Hold Love Strong (17 page)

K
eep your eyes closed,” said our science teacher, Ms. Hakim, a young, exuberant clay color woman originally from California who once brought in her college diploma to prove to us that she graduated from Harvard. “OK. Open them.”

Except for the slivers of white light cutting past the edges of the drawn window shades, everything in the class was black.

“Nightfall,” said Ms. Hakim. “Now look up.”

Nothing had prepared us for the sight. Some students laughed. Some giggled. Others gasped and sighed things like
damn
and
shit.
On the black ceiling there was a galaxy of glow-in-the-dark star stickers.

“Abraham,” said Ms. Hakim. “Tell us. What do you see?”

I was fascinated by the sky, with stars, moons, and planets, and the far away. “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I don't know what I see.”

“What do you mean you don't know?” she scolded, refusing to let me off easy. “You quitting on yourself just like that? I thought you were somebody. And every somebody has an opinion! Try again.”

I loved Ms. Hakim. “I mean,” I said, “I don't know nothing about astronomy.”

“But what do you see?” she urged. “Use your imagination! You're standing in the middle of outer space!”

“Well,” I said. “If I'm in the middle of outer space then I'm a star too.”

“Good,” said Ms. Hakim. “Good. I hadn't thought of that. That's good. So we're all stars. Taquanna, what about you?”

“Well, first of all it's astrology, not astronomy,” said Taquanna.

“OK,” said Ms. Hakim. “Is it astronomy or astrology?”

“Which one is the one with the signs?” asked Yusef.

“You tell me,” said Ms. Hakim.

“Astronomy is what we're looking at,” decided Precious. “And astrology is the shit girls read in the paper to find out if a nigga loves them.”

“Choose another word,” scolded Ms. Hakim.

“Shit,” Precious said. “I mean, sorry. Astrology is what girls read in the paper to find out if their nigga loves them.”

“
Shit
ain't the word I was talking about,” said Ms. Hakim. “Try again.”

“Oh,” said Precious. “My bad. Astrology is what girls read in the paper to find out if their man loves them or not.”

“Thank you,” said Ms. Hakim. Then she raised her voice and spoke slowly and clearly, as if she were reading the accomplishments of an award recipient. “For the next two weeks, we're going to surf celestial bodies and ethereal drift. How's that sound? Deep, right? Well it's outer space, the universe. Who thinks life is out there?”

“Definitely,” said Titty. “You seen that movie
ET
?”

“If you do,” continued Ms. Hakim, “then what kind of life? Is it life that we know? Or is it an alternative, extraordinary form? If yes, what do these beings endure to survive? What do they breathe? Hydrogen?
Carbon monoxide? Oxygen, like us? Are there trees in outer space? And how about if there is life on other planets, what is their capacity when it comes to love? Will they hate or love us if and when we meet? Do they even have the capacity to hate? Or are humans the only ones in this vast universe who do? And do you know that some stars, some of the biggest and brightest we see, actually died thousands of years ago? Almost like they are burning on the hope that they might be seen. Look up. Think. Tell me about the stars. Tell me. What do you see?”

I
n front of my building, a brigade of brothers stood against the exhausted red bricks with hours to kill and breath smoking from their noses and mouths. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was just about to set. The coming evening soaked Ever in a fresh bruise. Some stood with a foot cocked behind them, the soles of their shoes pressed flat against the brick. Others stood with their arms folded across their chests. Alton Johnson stood with one foot on an old orange milk crate. Elijah had his hands jammed in his pockets. Heads were cocked to the right, tilted to the left. Ennui was postures, dispositions, faces, and fact. I said hello, slapped hands, and was teased a bit, then I hung around, eavesdropped. Talk spanned from women and no woman to jobs and no job, the government and the basketball games on TV the previous night. What happened to who? And what couldn't be believed. And what was going to be done about it. Nearly every time and no matter what the initial conversation had been about, talk always shifted into a relationship with revolution, personal revolution, famil
ial revolution, community revolution; city; state; revolutions in other countries; monumental comebacks and reversals; last-second shots and touchdown passes; Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics; Watts riots; Rodney King riots; the riots that should be happening in Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, Kings County, and Queens.

