Leaving: A Novel (11 page)

Love smiled, and his high, round cheeks shone in the light of the candle. “You sure are hungry. Didn’t anybody teach you manners? You’ve got the sauce all over your chin.”

“Take your stupid chicken, then.” Li’l Pit chucked the bone through the rusted security bars still locked to the inside window frame. “I don’t need nothin from you, you funny-talking gray boy.”

“Don’t trip, dog. Don’t trip. You hungry, that’s all I’m sayin.”

“What you laughin at?”

“Nothin.” Love shook his head, but then he did start to laugh. “I just recallin you in the lot today, yelling up ‘East Side. East Side.’” He looked Li’l Pit in the eye the whole time he spoke. “You like one of those short Li’l Gs, ain’t scared of no Mac Daddy. ‘East Side.’ You crazy, man.” He bent over laughing, and his brother laughed too. “That’s why you a pit, like me. It doesn’t matter how little you are if you’re unpredictable. Even big people afraid of a little, uncontrollable dog.”

Li’l Pit stood up and danced; his head jutted forward and back like a pigeon’s, his hand out in front of him in the East Side flash. He rapped:

Yeah I’m Li’l Pit

Don’t fuck with me

I am

The Mac Daddy

My brother is

A punk OG

My daddy up at

Santa Ree.

Love shook his head as Li’l Pit sat again on the ground. “You crazy, dog. You crazy.” He looked away to the bars on the window. “You know our daddy ain’t up at Santa Rita no more, don’t you?”

Li’l Pit cracked his neck and then looked at the food on his plate. “Sure.”

“He out in some backyard, toe-up.”

“I know.” Li’l Pit dipped his index finger into the mound of mashed potatoes and sucked off a scoop.

“You remember him?”

“I met him when I was just a kid.” Li’l Pit scooped up more potatoes with his finger. The light of sunset cut through the bars onto the sickle-shaped part in his hair.

“That’s a tight fade you got,” Love said. “I’m gonna get me a wasp right here over my ear.”

“By who?”

“Myself.”

“Give me a skull and crossbones right on the back.”

“You don’t need none of that shit. You too young to be a playah. You should be in school. I’m gonna take you to Prescott next week and set you up.”

“No you ain’t.”

“I’m gonna send you to college.”

“No you ain’t.”

“You’re gonna be a computer scientist.”

“No I ain’t. I’m gonna be a ballah and have me a cherry red Impala.”

“You gonna be toe-up, that’s what you gonna be if I catch you bangin.”

“I ain’t got to do what you say. You ain’t my daddy. I ain’t gonna go to Prescott. I’m gonna kick it wit you and my homies. Yay-eh. I’m West Side now.” Li’l Pit stood up and danced again, poking his head back and forth, this time holding up his fingers in the West Side flash.

I gotta hoo-ride

’Cause I’m West Side

Gonna have pride

’Cause my daddy done died

But now I’m West Side.

“I ain’t gonna let you be down with no punks,” Love said.

“You down.”

“No I ain’t.”

“Yes you is so.”

“Well I say I’m not.” Love stood up and went to the window to see if anyone was walking around outside. The street was full of tired men and women returning home from work, but the crew was nowhere to be seen. As the sky darkened, a long pink cloud turned gray.

Li’l Pit rubbed his chapped hands over his naked shoulders, which stuck out of his jersey like two thin pencils.

“I’ll get you some blankets and a shirt,” Love said.

“How come you don’t take me in the house?”

“Shoot, dog. I can’t just take some strange niggah into her place.”

“I ain’t no stranger.”

“You is to her.”

“No I ain’t. I came here for Mama once and almost got my shoes took. I ask her for Mama’s dress and she give it to me, the yellow one, but it don’t fit Mama neither way, and she just sell it for a rock. Anyhow, she know me. She my Nanna too.”

“She just got used to being my Nanna last month, dog. You think she want two of us crazy kids wreckin up her place? ’Sides, you got all that lice all in your head. So you got to stay out here a while.”

Li’l Pit looked down at the ground lit by the candle. In the dirt lay the remains of someone’s crack binge, a half-burnt matchbook, some tinfoil, and an empty box of Arm & Hammer baking soda.

