Chill Wind

by Janet McDonald

  “I gotta get free, I mean, bugs are crawling down my back, and men are following me.”

  “What? What men? What are you talking about, Aisha? Not for nothing, but if you’re trying to get sedatives—”

  “I ain’t trying to get no—Nurse Constantino, I need your help, I can’t eat nothing—”

  “That,” she said, looking Aisha up and down, “I truly doubt.”

  “—and I’m going crazy and can’t sleep and—”

  “Listen, Aisha, you’re a nice kid, but we are very busy today. Now stop busting my chops. What exactly do you want?”

  Aisha hesitated, then decided to just go for it since Constantino was already giving major attitude.

  “Nurse Constantino, I been feeling mental for the past few … well, since Ty was born, really, and I need me a letter for the welfare saying I can’t work.” There. She said it.

  The nurse sighed and leaned back in her chair like a weary parent listening to yet another tall tale from her child. She took Aisha’s hand in hers and looked her in the eyes.

  “Hon, I been a nurse longer than you’ve been alive. Do you truly think you’re the only girl to come see me because she’d rather stay home and watch TV than work? I’d love to be home too with my feet up, but nobody sends me a monthly check. So I have to deliver babies in order to be able to eat, pay the mortgage, and take my bird and two little dogs to the vet once a year.” She sat forward and looked straight at Aisha. “You kids think you’re so much smarter than everybody. I’ve had girls in here limping, high, spitting, what have you—all wanting the same thing. No, Aisha, I can’t give you a note saying you’re a nut job and can’t work, because you’re not. And you know what? The workfare experience might be just what you need to begin to build a better life for yourself and your children. Now, can I get back to work before I end up collecting welfare too?” She rose heavily to her feet. “Give the kids a hug.”

  Luckily not a single Fort Crest girl—or boy—was outside when Aisha walked by on her way home. Otherwise she woulda broke wild on them. Back at Hillbrook Houses girls were jumping double-dutch on skinny legs and expert feet. Kids playing dodgeball were shrieking and weaving from the path of an oncoming basketball. Teens posing on banisters bobbed to music blasting from somebody’s window. Women sat side by side on the bench, gossiping in hushed voices. Men returned home from day jobs as others left to work the night shift.

  Aisha didn’t stop to hang but instead went straight upstairs. She had no wisecrack answer when her mother said, “If that was a hour, I’m Oprah Winfrey.” She checked on Ty, contentedly kicking in his playpen, and on Starlett, busy scribbling on a newspaper opened on the couch. Aisha went to her room, dropped on the bed, rolled onto her side, and cried.

  By the time she got the second notice, the “30-Day Termination Reminder,” Aisha had shaken off the clinic setback and come up with another plan. The way she saw it, back in the days when her mother was growing up, it seemed like girls had it better. A girl and boy dated for a while and, if they really liked each other, got engaged for a while longer. They married and found an apartment together, and the wife had babies and stayed home while the husband supported the family, which he had to do if he was a real man. Aisha liked the order and simplicity of that arrangement. Especially the part for the wife. And since she already had the babies, all she had to do to be a real wife was stay home and raise them, which is exactly what she wanted to do.

  Nowadays things were wak. Wasn’t nobody a wife or a husband since nobody got married. Everyone just kept living at home like they was still children, even if they had children. Unless they parents put them out and they had to go to a shelter to be robbed or beat every night. No, that wasn’t for her. Aisha was about to become a very old-fashioned girl. And who to call on for help but her most old-fashioned friend, Toya Larson, the baby of the homegirls?

  “Well, look who’s stalking,” joked Toya, running into Aisha at the Larsons’ door. “I’d love to do your nappy head, Ai, but you know Mommy only lets me do hair on weekends so nothing interferes with school.” She knocked at her door. “Mommy! It’s me!”

  Mrs. Larson looked through the peephole, unbolted three locks, and welcomed the girls in. She asked her daughter about her day, asked Aisha about her children, brought a tray of cookies and milk to Toya’s room, and left the girls alone. As far as Aisha was concerned, Toya had the dream mother.

  Toya also had a new computer. “Let me show you how it works, Ai, it’s bomb!” Aisha said she didn’t want to know nothing about no machine that didn’t play CDs or movies.

