The Last Orphan
Chapter 34

Ruby beamed in the passenger seat of Evan’s purloined rental car. “I’ve never been to Mattapan.”

After leafy Wellesley the blocks here looked even more dilapidated. Dense streets crammed with triple-deckers, a few mid-century split-levels, and homes with peeling vinyl siding, barred windows, and sagging porches on the verge of decomposing into overgrown weeds. A few burned-out houses, a number more boarded up with mortgage-foreclosure signs nailed to the doors like MARTIN LUTHER’S NINETY-FIVE THESES minus the reformist optimism.

Turning onto Blue Hill Avenue, Evan was hit with a familiar sense of vibrancy and agitation. A number of beautiful former synagogues had been repurposed as Haitian Baptist and Black Pentecostal churches. Mom-and-pop shops advertised rent-to-own furniture, hair braiding, and pay-per-minute cell phones. Caribbean women with headwraps ushered their children along uneven sidewalks. Middle-aged men with dreads sucked off-brand cigarettes. Teens congregated in clusters, their baggy pants low-slung. Gang signs and love letters encoded as graffiti-embellished walls, sidewalks, billboards, and even one unfortunate street dog.

It was a hood not unlike the one Evan had grown up in. Different cultures and currents but the same muddy-rich water he’d pulled himself out of. He felt more comfortable here than in the arid atmosphere of Wellesley.

For the past few blocks, Ruby had gone speechless, a not-unwelcome development, staying focused on the fearsome new world revealing itself beyond her window. A homeless man emerged from an alley without pants, his teeth rotted to tiny nubs. A girl who couldn’t have been older than seven watched her younger siblings play in a cracked wading pool devoid of water. She held a baby on her h*p with maternal dexterity, his diaper sliding down. An ancient boxy Jaguar glided by, the hood rusted, bass booming from woofers. Painted on the driver’s door in black: Is there a problem, officer? The dude slumped in the passenger seat smiled at Evan menacingly, gold grill gleaming. When the Jag accelerated away, the modified engine sounded like it might rip a hole in the fabric of the universe.

As the noise faded, Ruby said, “I can’t believe this is a half hour from my house.”

Joey’s words swirled around in Evan’s head, and he felt his hackles go up. He’d had dozens of foster brothers representing an assortment of shades and stations. Remembering the First Commandment, he sought to clarify. “It’s dangerous,” he asked, “having people like this close to your neighborhood?”

“No,” she said. “It makes me so upset. No one’s taking care of anything.”

“A lot of people here,” Evan said, “take care of a lot.”

“I’m not saying that. I mean …” She struggled to grab the tail of a thought. “Did you see that little girl back there?” Her eyes misted. “Taking care of all her siblings? And all those moms alone with their kids …” Her anger felt thin, a veneer to hold in more complex emotions. “Why aren’t they getting real help? It’s just … as an empowered woman? It pisses me off.”

“It should piss you off no matter what you are.”

She held her hand to her mouth and stared out the window some more. The sights were no more uplifting.

Turning onto a dead-end street lined with drab buildings, Evan was hit with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Patches of dead grass, faded red stone, bathtub-size balconies crowded with burst armchairs and rusting bikes. Another dismal government project aimed at producing cheap housing. He’d lived in these apartments before. He knew the shortcuts the city builders had taken, how the toilets didn’t flush unless you pulled the chain in the tank, the way the breeze blew right through the prison-small window frames, that in the winter you had to wear a jacket to sleep and that the rooms turned into broilers during peak summer hours. He knew what wasn’t in the refrigerators. The water stains on the ceilings. The tattered clothes always a size too small. When all you could do is hold on for something, anything to get better.

Two low-riders were parked nose to nose, blocking the road. Young men sat on the hoods and trunks, drinking from brown paper bags. They wore flat-bill hats and pristine sneakers. Their eyes were pinked up, and they looked restless, directionless, dangerous.