“That’s all right. I been use to it anyhow.” He reached down and picked up a sheet of newspaper and wadded it up. He held it over the candle’s flame until it caught fire. The boys’ faces glowed orange as the ball of paper burned toward Li’l Pit’s hand. He looked up at Love. The flames reached the tips of his fingers, but he didn’t move. He held it for a second more, then threw the ball under the collapsed walls of a baby crib a few feet from them.

Love shook his head. “You ain’t got to prove you hard to me.”

“I ain’t tryin to prove nothin. I just is.”

“Course you is, you my blood.”

They watched the flame lick the edge of the crib’s post and then die away. Li’l Pit picked up the candle and walked over to the post. He held it under the wood until the white paint crackled and caught fire.

“Now!” Li’l Pit said triumphantly.

“That’s a shame.”

“What’s a shame?”

“It gets out a some big ole fire way back, and now you go and light it up.”

“Yeah, well, some things was meant to burn up.” He held his arms out and warmed them over the small fire. Beige moths raced between the shadows flickering on the walls.

“Some moths look like bees and wasps,” Love said. “So they won’t be eaten in the day. You know what I’m saying?”

“I think you one of them funny niggahs,” Li’l Pit said.

“Just cause I got some learnin don’t mean I can’t beat your ass.”

“Here it is, then.” He stood up and bent his butt toward Love. “Come on an beat on it.”

“I’m gonna get them blankets before you set your own nappy lice head on fire to keep warm.”

“That’s what I thought.” Li’l Pit lowered his behind.

Love climbed over the fallen railing of the stairway and out through a hole in the wall. He crossed Cranston, unhooked the fence, and climbed the stairs of the red Victorian.

Ruby sat in the rocking chair in the living room, looking out the front window. She wore her suede cowgirl outfit, light brown chaps and matching jacket with long leather fringes. She held a black hat in her lap. The room was quiet and the curtains still open. Love met her eyes when he came in but turned around quickly, closing the door and locking it. He walked by her to the stairs, his hands in the pockets of his white jeans. He climbed the first step, then turned to her.

“Ain’t you gonna ask where I been?”

“Will it stop you from going?”

“No.”

“Then why should I waste my breath?”

Love turned and jogged up the stairs, then stopped again halfway. “You got another blanket I could have?”

Ruby rocked back and forth a few times then let out a sigh. “You know your mama ain’t gonna do nothin but sell it.”

“It ain’t for my mama.”

“I try to get her to a program. Long time ago.” Ruby looked at the coffee table. “She lower than low. She ran away from me, you know. But I won’t have her in this house till she clean.”

“I told you it ain’t for her.”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Everyone else been pulled away from me. You what family I got. But you gonna do what you have to do. I know that. She your mama.” Ruby put her hat on the table and stood up. “I’d rather give it to you than have you steal it.” She went into her room and came out with a green blanket, satiny on the edges. Love came back down the stairs and took it.

“Just don’t you steal from me. That’s the one thing I won’t stand for—that’s what your papa done. Remember, you asked me and I gave it to you.” Ruby sat back down in the rocking chair.

“An where your shoes?”

Love looked down at his feet as though he hadn’t noticed. “I lost them.”

“You what?”

“I lost them.”

Ruby shook her head. “How you gone lose your shoes right off your feet? We can’t afford to be given everything away.” Love opened the front door.

Ruby yelled after him, “Now don’t you give her those loafers, you hear. Those shoes ain’t yours.”

Love took the blanket back across the street. The crib was still burning in low blue flames.

“Look at this,” Li’l Pit said. “I found myself a bed.” He lay curled up in an open cardboard box the size of a desk turned on its side, his feet sticking out of the bottom. Love laid the blanket over him.

“I’ll tell her tomorrow. Then we can get your head cleaned up and we can stay in the same room.”

“That’s awright. I don’t mind. I got myself a room here.”

“I’ll come get you in the morning.” Love climbed through the wall and over the stairwell again. He stopped in the darkness outside on the street and listened. He could see the crew under a streetlight at the corner liquor store. The guy with the braid and his wheelchair-bound homie with the snake were laughing next to a woman in tight red satin shorts and fishnet stockings. He watched them from a distance until the wind blew and chilled him.

Before he stepped off the curb, he heard Li’l Pit calling to him from inside the burnt house, or maybe singing again. He went back to check on him, and through the hole in the stairs he saw Li’l Pit lying on his stomach inside his box, banging his forehead against his arm and grunting in a monotonous drone, like a car engine struggling to turn over: “Nuh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh.”

