Per Capita

Indian red. 2015

The first man Kalo ever loved was a hustler—a killer, too. In that way she was blessed. He taught her two things (more, but this is what she will share): all you got in this life is your balls and your word; play your hand close to your chest. The city Kalo grew up in changes infinitely and infinitesimally by the square foot. Dead men, ghosts, babies, slave ships, the drums, and jewelry (who knows how they got it on board), all these things crowd the sidewalks and jam up all the doorways, which are filled with bullet holes.

Eli whitney invented the cotton gin. 1967

When Kalo's daddy was ten years old, Wharlest Jackson got a promotion in Natchez, Mississippi. And then some white men put a bomb under his car. Blew him to bits. Just like that. Then a white man shot Kalo's uncle in broad daylight for allegedly fucking his daughter when everybody knew Kalo's uncle didn't even like white girls. Plus, he was gay, but nobody knew that, or maybe they did. But Kalo never knew him because he died before she was born.

Kalo's grandma's daddy, Papa, used to pass for white. Town to town. He was a baker. He made all the fancy cakes and shit for weddings and birthdays and funerals all over Louisiana. When Papa's mother died, one very satisfied bride inquired with the postman on how to send a flower arrangement. He couldn't figure who she was talking about then it clicked. Oh you mean those Pochés, he grinned. Them colored people?

Flowers and a posse came. Kalo's Tante Mochine says the fire those men set is what made her grandma's face twist up with the palsy. However, there are still miracles. Just one year later, Kalo's grandma graduated from eighth grade and confirmed her soul at Our Lady of Grace with a straight face.

Jamestown. 2015

We free, but still stuck in a slave mentality, or so they say, or who knows, until it's black history month, and why isn't there white history month anyway?

Aubade. 1996

Kalo takes a shortcut through an alleyway, so she can get to the bus stop faster. It is three buses to the high school she attends. When she leaves in the morning, the sun is never shining. Most of the year it is just barely dawn when Kalo walks out the door. It wasn't Kalo's idea to go to this school, or her parents' either, but when she took the test and won the money, they all buckled under other people's expectations. Think how nice it would be for people to see a girl from The Gardens going to that school. Mostly it was okay, or rather, she just dealt with it. Today, Kalo wasn't sure she'd make it all the way there. Today was a day when she might get off that second bus and just hang in the park.

Kalo's cousin was shot last night. He lived three doors down from her. Kalo hears the commotion when he is pulled out his doorway into the middle of the courtyard, banged up, and left there. When the shooting stopped a little kid knocked on Kalo's door and said Joseph had a hole in his head. Kalo thinks about all this and also how this English teacher of hers keeps giving her C's, no matter what she writes. As Kalo walks to the bus stop she stops to stare into the windows of several abandoned houses oddly enjoying the smell of rotten wood.

"K!"

Someone yells out from inside one of them. It's Corey. He and Kalo both grew up in The Gardens, but don't go to school together anymore. He'd been in the stinking house all night, probably would be there through the afternoon.

"I'm sorry. I heard about J," he says. "Stay and chill for a lil bit."

Kalo wants to. She tells him about a kind of poem...