At the Crossroads (19 page)

“Thanks,” Franky said.

“I’ll be right outside the door. Parents or legal guardians only. No girlfriends or homies. Ya dig?”

“Yes, sir,” Franky said as he dialed his home number.

“Hello?” Nigel said.

“Hey, Nigel,” Franky said.

“Boy,” Nigel snapped, “you know I’m gonna choke you, don’t you? What’s wrong with you? Why are you stealing and pouring soda pops on police officers? Are you crazy? Were you trying to go to jail? Huh?”

“Nigel,” Franky said. “Will you calm down?”

“No. I’m not calming down,” Nigel said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at a place called Metro. I had to call you or they were going to call DFCS.”

“What do you mean, you had to call me? Why didn’t you want to call me?”

“I don’t know,” Franky said.

“You don’t know? Franky, have you lost yo mind?”

“I don’t know.”

Franky could hear his cousin sigh in frustration.

“Well, now that I know where you at, I can speed up the process, ya hear,” Nigel said. “Did you tell them folks at the county jail that your name was John Doe?”

“I didn’t tell them nothing,” Franky said.

“I swear to you I’m gonna put my hands on you, whoadie.”

“A’ight,” Franky said. “I’m using the counselor’s phone, so I gotta go.”

“Hey, yo, Franky,” Nigel said quickly before Franky hung up. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I love ya, whoadie. I don’t know where I went wrong or what I did, but I tried to do right by you, ya heard.”

“I know. Nothing is your fault. You’re good.”

“Okay,” Nigel said. “I’ma try to get you up outta there today.”

“Thanks, Nigel,” Franky said.

“I love ya, whoadie.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

“Hang in there, whoadie,” Nigel said.

Franky hung up the phone and handed it back to Mr. Banks.

“What was the fight about?”

“He just came at me. I don’t know why. I was defending myself,” Franky said.

“So I heard,” Mr. Banks said. “Do you have someone coming to pick you up?”

“I think so.”

“That’s good,” Mr. Banks said, reaching in his pocket and coming out with a business card. “Here ya go. You seem to be an okay guy. Call me once you get out of here and we can talk. Maybe I can help you, or maybe you can help me. I run a nonprofit organization, and I might be able to do some things for ya.”

“Thanks,” Franky said, taking the card.

“Okay,” Mr. Banks said, walking over to a stack of books on the floor in the corner. He leaned down and pickedthem up. “How can anybody else read if this clown has all the books in his room?”

“I guess he likes to read,” Franky said.

“Yeah, when he’s locked up but when he’s home, you can’t get him to read a stop sign,” Mr. Banks said, walking over to the door with about ten hardcover novels in his arms. “Nice talking with you, Franky. I hope this place will not become a second home for you.”

Franky watched the man leave. He stood up and walked over to the door and looked through the glass at all of the kids milling around the dayroom. He slid his hands in his pockets and tried to figure out what he was going to do with his life. He missed Khadija, and he missed his parents, but he couldn’t do anything about that. Loving people was a hurtful thing because somehow they always left him. His mind drifted back to the look of disappointment he saw on his dad’s face, and he wondered if he would ever see him again.

K
elli Bourgeois was a no-nonsense type of girl. She had grown up in the gritty Magnolia Projects, home to rap artist and entrepreneur Master P. Her father had a few kids sprinkled throughout the various wards of New Orleans, but he always took time for her. He would even take around his wife and other kids. She was so much younger than all of her siblings that most people thought she was their child instead of their little sister.

Franky’s dad always made time to go and visit her even when the two wards were fighting some kind of senseless war. Franky Sr. always treated Kelli well, and once he got married and started doing well for himself, he made sure she had the best of everything, even going so far as paying for her to study abroad her senior year of high school. That trip to South Africa broadened her horizons and made her realize that as bad as life was in the Magnolia, they lived like kings and queens compared to some of thepeople living in huts in parts of South Africa. Once she returned to U.S. soil, she had little patience for slackers.

Kelli was five feet two inches tall and had hazel eyes and skin the color of honey. She had an easy smile and was always pleasant but professional. Men never approached her because they said she always looked so mean. She preferred
focused.
A year before Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, she had been a student at Xavier University, but after the storms, she decided to move to Atlanta and attend Georgia State University.

