Crave (21 page)

I vicariously lived through Angela's adventures, imagining the glamorous life she was living outside the confines of Lincoln Park. Sometimes she came home, found her way to Miss Betty, tired
and weathered, but her stays grew shorter and shorter. As soon as I heard Miss Betty's screams on the other side of the cinderblock, I knew I wouldn't see Angela for a day or two and sometimes as long as a week. The cops came just as Angela came and went. She made a habit of running away, so much so Miss Betty grew tired with the chasing. Some days, Miss Betty would be on her porch, staring out into her yard, one which had been able to grow grass, screaming at Lincoln Park's occupants, asking what we were looking at, demanding we reveal Angela's whereabouts.

With cigarette and beer in hand, flushed, with sweat trickling down the side of her face, Miss Betty was on the outside swearing, screaming, but all I saw was her pleading, begging for the Park to release its hold on her daughter. It's then I grew afraid for Angela and even though I admired her ability to keep running in complete abandon, I wanted her to come home. I wanted her to go back to school and finish out her time just as I intended to. It wasn't fun watching Angela's family dismantle itself with each day she was lost. And the days in which she was
found
weren't better. They screamed so much I feared screams were sharp enough to cut her.

When she came home, it wasn't always a joyous occasion for her family, but it was joy for me. I got my fill of stories of the fears Angela had conquered, the men she had been with and her ability to own them. She was different from the girl I'd first known, but there were still parts of her that clung to the child she once was. Those parts held the darkness of her life up to me, opened them wide for my inspection, as if she were a little girl comparing her Christmas doll with that of a friend's.

On one of her longest and last stays at home, Miss Betty was able to get Angela back into school. She went for a day or two, but quickly grew tired of the slow pace of classroom instruction and afternoon lunches. By then, Angela had met one of my older cousins, Darrell. Darrell was the only son of my Uncle Junie, and I was closer to him than any of my other male cousins. He sometimes came to my house, picked me up in his gray Honda, and drove me to his home in Ahoy Acres in Chesapeake. In my eyes, Darrell was my
personal god, so when he showed an interest in Angela, it seemed right my personal god be with my personal goddess.

Initially, Angela and Darrell talked about sexual things that
could
happen between the two of them. I observed their love play, even studying it in order to see who I was supposed to be in my relationships.

One day while riding the bus to school, Angela sat next to me and said, “I want to go and see your cousin today. Call him and see if he can pick us up.” I was game for that, especially since I wasn't looking forward to classes. Once we got to school, I rushed to the pay phone and called Darrell. I hoped my Aunt Chris didn't answer the phone because I knew she'd be wondering why I was not in class. Thankfully, Darrell answered.

“Hey, cousin,” I said.

“What up, girl? How ya' living?” he replied.

“Angela's here. She wants you to come get us from school.”

Darrell responded with a quick laugh and continued, “Cousin, my man has my car, so I can't pick y'all up, but if you get here, I can take you back.”

“All right,” I replied and resigned myself to the classroom for the day. Angela then took the phone from me, turned her back and began talking to Darrell. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at the end of their conversation, she turned to me and said, “We're gonna walk over there.”

I didn't know my way from Wilson to Ahoy Acres, but Angela said she did. Since she was committed to that journey, I was too.

After walking for what seemed like hours, we finally arrived at Darrell's house. After Uncle Junie died, Aunt Chris had done well for herself. As a family, we Boones prided ourselves on the fact she hadn't had another man since Uncle Junie had passed. I always liked going to Aunt Chris's, seeing pictures of Uncle Junie there, catching the scent of him that hung tightly to his clothes even though years had long ago removed him from this earth. Uncle Junie had been my favorite uncle up until the day he died. He used to sit me on his lap and tickle me until my stomach hurt. One evening, I sat with
him, looking up at his golden face framed by an afro, and pointed at a dark spot on his face. “What's that,” I asked.

“It's a mole,” he replied, “and you have one too.” He pointed at the side of my lip. His statement disturbed me. What Uncle Junie had called a mole looked like an all-black ladybug. I didn't want to believe one of those things was on my face.

