Hold Love Strong

by Matthew Aaron Goodman

  All of the windows in the apartment were open so the sounds of the street, of traffic and music and the occasional laughter and shouting leapt into our apartment from below and bounced like rubber balls off the walls. Taking advantage of the darkness, my Aunt Rhonda lay on the couch in the living room, giggling and whispering things of an erotic nature in a coy tone to her new boyfriend, Beany, a diminutive twenty-year-old with the gentle, unassuming face of a boy who believed all he’d heard in church. Beany lived three doors down the hall with his mother, father, little sister, and their two cats, Geronimo and Sam. His mother and father were hardworking church people. His sister, Cecily, was a straight-A student. In fact, Beany had been a straight A student too, but in his mid-teens his aspirations changed and Beany became bent on being the baddest motherfucker in Queens. Fuck you was his disposition. From his vantage point, everyone was out to get him. But because Beany was small and because he didn’t have the personal history or family structure to prove his courage or translate it into rage, and because his father was very much the master of his home, Beany, more than anything else, was bluster. I heard my Aunt Rhonda giggle and Beany beg please. Then I heard her say stop and it’s too hot, then slap him and giggle again.

  Our apartment door opened, and a pale river of light rolled into our apartment. Then the door closed and the darkness returned. Donnel was home. He mumbled a hello to my Aunt Rhonda then walked into the kitchen, a red brick in each hand.

  “Where you been?” I asked.

  “Stairs,” he said, short of breath. “Up and down, from the basement to the roof.”

  Donnel wore grey sweatpants and a grey sweatshirt and although the kitchen was no brighter than dim, I could see that his collar was soaked with sweat. He was twelve. His body carried the must of a man who should be wearing deodorant and he was so lean the veins on the back of his hands looked like noodles hidden just beneath the surface of his cherrywood skin. He hated seeing my Aunt Rhonda with a man because he knew what the product of such a coupling was. Sooner or later, she’d be crying. Sooner or later, she’d be whirling in a fitful rage. Then she would be silent, lost, alone.

  Donnel planted the bricks on the table and surveyed the kitchen, the bouquet of flowers Mr. Goines delivered the previous day that we’d pushed to the back of the table, the dishes in the sink, and the birdcage on the far corner of the counter, a moat of discarded seeds surrounding it. Inside the cage, the birds perched beside each other and tried to sleep through the heat, their beaks burrowed in their green chests. Donnel crossed the room, stuck his finger through the bars of the birdcage, and whistled a few high notes.

  “How many times?” I asked.

  “Twenty,” he said.

  “You crazy?” I said.

  Proudly, he looked at me over his shoulder. “Why?”

  “Cause it’s hot.”

  “Nigga,” he scolded. “Heat can’t stop me.”

  That spring Donnel had been beat real bad. Jumped after school, a crew of young brothers split his lip, split his head, black-and-blued, and broke blood vessels in both of his eyes. He fought back though, and his hands were so swollen and battered they looked like he’d spent hours grating them against a rock wall. He couldn’t grip or squeeze so he had to open bottles, bags, and cans of soda with his teeth for a week. Donnel must have thrown as many punches as he’d been dealt. Him against what I imagined to be hundreds, not one of whom he named. He refused to; refused to say why, refused tell anyone where it happened, when it happened, if he was alone or with friends. It didn’t matter how many times we asked, or how many times I begged him to tell just me as we lay head to foot in bed at night.

  The one thing he did say, the one thing he swore his life away on, is that it would never happen again. Never, he said. And it wouldn’t happen to Eric or me. Never, he swore. Not once. No one would so much as think of breathing on us. He’d kill if he had to. With his bare hands. Bet on it, he said. He made up a workout program and followed it religiously to ready himself. He did push-ups and sit-ups, seemingly thousands at a time. He did pull-ups from crossing signs every time we came to a corner and the sign glowed Don’t walk. He leaned our mattress against the wall and boxed it, pounding and pounding it until he was soaked in sweat. And he ran with the bricks; ran around the block, ran up and down the stairs.

