Sleepyhead
by Adeola Adeniyi
We finally made love last Thursday three days after her seventeenth birthday and then the following Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday. She had some pretty good moves, but she wasn’t a whore. No doubt our lovemaking was why Roxanne felt cool with calling my house from a police precinct out in Coney Island and begging for me to come pick her up. I can’t act like she didn’t have a few problems in her life, but her calling from a precinct still surprised me. My gut just told me Fernando Riveria was responsible for her trouble. I still asked Roxanne why they arrested her and she swore a cop only accused her of attempting to draw on a train car because he saw her sketching in a notebook with a magic marker. I sucked my teeth but agreed to help Roxy because I loved her. She loved me. I knew I’d remember Foxy Roxy, her black hair past her back, and that Pangaea-sized ass of hers for the rest of my life. Even in old age when I forgot everything else, I’d still remember that butt. She thanked me for being the coolest big brother ever and I hung up, brushed my fade, and drove to the precinct.
Many months ago on a Saturday afternoon, we ran into each other in the movie theater at the Kings Plaza Mall and I had agreed with her suggestion that we watch Akio’s Revenge together to talk about the film afterward since we were both there alone. I couldn’t believe she loved movies like that and others such as Hard Crimes, Death Stare, Revenge Always Feels Good, and Two Good Detectives. She became my film buddy. We didn’t talk much at school after that day (just as before), but we saw Akio’s Revenge five more times together, enjoyed afternoon dinners at Chinese and Soul Food spots, and went to a pretty decent Kung Fu film festival. I often had to remind myself I wasn’t losing a lightbulb for hanging with one of my former freshman-year students. I wasn’t the Threesome Killer Julian Davis whose trial for killing a thirteen-year-old girl during a threesome with his girlfriend was in the news every day. Sixty percent of the readers questioned in a survey done by the New York Post thought a jury should choke him (and his girl for helping him dump the body) to death as punishment for doing the same to the girl. I agreed only because pretty white boys with Upper East Side money never went to prison over poor girls from Queens. Anyway, I just loved Roxanne. Our first kiss (that she initiated) and her beauty hit me the way the ready rock has been hitting folks. I’ve had cute and pretty ladies before, but never a legit beauty. We did make out whenever I dropped her off at a corner two blocks from her house and I always used a strength inside of me harder than calculus to say no whenever she asked to visit my home.
I took deep breaths while reminding myself as I walked into the precinct an hour later how these dumb cops didn’t have half a clue about us. I approached the fat desk sergeant to ask about her and he quit reading his Newsweek before saying I could see the little subway Picasso soon. I then sat on a bench with two women listening to ringing phones and distant conversations. The only black cop in the precinct walked Roxanne to me ten minutes later carrying her bag and laughing at something she told him. He then told her a smart girl such as herself attending a fancy private school in Manhattan shouldn’t be defacing public property as he dumped four spray paint cans from the bag into the garbage before giving it to her. Roxanne zipped up her leather jacket and thanked him for the pizza and cutting her major slack tonight. My heart raced three marathons when the cop asked us why we didn’t resemble each other, but Roxy told him we were technically half-siblings. The answer satisfied him and he said he’d hate for her to be in the system next time because the city planned to crack down on subway artists now. I promised to keep both eyes on her and we left. Roxanne stared out the window refusing to answer my questions about tonight as I drove up Ocean Parkway and then fell asleep. An hour later she threatened to fuck up someone named Amy as she slept. The last time we made love Roxy woke up afterward screaming for this same Amy to leave her alone. It worried me and she refused to talk about it. I parked on Claver and Fulton, killed the radio playing an Eric B. & Rakim jam, and shook her awake. It started drizzling.
Roxanne yawned. “I guess I finally have to talk now, Mr. R?”
“We need to talk about this dumb behavior, Roxy,” I replied. “What if I wasn’t home tonight when you called?”
She rubbed my face and said, “I’m just happy you were. I only went with my people to bump the bumper cars and eat fries. It’s no big deal.”
“The cops arresting you for bombing on the subway is a big deal.”
“Again, I just went out with people tonight.” She sucked her teeth. “Forty dollars in the garbage because of that stupid fucking cop.”
“You weren’t with Fernando right?”
“No, I wasn’t. Don’t worry about Fernando!”
I sucked my teeth thinking about that pretty prick. Roxy finally had another Dominican attending Friends of Syndey when he enrolled a few months ago, but every goddam day they were stuck together in their classes, the cafeteria, the school library, and at the diner near the school where all the kids hung out at in the afternoon.
