"So is that why he hit you tonight? Did you try to get him to tell you what they were going to do?"
"No-o," she whined, again as if I'd accused her-as if I might take Jamal's side. "I don't give a shit about their big… fucking thing, whatever it is. Their big ideas. Like they're some important… y'know, big thing. I just wanted him to spend some time with me, that's all. He can't just treat me like 'Do this, do that.' I'm a person, too. I fucking told him that, too." She drank her 7UP defiantly. "I did."
I bowed my head against my hand, rubbed my forehead. "Oh, Lord, Serena," I murmured.
"What?" she said.
Those whispers in me were spreading, echoing, louder now. I felt the urgency rising out of my belly into my throat. I had to call the cops-not tomorrow-tonight, now. But again-again-I hesitated. I felt a sickening certainty they wouldn't believe me. They hadn't believed Casey. They hadn't believed Piersall. I needed more information to bring to them. I needed to hear everything Serena had to say, everything I could get out of her.
"Serena," I said slowly, lowering my hand, pressing my two hands together in front of me. "Serena, you must know something, you must've heard something. About what they're planning. When they sent you out of the room, you must've been curious-angry-you must've tried to listen in sometimes."
She made a sad little gesture: a wave, a shrug. "I just know it was supposed to be some big deal. Some 'major victory' or something. Like it was so important."
"But you don't know what or where?"
She sniffled, shook her head. She'd managed to stop crying now. "I think it's tomorrow, though." I forced down a curse. "What else?"
"Nothing."
"You're sure?"
"Yes!"
"All right," I said. I tried to bring her back to her story. "So tonight. You told him you wanted him to pay attention to you-"
"I just want him to be nice to me sometimes."
"And that made him angry. He yelled at you."
She made a childishly mocking face, a childishly taunting voice, imitating Jamal. "'You don't understand. You're just a stupid girl. It's so important! It's so important!' Blah-de-blah. I was, like: 'Fuck you, y'know? I don't care how important you are. I'm important, too.' And he was, like-" that taunting voice again-" 'You're nothing. You're just a stupid female. I'm the master of the universe.' And I'm, like: 'Whatever.' I'm, like: 'You dumb fucking Arabs treat girls like shit, y'know that?' And so then he, like, just hits me, like, with his fist." She moved her fist as if it were a hammer. "I mean, he's such a little wimp, it's not like he's strong or anything. And I'm, like, 'Yeah, well, you and your big plans are all bullshit anyway because I told Jason and he's investigating everything now and he's gonna tell the whole story to the police.'"
It was a second before I registered what she was telling me, before I could bridge the gap between her childlike tone, her childlike inner world, and the terrible meaning of what she said.
"You told him about me? You told him you were coming here?"
She gave me a sort of sidelong glance, a sort of conspiratorial smirk. She was trying to please me, flatter me, enlist me to her side of the fight against her boyfriend. "I told him you were my real father. I said, like, you were this rich, important guy from, like, the Midwest or something, and you were, like, totally in with the police and you were really pissed off that he was bossing me around and giving me shit all the time. I was, like: 'I told Jason all about what happened in the swamp and now he has the police investigating the whole thing and if I get hurt he's gonna find out about it and come after you.' I was, like: 'You're not so important after all, are you?'"
"My God," I whispered.
She just went on, frowning again, near tears again. "And he was, like, choking me. Motherfucker. I fell down. He, like, threw me down. I think I hurt my back. I did! I think I, like, sprained it or something. And then he said, 'You're going to see how important I am.' And he starts calling his stupid friends."
I stood up quickly, my heart beating hard.
"He was, like, so into it, he never even saw me sneak out," she went on proudly. "Like I was just gonna lie there and do whatever he said. Like, bullshit. Where are you going?"
My cell phone was still in the television room. I went to the phone on the kitchen wall. I snapped up the headset. I started to dial 911.
But it was too late. The teakettle whistle of the alarm warning began again.
They were already in the house.
The Battle for My Mother's House
There were four of them. One had a gun. Two broke through a back door, two broke through the front. They swarmed into the kitchen from both directions.
The second the alarm started singing, I knew they were on their way. I dropped the phone on the counter.
"Come on!" I shouted.
I lunged across the little room. I grabbed Serena by the wrist. I pulled her to her feet. She worked her way out from behind the table even as she protested.
"What's the-"
Then they were on us. Four dark-skinned young men in dark blue sweatsuits, the hoods pulled over their heads. Two out of the living room, two out of the front hall. Swarming us, shouting at the top of their lungs, the alarm whistling under them.
"Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Put up your hands or I'll kill you! Get down on the floor now! Now!"
They were all shouting at once, their angry faces closing in on us, their teeth bared, their eyes wild underneath their cowls. A chaos of rough noise swelled to the walls, to the ceiling of my mother's kitchen. I felt fear and confusion wash through the place like a flood. The gun was trained on my face. The bore of the barrel became the black focus of everything, like a drain down which the whole world swirled.
All this in an instant. Then Serena started shrieking, too, hoarse, ugly, tearful shouts.
"Jamal, you fucker, you fucker! Get out of here!"
She hit the young man with the gun. She pounded his shoulder with a small useless fist. Snarling and shouting with rage, he put his forearm into her face and shoved her away from him roughly. She stumbled against one of the others and the second man grabbed her arms. Then Jamal bore down on me, his gun stuck out in front of him, his hooded face blurred and enormous behind the black barrel. He was still shouting and they were all shouting and the alarm was whistling and Serena was screaming, struggling, in tears.
"Get on the ground!" Jamal roared, sticking the gun at me.
I punched him in the throat.
Strangely enough, through all this, I was thinking very clearly. The onslaught was so loud, so violent, so furious, that it swamped me in an instant. It was meant, I think, to throw me into confusion, to bear me down beneath the sheer weight and force of its initial blow. And yet my mind seemed to have gone into that crisis state of silence and slow motion. There seemed plenty of time to think and to react. I thought that in the next count of one-one thousand, everything would be decided. I thought: If I gave in to the power of their rush and to the noise and the shouting and the gun-if I lay down on the floor-if I surrendered to them-they would kill me. I thought: They would kill me and they would take Serena. I thought: Do something, Jason. Fight back.
So I ducked inside the gun barrel and pistoned an uppercut into Jamal's Adam's apple.
The bastard gagged and doubled over, crumpling backward into the table. I tried to grab the gun but it flew from his hand, spun through a little arc of air and skittered and twirled on the fake bricks of the kitchen's linoleum floor. The other men were still shouting, attacking. One had Serena by the elbows. She was struggling against him, cursing and screaming. There was a moment-part of a moment-when none of them-no one but me-fully realized what had happened to Jamal and to the gun. In that moment, with a quick, panicky movement, I kicked the weapon under the stove. You know that narrow space under the stove that's impossible to get to when you want to clean? I kicked the gun there. It was a slim, elegant automatic, and it slid right through the gap.