“Imagine,” Elijah announced. “If a nigga became president.”

“They'd kill him,” said Alton. “Before a nigga even steps foot in the Oval Office, they'd shoot him in the head.”

So the topic of discussion shifted to the notion that a brother might one day be president, a fantastical social leap our minds could not make without having to silence self-doubt, and the facts of our history, both as brothers in Ever and brothers in greater America.

“Shit,” said Mo, a tall, slender brother in his late twenties with smooth russet skin who said everything as an exclamation. “All I know is one day rap music is gonna boom from the White House stereo! And whether or not it's a nigga or some white boy from the suburbs shit is gonna happen! America has got a hard-on for niggas! We're like the apple in Eden! First niggas hang us in trees! Then Eve plucks us. And all Adam wants is to be just like us!”

“One day Ever is gonna be historic,” Elijah announced.

“Is that what you call this?” asked a short, fat, jovial brother who went by the name Moochie. “Is that what niggas are? History? Like we just standing around waiting to join the dinosaurs? Like one day some Indiana Jones is gonna come and dig up our bones and say
Wow, so this is how niggas lived?
”

Suddenly, someone came from behind and snatched me in a headlock, then wrenched and squeezed and bent me over. Brothers stopped talking. They laughed and called for me to fight back and fight back more. I fought with all of my might to get out of the clutch. I was yanked up. I was pushed down. I was a dinghy lost amidst a violent sea.
I was being drowned then saved by the same force. I flailed. I kicked. The arm around my neck tightened.

“C'mon Abraham!” shouted Alton. “Free yourself! Get out of that grip!”

I was turning blue. My lips were cold and wet and my tongue was bone dry. The strangler's wrist dug into my windpipe. I wheezed. My eyes throbbed, then swelled and sizzled. Snot leaked from my nose. The world was crusty purple and red. Brothers' faces melted into burgundy puddles during each sporadic moment I could see. I owned nothing, not even a sliver of my five senses. I smelled nothing. I tasted it. Then I felt it and saw it and heard nothing and all at once I stopped fighting and my entire body, from my eyelashes to my toes went limp.

“Who's your daddy?” the assailant asked.

I knew the voice as if it were my own. Donnel. Why was he choking me? He eased his grip. Then he shook me and squeezed his grip again.

“Nigga,” he said, “I'm talking to you.”

Digging deep, I uncovered a pocket of oxygen in my chest and gasped.

“I,” I said.

“Nigga, what?” Donnel exploded. “Huh? Tell me. Shout it to the world! Who loves you?”

Who loved me? My grandma. My Aunt Rhonda. My Uncle Nice. Eric, I supposed. But him, Donnel? I thought so. But at that moment I wasn't sure. And the doubt caused my body to burst with rage. So I tore at Donnel's grip. I clawed at his arm. I wanted to breathe and I wanted to breathe now. I had to. Because I had to turn around and look Donnel in the eyes to see whether or not he loved me. I was desperate for that holy confirmation. But Donnel didn't give in. He didn't relax his grip or release me. He fought back and squeezed tighter. Then he leaned all of his weight on my shoulders. He was
trying to buckle me, to make me succumb and crumble. I refused. I fought to remain on my feet. My legs burned. My knees quivered. I could stand. I would stand. Then I couldn't. I collapsed to the concrete. Only then did Donnel let go.

“Nigga, what you got?” he asked, bouncing back on his toes like a boxer, his fists up. “Huh? Get up. Stand and fight. Let's go.”

