Layla's Score

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Book excerpt

Chapter One: Love And Happiness

       They were close to St. Louis, midway through the eleven-hour drive from Chicago to Tulsa, when Layla had to go potty. Lefty told the little girl, “Gimme a couple minutes, Tator Tot. I gotta find a spot for you to pee.” As he went to work scanning the road for a suitable place, Layla blurted, “You'd better hurry! I gotta go bad!”

       Lefty looked at her in the rear-view mirror. Her face was contorted and she was twisting uncomfortably. “How bad?”

       “Real bad, Daddy.”

       “You need to tell me when you first feel it coming on,” said Lefty. “You gotta give me time to find someplace to take you. You can't just wait until you're about to explode and then expect me to find a gas station in two seconds. There aren't any gas stations around here.”

       “But I didn't know I had to pee until just now,” she said, her voice shrill and whiny, as urgent as he'd ever heard it.

       Lefty's eyes continued to scan the road, occasionally glancing at the little girl in the back seat, writhing uncomfortably. Finally, after a couple minutes, he came to the conclusion that he had to do something immediately or the seven-year-old was going to have an accident. He pulled off onto a small county road. Seeing there weren't any businesses beyond the highway, he stopped the Caddy on the side of road, its frame leaning into the ditch.

       Layla said again, “I gotta go pee, Daddy. I gotta go real bad.”

       Lefty unbuckled his seatbelt and made eye contact with her in the mirror. “I know, Tator Tot.” He opened the door and climbed out, making his way back to Layla's door. He opened it and found Layla unbuckling her belt. He let her out, looking down the road to make sure there were no vehicles approaching.

       The little girl looked around. “Where's the bathroom, Daddy?”

       “There's no bathroom, Tator Tot.”

       She looked at him quizzically. “Then where should I potty?”

       Lefty nodded toward the ditch. “Right here.”

       She looked at the ditch, confused and unsure. “I don't wanna pee outside.”

       “I understand that, kid, but if you don't pee now, you're gonna pee your pants. That's a no-no. Think how yucky it's gonna feel wearing cold pee pants. So—”

       “So what?”

       “You gotta pee outside.”

       She wasn't pleased about this development, but she took it in stride. Layla was smarter than the average seven-year-old and Lefty had found that most of the time he could simply explain things to her as though she were an adult. There were of course exceptions, but for the most part this was true.

       She made her way down into the ditch. “How do I do it, Daddy? I never pottied outside before.”

       Lefty looked to the heavens, taking a slow breath. Showing a little girl how to pee outside without getting any on her clothes was not something he'd ever imagined he'd be doing. “Pull your pants down, to your socks,” he said. To his surprise, without much resistance, Layla slid her tiny blue jeans down around her ankles. “You gotta pull down your panties, too,” he said. “Really?” she asked. This made him chuckle. “Unless you wanna pee through your undies, then yeah, you gotta slide those down, too.” Again the little girl accepted his word and slid her panties down, now standing there with her privates exposed to all of Missouri.

       She looked at him. “Now what, Daddy?”

       “You just gotta pee, right?” he asked. “No poop?”

       “No poop.”

       “Okay,” he said. “You gotta squat down and stick your butt out so when you pee you won't get any on your pants or your shoes.”

       “I don't sit on anything?” she asked, unsure. “I just pee with my bottom in the air?”

       “That's how you do it.”

       “Why?”

       Having no sufficient answer for this, Lefty replied, “That's just the way it's done. There's no reason why, that's just how it is.”

       “Okay,” she agreed, starting to strain to make the urine flow.

       As she did this, Lefty glanced down the road and saw a white car approaching. He squinted his eyes, trying to see it better. It came closer and he realized it was a cop.

       “Shit,” he said, unsure what the best course of action might be.

       He looked at Layla. “It's starting to come out now,” she said.

       “I'm sure it is,” he muttered. There was no way out. The cop was approaching, slowing as he did. Lefty could just imagine how this looked, a black man standing on the side of the road next to an expensive car, hovering over a little girl pissing in a ditch. And considering how close they were to Ferguson, where the cops had famously killed an unarmed black man named Michael Brown, Lefty wasn't overly excited about the prospect of being stopped here.

