Miracle's Boys (3 page)

I flipped through the channels for a while, then sat back against the couch and watched music videos. I couldn't really tell one from the other. Most of them had some guy standing there rapping and a lot of pretty girls dancing around him. Or the guy was driving a fancy car with pretty girls in it. Once in a while the guy would be in a swimming pool with pretty girls. That was the one on now—a guy with a lot of rings on his fingers rapping to some pretty girls in bikinis.

Newcharlie liked listening to music and said he was gonna be a rapper. Aaron said he was gonna be one, too. Either that or a car salesman. I guess he figured he'd sell cars to rappers who would fill them with pretty girls. Thing about rapping though, Newcharlie said, is you gotta do it now. Most rappers weren't much older than him. Sometimes he and Aaron sat in our room all day long, making up rhymes and slapping each other five when something came off sounding right. But I hadn't seen them taking any real steps—like making some tapes and calling up a radio station to ask for a few minutes on the air.

I turned the volume down low. The apartment felt big and quiet with nobody in it. It's not that big—just four rooms: me and Newcharlie's room, then Ty'ree's room right next to us. His room used to be Mama's. Then there's a long hallway leading to one big room that's both the living room and the dining room. If you go right, there's a dining-room table and chairs. If you go left, there's the couch and stuff. The door to come in and out is between the couch and dining-room table. You walk through the living-room side to get to the kitchen. You have to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom.

Newcharlie had put plants in all the windows—spider plants and ferns and some other ones I don't know the name of. He'd learned a lot about plants at Rahway. It was strange to see him messing around them on Saturday mornings, taking off the dead leaves and giving them water. Sometimes he put these little sticks of plant food in the dirt. Once I even caught him talking to them, telling this sickly-looking fern that it better toughen up if it wanted to make it in the world.

The sun had come out again, and I watched it bounce off the plants and sprinkle itself over the dining-room table. When I closed my eyes to just a sliver, I could see Mama sitting at that table, playing with her eyebrow the way she did when she was worrying, her hair coming loose from its braid. I watched my ghost mama for a while. She looked peaceful sitting there even if she was worrying.

“Hey, Mama,” I whispered. “Can you make some chicken for dinner tonight?”

Mama looked over at me and smiled, a quiet, far-away smile. I blinked and she wasn't there anymore.

I got a thousand dollars in my pocket,
the guy in the rap video was saying. I leaned back against the sofa and watched him do a sort of swim-dance around the girls.

After a while, I heard Ty‘ree coming up the stairs. He always whistled the same song—a song our mama used to sing to us called “Me and Bobby McGee” about a woman hitchhiking with her boyfriend in Louisiana and how free she felt whenever she played her harmonica. When Ty'ree sang the words sometimes, it made me want to get a harmonica and get out onto the road. Maybe see a sunset. Once Ty'ree took me to Central Park and we watched the sun go down over the lake my daddy got hypothermia in. It was real pretty. Pretty and sad. Most times, though, it just sets and then it's night and what you notice is the day and the night—not the sunset in between. On the highway you probably get all four parts—the sunrise, the day, the sunset, and the night.

“Yo!”Ty'ree yelled.

“Yo back,” I said, holding up my hand without turning my head. I felt Ty'ree slap it and smiled.

“Where's your brother?”

I shrugged.

Ty‘ree sat down on the couch beside me. He was tall and skinny-looking but not really. When he wasn't wearing a shirt, you could see all his muscles. But with his clothes on he looked skinny. He used to have locks, but he cut them off when he started working full-time, and now his hair is short and neat like an old man's even though he's only twenty-two. He leaned back against the couch and loosened his tie. I guess Ty'ree's like our daddy. He works and pays the rent and buys groceries and stuff. After Mama died, the people at the publishing house let him start working full-time. Now he's the mailroom manager there and says the work isn't so bad, but once in a while people blame you for stuff that isn't your fault. Ty'ree says it's not even worth getting mad about really. He says that's how it is in the whole world, people always looking for someone else to blame, so he might as well get used to it.

