Dope Sick (11 page)

“
SUPPOSE THE GUN I GOT
was the one he shot the cop with? Maybe that's why he's saying I'm the shooter!” I said.

“So what you saying?” Kelly stood up.

I was surprised to see him stand and face me. He seemed even taller than he had before, as if he had changed and had grown so that he was more than I was. When we had first met, I had just taken him for some homeless dude with maybe some street smarts. Now he was standing, looking at me, and I thought I was feeling something coming out of him, but something in him that I could
sense, that I was sure was there. A power.

He looked at me, waiting for me to say something. “I want to take back that minute,” I said, “when I was being sick in the bathroom.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said reaching for the remote, “but suppose he didn't switch Nines. Maybe the police don't know what gun was used to shoot the cop?”

“So why he saying…?” I didn't know what to do. Kelly sat down and shook his head like he was getting tired of me. “It don't matter what gun I got. I have to get rid of it before the police get here.”

“You still want me to call them?” Kelly asked.

“No.”

“Yo, Lil J.” Kelly put one leg over the side of the chair, the way I do sometimes. “You thinking the world is supposed to stand still while you make up your mind how you want to live? You thinking everybody supposed to freeze in place while you bopping around doing your thing?”

“I ain't
bopping around
,” I said.

“You came here huffing and puffing with a gun
in your hand,” Kelly said. “That was last night and this is morning and you still standing there huffing and puffing with the gun in your hand. You going to shoot your way out or not?”

“I just need some time to think, man.”

“You don't even know what time is,” Kelly said.

“You the one holed up in here and ain't got no life,” I said. “I'm stone street. I know what's going down. And I didn't learn it from no television, either.”

“You know what's going down?” Kelly asked. “No, I don't think so.” He picked up the remote and clicked it twice. There was the picture of me on the roof again with the gun up to my head.

“Kelly, stop it!” I said. I turned my head away from the screen. “Come on, man!”

From the corner of my eye I could see that the screen had gone dark. I looked at it slow and saw that the television was on another channel. I was looking at an advertisement for a household cleanser. My legs were weak as I found my chair and sat down.

“Hey, Lil J, what you thinking that picture was?” Kelly asked in this real quiet voice. “You thinking that was the future? Something down the road and you looking to see which road it's on so you can change direction? Your mind just running loose, going every which way? Like you were thinking that maybe Rico switched the guns?

“Or you thinking that maybe that picture is just another ‘right now' trailing after you, looking to catch up with you while you standing still trying to make up your mind? What you thinking, Lil J?”

“I'll leave the gun here,” I said. “And I'll go outside and give myself up.”

“I don't want the gun up in here,” Kelly said. “I didn't have a gun when you got here and I don't need one now.”

“If the cops see me coming out with a gun in my hand…” I knew that's all they needed and they would blow me away. “Kelly, give me some kind of break, okay? Look, you young and everything, but you got some smarts. I know this whole
thing is my messed-up bag, not yours. But I really need some help.

“You keep asking me what I want to take back, and the deeper I go, the more I see I can't get no place comfortable, you know what I mean? I'm looking to find the place where my thing went wrong. Right now it look to me like, with Rico out there flapping his lips on me, that I'm gone, just gone. You shoot a cop in New York and nobody wants to hear nothing. They need to burn somebody, and they ain't going to be caring too much who it is they burning. I ain't got a chance and I don't think I've ever had a chance. And what little piece of hope I got, you know, for a miracle or something, is gone if they catch me with the Nine. This is your turf, brother. Can you get rid of the gun for me? Please?”

Kelly looked me up and down, then stood and came over to me. We were standing close for the first time, with him no more than a few inches away from me. I was spooked. It was like he was looking at me and through me at the same time. He
put out his hand and I handed him the gun.

Kelly turned and walked slowly over to the window. He stood for a while, and I thought I saw his shoulders heave as if he was taking a deep breath. I was thinking maybe he was relieved that I wasn't holding the gun.

He pulled the string on the shade and let it go flapping up to the top of the window. I blinked as daylight flooded the room. I saw Kelly open the window, and felt the cool air against my skin.

