Juliet

Chapter 31 #2

“You’re not hearing me. They ain’t built like him. There’s a reason they can raise their fist to a woman. But Pup…” She bites her lip, shaking her head and letting out a bitter laugh. “You ever stop and listen to the way people talk about him around here?”

“All the time. They talk about how good of a fighter he is, how he takes care of them, how—”

“No. You’re just hearing what’s on the surface—all the silly, shallow stuff people say when his name comes up. I’m talking about listening for the real shit that lurks in their voices when they’re low-key warning you about him.”

Her eyes flutter to my clenched fist. “It’s in his eyes, you know?”

“Wha…what is?”

“Daddy and Smit used to take him out back…” She points toward the backdoor. “They used to wail on his ass right there in the yard, and I’d watch from the back porch even though Daddy used to tell me to stay inside. It’s how they break boys like him, you know?”

A harsh rasp wraps itself around her words. “Two grown men shoving their feet into his ribs until one day Pup just stopped screaming and his eyes turned coal black. He took one last kick from Daddy, then pushed himself up from the ground…”

Her voice trails off, and my body aches from not being able to transport myself back in time to hold Rich.

“At thirteen he almost beat Daddy and Smit to death with two broken ribs right in front of that oak tree back there. At thirteen. His eyes were so black I didn’t think it was him anymore. It felt like somebody else. You ever seen Pup’s eyes like that?”

His face barrels to the forefront of my mind.

I remember the way his eyes turned into black pools in Beatrice’s backyard when he stood over Wendell, and the way they swirled into black swarms of anger when he told me what he’d do to AJ, but he never felt like anybody else but my Rich—even when his eyes changed.

“No,” I lie.

She shakes her head. “I told you you didn’t know him.

If you did, you’d know the exact darkness I’m talking about.

That’s how I knew Jamari wasn’t gonna walk out of our backyard alive when he came here to talk to Pup.

I knew when Pup’s eyes turned that nasty coal-black color I’d never hear Jamari’s voice again. ”

“Wha…what? What do you mean you wouldn’t hear it again?”

Her eyebrows curl into themselves. “How the fuck I’mma hear a dead man’s voice?”

“Dead? No…Rich said he talked to Jamari and…and Jamari left. He left you alone and went back to be with his family in Dallas.”

Her head flies back and her eyes widen as if something crawled inside her and took over her body. “Jamari took his last breath in that backyard. So it must be his ghost you talking about up in Dallas.”

My throat constricts, squeezing Rich’s words and holding them so tight that the only thing that comes out is a quiet choke.

She takes a step closer to me, and I take one back. “So that’s how Pup puts you to sleep at night, huh? With fairytales and lies?”

“I…” I shake my head, looking down. “He told me he would never do that. He told me he would never ki…”

The rest of the word drifts off.

I can’t say it again.

I’m back to square one.

She scoffs. “I told you he made up some pretend man for you to fall for, but your naive ass just won’t fuckin listen.”

All the words that fell out of Rich’s mouth replay in my mind—all the ones that felt too good even when he was describing something bad.

Somewhere in that clusterfuck in my stomach, there’s empathy floating around for Arnez…

and maybe Jamari, but it can’t poke its head out because panic is too busy pulling it back in.

“You think I’m lying?” she asks.

My mouth falls open.

“Go ask Faye. Go ask your uncle. Why you think he won’t even put boxing gloves on Pup or let him spar with anybody at Worthing?

Everybody around here knows what Pup did to Jamari.

Everybody. It’s the loudest secret around here.

You wanna know who the real wolf in sheep’s clothing is? It’s him. It’s your man.”

She points past me. “Go ask him about it. Ask him why it’s so fuckin hard for him to just walk away from this life if he wants to be with you so bad. Ask him why Faye been running up and down 288 to the Barnes’ ranch. Ask him!”

“288?” I frown. “She said she had a client in Manvel.”

“Ain’t no damn Manvel client! She’s a liar, just like he is!

She sits her lying ass up under my daddy every week.

Why you think she offered to clean this house?

Huh? Look around! Ain’t nothing here to clean!

Pup’s a neat freak! It’s just her alibi for Kenny while she runs around doing shit for Daddy and Rich knows it! ”

All the dots connect in my head with every revelation she spews—all the strange things I noticed when I first came home aren’t so strange anymore.

She chuckles. “Oh, you didn’t know those two can be thick as thieves? It’s always been like that with Pup and Faye.”

Her words bolt out in a painful shrill, as if she’s been holding on to them for a little too long.

They pierce that air of mystery around Rich that just keeps coming back no matter how many times I think I’ve popped it for good.

This time it shrivels into a pathetic heap and falls between me and Arnez with Rich’s truth leaking out of it.

Now I have the answers to the questions he always avoided, but deep down, I think I already knew them.

He’s a boy from the Bottoms just like Zaire and the rest were—a bayou boy.

A fighter.

A dog that used to be a runt.

A man who never had anybody who belonged to him before I came along.

And now Arnez says he’s a murderer just like Tony was.

“I want you to ask him why we owe Melo Barnes money every week,” she says.

“What?” I hiss.

“Yeah…” She snorts. “Jamari always said if we were ever in trouble to never call 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 that I almost 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 she knew I 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 been his no 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 just stop?

Why couldn’t we argue like normal couples?

Why couldn’t I post pictures of myself on my Instagram 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.”

If we were somewhere else, in another place and time, I’d tell her what Yesenia told me. I’d tell her to pick herself up and put herself back together piece by piece, but I think that would be futile right now.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Yeah…me too.” She snatches her hand from under mine and stoops down, picking the tape up from the floor.

“I’ll take you to Lucky’s. I need…I need to go home.

You can talk to Pup all you want there. You can ask him about the money, about Jamari, about whatever.

Y’all can do whatever you want. I don’t think I care anymore. I can’t care anymore.”