“Where's your brother, Laf?” he asked again.

“Just left.”

Ty‘ree looked at me, a slow smile coming to his face. He had the best smile in the world. Everybody said so. When he smiled, it made me think about when I used to go to church, how I'd sit there staring at this stained-glass window of Jesus with all the kids around him. Jesus was smiling and the kids were smiling and everything seemed peaceful and right. That's what Ty'ree's smile was like. Peaceful and right. Once I heard Mrs. Williams who lives downstairs call him St. Ty‘ree, and I heard Ty'ree laugh and say,
But I ain't dead yet, Mrs. W.

“That what he said to tell me?” Ty'ree raised his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head and glued my eyes to the TV.

“Yeah, right!” Ty'ree rubbed my head and I smiled, taking a swing at his hand and missing.

“He really did just leave, T—like maybe a half hour ago.”

“He say where he was going?”

“Nah.”

Ty'ree frowned. “Boy better not be out there getting in any more trouble, that's for sure. And you better not be getting into any trouble either.” He tapped the back of my neck.

If Newcharlie got into trouble again, they'd send him off to someplace worse than Rahway. The social worker said that she'd also have to send me either down south with Aunt Cecile or into foster care, ‘cause if Newcharlie got into trouble again, it meant Ty'ree couldn't handle us.

“You hear me, Laf?”

“Do I
look
like I'm getting into trouble, man?!”

“Looks can be deceiving, li'l brother.”

“Well, I'm not. I'm not Newcharlie and I'm not getting into trouble. Just sitting here watching some TV, that's all. A little TV never hurt nobody.”

Ty'ree looked at me for a moment, then smiled again.

“Well it
didn't.
Not like watching a video's going to teach me how to hold up a candy store.”

“Hey, we don't need to talk about that, all right?”

I nodded. Our house was full of stuff we didn't need to talk about.

“How come you ain't outside, Laf?”

“First you tell me don't be getting into trouble, then—”

“Little outside never hurt nobody,” Ty'ree said, mimicking me.

I tried not to laugh but couldn't help it. Ty'ree could always make me laugh.

“PJ and Smitty visiting their cousin this weekend,” I said.

“Out in Brooklyn?”

I nodded. Me and Smitty had been friends forever, been in the same class since third grade. Him and his little brother, PJ, lived right down the block, and we all hung out once in a while. But sometimes Smitty'd get to asking questions about Mama dying—stuff I didn't care to talk about.

“Can you make chicken for dinner, Ty?”

He jutted his chin toward the kitchen. “I read your mind. Took it out the freezer before I went to work this morning.”

“You gonna fry it?”

“Yeah.”

We sat watching TV for a while. Ty'ree wasn't really watching though. He looked like he was thinking deep about things.

“You thinking about Mama?” I asked.

Ty'ree shrugged. “Not really. Kind of, I guess. Why do you ask?”

“ ‘Cause I'm always thinking about her.”

“Me too.”

Me and Ty'ree stared at the TV, feeling Mama somewhere nearby, and the house and my head chock-full with things we weren't allowed to talk about.

NOBODY KNOWS WHERE CHARLIE GOT THE GUN he used to hold up Poncho's candy store three years ago. Not even Ty‘ree. When the cops showed up at our house that night, Mama and Ty'ree were sitting at the dining-room table. Ty‘ree had just cashed his check from the publishing company where he worked part-time, and Mama was filling out a money order for the rent. Ever since I can remember, Ty'ree had sat with Mama at the table, the dim light from the floor lamp in the corner turning them both a soft golden brown. While Mama filled out the money order and figured out how to pay some of the other bills, Ty'ree made grocery lists and school supply lists and added and re-added the cost of everything. Some evenings he'd sit clipping coupons for the cereals we liked and the laundry detergent Mama used. He'd put these in an envelope on top of the refrigerator and take them down when he and Mama sat at the table, figuring and re-figuring.

