Double Dippin' (12 page)

“Yeah, tomorrow,” the cop added, laughing uproariously at his own remark.

“I can’t wait until tomorrow. I’m a juvenile and you have to let my people know where I’m being detained.”

“All right, who’s your people?” one of the cops asked, amusement in his voice.

Shane didn’t have any people and he didn’t know Shiree’s phone number, but he knew the number of the Children’s Home.

He rattled off the number. “Ask the lady at the front desk if Shane Batista lives there.”

“Front desk? What kind of place is that?”

“It’s the Children’s Home.”

“Man, you saying your tall ass lives in that orphanage up in Germantown?”

“Yeah,” Shane said, now embarrassed.

“Oh, so you ain’t nothing but an orphan?”

Shane silently seethed.

“I don’t believe you,” the driver said. “Any of y’all know any orphans?” he asked the group.

There was a chorus of “Naw…nope…I don’t think so…I know some foster kids…”

“But don’t none of y’all know no orphans, right?”

“Right,” the group chorused.

“Well, let me introduce you to the first orphan any of us ever met. What’s up, Orphan?” the cop said to Shane and for the rest of the ride Shane was referred to as “Orphan.”

“I said my name is Shane.”

“Man, fuck you and your orphan ass. You should have been at the orphanage with all them other little homeless kids instead of hanging on the corner rolling dice, now you’re going to jail. Bet you gonna wish you was in that damn orphanage when Bubba gets through with you.” The cops and Shane’s fellow crap shooters were falling out laughing about his orphan status and the possibility of him being molested by an anonymous prisoner named Bubba.

The group of crap shooters was marched into the Round House and detained overnight. The next day they sat in front of a video judge who informed them that there was enough evidence to send them all up to State Road.

Everyone except Shane. By now, it was discovered that he was truly only fifteen, and resided at the City Home for Children.

Possession of drugs with the intent to sell is a crime that is taken seriously, therefore Shane was sent to Barney Hills Reform School for Boys, an institution in the country for boys ages fifteen to eighteen who have run afoul of the law.

“Hopefully,” the judge told him, “you’ll be reformed and emerge a productive member of society.”

“Man, suck my dick,” Shane mumbled.

The ride to Barney Hills was torturous. He didn’t fear the boy’s reform school, but he didn’t know if Tariq could survive without him. He’d fucked up real bad. His little brother relied on him to have his back and now they were miles apart with a mountain of red tape that would make it difficult to even visit.

Shane got off the bus and took a look at the beautiful surroundings—sprawling acres of lush green, elegant stone buildings. The place was designed to look like a college campus. It was a wonderful place that offered a myriad of educational and vocational opportunities, but Shane knew it was really just a prison in disguise.

E
very week Tariq wrote Shane a lengthy, upbeat letter. He knew Shane felt guilty enough, so he never told him the real story. Truth was, Tariq was so depressed he’d been placed in group therapy. The psychiatrist at the Children’s Home had strongly suggested to the Home’s clinical team that Tariq be put on an anti-depressant.

Tariq wouldn’t dream of confessing to his brother that he cried himself to sleep every night and woke up feeling unable to face another day. The void created when he’d lost Shane was unbearable and life without his twin felt hopeless and without joy. The only reason he hadn’t considered suicide was because he couldn’t do such a terrible thing to Shane. So he endured the pain.

The social worker had informed Tariq upon admission that it was highly unlikely that he’d be placed in another foster home. Foster parents tended to prefer younger children; children whom they could mold and in whose lives they could perhaps make a positive difference. Older children were considered lost causes—already scarred beyond redemption.

“You’re a nice kid, Tariq. I’m going to keep pushing for you. I know there’s a soft heart out there somewhere—somebody who’ll see the good in you.” She patted his back encouragingly.

Tariq didn’t care. In fact, he preferred the Children’s Home. He knew the routine and he kept to himself, the way Shane had instructed him to.

