The Residue Years (27 page)

Got it, got it.
—Grace

I'm tired, tired, but early for the shift after the shift I missed. In the ladies' room I soap stains—when was I supposed to have made it to a washhouse?—and splash my face alive. I step out of the restroom a tiny bit staggered and see Pam leaning against the wall with a clipboard tucked. She cuts her eyes at me and inspects nails this week she's painted in triple fluorescents.

Missed you, she says. That's how you do? No call, no nothin?

Oh, I say. Was I on the schedule?

Nice try, but don't try it, she says.

Try what? I say.

Enough! she says. I told you from day one, I need workers I can trust.

It won't happen again, I say. You have my word. Next time I'll double-check.

If there's a next time, it's your last time, she says.

Got it, got it, I say.

Great, glad you do, cause I meant it, she says. Now tell me what's wrong. Why you don't seem yourself.

Just tired is all, I say, though as soon as I say it, I hate her for the fact she won't seek the truth. Hate myself for needing to be pushed to it.

Pam shakes her braids—thick ropes plaited wide and pulling at the edges of her scalp—off her shoulders. Come, she says, and drags me into the office. She lays her clipboard down, collects time cards spread across her desk. I snatch off my visor and smooth my hair; what I wouldn't give for another visit to the stylist. She searches her drawer for a stack of checks and hands me mines.

I know you say you're tired, but I might need you for OT, she says.

That's fine, I say, and stuff the check in my pants and walk out to the front counter.

There's a baseball team—snap-back hats and raglans—in the lobby, boys about the same age as KJ, and it brings me low to see them laugh and joke. I open a till and wave over a scrawny boy with braces. Welcome to Taco World. How may I help you? I say, and wonder if he too can see this blight.

Fucking refuse, do you hear?
—Champ

The wind sends a broken branch into the same bed of sawdust where, one night, my girl stabbed my toothbrush so deep in the soil, you could only see the tip. Why? It's a long, long story, both the original version and the extended remix. I'm trying as best I can to keep you from getting distracted. That's a lie, but I'd rather not speak on it. I couldn't stand any of you thinking less of me.

From the room where I keep my computer and books, I watch my neighbor, the one from across the hall, pull up in his dented compact. Dude's a teacher, which I know because he corners me everywhere he can (in the laundry room, in the elevator, by mailboxes, near the trash) and dupes me into saga-length Q&A's. I'm so serious, if he catches your ear, it's the Indefatigable Express, with nonstops till you break, either that or smack (never did it, but believe me it's crossed my mind more than once) him right in his trap! Guys like him, if I was less prone to fits of guilt and shame, I'd curse them to hell, but since I'm not, I cut him slack cause we know how it is with those college-educated middle-to-ruling-class whiteys: Everybody's business (how else to keep the rest of us on lock?) is their business.

Tonight, Mr. Chat-You-to-Sleep lollygags in his ride longer
than the norm. He climbs out, finally, holding a clutch of papers and a lunch pail. He loses a few sheets and chases them down. He presses the damp papers and his metal box to his chest and scurries inside. End of show.

The encore ain't the chatterer, but a clique in letterman coats slapboxing their way along the block. Every few steps, they drop their bags, square off, start a new round. Nothing special really, but
bam
, just like that, I got an idea for my personal statement. An anecdote about the time one night I was coming home from a game and a carload of gang members cruised beside me, screamed, What up, blood? and dumped a few shots my way.

