Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  He tightened his stomach muscles to push against it and reached with his fingers. It wouldn’t budge. The sensations were becoming less pleasurable, becoming painful even. Frightening. He started to panic. The clock. Kathy would be home in forty-five minutes. The buzzing went on deep inside. His desperate grunting and poking yielded nothing. It wouldn’t move. He needed help. He stripped off his lacy lingerie and pulled on mannish jeans and a sweatshirt. He stopped in the bathroom and scrubbed off the makeup, peeling off the eyelashes roughly and jamming them deep in his jeans pocket. He hid his clothes and makeup in the garage and climbed into the car, buzzing.

  The emergency room was quiet. “I need to see a doctor,” he told the nurse behind the counter. Could she hear the thing? She handed him a clipboard with a pen and lifted the phone. “What’s the problem?” she said. John hesitated. She was middle-aged and hard faced, with a whiff of the Catholic-school nun about her, but the ethic of Variations buoyed him.

  “I have a vibrator stuck,” he said, with a sheepish grin.

  She didn’t blink. “Take a seat,” she said, and John, over the edge, made an uncharacteristic joke.

  “I think I’ll stand.”

  It was a bigger deal than he’d expected. He had to be admitted and sedated. He came to in a hospital bed with no idea of how much time had elapsed. A curtain surrounded his bed, covered with orange-and-blue geometric shapes, lit by sunshine. Morning. Officious hospital sounds leaked through the curtain. At the foot of the bed stood Kathy, looking stricken.

  “What is it?” she asked, when he opened his eyes. “Nobody would tell me anything. They said I should ask you. Is it bad?”

  She looked quite beautiful, voluptuous and blue eyed, as alluring as when they’d first dated in Hattiesburg. She should, he thought ruefully, given how much she spends preserving herself. But through the layers of makeup and jewelry and fur, she really looked worried. “I had a little dizzy spell, that’s all,” he said. “Probably too much worrying about the store. They ran a bunch of tests. I’m fine.”

  Kathy wiped away a tear with a long aquamarine nail. “When nobody would tell me anything, I thought it was really bad.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  A nurse pulled back the curtain. “Good morning.” Over her arm, she held John’s sweatshirt and jeans. In her hand was a plastic bag, and in the plastic bag, the vibrator. “Here’s your things!” she called cheerily, dumping them on the chair beside the bed. She took John’s wrist in her cool fingers and looked at her watch. John used his eyes like barbecue tongs, clasping Kathy’s face toward his. But her gaze drifted off toward the pile on the chair. He watched her face with the detached, slow-motion wonderment of someone skidding a car into a telephone pole. Her eyes were blank, the worry starting to slough itself off. Then they focused. Still no visible reaction, just focused eyes, looking down at the chair.

  “How are the kids?” John said. Kathy kept looking at the chair. “They with your mom?” John asked.

  Kathy’s head tilted slightly. One eyebrow ticked upward a millimeter. John was pulling on the wheel to no effect, the brake was useless, the pole headed straight for him, and wasn’t it interesting? Kathy’s eyes changed, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud, and hardened slightly at the edges. The corners of her mouth twitched downward. She detached herself from the foot of the bed and, without so much as a glance at John, walked to the chair.

  “You’re fine,” the nurse chirped. “They’re working on your paperwork, and then you can go. Bye-bye, now, have a nice day.”

  John could have put his arm out and snatched the plastic bag, but he didn’t. He was far away, watching with detached curiosity. Kathy picked up the bag and studied it, then pivoted her whole body and looked into his eyes. Her face was hard, cold, furious. He knew it immediately: she’d known all along. It wasn’t his fetish that enraged her, he realized. It was being forced, finally, to confront it. Until now, she’d been able to spend his money and gad about in her Cadillac, with beauty parlor appointments and shopping dates in old Metairie, the coddled suburban matron—respectable, normal, married to a couple of big flashy stores. She might have found his dresses and makeup years ago, but she’d never have said a word. She was angry all right, because now she had to hush up and live a lie or face having a pervert for a husband.

