The Dying Ground (32 page)

In the living room I stopped dead in my tracks. Alixe stood at the front door, not yet aware of my presence or that Felicia was in the same room. She slipped off her coat and went to the clothing rack nearest the door.

“How did you think of this, Chantal?” As she browsed the labels there was nothing but admiration on her face.

“Girl, you on Tokyo time. We been doing this in Oakland for ages.” I noticed that Felicia had changed into black pants and a white sweater. Simple. Beautiful as always.

She eyed Alixe quietly, noting from my demeanor that the new arrival was more than just a late shopper.

Alixe pushed aside a row of skirts and spotted me in the empty space. “Maceo!”

“Hey, girl.” I stayed put in the hallway entrance.

“Funny place to find you.”

“Ain’t it, though.”

She look puzzled but I was too stuck to offer guidance. Patrice nudged her way past me, holding a pair of black shoes in her hand.

“Felicia, these’ll work fine with what you have on.”

Alixe held my eye for what seemed like an eternity before turning to Felicia.

Chantal graciously stepped between the two women. “Felicia, you see anything else you like? Why don’t you grab a couple of things?”

Alixe turned her crosshairs on me. “Maceo, can I talk to you for a minute? Outside.”

“Yeah, I was on my way out anyway.” Then I made a mistake. I crossed the room and knelt in front of Felicia’s chair. All around me I saw the Black-girl-tilt-of-the-head to indicate that I’d just dissed Alixe. Felicia smiled, a real smile, for the first time in ages.

“Glad you think it’s funny,” I whispered. “Listen, I’m going to try and find Holly. You gonna be cool?”

“I’ll be fine.” The smile played around her mouth as she looked at Alixe. “You be careful.”

“W
hat’s going on?” Alixe waited for me on the sidewalk. “How long have you been back? How come you didn’t call?”

“I just got here.”

“Why didn’t you call?” she asked again.

“I had something to take care of.”

“Something or someone?”

“Something. I haven’t even seen my family yet.”

“You haven’t seen your family?” She looked confused.

“No.”

“Maceo, what’s going on?” She looked back toward the apartment. I saw that Felicia had stepped out and was watching us from the balcony. “Where’d you find her?”

“Fresno.”

“Fresno? I thought you were going to Louisiana?”

“Change of plans. I’ll explain it later.”

She scanned my face. “I want to believe you.”

“Believe me or don’t, I got somewhere to be.”

“Why are you mad at me?” She grabbed my arm when I tried to turn away from her. “You don’t think I deserve an explanation?”

“Nobody’s getting what they deserve tonight.”

“I’m not just anybody. And I do deserve an explanation. I thought you were gone. Out of state. Then I see you here, with her, and you can’t explain to me what’s going on? That doesn’t wash.

“Where you going? I’m talking to you.” Her voice rose in anger.

“I got business to take care of.”

“It can’t wait?”

“Alixe. I don’t have time for this.” My own voice rose in response to hers.

“Nobody can save Felicia but you, is that it?” Her words were laced with contempt. “She takes precedent over every other thing in your life.”

“I owe it to Billy” was all I could say.

“Don’t use that excuse. Billy’s not here, and I can’t imagine if he was your
friend
that he would want this.”

“That’s the difference. You can’t imagine it, but I know it. He would do the same for me and so would Holly.”

Her eyes darted around in desperation. I wanted to make her understand but there weren’t enough words in the dictionary. This knowledge came from an innate code of ethics that was alien to her universe. If I died the way Billy had, Holly would ride into his own death to right the wrong.

“I owe Billy,” I said again.

“You only owe yourself.” She answered me with an innocent’s certainty.

“That’s how you live,” I told her.

“It’s how I survive, Maceo.”

Felicia came quietly down the steps while we argued. Alixe turned to stare pointedly at her and then she looked back at me. “Don’t do this, Maceo. Whatever happens is not going to be worth it. It’ll cost you too much.”

“Meaning you? It’ll cost me you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

“More than that.”

I stood and looked at both women, knowing I was making a choice, knowing also that there had never really been any question.

“Maceo,” Felicia interjected. “I changed my mind. I’m going with you.”

Alixe’s gaze was steady, locked on mine and awaiting answers. She ignored Felicia, who stood patiently at my side. My head started to spin. Both of them wanted something from me and I could only give to one. I saw tears pool in Alixe’s eyes because we both knew the answer. Felicia stepped around her and slid into the passenger seat of the car. She rolled the window up tightly to give us privacy but there wasn’t any. Everybody present knew what was being said in the silence.

“Alixe, this doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Yes, it does.” She smiled weakly. “I love you, you know.” She paused. “But you don’t deserve me.”

“Alixe.”

“Let me finish. You don’t get to play this game and get the good things too, and believe me I’m one of the good things.”

She was right, there was no denying it. She was a good thing but the timing was bad. “You
are
a good thing,” I said. I stepped toward her but she backed away.

“I love you, and I have no idea who you are.”

“You knew who I was when you met me.”

“You don’t even know who you are, Maceo. How could I? If you did you wouldn’t run so hard into this madness. You would
realize that you have too much to lose.” She looked at Felicia, seated in the car. “Even when all this is over you still won’t get her.”