  Donnel came to the table and looked down at my schoolwork. He was in the seventh grade. Maybe he was passing his classes. Maybe he was failing. He didn’t care, and although she swore she cared, although she asked him when she was going to see him doing homework and where his report cards were, my Aunt Rhonda was too concerned with what she wanted to truly care either. As far as she was concerned, Donnel was a man; what he wanted, if he really wanted it, he’d figure out how to get. The thing Donnel most wanted was for my Aunt Rhonda to be free from her desperate need for a man, and going to school had nothing to do with it. So Donnel either didn’t go to school or went to school with a level of contentiousness that made teachers demand that he tell them who he thought he was.

  “What you doing?” he asked, picking up my math homework and holding it so he could see it in the candlelight.

  “Multiplication,” I said. “I finished that already.”

  He studied my answers for a moment. Then he put the page down in front of me.

  “What’s six times six?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. “Thirty-six,” I said.

  He pointed at one of my answers. “You got thirty-two,” he said. “Fix it.”

  I looked at the problem Donnel had identified. He was right. I erased the answer, blew the pieces of rubber eraser from the paper, and wrote thirty-six.

  My mother pressed the stop button on her Walkman and took her headphones from her ears. “Donnel, let Abraham be,” she scolded. “He’s got schoolwork to finish.”

  Donnel ignored her. He tapped my shoulder. “Want to go swimming?” he asked.

  “Swimming?” I said.

  “In the pool,” Donnel said.

  “The city closes the pool when the sun goes down,” snapped my mother. “You know that.” She smacked my cheek with the back of her fingers to get my attention. “Can’t you see he’s fuck’n with you?” She tapped her hand on my homework. “C’mon, finish. I ain’t got all night.”

  If there was one thing Donnel wasn’t, it was a liar. He hated even the insinuation that he might be. He planted his hand on my homework and looked at my mother, his face and body taut, his eyes shining, black steel in the candlelight.

  “Someone put a kid pool on the roof,” he insisted.

  My mother looked Donnel dead in the eyes and considered what he said. She was twenty-two, lonely, hot, and always willing to embrace an escape from life.

  “The elevator working?” she asked.

  “I heard it going up and down when I was in the stairs,” Donnel said.

  “You sure?” said my mother. “Cause I ain’t try’n to get stuck.”

  “Who?” Donnel teased.

  “Me,” my mother said. “What? You gonna tell me I can’t come?”

  Donnel knew he’d won. He took his hand from my homework.

  “And the water’s clean?” my mother asked.

  Donnel shrugged. “Looked clean to me.”

  My mother thought for a brief moment and I wondered what she considered. Maybe she reflected on the facts of her life, that she was without a job; that my grandma was out of work too; that my Uncle Roosevelt was out somewhere who knows where doing who knows what with Luscious; that my Aunt Rhonda was on the couch with Beany, cuddling and entertaining fantasies; that my grandma and Eric were asleep, deep in safe, dark worlds of dreams; and that there she was, in Ever, sitting in the almost dark, sweating in a kitchen as her son spelled simple words and solved simple math equations that didn’t solve any of our problems.

  She swung her legs off my lap, leaned forward, and tapped her hand on the table. “Abraham,” she said. “Hurry up. Finish what you got.”

  My mothe
r took a candle from the table and quickly disappeared into the bedroom she shared with my grandma and my Aunt Rhonda. Donnel took a candle and went into our room to change into shorts. I wrote the last spelling words as quickly as I could. Then Donnel came back into the kitchen for me.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  I finished writing. I put my pencil down. Then I stood in a rush.

  “Put your shit away,” Donnel ordered. “Put it in your bag. Don’t be leaving it all out.”

  Hurrying, I put my homework into my school folder and stuffed it into my backpack. Then I took a candle and followed Donnel into the dark living room.

