Speak No Evil Read online

  The house is dark when we pull up and I remember the spare key under the mat at the basement door. My sneakers squish as I cross the lawn. I sit down to remove them because I don’t want to soil my mother’s carpets. I touch my forehead to the cool glass door panes and stare into the darkness to see what waits for me.

  7

  I can’t remember his face, but I think about him before I sleep. Sometimes it’s his eyes sometimes his hands, sometimes his Jordans, sometimes his voice. I know him only in fragments and I can’t erase those fragments. They torment me. I say nothing to Reverend Olumide, who tells me that he is thrilled with the progress we are making. He says the struggle to live with the Lord is lifelong and constant. He tells me to pray always for deliverance. You don’t have to be alone in this, he says. The weather is warmer so he wears short sleeves and shirts unbuttoned at the collar. He tells me to stay vigilant, that temptation will still come. He writes down Bible verses for me to read, on white index cards in dark blue ink with letters almost as perfect as a computer’s. I take the cards—Genesis 4:7, Luke 5:32, First Corinthians 6:18—and put them in my pocket without looking at them. I have a stack on a shelf in my closet. They remind me of all the things I should do.

  I don’t do them. Instead, on days when practice ends early, I take the long way home, detouring through Georgetown and lodging myself in the slow-rolling traffic on M Street so that I pass the store where he works. From my car, I see the faceless mannequins in runners’ spandex leggings and neon sports bras leaving exposed milky white mannequin midriffs. I see running shoes stacked high to the ceiling and the trickle of white-haired men and old but fit women who can afford the thirty percent location markup on a pair of shoes. The workers wear black shirts. I see them in fragments through the crowded display case, an arm here, the back of a brown head, a ponytail. I want the whole. I’m drawn to the whole, but I drive on overwhelmed by my embarrassment. My sneakers curve upwards like banana boats because I ran them through the wash.

  My father wanted to buy a new battery for my car after I told my parents that I took an Uber home when the engine wouldn’t start. He insisted on coming with me to retrieve it from school and frowned with confusion when the car started immediately after I turned on the ignition. Maybe it’s the spark plug, he said. I said, we should get home and look at it there. I had a headache and my stomach still felt uneasy. My father followed close behind me in his Range Rover. My palms were sweaty against the steering wheel.

  Each time I pass, I tell myself that tomorrow I will stop, but when tomorrow comes I don’t stop because I’m scared. The devil always comes in fragments until you experience eternity in its consuming entirety, Reverend Olumide says. I say the next day I will stop because random acts of kindness should not go unrecognized, but the next day comes and I can’t piece together what I would say to those eyes and I drive on, past the Key Bridge and up MacArthur Boulevard where I roll down my windows and inhale the spring smells of wet earth and new leaves, and sometimes scream into the passing wind so that my voice is hoarse and my throat sore when I get home. Since when did you start drinking so much tea, my mother asks me, every day tea, tea tea, as if tea is going out of fashion, she says. But I know she is secretly proud because she likes that I am adopting one of her British habits.

  Meredith would know what to do but we don’t speak anymore so I can’t ask her for help. Instead we sit across from each other in Global Literatures trying desperately not to look like we’re not looking at each other. She is different now. Her skirts and shorts are shorter now and she wears more makeup. Rowan tries not to look like he’s looking at her and Adam teases me after class. Dude you should totally hit that, you saw her cross and uncross her legs, it’s like Basic Instinct, he says, you know the movie with Sharon Stone. He likes movies so I nod and smile as we walk and he bounces. Rowan pulls fraying threads from the bill of his Princeton hat, but he says nothing. I want to hate him but it’s a waste of time. He wouldn’t give a fuck anyway.

  I text Meredith with my Nokia, cycling through letters and numbers with excruciating slowness and I hope she knows this means I’m serious. She doesn’t respond. I call Meredith after class but she ignores me. During my free period I walk up Wisconsin Avenue to the drugstore to look for blank greeting cards and Dum Dums. An older white woman with thinned gray curls and wrinkles badly covered by too much makeup rings me up. She smiles at me when she scans my items and while the register beeps, she says, I know it’s spring when you boys start coming here with your blazers looking for candy. In my day, the boys gave us flowers. I smile and swipe my card quickly. I hope she’s worth it, she says with a wink. My father thinks all white people in service jobs are stupid, bitter and mean, but she seems perfectly normal, maybe a little sad.

