The Orange Houses Read online

  —HELLO, GOOD-BYE, I LOVE YOU. This was all the sign she knew. What had passed between Jimmi’s friend and Fatima as they shook hands? Something intense and immediate. Something—

  “Something else?” the waitress said.

  “Please tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty.”

  “Serious?” She called to the other waitress, “Carmen, how you get to the Statcha Lib’dy?”

  “Never been. I think you got to take a boat.”

  Shouting from behind the counter. Two men who had been sitting at the next table escorted a handcuffed dishwasher from the kitchen. They seemed tired, distressed, not as distressed and tired as the dishwasher begging, “Por favor, tengo dinero. Te pagaré. Te pagaré.”

  The waitress said, “No te preocupes, Guillermo. No llores.”

  The other waitress, Carmen, whispered, “They prob’ly shut us down now.”

  “What happened?” Fatima said.

  “Immigration police.”

  Fatima fought the urge to hide her face in her shawl. “May I have my bill?”

  chapter 8

  JIMMI

  The train tracks, Wednesday, twenty-one days before the hanging, just past midnight . . .

  Jimmi weaved in and out of the trackside trash. He wanted to rip away his skin. Was this physical withdrawal or his spirit’s hunger? A knock of crack would help him get through to tomorrow—

  Don’t.

  He was low on money, but he wasn’t going back to the house to pick up his VA check before he beat the pill habit. If he could outlast the gnawing another week or so, he could go back fresh and tell the doctors he was done with the drugs, the therapy, the halfway situation. He would insist he was moving on into the Full Now: a good clean job that supported a family he would never let down.

  But not yet. He needed time away from all the old routines and places, the sad faces. Some alone time would clear his mind enough to keep him sober. The thought of going back to his part-time janitor gig at that depressing hospital made him queasy.

  “Soup,” he said to no one. “Get some heat into you.”

  The elevated highway straddled the tracks. Jimmi pushed a rotting 4 x 8 plywood sheet from a cut in the track wall. At the tunnel’s mouth was a wheeled garbage cart nearly filled with supplies, scavenged canned food, plastic tarps, and a car battery mounted with a flashlight. He pushed through the dark, a left here, two rights, another left. He knew the maze by heart. This was his hideout since childhood. He came to what had been the start of a subway station eighty years ago. He got the butane hotplate going, pocked a soup can with his knife and dropped it onto the heat. In the flame’s light he swept sand from a patch of floor with his coat. He chalked the concrete so:

  WHY DO ANGELS FLY TOWARD LIGHTNING?

  THEY THINK THEY’LL SURVIVE IT?

  TRULY FRIGHTENING.

  SWOOP IN FAST AND GRAB THE WONDER,

  GET OUT FASTER, BEAT THE THUNDER.

  THEY LISTEN, GLISTEN, MAGIC EACH DAY,

  MAYBE, PLEASE, TO SHOW US THE WAY?

  But what those girls could make together. With their gifts, they had a responsibility to do it, to create the beauty that went past paper and pen and sculpture and into the vibe. You can’t describe it except to call it something like hope. He prayed Mik and Fatima would hook up until he remembered he was too mad at God to ask for anything.

  Now he saw the other girl, the child suicide bomber, legless, bleeding out in front of him on the sandy subway platform. He closed his eyes but still saw her, would always see her. Why didn’t he grab her as she skipped past him? Could he have stopped her from detonating that IED? What would have happened if he never signed on for overseas action, if he stayed home to be with his lady? Would he have saved his baby that night? Saved Julyssa?

  He stared at his fingers, the ones that had focused a rifle sight, cocked the hammer, snapped the trigger, pulled grenade pins. He wondered if his goddam filthy hands were good for anything but ruin.

  He lifted the soup can by its lip from the stove. The metal ring burned his fingers as he set it aside. He didn’t care. He kept his hand on that ring until he couldn’t tell if the metal was hot anymore. He turned off the stove and trembled himself into a sweaty sleep.

  chapter 9

  TAMIKA

  Mik’s bedroom, Wednesday, twenty-one days before the hanging, 1:30 a.m. . . .

