On the Come Up (16 page)

Well, what we gonna do then.

What the fuck, AnnMarie … You so special, you gotta know what we doing. You can’t just hang with me. You got to be
doing
something.

I’m just asking, ’cause if we go to Angie’s house, they gonna have food, music—

Nah, nah, nah. Me and Raymel got something.

What the fuck you talking about, me and Raymel. You just said, Come over. Since when you got plans with Raymel.

Ain’t got nothing to do with you. If you wasn’t always thinking about yourself maybe you see I’m trying to put something together.

Darius left that to hang in the air.

Trying to confuse her with his bullshit.

AnnMarie hesitated, then she said, Well what if I go out there myself, then you and Raymel can come later, you know, when you done with your thing.

Darius tsked. Raymel don’t know nobody out there, he ain’t interested. You so stupid sometime, don’t even know why I bother. Then he hung up the phone.

Fuck you, she thought. Y’all never leave Far Rock anyway, don’t know why I bother asking.

She took the train by herself, late in the evening, sun dipping, nearly gone, turning the sky an electric blue. The house was on
Kingston Avenue. She found it easy, and went around the side where the music was coming from.

Angie hugged her, told her she look nice, come on in, come on back. Weed in the air,
I’ll be missing you …
blasting from the speakers. AnnMarie said, I love this song. And she didn’t care she didn’t know nobody, she start singing like Faith Evans, Angie’s mouth dropping open. She said, Dang AnnMarie, I didn’t know you could sing. Then they start dancing, everybody dancing, the whole backyard filled with people having fun. Wings and dogs cooking on the grill. A case full a wine coolers. Star at home safe and sound, AnnMarie went ahead and took a sip.

She left at midnight, Angie and Mayfield walking her to the subway, saying it ain’t safe out here, all the thugs lurking. Mayfield’s arm around Angie’s shoulder as she told AnnMarie about a dance competition she trying out for—if you a finalist, you get to dance backup in a Def Jam video.

Wow, AnnMarie said. That’s cool.

Yeah, Mayfield said, kissing Angie’s cheek. Tha’s my girl.

AnnMarie took the train all the way home, thinking about Angie dancing, tossing her baton and catching it the way she do. A melody flowing, AnnMarie slipped her feet out of her shoes and rubbed her toes together. She pictured Star swaddled in a blanket, eyes closed, breathing. Dancer, singer, drum major, flag girl. Which one she gonna be.

Just a stupid ol’ thing that started around a couple words, turned into taunts about how people from Far Rockaway be mad stupid.

Melody tsked. She said, I’m not from Far Rockaway and I say
it’s bleeding
too. Why does where you live make you stupid? How is your neighborhood an indicator of intelligence.

AnnMarie was nodding ’cause Melody be mad smart like that. She could cut you down if she want to.

But the Crown Heights kids just looked at her, then bust out laughing, all a them, all at the same time laughing in her face. One kid said,
How is your neighborhood an indicator of intelligence
 … in a fake white-person voice and Melody ain’t even white. She’s Puerto Rican, both sides a the family.

AnnMarie had to step to that boy. She didn’t care he was bigger, bumping her shoulder like she need to back the fuck up.

Melody with a hand on her arm, saying No, AnnMarie. Leave it.

But AnnMarie heard herself say,
Huh-uh
 … This punk-ass bitch gonna insult you like that. Come at you with some bullshit. Fuck you, she spit.
What you gonna do? I fight you right now
.

And in a deep part of her mind, she wondered what she was doing. She a grown mother now. What the fuck she saying. She hadn’t been in a fight in two years, if you didn’t count Darius.

All the kids pressing in, shoving their bodies together in a tight circle, adrenaline pumping, the boy slamming his chest into hers
but hesitating about taking the first punch. And when Maya and Dean broke through the circle, AnnMarie was aware of the relief she felt, Dean’s voice lifting above the mayhem saying,
Okay, okay. What’s going on, what’s going on here
.

Nobody said anything for a minute. Maya standing there like she superfly, hands folded over her chest, her eyes cutting across their faces like a mother you don’t want to cross. Some of the kids start to scatter but Maya said, Don’t nobody move. A couple kids tittered but they stayed put. Ain’t got nothing better to do, AnnMarie thought. A fight always good for something.

