Fire in the Streets (19 page)

Cherry and Slim have been sitting on the sofa real close, talking. They get up and join Raheem and Rocco, gathering gear to go out on rounds. No one speaks. The only sounds are little clicks of things being loaded and organized. They file out the door one by one. “See you, Maxie,” Rocco says.

“Bye.” I want to go with them. Want to do my part to protect the community, like I couldn't do the day of the shooting.

Raheem meets my eye again, and I still don't like what I see there.

The door closes behind them and then it's just me and Hamlin, who says, “We're walled in now, but good.”

E
MMALEE HAS THIS WISE WAY ABOUT HER
sometimes. A sixth sense, maybe, like she knows exactly where she has to be at the moment that I need her. She comes down the block with her book bag over her shoulder while I'm leaning against the windows out in front of the office, wondering how long I'll have to stand here before another assault rolls through. She takes one good look at me and slips her arm around my waist. Nudges the side of my face with her forehead.

“Come on. Let's go somewhere else.”

She has Eldridge Cleaver's
Soul on Ice
in her book bag. We sit on the ledge and she tries to read to me, but my mind is floating in all directions.

“Are you listening?”

“Hmm?”

She sighs. “Do you want to read some yourself?”

“No.” I like listening better. I don't have to work so
hard and I can just let it all sink in. But she's right, today it's not sinking in.

Emmalee closes the book. “Okay. Well, do you want to say anything about anything?”

I tip my face to the sky. I actually am fine just sitting here, in the sun and the breeze, quiet but not alone.

“Okay, well, I have stuff to talk about, but I can let it wait if you want.” She looks at me out the corner of her eye.

My gaze cuts to her out the corners of my own. I don't know how I missed it before. That certain smile playing at the edges of her mouth. I look at her full-on, and suddenly she's grinning.

“Jimmy?” I say.

“Jimmy!” She squeals like the little double Dutch girls. Leaps off the wall in a silly happy dance.

“What happened?”

She blurts it out all in a rush. My legs dangle from the ledge as I listen. About the first kiss and the second. She does the overview, then takes me through point by point, every glance, every finger brush, every word and what it meant.

I can't help but smile as it all becomes worth it, the days and days of collecting coins from the gutter just to have an excuse to go in there. I jump down and dance with her, fist in the air and swinging.

I was wrong about the silence. Talking is good. Distraction is good. It makes everything seem okay for a minute.

We push it as long as we can, staying out into the low dark before running home and going our separate ways.

I hear sounds through the door, but not soon enough to know better than to open it. The laughter and teasing voices stall as I barge in on the scene.

Mama's curled in the armchair, sitting across the lap of a man I've never seen before. They both look up at me, startled.

“Who's that?” he says.

“Who are
you
?” I fire back.

“Don't worry,” Mama coos, patting his cheek.

I'm frozen in the doorway.

“Run along to your room, Maxie.” Mama's words come out all slurred. “We're busy here.”

I think about it. Stay and hide? Leave and hide? Go to Emmalee's?

“You ain't told me you got a kid,” the man says.

“Well, she does,” I snap. “She has two.” I can't help myself.

“I ain't signing on to no family deal,” he complains, coming to his feet. He looms large in the living room. As big as Rocco, maybe, or bigger.

Displaced onto the arm of the chair, Mama splays her
hand over the back of it to steady herself as she works on standing up. “No, no, no,” she says. “They're grown.”

The man looks me up and down, like he's checking to see exactly how grown. He's well dressed like an office man, but carries himself like a thug. Been in the room ten seconds and I can tell it.

“She's a kid.”

“If you don't like it, you should leave,” I say. “'Cause this is how it is.”

“Run along, Maxie,” Mama says, more urgently. She's holding herself up by the back of the chair. “Let us talk a minute here.” She weaves her way around toward him. He lets her snake her arms around his neck and kiss his lips.

Over her shoulder he looks at me still standing there. He snorts. “She doesn't know how to mind you?”

That bristles me up. “I do what I want.”

The man shoves Mama to the side, and she stumbles into the chair. “Come here, girl,” he snarls. “I'll show you how to mind your mama.”

He takes a step toward me and I'm terrified. Ready to run.

Mama rises smoothly, intercepts his movement with a hand on his arm. “She'll mind. Won't you?”

But I hesitate.

“Go,” Mama says. I'm no match for this boulder of a human being, but then again, neither is Mama. And Panthers
don't run from a fight. Panthers protect their homes at all cost.

She nudges the man with her hip. “Meet me in the bedroom, darling.” Shrugging, he lurches toward her doorway.

Mama whirls around. “Get out of here,” she hisses at me. “Can't you see he has money? Don't screw this up for me.”

Standing on the street ten seconds later, I'm not even sure I remembered to close the door behind me.

I
CAN'T GO HOME, IS THE THING. I CIRCLE THE
blocks, thinking about what I'm going to do. Emmalee's, maybe. But instead of heading back, I turn aimless. Soon the Lemon Drop Lounge looms up across the street. Cherry's hangout, I remember her saying. I find myself drawn toward it. Cherry knows how to handle things. How to handle men. Cherry can help me.

I've never been inside, of course, but that doesn't stop me from slipping across the street. The metal door flops open easy when I pull. I slip inside to the music of the slightest hinge creak.

I don't know what I expected, but it isn't the relative quiet. People line the bar, sit at small tables in pairs and trios, and no one is talking in loud voices. Ella Fitzgerald sings out of a record player somewhere. I expected something fancier, not a dark tile floor and chipped wood paneling. The light is low, from sconces along the walls and above the bar. You
can't really make out people's faces until you get within a certain distance.

