by Sharon Flake
My godfather asks to speak to him a minute. They go inside and come out shaking hands and talking about how hot it is. Mr. Dave goes back to work. My stepdad gets back to me. “I’m never gonna understand you liking North Philly the way you do.” All he sees is the trash, and kids out of control, police trying to get people to talk who won’t, and boys like me in trouble or dead. But if he saw Raven. If he had that lady’s sweet potato pie, or if he saw all that money on the porch, or those people line dancing, and grilling in the dark, then he’d know why I love North Philly.
He opens the door. “Maybe we need to change a few things around here.” He picks up Golden, who is out of her Pull-Ups again. “But first you have to get what’s coming to you.” He’s quiet a minute. “Tell me what you think is fair—and don’t be messing around, ’cause I got plenty ideas about how to make you wish you were never even born.”
I look at him standing there like a mountain in that doorway. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He walks into the house asking Golden if she wants Ernie in the tub with her, or Mickey Mouse.
I don’t know why, but he doesn’t tell me to come inside. And I don’t go, not for a while, anyhow. I sit. I tell my stomach to quiet down when I smell fish frying up the street somewhere. I watch my neighbors kicking back, talking on cells and to each other. I hear Miss Bert yelling to someone to bring her a bowl of butter pecan ice cream, and some grease, so she can oil her scalp.
Philly heat. It makes people stay outdoors all night long. You can’t hardly sleep for the heat and the noise sometimes. That’s why I like it, though—like living here, feeling the heat, watching people walking the streets— knowing that it ain’t all bad; ain’t all good, neither. It’s just where I live. My hood.
Brown
Baby
Girl
Beauty of the world
My little sis
Here’s another kiss
A poem
A hug
Words to show the world
Just how much you’re loved
I apologize
For living in the suburbs,
For talking white,
For trying to be cooler than I am,
For locking my windows when my mom drives me into the city at night,
For choosing Harvard over Howard,
For not going to public school,
For taking Paige to the prom,
And for sitting up in church, singing hymns like life was ever hard for me.
I apologize
For that time I pretended not to see you cutting up,
Or the time I sat in the barber shop, scared that more than my hair was going to get cut.
I apologize
For looking like you, but not knowing exactly who you are.
But you can apologize too, you know.
I hear you laughing at the way I speak,
Pointing at the geek you say is me walking up the street,
Asking why my family gotta act so white.
Stepping up to me because you think I can’t fight.
I know what happens when I show up at a dance:
You and your boys sit back and don’t give me a chance.
Laughter happens whenever you see me around,
Unless you need to borrow some money.
Then, well, of course me and you is down.
I don’t always understand you.
You don’t seem to get me at all.
I prefer golf,
You swear by basketball.
We are
City
And
Suburb,
A million miles apart.
Brothers
Still trying to understand and forgive one another.
So I apologize
For whatever.
And you?
THE DAY SHE MOVED INTO OUR BUILDING, I was just about to hook up with my friend Sedgley to sell some weed. Money is tight. Mom’s check got cut back ’cause my little brother went to live with my dad. I did the best I could—making cheese steaks at Big Willie’s on the weekends, sweeping up at JT’s gas station Wednesday and Thursday nights. But the economy sucks, so they both let me go, then hired their relatives to take my place.
When you fifteen, they want to pay you like a boy. But Mom says I eat like a man; got man-size feet too— elevens. So I need to make some real dough. Sedgley and his boys always got plenty of money, so I was all set to make a run with him when I saw her outside our building. I had to speak ’cause she caught me checking out her mom—eyeballing her butt, to be honest. Her mom had on this short, tight jean skirt; no slip, no stockings, and long legs that went on forever. I could feel my cheeks turn red, so I apologized, something my boys tell me I need to quit doing. But it’s not cool checking out some girl’s mom. So after I said I was sorry, I picked up a box and carried it inside.
