Breaking Night (22 page)

“God,” she said, biting her fist. “Damn right.” She turned the volume way up.

“Pass me that,” I said, reaching for her nail polish. Holding the jar, I worried that Daddy would somehow see me all the way from University Avenue and think I was being girly. I shook it back and forth in motions that matched the grating noise of the guitars, then twisted the top open and shouted over the music. “Yeah, I would so do him, too.”

Sam and I spent every day together. Ours was a hasty, overnight bond that we both swore would last until we grew into old ladies, pushing ourselves around some resort in Florida with walkers. In the meantime, we planned the next fifty years of our lives together. Right after high school, we would hitchhike to LA, where we’d become successful screenwriters, then eventually move to San Francisco when Hollywood became lackluster, after making more money and visiting more countries than we ever knew existed. Our neighboring houses would be on that winding hill in San Fran that I’d seen in Daddy’s postcards, and in Rice-A-Roni commercials. After our children (three each) grew up and moved away, we would buy big, old-lady sunglasses to wear throughout our sixties, and we’d tan on beach chairs in our connected backyards until our skin turned into living leather. New York would have to do for now.

In a way, though, what we hardly realized was that we’d begun our shared lives already.

Little by little, Sam began filling up drawers at Brick’s apartment, packing her sketch pad, tapes, shoes, and clothing into sloppy piles that mingled our things completely over time. Together, we wandered Bedford Park at all hours of the night. I always suggested she take us by Bobby’s, where we threw pebbles at his window. My heart would thump, waiting for him to appear. TV light flickering from his darkened room, he’d lean out to whisper to us, throw down bags of chips, and talk about wrestling or his latest video game endeavor.

Sometimes he’d have Myers and Fief over, and they’d sneak out to join us in the parkway, where we’d make fun of teachers and take turns telling stories. I told them about my adventures with Rick and Danny, about the fire at the old folks’ home and how Rick got electrocuted.

“I just told him ‘test this out,’ and he did it. His fingers were burned like toast!”

Sam’s favorites were the stories of the serial killers Daddy told me about. She liked hearing what psychologists believed motivated them to commit their crimes. It thrilled me to see my new friends get as scared as I was when I first heard Daddy’s stories, or to see them crack up in hysterical laughter at the very mention of Rick’s name.

But mostly, Sam and I were alone. We made rounds to the all-night diner on Bedford and Jerome, where we befriended the Mexican night manager, a stout, often drunk man named Tony. There, we fended off the cold and shared bits and pieces of our lives over plates of French fries smothered in mozzarella cheese and gravy, the diner’s ancient speakers crackling Mexican boleros through the air.

On those nights we spent together wandering around outside, Sam confided in me some very difficult things that were happening in her home. The exact details of these events she shared with me are private; however, I will say that she needed to be away from home, for her own good reasons. And the things she shared inspired me to want to take care of her, out of my growing love for our friendship, for the sisterhood we were building together. If she felt she could not go back home, I told her, she could always stay with me.

I began to sneak her in for sleepovers, without Brick knowing it. He had firmly warned me not to have any guests past ten o’clock, but given that he went to sleep precisely at nine thirty, the rule was easy to break. We took a bed sheet and strung it along the side of Lisa’s and my L-shaped bunk bed. Then, with an old paisley quilt from Brick’s hall closet, I cushioned the ground for Sam’s resting spot. All we had to do was open and then slam the front door in the evening, to give the impression she’d gone home, then tiptoe back through the room and conceal her. With Sam’s legs tucked beneath the top of the bottom bunk and her torso sticking out beside my head, I would pass her half my TV dinners, whole glasses of Pepsi, Oreos, or any of Brick’s endless rebate supplies.

I found that as wild as Sam could be, there was also something puppy dog-like about her, as though threaded through her tough, eccentric outbursts were subtle indications that she needed caring for. It was in the way she could walk into an elevator and never press a button, but just wait there for me to do something; or how when we crossed streets, she never navigated, but walked blindly by my side, in total trust. If I made one bad move, I thought, a truck would flatten us both; it was all in my hands. She was fine with that, and that was fine with me.