“You know what Flatbush does to folks and I hate him having such a negative influence on you, Rox.”
Roxanne laughed. “So now Flatbush is different from Bed-Stuy?” She put cherry lip gloss on her lips and then dumped the tube in her bag.
“I’m worried about you, Roxy! Tonight is worrying to me.”
Roxanne leaned forward to kiss me and I even loved the smell of pepperoni on her breath. We kissed for about five minutes until she stopped for air.
“Thanks for saving my ass tonight!”
I quickly took her hand once she touched the door handle.
“Look, let’s talk for real, Roxy. I’m still worried about this behavior. This isn’t you.”
Roxanne brought out her lip gloss again, but I grabbed it before she could open it.
She slapped my thigh and laughed. “Don’t you remember how you’re supposed to be the cool teacher that’s always down? I’m fine.”
“I’m serious.” I put my arm around her shoulder, sniffed her raspberry shampoo, and then gently rubbed her lips with my thumb. “You’re too mature to behave this recklessly when you’ll be a senior soon. I think you should be home this weekend working on your final essay. Have you even picked a topic yet?”
Roxanne shrugged. “Maybe. I have two I’m considering for real.”
“I know you want to say goodbye to that forever soon,” I said, pointing to her a man sleeping beside a liquor store across the street. “You are a smart and beautiful mature woman and don’t let Fernando’s negative bullshit influence you. I know you don’t want to be back at Boys and Girls.”
“You read minds now, Mr. Robinette?”
“I know you don’t.” I twisted her hair around my index finger. “You know I was the first brother at Friends on a scholarship just like you and then I became its first black teacher and the youngest they ever hired.” I kissed her. “I hope that inspires you.”
Roxanne shrugged again. “I guess it kinda does.”
I wiped away more gloss until that shit was gone. “Perfect.” I kissed her lips. “Now promise you’ll be the best you I know you truly are. Promise you’ll start narrowing down what college you want to attend as we’ve talked about.”
Roxanne snatched the lip gloss back. “I swear on Dominican baby Jesus I will.” She applied the gloss to her lips again.
“Cool, Roxy.” I kissed her again and she slapped my thumb when I tried to wipe the gloss off again so I left her alone. “Let me take you home so I know you’re safe. I swear these rockheads lost their goddam minds.”
She giggled. “I’m fine. I can walk from here.”
“You walking home alone is not happening,” I replied.
Roxanne laughed and playfully punched me on the arm. “Damn, Mr. R. You really don’t have any apple juice in your veins if you’ll step on my block.”
I let her squeeze my biceps and she smiled.
“You better never forget I’m from Crown Heights, girl. Don’t let a nigga having a teaching gig at Friends of Syndey fool you.”
Roxanne kissed me and her tongue broke into my mouth to wrestle with mine for a few minutes. She said she loved me and I asked her to repeat that shit since I loved hearing those words leave her mouth.
She rolled her eyes smiling. “I love you, baby.”
“Let a brother hear it again,” I replied.
Roxanne said, “I love you, fool.”
I started the engine and drove to her building on Grand and Putnam. The drizzling turned into full rain and had everyone indoors. Roxy thanked me again for tonight and I received a surprise invitation upstairs.
“What about your people?” I asked.
“My mother’s in Miami this week with my little sisters and my big sis is at Rutgers majoring in drunkassness tonight,” She replied. “We’re cool.”
I loved the invite and chilled out knowing her people were gone.
“I’m in 4 A.” Roxanne felt my biceps again. “You have real heart, baby.” She lit a Newport (Fernando’s brand) once she left the car before running inside.
