The Chaos (7 page)

I wheeled into a spinning running man on the tiles lining our entranceway. I sang counterpoint to Rich’s rapping; “T’aint no big thing, to wait for the bell to ring . . .” And
one!
I leapt, dead on time, into the move I’d been struggling to get right at the Raw Gyals practice this afternoon!

Rich watched with that bemused grin he got when his li’l sis acted weird. “You know,” he said quietly, “that first day you visited me, I was never so glad to see anybody in my life.”

I stopped and stared at him. “But you acted like you didn’t care.”

He perched on one of the sofa’s padded arms. Dad would have had his hide for that. “That first month, I was frightened all the time. Waking, sleeping; always scared.” He saw my face. “No, not for the reason everybody always tells you. Wasn’t about guys trying to step to me.”

I sat on the sofa beside him. “Then why?”

He shook his head. “Girl, you and me, living in this nice, safe house with three squares every day and nobody beating on us, and we have all our teeth and none of them are rotting?”

I made a face. “Eww.”

Rich sighed. “We don’t know shit, Scotch. Some of the stories I heard from guys in there, some of the things I saw . . . They told me I was rich, that I had it easy. Some of those guys could barely read. Couple of them told me they’d never tasted a vegetable that wasn’t out of a can. They all had cell phones, but half of them didn’t know which end of a computer was which, made like they were too tough to be bothered with that kind of fairy shit, but the truth is, they were scared to look stupid. They don’t know how to Tweet, or Google. They can’t walk into a store without security following them everywhere.”

“Well, neither can you.”

That surprised a bleak laugh from him. “True that.”

“You’re darker than me. You got that ‘breathing while black’ thing going on. Makes you instantly suspicious.”

“Thing is, they were right. We have it easy. And a lot of them resented me for it. That was the real danger in there; getting ganged up on by a bunch of tough-ass, mean sunnabitches who’d never had what I had and knew they never would. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Not a single one of them had had their parents toss them in jail for having one joint.”

“Rich, I—”

“I mean, Doggie, he’d like, beat his dad unconscious. So his moms called the cops on him. But that was different.”

“His name was
Doggie
?”

Again with the little smile. “Doug. Dougie. But everybody called him Doggie. His dad had been smacking him and his
mom around for years. Doggie only beat his dad up once.”

Oh, God. That’s where our parents had sent Rich. Into a place like that.

He looked up from the floor. “Jeez, Scotch, don’t cry. Or at least go get some tissue. Don’t want you near me with snot all running down your face and shit.”

I sniffed back the tears. “Bite me.”

“Now, that’s just wrong.” He aimed a play tap at my head. I blocked it and made like I was going to elbow him in the belly. He pushed the elbow away, grabbed my wrist, and then we were both falling out laughing, and everything was okay again, sorta. Except for the hard knot like a rock in my belly.

“Li’l sis, you are such a brat.”

“Big bro, you are such a pain. And let go of my wrist. I have a new spot there.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he said airily. “If it was catching, the whole family would have it by now.” But he let go. I wished I could be so certain I wasn’t contagious.

Rich said, “Hey; wanna come to an open mike with me tonight?”

“You mean it? For real?”

“Yeah, T’s meeting me at Bar None. I’m going to sign up to get on the mike.”

“Wow.” Rich choked up whenever he tried to do any public speaking. I’d heard him spitting his rhymes softly alone in his room, and sometimes he’d do it for me and for Tafari, but he’d never performed on a stage.

“You came to see me when I was in jail. Mom and Dad didn’t. Will you come and hang out tonight, too?”

“I dunno. I mean, me and Tafari . . .”

“Yeah. Someday one of you’s gonna tell me what the hell’s up with all that. Why you guys suddenly broke up, I mean.”

He paused so I could answer, but I just crossed my arms and rolled my eyes at him like it was beneath me to even talk about it. Would this scraping feeling in my heart every time someone said Tafari’s name ever go away?

Rich shook his head. “Okay, but you’re both grown enough to deal with being in the same room at the same time, right?”

I could have said I wouldn’t go to the club with him. I should have. But I wanted to prove to him that I was grown enough. I wanted to be a good sister. And I kinda wanted to see Tafari, too. So I said yes. I asked him, “When’re you going?”

