At-Risk (2 page)

“I'll be back before you know it,” Jason said.

“Don't come back up here talking all that ‘y'all come back now ya hear,' know what I'm saying?” Justice said.

Smalls said, “This nigga gonna be square-dancing. Talking about yee-ha!”

“Gonna be listening to some Dolly Parton. He come back and be like ‘Biggie who? Tupac what?'” Dawud joked.

Smalls said, “Least they got honeys down there. You know, them big-legged cornbread-eating girls.”

“Church girls,” Justice said.

“
Yeah
.” They all said it.

“Good girls. Go to church on Sunday, turn you out on Monday,” Howie said.

“Put a hurting on you,” Smalls teased.

“Yeah, clear up all them bumps on your face. Skin be mad clear from all the play you'll be getting,” Justice said.

Dawud said, “Won't know what to do with yourself. Put some in your pocket and save it for later.”

“Maybe I'll just airmail some back to you niggas. Be all you ever
get,” Jason finally said. He had let them go on at his expense because he had the feeling he would miss them, because he knew the jokes hid the envy.

Better you than me
. They had all been thinking it when Howie said it. But even if they'd wanted to, none of them could have switched places with him. His mother wasn't a crackhead. They were poor because she was raising him by herself, not because she was smoking her money up or giving it to some fool who was constantly going upside her head. Jason knew who his father was. Every once in a while he even came by whenever his mother asked him to “talk some sense into him.” Many of Jason's friends had southern relatives, but none of them would ever be sent down South. He and they were different. He didn't relish the difference, but he recognized it. He didn't think it made him better; it just set him apart. And Howie and Dawud and Smalls and Justice all knew it, too.

Which is why they left him out of some things. They never asked him to walk to the store with them because they didn't want him to see them using food stamps and their sister's
WIC
checks. He didn't have any children either, and some of the boys his age already had two or three. He was almost sixteen, and he was still a punk. Whenever he and his boys caught the train and jumped the turnstiles, he always went second or third to let someone else get caught. Inside he turned to jelly each time while he waited to see if a police officer would come out from behind the door to the fake janitor's closet. He sold weed only to people he knew. He broke into the public pool only at night when it was all full and no one would be able to pinpoint him specifically if the cops came and broke it up. He didn't go anywhere with his boys on the first of the month if he could help it. He wasn't into robbing old ladies and their home attendants for
SSI
checks. He was a punk in thug's clothing and he knew it and they knew it, but they were kind enough not to say it out loud.

He was with them because there was nowhere else for him to
be. He wasn't smart; he wasn't athletic or artistic or talented in any way. He played basketball and tried to freestyle because everyone else did, but he wasn't even good enough to be mediocre at either. He had no plans and no prospects. He was a black boy without exceptional height or skill who could not ball and who could not rap, and as such, no one cared what he did or where he went or what he became, least of all himself.

He didn't talk to his mother as they sat on opposite sides of his duffel bag and let the taxi take them to the airport. She cast worried glances at his profile; he pretended not to notice.

“I'm sorry I had to do it like this,” his mother said, “but you know how you are.”

When he didn't answer her, she pressed her hands into the cracked leather of the seat. She was still dressed for work and she began to play with the cuffs at her wrists. “It's just the summer,” she said. “Just a change of scenery. I just want you to get away from all this—this
madness
for a little while.”
Madness
, she said, as if it were temporary and had only just come. As if it would not still be there waiting when he returned. As if he could come back and find out that a joke had been played and Kiki and Stephen were still alive.

She continued as if she couldn't stop. “Spend some time with your grandfather.” She turned to look at him. He could feel her eyes on his face. He continued to watch Queens's fast approach as they neared the airport. “He hasn't seen you in a while and he's getting on in years. He can't move around like he used to.”

To Jason, her words sounded like the plot for a made-for-
TV
movie. Or like those programs that cities and states were coming up with where they thought that sticking a city kid out in the country for a month would solve all of the kid's problems. He felt like an experiment.