Sonia said, We were just talking about whether you say
it’s bleeding
for when it’s hot outside or when it’s cold.

And then they start coming at us with
you stupid
’cause a where you from, AnnMarie said.

Dean sat down on the bench. He laughed. But that’s good—is it bleeding hot or is it bleeding cold …

He said, Why don’t we put it in the movie.

All the kids stood there dumb.

Huh?

What?

We gonna have a fight? On camera?

No, no, no, no, no … You girls discuss it.

Discuss it?

Talk about it … The three of you will be walking and one of you says something like
It’s too hot out here
and the other one says
Yeah it’s bleeding
. And you say
Wha—? You don’t say it’s bleeding hot, you say it’s bleeding for when it’s cold
and you kind of argue—you go back and forth but it’s too hot to argue so you just kind of let it go. Then you stop at the ice-cream truck and all you guys over here—and he pointed to each and every one of them Crown Heights kids—you’re getting ice cream too. You’re at the truck getting ice cream. Do you see? Do you see how it will work?

So they did the scene, walking through the courtyard, the
three girls from the movie, Crown Heights kids by the ice-cream truck, mad quiet, listening to the lines and waiting for their cue. And they only had to do it three times—Bobby walking backwards, the camera up on his shoulder, Albert there with his boom mic off to the side, giving her a wink and a thumbs up when they wrap that shit out, and she felt happy inside, sitting back eating her ice cream—Dean bought ice cream for all the kids out there that day and AnnMarie was about to tell him about Blessed doing the same thing a long time ago but she thought, Nah. I’m good. Right here, right now, staying in the moment with Sonia and Melody and all the other kids whose names she didn’t know but who’d come up with a scene about bleeding without spilling a single drop.

August came and went, another birthday gone. She turned fifteen that year and felt proud, opened up a bank account, first bank account for the Walker family. Put the movie checks in, signed her name on the back the way the teller said. Drew cash money out, paid down the Con Ed bill for her mother, bought a Rocawear outfit for Star—a all-white jumpsuit with button snaps and white booties, soft as velvet. Dressed her up and took her out in the stroller—she’d outgrown the infant one, pushing the new blue-and-white-striped Maclaren Techno up the block. To the grocery store or over to Niki’s—AnnMarie feeling certain that everyone who saw them pass would know she was a good mother, doing it right.

Yeah, she’d often think. Making the movie was fun. It was mad fun, like her life had finally sprang open and even when it came to an end, crew wrapping up cables, light stands returned to the crate, big-ass camera tucked back in its cushioned box, she held on to that good feeling.

It took her a month before she discovered the roll of film she’d lost in the bottom of her makeup bag. Got them developed and sat on the couch looking at pictures with Blessed. Her mother smiling as she pointed out Sonia and Melody. Angie, Maya, Dean,
Albert—the last day of the shoot Albert shaved that Fu Manchu off. Looked like a entirely different person.

The new me, he’d said.

She’d call up the other girls, say Heyyyy, what up, what y’all doing, how you been. They’d ask about Star, and she’d tell them how she trying to sit up, grab on to every little thing, drooling, clapping her hands together. Melody started work full-time in a office and Sonia, right away that girl got cast in another movie. A movie about a white girl starting up at a all-black school. Sonia got the part of the new best friend. AnnMarie said, That’s nice, Sonia. I’m happy for you. You deserve it. And they’d reminisce about all the fun they’d had but she felt lonely sometimes, missing the rhythm of those days—missing Darius too. He slept over once in a while, keeping clothes in the closet but mostly he out. Telling her he busy doing this that the other thing—saying he getting ready to MC at this block party, that club, talking about putting a mixtape together for a record label. By now, she didn’t believe him. Knew it was mostly bullshit—things don’t go his way, he’d drop into one of his moods, coming over, wanting to mix it up. Like the time he popped up, wanting to get some. She said, I ain’t in the mood, Darius, but he pushed her down on the bed anyway, got a knee between her legs and spread her wide.

