Excerpt from Conception
“Girl, you ain’t got no money?” Nakesha asked me.
We were sitting Indian style with our backs leaning against the black leather couch. I had thrown the kids in Leroy and Renelle’s room with the remote control. Nakesha leaned forward to slick Wet ‘n Wild’s Glamorous Red nail polish on her crooked toenails. I was trying to brush capfuls of Pink Lotion through my dried out hair, but I had to stop sobbing long enough to be able to do it. We had BET blasting way louder than we would have dared to at home, and JoJo and Devonte’s fine ass were gyrating in front of us singing “Freakin’ You.” There was no point in me wiping my nose or my tears anymore; neither were going to let up anytime soon.
“Girl, nope,” I told her. “This the only job I got, and you know they don’t pay me nothing…I spend it on lunch and stuff.”
I saw her eyes slant to ask me, “Yo mama don’t give you lunch money?” But then, she shook her head like I didn’t even have to explain.
“I bet Leroy got some dough hid in this house,” she said instead. “If we could find it, girl…”
“I already looked. He keep it under this tile in the kitchen. Or in this hole back in the linen closet. But it’s all gone. I checked. The popos got that shit.”
“Damn! Mothafuckas…”
“I need $500 dollars.”
“You know not to even look over here.”
“That or two heavy ass feet.”
“For what?”
“Jump on my stomach and make me lose this shit.”
“Girl, no! That shit don’t work. ‘Member Tonya Gray tried that when we was in eighth grade? Broke her pelvis but didn’t lose that baby. His head just shaped funny.”
“Well Nakesha, what else I’m gone do? I don’t have no money. My baby don’t have no daddy. I don’t have no daddy either. I can’t do this Nakesha.”
“See, I told you to quit letting him hit it raw. I told you…”
“Yeah, you told me. Don’t matter now.”
“Girl you just need a blunt. Shoot, I need one.”
“Nakesha I’m pregnant, remember?”
“So! That’s even more reason. You stressed. When I was doing it with Darnell he told me two pulls off a blunt and every single muscle in your body relax. Instantly! Even your eyelids.”
“Girl, quit talking ‘bout it ‘cause you gonna make me knock on #301 and cop a nick…”
“Shit, do it for me if you ain’t gonna do it for yourself. Ain’t no tweak in the world like that. Ain’t nothin’ like that tweak…”
“I’m not doin’ it and your ass don’t need to be doin’ it either. You seen the commercials. You know what your brain look like on drugs. So imagine my baby’s brain. He ain’t even got a brain yet.”
“How you know it’s a he? Shivana I want you to have a she.”
“Don’t matter. I ain’t having a he or a she. Only thing I’m havin’ is an abortion.”
“See, you gettin’ rid of it anyway so what the hell you care what its brain look like? Anyway my mama smoked weed all when she had me and I came out all right.”
“You sure ‘bout that?”
“Don’t play with me bitch…”
“How you know what your mama did when you were in her stomach?”
“Look, I know she smoked it with Darion and Joy. So why wouldn’t she have done it with me?”
I had too much respect for Mrs. Murray to picture her so dependent on reefer for a clear head that she couldn’t put it down for the nine months it took to grow a baby. So I left that alone. I wish I hadn’t though. Because I don’t know why I moved on to this next. Before I knew it, I just asked:
“Why don’t you do it?”
She finished off the last pinky and wiggled her toes like she had new strappy sandals rather than old jellies waiting. She swirled a fingertip of pink lotion into the ashy gray callous on back of one big toe.
“Do what?”
“Help me. Get rid of it.”
“What you mean Shivana?”
“Girl, just jump on me…”
“Uh uh! No. Noooo. Don’t even ask.”
“Come on Nakesha…please. It ain’t been that long so maybe—”
“Shivana hell naw I ain’t jumping on your damn stomach! You can forget it. I’m not doing that. Uh uh. God ain’t striking me down.”
“He won’t strike you down. He’ll strike me down.”
“I can’t do that to you Shivana. I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Nakesha!”
“No Shivana!”
