Hold Love Strong (12 page)

T
he front of my building had a heavy steel door beneath a rusted overhang only large enough for two people to stand beneath when it rained. The bricks around the door were written on with markers and pens. And initials, profanity, and hearts were scratched into the building's bricks with keys. The door was propped open with a cinder block that had trash stuffed in its holes. In front of it, laughing, and acting in an intimately affectionate fashion, Luscious and her best friend, Qadisha Smith, discussed virtues and existence.

“There ain't no doubt I'm beautiful,” Qadisha said, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head and body to the right. “Cause God made me.”

“God made everyone,” said Luscious. “But some of us is easier on the eyes than the rest.”

They didn't see me coming. Luscious leaned against the doorframe, her feet a little more than shoulder width apart, one leg in the build
ing, one leg out. She stroked the back of Qadisha's arm with the tips of her fingers. Qadisha slid her hand along Luscious's side and left it to rest on her hip. Luscious was just as beautiful, just as holy and praised as she was the day Nice got locked away. But there was something different about her too, something in the way she shunned men's cooing and advances, something self-assured and aloof, something so utterly uninterested and uninvolved. I had heard rumors that Luscious was a lesbian. And word was it was she and Qadisha. Word was they loved each other, that they shared the same bed, and that Nice was out of the picture, no longer in Luscious's heart. But I didn't understand it. Love like theirs, love I had revered, love everyone in the world hoped for; how could it be diluted, interrupted, aimed at another? How could it be trumped, even equaled? And what would Nice say? What would he do if he knew? Or did he already know? Had he been broken by the news in his cell? Had he raged? Or had he lain down and wept?

Luscious hooked her finger in the top of Qadisha's jeans and pulled her close. Qadisha's hip fit between Luscious's splayed legs. Her shoulder pressed against Luscious's cleavage. Closing her eyes, Luscious kissed Qadisha's forehead, left her lips pressed there until Qadisha smiled and playfully pushed away from her.

“And that's why,” Qadisha said, leaning back and putting her hands on her hips. “We one hundred percent almighty! We more than just beautiful. We heaven and holy. OK?”

“Sure,” smiled Luscious.

“Just like Jesus,” Qadisha concluded. “Cause we all is made of flesh and blood.”

Suddenly, Luscious saw me out of the corner of her eye. She stiffened. “Abraham,” she said. “How long you been standing there?”

I had no idea, not even an inkling. I looked at Luscious. I thought
traitor, backstabber, bitch.
I dropped my eyes, then lifted them and laid them upon Qadisha. Contrary to her delicate features, Qadisha was
a warrior with a sometimes clumsy grace. But she was not reckless or righteous. She raised her two nephews because her sister was addicted to crack. The oldest one was in an academically gifted and talented program. The youngest was three, always said please, and he could already tie his own shoes. I was struck by her face, by how comprehensive and thus powerful Qadisha's surety was.

“Where's your cousin?” she asked.

I shifted my eyes to Luscious and thought about my uncle. I hoped that she'd see him in my face, see in me what she first fell in love with, a skinny boy and his basketball. I bounced my ball twice as if, in addition to the sight of me, the sound of a ball bouncing might jog her memory.

“Which one?” I said.

“Donnel,” Qadisha said. Then she smacked the side of my head. “What you looking at Luscious like that for?”

“Like what?” I said.

“Like you thinking something but too scared to say it.”

“I ain't thinking nothing,” I said.

“So where is he?”

“Who?”

“Donnel,” said Qadisha. “Who you think I'm talking about?”

If my eyes were knives then I would have been guilty of stabbing Qadisha in the throat, then standing there, silent, thinking about my uncle as I watched her bleed.

“Ain't you supposed to be smart?” she continued. “I heard you the only nigga in your house that can write. That ain't true?”

