Aquaboogie

by Susan Straight

  “Why you name her Porscha?” Arlene asked when Esther picked up another section of hair.

  “I didn’t, I let Joe name her. He named the first one, and he wanted a Lil Joe, He said he would name this last one. ‘I ain’t never gon be able to buy what I really want, so I’ma call her Porscha, closest I’ll get to having me one in my name.’”

  Regina said, “All your kids got pretty names. Lil Joe the only common one.”

  Esther said, “Yeah, I always wanted them to know right off when somebody was calling them. Nobody’s likely to say ‘Danique who?’”

  “How old is Danique now?” Arlene said.

  “Huh. Lil Joe’s eleven, Danique just turned nine, Anaïs is… seven. Colette’s six. The names—I found them at French class. That’s where I met Joe.”

  “You a lie,” Regina said. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You weren’t there,” Esther laughed. “Serious. His mama’s Creole from Louisiana, and she had some idea Joe should be speaking French. I was taking it for college, and we were the only soul in there, I mean nothing but prep-track white kids.”

  “And you named your kids after some gray boys?”

  “Can Joe speak French?” Arlene said.

  “Ha! Copied offa me every day. Barely says quiche right.” Esther tilted Arlene’s head. “So in the French book I read about these two women, Anaïs Nin and Colette. I knew Anaïs was a woman’s name, but when he was born, he was so pale, didn’t get any color for a year. Light as that French woman’s picture, and all this black hair straight in points over his forehead. Fringing down like a girl. The name looked like him.”

  “That hair got nappy soon enough,” Regina said.

  “Anaïs and Colette. What about Danique?” Arlene asked.

  “I made that up.” Esther smiled.

  “Ooh, look at what that boy up to now!” Regina called, standing by the TV, and Arlene listened to “All My Children.” Esther never paid much attention to the soaps, even though they were on all day for Regina. She felt something connect, something she’d been puzzling out earlier… the quiche recipe. It was in that French textbook, too. Essays about food, wine, Edith Piaf. But Edith was just too ugly to name a child, she smiled to herself. That was what she’d thought. And Lil Joe came the next year, after she’d graduated and was going to Rio Seco City College. She’d been braiding hair already, for friends, then, experimenting, and somebody offered her twenty-five dollars to do braids for her wedding.

  A man’s voice crashed through the screen door, making everyone jump. “Esther, get out here and see if you want this old ugly thang.” She saw Floyd, who lived across the street; he and his nephew Snooter had backed their truck into her driveway, and a long couch poked out the end of the truckbed.

  “I ain’t never seen a couch that long,” Regina said. “Who gon give you a couch?”

  “Your mama called me into Miss Lindstrom’s house,” Floyd said. “She said Miss Linsey getting rid of this, got all hew furniture. I told your mama it need to go to the dump, it’s so ugly, but she said bring it to you.”

  The fabric was faded brocade, dull and gold, but the couch could fit six people easily, Esther thought. “Tina can cover it for me.”

  Floyd and Snooter carried it to the edge of the front steps. “How old is Miss Linsey now?” Esther asked, giving Floyd some sun tea.

  “Eighty somethin,” Snooter said.

  “Your mama been workin for her long as I been cutting grass,” Floyd said, wiping his forehead with his hat. “All the other domestics I see now are Mexican. Berta the only one left to talk to. You make that pie this week? You done taken enough time off with that baby?”

  Esther brought them each a plate, and they sat on the steps. “Where Joe Killer this week?” Snooter asked.

  “He had to take some furniture to Nashville. He said he’d be home to barbecue this weekend.” But he still hadn’t called, and it was way past noon.

  Snooter bit into the chicken and said, “Oh, shit.” Esther looked back quickly, but it was because Marcella and Gail had pulled up.

  “You never came by to see me, fool man,” Gail said, lip poked out at Snooter. “You was gon bring by a video.”

  “Y’all got lunch break already?” Esther said. “Let me go inside and get back to Arlene.” But Marcella pulled her arm.

  “Somebody want you, Esther,” she said, nodding toward the street.

  “Where she gon park?” Floyd said. “You want me to move the truck?”