  I draw stick figures in comic book squares on every available surface of the greeting card. They talk about when we were younger and we killed time doing silly things like staring directly into the halogen bulbs at the base of the Cathedral and then stumbling about blinded by faith, Meredith said. I drew all the waiting after orchestra for our parents to come while Lonnie the Bahamian security guard asked us, ya parents coming soon? I leave it on her sports bag during practice. Is it too late to say I’m sorry, I write. Meet me after practice in the meadow, I text, but Meredith doesn’t come to the meadow, not after fifteen minutes, not after the street is empty and all the boys have gotten into their cars and gone home, leaving me standing in the perfect grass, alone.

  There are still colored streaks in the sky when I leave. The sunset shimmers in the windows of the Russian embassy and the storefronts lining Wisconsin Avenue so that the whole city looks like stained glass. OJ loved evenings like this when the world seemed perfect and he would drive us home playing underground hip-hop, rapping along softly while tapping his thumbs against the wheel. But he hasn’t been here for some time and normally he is too busy to talk on the phone. I know that my parents have told him nothing of the last few months, my mother out of concern for me, my father for shame, both because OJ needs to focus if he wants to become an orthopedic surgeon, and my issues are an unwelcome distraction. I dial his number and listen. Somewhere in New York, “Call Tyrone” plays and my brother either ignores it or is busy. His half-Nigerian girlfriend gifted him the ringtone. She is also a medical student so my mother is willing to overlook her whiteness. She called my mother to wish her a Merry Christmas. She texted me too. They go to church on the Sunday mornings they aren’t in the hospital. I cut the phone before it goes to voice mail. No, he wouldn’t understand.

  There is a part of me that wishes Sportzone would burn down, leaving nothing but a sticky mess of rubber soles and melted mannequins with blistered and charred skin, but the only one capable of incinerating problems is God and almost everyone who matters in my life tells me that God is not on my side. I know I should go home right away, because that’s what is expected of me, that’s what OJ would do, what good sons do. There are normal things that normal people do at normal times, I heard my father tell OJ once when he called a girl his girlfriend. OJ was thirteen, so he sat in the front seat of my father’s car. I was seven so I sat in the back like I wasn’t even there. I played with the straps on my backpack as we sped home. OJ squirmed like he wanted nothing more than to leave right then, forget the cars and moving vehicles driving by. His fingers slid against the silver door latch, then under it as his hand tensed to pull it back, but he let it go. I don’t fight battles I can’t win OJ tells me when I complain about our parents. It makes life less difficult.

  I park beneath a dogwood tree on Thirty-Second Street. Its smell immediately fills the car. Someone on the girls’ track team called them “cum trees”—she said their blossoms smell like semen. I wonder how many people put our noses to that dip between our index fingers and thumbs that night. The name stuck and now dogwoods make me think of sex. Thinking about sex is normal, Reverend Olumide says, but certain kinds of sex are not. Pray for strength. Pray for deliverance. Petals fall from the tre
e when I shut the door. A light breeze shakes more loose. The car will be covered with them by the time I get back, but there are no other parking spots. I’m out of options.

  I hesitate at the glass door to Sportzone while the mannequins watch me with their hands on their hips and brand-new running shoes on their feet. Inside bright fluorescent light floods over sportswear neatly folded on industrial metal tables. Different shoe styles climb the wall on small wooden shelves arranged by brand, purpose and pattern: darks at the bottom, light colors at the top. Their distorted reflections shimmer in the high-gloss concrete floor.

