MAY 28, 2016
Only a few Hester Gardens townhomes faced north, and in Medford lore, they were the reason the public housing complex was haunted. When the sun rose on the eastern-facing units that overlooked the Rodgers Freeway, light poured into the tiny windows, baking the occupants from May through September and reminding them of summer the rest of the year. For the homes that faced west, the setting sun bathed the walls in eerie pinks and purples reminiscent of late-afternoon funerals down south. The handful of southern-facing dwellings were dim most of the day except around noon, when the sun was high enough to peek through curtains like an intrusive neighbor. But the haunted quarters were the ones facing north, or so everyone said. For those homes, the sun never seemed to rise, the days were cast in a never-ending pall of gray, and the murdered just didn’t know how to leave.
Nona McKinley’s unit faced north. On the morning of her middle son’s high school graduation, she showered, powdered herself, and primped in her bedroom mirror. It was a quarter past six, and she’d been up since four a.m. cleaning and fretting, filled with a range of emotions she couldn’t quite place. She fastened her favorite bra—the best of the three she owned because it crafted the deepest cleavage—and hummed along to a gospel tune flowing from the television Pastor Davis had bought her. The song had also played at her eldest son’s funeral.
Kendall.
That wound was still so raw.
Being home alone was a rare but welcome event. A full bed alongside a milk crate draped with a neighbor’s discarded curtains completed her room, and the makeshift nightstand housed her blessing oil and Bible. The bars on the lone window and the narrowness of the room were her prison. Back when Vance still lived there, the space had seemed larger. His mere presence had stretched apart the walls and pushed up the ceiling.
She searched her closet for something that might dress up the outfit she would wear. At the back, she found the skirt she’d worn that day in the alley. It had taken her weeks to remove the bloodstains. Vance had made her promise not to throw it in the trash.
“I can burn it,” she’d offered.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he’d countered. “Just clean it and hang it again like you do with all of your clothes on a normal week.”
The memory of NaDarius came to her, of his hand reaching for her skirt, but she wouldn’t let him haunt her this day. Not at such a special moment. The occasion she’d been waiting for, when all of her hopes and dreams and backbreaking work were finally paying off.
She wasn’t expecting the boys to return home before the ceremony. In fact, she was set to meet them there. So when her front door groaned open and slammed shut, she drew in a breath and stared at the image of her own wide eyes.
With her bra hooked but backward on her torso, she snapped off the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and waited for familiar footsteps—deliberate if they belonged to Marcus, the graduate; dawdling if they were Lance’s, the middle schooler’s. These footfalls were neither; they rushed across her floor as if set aflame.
Was it a junkie? Or one of the boys from the local gang, the Hester Boys, rummaging through her kitchen drawers? How would they have gotten in? She had wrought iron on the front door, and there were but two ways a person could force entry, one of which involved a screwdriver.
Only she, Marcus, and Lance had keys, and her boys would never lose nor loan theirs. She prayed it was Marcus stomping across the living-room floor, drawing closer to her room. Perhaps he’d forgotten the printout for his speech?
“Marcus?”
She didn’t like the way the movement stopped on the other side of the wall. The clock ticked louder than usual. Across the hall, the toilet bubbled. Sweat formed on her upper lip and about her temples, and she pressed her palm to her chest, hoping the gesture would calm her breathing.
No answer from the living room.
She rushed forward and pressed the dime-sized gold lock on her bedroom door. With trembling fingers almost too thick to work, she tugged her bra into place, slid on her blouse, and zipped her hips into her pencil skirt.
She tiptoed back to the dresser and quietly searched the top for her phone. Mable. She’d call Mable Cleveland. Mable lived several doors down in Hester Gardens and was always armed, even at funerals, even in line at the neighborhood food pantry. Where was Nona’s cell?
Blush brushes, BB cream, and her bottle of blue-black mascara covered the dresser top, but no phone. She eased open the top drawer in case the device had fallen in. It wasn’t there either.
Nerves stabbed her stomach and chest. She must have left it on the kitchen counter. Her only way to call for help was on the other side of her home, out where the steps gave way to a dragging sound, a heaviness being pulled across her floors.
