There were two ways out of the cellar and neither looked good.
“Mel, we gotta go.”
Above us were ground level windows, but they were pretty high and very small. Not much hope there. I grabbed Melanie’s arm. “Come on, sweetie.”
But before we could do much of anything, Mama came tearing down the stairs looking ready to kill.
She was tall and thin with wiry muscles. Her hair was cut short, near to bald. She wore shorts and a tee shirt tied into a knot showing her midriff. On her body we saw scars, lots of them — a particularly ugly one ran diagonal across her stomach. Another was on her cheek. On her arms were dark tattoos. Plus a big tattoo of an eagle was on her left thigh.
“Who the hell are you?” she said.
I stepped back. Melanie ducked behind the washing machines.
“I see you back there, girl! Don’t you hide.”
She gave me a sharp look. She came forward well into the room.
“All right, out with it. Who are you?”
I thought maybe I could hit her and run for it. But I thought again. She looked like she’d been hit by harder things than me. Plus, even if I made it out, would Melanie make it too?
Instead, I thought of a quick lie.
“Hey. I’m Veronica. Like, we have permission from the landlord to be down here.”
She got a skeptical look. But I saw no point in stopping. “So, see, my dad is thinking of buying the building, so we came down to look around. This is my friend, uh, Julie. Come out, Jules.”
I winked at Melanie. Slowly, she emerged from the shadows and stood next to me. She held the diary by her side.
The lady came toward me, seeming to stalk, catlike. “Fine. What’s the landlord’s name?”
“Uh — I dunno. He knows my dad, though.”
She got close. She leaned down and brought her face level with my face, eye to eye. “You full of shit, girl.”
Well, I was. I took Melanie’s hand and tried to slip around her. “Can we go?”
She stepped and blocked our way. “No. You can’t.”
“Please let us go,” Melanie said in a meek voice.
“Bitch! You just shut up and back away.”
She stood tall with crossed arms. Her gaze shifted back and forth between us. She waited, poised. I made a decision.
I shouted, “Run!” and dashed as quick as I could right past her.
Except she was smart. She let me pass. She didn’t even try to stop me. No, she took two steps and caught Melanie tight in her arms.
“Stop, bitch! I got your girl!”
I made it to the stairs before I stopped. I turned around. “Shit! Come on. Let us go, we weren’t stealing nothing.”
Melanie struggled, but had no chance.
The lady said, “Just tell me what you be doing. That’s all. If it’s cool, then we cool.” She walked toward me holding Melanie’s feet off the floor. “If it ain’t cool, then — well — you may as well let it out. Gonna hurt either way.”
They both looked at me with wide eyes, Melanie’s from fear, the lady’s with suspicion and anger.
“Okay. Just put her down. I’ll tell you.”
She squeezed until Melanie squealed.
“Fuck! Please! I’ll tell you.”
“Just start talking, bitch.”
“It was my grandpa’s house, and his father before. We just wanted to see it. Like, we read his diary and it talked about the house.”
She seemed to think about that, for a while. Then she put Melanie down. “Stay there!” She strutted over to me. “So, you grandaddy live here, years ago, and you thought you come walking in like you was the master?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Huh?” she said. “Like that?”
I glanced back up the stairs. But, no, Melanie would never make it. “It ain’t like that,” I said.
“Oh really?”
“Lady, come on.”
“I wonder what would happen if they caught me in your basement? And I gave some bullshit story about knowing the landlord. Huh?”
I didn’t answer that. We both knew what would happen to her in my neighborhood, but there was no way I was going to say it.
She leaned close to me. “You wanna know what’s funny, bitch? Huh? I’m the landlord! That’s right. This is my building.”
I blinked. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Huh? Didn’t think a nigga could own a building, right?”
“Shit, lady. Fuck!”
“What? Shit, fuck? That how you talk in my house?”
I stepped back again. She seemed to be getting more and more angry, and I wasn’t sure how I could stop it.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m no racist-townie-bitch. We just wanted to see the house. And of course a black person can own a building. I’m not stupid. Whaddaya want us to do?”
Melanie got close behind her. “Please, ma’am.”
The lady got a big smile. “What you looking for down here anyway? You got that diary?” She motioned to my backpack. “It’s in there, right? Lemme see it.”
Melanie still held the diary in plain sight. She stepped back. The lady noticed, turned, and saw it in her hand. “Oh, you have it. Give it to me.”
Melanie held the diary behind her back and retreated further. “Please,” she said.
