Insurrections (12 page)

We always pull through. You're always predicting the worst and we always pull through. It's never as bad as you say it is.

You don't even know how we pull through.

Silence.

You want me to take it back? Fine, I'll take it back.

It's too late; you can't take it back now. You already gave it to her like a fool. You'll just be disappointing her. God, Robert, you apply for two jobs and then give up; got the nerve to spend the money I make on expensive gifts. I don't understand you. It's just like the garage. You never think anything through. All you had to do was apolo—

Could we not talk about that? I'm done talking about that.

Silence.

I don't know how we're going to get out of this one. We can't live on that chessboard, Robert. Did you even try to think this through? I'll tell you this, Robert, you're not going to have Bobby out of school on his birthday so he can grow up to be like you.

Whatever—

You're not a man, Robert. You don't. . . .

Think
.

At least, I believe she said
think
, but I can't be sure because the door slammed on that word.

A moment later my door cracked and a sliver of light expanded into the room.

Baby, I heard my father's voice say. The gentle tinkling of wooden chess pieces bouncing against one another accompanied his voice. Baby, are you awake? Want to play chess with Daddy?

I pretended to be asleep. My bed shifted and creaked. My father sat on the edge by my feet. He said nothing for a while, sitting still. He sighed. He whispered something angrily. Before long he was taking short, tortured breaths and whimpering like an infant or a wounded horse. I cracked open my eyes and peered at him through slits. A glint of hallway
light landed on half his face; the other half sat draped in darkness. A dampness slicked his cheeks. I burrowed my head between pillow and sheet and tightly shut my eyes.

Neither of us said anything about that night as the days passed. The marble chess set sat in the living room, our last game frozen on its face. Both my father and I barely acknowledged its presence most of the time. Every week, though, he removed the pieces, cleaned the dust from the board, and set them back just as we had left them that night.

One day it sparkled under the ugly yellow apartment lights while I sat across from it doubled over by an aching in my belly. My mother had cooked spicy wings for dinner; maybe that was the cause. I tried to ignore the pain by sitting on the scratchy brown couch and writing in my journal. As I wrote, I felt a new wetness between my legs. And there it was, a streak of brownish-red blood staining my underwear.

My mother knelt over the bathtub washing my underpants in warm soapy water, talking to me about babies and blood and all the ways my world would change. Most of it passed over me, disappearing into the universe.

A few days later I went to the park by myself, though my mother now forbid it and my father sided with her, saying, What are you looking at me for? You heard your mother. I slid into a seat across from Manny. He slowly took my pieces, finally checkmating me after the tall brown-skinned woman showed up. Manny walked off with her, leaving me with a dimpled smile and a wink as he had done before. I shrugged, sitting there by myself wondering if all that talk of my world changing was just another one of those empty things adults say to children.

My father barely spoke during this time. He usually disappeared after dinner, and I would hear him return late at night, taking heavy steps, loudly banging into furniture and cursing in pain. In the darkness I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about games I watched in the park or something else entirely. He would be gone again in the morning when I awoke for school. In the afternoon there was my father, sitting on the couch, red-eyed with a green bottle of beer in his hand.

The day we returned to the board was an unusual one. It must have been a school holiday, because my brother and I were both home, but
my mother wasn't there. I remember my father's coarse hands gripping a folded newspaper to his face as I ate soggy cereal. His hands made me think of his loss in the park.

After I had cleared the table and washed the dishes, I spread the crumpled chess mat on the table next to the marble board. Without saying a word to my father, I set up the pieces, both black and white. My father put down the newspaper and approached the table cautiously. He suggested I be white and started to take a seat before the black pieces, but I shook my head and spun the mat so that the white pieces sat before him.

We stared at the evolving board, barely speaking, feeling for the fallen pieces almost as if they were dead family. My father made a mistake and grunted angrily. One of his bishops went down, and his king stood exposed.