Jesse came out the room.
“Shivana can we have some—”
“No!” I spit at her. “Y’all can’t have nothin’ so don’t even ask! Get back in there.”
“Shivana, why you crying?”
“I said get back in there. And don’t come out ‘til your mama get home! Matter fact, just go to bed. I ain’t got time for this shit tonight…”
“But it’s not eight o’clock.”
“What did I say?”
Jesse stomped off. I turned back to Nakesha. She was crying.
“I’m not doing that girl, so don’t ask again,” she said, right before the phone rang. We let it go to the answering machine.
“You have a collect call from the Cook County Correctional Facility from Leroy. Will you accept…”
Nakesha jumped up before I did.
“Hell yeah,” she said to the operator after she snatched up the phone. “Put that nigga on the phone.”
I knew what she was about to do, and when Nakesha’s mind was set to something she did it. She ran away from me, around the couch, then into the kitchen with the cordless phone, ignoring my pleas to hand it over. I heard Leroy’s deep, dry voice crack in over the phone.
“This ain’t yo baby!” Nakesha shouted. “She at work trying to take care of yo damn kids.”
“Nakesha, no. Don’t… lemme talk to him.”
“Don’t worry about who this is,” she just continued. “Worry about how you gonna take care of Shivana baby…”
“Nakesha, no…”
“I said Shivana baby. What you think I’m talking about? You stupid?…I’ll stay on your phone if I want to stay on your phone! You ain’t payin’ the bill no more you jailbird…you heard me…I called you a jailbird ‘cause that’s exactly what you are… This bitch is Nakesha Murray asshole, and you got my friend pregnant! Now what the hell you gonna do about it?”
She had done her damage so she threw the phone at me.
“Leroy…it’s Shivana. Don’t listen—”
“Vana! This you? Who the fuck you got in my house? Who the fuck she think she talking to? I’m gonna break her neck…And what the fuck she mean yo ass is pregnant?”
“She was just playing…”
“No I wasn’t!”
“She better be. You bet not be pregnant…I don’t need this shit right now. I don’t need…”
“I know. I know…She was lying. I mean, I thought I was, but I’m not.”
“See, this what I’m talking about. Little silly young girls. That’s why I ain’t never take you nowhere. Don’t you know what I’m going through in here I’m dying Vana. I’m dying. Y’all gotta help me get out of here…”
“What he sayin’ girl?”
I ignored her.
“I know. I know you going through a lot. I’m not pregnant. She was just playing a joke.”
“Well I’m gonna make sure Renelle don’t pay you tonight ‘cause y’all joking just cost me money.”
The phone went dead.
Red. All I saw was red. The black leather couch faded into the wall like blood oozing out onto a clean white floor. In my head I peeled Nakesha’s skin away to the meat. I charged her like I was a bull. Slammed her against the glass end table with their cheap, hollow, scratched gold tin legs. The plastic black table lamp flew to the side. The table’s legs bent like spit-wet toothpicks under her weight, and the glass crashed against her back. She was screaming and crying, but not swinging. I put my hands around her neck and squeezed. She struggled, but she wouldn’t kick or swing. She wouldn’t even raise her voice. Softly, she begged.
“Let me go Shivana…Stop it.”
I hit her head against the wall as glass crunched under my feet. The back of her head seemed as tough as the rubber soles of my shoes, because she wouldn’t even make the close-mouthed hiss which usually followed a newly-registered pain.
“Kick me,” I shouted. “I’ll let you go if you kick me.”
“No!”
“I said kick me bitch! Do it…you owe me now…”
“No… I’m not doing it,” she sobbed.
“Well I’m not lettin’ you go then…”
We had reached a standstill where the only movements were our hearts pumping heavy and hard. I knew if I just held her there long enough, pressed her hard enough into that glass until it started to cut through her thick Chicago Bulls sweatshirt, she wouldn’t have a choice. That sharp fire hot pain would make her force me off, with her feet or her knees. I thought about strangling her, but God changed my mind. I stared into her eyes before I sat on her chest with my knees crushing her breasts. She had just gotten that shot, so I knew they were sore. That did it.
