The Residue Years (13 page)

John 3:16,
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life
, the pastor says. Father, we ask that You come into our house today. We ask that whatever is troubling the hearts of these men, these women, these children, your creations, Father, we ask that You come into their lives and heal it. Let us put our faith in You, Lord. Everything works together for the good of them that love You. The pastor strides from one side of the stage to the other and stops under a giant painting of Jesus. He drifts down the steps and lays a hand on those that have come forward
to be born. He looks up and roves his eyes around. Then with his face shining and shining he starts up an aisle. It's my aisle.

God, some of us have been before You once, but it wasn't our time, he says. God, some of us have been before You twice and it wasn't our time, he says. But dear God, this is our time. The pastor stops next to my pew. The organist fingers chords and the drummer taps his cymbals. Satan, the pastor says. You are no match for my God. You are a coward. I said, Satan, you are no match for my God. You are a coward. We rebuke you in the name of the Lord. The pastor stomps and shakes his fist and snaps his head back. We rebuke you, Satan, in the name of the Lord.

The pastor gazes along my pew. He reaches out. Reaches out to whom?

This time I want to turn away. This time I can't.

He wades into my row and they part. Come, come, my saint, he says.

Good sense says I've hurt her too much to keep her.
—Champ

Here's the story that changed my mind about this love shit. Not by itself, but still. This happened back in high school, so it goes: me and the homies went to see the new black flick (you know how they do us. We had to roll to the outskirts to catch it; not that that matters, but it matters), and while I was in the lobby buying a Slushie and some ransom-priced popcorn, this super lame guy I'd seen in traffic bopped up. He asked me if my girl was my girl and grinned. I told him yeah and asked him, what about it? Bro, I ain't no snitch, he said, but she's in there with another dude.

This wouldn't have been so bad if my girl wasn't distinguished, if she hadn't been the only girl in the history of my postpubescent fuck spree—which began in earnest in eighth grade and was full tilt by that point, who had ever inspired me to pass on a shot of ancillary pussy. We (the we being me and my homeboys, whose fatmouthing made a worse situation worser) found her in the theater sitting with this supernaturally pale half-a-nigger who hooped (I told y'all we all hooped) for a private high school in the burbs. So how did a fledgling Don Giovanni handle such trials? I tapped old girl on the shoulder and beamed high-watt and sat behind her and the half-a-nigger the whole flick, making a
symphony of sucking down my Slushie and smacking my popcorn with true ambition. The credits rolled and I let them empty into the aisle and followed, trading big-ass guffaws with my boys. For the rest of the day and thereafter, I played like wasn't shit wrong, that I was cool as the temperature (it was like they double-dutied the joint for storing cadavers) in that theater that day, though the truth was I was an emblem for grief.

Wouldn't you know, when I got home, Grace was nowhere to be found. MIA until days later, when she slumped in too looped to lend advice of any kind of efficacy. When she finally got right, I told her what happened, expecting the kind of coddling my young self was too old for even then. That's what I wanted, but this is what I got instead: Son, if you're going to risk your love, save all the space you can for hurt.

Beth answers barefoot in a silk robe with music playing in the background, a surprise since I called her crib not an hour ago and she didn't pick up. She lets me in, heads for the fridge, pours a glass of wine. She sways into her room and through her robe, through the silk-something under it, you can see her ass cheeks jump—picture two koala bears wrestling—just like I lust.

Damn, I say.

Damn, what? she says.

The kitchen's light is lush. I weigh the dope, mix it with soda, and set a pot to boil. Then it's back and forth from the kitchen to the peephole, my hands no good for anything steady, the sound of my pulse not the sound of a pulse. This happens every time I chef. It happens and I mind it or else. Beth ask me to top off her glass and I pass again by the peephole. This is intervention, no
less, which is a priority when you've had dreams like mines, sleep wrecked for weeks with visions I can't even speak on.

I take the pot off the stove and let the work lock.

I dump the water and let the work sit on a paper towel to airdry.

But this is as far as it goes with the play-by-play. This ain't no how-to guide.

