Jack & Jill

to find Chop-It-Off-Chucky, hadn’t given Alvin Jackson the time of day. The whole sorry affair was race-related, no way around it, and it made me both angry and sad.
    I came home early and spent the evening with Nana and the kids. I wanted to make sure they were okay after the murder at the Sojourner Truth School. At least that horror tale had been solved. But I still wasn’t over the child killing. I couldn’t get past it for a lot of reasons.
    For half an hour or so, I gave Damon and Jannie their-weekly boxing lesson in the basement. To Damon’s credit, he’s never complained that the sessions include his sister. He just puts on the gloves.
    They’re becoming tough little pugs, but more important, they’re learning when not to fight. Not many kids mess with them at school, but that’s mainly because they’re nice kids and know how to get along.
    “Watch that footwork, Damon,” I told him. “You’re not supposed to be putting out a fire with your feet”
    “You’re supposed to be
dancing,”
Jannie threw a little verbal jab at her brother. “Step, right. Back. Step, step, left.”
    “I’ll do a dance on you in a minute,” Damon warned her off, and then they both laughed like hell.
    A little later, we were upstairs in front of the tube. Jannie was crossing her small arms, squinting her brown eyes, and making a tough-as-nails face at me. It was her official, non-negotiable bedtime, but she had decided to lodge a protest.
    “No, Daddy. Nope, nope,
nopeee,”
she said. “Your watch is too fast”
    “Yes, Jannie. Yep, yep,
yepeee.”
I held my ground, held my own against my chief nemesis. “My watch is too slow.”
    “No, siree. No way,” she said.
    “Yes, indeedee. No escaping it. You’re busted.”
    The long arm of the law finally reached out and corralled another repeat offender. I grabbed Jannie off the couch and carried my little girl up to bed at eight-thirty on the dot Law and order reigns at the Cross house.
    “Where we going, Daddy?” she giggled against my neck. “Are we going out for ice cream? I’ll have pralines ‘n’ cream.”
    “In your dreams.”
    As I tightly held Jannie in my arms, I couldn’t help thinking about little Shanelle Green. When I had seen Shanelle in that schoolyard, I was scared. I’d thought of Jannie. It was a vicious circle that kept playing inside my head.
    I lived in fear of the human monsters coming to our house. One of them had come here a few years back. Gary Soneji. That time no one had been hurt, and we had been very lucky.
    Jannie and I had worked out a prayer that we both liked. She knelt beside her bed and said the words in a beautiful little whisper.
    Jannie said, “God up in heaven, my grandma and my daddy love me. Even Damon loves me. I thank you, God, for making me a nice person, pretty and funny sometimes. I will always try to do the right thing, if I can. This is Jannie Cross saying goodnight.”
    “Amen, Jannie Cross,” I smiled and said to my girl. I loved her more than life itself. She reminded me of her mother in the best possible way. “I’ll see you in the morning. I can’t wait.”
    Jannie grinned and her eyes widened suddenly. She popped back up in bed. “You can see me some more
tonight.
Just let me stay up,” she said. “I
scream
for ice cream.”
    “You
are
funny,” I said and kissed her goodnight. “And pretty and smart.” Man, I love her and Damon so much. I knew that was why the child murder had really gotten under my skin. The madman had struck too close to our house.
    Maybe for that reason Damon and I went for a walk a little later that night’ I draped my arm over my son’s shoulders. It seemed as if every day he got a little bigger, stronger, harder. We were good buddies, and I was glad it had worked out this way so far.
    The two of us strolled in the direction of Damon’s school. On the way, we passed a Baptist church with angry, dark-red and black graffiti markings:
I don’t care ‘bout Jeez, ‘cause Jeez don’t care ‘bout me.
That was a common sentiment around here, especially among the young and restless.
    One of Damon’s schoolmates had died at the Sojourner Truth School. What a horrible tragedy, and yet he had already seen so much of it.
Damon had witnessed a death in the street, one young man shooting another over a parking space, when he was only six years old.
    “You ever get afraid to be at the school? Tell me the truth. Whatever you
really
feel is okay to say, Damon,” I gently