“What?” I hiss.
“Yeah…” She snorts. “Jamari always said if we were ever in trouble tonevercall the laws. He always said to call Melo—so I did. I…I had to turn his bloody body over and dig his phone out of his pocket and call Melo. I could barely keep my fingers on the screen because my hands were shaking so bad…and…and Pup was just pacing back and forth and asking me why I never told him what Jamari was doing to me.”
She pinches her eyes shut so tight that her eyelids wrinkle. She opens them back and grabs her forehead as if she’s trying to make sense of it all for the first time.
“When Melo got here and saw what happened, he said he’d cut me a deal because he really liked Jamari.” She gulps. “Jamari knew when to talk and when to shut up. He was well spoken. He wasn’t flashy. He gave Melo the idea to hide his heroin in the hay he sold to get it across state lines easier. He was perfect.”
She sounds as if she’s giving Jamari’s eulogy right in the middle of Rich’s kitchen as fresh tears coat her eyes.
“I mean…I guess fourteen hundred dollars a week is a bargain to scrape your perfect employee’s dead body off the ground, right? I guess everybody has to get their cut for turning a blind eye—the police department, the coroner, the funeral home, and then Melo has to get his cut for leaving his dinner table to come over here to Joliet to coordinate it all. By the time Jamari’s mama and granny came down here to get his body, he was already cremated—already burnt into nothing but ash and bone because the car wreck he’d been in had mangled his body so much they wouldn’t have wanted to see him like that anyway.”
She flings her head back, staring at the ceiling. “That’s what Melo told his mama at the funeral home. He said it so easily thatIalmost believed him. I almost believed Jamari and Pup’s fight was something I made up in my head until his mama looked at me like sheknewI knew the truth about what happened. I can’t close my eyes without seeing her face.”
“But why?” I gasp. “Why would Melo do that if he liked Jamari? Why would he do that if Jamari worked for him?”
“Because he’s a businessman before he’s a human being. He’s a wannabe city councilman who wants to win this upcoming election more than anything else. He didn’t even shed a tear when he saw Jamari’s body lying out in the grass back there. He didn’t flinch at the way Rich sat against the tree covered in Jamari’s blood. You can’t tell me you believed Melo Barnes was a good person?” She lets out a sarcastic laugh. “Actually, don’t even answer that. You believe every word Pup spits out.”
“I didn’t know what to believe. I mean, I heard things about Melo Barnes, but…but we all did. Then he’d turn around and pay somebody’s rent or buy the neighborhood kids bikes for Christmas, and all those things we heard would just go away.”
“Because it’s all a facade!” She slaps her hands against her thighs. “And you know…this really isn’t my place to be telling you any of this. Pup should’ve laced you up. He should’ve told you about his fuck up but I guess if he did that he would’ve lost control of whatever this is y’all have, huh? Pup should’ve told you that this neighborhood has always beenhisno matter what fuckin campaign Melo Barnes is running and he never even had to sell dope to control it. Melo Barnes’ jealous ass is probably rubbing his hands together every night because I brought Pup right to him through happenstance. The root of all that he thinks is wrong with this neighborhood is in his possession.”
For the first time in my life, I can say I’ve been gut-punched by somebody’s words. They hit me right in the center of my stomach where AJ’s foot would.
I grab it.
“But you know, all of this is my fault,” she says. “I knew the consequences of telling Rich the truth, but I was so fuckin frustrated with Jamari. Why the fuck couldn’t he juststop? Why couldn’t we argue like normal couples? Why couldn’t I postpictures of myself onmyInstagram without him throwing a fit? Why couldn’t he just be the man he promised he was during our first six months together? I just needed to vent to somebody who wouldn’t judge me, and that’s one thing Pup never did. He never judged me.”
She sucks in a ragged breath. “But I should’ve known better than to vent to him about this. He used to always tell me not to come telling him about some boy that had mistreated me unless I was ready for him to make that boy a man…and I don’t know why I called his bluff. You can never do that with Pup.”
“Arnez…”
“He said to call Jamari over and he was just gonna talk to him about what happened to my face—that’s it. I don’t think Jamari even got one word out. He couldn’t even tell Rich how much he loved me.”
She belts out a loud sob that shakes the walls. It’s one that only a person who lost somebody they loved could produce. Aunt Faye let out one just like it when they lowered Mama’s casket into the ground.
I see all of Arnez’s sleepless nights in the redness in her eyes as tears cascade down her face. I hear the culmination of everybody’s warnings about Rich over the past month in her cries—Uncle Kenny’s, Terrica’s, and Aunt Faye’s, but even with all the chatter in my brain, I can’t dig deep inside myself and muster up any empathy for Jamari. I can only feel sorry for Arnez, but I don’t see myself in her anymore. This is where our similarities end.
I shuffle around the island, putting my hand over her hot one.
“He hurt you,” I mutter, swallowing the stifling air between us and squeezing her hand. “Jamari hurt you.”
“But that ain’t give Rich the right to kill him! That ain’t give him the right to beat him like he did! It wasn’t even a fair fight.”
“He was just trying to protect you.”
“I didn’t ask him for that! I just asked him to…to listen to me and?—”
“See Jamari how you saw him. See the man you fell in love with—not the bruises, not the humiliation, not the pain he inflicted on you when he turned into that other Jamari you don’t remember falling in love with too.”
She opens her mouth like she’s trying to catch my words and swallow them to cure her heartache.
“I guess we ain’t so different after all, huh?” she rasps.
I give her hand another squeeze. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“It’s not.” She sniffles. “There’re some days that I can’t even look at Pup because I get sick to my stomach, and then some days where all I can think about is what would happen if I lost him too. I used to tell him I’d go have a talk with God and ask him why he made thunder and lightning. Because how dare he make something that terrified my baby brother so much?”
Her voice cracks. “I don’t even know where to go from here.”