Who taught you a move like that? my father asked. I was too deep in concentration to respond.

He made a helpless move and hid a crestfallen brow behind a false smile.

I imagined my father's mind racing, cataloging everything that had ever tumbled down around him. I put my hand on a bishop, my would-be assassin, and thought of my father's heights when he won, how he galloped around. The depths of his despair at losing, I expected, would be equal to the peaks. He'd mope about, his face fallen and miserable, his posture stooped as if his back ached. I took my hand from the piece and leaned back in deliberation. He ran his left hand over his cheek and his upper lip as a sort of nervous gesture.

My bishop moved to an out-of-the-way square where it died at the hands of one of my father's pawns, and my father chastised me for missing an opportunity to take the game.

It's not over, I said. That's all part of the plan.

His tight jaw eased. His eyes danced with life, and his down-turned mouth became a straight line.

I inched a pawn forward, anticipating that moment when it would reach the other side and take the rank of queen. We went back and forth trading pieces. My queen fell. The pawn I had been grooming fell, and I inched another one forward a single square at a time. My father's moves were now of little interest to me as I eyed that determined black pawn. If it became a queen, I could still pin his king in three or four moves. I
watched his spare pieces as he studied the board. He angled them into position, maneuvering his bishop and a pawn to kill my king. Doubling back, I blocked him. He made another move, and I focused again on my pawn.

It danced to the last square, transforming into royalty, that most powerful lady of the board.

And as I smiled at the pawn's triumph, my father used a knight and a rook to seal my king's fate. He slapped his hands together and rocketed to his feet, announcing his checkmate with a shriek while he paraded around the table laughing and applauding. I gave the victor the slightest nod and tipped over my dead king.

The man walking toward me stretched his hand out as we crossed the street. I shook it and kept walking, as I had never seen him before.

Juba, he said. Boy, Juba, I ain't seen you in a long time. Juba woo-wee.

Because my name is not Juba, I was content to keep moving. The man stopped right in the middle of busy Carroll Street, still gripping my hand. A money green Acura turned sharply in front of us. I dipped and jerked to avoid being struck.

Are you crazy? I asked as we made it to the sidewalk.

Sorry, Juba, man. It's just that I ain't seen you in so long. It's good to see you, man. You still up to your old tricks?

I had an idea what sort of tricks he might be talking about. The man looked old, but it was an artificial old. The kind of old that seizes a person who abuses himself. That sort of old comes from too many late nights. The old of hard liquor and worse. He was scarred in the face and on the arms, but also on his wrinkled hands. He wasn't the sort of man you saw around here very often.

I'm sorry, buddy, I said, but I'm not Juba.

Stop messing around, Juba. You always was a trickster. Stop playing games, man. You still hustling?

Sir, I'm hustling to catch this bus. Other than that I don't hustle, and I really have to go.

I really did have to go. I had a job interview at an accounting firm downtown in an hour, and I had timed everything perfectly. If I caught the 12:45 p.m. B58, I would make it there exactly fifteen minutes early. I had performed a test run the day before and another one a day before
that. This was my second interview, and I could tell the woman who ran the office liked me. All I had to do was show up. Since the layoff I had been out of work for several months. In another couple weeks my unemployment checks would be at an end.

There was something odd in this man's smile, perhaps something in the webs of wrinkles at his cheeks.

Juba, you something else, boy. The man let out a wheezy, whining squeal. Man, I'm trying to buy a dub. Can you help me out with that?

A dub?

Yeah, a dub. Remember when you used to be selling nicks down by Riverhall? But then one day you said since times is hard it's dubs or better.

I have no idea what you're talking about, I said. I think you have the wrong person.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a $5 bill. Here, buddy, I said. Go get yourself a sandwich or coffee.

The man stared at my hand, curling his lip in disgust. Man, I don't need your money, he said. I'm tryna buy some green.

I turned and started to walk when the man grabbed at my elbow.

