Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

“Now, calm down, T.C., I didn’t lie to you.” Tiger stood. “I just thought it would be a win-win, see. Get you back in the game again, hook you up with some cash. You wasn’t complaining when that money was coming in.”

T.C. just shook his head. The scene had zapped him of his energy, and he wasn’t going to waste any he had remaining on some bullshit.

“Look, he didn’t even take all of it, see.” Tiger was still talking. “I got a couple ounces in the back. We could sell that, make enough to buy some more seeds.”

“Just give it to me,” T.C. said.

When Tiger brought it out, T.C. stuffed it in his backpack and turned for the door.

Tiger followed him. “That’s it then?”

T.C. nodded, put his hand on the knob. He was almost out when Tiger called for him again,

“T.C.?”

“What?” He turned to him from the doorway.

“I didn’t have no other way to get the money. I didn’t mean to fuck with your life. I just thought either way you was gon’ hustle and if I helped you out, you’d bring a lil’ bit more in. Look, you got your auntie and your grandma, and I ain’t got nobody else, and I couldn’t see a way out.”

T.C. nodded. “I’ll check with you later, dude,” he said. Licia’s beat-up old Camry seemed like Tiger’s car the day he’d picked T.C. up from jail, and if he could just reach it, he might see his son again, his girl who was about to be his wife. He climbed in, reclined the seat, and just sat for a minute. Oddly he felt free. There wasn’t much weed left, and he could just pawn the rest off on his old basketball heads. Tops, he’d be done in a week. He’d have enough in his pocket for the ring, bottomed out, but it would be right on time. He would start work the following Monday. That was when his real life would begin, the engagement, the wedding; maybe he and Licia would have another one. That’s what people did, he knew. That encounter with the green-eyed mothafucka had him feeling out of place in his body still, but maybe it wasn’t just the man; maybe it was the realization that his life was moving uphill, and he wasn’t destined to plummet down the other side of it. He needed to take a minute to rest from the adrenaline of it all.

He turned the ignition on. Goddamnit, “Right Above It” again — Q93 played that song the hell out. Well, it was a good song to smoke to though, and if there was ever a time to smoke, it was now. He was tempted to go back inside and make amends with Tiger; after everything, he still loved to chill with him, hear the crazy shit that came out of his mouth. Nah, Tiger was bad news. T.C.’s mama had been right.

T.C. already had one rolled, and he pulled it out, flicked the lighter over its end, inhaled, closed his eyes. It was just his okay strain, OG Kush, more body than he liked, but he saved the heady shit for his customers these days. When he heard the siren, he wondered if he had mislabeled. That OG didn’t usually fuck with his mind. The sound must have been in the song. If Tiger were in the car, he’d have them running around the Ninth Ward on a phantom high-speed chase. T.C. was glad he hadn’t gone in to get him. He tapped the blunt out, turned the key in the ignition. He looked in his rearview before he drove off, and that’s when he saw them. One police car had stopped, and one was in the process of rolling up behind it. The cop in the car behind him sat in the passenger seat just watching him; the other one had already stepped out. He heard the one who was walking call the stop in on his radio. T.C. looked at the weed he’d tapped out in an old coke can, thought about ingesting it, but there was at least an ounce in that bag right beside him. He hadn’t broken any traffic laws, he was just sitting there, but when he rolled down the window they’d smell it on him, and that would be their cause to search his car. He could drive off, but that would just make things worse. On the other hand, he couldn’t go back to that place, he wouldn’t.

The cop tapped on the window. “Without reaching anywhere can you confirm that you have your license and registration on you?”

It was too late to leave the scene. They had the plate number and everything. He sat for a minute. One of his last games in high school, he’d been in a bind like this. There were only forty-five seconds left on the clock. His team was behind five points. The coach called a timeout, ordered the play where T.C. would flash open across the court, catch a pass from the point guard, then shoot a layup. T.C. wasn’t nervous — it was impossible to win, so there was nothing to be nervous about. Still, as he waited for his forward to set a back screen, he felt himself floating above his body, looking down at himself posted up, then running, holding his hands out, catching the ball, and tossing it back up at the backboard. If making that shot had given him any hope, he lost it when he got fouled because he was terrible at foul shots. Always had been. But he made it, and then he stole the ball from the best point guard in the state, drove it right back down the court for a shot just outside the three-point line a millisecond before the game ended. He had never felt anything like that to this day.

The officer tapped again, this time with more force, and T.C. just waited for a miracle to kick in, for that magic that had lit up his heart on that basketball court to drive him away from there.

Winter 1945

Airing out her secret to her mama and sister had given her mind license to let its other private thoughts roam. Her doubt, it turned out, was almost as strong as her faith. In most ways she trusted Renard. When she thought about him a certain way, she could be sure he would muster the strength or nerve or whatever it took someone to do the right thing. But these were difficult circumstances, and when she thought about it that way, she’d remember how he’d collapsed when it was time for him to meet her father; and later, how when he told her he was going to war, everything she’d thought he was made of flew out of him, and she was left with a shell of a man. Not to mention, she’d never met anyone from his family. He could be of any constitution, and she’d have no idea. It was easy to pretend to be good when you were courting someone, and everything rode on their quick opinion of you, but when you had secured their love, and there was nothing left to fight for, it was the rare man who was in constant war with his own sense of himself.

Her mama tried to distract her with baby bonnets and receiving blankets.

“You had colic the first year, so you better expect the same from her.”

“Mother, don’t be so negative,” Ruby would shout.

“I’m not saying it’s destined; sometimes it skips a generation, but I just want you to be ready in case.”

Mama had opinions about how long Evelyn should stay in the bathtub, how much pork she could eat, what her relentless heartburn meant. Mama sewed a season’s worth of baby clothes and knitted booties; she bought beef broth from the outdoor market and mixed it in Evelyn’s grits; she forbade her from attending Miss Georgia’s son’s funeral although Evelyn wouldn’t have considered it anyway — she barely left the house save for the walks her mama mandated in the evenings. Most of the time, Evelyn just succumbed to Mama’s whims without a word. The one thing they agreed on with enthusiasm was that Evelyn was carrying a girl.

“I had a dream,” her mama announced one morning. “The girl was a beautiful shade of brown, one I hoped would show up in one of my own children, but—” she shook her head. “A head full of hair, that’s why your indigestion has been paining you so. She was a perfect angel, just as beautiful as you were when you were born.”