Numbers (7 page)

Numbers was interfering with their teatime. The girls sat on the floor playing between the full-sized bed they shared and the twin-sized bed their mother slept on. They had dolls, doll accessories, and play dishes everywhere—all or most compliments of Numbers’s winnings.

“Boy, leave La-La and Ta-Ta alone and get from out my room before I have to come back there,” Jenny threatened. Numbers was not finished messing with the girls quite yet. He playfully pulled each of their ponytails before dashing out of the room.

“Maaaa!” the girls cried out.

Numbers was bored out of his skull. His mother had put him on punishment, again, after hearing about what happened at the number spot. She told him that she wanted him to stay away from that place, which was ironic because she was the one who sent him there in the first place.

Crispy Carl and Numbers did hit the number they put in that evening: 108 came out just like that. Straight. Louie didn’t want to pay out at first, but when all the other customers started demanding their money back, he figured it would be cheaper to pay up. Crispy Carl and Numbers were the only winners.

For the last month and a half, Numbers had followed his mother’s orders and stayed out of the spot, but with Christmas approaching he decided to try his luck. When Jenny sent him to the store across Park Avenue to get her a pack of Newports, Numbers thought he’d be slick and put in a quick number. He could have had Crispy Carl place the bet for him but decided it would be quicker to do it himself. He didn’t have time to listen to one of Carl’s stories.

Lady Luck, Numbers would find out, was not on his side. Not only did he miss his number by one digit, but one of his mother’s friends saw him in the spot and wasted no time ratting him out. Now he had been on punishment for the last four days and was going stir-crazy. No TV. No skateboarding. No company. No outside. No fun. His routine for the last four days was school and straight to the house. This time Mom said the punishment was until she said otherwise. While on punishment, he heard that the number spot had been raided again.

Numbers retreated to his room. He had been given his own room right before he turned thirteen.

Bright and early one morning, Numbers came into his mother’s room in a near panic. Jenny woke up to find Numbers standing over her looking confused.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?” she asked, still groggy.

“I don’t know, Mommy, I’m scared.”

“Scared of what?” She opened her eyes wider.

“I’m bleeding white cream from my ding-a-ling,” Numbers answered. He held out his hand wiggling his fingers to show her the sticky goo.

Jenny giggled. “Oh, my baby.”

She’d never really cared much if her son’s father was around or not, but when it came to situations like this, when a boy needed male guidance, she couldn’t help but loathe Lewis for abandoning him. That morning Jenny explained to her son about the birds and the bees, which, Numbers would find out, had nothing to do with birds or bees.

“Dee, come here. I need you to run to the store for me,” Jenny called.

Freedom at last,
Numbers thought, even if it was only for the time it would take to run his errand and back. He glanced at the little clock on his dresser; it showed 5:30
P.M.
He jumped out of the bed and made his way to the tiny bathroom. His mother’s stockings were hanging all over the shower-curtain rod. He gazed in the mirror, picked up the hairbrush that rested on the toilet-tank lid, ran water over the bristles, then evenly stroked his low-cut Caesar do several times from the crown of his head downward. This had been his daily regimen since the barber told him it was the way to train his hair into a beehive of waves. Slowly but surely, he noticed his nappiness was starting to respond. He didn’t quite have the beehive yet, but a few waves were forming. Once he was satisfied with his hair, he dressed in a denim shirt, a pair of Wrangler jeans, and his Li’l Abner boots.

The smell of macaroni and cheese and corn bread filled the apartment by the time Numbers emerged out of the bathroom. His mother was in the kitchen talking to Ms. Lindsay from
the tenth floor. She was one of the lucky ones. She lived in a three-bedroom apartment with her son, Maxwell, and daughter, Tabitha. They each had their own room. Ms. Lindsay was a purebred gossipmonger, always talking about someone or giving advice on someone else’s kids even though her kids were the worst. Numbers often wondered why his mother was even friends with the woman. He didn’t care for her much, but she was an adult so he respected her. His mother always told him that he didn’t have to like an adult, but he better respect them.

Ms. Lindsay was about five years older than Jenny. She was dark-complexioned, five-seven in height, with bushy eyebrows and a mustache she sometimes attempted to shave. Most of the time she wore her hair in a bouffant. She looked liked she might have had a shape before the kids, but now she was more square than anything.

