I had no plans to ask the Arab for help, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn’t willing to take my chances anywhere else. This was where I belonged. Whatever was going to happen would just have to happen here.
A knock at a trailer door after midnight is never good news. Sometimes it’s crack whores, sometimes it’s drunk Mexicans, and occasionally it’s Bobby Harvey coming home to the wrong place after too many sips of Wild Irish Rose. But tonight? Since it was technically tomorrow, it must have been the knock. I took one more sip of coffee and one more drag off my cigarette. At least I would get it over with now, without the dread. It’s the dread that kills you. Well, the dread and the four hundred and twenty-eight dollars in old crack debts that you didn’t make back belly dancing in a diner.
I stood behind the closed door and said a quick prayer of intercession to Jesus, Allah, Iggy, Saleem Hassan, and whoever else might be listening. I hoped that it would be Ivan himself, and not one of his lackeys, so that maybe memories of all the good times might buy me another day or two. Or less cruelty, at least. Not that there had actually been any good times.
I opened the door and looked out, and then down, to see not Ivan but Marwan standing on my step, his low-slung champagne-colored Mazda as out of place as he was in Rudd’s Trailer Park.
“Jamila, habibi, I followed you here. Look, I want to talk to you for real, because you’re making a mistake.”
“There’s no mistake,” I said, angry that he wasn’t Ivan. I had already gotten psyched up for getting killed. “I’m not going to work at your club and I don’t like being followed, so get lost.”
“No, seriously.” He placed his hand on the door to my trailer. “Lemme talk to you because you’re making a big mistake.”
“I think you’re the one who’s mistaken,” I said through my teeth, leaning my weight against the door to keep him out. “I don’t want anything to do with your club. Now get lost.”
“Fuck you. I drive all the way to the Southside to a fucking trailer park to give you a job and you don’t have no manners?” He stuck the toe of his Italian leather shoe against the door and kept it there. “You fucking piece of trash, you should be grateful I even talk to you!” His breath came through the crack of the door, hot in my face, smelling like fruity tobacco. Over his head I could just see the window of Beau’s trailer. Beau stood up slowly from the sofa, looked my way, and turned out his light.
“Fuck you, sharmouta!” Marwan spat once, twice on the steps of my trailer. “You’re not even beautiful! Kelbeh!” After his last insult, he smacked the side of the trailer hard with his open palm. The vibration made the cymbals on the table chime faintly, like a distant call to prayer. Marwan wedged his arm and shoulder into the crack of the door and grabbed a handful of my hair. I leaned back to pull myself loose, but I couldn’t get far enough away and keep the door shut, so instead I tried to twist around and bite him. I had just gotten a good toothhold on his wrist when his body jerked up like a marionette. Through the crack of the door I saw Beau’s big arm hooked around Marwan’s neck. Beau pulled him out of my door, off my step, and up into a standing camel clutch that would have made the Iron Sheik proud.
Beau held Marwan like that for a good thirty seconds, just long enough to scare him, and then flung him loose onto the ground. It was a short fall, broken by an errant cinder block. Every trailer park has them. Unfortunately for Marwan, this one happened to be exactly where it was, and its corner made a sickening thud as it connected with his temple.
Beau and I stood there for a long time. Looking at Marwan, looking at each other, feeling bad, but not as bad as we might have.
Bobby Harvey came wandering through after a while, making his last evening check of the trailer park.
“I didn’t see anything,” he said to us. “Did y’all?”
We both shook our heads.
“Good. Now get on inside before somebody does.”
There are some things that don’t warrant much investigation. A dead strip club manager in a shiny tie on Jeff Davis Highway is one of those things. Particularly if nobody in the trailer park heard anything or saw anything. And, not to gild any lilies, but just suppose there was a crack rock or two in his hand when the police got there, well, these things happen in trailer parks all the time. Such is life. I’m sure the Arabs have a saying about it, and it’s probably close to what my Arab said when he realized that the body he’d been called out of bed for was one of his guys. “Rahimahullah! His daddy should have beat him harder.”
The police took a report, but beyond that there was no investigation to speak of. The man’s wallet was empty. According to the girls at the club, he usually kept about five hundred dollars in cash on him — usually meaning on the nights he didn’t drop seventy-two dollars at a hookah bar on baba ghanoush and shoulder shimmies — so robbery was the obvious motive. The police made a point of coming around and reminding us to lock our doors. They were especially concerned about me, what with it happening right outside my place. I told them not to worry, that the Arab was letting me move to a bigger trailer in the back of the park. Same rent, more room — and with nobody next door, I could play my cymbals as late as I wanted every night.
Now, instead of waiting tables, I dance two nights a week at the hookah bar for better tips than I ever got slinging eggs when it was a diner. Word’s gotten around and the place is usually packed — Muhammad actually pays me now, and he’s even put a picture of me in the window, next to the picture of his famous kebabs. I still clean a trailer for the Arab every couple of months, not so much for the money but just to keep my title and help out. Because that’s what I guess family does. Saleem talks to me in my dreams every now and then, mostly to call me Jamila and ask me when I’m gonna get married. And sometimes he tells me I should eat more, I might blow away.
Untitled
by Meagan J. Saunders
To my mom, who showed me strength
Jackson Ward
An uneasy silence engulfed him. Occasionally, he would glance toward the driver’s seat and stare at Janie, who still wore her factory clothes. She didn’t look at him. Sighing, he moved his eyes back to the window. They flew past abandoned buildings, past Ebenezer, where he found God, and Armstrong, the school where he discovered Janie and everything else. Men sat on curbs heading nowhere, complacent. He knew them intimately — knew their stories, their fears, and their delusions. “So you ain’t gonna talk to me?” he asked, finally.
She hesitated. “What you want me to say? You don’t wanna hear what I gotta say. I ain’t ready to talk to you yet.”
“Well, you could say somethin’.” Her eyes narrowed. Still, he pushed the conversation: “How’d you pay the light bill?”
Words flew from her mouth like venom. “You ain’t gotta worry ’bout that, Jayden! I found a way. Not that you helped me. Not that you care.” The silence lasted until she pulled onto Marshall Street. She slammed her car door and pushed past him, through the overgrown grass and the trash people constantly threw into their yard. He followed close behind.