It wasn't true. My grandma's penmanship was that of a ten-year-old, but she could write basic sentences. And Eric said he hated writing but, although he couldn't spell well, he could write too. And although my Aunt Rhonda rarely spelled polysyllabic words correctly, my Aunt Rhonda could write also. And I knew my mother could write because
she liked to write poems and songs, lyrics never sung nor put to music. And Donnel could write, albeit always crammed with commas and never with a single period. But I didn't say anything to Qadisha. Even if it was just knowledge, I didn't want her to have anything else integral to my family.

Qadisha thought for a moment, then suddenly realized what my looking at Luscious meant, and her face became molten chocolate, sweet, gooey brown with a blaze beneath.

“So what good are you?” she scolded.

I sucked in, pulling my cheeks in hard like they were rags I was wringing dry with my back teeth. I refused to lash out. I would not give her anything. I thought about my uncle. Then I thought about Donnel. What would he say? Why was he always on the move, always going here and there, always on the way out of our apartment? And when he returned, why did he claim he was nowhere only to soon be going again, and later coming from nowhere once more? I saw Donnel only like this, only in passing. Just like I just saw him on the street. He was there. Then he wasn't.

As if thinking that by keeping their hands waist high and at her side I would not see, Luscious reached out and took Qadisha's hand, wrapping her index finger around Qadisha's. She gave it a gentle tug.

“So tell him we looking for him,” she said, pressing loving yet imploring eyes on me and clearly hoping that I would go away. “Tell him Luscious needs him when you see him.”

I studied Luscious for a moment. I understood the pain of my uncle's absence. And I saw how she had moved on, how when she looked at Qadisha there was no sadness. I looked down. I saw how tenderly she held Qadisha's hand.

“OK,” I said, raising my eyes to meet Luscious's. “I'll tell him.”

P
erhaps I was mistaken. No, I had to be wrong. I stood in front of our apartment door, cursing myself in the hallway's dimness. I couldn't find my keys. I searched my pockets. I turned them inside out. I tried to recall when I last saw them. On the kitchen table? On the couch? On the side of the basketball court? When was the last time I heard them rattle? Had I put them in my socks, tied them to my shoelaces? I checked. No, no, not there. I had no idea. I couldn't recall taking them with me or if I had them during the course of the day. I gave up on finding them. I knocked on the door and listened for any sound, the TV, the radio, someone talking, my mother, my Aunt Rhonda, Eric. I sniffed the air. Maybe someone was in the kitchen cooking? But there was nothing. I knocked on the door again. Still there was only silence. No one was home. I put my back against the door, slid down until I was sitting, and thought about what I should do. I didn't want to go back outside. I was exhausted. And I didn't want to see Qadisha and Luscious again. And although I wanted to see her, I also didn't want to
see Kaya either. Because what would I say? And besides, hadn't Donnel said he would be home in a minute, just after he got whatever he needed from the store? I decided to wait. I believed him not because it was easy, but because it was what I most wanted.

A few minutes passed. Then a few more. Then ten. Then twenty. I scolded myself. What was wrong with me? Cherrie, my mother's best friend, had our spare key. I didn't have to wait. I walked down the flight of stairs and knocked on Cherrie's door. Her television was on. An audience cheered.

“Who is it!” Cherrie shouted.

“Abraham,” I called back.

“Hold on,” she said. “I'm coming.”

Cherrie unlocked the locks from the inside of the door. Then she opened the door and pressed her plump, oily face in the six inches afforded by the chain latch.

“Abraham,” she said. “You know you interrupting my show.”

“I lost my keys,” I said.

“What do you mean you lost them?”

“I mean I can't find them,” I said. “And you got the spare.”

Suddenly, Cherrie's hand flew out from the six inches of space between the door and the doorframe and she snatched my T-shirt from my head. “You stretching it all out like that,” she scolded. “Either put it on right or don't put it on at all.”

Just as quickly as Cherrie took my T-shirt, she threw it back at me and I caught it against my chest.

“You sure I got them?” she asked. “Cause I could swear I gave them to Eric just last week. I guess we can check. Come on. Come in.”

