Page 74 of Justice

Somebody hurt her. And then, if the story she gave me was even half true, somebody left her for her own sister on top of it.

I found myself wanting to know his name.

Not to talk to him. I was long past wanting to talk to men who put their hands on women. I wanted to know his name so I’d have it. So it would be sitting in my pocket, ready, for the day I decided to go collect on it. Because a man who could do enough to a woman to leave a scar like that on her chest was a man who needed to meet somebody like me exactly once. I’d been that somebody plenty of times, for plenty of women, for a lot less reason than I was feeling right now.

I didn’t even have the man’s name and I already knew how it would end if I ever got it. And I would eventually get it.

Then, because a cell gives you nothing to do but sit in your own head, my mind went to Storie.

It always came back to Storie.

I thought about her face at that mall. Dry and bored, watching them cuff her daddy on a food court floor like it was a show she’d seen before and hadn’t cared for the first time either. And I made myself sit in a thing I’d spent a year refusing to sit in.

Where does a child get that from?

Because I know myself. I know what runs in me. I come from people who did what they had to do and slept fine. My grandmother built an empire on liquor she wasn’t supposed to be making and men she paid to look the other way. I have put hands, and worse than hands, on people who had it coming. Then walked away and eaten a good dinner that same night. There is a coldness in the Banks blood that goes back further than any of us can name. A thing in us that can look at a hard choice and just make it.

I always thought that was my burden to carry. My cross. The price of keeping everybody else safe.

Sitting in that cell, I started to wonder for the first time if I’d passed it down.

If my baby girl came out of me carrying the cold and not one thing to aim it at. No empire to run. No enemies to keep off her family. Just the ice in her veins, a dead mother, and a father who kept trying to love it out of her. When maybe the truth was simpler and worse. Maybe she was just like me. And maybe I was the last person on earth with any right to be scared of that, seeing as I made her.

Maybe I did this. Maybe she’s mine in the one way I always prayed she wouldn’t be.

I put my head back against that cold block wall and closed my eyes.

And the last thought I had before my mind bounced off to other things was a dumb, small, human one. I wondered if a single one of those therapists I’d been leaving messages for had bothered to call me back yet.

Somebody was going to have to help me save my child.

I just hoped to God it wasn’t already too late.

38

JUSTICE

Quest was waiting on me when they finally processed me out the next morning, leaned against his car in the visitor lot with a smirk on his face.

“There he goes.” He looked me up and down. “The infamous Justice Banks. Arrested at the mall like a shoplifter.”

“Keep fuckin’ with me, I’mma be right back in there for the same thing.” I laughed as I playfully shadowboxed him.

“Nah, nigga, you ain’t taggin’ my face. I shoots!” He laughed, pointing to the gun in his waist. “But Prime already got your mugshot saved as his contact photo. We decided we wanna send it as our family Christmas card.” He handed me a water bottle I didn’t ask for. “Get in. You smell like a holding cell.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

We got in his whip and pulled off. Quest’s jokes did help to lighten the mood. Then everything fell silent, and I started thinking about my bad-ass daughter.

“You good?” he asked after a mile.

“Not really.”

“Didn’t think so.” He drove a little. “I know we gotta handle whoever that was with my niece at the mall. But speak your mind before we get to the house.”

“That shit just don’t sit right with me. What is she doing? What do I gotta do to get her back on the right track?” I shook my head. “I might have to pull back from work for a while and focus on her. I gotta nip this in the bud. She’s out of control.”

“Whatever you gotta do, we’ll hold it down for you.”