At-Risk (19 page)

“Man, forget you,” Stephen said. But as he walked away, he was trying to remember what he knew about Wanda. Wanda had started to grow real breasts in the fifth grade. He'd find a way to be there all right.

By the time he got to his street, MacDonough, everyone was already outside. He walked through the maze of bodies, sidestepping double
Dutch ropes that whipped by fast enough to sting and stepping over the boys using yellow chalk to etch their lines and numbers on the sidewalk so they could play skelly, without really seeing any of them. He could count on his neighbors to be the same. Each day the heat brought them downstairs with the promise of a breeze or two before dinner. The stoops were littered with adults playing cards, fixing hair, smoking, and talking. Each day the old men on the street congregated in front of 32, his building, and sat on milk crates at the top of the stoop, dressed for church and talking quietly to each other. And each day Miss Earlene drank herself into a stupor and tried to pick fights.

“Yes, that's what I said! These kids here today ain't amountin' to nothing.” She looked up at the old men on the stoop for support but they ignored her. She sat at the bottom of the stoop, with her knees spread and her skirt tented over them, a forty-ounce bottle of beer in her lap. Stephen knew the moment she laid eyes on him.

“Not even close to nothing! Look at you. Yes, you Townsend boy. You, Stephen, you! You special, huh? That's what your mama make you out to be? What's your father say, huh? Mama's baby and Papi's maybe. Your daddy wasn't nothing and you ain't never gonna be nothing neither.”

Miss Earlene was a conversational drunk. After a few beers she talked to any one who would listen. His mother said she had been beautiful once, when she was much younger. And what his mother hadn't told him, but others had, was that Miss Earlene had loved his father and tried to steal him away. She and his mother had gotten into fights over his father, and his grandmother always had to pull them apart.

He'd learned to ignore Miss Earlene's tirades over the years. Especially when they were about his father. All his mother had ever said was that his father had left them, and since Stephen had been too young to remember him, he'd left it at that. He had no feelings where his father was concerned. No hatred, no bitterness, no nothing.
He was the only remainder of his father's presence. There were no pictures or souvenirs. Only absence. Drunk as she was, Miss Earlene was careful. She could say what she wanted about his father, but she knew better than to say anything about his mother.

The kitchen was hot because the windows were closed and the shades drawn; the smells that would have wafted out now turned back and circled around the apartment. His mother stood in front of the stove, her brown arms and elbows smattered with flour. Her short pixie haircut was wilting. Damp black tendrils framed her face. She was frying chicken when she heard him come up behind her.

“Hey, Ma.”

“Hey, yourself. Where you been?”

“Out. Chillin'. You know.”

“No, I don't know. That's why I asked you. Mind telling me why you didn't take out the garbage today? Too busy doing all your ‘chillin”?”

“Ah, c'mon, man—”

“Boy, who are you talking to?”

“Ma, I forgot, all right?”

“Well, why don't you just go on and remember, then?”

“All right. Dag.”

“Stephen, how many times I got to tell you to quit saying that? Sounds too much like damn.”

“Sorry.”

“Thank you.” She kissed his cheek and wiped off the counter, motioning for him to help his grandmother set the table.

They sat down to eat and his mother opened up the conversation after saying grace, “You sure were late getting home today. I got here before you. What were you doing?”

“Nothin' really. Chillin'.”

“Well, who were you doing ‘nothing really' with?” she asked.

“Nobody.”

“I may not be hip, Stephen, but even I know you can't ‘chill' alone. I don't mind if you stay after to be with your friends as long as it wasn't that Kiki. But I know it wasn't Kiki because I told you I didn't want you around that rough little boy anymore. He's got too much time on his hands and too much money in his pockets for a boy that age.”

“Does he have a rich grandfather, do you think? Maybe he could give me some of that money,” his grandmother quipped.

Stephen bit back his laughter, “No Gram, he don't have no rich grandfather.”

His mother raised her eyebrows and sent his grandmother a knowing look, as if he couldn't understand their communication. “Mama, that money is dirty money. He gets money from that brother of his,” she said.

“Wilfredo has a job, Ma.”

“Mmmhhm. A job. Washing cars down on Atlantic Avenue. They don't pay that kind of money down there. He got a job but he's got a something else, too,” she said.

She wouldn't say the words
drug dealer
, but he heard them just the same.

“Ma, Kiki's brother is not what you think. It's nothing wrong with his money.”

“First off, don't tell me what I think. You don't know where Wilfredo's money comes from and neither do I. I swear. One of these days, somebody gonna come looking for that boy to make him pay up and whoever is around him is gonna get caught up in it. Even if they're just minding their own business. And they gonna be real sorry, too. When they come looking for him, they're not gonna care who all is with him or if they're kin or if they're too young or what. Just don't let it be my child, please,” his mother said, speaking to no one in particular but making it clear that she was talking to him. She wiped her mouth with a paper towel that had been folded
to look like a napkin. When she put it down, he could see the faint traces of the raisin-colored lipstick she wore to work. “But none of that even matters since you don't play with Kiki anymore. Isn't that right, Stephen?”

He didn't answer.

“I said, isn't that right, Stephen?”

His grandmother jumped in. “Stephen, you hear your mama talking to you?”

He still didn't answer.

His mother pushed her plate away from her and started to stand but thought better of it. “Stephen, I have had enough of this. Now I am going to ask you this question one last time and this time you are going to give me an answer. Were you out again with Kiki?” She watched him closely, skewering him under her glare.

He shifted in his seat, “Yeah, Ma.”

“I told you I don't want you hanging around with that boy!”

