Once I paid March’s rent, I bought Trevor a new ball, the ones that are so fancy they paint them black. Gave me a little hope back when he sprung right off the soles of his shoes and it looked like he might’ve just been happy enough to dunk his whole body back into the shit pool. His smile makes it easier to tell myself it’s worth it when I hear a siren and a new part of my body knots; a whole rope wrapping around each of my ribs, like my bones preparing to be broken. Lately, the only way I can get through a night with the men is by taking shots and trying to sink into the dizziness of it, so I don’t see what they’re doing, so my body doesn’t know what’s going on enough to fear it. I don’t know if it works, but I know that when I wake up the next morning, I’m still alive and Trevor is still waiting for me to walk him to the bus stop and, at this point, that’s enough.
Tony keeps trying to apologize for his brooding and talk me out of doing what I’m doing, like I have that much of a choice. Funeral day would be a reminder of the bloodstains in the backseat of all their cars, when they’re just a little too rough, and I can’t handle standing next to Alé in a funeral home I know I am edging closer to never leaving. Alé can’t make me remember what it was like before the statues started moving, before I was the girl who wore a man’s skin and not just his clothes.
On the days when none of the uniformed men call, during the stretches of time when I start to think I am free, eating a meal that doesn’t send me right back into the nausea, I start planning a way to live without cops or sex, maybe returning to Bottle Caps and begging Ruth to give me just a couple hours of work.
This is one of those days. Actually, it’s the seventh day they haven’t called and I don’t have any more money in reserve. My insides are starting to slosh again and I know I gotta find a way to make more money, cops or not. Today, I swing by La Casa Taquería on the way to Bottle Caps. It’s not quite lunchtime yet and the place is sprinkled with folks. I spot Alé at a table taking an order and when she looks up and sees me, I catch the way her eyes widen. I stick my hands in the pockets of Daddy’s old corduroy jacket, the only one that Uncle Ty didn’t take with him, and walk up to Alé.
She finishes the order and takes me into her arms. “Hey,” she whispers in my ear, mid-hug, and it’s so simple, but there’s something about it that warms me up.
“Hey.” I haven’t seen Alé since the first cop found me and I don’t know how to stand in front of her like this without feeling like I’ve got a layer of shame on me, like when she looks at me she can’t possibly see anything but their handprints.
“What you doing here? Been a minute.”
I nod.
“On my way to Bottle Caps and thought you might wanna walk with me?”
She looks at the floor, smiling, then back up at me. “Yeah, okay.” She begins to nod, glancing around the room and flagging down one of her aunts to tell them she’s heading out. “Lemme grab my board,” she says to me, squeezing my arm.
Alé comes racing back down the stairs a couple minutes later, her forehead glowing and damp. “Let’s go,” she says, following me out.
Alé loops her arm around my shoulders and pulls me in, lifting her skateboard into the air and sighing. “Ain’t it beautiful?” she shouts into the open air, and I twist my head around to take it all in. The construction still lines the alley, bang-banging wood into more wood, and I swear it’s like the city is spiraling around us, skyline popping up a glorious portrait of windows and wheels that don’t gotta be as large as they are. Alé’s arm around me makes me wanna skip, lift my knees to the sky, the way we sway together.
Oakland doesn’t operate on a grid. We wind here. The streets pulling us closer to the bay, to where salt melts with street, and bikes turn to trucks that moan and thrust forward at every light. Then they push us back toward the buildings, where shouts line the perimeter of the sidewalks and, with Alé here, I don’t bother trying to decipher what they’re saying or who they’re saying it to. Just let the noises scatter, like chunks of asphalt out the road. I find my favorite murals, new swirls added to the backgrounds, bordered in tags.
“I been missing you,” Alé says.
“Yeah, me too. Been busy.”
She looks at me and I can see the worry welling up, but she doesn’t push. She never pushes.
“While you work, I’m gonna skate for a minute,” Alé says, gripping her skateboard to the other side of her body, but still holding on to my shoulders as we approach the corner of MacArthur and Eighty-Eighth, right around Castlemont High. Bottle Caps is painted bright orange like a life jacket or the way the sun looks in a dream.
Alé releases me from her arm and waves to me, heading off to the skate park the Castlemont kids use across the street. Alé graduated from Castlemont. That brought us this far east when the rest of us were up at Skyline for school. Marcus took me to the skate park a couple times when he was in middle school and the minute I saw Alé, this girl whipping in and out of slopes and then taking my brother in for a handshake and a pat on the back, I wanted to know her, know her real deep.
Back when I was still in high school, we all used to come out to Bottle Caps after school, gather around in front of the store after buying a pack of sodas or some chips. We’d bring a speaker and start the music going, and Ruth wouldn’t mind having us out there ’cause we never did nothing wrong. We was just living. Ruth even gave us discounts sometimes and, one time, when Lacy’s younger sister fell and split her chin open on the concrete, Ruth closed down Bottle Caps to take her to the hospital so her mama wouldn’t have to pay for the ambulance bill.
I open the door to Bottle Caps and I’m met with that familiar ding-dong beep that every liquor store makes upon entry. I head straight for the counter, where this man is looking up at the mini-television hanging on the wall. Cartoons are on, South Park, I think, and the man is laughing so hard his locs are bouncing.
“Hey,” I say, calling his attention to me.
He seems irritated to pull his eyes away from the screen. “You buyin’ something?”
“I’m looking for Ruth,” I tell him, and the moment I say her name, I know something ain’t right. His lips separate but no sound comes out.
“Um,” he starts. “She ain’t around no more.”
“What you mean?”
“Ruth died last week.”
It’s not that I didn’t know the moment his face pulled downward, but hearing it always hits a little different, digs a little pit somewhere in the body to bury her in. “What she die of?” I ask.
“Does it matter?”
He turns the volume up on the TV, but I don’t move.
“You gonna buy something or not?” He clearly wants me to get the fuck out, but all I can seem to think is How the hell am I gonna pay the bills? Maybe that’s a shitty thing to be thinking when this woman who gave me a steady gig when I had nothing else is suddenly gone, but it’s the truth.
“I used to work here,” I tell him, and he raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe me or maybe just like he don’t give a shit. “Ruth been giving me a shift when I need one.”
“Well, Ruth don’t own the place no more. And we can’t afford to be paying no one extra. Sorry.” He turns the volume up so it’s blasting so loud I don’t think he’d be able to hear me even if he tried. I pat the counter with my palm and retreat back out the door, back into the light.
Feels like I’m flushed with memories, like every cell in my body switched on and won’t stop moving. Trevor bouncing that ball. Our swimming pool. Mornings sitting at the counter shoveling cereal into our faces. Breathing. All of it so temporary that it feels like I’m edging closer to some future nowhere place, where I don’t even exist in this body. Without Bottle Caps, without cops, without Marcus, what choices do I have? I wander toward the skate park, but my body doesn’t even seem to be following where I tell it to go. My feet sway, zigzag toward the sound of wheels to concrete.