My nonanswer tells Michael all he needs to know. He glares at me for a moment longer, then slams his fist on the table, making me start. “Why, Tina? Why? You take off after the funeral, then no phone calls, no letters, nothing. I thought you were dead! And now you show up out of nowhere, and you . . .” He rubs his hand over his cropped hair, hard, like he can scratch the whole situation out of his mind. “You’ve got all these tattoos, and . . . are you a Goonda? Is that it? Are those Goonda tattoos?”
When I still don’t answer, he throws his hands up. “So you’re in a gang now, and that’s why you’re robbing us? Why would you do that? We’re . . . you’re . . .” He’s unable to go on, unable to put words to what he obviously sees as treason.
And I can’t stand it anymore.
“You want to know why?” I ask, launching up.
He grabs the gun and leaps to his feet too, and then I’m up in his face, never mind that the muzzle of the pistol is now inches from my heart. I don’t care. I’m beyond caring. I poke him hard in the chest to punctuate, “You. Want. To. Know. Why?”
Somewhere in my mind I am telling myself to stop. I know I should. I need to listen to Bug Eye and be cool, but it’s too late, it’s all spilling out now. I’ve spent too many years being quiet, biding my time, thinking, wondering, nursing the wounded animal in my chest back from death, feeding it, training it, grooming it, until it ripples with muscle, and its claws and teeth are diamond hard and razor sharp.
Mama thought we were safe, that we were away from men in the night. Except then this boy’s father showed us how not safe we really were. He showed us that there are men in the night everywhere. I can’t stand here and listen to this spoiled Big Man’s son ask me why. If he doesn’t know, he’s going to. I bite off and spit every brittle word:
“Because your father killed my mother.”
SEVEN
After Mama’s funeral, I took Kiki and walked away from the Greyhills. We were still in our Sunday clothes. I brought her to Mama’s church and asked the nuns to take care of her. They tried to make me stay too, but I ran. I went to the docks and spent two weeks living in a busted-up shipping container, trying to decide whether or not to die. I would wake up with rats crawling over my legs in the middle of the night and not even care. I was so far gone that I wasn’t even a person anymore. My mother had been killed. I had heard what Greyhill said to her in the garden. I couldn’t stay in his home anymore. I couldn’t leave Kiki there. But I couldn’t take care of my sister either. I’m not proud of abandoning her. But I did it.
When Bug Eye found me, I had just stolen a mango from a street vendor. I was too weak to run away, and the vendor had caught me by the wrist. He was about to beat me silly. His fist was in the air when Bug Eye stepped in and put a bill down that would have bought fifty mangoes. Then he turned and walked away, saying over his shoulder to the man, “My little sister’s a pain. Sorry, bwana. Come on, tiny girl.”
And I followed. For no other reason than he still had my stolen mango in his hand. He called me something that sounded like my name, or close enough to it. And there was not one single scrap of feeling in my body telling me to do anything else.
I slept in the Goondas’ warehouse that night. In the middle of a snoring pack of street kids, I lay down with no hope of anything better the next day. And maybe things would have stayed the same. I would have gone on being a useless bag of bones.
Except, early the next morning I woke to a hand creeping into my pocket.
I jerked awake like I’d been electrified, clawing at the intruder. But the weasel-faced boy slipped out of my reach, dancing backward.
“Give it back,” I said, my voice rusty from disuse.
“No,” he sneered. “What is it?” He squinted at the prayer card he’d pulled out of my pocket, twisting it left and right.
“Give it to me!” I rushed him, my voice growing louder. I snatched at the card, catching nothing. “It’s mine!”
I was vaguely aware of the bodies stirring around us. They sniffed the air, eager for blood.
The thief was bigger than me, older. He held the card over his head, his rag of a shirt flapping as he jumped to evade me. He could tell the card had no real value, but also that I was desperate for it.
It was currency he was interested in.
“You want it? Come and get it,” he said. He waved Saint Catherine’s paper face at me. I watched his fingers bend a crease across the card.
For the first time in weeks, I was alive. I was heat and fury. I threw myself at him, using my fingernails, my teeth, my toes, every ounce of raw pain I had at my disposal.
And I could hear the boys laughing, Hey, look at the wildcat, and then Bug Eye was pushing me away, saying, Give it back, Ketchup, and I saw the boy leering through the lines of blood I’d scratched down his face.
His eyes never left mine, even as he crumpled up the card and threw it at my feet.
Later, as I smoothed it, after I’d finally shed and dried my tears, I looked at Saint Catherine. Really looked at her. I looked at the wheel she rested her hand on. At the sword under her feet. At the palm branch she carried.
The prayer card had been in Mama’s pocket when she died.