I flinched visibly, and she realized she’d struck a chord. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She shook her head in disgust. “I never took you for one to believe in fairy tales, but you got your white horse out of the stable. Guys love that, I guess. The damsel in distress, even if she’s a black widow. With me there’s no rescuing. I’m just by your side.”

“I’ll call you.”

“No, you won’t”—she wiped a tear from her cheek—“and I wish I didn’t care.”

She walked into me until her face rested on my chest. I was forced to wrap my arm around her. It would have been so easy to stay there, to walk away with her, but the mess was mine just like it was Holly’s.

“She’s your past,” Alixe whispered into my chest. “I wish you could see that. She’s everything you should run away from.”

I tried to break the embrace and push her away, gently, but she held on tight. I found myself doing the same thing. I wanted them both, and the reality was I didn’t have either one. Alixe was what I wanted waiting for me on the other side, but I needed Felicia now.

“I wish I could wait, Maceo. But whatever happens tonight is going to poison you, and I can’t be a part of that.” She finally stepped away, and I saw her eyes glisten. “I remember that first night at your house when I saw all those pictures of you, your family, and Holly, and I was envious. I don’t have ties like that. But maybe those are ties I don’t need.”

I smiled at her and touched her face. She brought my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers. “Be safe,” she said and leaned in to kiss me. It tasted like good-bye before our lips even met.

Alixe, as an outsider to Oakland and to me, had exposed my shallow, insular world in one conversation. I resented that. If she opened me up what would she find? A map of Oakland where my heart should be. That’s all the definition I had: my neighborhood, my city, the like-minded friends with our sticky web of unwritten rules. Despite my talent, my family, or even myself, all any of us felt we had was the game. A sport with its own set of regulations. Invented manhood. Winner take death.

Alixe’s words exposed it all like a surgical knife.

I watched her walk away. I was set to call out her name when the car horn blared behind me and broke the spell. Alixe flinched at the sound, but she didn’t turn around. I waited until she got in the house before I drove off into the night with Felicia at my side.

T
he Kill Zone bumped with activity as I made my way down East Fourteenth. At a green light I maneuvered around a drunken couple having an argument in the middle of the street. Business as usual in the ghetto.

I turned off the boulevard and headed into the numbered streets lumpy with speed bumps. The speed bumps were the city’s lame attempt at fighting crime. The theory was that three speed bumps on each street would cut down on high-speed chases between criminals and the police and thus combat crime. It didn’t matter that a large portion of dealing, stealing, and general mayhem was done on foot.

Slowing down as I came to the end of the block, I watched a group of three young men eye me to determine if I was friend or foe. There was no identifying color or gang sign, like in L.A., just my demeanor. I was either there to enhance their lives by purchasing rock or get in the way of profit by being an undercover.
I ignored them to show that I was neither. Just a brother out with his girl.

I got out and leaned into the car window to speak to Felicia. “You gonna be alright? I’ll only be a minute.”

“I’ll be fine.”

I walked to the end of the block, made a left, and cut over two blocks to the apartment building where Holly’s mother, Sylvia, lived with two of her brothers in a relationship assumed to be incestuous.

Holly hated his mother. It wasn’t hard to see why but he played the family card during emergencies, and apparently she had come through for him. When I walked up the stairs I could see him inside the apartment. He sat on the couch with the front door wide open. The light from the TV screen made him look bloodless.

It took him a moment to place me when I stepped into the doorway. He watched me, blankly, making no move to reach for a gun, run away, or acknowledge me. He had retreated into the recesses of his soul to recover from whatever activity was fresh on his brain. He was either contemplating Smokey’s fate or recovering from it.

It spooked me to know another person so well, but my knowledge gave me the tools to deal with him. Holly thrived on violence, living on the edge gave him sustenance, but once in a while he had to work extra hard to erase the effects of his actions. He called it rebuilding.

“Holly.”

He looked at me without speaking.

“Holly,” I said again. “It’s Maceo. I got Felicia in the car. We gotta roll.”

I watched as he fought his way back to the surface in order to respond. He went into his reserve to pull himself past Cissy’s attack and Smokey’s fate.

“We gotta roll, man. I need you to contact Clarence.” I stepped into the room and turned off the TV. I couldn’t stand to look at him under the artificial blue light of the screen. I flicked on the overhead, and the room danced with light.

He blinked sleepily like a man under anesthesia before looking directly at me.

“When you get back?” he asked with deliberateness. His speech was slurred, like his tongue was swollen.

His surroundings made my skin crawl. The place was filthy, as if wild dogs had used the apartment as a storage unit. East Oakland was notorious for roving, overbred dogs abandoned by their owners who then merged into packs, traveling the streets day and night, dodging cars and navigating red lights like New Yorkers.

There were clothes scattered around the room, dirty, torn, some covered with spatterings of blood that could have been from sex, needle usage, or a fistfight. I didn’t want to think about any of it. In one corner, the only neat spot in the house, shoe boxes were marked in black: one for Sylvia, one for her older brother, Dom, and one for the younger brother, Vernon. They were lined up in a row and contained all the paraphernalia needed for dedicated drug use.

Holly caught me staring at the storage units. “Ain’t that a bitch, man.” I could tell he was resurfacing slowly, fighting his way back. He used contempt to get there.