Noah's Rights

by Kenni York

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

Nearly every two minutes in America someone is sexually assaulted. Olivia Collins, an urban author residing in the heart of the hood, knows this better than anyone. Working hard to repress her own issues, Olivia encounters Noah, an underprivileged foster kid who views himself as a number, a statistic.

As the awkward duo gets to know one another, secrets about Noah begin to unfold while unraveling Olivia's resolve and forcing her to deal with her own demons. No one understands her sudden and unexplainable connection to or concern for the young boy, but their relationship runs deeper than anyone around her could ever understand given her undisclosed past. Olivia's certain that she and Noah share a bond solidified by a common pain making them nearly one in the same, for she too is a statistic in her own way.

Release date: February 28, 2017

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“What I’m supposed to do with this?” he half said, half cried silently to no one in particular. “Always making me do this . . . can’t do this . . . sick of him. Why he can’t do his own stuff? Stupid . . . I don’t wanna go back to that stupid house.”

Snot slipped from his nose, and suddenly, he realized that he was crying. That was no good—crying openly like that could easily get him beat up and picked on should anyone from his school or from the neighborhood—period—catch him. That was the last thing he needed—to give anyone any other reason to jump him or make fun of him. He did all right in that department just by being his regular, ordinary self on any given day. Not wanting to give any potential lurker any ammunition against him, he took the back of his closed, left hand and wiped it across his nose collecting the snot on his ashy skin. With his right hand, he used his fingers to quickly brush away the fallen tears that lingered on his bony cheeks.

The likelihood of someone he knew seeing him wasn’t that great, but it was still possible. He’d purposely walked a block away from his apartment complex to one of the better-looking, gated communities in his neighborhood. There, he chose to hide behind a two-story apartment building, hidden away from any passersby making their way down the Bouldercrest Road. During this awkward period when the weather was beginning to change in mid-September, he sat in the middle of the stairwell slightly shivering against the cool temperature of the early evening while wearing tattered shorts and a faded, second-hand Polo-style shirt. Every time a car crept around the building, his head shot up, and he stared, praying that no one inside knew or noticed him, and that the car wouldn’t turn into the parking lot directly to his right. He didn’t want any of the residents of the building he was hiding at to come home and find him resting in front of their door. They’d surely call the police or notify their apartment manager. That was also unwanted trouble that he wished to avoid.

Looking down into his closed fist, a million thoughts ran through his head. The crumbled aluminum ball was torturing him beyond belief. He’d gone the whole school day with it practically burning a hole in his pocket. He hadn’t been able to concentrate at all in class, and when his classmates engaged in their usual ridicule of his attire, demeanor, personality, and intellect, he was unfazed. His fear wasn’t of them eventually beating the shit out of him on the playground as he was accustomed to. Instead, his fear was that they’d shove him around enough for the aluminum ball to fall from his pocket or someone would actually snatch it from his pocket in an attempt to rob him of whatever possession they felt he had. Either way, he feared that everyone would be privy to the contraband that he was toting around, and he’d ultimately end up in the principal’s office, followed by the intake office at the juvenile detention center. Life at home wasn’t great, but he certainly didn’t want to see the inside of juvie again.

“I don’t even want this,” he said out loud to himself. “Why he give this to me? Why he do that?” He begged the universe for a clear understanding as to why he was being set up for failure. Wasn’t it enough that he was already dealing with traumatic things that kept him awake at night? Why’d he have to be faced with such an adult type of situation? At that point, he would’ve given anything to have a life like the kids he would see on old-time television shows like Leave It to Beaver and The Brady Bunch. Those white kids didn’t ever have to worry about bullying to the extent that he’d suffered it, and their greatest obstacles were bad grades and how to get some boy or girl to like them. They had bubble gum problems that were easy to solve and didn’t threaten to land any of them in jail. But he knew better. This wasn’t television. He wasn’t some privileged white kid in suburbia, and his issues were far from easy to fix. Instead, he was an orphaned foster kid living in the hood of Atlanta praying day to day just for the opportunity to make it through the day alive and out of jail despite the hell he had to endure. This wasn’t some far-fetched television show that could be turned off if, and when, it got too heavy—this was his miserable life.

In the midst of trying to talk himself into how he’d handle his current situation, he completely missed the opening and closing of the first door on the upper level of the building he was squatting at. The resident, a woman in her late twenties, stood at the top of the stairs with her arms folded looking down at him from the back. She’d opened her mouth to say something initially, but was caught off guard the moment she realized that he was speaking to himself. She looked around the parking lot for a car or any sign of another individual of whom he may have belonged to, but saw no one. Intrigued, she continued to watch him, unsure of what to do or say next. A part of her didn’t want to disturb his apparent battle he was having with himself. Whatever he was going through wasn’t any of her business, but he certainly did sound tormented for a little kid.

