How It Went Down (6 page)

There’s nothing I’d want to leave in tribute to Tariq. I can barely find the will to be sad for him, which makes me sad all in itself. It’s not that I think he deserved to get shot or anything; I’m just not really surprised it went down like that, the way he was always hanging with Brick and the Kings. It’s kind of what you sign up for when you put on the colors. Isn’t it?

The person I ache for is Tina, his sister, so small and probably so confused by what’s happening.

I should go by and see her, maybe. I’m sure she’d remember me from when I used to babysit her. That seems like a good thing to do.

Everyone forgets about the smallest, most fragile ones when there’s high drama going on. My daddy died when I was four, and it was all so strange and hectic and upsetting. All these extra people in the house, and everyone trying to hug me and I didn’t really understand why. I remember squeezing beneath a couch and hoping and praying that my dad would just come and get me. I knew he was dead, and I knew dead meant gone, but Daddy had been gone before and he always came back. I don’t know how long it was before I realized gone meant forever and always. Longer than I would ever admit.

So I kind of wonder … I wonder if Tina’s sitting there, quietly waiting for Tariq to come home.

TINA

Songs float in the window.

A vigil
, Nana says.
For Tariq.

Mommy says:
No.

I’m not going to look at the spot where he died.

Nana holds my hand and we walk down Peach Street.

Flowers and candles and a whole crowd of people.

Nana says:
Look how much everyone loved Tariq.

But no one loves Tariq as much as me.

REVEREND ALABASTER SLOAN

The young girl comes toward me, wielding a powder puff. She says her name is Kimberly. She’s not a girl, but a woman, I suppose—she curves like a woman, at any rate—but that flawless smooth brown skin only reminds me that I’m getting on in years.

She has a wide open face, like a child, but her generous hip bumps against my thigh as she works to get me camera ready. Her brow furrows in concentration. Twenty years from now, she’ll have wrinkles in those spots, but for now I can enjoy the view. My gaze drops down, down, past her full, parted lips to the column of throat to the barest hint of cleavage.

“No, look at the ceiling,” she says, whisking the brush across my cheeks.

The ceiling is dimpled white, the familiar foam board squares that always top off a high school classroom.

“Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” she says.

When my son was young, he got detention once for throwing paper airplanes at the ceiling during class. His mother had to go pick him up early. By way of explanation he told her, “We were trying to get them to stick in the cracks.” She related this to me later, still hopping mad. I laughed. “Well, did it work?” I asked her. She started to laugh too. “He didn’t say!” We never did find out. No good way to ask that of your kid when you’re trying to punish him. I could ask him now, I suppose. It would give me a reason to call, other than simply to hear his voice and feel glad that something like this didn’t happen to him. Because it could have.

“Do you want blush?” Kimberly asks.

“Do I need it?”

“Not really.”

“Thank you for doing this.” I caught the first flight down after the news broke. My staff thought it would be a good idea, but we’re smack in the middle of the campaign, so not even my personal assistant came with me. The guy who usually touches up my makeup is back in DC, coordinating press releases about why I’m canceling my appearances there this week. My face on television, comforting Tariq Johnson’s family, will draw more voters and more campaign contributions than any stuffy old dinner with rich people I could host. At least that’s the theory.

“It’s no problem,” Kimberly says. “It makes me feel special.”

“You’re very special,” I answer. “I can tell.” It’s the sort of thing women like to hear. It’s also the sort of line that’s gotten me in trouble before. All that smooth, young skin. Those wide eyes gazing at me like I’m something magical.

Her fingers whisk excess foundation from my jawline. I clear my throat and tug the napkin from my collar. On another day, perhaps. But not during the campaign. I ease off the stool. When I stand, we are no longer face to face.

“Okay,” she says. “Wait—” She adjusts my collar, neatens up my tie. I raise my chin, let my eyes drift shut. Not during the campaign.

“You’re better-looking in person.” A tiny blurt of sound. I open my eyes. “I always wondered,” she adds. I glance down, catch the slight purple flush across her cheeks.

“Is that a compliment?” I’m not really sure.

