“That means Kaylen’s not supposed to hit me back, right?”
Ella wonders what she would do if Brother Harvey hit Kaylen with that too-big hand of his.
“Now, I’m not saying Kaylen shouldn’t defend himself.” He puts his hand to Kaylen’s head, cups it. “Kaylen, you say, ‘Brother Harvey, I will defend myself, and then at an appropriate time, I will forgive you. And I will do both of these things vigorously.’”
The air starts to change the same way it does whenever Ella catches herself daydreaming, imagining. And she sees an older Kaylen, filled out and all man, working in a hospital as an orderly, and all his patients are old, way older than him, and over and over, the old patients, when they get slow and know it’s not going to be too long now, ask him to sit with them. No bang, no blue bandanna, no pool of blood on the sidewalk. Reflexively, she grips the tissues in the pocket of her frilly dress. She’s up in the front, and a nosebleed now would embarrass her in front of everybody. But it never comes, and she lets go of the tissues and pretty soon they’re singing. Brother Harvey says a prayer for all of them, anointing them; then he sends them back out to their parents or grandparents or people who act like their parents because they need to.
Ella’s so tiny that when the ladies crowd around her, their big hats come together like pink flower tops to hide her from the sun.
Mama has Ella’s hand in hers as they walk to the bus stop. Ella skips over the cracks where weeds poke through, more of Grandma’s Werther’s in her pocket. Jahnae will be waiting for them. When Ella looks up, though, Mama’s face is drawn tight, and quiet. Her stomach has grown so big that every step is deliberate. And this is what happens to you when you get pregnant, Ella realizes. You can’t skip no more.
“Mama?”
“Oh,” she says, like she’s been sleepwalking.
“Mama, you okay?”
“Yeah, honey. Just… I got a lot to do today, that’s all. Setting up for the daycare.” Then she grows silent.
“It’s okay, Mama. I daydream too.”
“Do you, now?”
“Mmhmm.” A pause. “But when I do, they’re usually sad. Sometimes, they’re happy like with Kaylen, but most of the time, they’re sad.” She stops skipping, but still watches out for the cracks. “I see bad things happening to the boys. Like, Jelani getting shot. And after Lesane turns ten, Crips are gonna ask him what set he’s from and even though his mama’s gonna teach him to say he doesn’t bang, it’s not gonna— Ow!”
Mama wakes up again and stops, almost like she’s just now noticing how hard she’s been squeezing her daughter’s hand. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” she says, kneeling, but Ella’s crying by now, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“Mama, you hurt me!”
“I know. I’m so sorry, baby,” and she hugs Ella close to her bulging stomach. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers into her pigtails.
“I hate it here.”
Mama blinks.
“I hate it here. Everything’s so—” She searches for a word that will tell Mama how violent it always is or how much she hates having to hide in the closet every time it even looks like gangbangers might roll through, how she hates having to already know what it means to live in Hoover territory, how she almost always imagines horrible things happening to the boys here and how she can’t imagine anything else anymore, a word that will describe the pit that sits in her stomach all the time and the way the ground rumbles beneath her every time she gets a nosebleed like it’s going to open its mouth and swallow everything. “It’s so bad here,” she whimpers.
“Oh, baby.” A look of helplessness flits across Mama’s face. Desperation, then it passes, and Ella already knows it’s because Mama knows she can’t let Ella see her hopeless, and Ella hates that she has to know that. “Baby, that’s just the Devil at work. But you know there’s more out there than just the Devil.”
“But everything’s the Devil!”
“The Devil is busy here.” Mama has taken to smoothing out Ella’s outfit, running her hand down her sleeves. “The gangs, the drugs, all the evil that men do to each other here. Sometimes even the police. That’s the Devil. But you just gotta pray, all right, Ella?”
Ella nods her head.
“Here, baby. Let’s pray, right here.”
“Do I gotta get on my knees?”
Mama chuckles. “No, baby, just gotta stand right here. Just bow your head and close your eyes.”
Ella obeys, and Mama’s voice comes to her hushed and strong.
“Dear Blessed Redeemer. Please protect my baby, Ella, in these trying times. Please surround her in your hedge of protection. Please bless us with food and work, so that we may be healthy and do your will. Please, Lord, cast the Devil out from here, make for us a safe place and grant us mercy on our journey. I pray, Lord, for the little boys that grow up in this world, that you will shield them, and that you will guide them in your ways, that you will build them into big, strong tools for your work. And that whatever you would have us do, you will make the path clear for us. Lord, bless my Ella. Make her strong. Make her smart. Make her powerful. You are husband to the widowed and you are father to the fatherless. And when you are done with us in this world, when you are done with this world, we know you are preparing a better one for us. In your name we pray.”
“Amen.” Ella smiles and wants to tell Mama that while Mama was praying, Ella was saying her own prayer. And she thinks Mama would be proud to hear it. But, soon enough, they get to the corner where Jahnae is waiting, and Mama lets her go.
“Be safe, baby!” Mama shouts as the bus pulls up. “Grandma will pick you up today.”
Jahnae climbs up the steps in front of her, and they settle onto a seat, Jahnae by the window and Ella next to her, looking through it as her mother recedes into the distance. “After she’s born,” Jahnae says, “your sister’s gonna start stealing your clothes. Watch.”
“Mama ain’t having a girl.”
“How you know?”
Same way I know LaTonya’s baby’s gonna get shot in a drive-by when he grows up. Same way I know Kaylen’s gonna work in a hospital and be kind to old white people. Same way I know something horrible’s gonna happen soon, Ella wants to tell her. “Grandma can’t keep a secret,” she says instead.
“Hi, Mrs. Jones,” a bunch of her classmates shout as they rush past and form their groups and start heading home. Grandma waves at all of them in small sweeps, smiling her love at them.
“You ready?” she asks Ella.
Ella nods, and they walk into the quiet that blankets the neighborhood after the kids have all spilled out of the schools, and some of the teachers hang around out front to whisper worriedly. About King somebody or Somebody King.
“Grandma?” Ella kicks a pebble that zigs one way then zags another, bouncing along ridges in the broken sidewalk.
“Mmm?”
“How come everybody’s always fighting?”
“What do you mean?”
Ella shrugs, not quite sure how to make the words fit what she’s always seeing in her head, what always immediately precedes and follows her nosebleeds. “I mean, the gangbangin’. How come everybody’s always dying so much? They’re always so… angry.”
Grandma’s flats shuffle against the concrete.
“Mama says it’s devilment. It’s the Devil that makes everyone so angry.”
Grandma’s brow creases in a frown, and Ella wonders if Grandma’s forgotten about her because she’s got this faraway look in her eyes, and it looks sometimes like how Mama stares out, not looking at anything really but seeing something Ella can’t see. “They’re not angry at each other,” Grandma says finally. “Not really.”