The Warmest December (6 page)

Delia would slam open the apartment door and rush into the bedroom to find Hy-Lo fully clothed and sprawled out across the bed. His mouth would be open, drool sliding down the side of his face, as he snored loud enough to drown out the curses my mother unleashed above him.

“The pillow,” I stated timidly one day as I stood behind my mother while she called out my father’s name in between the
Damn you
’s and
I hate you’
s.

Delia turned to look at me. “What?” she asked, perplexed. “What did you say?”

“Pillow,” I repeated and pointed at the pillow that lay at my father’s feet. Her eyes opened wide and a look of disbelief spread across her face, but just for a second, long enough for me to know that she understood what I was suggesting.

“Go take off your school clothes,” was all she said before she pushed past me.

I didn’t have to ring the bell today. The door was propped open by Malcolm’s baseball bat. Jimmy Smith’s “Midnight Special” sailed out on the seasoned scent of mashed potatoes and baked pork chops. Malcolm shot me a worried look and we stepped hesitantly inside.

Our apartment was always dark. Hy-Lo kept the drapes drawn and the shades down. Looking back now, I think maybe he needed his dwelling to match his emotions. Black. The only parts of the apartment that held any natural light were the kitchen and bathroom. He hadn’t figured out a way to keep the sun out of those rooms yet.

When we walked in we saw that Hy-Lo was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, his body hunched over, hands clasped together, forearms resting on his lap. This was his thinking position. An empty pint of Smirnoff sat ominously on the table. I rolled my eyes and braced myself.

“Good afternoon,” Malcolm and I mumbled.

We stood there waiting for the first order of the afternoon. It was early fall and we wore heavy cable-knit navy blue sweaters. On our backs we wore book bags heavy with textbooks and binders.

Hy-Lo said nothing.

Ten minutes turned into twenty and still we stood there waiting for an order. The apartment was warm and it fed the heat that was building up beneath our clothes. Sweat trickled down our armpits and tickled our sides before dissolving into the cotton material of our shirts. Our backs ached with the weight of our book bags and our legs began to wobble from standing in one place too long.

“Midnight Special” had ended long ago and the needle made a steady scratching noise on the black nothingness at the end of the album.

Hy-Lo sat and stared at his hands.

I looked at the clock and it said one. Malcolm’s bladder was full and he stepped to cross his legs.

“Stand up straight.” The sudden sound of Hy-Lo’s voice startled us and we jumped.

“Daddy, I—” Malcolm tried not to whine, but he was only seven and that was hard not to do when you had to pee.

“Shut up,” Hy-Lo said in a low voice.

“But—” Malcolm began again. His hands were between his legs holding on tight to his penis as he hopped from foot to foot.

“I said shut up!” Hy-Lo yelled and finally turned to look at us. His eyes were bloodshot and I suspected that he had consumed more than the one pint of vodka that sat on the table.

He got up from the table and moved to open the door of the oven to check on the meat he had cooking there. I looked at Malcolm: he had stopped dancing, a dark stain was spreading across the front of his pants, and his eyes were filling with tears, his bottom lip trembling uncontrollably.

Hy-Lo closed the oven and stared back at us. He saw the wet stain on Malcolm’s pants and began to laugh. He laughed until he coughed and then he wiped at the tears that formed at the corners of his eyes. “Idiots,” he muttered and took a jerky step toward the sink. He turned on the faucet and filled a glass with water. Lifting the glass, he stopped before his lips touched the rim and slowly turned his head toward us and said, “Malcolm, go take off those pissy clothes and go into the drawer and choose the belt you want to be beaten with.” He finished the glass of water in one swallow.

In the bottom drawer of Hy-Lo’s dresser was a bottle of Old Spice aftershave, a small jewelry box that held his wedding band, a deck of cards, ten pairs of black nylon socks, and three belts that were coiled like sleeping snakes. Two were black and one brown. The width and length of the belts were identical, but still whenever Malcolm and I were sent to the drawer to choose, we agonized over which one would hurt the least.

Malcolm began to bawl as he stumbled toward the bedroom; his wails filled the tiny apartment and tore at my insides. I did not look after him; my eyes remained ahead of me, on my father.