I had nothing. He was relentless. I was too exhausted, too hurt to even look up. I remained on my hands and knees, burning and aching. My throat ablaze, crushed. I breathed deeply, filling my body with air. But I didn't rub my neck or let myself grimace. I wouldn't allow anyone the satisfaction of witnessing pain as a part of me. I looked down at the concrete and considered all of the ways I could respond; the things I could but shouldn't say, how I could charge at Donnel and swing. I could have cried if I were someone else, someone not Abraham from Ever. I cleared my throat and spit a wad of bloody phlegm on the ground. Somewhere I was bleeding. Slowly, I lifted my eyes and laid them on Donnel, hoping that it had not been him who attacked me. But it was. Why? I wondered.

I took one great deep breath and pushed myself up to my feet. Then I stared at Donnel blankly, my hands hanging at my sides, the sound of brothers teasing me a washed-out drone. Donnel wore a black hooded sweatshirt, a black winter coat, and a black baseball hat. I was hot, sweating. He bounced forward and snapped a jab that came within an inch of my face. Then he bounced back on his toes. What had he come for? Why had he chosen to arrive in the manner he did?

“Throw your hands,” he demanded. “Didn't I teach you to fight?”

Donnel stood still and waited for me, his fists up. A mischievous grin creased his face. Then he dropped his hands and his smile unfolded into a soft tumble of laughter.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

He reached his hand out and waited for me to slap it. I stared at
Donnel's hand and thought about leaving it there, hovering between us until it rotted and stank, or dried and turned to dust, or he ran out of the strength it took to keep it aloft. But Donnel didn't give me the time to make a decision. He looked at brothers. Then he snatched his hand away. I thought about punching him with all of my might, blasting his head open with one ferocious blow. How could he do what he'd done? How could he attack, offer peace, then leave me with nothing?

He breathed, smirked, and shook his head no. “Where you coming from?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I said.

Quickly, Donnel swung at me and his open hand clapped off the top of my head.

“Nigga,” he scolded. “Be specific.”

I wanted to swing back. “The library,” I said.

“The library? What you doing there?”

“Reading,” I said.

“Reading?” he said, smugly glancing at the others as if to prove or at least question whether or not reading was a valid answer. “About what?”

“Timbuktu,” I said.

He laughed. “Timbuk-what?”

I glared at Donnel.

“Timbuktu,” I said. “Where everything, everyone, even salt was precious.”

T
he older I got the more difficult it became to navigate my feelings about love and loss. From one moment to the next, I never knew what I might long for or hurt inside about. My mother or Donnel. My grandma. My uncle. And then there was Kaya. All through the spring I found ways to coincidentally meet her in the library. Then I would walk her home in the evening, sometimes in silence, sometimes dribbling my basketball around her as we walked, and sometimes pouring forth a succession of bad jokes and anecdotes to make her laugh as much as to keep the subject of our conversation far from what I was thinking and feeling. But then I never knew what I needed to express. I had suppressed my core, and in response, what was most imperative went without an identity. So my emotions were colorless and weightless. They had no scent or relationship to nature. I could not describe them in concrete terms, embodied by a metaphor or simile. My emotions were arrivals and departures, nonstop insignificances speeding through a station. In other words, I
felt just some things because I didn't know nor did I have the capacity to verbalize and thus understand what I most lacked. So my emotions rose inexplicably, then split and fell in separate ways. I might be enraged. I might be solemn. Then I might be thankful. I might be sincere, honest with myself when thinking about potentials and predicaments. Then I might lie; say something was unbelievable although I believed. I might blaspheme and then suddenly be righteous. I might doubt and then know everything. I was like a plastic bag caught in the air, suspended by the battering of opposing winds. My grandma said it was my hormones, that they were making me real impossible; a motherfucker, a son of a bitch, just like one of those lunatics they lock up. “Abraham,” she said. “What's gotten into you?”