“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t mean you look bad on TV or anything.” She has a great smile.

The campaign volunteer who drove me in from the airport pokes her head into the room. “The cameras are out front now,” she says. “Five minutes.” She bobs back into the hallway, immediately reabsorbed in her phone.

“Great. Now I just have to figure out what to say.” This is for Kimberly’s benefit. It’s another thing people like to hear. Folks who meet me for the first time like to feel that they’re being brought behind the scenes. You learn, over the years, how to please people. How you really are isn’t important if you can pretend to be a person who pleases people.

In this case, I’m only half joking. No words can describe the sorrow I felt upon hearing the circumstances of Tariq Johnson’s death, and none can convey my frustration with the system that allowed his killer to walk free. But I am, as ever, tamping down my feelings. Because how I feel shouldn’t matter. I turn my attention toward how I must speak. All that matters is that I say the right thing—what people need to hear.

“I knew him,” she says. “We went to the same church.”

“You did?” I lift her hand, cup her small fingers, flirt with danger. “I’m very sorry.”

Kimberly shrugs, clearly embarrassed to accept my condolences. Her gaze drops to our hands, now linked. “I’m sorry for his mother,” she says. “No one deserves a thing like this.”

“No.”

Tears stand in her eyes. “It’s terrible, what happened,” she says. “But I really didn’t know him very well.”

“Were you in school together, too?”

“Oh, no.” She half-smiles. “I’m much older.”

I wonder what constitutes “much” in her mind.

“Will it come to you?” she asks. “When you get in front of the cameras, will you just know what you want to say?”

“Maybe,” I answer. Sometimes it happens that way. I can talk my way out of a paper bag, if need be. I’m a minister. A politician. I know how to do the dance. “What would you say?”

“I’m not sure,” she murmurs. “I didn’t know him very well.”

She’s being shy. I want to shake her, shake something loose. Some small tidbit of something personal about Tariq. Because in a moment I have to walk out there and, effectively, eulogize him. And I didn’t know him at all.

And yet, I do know him, because I know a hundred, a thousand young black men, and it could have been any one of them shot. My own son … I press the emotion away.
Just think it, don’t feel it
, I remind myself.

My thumbs stroke the soft skin of the young woman’s hands. “Thank you, Kimberly. You’ve been a big help.”

KIMBERLY

I couldn’t tell the whole truth to someone like Alabaster Sloan. I knew Tariq, and I know his mama and his sister and his greatma. I knew him, sure enough, but the whole truth is that I hated him.

My first job babysitting was for Tariq and Tina. Tina’s always been a sweet girl, real quiet and simple. But Tariq … in my head I still think of him as terror boy.

I never wanted to go over there, because of him. But my mama told me,
Never turn down a handful of money for a few hours’ easy work
. I couldn’t explain to her why it wasn’t so easy. I was supposed to be able to handle those kids. I should have been able to, and most of the time I could get them to mind, but Tariq had a mouth like a sledgehammer.

I already knew him from church before I ever stepped foot in his house. He and his friends called me “fat face.” They picked up on it from a boy in my grade called Brick. They all looked up to Brick. I guess he came off to them as cool, being so much older. He was a real punk, twisted in the brain, but the little boys never could see that.

Brick loved to torment me something fierce. He’d call me fat face, blow out his cheeks and do a little dance making fun of the parts of me that tend wide. I knew I was big, but for the most part I thought that was okay.

My hips came in early, is how it started. Guys around the neighborhood would whistle when I walked by. I would hear them talking about how I looked fine, how they wanted to break my cherry. I pretended not to listen. It made me feel weird, that they were looking so close, but it made me feel good too, because I could tell they were liking what they saw.

Then Brick started in. I don’t even know why. I never did anything to him.
Fat face
.
Hippo hips
, he would say.
Here comes the blimp
. He’d walk around me, staring, acting all puzzled, till Tariq or someone would ask him what he was doing, and he’d say he was looking for the strings that were holding me down.

I wish it was Brick that got shot. I’m not ashamed to wish it, either.