“Hey, Numbers,” Ms. Lindsay called. She was sitting at the dining table smoking a cigarette. “Got yourself in a little trouble, huh?” She asked a question she already knew the answer to, because Ms. Lindsay was the fat pig who squealed on him. Fearing he might say the wrong thing, Numbers said nothing.

Jenny was cleaning fish in the kitchen sink. She was an exceptional cook. Anna Beth always kept her in the kitchen cooking something when she was growing up in Sumter, South Carolina. “Dee, take the five dollars out of my back pocket.” She poked her right hip out so Numbers could remove the money while she continued to clean the whitings. “I need some cornmeal, the big thing of lard, and hot sauce from the supermarket on Myrtle Avenue.”

“Ma, what’s all the fish for?” Numbers asked.

“I’m having a card game, so hurry up back from the store. People gonna start getting here about seven.”

“Can you get me a beer, being that you’re going to the store
anyway?” Ms. Lindsay extended seventy cents to him. “Keep the change.”

Numbers wanted to say no, but his mother would surely think he was being rude and scold him for doing so. Well, at least she was tipping him, Numbers rationalized before bringing his attention back to what his mother had just said.

A card game?

What kind of cards would they be playing: Go Fish, I Declare War, or maybe Crazy Eights? Numbers grabbed his heavy red-and-black lumber jacket from the couch next to the door and his Walkman and headed out. He thought about running upstairs to get Jarvis but decided against it.

The usually crowded stoop was empty. Only a crazy old man named Shakespeare lingered by the building talking to God, himself, or his imaginary friend. Numbers never knew what was wrong with Shakespeare; he just stayed clear of him.

The temperature had dropped considerably on this late afternoon. He zipped his coat all the way up to his chin. The leaves on the trees were all but gone, and even though it was Friday, not too many people were out. Numbers made his way through the projects listening to his
Dana Dane with Fame
album, the song “Nightmares.” Dana Dane lived right above him in apartment 2E. Numbers was ecstatic when Dana Dane gave him a signed copy of his cassette tape.

Numbers walked hurriedly past the back of building 102, past the buildings and nursery on the right-hand side, then past the front of building 117. In the middle of the buildings up ahead was a play structure, monkey bars and a slide, but the kids rarely played there. Mostly the thugs, players, and drug dealers hung out there if they weren’t in front of building 79. Today was no exception. The usual suspects were congregated there, rolling dice, shooting the breeze, drinking quarts of beer, and smoking. Numbers
walked on, making a mental note that on the way back he would take another route.

At the supermarket he picked up the items his mother wanted and waited in line. It was a little busy, and almost twenty minutes passed before he finally paid for his groceries.

“Young man, would you pack my bags?” an older lady behind Numbers requested as he was picking up his package to leave.

Numbers thought about it for a second. “Okay.” He set his bag down on the floor at the end of the counter and began packing her bags. For his trouble he was given fifty cents. Numbers decided to pack a few more people’s bags. Twenty minutes later he’d accumulated $3.85. He wished he could stay until the supermarket closed, but he knew if he didn’t get home, his ass was grass, as his mother would put it. He wondered why he’d never thought about bagging groceries for money before.

The twins were asleep in the room with the door closed. They usually slept through the night uninterrupted, and despite all the noise from the card game taking place in the front, that was still the case.

There were ten cardplayers not including his mother in the smoke-clustered front room of the apartment. The room smelled of fish, marijuana, cigarettes, liquor, and musk. It seemed like everyone was chain-smoking and/or drinking some type of alcohol. Marvin Gaye tunes played in the background, but you could barely hear the lyrics over all the loud talking. To cool the apartment down, the old pull-latch windows were open as wide as they could be, but the temperature inside was still above eighty degrees. The old metal heaters and pipes that were installed in all of the projects put out a lot of heat when the boiler was on.

Jenny had set up two card tables and borrowed folding chairs from various neighbors to accommodate her guests. Five players sat at each table, and the game was poker. Numbers was surprised
to see Crispy Carl among them, dressed in a red suit with black pinstripes, a matching red hat and shoes, looking like the old pimp he was.

