Blank Confession (8 page)

Pépé chuckled. “Your grandmama has ears like a cat. But it is true. I was selling in front of her mama's shop. But I charm her.”

“He was very charming,” Mémé said.

As we set up the board for another game, he asked me how school was going. Pépé was always curious about high
school. He had only an eighth-grade education, so to him the higher grades were like a mythical world in which the secrets of the universe were being taught. My world was as mysterious to him as his Haitian childhood was to me.

I found myself telling him about how a lot of kids were using drugs. He asked me how they got them. I told him about Jon Brande. I don't know why, but I had always found it easy to tell Pépé things I would never tell my parents. He was a good listener, and he never tut-tutted me or made me feel stupid.

“This boy, he sounds like a
djab
,” he said.

“What's that?”

“A spirit person. Powerful and most dangerous. You avoid him?”

“I try. Only he thinks I owe him money, so …”

Pépé became serious. “You borrow money from this
djab?
”

“No!”

“François, don't you be filling that boy's head up with that nonsense!” Mémé shouted from the kitchen.

Pépé rolled his eyes and winked at me. He moved a checker forward and lowered his voice. “You need money?”

I shook my head. I knew Pépé and Mémé had hardly enough money to get by. Pépé worked as a janitor for an insurance company downtown, and Mémé had a parttime job teaching French at a charter school. I wasn't about to give their rent money to Jon Brande.

For a few minutes we played checkers without talking. I saw an opportunity and made what I thought was a
sneaky move, but Pépé said, “You do not want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Look at the board.”

I looked at the board, and after a few seconds I saw the trap he had laid for me. I took my move back.

“You must always think three moves ahead,” he said.

“Three's a lot.”

“Not so much if you use your
tête.
”

I used my
tête
—that means “head”—and came up with another move.

“Better,” said Pépé. “What you going to do about this
djab?
”

“I don't know. I have a friend, he says to not pay. Now Jon's mad at him, too.” I told him about Shayne and about the fight with Trey. Pépé listened. When I'd finished talking, he reached out a long index finger and slid a checker forward.

“Now you got two
djabs,
” he said.

“Trey's a
djab
too?”

“No. The boy who fights for you.”

“Shayne's not a
djab,
he's a good guy,” I said.

“
Djabs
are not good or bad. Maybe they cancel each other out.”

Mémé came out with two glasses of lemonade and plunked them down on the table. “Don't listen to this crazy old man,” she said. “You have a problem with a boy at school, you go to your teachers. Or the police.” She stomped back to the kitchen.

Pépé leaned over the checkerboard and whispered, “She does not understand
djabs.
”

Monday morning, six forty-five, I was in my underwear trying to decide between my navy-blue double-breasted and my charcoal-gray three-piece when I heard a motorcycle engine, then a
bleet-bleet
from the driveway. I looked out my bedroom window to see Jon Brande sitting on his bike. Something was wrong with his face. I put on my glasses for a better look. Jon had a black eye. Two seconds later, Marie flew out of the house and hopped on the back of the bike and they took off.

I decided on the double-breasted, got dressed, and went downstairs. My mom was holding the curtain aside and staring out the window at the empty driveway.

“Honking like that.” Mom shook her head. “That boy's mother must not have taught him any manners.”

“I don't think he has a mom,” I said.

“Well, it certainly shows.”

“Marie says his mom took off when he was five.”

“That's awful!”

“Maybe that's why he's such a jerk. Do we have any frosted flakes?”

“Why don't you have some
un
frosted flakes for a change?”

“They don't have frosting.”

She let the curtain fall back into place and turned to me. Her eyes did that up-and-down thing. “
You
look nice,” she said.

Shayne was in a quiet mood that morning, even for Shayne. I watched him slumped at his desk in American Lit, staring at a point in space a few feet in front of his eyes. I kept thinking about what Pépé had suggested—that Shayne was a
djab.
I knew Pépé had been kidding me. But then again, with Pépé, I never knew for sure.