I lie across Beth's bed. She asks me about school, and I tell her about an essay on happiness that I had to read for class. What would you rather have, a trick knee or a broken leg? I say.

I beg your pardon? she says

Of the two, I say. Which would you rather?

The leg, she says. It'll heal.

Beth, her big brown nipples pressing through the silk, sits against the headboard with her knees bent and parted, no panties. An invite. And how could I pass on an invite like this? With Kim's face a foosball knocking around my skull, I strip down to my boxer briefs and tell her she ain't cool for seducing me.

So this is what you call seduction? she says.

Peoples, pause please before you blister me too tough. Me and Beth, we ain't all the way reckless. We've got rules: no open-mouth kissing, no proclamations of love, a limit on postcoital pillow talk. Before that, though, I make a rhythm that lasts a few songs and part of another. She rests her thigh, warm and twitchy, across my stomach when we finish, while we lay looking at the TV without watching it, a paranormal quiet between us. This goes on till I get up to clean off. Our postsession cool-off is pretty much standard but what happens in the bathroom borders on the semifantastic. What happens in the bathroom is this: it hits me that I couldn't, for a jackpot, recall Beth's last name. Oh
boy, talk about all bad intimacies. I grab the sink with both hands and look into the mirror. See a face that's the face of a sucker who could do this on a whim to a good chick. I rub my nuts and smell a finger. To smell another woman on your nuts when you love your girl (I know, I know, I know) is foul. To be stumped on the last name of the girl that's all over your nuts when you love your girl is no less than lowdown dirty despicable. I mumble the alphabet, hoping a letter will help the name catch hold.

You want to know some funny shit? I say, back in the room, stepping into my boxer briefs. I can't remember your last name for shit.

Are you serious? she says. Do you think admitting that fact's a little foolish? she says.

Admitting that fact might be the least of my fool, I say.

It's Ford, she says. And for the record, you're the worst.

Beth's an army girl, a corporal, which in a strange way makes our setup extra-special. I bend to lace my shoes, see a fitted cap under the bed. I should shrug it off, but what can I say, I'm an opportunist. I toss it on the bed and ask if it's competition for the crown.

Beth smirks. She asks if I can give her the storage fee. It's early I know but things a little tight this month, she says.

You need it? I say.

Wouldn't ask if I didn't, she says.

So check it, I hope you don't be letting your less special houseguests snoop, I say. Can't have nobody stumbling on my stash.

If I have a guest you can believe he's occupied, she says. The last thing he's worried about is playing a sleuth.

What's the size of the thing it takes to kill it, whatever it is?

Beth says this and I can hear Half Man in my head (the old jabbering voice of dissent) warning me against hitting Beth raw, reminding my silly ass that she's in the field in a major way.

If your dad's a plumber, you learn pipe work, how to dredge a pipe; if he's a writer, he gives you books, show you how to write a decent sentence; if Pops is a preacher, maybe he teaches you Sunday sermons. My dad (by
dad
I mean Big Ken, who isn't my real dad, but stepped up when my biological pops was into sleight of hand) was, Ibullshityounot, on everything I love, right hand to God, a pimp. Some days he'd take me along while he checked his hos: white girls who lived in dank apartments, who wore robes well in the afternoons and who smelled of cigarette smoke. Sometimes he'd have other errands to run, and would leave me with them. They'd occupy me the best they could, and when he swooped in an hour or so later, he'd stuff fives and tens in my pockets and let me lap-drive to the next spot. He never talked about what he was, and when I got older he never held his hustle up as a model, but for the last long while I've wondered how much of what he was is what I am.

Beth gets up to take a shower. She leaves her door cracked, tells me that the sergeant pulled her aside and said she might get stationed in another state, that I might have to find another spot to stash my work. She says I've got a few months, maybe more, but she wants to give me a heads-up. I lay her cash on her blanket and stroll in the kitchen, where I prep a few oz's and scrub the pot and utensils clean. Forget the cliché: in this life cleanliness is next to freedom!
I leave with a swollen plastic sack stuffed in my sleeve and my eyes stabbing every which way.