The same question was applicable to her. That is, if I had lost my mind then so had she. Because Mr. Goines had become a sudden fixture in our apartment. He sat on the couch and talked at the TV during sitcoms and Knicks games. He ate at the kitchen table with a newspaper open before him and criticized the news to anyone who was near. He wrote ideas out on legal pads, page after page, his faux tortoiseshell glasses crooked. Everything, all of their seemingly heavenly and holy love affair, all of the perfect excitement my grandma swelled with over Mr. Goines's visits and overnight stays, how he slept in her bed and he and she would kiss, gently, like fish, made my stomach twist. Because I feared for my grandma but I also wanted her to be loved and happy. So I watched Mr. Goines's every move. And when she and he were near each other, I made sure to see if he loved her enough. It seemed he did. Even when they argued, he was respectful, calling her
Honey, Sweet lady, Baby
when he addressed her accusations.

But that didn't mean I trusted Mr. Goines, or, for that matter, wanted him in our home. Because I didn't. And because more than my mistrust of him, his presence poked holes in and deflated Donnel. I saw it in his face and all over his body. Of course, he said nothing about it. He didn't
tell me or Eric or my Aunt Rhonda that he didn't want Mr. Goines coming around. He didn't talk to Mr. Goines more than a mumbled yes or no. Sometimes when Mr. Goines was there before Donnel came home, Donnel kept his head down and left within an hour. And when he disappeared, his absences were longer. And so no longer was it only that I rarely saw Donnel, but when I did see him, he didn't look me in the face nor let his eyes rest on anything too long. He was nineteen and he had considered himself to be the man of our home for a long time. But now it seemed a man had come to take his place. So he must have felt as if he was being pushed out. So he responded by acting as if he was running away. But not running to something; running as if he was chased, hunted and hounded, preyed upon by everything from the sun to the night, from the air he breathed to everyone, even me.

I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know what to do, whom to align myself with. And then one October evening my grandma and I argued about nothing important, something as insignificant as whether or not it had rained on a Monday weeks before, and then Mr. Goines inserted himself into the argument, so I argued with him. Then I argued with my aunt and my grandma and Mr. Goines at the same time and punched the wall in my room, goring a six-inch wound in the drywall. Then I stormed out of the apartment, stomping down the stairs, each step echoing through the stairwell, my hand throbbing, my knuckles bloodied.

So I had been out since the evening, walking up and down blocks without stopping. And it was near midnight, drizzling after raining all day. I was tired and my feet hurt. The small of my back was tight and sore. But, as if the sound were the Morse code of me, I was still pounding my feet. I was on Columbus Avenue, my hands jammed in the pockets of my coat, my hat pulled low over my eyes. I kept my eyes on the concrete in front of me. I believed I would never stop. I would walk forever. I would follow the streets until they reached a sea that I would storm across too.

Then I heard the drumming of a ball and I stopped. I looked up. I was a half block from the basketball court. I walked to it. There, two little brothers played one-on-one at the far side. The rain made the concrete court gleam. The little brothers dribbled the ball. The sound was wet slaps. They shouted at each other. They laughed and shot at a rusted rim they could barely see. The cuffs of their too-long jeans and coat sleeves were soaked. They pushed their sleeves up their arms, past their elbows. Moments later, the cuffs gave in, slipped down over their hands again.

I crossed the street, walked around the fence, and sat on top of the back of the bench farthest from them. Water soaked through my jeans and sent a shiver along my spine. I hadn't been to school in a week. It was coming up on a year since my mother had died. My ability to rise from bed and shower was intact. But walking to school and sitting in classrooms were gone. I spent my days in the library, at the park, and when my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda were at work, in our apartment. I wondered what did a year since my mother died mean. Titty, Precious, and Yusef tried to talk to me. And Ms. Hakim called and made me promise to be in school on Monday. I hadn't made the decision to drop out. I thought I would eventually go back. So it was not my absence from school, nor the argument I had with my grandma, nor the throbbing of my fist that consumed me. It was thinking about my mother and one question: What about Donnel?
What about him?
Was he next?—the question caused me to drift about in a state of incendiary disarray and ignorance. That is, I had come to a mortal decision, a crossroads, the end of a plank. I was fifteen, at the start of my sophomore year. Was I thinking about Donnel because I was to follow him? Or was I thinking about Donnel the way I thought about my mother? Was his absence causing me to hate him? And was it all making me feel helpless and abandoned?

