Troubled me, that scene in the courtroom, the whole way to work afterwards. I was in a fog, trying to sort out my feels. What I wanted to do. If I wanted to do anything.
He'd got to me, Justice. And I couldn't just let go.
And then I opened the loading dock door to the Big Building like I always do--I park in the old warehouse garage across the alley--and these confetti cannons and and lasers and disco balls and things all went off like we were having our own private Fourth of July or something.
Now, the big space I always enter through was where we cranked up the new music, videos, games, whatever, for their first public test runs. So because it was always loud in there, I hadn't had the slightest clue that this time the noise was all about me.
Rocked me back on my heels, though, when I opened that door and this big mob of staff and local "artistes" started cheering and whistling. Reminded me of that prom, you know? All those big old "holy shit" surprises.
They hit me with this mariachi music, the way we do all the time here in Tucson. They'll hire a big old band to greet guests coming in or leaving parties and weddings and damned near any big celebration. Only this was no ordinary mariachi music, people. This shit rocked.
The band started out totally traditional. And then from a little stage 'way up front, Fixah took over and went all Trap on it with a clip he'd recorded on the spot, while they were playing the intro. I'm talking bass drop and all.
I wish you could've heard everybody scream when he kicked into that whole new gear and yelled, "How do you like that shit now, mutha fukkaaaaaaaz?"
I was just standing there in shock when Yoli came dancing out of the crowd--another surprise. I hugged her, and she linked arms with me and sort of danced me through all the party people who'd been in on this thing.
And I heard Fixah say, "C'mon up front here, boss man! We got a ring side seat for ya'! And lemme get my man Yoshi'n' the JCrew up here--everybody huddle up! Lez get it on!"
And sure enough, there were tables up by the little stage he was on.The tokidokis were already there, in full effect with their multicolored hair and clothes and big goofy grins. So was Wyatt. Looking a wee bit uneasy, but she gave me such a sweet smile.
I wanted to greet her, but the tokidokis came rushing at me the minute I got close enough to the table to fangirl all over me. And then I saw Yoshi go over to Fixah's mic.
He said, "Okay, so...everybody come this way now."
And the swarm came closer. Sat on the floor the way we usually did in there. There were folding chairs in stacks along the walls, but we almost never used them.
Once they'd settled, Yoshi looked down, gave me this really nice smile, and said, "We are here to clear up some confusion, before you leave us."
I had no idea what he meant by that. And he knew I wouldn't. I could tell by the devilish smile on his face.
"Someone told me the strangest thing the other day," he said. "About a conversation she had with you. Perhaps you remember?"
I shrugged. Still lost.
And he said, "I believe you said you weren't sure if you had really accomplished anything yet. Do you remember now?"
I did. In passing, though, I'd said it. On my way out of the door that morning, an aside, as they call it. Just, a little "I dunno, kiddo..." after I'd kissed her. Kendall. I hadn't really meant anything by it. Just that things were moving too fast for me to get a grip.
But apparently, she'd taken it to heart. And told Yoshi. Maybe other people, too. Which explained all this, maybe...
Yoshi smiled some more and said, "Ah. A light goes on! Very good!"
I laughed, and Yoli reached over and gave me a pat on the shoulder. Another one who'd heard this story, probably. And Wyatt, too? Wow.
"We are here, to show you what you have accomplished," Yoshi told me. "We know that nothing we say will really matter because you like to worry!"
That made everybody laugh. Including me. Because he was kind of right. I mean, I don't like to worry, but I feel weird if I'm don't have anyone to "mama duck" around anymore. That's my jam, getting those ducks in a row. Or herding cats, as our Cat likes to put it. I'm actually good at that. I just am. I don't know why.
He looked at Dylan and said, "Ladies first!"
And the tokidokis sort of shoved each other up to the stage, all nervous and giggly as always.
In fact, when Dylan went up to the mic next to Yoshi, she got all trembly and went, "Oh my God, I cannot get used to talking to this man!"
And when he gave her a serious Japanese bow she just wrung her hands and squealed. Which made us all laugh again.
