Chapter 32

Jerry stepped out of his car and headed up to the door of the house. The clear laughter of Bill and Abe sounded from the backyard. It sounded almost hysterical. Curious as to why the boys were laughing so hard, he changed course and walked around the house. Bill was literally rolling on the ground holding his sides. Abe had collapsed against the side of the house, tears coming down his face.

A black girl wearing a large grin was standing by the side of the yard that hadn’t been straightened up. She looked familiar but Jerry couldn’t place her name. She took one look at him and the grin dropped from her face to be replaced by fear. Without saying a word, she ran off disappearing between the houses behind his.

“What’s so funny?”

Abe, hardly able to answer, managed to say, “Shauna ... she ... Melissa...”

A sinking feeling crept into Jerry’s stomach as he imagined what had happened. He asked, “Did Melissa say something to Shauna that she shouldn’t have said?”

“Yes,” replied Bill who managed to keep a straight face for a whole ten seconds before bursting out in laughter.

He had a very clear picture of what happened. Now that he had the name, he knew that the girl that had run off when he came into the backyard was Shauna. The girl might be young, but she was strong. If she got into a fight with Melissa, then his daughter would be in pretty bad shape. He hoped that it wouldn’t require a trip to the hospital. Worried about his daughter, he asked, “How’s Melissa?”

Abe, struggling to talk while laughing, said, “Green.”

His answer caused Bill to start laughing even harder. Unconcerned about the angry look from his father, he rolled onto his side trying to get control of himself. His laughter was beginning to hurt and he wanted to stop, but couldn’t help himself. He calmed a little and lay there gasping for breath.

Deciding that he would return to punish Bill for laughing at Melissa’s misfortune rather than helping her with her wounds, Jerry went into the house to tend to Melissa. He froze on seeing his daughter crying on the futon. Shocked by what he saw, he exclaimed, “You’re green!”

Melissa sat up and looked at her father, tears running down her face. Half of her hair and just about every inch of exposed skin was green - dark green. She looked like a gecko lizard in misery. She whimpered, “They sprayed me with green dye. I can’t wash it off.”

Putting a hand over his mouth, Jerry said, “Let me go talk to someone. I’ll be back.”

As she sat in the chair with tears running down her face, Jerry bolted out of the house and ran halfway up the block. Satisfied that he had put enough distance from his daughter that she wouldn’t hear him, he stopped running and started laughing uncontrollably. He couldn’t help it. The fact of the matter was that he was relieved she had been uninjured, but she looked so funny sitting there. He wondered how much of her they had managed to cover.

It took twenty minutes for him to control himself enough to even consider heading back to the house. He turned and looked in the direction of the house. A grin split his face and, out of fear of losing it again, he couldn’t make himself return to Melissa. She would have to wait a few minutes more.

One of the neighbor kids, after watching him carefully for five minutes, got up enough courage to walk over to him. Seeing that Jerry wasn’t about to hit him, he said, “Hello, Sir.”

“Do you know what Shauna did?” asked Jerry deciding that the kid’s manner suggested that the boy knew more about what happened with Melissa than he did.

“Shauna didn’t do it alone. We held a trial and decided that she had to suffer. Every one in the neighborhood was in on the decision and contributed money to buy the supplies.”

“Are you worried that I’ll get Shauna in trouble?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The look on the kid’s face suggested that he really was worried about Shauna getting in trouble. Another bout of laughter tried to capture him in its grip. After a couple of minutes, he managed to bring the urge to laugh under control. He said, “It’s too funny. I can’t get angry. Let her know that I won’t do anything this time.”

The boy grinned and said, “It was funny, Sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Benson,” replied the kid wondering why Jerry would want to know his name.

“Nice to meet you, Benson. You’re a good kid to stand up for your friends like that,” said Jerry. Judging by the way that the kid held himself, Jerry was sure that the boy was going to be one of the leaders of the community. It took nerve for the kid to approach him and he had done it meaning to protect others from Jerry’s wrath. He wondered what Henry and Mr. Atkins knew about the boy.

The kid, grinning at the praise, left to tell everyone else what Jerry said about the dye job. Watching him run off, Jerry pulled out his cell phone and called Jenny. When she answered, Jerry said, “Melissa has been dyed green by the kids in the neighborhood.”

Not sure that she had understood him correctly, Jenny said, “What?”

“The kids in the neighborhood dyed Melissa green.”

“You’re kidding!” replied his girlfriend trying to keep from laughing. She knew that it could have been worse, they could have beaten her to a bloody pulp.

As the laughter threatened to reclaim him, Jerry replied, “Nope. I’m serious. Can you come over here and help?”

“I’ll be over in about an hour.”

Surprised that it would take her so long to come over, Jerry asked, “Why so long?”

“It’s gonna take me that long to stop laughing.”

The click over the phone indicated that she had hung up. Jerry understood and burst out laughing again. Holding his side, he finally quieted down. He talked to himself as he walked home. “Controlling laughter is even harder than controlling rage. Damn, even I have to admit that’s ironic as hell.”

Arriving at home, he chose to deal with Bill and Abe rather than his daughter since he really didn’t know what to say to her. When he went in the backyard, he saw that Abe and Bill had managed to get some control over their laughter. Jerry asked, “What happened?”

Bill, seated on the ground and leaning against the house, answered, “Melissa caught Shauna and I kissing. She called Shauna a slut, but that didn’t really bother Shauna. When I told Melissa to fuck off, she asked how much the ... well, you know what she called her. She asked how much Shauna was charging me.”

“The one thing you don’t call Shauna is a nigger. Shit, even the other blacks won’t call her that,” commented Abe shaking his head. It bothered him when other blacks called each other that word, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it. Shauna, on the other hand, would rip the person a new asshole.

