Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (31 page)

Back in her room, Blue said, “John, you take something out you need to put something in its place. A balance. Something to keep your mind occupied till you’re stronger.”

The drive back, I told her I wasn’t attending another Narcotic Anonymous meeting. I didn’t need to spill my guts to a group of strangers to stay clean.

“What you have in mind?” The kiss made me want more.

Blue crossed the room and picked up a book on the floor. “Reading,” she said. “It works for me sometimes.”

“I don’t read books.”

“John, if you don’t read you’ll get stuck. Stuck on very few ideas. Stuck on the last opinion you heard. Stuck on stupid.” She sat in the middle of the bed. “Come here.”

I lay my head on her thigh. Blue opened the book and began to read.

The beginning eluded me; I was too focused on her body, the silky patch only a few inches away. I crossed my legs to conceal an erection.

Then the story captured my attention.
Sounder,
that was the title, written by William H. Armstrong. The main character, The Boy, was so poor his parents couldn’t even afford him a name. His father stole a ham to feed his family, the police came and arrested him, shooting the dog, Sounder, on the way out.

I’d seen the movie version, but the book was far more interesting. Or maybe it was the way Blue read the story, her voice clear and even, as if she were reading to an audience.

In the morning I woke up with Blue in my arms, both of us fully clothed, the book still in her hand. I kissed her softly on her pretty lips and got up and got ready for work.

Nine hours later I walked into Blue’s room and an atrocious odor hit me. I thought the commode had overflowed.

Blue was standing over a pot on the hot plate, smiling. “I cooked you a country dinner. Chitterlings and crackling corn bread.”

I looked in the pot at three chitterlings swimming in gray, greasy water. The smell almost gagged me. She had to be kidding. “Did you clean them?”

“That was the hard part. A ten-pound container and only three looked worth keeping. I threw the rest out.” She took a plastic container out of the microwave. Black bumps broke the surface of half the cornbread. “I wasn’t sure if the crackling went on top or you mixed them in the batter. I tried both.”

She wasn’t kidding.

Blue put two chitterlings and a slice of cornbread on a paper plate and handed it to me. “Tell me what you think.”

Hurt her feelings or die of cholera?

The cornbread was soggy with chitterling juice but still crunchy, the cracklings not fully cooked. I put the plate on the dresser. “Delicious. Mmm mmm. Let me wash my hands.” In the bathroom I gargled with Listerine.

When I came out Blue handed me the plate again. “Taste them. I need to know before I cook them again.”

“No,” I said, putting the plate down, “I want to taste you,” and kissed her. Her lips tasted like peppermint. We kissed a long time and then I tried to work her toward the bed. She resisted. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t do tricks, John. I’ll grind, but that’s as far as I go.”

“Grind? What’s that?”

“We do it with our clothes on.” She moved to the bed, lay on her back. “Come here, I’ll show you.”

A long time we grinded, humping with clothes on, the equivalent of handless masturbation. Each time I tried to pull out the package, or pull down her blue jeans, she said, “Uh-uh.”

I got up, had had enough, the package sore and rubbed raw. But for the satisfied look on her face, I’d have told her that people from Arkansas didn’t grind.

Later, we were sitting in a theater watching
Training Day.
Not once in the movie did Denzel grind--the one sex scene he and the girl took off
all
their clothes.
Blue clapped at the end. All was fine with her: she’d grind.

In the Cherokee she said, “You didn’t like the movie, did you?”

“It was okay.”

Blue took my hand and rubbed it against her face. “You want to go home and grind some more?”

No, I’d rather jerk off with sandpaper.
“We’ll see when we get there.”

* * * * *

Three weeks later, I moved in with Blue. It made sense: I was at her place day and night. Blue cooked dinner and I threw it out once her back was turned. Weekends we went to the casino or a movie. At night she read to me, and now we were halfway through
Manchild in the Promised Land
, by Claude Brown.

Blue said Zora Neale Hurston and BeBe Moore Campbell were her favorite authors, and said I should discover my favorite authors on my own. But I simply couldn’t get into a story unless Blue was reading it.

I started sleeping in my shorts, but Blue kept her clothes on, in case we decided to grind in the wee hours of night. We’d grind twice more since the first time, me thinking that it would excite her to do the real thing. Wrong. Painfully wrong.

