Young Junius, page 5
part #4 of Jack Palms Series
She saw her customers stray to Rock and go immediately downhill: they forgot their lives, their jobs—if they had them—and turned to stealing and other crimes to satisfy the never-ending itch.
It got bad fast, and Marlene wondered why she was the only one who saw the trend when she looked out through her windows. Sure, some of the older residents, the grandmothers and grandfathers, saw it, called the police when they were assaulted in front of their buildings for whatever cash they held, mostly the gains of social security checks, but Marlene knew—just like everyone else—that these complaints would do nothing, that she might be the only one with the power to make any change.
“You ok?” She felt Anthony’s hand brush her shoulder, smooth her hair back out of her face. “Why you look so worried, beautiful?”
She looked down at his chest, avoiding his eyes, and noticed that between his legs he was stiffening already, again. She moved forward to kiss him, brushed his lips, and ran her hand across his back. She kissed his pecs and his nipples, started to head downward when he put his hands on her shoulders and held her where she was.
“Marlene. You can tell me. I know you don’t think I can help here, but maybe I can.”
He smiled. Sure, Anthony would think he’d have answers to the problems in her towers. As one of the few black members of his class at Harvard Law, he thought he had answers for everything, that the books he studied had real power over places like this, forgotten civic ideas like the Rindge Towers.
He thought the DA’s office could help, that a few good arrests would lead to small solutions that would build and build until—guess what?—all of her problems and the problems of the towers’ residents would be solved.
Marlene didn’t know what she found most troubling: his idealism about her world and how naive he seemed, or the chance that his view of the problems included her.
He winked and she knew Anthony really thought he could help, thought he knew what she had going on. He didn’t even know how she made her money or came to afford what he liked to call “her penthouse in the skies of ghetto heaven.”
He knew Malik was her brother and why he’d been sent to Billerica. Sometimes she even entertained the idea that he might be trying to use her, that he secretly hoped to get inside her world and draw enough evidence to break his big, career-making case for whatever law firm or prosecutor’s office he wanted to join once he got his JD.
But if he was using her, she supposed they were even.
When they met in Harvard Square the night Marlene snuck out on her own, against the advice of Seven Heaven, the one thing she saw in Anthony, other than a beautiful face and perfect body, was the fact he was someone else, someone from outside.
So she used him to explore another world, to see how life looked through a different set of eyes—and, sure, the sex was good enough to keep him around just for its sake alone, just as long as he didn’t try to bring a case against her.
“I’m fine.” She ran her fingers through the short hairs on his chest, a ploy she knew he had a hard time resisting, and stretched up to kiss him again.
He let her kiss him twice before he cupped her face in his hands. “I know you have a problem, lovely. I just want you to understand that I might be able to help you out of it.”
“I know.” She nodded her way out of his hands. If there was one condition that their relationship had to exist on, she knew, it was that she never let him inside what was real.
14
“Now what the fuck you got yourself into?” Junius’s mother had just shut the door on their company, and now she turned to her son, demanding an answer.
“I—” Junius said.
She slapped him across the face.
Elf shied away into a corner of the room. Aldo Posey stood with his head down. He looked like he was trying to fall asleep on his feet.
“Please tell me you did not just bring those fools into my house,” she said, looking at her husband. “Aldo!”
He jumped to attention. “I—they—they found me at the bar.”
“Sorry!” Gail said. “You are sorry! Now tell this boy to go get himself killed the same week we just lost Temple.”
“I—” Aldo Posey didn’t say anything else.
“That’s right,” she said. She told Junius to stand up, even before he’d finished sitting down. “Don’t make me tell you again. You hungry?” she asked. “Make yourself a plate, and then come back to tell me what all this show is about.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Junius crossed into the dining room and to the table of food that his mother’s friends had left after the funeral reception: enough food for a week, food for at least four people. Junius took a fried chicken breast and a drumstick, some cold cuts, potato salad, and a biscuit. Elf followed.
In the living room, his mother had righted the coffee table and was fixing her magazine stacks. “Sit,” she commanded. Junius and Elf sat side by side on the couch. She asked them what they wanted to drink and then went and brought them Cokes from the kitchen. “Now tell me what all this is about.”
Junius explained he and Lamar had been in a fight that Rock didn’t like, and that that was where Derek and Clarence had come from. He didn’t say anything about Marlene or anyone getting shot or the other towers. When he finished, he just looked at her.
“I don’t want to know who killed your brother,” she said. “You know who it was? It was this. All this around you, what you bringing into this house, what you see on the streets is what took your brother from us.” She waved her arm to include both ends of the block, whatever else might be outside. “That took him and now it taking you!”
Junius chewed. He knew better than to answer his mother when she was explaining her views on the world. She’d be talking about church next and how it all went wrong when he’d stopped coming to Sunday mass. He watched his father start to nod off behind her. Back in a chair, he was actually starting to fall asleep.
