Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir by Cinelle Barnes

Author:Cinelle Barnes [Barnes, Cinelle]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781542046138
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2018-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Creatures, Great and Small

1997

Paolo was gone. Gone to the mall or the billiard hall or a friend’s house for a smoke. Gone with bloodshot eyes and a mind that had holed up in his consciousness or some rift in time. But even then, he was kind and generous to me—sacrificing his meals so I could have a second serving, stealing KitKats or M&M’s from the candy store to bring home as a surprise. We still did most things together when he was home—eating the same scraped-out-of-a-can meal, listening to the same music, staying up late and talking about our dreams. But I was turning into a young lady, and he into a phantom.

With every conversation, the pep in his voice got a little bit lower, and the clarity of his words got hazier. He started using fewer phrases and more letters: E, LSD, AC/DC, MJ, and Notorious B.I.G., whom, Paolo kept repeating, had died last March in a shooting tied to the then-prominent East Coast–West Coast rap feud. He repeated that story over and over, inflating and deflating details each time. He obsessed over Biggie’s and Tupac’s mysterious deaths, and claimed that he could solve them.

“It’s just common sense, man. This guy hired that guy to kill the other guy because he was overstepping. He was in goddamn LA when it was clear that Brooklyn was his fuckin’ territory. Common sense, man. They killed each other. They fuckin’ killed each other.”

He stopped talking to me in sentences and instead replaced them with Biggie’s chorus about making more money and having more problems, and Tupac’s song about the war on poverty, the war on drugs, and the war between cops and bodies.

The swings between his crazed, raving mood and a mopey-dopey state came quickly and frequently.

“Kuya, are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Paolo replied, head down, eyes half-shut, mouth barely opening. “Just trippin’, sis. Just livin’, just trippin’, just . . . just tryin’, sis. You be good, sis. Don’t do what I do. You be good because you are good, sis.”

He reached behind the TV and pulled out a ziplock bag of pills.

“You don’t touch this, okay? This is only for hopeless, broken-ass boys like me. Boys who got nothing. You—you have plenty. It’s good for me, but it’s bad for you.”

“Okay,” I said and bit my lip to not cry.

I wanted to be good because that’s what he said I was and should be. And with that, he put our friendship at stake. To be good, I had to stay away and stay awake. I had to find other company.

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