“He has a little limp.”
“I know what he got. Why’s he got it, is my question.”
“There was a shooting when he was a baby,” I say to her, “and he was injured.” As little information as possible. I don’t want this woman knowing too much of anything about me and my child.
And she smiles too, as if she knows I’m holding back. She’s an older woman now, in her fifties, but she’s still very pretty.
She walks us to her small kitchen table, which, with her open floor plan, is just beyond the living room. It’s all neat and tidy, like she’s just an everyday homemaker, and the Price is Right is loud on the TV. “Come on down!” that familiar voice is saying. “You’re the next contestant on the Price is Right!” And a woman wearing a cardboard box and a clown’s nose is running on down.
We sit at the kitchen table: me, Ayden, and his grandmother. And I know he knows that’s who she is because he’s staring at her. But I also know my child. He’s not going to try to get to know her better, or try to please her in any way. The way he sees it, we have enough problems in our life than to have to add this mean lady to the list.
“Okay, you wanted in, you’re in,” my mama says to me. “Now what is it you want? And make it snappy. I don’t want you cuttin’ into my soap opera time. The Young and the Restless gonna be on soon enough.”
“I got laid off from my job,” I say to her.
She stares at me. “Laid off?”
“Yes, ma’am. And I---”
“And you need money? Is that why you’re here?”
“No, ma’am.” I wouldn’t ask her for money if she was the last human being on the face of this earth.
“You got that car out there. I saw it when I opened the door. Why haven’t you sold that pieces of car and made you some money?” It was like she didn’t hear me. I told her I didn’t want her money.
“Why don’t you sell that car?”
“All I’m gonna get for it is a couple hundred bucks tops.”
“So? It’s better than begging.”
“I’m not begging!” I say this angrily, although I know I’m not helping my case. “I need that car to get a job, and to keep one once I get it. I’m not here for money. I’m not here to beg.”
“Then what are you here for?”
She has no compassion whatsoever. Not that I expected any. Even when I was a child, she didn’t have none for me. But damn. It’s tough enough. “Before she died, Grandma said you were working at a plant in this town, and been working there a long time. I was wondering if you could maybe get me on at your plant.”
“Are you on dope?” she asks me. “They’re laying off too! Haven’t you heard about the recession in this country? Only reason they haven’t laid me off is because I been there twenty years. I’m already vested. They got to pay me one way or another. A pay check or a retirement check. Unlike your stupid ass, I had a plan for my life.”
I stand up from that table real fast. I took her shit when I was a kid. I’m a long way from that now. Ayden stands up too.
Then she says something that throws me. “I can keep the boy,” she says to me, standing too. “Until you get on your feet.”
My whole body goes still. Leave my child with her? With the woman who used to beat me with extension cords for eating too much peanut butter? With the woman who would burn me with straightening combs when I cried getting my hair done? No thank you!
“I don’t leave my child with anybody,” I say to her. “I just thought you might be able to hook me up at the plant where you work. A job is all I want. And I’ll find one,” I add, although I know, with the low opinion she has of me, she doesn’t believe me. But I don’t give a shit. I take Ayden’s hand and we head for the door.
But when we get to the door, she surprises me. “I hear they’re hiring in Jericho,” she says. “At the Jericho Inn.”
I turn and look at her. I don’t even know where Jericho is. “Oh, yeah?”
“It’s a cattle call at four this afternoon.”
“A what call?”
My mama, being my mama, rolls her eyes. “A cattle call, child. Where everybody shows up at the same time because they need something like five people all at once. I got a friend who lives there. She was telling me about it just this morning because she’s applying too.”
“Applying to do what kind of job?”
“Housekeeping. And you might just get in.”
I might get in? I never even heard of Jericho! “Why you think I’ll get in?”