Cherrie closed the door and in the moment it took her to unhook the chain latch I pulled my T-shirt on over my head and realized that I had not seen Cherrie and my mother together for a few weeks. Cherrie had not been to our apartment nor had I seen them together outside, nor
had I answered the phone and heard Cherrie and the familiar, syrupy yet percussive salutation—
Abraham, what's going on, where your ma at?
—she chanted when looking for my mother.

The door opened and Cherrie stepped aside so I could walk in. All of the lights in her apartment were off and the ivory shades were drawn over the windows so the only light in the apartment came from the TV. It laid a stream of pale green across the room and onto the small glass coffee table and the couch. On the walls, there was an old poster of Harriet Tubman, a painting of Jesus, and a cross hammered above the TV. Even in near darkness it was clear that Cherrie's apartment was pristine. She kept all of her windows down so the dirty air and gray street dust couldn't come in but that also made it feel as if there was no air in the apartment. I didn't understand how she could breathe. But it was Cherrie's place and she never had a problem making it clear that it was her apartment and you could get out if you didn't like it so I didn't say anything.

The theme song for the
Ricki Lake
show filled the apartment. Cherrie closed the door and locked the chain latch, the door, and the deadbolt. Then she pushed me out of the way, ran past me, and planted herself in the middle of the pale green light on the couch. Cherrie was a boulder of a woman with a boulder for a head, boulders for legs, boulders for arms, and two boulders for breasts.

“Check the jar on top of the fridge,” she said, pointing to the kitchen, her eyes trained to the TV. “This one's too good. It's a repeat. The guests is crazy as all hell.”

Cherrie shifted her weight to one side and pulled something from beneath her rear. It was a small Bible. Cherrie put it on her lap. Then, without taking her eyes from the TV, she searched the couch for something else. She ran her hands over the cushions and between them. Reluctant and frustrated, she stood up, stepped away from the couch, and glared at the floor, the coarse grey carpet a deep, black pool. She huffed, then she dropped to her knees. She slid her hands beneath the couch, dragged and
rubbed in circles. The sound was grating, as if her hands were as hard as the carpet was. I stood a step inside the door and watched her. What was she searching so feverishly for? Cherrie stopped. Then she looked at me over her shoulder.

“Abraham,” she scolded, “I ain't the TV. Don't just watch. Come and help me.”

I crossed the room and looked down. “What you looking for?”

“It's black and silver,” said Cherrie. “My pen. It's one of those that has a bunch of different colors that you can click down.”

Cherrie ran her hands through the couch cushions once more and found what she wanted.

“It's just a pen,” she said, holding it up for me to see. “But it was my mother's lucky one. Pastor Ramsey gave it to her with the Bible.”

Something clicked in Cherrie's head and she looked at me, her face a sad, round stone in the TV's green stream of light. “Abraham,” she said. “How's Jelly doing?”

Although I had just thought about the changed relationship between Cherrie and my mother, I was stunned by the question, by the expression on Cherrie's face and the fact that here was Cherrie, my mother's lifetime best friend, asking me, a son who rarely saw his mother, how she was. Yet I answered her automatically.

“She's good,” I said.

Cherrie considered my answer. Was I right? Was it just a wish? Would she believe me? Cherrie put her free hand on her knee and with a sigh and soft groan, she pushed herself up from the floor. Then she looked at me and tried to make a smile out of distress.

“Come,” she said, motioning for me to follow her into the kitchen. “Even if we can't find the keys then at least let me make you something to eat. You Abraham, so I know you must be hungry.”

M
y mother was nowhere to be found, not at the park, not at anyone's barbeque or picnic, not with friends in front of our building, not sitting on one of the benches in the concrete courtyard, not anywhere along Columbus or Washington avenues. It was the beginning of summer and I had just completed the seventh grade. My mother was missing for three days going on four. Then it was after midnight and my grandma and Rhonda were in the kitchen talking about my mother. They argued. They shouted. I was in bed. Donnel lay next to me. Eric was on the mattress on the floor. Everything could be heard through the walls. They didn't hold opposing opinions. They were in agreement. So they argued because they didn't want to agree, because they hoped that the other might say something that was more true than the truth they knew. No my mother couldn't be. No, not her. Not crack.