The lady advanced. I looked around. Next to me, propped up in the corner, was a garden hoe with a rusty metal end.
Melanie backed against an empty wooden frame meant to hold a washing machine. The lady had her trapped.
I grabbed the hoe, stepped forward, and jabbed her hard in the middle of the back. I didn’t swing the thing at her. I didn’t want to really hurt her, just to get away. She spun around and faced me. “Bitch! You best put that down.”
I held it over my shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to swing. “Mel,” I said — forgetting to call her Julie — “get up the stairs.”
Melanie ducked around the lady and ran toward the stairs. But she only got halfway before the lady moved. “You ain’t got the guts,” the lady said as she lurched forward.
I didn’t swing it wide, not full force. No, I wasn’t going to kill some lady in her house. I swung it halfway, half-hard, but still, it clipped her jaw and slid up her cheek. I saw blood.
“Fuck!” she shouted. Her hands flew up to her face and tried to grab the hoe.
No good. I pulled it back and jabbed it again, hard to her belly. She grunted and dropped.
I turned. Melanie stood behind me with her mouth open. I grabbed her hand. “Come on!” I tossed aside the hoe. Then we both pounded up the steps — past the little girl in the darling dress who waited on the ground floor landing — and out the backdoor into the clear.
From there it was a quarter mile to the T station. We ran the entire way.
We sat side by side on the Red Line, heading north through Dorchester toward South Boston. Next to me Melanie pored through the diary, frantically turning pages, reading, skimming. She bit her lip.
Did I believe? Truly, was there magic to be had? From some old book hidden away?
I caressed Melanie’s arm under the disapproving stare of a fat lady who sat across from us. I returned the lady’s dirty look.
I imagined my great-great-grandmother Emma. I’d seen pictures. Actually, she looked a lot like me, the same black hair in a bob, the same dark, deep-set eyes. Like me, her body was tall and strong, her breasts full and round. Next, I thought of her husband, his coming home after a long day at the shop, the smell of cigars, the scotch flowing, the loud men crowded into the apartment for a night of cards.
What were the witches like? I pictured them, pretty women in flowing dresses, in a dark room lit by candles. I imagined their soft voices muttering spells. Did the magic work? I saw them gaze eye to eye over the flickering flame, hands touching, stealing kisses in the shadows.
Wasn’t that the magic? Wasn’t that the real witchcraft?
I glanced at Melanie, touched her again. She looked up, her eyes feverish. The hint of a smile. Back to the diary. More pages flipping.
She was so beautiful to me.
Indeed, that was the magic. The witchcraft.
“We’ll get the book, sweetie, somehow. We’ll get it.”
She looked back at me and gave a small nod.
The next day was Monday. After school I had to work at my job, a little button shop downtown. But after school the next day I caught the train down to Field’s Corner. This time, instead of heading back into the neighborhoods, I went the other way to Dot Ave.
Dot Ave, which is Dorchester Avenue on the map, is a strange little piece of old Boston. Walking along, you’d swear you were in some quaint Massachusetts town with cracked sidewalks and old red-brick shops. Except half the shops in this part of town were now Vietnamese. And the people walking around did not look like small town folks.
I found a group of kids about my age. I went right up to them, a black boy and two black girls. The boy was in a white tee with his pants hanging low. The girls were in colorful skirts and tops. They were standing around under the shade of an oak tree in front of a pho joint.
“Hey,” I said.
The boy looked over at me with leering eyes. The girls stood upright and gave hostile stares.
“Hey, yourself, girl,” the boy said. He stepped over to me, swaggering like a dude in a really bad hip-hop video. His eyes were fixed on my tits.
As he got close, one of the girls strutted up behind him while loudly smacking her chewing gum. “What you want?” she asked.
I slumped my shoulders and cocked my head to the side. “So, look, does any of you know this guy Lashawn. He hangs out with these guys Jorell and Ray.”
The boy said, “Yeah. I know them niggas. Forget about them.” He smiled. His front teeth were gold.
The other girl, who had an elaborate weave dyed red, stepped up and asked, “Why you asking ’bout him? He put a baby in you?”
They all laughed. The boy stepped off to my side and let his gaze run up and down me. The gum-chewing girl shoved him.
“No!” I said. “He didn’t. Look, do you know or not?”
Just then, the boy looked over his shoulder. “Uh-oh! The white cavalry coming.”
