Scandalous Heroes Box Set (45 page)

“What we into tonight?” Tino asked.

A tall black man name Antonio slapped Tino’s shoulder. A gold tooth gleamed in the night. “Just looking for a party, my man.”

Tino shrugged. “Lets get some booze and hit the river.” They could make their own party there with the car running, headlights burning and music spilling from the speakers. The sight of the Ohio River hitting the Serpentine Wall and the sound of the cars driving along the overpass created an atmosphere that allowed the young men freedom to be themselves.

They filled two cars and as they drove down Vine Street they passed a group of streetwalkers and Tino rolled down his window and shouted.

“Go home and take care of your fucking kids!”

The guys in the car laughed and the whores screamed back at them and gave the car full of young men rude gestures. Tino wasn’t laughing and neither was Scotty. One of those whores was their mother and if she recognized the voice of her oldest son it didn’t register as she gave them the double bird and screamed curses after them. Scotty sat silently feeling hot and cold, sad and mad, too wise and too old.

They drove across the river to Kentucky and pulled up to a gas station. Three guys exited wearing ski masks; one of them was Tino. When they returned at a run moments later each young man carried a case of beer. The car skid away while Tino laughed. He tossed his brother a pack of chocolate covered donuts.

“Eat.”

~***~

Scotty wasn’t able to drag himself out of bed in time to go to school the next day. He showered, wiping the fog from the mirror and stared blankly at his reflection. He was fourteen and he was tired. He stared into the reflection of his blue-grey eyes, which spiraled infinitely through limitless versions of himself. He smelled beer and onions on his breath so he brushed his teeth and then grabbed the comb from the medicine chest and combed his damp hair back where it would soon dry into longish blond strands that would brush his shoulders.

Scotty left the apartment, and knowing to avoid truant officers he went to Garry’s house. Garry James, better known as G was sixteen and Scotty’s best friend. A year ago he had dropped out of school and now his apartment was the hangout spot. With his mom working during the day and his brothers and sisters at school, there was no one around to tell on him for smoking and drinking.

He’d known G all of his life--since before he’d even gone to nursery school. He was just a neighborhood kid but unlike most of the kids he didn’t treat Scotty any different just because of his melanin deficiency.

Blue and Kareem were the other two guys and he liked them okay so decided to cop a squat.

“Yo, Scotty.” The two friends slapped hands. The older boy was sitting on the floor in front of the T.V. where he had hooked up the Atari game system that he’d gotten a few months back. Everybody always fought for a turn to play on it except Scotty who still preferred playing a simple game of pinball. It sounded cool and looked fancy but he preferred the arcade than sitting in someone’s swampy house.

“Yo, G. Wassup man?” Scotty replied while ending the intricate hand-slapping greeting.

“Hey Kareem, give my man a turn!” G nudged the other player.

Scotty reclined on the couch. “Nah, go ahead. I’ll watch.”

Blue passed Scotty a joint and he swallowed back his distaste and just passed it on. He and drugs just didn’t mix. He had walked into the bedroom once to see Tino shoving a needle into his arm. He had been so stunned that he had just stood there staring. Of course he knew his brother smoked pot but he couldn’t believe that he would skin pop after watching their mother do it for most of their lives. He remembered wondering why people were so stupid to waste their hard earned money on dope. They risked their livelihood doing something illegal or immoral only to shoot it up into their veins. He vowed that it would be different with him. Every bit of cash he made would go to making a better life for himself.

He stared at the game that was playing on the television screen and his eyes became glazed as the sound of his friends droned on around him and another day in the life of Scotty Tremont came and passed.

Chapter 3

Vanessa waited fifteen minutes after her mother left for work just in case she came back. Sometimes she did that, came back because she had forgotten something or other. Once she felt enough time had passed she grabbed some Barbies, a jump rope and then headed outside. Vanessa didn’t do this often. For one thing she was afraid that someone would tell on her, but mostly because her mother’s schedule in the evenings was unpredictable and she might dash home for dinner and then run right back out or she might be extra long at the bar and not return until after 2 a.m.

