couldn’t for some reason. Daddy’s different though. While Uncle Carlos somehow keeps impossible promises, Daddy keeps it real with me. “You think the cops want Khalil to have justice?” I ask.
Thump-thump-thump. Thump . . . thump . . . thump. The truth casts a shadow over the kitchen—people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right.
Maybe this can be it.
“I don’t know,” Daddy says. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Sunday morning, we pull up to a small yellow house. Bright flowers bloom below the front porch. I used to sit with Khalil on that porch.
My parents and I hop out the truck. Daddy carries a foil-covered pan of lasagna that Momma made. Sekani claims he’s still not feeling good, so he stayed home. Seven’s there with him. I don’t buy this “sick” act though—Sekani always gets some kinda bug right as spring break ends.
Going up Ms. Rosalie’s walkway floods me with memories. I have scars tattooed on my arms and legs from falls on this concrete. One time I was on my scooter, and Khalil pushed me off ’cause I hadn’t given him a turn. When I got up, skin was missing from most of my knee. I never screamed so loud in my life.
We played hopscotch and jumped rope on this walkway too. Khalil never wanted to play at first, talking about how those were girls’ games. He always gave in when me and Natasha said the winner got a Freeze Cup—frozen Kool-Aid in a Styrofoam cup—or a pack of “Nileators,” a.k.a. Now and Laters. Ms. Rosalie was the neighborhood Candy Lady.
I was at her house almost as much as I was at my own. Momma and Ms. Rosalie’s youngest daughter, Tammy, were best friends growing up. When Momma got pregnant with me, she was in her senior year of high school and Nana put her out the house. Ms. Rosalie took her in until my parents eventually got an apartment of their own. Momma says Ms. Rosalie was one of her biggest supporters and cried at her high school graduation like it was her own daughter walking across the stage.
Three years later, Ms. Rosalie saw Momma and me at Wyatt’s—this was way before it became our store. She asked my mom how college was going. Momma told her that with Daddy in prison, she couldn’t afford daycare and that Nana wouldn’t take care of me ’cause I wasn’t her baby and therefore I wasn’t her problem. So Momma was thinking about dropping out. Ms. Rosalie told her to bring me to her house the next day and that she better not say a word about paying her. She babysat me and later Sekani the whole time Momma was in school.
Momma knocks on the door, rattling the screen. Ms. Tammy answers in a head wrap, T-shirt, and sweatpants. She unhooks the locks, hollering back, “Maverick, Lisa, and Starr are here, Ma.”
The living room looks just like it did when Khalil and I played hide-and-seek in it. There’s still plastic on the sofa and recliner. If you sit on them too long in the summer while wearing shorts, the plastic nearly glues to your legs.
“Hey, Tammy girl,” Momma says, and they hug long and hard. “How you doing?”
“I’m hanging in there.” Ms. Tammy hugs Daddy, then me. “Just hate that this is the reason I had to come home.”
It’s so weird looking at Ms. Tammy. She looks the way Khalil’s momma, Ms. Brenda, would look if Ms. Brenda wasn’t on crack. A lot like Khalil. Same hazel eyes and dimples. One time Khalil said he wished Ms. Tammy was his momma instead so he could live in New York with her. I used to joke and tell him she didn’t have time for him. I wish I never said that.
“Where you want me to put this lasagna, Tam?” Daddy asks her.
“In the refrigerator, if you can find room,” she says, as he heads toward the kitchen. “Momma said folks brought food all day yesterday. They were still bringing it when I got here last night. Seems like the whole neighborhood has stopped by.”
“That’s the Garden for you,” Momma says. “If folks can’t do anything else, they’ll cook.”
“You ain’t ever lied.” Ms. Tammy motions to the sofa. “Y’all, have a seat.”
Momma and I sit down, and Daddy comes back and joins us. Ms. Tammy takes the recliner that Ms. Rosalie usually sits in. She gives me a sad smile. “Starr, you know, you sure have grown since the last time I saw you. You and Khalil both grew up so—”
Her voice cracks. Momma reaches over and pats her knee. Ms. Tammy a takes a deep breath and smiles at me again. “It’s good to see you, baby.”
“We know Ms. Rosalie gon’ tell us she fine, Tam,” Daddy says, “but how she really doing?”
“We’re taking one day at a time. The chemo’s working, thankfully. I hope I can convince her to move in with me. That way I can make sure she’s getting her prescriptions.” She sighs through her nose. “I had no idea Momma was struggling like she was. I didn’t even know she’d lost her job. You know how she is. Never wanna ask for help.”
“What about Ms. Brenda?” I ask. I have to. Khalil would’ve.
“I don’t know, Starr. Bren . . . that’s complicated. We haven’t seen her since we got the news. Don’t know where she is. If we do find her though . . . I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“I can help you find a rehab facility near you,” Momma says. “She’s gotta wanna get clean though.”
