A Brief History of Seven Killings (83 page)

You know when a woman puts on a show that something’s not bothering her? How she straightens a back already straight, and starts to play with her necklace and looks away even though nobody is looking at her, and how she smiles like some ghost gave her a joke? Smile until there is no smile anymore, just her feeling her lips pull back over her teeth? Yeah I’m spying that woman in the mirror on the other side of the Ranking Don’s bed.

—That man should hang. Somebody shoulda shoot him inna jail, you hear me.

—For this? I say. I really didn’t want to point to the man in the bed, that just seemed too damn dramatic, so I nodded instead. Subtle.

—What, Ranking Dons don’t kill anybody? I say.

It’s funny, I try to shut all that shit out but I remember, though, not long ago the New York
Post
carried some headline . . . yeah . . . the Jamaican who got New York hooked on crack and it was the head of the Ranking Dons. I remember ’cause it was the last time I picked up a
Post
.

—Ranking Dons don’t have no leader.

—Of course not, him in jail.

—No, me mean they don’t have no leader like Josey Wales. That man different. One time some man bump him car—no, he bump the man car and chase after him. You believe that? The man run right into police station.

—The police drive him home?

—No. They stand back while Josey march into the station with some other man, pull him out and kill him right in the street, right in front of the police station.

—Oh Lord.

—Oh Lord is right. But you know, you going be so wicked you can’t surprise when wickedness come back to you. Both him daughter and his son, the one him was sending to Wolmer’s Boys’ School ’cause he think he can make him posh, get shot dead. Boy, as mother me sorry when pickney dead. But as me, it serve the fucker right. But is this one start all the kasskass. Can you imagine, nothing happen when they kill the girl but them kill the boy and Kingston erupt with wildfire. What a thing. And the fire spread all the way to Miami and New York. My man tell me smoke even blow all the way to Kansas. You know where Kansas deh?

—Uh-uh.

—Me neither.

—So he in prison then. And he’s not coming out.

—Him can’t come out. If he was going to come out he should a come out in Jamaica. But from what me hear, him start chat too much. Too much
people scared and stupid. If me was him me would a board plane to ’merica from yesterday.

—So he in prison then? Him not coming out?

—Not for now. Why you business so much ’bout Josey Wales? After ah no ghetto you come from?

—I . . .

