Hold Love Strong Read online

  That Sunday we went to church, my grandma, my aunt and mother, my cousins and Luscious and me. We sat silently in a middle pew of the Holy Name, the storefront church with exposed brick walls and no windows that was founded, managed, and maintained by Pastor Ramsey and his musically inclined son Jeremiah and attended by no more than a handful of people unless there was a funeral. Standing behind the rickety lectern, Pastor Ramsey, a diminutive, militant man who wore wire-frame glasses and flamboyant floral ties, ranted and raged, read from a ragged leather-bound Bible and breathed a sermon that concluded with the choice between faith and ire.

  “Cause it’s with Jesus! It’s through Jesus! It is Jesus who gives us peace! John fourteen, twenty-seven. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you: not as the world gives, give I to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

  I didn’t believe a word Pastor Ramsey said. Although just a child, Fuck Jesus is what I thought. What had that nigga ever done for me? For my aunt? My cousins? Luscious? Nice? What had Jesus done for my grandma, she who, dressed in a white floral print dress, sat to my left at the end of the pew; she who raised all known generations of my family, parented herself, my aunt, my mother, my uncle, and finally Donnel, Eric, and me without the sustained support of a single man or blood relative; she who possessed a heart that had been wrenched and bent; she who held her chin at an angle that proved her indestructibility; she who stared straight ahead and wrung her hands in her lap while tears as large as dimes skated down her cheeks and dripped from her chin; she who never once blinked while Pastor Ramsey pounded his fist on the lectern or while Jeremiah, an effeminate version of his pious father, held the microphone inches from his mouth, closed his eyes, swayed, and, with a voice like sustained notes of fragile bells, sung of an amazing grace, a savior who couldn’t save us from Ever.

  One week later, we visited Nice in the city jail. He talked on a phone on one side of the glass; we took turns talking on the phone on the other. He had met with his Legal Aid lawyer and decided to plead guilty. It was simple. He did it was all he said. He didn’t cry or apologize for what he’d done. He didn’t excuse himself or offer reasons and justifications. He dropped his eyes when Luscious cried and told him she loved him with all of her heart. He dropped his eyes when my grandma said he’d lost weight. He thanked Eric for the picture he drew him. He told Donnel that he was in charge now, that he was the man of the house, that Eric and I were his responsibility. He wore the orange jumpsuit the prison issued him and one by one he told us to forget him, not to write to him, to never send mail or money. I was the last to speak to him.

  “Imagine,” he said. “Abraham, imagine I’m dead.”

  He raised his eyes and let them rest on each of us, on my mother, my Aunt Rhonda, on Donnel and Eric, on me, and finally on Luscious. Then he nodded once as if to bid us farewell and looked straight ahead, acted as if no one, nothing, not even he was there anymore. He put the phone down on the table, rose from the seat, and balletically turning around he put his hands in his pockets and slowly walked away. Luscious wept and wailed into my grandmother’s chest. My aunt and mother cursed and wiped tears from their cheeks. Eric and Donnel were silent. I kept the phone pressed to my ear and listening to the fading drumbeat of Nice’s footsteps on the concrete, I tried to shout his name, but instead I swallowed it, felt it lodge in the back of my throat like a sticky round stone until Nice was out of sight and his sound was gone and his name dropped into my gut, echoing, emanating until it became marrow.