I looked where he was looking, and indeed a Boston police car was creeping up. Inside were two white cops.
“They gonna save your ass from the big-bad niggas!” the boy said. He held up his hands like in an old western movie.
They all began to back away from me. But when the cops got close, and when the driver took a long look at me, he got a disgusted look. The engine revved and the car sped away.
“Oooo!” the gum-chewing girl said. “They ain’t gonna save you!”
More laughter. The boy said, “Yeah! They think you down here fucking niggas!”
I sighed. “I’m not fucking anybody.” I looked over at gum-chewing girl. “Please, just tell me if you know where he hangs and I’ll be outta your hair.”
The girl with the weave reached up and touched her hair.
The boy circled behind me, still checking me out. Gum-chewing girl watched him. Her eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll help you. Always help the less fortunate. The nigga’s old lady keep a restaurant over on Geneva. He usually up in there.”
She gave me directions. It wasn’t far.
When I walked into the diner, Lashawn wasn’t around, but a lady in a smart blue jumpsuit stood behind the counter. Somehow, she indeed reminded me of Lashawn.
She took a long look at me. “Honey, you sure you in the right place?”
“You Lashawn’s mom?”
She blinked and answered fast. “What’s my boy been up to?”
She stood stiff, waiting for me to respond. But I didn’t answer right away. Slowly, I approached the counter and slid into a high-back swivel chair. “Nothing. Just a friend. Can I have a Pepsi?”
She looked at me for a few seconds more. Then she shrugged and poured me a Pepsi. I took a sip and looked up at her. She looked back. But then, before we got too uncomfortable, another customer came in. She left me alone while he ordered a coffee and a sandwich.
I turned, faced the door, and sipped my Pepsi.
After a while, she came up behind me and asked, “What’s your name, girl?” I turned back. She leaned against the counter right in front of me. Her short, curly hair was pushed back, making her forehead seem tall. Her eyes, sunk into a dark face with darker freckles, were deep brown and suspicious. Her lips were narrow and taut.
“Uh, Veronica.”
“How you know Lashawn?”
I took a small sip of Pepsi.
“We met the other day. He came up and talked to me. And — well — I was afraid.”
I waited to see if that would get a response. It did. She blinked and said, “You were afraid of Lashawn? My Lashawn?”
I shrugged. “I feel pretty stupid about it. Anyhow, he made me promise to talk to him, like, then I wouldn’t be afraid. See?”
She just looked at me.
“So, I’m here to talk to him.” I gave her a big grin. “But I guess he isn’t around.”
I swiveled in the chair and looked around the restaurant. Then I looked back at her.
“Well, girl, you just sit tight, right there. Lashawn gets here about 5:30.” She grabbed a towel and began to wipe down the counter where my Pepsi had been sitting. “He better get here.”
At that moment it was 5:15.
It was 5:37 when Lashawn strutted in with Ray. When he saw me sitting at the counter, he did a double take. Then he said, “Oooo, Veronica, I didn’t think you’d show your face round here again.”
“Hey, Lashawn. Why is that?”
He glanced at his mom. Then he said, “Man, you know — ” He looked over at his mom again. “Let’s go outside.”
I tossed a few dollars on the counter for my Pepsi. Then I followed him. As we passed out the door, his mom called out, “Lashawn! What you doing?”
“Nothing, Ma! I’ll be back in a second.”
Outside, he walked a half block down the sidewalk with me and Ray in tow. Then he turned to me and said, “Girl, you cut that woman’s face!”
“Oh. That.”
“You best get back on that train and outta here. Her man is hard.” When he said hard, he smacked his fist into his open palm. “You know, connected. He gunning for you.”
I looked back and forth down the street. I didn’t see any low cars with dark windows creeping this way, nor kids on motorbikes with machine guns, nor any of the other ways that the hitters in Dorchester murdered each other.
I looked back at him. “I wanna break back into that house. Will you help me?”
“Fuck!” he said.
Ray had been standing there with a harsh look. But when I said that, he stepped up in my face. “Bitch! You think ’cause we black we know how to break into houses?”
That made me grin. “No, I think ’cause you live in Dorchester you know how to break into houses.”
Ray’s look got even harsher. I shrugged and said to Lashawn, “So, will you help me?”
“What for?” he asked.
“Well, I thought about that. I don’t have much money. And I ain’t gonna fuck you. Sorry. So, well, just because we’re friends.”
Lashawn blinked. Ray scoffed. “Since when we friends?”
