PROLOGUE
THE ALIBI
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for
an entire lifetime.
—ANNE SEXTON, “45 MERCY STREET”
Jacob Safulu, a.k.a. Dreamer
December 6, 1993 • 9:18 p.m.
Angela’s never sat me down and looked at me like I’m a problem she finally solved before. She hasn’t said anything yet, but I feel her words on their way to me like how I can feel a punch is coming. Inside, I’m already trying to get out of the way.
“This isn’t easy for me or anything,” she’s saying, and I know it’s the windup before she hits me with, “but I need you to move out, Jacob.”
That’s the knockout right there. It’s over. Done.
When Angela makes decisions, they stay made.
What she’s doing right now is dumping me and making me homeless in the same swoop, but all I can think of is how the microwave’s beeping. This new one I got off a homie last week. It’s from Japan. Good shit. Digital. It’s got this thing where it reminds you if you don’t get your food out. That’s what it’s doing right now with her macaronis. It’s beeped twice already. The sound of it reminds me how that monitor sounded on my homie before his heart just stopped.
Tiny Gangster, R.I.P. Southsider. A real Lynwood rider. Un matón grande.* Toughest fool I ever met. And remembering that mixes into right now, and this hot hard pain sticks in my chest. Like a fire rock.
Angela snaps her fingers in front of my eyes.
“Hello?” She’s getting heated. “You paying attention to me, or what?”
Beep.
I come back with, “Or what.”
She rolls her eyes at me. She used to love how I made her laugh. Now she’s got a look like me even trying is just … sad.
“You see how this isn’t working out, right? You get all immature when you should be serious. Is everything a joke with you? Cuz I need somebody who can be more than one thing, like somebody who can deal with real shit and be all romantic with me.”
“Listen.” I grab one of her hands. It’s cold. It don’t want to be between my palms, I can tell. “I can be better. I can be all that. Buy you flowers.”
Angela pulls her hand away. All I ever heard from homies is how she’s too good for me. How she’s older. How she’s the prettiest around by far. How she’s going places. Even Wizard says all that. Over time that messes with you. And I’m regretting ever leaving Little’s house, ever having that big-ass fight with his mamá about how I wasn’t ready for this type of thing yet. Living with a girl, at seventeen? She wasn’t about it. I did it anyways.
Beep.
I smile again. Not at her tho. At my feet this time. I talk at them too, like, “So, if all of a sudden I was serious, this wouldn’t go different?”
“No,” she says to me, “we already crossed those bridges.”
“So why you want me to be different when you’re pulling the plug?”
She’s leaning forward. She’s looking me hard in the eyes. “But is this you? Or is this just what your homies want from you?”
I kind of retreat, like, “Whatever.”
She ain’t letting it go. “Remember that time you got caught up moving those TVs?”
I got to trip on that for a second. It was after the riots. After I maybe helped burn down that Jack in the Box on MLK. There was a storage shed in the hood, one full of shit we’d rounded up. Homies were coming all hours to fill it. That was laughs.
She’s saying, “Remember how you acted like you could be the one to find a buyer since Jellybean wanted to see who’d step up? You came with this big smile like you could fix it.”
Shit. I remember. I tried to sell everything to this old Korean lady with an appliances shop on Long Beach and that lady called the sheriffs on my ass. What Angela’s not saying is how Wizard’s advice came in real good. Not having tattoos. Not being on a gang card. Not being photographed or FIed. There’s no evidence of me being affiliated. Sheriffs didn’t even pick me up, cuz I’m a sleeper like that. And, besides, Mrs. Hong couldn’t pick anybody out of a lineup, anyways. She picked some pineapple-headed paisa, I heard.
Angela’s staring at me. Wants me to say something. I don’t have the right answers for her, so I don’t. I just wait for a beep. There isn’t one tho.
She puts her head down and brings it back up by pushing all her hair away from her face in a wave. She’s all, “Thanks for making this easier.”
All I got left is hurt. That’s the shit making me say, “I mean, at least I can do that, right? You’re welcome.”
She gets this wiggly look on her face like she’s not sure what to say. And I get that. It’s how I feel too. I know I fucked up. A lot. I messed around on her with Tiny’s cousin Giselle when I was high. It’s more than that tho. Angela’s always been after me to change it up, to be up out of the streets. Get a job. Or go to school.
“It’s like you’re still wearing a mask around me,” she says, “of what you think I want to see.”
The beeping’s done for good, I think. I’m remembering how all it ever does is five. It doesn’t go on forever or anything. That gets me thinking how maybe everything’s on a timer. Not just me and Angela. Everything. Ticking down. Running out.
So I figure why not be real with her if … if that’s what she wants?
So I’m leaning forward, saying, “All I got is this burning feeling right here since the moment you said what you had to.”
She nods, like whatever, she don’t believe me.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Just…”
She bites her lip at me, wondering where I’m going with all this.
I say, “I wish you luck. In life, you know? All that suerte. For real. Just please don’t be messing around with no homies. I can’t handle that. For real, that’s not … I mean, nobody needs that. Not me. Not you. Not Wizard. Not whoever the fuck ends up being next. Okay?”
She don’t need me to say that nobody needs another Tiny Gangster situation. Shot six times. Lying up in St. Francis till his body gave up. No match for some bullets that his girl’s ex put in him.
I say, “So I’m gonna go now, all right? I’ll grab my shit some other day.”
She blinks. And I see how she’s crying. And that gets me. Cuz this whole time she’s been so cool and calm and grown with dropping this on me. A couple tears letting go, running down her cheek. I wanna wipe them off. That’s not for me to do anymore tho. She’s looking at me now in a way that says how she’s feeling my pain and feeling bad for causing it at the same time. But fuck that. She did it. And it’s done. And it’s been burning me inside how Little’s mamá was right all along.
“I guess,” Angela says.
“Okay,” I say.
And I just get up, like a man, and I carry the weight of all the stupid shit I done, cuz there’s no other choice. Cuz you have to. Always.
And I turn my back on her and walk out that front door. I bounce.