After class I walked with Shayne to the east wing, where we both had our next classes. I talked the whole way—I don't remember about what. Shayne hardly said a word.

I hadn't seen Jon or Marie all morning. At lunch, Kyle and Trey were sitting at their usual table, but no Jon. Shayne showed up a few minutes late, bought a slice of pizza, and joined me.

“Hey,” I said.

He peeled off a piece of pepperoni and ate it. I asked him if anything was wrong. He shook his head. Kyle and Trey were staring at us, their eyes like laser sights.

“I shouldn't have got in that fight with Trey,” Shayne said.

“It didn't look to me like you had a choice.”

He shook his head. “There's always a choice. If you think far enough ahead.”

I thought of Pépé's checkers advice.

“I saw Jon this morning,” I said. “He picked up Marie.”

Shayne nodded.

“He had a black eye.”

Shayne smiled.

“Do you know how he got it?” I asked.

“It wasn't from me.”

Jon never showed up at school that day. Neither did Marie. She didn't come home for dinner, either. Mom was frantic, calling Marie's cell and leaving messages, and then calling Marie's girlfriends, none of whom answered. Dad went into his tight-jawed self-control mode. When she finally got home, it was close to midnight. We heard Jon's bike pull up in front. Mom ran to the door, followed by me and Dad. She opened it just as Jon took off. Marie came up the walk carrying her book bag. She looked at the three of us standing in the doorway and said, “What?”

It wasn't the first time Marie had disappeared and come home late, so I knew the routine. Dad shook his head, made a sound with his lips that encompassed disgust, frustration, and resignation all in one exhalation. Mom was all,
Are you all right? Where have you been? Why didn't you answer your phone?

Mom's questions quickly morphed into yelling. Marie started yelling back. Dad turned his back on them and went to bed. I listened to the yelling for a few minutes, then went to my own room and shut the door. The yelling would soon become crying, and the two of them would end up having a long mother-daughter talk in the kitchen.
It was always the same; nothing would change; it would happen again.

My family.

The next morning everything was back to what passes for normal. Dad left for work early so he wouldn't have to deal. Mom's eyes were all baggy and dark from the crying and no sleep. Marie was quiet and wouldn't look anybody in the eye. I tried to lighten the mood at the breakfast table by making a joke about Marie “studying late.” Nobody laughed.

I asked Marie, “Is Jon picking you up this morning?”

“Mikey, shut up,” she said.

Mom poured herself a cup of coffee and took it out to the patio.

“You are so lame,” Marie said.

“I'm not the one who skipped school and came home at midnight.”

“It was eleven thirty, and screw you.”

“What happened to Jon's eye?”

She sat stirring her corn flakes, getting them good and mushy. After a while she shoved the bowl aside.

“He had a fight with his dad.”

That wasn't what I had expected.

“His dad kicked him out. I had to help him move his stuff over to his brother's apartment.”

“Jon has a brother?”

“Stepbrother, really. From Jon's mom's first marriage. He lives on Front Street, over on the east side.”

That was all the way on the other side of the city. I
liked the idea of Jon living as far away as possible.

“Did you talk to him?”

“I was with him all day—what do you think?”

“I mean, did you talk to him about the money?”

Marie did her eye-roll thing. “It's always about
you
. Jon gets beat up and kicked out of his own house, and I get grounded, and all you can talk about is
your
pathetic problems.”

“Did you talk to him or not?”

“No. It wasn't the right time. Besides, you lost his package; you should pay for it.”

My sister.

Jon didn't show up at school again on Tuesday, and I let myself imagine that I would never see him again. Maybe now that he was living all the way across town he would transfer to another high school. So instead of looking over my shoulder all day, I made an effort to appreciate the educational system.

I made several sarcastic and amusing remarks during American Lit—we had just started reading
The Catcher in the Rye
, so it seemed appropriate for me to channel Holden Caulfield, the original wise-ass. Mr. Clemens was not appreciative, but he didn't send me to the office or anything.