“A white man owns the hotel,” she says. “A guy they call Big Daddy Sinatra. I hear he’s a mean sonafabitch. A real bastard. My girlfriend says he runs that whole town. But he’s got a black wife, and she runs that hotel. She’ll be the one doing the hiring. At least you shouldn’t be discriminated against, and might even have the inside track. Especially since there ain’t that many Negroes in that town, and she may wanna hire her own kind. That’s all I’m saying.”
It’s worth a shot, that was for damn sure. “Where this place at?” I ask her. “This Jericho?”
“Two towns over from here, up the interstate. About a twenty-minute drive.”
I nod. “Thanks,” I say, although it kind of aches me to say it to her. But she didn’t have to bring it up.
She doesn’t say you’re welcome. That would have been too much like civilized. She opens the door for me and Ayden, more than ready, I’m sure, to be rid of us forever again.
But my mama, being my mama, can’t just leave it be. “I told you so,” she says to me.
We’re on her front porch now. It’s a nice cool breeze blowing all across this nice, clean, quiet neighborhood. I turn and look at her. “Excuse me?”
“I told you so,” she says again. “You just like your daddy. Ain’t worth a damn. Can’t even keep a job. Can’t provide for your own kid. But nobody couldn’t tell your fast ass nothing. Got yourself knocked up and never got back right since. I told you that was gonna happen. You wanted to go to college, always readin’ them books, and had the brains for it too. But I knew your ass. I knew you wasn’t gonna amount to shit. And I told you that when you were real young. Now look at yourself. You became exactly what I said you was gonna be.”
I’m ready to cuss her ass out. I’m sorry I feel that way, but that’s how I feel. But I hold my peace. She didn’t raise me. She didn’t teach me a damn thing. How she expected me to learn how not to be this or how to do that when she was worse in my eyes? Grandma was too old and feeble to teach me, and she was all I had. Where was you, I want to ask her. Where was your ass? How was I to know that boys giving you attention was how they got in your pants if nobody was bothering to tell me that? Some kids figure it out themselves. Somehow they manage. I wasn’t one of those kids.
And she has the gall to talk about how terrible I turned out as if she had no hand in it. I wanna cuss her ass out, I declare I do. She’s the worse thing crawling in my eyes.
But she’s my mother too. I may be the lowest thing walking in this world. Nobody thinks I’m worth a damn. But I’ll never get that low. I can’t cuss out my own mama.
“Let’s go, Ayden,” I say to my son, hurt that he had to hear yet more proof of who I really am, but he doesn’t turn with me. He’s still staring at my mother.
“Let me tell you something,” he says to her, and I know he’s angry and wants to cry because his bottom lip is trembling. “My mama is a great mama. When I was two, she saved my life. If it wasn’t for her quick actions, I would have been dead. My daddy was killed, and it broke her heart, but she fought for me. She made them doctors treat me right, and give me the best care any child could have gotten. And she raised me all by herself. She never left me with nobody. She never put us on welfare. She took care of me right and taught me right. She may not be rich like you, and got a fancy house like you got, but she has a big heart and she tries to build people up, not tear them down like you do. My mama is a great mama!”
But my mama, like I could have gue
ssed all along, is not impressed. “Your mama ain’t shit,” she says to Ayden. He just gave his heart to her, and she just gave it right back. “Sooner your ass realizes she ain’t worth shit, the sooner you’re figure out a better way of taking care of yourself. Because from what I’m seeing, with your peg leg self, you can’t do much worse. Probably can do better raising yourself than what that sorry-ass heifer doing for you. Telling me what she is. She ain’t shit. Now get the fuck off my porch!”
Ayden’s so mad now he balls up one of his fists. He wants to rain down fire and brimstone on my mama. But I’m not disrespecting her, and neither is any child of mine. She might go in the gutter, but we aren’t following her there.
I take Ayden by the hand, forcibly, and we leave her place for good.
But as we drive slowly through Maine, and get on the highway, heading to that place call Jericho, I can see, from the side of his face, that tears are in his eyes. Nobody wants to hear that their mama ain’t worth a damn. And I want to tell him it’s not true. That everything he said about me is the real me. But it’ll sound too self-serving and, if I were to be honest, I’d be lying to my son.