Tariq was always ecstatic whenever he received a letter from his brother. But his heart sank upon opening Shane’s brief letters comprising no more than one to two sentences. The last sentence was always the same,
Stay strong, man, I’ll see you soon
.

When was soon? Tariq had questioned his social worker about arranging a visit to see Shane, but he might as well have asked for an all-expenses paid trip to Disneyland, or for a visit to the moon.

“If Shane were in the Philadelphia area, in a private home, it would be easier to make arrangements. I mean, jeez, he’s over a hundred miles away and he’s in a facility run by the state. There’s so much red tape involved. You’re a ward of the city, but let’s say that you happened to be in a state facility. In a case scenario such as that, the visit could probably be arranged. But the communication between city and state is hopeless; it’s practically nonexistent.”

Blah, blah, blah
was how her words sounded to Tariq. She was just too lazy to weed through the red tape. The social worker, did, however, allow Tariq to make one phone call per month to talk with his brother.

“If he were in the city, you could get a weekly call,” she said apologetically. “But Barney Hills is a long distance call, and…”
Blah, blah, blah
.

Shane was hardly ever available to receive the monthly call. “Shane Batista is in building five or building ten,” a disinterested voice would inform Tariq, who waited so anxiously to hear his brother’s voice that during the wait, he’d bite his nails until his cuticles bled.

On the rare occasions when Tariq’s call had successfully reached the building where Shane was supposed to be, he was usually told, “Oh! You want Shane Batista? He was just here but he went to the lunch room.”

Tariq’s bad timing always left him hearing that he’d missed Shane by seconds, that his brother had just gone to the pool, the print shop, or the computer room. The disappointment always left Tariq in a blue funk for the rest of the month, which was why the psychiatrist was pushing the anti-depressants.

Tariq, however, had a distant memory of numerous bottles of pills that his mother refused.
Poison
, she’d scream, knocking the array of medicine bottles off the counter top.
Damn doctors trying to poison me!
Yes, he recalled vividly now how he and Shane would gather the poisonous bottles and help their mother throw them away.

The bottles couldn’t go into the trash can in the house.
Oh no
, his mother would say.
The government’s spying on me
. Therefore, the bottles had to be dispensed in various trash bins around the city. The Batista family would trudge
for hours, scouring the city looking for trash bins that Marguerite inspected, pulling out trash and other people’s waste, searching for a hidden camera before deeming the trash can a safe container for her poisonous pills.

Tariq’s face grew dark at the memory of Shane getting slapped for dropping pills in a trash can that their mother said he should have known had a hidden camera. Instead of a green plastic liner that Marguerite Batista deemed safe, the can Shane had dumped the pill bottles into had been lined with white plastic. Their mother had lifted Shane and held him over the can while he waded through trash and garbage and finally retrieved the pill bottles that had to be secretly disposed into a
safe
trash bin.

Not wanting to be poisoned, Tariq began pretending to be in a perpetual good mood and presented himself as upbeat and optimistic during group therapy as well as when meeting with his psychiatrist. His sorrow and his broken heart were well hidden behind a bright smile and hearty laughter. His pleasant disposition and good manners made it easy for the staff at the Children’s Home to think of Tariq as one of their success stories. Tariq was now perceived as a physically attractive, well-mannered, well-adjusted, happy young man.

Even the social worker was fooled by Tariq’s sunny disposition. She was so impressed that she worked overtime until she found a good home for Tariq, who was now sixteen years old.

Living in a real home was bittersweet. Mrs. Inez Packard, his most recent foster parent, was a tall, beanpole of a woman with broomsticks for legs. She wore glasses that hung from a chain around her neck when not sitting on the tip of her nose. She reminded Tariq of a strict schoolteacher or a librarian. Her medium-brown face was plain; her lips were a severe unsmiling straight line. She had short curly hair, with a touch of gray at the temples.