“I don't have one of those,” I said. “It's ugly.” He laughed and held me close to him, so I laughed too. I'd always loved Uncle Junie's laugh. When I listened closely, I could hear the same deep, gruffness in Darrell's chortle.

So, there I stood in Uncle Junie's living room, on the same floor he had once stood, inhaling the same air that had traveled through his lungs, handing Angela over to his son as if she were my gift to give. Darrell and I used to laugh about my ability, as a good girl cousin, to deliver “booty” to him, but now there is no reason to laugh. There is a part of me that always cries for each step I took leading to Darrell's house.

Darrell and Angela quickly went into the bedroom soon after we arrived. He'd instructed me to eat what I wanted and to watch television while they were in the room. I lay on the couch, turned on the television, and drifted in and out of sleep. I wished I'd had my own guy there, someone I could go into a room with and do secret things. Every so often, I heard a gasp, a pant, a moan, but their actions on the other side of that wall were unknown to me.

We spent the whole school day at Darrell's. By 1:30, I was knocking on his bedroom door, letting them both know we needed to get back to school if we were going to catch the bus home and remain undetected. I waited impatiently for Angela and Darrell to come out of the room. One of the main reasons I had been able to skip school for so long was my ability to catch the bus with everybody else. Angela had just started back to school and I knew Miss Betty would be waiting at home for her.

Despite my pleas for Angela and Darrell to hurry, they took their time getting ready and heading out to the car. Once in the car, I beckoned Darrell to drive fast, hopeful we would catch the bus
before it pulled off from the school. We had no such luck. As soon as we pulled onto Willett Drive, I saw my bus turning onto High Street. A chase ensued. Both Angela and Darrell were telling me not to worry. Darrell said he'd just stay behind our bus and we could jump out of the car and act as if we were getting off with everyone else. That sounded like a good idea, but something in my bones didn't feel right, like I was driving toward a storm and needed to decide whether to quickly drive through or to turn around. Turn is what I felt in my gut, but it soon began to feel as if the storm was driving toward us instead of us toward it.

Darrell was a skilled driver. No matter how many wide turns or abrupt stops the bus made, he was able to stay right behind it. When we pulled onto Deep Creek Boulevard, when I saw my brother, Champ, and others getting off the bus, I believed we had made it, that my bones had been wrong and we had averted potential disaster. That was until Angela and I walked around the bus and saw Miss Betty standing on the sidewalk, tapping her foot, arms folded in front of her chest, cigarette hanging dangerously between fingers, ready to pounce. And pounce she did.

She jumped on Angela, pulled at her clothes, her hair, anything she could get her hands on. They fought, Angela to get away and Miss Betty to keep a hold of her, but they fought as if they were two Lincoln Park girls fighting over their man or over some “he-said-she-said” stuff. They fought and I watched, waiting to get sucked into the hurricane of their conflict. Angela finally got away and ran down Deep Creek Boulevard. Miss Betty, panting, cursing, screaming, made her way to Lexington Drive. I prayed she wouldn't tell Momma, that she wouldn't know I too had been with Angela, but by the time I got home, Miss Betty was on my porch with Momma, pointing with one hand, lips curled into a snarl, the other hand on her hip.

“Where you been?” Momma asked as Miss Betty stomped away.

“At school,” I whispered, staring down at my shoes.

“Don't lie to me, Laurie.” My name sat heavily on Momma's tongue. I knew she wasn't playing. “Betty told me she called the
school this morning to see if Angela was there and she checked to see if you were there too. Now, I'm going to ask you one more time, where were you? And you better tell the truth.” I wanted to run into the house, to take my beating like a young lady in the confines of my home. I didn't want Momma dragging me in my front yard for the whole of Lincoln Park to see. I certainly didn't want to try to fight her back because I knew all of my family—aunts, uncles, and cousins—would take turns beating me afterward. I also didn't want to tell on Darrell. He was my favorite cousin, and if I snitched on him he might not pick me up any more. I wanted and didn't want so many things, but my wants didn't matter right then. What mattered was what Momma wanted: the truth.

