Lily squinted through a sleepy haze and tried to understand why Kenya was walking naked across the moonlit rooftop of the high-rise.
As Lily watched in disbelief, Kenya smiled at her, then leaned over the edge of the building and pointed toward the ground. Lily's gaze followed Kenya's pointing finger as she stared down into the courtyard outside the building.
Bewildered, Lily looked at Kenya, who smiled and met her gaze with large, almond-shaped eyes. Lily was disarmed by her loveliness. She smiled back.
Kenya pointed toward the ground againâthis time with urgency. Lily looked down and saw moonlight reflecting against thousands of shining jewels. For a moment, they were beautiful. Then a cloud passed over the moon, and the brilliance dissipated. The jewels were nothing more than broken shards of glass.
Lily looked up at Kenya. And the little girl who'd seemed so lovely just moments before started crumbling to dust, right before Lily's eyes.
The gentle rooftop breeze kicked up into a swirling gale, scattering Kenya's naked, crumbling body across the rooftop. Lily ran to the edge of the roof in a panic, trying in vain to snatch pieces of
Kenya from the air. But as Lily leaned over the edge to save her daughter's best friend from the windstorm, someone pushed her.
Lily tumbled off the roof and spun toward the ground, falling, as the wind blew against her face. She tried to scream, but couldn't. She flailed her arms and fell faster.
Tears sprang from the corners of her eyes as she hurtled downward. And then someone called her.
“Mommy.” The voice was soft, feminine, familiar.
“Mommy!” The voice was louder now, accompanied by hands pulling at Lily's clothes.
“Mommy!” Janay screamed.
And with that, Lily's eyes snapped open. She stared up into her daughter's face as she sat on the edge of the bed. Lily sat up and looked across the room at the oscillating fan that had whipped up the wind in her dream. Then she jumped from her bed and ran into the living room, looking desperately for a child she knew she wouldn't find.
“Where Kenya at?” she asked when she returned to the bedroom.
“She went home,” said a bewildered Janay. “Remember? You said she couldn't spend the night 'cause Miss Judy wanted her home sometime.”
“I remember,” Lily said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and placing her face in her hands.
A tear rolled slowly down her cheek as she recalled the details of her dream. She whisked it away with a hard, bitter swipe of her palm.
“What's wrong, Mom?” Janay asked, her voice rising in panic.
“It's Kenya,” Lily said as she reached out to cradle her daughter's face in her hands.
“Somethin' bad done happened to Kenya.”
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It was four in the morning when Judy realized that her niece had not come home. She knewâdeep down in the secret place where women feel such thingsâthat something was wrong.
She considered calling the police, but thought better of it. She was down to her last twenty-cap bundle of crackâhardly enough to sustain the pipers who were buying them two at a time as they waited for Sonny to return with more. On this, the summer's only first of the month to fall on a Friday, tens of thousands of dollars in welfare and Social Security checks were circulating through the projects. And Judy had to get her share.
No, she couldn't call the police. But as she looked around the room at sunken gray faces fixed in silent desperation, she knew that she had to do something. At this time of morning, with legions of addicts searching for their next hit, anything could happen to Kenya. And Judy knew it.
She looked up at the grease-stained clock above the stove. It read 4:05. As images of Kenya worked their way through her mind, she was immersed in something she hadn't felt in years. Fear.
Judy picked up the phone and dialed the only person who knew Kenya better than she did. She only hoped that Daneen was where she'd said she would be. Because more often than not, she wasn't.
“Hello?” a groggy voice came on the line after the fourth ring.
“Kenya with you?” Judy asked quickly.
“Who this?” Kenya's mother asked as she sat up in bed and tried to get her bearings.
“Daneen, it's Judy,” she said evenly. “Kenya left outta here ten o'clock to go to the Chinese store. She ain't come back, and I was wonderin' if she was with you.”
“What you mean is she with me?” Daneen said, suddenly wide-awake. “She supposed to be with you.”
“Well, she ain't.”
“How she gon' get up here with me, and I'm damn-near 'cross town, Judy?”
Daneen jumped out of the bed at her boyfriend Wayne's house, reached over him, and grabbed jeans and a T-shirt from the floor.
“Kenya don't even know where Wayne live at,” she said as she pulled on her clothes.
“Look, Daneen. I was justâ”
“You was just what, Judy? You was just so busy sellin' that shit you let my baby walk out and disappear? What's wrong with you? I swear to God, Judy ⦔
Daneen screamed and cursed and said all the things she'd wanted to say to Judy for years. Judy listened to the tirade, and when her niece's anger dissolved into sobs, she responded.
“I know you think you got yourself together now that you done stopped smokin' that so-called shit I'm sellin'. What is it, two months clean now?”
Judy didn't wait for Daneen to answer.
“Congratulations. Maybe you can run back to family court in a couple o' months and try to get your daughter back. Might even get your job back, too. Tell 'em you changed or some shit.
“But for right now, Kenya's out there. And it's a whole lotta folk who care even less about her than you do. So I suggest you get outta bed with Wayne, or whoever the nigga o' the week happen to be, and get down here and find your daughter.”
There was silence on the other end of the line as Darnell and the other pipers in Judy's apartment stopped smoking long enough to stare wide-eyed at Judy. She hadn't meant for them to hear. But it was out now, which meant that word would spread before first light.