“But Ma, he's my boy. You can't—”

She slapped him across the face, “I don't want to hear another word! He's not
my
boy, you are, and I don't care what you say about him! You got another think coming if you expect me to put up with you disobeying me! And don't even think of stepping one foot outside this house tonight or any other night until I say so. Take yourself to your room this very minute or else I'm not gonna be responsible for what might happen if you stay in my sight. Lord, give me strength. And I better not hear no tv on in there and no video games! You hear me?”

He rose sullenly and left the table, dragging his feet, his face stinging.

All of their bedroom doors were closed to each other. Stephen was lying on his bed and listening to the sounds in the other two bedrooms. The music that his grandmother called the blues was playing
in her room as it always was whenever she was alone in her room. His mother was behind the door in her own room, crying.

He often made his mother cry. But he was always sorry. And he had never made her cry like this. This time her crying was louder than the music in his grandmother's room. This time it sounded as if it would never stop. He opened her door and let a little bit of light slip through so that he could look at her. Lying across the bed on her stomach, she looked a C of sorrow with her back curved up and her face buried in her arms. He felt a little sick inside when he realized what he was doing to her. He felt as if he had eaten something bad and couldn't get the taste of it out of his mouth.

Hurting her wasn't something he did on purpose. It just seemed to always happen whenever he did the things he yearned to do. The two of them didn't see eye to eye on anything. She saw the danger, the trouble, before she saw anything else. Sometimes he wondered what kind of man his father had been. If he was the kind of man who took chances and saw the possibilities instead of the problems. He wondered if his father had seen his mother with her short pixie hair and lips dark as grapes and seen all the possibilities with her only to find out that she saw only pitfalls to be avoided, that she kept her feet rooted firmly to the ground and would not pick up and follow him wherever, that she would rather hear him tell her that the bills were paid on time than say she was beautiful. Stephen wondered if there was any of his father in him, if that was the difference that made everything so hard, if it was his father in him that his mother saw and worried over.

He didn't go to her. He let her cry. He had done this enough to know all the things that she would say:

These boys, they'll kill you
.

They'll take everything you have
.

They don't want you to have nothing
.

They see that you're smart. That you've got a little something going for you. And they hate it. It makes them mad
.

They'll smile at you now, but when you try to do something for yourself, when they see you trying to have a little something to your credit and name, they'll try and stop you
.

Stephen, why you make it so hard?

If you could just listen sometimes. You're my baby, and I'm just trying to keep you alive
.

He closed her door, standing there with his hand on the doorknob. He gripped the knob tightly until he could see his brown knuckles lighten with the strain of it. He wouldn't go in, but he listened long to the tears she was crying for him.

He went to his grandmother's room and knocked lightly on her door.

“Can I come in, Gram?”

“Yes, baby. Come on in.” She was lost in thought, leaning out of her chair, bending over her record player. “Have a seat,” she said.

He sat down on the floor by her feet and rested his head on her lap, comforted by the scent of peppermint balls in the pockets of her housedress. Her lap was warm. Her hand came down to rest on top of his head. She stroked his hair lightly.

“How you feelin', baby?”

“Okay, I guess.” He didn't want to explain. He just wanted to sit there and feel the comfort of her old fingers slowly weaving in and out of his hair.

“You want me to rub your feet, Gram?” His grandmother was always complaining about having poor circulation in her legs and feet. Sometimes he had to help her put her knee socks and shoes on before her doctor's visits. Sometimes he had to rub the life back into the soles of her feet.

He knelt before her and braced her feet up on his thighs. He began to rub lotion on the cracks and hard, dead skin of her heels. The music came to him softly as he rubbed.

There ain't nothin I can do
Nothin I can say
That folks don't criticize me
.

After a few minutes, she sighed. “Thank you, baby, but you don't need to be in here rubbing an old woman's feet. These feet done more walking than you can ever imagine.”

He shrugged. “I don't mind, Gram. I know you're tired.”

“Oh? Who told you?”

“I have my ways,” he said, thinking of Kiki and his cryptic answers. “Like right now I know you're thinking about something.” When she looked at him curiously, he jerked his head to the record player in response. The music had stopped but the needle continued to play and move, making shushing sounds on the record's edge.

“'Cause you letting your record getting scratched up. The song's over.” He got up and took the needle off the record. “Want me to play it again?”

“No baby, take the one off the top of the stack.”

“But that one's scratched worse than this one.”

“It'll play,” she assured him.

He pulled the forty-five out of its paper sleeve and put it on. The needle scratched several times. Then it caught.

“Ah, now this is it.” She leaned back. He recognized Billie Holiday's voice. His grandmother's favorite singer. His mother liked her, too. He could never forget Lady Day's voice. His mother said she and his father used to play Billie Holiday records to soothe him when he was teething and crying loud enough to wake the neighbors. He didn't remember any of that, but sometimes it did seem that her voice called to him when he was listening, that sometimes it was reaching
just for him. She always sounded to him as if she was aching. He thought she sang as if her heart was torn at the seams.

That voice surrounded the two of them in the room.

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
.

He saw that when his grandmother closed her eyes, the fine lines around her eyes disappeared. He pressed both thumbs hard against her heel and rubbed. She said, “Can't for the life of me figure out why they wanna call this stuff jazz. Ain't nothing about this jazzy. Don't nothing in this music make you wanna get up, snap your fingers, put on a pretty dress and some red lipstick. Make you wanna be at home with your thoughts, know what I mean?”

So the Bible says
And it still is news
.

“You know, your problem is you listen to the wrong people. You wanna be out there so bad, but it ain't nothing out there. Why you gonna listen to your friends over your family? That boy ain't done nothing to make you stay.” She spoke as if her feelings were hurt. Her voice, coming after a long period of silence, startled him, and her words and tone sparked the need in him to defend himself, but he couldn't say anything without sounding fresh.