I drove around for twenty minutes trying to find a parking spot and lucked out on Fulton and Irvin Place. I walked to her building and realized the dog piss and shit and curbside garbage here smelled worse than the normal trash in Crown Heights. I’d never been in such a dark area before with these many boarded-up buildings or heard such loud barking. I hated knowing such a soul like Roxanne had to live here. She buzzed me up ten minutes later and I ran up the stairs smelling the skunkiest weed ever. Roxy wore a wifebeater and sweatpants as she stood at her door and let me inside her world. I wanted to look at the pictures of her beautiful mother (they looked more like sisters), her actual sisters, and Roxy (she was adorable in her banana costume as a kid) on the living room wall. The pictures reminded me of when I was that age and made me think of my downstairs babysitter who always put her hand down my pants. I still saw in my head those cartoon mice I always watched on her TV, heard the gospel songs she often played, and smelled the cookies she always baked. Roxy pulled me away and I saw she had books everywhere on her bedroom floor and a canvas with a painting of an upside-down cabin in the cloudless light blue sky burning with green flames. I had no clue about what the painting meant, but Roxy created the work so I liked it. I told her the painting was cool and she ignored my judgement. I sat at her desk when she left to read the papers on it. I felt proud to see such high passing marks on her recent math and science tests. A consulting card though for something called psychic therapy with Miss Eve worried me. Roxy shouted to ask if I was hungry and I shouted back how I wanted to eat ten cows. I found an essay and read:
Roxanne M. Bonilla
Friends of Syndey
Mr. Allen
English 11000
February 17th, 1990
We don’t have to become where we are from.
I first heard the sounds of gunfire from a powerful AK-47 when I was three years old because of a drive-by shooting on my block thanks to one gang member wanting to gun down another gang member in broad daylight as children played. Eleven-year-old mothers pushing their baby strollers on Bedford-Stuyvesant blocks with bombed-out homes and heroin needles on the street everywhere hit the ground crying. I spilled strawberry ice cream from my cone onto my cheap shoes full of holes before I hit the ground and just prayed to survive. I have seen gang members throw grenades at rivals and chase the police out of the neighborhood with baseball bats, icepicks, razorblades, and homemade shanks. I see three-year-olds deal heroin, cocaine, and the crack rock every day while wearing bulletproof vests custom-made for boys their age. A powerful drug lord who lives in my building shoots at rivals from our roof all night long every single day. I have watched one of my friend’s nine older brothers get jumped into the 18th Street Loco Toon gang, watched them get shot at in the street, and listened to her tell me about her travels to cold prisons to visit them behind glass. My best friend who is more like a sister to me has an older brother named Frog aka Loco Insane Psycho who was forced to join the neighborhood gang called 21St while in the fourth grade and now he will be in San Quentin for the rest of his life. He never had a chance and her other brothers would all be joining him in there for good if they don’t end up in a casket. I am a survivor of seeing violence all day every day and I have pretty much gotten used to bloodshed, but I will not join a gang and continue this cycle thanks to the good and kind-hearted people at Friends of Syndey High School where I attend and am thriving. Even with this crack cocaine wreaking havoc in inner cities across America I continue to thrive and I am living proof of how anybody can overcome the destructive environment they were born into…
I didn’t bother reading the rest. Roxy came back with a Chinese food menu and asked what I wanted. I wasn’t in the mood for Chinese and offered to cook.
“You actually want to cook for me?” she said, giggling. “Don’t get soft, Mr. R.”
“Never that!”
“I guess we can find something.”
“You’re better than that essay, Roxy?”
Roxanne laughed. “You know they’ll believe anything.” She kissed me. “I’m hoping for a free trip to Barcelona this summer since Mr. Allen sent a copy to an organization that helps troubled souls see the world. His cousin is a member.”
I fixed spaghetti with meatballs and tomato sauce. Roxy was hitting a spliff in the living room and cracking up hard at the crazy antics of the ladies on 227. I then got the plates and Roxy ran to sit at the dining table when I called her. She asked if I’d run and buy wine to make this night more romantic like in the movies and I told her that wasn’t happening with us now. She poured us apple juice instead. I loved watching Roxy enjoy my food and listening to her praise my cooking. It did taste delicious. We sat on the couch to watch Death Stare and Roxy rolled another spliff. When the credits came she said she wanted to ask me something.
“What’s up?”
“How much could you still love me if I did something fucked up?”
“How fucked up?”
Roxanne shrugged. “Very fucked up. Would you still love me?”
I held her hands and kissed her. “Hey, unless you had a secret torture chamber where you tortured babies and shot random folks for fun then nothing you could have done would be so fucked up that I’d stop wanting you.”
Roxanne later fell asleep in my arms during the middle parts of Hard Crimes. Near the end, she suddenly started mumbling apologies to Amy and then said Amy should go bother Espy since Espy was responsible for what happened to her that day. Roxanne woke up a few minutes later breathing heavily and asked if I heard her talk in her sleep. I said no and she started rambling about how weed always made her babble horseshit. I hated seeing this behavior. She turned off the TV and told me to leave.