  She set aside her sketch and thought If a city sky . . .

  She pictured herself soaring over the Bronx, clouds vaporizing, the sky empty but for the bright blue in it. She felt good for a while, then cold as she flew higher. The sky turned cobalt. Pulling her robe around her, she drifted into sleep.

  She woke in a panic to stop a dream about a six-winged paper doll catching fire in a bomb-burned sky.

  She had fallen asleep at her desk, her face greasy with night sweat. The window was open, the room damp. The only light was a dim red from her clock radio, 4:04 a.m. Her desk lamp had blown out. She was sure something evil was in the room.

  She went to Mom’s room. Mom was crashed out on the bed facedown, her pants on the floor. She’d conked in her Dunkin’ shirt. The room smelled sad, like stale donuts.

  Mik wanted to cuddle her, almost did, didn’t.

  She went to the main room, sank into the couch and clicked the TV to snow for the soft purple light in it. A trace of NaNa lingered in the couch cushions—street vendor perfume.

  “Saw you scrambling this morning,” Mom said. “Finish that homework?”

  “Yeah,” Mik said. It was somebody else’s.

  “Are your aids turned on, or are you trapped in slow motion?”

  “Nice brooch.”

  “Sarcasm isn’t pretty on you.” Mom fussed with her hair in the hallway mirror.

  WHY YOU GET DRESSED SO NICE TO WORK WHERE NOBODY APPRECIATES YOU? Mik signed.

  “What?”

  “I said, you look pretty, Ma.” Mik grabbed her bag and went.

  From behind battered card tables, street hawkers begged folks to buy fruit, shish kebob, trinkets and, at the end of the block, newspapers.

  The paper girl smiled when she saw Mik.

  Possible causes for the scar on the girl’s cheek flashed Mik’s mind: a switchblade, ringed fingers curled into a fist.

  She put fifty cents into the girl’s sooty hand, wanted to ask her over for dinner, but the words wouldn’t come.

  HELLO, the girl signed.

  Mik nodded. She wanted to ask the girl how she knew sign, but that would require a whachamacallit, conversation. “Nice day,” she said and signed as she hurried away.

  Mik picked a back row spot to nap through English. She dozed with her chin propped in her hands. Her face slipped through her fingers. Her head whacked the desk. Blood dripped from her nose.

  Pounding on the floor, the desks, all eyes wild, howling mouths—

  Click. Aids off. Everybody a mile away.

  She read Rodriguez’s lips as the old woman led her to the nurse’s office. “Mika, is that alcohol on your breath?”

  “Cough medicine,” Mik coughed.

  Speech therapy: The old hippie teacher smelled like licorice and Certs, total pot cover. After, out in the hall girls flocked around a new boy. Mik clicked on her hearing aids.

  “What’s y’all’s name?” said Shanelle, the girl fresh from juvie.

  He wore his hair in dreads beaded Day-Glo orange, green, yellow. He licked his lips. “Jaekwon.”

  Shanelle said, “Where y’all from?”

  The bell went off—a slasher movie scream in Mik’s hearing aids. Kids scattered.

  “And where y’all going?” The boy grabbed Shanelle’s hand to hold her back from running off to class.

  Mik hurried past. Shanelle backed up hard, knocked Mik off her feet, her books spreading out over the buffed floor.

  “Fat bitch,” Shanelle said. “Watch where you going.”

  “You watch where you going,” Mik said.

  Shanelle crossed her eyes, exagge
rated Mik’s words with a thick tongue, “Ooh wah whay ooh gah-in.”

  The Jaekwon cat helped Mik pick up her books. He was checking out her butt, Mik noticed.

  Sha’s eyes narrowed. She pulled her sweatshirt zipper down to show some serious cleavage. “Jae-baby, lemme give y’all my numbuh.”

  The bucktooth G pimp-limped up to Mik, helped her with her books. “What up, girl?”

  “Easy, son,” this Jaekwon said. “I got it.”

  Little G was nerd cute, but Jaekwon was seriously ban-gin’. That he would spend a look on Mik blew her mind. He was a total player—all that lip-licking, his cheeks sucked in like one of those no-shirt cats on the cover of the romance novels at Target. She almost laughed. He winked at her.