Tariq and his friends would be all clustered around Brick, watching his every move. They rolled their jackets like him, when that was the thing, wore combs in their hair when he did. But Tariq liked to think himself a wordsmith, so it all got worse after they started hanging around. Brick’s arsenal of insults was small. Same thing, day in, day out. Fat face. Hippo hips. Blimp. He thought he was so damn clever.

I figured out how to deal with it. Figured it would pass. But when the shit got old, Tariq would come up with some new way to mess with me. He tried to jump on my back one day. Called it the elephant ride. Got them all doing it. I had to go to the doctor the week after; my back was hurting real bad from all the strain. Things like that.

I hated them. I used to look at myself in the mirror and try to see what was so fat about my face. Mama says that’s just its shape: round.

When Brick got busy with the 8-5 Kings, he laid off me. Tariq and his friends, not so much. Tariq got a little bit nicer later, I guess. He got nice enough to ignore me instead of making up new jokes, and the old ones slowly died. I finished school, got my haircutting license, and got a job at Mollie’s Manes. It pays well, and I like it.

Today, I got to put makeup on Alabaster Sloan. I was standing a couple of inches from him, had my hands on his skin. That makes me as close to being a celebrity as we have in this town. I’ll be telling this story around the salon for years to come. And I guess I have Tariq to thank for it. Wow, that’s such a bitchy thought. So wrong.
Thanks for dying, Tariq, so I could get my fifteen minutes of fame
.

I can’t help feeling a little bit glad about it. I mean, I’m not glad he’s dead or anything. Honestly. I’m not hateful like that. I have mean thoughts sometimes, because I can’t help the things that pop into my head, but I don’t want to be like that. Yet here I am, alone in a room with Alabaster Sloan, close enough touch. Actually touching. How else was something that amazing ever going to happen to someone like me?

In person, he seems quieter, less brusque. On camera he’s a take-charge, my-words-will-blow-you-down, blustering powerhouse of a man. He seems larger than life. Up close, he’s not much bigger than I am. Taller, but slim. There’s a softness about him that surprises me. His eyes move around the room, and when they rest on me, I feel like he is looking deep.

Lots of people look at me, but no one looks at me deep. Guys still whistle when I walk down the street.
Do you want some fries to go with that shake?

They grind against me, uninvited, when I go dancing with my friends. Strange hands at my waist.
Yeah, baby, back that ass up.

I’ve never had a guy who’s interested in the rest of me. One who likes to look into my eyes. To most guys, I’m just a round face, a double E cup, a pair of hippo hips.

That’s why, when the Reverend takes hold of my hand, I let him. When his lips brush the back of my knuckles, I think,
he likes me enough to kiss me
.

He asks me what I would say, to all those cameras, if I was him. Then he stops and waits. Tilts his head as if he’s really ready to listen to what I have to say.

It’s a crazy thing to do. Completely crazy. He’s a celebrity. Someone I’ve seen on television. Say his name to anyone, they’ll go, “Yeah, I heard of him.” He’s married, too. But he’s in the room, and he’s looking at me all soft …

I stretch my round self upward. Kiss him on the lips.

TOM ARLEN

It’s always sad when a kid dies. I’ve lived here twenty years, and I’ve seen more than a fair share of funeral processions. I don’t understand the violence. The way these young men run around the neighborhood, acting like they’re so tough. Then when one of them dies, they answer by killing some more.

Plenty of deaths and other rough crimes around here, but I’ve never seen Underhill on national news before. Can’t think of a time, anyway. And I’m not sure what’s all that different in this case. Two guys with guns, one dies—it’s an everyday story. I have a month’s worth of local newspapers gathered up in my recycling bags, and I bet I could find five stories that read about the same. Two guys with guns. Except one thing—in all those other stories, I bet anything, both parties were black. They’re out to get Jack Franklin because he’s white.

They’re calling him a racist, a murderer. But anyone would stand up in the face of a gun. That’s just common sense. How is it racist?

Jack’s lucky, is all. He got his shot off first. If Tariq had fired first, Jack would be just another victim of gang violence. Certainly not worth this media circus. They’d all shake their heads and put him in the ground and the world would keep on spinning.