Team Seven (16 page)

“Now you’re awake. You nasty motherfucker!”

A baby is crying. Whose baby? Not sure, guessing it’s hers. Janet’s a regular jungle-fever hooch on the reggae circuit, she’s at all our shows. I cough and push up on my elbows, I feel the piss ooze out of the mattress and know it’s been another one of them nights and I know I must do better. She looks at me again. I am sorry, but saying it won’t help so I don’t and roll over on my side. Pipe in hand she pulls open the curtains and the foggy sting of whiteness from the snow floods the room. She bangs the pipe on the sill and blows in it. Loads it with a hit, flames the lighter, and inhales. I listen to it crackle as my head begins to accordion in and out. Every time I blink the room kaleidoscopes in front of me, shuffling our lust trail from last night leading up to the bed: empty red tops, Colt 45s, dirty clothes, fabric roses, and our underwear.

She walks into my view facing the window, and all I can see is her lower half. The bottom tips of her greasy blond hair, her dimply pimpled raspberry ass and the topless fairy riding a half-moon tramp-stamped on her lower back. She turns around and grabs the golden tuft of hair on her crotch.

“Motherfucker! Don’t look at me like I don’t love my goddamn husband. I love my goddamn husband!”

She bounces at the knees, pelvis thrusting to emphasize her words. She squats while yelling it again and flails her arms out, dashing over a bottle of orange pills across her nightstand. The pipe falls out of her mouth and shatters. Pills everywhere. She crumbles onto all fours.

“Save them!” She looks up at me.

The baby’s cry is now louder and gurgled. My mouth is beginning to film over and it feels as though a boiled egg is forcing its way up my throat. I jump and run out of the room naked, sticky, and cold. I make it to the kitchen sink and this is where I let it go. Throwing up makes me feel no better as I lean dry-heaving against the counter and looking at the floor. It sounds like that damn baby is screaming on a megaphone in my ear now, and I look up under my armpit. It’s in the living room snugged to the couch’s armrest, a roll of newspaper propped up under its chin, an empty bottle on its side.

I turn around and it’s a white-black mulatto baby, head shrouded in curls. I walk over to it and it’s a boy. His chest puffs up and he slows the cry down to a groan. His eyes twinkle at me and his little arms stretch up in my direction. His bib looks like it’s made of yolk. He’s thrown up too. Poor little bastard. The place smells like a burnt diaper. This seems more like a job for a mother, and so I turn back for the room.

Janet’s in bed spread-eagle, her arms crossed at her chest, head slumped back, geekin’ out, biting at the air, making nasally moans. I sit down next to her. All them curls and crying this morning got me to thinking about Ruby, Nina, and Andre—my family—and when it was I was last home. These thoughts always lead to worries and worries lead to ganja smoke, so I grab my jeans and put on my boxers. I pick up an
old Boston
Metro
, fold it in half, and take out the last of my ’erb and start breaking up on it. The crumbling is over and now I’m beginning to spin my spliff.

As I start tucking it together Janet shakes herself awake and starts looking at me as she kneads her nails into her thighs. Her eyebrows crouch together and she leans forward and smacks the joint out of my hand. Looking at the last of my ’erb sift into the carpet has the accordion in my head feeling motorized and the baby sounding possessed.

I reach and pick up one of the orange pills she forgot to grab off the floor and eat it. Then I look at her. She tosses her hands at her sides as we both look down at the carpet.

“Bring home E-Bone Battel. And you piss the bed and don’t even fuck me right.” She grabs at her crotch, gyrating again. “Thought Dom said you were one of those Mandingos.”

I hear a ding in my brain and the accordion stops. My body begins to feel like a hot-air balloon and the fire’s taking me up. In moments like these I’ve learned women want this, they’re crying out and begging for it, so you’d better let your hands go.

I reach and snatch her hair and it feathers out in front of me. Feels like I’m baling hay as she squeals. I stand up and pull her with me. Things get hazy and somehow she bites my chest and scratches at me. I swing and release her. There’s a thud and that’s her head on the wall. She’s down and crying too. I minute-man around the room getting road-run-ready but get stalled looking for my other boot. In the midst of looking around she says she’s calling the police. I ignore her and fish my other boot out from behind the bedpost. As I kick my foot into the boot I look over and she grabs a box cutter out of her purse. I start for the door and she hops up and stands in the doorway, box cutter in hand.

