The Residue Years (3 page)

She scans a letter from the pile that sits beside a framed five-by-seven of her boys, letters sliced along the edges and crayoned, which, if my mind serves me right, was what got me and her to speaking. Before that you couldn't get her to open her mouth, couldn't nobody ply a single word from her till the day we happened upon each other in the hall, she hurrying with her mail and me lugging an armload of books to my room. That day we exchanged hellos and, for reasons neither of us could name, we chatted through both morning groups, through free time, blathered right through lunch. Next thing we knew we were taking all of our meals together, sitting through Sunday services, and swapping stories well past the time everyone else was asleep. Come to find out we were both raised Baptist, lost our mothers as young girls, and have the habit, excuse me,
had
the habit, of choosing work-allergic roguish men.

Try to split us apart now and you can't, but who knows beyond my stay what will become of our bond?

Who knows but how could we, how could any one of us, when this life is not that life? When we've spent this long dissembling. How could we, though those that know us best or maybe don't
know the risk coax our truest truths into view: that we have problems accepting love, that we don't know how to let go, that we're not so good in judging who or what should be kept, that on our worst days, it's tough to find reasons?

We stroll to the kitchen, my heels clicking and her flats whisking along. If you've seen one cafeteria, you've pretty much seen them all: a windowless room with soft white walls and gray tile and workers—stone-faced new residents themselves—who at mealtimes serve just enough to keep us alive and no more, which must be why a good few residents look the victim of third world hunger. We are victims of the morning's longest line, heirs of cooled oats, shriveled links, and shallow juice in cups the size they use for urinalysis.

We find seats and right off she asks me if I heard about the girl who got out last week and relapsed so fast she was back by morning group the next day—sad, sad, yes, but not outside our fates. We come and go. We come and go: the timid ones, the stubborn ones, the worried. Girlfriend sips at what's left in her cup, which, as I said, wasn't much to start.

Your boys. You must be about to bust, she says.

Explode. Yes, I say.

Now's the time for those plans, she says.

That's the thing, I say. I've had them, changed them, and changed the ones I changed.

We watch the latecomers drag in—their eyes full of blood and hair tight-napped at the neck or spun around their head—and catch the last scrapes from the pots and pans. She and I don't say much else. We are not the last to leave but close, and she walks me to my room. There's a note under my door that says for me to report to the nurse.

Should've known they'd hit you with that last UA, she says. I'll leave you to it.

What they won't say here is how we can never know, when we get this close to leaving, if someone would rather see us stay. What they won't say is what they'll do to keep you if they choose: botch exit papers, switch UA results, quiz you to tears on a false report from the staff. They keep secret the ploys they use to stretch your days into months, tricks that will send us to places we escaped to serve suspended time, to serve new time, reason why when you reach the end it's nerves, nerves, nerves.

The UA line stretches far down the hall and I shuffle to the end of it behind a girl from my floor with gobs of white glue caked between the tracks of her weave. You can hear someone curse inside the restroom—what might be a scheme gone bad which wouldn't surprise me. I once saw a so-called slickster's balloon of prepackaged urine fall from his armpit, burst, and soak a fussy nurse's brand new white shoes. Down the line the counselor gapes at us from her office—the wall of champions looming behind her—while the nurse moseys out bearing gifts: twist-cap prelabeled sample cups, and here and there packets of pills.

Which of us experts believes themself a bootleg chemist? Who's ready to bet against the odds, will hedge against the time it takes to pee clean; against whether they test our urine, or our hair, or our blood.

The counselor slinks out, a wrist noisy from a sleeve of gold bracelets rubbed half-silver. She works her way along the wall frisking us each with just her gaze, waiting for an eye to rove, for a nerve to spark in someone's balled fist or leg. She reaches me and takes my hand in her hand till my heart slows. Come see me, she says. You be sure to come see me soon.

