Slapboxing with Jesus (Vintage Contemporaries Original)

by Victor Lavalle

  —Do you want a shake?

  —Of course Mom.

  —Then ask me.

  —Mother?

  —Yes?

  —May I please trouble you if it’s not too much bother to afford me the money so that I may purchase a vanilla shake?

  She sighed, but smiled. —One minute Mr. Morris.

  He didn’t care, even offered to pay, but they were well past small niceties. When I returned, her mouth was open—agape; for years I pronounced this a-ga-pay. She was silent, he spoke. Explained that he’d gone ahead and submitted the application, done all he’d been hired for; this, he assured my mother, was a good thing. But Mom had a habit of wanting people to listen to her, so she lost her temper, loud then louder. I was leaning against the table, but took a step back so this lawyer could get the whole barrage. He leaned backward, wishing for bullets to come through the front window, a grease fire. No luck.

  Then she was gesticulating. I had no sympathy for her, people were looking. An African could not control itself, this was her son’s thinking. Her hand shot out and sent his hot coffee up, landing across our boy Cleveland.

  —Shit, woman! he yelled, tried to stand, but got corralled by the tabletop, which caught him in the yams. Back down, he rubbed his face, lifted that folder, shook it; random droplets flecked out in six directions.

  —I want all your paperwork, showing me what you say you did for all that money. I’ll report you. That I was cheated.

  He shook his face. —You do what you like. You’ll hear from the Patent Office about approval or not in a few weeks. I’ve done my job. He rose, taking the folder with him, having never presented its contents. He seemed to be taunting her, implying that what she wanted was so near; with the hand that held it, Cleveland Morris waved good-bye.

  Mom shut her eyes, began talking to herself, throwing hands wild enough to conduct an orchestra. Anytime before this afternoon, I’d have talked her calm, slowly assuring her things would be fine; it had been my job to do this on occasion. Other people laughed at her exhibition and I was mortified, disgusted. I stepped back, one foot. She looked up at the menu, white numbers on a black background, pictures flanking either side. —I haven’t had one of those fish fillets in so long.

  I shook my head for her. Besides soothing her, I was meant to bolster her will when necessary. —You’re not really hungry, Mom.

  She grabbed my arm like we were going to fight, that hard, then released. —You’re right. You’re right. Her purse opened and out came the pills. I was embarrassed, suddenly sure that to all the other customers she was now not only the Angry African, but also heavy, her slim form before them only an act. Temporary.

  —Mom, I groaned, people are looking.

  She opened her mouth, for more volume. —You think I care what these people are thinking? I will speak whenever I please.

  My head sank; let some revolutionary someone else be proud of the Unsilenced Woman. From another table I retrieved napkins, brought the stack over and dropped it on what was left of the spill. Mom spoke to no one. We were both learning to rely more on ourselves. I pushed my hands down until I could feel the moistness on my palms, then swished the papers around, sopping up all the brown wet.

  Cleveland Morris had bosses. My mother tracked them down. Their office stood eleven blocks from our building, closer even than the Burger King. On Monday, she and I went. We stopped outside and Mom leaned against a wall, turned her face up and told herself not to be afraid. I rubbed the back of her hand halfheartedly.

  In a seven-story building, their offices took up the entire sixth floor. She and I were shuffled into a waiting room; judging by the masses, we were on a very long line. Many women slept with their faces against their purses, leaning that far forward. The chairs were of all types: wooden with no backs, metal folding chairs, bright yellow plastic welded four to a frame. Men stood and paced then sat and huffed. No one was happy. People talked, conversations kept private by the loud rzzzz of the giant old fan spitting dust from a corner.

  —So you want to know about Africa?

  I wanted to quiet her. She watched me expectantly, as though I had questions rehearsed; our chairs seemed farther apart, a cause for both celebration and sadness. I put my hand out to touch her arm and pulled it back. I blew out air. I was confused.

  We sat quietly, waiting just to make an appointment to be heard about Mom’s complaint. Mom took down the name of the woman who put us in the date book, the woman who seemed personally offended when my mother mentioned the words “small claims court.” I drew a picture of her big fat head on a sheet of paper that had been lying on the floor.