When his mother saw where he was looking, she turned in time to see Aldo’s chin hit his chest. “My Lord!” she said. “God knows he been no good to you. Didn’t set something right. But didn’t I show you not to get involved in this mess?”
Again she waved to the street outside, their world, all the bad things.
“Yes, ma’am.” Junius nodded.
His mother walked to the windows and looked outside. If he had to guess, he thought Rock’s boys would have left, gone home for the night, or gone back to tell Rock that Gail Ponds-Posey, a grieving mother, was now part of their problem. Not that Rock would care. He’d know Junius would have to come out at some point, and when he did, the mother rule wouldn’t apply.
She drew the blinds shut and sat down heavily on her love seat. “My Lord.”
The truth was she was tired. She’d seen Temple taken from her this week, and now these men, these pieces of trash, had come into her living room and threatened her, her son, and his friend.
Her husband? He was one of them, a piece of trash like the others, blowing into her house with the wind. A good broom or a wave of her hand was all it took to sweep them back out. But behind her, on the other side of her windows, were the streets, their world: the places she couldn’t clean, protect her son in, or change.
“My my my,” she said. “Aldo.” He was asleep in his chair. Even with the lights on around him, that man could fall asleep in the middle of a train station. She shook her head. Maybe she hadn’t done enough to set him straight. Maybe that’s what had set her sons in the wrong direction. She didn’t know. Some of it had to be him, his responsibility.
Her son chewed, drank his soda. He looked like a boy still, just a child, but he’d held a gun at those men. She shut her eyes tight, trying to push away the image of him holding the gun on Clarence. Clarence Williams: a boy she’d seen come up on the streets just like the others, his mother a good woman until the day she was shot dead on the street, killed for being on the wrong block at the wrong time.
Clarence. Sure, they could have done more for the boy, someone could have brought him home and given him a bed. Someone had to have an empty bed in their home. But no one had.
It all made her want to weep. She shook her head, looking at her son’s friend, the one they called Elf. She knew his mother. Barely older than Junius, he’d held a gun too.
The worst of it, she knew, was still to come.
She stood up and told her son to go up to his room when he finished eating. He and his friend should both sleep upstairs. She would see him in the morning, and they would straighten this out then.
She left her husband sleeping on the chair and went to start putting the food away in the kitchen.
15
Junius woke when his mother opened the curtains beside his bed. Sunlight shone onto his face, and he knew he was done sleeping. He looked at the clock: not yet seven.
“It’s early,” he said. Then he saw his mother’s eyes: cold, decided.
“Get dressed and come downstairs.”
He left Elf asleep on the floor and went downstairs in a pair of shorts and an old T-shirt from the baseball league. He stopped in the bathroom to piss. When he got out, he could see on her face he’d made a mistake.
“I got twenty minutes to tell you this, so you listen up.”
He sat down across from her, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
She tapped the coffee table. “This here is fifty dollars.” Two twenties and a ten lay atop of an issue of Ebony. “This enough to get you to your aunt’s house in Brooklyn. When you leave here this morning, and I mean in the next hour, before any of these jackasses out there get up,”—she waved to the street—“you go straight to South Station and get on a Greyhound to New York City. You hear me?”
Junius nodded.
“You walk straight to the subway, do not stop, you buy a ticket and leave as soon as you get downtown. I may not be perfect, and the Lord knows you sure done wrong yesterday, but this be the only way. You have to leave here now.”
His father grunted in his sleep, and Junius noticed him in the bedroom at the back of the house, sleeping in his mother’s bed.
“You don’t wake him now neither. Leave him be. He got problems enough on his own.”
Junius looked down at his hands—strong hands that should be able to fix this, to keep more trouble from coming. “What about you?”
His mother wiped her cheek. If there was a tear there, he hadn’t seen it. “We be ok here. This my home.”
“When can I come back?”
She shook her head. “It’s not safe for you here no more, and I rather see you at your aunt’s when I come visit than see you laid out like Temple. Can’t have both my boys like that.” She took a deep breath and her shoulders sagged; for a moment, she looked small. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and this time Junius thought he saw the shine of a tear.
Then she sat up straight and exhaled. “No more,” she said, restored to herself again. “Time for you to leave.”
She checked her watch and stood up, dressed for work already, even after the funeral yesterday and last night’s action. There were bills to be paid.
With Teele Square no longer a possibility and Willie Stash not getting behind him, Junius knew this old woman in her flower-print dress might be his only support. This woman he might never see again.
Her and maybe Elf.
Junius held his mother, brought her as close as he could and felt her small body in his strong arms. He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d gotten to be so much bigger than she: wide enough that her shoulders didn’t cover the space of his chest, tall enough that his chin was higher than the top of her head.
She stood back and pulled away from him, checked her watch again. “This the only way,” she said. “Now go.”
“I got to get dressed.”
She frowned. “Then do it. But don’t procrastinate. Get yourself to the station in the next hour. Move before anyone else is awake.”
16
Upstairs, Junius dressed quickly. He took a fast shower, pocketed his mother’s fifty dollars, pulled on yesterday’s jeans again—they were his favorite—and a clean sweatshirt over his favorite Celtics T.
