Grace After Midnight Read online

  “What I think,” he said, “is that you’re smarter than the other kids playing out here. You’re one step ahead of them.”

  I stayed silent.

  “Well, in this game it’s good to stay one step ahead, but it’s even better to stay out completely.”

  “You out?” I asked him.

  “I’m in,” he said. “Deep in.”

  That’s the first time I met the man who named me. His name was Arnold Lonly. When I tried calling him Mr. Arnold, like my mama taught me to address my elders, he say, “Just call me Uncle.”

  And that was that.

  Uncle didn’t live in the neighborhood but he knew the neighborhood. He worked it. He set up shop and had him a thriving business. From Jump Street, he always had an eye for me. Didn’t take long to learn that he really didn’t want anything from me. He was just wanted me to stay clear of trouble. He saw something good in me. And I felt his love. He tried to steer me right, but I was gonna do what I was gonna do.

  NINE-MILLIMETER

  Death lived on our street.

  Me and my boy D used to play in front of the Collins Funeral Home, one block down East Oliver, where we’d watch them bring in the bodies. Mr. Collins was a twisted dude.

  One day he said he’d pay us to clean out his basement. We backed off, but the promise of money lured us down there. Next thing we knew, old man Collins locked us in.

  The room was filled with corpses. One casket was open. A man was in there, and he was still alive. I know because I saw him stretch out his arm and I heard him take his last breath. Frightened to death, we ran up the basement stairs, banging on the door until our hands turned bloody. But old man Collins wouldn’t let us out. We finally broke a window and crawled out. I felt like I had escaped death.

  Few months later death returned. This time death got all over me.

  When it happened, D and I were playing in the alley. By then I was in the sixth grade and running wild—going to every house party I could find and holding packs for the most vicious dealers in the game. Mama and Pop were nice folks, but they couldn’t control me. Besides, they had no idea what I was doing.

  Me and D weren’t doing much that day when two niggas came running down the alley, one chasing the other. The nigga being chased didn’t see our bike and tripped over it, falling right in front of us. The nigga chasing him had a gun. Just like that, he pumped four shots into the dude’s head.

  I watched blood gush out of his skull; I saw his brains splatter out on the concrete.

  Never had seen a murder before.

  Never had seen anyone shot up right in front of my eyes, inches from where I was standing.

  How did I feel?

  I can’t remember feeling. Just remember looking.

  How did I react?

  Can’t remember reacting. Just remember standing there.

  Inside my head I was saying, Oh, shit, that nigga just got his brains blown out.

  But on the outside I wasn’t crying or screaming. I wasn’t moving. I was cool as a fuckin’ cucumber.

  Just stood there.

  The killer looked at me, and I looked back at him.

  I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I wasn’t moving.

  I wasn’t scared ’cause he didn’t look like he wanted to shoot me. He already did what he had to do. I think he also saw that, though I was an eyewitness, I was cool. I didn’t look like no snitch. I wasn’t interested in getting my brains blown out.

  So just like that, he tossed the gun at me—a heavy-ass nine-millimeter.

  He nodded at me, like it was okay. It was a gift. The gun was mine. I nodded back.

  I picked up the joint and put it in the pocket of my baggy jeans.

  And that’s when everything kicked off.

  BOW AND ARROW

  In the world of nine-millimeter handguns and semi-automatic weapons, you don’t think about bows and arrows murdering someone. Bows and arrows are off some old Robin Hood movie. Who knows anything about bows and arrows?

  “Miss M was killed by a bow and arrow,” D told me.

  “What!” I said. “What you talking about? Miss M is nine months pregnant and about to have her baby.”

  “Bow and arrow went right through her stomach and into her baby. Killed ’em both.”

  “That’s crazy. Why’s anyone shooting an arrow at Miss M?”

  “They say it was an accident.”

  Miss M was the mother of a close friend of mine from school.

