The Night Gardener

'Did she put up a fight?' sang Alana, as Ramone bent down and kissed her on the top of her head, sprouting a mass of thick black curls, an inheritance from her father.

'How's my sweet little girl?' said Ramone.

'I'm good, Dad.'

She kept on dancing, thumbs out like Da

'Is that movie she's watching appropriate?' he said.

'It's Grease,' said Regina.

'I know what it is. But Travolta is air-humping over there and our daughter's copying him.'

'She's just dancing.'

'That's what they call it now?'

Ramone unwrapped his arms and stepped to her side.

'Good day?' said Regina.

'We had a bunch of luck. I wouldn't say anyone feels good about it, though. Man wasn't a criminal. He got crazy behind some crack and killed his wife because he was jealous and despondent. She's in the morgue, he's probably down for twenty-five, and the kids are orphans. Nothing good about that.'

'You did your job,' she said, a familiar refrain in their home.

He talked to her every night about his workday. He felt it was important, in that those cops who didn't, in his experience, were headed for disasters in their marriages. Plus, she understood. She had been police, though now that seemed like a long time ago.

'Where's Diego?' said Ramone.

'Up in his room.'

Ramone looked into the pot. The garlic and onions, cooking in olive oil, were begi

'You've got the fire up too high,' said Ramone. 'You're burning the garlic. And those onions are supposed to get clear, not black.'

'Leave me alone.'

'The only time that flame ought to be on high is when you're boiling water.'

'Please.'

'You making a sauce?'

'Yes.'

'My mother's?'

'My own.'

'I like my mother's sauce,' said Ramone.

'You should have married your mother.'

'Listen, turn that flame down, will you?'

'Go see your son.'

'I plan to. What happened today?'

'He says he didn't know his cell was on. One of his friends called him as he was coming out of the bathroom, and Mr Guy heard it.'

'Mr Guy-guy.'

'Gus…'

'I'm sayin, dude has name a like that, he's go

'He's not the manliest fellow on the planet, I'll give you that.'

'And they wanted to suspend Diego for that?'

'Insubordination. He wouldn't give up his phone.'

'They shouldn't have gotten up in his face to begin with.'

'I know it,' said Regina. 'But it's the rule. Anyway, you gotta act like you're upset with him, I guess. A little.'

'I'm more upset with that school.'

'I am, too.'

'I'll talk to him.' Ramone leaned over the stove. 'You know, you're burning the living shit out of that garlic.'

'Go see your son.'

Ramone kissed her on her neck, just below her ear. She smelled a little sweaty, and sweet, too. It was that body oil she liked to wear, with a touch of raspberry in it.

As Ramone walked away, he said, 'Turn that flame down some.'

'You can turn the flame down your own self,' said Regina, 'the day you step up to cook.'

Ramone went down the hall, the sound of the Thunder-birds and the Pink Ladies singing at his back, and up the stairs to the top floor.

He was having more than second thoughts about the decision to transfer Diego out to a Montgomery County school, but at the time he'd made it he felt he had run out of options. Ramone and Regina had been in agreement that the District middle in their zone was unacceptable. Physically it was in a state of perpetual disrepair, and it was always short on supplies, including pencils and paper. With the school's low lighting, many of the fluorescents and incandescents either dead or nonexistent, and the metal detectors and security perso

Gus Ramone had discussed all of this with his wife, intensely and in private. In the end, they both decided that it would do Diego good to be exposed to a different atmosphere. But even then, when Regina herself became adamant that they make the move, Ramone was not entirely sure that his motives for getting Diego out of the D.C. public school system were pure. The thing that played on his conscience was that the kids in their neighborhood middle school were almost all black or Hispanic.

Regardless, he and Regina had arranged the transfer. To do so, they'd set up a kind of ruse to establish residency in Montgomery County. Ramone had bought an investment property, little more than a cottage, in the then run-down downtown Silver Spring area for one hundred and ten thousand back in 1990, when Regina was teaching and they were a two-income couple. Ramone rented it to a Guatemalan roofer and his small family. He and Regina obtained a Maryland phone number for that address; the calls rolled over to their home in D.C. With that and their ownership papers on the house, they had the necessary tools to claim Maryland residence, which made Diego qualified to move.

But from the start, it seemed as if they had made a mistake. The middle school in Montgomery County had magnet students, and most of these students were white. There was less tolerance for so-called disruptive behavior in this school than there was in Diego's old school in D.C. Laughing or talking loudly in the halls or in the cafeteria was an offense that could often warrant suspension. So could being in the vicinity of, but not directly participating in, trouble. There appeared to be different sets of guidelines for Diego and his friends than for the kids in the magnet and gifted and talented classes. Those mostly white kids were being favored, Ramone surmised, because they were bringing higher test scores to the school. Everyone else in the school fell into the category of 'other.' When Regina dug and looked into it, she found that black kids in Montgomery County were suspended, demoted, or expelled at three times the rate of white kids. Something was definitely wrong there, and though neither Gus nor Regina was quick to bring up the R word, they suspected that their son's color, and the color of his friends, was indirectly related to the troublemaker tags they were being forced to wear.

All of this occurred in a school situated in a neighborhood known for its liberal activism, a place where 'Celebrate Diversity' bumper stickers were commonly displayed on cars. The days Ramone picked up his son at the school, he saw that most of the black students streaming out the doors hung together and walked in the down-street direction of the apartments,' while the white students headed for their homes on the high ground. Sometimes he would sit there behind the wheel, watching this, and he would say to himself, I made a mistake with my son.

Thing of it was, he never did know with certainty if he was doing the right thing for his kids. Those who said they did were delusional or liars. Unfortunately, the results didn't come in until the race was done.

Ramone knocked on his son's bedroom door. He knocked harder and was told to come in.

Diego was sitting on the edge of his bed, a mattress and box spring that lay frameless on the carpeted floor. The football he slept with sat beside him. He wore headphones, and as he removed them Ramone heard the sound of go-go turned up loud. Diego wore a sleeveless T, his arms thin and defined, his shoulders already as broad as a man's. He had the begi