“Oooohhh,” she finally moaned.
“Okay! Okay,” she said with her eyes scrunched and her face frowned in pain.
“You better do it,” I mumbled through tears, then closed my eyes tight because I could see she was getting to the point where she had no choice. Like I had eyes in the back of my head, I saw Junior and Jesse standing in their parents’ bedroom doorway, holding each other and crying. But I couldn’t hold Nakesha tight and stiffen myself for her blow at the same time; she had reflexes and so did I. I squeezed my eyes so tight I gave myself a headache and howled—a high-pitched scream that rang my ears like noon church bells for the second it lasted. The second it took Nakesha to slap my face. The second it took me to loosen and focus back on crushing her.
“Shivana…no…stop…” I heard one of them kids cry through snotty hiccups. I didn’t hear keys jingling in the lock, the front door opening, Renelle’s brown paper Aldi bag full of groceries falling to the floor, the swish of her Mickey Mouse nursing scrubs as she ran towards me to dig her fingernails into my shoulders.
“Shivana, what the hell…?”
Renelle shook me backwards and held me up while I flailed. Nakesha jumped up, coughing and unable to catch her breath. Once she sucked in one entire breath, I saw her eyes flame. She charged Renelle and me, slapping me in the face over and over again.
“You better get out of my house!” Renelle shouted. “Shivana, who—?”
“I hate you Shivana!” Nakesha screamed so loud I came to and stopped. “I hate you! You bet not ever speak to me again! I hate you!”
“Just stop it!” Renelle shouted, holding her arms out straight so that Nakesha couldn’t get to me and I couldn’t get to her. I had stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped seeing. Jesse and Junior had run to their mother, clutching her legs and hoping the madwomen didn’t turn on them. I saw their fear, and was ashamed. I dropped my arms loose and felt ready to take whatever Nakesha had to give me, but she wasn’t interested in kicking my ass anymore. She was ready to leave a deeper wound.
“Don’t be mad at me just ‘cause Leroy got your stupid ass pregnant!” she said, with a grin on her face, running around me to grab her Detroit Pistons Starter coat which sat on the end of the couch. All the blood drained from Renelle’s face, decayed into an astonished gray. She opened her mouth in a perfect circle, but no sound escaped.
“Yeah…she fucked yo’ nasty ass ugly husband and now she pregnant,” Nakesha said as she stuffed her feet in jellies. Then she started on her way out the door. The last thing I heard before a slam which rattled a couple oranging pictures off the wall was: “Find a new girl, bitch.”
When I turned back towards Renelle, shock had captured her. Her mouth, frozen; her breath, trembling; her eyes, two black tombs waiting; her hands, trembling and holding the wild, knotted, uncombed hair on top of her babies’ heads. Before she could ask her question, scaled back to simply whispering my name, I had run out the door behind Nakesha.
As if God himself had called it for me, there was a cab waiting outside the building when I flew out. Like I really had somewhere to go.
My daddy was a cab driver. We never had a car, probably couldn’t have kept up the payments if we had. What most men lacked in loyalty they made for up with creativity; along with the required xerox of his driver’s license, Daddy had clipped his only daughter’s kindergarten school picture to the one page application for the job. Once Wolley Cab forgave his lack of references (Daddy had cussed out every single boss who let him go), he was able to kill two birds with one stone: he got us some income and a car. Mama quit nagging him for a little while about money and riding the bus. Couldn’t stop giggling then, in between staring out the window whenever Daddy drove us around the South Side. This was back when both Wolley Cab and their love was brand new. Mama liked me to lay in her lap back then, used to pat my head with one hand while she tickled the back of my Daddy’s with the other, until he screamed at her about making him run us off the road. I was too little to resist against her. It got to the point that every time we eased in back of Daddy’s cab, playing like we were fares, I automatically assumed the position Mama enjoyed. But I craved the smell of new leather, a rich and foreign scent against the harsh odor of a chain-smoker’s only jeans. I would lie on my mother’s legs and sniff with all my might, holding my breath to seal in the smell until my chest grew so heavy I had no other choice but to huff it out. I looked for my face in the shiny new door handles, and imagined my reflection was rich.