  III

  Saturday morning. Crackheads were starving for breakfast outside. My cousins and I were watching cartoons in our apartment. No adults were home. Nice was to spend the next seven to ten years of his life in prison. My grandma had found work on the weekends in a Laundromat sweeping up, wiping spilled detergent, and using a butter knife to free jammed quarters from coin slots. My Aunt Rhonda had gone out the night before in a black miniskirt and with red lipstick thick on her lips and she had not made it back, which meant she’d return sometime in the afternoon with her high heels in her hands and her eyes puffed and muddy. She was still dating Beany. But she was still searching, still desperate for that holy, transporting, nonexistent type of love, so she was dating other men too. I had not seen my mother the previous day, so I didn’t know where she was. She had picked up a habit of disappearing, of saying she would be right back and not following through. I worried but said nothing. Since my uncle had been locked up, I had assumed a steely disposition. I imagined not that he was dead, but that I was tougher than I was; fearless, untouchable. I was ten years old and already I wore the mask of a man in a mug shot. Donnel and Eric sat on the couch and I sat on the folding metal chair next to it. Donnel was fourteen and growing into the face that was going to make him a good-looking man. Eric was twelve and his two front teeth were too big for his mouth. On the couch next to him was one of the tattered spiral-bound notebooks he drew in and cherished and carried around until he either filled the pages or lost and replaced it with a new one he bought at the ninety-nine-cents store. He was eating Cocoa Krispies and his spoon clacked against the plastic bowl. Then when he finished eating all of the cereal, he raised the bowl to his face and slurped the milk, and because Donnel hated when his cartoons were interrupted, I knew trouble was coming.

  “Go ahead and keep make’n noise,” he warned, without taking his eyes from the TV.

  Eric lowered the bowl from his face and looked at it. Then he looked at me. He was helpless and worried. His eyes hung from his face and his cheeks deflated and drooped like tired sacks. Eric knew that Donnel would warn him once, then swing. Donnel didn’t have patience or sympathy for Eric’s deficiencies. Eric was his little brother and Donnel wanted him to act right, so Eric’s doom was inevitable because he didn’t have the coordination to eat quietly or the willpower to stop eating, and, even if he did, what Eric did with food could never be defined as eating. Eric consumed. Everything flew, crashed, and splattered into his mouth. And there was something very wrong with his digestive system, the whole thing, from the way he crammed food into his mouth and the gnashing his teeth did to how, minutes after eating, he went to the bathroom and, moaning and groaning, let it all out.

  Eric looked at the TV. Then he glanced down at the bowl again. The remaining milk taunted him. His face grew taut. His lips stretched. He was fighting to hold on, to not eat. Silently he begged himself. He pleaded. But he couldn’t put the bowl down. He didn’t have the fortitude to stop himself. He raised the bowl to his face, then tilted it to his lips. I didn’t have time to pray for him or the chance to get out of the way. He slurped once. Then Donnel’s hand slammed against the bottom of the bowl. Milk splattered everywhere, on the wall and couch, on Eric’s shirt and face, on his notebook, on my right arm and leg.

  “What I say?” Donnel exploded. “Now clean that shit up.”

  Eric’s lips quivered. The bowl was upside down on the floor and milk dripped from his face. He bit his bottom lip. He gnawed on it. He slowly shook his head. Then he stopped and suddenly turned and looked at me. He had come to a conclusion. Although he was twelve, Eric didn’t recognize anything other than his emotions. That is, how he felt was usually the only thing that was important to him. But because Eric could not cry, physiologically could not shed a single tear, how he felt was often too large to put into words, so it made him act out. This is why Eric drew, and why he fought you when he was angry and fought you when he was sad. His eyes narrowed and I knew the conclusion he had come to. It was all my fault. Eric was going to lash out at me. There was nothing I could do but close my eyes and defend myself. He lifted his fist, but then, just as he was about to swing at me, a door slammed and a man yelled outside, his voice echoing through the hallway.

  “Come here!” he shouted. “I ain’t done! This ain’t over!”

  It was Beany. Eric, Donnel, and I looked at the door, stared at it as if it were a window we could see through.

  “Nigga! Don’t walk away!” Bea
ny shouted. “I know you hear me!”

  Beany was harmless. He made noise. He puffed his chest out. He made empty threats. I’d seen him squirm and turn green when my Aunt Rhonda popped one of his pimples and showed him the pus on the tip of her finger.

  “Nigga,” he boomed. “I ain’t through!”

