Apple Brown Betty (15 page)

 

Slay slid on his jeans and then his Michael Vick jersey, and eased his feet into his boots. Kenya stirred behind him just as he placed his hand on her bedroom doorknob. She sat up in bed, the sheet wrapped around her chest like a bra.

“You leaving, Slay?”

He turned to her. “Yeah, just for a minute.”

Kenya turned on the lamp next to the bed. The small lamp shot off a dense bit of light that only lit the half of the room where Kenya lay. She was under her own spotlight like a star. “You going to check on Ms. Nancy, you can stay up there with her tonight, you want. I ain't going nowhere. I'll be here in the morning.”

Slay smiled. “I'll see you in the morning. I want to hit the restaurant for lunch, okay?”

Kenya nodded. “Hey, Slay,” she said as he turned to leave.

Slay turned back to her. “Yeah?”

“Thank you for not gassing me, telling me you loved me and all that stuff niggas be saying. Thanks for showing me that you do care, though. For always looking out for me and the boys.”

Slay was about to say something, but Kenya turned off the lamp and settled back under the covers. He stood there for a moment watching her before he turned and left. When he closed the door Kenya shifted in the bed, took the warm pillow Slay had been resting his head on and hugged it tight against her chest.

Slay took the rickety elevator up to the thirteenth floor. He pulled the key as he exited through the doors and went to his mother's apartment. The hall lamp just across from his mother's was busted and so he fumbled in the darkness to get the key in the lock. On the third try he got it in, turned the lock to open and walked in. As usual the apartment was dark, the radio in his mother's bedroom playing. He went in the kitchen and pulled down a glass from the cabinet. Went in the refrigerator and took out the two-liter of Schweppes Ginger Ale and poured a half glass full. He put everything back in place and grabbed the white package of saltine crackers from the countertop, where he'd left them yesterday. He went to his mother's bedroom, tapped as he always did, and went in without getting her approval, as he always did.

Nancy wasn't in the room. The sheets and blankets were off the bed, bare mattress the only thing left. Slay plopped down on the mattress; he was too tired to go searching again. He'd just wait for her to return. He ran his fingers along the surface of the mattress. The only positive thought he had was the reality that some old sheets wouldn't buy anything in the bartering crack game.

 

Cydney walked in her apartment and went straight to the phone without removing her jacket or shoes. She dialed Faith's number.

“Hello,” Faith said.

“You didn't cancel your three-way calling service, did you?”

“I been meaning to. I hardly use the darn thing, but no, not yet—”

“Good,” Cydney cut her off. “Get Victoria on the line with us.”

“You haven't even said hello yet,” Faith said.

“Do you want to know about my date with Desmond Rucker or what?”

“Y'all went out, already?” Faith said, her voice rising with interest. “Hold on, I'll get Victoria.”

There was dead air for a few minutes.

“I knew you'd be on him before the weekend let out,” a voice cut through the dead air.

Cydney smiled. “Good of you to join us, Victoria.”

“Skip the preliminaries and get right to the scoop,” Victoria replied.

“Yeah,” Faith said. “The complete blow by blow of the good stuff.”

“Whoa there, Faith dear,” Victoria said. “Cydney is a lady of the highest honor. There's no ‘blow' in her repertoire.”

“You know what I meant, darn it,” Faith said.

“You two finished playing sexual innuendo at my expense?” Cydney asked.

“You are so right, of course,” Victoria said. “The floor is yours.”

Faith couldn't let that go. “Whoa, there, V. Cydney is a lady of the highest honor…she wouldn't be caught dead doing anything on the floor.”

The three of them laughed together.

 

“I was wondering where that shirt was.”

Felicia turned from the running water spigot of the kitchen sink. She had on one of Desmond's shirts and his favorite slippers. “Hey, lover boy,” she said to her brother.

Desmond moved closer to her, saw her feet as he came around the rise of the island counter. “Man, you got my slippers, too!”

Felicia looked down, turned off the spigot, and dried her hands on his shirt. Desmond gasped. Felicia smiled. “Manolo Blahniks these slippers are not, but they're comfortable.”

“Manolo what?”

“Manolo Blahniks,” Felicia said. “They're like the hottest shoes for women right now. You want to impress this new mystery lady, mention the name to her. Manolo—m, a, n, o, l, o. Blahnik—b, l, a, h, n, i, k. If she has any sense of style whatsoever she'll know them.”

“You keep assuming there's some new woman in my life,” Desmond said.

Felicia placed her hands on her hips. “You telling me there isn't?”

Desmond fought unsuccessfully to keep a smile off his face.

“Thought so.” Felicia sat on one of the bar stools that lined the wall next to the kitchen counter. “So what's her name?”

Desmond pulled a bottle of Snapple from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, sat across from his sister. “Cydney Williams. And she is prime.”

Felicia raised one eyebrow. “Oh, is she now?”

