Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction

by James Henderson

  Another detective joined us and Detective Rainey told me to recite the part about bringing Batman the turkey. Then he said, “Mr. Dough, you don’t want to go to prison for fifty years, do you?” I told him no and he said, “I’ve got something in mind to keep you from doing that.”

  * * * * *

  Lisa Grogan, my new girlfriend, was a looker. Pretty face, apricot-colored skin, sandy-colored hair tucked under a black wool cap. The large, black turtleneck sweater she had on didn’t hide a middle-age spread, but she was still a looker. We were riding in a teal-green Mercury Cougar, Lisa behind the wheel. Neither of us said a word.

  I squelched the urge to hold her hand, tell her our relationship was a rose blossoming anew. Bad idea. She was an undercover detective. Our temporary relationship existed for the sole purpose of buying an eight ball of crack from Batman.

  Once we walked out the door less the two hundred in marked twenties in my pocket, Lisa would give the signal, pulling the wool cap off, and a team of narcotic officers along with Detective Rainey would converge on the house and arrest everyone in it, including me and Detective Grogan.

  I didn’t particularly like that part. Detective Rainey said it was necessary and would prevent me and Lisa being tagged as snitches. “Which do you prefer?” he’d said. “A couple hours or fifty years?”

  Lisa stopped the Cougar in front of the blue house. “We’ve been aiming to pop this guy a long time. Don’t screw this up. You do and you may be looking at more than fifty years.”

  Wait a minute! There was one too many cops dangling fifty years over my head. I started to tell her that but noticed her hand shaking as she took the keys out of the ignition. She was just as nervous as I was. We crossed the yard, walked up the steps, and I opened the front door without knocking. I thought we were at the wrong house. There was furniture in the front room. Pictures on the wall. A tall but very skinny woman in a black leotard and white stockings moved in synch to an aerobic video on a console television. The smell and sound of frying chicken came from the kitchen.

  A man walked from there, in a white shirt, tie and dress slacks, his hands white with flour. He looked like Batman. He smiled at Lisa and said, “Come in. Have a seat. Give me a minute, will ya?” He went back into the kitchen. He was Batman.

  I looked at Lisa and she shook her head. I whispered, “Let’s go,” and she pointed to the couch, whispered for me to sit down and shut up. I wasn’t about to sit down. This was insane.

  Where’s Cindy?

  Batman came out a few minutes later, looked at me and said, “When was the last time you saw Spanky?”

  “I saw him earlier today.”

  “Where?”

  “On the street.”

  Batman licked his lips. “Reason I asked, he called me this afternoon, said he was looking for you. Said he has something for you. I told him to leave it with me, but he said he wanted to give it to you personally.”

  I sat down then.

  The limber beauty on the video spread her legs and deftly bent over and patted the floor with both hands. The skinny woman a few feet before us tried to duplicate the move and fell flat on her stomach. She lay there a moment before turning her head and staring at Batman, an embarrassed look on her face. Batman gave her a disapproving look and shook his head.

  “Go to your room,” Batman told her. “Please. You gonna break something you’ll need later on.” The woman got up and left the room.

  Lisa, a damn undercover detective, didn’t get it. This whole scene was staged. Spanky had tipped Batman off and issued a threat from jail. It was time to go.

  I started to get up when Batman said, “What can I do for you two?”

  Lisa patted my knee and said, “Show him the money, baby.” I gave her a no-way-in-hell look. “Baby, if we can’t get a deal here we’ll try somewhere else.”

  I gave her the money and she put it on the table.

  Batman said, “What’s up?”

  “An eight ball,” Lisa said.

  Batman played dumb. “An eight ball of what?”

  That keyed Lisa to what was going on, but she had to play her hand out. “Nice talking to you, dawg. If you can’t serve us, we need to be moving on.”

  Batman told her he didn’t sell dope. “You got me mixed up with someone else. In fact, you could run a dog through here, Mrs. Grogan, and you wouldn’t find so much as a painkiller.”

  Lisa glared at him. “What did you call me?” Batman repeated her last name.

  “You ready now?” I asked her.