  “My computer does both! You can listen to a CD on it or watch a DVD movie!”

  “Yeah, that’s phat and all, but computer stuff gon’ hafta wait. I wanna run a idea by you. You know I ain’t been a virgin since Michael Jackson had his real nose, right? But I been thinking about maybe getting married in a church and settling down to bring up my kids like in a real family, you know, like your folks. Husband, wife, and kids. What you think?”

  “Wow, congratulations, that’s good news. Mommy always says that in this world a child with two parents is a blessed child. Even though most of our friends live with either one or the other, I think you have it better if you have both parents. The Bible says—”

  Aisha cut her off. She wasn’t in the mood for Bible talk. “Cool. So, here’s the deal, you good in English and everything, so I thought you could do a letter to Kevin for me.”

  Toya looked confused. “Wait, wait, wait—hold up. If you two getting married, why’re you writing letters to each other?”

  “I ain’t asked him yet, stupid, that’s what the letter’s for!”

  Toya slid off her chair cracking up. “They getting married, and the groom doesn’t even know about it! And she calls me stupid! Owww, my stomach hurt from laughing! Ouch!”

  Aisha sneered at Toya, who’d turned red, then she laughed too.

  “Go on, Redbone, bust out. But you doin’ my letter. And when I’m all fly on the church steps in a white wedding gown with my husband Kevin at my side, I’ma aim my bouquet straight at your big, high yella moonface.”

  Before Aisha had even gotten out the word bouquet, Toya was rolling on the floor. “My stomach! Owww …”

  Mrs. Vinker tossed the day’s mail onto the kitchen table and fixed herself a cup of steaming coffee.

  Where was her little boy? she wondered. Chasing behind that foolish-looking girl witch the blond braids from Fort Crest, most likely. She raised the cup to her lips, and again she had to sit it back down. No matter how much milk she put in, her coffee always stayed too hot for too long. She lifted the cup and blew hard. “Oh, for crying out loud, look at this mess.” As she dabbed a dish towel on the brown splatters that had wet the day’s mail, an envelope caught her eye. “Strictly Private,” it said. For Kevin? What could that be? Who’d be writing her baby? She picked it up.

  It’s not that Aisha expected him to write back. The scrub probably couldn’t spell his own name, but he coulda picked up a telephone like a man. Toya’s letter was smokin’ too, good enough to make Aisha want to marry her own self. She had put in stuff from the Bible, from R. Kelly songs, from the movie Love & Basketball. Redbone had thrown down! Well, if Kevin was too much of a punk to call, then she’d be the man and call, and if his witch of a mother picked up, too bad.

  “Kevin? Ai. Your moms’s letting you answer the phone these days?”

  “Yo wassup, Ai. She at work. You ah-ight? Been thinkin’ about you. How Star and my little man?”

  “They fine, but they miss they daddy. We ain’t seen much of you lately. What you up to?”

  “You know, just kickin’ it.”

  “Oh, just kickin’ it. So why didn’t you just kick out a answer to my letter?”

  “Letter? What letter? I didn’t get no letter from you. I don’t get mail. Anyway, my moms the one who check the box. You sure you wrote me? About what?”

  That old … she stole Kevin’s letter! Nothing to do now b
ut ask him straight up.

  “What I had wrote you about was that we been going out a long time and we got two kids together. Don’t you think it’s about time we got married and made a real family? We yours, after all.”

  “Whoa, slow down, Aisha, you goin’ too fast for me. I’m still a young man, you know what I’m sayin’, I ain’t ready for no twentyfo’-seven daddy gig. I been tellin’ you all along, when I’m hooked up right with a cash flow and my own crib, then we all be hooked up. But right now it ain’t happenin’ for me. I’m stuck with my moms and—”

  “Don’t gimme that, Kevin. You want to be right where you are ‘cause you ain’t nothin’ but a punk mama’s boy who don’t do nothin’ but talk big with squat to back it up. You right, I ain’t sure I wrote you. Matter of fact, I remember now, I didn’t.”

  She slammed down the phone, hoping to bust Kevin’s eardrum. Then she lay down on the couch and looked at the ceiling, seeing nothing, thinking nothing. Starlett walked over to her mother.