Her mom stopped me when I came for the second one. “This here’s Ashlee,” she said, smiling. She took the snake plant off Ashlee and told her to “Say hello to the boy.” Ashlee didn’t say a word. So her mom stuck out her hand and said, “You can call me Aretha.”
Ashlee kept taking things out of the U-Haul and into apartment 3B, across the hall from me and Mom. She was pretty, like her mom, but you could tell she wasn’t nothing like her mom, who had a pierced eyebrow, three tattoos on her left arm, the prettiest legs I ever seen. And she switched so hard the mailman across the street stopped working for like ten minutes just to watch her walk up the apartment steps, and in and out of the building.
Ashlee’s mom was young, like my mom. She was maybe thirty-two. “How old did you say you were?” Aretha asked me. I told her seventeen. Then she asked about my mom. “When I meet her I’m gonna let her know what a gentleman she raised.” She pinched my cheek. I picked up two more boxes—big ones. And I thought about Sedgley, who was probably mad at me right then. I was supposed to make a few runs with him last week, too. But I chickened out.
I’m a hard worker. Everyone knows that. Once I get started, watch out, I’m gonna outwork everyone else around me. Ashlee was the same way. She carried heavy boxes, two and three chairs at a time. Her mom was different. Aretha don’t mind letting someone else do all the work. The first half hour I was there, she took two breaks—one to fix a broken nail, the other to drink a glass of cherry Kool-Aid. She made a production out of everything too. She didn’t just gulp down the Kool-Aid like us guys do: she used a straw. She lotioned her legs, sipped Kool-Aid, put on lip gloss, sipped, talked on the cell, chewed on ice, and asked Ashlee over and over again: “How my lips look? My legs ashy? This outfit okay?” I’m glad she did not ask me.
“Quit it.”
I ain’t sure if Ashlee was talking to me or her mom. I don’t think I was staring at her legs. But who knows, maybe she saw her mom looking me over. Sedgley says that older women like me, even though he can’t figure out why. I don’t think they like me like that, it’s just that they’re all single around here mostly, and there ain’t no one to help ’em out but me.
“Quit fooling around, Mom,” Ashlee said. “Or we’re never getting done.”
Aretha asked if I had some friends who could maybe help us move things along. I said I’d call around. But I know my friends. They wanna get paid, and Aretha wasn’t the type to give up cash. She was used to people doing for her just because, I could tell.
She winked when she thanked me. Then she left the room. I kept my eyes on the floor, but I thought about her. Older women. Young dudes. My mom would say there’s something wrong with that.
I can tell when a girl doesn’t want me around. So I stayed outside when Ashlee was inside, and left when she came in the apartment to do something. Ashlee was not friendly like her mom. She ain’t say one word to me. I asked what school she went to. Nothing. Asked how old she was and why nobody was here to help ’em out. She kept her lips tight. That ticked me off, you know. So I called Sedgley. Told him I was on my way. He said to forget it. Then the phone went dead.
“I gotta
go,” I told Aretha, when I got outside. She handed me another box, then asked if I could carry in just one more little thing—a love seat. Maybe it was the way she said it. Or maybe it was the way she looked. But I carried it inside, then took another love seat in too. I just about busted my back doing it. And when I came out, feeling kinda good about what I did, that Ashlee still ain’t say nothing to me.
She was sitting on the steps, looking up and down the block. “I’m not moving no more.”
I didn’t know why she was saying that to me. Then I saw who she was talking to.
Aretha was in the window, taking another cigarette break. She promised Ashlee this was the last move. I don’t think Ashlee believed her. This was the third move this year, Ashlee reminded her. It was her second school; the third bus route she had to learn. “Things happen,” her mom said.
Ashlee was upset. “Most people live in the same house all their lives. They . . . just forget it, Mom,” she said, jumping up, pushing past me when she went inside. Before I knew anything, though, she was right back out there with us. “We need more help. Who’s gonna move that couch? Him? And what about the beds? And the TVs?” Ashlee wasn’t waiting for answers. She was gone again.
