On the Come Up (28 page)

AnnMarie watched his eyelids fly up and hit the ceiling. He stood there dumb.

She said, Darius, this is my girlfriend, Lucinda.

She said, Lu, this is Darius, my baby father.

Lu sat up, and by way of hello lifted her chin but didn’t speak, gazing at him in that quiet way, and waited.

AnnMarie could feel his body go stiff and she held her breath, sensing the confusion rise up and fill his mouth, his words coming out jumbled,
Okay, word, how you doing
 … and AnnMarie didn’t try to fill the silence, the two of them waiting him out until he finally took a step and backed out the room, saying, Yeah, yeah … okay, well, hold it down then …

Yeah … I’ve been holding it down.

Lu said it straight, matter-of-fact. And Darius cut her a look, filled with a sudden suspicion but AnnMarie was already calling to Star. She said, Star show your father the puzzle you playing with. Star looked up at Darius, expectantly. He took a seat on the couch, glancing up at AnnMarie, waiting for her to join them, to hang the way they’d always done. But she didn’t, she stayed where she was, watching his face scrunch up, like
What the fuck you doing
, as she swung the door closed.

Inside the bedroom, AnnMarie leaned forward, halfway crouching, hands on her knees, trembling with excitement or fear, she didn’t know which, but giddy as hell—she start to laugh, mad quiet, but she was laughing and Lucinda reached down and picked up her ball, spinning it on her finger, a smile playing on her lips. AnnMarie raised her eyes and they looked at each other across the room. They didn’t have to speak. Ain’t nothing to say that wasn’t already understood.

Next thing she knew, the door flung open and Star was standing there. She said, Ma, Daddy says he wants to speak to you. AnnMarie glanced past her and saw the living room empty.

She said, Where he at?

He waiting for you out there.

AnnMarie turned and looked at Lu.

He try anything, Lu said, holler and I be there.

Darius was leaning up against the wall in the hallway.

So that your girlfriend-girlfriend or that your friend.

She’s my girlfriend.

He pushed himself away from the wall, shaking his head. I can’t believe it. What made you go that way …

Her heart pounding in her chest, she said, It ain’t no thing, I’m just taking a break from men for a while.

He kept looking at her, his eyes narrowing in disbelief.

So you a muff-diver now. That is disgusting.

She said, It ain’t no thing, Darius. I’m just having fun with my life.

Well, what about me and you—we still gonna get up with each other …?

She wanted to laugh, thinking, You beat me, you rape me, you punch me in front of Star, hell no, I ain’t interested in fucking you.

But she shook her head, watching the anger and impotence brewing right below the surface, his eyebrows scrunched, mouth tight until finally he stepped past her and jabbed the elevator button to go down.

So you ain’t gonna hang with Star, she asked.

Nah, nah … I come back later.

AnnMarie didn’t wait. She left him standing by the elevator as she turned the doorknob and went in.

Dean called.

He said, AnnMarie, I got a part for you.

He said, It’s not a big part like last time. You’d play a waitress. You have to sing “Happy Birthday” to a customer.

She said, Dean, you know I do it.

He put the script in the mail.

When it came, she flipped through it and found her scenes.

She had three scenes, Waitress #2 highlighted in yellow where she suppose to learn her lines.

The day of rehearsal she got up early, showered, pressed her jeans, put on a blouse she knew she looked good in. She practiced her lines in the mirror.

You decide yet?

What can I get you
.

Have you decided yet?

What can I get for you
.

She asked Blessed to watch Star.

Star said, Where you going, Ma?

She bent down and hugged her daughter. She said, I’m goin’ to the city, Boo. I’m gonna act in a movie. How I look?

You look good, Ma, but I wanna go.

Why don’t you wave to me. Go on, get up there and look for me.

AnnMarie waited as Star ran to their bedroom, heading for the window. Then she turned, walked out the door, went down the stairs and out the building. Across the street, AnnMarie looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. She saw Star’s head bouncing up and down, two palms to the window, shouting now ’cause she’d spotted her.