I am everything Ayden said. I am hard working. I did fight for him. But I’m everything my mama said too, because I failed. I failed to get away from Tyrell before that crazy day. People used to say I was so smart, and could go to college if I put my mind to it, but I couldn’t even manage high school. I barely got my GED. I failed to plot and plan my life so I wouldn’t be in such a scary place. Now we’re homeless, and I’m still jobless, and if this Jericho doesn’t work out for me, we could be sleeping in this car real soon. I’ve stretched that last paycheck almost as far as I can stretch it. I need a miracle something bad.
But instead of worrying myself sick, or trying to rehabilitate myself in my child’s eyes, I call on the miracle man himself. I’m calling on Jesus as I’m driving. Tears streaming down my eyes, I’m calling on the man who walked on water. Because my grandma raised me in the church. I know what God can do. And if He can’t help me, there’s point blank period no help for me.
CHAPTER SIX
I’m at the Hub in downtown Jericho, a small diner so named because it’s in the center of everything in town. I come to the place most days because it’s in walking distance of my office at City Hall. It’s also where I hold court with the locals who want to complain to their mayor about the water treatment plant and the problems we’ve been having over there, or their electric bills, or my shoddy leadership, as they see it, of their beloved town. Whatever they want to vent about, I let’em. But then sometimes, like today, it’s mainly just city workers and county workers and people who figure the mayor is their boss way up the line somewhere, and they aren’t about to make waves. They let me eat in peace.
But I’m not exactly in peace. I’m sitting here, and there’s food in front of me, but there’s no joy. Not after that phone call I got from Laura this morning. What the fuck was that about? Said she might be pregnant and, if she is, I’m the father. Like I’m supposed to believe a hot chick like her only slept with the one guy. And I thought I used condoms every time I banged her. But I could have slipped up.
I met her a year ago, because a buddy of mine was bonking her and she wanted to bonk me. Keeping it real, that’s the kind of relationship we had. It never was anything more than that. But now I’m supposed to believe she jumped pure overnight and swore off all other men but me? That’s what she’s claiming. But I’m not buying it. I might have been born at night, but not last night.
And what’s weird is she won’t return my calls or text messages. Why she wanna tell me something like that, and then go silent? She thinks I’ll hear news like that and go silent too?
I check my text messages. My chief of staff, Gerard, just hit me up with a Got news on L message. Will call, he adds. Which means, wherever he is, he has to find a private place before he places the call.
“But I’m still hungry,” I hear a little boy says. I look over, two tables over, and there’s a black woman with a black kid finishing what looks like two kids meals. Only both plates seem to be in front of him, as if she gave the boy her food to eat too. The plates are clean so I can’t say if he ate both. But it couldn’t be much because he’s still hungry.
The mother pays the waitress for the two kids’ meals and the waitress goes to the cash register to ring her out. But the woman is looking in her purse. Her boy’s still hungry and she wanna see if there’s more she can give him. But I can tell she’s counting change to see what she can pull together to get him more food, and it’s not looking good. She’s got some dollars on her, because I see them too, but apparently that’s for bigger things: like a roof over their heads maybe. It’s hard out here now that the economy’s tanked and I’m seeing more and more people just like them. People who were living from paycheck to paycheck to begin with, and now the paycheck’s gone. Now they have little or nothing. Jericho’s been hit. Not as bad as other places. We’re a more prosperous, upscale town to being with. But we’re taking our beating in this economy too.
She finishes counting her change and puts it all back in her purse. “It’s not enough, Ayden,” she says to the boy. “I’ll see about getting us something later, okay? But if we spend it all here, you’ll be hungry later tonight, and then what can we do? We’ll eat later.”
“You didn’t eat at all,” the boy says, confirming what I suspected already.
“Don’t you worry about me,” the woman quickly admonishes. “I take care of you, not the other way around. Got that, buster?”
