The First Part Last

by Angela Johnson

  I look at his shoes. Loafers. What’s that about anyway?

  “No.”

  “She helping you out? I mean, I heard that the baby is living with you.”

  I try the eye rubbing thing again and think how I’m going to get him out of my business. Shit! People in this school talk too much. Everybody’s always got so much to say, and never really says anything that’s worth talking about.

  He probably drives a Jeep, and his girlfriend and him have been engaged for two years. They probably laugh at the same jokes and plan to have two kids and go to Disney in the summer.

  What the hell does he know?

  “Yeah, my kid lives with me.”

  “Well, I hope you’re getting help.”

  Then he just leaves.

  I’m thinking he’s going to tell me how he’ll give me a break on my grades or something. Something. But that ain’t happening.

  He just hopes I’m getting help.

  I rub my eyes again and hope my shirt dries from all the spit on it and remember I have to stop by the store on the way home from school to pick up some more formula.

  I have to change twice on the subway to get to the baby-sitter in Brooklyn to pick up Feather.

  Jackie’s poodle keeps barking at me. The stupid dog’s known me for years and still keeps acting like it’s never seen me.

  What’s the problem?

  I walk into the toy-covered living room and remember playing in it when I was little. Nothing’s changed. Nothing.

  I can almost taste the toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup that I couldn’t get enough of.

  I remember the box of play clothes and the corner off the dining room where me and Paco Morales painted the carpet polka-dot.

  Jackie looks the same.

  Laughs the same, shaking when she laughs and tossing her beaded braids in back of her when she puts her hands on her hips to tell one of the parents that she needs to give her baby more green vegetables to make him regular.

  She’s probably talked the same way to parents for thirty years.

  She probably talked to my own mom that way. Everybody listened.

  So when she says, “Boy, you look old and tired,” I sit on the floor like I used to and think about how easy it was when me and Paco thought the carpet needed spots. She puts Feather in my arms and leans down close to me, braids clicking with beads, and says, “But it’ll change for sure. I know it will. I just know.”

  I want to ask her how she knows, but I’m too tired, so all I can do is hold my baby and think about the two changes we have to make to get home.

  then

  NIA’S SCARFING DOWN TACOS like she hasn’t eaten in a week. I know she ate two hours ago, because I was the one that picked up the pineapple-and-pepperoni pizza for her at Mineo’s.

  “It’ll be cold by the time I get it to you,” I said, screaming over the sound of jackhammers and taxis blowing down Broadway.

  “That’s okay. What do you think stoves are for? I don’t mind cooking it a few more minutes.”

  “You sure you want a slice this early in the morning? I don’t even know if they fire the oven up this early.”

  “Bobby, it’s a pizza shop.”

  “Yeah, but this early they usually only serve pastries and espresso.”

  I’m not gonna get out of this. She wants a pizza at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, and the quiet on the other end of the phone means she’s as serious as a heart attack.

  I head toward Mineo’s.

  And all I’m wishing is that Nia’s parents didn’t live in Chelsea ’cause if she was gonna get a jones for Mineo’s on the Upper West Side I was going to be hopping a lot of buses.

  Now she’s sitting on the floor against the dining room wall, stuffing more tacos down her throat. She looks tired. And she looks good.

  Real good.

  She’s all in black. V-neck sweater, black pants, and some sort of ruffle black thing that pulls her curly brown hair up in a pony tail.

  When she takes a breather from eating, she brings her feet up, sits cross-legged, and plays with a silver toe ring on her left foot. She smiles at me sitting across from her with my back against the couch.

  I say, “Feel better now?”

  She nods her head, crawls across all the taco papers and salsa containers, and curls up around me. She smells like baby shampoo and hot sauce.

  In a few minutes we’re wrapped around each other on the floor. She smells sweet and her mouth is tangy, then sweet, then tangy again.

  All I can think is that I want her more than anything. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything, ever.

  She pulls my T-shirt over my head and kisses me so soft on my neck. She’s everything that I ever thought I wanted when I take her sweater off and kiss all the soft places, the warm places, down to her stomach….

  I stay there for a long time, warming my face on her swollen belly. She sighs and holds my head. I close my eyes and want to stay there.

  “Is it too early for the baby to move?”

  She giggles. “Yeah, I think so.”

  I look over at all the taco wrappers and the pizza box.

  “I guess it’s not too early for it to eat like a starving pig though.”

  She giggles again.

  Kissing her belly is like eating ice cream. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. So I don’t.

  She starts to shiver and I watch her arms and stomach get goose bumps on them, so I wrap myself tighter around her.

  I whisper, “Is it okay? I mean, will it hurt the baby if we do it?”

  She sits up against the couch and smiles.

  “No. I got all these pamphlets and things from the doctor. All of them say it’s okay, just use common sense.”

  I figure we hadn’t used too much common sense lately, or she wouldn’t be pregnant.

  “My parents won’t be home until tonight. We’ve got a long time.”

  I pull her to me then lift her up off the floor.

  We step on the pizza box as we head toward her room. I’m glad we have a long time. I’m glad.

  now

  I SHOULD HAVE SCOPED how the day was going when Feather puked on me just as I picked her up out of her crib this morning.