Blam! Blam!

He was shooting down into the street!

“
WHAT YOU DOING? WHAT YOU
doing?” I heard myself screaming. I took a step toward the window and stopped. My head was going crazy. I didn't know what to do.

Blam! Blam!

He shot again.

Kelly turned and went back to the chair. He picked up the remote and turned the television set on. It was the street. The cops were pointing up. I knew they had to be pointing toward the window. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

On the screen the cops were ducking behind
their cars. A close-up shot had one of them putting on his bulletproof vest.

“Kelly!” I crouched down near the chair. “Use the remote, man. Use the remote! Take me back to when I was with Rico! Take the whole day back. Can you do that?”

“That's not going to make your life better,” Kelly said. He was standing with his head sideways, looking at the screen. “You said that already.”

“I don't know that, Kelly. Maybe it will. Maybe…I don't know…” I was half talking and half crying. “I don't know that—why you shoot out the window? Why you shoot…? Kelly, if you can take something back—Oh, man! Oh, man!

“Kelly, check out the screen, they coming into the building! They coming in!”

On the screen I could see the SWAT guys, all dressed in black, running in a line, their automatic weapons pointing up. They didn't look like people—they looked like some kind of crazy animals with guns for arms. I felt like I was in a storm. My whole life was spinning around me. I was jerking my head
from the screen toward the window.

From out in the street came the sounds of sirens and people shouting. There was a bang, and then I smelled smoke.

“Kelly! Please! What we going to do?” My voice was cracking, and I could hear myself start to stutter. Then I saw Kelly headed toward the door. He still had the gun in his hand. “Kelly, where you going? Where you going?”

“Get some rest, Lil J,” he said. “I got to go.”

“Yo, man, don't leave me now. Please.”

Kelly went out the door. I took a half step toward it and stopped. I wanted to run, but I was too scared. My legs weren't working. I looked at the television. I saw the SWAT team was coming up the stairs, one flight at a time.

I got down in the middle of the floor and spread my arms out so they would see I didn't have no gun. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and tried not to move.

Then I heard shots! I wanted to get up and go to the stairs and scream down that I'd give up, but I
was too scared to move.

“I give up! I give up!” I called out from the floor. “Oh, God, I give up!”

There were more shots, and then nothing.

A few seconds passed and then a few minutes. I heard sirens and the squealing of tires. The sound of a helicopter drew near and then faded away. I kept my head down, waiting.

The television was still on, and I looked up at it. It was the street again. I saw the front of the building, and the SWAT team was coming out. Some of them had their helmets off. The camera switched to an ambulance. The camera must have been jerking as they took an overhead shot of somebody being put into the ambulance. I couldn't see who it was from the floor, and I was too scared to stand up.

I lay on the floor all day. The street noises changed to just passing traffic. At times my whole body shook, and other times it was still and I could hear my pulse pounding in my temples. When I could get up the courage, I lifted my head a little and looked at the screen, but I couldn't really see
anything too clear from where I was laying. The wind picked up and made the shades flap and I felt a few drops of rain on the back of my neck.

I didn't know what happened, what the shooting was about, who was being put into the ambulance. I thought about Kelly. Did they shoot him by mistake? Was he just crazy? I didn't know what was going on. I thought I heard noises on the staircase. I thought I heard the wind rattling the windowpanes. I wasn't sure what was real and what was in my mind. When I heard the sound of crying, of someone whimpering and alone in the room, I knew who it was. It was me.

Night came, and the room grew dark except for the light from the television. Then the television went off and I was alone in the blackness of the room. Had someone turned off the electricity? Were they waiting for me to come out, to show them that I was still alive?

Get some rest, Lil J,
Kelly had said.
I got to go.

There was no resting. Every nerve in my body was tense. Every muscle was aching. Getting up off
the floor was hard. My body felt weak and my hands were shaking again. My left arm was a little numb, but it didn't seem too bad. My right knee was aching, and I thought I must have hurt it when I was getting down on the floor.

I didn't know what to do. Still. I didn't know.

I pushed the door open. Darkness. The place stunk. It smelled musty, and it was hard to breathe as I eased down the stairs, feeling my way along the walls.