The kid smiles. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.
Although the boy says what she wants to hear, he looks like that kind of kid, I can see the disappointment in his big eyes. He’s still hungry as a motherfuck. And his mother hasn’t eaten at all. I motion for a waitress.
“Yes, sir?” she says as she comes right over.
I lean toward her ear. “That young lady and that boy,” I say.
She glances over, but quickly looks back at me. “Yes, sir?”
“Take them a couple of plates of your big burger special. Put it on my tab, but tell them it’s on the house.”
The waitress, a cute blonde who understands that times are hard, smiles. “Thank you, sir. I was worried about them, too.” And she goes to do my bidding.
I lean back, waiting for Gerard’s call, and take a good look at the woman. She’s barely thirty, if that. Dark-brown skin that looks creamy. Thin and small in every way, like she’s missed some meals in her day. But she appears to have some height on her, too, like she could have easily modeled if life had taken her in a different direction. But unlike those rail-thin models, she’s got a nice stack in front of her. Very nice. She’s sitting down and I can’t see if her ass matches her sizeable breasts.
She also has a nice, simple style about her that I immediately like. She’s wearing an airy white blouse and blue trousers, and has on heels. Even in her difficulties, she keeps herself up. And there’s no doubt in my mind that that woman is one of those people who, when the economy cracked, fell through that crack. And her son too. He’s nicely dressed with his shirt tucked in. They’re poor, and that shows too. But it’s not showing in how they carry themselves. It’s only showing in their eyes. In their sad, scared eyes.
My waitress, I’m happy to say, is quick on her feet, as if she didn’t want the pair of them getting away before she could give them their gift. But if she thinks it’s going to be easy, she’s in for a rude awakening. I don’t know that woman from jack, but I know she’s still got some pride. Some people gladly take handouts. They view it as letting others be generous to them so they can get their blessings too. She’s not one of those people.
And I’m proven right immediately. She doesn’t want to take the food. “What do you mean it’s on the house,” she’s asking the waitress. “Your food isn’t free.”
The waitress tries to quietly explain that the owners know it’s hard out there, and they do what they can.
But that woman, I can tell, isn’t buying it. She doesn’t want to be on anybody’s charity list. It sickens her. But she look at her boy. He’s her driving force.
But then my heart sinks when she looks at that boy. It’s not the look of somebody offended and ready to walk out in umbrage. It’s the look of somebody who feels as though they failed their child miserably. Here she is, can’t even keep his belly full. And some white woman’s standing there offering them free plates of big burgers and loads of fries, the kind of comfort food that will hold a growing boy for hours to come. And she knows it. But she also knows she can’t afford it.
She takes the food.
And when she does, my heart aches for her. A decent woman in an indecent time. And it’s a shame.
But then my cell phone rings. It’s Gerard. And I snap out of that shit. What am I doing anyway? I don’t know that female from Adam. I don’t know if she’s decent or not. I got my own problems to worry about. Namely Laura’s ass, and this upcoming campaign. I answer my phone.
“What you got?” I ask.
“She’s pregnant,” Gerard says over the phone. “And she knew she was pregnant two months ago.”
“Two months ago?” Why would she say she didn’t know if she was pregnant when she knew two months ago? But I can’t even dwell on that. I’m too busy thinking about the idea of it all. I don’t know how to react to news that I might be somebody’s father. I’m not ready to be a father! My old man is my example, and I’m nowhere near up to that standard. And before Jenay came along, he raised four boys all by himself. And to be attached to a woman like Laura for the rest of my life? That’s fucking nuts. She can be a bitch and I can be a bastard. We’ll kill each other before this shit is through. I pinch the bridge of my nose.
But after giving me a moment to just digest this news, Gerard keeps on talking. “The good news is,” he says, “you might be the father, but a whole lot of other men might be the father too.”
Bobby Sinatra: In All the Wrong Places (The Rags to Romance Series Book 1) Page 4