Ms. Tammy nods. “And that’s the problem. But I think . . . I think this will either push her to finally get help or push her over the edge. I hope it’s the former.”
Cameron holds his grandma’s hand as he leads her into the living room like she’s the queen of the world in a housecoat. She looks thinner, but strong for somebody going through chemo and all of this. A scarf wrapped around her head adds to her majesty—an African queen, and we’re blessed to be in her presence.
The rest of us stand.
Momma hugs Cameron and kisses one of his chubby cheeks. Khalil called him Chipmunk because of them, but he’d check anybody stupid enough to call his little brother fat.
Daddy gives Cameron a palm-slap that ends in a hug. “What’s up, man? You okay?”
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“Yes, sir.”
A big, wide smile spreads across Ms. Rosalie’s face. She holds her arms out, and I walk into the most heartfelt hug I’ve ever gotten from somebody who’s not related to me. There’s not any sympathy in it either. Just love and strength. I guess she knows I need some of both.
“My baby,” she says. She pulls back and looks at me, tears brimming in her eyes. “Went and grew up on me.”
She hugs my parents too. Ms. Tammy lets her have the recliner. Ms. Rosalie pats the end of the sofa closest to her, so I sit there. She holds my hand and rubs her thumb along the top of it.
“Mmm,” she says. “Mmm!”
It’s like my hand is telling her a story, and she’s responding. She listens to it for a while, then says, “I’m so glad you came over. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I say what I’m supposed to.
“You were the very best friend that boy ever had.”
This time I can’t say what I’m supposed to. “Ms. Rosalie, we weren’t as close—”
“I don’t care, baby,” she says. “Khalil never had another friend like you. I know that for a fact.”
I swallow. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The police told me you were the one with him when it happened.”
So she knows. “Yes, ma’am.”
I’m standing on a track, watching the train barrel toward me, and I tense up and wait for the impact, the moment she asks what happened.
But the train shifts to another track. “Maverick, he wanted to talk to you. He wanted your help.”
Daddy straightens up. “For real?”
“Uh-huh. He was selling that stuff.”
Something leaves me. I mean, I kinda figured it, but to know it’s the truth . . .
This hurts.
But I swear I wanna cuss Khalil out. How he could sell the very stuff that took his momma from him? Did he realize that he was taking somebody else’s momma from them?
Did he realize that if he does become a hashtag, some people will only see him as a drug dealer?
He was so much more than that.
“But he wanted to stop,” Ms. Rosalie says. “He told me, ‘Grandma, I can’t stay in this. Mr. Maverick said it only leads to two things, the grave or prison, and I ain’t trying to see either.’ He respected you, Maverick. A lot. You were the father he never had.”
I can’t explain it, but something leaves Daddy too. His eyes dim, and he nods. Momma rubs his back.
“I tried to talk some sense into him,” Ms. Rosalie says, “but this neighborhood makes young men deaf to their elders. The money part didn’t help. He was going around here, paying bills, buying sneakers and mess. But I know he remembered the things you told him over the years, Maverick, and that gave me a lotta faith.
“I keep thinking if only he had another day or—” Ms. Rosalie covers her trembling lips. Ms. Tammy starts for her, but she says, “I’m okay, Tam.” She looks at me. “I’m happy he wasn’t alone, but I’m even happier you were with him. That’s all I need to know. Don’t need details, nothing else. Knowing you were with him is good enough.”
Like Daddy, all I can do is nod.
But as I hold Khalil’s grandma’s hand, I see the anguish in her eyes. His little brother can’t smile anymore. So what if people end up thinking he was a thug and never care? We care.
Khalil matters to us, not the stuff he did. Forget everybody else.
Momma leans across me and sets an envelope in Ms. Rosalie’s lap. “We want you to have that.”
Ms. Rosalie opens it, and I catch a glimpse of a whole lot of money inside. “What in the world? Y’all know I can’t take this.”
“Yes, you can,” Daddy says. “We ain’t forgot how you kept Starr and Sekani for us. We weren’t ’bout to let you be empty-handed.”
“And we know y’all are trying to pay for the funeral,” Momma says. “Hopefully that’ll help. Plus, we’re raising money around the neighborhood too. So don’t you worry about a thing.”
Ms. Rosalie wipes a new set of tears from her eyes. “I’m gonna pay y’all back every penny.”
“Did we say you had to pay us back?” Daddy asks. “You focus on getting better, a’ight? And if you give us any money, we giving it right back, God’s my witness.”
There are a lot more tears and hugs. Ms. Rosalie gives me a Freeze Cup for the road, red syrup glistening on the top. She always makes them extra sweet.