When the cab pulled up to the curb, she didn't get out. His mother
kissed him and pushed a wad of crumpled bills into his hand. She laid her moist palm against his cheek and whispered hopefully, “Maybe tonight you'll be able to get some sleep.”

His grandfather's home attendant met him at the airport. She was holding up a cardboard sign with
JASON
printed carefully on it. Though unnecessary in the small regional airport, the sign made him feel important.

She introduced herself as Miss Charlotte. When she spoke, her voice made him think of family gatherings and holiday dinners. “I know Cal would have wanted to be here to pick you up himself, Jason,” she said, “but he can't do all the things he wants anymore.”

Two years ago, his grandfather had fallen in the shower and had a stroke. Jason's mother had flown down to Tallahassee to look after her father, leaving Jason with the apartment to himself for two whole weeks. He'd used that time to convince Chanelle to come over and stop playing hard to get. He had not thought of the paralysis that took over the left side of his grandfather's body. He had thought of that time as a vacation.

This was not the house his mother had grown up in. His grandfather had moved from a two-level three-bedroom house to a one-level two-bedroom home after the stroke made it difficult for him to climb the stairs. Miss Charlotte gave Jason a tour, taking him all over and through the house, showing him what she clearly thought of as the main attractions. She took him to the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain back to show him how the bathtub had been altered to fit his grandfather's special needs. “Now he won't have any more nasty falls in here,” she boasted.

Jason pointed to a large silver-looking handle shaped like an upside down U reinforced in the middle of the side of the tub. “What's that?”

“That's so he's got something solid to hold onto when he climbs in and out of the tub,” Miss Charlotte said.

A small rubber mat with upraised bumps lined the bottom of the shower so that his grandfather wouldn't slip. A wide white plastic chair sat on top of the mat. It looked like more than one person could sit there. Jason lifted it up easily and set it on the small square of tiled floor in the cramped bathroom. The plastic was hard; it didn't bend or give. It was bone dry. It would have looked like something he could take to the beach if it hadn't had so many perforations in it to allow the water to run freely. Miss Charlotte explained that his grandfather had to sit to take his showers because one of his legs wasn't strong enough for him to stand long enough to shower on his own.

“That's his shower chair. I set it in the hallway to dry each time Cal is finished with it so that it won't get mildewed,” she said. “You can go ahead and put that back the way you found it now.”

She was about to take him to the kitchen and show him the bottle opener, which she used to keep lids loose on all of the bottles in the house, when Jason heard his grandfather's raspy voice.

“Is that you, Charlotte?”

“Coming, Cal!”

“Hurry up. I want to see him!”

“We're coming, you old goat! Keep your pants on!”

“Why don't you take them off for me, woman?”

Jason hadn't known that a woman her age could still blush. Miss Charlotte led him down the hallway to the bedrooms and apologized, “You've got to excuse his language, Jason honey.”

The voice shouted, “Don't make excuses for me. I don't need them.”

“Don't pay him no mind, Jason. He's pleased as punch to have you here. He's been talking about your coming the last three weeks. Cal, look at what I brought you,” she said, pushing Jason forward as if he was a gift.

The overpowering smell of Ben-Gay made Jason's eyes water. The two windows in the room were both closed and the smell of the liniment mixed with the musty, stale air. The room was sparsely furnished and everything seemed to be in precise order. One lone bottle of cologne sat on the dresser next to a short hairbrush and a nail clipper. A wheelchair was positioned to the left side of the bed and the man who was his grandfather half sat and half reclined in the bed with his back against the headboard. He wore a white sleep shirt with faded blue stripes. A heavy gray blanket, the kind Jason had seen in Army-Navy stores, was spread over the bed.