I cross to the bar, trying to hold myself tall. Bartender looks down at me.

“You can't be in here.” His beard and mustache cover his mouth. The voice sounds like it's coming from somewhere else.

“I'm not staying,” I say. “I'm looking for Cherry.”

He throws a dingy towel over his shoulder. “Gotta go, kid.”

“It's important. Have you seen her?”

He pulls the towel off, wipes down the counter. Throws it back on. “It's not a good time,” he says. “You should wait till the morning.”

“But she's here?” I squint around, trying to catch sight of her.

Bartender sighs. “In the back.” He points toward a thick red curtain hanging in a narrow doorway.

“Thanks.”

I slip behind the curtain. The room is small and the light is even lower back here. Several of the wall sconces have burned out.

I hear the metallic clicking before I even see her. I recognize the sound of a handgun being cocked ready to fire.

“Cherry?” I turn toward the sound, to my left. Her silhouette blooms from the darkness. As my eyes adjust, I can
make out her features. In the candle-like light I can see that her face is washed in tears. What shocks me more is the way she's holding the gun, trained on me.

“Oh, it's you.” Cherry lowers the gun to the tabletop.

“Yeah.” I've intruded on something. Something terrible. “What's happened?” I whisper. She's alone in the dark, and packing. “What's wrong?” I look over my shoulder, like whatever Cherry fears might be right on my heels.

The curtain settles, and so do the shadows it casts. “Things you can't understand,” she says, voice low like the music in the background.

Cherry lifts a short glass to her lips and drains it. “What are you doing in here? It's not the right kind of place for a sweet girl like you.”

“Looking for you.”

“Well, you found me, girlie. Sure as the sun shines out your ass you did.” She laughs, and the curtain stirs so more light pours in. Whiskey light flashes in her eyes, glowing bright beneath heavy, shadowed lids.

“You've been drinking?” I murmur. It's not against the rules to drink off duty, but it's never allowed to drink when you're packing a gun.

Cherry leans her forearms on the low table. “See, this is what I'm talking about. Go home and go to bed, little darlin'. That's where you belong.” She reaches beneath
the table and extracts a bottle, half empty. Liquor sloshes over the edges of the glass as she pours. The pungent scent assaults my nostrils, ugly and familiar.

“I'd offer you a belt, but . . .” Cherry snorts, waving the bottle at me, then thumping it back down beside her.

“I need your help.”

“What do you want?” Her voice thrums low from her chest. For a second I'm drawn close to her in some woman way that makes me feel older, like a friend, a confidante. Which satisfies me down deep, because it's why I'd come.

“I wanted to talk to you—”

“But what is it you're looking for.” Cherry sighs. “After the talking's done.”

“I—”

“Don't tell it to me pretty,” she says. “Tell it to me real.”

So I tell her. Everything.

Cherry sips her drink till it's gone, listening. When I'm done she's pushed the glass away and lit a smoke.

“I want to be a real Panther, like you, not like a kid.” Panthers can protect the neighborhood. Panthers can protect their homes.

She nods slightly. I wait for her to speak, but after a moment her head nods lower, like she's going to lie down and sleep.

“Cherry?” I put my hand on her wrist. Too personal.
She jerks away, awake. Two fingers bracing her cigarette, the other three stroking the gun. Her free hand, the one I had touched, comes back across at me. She touches my cheek, all gentle and sad.

“Child,” she slurs, in a way that makes six years seem like everything. “Be careful what you wish for.”

“I know what I'm asking,” I insist. “I know it'll be hard, but I'm ready.”

Cherry lifts her smoke to her mouth and draws deeply on it. She's smoking this one slow, and though it's more than half smoked, the whole tail of the ash hangs on, useless, but like it's waiting to serve another purpose.

When she lowers her hand, she looks at it like she's seeing it for the first time. She holds it out to me. “What is this?” she says. “What do you see?”

“A cigarette?”

Cherry shakes her head, her eyes drooping.

“Ash? Something burning?”

“No. Tell me what this is,” she says softly, tracing her thumb beneath the thick line of burned ash still hanging. I don't understand the game.

“What?”

“What do you want it to be?” The glistening sweat on her skin flashes as she leans in toward me. “The truth? A promise? Love?”

My eyes catch the precarious tremble of the thin, burning stick between her unsteady fingers. A tiny breath lodges in my throat of its own accord.

Cherry grins. A flick of her wrist and the long ash falls to dust.

I
T FEELS LIKE THE RIGHT THING TO DO AT THE
time. “I'm going to keep this for you,” I tell her, sliding the gun from under her fingers. Cherry isn't being fully herself, under the dazzle of drink and the seeming protection of a dark room. She says nothing, but tips the bottle to the glass again. She can't help me now, in this state.

The gun fits easy at the small of my back, beneath my jacket and trapped by the belt of my skirt. I don't even wave to the bartender as I scoot toward the door, feeling the weight of it on my back.

It felt like the right thing, moments ago, but as the door squeaks shut behind me and I'm facing the street, I realize I've only picked up a fresh burden. It's not going to get me out of anything.

It's not a long walk home, but it's long enough to set my mind churning newly. The gun changes everything. It's
what everyone has been telling me. And it's what the Panthers are built on.

Get out of here. Don't screw this up.
Mama's words, sharp like a knife blade, cut as sure. I want to cover myself, to hold in the wound, but it threatens to spill forth. What happens after that? What happens when every piece of me that's aching tries to get out to the light? Who would I become at that moment?