“It’s me,” someone said. The voice moved to the hallway, outside her bedroom door. Closer. Louder. “It’s me.”
She snatched up the metal baseball bat she kept beside her bed, careful not to make a sound. She didn’t know who was on the other side of the thin wood, but the voice—deadpan, bass-heavy, and evil—didn’t belong to any of her sons.
How could such a flimsy lock keep her safe? She backed up, bumping her nightstand and knocking her Bible to the floor. She regretted making Vance get rid of the revolver he’d kept in the milk crate.
Floorboards creaked on the other side of the door.
“You better get out of my house if you know what’s good for you.” She drew closer to the wood again, hoping to sound like a large, menacing person who had a weapon and perhaps also knew how to throw a punch, but her voice came out shrill and weak.
The doorknob rotated slowly, the motion barely emitting a sound. The handle squeaked in protest as someone moved it left, right, left, right. The lock Pastor had installed worked after all. The metal held.
When she didn’t open the door, the intruder violently shook it in its frame. A crack the size of a strand of hair appeared near the edge; it wouldn’t take much more pressure to break through. She wished she hadn’t told Pastor to install those irons on the bedroom windows and the front door. Now she had no way to get out.
She pressed her ear to the wood; the post of her stud earring dug into the flesh behind her lobe.
Everything came to a stop.
She brought the bat to her right shoulder anyway, gripping the handle and gearing up to swing. Her pulse throbbed against her temples. Tears burned the outer corners of her eyes. The clock beside the bedroom door ticked. As the red hand crept forward, the thin rod counted down the seconds until she came face to face with this prowler. She waited. Her pounding heart echoed in her ears.
Ten minutes passed. Outside the bedroom window, children laughed and a car’s engine roared to life, but no noise from her home.
Was he gone?
She unlocked the bedroom door, and after the handle clicked and the hinges creaked open, her entire home seemed to sigh.
No sunlight graced the narrow walkway that led from her and the boys’ bedrooms and past their shared bathroom. She gripped the bat with both hands and elbowed the light switch on.
The overhead bulb illuminated the only frame she’d ever hung on the wall: the family portrait in which she stood next to Vance, the two of them smiling, with their three boys seated in front of them, also grinning.
Expecting someone to leap from the open door of the boys’ room, she peeked inside. Their closet sat open, their dirty shirts, shorts, and socks spilling out. Light from the window passed beneath their mattresses and illuminated the spots under their beds. She crouched and squinted. No one was under there. Same for the shower in the bathroom—curtain open, space empty. The final place to check was beyond the hall.
She inched along the wall, her palms moist on the bat as she braced for someone to reach out of the shadows and grab her. She kept her eyes trained on the archway where the hallway opened into the den.
The console table snagged her skirt as she passed, but she refused to take her eyes off the hall’s threshold as she backed up and freed the fabric from the splinters in the wood.
The closer she got to rounding the corner, the stronger a sickening and familiar smell became. The air reeked of her mother and father in the moments before they passed, when they were in the liminal space between the living realm and the next, with the heat leaving them, sweat gathering under their arms, and feces leaking into the mattress beneath them.
The sharp odor of smoke reached her nostrils.
With her bat still poised to strike, she paused at the edge of the hall and squinted at the dim den, expecting open and ransacked kitchen drawers and cabinets, perhaps an overturned couch, a missing television, maybe. The sweat from her soles squeaked against the floor as she entered. She held her breath.
Vacuum lines from her four a.m. cleaning session coursed up her couch’s fabric. The bowl of plastic apples sat undisturbed in the middle of the dining table. The refrigerator remained closed, the photos of her boys taped to its front untouched. The tiny coat, linen, and utility closets that spanned the entry wall were open, and the jackets and shoes were organized how she’d left them hours before. Nothing was out of place, but someone had broken in. Had made a ruckus doing so. Yet the physical evidence of the noises she’d heard did not exist. Had she imagined the entire thing?
Smoke billowed from the stove, but nothing was cooking on the eyes. The flames on the right rear burner grew as if she’d poured gasoline on them. Her breath escaped in a loud gasp as she dropped the bat and reached for the knobs. They were already off. The fire reached higher, above the back of the stove now, and might have continued if she hadn’t smothered it quickly with a damp dish towel.