But she gathered her wits and waved to someone up on the catwalk above us. And they lowered this screen I hadn't noticed 'way up in the rafters.
And she shook back her strawberry red hair, looked at me, and said, "So, like, we were asked to think of a creative way to tell you all the things that KJC and KJF have done over the past few months. And some of the things that you and your amaaaaazing wife have accomplished aside from that, too. And...well...because we met in school, you and me and...the girls here...we figured this would be the best way to do that. So..."
She paused, as if she was trying to think of a way to transition into the actual presentation. But then she just shrugged and said, "Enjoy!"
And gave Brittany a shove, which turned into a sort of domino thing, each girl bumping into the other and stumbling toward the steps. It looked like some kind of Marx Brothers routine. But it was just my tokidokis being their silly selves.
And as they were still galumphing down those steps, the first slide of what would turn out to be a hilariously corny PowerPoint presentation appeared--with a gunshot sound effect. Which kind of set the tone for the whole thing.
See, they had deliberately piled on all the wacky, cartoony music and graphics and characters that some teachers still use for classroom presentations to this day. Even the awful canned applause and laughter and "oooos" and "ahhhhs" and "boings" and stuff like that.
Every slide transition was insane, too. The way kids do them when they're just learning how to use the program. So all the bullet points and pictures and things kept zooming or spiraling in and out or flying from one side of the screen to the other--you know what I mean. If you had that thing where you get seizures from flickering screens, you were a goner during that presentation.
But what was on the slides was pretty dope.
I mean, the reason I'd said what I said is because from my vantage point it's like watching someone put a jigsaw puzzle together. Lots of someones in all the different teams. I see pieces, all the different projects, as they're happening. But sometimes I don't even get to see the finished picture before they're on to something new.
So to really help me "get it," they hit me with a blizzard of bullet points. Starting with the foundation side, KCF.
That part went by pretty quick, because mostly we funded other people's programs. But we had done a lot of things ourselves. Like adding a medical team to the food truck program, with their own trucks and "on call" staff for emergencies and night runs.
And most recently, we'd helped two larger local organizations buy a big old hotel for migrants with kids to stay in when they were just dumped on the street or at the Greyhound station by ICE.
That was an emergency, actually. Because ICE, the people who grab up all the migrants at the border now, had started releasing these big bunches of shell-shocked people, without warning, at the Greyhound station or sometimes just onto the streets.
They could keep the single adults in the jail to wait for their hearings. But the ones with children had to be released because you can't incarcerate kids and adults together by law.
So there they'd be, 150 shell shocked people who didn't speak English and had been through hell trying to get to the border, wandering around the bus station or the streets of Nogales, trying to figure out what to do. Where to go. What those papers they'd just signed were all about.
There were some local organizations who kept volunteers at all the drop offs. And there were some safe houses that could take maybe 10 or 20 at a time. But they were releasing hundreds of them now. Deliberately, hoping to cause a lot of chaos and rile up the locals.
So Yoli had gotten Indio and his crew to drive vans from the port of entry or wherever they were being released over to the hotel, where they'd be able to call relatives or be assisted to find more permanent lodging by people who handled this kind of stuff all the time. Legal aid, too, they got. From people who spoke their languages.
So the KCF part of the presentation was mostly pictures of people at the hotels, cooking in the communal kitchen, or kids playing in what used to be the nightclub in the lobby...stuff like that. And some stats on funding we'd provided to local social service organizations. Numbers, you know? Impressive ones, but...I won't belabor the point. You get the idea.
And I got the idea. Made me feel real. I admit that.
But it got real real when they switched over to KCJ, where the wild things live. I'll just give you the bullet points. No commentary necessary. Cause we kicked some serious ass--check this out. We had:
· East Hell Arizona, HBO, starring me, myself and I. I was still going to shoot that, because I'd have even more time while I was off, actually. And Kendall really wanted to see some of the places I'd chosen.