“What?” I jump at her. “Cut me if you gon’ cut me then.” I wind up like I’m ’bout to smack her and she flinches back. I knock the box cutter out of her hand and bodycheck her to the floor. Her and the baby together sound like an engine running, and that’s exactly what I do. I bounce out the door of her bedroom.

“You ain’t shit,” she yells as I bolt from the apartment. “I’m telling Woodley about this!”

“Tell ’em, bitch, worry ’bout your fucking kid,” I stutter as I run.

It’s snowing, I have a hoodie but no coat, and I’m in East Boston. Janet stopped chasing me at the door of her apartment, but I’m still running ’cause that’s all I ever seem to do. Run, run with my rebels, Dom Dixon and the Running Rebels. That’s my band, for now. Dom’s our lead singer, Ziggy’s on the keys, I’m on the drums, and Denzly’s on the bass. We gig up and down the East Coast but mostly stay in New England.

I don’t know why I always seem to go, but I just do. I run, ’cause in moments like this, when my heart beats like a nail clipper puncturing my eardrums, I think of Ruby the most. I wonder if I’ll ever get back to her and pray I do. She never believes in what it is I’m doing while I gig, but I’m trying to make things better the only way I know how—the music.

I stop running when I see a cabbie on the corner and I hop in winded. My lungs feel dipped in rubbing alcohol and that pill’s got the driver’s head looking like a big tater tot. He keeps talking to me. I’m not sure what he’s saying but I keep nodding yes because my head is starting to feel too heavy for my neck. Now, I’m pretty sure I didn’t say so, but South Station is where the cabbie has brought me. Well, I yacked a little bit on the backseat and he put me out free of charge. I get out of the
cab and all the gel-heads in business suits sniff up their noses at me like they’re any fucking better.

I pull the drawstrings on my hoodie, hop the turnstile, and get on the next Red Line train to Ashmont. I doze off and wake up as the doors ding open, and I can’t tell if I was sweating or drooling but my hands are wet. The conductor’s voice announces that we’ve arrived at Broadway. A familiar hand is stroking my knee. I look and don’t move it because it’s Beatrice, one of our band’s favorite groupies. I’ve had her before, many times. She’s a paper-thin biddy, always had a thing for drummers and the way we swing our sticks. Her teeth may look like broken piano keys but she knows how to use her mouth.

At the JFK stop a rotund woman gets on our cart wearing all white. She looks like a sea lion wrapped in a snowman suit, only her top hat is white and covered in glittery fake baby’s breath. She waddles in licking her lips, humming “Amazing Grace,” and snugs into her seat clutching her purse and Bible. Beatrice tries to lean in and kiss me as the train takes off, but I feel the scratches and the bite on my chest and push her away.

“Good to see you too.” She raises an eyebrow and slaps my arm.

“Rough night. Got a Tylenol? ’Erb? ’Trice, I need something.”

She bites her lips and then starts rummaging in her purse. She sandwiches a blue pill between what look like two credit cards and crushes them together against her knee with a lighter. She sprinkles a bit between her thumb and pointer finger and raises it to my nose.

“Here,” she says. I sniff. “That’ll put ya down, sugar.” She strokes my face.

The train takes off and I begin to feel like a conveyor belt is spinning in my ears and it’s tickling the back of my tongue.
My eyes feel like cold orange slices, but the rest of my head is piping hot. I’m sweating and Beatrice is sucking my ear now. I don’t stop her. The big woman’s angry and charging toward us. I can’t move. I want to yell but instead it’s she who’s yelling.

“It’s the people like you two who are why our children are so lost. You and you. You’re prostitutes. Turning tricks for the devil. No shame for yourselves in public.”

Beatrice stands up and waves a finger in the lady’s face. “Fuck you, Miss Lady, you ain’t seen me doing nothing. I work for myself.”

Beatrice jumps at her and the woman swings her purse, and it seems they’ve exploded into a bouquet of doves and roses. And then I wonder if the woman that sat next to me was Beatrice at all, but I know that the big older woman’s not wrong and I wish I could say what happens next but I don’t remember. Many sounds muddle together with the conveyor belt and I begin to nod. I wake up at Ashmont to the butt of the conductor’s flashlight in my chest.

“End of the line, Daddy-O. Get off the train.”

I take the trolley to Mattapan and walk over the bridge to Milton. What I remember next is falling down somewhere in the snow and more crying. Stern voices and warmth. Gentle hands carefully undressing me. More warm sensations and delicate arms embracing me and guiding me to my sleep, and the word: “Daddy.”

Ruby mushes me in the chest. She’s dangling the keys to the station wagon in my face. She’s in her bathrobe, silk scarf wrapped tight.