Ma! Ma! Look here! Ma! Ma! Up here! Maaaaaa …! Like a refrain from a song, AnnMarie thought as she waved both arms high over her head, laughing, not caring who saw, not caring one bit about being loud and crazy because this was the view from the window, this is what Star saw:

AnnMarie turning north, going the rest of the way up Gateway until she reached Mott Avenue. Star lost sight of her there as she crossed the street, heading west, passing first Cornaga Avenue, then Central, finally arriving at the stairs of the subway where she followed them down into the station.

It wasn’t no big thing, no big romantic thing with Cupid shooting arrows and hearts and alla that. It was just a regular day. Lu came into the bedroom, ball in hand, tossing it back and forth. She said, How much money you got saved.

AnnMarie said, Why. What’s the matter.

How much?

About sixty dollars, maybe a little more.

How much your next paycheck gonna be.

What’s going on, Lucinda? You in trouble? What you need.

She said, Nah … nah, you know my uncle that manages the building over by the park. There’s a apartment that just went empty.

AnnMarie looked at her, like
What you mean, an apartment
.

She’d been sleeping over a lot lately, since school was out for the summer. Blessed’d been like, What’s Lucinda doing here all the time, don’t she got her own house to live at? What you girls doing in there?

Sometime AnnMarie wonder if Blessed blind outta her good eye. Like,
Duh. This girl eating my pussy, I’m walking around with a smile on my face—can’t you tell we in love?

But AnnMarie knew Blessed liked Lu. Sometimes Lu’d show up with little things from back home—things like the tamarind
fruit still in the shell, ginger beer and sugar cakes. Blessed would marvel. She’d say, Lucinda, where you find this? Lucinda’d laugh. I got my ways, Blessed, you know I do …

The rent’s eight hundred fifty a month, Lucinda said. We split it down the middle fify-fifty. We don’t need a reference, no first last and damage ’cause it’s my uncle … AnnMarie’s mind start going a mile a minute, thinking, Move in with Lu? Is she serious?

Well, who gonna watch Star when I go to work?

They got a Head Start over there on Empire Boulevard. My sisters went there. It’s a good program.

AnnMarie thinking, She’s serious, she
is
serious. She wants to live with me. Like for real, not just squashed in here at my mother’s house, but paying rent together. Lu still talking, saying something about her student loan and a stipend, how she got some kinda scholarship to play ball, not a lot but she’d done the math and it could work if they’s careful.

AnnMarie sat down next to her, took the ball outta her hand. She said, Hell yeah, I move in with you.

Next paycheck came in, they down at check-cash, pulling money out the metal drawer, adding the three hundred fifty to the sixty dollars AnnMarie took outta her sock drawer, counting out the cash on the bed, pooling their money together. Going in and out of the apartment, bringing back empty boxes, packing up all her things, Star’s clothes, loading them into the car. Blessed said, What y’all doing? Where you going?

She said, I’m moving out, Ma, and you welcome to come visit.

The apartment building was on Flatbush Avenue, above Biggs Barber Shop, two blocks from Prospect Park. You could stand in the living room and see the tops of trees, green leaves rustling out there through the window, a real window in the living room, separate from the kitchen. They’d already been to the park four, five times—saw the different playgrounds, a drumming circle, a lake with ducks and paddle boats. On the far side, one day walking, Lucinda showed them the horse corral nestled in a grove of trees.

AnnMarie’d been busy, getting settled, making lists of things they need—couch, kitchen table, chairs, curtains to hang. Dishes she found at a stoop sale right around the corner, cups and glasses Blessed had gave them, and from Lucinda’s mother, they got some mix matched forks and knives and spoons. Still she had work to get to every day, traveling a hour and a half each way. There was Head Start forms to fill—she’d been mad slow with it, dragging her feet even though the deadline was right around the corner. Two copies of the birth certificate, copies a health forms, pages and pages of information to fill in—where you live, what you make, your income, who the mother is, who the father is, if there a doctor, if there insurance and she’d stare at all those pieces a paper, her eyes swimming, thinking, Why they got to know all this shit about my life.

Star ain’t got no doctor, just the clinic back in Far Rockaway. They gonna take her, she ain’t got no doctor? Do she put Darius’
name down or do she leave it blank? Do she write Lucinda instead a Darius?

