Fire in the Streets (16 page)

Jolene breathes out a laugh. “Cherry's insane.”

“Yeah.”

“We all just want you safe, you know.”

“Are any of us really safe?” I whisper.

Jolene slides her fingers through the hair at the side of my face, all motherly. I fight the urge to turn my cheek into her palm.

“You were so brave,” she says. “I was right next to you. If you'd seen what I saw, you wouldn't doubt that you'll be a great Panther.”

I don't doubt it. I want to prove it.

Jolene does it again. Smoothes back my hair, like a mother, which I know she is. “Beautiful girl,” she says. “Your moment will come.”

I
CAN'T SLEEP FOR THINKING. RAHEEM IS OUT,
Mama's out. I have the place to myself and every corner is filling up with thoughts that will not quit. Thoughts about the past few days.

Emmalee and Patrice rushing up to me at The Breakfast, dragging me to sit with them, like usual. “We have to still be friends, you know.” Patrice trips over the words like they can't come out fast enough. “You don't have to be at the Panther office all the time, do you?”

Me replying, “I guess not.” Not wanting to lose them, not even a little bit. Feeling grateful.

Going to the Panther office. Jolene quietly handing me Little Betty. Stamping envelopes all afternoon. Maybe nothing about the world has changed at all. Only me.

I hear the keys jingling in the hallway, then the cursing. Jingling for a while longer before the door actually opens. I sit up on the couch.

Mama flops in the door, tripping against her dangling pocketbook. Shoes already off and in her hand. Not pretty.

It's not so common for Mama to come home drunk. Least not without a man to prop her up. Even then the times are few and far between.

“You're awake,” she says. “Don't look at me.”

“I'm not looking.” I roll off the cushions and go to help her. I take the purse and the shoes and throw them by the door. Lead her to the bathroom, before she settles on the couch and passes out. We learned this one the hard way.

She leans on me until I get her out of her stockings and skirt. She's wearing the pretty panties, the black ones with the lace edge.

I sit on the side of the tub while she goes. She leans her forehead on the counter in a way that's probably going to leave a dent on her face.

“What happened, Mama?” I whisper.

“Don't you worry. I'm going to fix it. They can't keep me down. Not me.”

I don't like the sound of that. She's crying a little now. I get her off the toilet and we start toward her bedroom.

“Where's Wil?” I say, suspecting.

The string of curses tells a story I don't need to know the details of.

I slide my arms around her. “Sorry, Mama.” And I am.
He was one of the good ones, I was starting to think. Maybe not, for things to end up like this.

“There'll be someone else.” I know it. I fear it. “Someone better,” I whisper, hoping it hard.

She laughs into my neck. “You think you know the world, little girl.”

“No, I don't know that much,” I admit. “Everyone tells me I don't. Lay down, Mama.”

She crawls into bed. I draw her covers up and sit on the side, like she sometimes does for me. “It's best when it's just us, anyway,” I tell her. “It's going to be okay.” I don't know if it is or not, but I want to pretend it is.

Her hand comes up, rubs my face. “You're a good girl. But starry eyes never got anyone out of no ghetto.”

Then her head lolls against the pillow, her fingers fall lax over my shoulder and down my arm. She's out.

I kiss her cheek, push a clump of sweaty hair out of her eyes.

She doesn't know I see her like this. Her foggy morning head forgets and we never speak of it again.

It's how I get away with sliding under the sheets with her. Turning her on her side and tucking myself against her warmth. Molding her arms around me like I'm little again and nothing in the world can touch me.

I
WAKE IN MAMA'S BED, ALONE. THE DOOR IS
closed, but I can hear them arguing beyond it. Raheem says something about being responsible; Mama says something about needing time. I leap out of the bed as the front door slams.

I burst out of the bedroom to find Raheem alone in the kitchen. He stands with his arms braced against the counter.

“Where's Mama?”

He straightens up. “She's not here.”

“What do you mean, she's not here?” On a morning like this she ought to be lying on the sofa, still halfway sleeping it off.

“She just left.” Pause. “Said she went to look for a job,” Raheem adds in his lying voice.

My heartbeat slows. “A second job?”

Raheem looks away. “Maxie, I'm sorry—”

“She lost her job?” I drop into a chair at the table. “Again.”

“Seems that way. Look, it's going to be okay.” He sits across from me. Smiles as best he can to reassure me.

“Why were you lying before? Where did she go?”

Raheem makes a fist on the tabletop. “She has to find a job, so. . .”

“Where did she go?”

“I don't know,” he admits.

Moment of panic. “Is she coming back?”

Raheem leans over and touches my hand. “It's not like that,” he says. “She'll be back. I think probably she went to George's.”

“Oh.” George's Liquor Cabinet. “Did she take all the money? You didn't let her take all the money, did you?” I would have hidden our cash last night if I had known it was going to go like this.

“I didn't see this coming,” he says. “I don't know how much she took. Just don't worry about it, okay?”

How do I not worry? I look at the cupboard doors, wishing we had done more shopping last week. I look at the front door, wondering how long before they pin up the yellow notice that means pay up or lose the apartment.

