“You eyeballing me, Kenzie?” Hy-Lo’s tone was loose, almost jolly.
“No,” I said loud and clear.
“No, who?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“No, D-Daddy.” I hated the word; it always seemed to stick to my tongue like peanut butter when I said it.
“No, sir!” he bellowed and my heart skipped two beats.
“No, sir,” I said.
There was a time before Malcolm was born, up until he took his first steps, when I had to refer to Hy-Lo as “sir.” “Daddy” was not used in our home. Hy-Lo was proud of the service he rendered his country during the Vietnam War in the early ’60s. He spent three years in the army, two of which were served in the Philippines.
During those years, uniformity, discipline, and respect shaped his character while alcohol hacked away at his mind and undid his soul.
“This is not the army, Hyman,” Delia would say in a soft, chastising tone she usually used on us kids. “You are their father, Hyman, not their sergeant.”
Delia had won those long-ago conflicts because they were still young and so was his disease.
“No, sir.” My response was meek. I was putting great effort into hiding the anger that was building within me. I did not want to choose a belt today.
He mumbled something I could not hear and then dug into the front pocket of his pants. He still wore his blue work uniform pants. He pulled out a wad of bills and shoved it at me. “Count it,” he said and sat back down at the table. He reached for the bottle, but his hand stopped in midair, suddenly remembering it was empty.
I started to count.
Malcolm’s sobs kept coming from the bedroom. The agony of waiting for a painful act could drive you mad, and Malcolm sounded like he was on his way there.
I started over again placing the tens, twenties, and fives in neat little piles on the table as I counted out the four hundred and twenty dollars. It was the same amount every week.
“Go straight to the bank. Don’t stop. Don’t talk to anyone, and come straight back home.” Hy-Lo spoke slowly, methodically. I blinked twice and then nodded. He stared through me and waited for the proper response.
“Yes, sir,” I replied as I curled the money tight into the palm of my hand.
“Don’t come home if you lose it,” he said with a thin smile that made me think he really wanted me to lose it, to give him an excuse to send me to choose a belt.
He stood up and his body swayed a bit. “Go on,” he said, waving me away. I looked over my shoulder and saw Malcolm, stripped down to his briefs, standing in the doorway of my parents’ bedroom, brown belt in hand. His body was shaking and his bottom lip was glossy wet with spit and tears.
I walked out the door and Hy-Lo closed it behind me. I stood there in the hallway awaiting the sound of the first stinging lash. When it came I ran, Malcolm’s long wailing cry pushing me forward.
Even as I sat there in the hospital I could hear Malcolm’s wail just as clear as if it was 1978 again. I looked up from my tightly clenched hands and half-expected to see a young Malcolm tear around the corner and into the room, his pants down around his ankles, Hy-Lo hot on his tail, eyes like fire and the belt swinging in the air above his head.
The wail got louder even though I was sure it was 1999 and I was in a hospital room and not apartment A5 on Rogers Avenue. I turned and looked at Hy-Lo to make sure he was still there, still dying—but the wail swelled around me, pulling at me. My heart thumped harder in my chest, my mouth went dry, and I opened my arms in preparation for Malcolm to run into them. “I’ll protect you. Come on, run, Malcolm, run,” I whispered, leaning backward, arms spread wide like angels’ wings. I closed my eyes, bracing myself, and then the wailing stopped.
I opened my eyes to find a young man with a long ponytail and two gold loops in each ear looking back at me. He had come to a stop outside of the room, a large laundry hamper before him. It was the ancient wheels that cried, not Malcolm, as they turned over and over against the cold marble floor.
The man’s face twisted in wonder and he raised his hands to his mouth to cover the smile that surfaced there. “Pssst,” he called over his shoulder to someone I couldn’t see. “Look at this nut case.” He beckoned the person to hurry with a quick wave of his hand.
I dropped my arms to my side, cleared my throat, and tried to make myself look sane.
A small bald-headed man peeked quickly around the doorway, considered me, and then pulled back. I could hear his laughter from behind the wall.