It didn’t take long for Vanessa’s toys to draw the attention of the neighborhood kids, who played with her because she had the best toys ever. Playing with the toys soon led to games of tag and Mother May I. Vanessa and the other children laughed and ran through the parking lot, but never going further than that because even though Vanessa’s mother wasn’t present, she knew that the parking lot was her safe zone and beyond that bad things could happen.

The streetlights flickered on a short time later and the little girls ran off to their homes yelling goodbye. Vanessa smiled happily and then gathered up her toys and went back into her house. She ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and had a glass of milk for dinner. She turned on the stereo and played the Jackson 5 until she got tired of dancing and singing ABC and I Want You Back and her all time favorite; Ben. She didn’t care if it was a song about a rat. One day she was going to marry a man named Ben and sing that song to him.

She was carrying her Barbies upstairs when she remembered that she hadn’t brought her jump rope into the house. 

Vanessa’s eyes widened. If her mama saw the jump rope outside…She dropped the dolls to the floor and dashed down the stairs. She pulled back the drapes and squinted out the window to see if mama’s car was making its way up the hill. Not many cars came up this way; generally just the people that lived up here. There weren’t any stores or schools or anything else but townhomes in Garden Hilltop.

Vanessa took a deep breath and then unlocked the door and dashed out into the night. There were different levels of wrong. Yes it was wrong to go outside during the day when her mother wasn’t home. But it was
definitely
wrong to go outside at night when there was absolutely no one around to help her if something ‘bad’ happened. Bad was a word that caused her to think of the dead little girl in the building down the hill...

She quickly scanned the ground outside of her house, already nervous but not just because her mother might find out, but because it was dark outside. Not seeing the rope on her stoop, she considered that one of those little heffas had stolen it. And then she saw a gleam of color in the grass at the edge of the parking lot. Now she remembered dropping the jump rope, with its yellow plastic handholds, there when they started playing tag. In relief she crossed the parking lot, and sure enough there was her jump rope, partially concealed by the weeds and grass.

But Vanessa didn’t immediately pick it up. Her mouth parted as she took in the sight of the starlit sky above her and the twinkling artificial lights of the homes below her. She forgot to be scared as the beauty of the velvety night began to take the place of her fear. The moon sat like a huge light bulb above everything and the magnitude of her place in the universe struck her. She was just one little girl standing in one parking lot in one city of her country on one world among many planets and stars that made up the Milky Way which was just one galaxy in the entire universe...

The idea if it was overwhelming. She stared into the sky as she tried to fathom the concept that she was…nothing. Insignificant. A speck.

Movement caught her attention and in alarm she saw the familiar bike rapidly approaching from the winding hill that led from Winton Terrace. She squealed in alarm and darted back across the parking lot and towards the safety of her house. She was half there when she remembered that she didn’t have the jump rope. Vanessa stopped and indecisively did a dance that took her one step back to the rope and then a hop towards the safety of her home before she repeated it.

She had to get the rope! Someone would steal it or mama would see it and that would be it for her. She turned just as Scotty Tremont’s bike entered her parking lot, alarmed at how quickly he had arrived but terrified when she realized that he was heading toward her!

Another squeak of fear escaped her lips as she dashed back to the edge of the lot, running faster than she had ever run before—even faster than she would run past
that
building. She snatched at the rope at the same time that her body changed position to make the sprint back in the opposite direction. She looked like she had just been passed the baton in an Olympic race. Now she could hear the smooth metallic sound of bike pedals and she risked a glance in that direction.

Scotty Tremont was staring right at her and instead of coasting the circumference of the parking lot like he normally did he was peddling faster, his legs pumping rapidly as he closed the distance between them.

She yelped in terror and then immediately tripped over the looped end of the rope and went skidding across the gravel parking lot. Face down, palms down, knees scraping she felt the sting of her skin being peeled back and a teeth clattering moment later her mouth slammed to the ground and pain exploded at the exact moment that her two front teeth ran through her bottom lip.