  We returned on a Thursday. Mom brought me straight from school, rode a public bus overpopulated with the young. I dipped my head down as we traveled together. In the rear Cindac was yelling, —African Anthony! then ducking so my mother wouldn’t see who’d screamed.

  Then us in the waiting room, sneaking into a spot I didn’t like because three rows of people sat behind me—having people behind you, that’s how spitballs got in your hair. Mom asked if my old sneakers were too old. I blurted out, —You should have stayed there.

  —Where? She had been going over the delineation of grievances she’d prepared the night before.

  —Uganda. I mouthed the word out, barely a whisper that no one else could hear. We could have just been living there, doing fine. I doubted very much that it was so shameful to be African in Africa.

  But my mother had her own logic and reasoning and when I suggested she could have done better for her boy she twisted her lower lip like she’d suddenly been stabbed. She grabbed my right arm at the elbow, squeezed, said, —You don’t know anything.

  It didn’t actually hurt, but I winced regardless. —Get off me. I pulled free.

  She tugged her wig down; it was cut with unflattering bangs. —The very last time I visited, she said, you were eight. You remember? I was gone for two months?

  Nodding, I said, —Nineteen eighty. That year, I was skipped a grade. My family hadn’t treated it ceremoniously.

  She rubbed a thumb against her chin, just below the lip, like memories were stored there, like she could jiggle them loose; in her head they were slightly incongruous, trickling out in odd arrangements.

  In fact, she remembered very little, only that a cousin named Franklin met her at the airport, that she’d brought along all our old clothes for family. I interjected that maybe this was where my Spider-Man T-shirt had gone, but, of course, she could not recall. Sixteen-year-old boys who had been given guns and called soldiers sat at checkpoints and jabbed their muzzles into any woman who passed. At a small club my mother danced to Percy Sledge. The land, she told me, was beautiful with hills. Unlike New York, in Uganda the weather was a blessedly dry heat, you were not grimy at the end of a day.

  —At the airport I went six hours early. I had confirmed the ticket in New York and Nairobi; the woman at the ticket counter gave me trouble; she wanted a bribe; I’d been away so long I had forgotten how things worked; we yelled at each other. I missed my plane. She said I’d made a mistake but Franklin was sure she’d sold my seat to someone who knew how to pass a tip. At the airport, as I was panicking, I ran into a friend, Lucy. Lucy had gone to King’s College Budo with me.

  —I thought you went to college in Canada, I interrupted.

  —It’s called King’s College, but it’s a grade school. Listen:

  Lucy offered to make the very long drive from Entebbe to Nairobi before her husband had said yes; he was standing there, obviously angry, but was a little man and took any responsibility very seriously. She had only been bumped from the Entebbe to Nairobi journey and, if they made it in time, she was assured there was still a place on the connecting flight to London and from there, America.

  Lucy had two little girls; her husband owned two cars. A cousin of theirs acted as chauffeur for Lucy and the kids in return for a room, so he could live in a city. The girls wore dresses nice enough for a confirmation and bright, bla
ck shoes. They ate little cakes, cheered when they were told of the long ride. Their noses looked almost like mine.

  As they got out into the country, the two men raced. Mom rode with the husband. In the other car the girls used the bumps in the road to excuse their hopping around. They were scuffing up the seats and enjoying themselves. At times the cars were close and Mom could hear them scream, Sorry Mummy! They threw their hands up and laughed like it was a roller coaster. Lucy’s husband was a better driver, the other car trailed, soon they were gone. Lucy’s husband wanted to wait but Mom showed him her ticket, the flight time. Mom cried a little and not every tear was genuine. They arrived almost an hour early. She gave him fifty dollars, but he refused. Mom told him to buy his girls some pastries with the money, but he told her it was Lucy who indulged them. Then he took the money anyway.

