The sirens that day left us sitting in the only unmarked spot of the apartment, the center of the rug behind the sofa, both Marcus and I staring at the neon tape signaling another spot of DNA, as if the whole apartment wasn’t made up of us and our blood. The social worker left with the police, after an hour of questions following Mama and the ambulance. Marcus had his arm around my shoulders and every time I started shaking again, he’d scratch my arm to remind me he was still the same. I was two months from fifteen. He was the youngest adult I’d ever seen and it wasn’t more than a week later that he dropped out of school. Marcus was determined to hustle for me, to be the man.
We settled in the patch of beige-turned-brown rug and Marcus whispered in my ear, “I got you.” It was like the light finally found its way to Marcus’s mouth because he was speaking sun into me and if Mama wasn’t gonna be there no more, if Daddy was already no different than infertile dirt, then I needed my brother more than anything. He asked me what I wanted for dinner and when I told him I wasn’t hungry, he found Mama’s emergency fund in the pillowcase and ordered us three different kinds of pizza. He ate two slices of each, picked all the sausage off one of them, and left me his plate to wash up. Maybe I should’ve known it’d be like that, me washing up his dishes, cleaning up his ruins, but his arm around me, his whisper was enough for it not to matter. Marcus had claimed me. I was his.
I thought Marcus was gonna be everything I needed after that. He held my hand through Mama’s trial, through Uncle Ty leaving town, through visits to Mama in the overcrowded Dublin prison. And then, two years later, he let it go. Marcus took off to Cole’s, stopped looking me in the eye, left the newspapers he used to pore over in a pile by the door. I’ve been chasing him ever since, trying to get him to look at me.
By the time my fourth glass has emptied out to only ice, the club is full of crawling bodies, every stool and table occupied, the music thump-thumping even though I can’t place a single distinct song. All three poles are in use and dollar bills make their way into the thong of each woman giving a lap dance. There’s something about the buzz of the place that makes me feel alive, not like a girl barely scraping by but a woman free. The way the lights remain just the perfect mix of warm and not-quite-there. The way the music combines with the chatter to produce a chorus of muffled fuzz, like a melodic static. The way every time the door opens to let another cluster of bodies in, the Oakland outside seeps in: a drumbeat, somebody shouting about how we gotta beware the cracks in the sidewalk, a siren.
Lacy comes back from making her rounds with a tray of half-empty wineglasses and it don’t make no sense to me why anyone would pay for something just to not drink it. I catch her eye and point to my glass, but I can’t seem to locate the words to ask her for a refill.
She laughs. “I think you’re done, Ki,” she shouts.
I pout, spinning around on the barstool. Polka dot tie catches my eye again. He’s talking to his suited friends but staring right at me. I come back from my spin to see Lacy mixing drinks and the room suddenly feels overcrowded, like every pocket of breath has disappeared in that single spin. I shout out to Lacy across the noise. “Gotta get out of here.”
She raises her eyebrows, her figure even taller than I remember it being when her face elongates like that. “You sure you can make it home?”
I wave at her. Less at her and more at the outline of her, the figure that drags upward toward the ceiling. I lift myself off the stool and gather my footing, walking toward the door like it’s hiding something glorious behind it. I swing it open and step out onto the street. I know almost immediately that it’s gotta be after ten because Oakland’s shut down, all the lights turned off. The only people on the streets are the ones who live there. That’s what it’s gonna be like for us—Marcus and me—pretty soon. No escaping the sidewalk.
The windchill enters my body, slips under my shirt right to my belly button. Sometimes I think about where my belly button might lead to. Like if it goes to the stomach, joins the slosh of cherry red up in there, or if it’s connected to my womb.
The door to the club swings open behind me and Polka Dot is there, his hair loose from its gel in a way that looks more natural on him, like he wasn’t meant to be that tied up.
“Hey.” I’m not even sure he’s talking to me until he says, “Gray shirt,” and I have to look down at what I’m wearing to understand that he means me. I try to smile at him, but my mouth is buzzing and I think it turns up lopsided on my face, which he laughs at, a low laugh, one that never really reaches its climax.