On the Come Up

by Hannah Weyer

  There was no map.

  She had no compass.

  But she wanted to change things.

  It wasn’t a conscious thing, or maybe it was.

  11

  Eighth grade, spring semester, Brittany finally got kicked out for breaking some teacher’s jaw. Gone for good. AnnMarie heard about it in the lunchroom, a hush falling across the table as Patrice leaned forward and told. She got shipped off to one a those juvie schools for violent kids, Patrice said. My mother friends with the teacher. Mr. Nobella, he in the hospital. He pressing charges. Good, AnnMarie thought. I hope he do. Fat bitch finally getting what she deserve.

  AnnMarie walked around on cloud nine, having discovered orgasms, making Darius wait for her as she found the spot and felt the lapping sensation move through her body down to her toes. Daydreaming in school, the throb between her legs making her sigh into her hand. But mostly she focused on the words and numbers and passed her tests and sang for Mr. Preston in the front row.

  In May, he took the choir class to sing for a school over in Cedarhurst, a rich neighborhood on the other side of the expressway. Mr. Preston knew the principal back when he went to Teacher College. He said, Consider this an opportunity, people. They didn’t know what he meant and didn’t care. Field trip meant no school for the day.

  They walked in a cluster, Mr. Preston leading them across streets and boulevards and nobody skipped out, everyone curious to see what a white school look like from the inside. They weren’t disappointed. Air-conditioning in the auditorium. Velvet curtains hanging. Spotlights mounted from the ceiling. AnnMarie tried to keep her eyeballs in her head as they filed across the stage. Never seen so many white people all at once. Mr. Preston shaking hands with the man must be the principal.

  Down front in the rows of seats, all those mouths moving—she couldn’t hear no specific words, just a sound like a unified rumble bouncing off her eardrum. Mr. Preston rapped his baton on the music stand and it got quiet. The choir kids straightened their backs the way they practiced, and when a paper airplane sailed through the air and landed at Mr. Preston’s feet, they ignored it, singing first “Precious Love,” then “Classic #45,” and when AnnMarie’s solo came she dialed those kids out of focus, only thing matter was Mr. Preston’s baton moving—one, two, three, four. She took a breath, pushed the air out her lungs in the form of a note, the right note in the right key and soon her voice was crashing off the walls, off the velvet curtains and those spotlights no one had turned on. When she got done they clapped. All the white kids clapping mad loud. Respect, thank you very much. She looked over at Mr. Preston and could see the relief on his face. Halfway bowing his head, Principal Man walking over to shake his hand.

  The choir kids stepped down off the row of bleachers, gathering in a loose cluster, waiting for Mr. Preston to finish marveling. Beautiful space. Great acoustics. AnnMarie watched the Cedarhurst kids file out, taking all the air with them as they left the room. Principal Man rocking back on his heels, saying something. Something about a PTA to thank.

  Then they were heading home, a empty feeling in AnnMarie’s chest, she didn’t know why. They’d passed through the hallways, peering in the classrooms where the doors had been left open, taking in the big rooms and the white kids staring, passing out the back where the tennis court was, kids doing calisthenics on a ball field. Walking past all the shiny cars parked in the school lot, trimmed bushes next to all those windows, no mesh bars blocking out the light. Blocks and blocks they walked, and when one of the choir kids kicked the lid off a garbage can Mr. Preston kept walking, stiff-backed, chin out, leading them back across the expressway.

  All year she’d kept in touch with Crystal over the phone. After the hotel, Crystal’s mother found a place to live in the basement of a house in Springfield. AnnMarie’d said, Springfield? Where that at. Crystal said, I don’t know. Somewhere out here … Crystal told her how she found a cat dead in the street, its head mashed up and bloody. She asked about Wallace and AnnMarie told her he’d dropped out. How he a rapper now.

  Sometimes she’d see him around the way, cyphering, putting all the other boys to shame.

  Start of 9th grade at Far Rock High School, her mother switched out the walker for a cane and was moving around more. AnnMarie would see her down on the street, sitting with Crystal’s grandma on two lawn chairs, catching the last of the September light but still glaring when she went by with Teisha or Nadette or Niki. They a bad influence, she’d say. AnnMarie just tsked. She’d told her and told her, they a singing group. They singing. Blessed didn’t believe her. She’d heard through the grapevine about the dancing and thought they was rude girls. Loose girls and vulgar.