I heard something scurry on the steps below me. Another rat. Me and the rat making our way down the stairs. Me more scared than the rat.

The first floor. The front door was half off its hinges. There was something across the door. At first I couldn't see what it was, and then, when a car swept by, I saw it was yellow police tape. I crawled to the door and looked out. The street was mostly empty. Two men were sitting on a stoop down the block. I didn't see any police cars.

I was on the street, walking slow, trying not to run. I saw myself reflected in the window of a
bodega, and I was covered with dust. I brushed myself off as I walked. When I got to my 'hood, I stopped on a corner and looked around for the police. Nothing. I circled the block, looking for strange vans, white guys sitting in cars, anything that might be a trap. I didn't see anything.

Lenox Avenue was busy even though it was late. A woman was selling sausage sandwiches on the street. Two men had rigged up a television by hooking the plug into the base of a streetlamp. They were watching the news. As I stood and watched it, I realized I was cold. I was going to move on when I saw the front of the building I had been in.

Then the television image switched to the one I had seen before, of someone being put into the back of an ambulance. My mouth was dry. I
was confused and tired as I stumbled toward my house.

I knew that Kelly was way too smart to just run out in the street pointing a remote at a SWAT team. He was way too cool to just throw away his life. Kelly was special, something else. I knew it and he knew it.

I realized that when he came out the building, he must have been thinking about me, about what would come into my head as I tried to figure it all out. The fear was still in me and pushing against the insides of my skin so hard, I imagined I wouldn't look like me anymore. I would look like something different—not even somebody different. Something different.

I was also thinking that I would see Kelly again. One day he would just show up and look at me the way he did and ask me what was going on in my life. I didn't know what was going on now, but I knew Kelly wouldn't want to hear that shit. He just wouldn't.

“Lil J, you been cleaning sewers in them
clothes?” Thelma Mosley was sitting on the stoop, drinking beer.

“No,” I said. “Just doing some work.”

I went upstairs, and Mama was in the kitchen, sleeping with her head on the table. There were pills on the table, and I went over to her to see if she was all right. She was breathing shallow, but she looked okay.

“Mama.” I shook her shoulder. “Why don't you get up and go to bed?”

She mumbled something about “In a minute.”

I went to my bedroom and took off my dirty clothes. I didn't want to be in my underwear in case the cops came, so I put on some clean pants and a fresh shirt before I lay across the bed.

The night played out in my mind over and over again. Sometimes I thought it had happened one way, and then I couldn't be sure. I remembered Kelly asking me if the image of me on the landing, ready to kill myself, was the future I was headed toward or the past creeping up on me as I stayed in one place.

I was afraid of the future, as I had always been. Now I was afraid to stay still, afraid of what was coming after me.

I wanted to sleep, but I wasn't sure enough of what had went down to close my eyes. I got up and walked into the living room. Then I was asking myself if anything that I thought had happened had been real. I had heard about dudes using drugs and getting their brains messed up. Was my brain messed up? I remembered, or thought I remembered, tapping the Baggies with Rico and putting two bags in my pocket. I went back to my bedroom and went through the pockets of my dirty clothes. The Baggies were still there. Or they might have been there from the day before. I took them into the bathroom and dropped them into the toilet, flushed it, and watched as they swirled around in the water and finally disappeared.

I stood in the bathroom awhile, trying to pull myself together. Then I thought about my arm. I took my shirt off again and looked at it. It was sore and swollen. I folded some toilet tissue into
a square and poured peroxide on it and wiped the dried blood from around the wound. The library was open over the weekend, and I thought about going there and looking up something on the internet about treating wounds.

I went back to the living room, sat down on the couch, and turned on the television. I looked for the news again. The first two channels just had commercials.

On the next channel there it was, the image of me, sitting on the landing to the roof. This was Kelly talking to me. I knew that the same way I knew I would see him again one day. On the screen I wasn't moving, just sitting there, my eyes closed, my face twisted, like something real bad was going to happen to me. Or maybe was going to catch up with me. I didn't know which. I reached for the remote.