On the Come Up

by Hannah Weyer

  AnnMarie looked at her, like What you mean, an apartment.

  She’d been sleeping over a lot lately, since school was out for the summer. Blessed’d been like, What’s Lucinda doing here all the time, don’t she got her own house to live at? What you girls doing in there?

  Sometime AnnMarie wonder if Blessed blind outta her good eye. Like, Duh. This girl eating my pussy, I’m walking around with a smile on my face—can’t you tell we in love?

  But AnnMarie knew Blessed liked Lu. Sometimes Lu’d show up with little things from back home—things like the tamarind fruit still in the shell, ginger beer and sugar cakes. Blessed would marvel. She’d say, Lucinda, where you find this? Lucinda’d laugh. I got my ways, Blessed, you know I do …

  The rent’s eight hundred fifty a month, Lucinda said. We split it down the middle fify-fifty. We don’t need a reference, no first last and damage ’cause it’s my uncle … AnnMarie’s mind start going a mile a minute, thinking, Move in with Lu? Is she serious?

  Well, who gonna watch Star when I go to work?

  They got a Head Start over there on Empire Boulevard. My sisters went there. It’s a good program.

  AnnMarie thinking, She’s serious, she is serious. She wants to live with me. Like for real, not just squashed in here at my mother’s house, but paying rent together. Lu still talking, saying something about her student loan and a stipend, how she got some kinda scholarship to play ball, not a lot but she’d done the math and it could work if they’s careful.

  AnnMarie sat down next to her, took the ball outta her hand. She said, Hell yeah, I move in with you.

  Next paycheck came in, they down at check-cash, pulling money out the metal drawer, adding the three hundred fifty to the sixty dollars AnnMarie took outta her sock drawer, counting out the cash on the bed, pooling their money together. Going in and out of the apartment, bringing back empty boxes, packing up all her things, Star’s clothes, loading them into the car. Blessed said, What y’all doing? Where you going?

  She said, I’m moving out, Ma, and you welcome to come visit.

  60

  The apartment building was on Flatbush Avenue, above Biggs Barber Shop, two blocks from Prospect Park. You could stand in the living room and see the tops of trees, green leaves rustling out there through the window, a real window in the living room, separate from the kitchen. They’d already been to the park four, five times—saw the different playgrounds, a drumming circle, a lake with ducks and paddle boats. On the far side, one day walking, Lucinda showed them the horse corral nestled in a grove of trees.

  AnnMarie’d been busy, getting settled, making lists of things they need—couch, kitchen table, chairs, curtains to hang. Dishes she found at a stoop sale right around the corner, cups and glasses Blessed had gave them, and from Lucinda’s mother, they got some mix matched forks and knives and spoons. Still she had work to get to every day, traveling a hour and a half each way. There was Head Start forms to fill—she’d been mad slow with it, dragging her feet even though the deadline was right around the corner. Two copies of the birth certificate, copies a health forms, pages and pages of information to fill in—where you live, what you make, your income, who the mother is, who the father is, if there a doctor, if there insurance and she’d stare at all those pieces a paper, her eyes swimming, thinking, Why they got to know all this shit about my life.

  Star ain’t got no doctor, just the clinic back in Far Rockaway. They gonna take her, she ain’t got no doctor? Do she put Darius’ name down or do she leave it blank? Do she write Lucinda instead a Darius?

  Another form said, Describe your child. What her personality like? Does she have trouble separating? Any major changes in the household? She thought, Separating. What they mean, separating. Star stubborn as hell. Do she put down stubborn? The whole process making her feel uneasy, deep-down inadequate, so the last day, the very last day of the deadline, she found an excuse. She said, Star you wanna go pet the horses? Star said, Yeah! Mama, let’s go. But Lu came outta the kitchen right then and said, Where you going? Did you fill out the forms?

  I’ma do it later.

  Lu said, There is no later, you better do it now.

  AnnMarie didn’t answer, kneeling down to strap on Star’s sandals.

  Lu said, You don’t get Star into the program, then what you gonna do, who gonna watch her when you working and I’m at school.

  AnnMarie tsked, an impulse, old and familiar, rising. She stood up, glaring.

  I know that already, stupid, why don’t you stay out my business.

  Lu said, Who you calling stupid. You need to take care a this shit.

  Why you acting like my mother.

  Why you acting like a child.

  And that was it. AnnMarie said, Fuck this shit. I’m out. Grabbed hold of Star’s hand and yanked her out the door.

  Outside on the street, Star had to hustle to keep up, AnnMarie walking fast up the block. At the corner, she waited for Star, took her hand, then entered the deli.

  She said to the deli man, What do horses like to eat.

  He thought about it, then said, Apples?

  Yeah, yeah, let me get a couple of apples. Star grab a couple a those right there.

  Star turned, reached up onto the shelf where the produce at, took a couple of apples in her hands.

  She said, I’m hungry. AnnMarie glanced at her, said, Go on, eat one then, we save the other for the horse.

  At Ocean Avenue, they left the sidewalk and cut into the park, walking along a narrow path through a grove of trees. Up ahead, a two-way bike lane snaked through the trees and grassy patches—people out jogging, cyclists zipping by, fast walkers moving their hips like they on a dance floor. AnnMarie stood at the curb, waiting for a break in the flow and Star reached up and took her hand. They stood for a moment longer, then darted through the foot traffic to the other side.