* * * * *

Three days before Thanksgiving, a Monday afternoon, rain mixed with sleet falling outside, Blue in the bed snoring,
The Price is Right
on the television, the smell of those shitty chitterlings permeated the furniture.

I was bored, actually wishing I was raking leaves, not used to sitting around all day. I eased the door shut behind me, walked to the pay phone in the lobby and called Mama collect. A pleasant surprise, Alfred accepted the call.

“How you doing, Alfred? Mama asleep?”

“Yeah, she is. I’m doing fine.”

“Uh, you didn’t tell her what happened, did you?”

“I’m afraid I did. Blood on the porch. I couldn’t lie to her.”

Shit.
“How she take it?”

“Bad, very bad. She got better, but then that boy come over and asked about you. They got to cussing each other when he told her he was gonna do something to you.”

“Spanky? He come to the house again?”

“He looks like a Spanky, damned fool. Your mama bought a gun.”

“What?”

“Sure did. She waiting and wishing for him to come back.”

My head started hurting. “Alfred, take care of mama, will you? I know it’s my fault, but don’t let anything happen to her, okay?”

“I’ll do what I can. Your mama has a gun. I don’t get in the way of a gun.”

“She’s not going to shoot you, man. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Uh-huh. Another thing, your wife come here and left you a letter.”

“What does it say?”

“Hold on, let me go get it.” He took a while coming back. “It’s in an envelope, you want me to open it?”

“Yes, Alfred, open it and read it to me.”

“Hold on, let me get my glasses.”

I got excited. Doreen had finally discovered the true Dokes, a black militant with a perverse fondness for white furniture. She wanted us to get back together. Dokes’ baby would present a problem…
Hell, we’ll give it to a zoo.

Alfred returned to the phone. “You sure you want me to open it?”

“Yes, Alfred.”

I heard paper rumbling and he said, “Top says State of Arkansas. Then it says Divorce Decree. Says Doreen Dough versus John Dough…”

The phone slipped out of my hand, and I didn’t pick it up.

Blue was still asleep. There was a rock on the dresser, and a small piece in the straight in my hand. I hadn’t smoked in over a month. Blue sat up the second the lighter flicked on. Sheet lines imprinted in her face, she said, “What you doing?”

I inhaled the smoke, exhaled, and said, “I don’t know.”

Blue crossed to me, pressed my head to her breast, caressed my neck, then took the pipe out of my hand and hit it. She gave it back and said, “Damn, you were gaining your weight back.” Pause. “You talked to your wife?”

“No, my stepfather.”

“And he told you something you didn’t want to hear about your wife?”

The lighter flicked but didn’t light, the fluid low. “You got a lighter?”

Blue said, “There’s one in the car. It’s open.” I came back with it and she said, “Your wife the reason you cut your wrist?”

The smoke went down the wrong pipe, made me cough. “I didn’t cut my wrist. A guy stabbed me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I mean, I was hoping you said your wife. There’s a source for the pain it might pass, at least I would think.”

“What pain?”

Blue came over and took the pipe again. “The pain of breathing.”

* * * * *

Thanksgiving Day, a smoked turkey sitting in the middle of a cherry oak table, six people including myself sitting around it, Blue, her octogenarian parents, Doyle and Kathy Hunt, and Gene and his wife, Luann, a petite woman wearing too much makeup and too many necklaces over a champagne-colored column dress.

Blue and I were on a four-day binge, and had smoked a rock in the car before walking up the marble steps to an aqua-green two-story Colonial with brass bars in the front windows. Kathy, in a floral dress with a kimono waist wrap, opened the door and hugged Blue and then me, saying, “Blue, you finally snagged you one.”

Blue said, “He’s married.”

“Oh,” her wrinkled face twisting up, rheumy eyes telling me I was no longer welcome.

She led us across a glossy pinewood floor through the foyer, the living room, well-kept antique furniture there, into the dining room where everyone was waiting.

Doyle, suspenders over a white shirt and black tuxedo slacks, shook my hand, called me Johnny though Blue told him my name was John. The old boy looked good for his age: eyes bright, good posture, a few wrinkles lining his brow, and a little hair left which he combed forward to cover the shine.

