The Quiet Parts Pt. 13
ELEVENTH STORY
“Who do they think they’re fucking with?” Leigh yells. “Let’s tell Chen.”
Crosslegged on the kitchen counter, Sequoia continues their protest. “Tell Chen and we’ll get evicted.”
“So?” Her revulsion, left to fester over torturous hours waiting for Sequoia to return, has grown into murderous rage. At the kitchen table, she chops her last crumbs of coke and snorts, an attempt to suppress loathing for her stammering, wimpy housemate.
“This goes beyond breaking the lease,” Sequoia argues. “Do you want this to get out? It was a stupid idea in the first place,” they say miserably. “I should’ve never gone along with it. We should . . . should . . . hire a wizard!”
“I don’t have money for a wizard.” Even as she negates the idea, Leigh wonders if her dad could afford one. Then she pictures him looking on her in disappointment, or smug vindication. Either way, she cannot face him. Intent on solving this problem herself, she needs time to think. She proposes they take a day to brainstorm and then runs upstairs before her housemate can argue, her mind clamorous with the laughter of black villains.
At half past noon she rents a Prius online, then busses to Berkeley to pick it up. On 580, the recklessness of other drivers makes her scream. A glance in their cars reveals dark faces gibbering through bulbous, wet lips.
Some strange whimsy leads her to Hayward. Next to a park, she cuts off the engine. Hatefully she gazes on the basketball court, the handful of trees where crackheads camp in the shade. Truly, she knows, her obsession with blacks will destroy her. Ashamed of her weakness, she languishes in the masculine beauty on the court, their ox-like chests and spherical calves, their taut thighs upon which high and sculpted buttocks ripple with boundless energy.
She thinks: no one is ever truly prepared for disruption. Most people assume the world they know will stay copacetic, la-dee-da and boring, so when calamity strikes they either run, or are defeated by what catches them unprepared.
Normalcy, she figures, must be fought for, the same as peace must be fought for. Snatched back from the jaws of chaos. The actions of her tenants, cruel and war-like, require an equal response on her part. However, to defeat their savagery will require intelligent cruelty, failsafes, plans A through Z.
Then she spies him not a dozen paces away—Brenden the doorknob boy playing football with his friends. Cornrows, Warriors shirt, Timberlands, seven years old and aggressive. Against the lethe of summer, against the imminent disaster increasing the gravity on her bones, she cooks the ingredients of a plan. Shortly she knows her path—all she needs is the will.
She honks her horn, gestures Brenden through the window. Confused for a moment, he recognizes her, runs to her with a bright little grin.
“Hi Miss Leigh!” He looks cheerful and rested, dark with summer. She rolls down the window and says, “I thought you live in San Leandro, little guy.”
“We moved,” he says plainly.
“Oh, buddy. It must be hard being in a new town. I’m going to miss you at school. Who will keep the doorknob so well-loved?”
More pleasantries are exchanged before she asks, “Want something to eat?”
The greedy little creature hops in without question.
Blood roars like a jet engine between her ears. Puddles of blood spill across her vision—Andre’s blood. Interstate 92 takes her toward the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. To either side of the concrete rise grassy foothills, yellow bubbles smooth and parched with drought. She floors the accelerator, liberated, ingenious, a free woman.
The boy begs, “Slow down, Miss Leigh!”
How dare he talk back to her! Leigh, who always made time for others, who gave her emotional labor when she had barely a drop for herself.
“Nobody takes advantage of me!” she yells. “Nobody!”
Right before the bridge, she takes the exit toward one of the aquatic parks along the bay. Now the boy is shrieking. Surrounded by rainbow flora groomed to confectionery pleasingness by the Park Service, she guns toward a thin, blue line at the edge of sight. Eighty, ninety, one hundred miles per hour to a shocking, tragic, romantically premature end that will be talked and written about till the end of time. Transcendence fills her.
The bulkhead is a wall of fat stones stacked four high. Near to them she breaks, spins the car 180 degrees until they are facing away from the water, and she shuts off the engine with a right jab to the ignition button. Songs of seagulls. Whitecaps in the rearview. Dust plumes wrap them in a brown cocoon. Slumped with her elbows over the wheel, Leigh listens to the chunky ticks of her heartbeat, like a clock in duet with the weeping boy.
