A Deeper Love Inside (35 page)

“Mr. Sharp, what if I say, it’s okay if we talk about some things but not other things? What if I make up a sign like this . . .” I manipulated my fingers. “And anytime I flash this sign, it means I don’t want to answer that question.” I smiled. “So when you see it, you don’t ask that no more,” I said softly.

He laughed a hearty laugh. Linda began laughing, too. I wondered what she was laughing at when she always spoke only in Spanish. I decided she was just happy he was happy. It was one day of seeing him as a man and not a boss. I didn’t know if it was her first time like this or not.

“What if I don’t agree to your sign language?” he asked.

“Well, Mr. Sharp, you’re a nice man. I don’t want to lie to you.”

“That’s the Ricky Santiaga I know. You don’t have to tell me you’re his daughter,” he said.

I flashed the sign.

• • •

In Esmeralda’s Beauty Salon, a few doors down from Big Johnnie’s, I was having my hair done for the first time since lockdown. Used to Siri or me doing it myself, I felt a different feeling when Esmeralda
touched me. The warm water in my hair, her fingers massaging my scalp, clearing away the shampoo suds, and even the way she kept securing the plastic around the front of my body so my clothes wouldn’t get wet felt unfamiliar.
No one touches me,
I thought to myself. While the shampoo bubbled up in my hair, some tears did flow from my eyes, even though they were closed while enjoying the feeling of the wash.

The ladies in Esmeralda’s liked me a lot for saving them and some of their customers from getting those parking tickets.

“Who did your nails,
mami
?” one of ’em asked.

“I did,” I said, but really it was Siri who had the patience to paint on unique designs, blow them dry and wait and apply a top coat. Holding a mirror and showing me all the angles on my hairstyle, three beauticians stood still for some seconds admiring my new look.

“Que linda!”
they said.

When I went to pay, Esmeralda refused my money.

“No,
mami
!” she said. “Today for you is free,” she whispered while walking me out the front door of her shop. She wouldn’t even take the tip. I knew that was big. Sometimes I sat inside their shop when it was raining. I’d be flipping through fashion magazines. Their tip game was crazy! They started with an empty clear jug each morning, and counted out a bunch of ones, fives, and tens and a few twenties every evening. I was plotting on getting in good enough with them for me to become their “hair wash only girl.” I thanked Esmeralda four or five times. She stood outside her shop door watching me walk down the block for some seconds.

As my feet moved light and comfortably in my new Nikes, my legs in my Guess jeans, my breasts in my new North Face jacket, my new Gucci bag on my shoulder, I dropped my last quarters of the day in the meters, and passed The Golden Needle on Mr. Sharp’s day off.
I admired my manicured natural nails, clear polish with a razor-thin purple line across the tips, a la French manicure. As I waved at Linda, my mind realized that Esmeralda and them had probably heard from Big Johnnie, or one of his customers, that my mom had died. No wonder everyone was treating me extra-extra special. Every person, the men and the ladies, knew that the loss of a mother was the worse feeling and possibility. Only Mr. Sharp knew the real truth, the truth I never confirmed for him.

As I walked, I thought about how every day I feel the same sadness a child whose mother had actually died would feel, I believed. If it were not for Siri’s singing and beautiful humming, I don’t know how I would ever be okay enough to make it through each day. Even in lockdown, laying awake in my bed at night in the C-dorm, I felt like I had a hole in my heart. But at least then, I was still surrounded by plenty of other little crazy girls who each had a hole in their hearts, too. In the underground beneath Big Johnnie’s floor, I got real familiar with extreme and continuous loneliness. Death and loneliness seemed the same to me. At least they had to be cousins, I thought to myself.

For two back-to-back Fridays, Elisha had not shown up to meet me at the organic market. The note I left for him would always be removed by the time I returned. I’d post another one each time. This Friday I was hoping I’d be lucky. Since a few things had begun going my way for the last twenty-four hours, and since I did not have to spend one dollar of my savings on these new clothes, I thought it was a possibility that Elisha would be there this Friday, and he was.