She wrestled with the window, opened it, and fanned the smoke that floated around her kitchen. With her index finger and thumb, careful not to burn herself, she snatched up the dish towel and flung it in the sink. All flames on the stove were gone.
Her phone sat on the counter. Coughing and sweating, she turned her back to the kitchen sink so her home and the hallway she’d just exited remained in view. She still felt under siege, even if no one was home but her and her fear.
She picked up the bat and rested it against the kitchen table, within arm’s reach. She scanned the room’s every nook as she unlocked her phone and opened her contacts. Marcus answered on the second ring, and she sobbed when she heard his voice. Choked up, she struggled to get through the entire story of what had just happened, but Marcus managed to get the gist of what she said: There had maybe, somehow, been an intruder.
“Someone broke in? I’m on my way back,” Marcus shouted over the din of teens laughing in the background, some shrieking as they likely lined up and practiced for their ceremony. She hated she was worrying him on such an important day.
“No. Stay. I’m fine. I just … It wasn’t real. I must have … I needed to know it wasn’t real.”
“But if somebody was trying to break in—”
“No. I had my gospel music on too. The sound might have been somebody over in the Taylors’ unit or something.”
She didn’t fully believe that. The voice had seemed so real, but there was no proof now that it’d happened at all.
‘“But if it’s an emergency—”
“There’s no emergency.” She regretted calling. Was kicking herself for making Marcus responsible for her emotions. “Just me losing my mind.”
“Being scared doesn’t mean you’re losing your mind.”
Scared. Yes. She was scared, but that’s all she could really say with certainty. She had no idea what had just happened to her.
Maybe a burglar had tried the door, rattled it, and then realized her unit had bars and would be too difficult to break into.
What about the voice?
Again, Marcus insisted on coming home.
“Nope. By the time your bus arrives here, I’ll already be there.”
He paused, likely weighing this information and trying to come up with another way to take care of her.
As the morning sun rose higher, it punched through the windows, rested on seat cushions, filled the corners, spilled across her shelves and counters, and dissolved the shadows. Sunlight in her home was rare, so she was grateful for it. Even the smiles in those refrigerator photographs seemed brighter, with her boys’ faces saying What’s the problem, Mom?
“Okay.” He still sounded unconvinced. “Text me as soon as you get on the bus.”
“Soon as I get on.” She didn’t enjoy feeling like the child in this exchange. “I promise.”
“Knew I shoulda told Lance to keep his butt at home this morning.”
“It’s fine. You know he uses any excuse to get out the house.”
“All right, Mom. Sing it with me now.”
She smiled, pretending she didn’t want to belt out the tune they’d begun singing his first day of kindergarten, when he’d gripped her hand tight enough to leave creases from his toy watch on her wrist.
Back then he’d asked, “How long I gotta be ’way from you?” She’d knelt before him, took in his unlaced sneakers, the snot pooled above his lip, the thumb he’d begun sucking during the walk up the steps, and she’d told him, “When the little hand is on the three and the big hand on the twelve.” She’d whispered the song to him. He’d joined in, and it was only then he’d been willing to bunny hop with the other students into the classroom.
“Better sing it now, or I’m coming home.” His smile came through the phone, and it made her giggle.
They sang the chorus to “I’ll Always Love My Mama” by the Intruders.
Marcus whispered the lyrics, likely pressing the button on the side of the phone, increasing the volume to hear her over the hubbub.
He chuckled, and her heart was bursting. She wished his day hadn’t been clouded.
“Better now?”
“Better.”
But as soon as she ended the call, the sun passed behind a cloud, and the light filling her home turned to gray. Shadows again rested on seat cushions, filled corners, spread across the counters and shelves, and darkness even passed over her boys’ pictured faces—their smiles now those of aggrieved men.
She was not better. Her eyes ached as she faced the empty space in the hallway, the area so dark she could no longer make out the family portrait in that grim passageway. Behind her, the tick, tick, tick of the pilot light, and the stove lit itself again.