Gene, in his high-dollar blue business suit, didn’t shake my hand, didn’t acknowledge Blue. His wife hugged Blue, told her she looked good, asked where she bought her clothes, a red vest over a white shirt, red-and-white striped skirt and red shoes. Blue didn’t say. The woman looked me over head to toe, her expression the same as her husband’s, disgusted, but she let it slide, directing her focus and conversation at her inlaws.

Gene, however, scowled at me as his father said grace, scowled at me as he himself carved the turkey, scowled at me now as he chewed, reminding me of Aunt Jean.

High, inappropriately dressed in jeans and a black cotton sweater Blue had bought for me, I was ready to go, kept looking at the big grandfather clock in the living room.

Just like Aunt Jean, Gene wasn’t courteous enough to wait till everyone finished eating before talking shit.

“John, I seem to have forgotten where you said you worked.”

Putting me on the spot in front of his folks.

I didn’t answer, kept lapping up the watery dressing. Now I knew why Blue didn’t have a clue cooking chitterlings.

Gene harrumphed and Blue said, “He works for David. David McCuen Landscape Service.”

Gene daintly dabbed the corners of his mouth with a red napkin. “A lawn specialist?”

I mouthed “Fuck you,” and he threw the napkin at me and stood up, saying, “Don’t you dare talk to me like that in my parent’s house!”

Luann said, “Gene, honey, sit down. What’s the matter?”

“He know what he said. He’s pretending he didn’t say it, but he said it.” He had that right. “I don’t want him here. He’s not welcome.”

Doyle said, “Sit down! Don’t forget where you are. I’m the only one says who’s not welcome here.” Gene sat down, no longer scowling, looking now as if he were ready to kill. Doyle smiled at me and said, “Johnny, you’re welcome here anytime. You’re the first fellow Blue brought by for us to meet. She needs a man in her life, somebody to look after her.”

Kathy said, “He’s married.”

The old man’s goiter bobbled up and down in his neck. “Married? What you doing with Blue if you’re married?”

Blue said, “We’re cohabitating, Daddy. John is from down south, where you grew up, Daddy. Arkansas, next door to Mississippi.”

Doyle groaned and shook his head, though not hard enough to shake the piece of turkey taped to his bottom lip.

“I’m not married,” I told him. “I was married three days ago. My wife divorced me.”

“Are you planning to marry Blue?” Kathy asked.

“Anything’s possible.” I winked at Blue. “Who knows?”

“What happened to your wrist?” That was Luann, helping her husband point out the negatives.

I looked at the scar on my right wrist and said, “A guy stabbed me.” They were all staring at me, Blue smiling. “I witnessed him beat a man with a monkey wrench, told the police on him. He didn’t like that, tried to kill me.”

Doyle shook his head again, this time sending the piece of meat flying. There was an uncomfortably long silence, no one eating.

Gene said, “You and Blue are a perfect match. Both of you are crazy.”

Later, Blue helped her mother clean up while Doyle and I retreated to the den and watched the Dolphins beat up on the Cowboys. Gene and his wife had gone, leaving abruptly without saying good-bye to anyone.

During halftime, Toby Keith performing, Doyle sipped Southern Comfort from a flask and said, “Blue is fragile, very fragile. Promise me you won’t break her.”

I promised him I wouldn’t.

It was dark when we left with a month’s supply of leftovers. Freezing cold. A sheet of sleet covered the ground but the streets were clear. Blue and I held hands as she drove west on Interstate 70. Passing the Chiefs and Royals stadiums, next door to each other, Blue said, “Thank you, John,” and kissed my hand.

I didn’t respond, thinking about Doreen, wondering if she told Dokes she loved him, wondering if she danced naked for Dokes, wondering if she and Dokes were still doing it despite her belly getting bigger.

Blue stopped at the house where she bought the Escatsy pills and came back with a bag full of them. She swallowed a handful, started laughing and kissed me. From there we went to the casino and she played five-dollar blackjack till three in the morning.

Back in the room, we smoked crack and listened to a Donny Hathaway CD over and over again.

Blue, bags under her bloodshot eyes, said, “John, you wanna grind?”