My turn comes and I hover over the toilet and catch a weak stream in the cup and twist the cap tight. I stand in the dank for a time, braced against the sink, listening to the voices float in through the door. When I come out, I see a new resident, too young for this life, carrying her intake issue—blankets, sheets, a flat pillow—with arms so thin you could rub them for fire. Below bangs hacked to a slant across her face she gives me meek eye-to-eye and slugs up a flight of stairs. She could be me years back my first time in a place like this, though let's hope she arrives at the truth sooner than I:

It's no use trying to fool ourselves.

Sometimes fooling ourselves is the only strength that counts.

But time has taught me my options (who knows about the
next man's?),
my
options, are full of fast-twitch muscles.
—Champ

Here comes a woman, no coat, with her wet hair matted. Closer, she looks about Mom's age and, like Mom, makes you wonder if she's lived a hard-knock life or not. My mother will be out soon, and I can predict the promises she'll make, a script after years I can recite verbatim, speeches she may believe, but maybe doesn't. But that matters not. Whatever plans Mom has this time, grand or small, starry-eyed or dull, my plans will be under her plans holding them up.

OneverythingIlove. We. Won't. Lose.

The woman from a few seconds ago, she's hocus pocus in my rearview—poof. Vanishes, and when I swivel to see where to, there's an unmarked patrol car idling at the crosswalk. Your boy keeps cool at first (clean records create reckless confidence), but when they start towards me, I push the sack in my boxer briefs, hop out my ride, and shuffle towards the nearest house, a place that favors our old house on Sixth—home. Two sets of stairs to reach the front door, and I climb each one slow. As if I'm cursed with early arthritis, a janky hip, a trick knee. Truth be told, I'm giving the kind officers time to get busy with another call, to find more pressing work elsewhere, anywhere but here, but wouldn't
you know it, there must be nothing pumping in Northeast, nada, and since it ain't, I'm the object of the officers' affection, their one and only true love, and right about now they're sending their amore through a searchlight, stabbing it all inside my ride, which, Ibullshityounot, bucks my eyes the size of silver dollars, and buries my breath down deep where it's hard to find.

And peoples, trust me, you'd be breathless too, or worse, if you knew what I know about the Feds' famous math: 100 to 1—a.k.a. the Bias Effect, à la Len Bias, the former college star who overdosed himself into old glory's cocaine demigod.

What I see: a porch junked with trash bags big as boulders, old bike parts, rusted tools, busted cardboard boxes, a mound of soggy clothes. What I feel: my heart stall, a vein in my neck grab. When my heart gets to pumping again, I pound at the door. No—my bad. There I go being a hype man for myself. On the forreals, it's a feathery-ass knock, but I'm ready to strike a convo with whoever answers.

Hello, sir, I don't mean—

Excuse me, miss, I know it's late, but—

Hey, lil man, let me holler at—

But see here's the problem: Through the thin curtain covering the window the whole house is black. Ain't enough light in there to make a shadow. In a nimbus I harvest my cell and make a Broadway show of dialing my homeboy Half Man. No lie, it sounds as if someone installed an amp in my earpiece. Wouldn't be surprised if the whole block heard it ringing over and over, heard me calling my homeboy to no avail, which shouldn't be no big old surprise since dude could make a career of being absentee: Gayle “Half Man” Kent: the CEO of Mr.-Never-There-When-Need-Be, Inc.

A car splashes past, bass turning its trunk into a booty music live show. Soon after I lay a second round of heavy-ass knocks on the door, pounding that sets (sans self-hype this time) my knuckles afire and ratchets my pulse to the sound of a siren. And peoples, let's call that siren freedom's theme song cause that's what it is, trust and believe, cause the ones who disbelieve are either doing time or indicted.

Police pan the light across the yard, the house, then relentless again on me, and meanwhile, I'm glancing this way and that, and feeling the sack crawl down my crotch towards the loose elastic of my boxer briefs. Any second they'll order me off the porch with my hands held high. Another second and they'll trap my wrists too tight behind my back. And right between these fates sits the crossroads.

Run or stay?

Toss or keep?

Felony or misdemeanor?

Life has options! This is what they preached to us in my old youth program, what I tell my bellicose brothers whenever they'll listen, which ain't if ever often enough.

