The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

“Oh, for God’s sake, put that away,” Meredith says, loud enough for Betsy to spin around from the coat check to see the two women panicking.

The woman in coat check hands Betsy her jacket; she swings it around her back, cape-like, wrapping it around her neck. “Thank you,” Betsy says, handing the woman a twenty. She walks over to Laurent at the checkout table, bypassing Meredith and Phyllis. “Here, put it on mine, there’s no limit,” she says. He swipes: approved. Betsy turns around, smiles, and struts out of the double glass doors, Meredith and Phyllis inhaling whiffs of her ninety-eight-dollar bottle of Versace Bright Crystal.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Bunny waits for Anthony to appear, her right leg compulsively bouncing up and down; she’s anxious to tell him about the money. When he appears on-screen with a gash under his left eye, her leg stops.

“Hey, oh my God,” she says, looking at the flesh wound under his eye.

“That motherfucker came at me again.” The screen goes fuzzy; Anthony’s voice cuts in and out.

“Why do they do this? Why do they call this visiting? This is fraudulent! Hello?”

Anthony sits back and listens to Bunny’s unfolding enlightenment with annoyance. “Still here,” he replies, his face edging back into visibility on the monitor.

“I don’t understand why you’re still in there if you haven’t been convicted yet,” Bunny says, getting frustrated. “Isn’t it supposed to be innocent until proven guilty?”

“I don’t got a lotta time left on my minutes this month,” Anthony says, reminding her that nothing she is saying is a surprise for anyone in her immediate vicinity other than herself.

She nods and wipes her cold nose with the sleeve of her jacket. “So I’m not sure I’m the person who can find you a lawyer—but I can give you the money for it. A hundred thousand dollars.”

Anthony looks at her, impatient, skeptical. He swivels around in his seat again, paranoid. “Where’d someone young like you—an independent reporter—get a hundred thousand dollars? You dealing drugs?” he asks.

“You said it yourself, I’m moneyed up, or whatever.” Bunny looks down, trying to not make it a big deal, but it’s a big deal.

“All right, where’s the money from?”

“My parents, I told you.”

“Your parents gave you a hundred K?… Why?”

Bunny pauses. “That’s a question I’ve never been asked before.”

“Right, ’cause you only hang around people like yourself.”

Bunny hears this and knows it couldn’t be truer. She doesn’t have any friends who are unlike her. Marty is the only Black friend she has. From the time she can remember she’s been taught to not acknowledge it, or think about it, or ask why.

“So who are your parents?” Anthony asks.

“They’re nobody—they just came from somebody.”

“Who’d they come from?”

The tables turning, Bunny tries to keep it vague. “I guess you could say… war.”

“War…” Anthony echoes.

“Yeah. War.”

“What the fuck do you mean, war?”

“Like weapons-ish…”

“Your family makes weapons?”

“Not anymore, like a lonngggg time ago, like last century,” Bunny says quickly. “But my parents are so proud of what our ancestors accomplished, you know? There’s so much pride, and I just, I’ve been thinking about your dad, a man who made his money in an honorable way, in a way that didn’t hurt anyone, and didn’t think that it would kill him in the end… that it’s killing the whole fucking planet,” she says. “Not him, I mean, you know what I mean, the company.”

“Companies,” he corrects her, frustrated that he has to sit here and listen to Bunny recap what he’s always known. “The Banks got companies. But listen, we don’t got a lot of time, my minutes…” Anthony says urgently, his stomach churning, anxious for the money.

“Anthony,” Bunny says, taking her time, “do you think the Banks family deserved to die? Do you think they had it coming?”

Anthony bites his cheek, exhales. “When I’m questioned about it, I’m having to pretend to show remorse, ’cause if I don’t it makes me look guilty. But when someone’s fuckin’ killed your father, you don’t give a shit what happens to them—in fact, you want the worst for them.… How do you think it’s going to make me look?”

“I—I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s like to lose a father, I guess. I can’t say.”

“Mm-hmm.” Anthony doubts her honesty.

“I think… I think I’m… afraid,” Bunny continues.

“Afraid of what, we don’t got all day here!” Anthony’s impatience is escalating as his phone minutes dwindle.

“Afraid that I’m a bad person.”

“You want to give me a hundred thousand dollars, and you think you’re a bad person? What the fuck’s wrong with you?!”

“ ’Cause the money I inherited is dark and conditional and bleeding all over America!” She wants him to tell her it’s okay, she wants him to tell her she’s innocent, she wants him to tell her she shouldn’t feel guilty, she wants to put the burden on anyone but herself. She wants him to tell her she isn’t complicit.

Anthony takes a good long look at her. “You’re not bad, Grace, you’re not bad.”

“Right, yeah, of course,” Bunny lies, reburying the shame she feels. “So will you take the money? I want to give it to you, to go after what is fair and what is right—you should have a chance to be heard and the right to a decent fucking lawyer. But I—if you take the money, I won’t be able to write about your case. I probably shouldn’t,” she says, wiggling her way out of “Grace, independent reporter.”

“Yeah, yes, thank you. I’ll take the money,” Anthony says into the telephone. “So what is this anyway, your white guilt? A donation to make you feel better about Black lives?”

Bunny panics, she knows she’s gotten too emotional, she’s revealed too much, why did I do that, why did I come here? “I don’t want to end up like my parents,” she blurts out. It is the most honest thing she has shared.

Anthony takes it in. “Yeah,” he says, “me neither.”

For a brief moment