Lily had spent the better part of the past two days wondering why the police hadn't questioned her. After all, she was more of a mother to Kenya than Daneen, Judy, or anyone else had ever been.
But the police weren't doing all they could, in her opinion, to find Kenya. They hadn't gone door-to-door in the building where she lived. And they hadn't gone door-to-door in the rest of the neighborhood.
Worse, their investigation seemed to be more about finding Sonny than finding Kenya. But with Sonny still on the run, and Judy a fugitive as well, their options were running out.
So when the knock finally came on Sunday afternoon, she wasn't surprised. That is, until she opened the door and saw Kevin Lynch standing in the hallway with Darnell.
She paused for a moment, her eyes darting from one to the other before she opened the door wider.
“Come in,” she said.
Lynch walked in. When Darnell tried to follow, Lily held out a hand to block him.
“Lily, Iâ”
“Look, I know Kenya your niece, Darnell. And I'm sorry she
missin'. But I can't keep bein' around you and havin' you all up in my house. If Kevin wanna talk to me 'bout what happened, that's fine. But we ain't got no more words, Darnell. I said what I had to say, and so did you. That's it.”
He stood there, hoping that Lily would change her mind. When it became clear that she wouldn't, he turned to leave with a finality that hadn't been there before.
Lily closed the door, then leaned against the wall and let out a long sigh.
“What was that all about?” Lynch asked.
“It's personal,” Lily said. “Have a seat and try to ignore the mess. It's been a long coupla days.”
He walked around the coffee table and moved the hair grease and brush from the couch before he sat down.
“Can I get you somethin'?”
“No,” Lynch said. “I really just came to talk with you, and hopefully your daughter, to get a little bit of detail on what happened Friday when Kenya came down here.”
Lily looked at him and smiled in spite of herself. “I'm sorry, Kevin. It's still hard for me to believe you a cop,” she said. “I still remember when you was livin' on the third floorâhow your grandmother used to try and keep you outta all the mess that went on 'round here.”
“Yeah,” Lynch said softly. “That seems like another lifetime.”
“But you look good, Kevin. I'm glad you could come back to help with this. I know that mean a lot to Daneen.”
Lynch didn't respond. He didn't want to talk about Daneen.
“Far as what happened Friday,” Lily said. “The only one who could tell you about that is my daughter. And I'ma be honest with you. I really don't want her doin' a whole lotta talkin'. You start talkin' 'bout people like Sonnyâpeople that'll kill you soon as look at youâand I start gettin' real nervous 'bout havin' my daughter name comin' up as some kinda witness or somethin'.”
“I understand. But I just want to ask her a couple of questions. It won't take long.”
“No, you don't understand. If I let Janay talk to you, I don't want her name comin' up in no files, and I don't want nobody comin' 'round askin' her to testify.”
“Lily, whatever she says won't go any further than this room.”
“You a cop, Kevin,” Lily said. “You can't keep what she tell you to yourself.”
“Well, that's not exactly true,” Lynch said with a sigh. “I was suspended this morning.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, and then came the inevitable question.
“Why?” Lily asked.
“You heard about Judge Baylor, right?”
“They blamin' you for that?”
“Somebody had to take the fall. And since I was the one who started the chase, I got elected.”
“So if you suspended, what you still here for?”
Lynch paused, then started to give her a simple explanation. But then he realized that there was no easy answer.
“I guess I'm here for a lot of reasons,” he said haltingly. “But mostly, I'm here for Kenya. It seems like there was so much stacked up against her that there was nothing she could do to make it right. And she didn't have much help, either. Her mother could've been more than she was, but she didn't want to. Her fatherâor at least the man Daneen said was her fatherâdied trying to be something he wasn't. And then when it all fell apart, Kenya had to come to live in a place that, for all intents and purposes, was a crack house.”
He smiled uneasily, then fixed his eyes on Lily.
“I'm here because I can relate. If some things had happened just a little differently, my life could've been just like that.”
Lily nodded, remembering the circumstances under which Lynch had come to the Bridge.
“But we're not here to talk about me,” he said quickly. “We're here to find Kenya. And if Janay can shed some light on what she did Friday afternoon, maybe she can help us do that.”
Lily was quiet as she made her way to a chair and sat back to consider what Lynch had just told her. She responded without looking at him, almost as if she was talking to herself.
“Janay all I got,” she said. “And I can't see her gettin' mixed up in this. I done already lost Kenya to this place. I ain't gon' lose my baby, too.”
“Lily, it won't leave the room,” Lynch said. “Nobody ever has to know that Janay told me anything. I just need a starting point. Please. Let her give me at least that.”
Janay came in from the bedroom and stood against the wall. She looked at her mother with a silent plea in her eyes. Underneath it was a hurt too big for a child to carry.
When Lily saw that, she knew there was no other choice.
“Come here, baby,” she said, extending her hand as Janay came to her. “Tell Mr. Kevin what y'all did on Friday. Try not to leave nothin' out, 'cause he need to know everything he can if he gon' find Kenya.”
Janay began to speak. Lynch listened intently. After a while, Lily joined in, adding the details that she could. As they spoke, they were all immersed in Kenya's reality.
It was as if Kenya was telling her story for herself.
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When she left her aunt Judy's, Kenya ran down the hall, past the elevator and into the stairwell, with its piss-stained corners and stale smoke.
“Where you goin', Kenya?”