Options. Options. Calling Kim, my sweet thing, is on the list. My girl don't sleep sound at all, so she says, unless we're lying side by side which means she's likely up, but since she's also a first-rate worrier, it probably ain't worth the trouble. The trouble of lying. Of inventing an excuse for why I'm breaking my embargo on hitting licks this late, a rule I let her impose in the first place. Not to be no sucker, never that, but Kim is special, so special. Yeah, most, if they could, would choose the chick of their dreams, but if you ask me, fantasy girls are never seen in full. My girl's the girl you'd pick if you were wide awake with time to think, and
though, between you and me, I may here and there indulge in a shot of ancillary pussy, I ain't in earnest down with risking our good thing.

Life has options, my old program preached, but on the other hand, here's the incontrovertible truth about those options: Act too slow and they put on track shoes and sprint right the fuck off.

The patrol car shifts into park. The doors swing open. A pair of officers hop out and plod my way. I swing around just in time to see them (those flashlight-bearers of love) stop at the base of the first set of steps. Them looking up at me and me squinting into the inscrutable. You live here? the one without the flashlight asks. He's heads taller than his partner (picture a giant on his tiptoes in heaven), with a voice that sounds beefed up on performance drugs. No sir, I say, hoping the
sir
sounds sincere, honorific. I'm looking for my friend. Haven't seen him in a while.

The officers turn towards each other, black silhouettes set in effulgence. And on my life, it should be a crime how long they stay silent.

They busted this place the other day, one says.

Busted! You sure? I say, and start towards them.

So let's get this straight. You haven't been here in all this time and you stop by at almost midnight to say hello? the taller one says.

The three of us stand on the sidewalk, face-to-face; face-to-chest. They're older and maybe slower, but they've got those radios no mere man can outrun, and even if by chance I could, I'd still have the problem of this slithering sack in my crotch. Check it, if it's true that life has options, it's also true those choices are full of fast-twitch muscles.

How about you show us some ID, says the shorter officer, though calling him short is gratuitous to the utmost. Homeboy's
all of five feet nothing—no lie, we're talking centimeters off a certified dwarf. With hands no good for shooting pool or poker, I give the dwarf my license and watch him (in a hundred frames per second slowmo) march to his car and sit with the door swung open, one foot inside, one foot hovering. He runs my license on speaker, and just like that, my legs are no better than a beat-up ride with bald tires and alignment shot to shit.

The taller officer asks my name once more, and before I can answer, his partner shouts it out.

Wait, aren't you the one that used to play ball? he says, and shakes a finger. Aren't you the kid that wore those colored socks in the tournament that year? The homunculus appears, looking smug and slapping my license, neither of which are good signs.

Here comes the chorus of freedom's theme song. Here it comes and here's why. One of my homeboys (dude probably never so much as jaywalked) spent almost a week in the county thanks to a handful of faulty warrants in his name by way of false reports to officers by his full-time, lifetime, thug-life cousins. Now, I should be straight, but that's the thing about this business: You think you know, but you can never know for sure whether you're in the system.

The legal-sized dwarf returns my license and turns his eyes into hot flares. Tonight's your night, he says.

This boy here could shoot that ball, the taller officer says. I seen him score thirty-something points one game, must've been five or six three-pointers. He turns to me. Youngster, you supposed to be in college somewhere scorching the nets.

Oh, you were at that game? I say, and offer my best impersonated smile. It was seven threes that game, sir, I say, still hoping the
sir
sounds sincere and honorific. I tell him how I'm in college, about how close I am to earning my degree.

You balling? he says.

No, sir, I say. Just the books for me.

He fixes his face into a frown you could almost call authentic. You got the right idea, he says. For sure. You could be out here running amuck like the rest of them. You keep on.

When they pull off, the part of my brain that makes good decisions says, Leave now! Leave now! Leave now!

But what do I do?

What they should tell you in those youth programs is that reckless confidence breeds bad decisions, that avoiding a felony can swell almost anyone with a superfool's sense of safety.