After that I almost got kicked out of Biology for feeding Mr. Bush's pet rat a Cheeto, but I handed in my Cultural Studies report on time, and I made it through gym without getting snapped by a towel. After school I talked Shayne into going to Thriftway with me. He didn't seem all that excited about it, but he came.

Thriftway is my favorite used-clothing store. It's like a Goodwill, but they sell only clothing. Mrs. Jerdes, the owner, had set aside a hardly used bar mitzvah suit for me—an unusual dark green with pale blue pinstripes. Nineteen dollars. I tried it on. Perfect fit. I found Shayne back by the denim rack sorting through the black jeans.

“What do you think?” I said, holding my arms out and turning around.

Shayne looked me up and down.

“It's you, Mikey,” he said.

Since I was enjoying the fantasy that Jon was permanently gone, I paid for it with my last twenty dollar bill.

My good day continued after Shayne dropped me off at home. Mom was making rice with pigeon peas and sausage, one of my favorites. Dad got home early from work and was out in the garage puttering with the busted pump from his fountain. Marie had come straight home from school for once and was doing her homework in the den. I went through the pockets of my new suit and found a folded-up hundred dollar bill in the watch pocket. I'd found money in thrift store suits before, but never a hundred.

It was a sign.

I went to school the next day, Wednesday, feeling pretty good about things, especially when I saw that Jon was once again absent. Maybe he'd dropped out permanently. I could get behind that.

Shayne didn't show up either, which surprised me because when he had dropped me off the night before he had said, “See you tomorrow.”

But I wasn't worried. Yet.

After school I texted him and tried calling him a few times, but always got shunted over to voice mail. I would have gone to his house but I had no idea where he lived. Maybe he'd changed schools or moved. I should have been worried, but instead I got mad. Like, why didn't he at least call me?

Walking home, I heard the sound of a motorcycle coming up behind me. I turned, thinking it might be Shayne, but it wasn't. It was the other
djab.

“Little Mikey,” said Jon. His eye looked better, but you could still see he'd taken a good punch. He wasn't smiling, and that was even scarier than when he
was
smiling. “Happy Wednesday,” he said.

I said, “I thought you moved.”

“Not that far,” he said. “You got my money?”

I didn't even hesitate. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the hundred dollar bill and handed it to him.

“Seen your friend lately?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He laughed and rode off.

That night I tried to talk to Marie, thinking she might know something. She told me she hadn't heard from Shayne since seeing him at school on Tuesday.

“What about Jon?”

“What about him?”

“Has he said anything about Shayne?”

“Not to me. Why?”

“Because I saw him on the way home. He took a hundred bucks off me. And he said something about Shayne. Like he knew something.”

Marie looked at me for a long time, then said, “I thought you said you didn't have any money.”

“I don't, now. Is Jon still staying with his brother?”

“As far as I know. He hasn't called since the day I helped him move.”

Thursday morning. Still no Jon—the rumor was that he had dropped out—and no Shayne. Nobody knew what had happened to him. I tried not to care, but I couldn't think about anything else. I went back and forth from worried to mad. Finally, I decided to ask somebody who would know.

Back in grade school, Trey Worthington had been my
friend. He was a year older, so we were never super-close, but back in the fourth and fifth grades he had sort of looked out for me. We were like Lennie and George in that book
Of Mice and Men.
I was the little smart one, and Trey was the giant oaf who protected me. Naturally, I had to do some of his homework as a trade, but it was a win-win deal.

That friendship did not survive the transition to middle school, but we did have a history, so it wasn't completely crazy for me to start a conversation with Trey. The hard part would be to get him alone. I saw him at lunch, but he was sitting with Kyle Ness, who scared me almost as much as Jon did. I didn't have a chance to talk to him until later, when I caught him coming out of his Remedial English class.