  “Whatcha doing, Mommy?”

  “Nothin’, baby, just chillin’.”

  “Cuh I chill wichoo?”

  “Yeah, baby, you can chill with Mommy.” Starlett climbed into Aisha’s lap and curled up against her stomach. Aisha held her close. She thought about Ty. They’d never be family to their so-called father, and she’d never be a wife to her so-called man. But they were still Ingrams. And Ingrams stuck together. She hoped.

  Eight

  Mother and daughter chilled on the couch, the smallest of families. Aisha thought about Kevin not wanting to marry her, Nurse Constantino refusing to give her the letter, her welfare money coming to an end, and her own mother maybe putting her out. And there was the thought of sweeping the streets of Brooklyn. Nah, she wasn’t going down like that—something had to break for her. She’d been barking up the wrong trees, that’s all. It was time to turn to people who couldn’t say no. She recognized the faces mainly from photos, but she had big hopes for the middle-aged strangers she knew as her brothers and sister. She picked up the phone and dialed her sister Ebony’s number.

  Ebony Ingram was born with attitude. She’d been a colicky infant who cried and whined whether she was fed and diapered or not. In prekindergarten she pulled hair, slapped faces, and stomped on so many little toes that the teacher asked Mrs. Ingram to keep her daughter home “until she was ready to be socialized.” Ebony’s warrior temperament wasn’t all her fault though. The youngest of three, she was forced early to go to war against twin brothers who enjoyed tormenting her in as many ways as they could imagine. Their favorites were jumping out of closets, growling under her bed at night, and putting scouring pads in her pillowcase.

  The quick-tempered child never did get socialized. She battled her brothers when they teased her with the name “Ebonicky” and fought her classmates for no reason at all. She dropped out of junior high and dropped back in. She shoplifted makeup and graffiti-ed walls with her tag “Fly-chick.” In church, she stole dollar bills out of the offering baskets and set fire to a pew. But what she did best was rebel against adults, especially the two struggling to raise her. And all of this, every last infraction, went completely unpunished because, with her father’s height and her mother’s looks, Ebony Ingram was absolutely gorgeous. Aisha had often wondered about her older sister, why she’d left home, how she lived, but Louise insisted that Ebony wanted nothing to do with them. Aisha decided to find out for herself.

  “Hello, you’ve reached the Riordan residence. Leave a message after the beep, and we’ll get back to you.”

  “Wassup, big sis, long time no smell, ha, ha. Gimme a shout when you get this message, okay? It’s me, Ai, ya baby sister. Star wanna say hi. G’head Star, say wassup to Auntie Ebbie. She too shy right now, but she miss you. Ah-ight, I’m out. Say wassup to Frank.”

  She placed the receiver in its cradle and picked it up again to try her brothers. It seemed dumb that her folks had given them the same name since it was hard enough to tell with twins who was who anyway. Perhaps it was because they themselves had been called Lou and Lou. Or maybe it was as Mr. Ingram had said, that the firstborn son always carries his dad’s name, “like Martin Luther King Sr. and Martin Luther King Jr.” Even if there are two of them.

  Whatever the inspiration, Aisha’s brothers were Louis Jr. and Luis Jr., the o being the only thing that kept teachers from going completely crazy. The identical boys loved to pretend to be each other or repeatedly enter a classroom one after the other. Their behavior made them regulars at the principal’s office. The Lous were surprised and relieved that their sons managed to graduate high school, even if at the bottom of their class. The boys never married, choosing instead “a life of bachelor boys,” as they put it. They spent a few years in California acting in “art films” that Louise could never find at any video store, and eventually returned to the East Coast.

  Although they occasionally sent Aisha a joint birthday card from Florida where they worked with other handsome twins at Dino’s Doubletake Take-Out, the only sister they knew was the one they’d grown up with. Listening to the phone ring, Aisha hoped that she could rate with them as much as Ebony did.

  “You’ve found Lou and Lu, and you know what to do.”

  “Wassup, dawgs, long time no smell, ha, ha. Gimme a shout when you get this message, okay? It’s me Ai, ya baby sister. Star wanna say hi. G’head Star, say wassup to your uncles. She too shy right now, but she miss y’all. Oh yeah, I got the card, thanks y‘all. I’ma be twenty in June. Ah-ight, I’m out.”

