"You blame all that on me?" Ken asked, his voice filled with surprise and self-pity.
"You ever look in the mirror? You ever look in the mirror and see what everyone else sees?"
"Don't you talk to me like that. I'm...I'm ..."
"You're what? You can't even say it. You aren't anybody's father. You don't even know what it means to be a father. Have another drink. Have a lot of drinks," Roy said and walked away from him, only he didn't go to his room. He came to mine and closed the door behind him.
I was on my stomach, my face pressed into the pillow. I turned slowly and looked up at him.
"She was so afraid of everyone finding out, Roy," I said. "She-just wanted to get out of it and start new. I hoped I could help her do it. You have to believe me."
"I believe you," he said. "I'm just disappointed you didn't come to me."
I nodded.
"You're right. I should have gotten more help."
"How could you go alone to that section of town? You think you've got some special guardian angel now since you found out your real mama is some rich white lady?" he asked.
His question drove a bee sting of pain straight through my heart. I saw the anger in his face, the fury in his eyes. It was the way he wore sorrow and pain most comfortably.
"No," I said softly. "I never thought I was anyone special and I certainly don't think so now."
"I'll get that Jerad," he vowed. "I'll tear him apart with my bare hands."
"Just leave it for the police, Roy. If something happens to you because of all this, it will be my fault, too," I told him.
"It's too late for any of us to feel sorry for ourselves," he said harshly.
He gazed at Beni's empty bed, at her posters and her Walkman with the discs beside it. And then he looked at me and shook his head before leaving, closing the door behind him.
If I had any tears left, I would have cried on and on But my well of sorrow was bankrupt. All I could do was lie in pain and stare at a picture of Beni and me when we were younger and we still thought the world was Disneyland. Beni and I never talked much about death even though there was so much violence around us. I recalled once when we came upon a shooting and saw a body covered with a blanket on the sidewalk. The police were there and some curious onlookers. There was even some blood visible on the concrete.
Someone had taken pictures, but everyone was standing around and talking quietly as if this was nothing special. The dead were anonymous, statistics, short sound bites and reports on local television news. People ate and drank while they watched and listened. Sometimes, they shook their heads or commented, but most of the time, the words and the pictures were lost in the mixture of scenes and stories that were woven to form another day in the city we called home.
We almost felt as if the dead would rise, wipe off their clothes, ask how well they had performed, and go off to return for another day's reportage. When reality was so harsh, you turned to make-believe to help swallow the daily doses. But there was no makebelieve for me in Beni's and my room. I could close my eyes and wait expectantly for her to come through that door, but I knew she never would; she would never come in again. It made me wonder if I ha
d truly been a good sister.
Should I have done more, tried harder to get her away from the nasty girls? Should I have worried less about myself, about my grades and my looks and helped her improve herself? if I had worked more diligently, would I have prevented her from ever getting into the trouble that led to her death? Had I been too selfish, too prudish, too prissy and stuck up to get my hands dirty?
Poor Beni had thought so little of herself. She tried so hard to get people to like her. She thought if she could be in with the hard crowd, she would gain respect. I remembered how excited she had been when Carlton had shown her attention--the sound of her voice, the music in it as she described her budding new romance.
I knew when it came to Mama and Roy especially, she was always measuring herself against me. She wanted me to be more like her, but in her secret, put-away heart of hearts, she really wanted to be more like me. I knew she resented me and loved me at the same time. That was why she sat with those horrible girls, why she pretended not to know me in school, and yet, she was there when I needed her the most.
The truth I couldn't even voice was that Beni sacrificed herself to protect me. Maybe if she hadn't struck Jerad and fought back, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to escape. Should I have run? Was I a coward? Or, if I hadn't, would I have wasted her effort and put us both in harm's way? I could imagine her face full of anger if I had remained behind. It almost made me laugh. I gazed at her bed and imagined her lying there as usual, lecturing me on being too good.
"It's not your fault; it's mine. You just tried to help me. Stop taking on my sins as your own. Everyone's going to end up feeling more sorry for you than for me," she would moan.
I did laugh thinking of her saying those words. I sat back and gazed at everything that was hers. I couldn't help but think about all the secrets and dreams we'd shared in this room. The walls held tightly to the fantasies we'd created when we were much younger. As we grew older, we drifted apart. We were like two boats floating beside each other. Suddenly, waves came to bounce us and separate us more and more and no matter how I reached out, how I stretched and strained, I couldn't quite grasp her hand in mine again.
She was carried away.
And now she was gone.
All of us dreaded the funeral. I remember thinking on the way to church that funerals are horrible because they confirm what you hoped was just a bad dream. I would wake up in the morning and gaze over at Beni's bed, expecting to see her turned to the wall, the blanket wrapped awkwardly around her, her braids poking out from under the covers. Even when I didn't see her there, I would lie and listen for the sound of water running in the bathroom. Maybe it was one of those rare days when she rose before I did. Maybe she wasn't dead. Maybe everything was really just a nightmare.
I listened.