11

I'm an out-patient now. I live in a room. My parents moved away. I don't know where. I'm an adult now. Twenty-three years old.

I get a check. From the Government. Every month. It comes to where I stay. I pay my room rent. I eat in restaurants, but I don't eat that much. I'm not hungry much.

There is a television set in my room. I always leave it on. Messages come through it for me.

I don't take the medication very often, but I act like I am. Nobody looks that close.

12

They send you cues. That's the message, to watch for the cues. I go out, looking. The subways are the best. There's all kinds of crazy people in the subways. People never look at me that way. I look right. I'm careful.

I look carefully. At everything, I look. There's a third rail. It's death to touch it. If you look down, down into the pit, you can see the other tracks. Water runs between the tracks, like a river. You can see the things people throw there. Sometimes you can see a rat, watching up at the people.

The messages are everywhere, but they are never spoken. Not out loud. They come through things.

You have to watch them from behind because their eyes can burn you.

The first time, in the subway, the train came through the tunnel. Shoving through, too tight for the tunnel, like Ellen did to me. When the train screamed, I knew I was in the right place.

From behind, they look alike unless you look close. If you can see their panties, the outline of their panties, under their skirts or their slacks, then that's them. That's how you know them.

The first time I saw that, the train was screaming in. I was jammed in behind her in the crowd. When I pushed her, she went right under the wheels. Then everybody screamed like the train.

Nobody ever said anything to me.

13

The message comes to me anytime. Especially in my room, where the medication doesn't block the signals. When I hear the message clear, I go out. To do my work.

I'm on a witch hunt.

Working Roots

Shawn knelt at the door to his tiny closet, worshipfully regarding a red shoebox. He slowly removed the lid and carefully removed his prize. Air Jordans, Nike's very best. The Rolls–Royce of sneakers, gleaming in pristine white with artful black accents. He turned one gently in his hands, admiring the intricate pattern of the soles, the huge padded tongue, the plastic window in the heel through which he could see the air cushions. No matter how closely he looked, Shawn could not find a single blemish to mar their perfection.

Almost two hundred dollars for a pair of sneakers. Granny would never understand. All they had to live on was her miserable little Disability check. If Granny wasn't able to make a little extra selling potions and charms to other people in the Projects, they wouldn't make it at all. It got harder and harder to sell her spells every year, Granny told him–younger people just didn't believe in the old ways.

Granny might not understand, Shawn knew, but she would never get mad at him. Old people were supposed to be mean, but Granny never was. She never punished him, even when he deserved it. Other kids got a whipping for nothing at all, sometimes. He'd heard them talk about it, at school.

Yeah, Granny was old, and she was kind of strange. And, sure, there was that back room, where he was never allowed to go. But she was always home, always had food for him. Always eared for him when he was sick or hurt. So maybe they didn't have a color TV like everyone else. Maybe he couldn't play Nintendo, couldn't have his friends over either. He had complained about the old lady's ways to his running partner Rufus one day.

"Shut up, fool!" Rufus replied.

Shawn saw the pain in his best friend's eyes–he felt ashamed again. Granny never got drunk, didn't take drugs, didn't have strange men living with her, different ones all the time. Rufus was right.

Shawn had worked for his special sneakers. Worked hard. There was easy money to be made around the Projects, inside and out. The drug dealers were always looking for new runners, the numbers man could always use a smart kid who could keep records in his head. Stealing and hustling were a way of life…sometimes a way of death, too. Shawn didn't touch any of that. All summer long, he had worked…hauling the monster bundles of newspapers the trucks dropped on the streets at dawn to the individual newsstands. Afternoons, he helped out in a car wash. He didn't spend his money, although the temptations were great….Shawn was fifteen.

Now it was September, and school was starting. Shawn bought his own clothes this year, with the money he'd earned, Granny was proud of him for that, but she didn't know about the sneakers.

When he'd gotten his first money from the newspaper driver, he bought Granny a gold necklace. Twenty dollars, the young man in the long black coat told him…for gen–u–ine eighteen–karat gold. Shawn thought how pretty it would look on Granny. He showed it to Rufus, but his friend said it wasn't gold at all.

"You been hustled, chump. That ain't nothin' but brass…turn green right around your neck."

Shawn gave the necklace to Granny anyway. But because he had been taught not to lie, he told her what Rufus had said.

"Sometimes, people believe thinkin' the worst means they smart. It ain't always so, son," Granny told him. And she told him the necklace was real gold too. Gave him one of her dry kisses.

She always wore the necklace. And it never turned green.

Shawn couldn't really remember a time when he hadn't been with Granny. He knew his mother was dead, killed in a drive–by shooting while she was standing on the corner, just talking with a friend. They never caught the night riders who so casually blew her away. The police told Granny the shooters were really trying for a dope dealer standing on the same corner, like that would comfort her.

There was an "Unk" written in the space for his father's name on his birth certificate. Rufus explained that to him.

"Jus' means yo' momma didn't tell them yo' daddy's name at the hospital, that's all."

"Why wouldn't she tell them?"

"'Cause the Welfare go after him for the support money, see?"

Shawn nodded like he understood, but he was confused. Granny didn't collect Welfare–her Government money came from working all her life. As a maid. In Louisiana, where she was from. Where his Momma was from too, she told him. But Momma had come north when she was only a young girl.

"Came for the party, stayed for the funeral," Granny told him.

Sometimes, people would come to the apartment to see Granny when they had a problem. A lover who jilted them, a job they were hoping to get…stuff like that, Granny always seemed to know what they wanted before they even asked. She would speak a foreign language while she was working…sort of like French, Shawn thought, but he couldn't tell for sure. He knew it wasn't Spanish–he heard that every day in school and this wasn't the same. And she worked with roots. Special roots she got from someplace. Dried old things, all twisted and ugly. But Granny could make things happen with them, folks said. Some folks, anyway.

Other folks, they said she was crazy.

School was tomorrow, and Shawn couldn't decide. His beloved sneakers wouldn't change his status sitting in his closet, but if he wore them outside…there was a risk. The Projects were full of roving ratpack gangs. They'd take your best clothes in a second, leave you bleeding on the ground if you tried to stop them. School was close by, but it was a long, long walk.