After Nothing

by Rachel Mackie

  ‘He’s a dick,’ said Antoine.

  I didn’t disagree.

  ‘This is happening to me, not you,’ said Antoine, ‘and not Harold.’

  ‘I can give you some time off.’

  ‘I don’t want time off,’ said Antoine, close to shouting. ‘You don’t get it.’

  My eyes went to the phone on my desk. 4:45. I’d missed my bus. I needed to go if I wanted to get the next one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Antoine sarcastically. ‘Don’t let me keep you.’

  His chair scraped as he pushed it back and stood up. Diane gave me a disapproving look.

  As they left the office I heard Antoine tell Diane I was a cold bitch. I picked up my phone to text Julie that I was running late.

  The Drummond kids, biological, adopted and fostered, were all out in the front yard attempting to have a snowball fight – there just wasn’t that much snow to fight with. As I let myself in the gate, Lainey came running toward me and threw her arms around me in a hug.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, hugging her back with my free arm.

  ‘Hi,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Having fun?’

  ‘Kind of. I’m in charge. Liyah keeps swearing any time snow lands near her.’

  My eyes sought Liyah out. She was scraping a mixture of ice and dirt together from beneath the dogwood tree at the far end of the Drummonds’ house. As I watched, Deezyah and Samuel ran past her laughing, Samuel lining up a snowball in Deezyah’s direction. He hadn’t even thrown it when she stood up and yelled at their departing backs ‘You bitches.’

  ‘Better go,’ said Lainey, adding as she ran off in Liyah’s direction, ‘Joey’s inside with Mom.’

  I had Joey on my hip, my bag over my arm, and I was unlocking the door with my free hand when my phone started ringing. By the time Joey and I were inside it had stopped.

  I sat Joey down on the living room floor, tipped out all the toys in the toy box, and went to the refrigerator to see what I could make him for dinner. I badly needed to do a grocery shop that weekend.

  ‘It’s just eggs tonight, Joey.’

  I glanced in his direction. He’d crawled over to beside the couch and was now sitting on his butt, looking up at it. I could almost see his mind trying to figure out how to get up there.

  My phone rang again. Hoping it was Kane, I dug it out of my bag.

  Harold. I silenced it and put it down on the kitchen bench. Within seconds it was ringing again.

  This time I answered it.

  Harold was yelling in my ear before I’d finished greeting him.

  I was a liar; I was a deceitful little girl; I was setting out to ruin his business. I was a manipulative little bitch. How dare I not tell him that Antoine had AIDS?

  ‘Antoine doesn’t have AIDS. He has –’

  ‘Don’t you lie to me, girl.’

  ‘I’m not. Antoine is HIV-positive.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘We’re going to lose all our customers.’

  ‘Harold, I don’t think our customers would care.’

  ‘Of course they’d care.’

  ‘They’re professionals. They’re educated.’

  ‘So am I. I wouldn’t eat in a place where there was someone with AIDS.’

  ‘Our kitchen is clean; our food is prepared properly. All the staff follow our hygiene rules, because if they don’t then they don’t get leftovers. And trust me, they like leftovers, because the food’s so good. Food Antoine has been preparing since you bought the coffee shop. You cannot discriminate against him, Harold. It’s illegal. If you do it will cost you a lot. I suggest you go online and find out a little more about HIV.’

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘You should have told me. Never realized you were such a disloyal little bitch.’

  I didn’t reply. My eyes went to Joey. He’d got his hands on the television remote and was trying to crawl and hold it at the same time.

  ‘Kelsey was loyal enough to tell me.’

  ‘Kelsey told you?’ My heart sank. She’d obviously been listening in on Antoine and me, and then gone straight to Harold.

  ‘She’s been doing a damn sight better job than you of late.’

  ‘Actually, I doubt that.’

  ‘Really? She’s had one day off. One day. I’ll need to meet with you tomorrow.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I can meet with you Monday.’

  ‘You’ll meet with me tomorrow or else.’

  ‘I’ve said no. Text me a time for Monday.’

