Victor Lavalle - Lucretia and the Kroons

“In our building?” Loochie asked.

“Not just in our building,” he said. “Right above us.”

Loochie reeled back with open horror. “In Sunny’s place?”

Louis chuckled, satisfied with the reaction. “On the sixth floor: 6D. Why do you think everyone is so afraid of that place? The Kroons. That was the family name. Mother, father, five sons, and a daughter. Every single one was a crackhead. I never took the elevator when I was young because one or two of those Kroons would ride the elevator, day and night, just looking for a kid to get on the elevator alone. They’d rob him for whatever he had. Sometimes they did worse.”

Now Louis looked at Loochie directly. Loochie looked over his shoulder, for her mother. She wished her mother would appear and make Louis shut up, but she wouldn’t let herself call out for the help. She’d feel too much like a baby if she did. So she sat quietly.

Louis looked across the living room, at the television, which was off. He was reflected in the dark screen but the image was warped. His head was even bigger and lopsided and grotesque. Loochie could almost imagine that he was a Kroon now, a creature that had snuck into their living room.

“A whole family. Can you believe that? Every single one of them was smoked out. It was crazy. I’d see them in the hallways or the lobby and they had sores on their bodies, on their faces, because the crack made them so sick. They didn’t eat or drink. They smoked so much crack it was like their bodies started rotting . I remember one brother, the oldest brother, he had a dent in his head. Like a basketball without enough air in it. And that dent kept getting deeper, year after year. One time I saw him, I was going up the stairs and he was coming down, and half his skull was just gone . It was like a pit with some skin over it. I didn’t know how he could even be alive. He tried to grab me.”

Loochie leaned forward. “What did you do?”

“I was on the second-floor landing of the stairs. I opened the stairwell door and ran out and went over to my friend Todd’s place, 2B. I still remember. I stayed there until mom got home from work. I wouldn’t even leave Todd’s place. Mom had to come get me. I was just a little younger than you. The early eighties was a weird time. I remember kids started disappearing, all over the country. The news and parents said kids were getting snatched by guys in vans, but that wasn’t it. Not in this neighborhood. It was the Kroons. Stealing children up to their apartment. And once they get you in there, that’s it. Nobody leaves 6D.”

“Why?” Loochie whispered.

“They just … Well, I don’t know what they did to kids up there, but the smells were so bad. They must’ve been burning the bodies.”

“Why?” Loochie asked. “For what?”

“I don’t know why things like that have to happen to children,” Louis said quietly. “But being young doesn’t protect you. Horrors come for kids, too.”

At that moment Louis stared into the distance and seemed truly sad for having to reveal a truth like that to his little sister.

“But they’re gone now,” Loochie said softly. “I’ve never seen them.”

Louis lost the sad look and returned to something more gleeful. He shook his head. “The parents died, I remember that. But the others didn’t. The super locked that apartment up tight one day. But the brothers, and the sister, are still in there. Why do you think nobody’s ever moved into 6D? They can’t. That place still belongs to those things . The super was hoping to just starve them out but it hasn’t worked. The Kroons won’t die.”

“But if they’re just stuck in there it doesn’t matter, right? They’re stuck.”

“The super closed off the door. But they can still get out.”

“How?”

“Same as I used to do. Same as you probably still do.” Louis watched her to see if she’d figure it out.

“The window?” Loochie asked.

“The window,” Louis confirmed.

Just then their mom walked into the living room and Louis got up from the couch. Loochie’s mother said, “We have to go or we’ll miss our appointment.”

“Appointment?” Louis asked.

“Reservation,” their mother quickly corrected.

This whole time Loochie was stiff on the couch, her body locked with fear.

“Tell Sunny I said hello,” her mother said. “I hoped I’d get to see her before we left.”

“Sunny’s missing?” Louis said, but the way he grinned showed that he was being theatrical.

Their mother looked closely at Louis, then at Loochie, who hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch. “What have you been saying to her?”

Louis shrugged. “We’ve just been talking about the good old days.”

Their mother looked at her watch. “Loochie,” she said, but got no response. “Lucretia.”

Finally Loochie turned her head.

“We’re leaving,” she said. “You’re on your own.”

The story of the Kroons seemed to float in the living room like a great gray cloud. So Loochie left the living room. She walked into her mother’s bedroom and stopped before the two wig-wearing mannequins. She had another idea, along with the bike ride, of what to do with Sunny when she arrived. Two wigs for two girls who might enjoy a little dress-up. Loochie would save the nicer one, the date wig, for Sunny. She slipped the work wig off its foam head and placed it gently on her scalp. She knew she should’ve waited for Sunny to do all this, and normally she would have, but Louis’s story had her feeling jumpy. She needed to do something just so she wouldn’t be sitting around having nightmares about apartment 6D.

She tucked one braid under the wig, as best she could, then the other. Did she look older now? Loochie turned to her right profile and her left. She dipped one shoulder and looked into the mirror with her most mature expression. The wig looked nice. And wouldn’t it be even better with a little lipstick?

Loochie found the small bag in the top dresser drawer where her mother kept her cosmetics. Unopened lipsticks, eyeliner, foundation, a jar of cold cream. Loochie decided to be bold and she uncapped one lipstick, a red that wasn’t too red, and she applied it lightly like she’d often seen her mother do. Now she looked at herself in the mirror again, delighted at the sight. Forget the fact that she was twelve years old: She practically looked fifteen. Maybe even sixteen. She stepped backward from the dresser mirror and the farther she moved the older she seemed to get. She found a pair of her mother’s socks on the floor, rolled each into a ball, and tucked them into her sweater. Now she even had boobs!

Her hand moved toward her pants pocket without her even willing it to do so. She had one of Sunny’s cigarettes pinched between two fingers and almost didn’t realize how it had gotten there. She was becoming someone else. Not Loochie but Lucretia. Lucretia put the cigarette between her lips and made a loud sucking sound, treating the cigarette more like a straw. The sound was embarrassing but in the mirror across the room the moves looked so elegant to her.

Lucretia swiveled, her hips turning before her feet did. Lucretia sashayed out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. Lucretia spun the dial on the front burner of the oven and the flames whooshed when they rose. Lucretia batted her head from side to side as if a breeze were playing through her hair. Lucretia bent forward delicately and brought the tip of the cigarette to the flame. When it lit Lucretia pulled on the other end more gently this time and the rolling paper flared. Suddenly Lucretia thought she heard the front door unlock. Her mother was back! She turned off the burner and listened.