Judy knew that. But she didn't care. All that mattered was finding Kenya.
“I'm callin' a cab,” Daneen said in a near whisper after she'd calmed down. “I'll be down there in a few minutes.”
Judy slid the phone into its cradle, closed her eyes, and mouthed a silent prayer.
Daneen called a cab. And then she made the call that she knew her aunt wouldn't.
Somebody was going to find Kenya, Daneen thought as she hung up the phone. One way or another, they were going to find her baby.
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It was four-twenty when Sonny parked his maroon Sedan de Ville on Watts Street, an alleywide passageway between Broad and Thirteenth. He got out and walked half a block, crossing to the hack stand in front of the deli on Broad Street.
He handed five dollars to a thin, unkempt man in an old white Mercury Marquis. Then he got into the car's passenger side and told the driver to go south on Broad.
The man glanced warily at the garment bag that was slung over Sonny's arm. He knew that it contained drugs, and that somewhere, tucked into the folds of Sonny's clothing, there was a gun. But it didn't take much to figure that out.
Anybody who knew anything about Girard Avenue knew all about Sonny. He was a fixture outside the awning-bedecked building in the middle of the block, where welfare recipients collected their biweekly checks.
He made loans to them at 50-percent interest, holding their welfare identification cards as collateral and escorting them to collect on check day. He bought their food stamps at seventy cents on the dollar and redeemed them at full value. He sold crack to them from Judy's cramped apartment and took what he wanted from those whose drug habits outpaced their ability to pay.
But if anyone ever crossed him in any one of his enterprises, Sonny did more than merely punish them. He made them disappear. Some showed up again, with scars that forever marked them as his victims. Others never came back at all.
The man driving the old white Mercury had the good sense to be afraid of Sonny. That's why he was glad for the short tripâone block south on Broad and a left at Poplar, then four more blocks
to East Bridge Placeâa one-block stretch of asphalt that ran along the front of the projects. Sonny would usually get out and walk to the building from there.
Sonny, as always, was relaxed during the ride. But when the car reached the corner, and the building came into full view, his calm demeanor was shaken. There was a police van parked out front.
“Stop the car,” Sonny said quietly.
The driver pulled over and shut off the headlights.
Sonny placed his hand against the garment bag, checking its contents, as he watched two officers get out of the van and walk toward the projects.
He sat there for a few seconds after they went into the building, trying to tell himself that they weren't on their way to Judy's apartment.
But in his heart, he knew where they were going. He even knew why. So he did what his instincts screamed for him to do. He ducked out the passenger-side door, disappeared around the back of the car, scrambled onto Poplar Street, and walked back toward Broad.
The driver watched, glad to be rid of Sonny, who disappeared into the night.
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Judy heard the sound of a baton against her door and knew that it was the police.
The pipers heard it, too. Darnell and his girlfriend Renee, along with the other two who remained in Judy's apartment, quickly scrambled to hide pipes and rocks in pant hems and sneaker tongues. Judy moved more casually, slipping the remains of her bundle and a thick wad of cash into her ripped chair cushion.
The baton rapped against the door again, harder this time.
Judy lit a cigarette and waited, contemplating whether to answer the knock as the scramble to hide the drugs continued.
“Somebody here call the police?” a male officer asked from behind the door.
Judy didn't answer, but raised her arm to signal Darnell and the others to stop moving. They did, and silence enveloped the room.
Judy waited half a beat to answer the door. To ignore it when the lights and movement had already made their presence known would seem suspicious. And suspicion was something that Judy could ill afford, especially with Sonny on his way back with their third package of the night.
Judy tousled her hair and kicked off her shoes. Then she wrapped her favorite robe around her clothes, walked to the door, and opened it a sliver.
She was nonchalant as she regarded the black cop and his white partner. For effect, she squinted and rubbed her eyes like she'd just been awakened from a deep sleep.
“I didn't call the police,” she said after a long pause.
“You sure about that?” the black cop asked. “We got a call that somebody here wanted to file a missing person report.”
“You must got the wrong apartment then.” Judy dragged on her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “Ain't nobody here but me, and I ain't missin'.”
The officer looked at his partner, then back at Judy. He seemed puzzled.
“Anyway,” she said, taking another drag on the cigarette, “I ain't call no cops.”
Before the officers could respond, she closed the door and locked it, then listened as their footsteps echoed down the hallway. When she was sure they were gone, she leaned back against the door in relief.
Darnell sat on the floor with a broken metal hanger, scraping residue from the hollow glass tube that served as his crack pipe.
“You coulda told 'em about Kenya,” he said without looking up.
“And you coulda got the hell outta here,” she said, crossing the
room and retrieving her money and drugs from the ripped chair cushion. “I wish you woulda just kept goin' when you went out to get them matches.”
“Yeah, I bet you do,” he said as he deposited the residue he'd scraped from his pipe onto a bent matchbook cover. “Same way you wanted Kenya to keep goin' when you sent her to the store.”
Judy retorted quickly. “You know what, Darnell? I think you need to shut the hell up.”
Darnell glanced at his aunt as he struck two matches and held the flame at the end of his pipe. It hissed and sizzled as he sucked the glass tube. And when he exhaled, the smoke swirled in front of his face, giving his skin an otherworldly glow.