She ran her spotlessly clean home in a militaristic fashion. The clutter-free environment was more regimented than the routine at the Children’s Home. Her husband, Mr. Packard, was a barrel-shaped short man who didn’t say much but he also adhered to his wife’s strict household rules.

But there were perks. Tariq had a bedroom of his own replete with a television and a Playstation, to be enjoyed only at the mandated hours. Daily chores garnered him a weekly allowance, and Mrs. Packard, though strict, was a very good cook. The food enjoyed in the Packard home was a far cry from the institutional packaged meals he ate at the Children’s Home.

“I don’t allow phone calls longer than fifteen minutes. And absolutely no long-distance calls!” Mrs. Packard informed him the day he moved in. His heart clenched, but when she said he’d be getting an allowance of thirty dollars every two weeks, he brightened. He could afford to call Shane from a public pay phone.

The downside of life in the Packard home was that he’d acquired two foster brothers. Twelve-year-old Keon and eleven-year-old Eddie came with the deal. They were all unrelated, yet the two boys insisted upon referring to Tariq as their other brother. Their big brother. Ugh! That irked him. He had one brother, and his name was Shane.

T
he day of his first allowance was the best day Tariq had had in a long, long time. After depositing an endless stream of quarters into the pay phone, he was connected to Barney Hills without a glitch. And wonder upon wonders, Shane was on the other end of the phone in less than five minutes. They were both whooping and hollering so loud, Tariq was too excited to listen to the mechanical voice that broke into the line requesting an additional seventy-five cents.

“Man, put the money in the phone,” Shane had to remind his brother, who was chattering a mile a minute. “So where you staying now?”

“I’m in Mount Airy. It’s real nice. I live on Boyer Street. It’s nice up here.”

“That’s cool. So…um…You getting your dick wet?”

“Man, come on…” Tariq responded, giggling in embarrassment. Shane would never change. “I’m going to call you every two weeks at the same time, all right, Shane?”

“Cool, man. I’ll be here sitting next to the horn.”

“They treat you all right in that place?” Tariq asked worriedly.

“Man, I run this place,” Shane said with much bravado. “These punks up in here better be worrying about whether I’m treatin’ them aiight,” he said, laughing. “That goes for the teachers, the case workers, the cooks, the cleaning crew, my homies, too. Everybody up in this dip knows I’m the muthafuckin’ man.”

Tariq made noncommittal sounds that he hoped came out sounding like approval. He was actually stunned. Shane had always been tough, but his brother now sounded tougher than tough. His voice was deeper with a real
rough edge; he sounded like someone Tariq hardly knew. And that made Tariq uneasy. He didn’t want time and distance to cause his twin brother—his only family in the world—to become a stranger.

“Well, we only got two more years and we’ll be living together,” Tariq said, using an upbeat tone. “I’m already looking out for an apartment for us. Can you imagine the two us living together in our own place?”

“Naw, I can’t even picture that shit, but yeah, you do that little brother. Keep on scopin’ out a crib for us—something’s bound to turn up. In the meantime, keep it tight, aiight?”

Tariq nodded and the brothers were disconnected. Yes, Shane had changed drastically, but that didn’t diminish the joy and love in Tariq’s heart. He felt happy enough to fly. Suddenly hungry, he decided to treat himself to some fast food. Long happy strides led him straight to the McDonald’s on Stenton Avenue.

“Can I help you?” The girl was chewing gum, making popping sounds that Tariq found appealing. He never understood how girls knew how to do that. His mother could do it; he remembered fondly. In an instant, Tariq had a flash of his mother ripping a stick of Doublemint gum in half. The memory of her face was shadowy and vague, but he could hear her saying, “
One for you and one for you
,” with a smile, as she placed half pieces of gum in his and Shane’s anxious, open palms. His mother would push an entire stick in her mouth and within seconds, the popping would begin. It was music. A melody of love. The memory had caught him off guard and since the cashier was responsible for bringing such a wonderful memory to his subconscious mind, he gave her a gleaming smile and placed his order.