  But I didn’t hear it or see it.

  Fred always talks about the signs being there. He says he can tell in the morning if a waiter is going to quit or some delivery isn’t going to come. The only way to change something is to pay attention to the signs.

  But K-Boy says it doesn’t matter what you do, what’s gonna go down is already set. Try to change something—be damned. Don’t try to change it—be damned just as much.

  So I should have just called in sick to school and watched the purple dinosaur all day long with the baby.

  I should have just hid.

  But in the end there was probably nothing I could do about anything anyway. If you look at it that way I guess it makes what goes down, go down easier.

  And ’cause I was going to be late getting Feather to the sitter, I knocked on Coco’s door.

  ’Cause I had to give Feather a bath it made everything late. I’d already been called into the guidance counselor’s office twice.

  She smiled a lot and asked if everything was running smooth. Was fatherhood what I thought it would be? Was the responsibility of a baby getting to be too much? Was my mother helping? My father? The baby’s other grandparents?

  I fell asleep in her warm office and can’t remember what lie I answered to most of her questions.

  I wasn’t up for that today.

  I didn’t think I was ever gonna be up to that any day. Never talked to so many adults in my whole life. It was getting right down to my last nerve.

  Hell, I didn’t have any nerves left.

  So I did what my mom asked me not to do. I took the easy way out and asked Coco to do me a favor.

  She came to the door in a star-burst caftan, her hair tied up in braids and a cup of coffee in her hand. “Hey, kid.�
��

  I carried Feather in, strapped in her carrier. Anybody would have wanted to keep her, dressed up cute in her pink teddy bear snowsuit.

  Coco took the carrier from me and smiled.

  All of a sudden my backpack is feeling heavy and it’s all I can do not to fall on my knees to the soft carpet.

  Coco says, “Running late? You need I should keep the little mouse pie?”

  “Yeah, could you? I mean I wouldn’t ask if the morning wasn’t already shot, and my mom hadn’t left about five this morning with every camera she had in the world to get some sunrise shots of the city.”

  “Hmmm.” Coco hums.

  “And she hasn’t got back yet—Feather puking and it taking forever to get her to take a bottle.”

  I must have looked whacked ’cause Coco started unbuckling Feather while I held her coffee.

  “Go to school, Bobby. I got her.”

  I could’ve cried and hugged Coco all at the same time but I just leaned over, kissed Feather, and told Coco I’d see her after school and what channel the purple dinosaur was on. She looked at me like I was crazy.

  I should have hung with the first idea. Should have called off school and watched the big lizard with the kid all day.

  then

  J. L. RUNS TO THE DOOR to make sure what we hear out in the hall isn’t going to get us kicked out of school for three days.

  It’s just some kid late for class.

  And I don’t even want to ask J. L. how he’d gotten the keys to Nelson’s room. It’s never good to know too much about what J. L. has in the back of his head. But it’s cool ’cause it’s usually kickin’.

  Something stupid.

  Something dumb.

  Always funny.

  Today we’re turning everything in Nelson’s room upside down. Desks, chairs, posters, garbage cans, whatever.

  Just about the time we get to the desks, J. L. starts laughing and can’t stop. He’s laughing so hard you can hear him in the hall, I thought.

  “Shut up, man. You’re gonna get us busted.”

  J. L. pulls on his baseball cap and keeps laughing.

  “Man, this is so stupid—what we’re doing. It’s so stupid I can’t help it. …”

  Then he starts laughing so hard he ends up on the floor.

  I look at him curled up on the floor, gasping, then I look around the room and start laughing too. This is about the dumbest thing we ever did. But it feels good after the last couple of months with everything being so heavy with Nia and all.

  We get out without getting caught, lock the room up, and push the extra set of keys back underneath the door. We walk to the third floor, get chips out of the machine, and head back to study group.

  Never get to see how Nelson looks or how everybody laughs when they see the room ’cause five minutes after we’re sitting back in group, the teacher gives me a note to say I’m excused.

  Nia got real sick and was rushed to the hospital. And when I think the kid is here already, I remember she’s only a few months pregnant.

  I sit on the subway a few minutes later thinking, yeah, life is stupid.

  Nia’s sleeping when I get to the hospital.

  I sit at the foot of her bed and rub her feet ’cause I know the only thing she likes more is having her back massaged. But I can’t do that now.

  The white sheet is curving around her stomach and I don’t notice at first that the sheet is moving a little. I figure she’s waking up, but when it does it again and her eyes are still closed, I know.

  It’s like a dream when I move my hands from her feet, up her legs and hips to her belly, and it kicks me.

  I put my head on her stomach and it’s like I’m stoned, and don’t wake up till the nurse comes in to take Nia’s temperature. I leave Nia sleeping.

  Don’t remember anything except how I walked about fifty blocks and it only seemed to take a few minutes to get home.

  now

  I LEAVE COCO’S APARTMENT and think how easy it would be if every morning fifty steps would get Feather to her baby-sitter.

  Hell, that’s living in a dream.