· A Netflix travel series starring Big Brian--yep, my father-in-law. Nia pitched it to him, after he cracked her up talking about some of the rich people and celebs he'd taken to these exotic places. So he'd be doing the "extreme eco-tourism" thing with willing celebs. Not eating snakes and stuff but immersing them in different cultures and making them work and connect with the locals. It didn't have a title yet, but the little pitch video with Brian talking to Nia just the way they had the day she got the idea was broadcast worthy itself. Brian was totally natural on camera, and a born story teller, too.
· Our music production company (KayCee), which already had six chart topping CDs, (Billboard, Apple) one of which, this wild combination of poetry, Hip Hop and House music called Power UP, was actually in the running for several awards, including the goddamned Grammys, I guess. How that happened, I will never know. (Nia probably)
· Our film production company (Graciela Productions), with Halley and Yoshi at the helm. They were doing all kinds of work, from commercials to actual films. One of the scripts had been "stolen" from a major company that had bought but never made the film, even though it had always had a lot of "buzz." When the option lapsed, Nia heard and jumped on it. A director with a lot of prestige (but who I never heard of so I can never remember what his name is when I need to) was already on board. We were in all the major trade magazines after that happened.
· Amazon.com series co-production: La Tienda China about this rapper who goes home to a local barrio and has to face his old buddies who haven't "moved on." He buys the old Chinese grocery store to turn it into a music studio. Script was written by one of our rappers and the music would be done in house.
· Poetic License, my favorite new one, is a big old bus that's getting ready to travel the country putting on "pop up poetry slams" on the streets and finding writers of all genres to publish in a digital and hard copy magazine. And books, too, later, they were planning to do, full of artists they found on the road.
· A possible cable network. Or maybe our own sort of Hulu thing. We're not exactly sure which way we want to go yet.
· Everybody's Internet: That's the working title. Yoshi really wants us to become internet providers, to give access to places that don't have it either for economic or technical reasons, like in remote or rural areas.
· And of course, the gaming division brought over from JJ's "house." It was rockin' it out there, on every level. My "avatar" made an appearance that day, even. The hologram and a screen version, wearing a tux, right? They were teasing me with that. Anyway, he's becoming an industry unto himself, as you already know. I'll probably do some kind of stage thing with him someday, in Asia, maybe. It's not even necessary, at this point. He's doing fine on his own.
They used that Porky Pig, "Th-th-that's all folks" at the end of that presentation, which cracked us all up again. And when I gave them a salute when the lights came back up they just giggled and glowed.
And then Fixah stepped over to the mic again. And gave Wyatt a little wink.
And said, "Teacher lady! You're up!"
She blushed a little bit as she rose from her seat and headed his way all graceful as hell. And on her way up the stairs, the full sleeves on her blouse and that long hair rustled as if they'd planned it that way. God, that woman.
She stepped behind his console smiled the way she did when she was about to introduce a new novel or something in class, and said, "How do I follow that?"
But then she looked down at me and said, "My presentation is more of a proposal. And I enlisted the aid of some wonderful young people to help me plead my case. So..."
She nodded, and this little super slick film came up on the screen, created by students at this school she'd visited in San Diego. It was called High Tech High, and it was legendary--Oprah had even featured it a few times on her old show.
It was like no other school in the world--when they first opened, anyway. The kids picked their teachers, for one thing. Every summer they have a big beach party where they meet the hopefuls that make it through the initial interview process. And the ones whose vibes jibe get the jobs.
They're not all even teachers. They're people who work or are experts in different fields. Headmaster in the film, this surfer looking dude who turned out to have all kinds of Ph.Ds and whatnot, said, "We can teach you how to teach. The love, you gotta have that up front."
That made me sit up and take notice for sure. But that was just the beginning.
See, there aren't really any "classes," in the conventional sense. Just big spaces where the kids work on projects, big ones, all year long, instead of going to normal classes. Everything they learn is connected to the projects, which are supposed to be things that help the community in some way.
It can be artistic or practical, a big ass statue or fixing up old houses and buildings for the homeless or low income families, whatever. But they learn all their math, science, English and a whole lot more while they're doing this project. And what they did on camera was introduce their projects and explain how that works.
