On the way, we stop by the grocery store and Shanice runs in and gets the pie, some apples, and some vanilla ice cream. When we get inside the Showboat, we walk down to the lanes, and when I look to the left, I don’t see no familiar faces, so then I look to the right, and I still don’t see nobody I know from our team in our usual lanes. I know I got this right. This is our “house.” I start walking over to the bar area to ask Zenobia if she would put this ice cream in the freezer and where the hell everybody done disappeared to, and she just grins at me like a damn fool—showing off them two gold teeth that long ago stopped shining—and that’s when, from behind me, I hear a whole bunch of Negroes yelling at the top of their lungs: “SURPRISE! HAPPY TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY, VIOLA! AND WELCOME HOME, HUZZY!”

I’m scared to turn around, ’cause I might have a heart attack, but that’s a chance I’m gon’ have to take. When I do, Essex and the whole crew is holding a giant sheet cake with my name written in pink letters right across the middle and big yellow-and-mint-green roses up in two corners that I know they got from Costco. I forgot to tell Shanice that I do like Costco’s cakes, ’cause they don’t stick to the roof of my mouth like the other ones do, but I figure, if I let her roll my ball a few times, I can sneak and eat a little piece and maybe she won’t even notice.

Burnt Toast

I don’t know why I’m not scared. I should be, in this neighborhood: South Central. Jimmy was killed out here in a drive-by shooting. That was in 1985, when the term wasn’t part of our vocabulary yet. It doesn’t seem like it was nine years ago. In fact, if I were to drive down two or three blocks and turn a few corners, I could be right in front of the house where it happened. But I don’t want to see that porch or the steps leading to it. I don’t want to see the red grass or the burgundy sidewalk; the broken glass shattered and scattered like a map of the world ripped apart until every country landed in the wrong place. I don’t want to remember the screams that sounded like sirens and the sirens that sounded like screams. Or the crowd, too many people—even little kids—rushing to form a thick circle so they could experience the thrill of seeing another dead body being carried off to the morgue: another casualty in their own neighborhood caused by someone from their own neighborhood.

Jimmy never hurt anybody. Even after he got his degree and became a high-school coach, he still spent his summers out here, volunteering, helping to train young track hopefuls for the Junior Olympics. His heart was big, and I’m glad I was lucky enough to feel it. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m sure if he were still here Shanice and I would be happy. He wouldn’t have let anything happen to her or me. He was a protector, and the sad thing is, no one in his neighborhood even cared. I think it was Malcolm X who said that when we kill each other senselessly it’s genocide, and the white man is smiling, watching us do a job he doesn’t have to anymore. I’m sure this is why they never found out who killed my husband. They just never looked that hard.