Chill Wind

by Janet McDonald

  The evening was heavy and humid. Upstairs, Aisha felt like she was suffocating. She put the kids to bed and looked in on her mother. Louise had dozed off fully clothed in her sitting chair. She turned off the TV and eased her mother’s door shut. The phone rang.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hello, dahhh-ling.”

  “Hello, sweetheart,” said a second voice. “I’m on the other phone.”

  Aisha was not in the mood. “This better not be no obscene phone call, ’cause I got Caller ID.”

  “Oh dear!”

  “My word, did you hear that? Caller ID! The Ingrams have become ghetto fabulous.”

  “Who is this?” She was irritated.

  “Don’t you recognize the big brothers you miss so much that you called, when was it—last Thursday or …”

  “ … was it Wednesday?”

  “Louis! Luis! Wassup! Man, I’m glad it’s y’all. I didn’t even recognize y’all’s voices.”

  “Girlfriend, you need to work …”

  “ … on your English, honey, because you are too ebonics for me.”

  “And for me!”

  Aisha’s heart was beating hard. “Y’all still crazy!” she said. “So gimme the 411 on everything, how’s work, how’s Florida, when y’all getting married …”

  Talking over one another, her brothers said, “Work—let’s see … Dino’s fine, he opened four more Doubletakes … San Francisco, L.A., Aspen, and where, where, where is the last one—oh, Vermont of all places. We’re looking at Paris too. The French are into twins.”

  “And Luis, when are you getting married?” laughed Louis.

  “When you do, bachelor boy,” answered Luis.

  “Paris? Whoa! Do y’all need a sexy waitress?”

  “Yeah, Aisha, if you come with a twin.”

  “And heart-stopping abs, cut delts, and ripped biceps.”

  “I got all that! It’s just under all my fat. So anyway, I called ’cause I might be getting cut off welfare—”

  “Ohhh, the W word. Ugly, ugly.”

  “—and me and Star and Ty, we might need a place to stay, y’all know how Louise is … only for a few weeks max until I get a gig and my own crib. It could be fun for y’all, having family around.”

  Silence.

  “Aisha, we wish we could …”

  “ … but if you could see our place here …”

  “To tell the truth, it’s not even our place.”

  “That’s right, we’re in the guest apartment of Dino’s condo.”

  “So I’m sure you see how awkward that could be.”

  “Yes, Ai, and Dino is positively allergic to children.”

  “Not that yours aren’t gorgeous, because I know they are from the photos you sent, but …”

  Silence.

  “That’s ah-ight … uh, I got some other things I’m checkin’ out too. I mostly just wanted to give y’all a shoutout.”

  “Well, that is so sweet of you, l’il sis, and a shout back atcha!”

  “Absolutely, Ai. And you must come visit us down here in the Keys. And bring Louise—she’d fit right in with the Hemingway crowd.” Aisha’s brothers chortled like schoolboys.

  “Okay, well—’bye, y’all. Star sleep now, but she said hi before. Don’t f’git her birthday.”

  She listened for their click, then hung up too. That night, she had trouble falling asleep.

  The next morning several brisk knocks rapped at the door.

  “Ai! Don’t you hear nothin’?!” yelled Louise from her room. “Ai, the door!”

  Aisha groaned. She’d finally settled into a deep sleep and now was having trouble waking up.

  “Ai! I said door!”

  Aisha tugged at the housecoat bunched and tangled around her hips. “You got legs too!” She eased off the side of the bed and pulled the sheet over Starlett. She was dead tired. Knock, knock. Why couldn’t Louise ever answer her own friggin’ door? Hung over, probably. She slouched toward the door. Knock, knock, knock, knock. If that was them Jehovahs waking up the whole world this early, they was in for some drama.

  “Wait!” she yelled in as mean a voice as she could, sliding open the peephole cover. She focused her eyes.

  “Daddy?”

  She hadn’t seen her father for more than a year and felt excited even though she didn’t want to. Maybe he’d—She swung the door open.

  “What you doin’ here?”

  Louis Ingram had kept a little bit of the hip musician about him—the goatee and wide sideburns, the eyes yellowed by late hours in smoky clubs. But age was ushering him along, and he looked almost old. What hair was left on his head had grayed, his face looked jowly, his gut overhung the tool-laden belt he was wearing, and a slight stoop had replaced his strut.

