The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead by Chanelle Benz

Author:Chanelle Benz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-12-22T16:00:00+00:00

According to the homies in puffy coats on the plastic chairs around their stoop who took one look at my nose and agreed I was too fucked up to fuck with, it was eight-thirty at night. On the real though, I had found and tied two plastic bags over my feet, was legally blind, and all I had left in the world were bloodstained sweatpants with seven dollars and fifty cents in them. And still, I didn’t cry. I did have this feeling like I was being followed, but when I randomly/anxiously turned, all I saw was that the way I had come was dark.

I hobbled down Fitzwater and Eighteenth, passing flat-fronted brick row houses with long white windows and worn stone steps on my way to Aunt B’s. But my rush was in vain: no one was home. Not even a damn Welcome mat for my ass. I slumped on the bottom step, perching my Pathmark heels on some weeds coming up out of the sidewalk and wiped at my dripping/clogged nose. There was no way I was gonna cry even though I was kind of starting to cry.

Self-snitching: crying had been a problem since I was nine. But back then, people were cool with it. I had earned my tears. Cuz when I was nine, my dad went to prison, my parents got divorced, and Mom and me moved out of Philly to her ex-boyfriend’s house in Bryn Mawr. But three years later to still be getting all inconsolable about negligible shit? Like when I misspelled remainder on the floor of the State Spelling Bee? (A gaffe I ascribe to it being 6 a.m. and a fear of large white crowds.) I mean, people at Friends paid more in tuition than people in my old school paid for rent in a year—what was to cry over now?

The fuzz of a woman in lavender scrubs with some animal on them stood over me. “Lord child, you scared me.” Aunt Bernice hugged me quick but just as quick pulled back. “What happened to your face?”

The concern in my aunt’s voice disturbed my weak hold on ocular dignity. “Nothing.” I looked down. “I got in a fight after school. Tenth graders. Way bigger than me.”

Aunt Bernice turned my chin as my cousin, Nahala, slammed the car door, saying, “Oo you got hit good, huhn?”

“Your nasal passages blocked?” asked my aunt, decorously ignoring my cousin.

“Not really,” I said.

Then in rapid fire: “You been throwing up? Your neck hurt? This happened at your school? Does your mother know?”

I thought back to Mom, waiting in the pickup line at school, the flags at the top of the flagpole on the side of the gym snapping. I had spotted her leaning out the window of our black SUV in aviator sunglasses, seeing me and smiling then spitting out her gum. Behind her was Jacquon, trapped in his car seat, looking happy to see me when I climbed in front and gummy smiling to let out some drool.

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