       Maybe it would be a black cop, he reasoned. They weren't much better, Uncle Toms really, but that would dramatically decrease his chances of being gunned down in front of his little girl. The cop pulled up, and Lefty could see his face. He was as white as a paper plate blowing in a snow storm.

       Here we go, he thought.

       The cop was staring at Layla through the window of his cruiser.

       Lefty looked down at her squatting there. “You about done, Tator Tot?”

       “Almost done, Daddy.”

       The cop stopped and got out of the cruiser. Luckily he didn't have his hand anywhere near his pistol. As he walked around the car, the cop said, “Little girl had to go pee, huh?” There was a big smirk on his face.

       “She did,” Lefty said, nodding.

       Layla heard the cop but was completely unfazed by his presence. She remained there, squatting, focused on the task at hand.

       Lefty looked at the cop, trying to look as nice and smiley and white-people friendly as he could.

       “I got three daughters of my own,” said the cop. “I been down this road before.”

       There wasn't anything in the cop's voice that led Lefty to believe there was gonna be trouble. Not yet, anyway.

       Lefty started to respond, but Layla spoke first. “I'm done, Daddy. What do I do now?”

       Lefty looked at her, and then back at the cop, unsure what he should do.

       “You got any napkins?” asked the cop.

       Lefty hadn't even considered this. “Yeah,” he said. “I'm pretty sure.” He climbed into the car and opened the glove compartment, but couldn't find any napkins. He considered pulling out the Glock, but he didn't want to do any gangster shit in front of Layla. “Dammit,” he said.

       “Ain't got no napkins?” asked the cop.

       “It doesn't look like it.”

       “What were you gonna use to let the little girl wipe with?”

       “I hadn't really given it much thought,” said Lefty. “We hadn't gotten that far. She had to go, so we stopped. This was our first go-around with this type of thing.”

       The cop went back to the cruiser. “I'm pretty sure I got some Dairy Queen napkins in the car. I'll go look.”

       Good lord, thought Lefty. What have I gotten my black ass into?

       “What do I do now, Daddy?”

       “Just a second,” said Lefty. “The nice policeman is gonna get some napkins so you can wipe, just like you do when you sit on the toilet.”

       “Good,” she said. “I was hoping I could wipe.”

       Lefty looked over at the cop, reemerging from the cruiser with a handful of brown napkins. He brought them to Lefty, who then carried them to Layla. “Here you go, Tator Tot,” he said. “Wipe with these.”

       She took the napkins. “What do I do with the napkin after I wipe my pee on it?”

       Lefty didn't know. He looked at the cop, who was on the verge of real laughter. “Just throw it on the ground,” said the cop. “Someone gets paid to pick up the trash around here. Leaving trash behind, that's job security for those fellas. I wouldn't recommend throwing out your trash all the time, but this once ain't gonna hurt nothin'.” He looked at Lefty. “Who wants to carry around a napkin with piss on it, am I right?”

       Lefty nodded, glancing over at Layla wiping.

       “I'm done,” she announced. “Now what?”

       “Drop the napkin on the ground and pull up your pants.”

       Layla looked at him, a serious expression on her face. “I can't litter.”

       “What?” asked Lefty.

       “I can't litter. Because it's wrong.”

       “Who says?”

       “My teacher told us it destroys the environment.”

       The cop chuckled. “A napkin lying on top of the ground won't hurt the environment. It might irritate the person who's gotta pick it up, but that's about it. It really won't do too much of anything bad.”

       The little girl looked at him. “Are you sure?”

       “Of course,” said the cop. “I'm a policeman. Would I lie to you?”

       “I don't know,” said Layla.

       Lefty looked at her. “Just throw the napkin on the ground, Layla. It'll be fine.”

       Layla didn't approve, but she finally dropped the pee-stained napkin in the ditch. Lefty looked back at the cop, whose demeanor was gradually shifting to one more business-like. “You the little girl's father?”