I watched the young brothers playing basketball, leaping and twist
ing about each other like tails of fighting kites, their sneakers slapping and skidding against the wet concrete. The larger boy stopped dribbling the ball and told the smaller one to tie his shoelaces. Suddenly, a particular variation of staggering longing landed in my head and a new question engulfed me. Could my mother see me? Right then, right there; suddenly that was all I wanted to know. Since her death, had she been watching me from above? Did she know what type of young man I'd become?

“Abraham,” came a woman's voice from behind me. “Abraham, that you?”

I turned to see a silhouette, but I could make out nothing more. Not even the voice gave me a clue. The woman walked from the darkness and when she came near enough, I saw that it was Luscious, her arms folded across her chest, holding a waist-length black leather coat closed.

“Abraham,” she said, her face inches from the fence that separated the basketball court from the sidewalk, she from me. “What're you doing out here all by yourself?”

I shrugged. Then I tipped my head toward the young brothers playing basketball and said: “Just watching.”

Luscious brought with her the smell of menthol cigarettes and perfume of a seductive yet humble nature, lavender with kick and heat. She lifted her eyes from me and watched the young brothers play for a moment.

“No matter the time, life don't change,” she sighed.

“What you mean?” I asked.

As beautiful as she had always been, but with her lips parted in a sad halfhearted smile, Luscious shook her head slowly, then softly said: “I got a letter from your uncle.”

I was paused with the thought. My uncle? Never once had my family heard from him since he was stripped from Ever and locked away.
Luscious's eyes welled and she whipped them away from me, from the young brothers on the basketball court, from Ever, and she aimed them as high as she could, looking into the sky without lifting her chin. A tear slipped down her face, dripped from her chin. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and laughed gently, one tumble of breath when what she clearly wanted to do was weep. The rumors about Luscious had been true. She had been with Qadisha and when they broke up, she was with other women. She held their hands. She made love to them. But what did he write? What could she possibly say? And who was she to him now? I couldn't believe he had written to her. He had never once written to us, never even a note or card for Christmas or birthdays.

Luscious lowered her gaze, lay her sodden sight on the young brothers playing basketball again. “Seven years,” she said, her tense tone blurring the distinctions between anger, longing, and defeat. “I ain't heard from that man in seven years. And even after all this, after all that's happened: I still love him.”

F
or weeks, my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda talked about it. For weeks, they woke up and went to bed with the fact hot on their lips. For weeks, they planned a celebration so celebratory it was not a celebration but the birth of fireworks born from a Big Bang; a universe had come to the end of its infinite patience. They discussed DJs and songs that had to be played. They argued over where the furniture should be moved so there would be room for everyone to whirl and grind and dance the way they really wished to, with their eyes closed, as if they were alone in the dark and they had sadness and evilness to whip from their limbs. Who would cook what dish? What color should the plastic forks, cups, and plates be? These were major debates and decisions. And the napkins? The tablecloths? The streamers? How about what they would wear? They argued about the colors late into the night. What about red? White would show stains. What about blue? No. This was not Valentine's Day, a wedding, or the Fourth of July. This was greater; a holier celebration of love and
independence. They had to match. It all had to match; the entire festival was to be color coordinated. For weeks, there was no news on TV; no weather outside; no America, Ever, or Queens. No world beyond the joy of our home existed. Old family stories were recalled, old family photographs passed around. My grandma and my Aunt Rhonda predicted what would happen; how joyous the occasion would be; this man would certainly dance with this woman and then this other woman would certainly guzzle all of the punch and eat all of the cake and dance with all of the other men, rub her sweaty body against each and every one. And what about him and her? She and he? Thousands; that's how many would attend. Like teenage girls high on cotton candy, Coca Cola, and coffee, they couldn't contain themselves. There was no pause or slowdown. They didn't speak. They didn't enunciate. They didn't talk or discuss. They scatted; like
be-de-be-bo-bo rin-tin-tin hi-d-hi-d-ho
. They swung their hips, arms, and eyes when they moved. They cooked and washed dishes and scrubbed and mopped and dusted and wiped and cleaned the apartment from crack to crevice back to crack. They did everything, multitasked multitasking awake and asleep, simultaneously. Finally, my grandma's son, my aunt's brother, finally my uncle, lord have mercy, Nice was coming home.