“Soon as I’m dressed.”

“I’ll be ready in five minutes. Ten. Hey; can I stash a couple blouses in your closet?”

“I’m running out of space.”

“There’s only four. Mom and Dad never check your room anymore. Mom’s always scoping mine out. Come on, Rich. Please?”

“
Four
new shirts?”

“I think they don’t search your room cause they don’t want to have a reason to send you to jail again.”

“Scotch, did you buy more new clothes? You have enough cash for that and rent?”

“What’re you, the twenty questions fairy? Trust me, Bro. Everything’s okay.”

It would be. I clattered up the stairs to change. I could wear my new boots. This was going to be great!

I sat on the edge of my bed and texted Ben and Glory:

MY BRO’S TAKING ME TO BAR NONE! DOWNTOWN!

In seconds the answer came back:

SRSLY? RICH’S SO COOL!

That was Gloria. I could practically feel the blush over the phone.

AND CUTE!

That second one was from Ben. I texted him back:

TELL U EVERYTHING 2MORROW!

I’d barely hit send when I got back:

YOU’D BETTER!

I smiled and closed my phone. Things were back to normal. It was going to be a good term after all. Now, where the rass had I put that new blouse? “Rich!” I bellowed. “I gotta come get a shirt out of your room!”

I waved at the bartender until I caught her eye. She came over. “Yeah?” she yelled over the drum ’n bass pounding out over the speakers.

“Ginger ale and lemon!” I yelled back. No booze for me. If I got caught out in here, at least I could say I hadn’t been drinking liquor.

The bartender narrowed her eyes at me. I looked away, playing like I was so old it wouldn’t even occur to me that she might think I was underage. She went to get me my drink. Nice tat she had; bear claws on either side of her breastbone, just above the neckline of her T-shirt. I wanted a circlet of briar roses around my left elbow. Soon as I got the lump of black stuff off that elbow. Would probably hurt like hell to get it done, but there’s no beauty without pain, right? Mom ’n Dad would just about shit themselves if I so much as mentioned a tattoo, though. I’d start saving up for it tomorrow. Maybe I was diluting that nighttime goop from the naturopath’s too much. Tonight I’d start putting it on full strength.

And in a few more weeks I’d be outta my parents’ house. I’d be sharing a place with Rich, doing what I wanted to do.

So this was a bar. I could smell decades of beer rising like stale bread dough from the worn carpeting. It wasn’t nasty or anything. Just old-smelling. Big tables everywhere, some rectangular, some round. All covered with cheap plastic tablecloths. Heavy, old-looking wooden chairs. The place was filling up with people chatting, drinking. Lots of pitchers of beer on tables. That’s it. Except for the booze, it was nothing special. I’d kind of expected it to feel more, I dunno,
illicit.
Wicked, even.

The stage was near the entrance, with a big picture window behind it. There were a couple of mikes up there. The spotlight was on center stage. Rich’d be standing in that light soon. I’d love to be in that light, dancing, with all eyes on me. I could hardly wait for Raw Gyals to make our debut.

Bar None was right at the foot of the city. The window looked out onto Lake Ontario. Which, seeing as it was night, meant that the only thing I could see out the window was mostly blackness, pierced here and there with the running lights of small planes landing at the Toronto Island Airport, and the lights from those party boats you could rent so you could have your office party on the lake, complete with DJ and dancing.

Somewhere out there in the darkness was the string of small islands in the lake. It’d be so wicked cool to live on Toronto Island and have to take a ferry to and from Toronto every day to go to school. But Dad said that people who had those homes never gave them up, just passed them on to family or friends. Ward’s Island was out there. And Centre Island. I hadn’t been to the mini amusement park on Centre Island since I was a kid. Maybe Ben, Glory, and I could do that thing we’d planned to do this summer before things with
Tafari blew up. We were going to take the short ferry trip out to the island, go to the amusement park, and take a swan boat ride, just like we were six-year-olds again. The swan boats were so hokey; small, white fiberglass boats in the shape of a swan. They could seat about six people. Only they didn’t really float, and they weren’t even on the lake. They were in an artificial pond inside the amusement park. They were attached to a track below the water. There was a pedal on the floor of the boat. You pedaled the boat out along the track, and there was someone in the boathouse timing how long you’d been out on the pond. When it was time for you to bring your boat back, you’d hear this tinny voice on a cheap speaker system call out,
“Swan number twelve, come back to the deck!”
I loved that part. It’d be a scream for the three of us to do that. When I’d suggested it back in June, Tafari hadn’t wanted to go. Said it was kid stuff. Didn’t he realize it was only kid stuff if you were still an actual kid? If you weren’t, it was, I dunno, retro, or something.