  Mom called Franklin days later to ask him to send her some things she’d forgotten. He told her that Lucy’s husband had returned to find the other car parked by the road, empty. He had opened all the doors, inspected the boot. Not even blood. He came back with police whom he paid to make a genuinely thorough search. Lucy, both girls and his cousin left nothing. Franklin told Mom this and she was shocked, mute, but was not sad. She’d have urged him to keep driving even if she’d known what was going to happen to his family. She had to leave, it was no longer her home. Mom asked after Lucy for two more years and each time Franklin had no good word. There couldn’t even be a burial. She’d have sent a few dollars for some kind of ceremony. Mom cried sometimes and Grandma told her not to feel guilt, but it wasn’t that, it was relief and it was joy. She was thankful she had me in Manhattan. Regardless of who was sacrificed, Mom thanked God.

  I was kicking my feet forward and back in my chair; she was breathing heavy and close to tears. I barely noticed. I asked, —So did you ever make it to the airport? I smiled.

  She made a noise, sucked her teeth in disgust, so loud that other people looked back, thinking she was commenting on the long wait. They nodded.

  We were called into an office with a woman and three men, Mr. Morris among them. There was an air in the room not of apology, but attrition.

  The woman wore small gold earrings but the lobes were long, they flapped as she reached for the folder and slid it forward. Mom flipped it open, leafed through sheets. —What is this?

  —Everything, the woman said. All our paperwork, your initial information and your check. We have withdrawn your application for a patent. You may work with someone else.

  A fan hung from the ceiling, three flat flower petals on the end of an upturned stem. Paint on the walls had been faded by sunlight into a diamond pattern. Behind these four a window was open, the other was closed, a blind drawn over it so that the wall seemed to be winking at us, telling Mom, You won.

  —Is that it?

  They all wore cheap clothes, suits, the woman in her dress. The money they made was not going to their wardrobes. One man with eyes that stuck out like a frog’s asked, —What else do you want? Should Mr. Morris have to shine you shoes?

  They had given my mother the materials she wanted, but damn, this was some shit and even I knew it. These people knew how to cheat and who. They ran television commercials on Sundays during Like It Is. All these brown lawyers would get on the screen and make it sound progressive, political and positive: Black lawyers for Black clients, Latino lawyers for Latino clients; they had descended on us. It was a lesson many of these people were learning: we can’t even trust one another. She grinned at Cleveland Morris and waved her papers in the air. —This is mine.

  In our apartment Grandma overjoyed loudly at her daughter’s triumph. We ate dinner together, laughed as Mom mimed Mr. Morris’s morose manner. Then, next day, Mom returned to overtime, back to our routine.

  I spent the next three weeks trying to coax her into some shared action: shopping for clothes, getting Grandma a gift for her birthday five months away. Let’s just do something, was my mantra. She’d sit on the couch, appreciative but exhausted and tell me that the little time she had would be spent on the Tile Defender—recopying notes, sending packets out to other patent lawyers. She’d explain this to me and ask, —Do you understand?

  I did. I hated her. Wistfully I remembered the Burger King lounge like it had been the site of some historic event. Somehow she needed to be persuaded to work with me again.

  Visited the three spots in our home: beside the couch in the living room, the filing cabinet in our shared bedroom, the cupboard above the stove where she had a strongbox, never locked. I took the proper papers from all three: the lists of ingredients, all the legal notations Mr. Morris had made (he had done a little), even the script for the commercial that she’d typed up. Brought them to the stove while my grandmother was taking a furious shit.

  The front right burner clicked then blew a blue flame out into a halo. I rolled all the sheets into a thick, uneven cone, held them over the fire. I don’t say this was all in the hopes of re-creating a partnership; I also thought jealously of the good things in Uganda: dry heat, families with the money for two cars, hilly green terrain and even Percy Sledge. To me, she’d only mentioned these things to make me envious, at the time it was all I’d heard. I thought she’d cheated me; not of money, but your family, your home; they’re also things to inherit.

  As they burned I ran the blackening pages under tap water until a height of charred, soaking ash was left. I ran more water as the paper slowly drained down the sink. I opened a window. No one came into the kitchen for a while, Grandma was occupied, so the smell had time to leave, out the window, mingling with pigeons and pedestrians.