  I didn’t want to believe it. I knew it couldn’t have happened. Some fucked-up rumor.

  But the rumor wasn’t a rumor. The rumor was real.

  I went with my friend to the funeral home where her mother was laid with her little infant. They were both wearing white. They’d taken the child from the womb and placed it next to her mama.

  Never seen nothing like that before in my life.

  People were screaming with grief, moaning and shouting, “Lord, have mercy!”

  I got up and walked by the casket. They were so still.

  Mother and child.

  Dead.

  Silent.

  Frozen.

  By then I was ten, and I’d seen boys killed. I’d seen men shot down in cold blood. But this here was different. This was a mommy and a baby. This was the saddest sight I’d ever laid eyes on.

  My heart was so heavy it was hard to get up when the service was over. I didn’t want to leave them alone in that casket. I felt empty. I felt like nothing really mattered if a bow and arrow can go through a mother’s tummy and kill both her and the innocent little thing growing inside her.

  What kind of world is this?

  I didn’t have no answers. I didn’t want no answers. I didn’t want to cry. I could usually keep myself from crying. But not this time. This time I broke down along with everyone else.

  This time was the worst.

  “YOU BAD”

  Boys start humping on girls at a young age. That’s just how it is. I started seeing it when I was ten or eleven.

  But when they tried humping on me, I fought ’em off. After I beat the shit out of a couple, they left me alone. The boys who understood me became my best friends and running buddies. They looked at me like I was no different than them. In my mind, I wasn’t.

  Once I had that gun, I was on my way. I hid it under Mama’s summer kitchen, a porch in the back of the house where I could crawl under the foundation.

  Life went on.

  Me and D played basketball with hoops made out of crates. D had game and so did I. He was also tenderhearted, thin-skinned, and hated being teased. When kids at school ganged up on him and started calling him names, he ran to me and said, “Get the joint.”

  “We don’t need to be fooling with no gun,” I said.

  “I don’t wanna shoot ’em, I just wanna whip it out and scare those niggas real bad. Go get it.”

  I got it. Gave it to D. And the two of us went looking for the boys who’d been ragging on D.

  We found them. All ten of them. They saw we were looking for trouble, and they were ready. They had baseball bats and knives, but they weren’t ready for a nine-millimeter.

  Neither was D. He didn’t know how to use it. He didn’t distance himself to get good range. He got too far up in their faces. Had no leverage.

  “Yo, D,” I said, “back up.”

  But by then he was whipping out the gun. One of the niggas saw what D was doing and knocked the joint out of his hand. Gun fell on the ground. Before anyone could react, I grabbed it. I aimed at the nigga who had plucked it and shot the boy through the leg.

  For the first time in my life, I’d fired a gun. The guys backed off. The fight was over before it started. D was all smiles.

  “You bad,” he said to me. “You ain’t scared of nothing.”

  I got this reputation. And I got this attitude. If anyone questioned what I was doing, I’d say, “What the fuck do you care?”

  You feel what I’m saying?

  I
’m saying that no one cared about me. Mama and Pop were cool, but they were off in their own little cocoon. They couldn’t relate to me. They couldn’t control me.

  I remember looking at Mama while she read her Bible and listened to her gospel music. She’d be smiling and nodding her head to the good grooves. The Word was making her happy. She was a woman who lived the Word. She tried her hardest to put it on me.

  “God loves you,” she said. “Don’t you know that?”

  I said I did, but I really didn’t. Didn’t know who God was.

  “God is Jesus,” she explains. “He died so you can live.”

  “I am living, Mama.”

  “He died so you can live forever.”

  “No one lives forever.”

  “That where you’re wrong, child. Heaven is forever.”

  “I don’t know nothing ’bout no heaven,” I said.

  Mama smiled and started quoting scripture. The words sounded pretty, but the words didn’t mean much to me. I imagined heaven as some make-believe place folks invented to make themselves feel better about living down here in hell.

  Pop was the same.