“What else could it be?” demanded my grandma.

“And the way her arms is all clawed up,” my Aunt Rhonda yelled. “What kind of rash is that?”

“She told me she caught an allergy!” my grandma shouted. “And she ain't never had no allergy in all her life so what she suddenly allergic to?”

“She looks like she been eaten alive!” burst my Aunt Rhonda.

“And what would eat her in the first place?” asked my grandma. “Jelly has become nothing but some bones and a whole heap of lies!”

Who could sleep with all of their shouting? I wished I could. But I was not even tired. I was only anger, a silent rage with ears in bed.

“A,” Donnel whispered. “You awake?”

I didn't answer. I hated him. Where had he been all day? And if my mother was a crackhead what had or hadn't he done to make it so? Lord help me if she got the crack from him. So I couldn't speak. Because I was afraid to. Because inside my throat was a rope that pulled my toes to my nose each time I breathed. And if I opened my mouth, I was sure that all of my insides would fall out and I would break wide open and weep. And I refused to weep. I would not. At least not in the blue darkness of the bedroom with Donnel and Eric present. If I was to cry I would cry alone. Maybe in the morning as I walked to school. But then again maybe not. I had begun to set decrees upon myself, rules that I believed would quicken my maturity, hasten my manhood, make any sensation related to pain and loss vanish with the rest of childish wants, things, and feelings.

Donnel propped himself up and looked over my shoulder. He put his face close to mine. His warm breath pushed on my neck and cheek.

“A,” he said. “You really sleeping?”

Again, I didn't answer. I kept my eyes closed, and although I felt them quivering I tried to keep my lips as still as possible.

Suddenly she was home and my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda were shouting at her.

“Jelly!” said my Aunt Rhonda. “Where you been?”

“Tell us now!” shouted my grandma. “What's going on? What you got yourself into?”

My mother denied everything. And she was professional about it. She didn't stutter, hem and haw. She never circled back and reconstructed her previous position. She made everything sound simple and plain. She'd lost weight because the summer was coming and who didn't want to look good. And the rash was a rash. And she was no doctor. So how was she supposed to know what the rash was from? And her hair? Well, shit, she just hadn't had the time. With all the running around for the last few days. Did they know she was working? Yeah, she got her old job back at the McDonald's. In fact, that's where she was coming from.

“My work clothes?” she said. “I leave them at work. I ain't trying to walk around dressed like Ronald McDonald.”

“Look at yourself,” my Aunt Rhonda hammered. “Jelly, God damn, you look like one of those crackheads you used to make fun of!”

“Think of Abraham!” shouted my grandma. “He don't deserve no mother like this!”

In a swirl and rush, Donnel threw the sheet off and stormed out of our room, opening the door, then slamming it behind himself.

“Abraham's sleeping!” he shouted. “Fuck! Can't you all respect that!”

“Who you talking to?” my grandma exploded. “Who you cursing at like that?”

“I'm cursing you!” Donnel countered, his voice not the voice of a teenager but the sure, huge booms of bombs and big brick buildings slamming to the ground. “I'm saying you all need to shut the fuck up!”

“Get out! God damn it! Get out!” burst my grandma.

Then I heard slapping, a hand slamming against the bare skin of a flat back and chest, a muscular neck, the hard bones of a face. Who
was hitting whom? Was it my mother? Was Donnel hitting my Aunt Rhonda? Had they ganged up on my grandma? Suddenly, the door swung open. I played dead. I was afraid the fight, the war was coming for me. I lay on my side, my hands knotted between my neck and chin. I focused on keeping my eyes closed in a way that they would look like eyes look when people are really asleep. I felt light on my face, saw red on the back of my eyelids. I heard someone open a drawer and slam the drawer closed. I heard someone snatch something else, a sweat jacket. I recognized the sound of its zipper smacking against the armoire. It was Donnel.

“Fuck you!” he shouted. “Jelly's a crackhead! Why you even asking her about it? And you all crazy! You all go fuck yourselves!”

“D,” begged Eric. “D, don't go.”

