South Central Noir

I seen it first.

Scrambled to it.

Felt the iron settle in my grip.

I turnt.

Palsey raised the knife.

I fired. His eyes bucked. A bright-red dot, the size of a nickel, appeared on his forehead. A little stream of blood, edged in black, spurted out the wound.

He fell acrost Miss Chimes.

Dead.

31

I didn’t celebrate no Christmas that December, 1935. Not no New Year’s neither. When Uncle Balthazar took me down to Angelus Funeral Home to pick out a casket for my Angel, the undertaker met us in the showroom and said, “We have several elegantly crafted vessels where your loved one can abide in comfort and peace till Jesus comes, Mr. Drummond. Models in mahogany, teak, copper, platinum, silver, brass, and gold. Which would you prefer?”

I had to think on that a minute.

“Anything but the gold one,” I told the guy.

The Last Time I Died by Jeri Westerson

Crenshaw Boulevard

1

I watched the police officers take away the weeping Negro janitor from the St. Vincent’s Academy on Crenshaw and Slauson. They arrested him for murder. The headlines screamed it, hinting of other things that might have happened to the girl, things I didn’t quite understand. Story after story in the Los Angeles Times made much of her whiteness and his Blackness. In the end, his trial seemed like a foregone conclusion despite his pleading innocent. The jury wore hard faces throughout the trial, and those who read about it were ready for the verdict they expected.

Except... none of it was true.

2

All Jesus had to do was be crucified. He never had to go to an all-girl’s Catholic high school.

I hadn’t wanted to go. I wasn’t even Catholic. But my mother had said I was “out of control” and needed “guidance” and since there were no military schools for girls in 1961, this was it.

I borrowed some smokes from the janitor, a nice Negro man who didn’t mind sharing. I tried smoking in the bathroom between classes and sometimes during, but too many goody-goody girls reported me. Damn nuns smacked you good with those rulers. Later I discovered going behind the gym. No one went there. I could lean back against the fake-stone building and feel the bounce of the volleyballs inside me, like a drumbeat in my chest.

My friends were just as wild as I was, straining to break out of the box the nuns tried to crush us into. Conformity. Sameness. It was in the uniforms, the skirts at just the right length from knee to hemline. Moral training with prayer and sacrifice. Reading, writing, arithmetic. Certainly no boys. And smoking was strictly forbidden, even though the nuns couldn’t tell me exactly why.

I knew why.

Even though I’d seen them smoke in the walled gardens of their convent.

Later that evening in the dormitory, we all lay on my bed. “I am honestly sanguine about this whole thing,” said Josie, chewing on a straw she had stolen from the cafeteria. Her new favorite word for the week seemed to be “sanguine” and she used it all the time in almost every sentence, trying it out even when it didn’t quite work.

Maggie glanced at her over her horn-rimmed glasses. “I don’t think you know what that word means. It means the opposite from what you’re saying.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Josie said defensively, before she flipped over on her stomach. “Anyway, this dance is going to be extraordinarily lame.”

“A dance with no boys,” I sighed.

“What’s the point?” said Josie, twirling her dark ponytail in her fingers.

“Comportment, ladies!” crowed Maggie, suddenly sitting up and imitating the deep voice of Sister Conception.

The others laughed, even as they glanced at the clock. It was lights out soon. Lights out was the time we liked to go exploring.

3

I lay on the cold floor. Am I dead? Must be, I decided, as hands clasped my ankles and dragged me along the concrete. Of course, I didn’t feel it. But I was curious as to what would happen next. It should have scared me that “next” didn’t seem to involve clouds, angels, and the face of God, but instead the dark of a basement in this damned Catholic academy. Poor old St. Vincent’s. I wondered if there were many murders at the school... or if mine was the only one. Because I could only remember so much. And I didn’t like the thought of it.

I could hear crying, but I wasn’t sure where that was coming from.

I zoomed up to the top of the ceiling, in a corner. Didn’t even have to make it happen. I was simply... there. And looked down.

The figures dragged me. They were the ones weeping. Did they think they were rescuing me? Were they frightened about what could happen to them? They were surely in danger. Was there a way to help?

4