“Stop,” Raheem says. “I'm going to take care of it. I'll take more hours. Get a second job if I have to.”

“Me too,” I say. “I can drop out. I'll get a job and—”

“Maxie, for God's sake.” Raheem bangs his fist on the table. “Stop saying that.”

“But—”

“We're gonna get by,” Raheem says. “We always do.” He runs a hand over the back of my head, tugging a section of hair on the way down. It's all he'll ever say or do to show he's worried too.

I
SNEAK DOUBLE PORTIONS AT THE BREAKFAST,
eat every last bite. I'm shoveling it in like I'm doing construction. Bulldozer is what comes to mind, but I can't seem to stop it. The empty-pantry clock starts now. Started last night, except I didn't even know it. I have to save food at home, but load up on everything else while I can.

Sam watches me eat with a funny look on his face. “You okay?” he says.

“Sure, why?” I practically choke on my mouthful of eggs.

He rubs my back while I'm coughing. “Just wondering. You seem a little . . . on edge.”

“I'm okay.” I try to slow down, but it's like my body knows that hungry might be just around the corner. “Are you going to eat that?” He's left part of a biscuit on his plate.

“Uh.” Pause. “You can have it.”

“Thanks.”

A short while later, we're walking up the steps to the school.

“Hey, Maxie. Do you want to come over for dinner tomorrow?” Sam says.

I've been to his house for dinner before, but not in a while. Not since we've been in our weird place of being together but not being together at the same time.

I peek at him out the corners of my eyes. Maybe he knows. Maybe he guesses. It doesn't matter. My stomach growls just thinking about it. “Sure.”

I lie to Patrice and Emmalee so I can go straight home and be with Mama. I don't even feel that bad about the lie. I'm sure I'll confess later. Or maybe they already know, already saw through the veil of words to what is really going on. We have no secrets between us, in the end. Ever. But it's not yet time to speak of it outright.

Sam, I don't have to lie to. I just tell him my mom needs me at home, because for him that's a thing that will make sense without specific details. I'm sure he can't see the whole picture, because I've never been good at explaining things about home to him. It's so hard for him to imagine what life is like without a dad around. He knows I'm missing a piece, but he can't really recognize the shape of it.

“Mama?” I come inside and she's sitting at the table, hunched over the newspaper classifieds.

“I have to find a job, baby,” she says, by which she means “leave me to it.”

She is drinking from a very large malt liquor bottle. That's about the cheapest drink you can buy at George's, so I can tell that she's seriously worried.

“I can help.” I sit down across the table. “Pass me a page.”

“I'm doing it okay,” Mama says, waving her thick red marker at me.

After a few minutes of letting it go, I ask, “What happened?”

“I'm going to fix it,” she says, with no further explanation.

I'm curious, but not curious enough to press her with more questions. Sometimes she loses jobs because she messes something up, like showing up late too many days in a row, or making a bad mistake in front of somebody who matters. She lost an office job for lateness; they didn't care that the buses don't run on exact schedules, so it was kind of a gamble every day what time she would get there. She lost a retail job because she broke too many glasses and vases and things in the stockroom.

Other times, the places cut out jobs for no reason. She lost a maid job that way, and a couple of different factory
jobs when they got new machines in that could do the work of people.

I sit with Mama as she circles ad after ad. There's always lots of possibilities, but only a few of them will ever pan out. We just never know which ones.

There's nothing much in the kitchen. Two cans of soup, some rice and beans. I crank open one soup and pour it into the saucepan. I add a few cans of water, more than you're supposed to, but just enough to stretch it between the three of us. “Keep it low,” Mama says of the burner as I strike the match to light it. I already know. Everything is low. The lamps all unplugged and the overhead light switched off. Cupping the match, I swivel to the opposite counter and light the row of fat pillar candles Mama has laid out and waiting. They bring a soft glow to the room as dusk falls outside the window.

The power isn't shut off yet, but it was all we could do to pay last month's bill, and so we ought to start watching for this month. I carry one pillar to the table, where Mama is still bent over the paper. “Watch it doesn't boil,” she says. The strain in her voice makes my heart beat faster, feeling the echo of times that were a lot worse than now.

“I know,” I say. We lost most of a pot of soup that way once. In one of the worst times, when the yellow notice was
up and the power was off and I went to the store with our last few cents and brought back the soup. While it was heating, the landlord came to the door and yelled at us about paying the rent. Raheem and I hid behind the couch, afraid, while Mama promised the man everything, anything, if we could just have a few more days. The door slammed shut, and she leaned against it, saying “Thank God” over and over, and that's when we first smelled the burning. Mama ran to the stove and yanked off the pot, but all the liquid had boiled off and the rest was suck to the bottom, turning black. Mama sat on the kitchen floor and cried. I hid behind the couch and cried, too.

Raheem knew what to do. He took the hot pan from her hand and filled it up again with water. He rubbed the bottom of the pan with a spoon until the burned stuff came off, and then he put it back on the burner until the water was warm. We ate it. It tasted charbroiled, but it was better than nothing. Though it turned us off soup for a while.