  A lone salesgirl with a microphone earpiece and a soccer player’s ponytail leans on a compact stand with an iPad for checkout. She looks at me, briefly less bored but also trained well enough to know that my purchasing power is not worth adjusting her perkiness level. How can I help you, she says. I scan the store but there is no one else inside. I can’t remember much from my first time inside except for the colors and the cold air forced down with a hiss from the exposed vents above. I just, I wanted to take a look at some running shoes, I say. Knock yourself out, she says. I do need new shoes. My current pair are less malleable after their session in the washer-dryer, but I have been afraid to ask my parents for money. I don’t want to ask them for anything. I lift a neon-blue trainer with red reflective stripes from its platform and turn it over—one hundred and eighty dollars. Everything in the store is thirty percent off, a voice says. I freeze like I have just stepped on a glass shard. He is shorter than me and he has a fresh shape-up, well-oiled so the sharp line of brushed-forward hair contrasts sharply with his brown skin. I swallow at his confused smile. Focus. But that smile. But those eyes. Focus. He has seen me, really seen me and still his gaze is insistent. Do I smell, yes I smell, but he has already smelled the worst of me. This is torture. What beauty, a solid frame of sculpted arms and broad chest made all the more broad by his fitted black golf shirt, collar popped. Focus. On what—straight ahead to his face? But those lips. Say a prayer to slow this fast-beating heart? But his strong, delicate hands. To wet this dry mouth? But the soft slope of his nose. For deliverance? You’re back, he says now settled fully into his smile and this secret familiarity. Feeling better?

  He has such a wicked smile, with perfect teeth and just the right amount of arrogance. I feel the shoe slip from my sweaty hands as my legs grow weak. Well, you came to the right place for shoes, he says. How much running are you planning on doing? Here, have a seat and maybe I can help you find something.

  Then shoeboxes surround us as he talks to me about running. He says his name is Damien and that he studies dance at Howard University but he wants to move to New York to dance with Alvin Ailey. I don’t know what that is but I nod all the same. He watches me as I walk around the store weaving through the metal tables with a different style of shoe on each foot. He asks me how they feel but I can’t feel anything at the moment. Like I’m floating, I say. Which one, he asks. I point to the neon-blue shoe with red stripes even though the instep feels narrow. Good, he says, trust your judgment. He squats down in front of me to probe for space between my toe and the front of the shoe. You don’t want it to be too snug so your feet can expand the more you run. If you’re sure, I can get them from the back, he says as he scans the shoe with his phone. You can pay Lisa up front.

  The blond-haired girl looks at me with greater interest when I approach, my debit card already in hand. I hope you found what you were looking for, she says, with a wide smile. I nod as she swipes my card and swivels her iPad so I can sign. My mother will ask me about the price, then she will ask me if I think money falls from the sky like manna. When I look at Lisa, I can breathe freely again until Damien returns with the box and a smile. Thank you, I say as I back away from him towards the door. Out on the street the traffic has thinned, but an older man in a Mercedes convertible plays Bob Dylan really loud, buses lumber past and a young woman in bright yellow shorts and pale legs jogs by. She is so skinny that her knees buckle outwards as she moves. No, the world has not changed.

  Someone taps my shoulder. Damien stands in front of me holding a small white square of paper that flutters with the evening breeze. You forgot your receipt, he says, extending his hand just as a car approaches from behind, setting his body aglow. My fingers touch his fingers as I take the paper. I see that he feels me. Thank you, I say again, and also for the other night. Don’t mention it, he says. Have a good night. Then he is gone.

  I hold the paper as I walk back to my car. No, the world has not changed, but my arms quiver. I unfold it before I unlock the door. His number floats across the white strip and I realize the smell of dogwoods doesn’t bother me.

  8

  My new life begins with coffee. That is what Damien and I decided when I finally dialed the number on the receipt. I sat beneath the flying buttress holding my phone. It took three tries entering the ten digits on my Nokia with trembling hands before the voice in my head saying stop was drowned out by the parade of young mothers and nannies in SUVs picking up their squeaking little ones from school. Carpe diem bitches, Adam liked to say ever since we read Romeo and Juliet. I pressed send.

  He sounded like he had just woken up and I imagined him laid out on white sheets in a white room with sunlight streaming in through large windows, white curtains billowing in the breeze. Then he sneezed. It’s me Niru. Oh right, Niru. What’s up. I just thought I’d call to—Thanks for calling. I thought maybe I got it really wrong. I held my breath and said nothing as an irate mother honked at another mother to please move. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for the shoes, they’re perfect. That’s cool. I said, cool, watching a lone kid with an oversized backpack shuffle the sidewalk a few paces ahead of his anxious father. Stay with me, Peter, the father yelled. Okay, well I guess, I’ll talk to you later, he said. Can I see you, I said without warning, without thinking, surprising myself. He said, yeah sure, tomorrow, like around now? He asked, have you been to Tryst, you’ll like Tryst.