They looked like Evan and the other boys from the Pride House Home.

As Evan coasted up to the roadblock, they set down their bottles and slid off their positions. They surrounded the Buick Regal. Ruby made a little noise in the back of her throat.

Evan said, “Stay here,” and got out, leaving the car running.

The locks clicked behind him, Ruby taking precautions.

The leader approached Evan, standing uncomfortably close. The kid couldn’t have been twenty years old. He wasn’t the biggest of the bunch, but he had the requisite gleam in his eyes. Handsome, too. In another life he could’ve been a movie star. His shirt was unbuttoned, showing off a white sleeveless undershirt and the handle of a crappy 9-mil Ruger with a turquoise frame. One of the boys standing behind him looked like he could be a starting lineman in the NFL.

The leader ducked down to peer in the passenger window. “Who’s the pretty white girl?”

“A friend.”

“Yeah? A lotta out-of-town motherfuckers like you bring ‘friends’ ’round here, know what I’m sayin’? Maybe we do something about it this time.”

Evan said, “Mind clarifying?”

“These aren’t f*****g whorehouses. These aren’t pedo crash pads. We live here, know what I’m sayin’? Our moms live here. I don’t care who the f**k you paid off on this block for an hour of time where your wife can’t replace you. You come in here and do your dirty shit with some white bitch and guess who deals with the fallout when her long-lost daddy calls the PD?”

“I’m not here for that,” Evan said. “I want to ask a few questions at ninety two eff three.”

Door 90 on the street, second floor, third door. According to Joey’s report, that’s where the super who managed Angela Buford’s building lived.

“Questions ’bout what?” the leader asked.

“About Angela Buford.”

“Never heard of her.”

“F**k that, Mack,” the big kid said. “I say you chin-check this motherfucker.”

Evan stared at Mack evenly. “What respect do you want me to show you to get past?”

Mack hiked up the leg of his loose baggy jeans, showing off old-school Wheat Nubuck Timberland 6˝s with the laces undone. He flashed a matinee-idol smile. “Why don’t you k**s my boots?”

The others laughed and fanned around Evan in a semicircle, thrumming with low energy like idling cars. Ruby had cracked the window to hear, her flushed face all but pressed to the glass.

Evan said, “Ask for something real.”

He held eye contact with Mack even as the others jeered and murmured.

He knew Mack would understand from his stare alone. That he didn’t have to do the usual, Look at me and ask yourself: Do I look scared? routine. That he was unafraid to escalate the confrontation as far as it needed to escalate. That his request for safe passage had been in good faith.

Mack tilted his head back, sucked his teeth. “Okay. We grew up here. This is our hood. It’s just us who take care of it, know what I’m sayin’? So don’t come and start shit that we have to clean up or act like whyever you’re better out there entitles you to a damn thing in here.”

“I understand. I’m asking questions. That’s it.”

Mack nodded. “A few questions.”

“If someone starts shit,” Evan said, “I might have to rough them up some. Is that okay?”

“If they start it?” Mack nodded again. “Yeah.”

Evan held out his hand.

Mack stared at it for a moment before shaking. He flicked his chin at his compatriots, and they hopped into the vehicles and backed them up, allowing just enough room for a car to pass through.

Evan went around to the driver’s door of the Buick Regal and knuckle-tapped. Ruby unlocked it. She was still wearing her seat belt.

Evan drove slowly through the gap toward the end of the cul-de-sac, faces watching them from either side.

Ruby blew out a breath. “That was incredible.” Her voice was ratcheted high, the excited afterglow of fear. “You backed that guy down. All of them. That was badass.”

“I didn’t back anyone down. I asked for permission.” Evan pulled to the curb in front of Angela’s building. “And, besides, I’m surprised that impressed you. I mean, as an ‘empowered woman.’”

“We want our men to be modern,” Ruby said. “We don’t want them to be pussies.”

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