It was like two sisters arguing. “This is why you always by yourself, Miss Mean and Nasty,” her mom said. But instead of going to talk to Ashlee, Aretha came out and sat down next to me. “You sure you can’t stay longer?”
I needed to go. But I didn’t want to. She was pretty. And she didn’t have no other guy to help her out. So I offered to stick around. I got a kiss on the cheek for that. My friends would say I was lucky, getting kissed by a woman like her. But it was kind of weird when I stood up and saw Ashlee standing in the front door, staring.
“That’s my mother,” she said, then walked away.
Ashlee looked really sad, so I was gonna apologize, but my mom come out.
“How you doing, baby?” my mother said, massaging my shoulders.
“Mom! Don’t do that.”
My mother laughed. “Don’t want your friends to know I still give my baby back rubs?” she said, pinching the same cheek that Aretha kissed.
I was glad to see my mom, but not happy with that top she had on. I quit getting on my mom about her clothes a long time ago, though. She never listens anyhow. And after a while your boys stop making comments, out of respect for you, I guess. Or maybe they just feel sorry for you—having a mom who still thinks she’s nineteen; partying and dressing that way too. “I’m grown,” Mom always says. But I think I’m more grown, responsible, than her sometimes. It’s like she’s my sister, not my mom. But she don’t seem to get that.
Aretha cuts her eyes at me, then at my mom, checking her out.
“Mom, this is Aretha . . . and Ashlee,” I say when Ash walks onto the porch.
My mom wanted to know if Aretha could sing. It was a joke: Aretha said she got that all the time. I watched them, compared them. And I could see, a little, how my boys felt about my mom. I mean, Aretha is fine . . . built. I wouldn’t want to be Ashlee. I could tell if they walked down the street together who would get all the looks and whistles. My mom is like that—a dude magnet. So I knew her and Aretha would hit it off. But Mom didn’t see how Aretha was looking at me—like I was a man. I got up then and went to the truck and worked until my arms hurt.
Women talk a lot. I’m used to that. But they should watch who they spend their time talking to. Mom and Aretha were talking to Mr. Dorsey. They were leaning over the railing, smoking cigarettes and crossing their legs. His eyes went from one woman to the other.
“You helping us, or what?” I asked him.
Mr. Dorsey looked over at me. “We still got beds to bring in,” I told him.
My mom stood up. Aretha crossed her arms and winked at me. “We could use some extra hands,” she told Mr. Dorsey. “I’m frying up chicken once we’re done.”
Mr. Dorsey is like a lot of guys. He’ll talk to a woman. Flirt with a woman. But he won’t do any work for a woman. “What time is it?” he said.
Time to go, I thought. It was, too. He said he was off to get his hair cut. And he was gone before they knew it.
I was glad. I think Aretha was too. Ashlee was different. She was still mad about things. And every once in a while she just stared at me. Then she’d look at her mom and kind of shake her head. Pretty mothers are a problem; me and Ashlee both know that.
My mother likes shoes. So does Aretha, it turned out. She had boxes and boxes of them. The two of them took in the shoes. Aretha has the only apartment with three bedrooms in it. The smallest room was going to be her shoe room, she said. And once the two of them got back there, they stayed a while. It turned out they wore the same size shoe. And Aretha was like my mom, generous. So she offered to lend her a few pair. Before you knew it, my mom was in and out of our apartment with dresses that went with Aretha’s shoes. I was in the kitchen, putting dishes in the cabinet. Ashlee was handling the silverware. In came our moms, dressed like they were going clubbing. Ashlee looked at me. We both looked at them. Then went right back to work.
I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s mostly been me and my mom, but I got a way with women. I know how to cheer ’em up. So I told Ashlee about the time I took four of my mother’s dresses and burned them in the yard. “They looked like T-shirts, they were so short.”
She laughed. “If I did that, she wouldn’t have any clothes.”