My coat and purse were upstairs. Like there was money to pay for a cab in either one. Shivering, I looked down the street and saw a fire-truck and a couple police cars had backed up traffic on King Drive. I was in back of the cab before the driver even noticed I was coming.
“I’m off darlin'’,” the older gentleman said. It was dark and he barely turned, so I couldn’t see his face. Soft blue coils covered his head and ended along the edge of his ears; stiff gray hairs like light pencil marks peeked out from inside them. I thought about Mama playing with Daddy while she sat in the back of his cab, and I almost touched the old man’s soft puff of hair.
He glanced back at me. Whatever he saw in my face got him back on the clock.
“Where you goin’ darlin'’?” he sighed.
“Nowhere,” I said.
“Hah?” he asked.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Traffic began to move again, so he couldn’t look back at me anymore as he spoke.
“Pretty young gal like you gotsta be goin’ somewhere.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t know where somewhere is.”
“Well, you gotta tell me something. Soon as we get past this here commotion King Drive gonna be movin’ too fast to being going nowhere.”
He looked back at me again. I just hunched up my shoulders as if to say, “What you expect me to do about it?”
“’Bout how old is you? Twelve, thirteen?”
“I’m twenty.” I had to make him think I maybe had some money so he would just keep on driving. Being polite couldn’t hurt.
“Whew,” he laughed out loud as his cab came to a jerking halt again. If we didn’t get too far, then maybe I wouldn’t have to walk too long once he put me out for not having no money. He kept talking and chuckling.
“I wouldn’t a never thought you was no twenty. But you know, these girls look so old nowadays that I done forgot what a thirteen year old one supposed to look like in the first place.”
“How come every time somebody just want to be quiet and cry, it’s somebody around who won’t shut up so they can do it? But I guess it was his cab…”
“You comin’ from your boyfriend’s?”
“No.”
“You gotta boyfriend?”
“Yeah, I got one.” So old ass Negro old enough to be my granddaddy don’t even start.
“You goin’ to him then?”
“Yep. He waitin’ on me right now.”
“Well, where he stay?”
“Up on Halsted…” I could feel the salty snot clumping in back of my throat while my eyes ran. I didn’t have any tissues so I just used my wrist and let whatever came on dry.
“Where at on Halsted? See, I’m off…you gone be my last fare so I ain’t trying to go too far from the depot. I been working since eight o’clock this morning. Been up to O’Hare, took a fare to Harvey…”
I was shuddering, staring out of the window, squeezing myself tight and just now feeling Nakesha’s hard pinch on both my arms through my own fingers which grasped my arms tight.
“…I dropped some folks off at the United Center for the Bulls game. Matter fact, let me turn on the game ’cause it should be ‘bout over by now. You been to the United Center? Boy, that traffic was somethin’ else. Cars backed up all down Washington. Wasn’t nothing but headlights and Negros wearing red and black for blocks. Been back out down South since ‘bout seven though. Gotta couple calls came through on radio. See, that’s what I like. Old folks or women going shopping call you up on the South Side just to take ‘em ‘round the South Side. Now see, I like’s that. Point A to point B without all the confusion and a long ride home. You go downtown and you got stress, traffic. White folks either running late and acting like it’s yo fault, or keep changing they mind about where they wanna go in the first damn place. Just itching for a reason to jip you by claiming you jipping them. Oh, we movin’ again now miss. You ‘bout ready to tell me where you goin’? Miss? Miss? Hey, you alright Miss…?”
I guess the middle of a crying fit was as good a time as ever to confess I was broke. Worked for Tina the night she left Ike.
“Sir,” I heaved, “No, I ain’t alright. I’m not.” I couldn’t even tell him all the reasons why. Hell, I didn’t know. All I could do was sit in the back of that cab, wish I was five smelling Mama’s cigarette smell jeans, wish my baby would bleed out onto this man’s nice gray leather seats. And if that couldn’t happen at least somebody would come along to help me make it happen some other way.
