“I leave school a long time now,” Effie answered flatly.
“But I hear you were doing good in Convent.”
“I was doing good in school, yes. Then I started to feel like I shouldn’t be there. I felt like the other girls were treating me funny.” Effie crossed the road to the shade of a shop at the corner. Carl followed, looking her over.
“Why you feel the other girls treat you funny? I’m sure you didn’t dress like this to go to school.”
Effie laughed. “No, my uniform was neat as ever.”
“What happened then?”
“You don’t know what I do?”
“No. What?”
“I work in the night.”
“Where, KFC?”
“KFC don’t sell roast fowl.”
Carl stared. “Effie, don’t tell me you working on the streets. Why?”
“My mother started bringing her men home to have a time with me when she was pregnant with my last sister. I couldn’t concentrate on my schoolwork again. I hated them big sweaty men. I used to feel dirty when I went to school, so I drop out. It’s two years now. After a while I decided to earn my own money. I get accustomed to the life now.”
Carl felt the pain behind Effie’s bravado. He easily recognized it, having seen so much of it in prison. He had acted the part himself until he had decided to accept and deal with his reality. He sensed Effie was in no mood for a lecture, least of all from him. He made a mental note to find a time to give her that lecture. Pictures of the pretty brown-skinned girl, her wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail, flashed in his mind. He could hardly believe this was the same girl. Effie had straightened her hair. It fell straggly around her face whose once chubby cheeks were now sunken. Sadly, he realized how much older she looked than her approaching seventeenth birthday. He made a silent vow to make a difference in at least one life.
“Girl, you couldn’t go by anybody for help?”
“I beg some friends to stay by them, but she used to come around and curse in front of they house. My friends tell me I have to go back. She used to meet me outside my school and slap me up, so I moved out a few times.”
“Nobody tell the school principal?”
“I didn’t tell my friends the real reason I wanted to leave. I used to feel shame. I wouldn’t tell my principal that. Only Maggie from next door to your aunt suspect, and when she ask me, I tell her everything.”
“Maggie!”
“Yes. I know she doing the same thing, so I feel comfortable talking to her. I started going to Woodbrook with her. She show me how to operate.”
“So what your mother doing these days?”
“She still working the QRC area. I don’t go by her territory, and she don’t come by mine, except when she want to slap me up for some stupid reason.”
“What you call a stupid reason?”
“Just imagine, a few nights ago she made a big scene in front of my friends, accusing me of stealing money she had in a radio to pay for the new fridge. I didn’t even know she hide money in the radio. She tear my dress. In any case, I already gave her money to pay for the fridge. She just like to take advantage,” Effie said, her voice betraying her hopelessness. Carl looked beyond Effie’s face to the apartments opposite, to the mildewed walls and peeling paint, and the exuberant feeling of freedom he had felt earlier faded.
Early-morning light struggled to overcome a steady rain. A woman walked along Besson Street to Piccadilly Street on her way to work, sheltering the rain with an umbrella. She bumped into a man leaning over the wall of the Dry River. Startled, she stepped aside and apologized. The man fell heavily to the ground but he uttered no sound. When she saw that his shirt was blood-soaked, and that the blood had run down the wall and mixed with the rain to form a red puddle on the pavement, she screamed. Then she ran to the next corner and stopped. Her screams had been heard. People started trickling from apartments. Soon a small crowd gathered, and the woman edged back to see the body. It was a young man.
“He not from around here. Anybody know him?” someone asked.
“I don’t recognize him.” A woman with her hair in rollers stepped into the street to walk around the body.
“It’s a good thing my heart isn’t bad, or Lord, I would have fall dead too. I bounce the man leaning on the wall and he fall boup on the pavement.”
“So it’s you who scream?” the woman in curlers asked.
“Yes, it was me,” declared the woman. “My hair stand up straight on my head. I am still shaking. Oh-oh, look. The police cars coming. I didn’t see and I don’t know.” She left to take up her 7 a.m. shift. With the police on the scene, the crowd thinned. But the body was still there when more city dwellers awoke and children wended their way to school. Three hours later, the DMO arrived to declare him dead.
“I gave you a contract and the man is still alive,” a voice hissed. “You killed the wrong man. I want the job done. I don’t expect to have this conversation again.”
Sheldon was shocked to overhear this conversation from his boss’s office. He was certain his boss thought the office was empty. He slipped noiselessly out the door and found himself walking more briskly than usual to City Gate where he clambered up the stairs of the transit hub and descended quickly down the exit to the Maloney maxi-taxis. He pushed among the crowd to get a seat in the first one that drove up. He sat at a window and jerked slightly as the taxi pulled from the line. Soon they were speeding up the priority bus route. He smiled wryly as he reflected that he, who was always advising young men in his neighborhood to keep away from crime, was working with someone involved in criminal activity. He pondered his next step. He needed the job, but he knew he would be uneasy in the office after what he had overheard.
As the houses of Maloney Garden came into view, Sheldon mused at the contrast between the serene rows of pastel buildings and the violence in the community. Hardly tranquil, an air of controlled rage foamed, seethed into a fog that enveloped the area and followed the bad boys like a dark cloud. Sheldon strove to be in Maloney but not of Maloney. He prided himself on being a role model to the youth of the community simply by getting a job and going to work every day.
When he reached his stop, Sheldon found Carl sitting on a culvert opposite the small shop at the corner near Carl’s home. Carl listened to Sheldon and felt in his heart that he knew how his friend felt.
“Who my boss had a hit out on, and for what?” Sheldon wondered aloud.
Carl shrugged. Sheldon knew he could no longer work there. A familiar car was speeding toward them. It was his oldest brother’s car. Actually, Balo was his half-brother. In her teens, Sheldon’s mother had become pregnant, and Balo had become a father figure for Sheldon.
Balo pulled over and jumped out, shouting, “They — kidnap — Reshi!” His panic was palpable as the words spurted from his mouth in gasps. He was sweating and his large frame trembled. Reshi had been on his way to meet his sister at school yesterday. He never turned up. Today, Balo had gotten a call for ransom.
“Sheldon, come with me. I want to go and search.”
Sheldon was stunned. “Search where?”
“I get some tips, so I going on that.”
“You call the police?”
“No. The kidnappers say don’t involve the police or they will kill Reshi.”
“You want us to go looking just so, without protection or anything?”
“You forget I am a businessman. I have a gun. That is protection. I more damn vex than anything.”
Sheldon was worried. “Balo, I want to help, but this sounding out of my range.”
“That is your nephew they have, boy. Both of you grow like brothers. Listen!” Balo clicked voice mail on his phone. Sheldon and Carl listened to the message, then Balo replayed it.