And I gotta tell you, I wanted to go to that school by the time they were done.
And I could tell by her smile that Wyatt could tell what I was thinking.
She said, "I know it's hard to believe, but this is not a new idea. Project Based Learning has been around for decades in one form or another. And when it's done well, it is astoundingly effective. Especially with the kids who usually fall through the cracks. It gives them a sense of purpose. And connects the school to community it serves in very real, very visible ways. And HTH can help us do that. But of course...that would mean firing the other company we've been working with..."
Yoli whistled through her fingers. I knew why. She'd hated the direction that other company was going in.
"It's just school again," is how she'd put it.
So I gave Wyatt a little salute and she smiled and said, "I hope that's 'Yes.' We need this."
I gave a little nod, and she smiled and said, "Maybe someday your little girl will walk those halls herself. Rather proudly, I think. So please go home and take care of her, Daddy. She is the only project you should be working on right now."
Did I tear up? You bet your ass I did. The way she said that last part, with her little hands clasped like she was praying--God, the feels.
Which is why I didn't notice who had joined us at that table until she came back and I stood up to hug her to death.
Everybody was there.
No, seriously, the entire family had snuck up on me. Kendall, too, was right behind me, smiling all happy.
And damned if Indio and Preston weren't both heading up to the stage together as I was being hugged by all my peeps. With both their squads, they went up. A "kumbaya" moment if I ever saw one.
Preston waved off Fixah like he didn't want to speak, but Indio shoved him into the mic so he had to say something.
At first, he just grunted and rolled his eyes.
But then he finally threw his hands skyward and said, "Okay! Well...I'm Preston Patton. And, uh...well, these doofuses behind me, we been together since elementary school, some of us. Just, like...hangin' around, runnin' the streets, gettin' into all kinda trouble together. And more recently, we got into some serious trouble--or almost did. Some of our brothers, they definitely did. Cause...well...we come up kinda hard, you know? We're in the thick of that opioid thing you hear about all the time and...well, worse. And because o' that, sometimes...well...you're lookin' for somethin', you know? Some kinda meaning in life. Even if it's just to show everybody what a mean mother fucker life's made you, you know? It can go either way. For the good or bad. And when somebody tells you they got a way for you to grab some power, show people who the fuck we are'n' that kinda thing...well...if you're in enough pain or lost enough, that can sound pretty good. Did to me. Did to most of us. But...this guy behind me here that shoved me up to this mic, I guess he sorta convinced me--us--that it didn't necessarily have to be an 'us or them' sorta situation. So here--talk to 'em fool! I'm out!"
He was all red in the face when we applauded for him.
And Indio went, "Oh, you all shy and shit now, huh? Drops allat truth on us'n' then wanna walk away..."
Gave us a little laugh, that did. Preston laughed, too.
But then Indio crossed his arms over that big old chest of his and went, "I ain't gonna take up much or your time. I just let the boss man know that hell musta froze over that day at the prom or somethin'. Cause we've kinda joined forces, our two squads, to work with that little shoeless wonder down there. On patrol, like. Scoutin' around for kids who've runaway or...got mixed up in shit they shouldn'a...all that kinda thing. And also, we're gonna expand that van transportation thing to the elderly and other people who can't get around or don't have the money for buses and stuff. Which will generate some jobs, too, right? It's still bein' worked out, but that's what we're lookin' for right now. Ways to pull people off the streets and into what you call gainful employment. So the people who get the services can help run the services. You feel me?"
Preston shoved him and we could hear, in the mic, him going, "Tell 'em the name, man..."
And Indio went, "Why didn't you say it, fool?"
And then he smiled at all of us and said, "We're Guerreros Unidos. Warriors United. Our shirts say it in Spanish and theirs in English, we decided. Cause some of us are still still carryin' some old baggage..."
Yoli gave them a whistle, too. Didn't care about the old baggage. One step at a time, right?
And Indio pointed at her and said, "Give it up for our girl right there!"