  I hung up. He rang back. And he rang back. And he rang back. Four times in five minutes. I turned off my phone.

  I gave Joey his eggs for dinner. I showered him. I cuddled him on the couch while he drank his bottle, and when I put him down he hardly complained at all. When I checked on him ten minutes later he was fast asleep. I straightened his blankets, and then I left his room and went to mine.

  Things were wrong. I was wrong. There was something wrong with me and it meant that I couldn’t do my job. Every part of me rebelled at the thought of going back to work on Monday. I didn’t want to unlock the shop’s front door. I didn’t want to talk to Diane, or try and make things up with Antoine. I didn’t want to have to deal with Kelsey. I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at Harold.

  I just wanted to be alone. Alone like I was now. The apartment was silent. I could cope with the silence.

  Tapping on my window woke me. I knew it was Kane even before he said my name.

  Because of the security locks I could only get the window open a couple of inches.

  ‘I’ll open the back door,’ I whispered through the gap.

  It was raining, and Kane shed his wet jacket the moment he came inside.

  ‘What’s going on? How come I couldn’t get hold of you?’

  I noticed the clock on the microwave. It read 11:30.

  ‘It’s late,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been trying to call you for hours. I would have come over sooner but I was with Chuck getting a piece done. Why’s your phone off?’

  ‘You got a tattoo?’

  ‘Baby, why is your phone off?’

  It was then I noticed he was looking at me strangely.

  ‘I should have called you. I fell asleep.’

  ‘Is Joey okay?’

  ‘Yes. He’s fine.’

  ‘You gonna tell me what’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t even know. I mean, I do.’

  I told him what had happened that day, and then told him Harold wouldn’t stop calling.

  ‘I don’t know if I can go back, Kane. He called me a bitch.’

  Kane took a step toward me.

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He said I was a manipulative bitch. I don’t think I was being manipulative.’

  ‘Where’s your phone?’

  Kane spotted it on the kitchen bench and was turning it on before I had time to respond.

  ’I’m going to deal with it on Monday, Kane.’ I felt wrong again. I felt like I was speaking from a distance when I said, ‘Don’t turn it on. I don’t want him near me.’

  ‘Motherfucker,’ said Kane. ‘He’s rung you twenty-three times.’

  Kane put my phone up to his ear.

  ‘I don’t want any of them near me,’ I said in a whisper.

  ‘Baby, you got eight voicemails, and I know only one of them is from me.’

  As he listened to my messages Kane’s expression became one of disbelief. And then anger. And then rage.

  ‘This motherfucker can say that shit to me.’

  I sat down on the floor exactly where I was standing. I rested my forehead on my knee and kept my eyes closed.

  I heard Kane say, ‘I got your messages, asshole.’

  Everything was unraveling.

  ‘Shut up. You said enough already. You call Natalie again, you try and talk to her, you
try and see her, and I won’t be lighting up your phone twenty-three fucking times. Things will be more direct. We clear?’

  If I didn’t have my job, what did that mean? I couldn’t think what it would mean. Would I still have Joey?

  ‘What is fucking wrong with you, ancient-ass nigga? Stop talking. I mean, I know you old; now I know you stupid too. You can’t say the shit you’ve said to Natalie. Eight fucking messages calling her names and shit. Accusing her of shit I know she didn’t do, shit you know she didn’t do. You trying to scare her? Dumb ass, she your employee. She got rights. You in a pile of shit, motherfucker.’

  Suddenly Kane started yelling down the phone.

  ‘Yeah, we real uneducated, motherfucker. So uneducated you paid Natalie to run your business for you. And you should see how uneducated I am. Probably even pronouncing your name wrong. “Motherfucker”? Am I saying that right? Let me make one thing real clear to you; there ain’t nothing I won’t do to protect Natalie. Nothing. You crossed a line, you stupid-ass nigga. All the abuse, fucking harassing her? Take a look at employment law motherfucker, you fucked.’

  Kane put my phone back on the bench at the same time Joey’s cry reached us.