“So what happened next?”

Abe shook his head before he answered, “It was real weird. Shauna asked Melissa if orange was her favorite color. Melissa answered that her favorite color was green. After that, Shauna told Melissa that she would never forget what happens when you call a black person a nigger.”

“I thought for sure that Shauna was going to come back with a gun and blow Melissa away. I even told Melissa that she should stay in the house until Shauna cooled down, but Melissa wouldn’t listen. She came out here in her bikini to work on her tan,” said Bill continuing the story.

“We were in the house when everyone came over and, I mean, everyone was here. We knew the shit was about to hit the fan and came out. They had her surrounded and I was sure that Shauna was going to start beating Melissa up.”

Jerry had to know and asked, “So what did you do?”

“We went over to make sure that things didn’t get too far out of control. I might hate the bitch, but I wouldn’t want her to get killed,” answered Bill with a shrug.

At least that was better than Jerry had expected, but his lack of concern for his sister’s welfare was still troubling. However, now was not the time to address that problem. He said, “You and I are going to have to have a long talk about your attitude towards Melissa. So what happened next?”

Grinning, Abe held up an empty plastic bottle. The label said that it had once contained soda water. He answered, “They all pulled out these bottles. Each one was filled with green dye and carbonated water. They fucking sprayed her.”

“Hell, I was half tempted to join them,” commented Bill starting to laugh at the memory. Melissa had stood there attempting to stare down the other kids, not quite realizing what they had in mind. When they started to shake the bottles with a thumb over the mouth of the bottle, she started to understand. When they sprayed, she had shrunk to the ground like the wicked witch of the west in the Oz story.

“Did you?”

Bill held up his hands to show the pads of his thumbs and said, “No green on me!”

Abe winked as he made a motion that looked like someone holding a thumb over the mouth of a bottle and shaking it. He held up his thumb and Jerry could see that there wasn’t any green on it either.

Abe said, “Shit, he lives with her and I live next door to her. Ain’t no way we’re pissing that bitch off. She’s fucking mean.”

Jerry looked over Abe and considered his language. Summer spent hanging around with the neighborhood kids had added a little more color to his language. Shaking his head, he asked, “Why didn’t the other kids in the neighborhood ask you to join in?”

Abe glanced over at Bill and then answered, “I guess they figured that with Bill being her brother, that he’d catch hell if he was involved. Everyone knew that Henry would skin me alive if I pissed you off at the family. Shauna was telling us about that when you came home from work.”

Jerry went into the house to talk to Melissa. She was still seated on the futon, but had stopped crying. Taking a seat beside her on the futon, he said, “I found out what happened.”

Melissa sniffed and ran her hands under her eyes. The skin on her hands were dark green that contrasted sharply with her bright red fingernails. She said, “They sprayed me with bottles of green dye.”

“Do you know why they did it?”

The young girl looked at her father for a minute before answering, “I called that girl a nigger.”

Jerry nodded and said, “One of the kids in the neighborhood said they had a trial and decided that you had to be punished for doing that.”

“Aren’t you going to call the police to have them arrested?”

“No. We tried to warn you that you don’t go around saying things like that. It bothers me that you even think things like that,” answered Jerry knowing that Melissa wasn’t going to like what he said. The fact was that he wasn’t sure that spraying someone with dye was even a crime.

“Do you think that I deserved this?” asked Melissa knowing what his answer would be before she even asked the question. Having plotted revenge on others many times, she was amazed at the creativity Shauna had shown. She’d have never come up with this as a means of getting even with someone.

“Yes, I do. You’re lucky that they didn’t do something worse than that. Mr. Atkins promised me that they wouldn’t maim or kill you. There’s a lot of leeway associated with that promise.”

Melissa expected for him to feel like she deserved the punishment, but she was stunned at the news about the promise. She couldn’t believe it. Her father had accepted a promise that they wouldn’t main or kill her? Who was that Mr. Atkins person that could make such a promise? Confused, she asked, “Why would you accept that promise?”

“Because it was the only way to keep you alive,” answered Jerry. He stood and paced around the room trying to figure out a good way to explain the facts of life to his daughter. There were times when he really hated his ex-wife. Seeing once again what she had done to his daughter, this was one of those times.

“As much as I like the people around here, I do understand the reality of this area. You have to understand that this can be a violent and dangerous place. One of the people that shot me is the same age as Shauna. He shot me because I threw him out of my house when he tried to rob it. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to make sense. You go around calling people names, you’re asking for trouble. That trouble can come out of the barrel of a gun,” explained Jerry.

Melissa stared at him. Incredulous, she said, “You mean she might have killed me for calling her a nigger?”

“Maybe not her, but some kids around here would kill you without giving it a second thought. You were lucky. The only thing stopping them is that Mr. Atkins gave his word that they wouldn’t do that.”

“Who’s Mr. Atkins?”

Jerry paced as he answered, “Mr. Atkins is the old man across the street and he is, for all intents and purposes, the law around here. To tell the truth, I’m surprised that he made that promise.”

“Why is that?”

A grim expression appeared on Jerry’s face while he looked Melissa in the eye. Even looking at the green girl couldn’t diminish the seriousness of the subject. In a tone of voice that conveyed the seriousness of the subject, he answered, “His father was hung by the KKK. He was forced to watch his mother get raped by a couple of white men. If you ever call him a nigger, there’s no power on this planet that could save you.”

The image of having to watch your own mother getting raped crashed through Melissa’s mind. For the first time in her entire life, she thought about how someone else might have felt. Her mouth flew open and she gasped, “Oh, that poor man.”