For just one second the world was quiet and still around her. She didn’t even hear the bike and rider approaching her, she didn’t see the stars or the small rocks that were now buried in her palms and knees. She didn’t taste the blood that filled her mouth nor the pain that would soon be nearly unbearable at her chipped and loosened teeth. The world was just an infinite place where nothing meant anything—not even a little girl lying on a parking lot in a city within a country on this world called earth, which was apart of the many other planets that made of the galaxy, which crowded the universe.

But the next second her cries of pain filled the night, the clatter of a bike dropping to the ground and the rapid footfalls of sneakered feet hitting the pavement was Vanessa’s new universe…and of course pain.

A hand reached for her arm and she cringed, only the touch wasn’t rough and it didn’t bring pain. Two hands helped to lift her into a sitting position and she held up her bleeding palms but didn’t otherwise look at them, she just stared fearfully into Scotty Tremont’s blue and grey eyes.

~***~

Scotty’s brow gathered as he stared at the gruesome sight of the bloodied girl. She was pretty scraped up but wasn’t crying. She was just staring at him in shock. What in the hell was she doing out in the night wearing just pajamas?

As he took in the sight of her bloody palms his expression calmed. It was pretty bad. Hiding his grimace he took one of her hands and gently removed small rocks that were embedded in the heel of her palm. When he thought he’d found them all he reached for the other hand and did the same.

When he was finished he met her eyes again and the little girl was watching him in surprise. He looked at her knees and masked the look of disgust at the sight of the layers of skin, which had been scraped away to reveal blood-coated flesh. She surprised him when she didn’t make a sound as he picked out the gravel burrowed in her flesh. He scanned her for more injuries and then suddenly frowned.

“You are in so much trouble.” Vanessa tensed and her heart slammed against her narrow ribcage. She shied away from him. “There is no way that you’re going to hide this from your mother,” he continued and Vanessa’s eyes widened as she realized the truth of those words. Those words cut through the fear that she had only a short moment ago felt for him. Yet despite the sudden awareness that she was destined to be in trouble for sure and should be darting back to the house to hide the evidence of her crime—she just had to know.

“How do you know me?”

Scotty stood and headed back to his bike. “Your mother drives a white Cadillac.” He climbed back on his bike and continued his circuit around her parking lot. She sat there and watched him until he headed up the smaller hill to the second parking lot. He turned his head swiftly and looked at her.

“Go in the house Vanessa.” And then he was gone.

Slowly she made it to her feet despite the pain that settled into her scrapes like knife wounds. She wanted to be in the house before he came back down the hill. She wanted to understand why Scotty hadn’t beat her up or run her over, but more importantly she wanted to know why he knew her name just because he knew that her mother drove a white Cadillac.

The next morning Vanessa got up and out of bed before her mother came into wake her up. She ran to the bathroom and looked at her face in the mirror, hoping that she would have healed overnight.

“Oh my God…” she whimpered. It was worse. Her lips were so swollen that it looked like a baboon’s butt. It was still bloody too. When she opened her mouth her chipped tooth was pretty obvious and there was no way that she could ever conceal that. Now she could clearly see the evidence of other injuries like scratches on her nose and chin. She looked at her hands, which were bruised and purple and then she pulled up the legs of a fresh pair of pajamas that she had put on after she had buried the ripped and bloody pair in the bottom of the garbage.

Blood had seeped from around the bandages on her knees and now they were stuck to her. Tears blurred her eyes but she had no choice but to face her mother and to take her punishment.

Leelah was just swinging her legs out of bed when Vanessa walked slowly into her bedroom.

“You’re up earl-” The words froze on her lips at the sight of her beaten child. “Oh my God, Vanessa, baby girl!” She said while leaping out of bed. “My God, baby, what happened?!” She grabbed her daughter’s arms roughly and searched her swollen face.