  She closed her exquisitely made-up eyes, opened them slowly, rolled them, and tossed the vibrator back on the chair. Then she shook her head, pushed through the geometrically patterned curtain, and was gone.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  DAUPHINE STREET

  1983

  Chicken took the miniature pies from the oven and laid them tenderly, one by one, on a rickety folding table—sweet potato, lemon, pecan, cherry. He tapped his booted heel to the beat of “Billie Jean,” which was blasting from tall speakers mounted beside the kitchen cabinets.

  If Da knew Wil was hanging in Chicken’s place, he’d kill him. Chicken, wiry and light skinned, had never had a dad, and his mom had run off. He lived on his own around the corner on Dauphine Street. The boy was trouble; Wil knew that.

  As the pies cooled, Chicken tucked plastic pouches of white powder into the gooey filling of each one. “You want a nickel bag, that’s the pecan,” he said giggling. “You want a dime, that’s the sweet potato.” What blew Wil’s mind was that even though the pies were just for cover, Chicken made them from scratch, rolling out dough he mixed himself, cutting up fresh fruit from Frady’s market. “It’s how my mama taught me,” he explained. Chicken knew that Wil, who could never get enough to eat, would be willing to help in return for a couple of warm pies. He liked having Wil along. “Ain’t nobody mess with a nigger boy your size.”

  Even though his parents were clear on one point—“Ain’t nothing in the Quarter for a black boy but trouble”—Wil sometimes carried Chicken’s cooler to the corner of Dumaine and Chartres, a block off Jackson Square on the downriver side of the Quarter, where tourists didn’t go much but where Chicken’s regulars knew to find him. Wil would sit on the cooler in front of Harry’s Corner bar, dreamily fingering imaginary sousaphone valves. Ta-da ta-da ta-daaa. Quarter notes: Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola. One evening when Wil was deep in a sousaphone reverie, Chicken said, “Hey.”

  Wil opened his eyes. Chicken was holding up the front of his shirt, showing the handle of a silver pistol tucked into the top of his pants. Before Wil could say anything, Chicken had the pistol out of his pants and was holding it behind his butt, walking up Dumaine to Royal and turning right, shoulders hunched, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Wil followed nervously.

  Chicken flicked his jaw at a skinny bald-headed white man leaving the Golden Lantern. Weaving slightly, the man noticed Wil and Chicken walking toward him and crossed the street, which filled Wil with a strange combination of anger and sadness. It was typical of a white man to think two young black men were trouble. On the other hand, Wil and Chicken were proving him right.

  Chicken brought the gun up. The man cowered pathetically, trying to cover himself up and raise his hands at the same time. Then suddenly his pale face started flashing blue.

  Wil looked over his shoulder. A police car had rolled up right behind him. Chicken ran up Governor Nicholls toward Rampart; Wil darted the other way. Someone shouted. Wil pumped his arms and picked up speed; he heard hard leather soles smacking the pavement behind him. He zipped into an alley, popped out on Barracks, turned right, found another alley, and rocketed in. Dead end. He crouched behind a Dumpster, his heart going like a bass drum, his wheezing so loud it echoed. A siren whooped. Had they caught Chicken?

  Wil crouched there a long time, shivering. As his heart slowed, he could hear Da’s voice: I didn’t give you my name so you could play with it like this in the streets.

  BELINDA CARR

  EGANIA STREET

  1984

  Belinda jumped out of the car and ran inside ahead of her mother. She stormed across the living room to her bedroom, slammed the door, flopped on
the narrow bed, and punched herself in the stomach. “Die,” she said. “Die.” Mom was putting on a kettle in the kitchen. Alvin was shooting baskets in the driveway. Calvin was shouting to a friend in the backyard. Belinda ached from her toes to her temples, a vague, nauseating throb, and the bed spun slowly, auguring into the earth.

  “Belinda, honey?” Mom tapped gently on the door. The light in the window was soft; she must have slept. “We all make mistakes, baby,” Mom said, sitting on the bed and rubbing Belinda’s leg. Belinda didn’t answer. Mom rose and shuffled away up the hall. She had repeated that line all the way home from the doctor: we all make mistakes, we all make mistakes.