The man with the ponytail laughed again but this time he did not hide his amusement behind his hand. He laughed raucously until Nurse D. Green came and shooed him on. He left taking Malcolm’s cries with him.
Chapter Five
I beat the stars this time and caught the sun just as it began slipping from the sky. The wind was picking up and the bare branches of the oak trees beat loudly against their trunks. The heavy thumping sounds followed me as I hurried away and down the block. I crossed at least three streets before I turned a corner, careful not to walk in a circle back to the hospital again.
The memory of Malcolm had been too much for me and I felt the hole near my heart stretch wider with a pain that began to burn. I clutched at my chest and tried to rub the want away, but my actions seemed to augment the process instead of quell it. The hole expanded and the need grew.
What I needed was to get to a meeting and share the pain; distribute it among the others, thinning it until it disappeared. What I wanted was a drink. I could pour the liquid down my throat and let it filter into the hole and extinguish the pain that lived there.
I walked two blocks and then turned left and walked three more blocks. There was a liquor store on the corner and I hurried toward it, almost broke into a run, but ended up doing a step-skip walk instead.
The closer I came to the door the worse the pain got, until a voice inside me told me to stop, and I did, smack dead in my tracks, right in the middle of the sidewalk. I stopped hard and someone bumped into me and then hurried around me cursing as he went.
“Oh God, please,” I said beneath my breath as I stared at the blue and white neon lights that blinked Bacardi-Bacardi-Bacardi.
“Oh God, please,” I begged, and turned and bolted toward the open mouth of the subway.
I had had my first taste of whiskey when I was five years old. It came in a teaspoon guided by my father’s hand. I didn’t like that, but I loved the occasional Rheingold beer that he kept in the house when he was trying to lay off the hard stuff. It tasted like a thick ginger ale and tickled my tongue, leaving frozen icicles in my throat.
By the time I was ten, I was walking the four blocks between our apartment building and Beehive Liquors, buying fifths of rum or vodka for Hy-Lo and sneaking sips from his bottle when he’d finally pass out across the bed. It tasted disgusting and burned the inside of my stomach, but the benefits were well worth it; the floaty sensation my head took on and the carefree feeling that embraced me.
Back then the neighborhood was small and everybody knew one another within a ten-block perimeter. The owner of Beehive Liquors knew me, Hy-Lo had made sure of it.
“This is Kenzie, my daughter,” Hy-Lo said to the tall, thin man with saucer-sized eyes behind the counter. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Things were slow for the moment; the working folk were still earning the dollar they needed to spend in his store.
“Hi,” I said, barely lifting my eyes to meet his. I felt uncomfortable around the shelves and shelves of liquor bottles. Despite their different labels, each one reminded me of the one that constantly sat on the bottom shelf of our food cabinet, right next to the salt.
“Well, hello there,” the thin man said and smiled at me, revealing a dark space where his front teeth should have been. He’d been watching the afternoon news on a small black-and-white television that rested on the wooden counter. He stood up and leaned forward, pushing his hand out to me. I looked up at Hy-Lo for permission. He nodded his head and grinned.
I moved my hand into his. It was soft and warm. It felt safe. We stayed that way for a long time, my hand wrapped in the security of his.
“This is Hal—I mean Mr. Hal.” Hy-Lo’s voice broke my trance and I dropped my hand back down to my side.
“Nice to meet you, Kenzie,” Hal said. I looked briefly at his beak-shaped nose and then lowered my eyes again.
A brief exchange was made between my father and Hal, one that did not include words, just nodding and winking.
At the time I did not know why my father brought me to that place, but I would know within a day.
“I have something for pretty little girls that come to visit me,” Hal said in his scratchy voice. He reached underneath the counter, there was rustling, and then he pulled out a lollipop. It was bright red and seemed to glow beneath the fluorescent store lights.
Again I looked up to Hy-Lo for permission. He did not agree as quickly this time, but after a moment he nodded his head okay.
