The Residue Years (14 page)

The morning it happened, Mom kissed my eyes wide and told me to wake Pat and I hustled down the hall and up the steps to the attic, where my brother slept in a room that, no matter how bad Mom stayed on him to clean it, forever smelled like feet. To wake Pat you had to snatch the covers off him, which he knew but never liked. We headed downstairs to a breakfast of bacon, grits, eggs, and homemade biscuits. Mom was standing over the stove and Andrew was reading a paper, wearing a shirt Mom had stiffened crisp with homemade starch. My mother was wearing
the same thing she wore each day: a nightgown, a black head scarf, and fall-apart house slippers. Mom fixed Andrew's plate and hovered close while he took his first bite. She asked him if he was going to fix the blinds and he said that he would and that he didn't need any more reminders. When he finished, Mom stalked him out of the kitchen and into the living room. We heard her ask again about the blinds, heard the door slam shut.

Pat and me were finishing our plates when she came back in and ran a tub of water and piled pots and pans and skillets in the sink. All you could hear was those dishes and Pat scraping the last bits of food off his plate. Pat swallowed his last mouthful and pushed away from the table and stood gazing at our mother.

Mom, he said. Is Daddy a good man?

Of course, she said.

Mom, he said. Do you love him?

What kind of question is that?

She snatched his plate off the table and grunted it back to the sink. Pat looked at me and I looked away.

Well, if you love Dad, Pat said, then why do you get mad and try to hurt him?

This sucked the color out Mom's face. She dropped a plate and stared into the sink. You could count the words she spoke to us for the rest of the morning and that afternoon after school. She was more of herself later that night, letting me piece puzzles in the living room while she hummed along to her favorite 45s and waited for Andrew to come home.

He slugged in late and slumped on the couch. He kicked off his shoes, undid the throat of his shirt, propped his feet on the table, and lay his head back. My mother watched all this, waited till he was settled, and asked again about the blinds, asked
if he planned to fix them that night as he had said he would. He said no, he'd do it the next night, said with all of his bother.

Mom stood and sighed. She sighed from a deep place and you knew it. She walked over and dragged a needle across her 45. She tied her scarf and smoothed her gown and sent me to my room, where I lay in my bed counting, counting, counting, how long it would take for her to erupt. It didn't take long at all before the screaming began, before Andrew whisked past my door and up the steps to Pat's room. Then I heard Mom in the kitchen. Then I heard Mom stomping up the steps. The boom of their voices coaxed me into the hall. That's where I saw Mom and Andrew tangled at the top of the steps, saw light catch the blade of a long knife, saw Andrew push and my mother tumble down the steps. It hurt to look, so I didn't look, not until she was at my feet, a blade in her chest, blood soaking through her gown. She died before I let her go.

I'm parked near the hydrant outside Andrew's place, the house he bought with his wife. He's got his front porch primed and his handrails sanded and his siding power-washed. You can see his wife—his sun, moon, stars—inside with a TV dancing grays across her face. She peeks up at me at the sound of the doorbell, then strolls into another room. She lolls out with Andrew behind her. He's the one that answers. He jitters the handle to open the storm door. Grace, he says. To what do we owe this surprise?

Afternoon, I say

He steps aside to let me in. I say hello to his wife and she plays like she doesn't hear it. Humph, I say, and follow Andrew into the kitchen. Out in the world this man is meticulous—shirts with
creases in the sleeves, slacks with all the wrinkles knocked out, wing tips polished. But today he's dressed in a T-shirt and un-pressed khakis with his belt unfastened.

Drink? he says.

No, thank you, I say.

He pours himself a vodka straight, no ice. He asks me what I've been up to. Says he hasn't seen me in days.

Days, weeks, months, I say

So let me guess, you're back in church, he says.

How would you know? I say.

It's about the only time I see you, he says.

It's the only time I can come, I say. The only time I can stand that woman, what you've done.

Which church? he says.

First Zion, I say.

That Baptist? he says.

Andrew's a Catholic, attends St. Andrew's hour-long Sunday masses, Wednesday night choir practices, takes minutes at meetings of the local archdiocese.

