The grown-ups around her didn’t seem very surprised by her pregnancy. It was as if they expected it. Girls were getting pregnant all over the projects. Nobody other than Louise even said “unwed mother” or “illegitimate” anymore. Aisha was normal. Of her friends, the ones without children were happy for her and helped pick out earrings and outfits to dress the baby up in. The young mothers gave her advice about good prenatal clinics, public assistance, dealing with labor pains, and where to sell food stamps for cash.
As the baby grew inside her, Aisha stayed inside more. Parties and boys, roller coasters and bump cars all faded into the past, along with her childhood. She gained weight and grew lonely. She yearned for the baby to come out just so she’d have company. And when she did appear, Starlett Whitney, named for the singer Whitney Houston, stole not only her mother’s youth but her heart as well.
Food stamps and assistance checks arrived every month, and the little baby became a little girl. Aisha played with her daughter, hung out with the other, mothers, and saw Kevin now and again, even though things between them weren’t like before.
Life resumed its easy, familiar rhythm. She had a pretty daughter, had left school for good, and got paid without having to work. Not bad. Ty arrived soon after Raven went off to college. Louise hassled her to get over to the caseworker and sign the baby up for benefits. And that was all she had to say about her second grandchild. So Aisha chilled. Up until she got the termination notice.
Five
It was hot, and the elevator was stuck between floors. People who’d done their Saturday shopping weren’t about to lug their bags up the stairs to their apartments, so they vied with the teens for bench space. Leafy trees bathed the side of the building in cool shade. Shrieking kids were whooshed along by strong currents of water bursting from open fire hydrants. Aisha, carrying a wide bag on her shoulder and maneuvering Ty’s stroller, made her way to the bench and squeezed in between Toya and her father, taking care not to kick over their groceries. The Washingtons, like a pair of thick bookends, sat at each end of the bench.
“Wassup, Ai,” said Keeba, sipping from a can of fruit punch.
“Wassup, Ty,” said Teesha, drinking hers through a straw. She giggled. “I like that. Ai-Ty. Sound like Chinese food. ‘An order of Ai-Ty with extra duck sauce, please.’ Ha, that’s funny, ain’t it, Ty? Want some?” Teesha removed the straw and held the can to the baby’s mouth. Red liquid rolled down his chin onto his light blue sweatshirt.
“See what you did, Teesha, with your clumsy self?!” Aisha snatched a towel from the baby bag and wiped Ty’s chin.
Keeba leaned forward. “Yo, my sister don’t need drama, so you best save it for ya mama. Why you so evil today? Got the curse? Oops, sorry, Mr. Larson,” she laughed.
Toya sucked her teeth. “You so silly, Keeba.”
Mr. Larson smiled. “I been married to Toya’s mother for near going on twenty years. You think I don’t know about the curse and napkins and tampons and all your other woman troubles?”
“Daddy!” Toya’s face reddened.
Aisha sat forward a little and turned to Teesha.
“Sorry, Teesha. I got a notice from the welfare people, and it’s buggin’ me out. They trying to kick me and my kids off, saying my five years is up.”
“Damn,” exclaimed Teesha, “that’s wak. The same thing happened to my aunt Neda last year. Welfare closed her case, and she ended up homeless.”
“Don’t be sayin’ our aunt homeless, baked potatohead. They gave her one of them workfare jobs with the Parks Department, cutting down trees or mowing grass.”
Teesha rolled her eyes. “Keeba, you way behind on your news. Aunt Neda quit after a week. That’s why they said she was noncooperating. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be no Sheena of the Jungle. Keith from across the street said he saw her all dirty, curled up on the grass in Prospect Park.”
“Lie!” yelled Keeba. “You lucky you at the other end of this bench, or I’d be upside your head. I’m asking Mommy soon as we upstairs. Anyway—Ai, they didn’t offer you no job or nothin’?”
Mr. Larson said the city couldn’t just drop people from the rolls. The state constitution said so. They had to give people welfare-to-work benefits, job training, or something. And if on account of being crazy or sick they couldn’t work, the city had to keep paying their benefits. That was the law, he said.
Aisha made a face. “They offered me workfare all right. You know what I gotta choose from? Scrubbing, sweeping, and hassling. And not getting no real paycheck but chump change, and that only for a little while. It’s terrible.”