Nothing could hurt us. Nothing could touch us. Nothing could take. And nothing was owed. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's passed. Then it was the spring and no bills were paid. And rent was skipped. Mr. Goines fixed the showerhead. He spackled the cracks in the walls and ceilings. He bought the lovebirds a new cage. And he gave me money so I could go to the hardware store and buy as many gallons of white paint, paintbrushes, and rollers as I could carry. Then when I came back with it all, straining to carry the gallons and plastic bags up the stairs, Mr. Goines, Donnel, Eric, and I painted the apartment. The walls, the ceilings, the doorframes; the bathroom, the bedrooms, the front room, the kitchen, he made everything shine with white.

“You see how we didn't go dripping nothing on the floor,” he said pushing a firm gaze and countenance upon us and pointing at the carpet when he was done. “You all got to learn how to live like that. Responsible. Respectful. Your grandma don't got to be living with no stains no more.”

That was a Thursday, and the next day Donnel vanished. He was nowhere to be found. No one, not any of his friends nor anyone else in Ever knew where he went. He was just gone. On Saturday, my grandma and my aunt asked me if I had seen him, and because I so hoped he was somewhere near and because I didn't want to disturb the incredible bliss of my uncle's pending homecoming, I said I saw him on Friday walking with some girl.

“What chick?” said my Aunt Rhonda, saying
chick
with a severity meant to emphasize that whomever he was with was not worthy of her son. “He ain't never said nothing about having no girl.”

“I never seen her before,” I said.

My Aunt Rhonda screwed her face. She didn't believe me. “She ain't from Ever?”

“He'll turn up,” my grandma decided. “Don't worry. Sooner or later he's gonna have to change his drawers.”

Compared to the incredible bliss of my uncle's pending homecoming, Donnel's absence seemed minor. In fact, after I told them that I saw him they seemed not to care. After all, Donnel was twenty, old enough to vote and fight in a war. So it was as if Donnel were some trivial, lost trinket that would turn up when and where they least expected. Maybe on Sunday, or maybe Monday. But if not on Monday, then Tuesday, and if not Tuesday then Wednesday. But if not by Wednesday then they'd call the police precinct to see if any black twenty-year-old male named Donnel Singleton had been apprehended or admitted to a nearby hospital because he had to be home by Thursday. Because Friday was the day my uncle was coming home.

But it didn't get that far. In the middle of Sunday night, Donnel shook me awake and demanded that I go to the roof with him.

“D,” I said, my voice loud, my eyes blinking like he was a cloudy apparition. “Where you been?”

“Shh,” he scolded. “Shut up. Just meet me on the roof.”

Donnel turned and walked out of our room, leaving the door open behind himself. My heart pounded. As fast and as quietly as I could, I put on my jeans and grabbed my sweatshirt. Then I jammed my feet into my sneakers and hurried out of the room. But when I walked out of the room, he was already gone. Something made me stop before running. My keys. What if we got locked out? I couldn't let that happen. I slapped my hands on the front of my jeans to make sure my keys were in my pocket. They were. So I left too, making sure to close the door as quietly as I could.