  “Where you all going?” asked my Aunt Rhonda.

  “To the roof,” said Donnel, not even slightly shifting in the direction of his mother and Beany.

  “How long you gonna be gone?” my Aunt Rhonda asked.

  Donnel didn’t answer. He unlocked the door and opened it as wide as he could. The room flooded with the pale glow of the hallway’s light and Donnel swung around and looked at my Aunt Rhonda and Beany as if he might catch them committing a crime. My Aunt Rhonda was slouched against Beany and her hand disappeared somewhere in his lap. Quickly, she pulled it free and covered her eyes as if the light was not pallid but blinding.

  “Donnel, damn!” she complained. “What’re you doing?”

  “Go on!” said Beany. He pulled away from my Aunt Rhonda. “Nigga, stop being stupid. Get out of here!”

  Donnel held the candle just beneath his chin, his eyes on Beany. “Who you talking to?” he asked, his voice molten anger.

  “You,” said Beany.

  “Nigga,” Donnel began, but my Aunt Rhonda interrupted him.

  “D,” she said, “take your little angry ass wherever.”

  “Before you get hurt,” Beany added.

  Hurt? Donnel glared at Beany for a long, dangerous moment. I feared what he might say and its repercussions. Donnel had a tongue as sharp and wicked as arbitrary hate and raining razor blades. I’d seen him slice and dice and fillet brothers, name all of their deepest secrets, and then chastise them for bothering to keep them. He shifted his eyes to me. And although I was afraid, I tried to use my eyes to let him know that whatever happened, whatever he said and however Beany reacted, I had his back, that if Beany leapt from the couch and tried to kill him, I’d be there killing Beany more. Donnel swallowed then moved his eyes from me back to my Aunt Rhonda and Beany. I assumed he would speak, say something vicious. But he said nothing. Whatever my Aunt Rhonda wanted, whatever she believed she needed, Donnel always, somehow, found a way to rationalize and give in to. He blew out his candle, put it on the floor, and called for my mother.

  “Jelly,” he said. “You coming?”

  “Meet you up there,” my mother called back from the bedroom.

  Donnel turned around and walked into the hallway light. Blowing out my candle, putting it down, and holding my breath as best as I could, trying not to breathe in the stale stench of hot piss that bloomed in the elevator and lived in the hall, I followed him. We took the elevator up to the top floor. Donnel muttered about how he would kill Beany if he did anything to my Aunt Rhonda. I told him that I had his back and that I hated Beany too.

  “Serious,” Donnel said, leaning against the back of the elevator and glaring at its steel door. “Nigga is crazy if he thinks I’m gonna do nothing the second he hurts her.”

  We reached the top floor and the elevator door squelched and groaned open. We climbed the flight of stairs to the roof. Donnel shouldered open the door and I followed him. And then, there it was: a pale blue plastic kid pool sitting between the blackness of the sky and the blackness of the tarred roof.

  “I told you,” Donnel said.

  We walked to the pool and stopped at its edge. It was filled with water.

  “Is it warm?” I whispered as if the night were a baby I was afraid to wake.

  Donnel bent down and put his hand in it. “Perfect,” he said.

  Behind us the door to the stairs swung open and out walked my mother followed by my grandma.

  “So I see how it is,” said my grandma, her voice deep and craggy from sleep. “You all taking a vacation without me.”

  “You was sleeping!” I said, excitement making my voice loud.

  “So?” said my grandma.

  Donnel peeled his sweatshirt off, dropped it, kicked off his sneakers, and stepped into the water.

  “Look at you,” said my mother, teasing him as she and my grandma came to the edge of the pool. “Donnel, you so skinny I can see your heart beating.”

  “My heart?” said Donnel. Standing in the middle of the pool, the water just below his knees, he curled his fist to his chest, flexed his bicep, and gave the tight little mound a kiss. “What you know about this?”

  “I know it ain’t shit,” my mother laughed.

  “It looks like you got an itty bitty egg under your skin,” I teased.