“Look at you,” she said with a wide smile as Franky walked out into the waiting room of the Metro Juvenile Housing Facility.

“Hi, Aunt Kelli,” Franky said, surprised to see the woman who looked like a female version of his father.

“How are you doing, boy?” she said, reaching up and giving her nephew a long hug. “I missed you.”

“I’m okay.”

“Well, smile, then. Jesus Christ, you look like some kind of hardened criminal. I haven’t seen you in years, and all I get is a mean ol’ face. You’ve gotten so tall. Oh my goodness,” Kelli rattled off.

Franky gave a halfhearted smile.

“Okay,” Kelli said, turning around and walking toward the door. “I know you’re ready to get out of here, so let’s go. I’ve signed all of the paperwork, but you have to come back to court in about six weeks—that is if I can’t get an attorney and speed things up. I’ll see what I can do.”

Franky nodded. He was really hoping to see Nigel or even Rico. Even though he hadn’t seen his aunt in almost four years, he always thought of her as being very no-nonsense and a bit standoffish.

“Where’s Nigel?” he asked.

“He’s at home. He asked me to come get you,” Kelli said, reading his disappointment. “Why the long face?”

Franky shrugged.

“I can ask them to keep you in here for a little while longer if you don’t want to come with me,” she said with a smile.

“No thank you,” Franky said, finally smiling.

“That’s what I thought. Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Franky said. “They feed you slop in here that I wouldn’t give to a pig.”

“Well, it is jail. I don’t think those places are supposed to be all that comfortable. What is that on your arm?”

“It’s a tattoo,” Franky said, displaying Dee’s handiwork. “My roommate did it.”

“Boy,” Kelli said. “You haven’t been in that place for a full day and you already have a prison tattoo?”

“It’s not prison,” Franky said. “It’s a youth facility, and they don’t have cells, they have rooms.”

“I see bars, I see razor-wire fences, and I see guns and men who are ready to use them. Looks like a prison to me,” Kelli said, handing Franky a brown paper bag containing all of his belongings.

“I guess you’re right,” Franky said as he tore open the bag looking for Khadija’s phone. Once he saw it, he snatched it out and turned it on.

They made it to Kelli’s car, and Franky got in the passenger seat.

“There is a restaurant over by my house called Pappadeaux. Wanna go? They have some really good food.”

“Okay,” Franky said, fiddling around with Khadija’s phone, but the service was turned off. He was hoping that she would get a message to him somehow.

The drive to Pappadeaux took about thirty minutes, and Kelli explained to him how she had been searching high and low for him since the storms. She explained how his father saved her life by swimming through the deep waters to get her and carrying her on his back to safety. She told him that his father’s last words to her were to take care of his son.

“Every single day for three years I called every school, hospital, and jail looking for you. Folks back home told me y’all were here, but I didn’t know where. I couldn’t find you guys,” Kelli said on the verge of tears.

“It’s okay, Aunt Kelli,” Franky said.

“I don’t know why those boys didn’t make you go to school,” she said, shaking her head. “Nigel is just as sweet as can be, but school has never been a priority to him, so I guess he just let you do whatever. But we’ll move forward.”

Franky knew what that meant. It meant his days with Nigel and Rico just ended.

“So I guess I’ll be staying with you now,” Franky said, just to confirm his thoughts.

“Oh, yes,” she said, nodding. “Definitely! We have to get you back on track. This jail stuff and not going to school isn’t going to work.”

“I go to school.”

“That’s not what Rico told me.”

“I just started a few weeks ago.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, we’ll figure everything out.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Tucker,” she said. “Do you know anything about the area?”

“Not really. I heard about a teen club out there.”

“Yeah. I think teen clubs are a bad idea. The kids are too undisciplined. They have more shootings at them than the adult ones. So needless to say, you won’t be frequenting any of those establishments.”

Franky nodded. He was already experiencing another culture shock. Living with his parents, then living with Nigel and Rico, being incarcerated, and now moving in with Kelli. He had a feeling that living with Kelli would be the worst of them all.

“This place is pretty good,” she said, turning into the parking lot. “It’s not authentic Cajun, but it’s a pretty good substitute.”