  Now I stand across Eighteenth Street from my future staring up at large brown letters boldly painted on a cream-colored pediment. The sun shines so customers spill through sliding doors to sidewalk tables set beneath large red umbrellas. They pretend to work at laptops but pay more attention to people walking up and down the sidewalk. Carpe diem, I say and step into the street.

  Inside there are people everywhere, clustered together at communal tables, facing each other on mismatched chairs and sunk comfortably into sagging couches removed from living rooms and basements. The college students study each other and the street over their laptop screens and textbooks. They raise their phones to text every other minute. Other customer tribes claim the cafe’s different quarters. There are Ethiopians at the round tables and hard benches near the bathrooms and young mothers in the paired easy chairs with space enough between them to fit a stroller. The couches are full of young single people hoping to brush an attractive stranger accidentally on purpose while reaching down to the floor sockets to plug in their laptops or phones. And there is Damien at the far end of the coffee bar that runs the length of the café. He sits on his hands hunched over a book laid flat on the counter, between a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk. He sees me in the mirror above the bar and smiles. He wears jeans with holes at the knees. His white T-shirt glows with sunlight reflected from the mirror across the bar and he wears brand-new red running shoes. I catch my reflection in the mirror, rumpled khakis, wrinkled blue dress shirt, blazer. I could have tried harder. You’re here, Damien says. His voice rises and falls with a casual elegance that it doesn’t have at Sportzone. He closes his book and breaks off a piece of cookie. His actions are deliberate, nothing wasted in the flow of hand to cookie to mouth to glass of milk to mouth to dabbing away his milk mustache with a folded brown paper napkin. He pats the empty stool beside him and rests his chin on his fist while he watches me. I hesitate. You’re new at this, Damien says, don’t worry, it gets better. Does it, I ask. It did for me, once I left
home.

  Home is Newport News, Virginia, where his father is a plumber and contractor with his own business and his mother works in the mess at the naval base in Norfolk. He has two older sisters, one in the Coast Guard, the other in the Army. His father wants him to join the Navy, wanted him to go to the Naval Academy, or at least to do ROTC. He thinks he might quit school altogether and move to New York to audition. I want to dance, he says as he swivels back and forth in his chair, swinging closer to me each time until finally his thigh touches mine. I sit upright when he places his fingers on my knee and smiles. What about you, he asks. Your parents know, I say, the first thing I have said since ordering a glass of lemonade now drained on the counter before me. I play with my straw and stir my melting ice cubes until there is enough water to drink. Again my mouth feels dry. Damien shakes his head. Does it matter, he says. I’m not there. Maybe I’ll never go back. But you’ll have to go back at some point. We all have to die at some point, he says. So what’s your point? I’ll deal with that when it’s time. He squeezes my knee and points at the clock. The clock says I have less than ten minutes to get to practice. I search my pockets for the twenty-dollar bill my mother gave me for gas this morning. Don’t worry, he says, I ate a salad before you came. But I owe you, I say. Next time, he says.

  There is no one to tell how his eyes really are green and that Damien has incredibly smooth lips and killer dimples. There is no one to laugh with about his cookies and milk, to gush to about the fact that he is eighteen like I am eighteen only he seems much older. He has more facial hair which he keeps perfectly trimmed and he works two jobs at two different sports stores because no one is paying for his college but him. There is no one to talk to about waiting for his call because I’ve told him not to text me ever, and feeling my heart stop when my phone rings, and it’s his voice, and again when an hour has passed and our words have filled our ears and still not enough has been said. There is no one to speak to about my headache and my stomachache when I leave my bedroom and encounter this beautiful prison that my parents have built, when I see pictures of me on the walls and side tables that bear no resemblance to the me they cannot see. Sometimes I stare at the family that owns me and I wish I were a different person, with white skin and the ability to tell my mother and my father, especially my father, to fuck off without consequence, and sometimes I stare at the white cards of Bible verses Reverend Olumide has gifted me and think that there is still a chance to change my ways. When we sit in his office, I talk to him about my future, about college and possible careers. I say nothing about the rest of my life so he thinks his pronouncements and prayers are working. I flex my abs while he speaks to force myself to breathe through the nausea and the pounding in my head. And when I leave I call Damien so that he can tell me it gets better.