“How come, Roxy?”
“Because my sister Angelina will be coming home and she can’t see you here for obvious reasons, fool,” she claimed. “I just need you to leave. She’ll be here.”
“You sure?”
“Again, she’ll be here,” Roxanne replied. “You never know what she’ll do or say when she’s drunk.”
I knew she was lying but I still had no plans to risk it. I put my sneakers back on and suggested she let me cook her dinner on Monday at my place.
“Fine,” she said.
She led me outside after first making sure nobody was in the hallway and I just ran back to my car to drive home.
I had a deejaying gig at a party on Saturday and finished my mixtapes on Sunday. I never stopped thinking about Amy because whatever happened to her must have been bad enough to drive Roxy insane. We never had dinner on Monday and she missed school that day. She never called me either. Roxy also didn’t attend school on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. I heard she’d been sick (her mother also brought a doctor’s note) and I believed it because I read in a magazine once how troubles in a person’s head can make them physically sick. I finally saw Roxy in the hallway that Friday laughing with Faggot Fernando and a blond girl and she let them touch the new gold chain around her neck. I hoped no man brought that shit. She never called me over the weekend. I saw her that Monday and she refused to look at me. I later sat in the teacher’s lounge enjoying an egg sandwich still thinking about Espy and Amy.
Mr. Allen entered the lounge to eat his sandwich and drink a Coke. He first talked to me about the Knicks, Julian Davis’s acquittal, and then his struggle with picking a student for the Barcelona trip. He couldn’t decide between Roxy and three other students. I mentioned he should pick Fernando Riveria, but Mr. Allen hated the idea because Fernando’s essays about his grandparents and uncles always bored him. I explained how the crack rock hit Flatbush the hardest and Fernando’s need for this trip because the crews in that area forced people (even toddlers) to join them. He said I was the Brooklyn expert and might consider him.
By late March, I figured Roxy and I was done and I missed her. We hadn’t talked since that weird night and she still refused even to eyeball me at school. I did meet this cool woman at a bar near my building and we often had fun together. Homegirl liked the most basic movies, but I enjoyed having fun with her and accepted her taste. I still never quit thinking about Roxanne though and I also never forgot about Espy and Amy. I wanted to know their story. It gave me no joy when Mr. Allen chose Fernando to visit Barcelona. I saw Roxy at school one Friday; she gave me a weak wave and said, “Hi, Mr. Robinette!” as she continued walking. I appreciated that. I lucked out in April when Roxy and I talked in the hallway for ten minutes about a new movie in theaters called Two Wrongs Make a Right. We both loved the fighting and she hated the ending. She thought the cop catching the typical nutcase killer was too regular for the filmmaker since she loved his first two radical films. Roxy then gave me a wave with an actual smile before walking away and that was the last time we spoke for the rest of April and May. My head still refused to forget about Amy and Espy no matter how hard I tried, and I went to visit a private detective named Carl Jones. I guess I cared to know about those girls since it helped with still missing Roxy and I wanted to know what seemed to be torturing her. It helped me forget to worry every night if she was fucking Fernando maybe, some little dick boy I didn’t know, enjoying films with the little dick boy I didn’t know, or getting herself into trouble. Going to the movies was our thing. I hated invading Roxanne’s privacy by hiring a detective but not knowing about Espy and Amy might put me in the funny house. Carl had the skills to find my sister’s asshole ex-husband’s secret family in Nigeria and I asked if he’d be able to find out the real story about these girls when I visited the liquor store he owned on Flatbush Avenue. The old man lit a cigarillo and bragged about how he could find out everything about another person from their favorite TV show to how long they jerked off for the first time and we agreed on $450 for basic info. He called me a week later and we met at the lake inside Prospect Park
“This Espy is Esperanza Ana DeSantos and she’s a seventeen-year-old senior at Boys and Girls High School,” Carl said as he ate the hot dog he brought with him and looked at his notepad. “She’s Roxanne Bonilla’s best friend and this Aimee Ramos has been dead for two years. Aimee was fifteen when her boyfriend Luis Hernandez allegedly pushed her down the stairs in her building. People saw them arguing at Nino’s Arcade on Fulton and Franklin two hours before she died, but the state couldn’t prove he was in her building or disprove he wasn’t home by himself so a jury acquitted him. He moved to Puerto Rico to live with his aunt though because people in the neighborhood loved Aimee and they burnt his house down a week after he came home. Roxanne fought physically with Aimee in sixth grade over a boy named Anthony Garcia and they fought again at Nino’s Arcade a week before she died because Aimee was spreading rumors that Esperanza was born with a penis.” He drank some strawberry soda. “Esperanza helped Roxanne fight her that day and Esperanza also lived downstairs from Aimee. They often argued over Aimee’s loud music, Esperanza smoking marijuana in the hallway, and accusations from Aimee that Esperanza’s father stole her family’s mail.”