       Lefty nodded.

       The cop looked at Layla, now standing, pulling her pants up around her waist.

       “Hey, little girl?” said the cop.

       Layla looked at him innocently. “Yes?”

       “What's your name?”

       “My name's Layla. What's yours?”

       The cop laughed and looked at Lefty, then back at Layla. “My name's Jim.”

       She smiled. “Hi, Jim.”

       “Hi, Layla,” the cop said. “I gotta question for you. Is this man your daddy?”

       Layla's face brightened. “Yep, he sure is. He's my daddy alright.”

       The cop looked at him, sizing him up. “He a pretty good daddy?”

       She nodded. “He's the best daddy in the whole wide world.”

       The cop nodded. “Glad to hear that.” He looked at Lefty. “Where you headed?”

       “Tulsa.”

       “What's in Tulsa?”

       Lefty wanted to be a smart ass and say, “Tulsa residents,” but thought the better of it. Instead he said, “I haven't been in there in years. I thought it might be fun to take the little girl there. When I was a kid I used to spend summers there with my Auntie Mae. She used to take us to this big amusement park they had there, was open every day. I loved that place, and I think she's gonna love it, too.”

       “You know they got an amusement park up the road in St. Louis?” asked the cop. “Six Flags. I used to take my kids there every summer.”

       “I've heard that,” said Lefty. “But I ain't never been.”

       “It's pretty good. But it ain't cheap.”

       “Nothing is. Not anymore.”

       “You said a mouthful there,” said the cop.

       “The one in Tulsa is called Bell's Amusement Park. They got a big roller coaster there and me and my brother Marky used to ride on it all day long, over and over,” said Lefty. “And there was this Mexican restaurant there my auntie used to take us to…”

       The cop was confused. “There was a Mexican restaurant inside the amusement park?”

       “No,” said Lefty. “It was somewhere else in Tulsa. But it was good. It was called Casa Bonita. Auntie Mae used to take us there all the time to get enchiladas, and those were some good-assed enchiladas.”

       “Oh yeah?”

       Lefty grinned. “Best enchiladas I ever had.”

       “I like tamales,” said the cop. “So your auntie, she still live in Tulsa?”

       “Nah, she's gone now, goin' on twenty years.”

       The cop nodded, understanding.

       Lefty leveled his gaze at him. “Cancer.”

       “Cancer's a bitch,” said the cop. “My old man died of cancer.”

       “I'm sorry to hear that.”

       “So was he. But you know what? He was a miserable old sonofabitch, so maybe it was karma. You believe in karma?”

       “Not really.”

       The cop didn't even acknowledge Lefty's answer, he just kept on talking. “He didn't even know he had the cancer. He started feeling bad and then one day, out of the blue, he fell down and hurt himself. They took him in to get checked out. They ran all kinds of blood tests and we waited for days to get the results. When they finally came back, they said he had cancer. It had spread into his brain, lungs, and kidneys.”

       “No shit?” asked Lefty.

       “And you know what?” The cop paused for effect. “My old man died the next day, I shit you not. The very next day. It all went South that quickly.”

       “That's horrible.”

       “I was at work, staked out in front of some meth dealer's house. My old man went into a coma, and they called and said he wasn't gonna wake up again.”

       “So you didn't get to say goodbye?”

       “Well,” the cop said, his eyes watering just a bit, “they put the phone up to his ear and let me talk to him. I don't know if he heard any of it. I suspect he didn't, but they said it was good for me to do it anyway. I couldn't even get through it without crying. I got embarrassed and hung up the damn phone before the nurse even got back on the line.”

       “I'm sorry, man,” said Lefty, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into the curious predicament of consoling a white cop in the middle of nowhere.

       “With all the money they spend on weapons to fight the sand niggers—” The cop caught himself. He looked up at Lefty, an awkward expression on his face, and then tried to pretend he'd never said it. “You'd think, with all the money they got for other things, they would figure out a cure for cancer.”

