South Central Noir

Maria looked stricken, and it didn’t help when Manny reached into the bag and came out with a brown leather jacket with fringes like you see on girls who dance to ranchero music.

“I got this for you. Come over here and try it on.”

Maria took one step and, like a dog snapping at a fly, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her down onto his lap.

“I... wait,” Maria said, still clutching the diaper bag.

Manny didn’t wait; he clamped one of his hands onto Maria’s leg and squeezed it. He tried kissing her on the mouth, but she turned her head, and he caught her ear. It didn’t seem to bother Manny that Maria cringed every time he touched her. Actually, he seemed more than comfortable with her discomfort. Hope, though, was losing her mind. Maria put up with Manny because she felt she had to — of all the bad shit she had to deal with he wasn’t the worst — but she really didn’t have to live like that anymore. They both swore that they’d never let that kind of shit happen to them again.

Maria held out the diaper bag for Hope to take.

“You could party with us, but the baby would probably yell his ass off.”

“No, I don’t party.”

“You don’t?” Manny said with a frown while massaging Maria’s leg.

“No, I’m watching my brother. I don’t have time to party.”

“Oh well. Maybe you need to give us privacy. Take the kid into the bathroom or something.”

Maria pleaded with her eyes for some kind of help as Hope walked away into the sanctuary of the bathroom. What was wrong with them? They should have seen this coming. Manny had done it before to Maria, but times had changed, or at least that’s what they wanted to believe.

Hope sat on the toilet and rocked Chauncey asleep, glancing up at herself in the mirror and feeling disgusted as she listened to what was happening on the other side of the door, whispers that weren’t whispers; the grunts of a drunken-ass old fool and the sounds of Maria protesting.

Soon as Chauncey was sleeping, she put him into the tub on top of a nest of bath towels, and then took the .38 out of the bag and looked it over. Would it work if she pulled the trigger? Unsure, but determined to make things different, she swung the door open and stepped into the other room.

Manny was on top of Maria, grinding his tattooed body into her, grunting mightily. Maria had her arms across her face to keep his nasty mouth from kissing her, and Manny was too into it to notice Hope kneeling down and rolling the bat from beneath the bed.

Hope thought about what she would do next. Should she shoot him or hit him? She had promised Maria that she’d get her back, just like Maria said she’d get hers. Hope stepped forward, lowered the gun, and lifted the bat high, then came down on the back of Manny’s head; the sound was sick like a coconut cracking, but at least Manny stopped with the grunting.

Maria kicked him off of the bed and scrambled to her feet and stood there shaking. She still had on those tight-ass Levi’s cutoffs that would take industrial scissors to remove.

“He was too drunk to get them off,” Maria said.

“How is he?” Hope asked, unable to look at Manny twisted up in purple sheets.

Maria bent down next to him for a long moment, then straightened up. “He’s breathing.”

Hope sighed, “I guess that’s good.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Now that she knew he was alive, she squatted next to him and fished keys out of his pants that were crumpled around his ankles.

“What now?” Maria asked.

Hope stood up with Manny’s wallet in hand and shrugged. “Visit my aunt. Figure it out.”

Maria nodded.

Chauncey started to cry.

Hope hurried into the bathroom and lifted him from the tub into her arms. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, as they ran for the hulking SUV outside of the motel room.

The Golden Coffin by Emory Holmes II

Dunbar Hotel

1

September 24, 1935. Riverfront Substation, LAPD

I heard crowds outside the window. Every now and again, a shout would break out far off, down the way — and closer, in the hall outside. The colored folks that got rounded up with me was getting pushed around. Sound like they was pushing back, fighting, banging the walls.

The cop that arrested me would sometimes stare out the window. Like he was expectin’ to see another colored girl pulled out the river, dead. Wasn’t but one light turned on in the room and the room was dusk dark except for where I was sitting. His boots was so heavy, even when he was behind me I could follow him. And every time he came into view, clomping past, light came in the window, and I could make out the scars and wrinkles in his face.

There was a knock at the door. The cop went over. Laid his ear against it. Like he could tell who was knocking just from the sound. He cracked the door, “Whatd’ya want, officer?” he said.

A lady cop answered, “Detective Hanniday, the chief wants to know when you’ll be finished with the colored boy. The niggers are rioting. He needs to see you, pronto.”

“Tell the boss I’m ’bout done,” Detective Hanniday said.