Locomotion (3 page)

I wake up with my stomach all bunched, throw up
two times. Miss Edna gives me three Tums,
the spearmint ones
but the stomach pains don't go away and I don't want
breakfast.
Not cereal. Not oatmeal. Not even pancakes.
Miss Edna frowns, presses her hand to my forehead,
fixes
me a bed on the couch.
It's December ninth,
she says.
I don't look at her, just go back into the bathroom
Nothing but bitter stuff comes up. And tears.

 

I hear Miss Edna calling her job saying she won't
be coming in. I hear her say
Dear Lord, remember me.
I hear her putting water on to boil
and smell the ginger she's chopping up to make me
some tea.

 

It's been four years,
Miss Edna says to the Lord
How long will he carry this burden?

 

I see my old house on President Street
the window frames black from fire. Glass everywhere.
I hear people screaming and crying.
I see the firemen wearing oxygen masks and shaking
their heads.

It's cold out. There's water everywhere.
And two of Lili's dolls—burnt and wet on the ground.
I hear Lili screaming for Mama
or maybe it's me.

 

There's relatives down south who don't have room
for us. There's church people who take us for a while
then pass
us on to more church people until there ain't no more
church people
just group homes where people come sometimes to
bring us food and
toys and read us books they wrote. Then go on home
to their own families.
There used to be four of us
Mama, Daddy, Lili and me. At night we went to sleep.
In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast.
That was four years ago.

 

I lean my head over the toilet bowl
and more of the bitter stuff comes.

Blue kicks—Pumas
Blue-and-white Mets shirt
Mets hat
A watch my daddy gave me
Black pants but not dressy—they got side pockets
Ten cornrows with zigzag parts like Sprewell's
A gold chain with a cross on it from Mama—under
my shirt
White socks
clean
One white undershirt
clean
White underwear
clean
A dollar seventy-five left pocket
Two black pens
A little notebook right pocket
All my teeth inside my mouth
One little bit crooked front one
Brown eyes
A little mole by my lip
Lotion on so I don't look ashy
Three keys to Miss Edna's house back pocket
Some words I wanted to remember
written on my right hand
Leftie
Lonnie

LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN HALSEY STREET PAR
K

Shoot hoops with me, Dog
Eric says. Throws me the ball.
Where you been all day?

People all the time talking about how much they hate pigeons 'cause pigeons fly by and crap on their heads and then somebody always says
That's good luck! That's good luck!
so you don't feel all stupid going through your pockets tryna find a tissue to wipe it off and you never find one 'cause you don't be carrying tissues like an old lady so you gotta walk up to some old lady with that pigeon crap on your head and ask her for a tissue and she just goes
Don't worry, that's good luck
like everybody else and it makes you hate those sky roaches 'cause they're everywhere in the city so you better duck if they fly over your head or else

 

But

 

This guy Todd that lives next door to Miss Edna's building got a pigeon coop on his roof and sometimes I go up there and watch Todd waving this huge white sheet till all the pigeons come swooping and flying above us—back and forth and up and down making those croaky pigeon sounds. Those days I'm not scared about pigeon crap on my head because the way they fly—just slow back and forth and the sun getting all bright orange behind them and them making those sounds that after a while sound a little bit like a song—all of it together makes you look up into the sky and believe in everything you ever wanted to believe in. Especially with Todd standing there waving that white sheet and his brown face all broken out in the biggest smile you ever seen on a teenager.

Miss Edna gets her paycheck the second Friday
of every month and we go to C-Town. Sometimes
the Twinkies go on sale three for five dollars and
Miss Edna says
Get three. You know how we love ourselves some
Twinkies, Lonnie
And her smile gets big and so does mine.
We go up to the cash register with all our food.
When I put the Twinkies on the counter, the checkout
lady says
I guess your son likes Twinkies, huh?
And Miss Edna looks at me sideways.
Then she smiles and says
Yeah, I guess he does.

Miss Edna got two other sons—Rodney and Jenkins.
Jenkins's off fighting in the war.
Rodney, he lives upstate and once a month
Miss Edna goes up there and visits him. She packs up
fried chicken and potato salad and
makes a pound cake. Puts it all
in a shopping bag and the shopping bag smells
like lots of good things.
She leaves two chicken legs and some potato
salad on a plate for me when
I don't
go with her but sometimes
I do
and we take a bus all the way up where there's
mountains and grass everywhere.
Lots of trees too.
Miss Edna can't visit her other son, so she prays.
I find her like that sometimes—on her knees in her
room with her hands
pressed together, her eyes closed.
Dear Lord,
I heard her say once
Keep Jenkins safe and don't let too many people die in this
war.

 

The war's on the other side of the world.

But Jenkins is fighting in it.
And Miss Edna's praying about it.
So I guess it's the same as if it was right here
in our city
in our house
in Miss Edna's room
Everywhere.

Ever been south? We
used to go all the time. That's
another poem.

Cloudy out and just a little bit of rain spraying
across our faces, some kids got their coats
hanging from their heads. Some shivering but we all
in the school yard 'cause the lunchtime teacher
stuck her hand
out the door, frowned and said
Okay, go on out, I guess

 

New boy's across the yard talking
to a little girl look like him, she
got high-water pants on too
only hers are pink and she got brown shoes that look
about a hundred years old. Her hair in four
big braids like Lili likes to wear sometimes maybe
she's Lili's same age. New boy puts his arm
around her shoulders and they just stand there like
that looking out over the yard. Watching
them I feel something in the back of my throat
close up and choke at me. Then slide on
down to my stomach and make itself some tears.