Donnel leapt onto the bed and kneeled behind me. He planted his hand on my shoulder. Then he leaned forward over me.

“A,” he whispered, his breath a warm thump on my neck. “I know you ain't sleeping.”

There was a second of nothing, a second of tranquility, a silence so utter and complete I felt my heart beating in my chest and the blood pumping through my arms and legs. Then Donnel slammed his lips against the side of my face. He kissed.

“I'll be back,” he said. “Don't worry.”

I squeezed my eyes tight. He's lying, I thought, lying like my mother; lying like everyone else. They're all liars, I thought. Every single one. Even me, I thought. Even if I don't know it.

M
y mother and I sat on the couch, saying nothing to each other and with a foot of space between us. On the television, a chorus sang
the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
while fireworks exploded above New York City's skyline. Outside, bottle rockets, firecrackers, and sporadic gunshots whistled and popped, and a tangle of many songs from numerous stereos climbed high into the sky and fell into our apartment, stumbling, smashing, wielding cacophony. It was as hot and steamy in our apartment as it was outside, and the rotten stench of the hot garbage overflowing from the Dumpsters behind our building was joined by the smell of barbeque. My mother was sweating. Her once rich brown skin was moist, taut, and sickly, rife with olive undertones and mauve stains beneath her eyes and in the barren valleys that were once her cheeks. She sat like a boxer, exhausted in a corner. Her arms were flaccid in her lap. Her torso was concave. She blinked once, real slow and real
hard, as if it took all of her focus to close her eyelids and then all of her strength to open them again. Regardless of what my mother did and who she was, I loved her. But that is not why only she and I were home on the Fourth of July. We were stuck. That is, my grandma was at work, Donnel and Eric and my Aunt Rhonda were somewhere celebrating independence, and my mother was approaching being clean for one week. So in addition to lacking the fortitude to refuse the temptations that were certainly outside, she had promised my grandma and my aunt that she was going to stay in. As for me, I promised my grandma that I would stay with her. Yet that is not the only reason I was stuck on the couch. No, I was also stuck because I was caught between wanting to barge into my mother's brain and rearrange what she craved and wanting her to get away from me forever. So I was paralyzed by the impossibility of one feat and the guilt created by the hate that made me desire the other. How could she have become who she was? How could she be so vicious to herself?

She wiped her hand down the side of her gaunt face. “Abraham,” she said.

I couldn't bring myself to look at her.

She put her hand on my leg and shook it just a bit. “Abraham,” she repeated. “Get some ice from the freezer.”

We weren't drinking anything but I didn't ask why she wanted ice. I looked down and noted the contrast between her bony hand and my brown leg, and I considered if I should leave her, if when I stood and turned my back she would bolt for the door. Because of hope, I quickly decided that she wouldn't, and if she did in fact try to flee I surmised that she was too weak to get to the door and out of the apartment before I stopped her. So I stood and walked into the kitchen. The light switch was to my left and I turned it on. Dishes were in the sink. A few rapidly rotting bananas were on the counter. Fruit flies hovered above and landed on them. My grandma's birds chirped. Their feathers were
slicked. To combat the heat, they bathed themselves in their drinking water. I opened the freezer and took out a plastic tray of ice. Then I turned off the kitchen light and returned to the couch, putting the tray between us. My mother took a deep breath, grabbed the ice tray, and twisted it with both hands. An ice cube popped out, bounced off the couch, and landed on the floor.

“Get that,” she said.

I got the ice cube from the floor and my mother twisted the ice tray again. She was so weak her arms shook before another cube popped out and landed on the floor just like the first.

“Shit,” she said, frustrated by her weakness. “Why don't they make it easier to get out?”

I wished I had an answer, but nothing came to mind. I got the second ice cube off the floor and held both in one hand. Where I could put them? If it had been any other day and I had been with any other person I would have either taken the ice cubes into the kitchen and put them in the sink or left them on the floor to melt. But because I felt as if I could not trust my mother, and because I had given her one opportunity to flee but I would not give her two, and because I was shocked by the fact that she barely had the strength to twist the plastic ice tray, I remained on the couch. Finally, my mother was able to dislodge then pick an ice cube out of the tray with her fingers.

