The Color Black

(The beginning according to Sice Taral)

Sice Taral

My name is Sice Taral Jacare.

I saw Joilah from across the classroom the first day of kindergarten. I remember because she was wearing red, my favorite color. It was my favorite color because my older brother wore nothing but red all the time. I looked up to him even though he wasn’t a role model in any sense of the word.

I’m not going to tell you that the world stopped when I saw Joilah, or any bullshit like that. It didn’t stop. I noticed her because she was wearing red. If she were anyone else I would have noticed them instead. Or, maybe it was destiny. I’m not sure. I don’t like to think that I am not in control of my life. I would like to think that I found Joilah, that my love for her developed of my own accord.

I spoke to Joilah during playtime. She was the only kid not yelling, fighting, or crying. She was sitting quietly on the floor holding a doll. I think I asked her if she had any friends, or something insensitive like that. I don’t remember her answering me. But I remember her tolerating me. She was way different than any other kid I had ever met.

Eventually, she spoke to me. She asked me what my name was. I told her, and she looked at me like I was from outer space. I remember telling her that her name was weird too. I was such a nice kid. She eventually started calling me ‘Taral’ and I called her ‘Joie’. We became inseparable.

Of course I thought that it was odd that Joilah was so different and so quiet. I knew it wasn’t right that she never had lunch money and that she wore the same outfits to school each week. I always had her back though. If anyone ever even thought about making fun of her, I was right there to stand up for her. From day one I was her protector. It didn’t take long for everyone to realize that making fun of Joilah was a bad idea. All I had to do was mention my older brother, Mateo.

Soon after my fourteenth birthday, Mateo, who was eleven years older than me, suddenly took interest in me. He started coming around the house more, asking me about what I was doing. I think he wanted me to ask him if I could join up with his crew. But I wasn’t interested in drugs and gangs. I wanted to stay on the straight and narrow so that I could always be there for Joilah. Plus, I was excellent at basketball, and I knew that if I kept my grades up, a scholarship was destined to come my way. If I made it to professional basketball, I could take Joilah out of poverty row forever. That was my plan. It was always about Joilah.

However, Mateo wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Refusing to be Demonio humiliated him. I didn’t really understand that then. I thought he would eventually tire of asking me, and would move on to greener pastures. There were plenty of young men in the city looking for a get rich quick card. Daily people came up to me asking if I could talk to Mateo for them. If I could put in a ‘good word’. As if I was his confidant. I always brushed them off, even if they came to me more than once, literally begging. I had my game plan. I had to see it through. I was determined not to give in. I never thought I would be like him.

Then everything changed.

I told Joilah to meet me at my house one day after school. I was going to basketball practice and I didn’t want her to have to wait for me for hours, even though she would have without so much as a single grumble. She never complained about having to wait for me. Joilah never complained about anything. She was the best kind of person, the kind that always put others ahead of themselves. And it was genuine. She wasn’t putting on. She wanted to please me, even if I did things that made pleasing me hard for her.

Practice ended early, and I went straight home. I knew Joilah hated to be alone, so I tried not to leave her alone for more than a few hours. It was the least that I could do. I knew what her home life was like. I understood why she didn’t like being alone. Who could blame her? She never asked me for anything. The least I could do was to make sure that I was never far away.

When I didn’t find Joilah at my house I panicked. Not once since kindergarten had Joilah not been somewhere she said she would be. I ran around the house screaming her name for a half hour. I searched every nook and cranny because sometimes Joilah had panic attacks and she would hide under my bed, in the closet, or some other small space. But she wasn’t under my bed or in the closet or anywhere.

She was gone.

I refused to believe that she was missing. She had to be here. She was always here. I sat down in the living room. My heart was racing. Was my mind playing tricks on me? I told her to meet me at my house, didn’t I? I decided to check her house just in case, even though I knew it was literally the last place she would be. I went into the kitchen and scribbled a note on the small white board on the refrigerator, telling her to stay put if she came home and I wasn’t there.