  Donnel splashed water at me. “Nigga,” he said. “What’re you talking about? Go ahead and lift your shirt. C’mon. Let’s see that nasty ole’ outie of yours.”

  My outie button was the subject of most of the harassment I received from my cousins and everyone else our age who had either seen me shirtless themselves or had heard about my belly button, the tiny, limp fist that stuck out an inch and made it seem like I had a nipple in the middle of my stomach if my T-shirt was too tight. I was embarrassed by it. Sometimes I pulled on it and pushed it in and held it there, like I was plugging the hole in a dam, hoping it would stay in. Sometimes I pondered how much it would hurt if I cut it off.

  “Donnel,” scolded my grandma. “You know I made that belly button with the help of great God Almighty. That right there ain’t a defect. It’s what…He told me to do.”

  My grandma wore a pair of my uncle’s basketball shorts and one of his basketball T-shirts.

  “And Donnel,” she continued, “don’t go pretending you didn’t have no hand in it either. You was right there too. So maybe you was holding Abraham too tight. Or maybe you wasn’t holding him tight enough. You know, you didn’t have none of those muscles you got now back then.”

  Donnel’s body was goldened by the reflection of the moon in the pool, the lights of Ever Park and Queens, and those lights way off in the distance, the electric ivory that was Manhattan. “I remember,” he said. “A is lucky to be alive.”

  Donnel looked at me and smiled. Then he splashed water at me and clapped and laughed as I squinted and blinked and hastily wiped the water from my face. I kicked my sneakers off and stepped into the pool. Then Donnel and I urged and teased my mother and grandma until they joined us.

  “Don’t splash,” my grandma scolded, holding the edge of the pool as she stepped over it to join us. “I don’t want my hair to get wet.”

  We squatted and sat down in the water and our legs touched in the middle of the pool. The kid pool was the first pool I’d ever been in that wasn’t packed with people on a hot summer day, brimming with children splashing and peeing and seeing who could hold their breaths longer; with teenagers ogling and wrestling each other; with mothers holding infants. I was conditioned to be one of many, to be of the masses; to be crammed in and to call such conditions relief; to know crowds as home. My mother, grandma, and Donnel whispered and cursed Ever, how strange it was that when the heat was broken the elevator ran smoothly. Donnel talked like an adult, like he was husband and they were his wives. He could do that. He had an ability to speak in the manner and on the terms of those he was with. I half listened and looked up at the sky, watched the lights of airplanes blink through the blackness, wondering who went where.

  “You all right?” asked Donnel, flicking water on my face and shifting attention to me.

  “Yeah,” I said, meeting his eyes. “Why?”

  He shifted his eyes to my mother and laughed a tumble of breath. “A can be so quiet, can’t he?”

  “He always been that way,” my grandma said.

  My mother reache
d over to me, pressed, then slid her wet hand down my ear, my cheek, and along the line of my jaw. “Mister Man,” she said, calling me by the name she used for me when she wished to tell me how much she loved me but either chose not to or could not say the words.

  Donnel spun himself around in the pool, hooked his legs over its plastic wall, and leaned backward into the water. He floated on his back, his arms at his sides, his head in the middle of the pool. The only sound was the waves made by Donnel’s movement, the water lapping against our bodies and the walls of the pool.

  “Look at the moon,” he said, talking louder than necessary because his ears were submerged in the water.

  The moon was nearly full, like someone had punched a hole in the black night and there was white on the other side. My mother laid her arms along the edge of the pool, leaned back, and looked up.

  “Sometimes, don’t it look so close you can touch it?” she asked.

  Donnel turned to his side and splashed water at me. “Lay on your back,” he said. “It’s nice. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “Who said I’m scared,” I snapped.

  Donnel lifted his legs from the edge, turned, and quickly sat on his knees.

  “Here,” he said, laying his hands on the surface of the water. “Lean back. I got you. Lean back and put your feet up.”