“I ain’t got no money, and I ain’t got nowhere to go.”
Old man didn’t answer me for a while. He just drove on and let me cry. He only spoke when my chest stopped jumping up with sobs.
“Well…it be’s like that sometimes,” he finally said. “Shit, I’m 57 years old. If I was to tell you all the times in my life I was broke and I ain’t have nowhere to go, we liable to run out of gas and road. Fight with your boyfriend?”
“Kinda,” I managed. “Somethin’ like that.”
“Pretty gal like you don’t need nobody giving you grief. It ain’t worth it. That defeat the purpose of calling yourself in love.”
“Yeah, I’m finding that out now…”
“When you got love you always got somewhere to go. Should, at least.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He kept on driving, just turned up the radio. It wasn’t yet time for the Quiet Storm. Kool and the Gang “This is Your Night” was on. That was Aunt Jewel’s jam. If I was at home, in the kitchen with them, we would all be listening to it together, maybe dancing and laughing, sliding across the sticky linoleum and pretending kitchen chairs were our partners. I wondered if Renelle had gone upstairs looking for me. There was no doubt in my mind I had a fight on my hands if I caught her in the hallway, alone. I wondered if Mama and Aunt Jewel knew now. There was no way I could go home. Is this how good people wound up homeless? I thought about my Daddy’s people who lived in South Shore. Just young cousins and middle-aged aunts who were always happy to see me if I came by, but would never see me otherwise because they wouldn’t make the effort. It wasn’t that late. I could just pop up. Once opened, they wouldn’t shut a door in my face. I was family, after all.
“Can you take me to South Shore, by the 71st Metra stop?”
“Yes ma’am. I sure can. I can do that for you.”
“I ain’t got no money. Maybe my aunt might…”
“Don’t even worry. I’m off the clock anyway. This my time. It’s my pleasure.” He looked back at me. “No, my privilege.”
How old were they before they stopped getting that look in their eyes? Did it ever stop? That look. Just a couple steps before that must which instantly made it as hard as wood. That look. It always started out as a tight, trembling, nervous kernel of lust. Shiny eyes couldn’t look straight at curled eyelashes no matter how much they concentrated. Shiny eyes fighting curled eyelashes so hard they had no choice but to sit the round out and turn down. Rest themselves on loose shoe-laces, lint in hair, a button come loose in the middle of breasts, a single curved eyelash fallen on a plump cheek—anything to give them a reason or a right to touch us. Somewhere between boyish charm and mannish mischief, right before that turned-on twinge we women could smell before we even knew it was there, they always gave themselves away with the look. Cabbie had it, and it was only after I saw it in his eyes that I sniffed the air just to find out the scent of Old Spice had gotten stronger. Twice, in one night, I asked a question I knew I shouldn’t have.
“Mister?”
He jumped so hard at the sound of my voice his hands lifted off the steering wheel for a second. I saw his thick gold wedding ring catch the lights from King Drive.
“Huh?”
I didn’t know if I would be able to get it out.
“Miss, you want something?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe I do.”
The whites of his eyes suddenly took up more space in the rearview mirror I was watching him through.
“Lord… don’t tell me I done picked up another one of these hypes. You in your right mind tonight? Matter fact, where your coat? Why you ain’t cold? You ain’t on that stuff, is you?”
I needed to get on with it quick. He looked like the type of old Black man who shuffled down 63rd at two in the morning with a pistol packed tight against his narrow hips, who could forget about arthritis long enough to aim a slim barrel fast as a switchblade unfolds, and wouldn’t hesitate to snap back the trigger if need be.
“Do I look like I’m on that stuff?” I pouted. “Shoot, I know I don’t. I see you looking at me. I know I look good.”
In the rearview mirror I saw his eyebrows arch in a new, unexpected confusion.
“Don’t I look good?” I asked him before he could start to even care if he was attracted to a hype. He didn’t answer, so I figured the best thing I could do was to get him talking again.