  She said she was, and Batman followed us out the door.

  “John,” he said, and I felt a chill, “you ever see the movie Roots?” I nodded and he said, “Chuck Connors played the massa.”

  Lisa stepped down to the sidewalk and told me to come on.

  Batman said, “Hold on. John needs to hear this. The massa raped Kissi, Leslie Uggams, and she had a boy, Chicken George, they called him. Ben Vereen played him. Anyway, he grew up and him and the massa started running together, chasing whores, getting drunk. “Meanwhile, in Virginia, Nat Turner saw an eclipse and thought it was God telling him to go kill whitey. Which he did. As you can imagine this scared the bejesus outta white folks. The massa got out his rifle, and Chicken George tried to run his black ass inside with the massa and his family and hide from the niggas. Chuck pointed the rifle at him and told him to get his black ass back where he belong.

  “Chicken George was hurt, thought him and the massa had formed a bond. Thought the massa would bring him into the big house when shit got ugly. That was then. Today, two thousand oh three, a nigga forget where he come from, run up in the big house and tell the man what nigga doing this, what nigga doing that.”

  He shook his head and gave me a hard look. “Something bad happen to that nigger! Something real bad! If you don’t know, you better ask somebody!”

  * * * * *

  The back door to the detail shop was open. In a swivel chair I propped my feet on the desk and watched the headlights stream down the street. The air was spiced with oil and Jobo Handcleaner.

  The pint of Canadian Mist tucked between my legs was half full. Detective Rainey gave me a five spot for cab fare, but I walked, bought the pint. It wasn’t working yet: I couldn’t get my mind off what Batman had said.

  “Don’t worry ’bout it,” Detective Rainey kept telling me. You think I need police protection? “Don’t worry ’bout it.” Batman sounded serious. “Don’t worry ’bout it.” What of those fifty years you were talking? “Don’t worry ’bout it.”

  The Canadian Mist kicking in now, warming me up, relaxing my mind, I figured to keep a low profile, stay away from crack and crack dealers. Chill out. Don’t worry about a damn thing, just chill out.

  It dawned on me that all that time I was with the police, no one mentioned anything about serving divorce papers, which meant that Doreen had changed her mind, had grown weary of Dokes, a clean freak better suited for the Nation of Islam than a relationship.

  Then I remembered the baby. Damn!

  A woman screaming woke me up. I jumped and she ran out of the detail shop. It was morning. There was a white Ford Explorer parked out front and I heard the woman telling someone there’s a man in there.

  “That’s John. He’s okay,” a man said.

  Marko? I walked up to the Explorer. A man with his head wrapped up, shades on, was sitting in the passenger seat.

  “Marko?” He nodded. “Man, I thought you were dead.”

  His face was bloated, lips split and chalky, and he moved slow. “That’s why you, Botchie and Calvin run off and left me, right? ‘He’s dead, what the hell?’”

  I started to apologize, but then he introduced me to the woman standing there gawking at me. Moesha: pointy nose, hair loosely plaited, thin, with a beer gut ballooning a pink bathrobe. Marko told her to go inside and get his stuff.

  She left, he said, “I thought I was dead, too. Woke up, white folks s
taring down at me. That’s a bad sign.”

  “Man, it happened so fast.”

  “We were in high school I used to take his lunch card, run him home crying to his mama. I didn’t think he would hit me. He’s still a sissy…an aggressive sissy, but still a sissy. Next time I won’t let him get the jump on me.”

  Moesha came out of the shop with a cardboard box and put it in the back of the Explorer, then got behind the wheel.

  I said, “Marko, you don’t have to worry about Spanky no more. He’s locked up, headed to the joint.”

  Marko scratched underneath the head bandage. He was still wearing the hospital band on his wrist. “It was you,” he said. “You dropped the dime on him?”

  Moesha was ready to go, both hands on the steering wheel.

  “Yeah, I did. Police stopped us and I told him Spanky just killed a man. They arrested him and then…” I didn’t think I should tell him about the botched bust at Batman’s house. “Lying bastards told me you weren’t gonna make it through the night.”