At night, under my bed, sometimes I could hear her crying softly. But whenever I asked her what was wrong, she’d brush it off, say it was just her allergies or that I was hearing things. But I knew better. Sometimes, when she snored in her sleep—a cute little whistle—I’d reach down and touch a piece of her hair, run it through my fingers, stare at how, in the darkness of our room, the moonlight turned it glossy as polished onyx. I will keep her safe, I told myself.

One evening, while I poured myself soda in the kitchen, muffled shouts came from Brick’s bedroom. No one responded to him, yet the muffled noises continued and sounded like half of a conversation. As I walked over to investigate, bits and pieces became decipherable.

“In
my
own goddamn house,
I
can’t even find a clean fork . . . didn’t ask for this . . . if you or those lazy girls of yours . . . group home . . .”

Was he yelling about unwashed dishes? All around me, dirt was ground into the floor; newspapers, yellowed with age, were scattered across the room; empty boxes of doughnuts and potato chips trailed from his bedroom as I walked an obstacle course around his crates of supplies. Brick complaining about a mess seemed insane.

Besides, my mother hardly ever dirtied a fork. The closest Ma came to eating food were the cocktails and sedatives she took randomly throughout the day—she never had an appetite anymore. Even if I put hot bowls of New England clam chowder on the nightstand (her favorite) or cut the crust from her tuna-fish sandwiches, the bowls were returned chilly and full, the tuna untouched. Sometimes I did leave piles of dishes, and I knew that was my fault. But could he really be screaming at Ma about it?

Through the cracked door, I peered in and saw that he was waving around a roll of paper towels, screaming, frantically sweeping it over Ma’s depleted body as she lay motionless, one arm protectively drawn over her head. He was in his underwear, a white T-shirt straining to cover his large, hairy stomach. A pile of dirty forks, which he must have collected himself, was clumped on the nightstand. He raised the paper towels over his head and grumbled, “You hear me, Jean? Do you?” thunking the roll on Ma’s head and face. I darted inside.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. “She’s sick. Don’t touch—”

Before I could fully step into the room, Brick grabbed the door. “Good-bye,” he interrupted, slamming it with a force that broke against my foot, scraping the skin on my toes so hard that the cuticles peeled back in chunks. A surge of pure heat seared through me as I hobbled on one leg, holding my damaged foot in my hand. I almost screamed in pain, but held it in for Ma’s sake. Black nail polish had chipped off on three of my toes; red blotches were rapidly forming under the nails in its place. At the sight of it, I tried, unsuccessfully, not to tear up.

Shoes would have been too painful. I tore open the hall closet and found a pair of oversized slippers, put them on, and stormed out, hysterical. Outside, the sky was transitioning from sunset to night. I started down the street, only half sure of where I was headed. When I passed strangers, I turned my face away, blocking my tears from their sight. Thoughts broke loose, swarming in my mind like a jumble of angry bees.

Ma was in a living hell and as much as I wanted to, I could not protect her. He was impatient with her at a time when she needed gentleness, when she needed someone to take care of her. And he didn’t need or want us there either; we were a burden. That much was obvious. It didn’t matter anyway because all I had to do was miss enough school and I’d be sent back to the home and Brick could be done with me. Mr. Doumbia was waiting if I messed up.

“You’ll end up just like your father, a no-good junkie drop-out,” Brick had taunted me once. This one day I couldn’t find the toilet paper, only I was sure we hadn’t run out because there’d been an enormous economy pack. Later, Brick screamed at me about flushing the toilet after we went, then he revealed the pack on the top shelf of his closet. He had
hidden
the toilet paper because someone had forgotten to flush. Not that I didn’t know already that something was off about him, but I realized then that he was as crazy as Grandma. Now he was putting Ma through a small hell over a pile of forks when she couldn’t possibly be weaker. The man was controlling and unstable, and Ma was powerless against him. I had to be away from it, from him, from Ma’s disease. It was too much.

A light sheet of rain drizzled down as I crossed Bainbridge Avenue, the wind whipping against my jacket, chilling me but seeming to strike fire along my foot. Across the sidewalk, people toted briefcases or clutched umbrellas on their return from work. I stumbled past them with my head held down, hiding my tears.