Franky and Kelli walked into the restaurant and waited to be seated. Franky looked around and realized this was the first time he had eaten in a sit-down restaurant since his dad had passed away. The hostess called their name and they were seated. Franky ate like a starving man while Kelli watched and wondered what happened to her sweet little nephew. She could see that his innocence was a thing of the past, but she held on to the fact that she knew his father had taught him well. Once they finished eating, Kelli paid the bill and left a nice tip. They walked outside, got back into her car, and headed over to Nigel and Rico’s house to gather his things.

T
here was a small U-Haul truck in the driveway behind Nigel’s car. Kelli pulled up to the curb and they got out.

“So this is where you guys are living?” she said, shaking her head. “This is only twenty minutes from me.”

They walked up to the house just as Rico was walking out carrying a box.

“Well, if it ain’t the jailbird, Franky,” Rico said, smiling.

“What’s up, Rico?” Franky said. “Where you going?”

“Back to the N.O., whoadie. I had about enough of Atlanta, ya heard?”

“For real,” Franky said.

“Yep,” Rico said as he walked over and loaded the box into the back of the U-Haul. “How you doing, Kelli?

“I’m doing just fine, Rico. How are you doing?”

“I’m straight now that I’m headed home.”

“I bet you are,” she said.

“Whatchu doing with a tattoo, Franky?” Rico asked.

Franky looked down at his arm but didn’t say anything.

“It’s nice, though, whoadie,” Rico said, then walked back into the house.

Franky walked inside the house and noticed that Nigel was placing his clothes into a cardboard box. He stopped packing when he saw his little cousin, and his eyes lit up. “Franky,” he said with a wide smile. He dropped his shirt into the box and went over to his cousin and grabbed him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Nigel sighed and appeared to be thinking whether he wanted to choke him or hug him. He decided the latter. “I was worried sick ‘bout cha, whoadie. I’m glad you okay.”

“I’m good,” Franky said. He was feeling anxious that the life he had known for the last three years was over without warning. They had had some rough times and lots of hungry nights, but he always felt loved and protected.

“Hi, Kelli,” Nigel said, walking over and giving her a hug. “How you doing?”

“I’m good. It’s been a long time,” she said.

“Yes, it has. I see you’ve been taking care of yourself. You look good,” Nigel said.

“Yeah, but she’s still mean,” Rico said. “My arm still hurts.”

“Come here,” she said, motioning with her index finger. “You’ve gotten a little bigger, but I will still spank your lil tail.”

“I know,” Rico said before grabbing another box.

Nigel looked down at Franky’s arm and frowned. “Where did you get a tattoo from?”

“Jail,” Kelli said, shaking her head.

“It’s just a tattoo,” Franky said.

“Man,” Nigel said, disappointment written across his face. “You don’t need a tattoo.”

“Are you leaving, too?” Franky asked.

“Yeah,” Nigel said. “You’re gonna go live with Kelli. She’s gonna get you back to where you need to be, whoadie. I always told you this street life wasn’t for you.”

Franky sighed and nodded. He didn’t want to go with Kelli. He wanted to stay with his cousins. As dumb and ghetto as they were, they had been all he had for so long.

“I packed up your clothes and stuff already. We gonna try to get on the road tonight. We gotta turn that U-Haul in tomorrow.”

Franky nodded and wondered why everybody he loved was leaving him. First his mother, then his dad, then Khadija, and now his cousins. He didn’t really know Kelli. She was family, but he didn’t really know her, and he feared the unknown.

Rico walked in and looked at Kelli. “Guess what?”

“Chicken butt,” she said.

“I’m going back to school,” he said, knowing that she would love to hear that.

“That’s good, boy. Did you ever finish high school?”

“Nope,” Rico said. “Getting my GED and then I’m gonna do a community college.”

“Congratulations,” Kelli said. “What about you, Nigel?”

“I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, Kelli,” he said. “I’m not a school kind of guy, but I’ll find my way.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure you will.”

They all said their good-byes, then loaded Franky’s clothes and other personal items into Kelli’s car. Franky had to fight back tears as they pulled away from his cousins, who were standing on the front porch waving at him. They were headed back to New Orleans, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever see them again.