       Lefty nodded. “I suppose there's more money in it if they don't find a cure.”

       The cop started to say something else, but Layla interrupted. “When are we gonna go, Daddy?”

       Lefty looked at the cop. “Are we good here?”

       The cop nodded. “Yeah, I think we're good. But next time the little girl's gotta pee, try to find a bathroom.”

       “We will. What happened was, she waited until the last second, and there wasn't time. If I had waited, she woulda peed in the car.”

       The cop nodded. “Trust me, I've been there. Just do your best, friend.”

       He climbed back into his cruiser and drove away, giving a small wave as he did.

They had just passed St. Louis when Lefty decided to converse with Layla. For the past couple hours she'd been playing some kind of robot game on her tablet. The only way he'd been able to get her away from the thing for any small amount of time was to ask her for details about the game. She took a break to tell him about it, but damned if he didn't understand a single word of what she'd said. After that, once she'd finished describing the game, she'd gone right back to playing it, seemingly transported to somewhere far, far away.

       To keep himself busy, Lefty listened to Parliament on the stereo. He played the greatest hits album all the way from “Up for the Down Stroke” to “Black Hole (Theme)” without Layla saying a single word. Finally he said, “Hey, Tator Tot.” He looked at her in the rear-view mirror. Layla said, “What?,” without even looking up from her game.

       “We're gonna take a break from the tablet.”

       That got her attention. She looked up, a startled look on her face. “Really?” she asked, sounding pained.

       Lefty nodded. “Really, Tator Tot.”

       “But why?”

       “Just turn it off,” he said. “We're gonna talk for a little bit. God forbid you actually have to talk to your daddy some.”

       She slumped unhappily. “But I was just getting to the good part.” This meant nothing, as Lefty had learned from previous conversations that she was always just getting to the good part; seemingly every part of her game was the good part and she didn't like being interrupted.

       “Turn it off, baby.”

       Layla was displeased, but being the good girl she was, she did as she was instructed.

       She looked at him up in the mirror. “What now, Daddy?”

       “I wanna talk to you,” he said. “That okay with you?”

       “What do you wanna talk about?”

       “We can talk about anything.”

       The broadness of his reply seemed to pique her interest. “Anything?”

       “Sure,” he said. “What do you wanna talk about?”

       “Can we talk about NASA?”

       He looked at her, blinking as he did. “NASA? That's what you wanna talk about?”

       “I like NASA.”

       “Okay,” said Lefty. “NASA's good.”

       “Did you know I was two-years-old when Neil Armstrong died?”

       “Hmm. Does that make you sad?”

       “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now I'll never get to meet him.”

       “What would you have done if you had gotten to meet him?”

       “I'd have told him he was my hero,” she said. “Someday I'm gonna be an astronaut just like Neil Armstrong. Is that okay? Do you think I would be a good astronaut?”

       Lefty nodded. “Sure, I don't see why not. But I wouldn't want you to get hurt.”

       “I wouldn't get hurt, Daddy. I promise.”

       “Pinky promise?”

       Layla said solemnly, “Pinky promise.”

       “Well, then I guess it's okay.”

       “You know what else I'm gonna be when I grow up?”

       He humored her. “What are you gonna do, Tator Tot?”

       “I'm gonna be a police officer, like Jim back there,” she said. Lefty's heart sank, and he could feel his features twisting into a disapproving expression. “You're gonna be what?”

       “I wanna be a cop,” she said proudly.

       “Why do you wanna be a cop?”

       She looked at him, beaming. “I wanna help people.”

       “Is that what you think cops do?” he asked. “Help people?”

       “Of course, silly. They help everyone.”

       “I don't know,” he said. “It seems to me like there are other jobs you could be that might be better.”

       She frowned. “Better than being a cop?”

       “Sure,” he said.

       “What's wrong with being a cop?”

       “Well,” he began weakly, “some cops are good, and some cops are bad.”

       “There are bad cops?” she asked, amazed by the thought. “I thought all cops were good. I thought they help people.”

       “Sometimes,” said Lefty. “But some cops are mean. Some of them don't like black people.”