Here's the mantra of me and my homeboys: Don't let daylight catch you! When you live with your girl you can explain away loads of suspect business, but strolling in at the crack of dawn ain't one of them. The homies, some of them would rather catch a misdemeanor (a couple of them actually have) and spend a night in a holding tank than face their girl after she's spent a whole night seething. Now it ain't a hard fast rule break when I creep through my front door, but it's that hour when the sun ain't far off from being an orange badge behind the clouds. I hope Kim's asleep, but hope, what's that? She's on the couch with the blinds open and the lights off. What you doing up? I say. Kim keeps her back to me. Long strands fall over her shoulders. Long legs sprawled in shadows sectioned by blinds. She don't say a word; matterfact, she don't shrug or jerk or nothing. She's got it bad, that not-answering shit, but all I can do at this hour is sigh. What you doing up?

The news, she says. Guess you didn't see it.

Who watches the news? Why would I be watching the news? I say.

Why wouldn't you? she says. If you did, you would've heard about the big bust.

What that got to do with me? I say. I know you ain't worrying over the next nigger's troubles.

Kim throws a small and hard thing across the room, knocks a picture of us at the Rose Festival carnival off the wall. I tip over and rehang it.

Keep thinking it's gonna be the next person, she says.

She looks fierce. She never looked this fierce. Not when we met. My freshman year at P State. She was walking up to the bar on campus, a sway of hips and a strut to annihilate a young punk. Where we met should have been the harbinger of harbingers, but I didn't have it in me to dismiss a girl with a walk like that. She's couple years older but I lied about how old I was (claimed the age I am now) and we were shacked up quick enough that the shit might've been bad judgment. And the truth is, though I talk tough, and these last couple years ain't been no romance novel (show me a love that is), I wouldn't trade her for no one—period. What'd your boy Nietzsche say:
There is always some madness in love. There is always some reason in madness
.

Maybe the old German saw into the maw of my tomorrows.

The stories I could tell. How once she found my car outside a chick's condo and sliced my tires; how she once wrote,
Fuck You Champ
, in red lipstick all over my windshield; how, after a random fuck rang our home line, she ripped my laptop screen off its hinges; how the night of the day her girl
allegedly
spied me on a lunch date she doused me out of a dead sleep with a pot of cold water and warned next time it'd be hot!

Good sense says I've hurt her too much to keep her, says too that I'll never find another who loves this hard, who knows what it means to have a home, knows too what it means to have a home and lose one. I sit down beside her and pull her close, wishing I could snatch out my heart and show her, but knowing, with all the room I've saved for hurt, this mettle ain't much to see.

She breaks loose and flurries into the room, me chasing. She flops at the edge of the bed and takes off her top. It's hard to see where she starts and the dark ends. If this were another night, I'd lay her down, work her panties low, and slide inside—the only
alibi she'd believe. But I don't have the mettle for it. Or tonight I'm made of too much steel for it.

Kim gets up and walks to the dresser. She takes out a paper and pamphlets and tosses them on the bed. The pamphlets show pregnant women. What's this? I say.

A decision, she says.

Decisions. Our last was not long ago and we said never again.

But the punk in me knows I'll press soon enough for another, a last (you would hope) clinic visit.

What the pimps in my life, what all the two-bit players and the model apathetic lovers never told me, was this: For those of us who can feel, the guilt never leaves, it only ever gets displaced.

Do you know how many times I've tried?
—Grace

Big strength was my mother's blessing. The strength to birth Pat and me in less than a year. To wake every day before dawn to cook and ready us for school and spend the rest of her day mopping and folding and washing and scrubbing, to do that and look past what her husband's family, Andrew's parents, Mama Liza and Bubba, who were well off from bootlegging, said about her and hers. Since I wanted to be strong too, I was Mom's shadow, scouring the tub with ammonia, and hand-mopping the tiles till they were clean as our silverware. For this my mother treated me as a friend, told me secrets she never told Pat, roused me from sleep some nights to sit with her well after she'd sent him to bed.