  “Look at Daddy’s girl, big as a house! Give your old man a hug. You get my birthday card? They got me out here checking the valves on that new laundry room furnace Housing put in. Lil’ Lou up?”

  A few years back he started using Louise’s old nickname, as if the teen beauty queen Lil’ Lou was the only wife he wanted to remember. They had married on Lil’ Lou’s eighteenth birthday and moved into what was billed as a “spanking new public housing complex for Brooklyn’s working families.” Unemployed musicians, which is what he was at the time, need not apply, so Louis took a temporary job at the local utilities company so the couple would qualify for an apartment. Once they settled in he would return, or so he planned, to music, which was his passion. He was twenty years old.

  Three years later the Ingrams were the parents of rowdy twin boys and a brash baby girl. Lil’ Lou’s formerly firm, tight body was showing the heft and wear of motherhood, and Louis had sold his drums. The temporary had become permanent. They were still happily in love back then and hadn’t yet begun to blame each other and the children for their lost dreams and vanishing youth.

  Aisha shook her head. “No, she ain’t up—it’s six in the morning! She back there crawling around on the floor looking for her lost head.”

  “Come on, Aisha, that’s your mama, and she sick now so—”

  “So why she gotta stay mad at me, I’m not the one who left—” She caught herself. A shadow crossed Lou’s face.

  “Be a sweet girl and go tell your mama I’m here, Ai. I gotta get back to work.”

  Still sleepy and yawning, Aisha checked out this man who popped in and out of her life every few months. Or years. Whenever he was in the mood. He was her children’s grandfather and her daddy, so why wasn’t he being one? He brought them into this world, so he owed them something. And them few birthday cards with nothing in ’em but “happy” wasn’t doing much to whittle down that debt.

  “Daddy, it’s funny you dropping by like this, ‘cause I was gonna give you a call about a … situation. See, um, my welfare runnin’ out—these days they put people off after five years, and I been on almost that long—so me and the kids gonna need a place. Mama don’t want nobody up under her if they can’t help out. I see where she comin’ from and all, three is a lot—and, well, since you got a good job and living by yourself now …”

  Mr. Ingram looked at his watch. “It’s always ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy’ when you want something. Looka here, Aisha, I gave up my music and my best years taking care of you children and your mother, and I’m all gived out.”

  “But you never took care of me! You split soon as I was born, Daddy!”

  “Oh, don’t ‘Daddy’ me, girl. You just like ya mother back there, whining and wanting.”

  Louis Ingram did an about-face and was gone. Aisha turned and made her way to her room.

  The sounds stirred Louise awake again. “Who that was?”

  “Nobody. I’m going back to sleep.” She crawled under the sheet and lay there wide awake.

  Nine

  A full-bodied brunette tossed her wavy hair over her shoulder, planted both hands on her wide hips, and turned smoothly on the ball of her foot, smiling beautifully. “Are you big, beautiful, and ready to live
your dream?” asked the cheery announcer. “Then call us today at 1-800-BIGMODELS.” Aisha, munching a Hostess Sno Ball, propped herself on the Washingtons’ oversize pillow.

  “Keeba, could I get some milk?” The cupcakes always made her thirsty.

  She sank her teeth into the pink coconut spongeball. Help hadn’t come from nowhere, and the final countdown was now in weeks instead of months. Maybe her five-dollar Lotto ticket would win the $17 million or at least a few thousand for second place. She’d been too tired to jumble up birth dates, clothes sizes, and friends’ apartment floor numbers and had let the machine pick the numbers. But she knew better. People always said the machines make you lose on purpose so the Lotto office don’t have to pay. Whatever. Until she lost her benefits, she was going to enjoy life.

  “Keeba!”

  “I heard you the first time. Our milk don’t go with them foam rubber pink things you eating. It go with Oreos.” Keeba licked the white cream off the cookie she’d pried apart and took a drink from a plastic cup. She was home from school with stomach cramps—welcome news to Aisha, who never got to hang with her friends on school days. The good ol’ days of everybody getting promoted even if they had bad grades were over. Now teachers were holding kids back left and right, even the ones who were really too old to still be in high school, like Keeba and her sister. And Keeba was cool about Star and Ty being there. Keeba’s menstrual cramps were the highlight of Aisha’s month.