  “I don’t think she’s fixing to stop,” Esther said, and the red Triumph went past, a little faster this time.

  “This is Arlene, ladies. She came in from L.A., and today’s her only day off, so I need to stop messing around.”

  Marcella nodded. “Ain’t you Tina’s cousin?”

  “Uh-huh, that’s how she came to me,” Esther said.

  “And who is this? I’ve never seen her,” Marcella said at the table, where Regina sat.

  “Shut up, girl,” Regina frowned. She always waited for someone else to start eating before she broke down.

  “What the news?” Gail asked. Regina looked at Esther.

  “Somebody named Miss Oaktown,” Esther said.

  “She trying to maneuver,” Regina said, cutting into the quiche.

  “That girl in the red car looking fire at you?” Marcella said, and Esther nodded. She could tell by the way Arlene’s head swayed slightly that she was sleepy, and she remembered her mother’s warm fingers in her own hair. Only a few times had she sat and braided Esther’s hair—usually she was too tired when she came home from somebody else’s dinner. And she pushed Esther away when Esther tried to soothe her, to touch her stiff curls. “Just let me get some rest, now,” she always said. “Go on.”

  And here she was, waiting for Porscha to wake up again, to make those little snuffling sounds that Esther could hear all the way in the front yard; none of her babies ever had to cry before she knew they wanted her.

  This was the last baby. Every time Esther fed her, held a foot in her hand while the cheek pressed into her breast, she thought that the helplessness, the stare into her eyes, would be over too quickly. She had measured and compared everything by baby standards for so long, by baby feel—the plump curve of Arlene’s chin when Esther cupped her hand underneath to lift the head: that was soft and padded as baby knees. Regina’s lips were full and lush as a nursing mouth. Esther listened, but she didn’t hear any soft sounds underneath the laughter and talking, the television and the cars passing in the street.

  When they started to pull against her hands, to sit up, she loved that, too. Teaching them to hold things, to walk, to read… somebody had said to her once, “They like kittens, and then they just cats and nobody want em,” and Esther got angry. Lil Joe’s wrists turned bony as his arms grew, his two extra chins disappeared, and she watched breathlessly when his eyes got harder as he figured things out for himself.

  It was one o’clock. Maybe Joe had found another woman in Nashville, serious this time. No, come on. But maybe he’d gone to Oaktown’s condo first, maybe he was back in Rio Seco already.

  “Esther, what these kids doing home so early?” Regina hollered, and Esther frowned, blinked. Lil Joe, Danique, all of them were trooping in the kitchen door with their backpacks trailing.

  “Teachers got some kind of meeting today,” Lil Joe said. “Half day of school is all.”

  “They never had that when we were in school,” Marcella said.

  “Where’s baby Porscha, Mama?” Colette alternated between kissing her sister’s hands and refusing to touch her. Esther thought, she’s been the baby for so long. “Go see,” she said to Colette.

  Lil Joe went back with her and came out holding Porscha. “She was rooting around like that pig we seen in the movie,” he said, pushing his nose against her stomach. “Beat box belly on the baby,” he blew against her skin.

  “Arlene, I’ma feed her. Lay down and take a nap,” Esther said.

  “No,
I want to see the end of General Hospital.”

  Just as she opened her blouse, the phone rang, and Esther picked it up from the floor. “Hey,” Joe said. “What up?”

  “Feeding the baby.” Esther felt the heat rise in her throat, rather than fall away. He sounded long distance. Am I going to think about that damn condo every morning.

  “She still don’t want nobody holding her unless they got groceries, huh?” he said. “That’s my baby. I’ma be home tomorrow—I’m in Amarillo.”

  “You still planning to barbecue?” Esther asked. The baby pulled hard, and the sharp tingle of milk rushed down. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Thought maybe you had ideas about being busy.”

  “What you want, Esther? What you trying to talk about?”

  “Your friend from up north got a condo. I heard.”

  “Shit, Esther. I told her about you. I told her find somebody else, that’s why she’s doing this. Man, you know…”

  “I know she thinks different.”