“Not you, Ray. Me and Lashawn are friends. Right, Lashawn?”
I gave him a wide-eyed look and smiled.
“Man,” Ray said, turning to Lashawn, “don’t you dare let this big-titted white bitch come acting like she’s your friend and getting you to do something this stupid!”
“Come on, Lashawn,” I said. “I need to do this. I’m gonna do it either way, but I need help.”
Lashawn gave me a long, quiet look. Ray shifted in place and seemed to get more and more angry. “Fuck this!” he said. “You one dumb nigga if you do this.” He turned and stalked away.
Lashawn smiled and shrugged. Then he said, “So, tell me, what’s in the house?”
I was asking him to put a lot of trust in me, so I decided to put some trust into him. “Not money or drugs, nothing like that.”
“Okay,” he said.
“So, it’s just some old family stuff. A book. Some other shit my grandma had. Well, great-great-grandma.”
He leaned against the cement wall of the barber shop we were in front of and looked at me for a while, like he was thinking.
“Is it a rare book or something?”
“You could say that.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Well, I mean, not like expensive rare. Or, like, something you could sell. This ain’t about money.”
“Yeah, I’m getting the no money part.” He put his hands into his pockets. “So you can drop that. What’s important about it? Don’t try to tell me it was her scrapbook.”
“She was a witch. It was her spell book.”
He blinked. “Bitch! You fucking with me?”
“No. I’m not.”
He scoffed. I scraped my foot on the sidewalk and stepped back. Then I looked up at him through my bangs and said, “Look, I’m not sure if it’s real — or anything — and I don’t know if magic is true. I really don’t care. But Mel, she believes it. And she wants that book more than anything in the world.”
He stood, watching. He seemed to be waiting. Should I say it?
“And I want her more than anything in the world. So, I’m gonna get her that book.”
I studied his face. He was the first person I’d told, other than Melanie herself, that I was a lezzie, that I wanted a girl. Could he even understand?
“Oh man! This is some lezzie-love thing?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Shit!”
I didn’t feel ashamed. Not under his gaze. There was something about his eyes, something soft, like his mom’s. He looked me up and down. His glance passed my legs and tummy, over my breasts, to my face. So, yeah, he looked at my tits. But he looked at my face too. He shook his head. “Girl, you don’t look like a lezzie.”
I reminded myself that I wanted his help. “The book is hidden behind the brick wall in the cellar. But, like, we don’t know exactly where.”
He raised his eyebrows. I quietly watched him. After a few seconds, he said, “How you know this?”
At that moment, the way he said it, I figured him out. I wouldn’t get him with money — he didn’t care about that any more than me. And I wouldn’t fuck him, we both knew that.
No, I’d get him with the mystery of the thing.
“My great-great-grandpa had a diary. He talked about hiding the book and stuff behind a brick wall. So, in the cellar, one wall is red brick. But it’s tight. We checked. We might have to take the whole thing down.”
“Don’t do that!” he said.
“Why?”
“Girl! In these old triple-deckers, the basement is load-bearing. Take down that wall, the house comes down.”
“Oh.”
“Like — ” He stepped back. “Shit! Fuck! You do need me.”
“Yeah. I really do.”
He thought. I waited.
“Gimme your number. I’ll check out the house and call you.”
I smiled.
In the posh Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, down a little cobblestone lane hidden away from the constant stream of tourists who wandered down Charles Street, there was a small coffee shop. Its customers were locals: rich white folks, who clinked their cups, pecked away on their laptops, and talked in hushed voices.
In this place there was no way we’d see somebody we knew. Also, rich folks didn’t really care if a black boy was sitting with two white girls. Not something I’d try in my neighborhood.
For the past four days, Lashawn, Melanie, and I had spent our afternoons here, poring over the diary, studying printouts of the neighborhood map, inspecting a small log book that Lashawn had put together that listed who came in and out of the house, and when. But today we were looking at photos of the cellar!
It turned out that, indeed, Lashawn could break into houses. In fact, he knew many things. He went to some posh Jesuit high school with a great science department — and when we were surprised at that, he got a little offended. He told us how hard his mom worked to get him into that school, and that, yes, he had a hardship scholarship, but he still earned all he had.
Mel was oblivious to it all. I was just pissed that he was in a better school than me.
But today that didn’t matter. He knew stuff. And last night he broke into the house and took pictures.
