Ebony Scales

“What did you do?”

Longwei stared out the front windshield for a long time, his eyes filling with tears. “What could I do? My back had been turned away from the shot, and I had no idea which building the attack had come from. I picked up what was left of my father, placed his body in my harness, and left. At least they let me do that much.”

Tears tumbled down Longwei’s cheeks as he recalled his father, and she reached across the center divider to lay her hand on his leg. “He raised a good man,” Joy said, offering what scant comfort she could. “And I understand the pain of losing someone you love to violence.”

“What happened?” Longwei asked, his eyes glancing at her to see if she really understood.

“I was twelve years old. Like I’ve said before, I grew up in some of the worst neighborhoods in Washington, places where you didn’t go outside your house after dark, and even then during the day you moved like a soldier running through a battlefield sometimes.”

“Like I said, I was twelve. Down the street from me was another little girl, we were classmates in school. Her name was Nikki, and she and I would sometimes play together when we were smaller. Her brother had fallen in with one of the local gangs though, and my mother had forbidden me from going over to her house. It put a damper on our friendship, but we still hung out every once in a while. When her birthday rolled around in June, she invited me to her party. I begged and pleaded with my mom to allow me to go, and finally she relented when Nikki promised that her brother wasn’t going to be there. So I dressed up in one of my best outfits, which really wasn’t much at the time. I wrapped up a present for her, Nelly Furtado’s CD which she would never admit to liking but I kind of knew she really was into, and started down the street to the party.”

Joy looked out the window at the empty countryside rolling by, her mind thirteen years and ten thousand miles in the past. “I was maybe two houses away when I saw the car rolling down the street, probably the most stereotypical gangbanger car in the entire world, a four door Oldsmobile Cutlass that had been reconfigured into a low rider. It was just one of those things you knew from the way it drove, kind of slow like but not the slow that meant it was looking for a house or something. I could see in the front windshield, and the driver had that intent look on his face, like he was keying himself up for something. When the side windows started rolling down, I jumped behind one of those large mailboxes that dotted the streets, and hugged pavement. When the gangbangers opened up, I swore the entire world was being split apart with thunder. I could feel myself screaming in terror, but couldn’t hear anything, until the driver hit the gas, and that low rider peeled off down the street, leaving behind rubber, a few sparks, and four dead bodies. Nikki had taken a round in the heart, dying immediately, thank God. Some of the victims weren’t so lucky.”

“Why did they shoot up the place?” Longwei asked, his face grim. “The brother?”

Joy nodded. “Yeah, the brother. It seemed he had disrespected one of the other local gangs, and had been caught gettin’ frisky with their leader’s girl. They didn’t even know if he was home or not.”

“What was the aftermath?”

Joy shook her head. “Same thing that happened with all of the shootings I heard about. A lot of people piling into the local AME church to wail and moan, a lot of pledges from local ‘community leaders’ about doing something to stop the black on black crime, and not a lot else. The gangbangers continued their war on the down low, with the police stepping up patrols for a few weeks until the overtime became too expensive to justify any longer. By the time summer was over and school began again, it was just normal again. The brother even stayed in the same house, at least until I left for college. I heard he got shot sometime during my junior year. A lifetime ago, really. But the pain is still there.”

The shared pain put a damper on the conversation, and the miles rolled by silently, until Yingtai woke up. “Where are we?” she asked. “I’m a little hungry, and my hand needs some lotion.”