  “I told her you my wife, Rio Seco my city, and she got mad. I’ma send Snooter over there—he’ll make her forget about me real quick.” Joe laughed, but low so he could hear what she did, as always. Esther imagined what the woman had said to Joe, how she’d laughed when she saw Esther through the window, in the yard. This wife with Joe Killer? she probably said to herself. She so…

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Esther said. “So easy for you to say.”

  “It’s on you as much as on me,” he said. “You want it this way. You told me after the baby…”

  “I know. I just thought maybe you decided to have two in the same city.”

  “Don’t even trip like that. She just thinks she’s hard. I’ll take care of it.”

  Esther laughed. “You sound so puffed up with yourself. Just get home because your kids want ribs and I ain’t hardly cooking all that.”

  Marcella and Gail were washing their hands in the kitchen. And Regina was watching her. “Look at this mess on TV,” Regina said. “You get in a accident, these lawyers are sure to get you some cash.”

  “Like hitting the lotto, girl,” Gail said.

  “Yeah, but your money would be gone so fast.” Arlene shook her head. “People never hold onto a big lump of money like that.”

  “Let me hold her,” Marcella said. “Me and Gail on split shift today.”

  “I wondered why you weren’t in a hurry to get back,” Esther said, while Porscha’s eyes followed her all the way back to the couch. She pulled another section of hair from the long bolt.

  “You always use good hair,” Marcella said. “Where they get all that real stuff? They be making that cheap fiber hair, look fake, too.”

  “The lady at the supply store said it comes from Italy.” Esther picked at the strands. “I always think of what they must look like, the ones that cut their hair. They don’t make hardly any money for it.”

  Anaïs ran into the living room. “Mama, a white man standing in the yard writing.”

  “What? You got a policy man, Esther?” Gail asked.

  “No, probably want to sell me a vacuum cleaner. Go tell him I don’t want anything.”

  Lil Joe came in behind Anaïs. “His car got a picture on the door. City of Rio Seco.”

  Esther’s heart beat fast. “Somebody from the city?” Joe had already called. But who came to tell you if somebody died? Her mother was at Miss Linsey’s. Was something wrong with Joe’s truck? He always parked it in the vacant lot at the end of the street. Illegal for sure.

  The man waited at the door. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m from the city’s licensing arm. Do you have a license to run this business?”

  “What are you talking about?” Esther said.

  “May I come in?” He followed her, stood looking at everyone. “Are you doing day care?”

  “Huh? These kids are all mine.”

  He raised one brow fast as a roach, and dropped it. “Well, someone called to say that…”

  “To say we only allowed one kid now?” Esther stared. “Who called?”

  “We had a complaint about the amount of traffic, the number of cars for a residence. It appears that you’re operating some kind of business, and I’m just trying to ascertain for the city whether you’re licensed.”

  “A license to have kids?”

  “Is this a beauty and hair-care operation?” He stared at the hair from Italy as if it were a snake.

  “I’m doing hair for my cousins.”

  “You have a lot of cousins.” He smiled.

  “We only allowed one cousin, too? Another new law?”

  “Look, as I said, someone complained that cars were blocking the street.”

  “Don’t make me ask about the limit on cars, too, now,” Esther said, smiling. The street. “I think I know what the problem is, and it’s not me.” She looked at Regina. “Oaktown.”

  “No. How she do that?”

  “She’s a secretary.” Esther pulled her lips up again, grinning fake as a dreaming Porscha. “We have a big family,” she said to the man, and he looked at the basket on the table, filled with one dollar bills, surrounded by crumbs from the quiche crust.

  “I’m sorry to barge in.” He let Esther lead him out, and she watched him stare at the couch, make notes about the cars, Floyd’s trucks.

  “Poor Floyd,” she called back into the living room. “They probably gon get him for that expired tag now.”

  “And all because somebody jealous,” Regina said.

  “You think Joe knows?” Arlene asked. Esther stroked the Italian hair, watched Porscha’s eyes squint with happiness when her mama’s face come into view.

  “No, he’d laugh silly. Pretty strange idea, to call the city.”

  “Where she get that?” Regina said.