  Then, as if the world stood still to wish Beany well, there was silence. Then two gunshots, a pause, and a third pop knocked through the hall. The gunman took off down the stairs, and because our apartment was next to the stairwell, we heard him go all the way down, the rumble of his footsteps, interrupted by the silence when he jumped the last few stairs, followed by the boom when he landed on the landing. Rumble, silence, boom. Then the door at the bottom of the stairwell groaned open, slammed closed, and its echo shook the chain latch on our door.

  It took a moment to recognize what had happened because at ten I was never exactly sure of everything I heard. There were too many sounds I didn’t know, and even some of the ones I thought I knew I misnamed. But as soon as I realized that the sound I’d heard had come from a gun, I understood the silence meant that one of the men in the hall might be dead. Still I looked at Donnel and Eric hoping to find a different conclusion. Eric’s face was a floppy brown sail sagged from his hairline, draped over his nose, cheekbones, and jaw. Donnel frowned pensively, his eyes narrowed, his upper lip crooked and bowed so its crest rested just beneath his nostrils. They knew what the sound was too. Gunshots were a sound, an intrinsic element of our lives, like shouting and laughter. There were gunshots on New Year’s, the Fourth of July, around Christmas and on Valentine’s Day. Sometimes, for weeks at a time, gunshots were nightly occurrences. Most brothers I knew had either fired a gun, aspired to fire a gun, or lied and said they had been struck by a bullet. I’d fired a gun. In fact, I’d fired Beany’s gun just the week before. Donnel had found it under our couch, and we went up to the roof and shot at the planes flying over Ever as they arrived and departed from LaGuardia and Kennedy Airport until police sirens filled the air and we ran to hide in our apartment.

  Donnel sighed deeply. Then he calmly stood, crossed the room, and put his ear against the door. I wished for a sound, any sound.

  “You hear anything?” Eric asked loudly.

  Donnel swung around and looked at Eric. “Nigga,” he scolded through clenched teeth. “Lower your voice.”

  Eric sucked a breath of air. “D,” he whimpered. “D, you think? I don’t hear…”

  “Nigga!” Donnel snapped. “What I say? Stop being a pussy.”

  Eric’s head fell, his chin to his chest like a puppet whose neck string had been cut, and his face became a gnarled root of pain. Then his eyes opened wide and suddenly he turned and lunged at me. He knocked me to the floor and landed on top of me. He burrowed his head into my chest and threw a punch that connected with my shoulder. Then, from behind, Donnel swatted Eric in the back of the head with such force the blow knocked Eric from me.

  “Nigga, what’re you, crazy? What’re you doing?” Donnel scolded, standing over us.

  Eric lay on his back, his knees up to protect himself as he rubbed his head with both hands. “I didn’t like his face,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t like yours,” said Donnel. “But you don’t see me swinging at you.”

  “You just did!” Eric shouted.

  “Nigga, shhh!” Donnel demanded.

  He muttered something about Eric under his breath and looked over his shoulder at the door. Then he went to it and pressed his ear against it once more. We listened. Still, there was nothing. No click or clack. No moan. No whisper. Not even the sound of a breeze climbing the stairwell or pushing through the crack under the door. Donnel looked back at Eric and me, then an idea came crashing over his face and his eyes flashed with light.

  “Eric,” he said. “Go and get some knives from the kitchen.”

  Eric stared at Donnel. He blinked. He loved knives. He was always messing with them, always sawing and hacking through anything he could get his hands on. It was another way he dealt with his emotions, another way he acted out. Eric cut all the butter sticks in the refrigerator into pats. He hacked the soles from old sneakers. He sawed through soda cans, plastic bottles, and action figures. He was mesmerized by Ginsu infomercials. When he was eleven, he carved an E into his forearm with the blunt tip of a dried ballpoint pen. Quickly, he got up from the floor, ran into the kitchen, and when he came back, both of his hands were full of knives and his face was glowing. He had butter knives, steak knives, a cleaver, the chopping knife we used to break up the frost that coated the walls of the freezer.

  Donnel laughed. “Damn,” he said. “How many knives you think we need?”

  “All of them,” Eric said. “Just to be safe.”