  Mom was frantic that night. She ran into our room, where I lay on my bed reading a comic, my feet folded under me. She asked if I’d seen her papers, checked the orange filing cabinet someone had been throwing away at her office, the one she’d brought home on the 7 train, the one I’d cleaned and smoothed the dents out of for three dollars. Nothing. She turned, asked quietly, —Have you seen my papers?

  —I saw them, I told her, dropped my comic.

  —Where are they? Despite her volume, her face was not as angry as I thought it would be; there was desperation, there was sadness. I tried to think which reason she’d rather hear: the blame or the adoration. Grandma was in another room, asking in Luganda and English if anything had been found.

  Mom and I sat on the edge of my bed; this is how we perched when she read me books as a little boy, Peter and the Wolf was my favorite. —This is what I was thinking, Mom. If you didn’t have those papers I could help you do the work again. We could choose another lawyer. I could help you buy the sheeting, cut it up, put on the adhesive. I could be your assistant.

  —Where are the papers? She enunciated every word.

  —And if we worked together you could tell me more stuff.

  —The papers?

  —I burned them.

  She nodded; her next question seemed to come from genuine curiosity. —Do you hate me that much?

  I watched her feet. —Yes.

  —Kitchen, she commanded.

  Grandma had gone off to her room, from where I could hear the vacuum cleaner going, high-power. Mom sat, then spoke, —Bread, marmalade, knife. I got each, brought them, forgot the plate but she didn’t notice. She twisted open the bag of bread and dropped every slice on the table.

  The marmalade was half gone. Inside, the orange strings and clear jam coated the jar. She unscrewed the cap with one long twist strong enough for the top to bounce off, onto the table and down to the floor, it spun as it came to a stop.

  She mashed the marmalade into the bread until the middle curved in, then she spread it as best she could. Small tears appeared and the fake wood beneath showed through. She ate sloppily, but didn’t make any noise. She still chewed with a closed mouth. Her back, as she breathed, bent into a ‘c,’ her head hanging somewhere near mine. I looked into her face, its burdens. When her hand came up I thought she was going to punch me, the walls seemed ready for i
t, but my mom wasn’t a violent person, even now; her fist didn’t know that and it waited there, near me, like it was making up its own mind. She said, —Maybe this really isn’t working out. Someone may have to come for you.

  You should’ve seen our wallpaper. Not what had been there when we moved in, I don’t even remember that one, the new one, put up on an energetic Saturday when she had roped me and Grandma in, getting the boy to peel off and cut the right-size strips while the old lady sat near the oven with a pot of glue coming to a simmer for spreading. The bare walls had had blemishes, remainders of the families before. That they had gone on to something else was not the only interesting part. We also talked of the next tenants who might, while redecorating, press a palm to the surface and, in so doing, imagine our lives.

  pops

  My father was eating pizza across from me, sucking in cheese and smiling like we were family. I was eleven and felt five. The fans overhead moved slow and uneven like drunks. If I was shorter I would have been swinging my feet.

  —You’re good looking, my dad told me like he was surprised.

  —I am?

  —Sure, sure. You look like your mother.

  The pizza was extra good, pepperoni slid down the slice on an easy river of grease; I ate each red circle one by one. The Italian guy behind the counter, taking money and making friends, had jokes with me when we’d bought our food. I’d laughed extra hard because I was too damn nervous.

  —So, what’s your first name? I asked him.

  His face didn’t know how to deal with me. —Louis.

  —Your name is Louis?

  —Uh-huh.

  —Louis J—— I blew out the name like bubbles, it made my lips numb.

  —Do you like it?

  —The pizza?

  —My name.

  —No.

  He bit more slice, swallowed and asked me why.

  —I beat up a kid named Louis.

  —On your own? He raised his shoulders like I was making him happy.

  —No, I said. Me and my friends. We kicked his ass. I waited to see if he was the kind of guy to blow his dick out if I cursed a little. My mom was like that. He didn’t squawk.