“It just start?” he asked, seemingly forgetting why he’d stormed into the apartment, as if hoping that the Huxtables might offer him some salve for his wounds, some special elixir, a placebo, an absolution.
“Shh,” I said.
Bill Cosby was in the kitchen and Theo came in, pushing open the door that led to their living room and the rest of their house. They talked about this and that. Bill Cosby made a joke, a funny face, and rolled his eyes. Theo laughed and pointed at him. A halfhearted but all-he-could-muster smile stayed on Eric’s face until a commercial came on. Not because he was good-looking; not because he was a good athlete or smart or had a good smile or game with girls or was the least bit chill, the least bit smooth, but secretly, Eric and I wished to be Theo. Why? The reason was simple. He had a father, a man who scolded and, most importantly, embraced him; a man who knew what he was thinking, who had caused the ways of his thoughts; who infused his demeanor with a fine soldierly pride just as much as he’d taught him patience and humor, whose shoulders were broader than his, shoulders he’d sat on when he was a kid, shoulders he could imagine having and using as a pedestal to plant his own children upon one day.
Suddenly, Eric remembered why he’d come home, why he’d launched himself into the apartment, and he rushed into the kitchen. I heard him tear open a drawer. Utensils and cutlery rattled and clanked off the floor. In their cage, my grandma’s lovebirds squawked and screeched. Eric ripped out what he wanted and threw aside everything else. He slammed the drawer closed. It didn’t close. He punched it, kicked it, yelled at it to shut. Then he shouted Fuck! kicked the cutlery that was on the floor, sending it clattering along the linoleum until it crashed against the wall, and came back into the room, the cleaver, his favorite knife, clenched in his hand and held at eye level. One of Eric’s fingers was cut. Blood dripped down his arm and fell on the floor from the point of his elbow, speckling the already stained grey carpet. He glared at me, daring me to say something, ask him what he was doing. Go ahead, his eyes said, go ahead and try to stop me.
Because just moments before I was living with Clair and Heathcliff and a crazed young man with a knife was nowhere to be found, I stared at Eric but uttered nothing. I was shocked and he waited. Then, inch by inch, body part by body part, he quit. His shoulders stooped. His chest heaved. His legs bowed. He was stripped of everything, even the free time he spent sketching cartoonish evildoers and superheroes in his spiral-bound notebooks. Then, no longer carrying the fury that had fueled his actions just moments earlier, Eric did the only thing he could do to maintain the meager amount of dignity he had left. He shuffled to the door. But when he grabbed the knob, he stopped and dropped his head.
“I wasn’t doing nothing,” he said.
He sucked a deep wet breath and shook his head. Then he slowly turned around and laid his twisted, should have been wet with tears but dry as bone eyes on me.
“I was just walking,” he continued, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “Niggas came out of nowhere and robbed me. They stole everything I had. They even took my notebook out of my back pocket and ran.”
Eric turned halfway around and showed me his empty back pocket. “It was here,” he said. “Right here.”
Suddenly there was the click of keys being put in the lock of our door and the squeak of the lock being turned when it was already unlocked. Eric stepped back. The door swung open. Then Donnel walked in, seventeen, six feet tall and strong, every inch of him hard, electric. Donnel was muscular, seemingly in possession of boundless energy, but his face revealed that he was exhausted. The bags under his eyes were so deep they seemed greasy, streaks of tar, oil slicks. He looked at me, the TV, and then he looked at Eric and saw the knife in his hand.
“Why you looking like that?” he scolded. “And I know you ain’t holding no knife to Abraham.”
Eric shook his head. “I chased them,” he muttered. “I chased them for as long as I could.”
“Who?” asked Donnel.
Eric was destitute. And just as I knew, Eric knew his plan of vengeance was thwarted. Donnel would never allow him outside with a kitchen knife. He knew Eric wouldn’t be able to handle himself, to fight with the viciousness he needed, to be as inexhaustible and fearless as a young man in Ever bent on waging war for what he wanted, what he deserved, was required to be. Chances were if Eric went outside with a knife and found the young men who robbed him, they’d strip him of his weapon and gore him with it. Eric was not a fighter. And when he did fight, he wasted all of his energy hurling himself, throwing his weight into one swing that never connected and left him gravely exposed. And he was not fast enough to run from a fight. So if he fought he’d get pummeled, beaten, and battered, eyes blackened, his jaw so sore and swollen he wouldn’t be able to whistle or brush his teeth let alone chew solid food. Eric knew this about himself. So he swallowed and showed Donnel his back pocket and then his coat pocket hoping to gain Donnel’s sympathy and therefore his strength, his ability to fight.