As we leave, I remember how Khalil used to run up to the car when I was about to go, the sun shining on the grease lines that separated his cornrows. The glimmer in his eyes would be just as bright. He’d knock on the window, I’d let it down, and he’d say with a snaggletooth grin, “See you later, alligator.”
Back then I’d giggle behind my own snaggleteeth. Now I tear up. Good-byes hurt the most when the other person’s already gone. I imagine him standing at my window, and I smile for his sake. “After a while, crocodile.”
FIVE
On Monday, the day I’m supposed to talk to the detectives, I’m crying out of nowhere, hunched over my bed as the iron in my hand spits out steam. Momma takes it before I burn the Williamson crest on my polo.
She rubs my shoulder. “Let it out, Munch.”
We have a quiet breakfast at the kitchen table without Seven. He spent the night at his momma’s house. I pick at my waffles. Just thinking about going into that station with all those cops makes me wanna puke. Food would make it worse.
After breakfast, we join hands in the living room like we always do, under the framed poster of the Ten-Point Program, and Daddy leads us in prayer.
“Black Jesus, watch over my babies today,” he says. “Keep them safe, steer them from wrong, and help them recognize snakes from friends. Give them the wisdom they need to be their own people.
“Help Seven with this situation at his momma’s house, and let him know he can always come home. Thank you for Sekani’s miraculous, sudden healing that just so happened to come after he found out they’re having pizza at school today.” I peek out at Sekani, whose eyes and mouth are open wide. I smirk and close my eyes. “Be with Lisa at the clinic as she helps your people. Help my baby girl get through her situation, Lord. Give her peace of mind, and help her speak her truth this afternoon. And lastly, strengthen Ms. Rosalie, Cameron, Tammy, and Brenda as they go through this difficult time. In your precious name I pray, amen.”
“Amen,” the rest of us say.
“Daddy, why you put me on the spot like that with Black Jesus?” Sekani complains.
“He knows the truth,” Daddy says. He wipes crust from the corners of Sekani’s eyes and straightens the collar of his polo. “I’m trying to help you out. Get you some mercy or something, man.”
Daddy pulls me into a hug. “You gon’ be a’ight?”
I nod into his chest. “Yeah.”
I could stay like this all day—it’s one of the few places where One-Fifteen doesn’t exist and where I can forget about talking to detectives—but Momma says we need to leave before rush hour.
Now don’t get it wrong, I can drive. I got my license a week after my sixteenth birthday. But I can’t get a car unless I pay for it myself. I told my parents I don’t have time for a job with school and basketball. They said I don’t have time for a car then either. Messed up.
It takes forty-five minutes to get to school on a good day, and an hour on a slow one. Sekani doesn’t have to wear his headphones ’cause Momma doesn’t cuss anybody out on the freeway. She hums with gospel songs on the radio and says, “Give me strength, Lord. Give me strength.”
We get off the freeway into Riverton Hills and pass all these gated neighborhoods. Uncle Carlos lives in one of them. To me, it’s so weird to have a gate around a neighborhood. Seriously, are they trying to keep people out or keep people in? If somebody puts a gate around Garden Heights, it’ll be a little bit of both.
Our school is gated too, and the campus has new, modern buildings with lots of windo
ws and marigolds blooming along the walkways.
Momma gets in the carpool lane for the lower school. “Sekani, you remembered your iPad?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lunch card?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Gym shorts? And you better have gotten the clean ones too.”
“Yes, Momma. I’m almost nine. Can’t you give me a little credit?”
She smiles. “All right, big man. Think you can give me some sugar?”
Sekani leans over the front seat and kisses her cheek. “Love you.”
“Love you too. And don’t forget, Seven’s bringing you home today.”
He runs over to some of his friends and blends in with all the other kids in khakis and polos. We get in the carpool lane for my school.
“All right, Munch,” Momma says. “Seven’s gonna bring you to the clinic after school, then you and I will go to the station. Are you absolutely sure you’re up for it?”
No. But Uncle Carlos promised it’ll be okay. “I’ll do it.”
“Okay. Call me if you don’t think you can make it the whole day at school.”
Hold up. I could’ve stayed home? “Why are you making me come in the first place?”
“’Cause you need to get out the house. Out that neighborhood. I want you to at least try, Starr. This will sound mean, but just because Khalil’s not living doesn’t mean you stop living. You understand, baby?”
“Yeah.” I know she’s right, but it feels wrong.
We get to the front of the carpool line. “Now I don’t have to ask if you brought some funky-ass gym shorts, do I?” she says.
I laugh. “No. Bye, Momma.”
“Bye, baby.”
I get out the car. For at least seven hours I don’t have to talk about One-Fifteen. I don’t have to think about Khalil. I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in my brain so I’m Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang—if a rapper would say it, she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood.” Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the “angry black girl.” Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, side-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.