Texts from Bennett (2 page)

“How he gonna get mad at people jus’ like him?” he said.

I turned around and walked to my back patio, reservation and anger battling inside me. I was sealing my mouth and holding in any hostile accusations until I knew the whole story. I had been borderline verbally abusive to Bennett and his family for the past few weeks and wanted to exhibit patience and tolerance.

But, Jesus, my house was a fucking mess,
I thought as I walked inside.

Excessive partying, psychotic damsels on designer drugs, and my white-trash family tree branch had performed a coup d’état on my once very clean and organized home. In order for me to even sit down in my favorite chair at my kitchen table, I had to scoop a basketball, a magazine covered with crumbs of marijuana and cigar guts, and an empty bottle of Actavis promethazine cough syrup with codeine (an oddly popular drink among the gangsta community).

I plugged my phone into the wall closest to the table to let it charge.

“Uh, why did Mr. Cole just try to kill us, Bennett?” I asked my cousin, only to realize he hadn’t followed me into the kitchen. I could hear him rapping to himself in a distant room.

After a few minutes of quietly decompressing, my phone turned on. I had missed several texts but quickly skipped all of them as they popped up, to locate my conversation with Bennett from earlier.

BENNETT:
hav u ever hear dat song dat go wut is luv baby dont hurt me no mo? u no dat sonf?

ME:
Yes. It’s called “What Is Love?” I think.

BENNETT:
Kk

ME:
Did you just say “Kk?” That’s the girliest text message you’ve ever sent me.

BENNETT:
nigga i speak da female language. i blend in like a ninja a kk text is a ninja star a :) is my sorde.

BENNETT:
i got a black belt in bitches.

ME:
Clearly.

BENNETT:
it wrks nigga . bitchez luv me they bow 2 da kk.

ME:
Haha. They bow to the Kk?

BENNETT:
lol yup i speak 100 persent fluant bitch langauge my txt game is on sum pure playa shit. i say kk and they bow 2 me .

ME:
Wow. You sound like Genghis Khan if he was a preteen text messaging his servants. “Bow to the Kk!”

BENNETT:
?

BENNETT:
wat

ME:
Nevermind.

BENNETT:
im tellin u.. be a rushin spy wit bitches.sspeak jus like em

BENNETT:
ya c? dats y bitches B gittin wit other bitches.cuz bitches kno wat bitches want.they all soft and sweet 2 eacJother.

BENNETT:
so i let dem know hey im bennett.i know wat bitches want 2.

BENNETT:
so i say shit like Hey sweety and Dats fabulus And Kk and O honney ur hair looks gr8 . an they think im sinstive

BENNETT:
but den i go in fo da kill

ME:
Okay, okay, I get it. Speak their language.

BENNETT:
C..if u Wuz in mexico an u met a bitch who spoke mexacin and a bitch who spoke amercian which bitch wud u prafer 2 git wit ?

ME:
Well, I’d rather get with the girl who spoke English.

BENNETT:
england niggaz sound funny i recamend u dont sound wierd wen u talk to chix dem niggaz talk like da crocodiale hunter

ME:
LOL. Bennett, in America, we speak English. And the Crocodile Hunter was Australian.

BENNETT:
dis aint a scan tron test nigga shudup and rispect my pimpen

BENNETT:
Bow 2 da Kk ha ha

For the past few days, my much younger cousin had been giving me dating advice. Yeah . . . more on that later.

BENNETT:
R u comein home soon their iz a guy here sayen he need 2 hk up a kord or sum shit.want me 2 tell him 2 fuk off? My mom talken 2 him rite now

ME:
Oh shit! I forgot. The WiFi is getting hooked up today. Fuck.

ME:
No, I won’t be done in the studio for a while. Let him in.

BENNETT:
k

BENNETT:
man my mom is nodden out off oxy wat shud i say 2 him..

BENNETT:
hello

ME:
Sorry, was mixing something. Tell him to do whatever he needs.

BENNETT:
ok

BENNETT:
dis guys hole ass crack is sticken out his britchez.he coo doe.we talken bout guns . his name is dan

BENNETT:
hello . he need to use ur computater

BENNETT:
hey he need 2 use ur Laptop is dat ok. . . .  to test da kinection

ME:
Password is BEERSNOB

BENNETT:
k

And I guess that’s where my phone must have died. I was pretty busy in the studio and didn’t have a charger there, so I didn’t really think much about it at the time. However, it looked like Bennett proceeded to text me about the Wi-Fi several times while I was MIA.

BENNETT:
wat do u want him 2 call da net work

BENNETT:
u their..

BENNETT:
he asken wat we want 2 Call da wi fi. name it somethn eazy 2 remmber

BENNETT:
wat shud we call it he gatta go

BENNETT:
hey

BENNETT:
Ay fukr i jus call U no anser

BENNETT:
??????????????

BENNETT:
he say we can name it watever u want

BENNETT:
yo im gna jus name da wifi thing he say i can pick da name

BENNETT:
?

That was it. Bennett walked into the kitchen as I was finishing the texts, still dumbfounded. I glared at him as he filled a massive bowl of cereal for himself.

He chewed a minute, swallowed, took a thoughtful pause, took another scoop of cereal, chewed and swallowed again, then proceeded with, “To answer your question. I dunno why he wanna kill us. I ain’t racist, my nigga. I’m more in tune with my black incesters than my white ones.”

I knew he meant to say
ancestors
, but whatever. Bennett butchering the English language wasn’t new, surprising, or important at this point.