“Here,” she said, holding the ice cube out to me. “Rub it on my neck.”

I took the ice cube and my mother tilted her head down. Then I touched the ice cube to the back of her skeletal neck and she shivered.

“Shit's cold,” she said. “Go slow.”

I slipped the ice cube up and down and back and forth, making figure eights around the crest and trough of her vertebrae. I still did not look at her. But as I watched the TV, the bursting of fireworks, their iridescent and luminescent rain, I thought about her. How had she become so
shrunken and trapped inside the shell beside me? She took deep breaths through her nose and sighed softly. Tears filled my eyes. I began to cry silently and the flashes of fireworks on the TV became neon streams falling before me. I still held the ice cubes in my other hand. Their cold made my palm ache. As they melted, water seeped between my fingers and dripped on the couch, still one of my grandma's most prized possessions. The ice cube I slid along my mother's neck melted quickly as well. Water ran in rivulets over her skin and it soaked the collar of her shirt.

As if she'd heard a voice, my mother lifted her head and stared at the TV. Then she looked at me. Her eyes were magnets. Mine were metal filings. There was nothing I could do, nowhere to go, no way I could thwart their pull. Finally, I looked at her too.

“Abraham,” she whispered. “You crying?”

The question made me empty. I was speechless. I didn't move. I couldn't even blink or twitch.

“Oh, Mister Man,” she sighed.

My mother cupped her hand against the side of my face and gently pulled me toward her. I fell like an ember, slow and steady until my head landed in her lap. I closed my eyes. Could I sleep and dream everything away? I heard the fireworks' finale on the TV, the pops, booms, and bangs. The ice cubes melted in my hands. The ache they created dissipated until it became a faint throb, then the silent flapping of wings in the distance. My mother stroked my head. She massaged my earlobe between her thumb and index finger. How could we explain our pains to each other?

“We gonna be all right,” she whispered. She let her hand rest on the side of my face. “Promise. Just don't never give up.”

I placed my hand on top of my mother's hand. “I won't,” I said. “I swear it.”

T
here were bodies stricken with a rampant, devastating emptiness; lovers and beloveds; I knew them, all of them, if not by name then by face; if they didn't live in Ever then they lived around; they had children in my school, children in my class, children who played at the park with me; they were everywhere, like gore splattered around the wreckage of the room, naked and fully clothed, tangled and strewn about, trounced upon, torn and tussled and turned inside out; to my right, to my left, all over the floor; mashed and mangled in the narrow halls; leaning, lonely shadows on the wall, crying and muttering to themselves; hollering, bleating like battered sheep; brothers and sisters and mothers and aunts and uncles and grandmas and sons and daughters. It was the day before my thirteenth birthday. I was in the crackhouse on the corner of Columbus and Pine, but I could have been in any of the crackhouses that riddled Ever Park and its surroundings. Rats and roaches and militias of dumb, stumbling maggots the size of Tic Tacs and pinky toes; broken bottles,
crushed aluminum cans, gaping holes in all of the walls; candles, melted to nubs, seeping and sagging on the floor, singed slivers and shards of wood, cardboard, makeshift campfires were here, there, everywhere. The windows were boarded. The door was bolted, soldered shut. There were holes large enough for a person to squeeze through in the ceiling. I'd squeezed through. Reluctantly, street light did the same, falling through the room, splintering and bathing my brown skin a muddy, blood red. I was on a mission, governed by an irrefutable responsibility. My mother had relapsed. I hadn't seen her for a week; not outside, not inside, not far off in the distance, stumbling or dragging herself in circles like a bird with a broken wing.

I breathed because I had to, because it was an involuntary bodily function, not because I had the strength. I covered my nose and gasped through my mouth, the rancid stench, a taste of fetid diesel that scraped across my teeth, burned my tongue, and planted a viscous phlegm in my throat that hung from my tonsils and dripped an imminent devastation into my lungs one splatter at a time.