Now, having an idea is one thing, but the real work is turning a blank screen into words, into sentences, into a few fucking paragraphs. My laptop's fan is whirring, that's how long it's been since I last tapped the keys. A slew of starts and stops, starts and stops and deletions then back to ogling the cursor, the glowing white screen. Wasn't checking in the least for grad school before now and look? I want in on my accord, though. On merit or not at all. No handouts, no punk-ass affirmative actions for me. I get the few first lines tapped out, but after that—nathan. Just me fumbling for a next sentence and losing track of time. Maybe I was wrong: What's tougher than a blank screen is a sentence or two and nowhere to go from there. I get up and walk again to the window, thinking it worked once, why not? I look far, far down the street and then up at the clouds, always the clouds, where a star or two twink. I slug into the kitchen, grab a two-liter (real pop too, none of that diet crap) out the fridge, and meander back to my laptop, where I take a swill that crawls down my throat. Then it's me back gazing at the screen and praying for afflatus. A prayer answered when, I'll be gotdamned, words arrive, begrudged,
one word and then the next, and after a while I got a whole page and I'm dancing around the table. What is it? What is it? Kim says, from the front room. I carry my laptop to where she is and peep her doing what she does best besides harangue your boy: laze on the couch and channel-surf. She's got her feet (bare toes cause the doc said polish could poison the baby) on the table and her shirt hiked above her tumescent belly. She pats the couch for me to sit. It's the statement, I say. I think I got a start. Let me read it to you two. By the way, this reading to the baby is brand-new.

Not baby. It's a girl. It's a girl. We're having a baby girl!

Tell me, what was the sense anymore in fighting it?

Yes, I was hella-resistant at first, but hearing the heartbeat did a retrograde number on my resolve. These days I'm a baby-book bibliophile:
The New Dad's Survival Guide
,
Man to Man on Child
,
Daddy Prep
,
A Father's Firstborn
… these days, I'm a neophyte baby-supply specialist, packing our closets with all things infant: the stroller, the car seat, the booster seat, the high chair, the potty chair, a swing, a bouncer, a bottle warmer, a breast pump; catch me stocking an oversized toy chest with rattles, dolls, building blocks, touch-and-feel flash cards. I've bought cases of diapers, wipes, bottles, washcloths, bought doubles and triples of baby soap and lotion and shampoo and oil, stockpiled bibs, burp clothes, blankets.

Got to the point where some mornings I stand at the mirror and sing lullabies. Cause between you and me the near birth of my future Princess has vulnerability levels dropped way down, any lower and I'd be on par with dudes like Jude, the proud owners of lifetime weep-for-free passes. But all in all in all it's for best, right? Who among you would claim different?

You hear that, Princess? I say, to Kim's navel. Dad's going to grad school.

Say it first and believe it second; that's my psalm.

Okay, and what happens after? Kim says. What happens all the while?

We went over this, I say.

We did, she says. But what if it doesn't work out the way you think?

Don't let her hear you, I say. You best not ever let her hear you doubt me.

Champ, she needs to survive, she says. We do.

I'm supporting us now, ain't I? I say

You need a job, Champ, she says. A job. Why don't you just finish and work?

You act like you don't know me by now. You act like you don't know better than judge me by these local-ass standards. My dreams are bigger than this place, and you nor no one else is going to kill them.

What's that supposed to mean? she says.

You know what the fuck it means, I say, and whip her around by her chin rougher than I should. I refuse to be one of these fools anonymous everywhere but inside their head. Fucking refuse, do you hear?

Kim falls quiet. She tugs her shirt over her stomach.

My pager goes off. It's one of my regulars calling too late for a lick, but I need the dough—and that's that.

Who's that this late? she says.

It's business, I say. My business, I'll be right back.

Funny you should ask.
—Grace

This heifer—forgive me, LORD—is wasting too much of my precious time, treating me as though I begged for the world, when all I asked for was change to make a call. At my back, rowdy kids knock over piles of folded clothes and kick overstuffed shivering washers. Metal clinks in multiload dryers. A giant steamer hisses somewhere unseen. I snatch the quarters and head outside to the phone booth.

I call expecting the line to ring and ring with no answer, for their machine to pick up.

Oh, so it's you, Kenny says. Didn't recognize the number.

It's a whole lot that you don't, I say. Where are my boys?

Grace, I don't think I'm feeling your tone of voice, he says.

Cut the games, I say.

They're at the park, he says. Call back.

I'll do you one better, I say.

He lets the phone go quiet.

A barefoot toddler darts past me into the parking lot with no one giving chase.

Guess you didn't hear me? he says.