“Thank you, Mr. Hal,” I said and took the lollipop from his hand.
My father and I left the store after he and Hal spoke of people I was unfamiliar with. People with names like Lonnie and Altamonte, who frequented the Beehive or the Blue Bar. My father’s drinking buddies. The ones who sat beside him at the bar and talked sports, women, and work. The ones he passed coming in or out of the Beehive on a daily basis, offering an expression of cheer during the holidays or a cautious word about the weather that would lead to full conversations.
The walk home would seem too long and the conversation too good to move away from the storefront just yet, so they would remove the brown bags that were tucked neatly beneath their armpits, and carefully reveal the glass heads of their bottles. A hasty look over their shoulders while their fingers worked at removing the cap. Quick sips would follow and then a grateful exhale as the liquor hit the spot, filled the need, quelled the pain. The caps would be replaced and the bottle heads would vanish back into the brown bags while the conversation rolled on.
It was easier now; the words ran in steady streams, and during the lulls, scarce as they were, or the quiet considerations of words just passed, the act would be repeated— over and over again until the bottle was empty or the sun too hot, the wind too cold. But mostly, until the bottle was empty.
His drinking buddies.
Last names were a mystery between these men, phone numbers never changed hands, and invitations to a family barbecue or an extra ticket to the baseball game would never emerge. But they could share a bottle between them, wrap their lips around the glass circle and pass it on to the next man and the next man and the next man.
They would promise to do these things—the barbecues or baseball games—but a pen never seemed handy or the outing date unsure. It didn’t matter; by the time the bottle was finished those promises had been long forgotten, brushed beneath the blackness of inebriation.
We reached the corner before he spoke. “Give it to me,” he said and my heart sank. For a moment I thought of playing stupid, fluttering my eyes and cocking my head to one side in an act of idiocy. I started to do just that, staring at the callused palm of his outstretched hand.
I knew he wanted the lollipop. Hy-Lo only allowed us candy on Halloween and Christmas, otherwise he forbade it. “You think I’m going to spend my life savings getting your raggedy teeth fixed? You got another thing coming!” he would say whenever he caught us with candy. I’d find out later he had other plans for his life savings.
Delia felt sorry for us and would sneak bags of Now and Laters, SweeTarts, and Snickers bars into the house like contraband, warning us to keep it hidden until Hy-Lo was out of the apartment.
I slowly handed him the lollipop and watched hopelessly as he tossed it into the gutter.
The following day and many days after that I became his mule, walking the four blocks to Beehive Liquors, a fivedollar bill clutched tightly in my hand. I would lower my head as I crossed the threshold of the store, keeping my eyes fixed on my badly laced sneakers and far away from the wideeyed stares of the adults I took my place behind in line.
Once at the counter Hal did not offer me his wide toothless smile or his hand in greeting like he did on the day of our introduction; instead he would snap his fingers impatiently at me until I raised my hand and dropped the crumpled five-dollar bill on the wooden countertop.
“What he want?” he’d ask, his back already turned away from me. I could hear the cash register bells go off and the loud clank of the drawer as it slid open.
“A fifth of Smirnoff,” I would reply to my sneakers. I could feel the eyes of the adults behind me boring down on me. I could hear the quiet murmers of disapproval like the wings of a hundred butterflies at my back.
“Her parents oughta be ashamed sending her in here.”
He would ignore the comments, maybe even throw the person a dirty look or snuff loudly and clear his throat. Their words did not stop him from grabbing the bottle from the shelf and shoving it into the brown paper bag.
Coins would rattle and the sound of paper dollars would rustle until Hal came face-to-face with me once again. He would place the bottle gently on the counter with one hand and slam the dollar-fifty change down with the other. “Next!” he’d call out loudly, instantly dismissing me until I came to him again.
I was Hy-Lo’s liquor mule for months before Delia finally became aware of what was going on. She’d left work early one afternoon and walked up on me as I made my way back home.