“My daddy used to drive a cab. How long you been driving a cab?”
Nervous now, he talked fast.
“Shoot, ‘bout twenty-five years now. Since bout ’67, when my last daughter was born. Shit…the money I made! And I put half of it on the horses and made even more.”
He laughed out loud.
“You talkin’ ‘bout hundreds of dollars a day. And this was the sixties, seventies. So you didn’t even have to work five days a week. I mean, you could have, but who wanna do that? You couldn’t get no better job than this back then. Not in the factories, not on the roads, not on the buses, the trains, nowhere. Wasn’t no job as good as driving a cab. Maybe drivin’ a truck. But that was it. ‘Specially once you bought your own car. If you had your city car you used that for work and your big city car you used for play. I mean, what more you need?”
I thought of change in my pocket as we drifted pass a second Kentucky Fried Chicken in a couple of minutes. I hadn’t eaten since school lunch. A couple of cookies and a Sweet Valley Cream Soda at Renelle’s didn’t count. I doubted if I had enough for a two-piece with mashed potatoes and my favorite coleslaw in the whole world. Cabbie kept on talking while my stomach talked back.
“But you see, back then, it was way different you know. Lot more going on. Lot more happening. Chicago was happening more than it is now. You know, these gangs and thangs done changed everything. We had him, hell I was in one myself, but not like now. Not like today ‘cause folks wasn’t never scared to go out they house for no reason back then. Maybe for White folks, but that was about it. Even that wasn’t no problem ‘cause for the most part they done always left the South Side alone. I didn’t drive nowhere but South in those days. You didn’t have to go downtown or to the airports to make the good money. 69th street all by itself paid my bills for a couple years, back when all the clubs was ‘round on Halsted, ‘fore they started tearing down the shopping on 63rd…”
I let him drone on. Cabbie had been as far North as O’Hare and as far south as Harvey, out here since eight o’clock this morning. He had dropped off people just itching to tip because they were in a good mood, anticipating the once in a lifetime chance to see Jordan fly. His nails were manicured, clipped and buffed to a new money shine, made so just so they could flicker when he handed a young girl like me a piss-colored drink in a smoky lounge. If he was smart like my daddy had been, he would have dropped his half day’s take off somewhere earlier in the day. He would have pulled out just enough cash to be able to make change, but left the real money somewhere besides his pockets or the console of his cab. He had probably dropped it off to a wife about his age, whose homemade buttermilk cornbread and daylong beans couldn’t get him home right at twilight like they used to. But that still left half the day. He was too young to be incapable and too old to be in crisis. He could get it up to do it to me if he wanted to, and it would be exactly what he wanted to do.
“You want to go somewhere, just me and you?” I suddenly asked him, and I imagined my ears sealing shut so they didn’t have to hear what was coming from my mouth. He chuckled, and I let him continue until he turned and again, and I saw the look reappear.
“I mean, you said you off work,” I said sweet. “What you do for fun? Maybe we could go somewhere and have some.”
My improvisation fueled by desperation, I didn’t want him to get a word in edgewise—yet. Aunt Jewel had taught me that to get what you want from a man, you have to fool him into believing that what you want was his idea in the first place. And I wanted every single dollar he had in this damn cab.
He chuckled again, but didn’t say a word. He glanced back a couple times in a couple seconds, but this time that other look was gone. There was another one in its place and that’s when I knew I had him. I knew this other look because I felt it had crept across my own face before, though I couldn’t actually see it. Didn’t matter. I knew it had been there. The first time Leroy clasped my waist real quick while I moved past him to reach a Lucky Charms cereal box sitting on top of the refrigerator, when his touch lasted way longer than an accidental brush. I had looked back at him and grinned in spite of myself, knowing what his offer was though he hadn’t yet officially put it on the table. A stupid, clumsy look—frozen by the disbelief I could be desired.
“What kinda fun you talkin’ about?” the cab man said, his interest betrayed by an adolescent crack on the question mark. Then of course, he cleared his throat.
