What They Found (8 page)

“I guess not,” Mama Evans said. “Some men are just funny that way.”

I
had slept badly, waking every few minutes to check the time. When I did sleep I dreamt of being lost in a large bus terminal, running from gate to gate trying to find my bus to somewhere. I was exhausted when morning finally came. I told myself that the strain of the last few weeks would soon be over, one way or the other. I was exhausted as I sat up. My head felt heavy in my hands and I wanted to lie down again, to sleep.

Snatches of conversation, all about the case, repeated themselves in my head. What had Frank Havens said? Oh, yes, that there was an outside chance that Donald would get probation.

“We made a good case for it,” he said. His voice was high and tense. “Once we had Donald in the rehabilitation
program things started to look up. The judge can see he’s working on his case.”

My brother was eighteen, two years younger than me, but somehow he seemed older. Our parents had spent the last few years trying to keep him out of trouble, watching in vain as he slid from small problems into the drug scene and, finally, an arrest for armed robbery.

Mama pushed the door open and held up a mug of coffee. I smiled.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“I’m scared,” Mama said, sitting next to me on the bed. The sunlight through the venetian blinds fell in diagonals across her lap. “You can never tell about these things. He can get as much as twelve years. I can’t imagine him being in jail for that long.”

“We’ll go into the courtroom today as a family,” I said. “And we’ll show the judge he has support. Mr. Havens said that sometimes the judge will allow the family to speak.”

Mama rubbed my hands and said that she had to get dressed. “Donald went to Barbara’s house to get his suit.”

That was a good sign. Just last night he had been surly and going on about how the Man wasn’t going to cut him a break because he was black and he didn’t need to dress for the occasion. I had grown as angry as he was. Our folks had been putting up with him for the past few years, getting him out of trouble, begging people not to prosecute him for the petty crimes he committed. They
had put up all of their savings to get him out on bail when he was arrested on the stickup charge.

Donald and a friend, Kwame Brown, had borrowed a gun and stuck up a gas station in Brooklyn. Kwame was the driver. When Donald ran back to the car with the money Kwame had panicked and taken off even before Donald was into the car. He had fallen on the sidewalk, and the gun had discharged. Luckily no one had been hurt. Kwame had been stopped two blocks down the road for speeding and had been arrested when the report of the robbery was sent out over the police network. Donald was arrested when he got to Barbara’s, his girlfriend’s, house. The robbery had netted them less than fifty dollars and now he was facing a possible twelve-year sentence. Kwame was pleading not guilty but Donald’s lawyer thought that Donald would do best copping a plea and not putting the state through the trial.

“They have him on videotape,” he had said with a shrug.

This wasn’t the life I had imagined for myself, or for my brother. There had been a time when Donald had played high school basketball and was hoping for an athletic scholarship. We were going to be the first ones in our family to finish college and had made glorious plans for all the great things we were going to do with the stacks of money we made. Those days seemed so far away.

The sentencing was scheduled for eleven and we waited in the crowded corridor with several other defendants,
their families, and a handful of lawyers. The court clerk came out and called people in as their cases came up.

“Where is he?” Mr. Havens looked at Mama.

I took out my cell and dialed his number.

“Yeah, who’s this?” Donald’s voice was deep, and raspy.

“It’s Brenda,” I said. “Where are you? Your case is coming up soon!”

“I ain’t figured what I’m going to do,” he said.

“You haven’t …” I handed the phone to the lawyer. He looked at me and turned away with the phone cradled to the side of his face.

Mama grabbed my hand. Her eyes were panic-filled. I looked over at Daddy, uncomfortable in his blue double-breasted suit, and watched him turn quickly and fix his eyes on a portrait of some ex-mayor.

They were both beaten down. Numb. There had been too many times of getting up in the middle of the night to go to station houses or hospitals or wherever Donald turned up, too many prayers for God’s saving grace and too many loans to pay lawyers.

Mr. Havens gave me the cell phone back and said that he had to speak to the court clerk. He went through the heavy wooden doors and Mama asked me what was happening.