Thirty feet wide. Five feet tall, just the brick part. Above that, the wall was the same stone masonry as the rest of the cellar. One hundred and fifty square feet. Each brick was about eight inches long and a shade over two inches high. About a thousand bricks. Roughly.
Lashawn guessed that, to take the load, the wall would be three layers thick. If there were a hollowed out place, he said, the inner layers would be absent, or broken through, or something.
“Sound!” he said. “We can find a hollow place with sound.”
We shrugged and waited.
“So,” he said, “you get one of those stethoscope things the doctor’s have. Y’know, the thing they use to listen to your heart.”
“I know what a stethoscope is,” I said.
“Cool. So, you get one, and we go brick by brick and tap. When you find the hollow area, it should be obvious.”
“Then what?”
“We break through.”
“That’ll take a long time,” I said.
“Yeah. I figured it out. Working together, two people can do one brick every three seconds. Take about an hour to do the whole wall. Then maybe fifteen minutes to break out that brick.”
He smiled. I asked, “When?”
“Well, when she goes out with her old man, she leaves the girl with her mom. I asked around. They go out every Friday.”
Today was Thursday. We rushed out and found a medical supply shop that would sell me a stethoscope. Then we went to the hardware store and bought a hammer and chisel and stuff. It took most of my money.
Melanie didn’t wear a skirt for the break in. She put on cargo pants. I wore sweats. We both had on hoodies pulled low over our faces. I had my backpack with the diary and the gear.
We met Lashawn just a few blocks from his mother’s restaurant. From there we silently trudged back into the neighborhood.
It turned out there was a path through the fences from the next street over, so we went that way, staying to the shadows when we could, and walking quickly when we had to pass beneath a streetlight. Finally we reached a particular house. Lashawn motioned and said, “Through here.” We crunched through the gravel between two looming triple-deckers, past a beat-up pickup truck, and around a little garage. Next there was a fence, but it was falling apart. We easily ducked through a hole. Then we found ourselves in the backyard of the house across the street from our target. Here was scattered some old patio furniture that, by chance, faced between the houses and at the driveway of number 253.
Her car was there. We could see it plainly in the glow of the security light fixed to the side of her house.
“Get comfortable,” Lashawn said. We sat.
It was maybe a half hour before we saw the lady lead out her little girl, get into the car, and then drive away.
“Show time,” Lashawn said.
We waited a bit more. Then we scurried across the street and to the side entrance of the cellar. The fence was locked, but Lashawn had a giant pair of cutting pliers in his backpack. He made quick work of the lock. Then down. He busted out the door lock with a few taps from a hammer. Inside! With a flashlight he crept over to the inside stairs. He climbed. Creak, creak, creak. When he got to the top, he removed three strips of plywood from his backpack. To those he applied fast drying glue. Then he stuck the wood over the door and door jam.
It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to bust through. But we’d hear it and have time to run.
Melanie stood guard at the foot of the outside stairs. Lashawn and I went to the wall.
“I tap, you listen,” he said.
I put on the stethoscope. He used the end of the chisel to tap on the bricks.
One by one, very slow.
He was right. When I heard it, it was very obvious.
“There!” I said.
“Huh?”
“That last one. It sounded, uh, hollow.”
“Get the hammer.”
The particular brick was near the floor about a third of the way in. We hammered around it, chipping out bits of mortar, slowly cracking through. When we got it loose, we pulled it out. Then Lashawn shined his flashlight into the hole.
There was a hollow space! I reached in and felt around.
“I got it!” I said. “Get Mel.”
It was a package wrapped in plastic. From that, I removed a red cloth-bound book, about eight inches by five, a small wooden box about six inches wide and four tall, and a stack of loose papers, perhaps two-hundred sheets, fastened by a bit of string. On the box was carved an ornate design of leaves and intertwined vines. It was closed by a brass clasp.
When Melanie arrived she knelt next to me and grabbed the book. She flipped it open and thumbed through the pages. As she did, I saw freehand writing in long paragraphs, except on every few pages there was a diagram: some were arcane circles, others were cryptic glyphs, a few were carefully drawn pictures of girls in flowing gowns, holding hands and running through the trees. In one the girls were kissing. Melanie looked up at me and blushed. Then she returned to the book. I opened the box. Inside was a red ribbon, a silver bell — about an inch in diameter — and a sewing needle two inches long.
Lashawn came and stood over us. “Can we look through it all later?”
Melanie closed the book, clutched it to her chest, and grinned.
“Let’s go,” I said.