  Moesha asked Marko was he ready to go and he said, “John, that’s bad news, man. Spanky come after you, man. You need to stay away from here. This’ll be the first place he look.”

  “He can’t come after nobody in jail. I’m not worried about him.”

  “He ain’t in jail.”

  “Huh?”

  “We just saw him driving down Booker Street. He ain’t in jail. Police was pressing me about Spanky the second I rolled into the hospital. They wanted me to roll over on him.”

  “What? You’re not pressing charges? You gotta press charges, Marko. He’s a danger to society.” That got me a snooty look from Moesha.

  Marko shook his head and I noticed the stitches in his left ear. “I’m in the hole with Batman. I roll over on Spanky, Batman will…You know what I’m saying?”

  I looked at the traffic going in every direction, picking out white cars. There wasn’t much difference between a Camry and a Lexus.

  Marko reached his hand across Moesha and I shook it. “John, you need to get off these streets. If you ain’t burned your bridges with your peeps, go home.”

  I watched the Ford Explorer zip into traffic, almost causing a wreck, thinking I had burned my bridges.

  Chapter 24

  Gray stubble covering his dome and lower face, Alfred answered the door in green knit slacks and a white long johns top painted with his last meal. His bottom lip was puffy with snuff. He looked me up and down, deep wrinkles bunching up between his eyes.

  “Mama home?” I said.

  He took a long time to answer. “She asleep, just got off work.”

  I sat down on the ceramic bench on the porch and said, “She wakes up let her know I’m out here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Uh, let’s see. She’s my mother, I’m her son. You can say we’re related and I’ve come to see her.”

  Alfred slammed the door. Later, Mama came out in pink pajamas. She took one look at me and grabbed her side as if she’d been hit. She screamed, collapsed onto the porch, wailing. Alfred came out and tried to help her up. She beat the concrete with her fist, begged Jesus to help her.

  I knew she would be hurt seeing me, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.

  Alfred said, “Boy, help me get your mother in the house.”

  I noticed the gray streaking her hair as we directed her to the bedroom. I started to leave when she grabbed me, held me for a long time, begged Jesus and pleaded with God to save me.

  Alfred eased out of the room. I assisted her to bed and held her hand. Closed my eyes, though unable to erase the image of her anguished face out of my mind. She looked older, more lines in her face, especially in her forehead. Triple bags under her eyes. And that damn gray in her hair.

  She fell asleep, whimpering, as if she were in physical pain. It was a bad idea coming here.

  Alfred stood in the hallway when I closed the door softly behind me. “You satisfied now?”

  An urge to hit him passed over me. “I’m leaving.”

  He caught my arm as I was passing. “You’re not leaving. You’re gonna stay here and deal with this. Your mother been tore up for weeks. I’ve dealt with it, you can too. You the one started it.”

  Ignoring him I went to the front door and looked out at the quaint single-story house across the street. Dokes’ mother still lived there. He and I and a few other guys played touch football and softball in the street.

  Alfred said, “You leave, don’t come back!”

  * * * * *

  I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, shocked, understanding now why Mama had collapsed upon seeing me. Teeth missing. My hair needed cutting, an uneven afro. Razor bumps poked out of peach fuzz along my chin and neck. Moustache was too long, covering my top lip, which was dry and chapped just like Zelda’s. Yet the most shocking thing was my eyes. They looked sunk in. Haunted. Cadaverous.

  I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Shaved. Trimmed my moustache with scissors. Found a set of clippers and cut my head clean, using a hand mirror and vanity mirror to see the back of my head. Another shock when I stepped onto the scale behind the door: the arrow quivered near 142. That couldn’t be right. Last time I weighed I totaled a hundred and ninety-two pounds. Where the hell did fifty pounds go?

  AIDS crossed my mind when I stepped into the shower. Aunt Jean said Zelda was HIV positive, and our only safe sex precaution occurred when Zelda threw my clothes out. Letting Spanky apply a condom orally wasn’t a great idea either.

  Naw, that wasn’t it. I hadn’t eaten much, worrying about Doreen. Some days I didn’t eat anything at all. I didn’t have AIDS.