“Niggas took my new notebook,” said Eric, his entire body heavy and limp. “And they took the new Discman and headphones you got me. And the new pencils, they took them too. D, I ain’t never been robbed so bad in all my life.”
Donnel looked down and shook his head. How were he and Eric from the same womb?
“What I tell you about going around flaunting shit?” he asked.
“But—,” began Eric.
“Nigga,” Donnel scolded. “What I tell you?”
“You said not to do it,” Eric mumbled.
“Stupid,” Donnel whispered.
He shifted his tired eyes to the knife, thought of something, and lifted his eyes to the TV. I glanced at the TV; The Cosby Show was on again. In their kitchen, Heathcliff told Clair what Theo said and swore he didn’t understand his son’s thinking as he cut himself a piece of cake. Why couldn’t our lives be like that? I watched Donnel. I saw his anger build, his eyes narrowing, his nostrils flaring larger with each breath. He rolled his tongue over his bottom lip. Then he bit his lip and pulled it into his mouth and held it there, pinched beneath his front teeth, squeezing it until it finally popped free. Donnel took a breath and opened his mouth to speak but just before he said anything, there was a thump and a moan, and a moment later my grandma’s bedroom door opened. Out walked my mother, the woman who gave me life, dragging herself, stinking like dank wool and vomit, her face so gaunt her cheekbones seemed to be outside instead of beneath her skin. Once again, swearing she wanted to get clean, she had come home three days earlier. Fear and the feeling of need, the gnawing of neglect swelled into all parts of my body. I tried to act as if she were not there. But she was. So I put my eyes on Donnel and did what Eric had just done. Silently, I begged him to make everything all right.
Donnel looked back at me. There was no longer the slightest doubt that he was selling drugs. He had new sneakers on, new jeans. He looked at my mother. Then he took one determined step toward the door. I feared he was leaving, disappearing again. But he didn’t. He stopped and locked the door, the two chain latches, the knob, and the deadbolts. Then he turned back around, put his eyes on my mother, and, aiming his arm and index finger straight ahead, he pointed at my grandma’s room.
“Get back in there,” he said. “Go lay down. You ain’t going nowhere.”
My mother stopped walking. Her eyes were bloodshot, shocked and worried, like she’d lost something precious a long time ago and had spent every night since thinking about where it might be. She wore one of Grandma’s dresses and she held one of my grandma’s purses, the white leather one my grandma often took to church. My mother had lost so much of herself she didn’t even recognize which clothes were hers. She slipped the purse up her bony arm and balanced it on her bony shoulder. Then she planted her hand on her skeletal hip.
“Well happy Valentine’s Day to you too,” she said, her tone and face laced with disdain.
The purse slipped down her arm and its descent to the crook of her elbow wobbled her,
nearly knocked her to the floor. She gathered herself and slid the purse up her arm again. Then she returned her hand to her hip and looked at me.
“Abraham,” she said, her voice feigning vitality just as much as every other part of her body, “Go open the door for your momma.”
Donnel shot his eyes at me. Then he calmly crossed the room and stopped at Eric. “Give me that,” he said, gesturing at the knife Eric held.
Dumbly, Eric handed Donnel the cleaver. Donnel looked at me. For a moment, I feared he was suddenly feeling murderous and about to act on it. Then I realized that what he was feeling was not murderous but resolute. His face was blank. His eyes were blank. His body was stiff. He was a wall, a dam. Only that which he allowed would pass him.
“Go and play ball,” he told me.
“I don’t want to,” I said without thinking.
“Then go to the library,” he snapped. He put his eyes on me in a fashion that was gentler than his tone. He looked at Eric. “Take him. Make sure he goes and reads or something.”