She turned around and saw Janay coming down the steps with jump ropes in her hands.
“I was lookin' for you,” Kenya answered.
“You wanna play double Dutch?”
“Okay.”
The two girls ran down the remaining steps together, hoping they would run into someone else who wanted to play.
They made their way out onto the sidewalk, anxiously looking up and down the street for some little girl who would be willing to turn the ropes. When she saw that there was no one else outside, Kenya sat down on the pole that ran along the length of the littered patches of grass outside the projects.
“Don't look like we gon' be playin' double Dutch no time soon,” she said.
“What you doin' out so early, anyway?” Janay asked, sitting down next to her friend.
“I was tryin' to find you so we could play tag.”
“Why you always wanna play them little corny games?” Janay snorted.
“Cause I got corny friends,” Kenya said, smirking.
“Yeah, right,” Janay said with a giggle. “I'm the one showed you how to be cool.”
“No you didn't. It was them mice in your houseâyou know, the ones that be sittin' at the table at dinner, talkin' 'bout, 'pass the peas.'”
Both girls laughed. But beneath the laughter, they knew the truth. Kenya would much rather live at Janay's apartment than her own. In truth, anyone would.
For the next few minutes, they sat quietly, absorbed in their own thoughts.
“There go that bitch right there!” Rochelle yelled out from behind them.
Janay stood up and gripped the jump ropes in her hands as Rochelle and her cousins approached. Kenya stood up, too, because she knew what was coming.
Janay had been friends with the older girl until about a month before. That was when Rochelle found out that her boyfriend had
tried to get Janay's number. Janay, who was developing more quickly than Rochelle and most other twelve-year-olds, didn't give it to him. In truth, she wasn't even allowed to accept phone calls from boys. But that didn't matter to Rochelle.
She had seen Kenya and Janay coming outside from the window of her first-floor apartment. And remembering the rage she'd felt after finding out about her boyfriend trying to talk to Janay, Rochelle gathered her two cousins and rushed outside to catch her.
Janay had managed to avoid Rochelle before. But from the look of the cornrows and the smear of Vaseline on Rochelle's face, there would be no avoiding her this time. But Kenya, ever the peacemaker, tried to reason with her anyway.
“Look, Rochelle,” Kenya said, stepping in front of Janay, “why don't you go âhead with that? Janay ain't never say nothin' to that boy. You need to be steppin' to
him,
not her.”
“Mind your business,” Rochelle said, pushing her.
Kenya stumbled backward.
Janay dropped her jump ropes and punched Rochelle hard across the jaw, knocking her into her younger cousin, who fell down and clutched her ankle.
Rochelle swung a wild left hook at Janay, who ducked and hit Rochelle in the stomach with two sharp uppercuts.
Rochelle doubled over as Janay grabbed a cornrow that had shaken loose in the melee. Janay swung wildly with her left hand, hitting Rochelle repeatedly in the face.
Rochelle's older cousin, who until then had watched in stunned silence, grabbed Janay and wrestled her to the ground. But Janay still had a grip on Rochelle's hair, and Rochelle fell on top of both of them.
Rochelle's younger cousin, who was crying now, let go of her ankle, got up from the ground, and ran into the building.
Seeing her friend pinned under two girls, Kenya started swinging. The first punch landed squarely on the back of Rochelle's neck, and
her forehead hit the sidewalk. She lay there writhing in pain as Janay got up and started punching Rochelle's cousin.
Kenya joined her, and by the time it was over, both Rochelle and her cousin were on the ground, curled up and trying to block the blows.
Janay and Kenya stopped, then stood there for a moment, surveying the damage they had done.
“Told you to stop messin' with me,” Janay said.
Rochelle peeked out from behind her arms, got up, and stumbled back a little as she tried to regain her balance.
“This shit ain't over,” she said as she helped her cousin get up from the ground. “Trust me, it ain't over.”
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Lily took it all in when her daughter Janay and Kenya walked into her apartment. Janay's clothes were filthy. There was a scrape on her knee. And the jump ropes she'd taken with her when she'd left the apartment were gone.
“What you done got into nine o'clock in the mornin'?” Lily asked from the kitchen as she wet a clean towel and rushed into the living room.
“It wasn't her fault, Miss Lily,” Kenya said. “Rochelle and them started it.”
“I told you 'bout hangin' around that girl,” Lily said as she dabbed at Janay's scraped knee, “wit' her fast-ass self.”
“I wasn't hangin' with her, Mom. She came outside and started messin' with me 'cause she thought I was tryin' to talk to her little dirty boyfriend.”
Lily stopped dabbing at Janay's knee and looked up into her eyes, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
“She pushed Kenya,” Janay said, looking down at her mother. “So I hit her.”
Lily stood up, went into the bathroom, and came back to the living room with a Band-Aid.
“Lemme tell you somethin', Janay,” Lily said as she bandaged her daughter's knee and sat down across from her. “Rochelle and the rest o' these little girls around hereâthey gon' grow up a lot faster than you. Some o' these same little hoodlums y'all call yourself fightin' over gon' be dead or in jail in two or three years. And Rochelle and the rest of 'em gon' still be here in these projects, carryin' they babies. And you know what's gon' happen to Rochelle and them after that? They gon' be stuck right here for the rest o' they life. And if you keep goin' out here runnin' behind 'em, yo' ass gon' be stuck here, too.”