“Kenzie, what you doing down this side of the avenue?” she asked breathlessly. She had not noticed the brown bag tucked beneath my small armpit. I carried it the way I saw my father carry it. I had to squeeze my arm tightly to my side to keep it from slipping out and crashing down to the ground.
“I had to go the liquor store,” I said matter-of-factly, as if this were the way of the world for a ten-year-old child. Delia’s eyes opened in surprise, she stopped dead in her tracks, and her mouth dropped open so wide that the pedestrians passing her turned to look over their shoulders in an attempt to catch the sight that so struck her. All they saw was me, a little girl on her way home.
“What did you say?” She was behind me again; her hands grabbed hold of my shoulders and spun me full around, sending the package flying from beneath my arm and landing with a splattering, stinking crash to the ground.
I didn’t need to repeat myself; what she’d thought she’d heard was apparently correct, the evidence lying broken and shattered on the ground before her.
“I can’t believe you’re ignorant enough to send a child to the liquor store! I can’t believe you would do something like this!” Delia was in a rage. Her face was streaked from anger and her index finger became a dangerous switchblade slicing the air. She waved it in my father’s face with reckless abandon, knowing full well that at any second he could reach out and snap it in two.
I had been sent to my room. Malcolm and I sat crosslegged on the floor, our ears pressed against the closed bedroom door as we listened to our mother read Hy-Lo the riot act.
“She is a child, for God’s sake, Hy-Lo. If you wanna drink, you go get it!” We heard Delia walk across the floor toward our room and we jumped up and scurried to our beds. Halfway there she changed her mind and turned back toward the kitchen, a new flood of angry words spewing from her mouth.
She was winning this battle only because Hy-Lo had not had a drink. If he had, Delia would have been blocking punches by this time. In his sober state, Hy-Lo was quiet, almost mouselike. Now he stood staring out the kitchen window into the backyard, allowing Delia to scream her anger in his face. It went on for more than an hour, until he got tired of walking from room to room trying to escape her. Finally he grabbed his keys and walked out of the house.
The bedroom door flew open and Delia stormed in. Her eyes were red and her face was sad and tired like an overused dishtowel. “How long have you been going to the liquor store for him, Kenzie?” The him came out like snot; the sound of it
made my skin crawl. I shrugged my shoulders and picked at my cuticles. Delia sighed and came and sat beside me on the bed. She looked at me, long and hard, as if she was trying to make a decision. She pulled at the barrette that hung at the end of one of my twisted ponytails and sighed again.
Her eyes moved to Malcolm, who was lying on his back.
He had a G.I. Joe figurine in his left hand, sailing the toy through the air above his head as he sucked frantically on the thumb of his right hand. This was how Malcolm dealt with the madness that was as constant as the air we breathed.
“Malcolm, I told you you’re gonna end up with bucked teeth.” Her words were heavy but did not mask what was really on her mind. “Kenzie.” She said my name once and waited for my eyes to look up into hers.
But I wouldn’t, I just kept staring at my fingers and wishing myself far away. A long moment passed and then I felt her fingers fiddling with my barrette again, this in place of the embrace she knew I needed, but for some reason could not give to me. Delia stood and left the room, leaving the door open behind her.
After a while I could hear the pots clang against the metal burners of the stove, the squeaky oven door open and close, and then the apartment was filled with the good smells of baked chicken and simmering wild rice. My body relaxed and the knots in my stomach loosened and I was finally able to leave my ragged cuticles to their healing process.
Malcolm was asleep; his thumb hung loosely at the side of his mouth, the G.I. Joe doll rested at the base of his soft round cheek. It was only the quiet before the storm.
When the front door opened it was nearly eight o’clock. Dinner finished, the dishes washed and put away, my brother and I were scrubbed clean and in our pajamas sitting quietly on the couch in front of the television watching The Muppet Show. Delia was in her bedroom on the phone. Her soft words and easy laughter sailed out into the living room, mixing in with the Muppets’ quick slapstick and odd laughter.
The Warmest December Page 5