“Mom,” I shouted. “Mom! You here?”

She smoked crack as if the smoke were a rope to rapture. Unapologetically, greedily, with an unabashed determination, she smoked it wherever oxygen reached. Rain, sleet, or snow. Morning, noon, and night. Had she sold her body for crack? Would someone knock out her front teeth or tear her earring from her ear, leaving the lobe cleaved and floppy? All of these things happened to crackheads. All of my mother, including the parts neither she nor God had ever dreamed, was gone.

We had fought with her. We had told her no more, not now, never, not one more time. We cried. We hollered. We begged. My grandma took me to church. We held hands and prayed for my mother. We called upon Jesus and Mary Magdalene. We looked to Psalms for guidance. We looked to Proverbs. My grandma Scotch-taped inspirational quotes on the refrigerator to give her, to give us strength. But did it
matter? When Donnel was around he said it wouldn't. I stayed silent and thought against him. My mind kicked and punched and screamed for him to stop. I thought everything, including it, was his fault, an idea too sick to say, too ghastly to put my breath into. He swore my mother was a fiend and she was a fiend for good. He said he'd seen it before, a thousand times over, she was not my mother, but just like the rest of them, a crack whore whose sole goal was death no matter if she knew it or not, no matter if it came quick or slow. Of course Eric had agreed with him. Of course he just repeated what Donnel said when Donnel was not around. And my Aunt Rhonda had said as far as she was concerned she didn't have a sister anymore and sought sanctuary in the arms of this and that man to keep her from changing her mind.

As for me, I had done three things. One: I went to school. I sat like a piece of furniture in class. I stared out of the window, put my head down on the desk. I did my work when I felt like it. I passed it in rarely and most often never. I didn't raise my hand, not once. My mother, she whose sole responsibility was to love me unconditionally, proved I held less value than a small chunk of baking soda and cocaine. So what did I have to ask or contribute? So I had stopped talking. I had become mute. Two: I played basketball. Up and down the court I went. I practiced for hours. I pounded and shot until my fingernails split from their beds and bled my fingerprints all over the ball. And three: I searched for my mother. And I refused to give up. I scoured Ever. I swept and memorized every inch. I walked every desire line a crackhead could travel. Each time I found her, I dragged her home. Once, I carried her over my shoulders like a sack of wet cement. She had crack. But seeking was my addiction.

So I was relentless, tireless. And I swore I would always be.

“Mom,” I shouted. “Ma, where you at?”

To my left there was a couch, soiled and pocked with burn holes. To my right there was a broken wooden chair covered with a bloody pillow. On the carpet there were spots that had been burned away and dark
stains the shape of countries and continents. I wanted to disappear, blink and vanish. Just somewhere, anywhere was everywhere I wanted to be. But I couldn't. I promised. And what would happen to her if I broke the promise? The question was projection. That is, my real fear was: what would happen to me if I let go?

There was moaning. Suddenly, I became hopeful. Was it her? Could it be? I looked to my left. A boil-faced, gaunt man had his hands on his hips, his eyes closed, and his head tilted back as he proudly accepted a blow job from another man. But it wasn't he who was moaning. Breathing hard, sighing
Oh Lord…Mmmm. Oh don't stop!
was what he said. I shifted my eyes farther to my left. There it was. A woman. She was on the floor. She moaned louder.

“Mom?” I said.

The woman shot me a look. It wasn't my mother.

Some kids go to the zoo. Some get to blow out candles on birthday cakes. Some get money from tooth fairies. I was where I was and I had been there before. I had been propositioned in that house, begged from, spat upon. I had been prayed to, pointed and laughed at, ordered to leave. I had been clung from. I had been pushed. I had been stared at, devoured. Once, I was attacked by a fat man with three teeth who was so weak his blows were no more than the last gasps of faint wind, and there, in that room, with one swipe, I sent him sprawling to the floor.