Hearing about Roxy and Esperanza’s fight with Aimee in this arcade made me remember when Roxy came to school back during her freshman year with that swollen lip. The white folks swore Roxy was involved in a Columbian drug war but she claimed she fell in the subway.
“Do you think this Luis killed Aimee for sure?” I asked.
Carl shrugged. “No clue. I’d need to do more investigating.”
“Would you want to investigate everything?”
He laughed. “Son, you struggled to come up with my basic fee so I know you can’t afford no murder investigation.”
We shook hands and I thanked him. I then went home sad knowing Roxanne had been dealing with this kind of shit and still refused to share anything with me. Roxy ignored me all through June and that’s why her calling my place one Saturday morning over the summer surprised me. She asked if I’d be okay with her visiting now and I played it cool by saying I was busy. She then pleaded to visit and I repeated I was busy and hung up. I figured Roxy would call back in ten minutes and she did in an hour. When she asked to visit in the afternoon, I said fine with a heavy annoyance in my voice. I cleaned up (and hid some romance books belonging to the bar chick) and she came wearing pum pum shorts and a Levi’s t-shirt while holding a grocery bag. I smelled burgers and fries in there and peach perfume on her. She also had a video rental of Revenge Always Feels Good. We walked to the dining table and she brought out the double cheddar cheeseburgers, sweet potato fries, cans of Coca-Cola, and homemade chocolate chip cookies. We sat and ate this delicious stuff.
“What’d you doing here, Rox?”
“I’m trying to make everything right between us again, fool!” she said, laughing a little and then opening her soda. “I love and miss you and I’m sorry about my behavior. I’ve just been dealing with so much nonsense and it’s been hell working through it. I’m sorry again and it’s no excuse.”
I asked her to tell me everything and why she stopped our thing.
Roxanne sat on my lap and ate her burger. “I have a few issues I’m dealing with. It’s not the most fucked up shit, but it’s fucked up stuff and I’m working through it.”
“Will you please tell me everything in your soul, Roxy?” I asked, praying she trusted me enough to tell me about Aimee, Luis, and Esperanza.
“It’s craziness that happened in my neighborhood.” She stuffed fries in her mouth. “It’s something I hate thinking about and just saying it out loud makes it even worse so please don’t make me go there.”
I stared at her face and hair and remembered how much I hated myself for having the most batshit insane, idiotic, crazy, and ridiculous thought that maybe she or Esperanza killed Aimee because they fought before and her asking me before how much could I still love her if she did something fucked up. Fighting and killing were Chinese food and hot oatmeal though and I was ninety percent sure Luis killed Aimee the same way Julian Davis killed that young girl. The guilt from Roxy fighting Aimee before she died was likely the fucked up thing and ate at her so I understood her not wanting to ever talk about it.
She kissed me. “Will you please forgive me?”
I told her to play the movie and she did. I put the food on two plates and brought it into the living room. We ate everything while watching two feuding warlords in ancient Japan fight. Roxy fell asleep an hour later since the middle part had scene after scene where the humane warlord just talked and studied philosophy with his father’s ghost and she slept like a regular person. She did snore, but it was a cute little noise. Roxy woke up later thanks to the scene where the descendants of the feuding warlords were having a shootout in a nightclub and asked me why I was looking at her so weird. I kissed her forehead and admitted how much I missed her.
“I missed you too, baby,” she replied, sitting up to watch the two brothers prepare to fight on a rooftop with their rivals.
Around late August on a Sunday afternoon, Roxanne called my house begging me to pick her up at a clothing store in the Kings Plaza mall since the security guards planned to call the real cops if an adult didn’t show up by three. She swore she never tried stealing a single item and that everything was a mistake.
The End
Adeola Adeniyi is from Brooklyn, New York and is an MFA student at The Writer’s Foundry at St Joseph’s University. His work has been published in Black Rennaissance Noir, Akashic’s Mondays are Murder flash fiction series, Solstice Literary Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and other journals.
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