That's what they were doing the night the cops knocked on our door looking for Charlie.

I was sitting in front of the television watching the news, because on weeknights Mama'd let us watch only one hour of regular television and then as much news as we wanted. I didn't really care for watching the news, but it was better than nothing.

Charlie had told Mama he was going to an after-school program to get help with his math homework. When he came in at seven that night, the news was going off and me, Mama, Ty'ree, and the cops were all waiting. Charlie had been too dumb to get rid of the gun. The cops found it and two hundred and fifty dollars in his pockets. Charlie was twelve and a half. Too young for real jail. So they sent him to Rahway Home for Boys.

It was one of the few times I'd ever seen Mama cry.

I turned and eyed Ty‘ree now. He was leaning against the back of the couch with his eyes closed. I turned the TV down a bit more. I had been twelve for only three weeks but it felt like forever. Every day Ty'ree found a way to remind me not to end up like Newcharlie. But I wasn't Newcharlie. I was Lafayette. I had a bit more sense in my head.

I could hear kids running up and down outside in the street and some girls playing jump rope. I heard a fire truck go by and a little kid crying for his mama. We live on the sixth floor. If you hang out our window and look way over to the left, you can see Central Park, the very edge of it near the ice-skating rink. You can see the tops of the trees—they were turning all different colors now. And you can see lots of cars. If you look to your right, you can see the George Washington Bridge. Early in the morning you can hear the traffic coming over it. Right across the street is a bunch more buildings like ours—old gray-and-beige buildings with lots of floors and lots of apartments. Years and years and years ago the buildings used to be fancy, Ty‘ree says. But not anymore. Now they're just buildings filled with people getting by. That's what me and Ty'ree and Newcharlie were—people getting by.

“Ty'ree,” I whispered. “You asleep?”

Ty'ree shook his head.

I looked down at the remote control, then back up at the television.

“W's up?”

“Can you tell me something?”

“Maybe,” Ty'ree said sleepily. “If I know it.”

I tried not to think about Newcharlie's face when he said the words, when he called me Milagro killer.

“Can you tell me about when ... when Mama died?”

Ty'ree frowned, then slowly opened his eyes. “It's Friday night, Lafayette. Go play some ball.”

I shrugged. “Don't feel like it.”

“It's gonna be winter soon—then it'll be too cold to be hanging.”

“Said I don't
feel
like it.”

“What do you want to know about it?” Ty'ree asked. He sounded tired. After a moment he put his hand on my knee. I wanted to put my hand over his but didn't.

“Just ... like ... like how come?”

“You know how come. She had diabetes. She went into a insulin shock.”

“But ...
why?”

“ ‘Cause she didn't have enough insulin in her. Her body just—just sort of shut down.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Then what happened?”

Ty'ree sighed and leaned back against the couch. “You found her the next morning,” he said. He sounded real patient, like he was talking to a very little kid. “She hadn't got up to fix your breakfast. You were in the fourth grade. You always liked oatmeal in the morning. You tried to wake her up to fix you some.”

“Where were you, T?”

“I'd left for school already. I'd just graduated the day before, and I was going to pick up my diploma and say good-bye to people.”

“And Newcharlie was at Rahway, right?”

Ty'ree nodded. “He'd been there for two months when Mom died.”

Once Mama had said to me that time is like a movie—something you watch real close wanting to catch every line, every action, every moment. Then it passes and you feel like no time passed at all. She said that when her parents died, time didn't stop the way people always say it does. She said it just became more
precise
—every minute, hour, day mattered that much more. Charlie had been in Rahway for two months. There were four days between the time I found her and the day we buried her. The morning I found Mama, the clock beside her bed said 7:44.
Mama,
I'd whispered.
You're oversleeping.
And now years have gone by—like no time at all.

“You remember the last thing you said to Mama, T?”

Ty'ree smiled. “I told her to make sure that when she ironed my green shirt, she didn't put any startch in it. I didn't like starch in that shirt for some reason.”