“You eyeballing me, Kenzie?” Hy-Lo’s tone was loose, almost jolly.

“No,” I said loud and clear.

“No, who?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“No, D-Daddy.” I hated the word; it always seemed to stick to my tongue like peanut butter when I said it.

“No, sir!” he bellowed and my heart skipped two beats.

“No, sir,” I said.

There was a time before Malcolm was born, up until he took his first steps, when I had to refer to Hy-Lo as “sir.” “Daddy” was not used in our home. Hy-Lo was proud of the service he rendered his country during the Vietnam War in the early ’60s. He spent three years in the army, two of which were served in the Philippines.

During those years, uniformity, discipline, and respect shaped his character while alcohol hacked away at his mind and undid his soul.

“This is not the army, Hyman,” Delia would say in a soft, chastising tone she usually used on us kids. “You are their father, Hyman, not their sergeant.”

Delia had won those long-ago conflicts because they were still young and so was his disease.

“No, sir.” My response was meek. I was putting great effort into hiding the anger that was building within me. I did not want to choose a belt today.

He mumbled something I could not hear and then dug into the front pocket of his pants. He still wore his blue work uniform pants. He pulled out a wad of bills and shoved it at me. “Count it,” he said and sat back down at the table. He reached for the bottle, but his hand stopped in midair, suddenly remembering it was empty.

I started to count.

Malcolm’s sobs kept coming from the bedroom. The agony of waiting for a painful act could drive you mad, and Malcolm sounded like he was on his way there.

I started over again placing the tens, twenties, and fives in neat little piles on the table as I counted out the four hundred and twenty dollars. It was the same amount every week.

“Go straight to the bank. Don’t stop. Don’t talk to anyone, and come straight back home.” Hy-Lo spoke slowly, methodically. I blinked twice and then nodded. He stared through me and waited for the proper response.

“Yes, sir,” I replied as I curled the money tight into the palm of my hand.

“Don’t come home if you lose it,” he said with a thin smile that made me think he really wanted me to lose it, to give him an excuse to send me to choose a belt.

He stood up and his body swayed a bit. “Go on,” he said, waving me away. I looked over my shoulder and saw Malcolm, stripped down to his briefs, standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, brown belt in hand. His body was shaking and his bottom lip was glossy wet with spit and tears.

I walked out the door and Hy-Lo closed it behind me. I stood there in the hallway awaiting the sound of the first stinging lash. When it came I ran, Malcolm’s long wailing cry pushing me forward.

Even as I sat there in the hospital I could hear Malcolm’s wail just as clear as if it was 1978 again. I looked up from my tightly clenched hands and half-expected to see a young Malcolm tear around the corner and into the room, his pants down around his ankles, Hy-Lo hot on his tail, eyes like fire and the belt swinging in the air above his head.

The wail got louder even though I was sure it was 1999 and I was in a hospital room and not apartment A5 on Rogers Avenue. I turned and looked at Hy-Lo to make sure he was still there, still dying—but the wail swelled around me, pulling at me. My heart thumped harder in my chest, my mouth went dry, and I opened my arms in preparation for Malcolm to run into them. “I’ll protect you. Come on, run, Malcolm, run,” I whispered, leaning backward, arms spread wide like angels’ wings. I closed my eyes, bracing myself, and then the wailing stopped.

I opened my eyes to find a young man with a long ponytail and two gold loops in each ear looking back at me. He had come to a stop outside of the room, a large laundry hamper before him. It was the ancient wheels that cried, not Malcolm, as they turned over and over against the cold marble floor.

The man’s face twisted in wonder and he raised his hands to his mouth to cover the smile that surfaced there. “Pssst,” he called over his shoulder to someone I couldn’t see. “Look at this nut case.” He beckoned the person to hurry with a quick wave of his hand.

I dropped my arms to my side, cleared my throat, and tried to make myself look sane.

A small bald-headed man peeked quickly around the doorway, considered me, and then pulled back. I could hear his laughter from behind the wall.

The man with the ponytail laughed again but this time he did not hide his amusement behind his hand. He laughed raucously until Nurse D. Green came and shooed him on. He left taking Malcolm’s cries with him.

