Bruce Alexander
My alarm went off. I rolled over, stopped it and a shape moved in the doorway. 'I was just watching you sleep,' Mom said. She lifted me into her arms and hugged me. I didn't understand. She wept my namesake was dead and so did I.
I fidgeted at breakfast; Mom just watched me. She didn't ask me about my homework and, at the time, I didn't know who the Joshua was that had died.
'Be careful today,' she said.
'Mummy, I'm not a baby.'
Her head whipped around. The look said it all.
Mom sat up front with Mr. Brown; I sat in the back. Normally he joked with me about the girls at school, and her with him, about his drinking. I watched the faces around me to see if they knew too. I couldn't tell.
I pulled free to stop her kissing me; my friends were pointing and laughing. I hurried away, wiping off her lipstick.
The car slowed but didn't stop.
'What you doing here, boy?'
I spun around, clutching my backpack. The watchman scratched his bumpy neck.
'Waiting on my ride.'
He padlocked the gate and walked away, muttering.
The streetlamp tried to turn itself on. Dogs barked somewhere. Mr. Brown was never this late. I decided to walk home. Asking Watchy was not an option and Mom had warned me not to ride with strangers.
The garbage on the street blended with the sewage water. I choked on the stench. The signs and buildings meant nothing; it was night and I was lost. I saw some boys on the sidewalk and walked up to them.
'Can you tell me where Durban Lane is?'
They stopped talking and stared. The biggest one came over.
'You need some help?'
'He needs his mommy,' a boy said.
I started to walk away, but their leader held on to my arm. He wore plaits, gold chains and a hoop earring.
'Don't worry about them; what's your name?'
'Joshua.'
'Good name, that.'
They called him Little Lion. He showed me the way.
I recognised where I was and ran the last few blocks. Some of my neighbours were in the yard and Miss Jenny met me at the gate. She told me what had happened to Mom, and Browny:
The Lord works in mysterious ways; poor Mr. Brown; a terrible, terrible thing; your dear mother was a good church lady; trust in the Almighty; crime never pays.
I was eight when I buried my family.
Home was no longer. Mom couldn't afford life insurance and it was her savings that paid for a closed coffin, a plot and a marker. Miss Jenny handled everything; no one asked me anything. She took me in for a spell. 'He' was everywhere framed over the dining table; holding up Bible passages on the fridge, on the salt and pepper shakers!
Prayer in the morning,
Prayer in the evening,
Prayer at suppertime.
I liked church,
Once upon a time.
I left messages for my father.
My friends treated me different; we didn't have anything to talk about. Older kids called me Joshua the Orphan. I got beaten up a lot; my friends just watched. And my grades tumbled. Now I walked everywhere; no money for taxis. Little Lion had crews that worked the traffic lights, and we talked. In my area, Poco Man, Mighty Mouse and Curly Temple did the hustling, Razor held the money. By day, they were paupers; at night, princes.
'Beggars must look like beggars,' Lion said.
Miss Jenny was waiting for me at her gate.
'You're late, again.'
'I was just hanging out.'
Her hand was a blur it came from behind her back and crashed into my cheek, spinning my head.
'I know what you're doing, bwoy. You don't know how good you have it. If I ever catch you with those dutty...'
I never heard the rest. She got louder and angrier; I packed and walked away.
Little Lion and the boys had a home, but he wasn't the Boss; they all worked for the local Don. I only had to learn one rule: Family came first.
I became a businessman; the motorist was the client.
Taxis were generally easy they understood us; they often had been us, before. The general public was the challenge: How to get hard-working people, who think we aren't, to buy our services.
The window slid up as I approached and she pretended to talk on her cellphone.
'Morning, Miss. Let me get the back glass for you. Don't worry about it, Miss, you can give me something next time.'
We knew their routes better than their men and she would pay, guilt overcoming her disdain.
Window down, music blaring, the driver rolled to a stop, leaving a wide gap between his sedan and the car ahead. Mighty leaned on the car and pulled up the wiper. I couldn't hear what the driver said, and Mighty didn't care. He squirted the windshield; the driver released his seatbelt. I didn't move until the man got out of the car.
'Put back the b-mb-cl-t wiper!'
Mighty hesitated, I didn't. The man grabbed Mighty's throat and I cracked him in the lower back with my steel pipe. He grunted and collapsed.
'I had to pay some cops off, Youngblood, but you did good,' the Don said.
He saw my potential and put me in charge of a new crew. Joshua was truly dead; they called me Mongoose. The title fit: I was small, wiry, and I could handle the big man.
The years flew by, and I made good money, for the Don. I wanted mine.
'To get big man money, you have to do big man work,' the Don said. He took me into his office and told me Little Lion's story.
I managed to keep my head up and walk out without stumbling. Someone called my name...the thumping of dancehall ... floppy breasts jiggled from the stage ... curry chicken. I made it outside and sprayed my lunch into my hand.
The Lord worked in mysterious ways. Mom; poor Browny. Crime never paid.
I cried and cried and cried, but I knew I had to do a terrible thing. Family came first.