Olivia Collins had only stepped out of her apartment to get some fresh air. She’d spent the greater part of her day sitting in the office of her two-bedroom apartment trying her best to get through the climax of the manuscript she was working on. For some reason, she’d felt herself spiraling into a writer’s block and knew that it was time to take a break. In doing so, she walked out onto her back porch with the intention of leaning over the rail and closing her eyes to meditate while looking up into the sky as dusk began to creep up. She’d done this countless times since living in the apartment, taking full advantage of her upper level unit. Only, this time, she wasn’t so sure she’d have the opportunity to reflect. Not with this unknown character having a borderline schizophrenic spell on her back steps. The curiosity within her forced Olivia to slowly move forward, inching down to the second step. With her arms still folded, she crouched down a little and leaned forward before speaking.

“Are you okay?” she asked in the most gentle, soothing way that she could so as not to frighten him.

Her gentility was of no consequence. The boy practically jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice, rising to his feet and turning around to face her with stunned eyes and a shocked expression on his tearstained face. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts that seemed to be at least a half size too big for him. At this point, Olivia noticed how thin the child was and yet again, wondered who he belonged to.

“Hi,” Olivia stated, giving him a smile to try to help him relax and know that she would not harm him.

He blinked but said nothing.

Olivia looked into his eyes noting the fear that was there and present in the way that he rocked side to side on the step that he was now standing on. “Are you okay?” she tried again, now lowering herself to a seated position.

He nodded, but remained silent.

“You out here alone?” It was a stupid question with an obvious answer, but it was the first thing that came to her mind.

This time he shrugged. Communication was clearly not his strong suit.

“You live around here?” she asked him.

He nodded slightly, and then lowered his eyes.

Olivia didn’t know what to make of it. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and it seemed odd to her that he was sitting on her back steps alone with no other children to play with and no adult in sight. She wondered exactly where his unit was and if his parents had any idea where he was. Remembering the somberness of his posture and the way he’d been nearly crying to himself when she first walked out, she had to ask herself if maybe he’d run away from home, making it only as far as her steps. It was a juvenile thing to do when you were upset because your parents wouldn’t let you have your way or someone picked on you. Perhaps that was exactly what was going on now.

“Do you think maybe it’s time for you to go home now?” she asked. “The sun’s about to go down, and I’m sure your parents are gonna be worried about you soon.” She pointed across his shoulder where a tiny beam of light sprung to life. “See there. The streetlights are coming on.”

There was an unspoken Southern rule that once the streetlights came on, young children were expected to return indoors for the day. Olivia assumed that the child understood and abided by this. Pointing out the lights should have encouraged him to make his way back to the safety of his own unit.

She sighed, seeing that he was not going to respond no matter what. Rising from her seated position on the step, she looked at him and motioned her head toward the slew of other apartment buildings that rested behind hers. “You should head on home, okay?” She turned to walk away, hoping that he’d take her advice.

Abruptly, he reached forward and grabbed her arm. “Can I get a piece of paper?” he blurted out.

His request caused her to stop in her tracks. With him having said nothing else in response to any of her questions, she was shocked that he’d be asking for something so unusual for a stranger to request of another. “Uhhh . . . sure,” she answered skeptically as she looked down at him, his small but mighty grip holding on to her. “Let me go and I’ll get it.”

He released his grasp and stared at her with huge eyes, wondering if she was really going to run inside and call the police on him for touching her.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Olivia hurried up the couple of steps and reentered her apartment in search of a sheet of notebook paper from her office. As he waited for her, the little boy stared out into the dusk of the evening and contemplated her previous words. I’m sure your parents are gonna be worried about you soon, he thought. Ha! He knew better than that. Where he was going, he was sure that the only reason they’d want to ascertain he was there was for the financial gain. His well-being and safety were of no consequence.

Olivia returned with a notebook and a pen. He hadn’t asked for the pen, but if he needed the paper, she felt certain that he’d need the pen as well. Cautiously approaching him so as not to scare the child off, Olivia handed him the notebook with the pen clipped to it. “Here you go.”

He looked at her and shook his head. “Naw, I just need one piece of paper.”

“It’s okay,” she told him. “You can take the whole notebook. I have plenty of them, and this one’s never been used.”

He looked at her quizzically for a moment before reaching out to take the notebook with his right hand. There were a lot of thoughts running around in his head, things he wanted to say but didn’t dare let out, not that he had anyone to confide in. He needed the paper to jot down his thoughts, thinking that he could then fold it up and hide it in his pants pockets so that no one would see it. His thoughts were private, and he kept them as such.

Olivia watched as he removed the pen and scribbled down a few lines in sloppy penmanship. She resisted the urge to rubberneck for a glimpse of what it was that he was so feverishly writing. For a second she wondered if maybe he had a story in his head. At least one of us is able to write right now, she thought. She hugged herself against the brisk air and once again looked out into the quiet of the complex. In the units around them, families were having dinner, winding down for the evening, and someone was maybe even already asleep. But, there she stood on her back steps with a strange boy, watching him write when she herself needed to be tapping the letters of her keyboard.

Soon, the boy stopped writing, closed the notebook, and reached behind himself to stick it into the waistband of his shorts and underwear. He promptly covered it up with his dingy shirt. He looked up at her as if he wanted to say something, but no words escaped his lips.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked, perplexed as to why he was still standing there instead of running off to return home. More and more she wondered why his parents were not looking for him by now.