“What kind of jobs are those?” asked Toya.
“Slave jobs. I got the notice right here. I keeps it with the baby’s diapers so my moms won’t find it, since she ain’t changed his diaper since he was born.” Aisha read out loud, “Your workfare options are, one, City Buildings Graffiti Busters; two, Clean Sweep Team; three, Zero-Tolerance Subway Youth Patrol.” She folded the notice. “I’m s’pose to let them know in two months, or I get kicked to the curb. Ain’t that a lot of nothin’.”
“It sure is, Aisha,” said Mr. Larson. “But you might be in luck. They trying to get more women and minorities in construction. Maybe you could do one of our apprentice programs. It’s hard work, but it sure pays better than pushing a broom down Jay Street.”
Toya said it would be great if Aisha and her daddy worked together.
Aisha shook her head. She said even the thought of doing a physical job made her feel tired. “Thanks, but I’m barely five foot two, and I’m big, even though I lost a little weight after Ty was born. I used to be in good shape from skating and jumping rope before I had my kids, but like my moms say, all that’s ancient history now.”
Keeba had an idea. “Work with us. Me and Teesha are blowin’ up like the Williams sisters, except we into hair instead of tennis.” They stared hard at Toya, the competition.
“I don’t know why you two are giving me the evil eye. Everybody knows my braids stay in longer than yours.”
Teesha grunted. “Homegirl don’t think so, Red. That’s why they be calling you ‘Toya and the Temples of Doom,’ ’cause by the time you done tugged all hard, girls ain’t got no hair left in they temples!”
“Word!” howled Keeba, holding her sides.
A faint smile tugged at Mr. Larson’s lips.
Toya was bright red. “Umm-hmm, sure. That why now I do Val and Brigitte and a whole bunch of other girls who used to go to you. And you know what they call you two? ‘The Robin Hoods,’ because with your high prices y’all be robbing people in your own hood!” It was Toya’s turn to laugh wildly.
Keeba yawned long and slow. “All I know is, the girls who come to us still got the hairlines they was born with.”
Mr. Larson stepped in. “Enough ribbing and tearing each other down,” he said. “You should support and encourage each other like those Williams girls. That’s why they’re successful.”
Aisha didn’t think braiding a few project heads in one building in Brooklyn was nowhere near as large as Venus and Serena was living. Besides, hair was not her thing. She wasn’t breaking her fingers twisting naps and extensions for hours on end. She’d stopped wearing braids herself because her hair started breaking off at the sides.
“I can’t spend my time fantasizing about rich tennis stars who already got it goin’ on. I have to figure my stuff out, ’cause when it get real, you gotta deal. One thing is sure—I ain’t taking none of those tired jobs. I’ma refuse, tell them I can’t work. Who knows—me, Star, and Ty might just end up in the park with y’all’s aunt.” She forced a weak smile.
The evening air was soft. From a window high above, a voice called out, “The elevator work!” Toya and her father grabbed their grocery bags and hurried off. Keeba and Teesha got a game of boxball going, and Ty dozed. Aisha stared at the grass, its green deepened by the evening light. She thought of Aunt Neda curled up in the park.
Six
T
he mail carrier in Aisha’s neighborhood was never more popular than on the first of the month. That’s when folks gathered in lobbies waiting for him like for the messiah. Having food, paying rent, or simply replacing a burnt-out bulb all depended on the timely delivery of Social Security and welfare checks. But folks had to make sure they got to their money before the mailbox thieves did, because the city took them on a hellish runaround before issuing a replacement.
Standing in her mother’s dingy housecoat and nappy slippers, Aisha was waiting for both checks. How had a month slipped by so fast? She used to be excited and eager receiving her check and stamps, planning how she’d stretch it out over the month. Now all she felt was that this was the next-to-last check. Starlett was growing fast and would be starting school soon. Which meant money for clothes and supplies. Ty had a weight lifter’s appetite and ran through disposable diapers like a waterfall. And Louise always had her lips pursed and hand out on check day. For the first time in her life, Aisha felt the squeeze of responsibility, and it was tight. She struggled to think up a way to hold on to the good life, keep the checks coming in. Then a great idea came to her.