“They don’t mean any harm,” I said, thinking about the dresses they had just put on. My mom was not ever going out in that thing. Hot pink looks good on her. But it’s like a sign. She wears it and men stick to her like a stinger in your finger. It’s cut too low here and up too high there. But Aretha’s dress—wow. I couldn’t say that to Ashlee, but man. Wow. I could see why they probably had to move so much. A woman like that can’t stay put too long. Other women get mad, I bet. Men get stupid, most likely talking to her a little too much; stopping by for sugar or something else sweet. “Where’s your dad?”
“Who knows?”
I looked at Aretha, going out the front door to get more shoes from the van. I would never walk away and leave a woman like her. Just like I wouldn’t leave my mom. They the kind that need a good man. Somebody to keep the losers away.
“Malik,” she said, walking back and coming into the kitchen, “you okay?”
I stood up. “Yeah.”
“You sure we ain’t working you too hard?”
I shook my head no.
“What you want, Mom?” Ashlee said.
“Just thinking,” she said.
She was thinking about me. I knew it. But she lied. She told Ashlee she was thinking about the curtains she had bought. She was having second thoughts about the color. I wasn’t having second thoughts. I wasn’t feeling guilty either, about me being young and her being my mother’s age. I’m mature. Everyone says so. I could date an older woman, I thought, watching her walk out the room. Listening to her talk to my mother about what a fine young man I am.
“You lying,” Sedgley said, when I saw him the next day. “You don’t even shave. She don’t want you.” He looked up at her place. “Introduce me.”
Sedgley is older than I am. Eighteen. “A boy like you won’t know what to do with that.”
I was in his car, sitting outside my front door. It was lunchtime. We still hadn’t finished unpacking the truck. . . . But Aretha is like my mother—don’t wake her up before twelve thirty on Saturdays.
“I’m telling you, man. I think she likes me.”
We headed up 62nd Street. A few minutes later the speedometer was hitting ninety. He talked to me about older women. He’d dated a lot of them, mostly ones in their thirties and forties. “They the best kind,” he said. “Desperate, with plenty of dough.”
“Money?”
“You have to get the dough. Otherwise, what’s the point?” He thought about that. “Here’s how you handle older women,” he said, trying to school me. And before I got out the car
he dropped a buck-fifty on me. “You can’t do the streets,” he said, telling me to forget trying to make runs with him. “But if you play your cards right with her, you might get paid anyhow.”
When Sedgley dropped me off, my mom and them were outside working. He looked at Aretha. He looked at me. “Nice,” he said, licking his lips.
Sedg and I used to go to school together. He dropped out the last half of his last year in high school. “Money,” he said. “That’s all you need to make it in America.” I looked at Aretha when Sedgley drove off. I didn’t want her money. She’s like my mom— she doesn’t have much. But I could see being with a woman like her.
My mom usually notices things. But she couldn’t tell that something was going on between Aretha and me. I helped Aretha take in the dining room table. All four of us put the legs on. We all helped bring in the china cabinet too. Aretha’s shoes were high. Not the kind you wear when you move in someplace. The kind you’d wear if you wanted someone to notice you. I noticed. Some guys on the block did too. But they wasn’t out there helping her. I was. So I got mad that she stopped whenever they wanted to introduce themselves.
“Aretha! I don’t have all day,” I said.
Ashlee dropped a box on my toe. I think it was on purpose.
Aretha knows how to get guys to do things she wants. She kissed me on the cheek. “I’m ready,” she said, taking me by the hand, ignoring Mom and Ashlee.
“Alright now, you too old for my baby,” Mom said, joking. Then she kissed me on the other cheek.
That just messed everything up, though; made me feel kind of guilty for what I was thinking. “Hey, Ash . . . let me get that for you,” I said, picking up the box. She rolled her eyes and went inside.
Pretty women spend a lot of time trying to get guys to look at them. My mother and Aretha do that. During a break, they sat on the steps smoking. They crossed their legs at the ankles and talked loud. So of course guys stopped. They gave them compliments and even asked for Aretha’s phone number. I stood behind her then. “Naw, I don’t think so,” she said, twice.
“I told you,” my mom said. “That boy thinks he’s my husband—yours too now.”