  Donnel took the cleaver and the chopping knife; Eric took two steak knives; and I took a steak knife and two butter knives. Then Eric tossed the rest of the knives on the couch. Some of them landed softly on the cushions. Some fell on the floor.

  Donnel was disgusted. “Nigga, go pick those up and put them where they belong. Shit, who the fuck just goes throwing knives like that?”

  Eric gathered the knives, disappeared into the kitchen, and a moment later, the utensil drawer squeaked open and the clatter and clang of Eric throwing all of the knives in the drawer at once rang loudly. Then he slammed the drawer closed, opened the drawer, and slammed it closed again.

  “Nigga,” said Donnel. “Now what are you doing?”

  “It won’t close,” Eric complained.

  “Just leave it,” Donnel said. “Damn.”

  Donnel looked at me and it seemed as if we were meeting each other for the first time. Until then, I had not taken account of the soft hair that had begun to darken above his lip. Of course, I’d seen him marvel over it in the bathroom mirror, and I was with him when he bought the black comb at the corner store to comb it, but I hadn’t noticed how the moustache transformed his face, how it took what were once boyish expressions of anger and threats of immeasurable pain and suffering and made them factual. Donnel was eight inches taller than me, but he might as well have been a mountain of a man.

  He touched the corner of the cleaver against my chest. “Stay,” he said.

  He slowly tiptoed to the door, paused, and listened. Still, there was silence. Eric came back into the room and Donnel shot his eyes at him and dared him to make a sound. He put the chopping knife in his back pocket and raised the cleaver chest high. He took a deep breath. Then he slowly unlocked all of the door’s locks, except the extra chain latch my grandma had recently put on the door because after my uncle was locked up there was something inside of her that always felt unsafe. Donnel took another deep breath, turned the knob, and opened the door. Slowly. A half inch at a time. The smell of a gunshot, of gunpowder and heat mixed with urine and rancid shit wafted into the room.

  “Eouww!” Eric cried out, covering his nose and mouth and pointing at me. “A farted!”

  “No I didn’t,” I complained, forgetting Donnel’s order of silence.

  “Shut up!” Donnel demanded, his eyes aflame. “The both of you! Damn!”

  Donnel gathered himself and opened the door an inch more. The stench invaded the room. Donnel shook his head and braved through it. He lifted the neck of his T-shirt over his nose. Then he opened the door as far as the chain latch let him, pressed his face into the six-inch space, and looked into the hall.

  “Get the broom,” he said, glancing at us over his shoulder.

  Eager to please Donnel, Eric ran into the kitchen. A moment later, he returned with the broom. Donnel took it by the brush end, got down on his knees, and aimed the handle into the hallway like a pool cue. Eric and I looked out into the hallway over his shoulder. It was 9:00 a.m., but the hallway carried the shade of late evening. Objects were silhouettes. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I thought I saw a rat. But I was wrong. It was a bare foot. That was all I could see, just a foot. Donnel scraped the broom handle along the floor toward it. Then
, when the broom handle came within two feet of the foot, he stopped it and said: “Hey.”

  There was no answer. Donnel looked back at Eric and me and then inched the broom closer.

  “Hey,” he said again. “Pssst, nigga, hello?”

  Again, there was no answer. Slowly, Donnel drew the broomstick back, then gently slid it forward and poked the foot. Eric and I jumped back like the foot was going to kick us. But it didn’t. The foot didn’t move.

  “He dead?” Eric asked, peeking outside again.

  “No shit,” Donnel answered.

  “Maybe he’s breathing,” I said, sounding so weak even I didn’t believe what I said.

  “Nigga ain’t breath’n nothing,” Donnel huffed.

  “How you know?” I asked, always hopeful.

  “Cause,” Donnel said and left it at that.

  He slid the broom back into the room and stood up. Then he closed the door and unhooked the extra chain latch in one sweeping motion. Eric looked at me. Then he looked back at Donnel.

  “What you doing?” he asked.

  “First,” Donnel said, confidently, “we got to ID the body.”