Unmanned by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online Page B

it,” he said, but he shook his head, doubting.
    “You still wanted to be with them, though.”
    “They were my niggers. My dogs. They got me.”
    “What did they get that your grandmother didn’t?”
    He caught me with his eyes, panther black, startling in their intensity. “That I was damned. Worthless. Like the fuckin’…” He jerked to his feet, paced, angry and quick.
    I gave him a moment, then: “So your grandmother didn’t think you were worthless.”
    “She fed me spinach. Slimy shit from a can. Said it’d make me strong. Kept praying for me. Always praying till I wanted to…” His hands were curled around nothing. “So I pulled a knife. When I was fourteen. Said I was running my own life from there on out and there wasn’t nothing she could do about it.”
    “Were you right?”
    He glanced at me, cords pulled tight in his throat.
    “Was there nothing she could do about it?”
    He watched me for several seconds, then laughed a little. “The woman was built like a nose tackle. Backhanded me so hard I couldn’t walk straight for a week. Took my knife. You got any idea how embarrassing it is to tell your gang your grandmother took your blade?”
    I steepled my fingers and tried to imagine the terror and guilt of his childhood, but I couldn’t. By comparison, my own background looked pristine, a glittering mirage of normalcy.
    “Cole laughed at me. Called me a pussy.” He lowered his head, laughter eerily gone, looking past his brows, eyes gleaming with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. My breath clogged in my throat. “I coulda beat the shit outta him. But it wouldn’t a mattered.” He was slipping into a different dialect, a different place in his mind. “Made ’im pay, though.” His tone was throaty now, chilling the back of my neck, lifting the hair on my forearms, making it difficult to speak.
    “How so?”
    “He had him a sister.” The words were almost whispered. “Twelve, maybe thirteen.” He paused.
    I was gripping the arms of my chair and forced myself to ease up a little.
    “Met up with her in the alley between a crack house and the porn shop. She was with her friends. Her peeps. But she had a thing for me. I knowed it. Even then I knowed it. Told them to go on ahead.”
    I was holding my breath.
    “Biggest fuckin’ eyes I ever seen. Flirted with me like a…” He closed his eyes, swallowed, seemed to come back to himself. “She begged me not to.” His fists tightened, loosened. He wouldn’t look at me. “But I was a man. Had to prove myself.”
    Oh God.
    “Afterward…” His face was drained of emotion. “She never cried. Never…” He cleared his throat. “There was talk…later…that she got an abortion.”
    At thirteen. I felt like barfing. “Did Cole know?”
    He drew a careful breath, lifted his chin slightly, found my gaze. “She never told. And I was too much of a…” He glanced toward the door. “I told myself it would just cause trouble if her brother found out. I felt bad. And that was enough, wasn’t it? Guilt.” Anger flared in his eyes. “I prayed for forgiveness, just like Grams taught me.”
    “But you don’t believe you’re forgiven.”
    “I’m not,” he said, and I knew what he meant.
    “How about the girl?”
    “Kaneasha.” His voice was soft, mourning. I braced myself, fearing the worst. “She left. Went to live with her aunt.”
    “You haven’t spoken to her?”
    He tensed as if waiting for a blow. As if almost welcoming it. “Should I?”
    “Do you think you could be forgiven?” I asked.
    “I raped her.” He said the words through his teeth. “A child. A kid with eyes so big they could swallow you whole.” He turned toward me, his own eyes haunted, pleading. “Would you forgive?”
    No. “I meant
you,
” I said. “If you spoke to her, do you think maybe you could forgive yourself?”
             
    I t was nearly two hours later that I stood up to retreat for lunch. But the doorbell rang again. I could