  The girls were deep into the afternoon soaps. As soon as Keeba put it down, Aisha snatched up the cup she’d just drunk from and gulped a mouthful of milk.

  “Git outta my milk, pig!”

  “Hmmm, don’t they say milk is a natural?”

  “If you put them greasy lips near my cup again, I’ma be a natural—a natural-born killer! Go get it out the ’frigerator, hog.”

  “Thank you so much, Robin Hood. Now don’t it feel good to share? Hey, watch me do my model strut like that white lady.” Aisha sashayed to the kitchen, hands on hips, head high. “I might just call them big models—I’m sure big enough.” She returned to the bedroom with a milk container.

  “Only problem, Ai, is big ain’t enough. We all big. You gotta be cute too. Where your cup? No, you are not fixin’ to drink out the carton! I swear, Ai, you put the ghett in ghetto!”

  “Please, I ain’t drinking out your booty milk carton. Your lips probably been on it. And don’t worry about my looks. I take after my mama the beauty queen. Now you, that’s another story. Ya mama so ugly, when she cry her tears go sideways.”

  “Don’t start with me, Ai, ’cause you know Miss Ingram so ugly when she looked in the mirror, it broke.”

  The girls were suddenly nose to nose, wobbling their heads at each other.

  “Right, Keeba. That’s why your mama so ugly, the dogcatcher refused to pick her up.”

  “Your mama so ugly, she scared the u off the gly.”

  “Now that was stupid, Keeba, just like you.” Next thing they were pulling and giggling and punching at each other. Having run out of “ya mama so ugly” jokes, Aisha focused once again on her future.

  “Ah-ight, jokes aside, I‘ma call. Why not? Done tried everything else, right? I ain’t letting nobody force me in one of them no-pay workfare jobs. If I gotta work, then I’ma be out there like Tyra Banks, getting paid Puffy style, I mean mega benjamins. I‘ma travel all over, be all up in magazines and music videos like my girl Brandy, open me a bank account, take care of me and mines, chill, get another model job, count my cash, chill, and keep it goin’ like that on and on and on.”

  “Well you go, Puff Mama, make ’em show you the money, I ain’t mad atcha! I bet a lot of stuff that happen to folks is like Lotto—you can’t win if you don’t play. You probably should go for it. Maybe you right, something might break for you. But you know you gotta hook me up when you be clockin’ dollars so I can get mine. And my sister. Or we gon’ be all over you like a rash.”

  Aisha promised that if she made it, she’d “do the right thing” by Keeba, Teesha, Toya—all her homegirls. They settled back into TV and snacks and time passed like sleep.

  Louis Sr.’s height genes had skipped a generation, making for a statuesque Ebony and a tall-for-her-age Starlett. What Aisha got were her mother’s dense bones, which formed a squat frame for her fleshy body. Growing up alone with a distant mother, Aisha discovered that not only did food taste good, eating itself was soothing. Feeding herself became an act of love. The slow smear of thick brown peanut butter across a soft square of white bread, the swath of mayonnaise, the buttery cheese toast, hot and dripping—these were rituals in a small world of pleasure controlled absolutely by her.

  When she had money, there were red hots, jawbreakers, SweeTarts, Chuckles, and chocolate kisses. Salted treats made her mouth squirt—potato chips and curled cheese puffs, vinegar-flavored potato sticks, and ridgy corn chips. A little more money bought real food like hamburgers and hot dogs, fries and onion rings, pizza and hero sandwiches, all washed down in floods of sugary cherry, orange, grape, or cola-colored drinks. As Aisha’s cooking skills grew, so did the stacks of pancakes, mounds of mashed potatoes, and piles of fried chicken parts.

  Swathed in blankets and supported by pillows, Aisha would sink onto her bed with a tray full of food on her lap, absently engaged in one after another cartoon, soap opera, sitcom. As she developed outward but not upward, her breasts ballooned, her hips spread, and her thighs thickened. Constant eating became a way of life, something that happened almost automatically, like breathing.

