Victor Lavalle - Lucretia and the Kroons

Loochie closed her hand around the cigarettes. A cold wind rocked her as it passed and she squatted on the fire escape. They were at eye level. “I don’t want to do this,” Loochie whispered, shaking her hand. “I saved you some cake .”

Sunny’s mouth squeezed tight and her eyes closed. She kept them closed when she spoke again. “I just want to do something fun with you, one more time.” She opened her eyes and looked at Loochie directly. “Just in case.”

Loochie almost jumped through the window, almost tackled her sick friend. “In case what?” she barked. She felt angry suddenly and didn’t quite know why. “In case what?”

Sunny’s eyes flared open. “My grandmother is going to hear you,” she wheezed.

“You’re coming over for my birthday party,” Loochie said, sounding like she was giving orders. “That’s why you’re coming over.”

“Okay,” Sunny said quietly. She watched Loochie a moment, opened her mouth to say one more thing, but Loochie raised the fist that held the cigarettes like she’d rather punch this sick kid than hear what more Sunny had to say. So Sunny didn’t say anything.

Sunny reached up and pulled at the kitchen window to shut it but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the strength left. She’d tired herself out opening the window minutes ago. Loochie stuffed the three Chinese cigarettes into her pocket, then grabbed the bottom of the window and pulled it down. Sunny waved at Loochie through the window pane. Just then Sunny looked like a specimen slide under a microscope. Then she managed to slide the security gate shut and Loochie couldn’t see her at all anymore. Loochie crossed her arms and shivered from the cold.

She stood at her full height again on the fire escape. Five floors below a few kids and adults walked along the sidewalk but none of them looked up. She watched them. Then she looked above her. The building had six floors. Loochie lived in 4D, and Sunny lived in 5D, but no one had lived in 6D for as long as Loochie had been alive. Sometimes boys in the building went on to the roof in groups and she didn’t have any idea what they did up there but even the boys — reckless and fearless and stupid sometimes — even the boys never messed with apartment 6D.

Loochie crept down the fire escape stairs and slipped back into her apartment. She shut the window and closed and locked the security gate, just as she heard the toilet flush in the bathroom. Right after that her mother walked into the kitchen.

“Don’t go in there for a little while,” her mother said, smiling bashfully. Then she crossed her arms. “Why is it so cold in here?”

But Loochie wouldn’t have to explain because the front door clicked, keys in the lock.

Her brother had arrived.

“Tell Louis I need ten more minutes to get ready!” Mom called and ran into her bedroom.

Louis was only twenty-two but already going bald. He kept his hair cut very low to try to disguise the fact, a style that emphasized the perfect roundness of his skull. That round head was one of Loochie’s favorite things about him. When she was younger, like three or four, he would walk her around on his shoulders and she slapped the top of that big old head and he didn’t mind at all. Even now, at twelve, when she saw her brother she still had the urge to give him a smack or two right on the noggin but she wouldn’t dare to do it because they didn’t know each other like they used to. Sometimes she really missed him. One of the reasons she’d taped the Mets pennant to her bedroom door was so that Louis would know, if he passed it, that it was important to her. That he was still important to her. So she felt quietly pleased that Louis wanted to sit and talk a little while he waited for their mother. Before they sat down Loochie rolled up the blanket and pillow she’d laid out for Sunny.

“You know who put that bike together?” he said, pointing at it where it stood, kickstand out, right under the living room windows.

“You did,” she said, rolling her eyes. She knew this because he’d told her on Christmas Eve, when her mother had wheeled it out. Then he told her again on Christmas Day, in case she’d somehow forgotten overnight.

“That’s right,” Louis said. He scratched behind one ear, then looked over his shoulder. “So why don’t you tell me where Mom is taking me today.”

Loochie grinned, giving nothing away. “To lunch,” she said.

Louis scratched his chin. “I don’t believe it.” He looked at her directly. He had small, intelligent eyes. When they were younger he could basically stare at her until she admitted to a lie. He tried to do it now but his power over her had diminished now that she was twelve.

“Lunch,” she said again, and nothing more.

Louis nodded once, as if he understood this plan was fruitless. But then Loochie saw a new quality in his eyes. They flashed brightly. “Mom says you and Sunny are going to be here alone for the afternoon.”

Loochie crossed her arms. Where was Sunny anyway? It seemed like it had been more than a couple of minutes already.

“We’re old enough,” Loochie said quickly, just in case Louis wanted to cause trouble by convincing their mother the two girls shouldn’t be left by themselves. What better way to get out of his suspicious lunch date than to convince their mom that Loochie and Sunny needed a chaperone?

Louis put up one open hand. “Relax,” he said. “I’m not trying to spoil your party.”

She almost believed him. She waited to see what he’d say next.

He looked past her now, out the window. “I’m just impressed that you guys aren’t worried.”

“About what?” Loochie asked a bit defensively. She’d been allowed to stay in the apartment alone since she was seven. Since Louis moved out and Mom didn’t get home from work until six o’clock, Loochie was in the apartment by herself all the time and she’d yet to get herself killed.

“The Kroons,” Louis said quietly. “I’m impressed you’re not worried about them .”

“What is a Kroons?” she asked.

Louis grinned and immediately Loochie regretted asking. The glee on her brother’s face suggested that Louis was about to enjoy himself at her expense.

“You’re too young to remember what the eighties were like,” Louis began.

This was true, considering that Loochie hadn’t been born until 1992.

“They called it the Crack Era. You know what crack is?”

“A drug?” she said, and wished she hadn’t posed it as a question.

Louis shook his big round head. “Weed is a drug,” he said. “Tobacco is a drug.”

Loochie’s eyes went wide and she looked down at her pocket. “It is?”

But Louis wasn’t listening. “Crack was a plague ,” he said. “The whole country got hit by it in the eighties. Queens was no exception.” Louis looked at the ceiling as if he were watching images of the era scroll by up there.

“The people who smoked crack, the addicts, they were called crackheads . Man were they rough. Crackheads didn’t care about eating or sleeping, they didn’t wash, and they didn’t change their clothes. Hell, they barely had any clothes because they were too busy selling everything they had just to buy more crack.”

“So they were naked?” Loochie asked. She imagined the sidewalk below, the streets of Flushing, overrun by naked, unwashed men and women. In her imagination they tackled any normal person who walked by and tore away everything, purses, jewelry, cell phones. Did they have cell phones back then? Loochie didn’t know enough ancient history to be sure.

“They were monsters,” Louis said with some satisfaction. He spoke like a veteran recalling war. “We had a family of crackheads in this building,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant because he seemed to know that would only scare her more.