  They wandered down another path, pausing at a bridge to watch the ducks gliding on the pond below. The sun beat down and she felt her neck damp with sweat. She squinted in the brightness. Up ahead she could see the path split off in two directions. Dang, she thought, which way do I go. Off to the side, some Rastas was playing soccer, their dreads flipping as they dodged and darted, kicking the ball up and down the field. She felt Star’s hand moist in hers and glanced at her. That girl still chewing on the apple, eating the seeds and all. AnnMarie felt a breeze brush past, saw the leaves swaying against a cloudless sky. Who the fuck cares, she thought. It’s a beautiful day.

  So they made the ascent up the grassy hill, cut across the path running parallel to the baseball fields and dugouts and some black dudes playing cricket, Star trailing behind as AnnMarie moved them through the field of green and up another hill, and as they rose to the top, she saw it.

  The horse was mad tall, with a shiny black coat, its mane braided, two dozen narrow braids laying flat against its flank. And on its back sat a girl, maybe nine, ten years old, holding the reins with both hands—the girl and the horse inside the corral made of narrow slats of wood.

  AnnMarie said, Star look, look at that. Star’s eyes went wide as the girl snapped the reins and the horse began to trot, the girl’s behind bouncing up outta the saddle. She looked scared but she was doing it, leading the horse around the oval path, jumping over a log set across the dirt.

  AnnMarie scooped Star up into her arms, carried her the rest of the way to the fence. She could see the riding teacher now, must be the teacher—calling out words AnnMarie ain’t never heard before, post … posting … she’s above the bit, bring her down, down, go to cant … Her hair long and gray, wearing the pants that poof out at the sides and tall black boots. The horse and girl coming around in a trot, round and round the path, inside the fence.

  AnnMarie set Star on the top rail as the riding girl came toward them and Star reached out her hand, holding up the apple, she said, Apple? but the riding girl didn’t seem to notice, her eyes straight ahead, and AnnMarie’s heart kinda shrunk up right then. What the hell she th
inking, bringing Star all the way out here.

  This ain’t no petting zoo. Lucinda’d been right. She had forms to fill but she’d froze. It came at her sharp and sudden, a stab of panic, wondering why she’d done it. Moved in with Lu. Trying to make it on her own, living outside her mother’s house. The horse was trotting fast now, braids bouncing, then it began to gallop, the girl’s face fixed in concentration, body crouched, her boot toes wedged tight in the stirrups.

  Fuck it, AnnMarie thought. Come on, Star, we going. And as she turned to lift Star off the rail she saw it. A figure, far off in the distance, cutting across the field. AnnMarie did a double take, her heart skipping a beat as she realized who it was. Lu, tossing that damn ball back and forth. She watched her climb the grassy slope, and it was as if their eyes had met in that instant, ’cause Lu cocked her head off to the side, like she do when she embarrassed. Trying to act all nonchalant. Trying to bounce the ball in the grass. And AnnMarie had to laugh. The ball sitting there like a hunk a cement. She couldn’t help it. She laughed, reaching for Star just as the girl rider went past, heard the gallop like the thrum of a baby heartbeat, knowing Lu was there, coming to see where they at.

  Acknowledgments

  This book is a work of fiction inspired by the life and oral accountings of my dear friend and sister traveler, Anna Simpson. Singular, beautiful, and sanguine, without her, these pages would be blank.

  Huge credit goes to the Film Club kids from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, including but not limited to my young friends Faustino, Maya, Monica, Rahmel, Woody, Raheem, Achim, Jason, Tati, and Millie, whose voices, musings, and unbridled energy pushed through the walls of an auditorium and alighted as muses to influence the spirit and character of this book.

  Also, I thank Messiah Rhodes, who taught me resilience, time and again, by defying his own circumstance and leaping the great divide.

  To my early readers, friends and heroes, I thank you: Alyce Barr, Shari Carpenter, Adele Parez, Bruce Weyer, Daisy Wright, Kate Griggs, Mikha Grumet, Lenny Bass, Joseph Entin, Sophie Entin-Bell, and Alexandra Aron.

  For their support, encouragement, and kindness along the way, I deeply thank Donna McKay, Kerry Washington, George Pelecanos, Rosie Dastgir, Nelson George, Ted Hope, Vanessa Hope, Anya Epstein, Jacqueline Woodson, my publisher Nan Talese, and my agent Alice Tasman.

  And finally, to a group of collaborators whose remarkable talents, generosity, and patience I leaned on during the creation of this book, I thank you Ellis Avery, Jennifer Pooley, Ronit Feldman, and mostly and forever, Jim McKay.

  A Note About the Author

  Hannah Weyer is a filmmaker whose narrative and documentary films have screened at the Human Rights Watch and the New York Film Festivals and have won awards at the Sundance, Locarno, Melbourne, Doubletake, and South by Southwest Film Festivals. Her screenwriting credits include Life Support (2007), directed by Nelson George, which earned a Golden Globe Award for its lead actress, Queen Latifah. Weyer has worked with teens in the media arts for the past fifteen years and, along with her husband, the filmmaker Jim McKay, started an after-school film club at a public high school in Brooklyn. On the Come Up is her first novel.

  Visit: www.HannahWeyer.com

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