Another form said, Describe your child. What her personality like? Does she have trouble separating? Any major changes in the household? She thought,
Separating
. What they mean, separating. Star stubborn as hell. Do she put down
stubborn?
The whole process making her feel uneasy, deep-down inadequate, so the last day, the very last day of the deadline, she found an excuse. She said, Star you wanna go pet the horses? Star said, Yeah! Mama, let’s go. But Lu came outta the kitchen right then and said, Where you going? Did you fill out the forms?

I’ma do it later.

Lu said, There is no later, you better do it now.

AnnMarie didn’t answer, kneeling down to strap on Star’s sandals.

Lu said, You don’t get Star into the program, then what you gonna do, who gonna watch her when you working and I’m at school.

AnnMarie tsked, an impulse, old and familiar, rising. She stood up, glaring.

I know that already, stupid, why don’t you stay out my business.

Lu said, Who you calling stupid. You need to take care a this shit.

Why you acting like my mother.

Why you acting like a child.

And that was it. AnnMarie said, Fuck this shit. I’m out. Grabbed hold of Star’s hand and yanked her out the door.

Outside on the street, Star had to hustle to keep up, AnnMarie walking fast up the block. At the corner, she waited for Star, took her hand, then entered the deli.

She said to the deli man, What do horses like to eat.

He thought about it, then said, Apples?

Yeah, yeah, let me get a couple of apples. Star grab a couple a those right there.

Star turned, reached up onto the shelf where the produce at, took a couple of apples in her hands.

She said, I’m hungry. AnnMarie glanced at her, said, Go on, eat one then, we save the other for the horse.

At Ocean Avenue, they left the sidewalk and cut into the park, walking along a narrow path through a grove of trees. Up ahead, a two-way bike lane snaked through the trees and grassy patches—people out jogging, cyclists zipping by, fast walkers moving their hips like they on a dance floor. AnnMarie stood at the curb, waiting for a break in the flow and Star reached up and took her hand. They stood for a moment longer, then darted through the foot traffic to the other side.

They wandered down another path, pausing at a bridge to watch the ducks gliding on the pond below. The sun beat down and she felt her neck damp with sweat. She squinted in the brightness. Up ahead she could see the path split off in two directions. Dang, she thought, which way do I go. Off to the side, some Rastas was playing soccer, their dreads flipping as they dodged and darted, kicking the ball up and down the field. She felt Star’s hand moist in hers and glanced at her. That girl still chewing on the apple, eating the seeds and all. AnnMarie felt a breeze brush past, saw the leaves swaying against a cloudless sky. Who the fuck cares, she thought. It’s a beautiful day.

So they made the ascent up the grassy hill, cut across the path running parallel to the baseball fields and dugouts and some black dudes playing cricket, Star trailing behind as AnnMarie moved them through the field of green and up another hill, and as they rose to the top, she saw it.

The horse was mad tall, with a shiny black coat, its mane braided, two dozen narrow braids laying flat against its flank. And
on its back sat a girl, maybe nine, ten years old, holding the reins with both hands—the girl and the horse inside the corral made of narrow slats of wood.

AnnMarie said, Star look, look at that. Star’s eyes went wide as the girl snapped the reins and the horse began to trot, the girl’s behind bouncing up outta the saddle. She looked scared but she was doing it, leading the horse around the oval path, jumping over a log set across the dirt.

AnnMarie scooped Star up into her arms, carried her the rest of the way to the fence. She could see the riding teacher now, must be the teacher—calling out words AnnMarie ain’t never heard before,
post … posting … she’s above the bit, bring her down, down, go to cant
 … Her hair long and gray, wearing the pants that poof out at the sides and tall black boots. The horse and girl coming around in a trot, round and round the path, inside the fence.

AnnMarie set Star on the top rail as the riding girl came toward them and Star reached out her hand, holding up the apple, she said, Apple? but the riding girl didn’t seem to notice, her eyes straight ahead, and AnnMarie’s heart kinda shrunk up right then. What the hell she thinking, bringing Star all the way out here.

This ain’t no petting zoo. Lucinda’d been right. She had forms to fill but she’d froze. It came at her sharp and sudden, a stab of panic, wondering why she’d done it. Moved in with Lu. Trying to make it on her own, living outside her mother’s house. The horse was trotting fast now, braids bouncing, then it began to gallop, the girl’s face fixed in concentration, body crouched, her boot toes wedged tight in the stirrups.