“I don’t know, just fun. Whatever that mean to you.”
“Naw, you tell me what it mean to you.”
It had to be his idea. The speedometer jerked down from 35 to 20 and we were criss-crossing the street’s white lane boundary lines. I didn’t say a word even to correct him or protect us. I just sat quiet and smiled out the window, catching real quick a star that was shooting or falling; I couldn’t tell which. Didn’t matter in the sky hovering over this part of town, so there was nothing to tell him he should see. A shooting star with nowhere to go aroused less excitement than a falling one.
“I don’t know what fun is anymore.” And that wasn’t a lie.
“Oh, you know.” He let the chuckle loose first so a stomach-filled laugh could slide into its place. “You know. I know.”
I just laughed right along with him, hoping he was thinking about head or a hand job. I thought about how the gray hairs on his chest would most certainly scratch. I wondered if he would be as hard, sturdy, energetic as Leroy. He retreated back to the chuckle before I knew it. Against Aunt Jewel’s instruction, I intervened.
“I guess my idea of fun is the same as everybody else’s. Me and a man I like doing the things we like to do.”
He faltered for a moment. I knew to lean forward and hang on to the back of his head rest like we were about to crash. I let him feel my sour breath so it could make him think of a morning after. He had hardened into a blank face, much too stiff and strained to not give way.
“How old is you, girl?” he asked softly, the shame already evident in his eyes.
“Old enough,” I answered. “You ain’t gotta worry. I do this, all the time. It’s no big deal. You ain’t gotta worry.”
He was thinking about it.
“Shit…What you want? From me? With me…?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I don’t know what I want. I mean, I do, but…”
“But what?”
“I mean, I’m married. I’m a deacon…I gotta wife.”
“I know. But that don’t make it impossible.”
“Yeah, but it don’t make it right either.”
I wasn’t going to beg, wasn’t desperate enough yet to beg, so I let the head rest go. Falling back was just what I needed to do for him to come to me.
“Well, I mean…what you want? What I gotta give you?”
I didn’t have to think twice about it.
“Shit, you can gimme all you got.”
I don’t know why I followed him and started laughing until my stomach convulsed. Maybe so my tears of shame could flow again in disguise. When I finished laughing and flicking them away, he had already pulled into a vacant, rubbish-strewn lot in back of an abandoned laundromat. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I could hear a coming Metra train sound its bells. So we were in South Shore, probably within walking distance of my aunt’s just in case I changed my mind or things got out of hand. He parked the car but didn’t turn it off. It was cold. He swallowed hard and I finally was able to hear his breath even though the volume on the radio hadn’t been touched. I didn’t exactly notice how he maneuvered his way upon me, slithering over the Lincoln Town Car’s middle console with an ease which made me suddenly think he did this all the time. I had no reason to be, but I was disappointed anyway. I could feel the decades-old cracks in his lips slicing a pattern into my own. The hairs I had known would scratch my chest instead stabbed at my chin. Then he held me tight against him for a whole verse of Luther, which song I couldn’t make out because I had lost my focus. But he was my Mama’s favorite so I could make out that voice underwater if I had to. The old man squeezed me into him and ran his lips and chin over the top of my hair. He massaged my back, let me taste his heart beating on my face so strong I felt the need to open my mouth and swallow. I inhaled too many breaths of Old Spice and felt the tart beginning to throw-up cascade down the back of my throat. Mind over matter, I convinced my pregnant self, knowing he might be too disgusted to continue—even if I wiped every last speck of vomit of his nice leather seats. I needed to push him off me to concentrate on keeping it down. I held out my arms tight as my eyes watered from nausea.
“What’s wrong there, sugar?” he whispered, holding my face in both his hands and looking into my eyes with a new rage of want. “What’s wrong, darling? Huh? I ain’t scare you, did I?”
“No,” I managed. “No. I ain’t scared of shit.”
He started to fall back into me but I wasn’t ready yet.
“How much you gonna pay me?” I shouted, turning away and bending forward from my stomach.
“Huh?”
“I sa-id, how much is you gonna pay me?”