However, the term
incesters
struck me as weirdly appropriate when I thought about Bennett’s part of the family. Nevertheless, I had learned to pick my battles, language and otherwise, with him. Even though I’ve done extensive research on both sides of my family lineage, I had sworn to never engage Bennett in a discussion where we debate about whether we have African in our bloodline. Never again, that is.

“Okay, well, something happened. Did you leave the house today?”

“No.”

“Did you listen to any loud rap music, with the
n
word, that he could have misinterpreted as being racist?”

“No.”

“Did you, your mom, or Leshaun, do
anything
today that Mr. Cole could have perceived as racist, uhhh . . . offensive, or disrespectful?”

“Nah.”

“What did you do today? Tell me your entire day,” I said as he took a seat at the table.

“Okay. It go like this. I woke up and eated some cereal. I smoked a Newport out front. Then I watched TV in the basement. I watched some show named
MacGyver
about a white nigga who can make a bomb out of a watermelon and a vibrator battery. Then I jacked off to Rachael Ray’s
30 Minute Meals
show. I ate cereal again. I rolled a blunt. I smoked it in the garage, since I’m not allowed to smoke weed out front no more. Then I smoked a Newport out front ’cause you never told me I couldn’t smoke cigs out front no more. I rode my bike to the store to get more cigs. I rode back. Uh . . . I did some push-ups. The internet guy came to hook up your cordless internet. I smoked a Newport, then went downstairs and turned the TV off, then I came upstairs because
SpongeBob
is on the DVR up here. And right when I turn on
SpongeBob
I hear Mr. Cole yelling outside.”

“And that’s when you went outside?”

“Well, at first I ain’t think he was yelling at me. But the more I looked at him, the more I noticed he was talkin’ shit. So I ran outside to see what was up. We argued for a couple minutes, then you showed up.”

I had nothing. I’ve learned to tell when Bennett is lying. Bennett is usually lying. But he was unwavering and stern, so I decided to chalk it up to Mr. Cole’s being a loon. There are numerous elements of Mr. Cole’s dossier that would point to him being a batshit crazy loon, like, for example, kidnapping a sixteen-year-old for driving like a sixteen-year-old.

“God, what a crazy fucker,” I said to Bennett and patted him on the shoulder. He guffawed and took another bite of cereal. I sat down next to him at the table, and opened my laptop. I was just going to have Bennett listen to the new song I created in the studio today.

I right clicked on the Wi-Fi icon and the menu of neighborhood networks dropped down. I slowly scanned the list top to bottom. At first it didn’t register. Maybe it was denial, maybe I just didn’t notice it. But after adjusting my retinas and mouthing the words silently to myself, I caught it. I found it. My heart stopped. My life flashed before my eyes. My jaw was on the floor.

“Oh my fucking God, Bennett! What did you do?!”

Bennett was so startled that he slammed his hand into his bowl of cereal, flipping it over, drenching himself and the table with milk and soggy Frosted Flakes.

“What? What?
What?
” he barked as he squinted his untreated, astigmatic eyes at the screen. “What this stuff mean?”

“Look, dude.” I pointed to the Wi-Fi menu. “This is why Milton thinks we’re racists!”

“What? I don’t get it!” he pled. Bennett was clueless.

I swear we both read it a good twenty times to make sure what we were seeing was real. I pushed my fist in front of my cousin and counted off his mistake on my fingers. “One K . . . two K’s . . . and a third,
racist
, K.”

“What do you mean ‘racist K’? It was ’posed to be funny!” Bennett bellyached, perhaps close to tears.

He leaned back in his chair, covered in cereal and milk, with the eyes of a crushed little boy. He wanted to be black more than anything else in the world, and he had just committed a mistake that a highly skilled, white-haired, samurai warrior would commit seppuku over. Well, if the code of ethics that this particular samurai warrior lived by involved never saying anything racist, accident or not.

Also, accident or not, this was the third neighbor in three months who Bennett had infuriated to levels of disrepair. After all that had happened lately, I was a little shocked to realize that it had only been that long since Bennett and his family had been living with me and my life was changed forever.

At which point the thought occupying my mind was,
Just give him the money before something bad happens . . .

But hang on. I can’t start the story here, let’s back up a bit to the beginning and the email that started it all.

On Sep 7, at 2:53 AM, Lillian O. wrote:

Hi Macky..Auntie Lillian here.. How are u honey? I miss u so much and hope u are doing good whats going on with u Pookie ? Lily

On Sep 7, at 6:26 AM, David Sheldon wrote:

Wow! Hey, Aunt Lily—

It’s so great to hear from you! Things are going wonderfully over here. My music is going better than ever. Touring is absolutely wonderful. Just bought a new house a few months ago! Getting settled in!

Also, I met a girl named Harper a while ago. She’s really great, and I know it’s probably moving too fast, but she’s definitely the ONE. She graduated from the University of Vermont and comes from a pretty rich family back in Vermont—they’re very educated and wealthy! But luckily, she’s amazing and will be a wonderful mother to your nieces and nephews! Well, let’s hope, haha.

I was shocked when I saw your email address in my inbox. How is everything? How’s Bennett?

Mac

On Sep 7, at 4:02 PM, Lillian O. wrote:

Hi Macky.. Well not much here.. well the recession has hit Tim and me pretty hard and we are losing the house to foreclose.. We stopped paying those assholes and plan on sueing them. We tried to ask them for a break many times being that we were so good with pay ment for the yeers leading up but they just said no and our morgage was sold to a other bank..wellt he good news is i should be getting my settlement from the construnction company soon and will be able to rent an apartment.. Bennett is doing pretty good. Still popular with the girls, which is trouble..but he is looking cute as the dickens. Well good talking to you.. I hope your doing good !! So happy ur in love Pookie! Aunt Lily