  But all of a sudden I have time that I don’t usually have.

  No school for about an hour and a half.

  And there’s that thing I haven’t done in a long time. Forgot that it used to juice me to do it, and now I need to do it, like yesterday.

  I run back upstairs and put about four cans in my backpack before I go to Mineo’s for a coffee and some kind of donut so full of sugar it almost blows my head off.

  I’m feeling good.

  Haven’t felt this let loose in a while, and I almost can’t stand it. Found this great wall a few weeks ago off the Ave. And it’s time to do some tagging.

  I cut through the parking lot and through the playground, an alley, and over and down a wall to get where I need to be. Perfect.

  Everything is clean brown brick, and off in the shadows of some brownstones.

  Where the hell did this wall come from anyway? It’s just standing here in the middle of the city, not connected to anything or holding anything up. It’s just been waiting for me.

  I sit down against it. Feel the bricks and let the cool settle in me. I’m feeling colors and seeing things now that I’m against the wall.

  There’s flashes of me and K-Boy climbing up a fire escape and tying our kites to a clothesline and watching them all day.

  After that, me and J. L. are at the Museum of Natural History in the shadows, looking at million-year-old rocks, and blowing bubbles on the front stairs.

  Then I’m in Jamaica on a beach with my brothers burying me in the sand. My mom’s snapping pictures of us while Fred keeps worrying that they’ll get sand in my eyes.

  In a few minutes my face is wet.

  Tears are still pouring out when I start spraying the clean brick.

  The tears are still coming when I start from the beginning and go to now.

  I’m always the pale ghost boy between everybody. Floating in and out of the paintings. One minute I’m just getting J. L.’s face right.

  I’m the pale white ghost boy beside the brown girl who is always looking away. Sometimes in the picture, my brothers show up, make themselves known, then leave the painting again.

  Like in real life.

  Finally it’s just me and the thing in the baby carrier who doesn’t have a face for a long time. There are bottles and boxes of diapers, hospitals, and social workers. There’s the baby with no face and the ghost boy at the courts.

  Then they’re at the arcade and the bodega by K-Boy’s house. The carrier sails through the painting, following the ghost boy Pretty soon he’s going to have to look inside the carrier and make up a face for the kid if it’s gonna be following him all over the damned place anyway.

  He’s going to have to see it.

  I spray black.

  Then red, mixed with some blue.

  The boy’s got to be paler. But no, maybe just some green all around him. Maybe just some more green.

  I’m losing wall now.

  It’s all got to come to an end soon. I’m going to have to find the kid’s face. It’s going to be hard now ’cause I’m out of breath and running out of color in the cans.

  I’m almost empty.

  But I got to find the baby’s face.

  And when I feel a hand on my shoulder, at first I think it’s some kind of savior coming along to help me out. Help me find it’s face.

  Then I notice it’s kind of dark and it isn’t just dark from the building’s shadows.

  I’ve been here all day. Way past school, and near the night.

  I get about two seconds of relief until the savior turns out to have a uniform and a gun, and I’m sitting in the back of the radio car all the way to the station.

  part III

  then

  SO HERE’S A GOOD DAY.

  We’ll call it a fairy tale day.

  Once upon a time, really right now, there was this hero (I always wanted to be on
e) who lived in the city. He was born in the city, loved the city, and never ever wanted to be anywhere else but the city.

  He loved the feel of it. The way you got juiced when you walked down the sidewalk and everybody was out.

  He loved the smell of it. Pizza on one corner, falafel and French pastries on the next. Standing in front of the Chinese restaurant, wondering if you want soup or if you should jump a train to that Jamaican place that K-Boy got kicked out of.

  He loved the sounds that woke him in the morning and put him to sleep at night. And when he left the city and the noise to go someplace else—another country or town—he missed it.

  Couldn’t sleep without the ambulance noises and people calling to each other in the street who are just getting back from the clubs.

  He couldn’t help but get used to the delivery trucks that pulled up early for the restaurants in the neighborhood and the jackhammers and horns. He loved the sounds the kids made running to the subway, and cabs blowing by and screeching to a stop.

  Now, ’cause this is a fairy tale, it’s important to have some sort of monster, but I’ve decided not to include him in the story. Decided that because this was a perfect day, we didn’t need him along to screw up the magical kingdom and run crazy through the streets, breathing fire and knocking down pizza joints and hot dog stands.

  Whatever the monster is, it has to understand that the kid has got friends who hang out with him and usually got his back, and some days it just ain’t worth it.

  I mean even in a fairy tale the friends could be asses and stuff, give the hero a hard time when he gets stupid or something, but they’re there. When everything gets real hard. Right there.

  Now. The damsel.

  Definitely in distress.

  Sitting in a castle in Chelsea.

  The hero is there to rescue her from her royal relatives who aren’t evil, but lately have been trying to do a close imitation of it.

  No white horse here.

  Got a pass for the subway though.

  The hero is buzzed up to the castle with his buddies waiting outside. The damsel’s parents are at friends’ having brunch and she’s all alone. No mama dragon at the gate. No three deeds to do in order to open it up.