  He liked to talk about how Jesus would come down at the end of the world and swoop up all the true believers.

  “When is the end coming?” I asked.

  “Soon, baby,” he said. “Real soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Could be tomorrow. Could be tonight. That’s why we gotta get ready and stay ready.”

  I loved me some Pop, but I couldn’t buy that line. Tonight the sun would set. Tomorrow it would rise. Tuesday would follow Monday and Thursday would follow Wednesday. Same old shit, day in and day out. Far as I could see, no magic Jesus would be dropping out of the sky any time soon.

  I couldn’t fault Mama and Pop for believing in the magic, though. The meaning behind the magic was beautiful. But the magic did something to Mama and Pop that removed them from the world—at least the way I looked at the world. They were characters in some goody-goody movie where there’s always a happy ending. I liked looking at the movie, but I knew it wasn’t for real. I couldn’t live in that movie. I was living in another movie—a shoot-’em-up.

  Mama and Pop were super-sweet folk, and I know that sweetness must have rubbed off a little on me. But I saw them as two people with their heads in the clouds. They didn’t see what was really happening in my world. My world was ruled by street smarts.

  If you have them, you survive; if you don’t, you die.

  That was an exciting idea.

  But the idea that Jesus was coming back to get the good guys and punish the bad didn’t mean anything. I didn’t believe that shit for a minute.

  AIN’T NO

  AVERAGE DAYS

  Every day can be a little scary. Or a lot scary.

  When I was coming up, fear came early and quick, but I think I musta blocked it or forgotten it.

  Some scary shit, though, I ain’t ever forgetting.

  Ain’t ever forgetting the day I was just standing up in the kitchen washing dishes. Mama had just come back from a little vacation. She was upstairs taking a nap. I’d just gotten home from school.

  Just your average day.

  Until I hear a knock on the door.

  “Your cousin home?” asks this nigga standing there. Nigga looks all jittery.

  “Who you?” I ask.

  “T.”

  “I’ll go see.”

  I go look for my cousin, who’s a man about twenty-one. He’s back in the bathroom.

  “T is up in here looking for you,” I say.

  “Tell him I’m in the bathroom.”

  I tell T.

  T says he’ll wait.

  Meanwhile, I hear my cousin slipping out the back door.

  When I look up, T is gone.

  I go back to washing a plate.

  Then Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

  I drop the plate.

  Somone’s shooting.

  Someone’s shot.

  Someone’s screaming, “Your cousin’s down.”

  Look up the street by Collins Funeral Home. My cousin is laid out on the sidewalk, blood all over him. Homeboys are going through his pockets, stealing his drugs and his money.

  Cop sirens are screaming.

  Helicopter whirling overhead.

  Cousin ain’t dead, but he’s paralyzed.

  It was T who shot him. Later I learned that my cousin had fucked up T the week before, and this was payback.

  This was life on East Oliver.

  Cousin was running down Oliver to get his piece that he had stashed in another crib. T caught him before he got there.

  I think to myself—T could have started shooting back at the house, could have shot me, or Mama, or all of us.

  This is how it goes.

  Cousin shot. Cousin I loved. Same cousin who always brought me Chinese food. Cousin who liked to get high on weed and laugh with me for hours.

  One day Cousin is running around.

  Next day Cousin is paralyzed.

  Ain’t no average days.

  “SHE MY DAUGHTER.”

  When folks asked Mama about me, she’d always say, “She’s a good girl. She’s a good daughter.”

  That was Mama. Mama saw the good in everyone.

  Truth is, I was a good daughter—or least tried to be. Wouldn’t ever let anyone say a bad word about Mama or Pop. Anything they asked of me, I did. Willingly.

  I worked. Scrubbed floors, washed dishes, did laundry. I liked being Pop’s little helper. Liked being Mama’s right arm. Liked when Mama told her friends how much energy I had. She was proud of me and I was proud to be called her daughter.