Desmond took a long swig from his drink, nodded his head as the iced tea eased down his throat.

“Does she have a brother?” Felicia asked, smiling.

“Hey, now,” Desmond said, “you're my baby sister, I don't want to hear that.”

“Women have needs, too, you know.”

Desmond covered his ears.

“I am young, supple—”

Desmond hummed over the sound of her voice.

“A vine of fresh fruit waiting to be plucked—”

“Huuuuuuuummmmmmmmm.”

“Waiting to have my skin peeled back—”

“Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

“My ripe flesh—”

Desmond stopped humming. “Enough!”

Felicia laughed. “Don't be a prude, Desmond.”

“You not telling me that you—” he chewed up his face “—that you've done the do?”

At that, Felicia covered her ears and hummed.

Desmond shook his head, swallowed the last of his tea. “This is too much for me.” He got up and placed the bottle in the recyclables bin. “I have to get into the restaurant. We'll finish this discussion later.”

“Whatever, baby brother.”

“I'm older by nine years and a few months.”

“I'll say,” Felicia said, squinting her eyes and leaning forward. “Is it me or is your hair starting to recede?”

“Funny.”

“I try my best.”

“You decide what you're going to do?” Desmond asked as he retrieved his car keys off the hook by the phone. “Modelingwise, I mean. Are you going back or are you going to talk with Mom and Dad, maybe do the college thing like they wanted you to?”

Felicia got up off the stool. “I'm definitely not doing the college thing. I was heading to the city today, but they had some kind of something or other, so I set up a meeting with some of the agency folks for tomorrow. I'm not going to let that one asshole, Kenneth, sour me on this. I've been into fashion since I was a little girl. I'm going to keep modeling as long as they'll have me.”

Desmond nodded. “You were going through Mom's stuff before you got potty trained. I even let you practice applying makeup on me.”

Felicia smiled. “Riiiiigggght.”

“Make sure we keep that between us.”

“Consider it done.”

“On the real, you're a strong young woman,” Desmond said. “I'm proud of you.”

Felicia smiled. “I'm proud of you, too, baby brother.”

Desmond thought about Cydney Williams, the good time he'd had with her, the bright future he knew they could have. He blew Felicia a kiss and walked through the door toward his truck.

Felicia was proud of him. He could take that. Cydney was all he expected and more, he could take that, too. He looked toward the sky as he moved toward his truck, toward Cydney's father looking down. “I'm going to do your daughter proud,” he said just before he slid inside the truck.

“C
an I come in? I don't have anywhere else to go,” I say.

I peek through the cracked, chain-locked door with hope. Indecision and lack of get-up-and-go must run in these folks' family, I think as I wait. Finally, the door opens for me. I walk inside. It's more naked than it was the last time I was here, the day of Darius's funeral. The entire apartment carries the smell of burnt eggs.

“Why ain't you home curled up with your husband?” Darlene asks. She's Darius's sister, my ex-sister-in-law. Before I answer, Darlene moves toward the kitchen in hyper steps, her back to me, but I can still see the sneer on her face, or at least imagine it.

“Bit of discord,” I tell her, following slowly behind.

“Speak English,” Darlene prods me. She is sitting in a chair at the corner of the kitchen. The small dinette table that usually centers the room is absent.

“Got in a fight,” I retry, scanning the room with my eyes. I just know she's going to eat all this up. She never really forgave me for marrying so quickly after Darius died. I'm not sure I forgave myself, but I know I've come to forget it.

“About?” Darlene asks.

“George is upset at me because he thinks I'm not doing a good enough job mothering my children. Cydney is running around with this bad boy, Byron, and Shammond…” I don't even want to get into what Shammond is up to.

“I believe the children are the future,” Darlene sneers.

I lean against the counter self-consciously. The bare apartment and Darlene's slovenly appearance have me wondering. Darlene's clothes drown her slight frame. She's lost so much weight since I last saw her. “Where are your children?” I ask her, looking around.

“Away?” Darlene answers. The sneer that had been a part of her voice for the past few moments was gone.

“With who?” I press.

“Folks.”

I wring my hands, looking toward the refrigerator. “I'm a bit thirsty, Darlene. You mind?”

“Help yourself. There's juice and soda.”

I trudge to the refrigerator, open it. Empty except for an extra-large bowl of spaghetti that looked as if Darlene had been pecking at it for over a week. “I'll just grab a glass of water,” I tell her, closing the refrigerator. I turn around to find that I'm alone in the kitchen. “Darlene?” I quietly walk from the kitchen, move toward Darlene's bedroom. I knock on the door. I can hear shuffling inside.

Darlene emerges, her head down. “Been looking for something the past hour and can't seem to find it,” she says as she scurries by.

I follow her to the living room. We both sit on the couch, the only piece of furniture in the room. Up close I can see discoloration on Darlene's lips. Darlene notices my probing eyes and sits back against the couch cushions.