On my way out the door, I noticed the half-eaten brownie on the floor. My heart sank. Joilah loved peanut butter brownies. Sorin made them for her all the time. She was here. Joilah was there, and now she was gone. She never would have left without telling me. Something bad happened. Why else would she have dropped a half-eaten brownie on the floor? Joilah was always so meticulous. If she left voluntarily, she would have made sure that the house was spotless. She always said that it was the least she could do for our hospitality.

Another realization hit me. The front door had been open when I came in. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, reasoning that Joilah forgot to lock the door behind her. It wouldn’t be the first time. But Joilah wasn’t there.

I felt my knees buckling. Joilah meant everything to me. I had to find her.

Joilah wasn’t at her house either. I searched it through anyway. I disregarded the looks her step mother gave me. Even though she couldn’t stand me, she never said a cross word to me. She knew who my brother was. She knew that I could make her life hell if I wanted to. All I had to do was tell Mateo.

I left Joilah’s house feeling worse than I could ever remember feeling prior to that day. Joilah was gone.

It was midnight before Mateo finally called me. I could tell he was high. At first I figured he was just checking in, something he did at weird times. He used to tell me that he “got a weird feeling” and wanted to talk to me. I didn’t know then that he had probably gotten someone in a rival gang pissed, and that he was worried that they would come after me. I’m glad I didn’t know then.

“I can’t find Joilah,” I admitted. “Something’s wrong, she’s always here.”

I really didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of my older brother. But I was devastated. It was hours since I’d seen Joie. I truly feared that she was dead. It was the only explanation that I could figure at the time. Someone killed Joilah. I would never see her again.

“She’s fine,” Mateo said to me. “Stop fucking crying.”

Still not understanding what he meant I said, “No, she’s gone. You don’t understand. I told her to meet me here. She isn’t here. She’s gone.”

Mateo exhaled loudly. I could almost picture him rolling his eyes while sucking on his favorite cigarettes. “She’s fine, Taral. She’s with us now.”

Several more seconds went by before I understood what he was saying. Weakly I said, “What?”

“I said, ‘stop fucking crying,’ she’s fine. I have her here with me.”

Anger rose inside me so fast I got lightheaded. Was this some type of sick joke? I knew it couldn’t be. Mateo did not have a funny bone. He was serious. I felt bile inching its way up my esophagus. I tried to swallow it back down. When that didn’t work, I went over to the kitchen sink and threw up. I gagged over and over.

“Where…is she?” I managed to get out between retches. The entire body was shaking uncontrollably.

“I’ll let you talk to her. Keep it short, ok? Time is money.”

My heart leaped at the chance to hear Joilah’s voice. I pressed the phone into my ear, as if doing so would help me to hear her better. Please be ok. Please be ok.

“Taral?”

“Joie? Joilah, are you ok?” I strained to be sure to hear every word.

“Yes,” Joilah giggled. I didn’t register the giggles.

“Where are you?” My head was beginning to throb from the intense concentration.

“…I don’t know. Where are you?” Again, the giggles.

Finally it registered that she was laughing. I felt the overwhelming need to vomit. I knew what that meant.

My brother returned to the phone. “So, we had to medicate her. She flipped out. You didn’t tell me she was unstable. The bitch fucking scratched me.”

I put down the phone while I returned to the kitchen sink and gave up whatever my stomach had left to give. At that moment, I knew why Joilah was with Mateo. I knew what he did to her. I knew what he let his friends do to her. And I knew whatever fondness I had left for my brother, if any, was now gone forever. I no longer thought of him as my brother, or as even part of my immediate family. I didn’t have a brother anymore.

I returned to the phone. I could hear Joilah in the background. I had to close my eyes to steady myself. I knew that I had to choose my next few words very carefully if I ever wanted to see Joilah alive again.

“What do you want, Mateo?” I asked.

“I need you on my crew,” Mateo said to me. “We lost some people recently. Important people. I need you. You’re the only one I can trust. I’m tired of asking, Taral. You owe this to me.”

I swallowed hard. I had to fight my body to keep it from heaving. It was hard to do that and at the same time be careful at how I responded to Mateo. There was a frustrating pause. I could still hear Joilah in the background, and it hurt me to the bone. What did he do to her? What did they give her? Where was she?