Chapter Five

I
beat the stars this time and caught the sun just as it began slipping from the sky. The wind was picking up and the bare branches of the oak trees beat loudly against their trunks. The heavy thumping sounds followed me as I hurried away and down the block. I crossed at least three streets before I turned a corner, careful not to walk in a circle back to the hospital again.

The memory of Malcolm had been too much for me and I felt the hole near my heart stretch wider with a pain that began to burn. I clutched at my chest and tried to rub the want away, but my actions seemed to augment the process instead of quell it. The hole expanded and the need grew.

What I
needed
was to get to a meeting and share the pain; distribute it among the others, thinning it until it disappeared. What I
wanted
was a drink. I could pour the liquid down my throat and let it filter into the hole and extinguish the pain that lived there.

I walked two blocks and then turned left and walked three more blocks. There was a liquor store on the corner and I hurried toward it, almost broke into a run, but ended up doing a step-skip walk instead.

The closer I came to the door the worse the pain got, until a voice inside me told me to stop, and I did, smack dead in my tracks, right in the middle of the sidewalk. I stopped hard and someone bumped into me and then hurried around me cursing as he went.

“Oh God, please,” I said beneath my breath as I stared at the blue and white neon lights that blinked
Bacardi-Bacardi-Bacardi.

“Oh God, please,” I begged, and turned and bolted toward the open mouth of the subway.

I had had my first taste of whiskey when I was five years old. It came in a teaspoon guided by my father’s hand. I didn’t like that, but I loved the occasional Rheingold beer that he kept in the house when he was trying to lay off the hard stuff. It tasted like a thick ginger ale and tickled my tongue, leaving frozen icicles in my throat.

By the time I was ten, I was walking the four blocks between our apartment building and Beehive Liquors, buying fifths of rum or vodka for Hy-Lo and sneaking sips from his bottle when he’d finally pass out across the bed. It tasted disgusting and burned the inside of my stomach, but the benefits were well worth it; the floaty sensation my head took on and the carefree feeling that embraced me.

Back then the neighborhood was small and everybody knew one another within a ten-block perimeter. The owner of Beehive Liquors knew me, Hy-Lo had made sure of it.

“This is Kenzie, my daughter,” Hy-Lo said to the tall, thin man with saucer-sized eyes behind the counter. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Things were slow for the moment; the working folk were still earning the dollar they needed to spend in his store.

“Hi,” I said, barely lifting my eyes to meet his. I felt uncomfortable around the shelves and shelves of liquor bottles. Despite their different labels, each one reminded me of the one that constantly sat on the bottom shelf of our food cabinet, right next to the salt.

“Well, hello there,” the thin man said and smiled at me, revealing a dark space where his front teeth should have been. He’d been watching the afternoon news on a small black-and-white television that rested on the wooden counter. He stood up and leaned forward, pushing his hand out to me. I looked up at Hy-Lo for permission. He nodded his head and grinned.

I moved my hand into his. It was soft and warm. It felt safe. We stayed that way for a long time, my hand wrapped in the security of his.

“This is Hal—I mean Mr. Hal.” Hy-Lo’s voice broke my trance and I dropped my hand back down to my side.

“Nice to meet you, Kenzie,” Hal said. I looked briefly at his beak-shaped nose and then lowered my eyes again.

A brief exchange was made between my father and Hal, one that did not include words, just nodding and winking.

At the time I did not know why my father brought me to that place, but I would know within a day.

“I have something for pretty little girls that come to visit me,” Hal said in his scratchy voice. He reached underneath the counter, there was rustling, and then he pulled out a lollipop. It was bright red and seemed to glow beneath the fluorescent store lights.

Again I looked up to Hy-Lo for permission. He did not agree as quickly this time, but after a moment he nodded his head okay.

“Thank you, Mr. Hal,” I said and took the lollipop from his hand.

My father and I left the store after he and Hal spoke of people I was unfamiliar with. People with names like Lonnie and Altamonte, who frequented the Beehive or the Blue Bar. My father’s drinking buddies. The ones who sat beside him at the bar and talked sports, women, and work. The ones he passed coming in or out of the Beehive on a daily basis, offering an expression of cheer during the holidays or a cautious word about the weather that would lead to full conversations.