  ‘Why are you on the floor?’ said Kane.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Get up, Nat.’ He hauled me back on to my feet, then raised his head toward the hall as Joey’s crying became piercing in its loudness.

  Kane swore, this time under his breath, before saying, ‘He heard me yelling, didn’t he? Fuck. Just two seconds, okay, baby? Sit on the couch.’

  I sat. Everything was too bright. I needed to block out the light. I shut my eyes, put a hand over them. It wasn’t darker, it was louder. Joey was really screaming.

  Kane was talking. Quietly.

  ‘You alright. I got you. Ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to you.’

  ‘Mom-mom-mom,’ cried Joey.

  ‘She here. She alright.’

  I dropped my hand as I heard them come close. Kane put Joey in my lap and I wrapped my arms around him.

  ‘Mom-mom-mom,’ he sobbed.

  ‘It’s okay, baby boy.’

  My body moved in a gentle rocking motion. I found it soothing. Comforting.

  ‘Mom-mom-mom.’

  ‘You’re safe. You’re safe, Joey. You got a big fright, I know. But you’re safe here.’

  I pressed my mouth to the top his head. He kept crying.

  ‘Nat, what do you want me to do?’

  I raised my gaze to meet Kane’s.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said. ‘I won’t forget again.’

  ‘Make him up a bottle? Please.’

  It took an hour to settle Joey again, and he only really slept once I’d put him in my bed, lying between Kane and me.

  The bedroom lights were off, but the main light in the hall was on, and Kane and I could just make each other out.

  We spoke softly to each other, Kane stroking the back of the hand I’d rested above Joey’s head.

  ‘What’s going on with you, Nat?’ asked Kane. ‘Where’s your fight?’

  ‘I’m tired. I’m tired of this life.’

  ‘You don’t even got any hate?’

  ‘No. Yes. Toward Bey.’

  Kane’s fingers stilled a moment, but then he went back to moving them across my skin, wrist to fingertips and back again.

  ‘I want you to stay, Kane.’

  ‘I’m gonna.’

  ‘I don’t want to upset the Drummonds.’

  ‘Rev been upset alright, but only ’cause me and him had words.’

  ‘About what? Kane, they’ve been so good to us.’

  ‘I know, and they know we appreciate it. I said that, but you ain’t had Rev telling you how to live your life for the last few years. But it’s cool now, and we can pay rent, which I want to do.’

  ‘You can live here?’

  ‘He and Julie have always been cool with me living here, Nat, as long as I committed to raising Joey.’

  My eyes went to the baby sleeping between us.

  ‘He can’t make you want him.’

  ‘Yeah, it had to be my choice.’

  ‘Had to be?’

  Kane’s eyes went to Joey’s slumbering face, then he looked at me.

  ‘I’ll raise him, with you.’

  Kane carried Joey back to his room, and laid him in his crib. I pulled his blankets up over him and made sure he was tucked in.

  Kane turned my light on when we went back into my room.

  He hesitated a moment.

  ‘My new tatt, I know you ain’t gonna like it.’

  ‘Then why’d you get it?’

  ‘’Cause it ain’t for you. It’s for me. And Joey.’

  Kane pulled his sweater, and then the tank he had on underneath, up over his head. He turned and showed me his back. Across the middle of his shoulders was a long, wide bandage, its edges partially concealing tattoos he already had.

  ‘Pull it off,’ said Kane.

  I gently lifted the tape and then peeled the bandage off.

  There was his Richmond tattoo, and below it the pattern he’d designed which rippled across his shoulders and swirled around the fanged snake’s head. The new, bold ink below that read: BEY.

  It dominated all his other tattoos, covering one side of his back to the other. It was beautifully done. The letters intertwined, their end pieces flowing into the surrounding work. But it was so big.

  ‘Kane.’

  It was all I said: it was enough for Kane to know my response to it.

  ‘He was Joey’s dad.’

  ‘He shot Reesey in the head.’

  ‘Yeah, and I let him down. Should have helped him. Should have protected her.’