“Abraham,” my mother interrupted. “Mister Man. Listen to your mother. Open the door for me.”
“Go,” Donnel said, ignoring my mother, his eyes planted back on me. “Now.”
“Nigga, fuck you!” my mother shouted at Donnel.
“A,” Donnel said calmly.
“You ain’t shit!” my mother screamed. “You nothing!”
“Nigga,” Donnel said, his voice rising, his eyes never once shifting from me. “Do what I told you.”
Suddenly, my mother snatched my grandmother’s purse from her arm and, wielding it like a stone, she held it over her head. “You think you gonna cut me? Huh? That it? You think you gonna stop me!”
“E,” Donnel said, shifting his eyes to Eric. “What I say? Take him. Get A off the couch.”
“You think you got me scared?” screamed my mother. “Abraham! Don’t you leave! Don’t you go nowhere!”
Gently, Eric patted me on the shoulder. “A, c’mon. Let’s go.”
Eric hooked his hand under my arm and pulled me up until, like a zombie, I rose from the couch. I stared at Donnel. I could not believe who my mother was. I could not believe what Donnel might do. He raised the cleaver shoulder high and took two steps toward her. She took two steps back.
“Abraham!” she screamed. “Abraham!”
“Abraham, go,” Donnel said, glaring at my mother. “Go and don’t come back until I come for you.”
“No,” my mother screamed. “No! You can’t leave!”
What crushed me most was that I could not disagree with whatever Donnel decided my mother deserved. So without making a sound, without breathing heavy or crying, I thought it was the last time I was going to see my mother, and looking at her, at the sad, ashen bag of bones she’d become, I took a moment to love her more than hate who she’d become. Then Eric put his arm around my shoulder, led me to the door, unlocked the locks, and we walked out of our apartment, down the stairs, outside. There weren’t any other mothers, any other truths but this one for me.
V
The hate I gained was simple and pure, the water of all hate, a level of hatred only accessible to a child abandoned by his creator, a hatred that after it is formed doesn’t need fuel or reasons to remain and grow. Maybe my mother first turned to crack because I was getting older and my maturity and independence caused her to feel useless and discarded, or maybe she was just looking for something other than me to give her a reason to breathe. Or maybe she began by simply looking for some fun, or perhaps, just once, she gave in to a grave craving for a momentary escape. I don’t know. But whatever the reason was it didn’t matter to me. That is, what most mattered to me is three weeks after Donnel didn’t let her leave our apartment, she was back at it again, smoking crack, claiming she was clean. My grandmother was the one who most believed her lies. Admittedly, I, for some time, believed them too. But then, there are only so many times I could come home and find my mother sitting on the couch, hurrying to hide a pipe beneath her leg or under the cushions or tightly gripped in her fist, those fumbling, hasty attempts followed by my mother looking up, smiling at me like a little girl posing for a picture or solemnly pretending she was watching the TV. How could I not know the diesel smell hovering in the room? Did she think I didn’t know the difference between a lie and the truth? My mother stopped taking care of her hair. She gnawed her fingernails to nubs of blood. And each feature of her face from her eyes and eyebrows to her nostrils and the shallow dimple on her left cheek was destitute. So I knew who she was. And my grandma knew. And when my grandma stopped denying it and my mother disappeared one day and did not return the following morning, my grandma changed the deadbolt lock on the door. I came home from school and had to knock to be let in.
“Who is it?” shouted my grandma from the other side.
“It’s me, Abraham,” I said. “My key ain’t working.”
My grandmother unlocked and opened the door but she didn’t say hello or explain what she had done. She pressed her eyes on me then ordered me to join her in the kitchen. Mr. Goines was there, sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee, a couple of screwdrivers, some screws, and the door’s previous deadbolt in front of him. We said hello. Then he shifted his eyes to my grandma and said, “Let me get going. I got some things to do.”
He finished his last swallow of coffee and stood.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” my grandma said.
Then she looked at me. In the minute I’d come home her eyes had grown from the heat she pressed on me to a gaze that pulled me in, even kissed me on the cheek and breathed in my ears.
“Abraham,” she said. “Do me a favor and finish washing these dishes.”