The bartender brought my drink back. I paid her. She had only stuck one lemon wedge on the rim of my glass. I love lemon wedges. I tried to call her back, but she was busy at the other end of the bar and didn’t hear me over the music. But there was a little bowl of lemon and lime wedges right there on the bar, just one stool over from me. Was I allowed to take from it? I looked around the bar. There were two more bowls just like it; one at the middle, one at the other end. But they might belong to people. People who liked lemon wedges even more than I did. I sipped at my drink and considered; try to sneak a couple of the wedges, maybe piss somebody off, or ask the guy beside me whether anybody could take them? And look like a real newbie. As if.

A girl came up to the bar, took a wedge, plopped it into her
drink, and walked away. Cool. I touched the shoulder of the guy beside me to get his attention. I leaned over and said, near his ear, “Can you pass me that bowl, please?”

“Of course. My pleasure.” He handed me the bowl, trying to make like he wasn’t noticing my cleavage.

“Thank you.” I loved it when guys tried to pretend like that. It was so sweet. It was only gross if they made a big deal of it, staring at your chest as if they wanted you and resented you at the same time.

The guy asked me, “You here for the show later? That poetry thing?”

“The spoken word open mike? Uh-huh. You?” I took a casual sip of my drink, as though I spent every Friday night in downtown bars talking to older guys. He was kinda cute. Looked white, maybe about twenty-two. Pretty hazel eyes, brown hair shaved just a little bit above his ears so it showed off the full cap of it above. His green sweatshirt was bulky, but not too bulky. Not so tight that he looked gay, but it didn’t hide how he had broad shoulders. Loose black jeans, rolled up neatly at the cuffs. Nice runners.

He said, “Not me. I didn’t know there was a show on. Just came in for a quiet drink after a long week at work, you know?”

“Uh-huh, I know what you mean.” I didn’t, but I would pretty soon. Mom and Dad were going to flip when I told them I was taking a couple of years off before going to university.

The guy looked doubtfully at the stage at the front of the bar. “I may leave before it starts. I’m not the poetry type.”

“Oh, it’s not like that! It’s not guys in berets with a bongo drum playing in the background.”

He chuckled. “No? What’s it like, then?”

“When it’s good, it’s like rap, it’s like freestyling.”

“I dunno. I can’t really get into that if there’s no music.”

“The words and the rhythms are music. You should stick around, you’ll see what I mean.”

Now he was noticing more than just my breasts. “Wow,” he said. “Maybe I will stick around. Especially now that there’s a beautiful, intelligent woman to tell me all about it.”

Oo, nice. “I’m sitting over there.” I pointed to where Rich had found us a table, about halfway between the bar and the stage. “But I could come and hang out with you a little bit.”

He looked where I was pointing. His face got wary. “So, that guy’s your boyfriend?”

I laughed. “Naw, he’s my brother.” I was testing him now, though I bet he couldn’t tell.

He looked at Rich. He looked back at me. He said, “You’re kidding me, right? You’re just trying to pretend he isn’t your boyfriend.”

Oh, he was skating on thin ice. “No, for real, he’s my big brother. You can go ask him.”

He got this look of hopeful comprehension. “Oh! So he’s your half brother, or something? Or one of you is adopted?”

Yikes. He could still pull this one out of the hole he was digging for himself, but the signs weren’t good. But his was a reasonable question, right? I didn’t have to be so trigger-happy. Still, my voice came out a few hundred degrees cooler than before. “We both have the same parents. One black, one white. Can’t you see how much we resemble each other? I came out lighter and Rich came out darker, is all.”

“Wow.” He visually compared me and Rich again. “I never thought it could happen that way. I just figured the kids would all come out, I guess light brown, you know?”

“Uh-huh . . .”
Our champion only has one more chance for a comeback! Can he do it?