  She didn’t say nothing about Darius. For some reason, Blessed didn’t mind Darius. Even though they was smoking weed and making love and music, like Lauryn and Wyclef.

  October came with rain and more rain. The whole world turning soggy and wet.

  One school morning, AnnMarie got herself up early, threw on a sweater and ran over to Nadette’s building to get back the coat she’d loaned her friend.

  Nadette was sitting in the kitchen, wearing a low-cut leopard-print camisole, counting money, a huge pile a money spread out on the table. AnnMarie said, Dang Nadette, that’s a lot a money. Nadette tsked, then stretched her arms above her head, yawning. She said, Girl, I earned it.

  AnnMarie said, Can I get my coat back? Darius had bought it for her. Special for the start of high school. It was a cropped black leather coat, lined in silver fur and mad sexy. All the girls asked to borrow it.

  AnnMarie found it laying on the floor next to a pair of five-inch heels and shrugged it on. She went out into a fine mist, holding her book bag over her head, walked the eight blocks up Mott Avenue to Far Rock High School, a place she looked forward to, knowing all the beefs of her middle-school years were behind her, where Darius waited for her each afternoon and no one dared mess with her.

  She pulled open the door, went up the steps and got in line, kids slinging they backpacks up on the table, moving one by one under the metal detector, and when her turn came the guard waved her through, the alarm slicing the air, making all the kids turn and look. The guard saying, Empty your pockets but she was puzzled. What the fuck set that off. Her hands going into her pockets, all her pockets—her fingers feeling the cold slim piece of metal and she groaned inside, moaned inside ’cause there it was, Nadette’s four-inch switchblade dropping into the plastic tray.

  This time they called her mother. Two-month suspension. We have a no-weapons policy, Principal said. Blessed was furious. She said, What you doing with a blade. It wasn’t mine, Ma, I keep telling you. It was Nadette’s. She borrowed my coat and left it in the pocket.

  Carlton said, Birds of a feather, Miss Blessed. You hang with ghetto, you gon be ghetto too.

  Shut the fuck up, Carlton, AnnMarie said. Nadette got a job. She make more money than you, Mr. Nobody Driver.

  He just laughed and walked away.

  She wanted to poke pins into his eyeballs, she hate him that much.

  Well, me na gon homeschool you, Blessed said. And you damn na hanging around here. The school don’t want you, get yourself another school.

  She went to Springfield High after that. Crystal told her to choose the school. We be together, she said. We’ll have fun. But one week into the transfer, Crystal’s mother moved again, this time out to Canarsie.

  It took the wind out of her.

  At Far Rock, she’d been reading Where for art thou o Romeo and sloping graphs in math, singing “My Sweetest Love.” Coming in midsemester, she didn’t know what was going on. No choir. Math teacher talking about quadratic functions. What the fuck a quadratic function? She start to feel anxious all the time, that feeling like she gonna up and blow away. Like a helium balloon let go in the wind, floating higher and higher ’til it wasn’t nothing but a speck in the sky. You blink and it be gone.

  At lunch she’d stand with her tray, wondering where she supposed to sit,
all the kids at tables huddled together, she’d stand and stare. Where the fuck she supposed to sit. Gym came before lunch and there was a door there near the girls’ locker room that led to the street. She started using it. Caught the bus back to Far Rockaway and to Darius, who was free most days—three years of high school and he’d been done.

  They made love in the warm darkness of the walk-in, hips grinding, limbs entwined, and she felt that floaty feeling go away, his body like a anchor holding her down.

  12

  Two months into the transfer, she came home one afternoon looking for a notebook she’d left behind that had phrases and songs and little ideas written inside. She’d fallen asleep on the couch and when she woke, her mother was leaning against her cane, watching her.

  You know why you so tired? Blessed asked.

  Say what, AnnMarie said, blinking.

  Me say, you know why you tired.

  What, Ma, why you bothering me …

  It was sweet going in, eh? Now it sour coming out …

  AnnMarie stared at her.

  That’s right, the doctor told me, you pregnant.

