Page 30 of When Love Takes Root

At sixteen, I had a lot to prove and no wisdom worth bragging about.

Uncle Zeke pulled up one summer afternoon in that old Cadillac, paint shining like midnight under the sun, chrome clean enough to check your reflection. He was Pops’s identical twin, same face, same voice when he wanted it, same broad shoulders, but the spirit moved different in them. Pops walked into rooms and made folks feel steady. Uncle Zeke walked into rooms and made folks check what they owed. He tossed me the keys like he was giving me a favor, told me to run the car down to Ray-Ray’s shop, and I caught them against my chest with all the foolish pride of a boy who thought being trusted by a grown man meant he was becoming one.

Pops was at work. Mama was at the church, helping Sister Darlene with somebody’s repast. Juice had practice. And me, wanting my uncle to see me as more than Jeremiah’s good son with fast hands, climbed behind the wheel.

I didn’t know what was in that car.

The bag shifted when my fist hit it harder.

One-two.

Step.

One-two.

Breathe.

Blue lights flashed behind me before I reached Ray-Ray’s street. Hot vinyl pressed beneath my palms while the officer told me to step out. The summer air smelled like gasoline and cut grass. My mouth dried before my fear could even find words. I kept asking what I’d done, but nobody answered me in a way that mattered. The trunk opened. Somebody whistled low. Another officer said something into his radio, and the boy I’d been that morning started leaving my body right there on the side of the road.

The courtroom smelled like floor polish and other people’s prayers. Mama sat with a tissue balled in her fist, her church hat tilted slightly because grief had been leaning on her. Pops kept his arm around her shoulders, but his jaw was locked so tight I could see the muscle jumping from across the aisle. Uncle Zeke sat two rows behind them, eyes forward, face unreadable. I looked at him once. Just once. He didn’t look back fast enough.

That was the moment I learned loyalty could be a beautiful word wearing funeral clothes.

I kept hitting the bag. Left. Right. Slip. Right. The chain rattled above me, and sweat broke across my forehead. Three years was what they took. Three birthdays behind walls. Three summers measured by heat through narrow windows. Three years of Mama’s hand pressed to scratched glass while she tried to smile like she wasn’t breaking. Three years of Pops sitting across from me with pain in his eyes and steel in his voice, refusing to let me confuse survival with manhood.

“Don’t let this place finish raising you,” Pops told me once through the visitation phone. “I raised you. Your mama raised you. God claimed you before any judge called your name. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said back then.

“No. Hear me with your life,” Pops said, leaning closer to the glass.

I swung too hard. The bag jerked away and came back mean. I caught it with both gloves and held it against my chest until it stopped moving.

Juice set the foil plate down. I could hear him do it. I could hear his shoes shift against the floor.

“I hated him for that,” Juice said.

“Who?” I asked without turning around.

“My daddy,” Juice said.

The room tightened.

Juice rarely said that out loud. Not because he loved Uncle Zeke less, but because truth got complicated when the man who hurt you also taught you how to tie a tie, drove you to games, put money in your hand, and clapped loudest when your baby sang in church. People wanted clean villains because clean villains made forgiveness easier to organize. Real life handed you men with blood and love on the same hands.

“I know,” I said.

“I was mad at you too,” Juice said.

That made me turn.

He stood near the shelf, no joke on his face now. Just my cousin. My cousin twin. The brother God hid in the family tree.

“You were mad at me?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Juice said. “For taking it. For sitting there like you owed everybody your silence. For making me write letters instead of dragging you to the park to hoop. For making Auntie cry behind glass. For making Uncle Jeremiah age ten years in one summer.”

I looked down at the gloves.