“Come on and deal,” Crispy Carl taunted Mr. Mac, taking a swig from his personal bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Numbers, my little man, come over here,” Crispy Carl requested after catching sight of Numbers. Numbers slid his way toward the living room behind the seat of Mr. Simon, who was sitting closest to the kitchen.

“Where you think you’re going?” Jenny inquired matter-of-factly, looking up from her plate. She was standing near the kitchen counter.

“Mr. Carl called me,” Numbers answered.

Mac dealt the cards.

“Jenny, let Numbers come over here and talk to his daddy,” Crispy Carl said, looking at the queen of clubs he had been dealt for his faceup card and shielding the facedown card with his hand. He lifted it just enough to take a peek. Those who weren’t enthralled by the hand they were playing, like nosy Ms. Lindsay at the other table, laughed lightly.

“You wish, you old fart,” Jenny countered. More chuckles followed.

Mr. Mac dealt each player two cards; one facedown and the other faceup.

“I’ll bet three dollars,” Crispy Carl said, leading off the bet with the high card.

“What you got down there, another queen?” Wayne asked. He folded and tossed his hand away. Carl took a swig of his Jack and smiled at Numbers.

“I’ma fold, too. Yeah, he probably do got a pair of queens.” Pearl was the oldest player at the table. She tossed her hand as well.

There were two players left in the hand other than Crispy
Carl—the dealer, Mac, who was studying his hand, and Sybil. Sybil was a very attractive brown-skinned lady, thirty-something, with streaks of gray hair on the front of her head. “Yeah, I’ll call that three dollars, he ain’t got nothing,” Sybil taunted, looking at Carl through her Yves Saint Laurent prescription eyewear.

“I’ll call, too.” Mac tossed his three dollars to the middle of the table.

Numbers stood over Crispy Carl’s shoulder watching the game, not quite understanding what was going on, but Crispy Carl was always willing to school him.

“The name of the game is five-card stud,” he began to teach Numbers. “You can win the hand with the best cards or, like Sybil always likes to try and do, bluff your way through.” He saw the confused look on Numbers’s face. “That means to try to scare the rest of the table into folding their hands by betting big.”

“Whatever,” Sybil scoffed.

Mac dealt the third card to Crispy Carl faceup. It was a 10 of clubs. Now Crispy Carl had a queen and a 10 showing. Sybil’s next card was a queen of spades.

“I could use that queen,” Crispy Carl joked, even though he was serious as high blood pressure.

“I bet you could, Mr. Pimp No More.” Sybil laughed, and the rest of the table laughed right along with her. She now had a queen and an 8 showing.

Mac turned up his second card: an ace of diamonds, to go with his jack of diamonds. The bet was now on Mac with the ace high.

“Okay, that’s what I’m talking ’bout,” Mac gushed with confidence. “The bet is six dollars.”

Crispy Carl slowly tossed a five-dollar bill and a single into the pot, seeming unsure of his bet.

“I’m not bluffing now.” Sybil quickly counted off six singles and another six dollars from her pile of money and threw the whole twelve dollars into the pot. Crispy Carl explained that
the pot is what they called the money in the middle of the table. The bet was now an additional six dollars to Mac and Crispy Carl to stay in the hand. “Let’s see who’s bluffing now,” Sybil said, taunting the two men with a stoic face.

“I wasn’t bluffing either, when I told you I would give you what you deserved,” Crispy Carl shot back at her.

“Shut ya ol’ black ass up,” she countered.

“You like this ol’ black thing,” he said.

Most of the players there knew Carl and Sybil once had a little thing going.

“See there, Numbers, Sybil has a pair of eights, but Mac’s aces can beat those.” Carl was talking as if he was a psychic and knew what Sybil’s and Mac’s facedown cards were, but he didn’t. He was just making a gambler’s speculation. Numbers stood there soaking it all up. Crispy Carl did not react; he just waited to see if Mac would call the bet.

“I’ll call.” Mac smiled, wagering his six bills. Crispy Carl called as well.

Mac turned up Crispy Carl’s fourth card. It was a king of clubs. Sybil’s card was a king of hearts. Mac flipped over a four of spades for himself. Now he had an ace high, jack, and four. The bet was still on him. It was turning out to be a good hand for the house.