“So you're here,” the old man said, staring. Jason stared back, surprised to see that his grandfather's face was his own. He looked nothing like his own mother and father, and although he had seen pictures of his grandfather, he'd never noticed any resemblance. But it was here in the uncompromising features of the old man staring back at him as intently as he was staring himself, the same seal-brown skin, aggressive nostrils, bushy eyebrows that almost connected above the bridge of the nose, the same full lips and pugnacious chin.

Jason didn't like the way his grandfather talked to him. He didn't like the way the old man sat there, looking legless, as if he ended at his torso. “Yeah, I'm here,” Jason said. “Where are your legs? You lose them in a war?”

His grandfather rolled his eyes. “I still have them, Youngblood, but I can only count on one. The stroke affected the left side of my body. My left leg is basically useless.”

“Oh.”

“I guess that's not cool enough for you.”

Jason shrugged, not caring one way or the other. “Nah, it's okay.”

“If it makes you feel any better, for as long as you're here, why don't you just pretend that one of my running buddies, my homeboys as you'd call it, didn't like the colors I was wearing one day or didn't
like the way I rolled my joint and decided to smoke me but missed and only caught me in the leg. Is that any better?”

“Whatever,” Jason said.

The old man asked, “Is it true that they shot those two boys down and killed them?”

“Calvin!” Miss Charlotte's exclamation broke the silence. “What a way to begin—”

The old man cut her off. “Well, boy?” he demanded. “Is it true?”

He knew that his grandfather knew the answer to that question. Surely his mother had told him. Surely the old man had been forewarned. His grandfather's blatant disregard angered him. His mother carefully stepped around the issue. They had never actually discussed the death of his friends since the funeral except for a few cryptic sentences in passing. But this old man who surely must know better had no sense but to bring the subject up right away. Jason didn't know what to think, except that he would have liked nothing more than to wheel the old man out into traffic. Since the funeral, he'd felt only numb indifference; now he claimed a pleasurable anger. His palms itched to hurt the old man. His grandfather smiled as if he could read his mind, as if he welcomed the challenge. Somehow, with his sunken body, the old man managed to give the impression that he could spring at any moment and kick ass.

“Anyway. Can I use the phone? I told my mom I'd call.”

Miss Charlotte called them to dinner. The chair was removed from the head of the table to accommodate his grandfather's wheelchair. The sight of his grandfather sitting there, the back of his wheelchair making him seem like a king seated on a throne, brought back the anger.

“What's for dinner? I don't know if my mom told you or not, but I don't eat squirrel or possum,” Jason said. “I'm allergic.”

“Boy, this is Tallahassee, not Davy Crockett's wild frontier.”

“Don't y'all eat that stuff? Rabbits and deer and all?”

“Rabbits and squirrels are just as much rodents as rats. You'll never see me putting any of that anywhere near my mouth. Come here, Youngblood.”

Jason rose and approached him. His grandfather began to pat Jason's chest and pockets. Jason jumped back. “Man, what you think you doing?”

His grandfather said, “Checking for weapons.”

“You're crazy. I ain't carrying nothing.”

“You gonna get in my car and go do some drive-bys? Or maybe sell me some drugs? Or are you gonna wait till I'm good and asleep and then steal my basketball sneakers to sell on the corner?” his grandfather asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You want to indulge in stereotypes, I can oblige you. Now sit down.”

Jason sat. He shook his head. “You need to stop watching rap videos. It's not all like that up there.”

He had begun to eat when his grandfather's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, applying pressure. “We give thanks for our food before we eat it,” his grandfather said quietly.

“I don't do church.”

“Then just be still while I say something over the food.”

The boy thought about it. He could refuse. This man was not his father, he didn't have to obey him. But the pressure of his grandfather's good arm told the story of strength. Veins, thick and prominent straining from knuckle to wrist, reminded Jason that this was the same man who could split a watermelon as easily as a head, the same man who had snapped the necks of chickens, blown the heads off rattlesnakes, and torn the hide off his mother's behind when she misbehaved. Jason released his fork.