No rain but the sky
is this strange color—silver almost and the sun
white—like this white ball behind a piece
of silver foil. You could look
right at the sun and not go blind.
It's watery like that.
Safe to look at today.

 

That's what I'm thinking when Eric
comes up to where I'm sitting
in the school yard 'cause it's lunchtime
The kind of day
when I don't want
to do nothing
but go somewhere and write
Writing makes me remember.
It's like my whole family comes back again
when I write. All of them right
here like somebody pushed the Rewind button
And that's what I'm writing when Eric
comes up to where I am—in the far back
of the school yard
Writing and eating my grilled cheese sandwich I snuck
from the cafeteria.
What you doing?
Eric
wants to know. He's wearing a leather jacket
like the kind I want to get one day—brown
with black sleeves
His own name across the whole front
E-R on one side
of the zipper
I-C on the other.
I close up my notebook. Say
Nothing.
When I don't want to be scared of Eric I think
about how he sings. Bird Eric. Angel Eric. Churchboy.
Don't look like Nothing to me,
Eric says.
His voice is hard. His eyes get real mean.
He calls me a punk and some other words I don't
want to even write down.
I don't know why he's so evil some days
with his stupid angel voice
and mean-as-the-devil ways.

They tell me and Lili we can sit in a room and talk—
catch up, the tall lady says and I ask
for how long and the tall lady says
An hour
then Lili's
new mama says
An hour. That's plenty of time.

 

I guess Lili's new mama and the tall lady never had a
brother they didn't live with no
more 'cause if they did they'd know an hour goes by
like three minutes or maybe even
faster than that.

 

Sometimes I go to Lili's new mama's house to visit.
I take the #52 bus and then I transfer for the #69 bus
and then
I get off and walk five blocks.

 

But sometimes Lili's new mama don't want me to
come there
and she don't want to bring Lili to Miss Edna's house
so we meet at the agency. Like today.

 

The agency's a gray building. It's ugly
It smells like Ajax. The floors got scuffs on them but
they shine. There's only a couple windows though
and not a whole lot of light coming in.

I look at Lili a long time and for a long time
she looks right back at me. She's
wearing a pink dress with flowers on it. She's got pink
ribbons in her hair,
real pretty. My sister's real pretty. She's got little
dimples on her cheeks and her eyes
are big and round even when she's not surprised.
They're light brown too
like Mama's.

 

 

I pull on the sleeves of my suit jacket. It's brown
and getting too small but Miss Edna says you gotta
look presentable for Saturday visits so Miss Edna gave
me twenty dollars
for the girl across the street to braid my hair.

 

Before I left the group home, this boy named Andre
pierced my ear for me.
Miss Edna lets me wear the earring but on Saturdays I
take it out so

Lili's new mama won't look at me with that look that
says
You look like a bad boy to me.

 

Lili's new mama didn't want no boys
Just a sweet little girl. Nobody told me that
I just know it.
Not a lot of people want boys
Not foster boys
that ain't babies.
Miss Edna took me 'cause
she already raised two sons. Said she knew what to do
if I didn't act right. Said she knew more about boys
than she did
about girls. The first day I heard
her ask the tall lady
He ever been arrested?
And the tall lady said
Uh-uh. Not Lonnie. He's quiet. Good.
Quiet is good
It's hard to be quiet all the time though.
And sometimes Miss Edna gets to yelling at me.
And that yelling ain't quiet either.

 

You found God yet, Lonnie?
Lili says.
She's got on little white gloves.
One of her hands is holding a Bible.

I wasn't looking for Him,
I say back.
Then I smile so that Lili knows I'm just goofing.
But she don't
smile back at me. Instead, she looks real serious.
God is everywhere,
she says.
He comes in your heart if
you let Him.
She sounds real grown-up. Like she's twenty-five
instead of eight.
But then her eyes get all watery.
You find God, Lonnie,
she says,
then maybe me and you
can be together again.
Maybe a real big brother would tell her it'd take a lot
more than that.
Tell her that her new mama's never gonna take me in
and some days I can't imagine living anyplace else but
in Miss Edna's house.
Some days I look around my room and say,
Locomotion, stop thinking about moving on 'cause
this is home.

 

But

 

My eyes just get all watery too and I wipe them
real fast. Then I turn toward the one
little window in our room so that Lili won't
see more tears already starting to come down.

 

Yeah, Lili,
I say.
I'm gonna go looking for Him, okay?

Then Lili gives me her Bible and kisses me on the cheek.

She has a big smile on her face.
You're the best brother,
she says

I look down at the Bible and let myself start grinning.

That Lili's something else.

Sometimes Ms. Marcus makes me sick!
Now everybody's head's bent over their notebooks.
This girl LaTenya that I like a little bit
got her tongue sticking outa
the side of her mouth like she's really concentrating.
Like she knows just what to write.

 

Even Lamont and Eric writing all serious like
they know exactly what they're doing.
Me? I'm slouching
waiting for that stupid teacher to say
“Sit up straight, Lonnie.”
Me? I'm slouching down and staring
out at the rain, city
so gray you'd think we live inside a big old gray box.
Clouds hanging so low they look
like aluminum foil
Reynolds Wrap sky.
Me? I'm waiting for her to say
“Stop daydreaming, Lonnie.”
I want to yell today.
Get real mad at somebody.
I want to punch something. Hard.
Maybe punch somebody.
Me? I want to yell
What family?!