Not even Christmas yet, barely December and somebody is already bursting firecrackers but I run and run and run again, then hop, then walk right up to just ten or so feet from the gate 56, walking stiffer, the firecrackers getting louder, especially the rapid ratatatatat ones I don’t like so I turn and the gate 56 is already open welcoming me for once open wide like the gate is two arms saying come in daughter only loving and oneness here until firecracker run right past me. Man running backwards nearly knock me over man in mesh sleeveless man almost stumble man with machine gun in two hands and shaking from recoil? Recoil recoil they call it recoil on TV. Machine gun hip shake ratatatattat, no papapapapapapap man run past me then behind me and I follow him with my eyes to the white car like a Cortina bombocloth a man says I look around two more men running one frontways and shouting other man backways with two handguns that firing up and down and pap-pap and my body’s jerking with each pap and one man knock me sideways when he run past me and other man knock me on the other side and me spin ’round and ’round and ’round and another man fire two shots and screech white car gone and other car pull up I didn’t see that other car it just pull up and I still feel like I’m spinning though I know I just stopped because I stomped my foot in the ground to stop and sirens wake me up or maybe it’s mosquitoes and right there near the guardhouse a woman spread flat in the dirt, blood spreading near her head and screaming people screaming too much screaming and I turn and walk into his chest tall man taller than me and thick like a man but thin too and skin dark or maybe is the evening and him eye narrow like a chineyman but he’s black no he’s dark and right up in me right up to my face right up to my neck and he sniffs sniffs sniffs like a dog Josey get inna the bombocloth car the white car says and he brings the gun right up to my face and it’s hole no an O no it’s an O with a hole and it smells like matches just as you strike it Josey get inna the bombocloth car the man in the car is shouting but he still in front of me waving the gun closer and closer and right in front of my left eye but the sirens getting louder and he walk away backwards looking at me and pointing the gun and he walking further and further but getting closer and closer and he’s in the car but I feel him breathing down my neck and he’s driving off but I smell him still here and I can’t move the woman is still in the dirt but a bunch of children run to her screaming and some people coming around from the back must be more people to shoot me run and run and run and a car horn blow and a siren and a whoosh and keep running and a bus slow down at stoplight and run and jump and land on the step people looking at me. Reach home have to grab my suitcase no my grip no my handbag damn woman you don’t need no damn handbag, grab the small suitcase under the bed the one you took to Negril with Danny, foreign white man grab the suitcase grab the suitcase r’ass bombocloth lizard lizard lizard lizard you r’asscloth so much dust under the bed no time for that now, red dress, blue skirt, blue jeans skirt, Fiorucci jeans, Shelly-Ann jeans, jeans halter top so much jeans but where you going? Calico dress no, purple dress no, velvet skirt no that was a stupid purchase say it just like your mother: purchase panties top drawer, socks who need socks, makeup who need makeup, no lipstick, rouge eye liner Jesus Christ young girl he coming with a O with a bullet in it but where you going? Toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash who have time for r’asscloth mouthwash go go go go girl pocketbook—to write what? Bible—to read what? the strapless heels, the Adidas maxi-dress that can wear anywhere, change? I should change, I should change so he can’t recognize me he following me he at the door he drive off before me so no no no no too much dress can’t run fast in dress need more pants and track shoes no I can’t . . . no . . . just stay put. Just stay in your place is not like he know you. Is not like he could ever find you. Where he going to look? But Kingston small. Jamaica small but Kingston smaller him going hunt like a dog that must be why he was sniffing me he’s going to hunt me down and shoot me like a dog tonight. Think for God’s sake Jesus Christ think. The police going call you a witness and they not going protect you. Take the Bible. No. Yes bitch take the Bible. Don’t turn on the radio, don’t turn on the TV he will find you through the TV he will smell you out and kill you, that O with a hole and a bullet in it I know. Who don’t know about the ghetto, this is why we have state of emergency because man in the ghetto can get anywhere he wants, if man from the ghetto can break into my mother’s house and beat my father and rape her then they can find anybody anywhere don’t think about them, shut them out, shut them out, shut them out.

Shut everybody out.

Shut everybody down.

Just go.

But I still smell him. I smell him now.

—Nurse? Nurse?

Nine

A
Brief History
of Seven Killings

—A Crack House, A Massacre and the Making of a Crime Dynasty

Part 3.

By Alexander Pierce

Monifah Thibodeaux meant it this time. Her mother knew she meant it because there was something final in her voice. Except she had heard that
final
before, and such is the tricky dance of somebody like Monifah, that final is fluid, final means a different thing each week and just when you think a person could not sink any lower, they fall to new depths that a poor mother could never have dreamed of. But this “meant it” somehow felt different from the others even if the stakes didn’t seem all that different. She was going to kick her habit tomorrow.

She said so to her mother, Angelina Jenkins. She repeated it to her best friend Carla, who had cut her off three years ago when she found Monifah in her bathroom with a needle stuck between her toes. She even told her ex-boyfriend Larry, who wanted to marry her once, and went as far as picking out a ring at Zales to surprise her. It was as if she had just returned from a twelve-step program and was on a mission to repair the damage done to loved ones hurt.

Monifah was going to kick tomorrow. But kick meant overcoming her self-devouring drug habit and turning back from being what her own mother called a crack ho. And with Monifah tomorrow was always a day away. She was going to kick tomorrow only two months ago. And five months before that. Seven months before that one. Sixteen months before that. But this time, tomorrow, was August 15, 1985.

August 14, 1985, Monifah had been straight for almost a week. A high
school dropout from Stuyvesant and pregnant at seventeen, she would have been a cliché’s idea of a ghetto cliché had she not complicated her own narrative so much. Dropping out of school after scoring 1900 on her SATs and staying clean for most of her pregnancy. Growing up shuffling between her mother’s apartment in Puerto Rican Bushwick and her family in Bed-Stuy and the Bronx, she was, according to her sister, hell-bent on escaping the life that fate had all but drawn up in lines with just numbers left to color.