  All the clothes from my high school days were a tad too big, even the underwear. In jeans and a wife beater T-shirt I looked in the mirror: much better, but my eyes still had that vacant look.

  Alfred and I sat in the living room watching Court TV, the novelist Michael Petersen on trial for murder, his attorney explaining how an intoxicated Mrs. Petersen had fallen down a flight of stairs and splattered blood on the wall almost to the ceiling.

  Mama shuffled out of her bedroom around noon. I couldn’t look her in the face. She watched TV with us a few minutes and then went into the kitchen. Not long after the smell of rolls, baked chicken, and creamed corn filled the house.

  Mama segued blessing the food into a tearful prayer, once again begging for my salvation. I almost lost my appetite. Almost. Alfred took his plate into the living room. Mama, a hand covering her eyes, didn’t eat anything. As usual the food was delicious.

  Not once had I told my mother I loved her. I couldn’t remember the last time I hugged her. Now seemed a good time to do both and tell her everything would be all right. But I couldn’t.

  As I was getting up to rinse my plate, Mama said, “I want you to stay here for a while, get your weight up.” Alfred cleared his throat. Mama raised her voice: “He’s my son, Alfred! No child of mine starving to death!” He cleared his throat again. “John, you think you and Alfred can get along while I’m at work?” I nodded. “Alfred is putting up a fence in the backyard. You can help him.”

  Alfred, in the living room in an A and B conversation, said, “I don’t need no help.”

  He and Mama got to arguing about the fence, Mama saying he’d been working on it for years, Alfred saying he liked to to take his time, get it right the first time. I escaped to my old bedroom.

  Before going to work, Mama came to my room. Her hair in a bun, she was wearing green scrubs and white tennis shoes. “Alfred tell you to do something, do it. He lives here too.”

  I said okay and she started to leave, but stopped at the door, her back to me.

  “My daddy was a mean drunk,” she said, her voice low. “He hated CJ, beat him every day. Every day! One time I saw him beat CJ with an extension cord. All I could do was cry and hope he wouldn’t beat me. You beat a child like my daddy beat CJ, you’d expect that child to gr
ow up and be mean and ornery. Not my brother, he’s the nicest man you’ll ever meet.” She paused and I could tell she was crying again. “CJ found a dog somebody mistreated and left on the side of the road. A pitiful-looking, mangy dog.

  “CJ loved it, though. It wouldn’t let nobody but him come near it. One day it got loose while CJ was at school. Daddy told CJ if the dog got loose and killed one of his chickens he was going to kill him. I didn’t want that to happen so I tried to catch it and tie it up. It attacked me, bit a plug out my arm, scratched my face. CJ came home and asked what happened. I told him I fell down. Jean told him the truth. I watched him walk down the road with that dog on his heels. He came back by himself. He was crying.

  “Daddy asked CJ what happened to the dog. CJ said, ‘I love my sister more than I love a dog.’” Another pause, and I knew what was coming next. “God knows I would never do anything to hurt my brother. I asked him to take you in…and he did, as a favor to me. You went down there and…Why did you do that, John? Why?”

  There was nothing I could say.

  Mama told me again about the dream where I was in a nursing home, said she was dreaming it almost every day now, said she didn’t want that to happen but couldn’t think of a way to stop it. “All I can do is pray for you, son.”

  She left, and I wondered if the rod in the closet would support my weight.

  Alfred woke me up. “A white girl at the door looking for you. This shit ain’t working.”

  It was Cindy, looking like a spy, brown trench coat, large sunglasses, a tan fedora on her head. It was still dark out.

  “How you know I was here?”

  Cindy said, “Get some clothes,” and stepped inside and closed the door. Alfred cleared his throat. “Please!” Cindy added.

  In the bedroom, after putting my shoes on, I looked out the window and saw a white Lexus parked in front of the house next door. Spanky! Cindy was setting me up.

  In the living room, Cindy and Albert were talking about slavery of all things, and I wondered who brought that up. I told Cindy it was time for her to leave. But for Alfred sitting there I would’ve kicked her out.