       Her expression was one of genuine interest. “I'm a black person, right Daddy?”

       “Yes, Tator Tot. We're both black.”

       She looked at her arm, studying it. “Actually, I think I look more brown than black.”

       Lefty grinned. “That's true. We're both more brown than we are black, but that's what they call us—black.”

       “Who calls us that?”

       He thought about it for a moment. “Society.”

       “What's society?”

       Lefty recognized this was a rabbit hole he might never get out of, so he gave her a simple explanation. “Everyone. Society means everyone.”

       “Oh,” she said, taking it in. “And cops don't like black people?”

       “Some cops don't like black people. Not all of them.”

       “Daddy, why don't they like us?”

       Lefty turned it over in his head for a moment before answering. That was a good question. “I don't know,” he said. “I guess you'd have to ask them.” He looked at her contemplating this and added, “We probably shouldn't really ask a cop about that.”

       “We shouldn't?”

       “Probably not.”

       “Why's that, Daddy?”

       “Well, if it's one of the cops who don't like black people, we wouldn't wanna make them mad. They might hurt us.”

       She looked up at him, her eyes big now. “Hurt us?”

       “Yeah, baby,” he said. “Sometimes cops hurt black people.”

       “How?”

       “There's all kinds of ways. Sometimes they beat black people up with those hard wooden sticks they have, and other times they just shoot them.”

       “Shoot them?” she asked, horrified. “With guns?”

       It was horrific, to be sure. “Sometimes.”

       “Well, I don't wanna hurt anyone,” she said. “I wanna be one of the nice cops.”

       Lefty nodded. She was only seven, so the chances of her actually mapping out her future right at this moment were pretty slim. So he let it go. She thought for a moment and then said, “You know what else I'm gonna be?”

       “You're gonna have more jobs?”

       “Yeah,” she said. “I'm gonna have lots of jobs.”

       “How are you gonna work all those jobs at the same time?”

       “Not at the same time, silly,” she said. “I'll work them at different times. When I get done with one job I'll go to the next.”

       Lefty grinned. “That's how it works?”

       “Of course.”

       “So what other jobs are you gonna have?”

       She was excited now. “I'm gonna be a pizza chef.”

       “A pizza chef?”

       “Yeah,” she said. “I'm gonna make pizzas and I'm gonna have my own restaurant where I make them. And do you know how much they're gonna cost?”

       “Two dollars?” he asked, kidding her.

       “My pizzas are gonna be free, Daddy.”

       He grinned. “Free pizzas, huh?”

       “That way everyone can have some,” said Layla. “But they won't all be free.”

       “They won't?”

       “Nope. Some pizzas will cost more.”

       “Why's that?”

       “Because they're the ones made with the special ingredient.”

       “There's a special ingredient?”

       “Yep,” she said, feeling proud of herself.

       “What's the special ingredient?”

       Layla looked up at him, barely able to control her enthusiasm. “Love.”

       Lefty chuckled. “You got it all figured out.”

       “Yep.”

       They drove for about a mile in silence before Layla asked, “Can we listen to some music, Daddy?”

       “More Parliament?”

       “I don't like Parliament very much,” said Layla.

       “Then what kind of music do you wanna hear?”

       She didn't hesitate, answering right away. “I wanna hear Al Green.”

       “You wanna listen to Al Green?”

       “I wanna hear 'Love and Happiness.' That's a good song, isn't it, Daddy?”

       “It sure is, Tator Tot.” He smiled proudly with the knowledge that he was raising the girl right. The fact that Layla requested Al Green on her own was a good sign. He picked up the case from the floor and opened it, removing the CD. He slid it into the stereo and a moment later “Tired of Being Alone” came to life, filling the car. “Love and Happiness,'” she reminded him. He preferred “Tired of Being Alone,” but skipped to track five per her request. The song began, and she sang along verbatim, stopping only to ask, “I sound as good as Al Green, don't I? Our voices really go together.”

       Lefty agreed with the assessment, and they continued driving.