By nine, she sat two bus stops away, in the Kitledge High auditorium beside her youngest, Lance, noting with pain in her chest the absence of her husband and her firstborn. A flood of energy rushed through her hands and feet as she peered out the window at the gray clouds that had formed in the sky. She should have been happy Marcus’s big day had finally arrived, but her thoughts remained on that voice she’d imagined in her home. It’s me. That’s how they all usually called out when they entered, and she’d recognize the voice immediately. Only this time, that hadn’t happened.
Rain pelted the roof, slowly at first. Anxiety? No. She wasn’t experiencing anxiety. Not exactly.
She received two text messages. One from Pastor: The big day is here! I’m putting the finishing touches on tonight’s graduation party. Give Marcus a big high five for me. Btw, I can’t wait to see you. I missed talking to you this morning.
A surge coursed through her body when she read his message. Her cheeks flushed. She turned her phone so Lance couldn’t see.
The rain shower became a storm that grew louder than the din of the gathering crowd. Folks filed in fussing and sopping wet. The women with curls where straightened hair should have been complained that poor weather forecasting had cost them time and money on their blowouts.
The second message was from her nephew Harlan: Just got put on a breaking news story at work. Won’t be able to make the graduation after all. Tell Marcus I’ll see him tonight at the party.
Harlan’s empty seat on the other side of Lance doubled in size. She was disappointed, so she knew Marcus would be as well. Another man absent from his life. She couldn’t be mad at Harlan, though. He was such a fine example for Marcus to follow. Harlan had made it out of Hester Gardens, and now Marcus would too.
The graduates marched in to the beat of whistles, cheers, and hoots. A live band played “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and the crowd filled in the words of the Black national anthem. Nona’s throat burned from yelling “Marcus!” Her cheeks flushed when he caught sight of her, waved, and blew her a kiss from the front of the line.
The sense of foreboding she’d woken with in the morning returned. Was it related to his graduation? Was she already missing him because he would head off to college in the fall? No. That wasn’t quite right either. She wanted him to leave, to get as far away as he could from Hester Gardens.
Marcus waved to alums, parents, and underclassmen huddled in the audience. Two years before, her firstborn had done the same. Back then, Marcus and Lance had held up a homemade poster that said Way to go, Kendall!
Kendall, you’d be so proud of Marcus today. She pictured her oldest outside the windows, seated among the clouds, grinning back. Was this weight in the pit of her stomach related to her grief? No. That heaviness lived inside her every day, had become its own painful limb. This was something else.
In his speech, would Marcus mention he’d be attending an Ivy League school in the fall? She wanted to sing it from the third row: My middle baby is going to an elite private school. Yes, honey, I raised him right!
Once the rain-soaked audience took their seats, the ceremony dragged on for forty tortuous minutes. A few administrators gave speeches about “the future,” and she nodded off twice, her head landing on Lance’s shoulder. That all changed when the principal introduced Marcus.
Her middle son strode to the podium. His military gait and upright posture resembled his father Vance, who’d been eighteen when she’d met him.
With aching cheeks and a wet chin, dressed in the only suit she owned—a navy pencil skirt, a matching blazer, and a polyester blouse so shiny it looked like plastic—she sat up straight, cleared her throat, and snapped several photos of him on her phone.
Comments floated from the attendees around her. With praise like “You must be so proud” and “You raised such a fine young man,” she was as much the star of this event as Marcus was. Her unsettled feeling from moments before could have been from a different day altogether.
“Family, friends, and teachers, those of you who have helped and guided us, you are witnessing a rite of passage for the future leaders of our nation. I hope not only that you take great pride in our commencement exercises today, but also that you consider the critical role you played in getting us here.” Marcus’s words thundered through the auditorium, the timbre of Vance’s voice speaking through him. The crowd cheered and whistled. Lightning flickered across Marcus’s face as he continued. Seconds later, thunder cracked. Before too long, rain pounded against the roof and windows.
The downpour echoed around them. Latecomers crowded into nearby rows, their pants and skirts soaked, with newspapers and plastic grocery bags covering their blowouts.