“We walked to Darrell's, Momma,” I began. “But I wasn't with no boy. I swear.”

Momma opened the front door and pointed, ordering me into the house, but I knew that trick. As I walked past her, she would surely slap me in the back of my neck with the full force of her power. I walked up to the door, gauging how quickly I'd have to get past in order for Momma to miss. She'd never really missed before, so I then had to gauge what point of entry would limit the sting of the blow. If I stayed close to the door, I'd get the full force of the slap, as Momma would have leverage and I'd be sandwiched between her and the door. If I stayed close to her, she wouldn't be able to get a full swing in, but she might assume I was being confrontational, which would yield a longer whipping upstairs. I resigned myself to the middle, a position that would sting then, but might make for less of a beating later. “Get past me,” Momma said and that was my cue to run as fast as I could. She hit me square in the back of my neck, sending vibrations down my shoulders and back. She chased me upstairs, stopping only long enough to get the leather fly out of her bedroom.

Once upstairs, Momma commenced to whipping me out of my clothes. The leather belt wrapped around my legs, my arms, and from my back to my stomach. I hopped around the room, rubbing the pain out of each welt in preparation for the next barrage of
swings. Even as I danced around the room with Momma, I worried about Angela, wondered where she was, where she would go, and with whom she would end up.

Momma put me under punishment for three months after that, and I was in no way supposed to communicate with Angela. I peered out of the window as the cops took a statement from Miss Betty about her now missing daughter.

The police didn't find Angela until the next day. By way of Shameka to Mary to me I learned Miss Betty was sending her to Texas to live with her father. I wasn't able to talk to Angela much after that, but right before she left, we found ourselves hanging out of the window again, talking, laughing, as we once had before our futures became dark pasts.

“I'm sorry about what happened, Angela,” I said.

“That's okay, Laurie. It was worth it because your cousin had some good dick.”

We both laughed, as I feigned vomiting.

“Are you scared about going to Texas?” I asked.

“No, we usually go there every summer anyway, so I know what it's gonna be like. I'm just ready to get away from here. My momma's crazy.”

“Mine too,” I replied. “I'm gonna miss you, Angela,” I started to cry. Then she looked at me, with the softness she'd held when I first moved to Lincoln Park.

“I'll miss you too,” she said in a muffled voice as she looked down. “But we'll see each other again and it'll be just like old times.”

My thirteen-year-old mind wanted to believe it would be like old times, but I knew we could never go back, no matter how hard we tried. But, I did see Angela again. Two years later, she was back in the park. She seemed ten years older than me even though we were the same age. Things didn't go well for her in Texas, and she again began running away. She took to using drugs and came back to Lincoln Park with even more stories to tell, some filled with prostitutes who were good at “eating pussy” and parties she often frequented. I didn't know her anymore. I wasn't as impressed with
her stories as I had been in the past, probably because I had my own stories to tell.

Soon after returning to Lincoln Park, she got pregnant, began spending most of her time in Norfolk, and eventually came home with a beautiful baby girl. One day she asked me to ride to Norfolk with her, so she could take her daughter to her father, Dude. Older and more adventurous, I was excited about traveling to Norfolk, a city infected with drug activity and crime, but known to have the cutest guys with the most money. We caught a ride to the other side of the water to one of Norfolk's worst projects. Angela immediately found Dude standing on the corner. He scowled at Angela and took the baby from her. He looked exactly like the baby, with a round head and lips that looked too small on his face, but fit the baby's perfectly. He lifted her over his head, planted a kiss on her cheeks, and handed her back to Angela. Then, he looked at me. “Who is this? She fine.” I blushed, flattered, but unsure of how to respond to his obvious flirtation in front of Angela.

“Don't fucking mind who this is. Give me some damn money for your baby,” Angela said.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he said and pushed her away. I worried she'd drop the baby as she toppled a couple steps.

“Fuck you, you big head bitch,” Angela replied and walked toward him again. I didn't want to be there anymore, and Dude's treatment of Angela made it worse. I feared he would hurt her or me.