  It was true, four days ago AnnMarie’d gone to the clinic where her mother got her prescriptions filled. She’d taken a test. She’d sat on the crinkly paper in the examination room, just sat there, dumb. Couldn’t move. Doctor talking, talking, she didn’t hear a word he said. Even though it’s what she’d wanted.

  What you got to say, AnnMarie, Blessed said.

  Fuck you and fuck him for opening his big mouth, AnnMarie said. Then she burst into tears. She hadn’t told nobody. Not Niki, not even Darius.

  AnnMarie had been skipping school all week when it happened. Lazing around at Darius’ house, his mother at work, they’d been getting high and watching TV. AnnMarie felt moody and depressed. Bored out of her mind. Even with Darius, all the little dramas in the studio room. Tempers flaring over stupid shit. AnnMarie’d been flipping channels and found Oprah talking. Some doctor-type person up there on stage, the two a them talking about how to make a baby. A white lady from the audience start to tell her story, how she trying and trying with her man, how all she want in life is a child and a family and how that be the key to happiness. Then she start to cry. AnnMarie felt sorry for that lady, pouring out her soul for everyone in America to see, and later, when she and Darius made love in the walk-in, AnnMarie felt the rhythm of his thrusts like a promise and she whispered in his ear, I wanna make a family with you. Darius said, Word. Just before he grunted and came.

  Afterward she stayed on her back, like the Oprah doctor had said, raising her legs up in the air, to catch the sperm inside. What you doing? Darius asked. She folded her knees over her chest. Wrapped her arms around her shins and cradled herself, not stirring. She said, I’m making us a family.

  Blessed crept across the room with her cane and sat down next to AnnMarie on the couch. She reached for her, pulling her into an embrace but AnnMarie felt the panic rising like walls snapping up around her. She shook Blessed off, crying, No Ma, don’t … Stop touching me.

  But Blessed held on, her arms tight around AnnMarie who struggled to pull away. God don’t like ugly, AnnMarie, God don’t like ugly.

  But Ma … I got my singing, how’m I supposed to go to school. I ain’t doing it!

  You will. You’ll go to school and have the baby. I’m gon help you. And I tell you this—if you kill me grandchild, I put you back in foster care and you’ll burn up in hell.

  Carlton walked in and stared at them.

  What happened now, Carlton said.

  AnnMarie felt a sudden rage and helplessness. Why you gotta be here, she screamed. Why don’t you get the fuck outta my house.

  But it was AnnMarie who left.

  Walking mad slow over to Nameoke where Darius lived. She didn’t know what he gonna say. Her eyes swollen, face blotchy. What he gonna say.

  She’d seen him fly into a rage before. Seen him knock his mother down a flight of stairs. His mother, Darla, grabbing on to his arm to keep her balance, but he’d wrenched free and back she fell. Up in his sister’s face. Beefing. Watched him clock some fella in the head, just a little thing set it off, and when the boy fell, he beat him bloody.

  He was sitting up on the front porch with Raymel and Jason. Raymel glancing at her, then away as she approached.

  Darius stood up and frowned. What happened, he said.

  Inside the kitchen, away from the others, she whispered it, afraid of his reaction, even though he’d seen her do it, hold her legs in the air. Even though he never used protection, not once in the entire time they was together. Still she was afraid. But before she could look up, she heard him whoop, felt his arms go around her waist and he was swinging her around. AnnMarie’s legs dangling off the floor, her arms around his shoulders, heart pounding.

  They went over to the liquor store and bought a bottle of Hennessy to celebrate.

  Darius telling everybody—we got Trinidad, we got Jamaican, we got Indian blood. Laughing and cheering. That gonna be one beautiful baby. And AnnMarie sat back on the porch, hearing the clink-clink of glass, and told herself to chill, feeling certain now it wasn’t something she dreamed up on her own. He’d claimed it. They doing it together—making a family, a true family together.

  And later, after he got drunk and told her he was wild with love for her, she didn’t go home, she stayed all night with him in the walk-in. Fourteen years old, with her own man and a baby on the way. Right before he fell asleep she said, You gonna marry me, Darius, and he said, ’Course I marry you. You turn eighteen, we getting married.

