Invisible Shai

Shai knew from when she was young she could make herself invisible.  At first she thought at first it was the fact that no one seemed to pay her any attention.  Her granny would be the one who the most would acknowledge when she came into the room.  As her granny stroked her dreads she would smile at her or give her a kiss on the head.  Her mother was many times too busy with the newborn twins to pay Shai much mind.  She would just tell her to help with this or that for the twins.  Her father big Joe as his friends called him worked most of the time and was sleeping most of the other.  Every once in a while her father would be looking in her direction with a slight grin on his face and say

“Shaima, come here my baby girl”

She loved when he called her baby girl

“Come give this old tired man a hug”

Those times have been less and less because of the twins.  Shai had no jealousy or hatred for her twin brothers, she just noted the time with her parents diminishing since they were born.  So when she would walk into a room and not be seen by anyone there, at first she did not think anything of it.  Her first clue that she could be invisible was when she walked into the living room when her granny was talking to our neighbor Gina about the young women who had died recently in the apartment building they lived in Coney Island, Brooklyn.  The woman (named Tasha) was found in the stairwell in the back stairwell of the building.  Everyone assumed it was her boyfriend Obie.  Obie at this moment was being questioned down at the precinct. 

Granny said.  “I know Obie seems good boy, but who else would hurt Tasha”

Gina looked ready to bust with information about the death “I heard there was a huge argument and she walked out on him”

As this conversation was occurring, Shai walked right in between Gina and granny.  Not one “Shai move”, not one “Girl don’t you see grown people talking here.”   Gina and granny continued their gossip without a hiccup.  She decided to make herself visible by thinking she could be seen.  As soon as she did granny said “Shai where did you come from, girl go get Gina something to drink”

After Gina left, Shai thought about how everyone assumed that Obie killed Tasha.  No one thought of the possibility that it could have been someone else.  It would seem like other people should be considered for this crime.  It is not logical to think that just because Obie and Tasha were in a relationship, he had to be the killer.  Shai decided to use her new found powers to find out if Tasha’s was killed by Obie or someone else.  Her first step was to go around the building listening on different conversations and see if any would lead to who killed Tasha.  She spent the day doing exactly that.  At first it was weird to stand in the elevator and stairwell, and everyone pass her by or stand just a few feet in from her and not see her.  She was now privy to conversations and information people wanted to keep private.  She heard gossip about her family.  Gina telling other older women in the building

“Yeah, I was just in their house, and boy is it a mess.  Twins must be overwhelming for them to care for.”

Shai never like Ms. Gina, and probably never will.  She saw boys smoking weed on the staircase.  She did not want to smell the smoke, so she was just about to leave when she heard one of them say.  “I know that woman was going to tell who’s been smoking weed and setting off the alarms.  I was just trying to stop her to talk and she tripped”

The guy speaking was Don -Don “a name so nice, you say it twice”, he would arrogantly say sometimes.  When everyone had practically hung Obie for Tasha’s murder, here Don-Don stood confessing to the crime with a head full of weed and whatever else he put into the cigars he rolled himself.  How could she convey this new-found information to the authorities without revealing how she came across the information?  She went to the precinct hoping something would come to her there.  She just walked in the front and walked straight to the back of the precinct without a “Hey girl where are you going?”  Shai went to the officers investigating the  death.  Detective Jarrod who was a trusted officer in the neighborhood, not only because he was black, but because he was well liked.  She saw on his desk, photos of the crime scene.  She had never seen a person she knew dead.  It was hard to look at.  She saw notes that detective Jarrod was keeping on the case.  Jarrod went to where they was holding Obie.  When he did Shai, wrote as close to his handwriting as she could.  She wrote down, check out boys hanging out in stairwell.  She also wrote check out back hallway videotapes.