*   *   *

THE NEXT MORNING
Love took his usual hour to fix himself up after showering, just as he had at Los Aspirantes. He applied lotion to every inch of his body, rubbing circularly from his wrist to his shoulder, his ankle to his waist, and then carefully greasing the grooves between each finger and each toe. He doused himself in cologne, tipping the bottle against his neck, his chest, and his underarms. He cleaned out his ears with Q-Tips, brushed and flossed his teeth, and then began to dress, laying out each T-shirt on his bed above his white jeans until he narrowed his choice down to two outfits. Then he tried on each shirt twice before coming to a final decision, a red Bull’s jersey. He slipped on his loafers and then went back to the bathroom to fix his hair. He picked it out and sprayed on conditioner until it glowed.

He had to wait for Ruby to leave for her cleaning job. Love was supposed to get himself to school. After breakfast and another expedition to the bathroom to wash his hands, brush his teeth again, and reconsider his hair, he put on Easton’s leather jacket, which he’d found going through the closets. Then he went outside to check on Li’l Pit in the burnt house across the street.

Li’l Pit sat in his cardboard box, the blanket over his legs, playing steamroller on his lap with two empty cigarette boxes. Love stood by the hole under the stairs and gestured to him with a flick of his head.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“You’ve got to get ready.”

“For what?”

“For school.”

“I ain’t going to school.”

“Well, you want something to eat, don’t you?”

Li’l Pit nodded.

“Well, come on then.”

Li’l Pit stood up and threw the boxes onto the ground.

The inside of Ruby’s house stunned Li’l Pit. The living room was clean and spacious under its high ceiling. The light through the curtains made the room glow softly, as if gold were hidden under the surface of all the wood. He stood silently and put his hands on the blue quilt tucked around the top of the couch. Everywhere were items of comfort and value, soft things to lie on, exotic things to steal.

“I’ll fix us something to eat,” Love said and went into the kitchen. Li’l Pit felt drawn around the room like a magnet. He studied the seashells around the base of the potted plant on the coffee table and the black stone elephants sitting by the record player. When Love came back in the room with two bowls of cereal, Li’l Pit was standing at the far wall, looking at the black-and-white photographs of Corbet and Elise, sliding his hand along the wood frames.

“Sit down here.” Love spread red-knit place mats on the table, and his brother sat in one of the tall-backed chairs. He grabbed one bowl and started shoveling the food into his mouth. Love pulled the bowl away.

“I’ll let you say grace,” Love said. Li’l Pit shook his head and stared at the bowl. “All right. Close your eyes. Thank you for this food we are about to eat and for taking care of us and taking care of our grandmother and the rest of the people in our family. Amen. Say amen.”

“Amen.”

“I mixed the Frosted Flakes with the cornflakes so you get some of the good stuff with the healthy stuff.” Li’l Pit pulled the bowl back and ate without looking up.

“Now, you’ve got to chew with your mouth closed. And don’t drink the milk out of the bottom. And when you’re done, you’ve got to brush your teeth so they don’t fall out.”

Li’l Pit finished the cereal, picked up the bowl, and drank the rest of the milk. “I ain’t brushing my teeth,” he said.

“You’ve got to.”

“It hurts.”

“Then you got to use your finger and some toothpaste and rub it all around.”

Love took his brother into the bathroom and squeezed toothpaste onto his finger. “See. Don’t use too much. Now just stick your finger all around in there.”

When they were done in the bathroom, Love made sure Li’l Pit washed his dish and put it on the drying rack, the way the counselors had him do it at Los Aspirantes.

“Now you’re ready for school.”

“No I ain’t.” Li’l Pit backed up into the corner against the sink and the refrigerator. It was clear there would be a struggle if Love insisted.

“Then what you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want to play hoops?”

Li’l Pit shrugged, which was good enough. Love went upstairs and got the ball from the closet.

“Where the hoops at?” Li’l Pit asked.

“You’ll see.”

They walked out onto the street and toward the train yard. At the end of the last block they rounded the corner into an alley, the backs of houses and garbage cans on one side and, on the other, a tall concrete wall hiding the train tracks. The hoop was a blue milk crate with the bottom cut out, nailed ten feet up on a telephone pole. Love looked up and down the alley, then, seeing no one else around, nodded and dribbled toward the pole, moving as best he could in his old loafers.