There was too much weight in the room, too much grief for me to possess the capacity to sigh, let alone protest. So I said good-bye to Mr. Goines and when they walked out of the kitchen, I went to the sink, turned on the faucet, and began washing dishes with the old green sponge. When my grandma returned she did not speak right away, so I assumed the disposition of a good soldier, washing the dishes because she had given me an order and continuing until she told me to do otherwise.
“Abraham,” she finally said, her voice a trumpet steadily rising over the sound of running water. “Your mother ain’t coming home. No more. Not until she gets herself together forever.” She paused. “Abraham, look at me. Stop washing those dishes. Turn around.”
Here was her order. Without hesitating, I turned off the water and turned around. As if she tore her tears out and held her crying in her fists, my grandma’s hands were balled at her sides. And her eyebrows were crooked stiches. Clearly, inside she was aflame, bleeding.
“So when she comes back,” she continued. “Don’t go opening that door. Don’t even think about it. Let her bang until her fists bleed. This is my home and I’m the one who decides who’s in and who’s out. Do you hear me? Abraham, you listening?”
I swallowed. I had never heard words so clearly in my life. “Grans,” I said. “Do what you gotta do.”
“I’m gonna pray, Abraham,” she said. “That’s it. That’s all there’s left to do.”
Suddenly, struck by some clap of intestinal, maternal pain, my grandma winced. Then she shook her head, took a deep breath, and, as if building herself taller cell by cell, vertebra by vertebra, she pushed her shoulders back and lifted her chin.
“And do you want to know why I’m gonna pray?” she asked, her eyes aglow. “I’m gonna pray cause your mother ought to be able to see the man you’re gonna be. And your mother’s a fool if she can’t do good so she can be there. And I ain’t got to watch her be a fool. She’s my daughter and I ain’t got to see that.”
On the morning of the last Sunday in March, just as my grandma was about to leave for church, my mother returned home, pounded on the door, and begged to be let in. Donnel was not home and my grandmother refused to let me, my Aunt Rhonda, or Eric near the door. She stood in the middle of the room, her arms out at her side
s as if she were halting everything behind her. My mother banged all morning. Then she left, only to return and bang in the middle of the day, and then again, late into the night. She cried and screamed and swore to Jesus she wanted to be clean. And she called my name. Abraham, she shouted. Please, baby. Please let your mother in. But my grandma made sure no one moved to open the door. She reminded us who was in charge. She responded to none of my mother’s pleas no matter how her begging and pounding tortured us.
“Momma, Jesus,” complained my Aunt Rhonda. “Please. I can’t take it! Just give her one more chance.”
“Shut your mouth!” my grandma ordered. “This place ain’t no coffin! And it ain’t no hospital for people who’re set on killing themselves. No. Not me. That’s not what I’m gonna let this home be!”
VI
It was April, spring break, and I had a week off from school. The sun was out. The sky was perfectly blue and perfectly clear. Seagulls honked, pigeons cooed; a few birds I’d never heard sang like frolicking children in a city pool. With my basketball, I walked out of my building. A small brown bird with a red chest was perched on the nearest telephone wire. A robin, Turdus migratorius. Mr. Goines had told me about them. I stopped and watched the robin for a few moments. Then I picked up a piece of gravel and threw it at the bird, missing it but causing it to fly away.
I continued walking. It was 7:00 a.m., early enough for me to be sure that there wasn’t going to be anyone at the basketball court. I walked along the avenue dribbling my basketball, bouncing it from my left hand to my right, between my legs, and around my back. I passed the liquor store, the bodega, and the Holy Name, Pastor Ramsey’s dilapidated storefront church that had not held a service since Jeremiah’s funeral. It’s doors and windows were covered by a rusted steel gate. I made moves, spin moves and crossovers to get past the world around me. I went around the garbage can overflowing with garbage, a sodden cardboard box of discarded housewares, rusted pots, pans, and a toaster sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. I dribbled around shadows, faked out broken glass, and pounded the ball between cracks in the concrete. I imagined I was on my way to a championship game. I created the entire scenario, fantasized about the season that had led to that imagined game. My team? We were the underdogs. But I possessed a particular conviction, an imagined fact that let me know my team would win the game. It was our time to rise up. Nothing, not even fate could stop us.
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