  Shanelle flipped off Mik as a teacher clapped them to class.

  The rain came down hard as she jumped onto the bus. Jimmi Sixes swung past on his skateboard. He skid-stopped at the ninety-nine cents store, under the awning covering the outdoor bins. From one of them he pulled a pack of colored construction paper. His clothes were soaked, rumpled. He was pale.

  She made change for a dude who needed laundry quarters and got back to doodling another empty cityscape.

  Joe Knows watched her from the customer side of the counter, said something.

  She clicked on her aids. “Sorry Joe?”

  “How long before you and Mom have enough saved up for the implant?”

  “Long time.”

  Joe nodded. “I been thinking about this. I been on that Internet thing, looking up the operation. I wanna pay for it.”

  Mik squinted.

  “You’re a great kid. I wanna see you do good. It was either the surgery or art school, but I figure you’re gonna get a scholarship.”

  She hadn’t planned on having to decide about the operation for another four or five years. She squeezed Joe’s hand, shook no. She keyed her phone: BUT THANX

  “Mik, what am I gonna spend it on? I got no midgets, no mortgage. C’mon. Talk to your mom about it. Will you?”

  Shanelle whittled a stick with her box cutter while her posse tagged the handball wall with silver perma-markers. Mik pretended not to see them as she hurried past.

  “Yo Dumbo,” Sha said. “Y’all best stay away from that Jaekwon. Serious. Deaf bitch. Yo, you hear me?”

  Mik heard her. She kept those aids on when near danger zones like busy streets and handball courts filled with psycho chicks. She tried not to walk away too fast, pretending she wanted to go shopping instead of home. No way was she crossing Sha’s path, not with her posse sharing brown-bag forties and smoking blunts.

  Mik went to the paper girl’s spot. The girl wasn’t there. Done for the day, she was towing her empty crates uphill by way of a beat-up rack duct-taped to a wobbly skateboard. She had a few leftover papers under her arm. Mik hurried after her into the wildwood park but lost her in the path’s twisting. She came to a fork and picked the wrong trail. She doubled back and found the girl far ahead, hurrying out of the park. The girl covered ground fast with those long legs. She had to stand close to six feet.

  Mik called after the girl but not loud enough, chased uphill, swore to take up exercise as she sucked wind. Weed stalks spiked rubble in abandoned lots. In the fading light a methamphetamine pipe blinked. The girl disappeared around the corner of a crumbling row house, the buildings on either side boarded up and swamped with dying pest trees.

  Mik found herself in an alley that opened onto a yard of cracked cement painted pink, a bright spot in the gray. A mangy old cat hunkered by the cellar door. It limped away into the weeds at the sight of Mik. She knocked, and the door opened on the first hit. Inside the small basement studio were a card table and on the floor a mattress made neatly with a red blanket. A short stack of newspapers squared perfectly against the wall. Pinned to the walls, doing handstands on the lone sill were tiny paper figurines, birds, angels, ballerinas, a soccer player upside down in a bicycle kick. All were painted with bin nail polish, sparkly black, neon red, Day-Glo green, dark blue, mystical brown glitter.

  “My friend,” the girl said. She’d come from the bathroom door now swinging shut on its spring. “Do you make a habit of breaking into people’s rooms?”

  Mik gulped. “How do I get home from here?”

  “That depends on where you live.”

  “Can you walk me?”

  “Bombs deafened some of the children back home,” Fatima said as she and Mik walked the back way along the tracks. “My sister and I watched the woman from the UN teach them sign, but only for one day before a raid split the camps. Perhaps someday when the fighting ends I will return home. For now I am so lucky to live in these beautiful United States.” Fatima stepped over a rat skipping out of the garbage. “Do you know McDonald’s restaurant?”

  Mik smiled.

  “His fried apple cake, the fritter? Magic. Once you bite into it, all problems disappear. May I treat you?”

  “Gotta get home.” The O Houses were just downhill. Mik scanned the street for Shanelle, not in sight.

  “I hope I see you again.”