“Fine. I’m in. When do I get her back?”

Mateo chuckled. “It’s not that easy. How do I know you won’t say anything just to get me to give her back to you? You’d take her and leave town, like you should have done a long time ago if she really means to you what you claim she does. No, you have to prove yourself, just like everyone else did, little brother. I can’t have people saying that I gave you special treatment.”

My head felt like it was going to explode. It took everything in me, every muscle, every sinew, and every cell in my body not to cuss my brother out and to take my chances at finding Joie. I knew they would dispose of her as soon as she became a liability. Maybe I could just wait them out. No. I couldn’t risk Mateo getting one of his boys to kill her just to spite me. I had to do whatever he asked or I would never see her again.

So, I said, as calmly as I could, “What…do you need me to do, Mateo?”

They returned Joilah to me two days later. They dropped her off in front of my house like the morning paper. The look in Joilah’s eyes was one of someone who was completely and utterly broken. She had no fight left. I pulled her to me and walked her inside. She smelled different. She walked different. She looked different. Everything about her changed. I would never get the old Joilah back. It hit me that I failed. I protected Joilah from people like my brother for most of my life. And she had fallen victim to my own flesh and blood.

Her face was heavily bruised. Her left eye was swollen shut. Her lip was busted, dried blood clung to the corners of her mouth like tiny leeches. I knew without looking that there was more damage done to her petite frame. I couldn’t bear to look any further at the moment. I held Joilah against my chest and cried. I held her so tightly I thought I might break her. I forgot that she was already broken.

Joilah was silent. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even move. She was just there. She barely looked at me. I held Joilah’s face in my hands. I looked her over. Even her skin felt different.

“Joilah. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Joie. Are you ok?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. I pulled her onto the couch with me and held her there for the rest of the night. I didn’t sleep at all, but Joilah did. I noticed she fell asleep almost immediately. She was exhausted. She was completely drained. I held her as close to me as humanly possible. Again and again I apologized. She never said a word. She never cried a single tear.

The following morning, I had to help Joilah get into the shower. She tried to walk there alone, and ended up on the floor, too weak to even walk a few feet by herself. She screamed and cried saying that she didn’t want me to help her, but I assisted her to the bathroom and remained there with her anyway. I basically had to peel her clothes off, everything was stuck to her body with dried blood, vomit, and urine. Once I got her jeans off I realized why she didn’t want me to help her. Her panties were stained with dark red blood. Her thighs were bruised and scratched. I can’t remember saying anything to her, I was too distraught to speak. I had to keep telling myself that this was real and not a nightmare. I could see Joilah standing there weeping profusely in front of me, but I couldn’t feel anything. I heard something that sounded like screaming. I realized that it was me, I was screaming at myself in my head. This can’t be real. How did this happen? Should I take Joilah to the hospital? How will I answer their questions about what happened to her? Mateo will kill her if I rat on him. But she could be hurt. Joilah could be really hurt. I had to close my eyes to calm down. I took several deep breaths. I couldn’t lose my shit. Not now. Joilah needed me. I told myself that I would think about whether or not to take her to the hospital in the morning. It was more important that I focused on what I needed to do just then. I had to get her cleaned up. I had to make sure that she was safe. Now more than ever I needed to protect her. Mateo could come back to finish her off. He would do that, he was that evil. Joilah was weak, she was compromised. It wouldn’t take much to end her life now. She was barely hanging on.

I knew that Joilah was much too traumatized to allow me to remove any more of her clothes. So I didn’t try. I drew the bath water and guided Joilah in it slowly. Her shaking intensified. I realized that she could be having a seizure. I had no idea what to do. I climbed inside of the bathtub with Joilah and held her body close to my own. I tried to reassure her verbally, telling her that I would never let anything else happen to her. I held onto to her so tightly that I was afraid that I might be adding to her pain. But I couldn’t convince myself to let her go. She was so fragmented, so defeated. I thought that she might be gone forever, and here she was. I couldn’t let her go.