So I stood up to lead the applause for her. Which quickly spread around to everyone in the room. Kendall gave her a little one-armed hug, too. She loves Yoli.
And then Indio said, "I got to get outta here, y'all! They some kinda big old announcement for you or sum..."
He looked around, and we looked around...and I saw Nia look over at Duke. And Duke did the "cut" sign, that neck chop motion, you know?
Aisha lowered her eyes. Looked away. I really wanted to find out what all that was about.
But Fixah leaned into the mic and said, "Okay, I guess it's time we got that last word then, y'all. From the only person who got the right to say it. So before we turn y'all loose to eat, drink and be merry...come on up here, Mami."
Kendall gave me a kiss on the top of the head as she stood up to go up. And she didn't even look nervous once she got there. Because she looked down at me. And saw me loving her with my eyes.
So she said, "So, first of all, I am not sorry to be part of the reason you're taking this break..."
And everybody laughed. And then when she shrugged and said, "I mean, it's obvious how much I enjoy your company," everybody roared.
I blushed a little bit, too. Cause everybody kept looking over at me and poking me and giving me little looks...
She got a little flushed herself, but she was real cute and playful about it.
And then she finally said, "I just want to thank you personally for making so many dreams come true. Including taking this...skinny, sick little girl to one of the saddest little cancer ward parties, ever, and making her feel like Cinderella at the ball. So this is my little presentation--I took the pictures. But I got the song from that teacher lady is making another dream come true, thanks to you. It's kinda 60s, 70s--her kinda song, you know? But it says everything I want to say to you, my love, so..."
She blew me a kiss. And I blew her a kiss.
And they turned the lights off and showed this really heart-rending film that used some of the pictures she'd shot of me and the family, but mostly me, her and both of us. Just the deepest pictures--I'd known she was shooting things quietly, now and then. But I'd never seen them, because of how secretive she is about her work.
You couldn't help just feeling like you were eavesdropping on something sacred, you know? The expressions, the gestures, the way we were sitting.
A lot of times, you couldn't even see our faces. Just our hands or legs or arms entwined. Or me looking at her or her at me, one of us without the other even being in the picture. Looking maybe sideways or down or off in the distance or something...genius.
And this is what the song told me. You're not ready. I wasn't, that's for damned sure.
Today, I feel like pleasing you
More than before
Today, I know what I want to do
But I don't know what for
To be living for you
Is all I want to do
To be loving you
It'll all be there
When my dreams come true
Today, you'll make me say
That I somehow have changed
Today, you'll look into my eyes
I'm just not the same
To be any more than all I am
Would be a lie
I'm so full of love
I could burst apart
And start to cry
Today, everything you want
I swear it will all come true
Today, I realize how much
I'm in love with you
With you standing there
I could tell the world
What it means to love
To go on from here
I can't use words
They don't say enough
Please, please listen to me
It's taken so long to come true
It's all for you, all for you
OH yeah. Just laid it all out there for me. No shame. Wanted everyone to hear it. Feel it.
And once they had, there really wasn't anything that could top it. So Fixah just said, "Girl, bye," and hit us with, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" as a signal that the presentation portion of the party was definitely over.
And when my girl got back to the table, I eased my arms around her, looked her in the eyes, and said, "Time to go..."
And as we were hugging up there, getting the "Aaaawwwws" from people looking on, I opened my eyes just in time to see Duke reach over and take hold of Aisha's hand, and Aisha look down at the table, not their hands, in that same uneasy way she'd looked at me earlier.
And when he kissed the back of her hand she looked at him, sort of sighed or something, and then leaned to put her head on his shoulder. But she didn't look as relaxed as she usually did when she leaned into him like that.
I saw Rick watching them, too. Turning some kind of business card or something end over end, over and over again like he was nervous.
Kendall caught the vibe changed and pulled back to check.
But I smiled and said, "You ready, Mama?"
"Are you?"
I gave her a kiss on the forehead and put my arm around her shoulder.
And just as I said, "Right this way," I heard burst of rapid-fire gunshots, and all these loud, flashing fire alarms went off just like at school.