“Shut up,” she calmly orders. “Or I’ll kill you.”
The little monster has murder in his eyes. “Let me go, bitch!”
Truly, he sounds like an animal. Like a human, Leigh takes out her phone and pretends to call 9-1-1. She raises her voice an octave, throws in a tremble to communicate distress. “Hello? 9-1-1? An African-American male is in my car. He’s threatening me. I’m so scared. Please come immediately.”
Her stomach turns at the idiocy in his slack jaw. Of course, she realizes—he is too young to fear the cops. Mistrust them, maybe, but the existential dread the older black knows at the sound of sirens remains unknown to him. It appears she must educate him. In her normal voice, she says, “What do the police do to boys like you?”
“H-help us?” His voice sounds high and thin.
“No, sweetie. That’s a lie they teach you in school. They shoot boys like you. It’s wrong, but that’s the way it is. If I call the police right now, they will shoot you.”
“I want to go home!”
“Then be nice. Be mean and I’ll give you over to the cops.” She explains, “Miss Leigh got in a little trouble that she totally does not deserve. And if the police come, I need you here to make sure nobody hurts me.”
Something tells her a black child makes for a terrible hostage. The cops would shoot right through him. She imagines herself going to prison for what these beasts have done, a cell to rot her mind and body. If it comes to that, she sees no choice but to drive herself and the boy into the sapphire oblivion of the Pacific.
She says, “I’m going to keep you with me until I know I’m safe, then I’ll set you free. No matter what anybody asks, don’t say my name. Lie until your last breath. See, I’m exhausted,” she confesses to his wide, wet eyes. “I’m just so exhausted from pretending like I care to other people pretending like they care. So I’m going to need you to be a big boy. Because if you hurt me, I’ll have to hurt you back. I don’t want to, but I will. I can do absolutely anything to you, and I’ll get away with it. Got it?”
Minutes later, on the road back to Oakland, his stomach growls. “I’m hungry,” he moans.
“I can hear that,” she teases. “Only my friends eat my food. Prove I can trust you, then I’ll let you eat.”
At night, Leigh discusses their options to a panicked, drunk Sequoia until she must go to bed, exhausted from the uselessness of her housemate. To keep the boy from running, she gags and rope-ties him to the leg of her bookshelf. Black faces bedevil her nightmares.
In the morning she tests Brenden’s loyalty by taking him to the kitchen, where Sequoia waits with their humongous mug of coffee. Neither have slept well, Leigh herself on the edge of delirium, vexed by the noise of a bumblebee Sequoia claims isn’t there.
“So . . . are you babysitting?” Sequoia asks from the other side of the table, eating cold pizza from a box. Settled in Leigh’s lap, Brenden stares at the wall.
“Babysitting for free,” Leigh clarifies. “His poor mother works all the time. But Miss Leigh’s always there to help. Isn’t that right, sweetie?” she coos, tickling him under his chin.
“Hungry,” Brenden moans.
Sequoia looks worried. “You’re hungry? Here.”
They offer a thick slice of pepperoni, but Leigh slaps his hand when he reaches for it. “He’s just playing the food card,” she says, but, realizing that sounds awful, allows him the smallest slice.
Sequoia sighs thickly. “I have an idea. If Wicker Park turned out that . . . way . . . then that means Garfield probably did, too. You’re old friends with Mica. We could use him. He could be our ally,” they conclude somewhat nervously.
“Preach, sister!” Leigh explodes. “Preach!”
In her room, she writes him a letter. Dearest Mica. Know before anything else that I have always loved you. I’ve loved you since I saw you spit that fire poem at the open mic. My life is in danger and you’re my only hope. All my love, Leigh.
It is still morning when Sequoia enters the Garfield hall, which, like Wicker Park, is obstructed behind old coats. Five minutes later they return excited, positively bouncy, because the hall has turned into a cave. In that cave, they passed the note to a strange man in otherworldly garb shiny with crystals. Nothing left to do but wait.
That afternoon, a message slips from under the door. Written on papyrus, Leigh recognizes his handwriting. Come, friend. Light the beacons in the tower and I will find you.
“He said yes!” she cries to Brenden in her room, and flings her arms around him, dancing, twirling.