  At the same time, you could say I was the daughter of the streets. That was the Snoop Mama and Pop didn’t really know. Maybe if they had looked, they would have seen that side of me. But they didn’t wanna look. They didn’t wanna know. And that was cool with me.

  Pops had his cronies who dropped by on some Saturday nights to drink their beers or sip their whiskey. When I ran through the room where they’d be sitting, Pop would stop me and say, “This here’s a fine young girl who’s growing up to be a fine young woman.”

  “Sure-enough,” the cronies would say. “You doing a fine job with that child.”

  All this praise was falling on my head. All this praise was feeling good, except I knew that Mama and Pop had their heads in the clouds.

  They missed what was really happening.

  For instance . . .

  One day Mama says we’re low on some grocery items. Would I pick them up for her?

  “No problem, Mama. I’m on it.”

  I skip down to the corner store. I got a list and it’s taking me a minute or two to tell the man what I need.

  Nigga waiting on line behind me says. “Move your li’l ass out the way.”

  I ignore him, but he leans on me harder.

  “Yo bitch, or butch, or boy, or whoever the fuck you are, get moving,” he says.

  I say, “I’m almost through.”

  He says, “Butch, you through now.”

  Then out of nowhere this grown man comes up to the nigga. The man is dark-skinned and tall. He’s got on a green leather suit and alligator shoes.

  “You best apologize to the young lady,” he tells the nigga.

  “I ain’t apologizing to no fuckin’ butch kid,” says the nigga.

  “I do believe you are,” says the man, who pulls out a gun and sticks it in the nigga’s ear.

  Nigga says, “I do believe I am. I’m apologizing.”

  “You better show her some respect,” says the man. “She my daughter.”

  That’s how I met the man I wound up referring to as Father. He wasn’t my real father—I hadn’t seen that man since I was three or four—but this nigga was better than my real father. My real father was small-time. My new father was big-time.

  Like Uncle, Father was a dealer, but not your average dealer. Father controlled all of East Baltimore. Uncle was in the
game. Father was the game. Father was King.

  Father took a liking to me. I can’t tell you why.

  Once he gave me fifteen hundred dollars for school supplies.

  Another time he took me out to see his mansion that sat way beyond the county line. Looked like something out of MTV Cribs. Marble and gold and red silk curtains. Pool tables and Jacuzzis and stained-glass windows.

  Father was fast-talking and super-smart. He was nice as he could be to me, and didn’t want nothing back. But I heard some niggas say that if you got on the wrong side of Father he’d kill you and your whole family.

  Father liked having me around ’cause I stayed quiet and just observed. He knew I was thinking.

  “I can hear you thinking,” he’d say. “You’re thinking one day you’d like having all this shit up in here.” He pointed to the circular staircase in the entryway to his house.

  I didn’t say nothing, but Father was right.

  GODMOTHER

  You don’t need no gangster godfather,” she said. “You need a good godmother. I’m your godmother.”

  The woman talking was Denise Robbins. She lived right down the street. I was coming out of the sub shop when she was going in. She stopped me to say we needed to talk. I’d known Denise most of my life.

  “You know I love my godmother,” I told Denise with a smile on my face.

  “But you love running these streets more,” she snapped back. “Look here, baby, I understand what’s happening with you. I see it.”

  “What do you see?”

  “These fools out here, these drug dealers and drug lords, these gangsta godfathers look at you like a mascot. They see you like a pet. To them you’re a puppy or a kitten. You think they’re protecting you. Ain’t that right?”

  I just shrug.

  “Well, I got news for you, babygirl. Those godfathers only care about one thing—and that’s cash money. Maybe they’ll reach down and pet their cute lil’ puppy from time to time, but they ain’t real family. They’re hoodlum family. Real family’s based on love and caring. Hoodlum family’s based on crime and killing. Girl, you better learn the difference before it’s too late.”

  “I know the difference, Denise,” I said.