He's right too. This isn't the first. First Zion, First Baptist. St. Mark's. Maranatha, Parkside Missionary, New Hope. I join and go a Sunday, go Sundays, steady until a weekend binge keeps me away for a week, for weeks at a time, for too many Sundays to brave the faces, to face the pastor, the first lady, a deacon; I join and attend until a choir member or an organist or an usher sees me wild and stumbling outside myself. The times that's happened it's been much easier to find a new place to pray.

How long, how long? When will you let it go? he says.

Lose a mother, and lose a father, get replaced, and all is well, I say. It's just that easy, is it?

Grace, he says. Give me chance.

Chance? You have no clue, do you? You could never know how it feels to be left behind and cast back?

The wife sweeps in and stands over the stove. She asks Andrew when I'm leaving, if I might stay through dinner, says she didn't fix enough for company. Andrew grabs prescription bottles off a carousel and shakes out pills and downs them with his vodka.

Is that safe? I say.

These old things? he says. He re-racks his meds. We're Thomases. We're built to last. The wife clears her throat and makes noise in a cabinet over the stove. She tramps out.

What do you call that? I say.

Oh, what can we do? he says. What can we do?

The time for doing
been
passed, I say.

He says my name again and throws up a hand. This man is an expert too, has lied to himself about what he's done to me. Their old Chihuahua barks in a back room. The refrigerator groans. It wouldn't kill you to call me Dad, he says. That is, after all, who I am.

That is, after all, who who is? I say.

Is this why you came? he says. I know this can't be why you came.

Correct, I say.

Then why? he says.

To invite you to church, I say. Come with me one Sunday, I say. Just one.

I'm not so sure about that, he says.

Why not? I say.

He gets up and pours himself another drink and pours me a
glass of water and carries them both over. What is it you want from me? he says

You don't get it, do you? It's not what I want
from
you. It's what I want
for
you.

He's glum under the light, this man who's been a man for all but me. I shove away from the table and stomp into the living room, stopping to gawk at the shrine of Pat and my adopted sister, a girl who was more of the girl he and his wife wanted than me—the first true hurt. I turn a family portrait of them facedown and whisk into the living room, where the wife is sitting on the couch smoking. I stop a few feet from her. She crosses and uncrosses her legs and blows outs smoke. God bless you, I say. May God have mercy on your soul. She looks over my shoulder and I look over my shoulder at Andrew, her husband, who's standing in the kitchen's entrance.

He has the face of martyr, this man, he who hasn't been crucified enough for his sins.

What I could tell him about my Sixth Street crew.
—Champ

Under a sky the color of dried tears I push past a politician's campaign sign. The sign is plunged into the front yard, into dry grass, cause it ain't been a drip of rain (which you should know by now is a small-scale miracle) in the P for days on end. I knock and stand back, peeking through a split in the curtain of the front door's oval window, hoping for a few smart words, maybe a sentence, weighing one last time if bothering these people that don't know me from the next nigger is worth what it might cost in expectations.

Life has what?

Breaking out now is still one of them. Abandoning this shit altogether, before the door swings open and my options (what options?) taper to none. Got that coward's-retreat weight on my heels when a woman answers, standing barefoot and blowing on a black mug with her long gray hair parted and her eyes creased with lines. She greets me with a smile that's straight and blanched.

Hello? she says. Her voice means peace.

Hello, I say, and pause.

Blame these sprint-twitch shivers. There's still time to turn tail, to claim I'm a Jehovah's Witness, a salesman hocking magazine subscriptions, a distant neighbor hounding after a lost
puppy—still time to claim any one of these excuses and she'd probably close the door and spare me the risk of making a fool of myself.

But what do I do? Apologize for the bother and ask if I can speak to her about the house.

Our place? she says. She cups her mug and moves to where I can see her better. She gives me the once-over. I give her a twice-over on the sly. She's got green eyes, a regal neck. Do you mind? she says. She eases the door shut, leaves me on the porch, and through the glass I see her evanesce.