“So King George has come down off his throne,” Darlene says.

“He means well. He still hasn't figured out that nagging me just makes me more resistant. Not that I'd know what to do anyway. Cydney's at the age where she can make her own decisions and Shammond is just stuck in the rough years.”

“How old they now?”

“Cydney's seventeen, Shammond is fifteen.”

Now Darlene was shaking her head. “Darius would trip out, he could see them practically grown.”

“Can I stay with you tonight, just to cool off and not have to hear George's voice for a bit?” I ask. I don't want to think about Darius. Even though George has been wonderful to me, and I love him, there's still a part of me that wishes Darius had worked out. For our children's sake.

Darlene looks me over before nodding her head. “Why not.”

“Thanks.”

Darlene smiles. “You did Darius dirty in death but you never did him dirty in life.”

I take that as a compliment and let it ride.

“I need to step out,” Darlene says. “You can grab some sheets and stuff from my bedroom closet and make up this couch. I'll be back shortly.”

“It's late,” I hear myself say. Same thing I used to tell Darius. I feel a need to share the same info with Darlene because she and Darius have similar tendencies. Her bare apartment is all the proof.

Darlene simply pats my knee before rising and seemingly walking out the door in the same action.

It's her life, I think as I move to the bedroom with George's voice echoing in my head. “That boy's the source of all these problems, Nan. He's mixed up in all kinds of stuff. His sister's unable to get herself back on course 'cause of him. You need to do something.”

Didn't the fall of one's children always land on the shoulder of the mother?

“Should have listened to me when I told you that boy did something to Cydney Doll way back when,” George's voice says to me as I step into the bedroom. “She ain't been the same since.”

Blame, blame, blame.

What kind of mother did he think I was? Did he think I'd stand by and let one of my children hurt the other? I'd questioned Cydney. Cydney said nothing happened.

I move to the closet of Darlene's bedroom.

“I blame you, Nan,” George's voice tells me as I open the door.

Of course he did. Darius had no ambition and diligence. George had enough for the both of them. He seemed to come to the realization now, after these years of marriage, that I wasn't perfect. The realization seemed to shake him. But it was breaking me because I wanted to be perfect, I wanted him to still look at me like he did those nights he carried Darius to my doorstep. I needed George to stop nagging me and help me, same as he did Darius.

The blankets and sheets are balled in a clump at the base of the closet. I crinkle my nose. Sleeping on them isn't at all appealing. I can hear George tomorrow, once I tell him whose couch I spent the night on. “Hang around Darius's sister long enough and you'll surely be about nothing.”

I pick up the ball of sheets and turn to leave, tripping over a sneaker too large to be Darlene's. Something falls from the sneaker. I place the sheets on the edge of the bed and lean to retrieve the sneaker and its contents. A lighter, a few small whitish shavings and some kind of pipelike contraption, a glass bowl fitted with fine mesh, lay next to the sneaker. I hesitate to pick up the contents and return them to the sneaker. For some reason I start to think about the day George caught me in the bathroom, smoking a Newport, washing the ashes down the sink. “Nan,” he'd said, shaking his head. “Only trashy women smoke. You're not trashy, now, are you?” I shook my head at the time. No, I wasn't trashy. I was the woman he'd looked on so adoringly when he carried my husband home. All this drama in our lives had chased away that look in his eyes. I wanted it back. I wanted him to take care of me, shield me from the problems of the world, hold me under the arm like he did Darius.

Tears find my eyes, and my hands shake as I pick up the lighter. I fumble to place the shavings in the bowl. Crack. I'd seen Shelby Lewis, who'd lived across the street from Darius and I, smoke it once, after her first child's father got caught with that underage girl, violating his probation. Overnight, Shelby's problems multiplied like roaches. But, for the few moments she sucked in the grayish smoke, she didn't seem to feel the pain anymore.

I spark the flame as tears drip down into my mouth. I'm a sensible woman. I know this is no answer.

“I blame you, Nan.” I hear George's voice in my head, clear as day.

I know you do, George. I also know you don't hold me like you used to. Why'd you have to go and stop? Don't you know I came to you because I'd been through a lifetime of not being held? Don't you know I expected you to hold me until the day I died?

I look at the cooked elements in the glass bowl.

Just for this moment I wasn't going to be perfect, wasn't going to strive to meet an ideal I knew was light-years away from me. I place the pipe to my lips. It worked for Shelby Lewis. Maybe it would work for me. Then, tomorrow I'd go and have a long talk with George, let him know how much I love him, and that his constant badgering is tearing me apart. I'm already a broken woman, two kids that I have no idea where and how they're going to turn out. Two kids that have turned a deaf ear to my pleas of concern and worry. All I have right now is George.

“I blame you, Nan.”

Oh, George, don't say that. Please don't say that.

“But I do, Nan.”

Okay, George, you win.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it, George.