Why should I be listening? I say.

See, that's it, he says. We got court coming up. We'll let the judge decide when you will and won't.

Judge who? I say. I'm coming to see my boys.

Grace! he says. In all honesty, you can't dictate shit, he says. What you need to do is get yourself situated, so when all this is settled, you'll have a decent place for the boys to visit.

We shall see, I say.

Yes, he says. We shall.

The way I slam the phone knocks a quarter out the coin return. I turn my back to the booth, but don't know where to go, don't know what to do, but what I need is someone close who'll listen, who could help. The nearest one I can think of is Kenny's older brother Chris, who used to live not too far from here. Chris, who was an ear for me when his brother and I had troubles, whose advice Kenny would mind when no one else could get through. I hike Fremont, too tired to know how tired I am. A car toots at me, but I don't bother looking up. I make a turn and amble by young girls twirling double-Dutch ropes. A block or so beyond, there's a young couple carrying groceries into the same house where years and years ago I almost got caught in a drug raid.

That night the police kicked in the front door, guns drawn and shouting, and I burst out the back barefoot because I couldn't run in heels. There was a dog chasing me till I hit the first fence, and I could feel the air from its bark at my feet. I sprang one fence and another, cut through black yards, my feet not feeling a thing. All I could think of was being caught, of having to explain what I was doing in the house in the first place. This fear kept me tearing through backstreets until there was nothing
behind me but wind, until I reached Dawson Park, where I crouched behind a bush and waited till the sun rose.

You can hear the girls twirl their ropes and sing a tune. The woman grins at the man from the porch. He climbs the steps with armloads of bags and stops on a landing and a dog bounds out on the front to meet him and nuzzles against his leg. A last turn puts me on what used to be Chris's block and what in a fair world still is. You can see a man that looks like Chris in a driveway, hovering over a two-seater with a hand sheathed in a fluffy glove. I huff to within a shout.

That sure is a nice ride, I say.

Hey, hey, hey. Well, ain't this somethin. What's happenin, sis? he says, snatches off his mitt. Ain't seen you since can't even call it. He rubs his pants, the hands he shares with his brother, thick and hairless, though his pinky nail is filed to a spike.

Happened to be in the neighborhood, I say. Thought I'd drop by and make sure you was still alive.

Now you know us pimps don't die, he says, and moves closer. His cologne could knock you down.

Well, I see you ain't lost your sense of humor, I say.

Ha! Never that. But on the serious tip, sis, what's been up? When you last seen my thickhead brother? Me and Blood ain't got up in a few.

Funny you should ask, I say. Cause I just got off the phone with him. Can I tell you I'm so finished.

Chris's eyes linger on places I'd rather they wouldn't. Makes me think what's left to see in me of my last time out, what signs might give it away.

Yeah, Blood done flip-flopped, but that's how it be when
them white folks put you on payroll. Enough about him, though. How's my nephews?

Getting grown too fast, I say. Actually, they been living with your brother this past year.

Oh, he says. Oh. That's news to me. That a long-or a short-term deal?

Supposed to have been short, but your brother trying to see it turn permanent, I say. We go to court coming up here soon.

Court! As in before a judge? You
got
to be bullshittin! he says. That yellow nigga really is out his head. Chris throws his mitts on the hood. He swings open the driver's-side door and plops inside. He thumbs the replica emblem anchoring his gold chain.

But on a happier note, I say. What's the latest with you? You still ripping and running the streets?

Oh, you know how it go with me, he says. Get rich or go to jail trying. He laughs. He checks himself in his car's tiny side mirror, pats the graying sides of his Jheri curl, pinches his hoop earrings. On the serious tip, though, sis, I got a little business I'm bout to start. Soul food restaurant by them old motels on Interstate.

That sounds nice, I say.

Hope so, he says. Got to find a way. But how about you? he says. You back working them corporate gigs?

Not so much anymore, I say.

He cocks his head and looks up at me. Well, I tell you what, I ain't got but a couple weeks till my doors is open, and when they do, you got a job, he says. That's my word.