I went to the elevator. The faint green
L
in the black circle by the buttons indicated that the elevator was at the lobby. I pushed the button. A second passed. I heard the elevator begin to move. But it was always too slow. And I had no patience. I could not stand there and wait to begin my ascent. And I thought that Donnel must have taken the stairs because the elevator was already below us and it never traveled that fast. So I ran to the stairwell, opened the door, and began to climb. The stairwell was so dark I might as well have been sinking in ink. My mind was electric, awake, but my body was still half asleep so I misstepped, tripped, and smashed my shins on the edge of the stairs. At another time, I would have paid attention to the pain. I would have lifted my jeans and checked for bleeding or how big the bumps had already bloomed. But nothing would stop me from catching up with Donnel. So I rushed to my feet and hurried faster up the stairs. I went all the way up without stopping. I never once put my hand on a railing. And when there were no stairs left to climb, I pushed open the roof 's steel door.

Donnel stood at the edge of the roof. His back to me, his hands planted on the ledge, he looked down at the street. The first thing I thought was that he was going to jump.

“D,” I shouted. “What're you doing?”

Donnel didn't move. So I ran to him. But after three strides, he turned around and laughed, and the sound of his laughter stopped me in my tracks.

“What's so funny?” I asked.

“You,” he said.

“Me? Nigga, where you been?”

Donnel smiled the wide, all encompassing, and limitless smile of a child. Then he turned around and pointed at the night sky. “There,” he said.

I looked over his shoulder, traced my eyes along his arm to the tip of his finger, and then followed his finger to what he pointed at. In the distance were the moon and the stars, and the lights from a few planes moseying across the black sky.

“Outer space?” I said. “Nigga, I'm serious.”

He dropped his arm, turned around, and set his eyes on me. “Me too,” he said. “I flew.”

I shifted my eyes from him back to the sky.

“In a plane,” he added. “First class too. Niggas thought I was some sort of rap star and everything. Gave me free drinks. Leather seats damn near big as our bed.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” I said.

I didn't believe him. I looked at him hard. In one of those steel birds that went silent and smooth thousands of feet above Ever? No way. Impossible.

He put his right hand over his heart and raised his left hand in the air. “Swear on Jelly,” he said. “Swear on Grans, on my moms, on Eric, on any unborn kids that I might one day make.”

I still didn't believe him. “Then where'd you go?”

Suddenly, he was sick of my incredulity. He made a face like he was going to eat me. He sucked his teeth and shook his head no. Then, in a rush, he reached behind himself, lifted up his shirt, and pulled out a crumpled gold-colored folder that had been rolled, folded, and crammed between the top of his jeans and the small of his back.

He unfolded the folder. He walked across the roof to me.

“Atlanta,” he said. He jammed the folder in my hands. “Century Twenty-one. We getting out of this motherfucker. We ain't staying in Ever forever.”

I looked at the front of the folder. He huffed a gust of irritation, snatched the folder from my hands, opened it, and handed it back to me. Then he stabbed his finger at a picture of some big white house.

“Nigga,” he said. “I got half that easy.”

It was too dark for me to see how much the house cost, but I stared at the picture of the house, refined white columns, front porch, seemingly palatial.

“What was it like?” I asked.

“Real nice,” he said. “And hot too. And the girls, nigga…Even the real skinny ones is sexy, bodies like melting Fudgsicles, Pudding Pops, chocolate all curvy and dripping down my hands. God damn it was beautiful!”

“No,” I said. I pointed at the sky. “The plane. Flying.”

Donnel dropped his eyes and thought for a few moments. Then he looked up at me. “You a virgin still?”

“What?” I said.

“You a virgin?”

“Nigga,” I scolded. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“Cause if you wasn't then you'd know what flying was like,” he said. “Weightless. And the only reason you know you're alive is cause your dick is half hard and your heart is bumping in your throat.”

There was a moment of silence that Donnel seemed to deem dangerous, and he grabbed the folder from me, jammed it back into the back of his jeans, and put his face an inch from mine.

“Say some shit,” he whispered. “Tell anyone, and I swear to God I'll kill you.”