He bit his lower lip. She was a nice enough lady even though she was a stranger. She seemed to want to help him, and that was something he wasn’t used to. Maybe she was his answer. Maybe if he could just leave it with her for now, overnight, he could figure out what to do with it and how to get himself out of this situation. Slowly, he reached into his pocket with his left hand and pulled out the aluminum ball that had been giving him so much grief all day. He extended his hand to her and looked into her eyes pleadingly, though his voice remained small and even.

“Can you keep this for me?” he asked.

Her face frowned up as Olivia surveyed the crumpled aluminum in his little hand. She had no clue why he wanted her to hold on to such a weird object. Her initial thought was that maybe it was his good luck charm and he was offering it to her as a way of thanking her for her generosity. Absentmindedly, she reached for it, and once she felt the weight of it, she knew that it wasn’t just about the foil. There was something concealed within in it.

“What is this?” she asked him. Curiously, she peeled back the layers of foil until her eyes fell upon the unmistakable baggies of white powder within. Her glance shot back up to him, and her eyes were questioning. “What is this?” she asked again, though she knew the answer. She only prayed that she was, by some chance, wrong. “What are you doing with this?”

“It—it’s not mine,” he said quickly, immediately caring what she thought about him. “It’s not mine. I just—”

“Then why do you have it?” Olivia held the dope in her hand and stared at it as if it was about to burn a hole through her extremity.

“He said . . . he said if I didn’t do it, he’d cut my feet off.”

She gave him a look of disbelief at the sound of his explanation. Her common sense told her to give the child back his stash or call the police. Either way, she wasn’t buying into the fact that someone was threatening to pull a Toby on him.

He sensed her skepticism and nodded his head with vigor. “For real! I’m telling you the truth! He made me do it.”

“He who?” She cocked her head to the side and waited for his reply.

“If I go back home with it he’ll know I didn’t sell it like I was ’pose to,” he responded, ignoring her question. “I’on know nothing ’bout selling dope and . . . and I was scared to do it . . . but I can’t take it back. I gotta hide it somewhere.”

It was the fear in his voice that made it real for Olivia. He was genuinely petrified that whomever had given him the coke was going to punish him for not selling it for them. The thought frightened her as well, and once again, she wondered who the hell this child’s parents were. “Who is it?” she asked again. “Tell me who it is. You can trust me. Let me help you,” she pleaded with him. She looked down at the drugs again, convicted in what needed to be done. “We have to call the police.” She wrapped the coke up and turned to head back into her apartment.

Once again, he lurched forward and grabbed ahold to her arm. “No!” he cried out. “You can’t do that. You can’t do that!”

She looked at him and shook her head. “Do you know how dangerous it is for you to be carrying this around? Whoever gave this to you should be arrested.”

“You can’t do that.” Tears began to well up in his eyes. “If you call the police . . . if you do that, then I’ll get in trouble.”

“You’re just a kid,” she reasoned with him. “All you have to do is tell the police the truth. Just tell them what happened and who gave it to you.”

“The police don’t care nothing about kids like me!” he hollered, releasing his grasp of her arm and stepping down a few steps.

Olivia’s heart was racing, and she was jarred by his loud, harsh tone. She was sure that he was about to run off and leave her standing there holding enough coke to catch a case.

“If you call them, something bad will happen to me!” he screamed. “I just needa hide it for a minute . . . I just need some time to figure out what I’ma do. That’s all!” He was on the brink of breaking down in front of this strange woman who’d been kind enough to entertain his drama for this long.

Olivia was confused. She knew what she needed to do, but watching the boy’s reaction pulled at her heartstrings, and she just couldn’t stand to put him through any more torment. It was clear that he was caught up in the middle of something that could end up fatally catastrophic, and she didn’t want to cause him any more fear or place him in greater danger than he was potentially in already. She was conflicted, but one thing was for absolute sure—this child was in trouble. She swallowed hard and looked around them. Her eyes fell upon a tree with a small, yet hollow hole that she knew was there. She pointed to it while handing him back his property.

“Stick it in that tree,” she advised. “In the hole. No one will notice.”

She wondered if she was making the right move, but she knew that there was no way she’d keep an illegal substance in her home. She watched as the boy hurried down the stairs and followed her instructions. Slowly, she descended the steps while watching his figure in action. “What are you going to do?” she asked weakly, still battling with the decision she’d just made. There was still time to call the police. “When he asks about it?” she clarified.

The boy shrugged. “I’ll come up with something . . .” He lowered his head for a moment, contemplating what he should say next. Coming up with nothing, although he was filled with gratitude which was instantly replaced with the new worry of what story he would exactly provide, he bit his lower lip. He blinked nervously as he took a final look at the woman before turning around and dashing off around the building and disappearing.

“Wait!” Olivia cried out, descending the remaining stairs and running in the wake of his path. “Wait!” But she couldn’t catch him. By the time she made it to the closed iron gate at the complex’s entrance, the boy’s figure was nothing more than a memory as he vanished up the road.

“Damn it!” she cursed herself. After all of that, and she hadn’t even gotten the child’s name.

“Girl, you gotta try this fried alligator,” Shanice gushed, dipping the delicacy into its specified sauce and smiling. . .