  He fell asleep but she didn’t. She lay there looking up at the small cut of window, watching a patch of light move across the wall then disappear. She felt his arm over her waist and thought about the room her mother once had in the shelter.

  It was a small little room. Very small with a twin bed and a chair. AnnMarie was living with Grandma Mason. In the beginning, her mother would come sometimes on the weekend and take her out of there. They’d go to the park, to McDonald’s, sometimes to church. They held hands. In the evening, she’d take AnnMarie back to the shelter. But there was no childs allowed in the bedrooms after lights out, so Blessed would have to sneak her in. In the shower room, she’d set her inside a laundry bag she kept in a cart, pull the cart down the hall to her room.

  AnnMarie sat scrunched up, clothes on top her head and she’d hear Blessed whisper. Quiet now. Shhhh. She’d sit in the bag, mad quiet, waiting ’til the lady check and leave. Then she’d feel her mother’s hands lifting her out and they’d sleep together in that narrow bed. The wall on one side a her, Blessed on the other. Blessed’s arm around her waist and AnnMarie’d think, I’m in my mother’s bed, with my mother and everything fine. In the morning, Blessed put her back inside the laundry bag, pull the string, wheel the cart outta there. Take her down to the street, she’d go back to Grandma Mason house.

  baby love

  13

  Like a thief in the night I was, running from your father. Like a thief in the night. Blessed leaned on her cane, giving AnnMarie one a her looks, like she mean business.

  Except AnnMarie had heard it before. And it wasn’t night. It was daytime. He was at the sugarcane factory when Blessed left, shoving clothes into a bag, screen door slamming.

  You don’t got something to say?

  AnnMarie yawned. I heard you, Ma, I know the story.

  Ever since Blessed had found out about the baby, it was like she was revived, on her feet asking AnnMarie how she feel, do she need something, asking where she going and when she coming back. And in between all the asking, she’d find a way to tell it, again and again—the story of her great escape. How he raped her. How he beat her with a pipe. A pipe used for plumbing.

  You is a rape child, Blessed would say. But I kept you, you see how I kept you?

  Like some kinda hero thief. Stealing past cornfields, past the houses made a concrete. Past the dirt yards and goats. Dogs barking, stray dogs so skinny
they ribs show through. Snarling at any scrap a life that pass them by. AnnMarie pictured her without shoes on her feet, dress hem flapping, her neck twisted ’round, a look like fear turn to triumph in her eye.

  ’Cept she had shoes. Shoes and a bag full a clothes, AnnMarie remembered. A rainstorm had turned the dirt to mud, and there was ants, millions of ants clawing their way to sunlight. Blessed walked five miles to St. Margaret, caught the bus to Port of Spain, her feet itching and burning, ants crawling out her shoes, up her thigh, hungry for blood. Traveling papers fixed by a lady named Miss Deacon for three hundred dollars. She’d spent a year saving. A year of broken ribs and fat lips and eyeballs hanging out their socket. Clinic man patch her up, send her on her way. If she stayed behind, she’d end up like Jahar, her firstborn. That baby got shook and banged by AnnMarie’s father. Shook and banged ’til he was dead.

  You got his blood, Blessed said. But you see how I kept you.

  Yeah, yeah. AnnMarie thought. ’Cept for all those years you didn’t.

  She remembered the first time her mother spoke about her father. In that narrow bed at the homeless shelter when she was a child. Wrapped around Blessed in the stillness, AnnMarie hadn’t understood all the words. But she knew sadness. Felt it in her mother’s chest rising and falling, in her eyes that refused to open. AnnMarie had reached up and patted her cheek, tried to pry an eye open, wanting her mother back.

  When had her love for Blessed changed? AnnMarie couldn’t remember.

  Carlton and Carlotta had gone visiting, so AnnMarie went into her room to change. She could smell the food cooking. Her mother’d been a good cook once, before the stroke. Now she hardly cooked at all, fingers shaking, recipes turned inside out. Maybe that’s what AnnMarie’s father had liked about her. She’d cook up the rice and peas, macaroni pie, curry goat. There weren’t no picture of her father. No way a seeing his face in her mind. Just a angry dude. She looked at herself in the mirror. Brown eyes staring. Was he in there?