Hey, Juba, man, he said. Stop playing games, all right?

I thought I heard his voice change. I snatched my arm from him and nearly tumbled backward, but I caught myself. I hadn't been in a fistfight since I was a young man at District Central mixing it up with guys from the Southside who thought I was a punk because I lived on the Northside. I wondered if I even remembered how to fight. I balled my fists and stepped backward a bit. He was big guy, and his hands seemed built for strangulation. I used to be so skinny back then, nearly frail. In college I lifted weights to give myself some definition, but it didn't work, so I stopped. It was important not to get wrapped in his massive arms, because then I'd never break free. I had to strike first, and then strike again and keep moving if I had any chance. All that was jumping the gun, though. I had no intention of getting into a fight.

He appeared to be looking over my shoulder. I glanced back to see three men approaching me with guns drawn. Confused, I raised my hands over my head. They wore badges around their necks and light black jackets. There was one to my left with a puffy pink face and a brown mustache. He appeared tense. I looked from man to man quickly, disoriented by their shouting. I put my hands out in front of me, but I wasn't sure if
that's what I was supposed to do. They kept calling me Juba. All I had to do was explain that I didn't know this man and that our very conversation was a simple misunderstanding. If only they would stop shouting.

Juba, get down on your knees and put your hands to your head, the man with the puffy pink face said.

I . . . Am . . . Not . . . Juba! I screamed it as loudly as I could. You can check my ID. My name is not Juba.

I became aware of each and every one of my movements, each individual heartbeat and blink. I slowly moved my arms to reach for my pocket where my IDs were, but that seemed to make them more agitated. They screamed at me, and I could barely understand them. I looked over at the man who had started all this confusion. They didn't seem to be troubling him. It dawned on me that he was with them, perhaps an undercover or a neighborhood snitch.

I fell to my knees as they asked. The officer with the brown mustache shoved me face down so that my cheek pressed flat against the sidewalk. One of them wrenched my arms together behind my back and pinched cuffs tightly around my wrists.

For some reason, even with all my attention on my movements—both involuntary and otherwise—I didn't realize that I had been yelling, screaming all along:
I am not Juba! I am not Juba! I am not Juba!
They had been telling me to shut up, but I kept screaming,
I am not Juba!
as I lay there on the ground. I suppose I had said it so much that it lost all meaning. It was the truth, though. I am not Juba.

They didn't release me from the police station until after midnight. All I got was a halfhearted apology from some detective who remained unconvinced that I wasn't Juba. They showed me photographs of myself leaving my condo, driving, going to catch the bus, and meeting with family members on the Southside. One officer slid me a cup of coffee after it was established that I wasn't Juba. He told me to watch my back because Juba is still out there. I had only a vague sense of what he meant. But they had to let me go, as there was no evidence that I was Juba.

Still, no one told me who Juba was or what Juba was supposed to have done. For all I knew, I was uncomfortably close to lying strapped to a gurney with chemicals streaming into my veins.

I called the accounting firm in the morning to explain my absence.
The office manager told me she was sorry, but they filled the position when I didn't show. She asked why I didn't call, and I couldn't make up something fast enough. I turned off the telephone and threw it across the living room of my condo. It slapped against the wall and nicked it.

I thought about suing. I invited my cousin over for a drink that night. He was a few years older than me and ran a private law firm downtown. I would have offered to go to dinner, or at the very least a happy hour or something, but thanks to the CRPD I was still unemployed.

My cousin always made an impression. He stood tall as a professional basketball player and had the sturdy build of one. Women seemed to like him. Guys wanted to hang around him. I wanted to hang around him, but I was always too broke to keep up. When he came to my door, he wore a sports jacket over a white shirt with thin brown vertical lines and a stiff, stiff collar.

He slapped my hand and held it firmly, pulling me into him and embracing me tightly. My cousin often went overboard with his handshakes and hugs. It was like something out of the seventies.