Chapter 33

“My mother liked you,” was the first thing he said when I walked up. He handed me a copper-gold box of chocolates. More importantly, it was Godiva, the kind of chocolate Poppa used to give me one piece at a time, to prove a point.

I smiled. Then he handed me another gift, a round wooden box. I opened it. It was an assortment of olives and cubes of cheese.

“I wanted to give you some options,” he said. Then a bright smile began beaming naturally across his face. His teeth were perfect, like the day after a person gets their braces tooken off. I smiled again.

“I like her, too. Is she inside the market?” I asked him. He took back the wooden box, pulled a tiny shopping bag from his North Face pocket and put the wooden box inside and held it for me.

“No, do you need to go in there?” he asked.

“
Uh-un,
” I said as I opened my Gucci backpack that I carried like a handbag, and placed the box of chocolates inside.

“Ivory, what do you like?” he asked. Him saying my name made me tingle some, even though it wasn’t my real name. I don’t know why I was tingling.

“Music,” I answered softly.

“Speak up!” I heard Siri’s voice in my ear. “Don’t turn all soft just because he’s a boy,” she said.

“But you’re soft,” I said to Siri.

“Huh?” Elisha said.

“Do you like music?” I asked him.

“Everyone likes music,” he said. “My mother started me on guitar lessons when I was five. I’m twelve now, so I guess you could say I play pretty good.”

“I dance,” I said.

“All girls say that,” he said.

“I’m not the same,” I told him. “As them . . .,” I added softly.

“I know,” he said. “That’s what my mother said about you.”

“So did you come to meet me cause your mother said so?” I asked him.

“Yep,” he answered with full confidence. “C’mon, let’s walk,” he said.

“Do you like sports?”

“Not really,” I said. “You?”

“I ball, but it’s not really my thing,” he said.

“What’s your thing?” I asked.

“Movies,” he said.

“You want to go to the movies?” I asked, a little excited at the idea. I hadn’t been to one in more than four years.

“No, I want to make movies,” he said.

“Oh, that’s dope,” I said, and then I turned a little quiet, imagining.

“You seem like you might make a good actress,” he said, staring straight ahead. I was just trying to figure out if that was a compliment or an insult.

“Why you say that?” I asked.

“I told my mother that you
acted like
you accidentally pushed that shopping cart into me,” he smiled half way.

“I did not,” I said, swiftly switching suddenly fierce.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You would make a good actress, because you made my mother believe you!”

I stopped walking and turned towards him, getting red.

“Why would I do that!” My attitude burst out. He laughed.

“See, that seems more like the real you,” he said calmly.

“You don’t know me!” I told him.

“Not yet,” he said. “But because I’m gonna be a movie director, I’m good at watching people.” He held his hand up and gestured like he was looking at me through the lens of a camera.

“This is my school,” he said. We were standing in front of Brooklyn Boys Academy. Then he pointed diagonally across the street. “That’s my house, right there.” It was a Brooklyn brownstone. He pointed again. “That’s the church my mom goes to. The organic market is right back there.” He pointed in the direction we just walked from.

It must be easy, I thought, for him to feel so free and relaxed that
he’d easily say
I live here
,
I go to school here
,
this is my plan for life.
I wouldn’t and couldn’t. But I admired that he could.

“Your turn,” he said.

“For what?” I asked.

“You live where? You’re twelve or thirteen? Your family?” he asked.

“I live way down there,” I pointed. “I walked twenty-eight blocks to meet you. I go to the organic market because I was taught that non-organic fruits and vegetables were sprayed with poison. I want my momma to eat well. It’s too expensive for me, the organic market, but I shop there for Momma anyway. I’m a year younger than you, but I feel older than I am. I just moved to Brooklyn. Most of my friends are age forty and up. So I’m so happy to meet somebody young like me.”

He busted out in boy laughter. “That’s crazy! Most of your friends are forty and up?” he questioned.

“It’s true,” I said, thinking of Big Johnnie, Mr. Sharp, Esmeralda, the flower lady, and Bernard the Butcher. Now I was laughing, too.

I felt nervous when Elisha opened the door to his school and walked me inside. He knocked on another door and then two boys came out.

“Stephen and Maurice,” Elisha introduced them to me.