“Donald is playing some kind of game, I guess. He said he didn’t know what he was going to do.”

“Didn’t Mr. Havens tell him that he might get probation?” Mama asked.

“He knows that but he also knows he might go to jail,”
I said, immediately sorry I had made the remark. Mama didn’t need truth, she needed compassion. “I think Mr. Havens is in there trying to get it straightened out now.”

She was crying. I knew she would cry.

Mr. Havens came out and beckoned to us. “The judge is going to sentence him now,” he said. “He’s somewhere downtown. Said he’s not coming. Nothing I can do except ask for mercy.”

The court clerk called for my brother, pronouncing his name carefully and making a big show of looking at all the black men standing behind the wooden railing. Mr. Havens stepped forward and said that he represented Donald.

“Your Honor, Donald Griffin, unfortunately, is addicted to drugs and the family has been working with him trying to get him the medical attention he needs to beat this thing. This is a hardworking family, Judge. The father works for the city, the mother works, and his sister works and goes to college.

“He has been accepted into a rehabilitation program as the papers indicate. This is basically a good kid who’s caught up in the drug scene.”

“You also telling me he didn’t show up today?” The judge, a roundish black man with rimless glasses, looked over toward us.

“Sir, Donald Griffin’s family is here and would like to speak on his behalf—”

“Where is your client, Counselor?” the judge demanded.

“Right now he’s sick and confused, Your Honor,” Mr. Havens said. “I think he’s having detox problems.”

“He’s got more problems than that,” the judge said. “I’m going to give him a provisional sentence of thirty-six months and I’m going to suspend it for thirty days. If he doesn’t show up within that time you’re going to have to deal with his detox problems on your appeal. Next case!”

Mama tried to say something to the judge, but couldn’t get the words out. Mr. Havens put his arm around her as we left the courtroom. He signaled me to stay behind when he left them at the train station.

“Look, Brenda, I can’t stay with this case,” he said. “Your parents don’t have the money to pay me, and I can’t afford to stay without pay. There are some good public defenders and I’ll talk to a couple to see if one of them will take the case.”

“You think he’s going to end up in jail?”

His head bobbed from side to side as he searched for an answer. “I hope not.”

He told me that Donald’s not showing up forfeited the two thousand dollars my parents had put up for his bail. I wanted to go find my brother and beat his face in.

I asked myself, as I had a thousand times, what had gone wrong. It seemed that we had been doing well as a family, had been chugging along with clear goals and a straight path. I believed in the goals we’d set and the paths. I was going to be an accountant and he was going to be a
physical therapist. That was how life was supposed to work for us.

I got home and Mama was sitting in the living room with the lights off. I turned them on and asked if she wanted me to make coffee.

“Did he call you?” Her voice was merely a whisper.

“No.”

“I should have told him to stay here last night,” she said.

“Mama, what Donald does is on him,” I said. “It’s not what you should have done.”

“Your father’s angry. I wish he wouldn’t be angry.”

“He has a right,” I said.

Mama looked up quickly. I knew she wanted to see what I was feeling, if I was angry with my brother, too. The truth was that I couldn’t be angry with him because I didn’t know what was going on in his life. Disappointed. I was deeply disappointed. Whatever my brother did tore at the fabric of our family. Dragged it down. Made it bleed. I called him twice without getting an answer. The first time I left a message. The second time I cut the phone off when it clicked to the message mode.

We had all grown old in the last year. Mama’s smooth brown face had begun to wrinkle, and little lines extending from the corners of her mouth had ruined her famous smile. Now I asked her to try to get some rest and she said she would.

I put on the coffee and sat at the kitchen table trying to think of what to do. What I knew, what I absolutely knew, was that there was nothing I could think of that Donald couldn’t screw up. He hadn’t always been that way. There had been a time when he was bubbling with promise and a joy just to be around. Family life had centered around him. Daddy had worked with him in Little League to teach him how to hit line drives and I helped him study to get into a good high school. Then he became a stranger, and I couldn’t lie across his bed and talk to him for hours about anything, like I used to. Then came the drugs. It was as if someone had come to our house and had removed the plug that held in that sense of togetherness and joy that made us a family.