Back upstairs, Aisha reached for the phone, even though she hated going anywhere near tacky Fort Crest Houses, a rival housing project.
“Yeah, hello, this Fort Crest Clinic? … Nurse Constantino there? … What you mean, what it in reference to? To me wanting to talk to her … Aisha. From Hillbrook … Yes, she know me.”
Aisha could’ve smacked herself for not thinking of it before. That day on the bench, Mr. Larson had said benefits couldn’t be cut off if you were crazy. She had checked the notice again. It said you had to get on workfare “unless you provide this office with documentation that you are ill, disabled or elderly.” She listened to the clinic’s “on hold” music, making crazy faces in the mirror. “Girl, you a mental disabled case, off the hook,” she whispered to herself, “one ill nana.”
A voice. “Hello? What? Hellooo!”
“Miss Constantino! I didn’t know you was on the line! … Oh, that was just the TV … It has been a long time, two years, right? … They both doing real good. You should see how big Ty is, and he only two. Starlett gonna be in school in a few months … I’m ah-ight, I mean, I’m not ah-ight. I—I got a lot of problems and ain’t been sleeping good. And sometimes I feel like, um … everything spinning around and making me crazy … Yeah, my mother know, and she real worried. That’s why she made me call you, ’cause she want me to come in and get a checkup and maybe a note … I know you ain’t no psychiatrist. Can’t I just get a appointment? … Thanks. Okay, next Thursday … Yeah, three-thirty’s good. Bye.”
She hung up the phone. “Ma, can you watch the kids just for an hour next Thursday? Doctor’s appointment!”
Louise didn’t answer. But Aisha knew she’d baby-sit as long as it was about a clinic date and not about Aisha doing anything fun.
In the week before her appointment, Aisha applied herself with determination to the study of insanity. First, she paid a visit to Raven’s mother and offered to watch Raven’s son Smokey, only a few months older than her own little Ty.
“Smokey’s at day care when I’m working—which you know, Aisha. If you’re scheming to get to watch my new VCR, just ask.” Aisha admitted that was the reason. Mrs. Jefferson said okay, “But no boy company!”
Next, Aisha went to the video store. She peered through three inches of barred, bulletproof window at a thin man with smooth, coffee-brown skin. Behind him were aisles of videotapes in boxes, beneath a large sign in red block letters: ABSOLUTELY NO PERSONAL CHECK OR FOOD STAMP VOUCHER. NO EXCEPTION.
“Yes, miss?”
“Y’all got movies about crazy people?”
The man laughed, showing bad teeth. “In America all movies about crazy people.”
“That’s word! But I want a movie with a girl who bug out, can’t go to school, hold a job or nothin’.”
He looked at her, shaking his head. “You American kids—why you want a movie like this? You can have and do and be anything in America. Why pollute the mind with nonsense?” He picked up a video from the counter. “A nice lady from down by the Brooklyn Heights just bring this back. Good movie. Good inspiration.”
Aisha read the box. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Unh-unh, I don’t want no nature movie. I need girls buggin’.”
Still shaking his head, he moved through the aisles scanning titles. He returned carrying a small stack. Aisha grinned and rubbed her hands together. “Lemme check ’em out.” The selection was perfect. Carrie; The Exorcist; The Breakfast Club; Heavenly Creatures; Girl, Interrupted; and Eve’s Bayou.
“Six video, two-fifty per video, that will be fifteen dollar for two-day rental, plus five dollar deposit, please.”
A frown pushed the smile from Aisha’s face. “Fifteen dollars, plus five—twenty dollars?! That make me real mad. Blockbuster got way cheaper prices than that, and you can keep they movies for three days.”
“Then go to Blockbuster, miss.”
Aisha made a loud teeth-sucking sound. “Y’all take food stamps?”
“Read sign, miss.”
“I saw the damn sign. What’s wrong with food stamps? They buy food just like cash do, right? I sure ain’t gonna report you to the welfare. Please, mister, I need these movies.”
He smiled broadly. “Okay. Twenty-five dollar in voucher.”
They eyeballed each other for a moment, Aisha steaming, the store owner indifferent. She shoved the food stamps into the “pay here” slot, snatched the videos out of the metal tray, and left.