I planted my left foot between splayed legs. I stepped on an old soda can and it crunched. I called her name. I said my grandma wanted her home. I said Rhonda was crying. I told her Nice had written her a letter and we were waiting for her to come home, open it, and read it aloud. Over and over again, I lied. I said Donnel had won the Lotto, that Eric was in the hospital, that my father, her first and only love, had come back for her; it was amazing, crazy, as if he fell from the sky. I didn't know how. I didn't ask him where he'd been, why he'd gone. That
was for her to do. All I knew was that he said he was back because he loved her. He loved us. He always had. I shouted everything, anything she might want, wish, and need to hear. Come on, I pleaded. It was me, Abraham, her only.

“Mom,” I shouted. “Mom!”

Never did I think I wouldn't find her. I was never too tired, never too afraid. Never was I without the unwavering belief that, as if by some great holy, unbreakable connection, like a divining rod finding water, I knew where she was. I walked down a narrow hallway. There was a door to my right. I stopped. I remembered that once I found her there, her legs pulled to her chest, her chin tucked between them, rocking left and right as if teetering upon an invisible edge. I gripped the handle, but before I opened the door, I considered calling her name again. Then I decided not to. Sometimes I called “Mom!” and ten women answered in different tones and manners. Some cried and thanked God a son had come for them. Some cursed and threatened me. Others laughed, cackled, and shouted “yeah” over and over again.

I turned the handle. I pushed the door in. Garbage was piled around the edges of the room, moldy clothes, tangles of brass, wires, and bent copper pipes. A dozen candles were in the middle of the floor. A few were lit. I took one step into the room and stopped. Suddenly, every pore on my body released a flood of sweat. Then I vomited. Not all of me, but something specific, some kind of invisible line that ran from me to my mother broke. Suddenly, I only hated.

Numb, I turned around and left, climbing out of the same hole in the ceiling that I dropped in through. This was the last time I searched for her, the last time I shouted, “Mom! Mom! It's me, Mister Man, Abraham.”

Before dawn the next morning, Donnel woke me by whispering my name and shaking my shoulder.

“A,” he said. “Wake up.” He tapped my head with his finger. He pulled on my ear. “Come on,” he said. “Meet me in the kitchen.”

I was annoyed and groggy. I didn't want to speak to him, let alone look at him. Just like I hadn't found my mother, I hadn't seen him the previous day. So I'd gone to sleep cursing him just as much as I cursed her.

“What?” I complained.

“Just come,” he said, his voice childish and impatient. He shook me once more. He got out of the bed and headed for the bedroom door. Then he stopped and turned around.

“Come on,” he begged. “I got something for you.”

Donnel left the room and I lay in bed and despised him for a few moments more. Why couldn't he just leave me alone, I wondered. Why couldn't he just disappear and stay disappeared? And why couldn't my mother do the same? But then, that was not what I really wanted him or her to do. I wanted them always near. So I sighed, rolled out of bed, and dragged my sleepy and forsaken-feeling self from the darkness of our bedroom to the kitchen, squinting in the flourescent light until my sight was no longer covered by a bright white blur.

Donnel stood with his back to me and he leaned over the birdcage, whistling, clicking his tongue and talking to my grandma's birds. He poked his finger into their cage. His back was fan shaped, as if beneath his skin were not muscles but folded wings. On the kitchen table was a black backpack with a big red bow on it. He turned around and pointed at it.

“Happy birthday,” he smiled. “I bet you thought I forgot. Go ahead. Open it.”

“Open what?” I said.

“The backpack,” he whispered. “Unzip it. Look inside.”

Inside the backpack was a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a small white box. I pulled the box out of the backpack and Donnel quickly came to the table.

“What's this?” I said.

Donnel smiled, then shrugged.

I opened the box. Inside was a thin gold chain with my name on it just like the gold chain that my grandma had bought me and my mother stole and sold.

“Where you get it?” I asked.

Donnel thought for a moment. Then he zipped the backpack closed and slid it across the table to me.

“You always asking questions,” he said, his face and voice tight like the skin of a brown drum that does not beat or pulse but hums no matter how quick and hard it is pounded. “Just take it. Put it on. And if grandma asks, tell her you found the old one under the bed or something.”