“They like to refer to us as the ‘working poor,’” Marcus continued, “as if chastising us for making poor decisions, as if that phrase isn’t an oxymoron, as if it isn’t an indictment of their systems, which seek to keep us downtrodden, desperate, and disenfranchised.”
“Amen, young brotha,” a man in the back called out.
“But we know how to survive, don’t we?” Marcus smirked. “We know how to take the pain, suffering, and mistreatment and turn it into joy, laughter, and miracles. We know how to stare down greed, hatred, and the violence of neglect and stand firm in our ability to give, to love, and to build community.”
“Yes,” a woman near the window shouted.
“And we’re not without some responsibility in this, are we?” Marcus’s expression grew stern, as if he were an elder; his eyes searched the faces of his fellow graduates. “We must accept responsibility for our actions because that’s where our agency lies. We can build bridges in our community, but where are those bridges leading us? Are we voting? Are we pushing for ballot initiatives that address our concerns? Are we using our device screens to learn about electoral politics or to watch the latest reality show, scroll our social media, and take personality quizzes?”
The crowd chuckled.
“I’m not trying to cast aspersions on us or blame us for our condition, but our oppressors are not going to change our lives for us. My mother named me after Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who said, ‘If you want liberty, you yourselves must strike the blow.’ And I believe this wholeheartedly. I might not be a separatist, but I think the brotha was on to something.”
Laughter and thunderous applause erupted.
“Preach,” a man in front of Nona said as he clapped. Whistles from behind her and an “all right, now” resounded above the ovation.
Nona couldn’t contain her smile and nudged Lance in the ribs to get him to grin, but her youngest did not comply. He sat stiffly in a hand-me-down church suit that, until that morning, had been hanging untouched in the corner of the closet that belonged to Kendall.
Kendall.
From his first-row seat next to his grandmother, Peter nodded at Lance. Just the sight of Peter made her stomach pull in on itself. Even though she was a Christian and had had a hand in rearing Peter, she had grown over the years to despise that boy.
When Lance lifted his hand to wave, she slapped his bony flesh, sending his palm back down to his lap. Lance glanced at her, then at Peter, shaking his head. Peter grinned, shrugged, and returned his attention to the podium.
“I know a thing or two about having help,” Marcus continued. “Everything my brothers and I have ever accomplished is because someone made a sacrifice for us. One day, I hope to be a U.S. senator to make a way in this country for the very people who paid for my sneakers, offered me and my brothers a ride to Kitledge High on a bitter winter morning, shoveled snow from our walkway so I could attend student council meetings before first bell, and handed me the last five from their wallets because they knew, as hard as my mother worked, on occasion, the fridge was empty.”
That part.
Nona grew warm about the collar, and she worried sweat would frizz her hair. She wanted to cover her face, but it was Marcus’s truth. As much as it stung, he was justified in saying it.
“That’s all right,” a young woman called out.
Lightning flickered through the windows. Nona jumped at the boom of thunder that followed. Wind pressed against the glass, and a sheet of moisture slid down the panes like slime. The storm reminded her of the darkness in her home and the voice from that morning.
“And I’m not just talking about our young people. The need to accept responsibility extends to our elders. Particularly when our school board year after year votes to spend thousands on gymnasium floors and turf for the football field while peeling paint mars classroom walls, while the air conditioning and heat are busted most of the time, while half the dollars spent on campus go to police resource officers who handcuff students more often than they high-five them.”
“Tell it!” a young graduate shouted from the front row. She raised her cap and waved it in the air in Marcus’s direction.
Marcus was telling the truth. The school had been built in 1952, when the city of Medford had been mostly working-class white folks and a smattering of middle-class Black people. Now, the administration still maintained the building’s original wood cabinets and fixtures—and “maintained” was being generous. The three-story structure was the spitting image of Hester Gardens, with concrete, red brick, and rectangular windows like those lining a train car. The floors were scarred tile and laminate where better schools had polished oak or cedar.
Marcus and Principal Watkins were the same shade of brown, but the bald man seated behind Marcus’s pimple-faced salutatorian Avery grew crimson about the forehead and scalp, and his mouth pulled into a sheepish grin the girl turned and captured on her phone.
“Money’s tight and savings are light for everyone,” Marcus continued.