  In the projects, Aisha’s size wasn’t unusual, nor was it criticized, as most girls her age were large. With her dark eyes, strong cheekbones, and full, sensuous lips, Aisha was one of the prettiest girls around. So why couldn’t she be a rich and famous big model?

  Aisha could hear phones ringing nonstop in the background as the 1-800-BIGMODELS operator rattled off questions about Aisha’s eye and hair color, height and weight, and gave her an address in lower Manhattan. “Take the elevator to the second floor, hang a right, go three doors down, then hang a left, and BIGMODELS is at the end of the corridor. Bring a headshot and your book, if you have one. If not, on-site makeup people and photographers will set up a shoot for you in the offices.” Aisha wanted to do a dance. The operator added that there was an “absolutely nonrefundable fifty-dollar appointment and processing fee.” She asked Aisha three times if Aisha understood that the agency was “only a conduit” and that “go-sees” were each girl’s responsibility. “BIGMODELS gets twenty-five percent of your catalog work and forty percent for runway work. Totally standard in the business.”

  Aisha’s brain got stuck on the fifty-dollar fee, and she hadn’t paid much attention to the rest. Where was she gonna get the money? The lady in the Spanish store cashed food stamps but charged double what it cost to cash a real check. Whatever. If that’s what it took to blow up and get paid … Puffy probably had to put up cash in the beginning to make his CDs. And Tyra must’ve had to dish out the benjamins to her first model agency too. Aisha saw this as her one chance and wasn’t nothing stopping her. She was a fox, built like a brick house, and could model, dance in videos, do movies, whatever the agency wanted.

  Ten

  The morning of her appointment, Aisha admired herself in the mirror. She’d greased down her bang and swooped it to the side. Sporting her special fake gold trunk earrings, she felt good about her appearance. She was about to find out what the outside world felt about it.

  The receptionist looked from the “don’t make me kick ya ass” expression on Aisha’s face to the Polaroids in her hand and back at Aisha’s face. The morning was not going to be good.

  “You got an appointment?” the young woman asked Aisha, an “I doubt it” tone in her voice. Her eyes examined Aisha’s swirled bang, traced down to her jumbo maroon jacket, lingered at the too-tight blouse, fixed on the black leggings, and stopped in horror at the wide, run-down pumps. Aisha gave her name and admired the pictures of models on the
walls while the receptionist turned pages in a thick calendar book.

  “Ingram … Ingram … well, well, you’re definitely in here. You got photos and the fee?”

  She did. Her attention was directed to a pile of forms. “Fill out one of those. A rep will be with you shortly. I’ll take the money now, thank you.” Aisha squeezed her hand into the small coin pocket of her leggings and wiggled out a ball of crumpled bills.

  “Cash? You don’t have a check or money order?”

  Aisha raised her eyebrows. This snotty babe was beginning to bug her.

  “Do it look like I got a check or money order? You see cash, don’t you?”

  The receptionist primped her lips like she was about to say something real stank. Instead, she swallowed and said in a flat voice, “Cash will do fine. And I’ll take your—er—snapshots too.”

  Aisha didn’t like the way she flipped through the Polaroids Toya had taken, like they weren’t good enough, and she really didn’t like how she stuck them in a folder and wrote on it “Ingram, Asha.”

  “’Scuse me, my name got a i in it.”

  “What?”

  “I said you ain’t spelled my name right. It got a i.”

  “The i’s right there,” snapped the woman, pointing. “I-n-g-r-a-m. That is how you spell Ingram, I assume.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about my last name.” Dammit, Toya had said a million times “Don’t say ain’t,” and this wench had already made her mess up. “I mean Aisha, A-i-s-h-a.”

  The receptionist exhaled hard, snatched up a pen, and scrawled an i between the A and s. “Does that work for you?”

  “Yes, it do.” Aisha sat down as a smiling, heavyset woman wearing a dark pantsuit and a flip of thick, bouncy hair appeared at the reception desk with a very pretty, shapely girl to whom she was saying, “I think we just might be able to make it happen, Holly.” She said to the receptionist, “Pammie, schedule Holly for a shoot early next week. I have her deposit.”