He looked at the nine on the dresser, removed the clip, and counted five bullets left—he’d fired seven times. He considered the gun, knowing he’d had enough shots to destroy his mother’s living room last night, to fill it with bodies.
Junius shook his head. The gun just caused trouble.
“Yo.” Elf sat up, rubbed his face. “What’s up?”
“Time to go,” Junius said. “I got to catch a bus.”
“Shit. Where you going?”
Junius told him about his aunt, his mother’s speech, and the fifty dollars. Elf nodded the whole time.
“I’m a come,” he said when Junius had finished. Just like that.
“Then get dressed. We gots to go.”
When Elf was pulling his clothes on, Junius hid the nine in a dresser drawer under his T-shirts.
His father was asleep, snoring, when they came downstairs, and Junius didn’t wake him.
It was light outside and had been for a few hours. But it was cold. The wind whipped down the street and through his jacket as soon as Junius stepped outside. He locked the door and pushed his key back in through the mail slot. He wouldn’t need it again.
Junius zipped his jacket all the way up and pulled on his black knit cap. Elf did the same, his hat a brown Boston College skull cap that he wore with the BC logo on the side of his head.
Neither of them had gloves, so they walked with their hands in their pockets, headed up the street in the direction of Porter Square and its new T station with the big, red sculpture spinning outside. The T would take him to South Station, where he was supposed to catch his bus.
In a Ford at the other end of the block, Derek dozed, his eyes barely open. Ness was fully asleep in the passenger seat, taking his turn while Derek watched. Clarence had said to turn the car off every twenty minutes, so they weren’t spouting exhaust and drawing attention to where they were, but come three o’clock in the morning and cold as shit outside, Derek made the executive decision that not freezing their asses off was more important.
They kept the car idling five hours, the heat on, and now the gas gauge dipped down close to empty, but Derek didn’t care. He was warm, and if he was a little sleepy, that was how he was supposed to feel at this hour in the morning.
His eyelids slowly fell, then he forced them open again, and then they fell. In another half hour, it’d be Ness’s turn and he could sleep. For now, he pushed himself.
As soon as he looked again, he saw Junius and his little butt buddy locking the front door, pulling their hats on, and walking up the block.
“Shit,” Derek said. He punched Ness in the leg. “Wake up, niggah.”
Ness started. He sat up, shaking his head, asking, “What, what?”
“Look who just came outside,” Derek said. Less than an hour ago, he’d seen Mrs. Ponds-Posey step out onto her porch and lock the door behind her, then head up the block to go to work. He’d thought about going in after them, breaking into the house and shooting those bitches, but feeling comfortable in the heat and not wanting to move for a while had won that war. Now, seeing the two of them, it was most definitely time to make a move.
“Get ready.”
He turned the key to start the car, not remembering it was already started, and the ignition made a loud, grinding complaint. Fortunately, Junius and Elf were too far away to hear.
“Yeah.” Derek nodded, backed the car up enough to pull out of their space, and drove slowly into the street. “Here we come, motherfuckers.”
He idled now, keeping some distance as they walked. They would make a right at the end of the block to head for the T, and when they did, he would move.
“You awake?” Derek asked.
Ness grunted.
“Go find a pay phone.” He handed Ness the card with Clarence’s home number on it. “Call Clarence. Let him know what we found.”
“You serious? You want me to call that motherfucker right now?” He shook his head. “Just drive on past those niggahs and I put two caps in them simple.”
“Nah. I said call our man.” Derek waited for Ness to finish getting his gloves on before he moved the car again. Even then, he just drove forward a half-dozen feet. “Get out,” he commanded.
When Ness finally got out, he turned back. “Where I meet you?” he asked, holding the door open, letting the frigid air blow into the car.
“I be up the block, follow these bitches to Porter Square. Tell Clarence we meet him in the T.” Derek nudged the car forward just enough to rip the door from Ness’s hand and slam it closed. As he pulled off, he saw Ness hold up both middle fingers and then grab his nuts in the rearview.
17
Early mornings were her favorite time of day, the only time she’d come down by herself and walk among the people outside. Marlene loved being close to those who really knew the towers, the ones who belonged here: the retirees, who always woke early; the workers, out of their apartments before 8:00 a.m. to get to their shit jobs at fast-food chains, Jiffy Lubes, downtown garages, gas stations; even the people coming home from nightshift work. These were the people she respected.
She held her fur around herself, pulled it tight to her neck, and faced into the wind, looking out at the parking lot. Some of the retirees pushed rolling carts toward the bridge that crossed the train tracks to Fresh Pond Mall and Star Market, where they’d buy their food for the week with food stamps, welfare checks. The social security helped too, but it was the combination that enabled them to get by, and sometimes that wasn’t enough. In her pocket she had an envelope of crisp twenties, ready to give cash to any who asked, whoever had a need. In the early mornings, she’d be sure to give money only to those truly in need.