With the drugs came a whole new way of talking. Words like “tracks” and “possession” found their way into the living room. Words like “warrant” and “bond” were on papers my parents were signing on the kitchen table. The family bankbooks, which once had been hidden away with so much pride, were now kept within reach.

I decided to go to Donald’s girlfriend’s house. I had nothing new to say, nothing new to argue, but I took my jacket from the back of the chair and headed toward the door.

Barbara lived on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, between 134th and 133rd, in a five-story building they
hadn’t gotten around to rehabilitating yet. Two older men sat in the vestibule playing checkers on a board set up on a folding chair. There was a small baseball bat leaning against the wall and I knew they had appointed themselves protectors of the building, at least for the day.

“Hello, young lady.” The dark-skinned brother looked up from the board. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m looking for …” I realized I didn’t know Barbara’s last name. “My brother has a girlfriend in this building. Barbara something.”

“Your brother a young man? Got a tattoo?”

“No, that ain’t her brother,” said the second man—he had once been big, but now his wide shoulders were betrayed by a thin, old-man neck and legs. “Her brother is that boy always got a starched shirt on. Go with that girl up there in thirty-one-G. Fifth floor. Name is Ronald— something like that.”

“Donald,” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if he’s up there, but you can go on and take a look.”

The elevator was slow and predictably foul-smelling, as if to warn anyone coming into the building not to expect too much. I wondered how children felt coming downstairs in the morning on their way to school.

When the car stopped on the fifth floor the door only opened partway—I had to push it open. The hallway was bright, with naked lightbulbs glaring from the ceiling.
Someone had put children’s drawings on the wall facing the elevator with masking tape. I liked that.

As I knocked on 31G I didn’t know what to say to Donald. Tell him that Mama was crying? Or that his father didn’t need any more problems?

Donald opened the door with the chain on it, peeping with one eye into the hallway. The door closed as he took off the chain, then opened.

“Yo, what’s up?”

My anger made me feel good. Who was he to come up with some hip-hop gesture of cool?

“Can I come in?”

He moved away from the door with a half shrug.

The place was a mess. I came into a narrow hallway strewn with old newspapers and a few articles of clothing. The kitchen was dirty. A row of empty jars next to the stained sink probably replaced their glassware. A small wisp of steam escaped from the teakettle on the stove.

“You want tea?” Donald asked.

“Sure.”

He took out two cups and placed them on the table. He put a teabag in each cup as the kettle began to whistle.

“You remember we used to have tea when we were living on Edgecombe?” he asked.

I nodded. In the summertime, when our parents went to work, we’d pretend we were grown-ups and make tea and imitate our parents’ conversations. Ages ago.

“Make believe I’ve already said all the things that you expect from me,” I said. “Make believe I’ve already screamed about you not showing up in court this morning. I can’t really get into it all again.”

“I got to take Barbara to the hospital,” he said. “She’s sick.”

“Glad you’re thinking of her,” I said.

He shot me a glance and I could see his jaw tighten and relax as he looked away. He drank his tea quickly, taking small sips, breathing deeply between each as if he were doing some sort of yoga exercise. When he had finished he stood and asked if I was going to wait until he got back.

“I’m taking her over to Harlem Hospital,” he said.

Donald went into the bedroom and I could hear him talking softly. He was calling her name from time to time, even in the middle of a sentence, as if she were not paying attention, or falling asleep. I got up and went into the room.

Seeing her on the bed, the sheet twisted around one dark leg, her head bent forward, shocked me. She was having a drug reaction. I went to her quickly and put my hand on her forehead. She was warm. I shook her gently and she moved one arm. “Let’s get her out of here!” I said.

Barbara was naked and I put panties on her as he dialed the emergency number. We tried to get some jeans
on her, then settled for an old skirt and a blouse we found at the bottom of her closet. I asked him how long she had been like this and he said he didn’t know.