  Louis Jr. and Luis Jr. had sent her a nice card when she turned nineteen, and last Christmas she got a scarf from Ebbie with a twenty in it. So the family feeling was definitely there for her—she just had to tap into it. Things were getting pressured, but she was on the case like a cop spraying Mace!

  Aisha was dozing when she felt a tug. What the … Starlett was pulling on her hand.

  “Mommy, wake up, Ty crying. Mommy! He crying.”

  Aisha shook herself awake.

  “Thanks, honey,” said Aisha, kissing Starlett’s nose. She walked down the hallway, Starlett right behind her, the smell of beer stronger with each step.

  “Girl, didn’t you hear me calling you, you deaf? That baby in there screaming his head off.”

  Aisha hated how the drinking made Louise nasty. Wasn’t it about time for her to pass out in front of the TV anyway? Her brothers might come through, or maybe Ebony. That would be bomb if she went to live with Ebony and Frank. They had a huge house in Queens with mad room and no kids. It’d probably be nice for them to have some life in they house, and she could take care of the place while they were at work, like live-in help. Not for good, of course, just temporary, until they got squared away. No more Louise sweating and stressing her.

  “Then why you didn’t get up and check on him? He is your grandchild!” Aisha shot back.

  “Don’t give me no lip, Aisha Ingram, or you can pack your junk and let the doorknob hit you in the backside. The pocket change you give me once a month don’t even cover the milk that boy drink up in a week.”

  Aisha raised Ty’s legs so Starlett could sprinkle him with baby powder, then she pressed down the sticky diaper strips. He gave them his best grin. Louise continued mumbling. Aisha got mad.

  “Don’t worry, Ma, we gonna be jettin’ real soon over to live with my big sister if everything work out right, and you can bug out all by your lonesome—”

  Louise’s chortling turned into coughing, loud throat-clearing, and back to chortling. “What big sister?! Now I know you gone crazy. Ebbie taking you and them children in? Then my name Aretha Franklin! That girl wouldn’t give the time of day to a blind man! Why you think she married that white man and moved way out to Queens? To get away from us, Aisha—you, me, your bonehead daddy, and everybody who remind her of this dump. Your big sister couldn’t even wait for you to get used to your crib before she got outta here. Yeah, you go ahead and move in with Ebony and Irishman—and I’ll shack up with
Denzel Washington!” She started cackling so hard again, she choked and had to down several swallows of beer.

  The sounds made Starlett giggle. “Gramma funny!”

  “Whatever!” yelled Aisha, hoping so bad her sister would call.

  Days passed changing diapers, washing clothes, pushing the stroller, combing hair, ignoring her mother’s mouth, and hanging at the checker tables playing cards. One particularly sticky day, all the girls were chilling in the shade. Teesha asked about the letter Aisha was supposed to have got saying she was bugged. Aisha told her it had to be from a real psychiatrist, not no common baby nurse. “And who got cash for them freaks?” she added, trying to play it off like she couldn’t be bothered. Toya wanted to know about the wedding and was disappointed to hear that Aisha had changed her mind. “I don’t want no scrub living off his mama. I’ma go find me a Tiger Woods.” She looked at the ground. Keeba said Aisha be lucky if he even let her carry his golf sticks. So what was Aisha’s plan? they wanted to know.

  “My family hooking me up. Y’all know I got grown twin brothers and a grown sister?”

  No, they didn’t know, they said, but that was phat. Family was bond.

  “So who got the cards?” asked Aisha, eager to change the subject from her problems. Teesha pulled out the deck of Rappers Delight playing cards she’d won by being caller number ten to 98 FM Rap Radio, and the first of several bruising games of knucks began. The first player out rapped the losers’ knuckles with the whole deck, the number of hits equal to how many cards a player was left holding. By evening Teesha’s knuckles were dark purple, and Toya had dropped out, complaining that Aisha hit too hard, like she was trying to kill somebody. Keeba promised both of them she’d get Aisha back but lost the very next game. Instead of holding out her fist like a good loser, she jumped up and went running.