It hit me then: I couldn’t remember the last time Ma and I had had a conversation. All we’d been saying to each other was “Hi” and “Bye.” Our last real talk may have been five months ago, when she signed me up for Junior High School 80.

The thought sent more tears streaming down my face; I couldn’t control it. Up until that moment, I told myself that I was handling her illness better than this; I prided myself on it. But avoidance allows you to believe that you’re making all kinds of strides when you’re not. I thought I had dealt with my feelings of pain over my mother’s AIDS, but the image of her lying helpless under Brick’s rage brought it all back. Like an exposed nerve, I felt the reality of her sickness jabbing at me. AIDS just wasn’t ever talked about in my family. Ma and Daddy didn’t talk about it, not even Dr. Morales brought it up, and certainly Brick didn’t talk about it. He watched Ma take her medication, could see her getting weaker, but he still made demands on her. Judging by the condom wrappers I found lying around, I am sure that for as long as Ma could manage it, they were even having sex.

No one was talking about her AIDS, even as it was eating away at her in front of us. Yet it was as tangible and present as the shaky foundation we stood on with Brick. Ma’s rapid deterioration and her sickness, like the sickness of our collective denial, was real.

Two weeks before, I’d been sitting in the kitchen alone when Ma burst in, crying, trembling. She went straight for the top of the fridge without noticing me, reaching for her fat brown paper bag of medication. The eruptive entrance and her raw, obvious pain had frozen me still. I watched her struggle with a childproof top. I didn’t dare speak for fear of embarrassing her. When the bottle finally popped open, the pills spilled out over the table, landing with dozens of little clicks against the wood. With great difficulty, Ma plucked up two, placed them on her tongue, and with one deep inhale, she paused her crying just long enough to swallow. In doing so, she caught sight of me.

“Ma” was all I said, one perfectly useless syllable, and nothing more.

“You’re too young for this,” she told me, raising her hand even as it shook. “I’m sorry. You’re too young.”

I stared back blankly and just watched her go, the white pills still scattered across the dark tabletop.

I’d never been too young for anything—not for the drugs, or for Ma’s graphic stories of teen prostitution—but I was too young for
this
, for AIDS. I absolutely hated myself for proving her right, for doing so little to soothe my mother when she needed me most. I was there for everything else, but when Ma was fighting AIDS, I had put a distance between us. Or, had she taken a distance from me?
Something
happened to us, because after she left University Avenue, after the group home, and now as she was getting sicker, we just weren’t close anymore. And now I had Sam, and my days were enlivened with cutting school, dreaming about the future with my friends, and a new vitality I’d never known before. What it boiled down to was, the more joy I experienced with my friends, the harder it was to come home to Ma and an apartment filled with her sickness. The harder it was to be near her dying. It was so much easier to not come home at all, to be with my group.

“Selfish,” I said out loud to myself, harshly wiping tears from my face. On 202
nd
Street, I looked up at Bobby’s living room window, at the warm light glowing from it. I thought of his smile, the way it lit his large eyes, made them so inviting. I headed upstairs.

Paula, his mother, served us pork chops and rice in front of his bedroom TV. It was tuned to wrestling, which made Bobby throw his arms up and cheer every few minutes, in a way that kept revealing his bare stomach and the trail of thin black hair running up to his belly button (I was careful about looking). Back in the hallway, I had wiped my cheeks clean and taken a few deep breaths before knocking, to make sure he didn’t have a clue.

“I like your room, Bobby,” I said cheerfully. But then I remembered, even as the words escaped my mouth, that I’d told him that already when I’d first walked in.

“Thanks,” he said, being gentle with the slipup, gracious as he had been when I’d surprised him at his door. “That’s Mankind,” he told me, pointing at the screen to a giant, leather-masked guy whose thick flesh glistened with sweat. The guy grunted into the camera, flew off the ropes, and landed squatting on his opponent’s back, sending a roar up from the crowd and into the room as Bobby flung his arms in the air again. I had no idea how to participate in the topic; Sam usually kept up the wrestling conversations.

“Yeah? That’s cool. . . . Is he, has he been fighting for a long time?”