It was an unfair question at this time, and that’s exactly how I liked it. His mind was too gone to expect any other response than the one he gave.
“Whatever you want. I got money. I mean, this ain’t all I do. I do more than drive a cab. I got a house. I got money. I could take you out, anytime, wherever you want to go…I got money.”
“Well give it to me.” I shut my eyes tight, and the rising vomit sunk down once more. I opened my eyes long enough to see his hips jerked forward as he lifted himself off the seat to reach into his left pants pocket. I had been right—a slick black pistol slid out right along with countless bills. He bent down to collect them before I could ask, and when I opened my eyes again his hands were outstretched and in them he held a pile of cash which looked like a fat, giant spider in the moonlight.
I grabbed a fistful of bills and stuffed them down my shirt, then grabbed more before those were secure in place. The more I stuffed the money, the more it seemed it seemed to fall, until I simply gave up and started to cry. Caught off guard by my reaction and change, old man wouldn’t touch me or let down his hands. I guessed he wanted me to keep on grabbing the money, but my hands were fisted over my eyes by now. He suddenly threw the money on the seat in between us and started to neatly fold the bills. He was quick about it, but still very, very neat—like he was wrapping a present two minutes before the party. He only stopped when a police car squealed off in the distance, and he grabbed the back of the passenger’s head rest as he looked around wildly. Except for the police car, there hadn’t been any signs that we weren’t alone for a while. But when I opened my eyes, I saw a group of rowdy boys freestyling rhymes over a garbage can. There were people collecting at a bus shelter a block down. A light suddenly went on in the laundromat, and the windows glowed a dirty gold. We both looked around, then at each other, and then all of a sudden I was in his arms. The bills smashed and crackled between us as he held on to me tight, and I cried. Not just a stream of snot or little pearls of silent tears, but that hard, long, stomach-hurting and eye-scorching kind of cry, for I don’t know how long. But at some point in the middle of the outburst he had eased back into the front seat, leaving a pile of bills stacked on the back seat as neatly as a new deck of cards.
“71st Street, by the Metra?” he asked as soon as I slowed down. But the crying with this stranger had cleared my mind. In minutes, it had demolished the wall standing between me and a new courage, a new maturity, a new acceptance of the bullshit I had gotten myself into.
“Naw,” I sniffled. “Take me on back. Just take me back home. Back where you picked me up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, and for fifteen minutes of stoplights never stopped so it seemed like we were on open road, neither one of us said a word.
I hadn’t planned on saying anything to him when I opened the door to get out, not even goodbye. I left the money where it was because I hadn’t earned it. But with just one of my legs out the cab, old man grabbed my shoulder before I could ease out another.
“Take the money,” he told me. “Go’on. You can have it.”
“But…”
“Naw, just go on, take it.” He nodded his head sure. He nodded with his hand on my shoulder until I turned to grab the stack, held it in my hands like it was a baby I wanted. Then like I couldn’t before, I stuffed it all down into my bra and this time not a single dollar escaped. I wasn’t sophisticated enough for a corny response, a thank you full of sarcasm or wit. I was more grateful than he or I could have ever known, but I was also alone, scared, about to get my ass kicked by Renelle, my mama, or both. I really couldn’t think of one thing to say so I just shut the door of the cab real light and promised to say something right if I ever saw him again.
When I walked up to my stoop, that boy—with the funny white cheeks and knotty hair—was sitting on the stoop, lighting a Newport and nodding his head in between earphones. Despite my nappy hair from the fight, eyes bloodshot from the crying, my ridiculously bare arms despite November, my chest deformed from a third mound that should not have been there, I smiled at that boy, felt my own dimples pinching my cheeks, the my eye creases touching, no reason, just because—as wide as I could. He didn’t smile back as wide. Just kind of grinned a tiny bit, lopsided with one side his mouth. I stood in front of him, we looked at each for a couple of seconds, anticipating, waiting for one or the other one to say something. I don’t remember who spoke first. Didn’t matter anyway. We would be together from there on out.
Otium