  “Come up for dinner.” She hadn’t talked this much to a stranger since she was five. What was it about this paper girl that suddenly had Mik feeling comfortable enough to initiate not just conversation but an invitation to dinner?

  “Perhaps you should ask your mother first. I will go buy cake for dessert. What is your room number?”

  “My apartment number?”

  “You live in an apartment?”

  chapter 10

  FATIMA

  The Orange Houses, Wednesday, twenty-one days before the hanging, 7:00 p.m. . . .

  The elevator surprised Fatima with its great speed. Electricity was everywhere in this enormous building, even in the hallways. The floors and walls were strong stone. Mik and her family were wealthy. Fatima’s tattered clothes and sneakers and the cheap fritters she purchased half price shamed her. A chubby old woman huffed toward Mik’s door from the other end of the hall. Fatima nodded.

  The woman was mistrustful. “Yes?”

  “I am a friend of Mik. I think.”

  The woman eyed Fatima’s shawl, opened the door and yelled in, “Y’all expecting a six-foot Muslim gal?”

  “But where’s your mother?” Mik’s mom said.

  Fatima pointed to her heart.

  Mom shook her head. “Child,” she said.

  “Oh child.” The kindly NaNa took Fatima’s hand.

  “Fatima, sixteen, living alone?” Mom said. “That won’t do.”

  “I’m-a ask around the church for a place for her.” NaNa popped the rest of her fritter into her mouth as she studied Fatima. “Lovely headdress. What’s that like, being Islamic?”

  “I am not Muslim.”

  “You’re not Christian.”

  “No.”

  “Then daggit, what are y’all?”

  “I am human.”

  NaNa thought about that. “I guess that’s all right. What’s the scarf for?”

  “To keep my head warm.”

  “Worse goes worst, you come stay with me. I got enough room up there for a village of Muslims.”

  “Thank you, but I must remain uphill. I am safest there.” These Americans were wonderful people. She was hesitant at first to answer their questions, to accept Mik’s invitation. But now she was glad she came. Back in the camps she told herself she would be fine on her own, but now she knew she had been lying to herself. She missed her sister.

  Mik had been watching her. She broke from the table to clear the dinner plates. Fatima helped. After, they went to Mik’s room. Mik showed her a sketch.

  Fatima ran her fingers over the dried ink. She caught a tear with a cupped hand to stop it from splattering the empty cityscape.

  “That bad?” Mik said.

  “Beyond wonderful, but your streets, where are your people?”

  Mik yanked the sketchbook away and hid it under her pillow as Mom came in with clothes and sneakers. “Try these on,
girlfriend,” she said. “I can let down the pants.”

  Fatima took in the embroidered jeans, the plush sweat-shirts, a leather jacket broken in just right. The sneakers were big on her, but so luxurious with their padding.

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  “You look adorable,” Mom said.

  Mik fiddled with her hearing aids.

  chapter 11

  JIMMI

  The cave, Thursday, twenty days before the hanging, 3:00 a.m. . . .

  Jimmi Sixes folded the colored construction paper into tiny shapes.

  “Night patrol,” he whispered. “Night vision goggles. They call it night vision, civilians without sin, grenaded to ruin, collateral mayhem, won’t happen say them, green blur and wasteland.”

  He flashed back to the desert and his armored tank rolling over towns held together by mortar thinned with dust and husk, everything ancient, so durable and fragile at the same time.

  He regretted he’d dumped all those antipsychotic drugs down the halfway house toilet.

  He fed cracker bits to the rats. “Food,” he whispered.

  He went where he’d been going since he was a kid whenever he was hungry and out of money. He went to Joe Knows.

  He waited in front of the locked roll gate. Joe and his old dog Tranquilito limped uphill with the sunrise, like always.

  Joe stopped at the sight of Jimmi. He threw an arm over Jimmi’s shoulder. “Ah kid,” Joe said. “Joe knows. Joe knows, son.”

  “Joe, was it like this for you, when you came back from your war? Was it this bad?”

  Joe made Jimmi breakfast. He smoked his Camel deep into the filter, his lids heavy as he watched Jimmi eat, though Jimmi didn’t eat much.

  “Jimmi, you gotta let me take you back to the hospital, son.”