—With just numbers left to colour? You did feel really cute when you write that, don’t?

—Boss, what him mean by straight? Him mean the gal was a fucking sodomite too?

—Ren-Dog, you think any woman not fucking you is a sodomite. One: the proper term is lesbian and two: straight here mean she leggo the coke. So my girl stop licking the crack pipe for a week.

—Zeen.

—What me want to know though, in part one you say is eleven people get kill. So how come you only write ’bout seven?

I don’t know if I should answer. Five minutes ago I told them I needed to pee and the Eubie dude said, Me not stopping you. I got up and Ren-Dog punched me square in the face and loosened my left molar. Before that, Pig Tails kicked me on the floor. Before that, Eubie told Ren-Dog to deal with me and he grabbed my shirt and ripped it off. Then somebody behind me hit me in the head and my knees hit the floor. Can’t remember when they pulled my pants off or my boots. They dragged me upstairs by my hands, making my head bump into each step, and they were laughing or shouting or screaming, I don’t know. Ren-Dog grabbed me by the neck and we’re in my bathroom and somebody laughed again and he pushed me and I tripped backways and landed in the tub and I tried to get up but slipped and he’s so fucking strong. He grabbed me by the neck again and I punched and scratched and slapped and tore at him, and somebody else just laughed and shoved me right underneath the tap and turned it on full blast. Water hit my forehead and eyes and I tried to remember not to breathe, but water got in my nose anyway and my mouth and every time I tried to scream my mouth
would fill up. I felt a boot pinning my chest down and couldn’t move my hand and the water was just blasting and punching and slapping my lips and punching my teeth and digging into my eye and in my nose and I started to choke and cough and cry and he still held me by the neck and that’s all I remember. I came to on the chair wet and in my brief and choking. Eubie threw
The New Yorker
at me and told me to read.

—I . . . I really need to pee. I really need . . .

They look at me and laugh.

—Please. Please. I need to use the bathroom.

—You just come from the bathroom, little boy.

They all laugh.

—Please. I need to—

—So piss, fool.

I’m on the stool and I’m a fucking man, I want to say I’m a fucking man and you can’t treat people like this and I . . . I want to sleep so bad and I want to stand up and I want to hold it, just to show them I can do something, but I can’t do so many things, I can’t even remember to breathe deep, and my eyes burn and the front of my brief gets wet and yellow.

—Boss, him really a piss up himself?

—What, him be six-year-old? Nasty r’ass.

—Guess him couldn’t hold it. Detention for this little boy.

They laugh. All of them but Eubie. I have to rub my eyes every few minutes because they get blurry. And I read this thing slow, because once I get to the end of the article they’re going to kill me. I can smell myself and feel my toes in my piss.

—Couldn’t find any info on the other four. Besides, seven is a good round number.

—Baby need a nappy, Ren-Dog says.

—Continue, Eubie says.

He’s walking to me again and I push back so hard I fall over. He pulls me up and I’m crying again and he says, Collect yourself, boy.

—Now continue.

—But . . . but . . . but . . . but then, but then, but then came a—

—Brethren, from the last sentence. You think we still remember it?

—I’m sor . . . I’m sorry.

—Is alright. Take control of yourself. We not going nowhere.

—She was . . . she was, according to her sister, hell-bent on escaping the life that fate had all but drawn up with just numbers left to color. But then came a boy.

“There’s always some f——boy,” her sister says. At Shelly’s Diner in Flatbush she has already cried twice in between quiet sips of her ice cream soda. Short, chubby and—

—Why you have to describe her so ghetto?

—Huh? I don’t unders—

—Short, chubby, and I remember the rest, “dark with hair that looked like the extensions were just removed.” What the fuck, white boy, you think she going like to read that?

—It’s what—

—It’s what, what?

He was right behind me and I was trying not to shake. My face hurt every single time I opened my mouth.

—How you like if me write “Alexander Pierce step out of the bathroom having shaked the piss from his one-inch penis.”