Other times he’d be his self, weed on his breath. Drifting in with takeout, or a new mixtape he said he made special for her listening pleasure. He’d say, Where my baby at? AnnMarie would turn and look at him. Check his face before she took a step. There was the occasional shopping bag. Pull the ribbon loose, she’d open up the boxes to find Puma and Baby Phat and Tommy outfits nestled inside. Tiny shoes made of real leather, little socks with lace around the ankles and beanie hats in baby pink and yellow and green.

Late October, she got a call from Ida B. Miss July said, Hello AnnMarie, we’ve been trying to reach you.

Miss July told her she ought to come by, get her records taken care of, think about her GED … She said they got a life-after workshop—like a reunion with the other young mothers, share stories, birthing stories and how to get by. AnnMarie said, Thank you, Miss July. I be there … But she never went. The idea of that place was like a step back instead of forward—picturing that long metal table and the sleepy feeling that had always crept into Room 5. There’d been the slow girl. Crsytal. AnnMarie tried to picture it. Do she want to sit next to Crystal? Hell no. She wanted to talk to Dean and Sonia and think about the movie and what was around the corner. She knew they was in the edit room, putting all the scenes together on a machine Dean called a Avid.

She’d call him up. She’d say, How’s it going? Is it done yet? How do it look? Is it good, what’s happening? When’s it coming out in the movies?

Dean’d have to cut her short, saying Patience, AnnMarie. Patience.

In November she missed her period. She didn’t think nothing of it at first ’cause her periods had been spotty after she gave birth, sometimes blood, sometimes no. But when she went to the clinic for Star’s six-month checkup, the clinic lady asked her how she feel. Clinic lady said, Star is healthy but how are you, Mom? Anything you want to talk about? AnnMarie said, Everything good. Everything fine. Clinic lady said, Have you become active again? What you mean, AnnMarie asked. The clinic lady meant sex. Wanted to know if she been fucking again. AnnMarie hesitated before answering. She hadn’t been in the mood, felt no real desire for Darius so she said, No, I’m taking a break from that right now.

The clinic lady said, Okay, just make sure you use protection.
Even if you’re not getting your period, you can still get pregnant. AnnMarie thanked her for the information.

When she left the clinic, she thought about the time Darius had made her fuck him. Yeah, he’d come inside her. She remembered that. She’d waited for him to leave before she got up, went to the bathroom, wipe his shit off.

Few blocks from Gateway, AnnMarie stopped and went inside Evelyn’s Pharmacy, pushing Star down the narrow aisle ’til she found the section for females, her eyes passing over the boxes of douches and tampons and maxi pads, finally spotting the tests. But she couldn’t bring herself to pick up a box. Not with Star only six month old. What they gonna think,
She stupid, or something?
So she backed down the aisle, past the counter where the sisters from 3D, Eve and Adrienne, sat with their matching sweat suits and crimped weaves—one a them saying, You didn’t find what you need, AnnMarie? Leaning over the counter, eyeballing her as she backed out the door with a clatter.

She left Star at home with Blessed, took the bus all the way to Five Town mall, went into the CVS, plucked the test box off the shelf, got in line at a register where the salesgirl was a stranger. Got home, peed on the wand, staring at the purple plus-sign slowly emerging. Yeah, she pregnant. Fifteen and pregnant again. She sat down and cried.

A week went by, then another. AnnMarie spent them chasing him down, going by his mother Darla’s house, walking over to Raymel’s or Dennis’, somehow missing him. Always just missing him.

She needed to talk to him, tell him about the anxious feeling, about the purple plus-sign and the nausea creeping in. His sister Vanessa’d say, Sit down, AnnMarie, let Star play with her cousin. His sister having given birth to a baby boy who she named Rocco James. His mother Darla panfrying potatoes in the kitchen, the onion and garlic smell wafting through the room, making AnnMarie’s mouth water. She’d say, He over at the studio, you want breakfast, AnnMarie? Why don’t you eat something … AnnMarie’d lift Star from the stroller, saying, Studio? What studio? Darla’d shrug. I don’t know. I just heard something … You know how he is. Crossing to the table with a plate of fried potatoes and AnnMarie’d feel the hollowness expanding so she’d set Star in her lap and eat.