“Crazy Americans,” he laughed, sliding the vouchers under the cash drawer with the others.
Aisha and her children spent the next two afternoons watching videos at the Jeffersons’ apartment. Ty occupied himself hammering the floor with Smokey’s toys. Starlett drew pictures of mommies, babies, horsies, and doggies with the bright crayons she was never without. And hour after hour Aisha watched girls tremble, puke, taunt, hallucinate, shriek, and weep while burning up classmates, battling Satan, harassing teachers, stoning mothers, fleeing mental hospitals, and plotting against fathers. A couple of times her imitations, complete with rolling eyes and loud snorts, made Ty cry and Starlett stare, reactions she saw as a good sign.
The Washington sisters dropped by to watch her rehearse being mental. With drooping head and blank eyes, Aisha answered the practice questions her friends assumed Nurse Constantino would ask.
Keeba began. “So Aisha, how are you, dear? Any problems?”
“Not doing good. Mixed up. Feel possessed.”
“Like how you mean, Aisha?”
“Don’t have no energy, and I feel things crawling on me, then it’s like something evil’s rumbling in my chest.”
Teesha wasn’t impressed. “Y‘all corny. That ain’t how you s’pose to do it, Ai—you just look like a druggie. You have to be freaky-deaky, buck-eyed, and nervous. I’ll be the nurse. Good afternoon, Aisha. What be the trouble today?”
Aisha rocked back and forth, fluttering her fingers like she was playing piano, and did her version of Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted. “I’m going nuts, Nurse Constantino, can’t sleep or eat or nothing, just wanna run away, you know, free, but people be following me, and I can’t go out so I’m climbing the walls, can’t sit still, you follow me, nurse?”
The Washingtons clapped.
“Go girl, that was good!”
“You was mad bugged on that one, Ai. She gon’ have to give you that letter if you pull it off like that!”
Aisha jumped up and down. “Yesss! Welfare ain’t cuttin’ off my cash, and ya know dat! I’m like that commercial for New Jersey, ‘Me and Welfare—Perfect Together!’” The girls gave each other high fives. Aisha felt so confident that she did more impressions—Linda Blair cursing, Ally Sheedy chewing her cuticles, Kate Winslet swinging a rock. Not for practice—she felt ready—just for fun. The welfare people could clean sweep her behind! Aisha Ingram was keeping her benefits
.
Seven
Every chair along the wall in the prenatal unit was taken. Leaning against a cot opposite the vending machine, Aisha passed the time trying to guess who was having a girl and who was having a boy by how round and high the future mother’s stomach was. The girls were winning, five to three. An intercom buzzed in English and Spanish with announcements about clinic hours, pages for doctors, and calls for blood bank donations. Aisha listened for Spanish words she recognized. She counted the number of candy bars in the vending machine, then the bags of chips, then the sodas. She picked off her nail polish.
A nurse’s aide dragged over a metal chair. “Here, honey, you better sit down. How many months are you?” she asked, patting Aisha’s belly.
“I ain’t pregnant, thank you,” snarled Aisha, rolling her eyes hard.
Another aide appeared with a clipboard and yelled in the corridor, “A. Ingram? A. Ingram!”
Jane Constantino had been a nurse for more than twenty years. She’d worked in the wards, the emergency room, intensive care, detox units, and labor and delivery. As far as teenage girls were concerned, there wasn’t much she hadn’t seen over the year, and she sensed immediately that Aisha Ingram was up to something. She just didn’t know what.
“How ya doin’, hon? You see I have a lot of girls waiting, so try to make it fast. Like I said on the phone, I’m no psychiatrist, but we do have one on call. You look good, by the way. I see you lost some of the weight you put on with the second pregnancy.”
Not the reception Aisha was expecting. And what was up with the “make it fast” attitude? She was supposed to ask Aisha what was bothering her, why she needed an appointment, questions like that—not be all huffy about how many wenches was waiting in the hall. If she hadn’t already had it two weeks ago, Aisha would’ve thought from her stomach cramps that her period was starting. She got so nervous, she forgot to droop her head down or wiggle her fingers or do any of the movements she’d been practicing.
Chill Wind Page 3