Little Niglet
We learned to keep him at arm’s length. I wish I would have tried harder to catch him. Maybe he’d still be here.
Dad was always muttering to himself about Little Niglet’s ashy knees and nappy hair. Always complained he was “runnin’ around looking like Jackass-motherfucking-Jones.” Little Niglet ran fast, like he knew you were trying to keep him. But he knew his place wasn’t here, even then. He was rambunctious and sassy; he put his hand on his hip when he was talking to you, and he was smart. Dad used to tell him to stop looking at him “with the eyes I gave you.” Dad thought he invented the cut eye, but Little Niglet would remind him that nobody cut an eye like he could—never before, never after.
The only time Little Niglet would stop running was when he reached the end of something or when he ran into something, but never because he was out of breath. I’d watch him run and think, “He’ll be running forever if we let him.” The few times I caught him, he would scratch and claw at me like a badger. Damn near gouged my eye out once. It was the way he looked at me when I caught him, though. His big brown eyes, so full of wonder and so sparkling and luminous, would turn black with hatred. When I couldn’t get my hands on him, I caught him with words. If I insulted him, he would bite back so hard he’d draw blood. He loved the smell of blood. He’d lick the tears from your face if he was close enough. And so we learned to keep him at arm’s length. To let him run around looking like he looked. In hindsight, I wish I would have tried harder to catch him. Maybe he’d still be here.
Dad was quiet. He liked being alone. He was hulking. Regal in stature but pauper in dress, and when he was upright, he moved through the world as if he owned it. A cigarette always dangled from the side of his mouth as he tapped on the newest handheld, and his black lips were always stained red with wine. He was, by all accounts, a drunk, though we’d adopt more affectionate turns of phrase and often shrug our shoulders when he passed out in the driver’s seat of the car. Mom left him there when he did that. Didn’t think it was her responsibility to be “lugging no old drunken Negro around.” Little Niglet would stalk around the car when Dad was passed out in it. I’d watch from the window as he paced round and round, like he was thinking, as if one more disappointment might make him snap. He hated seeing Dad like that and made no secret of his dislike for Dad and his drinking. He would pour all of Dad’s beers and wine out into the sink, discarding the bottles in fits and smashes on the back patio. Never did it when Dad was home, though. The one thing Little Niglet was scared of was dad’s big, rough hands across his face. Little Niglet went to great lengths to make sure nobody but Mom ever touched him. Not hugs, not kisses, not nothin’ and especially not a beating. When Dad came home, boots crunching across the glass as he surveyed the damage to his arsenal, Little Niglet was nowhere to be found. He was up in a tree, down at the creek, wedged into some hole we didn't know where, and wherever he was, he’d stay until Dad, like clockwork, passed out again.
Mom was feisty. Little Niglet loved her more than anybody else and made sure everybody knew. If he wrote something down, only she could see it. If he was having a tantrum, only she could calm him. If he wanted to fight, only she could make him back down. It was like the umbilical cord had never been cut. They were connected, and that connection was unassailable. He was savage in his love for her and in her defence, and none of us were welcome or safe. If he thought any of us were being rude, he’d leap up on the table, word-knives shooting from his mouth, and cut us all to pieces. One time, I saw fear in her eyes when he defended her. Once. Other than that, I think she was happy to have him as her little assassin. Dad ignored her, my sister was always nagging at her, I was a disappointment, and Little Niglet was the only person who saw her, made her feel special and needed. We learned to keep her at arm’s length, too, and let them two revolve around each other’s existence. It just wasn’t worth the blood.
A few years later, when Little Niglet came limping home, stinking of alcohol, with a bruised eye and a face red-fresh from crying, we couldn’t get through to him. “What happened?! Little Niglet, talk to me!” Mom begged him to speak, but he refused. He bit his tongue until he started bleeding. He wouldn’t even open his eyes. He was shaking like a caught fox. “If he shake any harder he gon’ scramble his brain!” my sister yelled. He climbed into the deepest recesses of the couch and wept for what felt like hours. As each of us approached and then retreated, he wept. He wept so consistently and for so long that I thought for sure we’d wake up in the morning and he’d be dust. Half his shirt was missing, his trousers had been torn and he wasn’t wearing any underwear. The thing we didn’t want to be true was the only thing that could be. I said a prayer for him. I said, “God. Don’t let him run.”
Little Niglet ran. I knew when I woke up in the morning that he was gone. Little Niglet had an energy about him, and it was as thick as the high noon heat of Sunday. He pulsed. As I wiped my eyes, I nudged my sister.
“Little Niglet’s gone.”
“How you know, nigga? You even been in to see him?”
“He’s gone. I can feel it.”
Mom was distraught. She hit all of us like we had something to do with it. She smashed a glass against the wall in the kitchen, threw a frying pan at my head and slammed my sister into a wall. I had never seen mom with that type of rage, and all of a sudden I knew where Little Niglet got it. She was showing her teeth, hissing, enraged. It was Discovery Channel shit. The moment Dad walked in, we ducked out, and the orchestra of smashing dishes and screaming would have made the devil blush. Through covered ears from under the dining room table, we heard her blame him. She said it was his fault. Said he better go find Little Niglet and that Dad could zip himself up into a body bag if he thought he could return home empty-handed. Dad laughed that kind of half-laugh you laugh when someone says something so insane that you know they ain’t lying. The type of shit you say when you’re daring somebody to test you. So she popped him square in the mouth and knocked his front teeth out. I heard him spit out his teeth through the wall.
It was the one time I ever felt bad for Dad. The one time I knew he wasn’t to blame. He wasn’t there when Little Niglet limped in, and he sure wasn’t awake when Little Niglet left. So, I prayed for Dad, too, as if He might finally listen. Dad knew if he couldn’t find Little Niglet, he had no home to come back to. Mom had drawn a line in the sand, pissed all over the house. Knowing Dad knew only the routes he had travelled—and only those that lead to annihilation—me and my sister followed him to the car. He slumped into the driver’s seat, a rush of stale wine fogging up the windshield. That’s when I saw what resignation looks like—how it hollows out the eyes and discards whoever was there into the shadow where he once stood. “Thee ya round,” he whistled. He knew he was never going to find Little Niglet.