She fully expected a standing ovation for this speech when he finished. She wished Kendall could see Marcus.
“You can tell a person’s character by what he chooses to spend his little savings on.”
Principal Watkins rubbed his brow and glanced at the school board president, who adjusted his necktie. In Medford, regular unleaded had risen to four dollars, but minimum wage hadn’t gotten over double that, so Marcus’s words drew claps, whistles, and more shouts of “Tell it, Marcus!”
Marcus paused, and the spotlight created a halo above his blue graduation cap. “And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my big brother, Kendall, killed in a drive-by shooting three blocks from where we’re gathered right now.” Marcus grimaced, choking down a sob.
Silence fell over the crowd. The storm quieted down. Light taps of rain on the roof filled the space as the audience grew stiff in their seats. Nona grabbed Lance’s hand and squeezed.
Her lips quivered. Tears inched down the crevices beside her nose, puddled on her chin, and fell to her shirt, sticking the fabric to her chest. She was a mess, and about every head turned toward her, only adding to her self-consciousness about her ugly cry. If Kendall were looking down on them, he’d know she’d gotten no better since the day she’d lost him.
With the break in the rain, melodies from the sparrows perched in the trees outside rose and filled the space where the people’s whispers had previously been. It was odd the birds were chanting in a storm. She’d been in a storm for years and hardly felt like singing.
Marcus cleared his throat and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. A flood of panic rose from Nona’s feet and rushed up her legs.
Principal Watkins, likely relieved Marcus had changed the subject, shouted, “It’s all right, young brotha. Take your time.”
Eyes glassy, Marcus nodded at his elder and returned his gaze to the third row, where Nona and Lance were, and where Vance and Kendall were not. Marcus’s nose was red. He sniffled.
Nona used a tissue from her pocketbook to dab the tears on her blouse. From the corner of her eye, Kendall appeared in the first-row seat he’d occupied two years before. He’d been in this very space, wearing his own graduation cap. He’d winked at her; his high school graduation had been their mutual triumph.
Nona was no longer warm. She was hot. She was cold. She was frantic. She was calm. She didn’t want Marcus to talk about Kendall. Actually, she wanted him to talk about Kendall.
Marcus cleared his throat again. “Most of you already know I adored my brother.”
Rows ahead, Peter shifted in his seat. Mother Lincoln turned her church hat–adorned head and stared at the side of her grandson’s face.
Lance, whose hand was limp even as Nona still squeezed it, lowered his gaze to the floor, seeming disappointed Marcus was not speaking of him.
A little louder, Marcus said, “But my love couldn’t keep him alive. The last conversation we had, he actually reprimanded me, told me that no matter how difficult our life became, we had to remain honest men, said it was my responsibility to do better than he did, and then to make sure our younger brother does better than us both. Today, I honor my brother …”
Marcus’s voice cracked on the final “brother,” and the unbridled display of emotion was what Nona had been dreading.
Thunder pounded. The raindrops picked up again, striking the roof faster, harder.
She finally brought the tissue to her eyes, soaking the paper to the point that she had to fish out another. She held the new one to her nose, her shoulders trembling. Mother Lincoln blew her a kiss, but Peter did not move from his spot where he stared at the floor. Lance rubbed Nona’s shoulder, rare affection from him, which signaled she must have looked a mess.
“Don’t cry, Mom,” Marcus whispered, his words amplified by the microphone as he sobbed.
Her mascara clumped beneath her lashes and ran thick down her cheeks along with her tears. She wanted to flee, to run back to the room where she’d identified Kendall’s body and climb onto that metal table with him. She wanted to go back and take the bullet, let them cut her open for an autopsy and place her remains in a box underground. Anything she had to do to make Kendall alive again.
Marcus straightened his cap, bit his lip, and aimed his eyes at the back row. He gaped for so long at that spot near the double entry doors that Nona and the others checked the area as well. Who had entered? Or perhaps, who had waved to Marcus? There were no folding chairs near the entrance. No one stood there.
Marcus whispered again. “Not today.”
Nona and Lance exchanged a confused expression, then searched again for the invisible person Marcus had spoken to. Principal Watkins cleared his throat,
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