I swing around to face Sixth, see the wind blow the peak off a pile of old leaves in the yard, shiver a naked tree branch. This is a last chance, and because it is, I plant a foot so as not to be foiled by my wayward courage.

The woman opens the door and there's a man standing behind her. He steps out in front and introduces himself and offers me a palm knobby with calluses.

What can I do for you? he says.

Sorry to bother you, sir. This may seem strange. Well, it is a bit strange. Okay, let me back up. I used to live in this house. My family and I. This is weird, I know, sir, miss, but I was wondering if I could have a look inside, I say. If it would be too much of a bother to maybe have a look around at our old place.

And your names is?

Sorry, sorry. My names is Shawn, sir. Shawn Thomas.

Shawn, a look, you say? You mean a tour? he says. He turns to his wife and she looks at me. He steps aside and points me to the living room couch. His wife asks if I'd like a drink and shuffles into what was the kitchen and probably still is. There's glassy magazines fanned across a nicked wood table, framed pictures
hung on the walls—a black-and-white wedding photo, a flick of what looks like the husband holding a fish long as a shark. He lowers himself into an easy chair and leans forward and clasps his hands. One of his thumbnails is obsidian.

Worked construction most of my life, and let me tell you, they just don't build them like this anymore, he says. These days they pour a weak base, slap a few beams together, and tack up thin Sheetrock. Do it all in a matter of weeks. Used to be we'd take our time. Lay a thick slab of concrete, plaster the walls, drive a nail with the intent the beams would last. He falls back. But hey, it's hard to find anything of character these days, he says. And that goes for house or human being.

Sir, I say, extra emphasis on the
sir
. I don't know much about building a house, but I know how a home can make you feel.

Right, right, he says, and stands. You're probably itchin to see what we've done.

We start in the basement, in the same back room where Bubba, my great-grandfather, used to collect his junk. Bubba was a heavyweight hoarder, believed that everything he touched deserved a second life. We (the
we
being my bros, my cousins, the neighborhood kids) spent hours rooting through what Bubba had saved to resurrect. The old junk room's a hardware store now stocked with shelves of hand tools, and power tools with cords looped and tied. Nubuck belts hang against a wall, a massive metal cabinet is pushed in a corner. This is my sanctum, he says, sweeping his arm. A man has got to have a place that gives him peace.

He snaps his suspenders, snaps them joints the same way Bubba did. My great-grandpops wore the same thing every day save Sunday: a flannel shirt and gray slacks up near his navel. It was Bubba that did most of the disciplining back then. He had this
way of standing, when he was about to soften a tough ass, with his head cocked and his thumbs hooked in the waist of his suspenders, that let you know he meant business. He'd seize you in one of his Nordic glares, make you kneel, lock your head between his legs, and ask if you knew why you were being punished. Then he'd tan your ass, open-hand, no belt, or with a thick black whip (a real whip!) so tough you wondered if he was working for honor.

But one thing about Bubba, he never exacerbated a mauling like Mama Liza, never said shit like, This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you, never proselytized: If I spare the rod I'll spoil the child. Not him. He'd whoop you with heroic silence, then offer you the hankie forever folded in a pocket.

We wander into the basement's main room. He shows me his wife's potter's wheel. This here is where she spends her time, he says, plucks a paintbrush from a handmade cup, and runs that dark thumb over the bristles.

We stroll past an ancient fridge and stove into the room where Mama Liza kept a contraption that dried fruit (you've never seen a family more stocked with raisins, prunes, and dates!), a room that's empty now. When I was young, they kept the room decked with tweed couches that we'd stand on to watch the foot traffic: a man collecting shopping carts, a chick tottering home from a night on the stroll, grandmothers carrying jumbo Bibles into the storefront church next door.

He asks me if I'm ready to head upstairs.

We start in the kitchen. And this ain't what it was. Gone the teacup wallpaper, the painting of
The Last Supper
, the decorative copper spoons, the sloppy white paint that sealed our cabinet drawers froze. They've refinished the cabinets, fastened them with bronze handles, laid tiles over our old Formica counters.
Our fridge used to make the sound of a band warming up, but theirs could lullaby a nigger to sleep.