Authors: Tamicka Higgins
“Even better,” Tramar said.
Jackson pulled off and around to the other side of the motel. Once they entered the room, Vivica took a few moments to adjust to such a cheap place. She did like that it was out of sight, and the room being on the back of the building was even better.
As Tramar carried the bags in for his father, he got a better look at him in the light of the motel room. “Damn, Daddy,” he said. “You sure you don’t wanna go to the hospital or something to at least have your face looked at, man?”
Frank shook his head. “Not at this point,” he answered. “It’s looking better than it did yesterday, and it doesn’t hurt as much. You just worry about you and getting your son back over here as quick as you can so he doesn’t get caught up in any of this shit.”
Tramar could hear the anguish in his father’s voice. All he wanted to do was apologize to his father for all of this, but it was too late. He turned around and hurried back to the car where Jackson was waiting behind the wheel. Once inside, Jackson pulled off.
“You sure they gon’ be okay out here?” Jackson asked. “I mean, I don’t really know nothin’ about bein’ out here, so I was kinda wonderin’ if you did or somethin’ and why you even suggested this.”
“Cause,” Tramar said. “I don’t know shit about it either. I figured if none of us knew nothin’ about this area, then what are the chances of Byron and his niggas knowin’ about it.”
“Wait a minute,” Jackson said, “then how did you hear about it in the first place?”
“Saw the shit on the news with some big car crash that blocked the road up for miles or some shit that the news was sayin’,” Tramar explained. “I remembered them sayin’ the highway exit and I had driven past that. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just thought about it and thought we could put them out here. Nigga, we gotta hurry up and get back down to the airport. Ayana is waitin’ in that McDonald’s down the road from the hotel and shit, and she say the place is swarmin’ with cops and shit.”
“So, what?” Jackson asked. “You want us to just pull up in the McDonald’s parking lot and shit and think that them people over at the hotel ain’t gon’ see us or somethin’. Look how late it is. Ain’t like it’s gon be a lot of people out over there and sittin’ in restaurants at that. That alone is gon’ make us stick out more.”
“I know, I know,” Tramar said. “I was thinkin’ that same shit too. But, at the same time, I don’t want Ayana to have to leave the restaurant with Quan. I figured if she did some shit like that, they might be able to look over and across them parkin’ lots and see that a girl and a kid are crossin’ the lot and road and shit. I don’t know if they know that she with my son or not. I don’t know what these people know. Man, sometimes it would be good to have a nigga who work in the police department that we could call and get answers from and shit.”
Jackson laughed out loud. “Nigga, you need to stay off them damn movies,” he said. “We just a couple niggas in Chicago. This ain’t like it’s the mafia shit or nothin’. So, what you try’na do when we get down to the airport and shit?”
Tramar looked out at the sides of the road as the car headed back toward the city. He nodded. “I got an idea that I think would work.”
***
When Ayana walked out of the McDonald’s bathroom, the dining area seemed twice as large. She was in total-anxiety mode, not knowing where her life would go from minute to minute. When she walked past the wall that divided the counter area from another area of the dining room, she could look across and out at the parking lot. There were still cars piled up at the entrance of the hotel. It did, however, look as if some of the cars had left. Ayana wouldn’t dare stand in the window long enough to actually count.
As she made her way across the dining room, she noticed that Quan was getting his phone out. She quickly rushed over to the table, slid in the booth, and placed her hand over Quan’s screen. “No, no,” she said, softly. “What are you doing? Who are you calling this late on a Saturday night, Quan?”
“My mama,” he answered. “Where is my daddy? Why can’t we go back to the hotel room, Ayana? I was callin’ my mama.”
“No,” Ayana said, yanking the phone out of Quan’s grip. “You can’t call your mama. She told us that no matter what happened, you can’t call her because she’s out with friends and stuff right now. She gon’ be out all night, and she not gon’ be able to answer her phone.”
“But you told me that my daddy had to go somewhere and that we had to leave the room because there may be a gas leak in the building,” Quan said. “How long do we have to wait?”
“I don’t know,” Ayana said. “But I just got off the phone with Daddy. He called while I was in the bathroom and I talked to him.” She casually slid his phone to her side of the table and down into her lap. “He said that he’s on his way and that we gon’ go stay at a different hotel. And that you might get a surprise.”
“A surprise?” Quan said. “What kinda surprise?”
“You’ll see,” Ayana said. “Just don’t tell your daddy that I told you okay, but you might be seeing somebody really special tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” Quan said. “I can’t wait to see who it is.”
Ayana leaned back for a moment and looked out at the road. For the next several minutes, she watched as police cars rolled down the road. She couldn’t help but wonder how they could possibly get out of that McDonald’s. Sure, she believed that Tramar was on his way to get them, but she thought she might have a stroke from all of the stress of being out on that road when so many police cars were in the area. Ayana shook her head, thinking,
They gon’ see a car full of niggas and that’d be enough for them to pull us over
.
Ayana felt her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. Quickly, she yanked it out and saw that it was Jackson’s number. “Hello?” she answered. “Tramar?”
“Yeah, baby,” Tramar said. “It’s me. Where you at? You still sittin’ up in the lobby at McDonald’s with Quan or what?”
“Yeah, we still here,” Ayana said. “I mean, where else we gon’ go? Ain’t like we got a car or nothin’ to actually get somewhere. Ain’t no cabs out here either.” Ayana then realized how she must’ve sounded. “My bad,” she said. “I’m just real worried right now.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tramar said. “Just calm down. We ‘bout to get off the highway by the airport and come swoop you up.”