“I called Mr. Watson and told him Andre won’t be needing a ride to the tournament today. You will be taking him to his
games this morning!” I clear my throat and wipe the sleep out of my eye. “What!” she says. “Act like you got something better to do.”

“Relax, I’ll take him.” I cough.

“Yeah, you will. You’re lucky your daughter is the one who found your sorry behind slumped against that basement door last night.” She sucks her teeth and walks over to the dresser. I smell the grease burning off the curling iron heating up next to her makeup tray and it’s turning my stomach. Her dress is hanging from the door. She drops her robe and she’s developed a little back fat, but, damn, she still looks good.

It’s always this way between us. We deserve each other. She’ll never leave me and I’ll never let her ass go. We ain’t right, but she’s my bottom bitch and we’re something and that’s all anyone ever needs—something.

A car outside beeps its horn twice and Ruby turns electric, patting over her face in the mirror, putting on her panty hose. She’s wearing a black lace bra and panty set and she’s got one of her gold necklaces on too.

“Where you going?” I ask her.

“Out.”

“Where out?”

She sucks her teeth and shrugs her shoulders.

“Eddy, don’t ask me no damn questions. It’s a women’s group at church. Roland’s taking me. The real question is where the hell you been the last four months—that’s the real question.”

“Out,” I answer her.

“Eddy, you’re insulting. You know that? I hope you run them streets smoking that stuff until your head pops off or someone pops you.”

She got her shit together and turned super Christian all of
a sudden a couple years back. Roland’s supposedly one of her Christian brothers. He’s a fucking whitewashed Uncle-Tom-ass nigga if you ask me. He lives next door with his soon-to-be wife and stepdaughter. He likes to slick-eye me from afar and look down his camel nose at me. One of them dark, pretty, slim-waist niggas that makes white folks feel comfortable. Graduated college, uses SAT words, got big teeth.

I don’t like him meddling in my garden when I’m away, but Ruby allows it. Andre thinks the motherfucker’s cool. And I don’t like the way he likes to hug up and grin in Nina’s face neither. I been away a bit, but I know what I know. Andre’s standing in the doorway with his gym bag.

“Andre, where’s the game?”

“East Boston High School.”

He doesn’t even make eye contact with me and walks out. He’s always been her kid. First fucking word was “Mama.” Ruby trained it into him just to spite me. What the hell was I supposed to do with a kid that calls his daddy “Mama” everywhere we go? Wherever the time goes, it’s gone, ’cause he’s about my height, it seems, and the kid’s got a chest that looks like two couch cushions. And his neck’s about the size of my thigh. I may not have been here in months but I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen him. Even when I do come around he’s always gone away playing for some team somewhere.

I kick on my boots and head out the door to warm up the car. I stop in the hallway to loop my belt and look up into the kitchen. Nina’s box braids are dangling around a bowl of cereal. I walk in there. She looks up and cuts her eyes at me. I put my hand on her shoulder and she flinches away and stands up.

“Leave me alone.” She turns her back to me. She’s crying.

“What’s wrong, baby?”

She turns back around and pushes me in the chest and I grab her arms and pull her close to me. She rests her head on my chest, I wince and look down at her.

“Look at you, Daddy—why you always doing this to yourself?”

“I’m sorry, baby,” I whisper in her ear. “Thanks for getting me last night, okay?” I rock her side to side. “You’re the only one I got in my corner, you know.” I stop rocking her because I’m getting dizzy and falling down wouldn’t help anything. I really hate it when she does this shit, but she’s got plenty to be upset with me about. I know. I pull back and brush two of her box braids behind her ear.

“I gotta take Andre to his game.”

She sniffles and looks down.

“Yo, we gon’ be late, Pop.” Andre’s voice tumbles into the kitchen all gritty, like I’m one of his homeboys on the corner, and my hands begin to tingle. I don’t turn around. I kiss Nina on the forehead.

“Get your stuff, baby. I’ll take you to lunch.” I stroke her cheek.

It just came out and Nina takes off down the hallway and I got not a penny to my name. I turn around and want to sock Andre’s jaw. I chuckle at him and walk over to the hallway closet and put on one of his jackets and an old knit hat. I zip the coat and turn to him. He smells fresh out of a ganja field and I step back and he steps back and looks at the floor. He’s higher than bat pussy and what am I supposed to say to him? I just brush by him and walk outside before I do something to him. Kid’s got a lot of stripes to chalk in the streets before he thinks he can get one over on an old dog like me.