Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

Now there’s an image: Sweet Thang threatening someone with a knife. I’m sure they taught all the Vanderbilt debutantes proper throat-slashing technique just in time for their cotillions.

“I wish I could invite you in for some coffee or something,” Akilah said. “But they cut off the electricity.”

“That’s okay,” Sweet Thang said.

“And I’m sorry the place is such a mess,” Akilah added.

It was such a perfectly absurd thing to say under the circumstances, we all laughed. From knife-wielding to crying to laughing, all in about ten minutes. At least this job isn’t boring.

* * *

My keen reporter’s instincts told me Akilah was in the mood to unburden herself of her story. And as the good little scribes we were, Sweet Thang and I were not opposed to letting her do so.

But while this was the time, it was not the place. Too much debris. Too much smell. Too much death.

I made the suggestion we head to African Flavah, a hole-in-the-wall diner on Springfield Avenue that just happened to serve the best breakfast in the city. Akilah was unsure for a moment until I sealed the deal by making it clear the Eagle-Examiner would be more than happy to pick up the check.

Akilah asked for a few moments alone in the house to collect herself. I told her we’d be waiting for her out in the car.

The fresh air felt good and smelled better. As I fired up the Malibu to get the heat going, Sweet Thang flopped down heavily in the passenger seat.

“I’m so sorry,” Sweet Thang said.

“What for?”

“For crying.”

“Yeah, so…?”

Obviously, there had been at least one tweedy journalism professor in her past.

“Isn’t that … unprofessional?” she asked, biting her lower lip in a way that still managed to be coquettish.

“No, I’d say it was great. You made a connection and now a grieving mother wants to talk to us-to you, I should say. That’s pretty much the definition of a good human interest story right there. How did you know she was the boys’ mother anyway?”

“I spent all morning looking at their pictures in the paper. They both look like her. The younger one could be her little clone.”

“Good catch.”

“Thanks,” she said. She leaned back in her seat and, because she apparently abhorred silence, asked, “So when do we ask her about the space heater?”

“Space heater?” I said.

“I thought we were doing a story about a space heater.”

“No. Oh, hell no. Lump the space heater story.”

“But what about-”

“Lump it.”

“But we’re supposed to-”

“Lump it.”

“But Uncle Hal-”

“Even Uncle Hal will realize this is much better than a space heater story. If we do this right, this could go on page one tomorrow,” I said. “Hang on, I’m just going to run inside and check on Akilah.”

Sweet Thang grabbed my wrist.

“Wait a second,” she said.

Her hand felt soft and warm and lovely. And for the briefest moment, I started imagining what it might feel like to have that hand situated elsewhere on my person.

“What is it?” I asked, reminding myself I was old enough to be her … well, her older brother, for sure. Perhaps even her youthful uncle.

“You’re going to do the interview, right?” she asked with big, imploring blue eyes.

“No. You are. You’re the one she obviously trusts. At this point, I’m just the guy driving the car.”

“But what do I doooo?” she whined.

“You’ll be fine,” I said, trying not to look at her. “When we sit down, just ask her what happened and then let the conversation flow. Be understanding. Make sure she realizes you’re not judging her. Cry all you want to. It’ll be perfect.”

“Oh, my goodness, thank you so much,” Sweet Thang gushed, and touched me again, this time on the shoulder. “I knew working with you was going to be the best thing ever.”

“Well,” I said, gradually trying to inch away but finding the Malibu had restricted my westward movement. “I’m sure we’ll have fun.”

“I know we’ll have fun,” she said, fixing me with a serious look, placing her hand back on my forearm and giving my arm a pat.

Thankfully I saw Akilah coming out of the front door, which I used as an excuse to get out of the Malibu and wave for her. The air was cool on my face and I realized I was flushed. Carter Ross, star investigative reporter for the mighty Newark Eagle-Examiner, reduced to a blushing teenager by the wiles of one blond coed.

Akilah climbed into the backseat and soon we were pulling up alongside African Flavah. Granted, I’m probably not real typical of the clientele at African Flavah-and I have a hard time saying the name without sounding ridiculously Caucasian-but the restaurant’s owner, a guy named Khalid, was a buddy of mine and a real inspiration. Back in the mid-1990s, Khalid and his wife, Patty, had opened their diner in a row of burned-out, empty storefronts on a part of Springfield Avenue that still hadn’t recovered from Newark’s 1967 riots.

But their diner flourished. And soon, so did the neighborhood around it. A clothing store moved in a few doors up. A bodega and a barbershop opened a few doors down. Then came a small electronics store and a furniture store. It was a regular renaissance.

Along the way, Khalid and Patty’s diner became a local institution, one so revered that in all the years they had been in business, Khalid proudly told me, they had never been robbed once. It helped that Khalid treated all his customers with respect and dignity, which wasn’t always the case with business owners in the hood. The matching bulletproof security cameras-one inside, one outside-might also have something to do with it.

As we entered, Khalid and I exchanged greetings and before long we were seated in a booth along the wall with a pot full of coffee. Akilah attacked it like it was planning to run off.

In this different light-when she wasn’t threatening my colleague with a very large knife-she looked younger than I originally thought. Younger and prettier. Her body was slim but not without curves in the right places. Her hair was straight and pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, showing nicely formed cheek and jaw bones and a slender, graceful neck. There was definitely potential there. Throw on some makeup and a dress, and I bet she’d be a gal any guy would like to have on his arm.

Still, she had that ghetto hardness to her face. It’s a look that comes from learning at a too young age that only the strong survive and only suckers trust someone else to help them do it. You can see it in the way the eyes flit about, in the way the body seems constantly tense, in the way the brain always seems to be manipulating a set of odds.

Yet somehow Sweet Thang had slid underneath that tough, cynical exterior. Maybe it was because Akilah’s math told her that a white girl with a ridiculous nickname and nice clothes couldn’t possibly be out to hurt her. Maybe it was because she was too damn tired to keeping doing all the calculations.

Either way, Akilah’s reactions to Sweet Thang were different. She was allowed in, even when most others were not.

After we placed our order and handed back our menus, Sweet Thang looked at me imploringly one last time. I shook my head. She rolled her eyes. I nudged her under the table with my foot. She batted her eyelashes. I crossed my arms. She got the hint.

“So,” Sweet Thang said as gently as she could, “what happened?”

* * *

Akilah looked down at the table.

“I don’t even know. I mean, I know I shouldn’t have left them at home alone,” she began. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

Her eyes filled with water again. I grabbed a napkin for blotting. Sweet Thang took her hand.