“But, Tramar,” Ayana said, looking back at the hotel parking lot. “There are a lot of police cars swarming around the hotel and shit. With how it’s looking, they might bring the news crew out or somethin’.”
“The news crew!” Quan said. “I wanna be on the news.”
Ayana smiled before continuing on with the conversation. “I don’t know if you should come here. I mean, there are a lot of police cars around and stuff.”
“Fuck,” Tramar said. “That’s what I figured. Look, here’s what we gon’ do. We just gon’ do it real smooth. We gon’ get off at the closest exit and come straight there. When you see Jackson’s car pull into the lot, we gon’ slow down at the side door in the drive thru lane. I want you and Quan to rush out and hop into the backseat. Be in your seatbelts by the time we get around and place an order and so on, looking like we just pulled into McDonald’s to get something to eat.”
“Okay,” Ayana said, looking over at the side doorway. “I’ll have him and we’ll be standing in the doorway. Let me get off my phone, I hear it beeping telling me that I ain’t got much battery left. Please, just hurry up and get here, okay? I can’t take this no more. Bein’ out like this.”
“We on our way.”
Tramar ended the call. Ayana put on a smile and looked back at Quan’s questioning face. “Daddy is about to be here,” she said. “We need to be waitin’ for him in the doorway, okay.”
Just as the two of them were getting their trash together on the table, Ayana saw what she never wanted to see. On the other side of the McDonald’s building – the side facing the hotel on the other side of the strip mall – a police car had pulled into the parking lot. The officer, who did not have his lights on, pulled into a parking spot and headed in.
“Fuck,” Ayana said. She could feel herself being put into a pair of cold, metal handcuffs and being taken downtown. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What’s wrong, Ayana?” Quan asked. “Why are you lookin’ like that?”
“Uh,” Ayana said, struggling to pull her attention away from the officer. He walked into the restaurant and made his way up to the front counter. “Nothing,” Ayana said, answering Quan. “You know how I feel about the cops and all.”
“Yeah,” Quan said. “They always on the news for killing somebody. And they even kill people who don’t have weapons.”
“Shh, shh,” Ayana said. The last thing she needed right now was for the white cop to hear them having a conversation about the police. “Let’s just talk about something else. So, how is your mother’s side of the family?”
Ayana zoned out as Quan went on about his aunt and her boyfriend finally getting married. The wedding was going to be out of town in Indianapolis, but Quan had said that he wasn’t sure his mother had decided if they were going or not. Ayana looked over to the counter. The officer seemed to not notice them sitting there. However, she knew how white people could be. Her mother and grandmother had always told her to not trust white people, even when they appeared to be on your side.
The officer ordered food, smiled at the workers behind the counter, and waited. As he did, he looked over at Ayana, causing Ayana to look lost in conversation with Quan. When the workers had handed the officer his food, he did something that made Ayana’s night all the worse. He went to the other end of the lobby, by the bathroom, and sat down. He now was facing dead across from them, texting on his cell phone – looking in the very path they’d have to take to get to the side door. Ayana clenched up, almost wanting to freeze up and sit in that very spot for the rest of the night.
For several more minutes, she sat there, listening to Quan as best she could. She felt her phone vibrating, seeing that it was Tramar calling. She glanced over at the officer, finding it very strange just how slowly he was eating his meal. He seemed to be more preoccupied with text messaging than he was with eating. Ayana pulled her phone up to the side of her face and answered. “Yeah,” she said. “Here we come.”
“Okay,” Tramar said. “Everything all right?”
Ayana paused for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to take a moment to explain. “There’s a cop,” she said, softly, “in the restaurant.”
“The fuck?” Tramar said. “Is you serious?” Ayana could then tell that he’d held the phone away from his body and told Jackson. Curse words slipped out of Jackson’s mouth in the background. “Just be real smooth about it, okay. Look like a happy family and stuff, okay?”
“Okay,” Ayana said. “Just hurry up. Here we come.”
Ayana hung up and pushed her phone down into her jacket pocket. She smiled, trying to give off as many positive vibes as she possibly could. “Okay, Quan. Daddy is about to pull up. Daddy and Jackson.”
The two of them slid out of the booth. Very casually, while watching the police officer out of the corner of her eye, Ayana walked Quan over to the trash cans. She tried to buy time, moving slowly. She would glance out of the windows, waiting to see headlights pulling into the parking lot. The third time she looked, she saw headlights coming up the road. She squinted, seeing that the car had its turn signal blinking to turn into the parking lot.
Ayana finished stuffing the trash into the trashcans and pushed Quan toward the door. “Come on,” she said, loud enough for the officer to hear. “Daddy is pickin’ us up.”
“Yay!” Quan said.
Ayana hoped that she had given off the wholesome, family vibe. She walked Quan out of the first door. They waited in the enclosed walkway for a moment before Jackson pulled up, the back door even with the entrance to McDonald’s. Quickly, Ayana pulled the door open and she and Quan jumped in. Jackson pulled off and up to the first menu board.
Tramar looked back at Ayana. There was so much he wanted to say, but he knew that he couldn’t – that he shouldn’t – in front of his son. Instead, he smiled and looked back at Quan in the rearview mirror. “Sorry about what happened at the hotel, buddy,” Tramar said. “We gon’ take you to stay at a different one, okay. We don’t know when that hotel is gon’ be back up and runnin’.”
“That’s okay, Daddy,” Quan said.
“Yeah,” Ayana said.
Jackson pulled up to the speaker. “What we gon’ order, y’all?”
They leaned toward the other side of the car as they looked at the menu. After giving their order to the worker, they were instructed to pull up to the second window. Jackson did just that, paying for the meal before they were informed that they’d have to wait a few moments. He nodded as the drive-thru window closed.