  ‘You said you didn’t want any part of him.’

  ‘I take Joey on, I take Bey with me. Joey gonna know him through me, and Bey was more than the man who killed his mom. More than just the bad shit he did. I know things about Bey no one else knows. I can give Joey that.’

  ‘But your whole back? You could have got his name small somewhere.’

  ‘I wanted it.’

  I just stared at him. What did it matter? It was just another emotion, or another ten emotions, or whatever the hell the stupid tattoo invoked. I thought I should protest more. At the same time, I also thought I should be conveying how relieved and grateful I was that he’d agreed to raise Joey with me.

  But what I felt was nothing. Nothing but a deep bone-weary tiredness.

  ‘Can’t explain it to you, Nat.’

  ‘I’m the one who has to look at it, Kane.’

  ‘Yeah, and I gotta carry it.’

  46

  Harold paid me out a month’s wages. And I got to keep the laptop. Kane said Harold agreed to it, but I’m pretty sure Kane just told him he wouldn’t be getting it back.

  I got in touch with my old boss at the bakehouse, Leonie, and she offered me my old job back. I asked if I could just do three days a week as a server, starting in a month’s time. She agreed.

  I spent three days catching up on things like buying Joey bigger clothes, and grocery shopping, replenishing all my baking supplies and tackling the mountain of washing that arrived with Kane.

  Then I fell apart.

  I could do what Joey needed, and that was it. No cleaning, no cooking for Kane and me, no talking to people outside of the Drummonds and Aunt Sarah. Definitely no going to church. I lived in fear of Joey’s caseworker, Penny, calling by, but it wasn’t enough to get me off the couch. Every time Joey went down for a nap I turned the television on. All those same shows my mom used to watch: most of them were still on. I watched them.

  Melissa walked in through the back door without knocking, and when she saw me, she struggled to find words. Melissa never struggled to find words.

  I was standing in the kitchen, Joey in my arms, while I warmed him a bottle.

  Shocked at her sudden appearance, all I managed was a weak ‘hi.’

  She walked forward and wrapped her arms ar
ound both me and Joey.

  ‘Natalie, I had no idea things were so bad.’

  ‘Kane called you?’

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t tell me this,’ said Melissa, stepping back and gingerly touching my hair. ‘Girl, have you looked at you lately?’

  She smiled at Joey and touched his cheek. ‘Hi, beautiful.’ He grinned at her. ‘Oh my goodness, look at all your teeth.’

  For every admiring look Joey got for the next quarter of an hour, I got a frown and a shake of Melissa’s head.

  Once Joey was down and asleep, Melissa reached for my hand and examined my nails.

  ‘Have you been chewing these?’

  We were sitting side by side on the couch. My head was resting on her shoulder, and I’d been listening to her update me on college life.

  ‘They’re just nails, Mel.’

  ‘Natalie, look at these. Look!’ She held up my hand in front of me. ‘How are you going to convince anyone to give you that baby when you can’t even look after your own nails? And your hair! I don’t even know where to begin. Take it out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Natalie, take it out or I will.’

  I reluctantly sat up and pulled my hair free from its knot on my head.

  Melissa’s eyes ran from one side of my head to the other, and then she gingerly lifted up the dreaded curls at the back.

  ‘That is disgusting,’ she said, sitting back. ‘You are disgusting.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, but at the same time I felt it – a smile.

  ‘You are,’ said Melissa. ‘You are the grossest thing I have ever seen. Ew. You’re just gross. And Natalie, to be honest, not that fine anymore. I bet Kane isn't even touching you.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Really? He’s doing you morning and night?’

  ‘Well, no. We’re not really having sex as much at the moment.’

  Melissa raised an eyebrow at me.

  ‘I haven’t really felt like it. But it’s me, not him.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ said Melissa, and then leaned forward and sniffed.

  ‘Mel!’ I said, outraged.

  ‘Have you showered today?’

  ‘Of course I’ve showered today.’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to tell when you look like a homeless person, Natalie. What are you wearing?’