We four left the school together. We met up with two girls, two blocks down from there.

The girls, Atiyah and Karla, looked me up and down. After I was introduced and said hello, I didn’t glance their way or feel fucked-up because of them. Today, as far as looks go, I was fucking flawless except for the big hole in my heart, and they couldn’t see that.

“What school do you go to?” Atiyah asked.

“I just moved to Brooklyn. I didn’t register yet,” I told them.

“Private or public,” Karla asked.

“What?” I said.

“Are you going to a private school like rich boys like Elisha attend? Or a public school like ours?” Karla pushed.

“Mind your business,” Elisha jumped in. “She didn’t decide yet.”

I liked him more when he said that.

“Where are we going?” Atiyah asked.

“There’s a party at our school tonight at eight. Wanna check it out?” Karla invited.

“Nope,” Elisha said swiftly. He seemed to say whatever he thought without hesitation.

“Ah, y’all are punks!” Atiyah said.

“We not ready to die for you two,” Elisha said.

“On the strength,” Stephen and Maurice said. I noticed now that they were both dressed in their school blazers. Elisha was not.

“I got an audition in the morning. I don’t want no bullet holes in my body.” Elisha and the guys laughed. An audition? I thought to myself. I wondered what that was all about. I didn’t ask, though.

We didn’t do much, but I could tell they’d rather do nothing together than doing nothing alone. It was October. The cold came creeping in but wasn’t full blast yet. We walked around pointing out which cars we wanted to drive when we each got old enough to drive. Atiyah chose a kitted-up Corvette. Karla chose the Cadillac. Maurice was content with the Pathfinder, but Stephen wanted the Suburban and said he would run Maurice off the road. Elisha waited to make his choice. Then he said he wanted the hunter-green Range Rover with wooden steering wheel, rims, and the buttercream-soft leather interior with the evergreen piping that he just saw.

“And you?” Elisha asked me.

“I didn’t see one I liked yet,” I said.

“You must know what you like. Tell me.”

“A Porsche,” I said. He smiled. “Nobody on this block could afford one,” I added, smiling.

Downtown Brooklyn, Karla wanted cheesecake. I didn’t cause I never had it before. Me and Elisha sat outside of Junior’s.

“Let me see your book bag?” I asked him.

“For what?”

“I wanna look at your books, see how far behind I am. Or maybe I’m way ahead,” I teased, but I didn’t mean it. I believed I was too far back to catch up. In prison classes I was too angry to learn. At NanaAnna’s, I couldn’t stop learning. Now that I knew for sure I wouldn’t be going to no more school, I had been telling myself it
didn’t matter. As long as I could read and write, count, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, I knew enough to not get beat outta my paper.

Elisha unzipped his bag and handed it to me. “You sure you looking for books?” he joked without laughing or smiling. I didn’t answer him.

The first book I pulled out was
Vocabulary.
He smiled. “I gotta test on that on Monday.”

“Are you ready for it?” I asked him.

“Why, you gonna be my tutor?” he asked.

“I’m okay with words,” I said, feeling challenged but not confident.

“My school is no joke. The words in there, we wouldn’t ever use in no conversation,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he thought I was dumb. I was sure that I didn’t want him to think I was dumb. I couldn’t like anyone who thought that way about me. We definitely couldn’t be friends.

“What page?” I asked him.

He took the book from me, flipped some pages and said, “Right here, page 34. I gotta know the definitions and use the words in sentences.” I looked at the first word and the definition his book gave:

Anomaly—a deviation from the norm, unusual.

I had never heard that word before. As I scanned down the word list on page 34, I felt a pinch of panic. Nothing looked familiar. I was behind, too behind to catch up. More than that, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of him.

“I told you. Forget it. Let’s do something else,” he said.

“Anomaly,” I said aloud. “Use it in a sentence.” I reversed the challenge onto him. He paused then smiled, his white teeth perfect. I could tell he was thinking.

“Some people consider my parents’ marriage an anomaly, because my mother is a Wall Street lawyer, and my father works for UPS,” he said.

I thought about it swiftly. I guess he used it right. The word really just means unusual. I guess he’s saying his mother earns more money than his father. To me, that was unusual.