  “So that was it,” Esther said. “That was her best shot.” She stood up to catch Anaïs by the ears, steer him toward the table. He never wanted to eat in front of people, and her hand pushed steady at the back of his neck.

  sweet thang

  KAREN / OCTOBER

  VICTOR MILES OUTLINED THE fly of his Levis with rhinestone studs back then. He wasn’t fine, not pretty with a Jermaine Jackson face, and he had hard short hair, not a round natural to slide a comb or pencil in over his ear. He was stone-hard, but girls went for that, too. Never smiled, Karen thought, but his teeth showed when his lips were resting; strong bones under the skin, she knew, they made his mouth like that. He had pimp-walked around Rio Seco High when she was a freshman, talking yang to anyone—teachers, coaches, girls he didn’t know. Come up behind a girl in the cafeteria line and grab her butt, not pat it on top but push his hand underneath, and Karen would see his teeth. “You want some, take some. You bad enough, get some.” The guys would laugh.

  He walked toward the convalescent home where she worked, coming from the church parking lot, pushing that leg down hard, stalking—it was him. And everything shone: his pants were double-knit, like ten years ago, and glossy with wear; his forehead and shoulders flashed with sweat—hot Halloween wind warmed the window where she stood in the day room—and his teeth glistened. Still showing through a not-smile, those hard lips. No Nikes or work boots like everyone else wore, but thin-soled black leather shoes, old like church deacons wore.

  Nothing past Oleander Manor but bushes squaring the asphalt strip by the kitchen, then the huge parking lot and the Methodist church that owned the home. Karen never saw people walking here at the bottom of the arroyo. Even the women plump as pigeons in the nubbly suits, the ones who came from the church on Sundays to visit people in beds, they drove across the parking lot to the Manor. On the other side of the street, fields stretched to the river-bottom. Where had Victor come from? Up the block was a Safeway, Flash Video, and a liquor store. Cool as ever, he swung past, and she slid her face against the glass to see.

  After the lunch trays were washed and stacked, she began to open the huge cans of mixed fruit, looking at
the muddy, thicked-up gravy she had left over. Damn. Lunch, dishes, trays, dinner, dishes, floors, trays, go home and cook something for Eddie and the kids. Wash up after them. She pulled out a Tareyton, felt the paper like baby skin against her fingers; her hands were rough as toast. Pushing open the kitchen door, she stood outside and faced the river-bottom. Smoke from the fire there had risen in fat rolls yesterday, but the wind flattened out the bruise-brown now, mixing it with the smog to stretch across the rim of horizon filmy and long. One of those nasty scarves the patients wrapped around their hair, or their necks, when somebody came to visit. She had hated the scarves when her mother brought them home from her ladies, who didn’t want them anymore. Acting like Karen and her sister, Esther, might wear them. See-through things, sticky as spiderwebs.

  Go and get a damn chair, she thought, leaning against the wall. Don’t nobody ever sit in them chairs, so dirty orderlies have to hose them off every month or that white plastic blend in with the brown wall. The chairs were at the other side of the building, facing the corner and the stores. She tapped her cigarette against her wrist. Fool. Every night you wish it was something out here to sit on. Every night you stand here, chicken to move a chair. Scary, just like Nucoa and them always said in school. Scary to go to the bathroom because somebody might kick your ass in there. Hold it all day. Scared a you.

  Nucoa was fixing to get fired. She must don’t want this job, Karen thought. She had seen Mrs. Baker’s arm when she took an extra plate of lemon slices to her room. Black and blue, same as last time Nucoa started pinching. Old people got a different kind of bruise, skin like paper and pale. The marks weren’t the same as when her kids fell or bumped. Sharp finger-purple bruises.

  She lit a match just to see the wind blow it out, and from the high humped roll of oleander bushes, leaves cracked and split. Karen held herself still, the match smoke stinging past her nostrils, and the sticks and stems rustled again, stopped. Lizards twitched around in there during the summer and ran in all the fields, but it was fall now, and that pressing down on dry stuff was too heavy for a lizard. Maybe skunk or possum, she listened, but no snuffling or settling-down sounds. I hate winter, she thought quickly, I hate when it gets dark so fast, not even six o’clock and I can see the moon. Get home and the house would be hot and close, stale as morning breath. Kids already inside, hungry, nothing in the refrigerator. Echo with her permanent snuffles, Eddie Jr. with a new scrape.