Eventually, Joilah’s cries slowed to a whimper. The shaking subsided. She lay against me quietly. Her eyes began to close. Slowly I began washing the blood off of her body. Gently I rinsed the terror from her skin. I saw the extent of Mateo’s hatred, exhibited sadistically all over Joilah. I could feel his anger towards me, his anger towards her. He wanted to kill her. He knew that if he killed her I would find a way to kill him. I wouldn’t rest until he was dead. Nothing would matter to me anymore if Joilah was gone. So he did everything but kill her. He broke her. She wasn’t Joilah anymore. She was his victim.

Joilah was silent as I washed the blood away carefully. She stared into space while I could do nothing but stare at her damaged body. Tears clouded my vision but I refused to cry. I told myself that tears would get me nothing now. I had to make Mateo pay for this. I could not let him live. I would make him feel the same pain that I felt now. I would watch him bleed.

The next day I asked my sister Sorin to look Joilah over. She was studying to be a nurse, and she would be able to tell if Joilah needed to be hospitalized. Of course, she wanted me to take Joilah to the ER immediately. But when I told her that it was Mateo, she stopped trying to convince me. Her face became grim as she realized the predicament I was in. Could she see her baby brother already slipping away? Could she tell that it was hopeless to try to save me? I’m not sure what she saw. But whatever it was, it rendered her speechless. I’ve never seen my sister look so solemn.

Sorin took off from school and work to care for Joilah. She obtained supplies and cared for Joilah as best as she knew how. After several weeks, Joilah began to look like herself again. The swelling abated, and the bruises lightened. The light never came back into Joilah’s eyes, however. She was forever changed. Sometimes she couldn’t even look at me, undoubtedly seeing my brother in me. It made me hate myself. How could I let this happen? Every day I asked myself the same question. Every hour.

Joilah never told me what happened to her during the two and a half days that she was kept from me. But she didn’t need to tell me. I knew. I saw it night after night in my dreams. I watched her scream and cry for me. I watched her beg for her life. I watched Mateo smothering her with his body, not caring whether or not she could breathe. Sometimes the nightmares were so real that I would wake up crying. Joilah had nightmares too. She screamed for me and even after she woke she continued to scream. Sometimes seeing my face made her screams intensify, and so I would tell her to close her eyes and listen to my voice. I promised her that I would keep her safe. I said that I would never let anyone hurt her again. But I knew in my heart that I couldn’t really keep her safe. Not anymore. I needed a plan b. Someone else would have to take over as Joilah’s protector. There weren’t many people that I could trust. Really, there was only one person.

Zion.

I was now Demonio.

I had to watch my every move, and I even had to defend my brother when necessary. I hated my brother, but I had to pretend otherwise. I had to acknowledge him in public. I had to greet members of the gang everywhere I went. There was no time for basketball. Basketball required hours of practice and days of travelling. Mateo made sure that I did not have enough free time to even think about continuing to play. It hurt me more than I thought it would to stop playing. My coach approached me daily for the first several months. Of course, he just couldn’t understand why I just up and quit. It made no sense, I knew. I was his number one player, the entire team counted on me to win. But there was nothing that I could tell him or them. There was nothing that he could offer me to get me to come back. I couldn’t play anymore. I couldn’t even go to school anymore. I had no time to study. If I wasn’t doing something for Mateo, I was with Joilah, praying that she wasn’t as sad as she appeared to be, all the while knowing that she was.

My life spiraled out of control so fast I never knew what hit me. One moment I was pursuing basketball, and the next moment I was my brother’s right-hand man. I had no choice but to keep dealing, keep digging myself further and further into the deep hole of illegal activities.

It wasn’t long before I started using myself. I had to. It was the only way I could live with the things I did. It was the only way I could forget my original plan. I kept hoping that someday Mateo would let me leave, and I could somehow return to my old life. Every now and then I could still imagine making millions playing for the NBA and taking Joilah out of the ghetto for good.

But I soon forgot my dreams all together. Soon being Demonio was all I knew. Still, every now and again, when it was quiet and I was alone, I could hear a faint voice calling me, whispering to me, screaming at me, telling me that Joilah was going to die, and there was nothing that I could do about it.