  I know, Mom, Belinda thought, rolling over and sitting up: I was yours. You dropped your dreams of singing professionally because I came along. It seemed to make some kind of terrible, comforting sense to Mom that Belinda should make the age-old, almighty, inevitable mistake in the never-ending circle of mistakes.

  If she’d prided herself on anything, it had been control. And now look. All honors classes, and she hadn’t even been aware what was happening to her. It had taken Aunt Florie to suggest a visit to the doctor.

  Everybody had pushed Belinda to break out of her “unhealthy” bookworm’s cocoon and enjoy the last year of high school. She’d joined the basketball team and the pep squad. She’d dated, tried a few dances. She’d even gone to see those wild Mardi Gras Indians and the even sillier masked white men of the big parades. She’d kept studying, though, and escaping through books to a place where boys knew how to make conversation, men had grace and manners, and endings were happy. It was only after Lionus Jenkins got his basketball scholarship to Southern University at Baton Rouge that she’d let him talk her into the prom. He was going to college, after all, just like her. What happened in the back of the limousine after the prom—the alcohol, the pawing, the whole shameful business—she had quickly buried under the soothing routines of her dwindling senior year. Lionus had murmured an apology, she’d forgiven him, and they’d gone their separate ways. She’d hardly thought about him since.

  Pinned to the wall above Belinda’s desk was a typed letter congratulating her on her acceptance to Southern University at New Orleans. Even now, her family didn’t really understand what it meant to go to college. Cousin Faye, who loved books as much as Belinda did, had tried to talk her into secretarial school, which in itself would have been a stretch for a girl from the Lower Ninth Ward. But Belinda had her sights on a real college.

  What she wanted, she realized, was an abortion. But if she said it, Mom would swoon, and the pastor at Greater Harvest Baptist Church would fill her ear with hellfire. She lay back on the bed in the darkening room, wiping her eyes. “Time to go,” Mom whispered through the door.

  The stars were coming out as they scuffed through the pea gravel and shells of Egania Street. The porch light was on at Lionus’s. Belinda followed Mom up the neatly swept front steps, like a steer up a ramp to the slaughterhouse.

  Mrs. Jenkins opened the door, wearing a pink housedress and smiling timidly. Mr. Jenkins sat in an armchair, a king on a throne. “Lionus,” he called. “They’re here!” Lionus slouched in like he’d punctured and all his bluster had leaked out. He nodded to Mom. “Ma’am.”

  This can’t be happening, Belinda thought. Her bones ached, and her stomach fluttered. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins swiveled their heads toward Lionus, who looked at the floor. “Son,” Mr. Jenkins said, “you got to step up.”

  “I know,” Lionus said.

  The room tilted. Instead of Southern University, Belinda realized, Lionus was headed for a laborer’s job. Instead of SUNO, Belinda was headed for long days changing diapers in a shackety house—another Lower Nine teen with a baby on her hip. That was the payback for ten minutes in the back of a limousine after the prom.

  “Lionus.” Belinda struggled to control her voice. “You got your scholarships. You go to your college, and I’ll go to mine. I can manage. Let’s not drag each other down.”

  “No,” Lionus said, squaring his shoulders and looking at his father. “I’m going to step up. I want to take care of my child.”

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  722 ST. ROCH AVENUE

  1984

  Evening was Wil’s favorite time of day, especially when Da wasn’t gigging with Miss Irma. Often Da would cook barbecued shrimp for the family—one of Wil’s favorites—and then sit on the porch with his arms folded, watching St. Roch Avenue with the imperious concentration of a theater critic. The landlord on Burgundy had raised the rent, so the family had moved to 701 St. Roch. Just as they were getting comfortable there, the landlord threw them out; he needed the apartment. Luckily, they found a place a few doors down. It was smaller, but it sat right across from Schiro’s Grocery, where a trio of regulars often sat on folding chairs out front, hats on the backs of their heads, noodling up and down the scales of their clarinets and guitars.

  Moving, always moving. The Rawlins family always stayed right in the neighborhood, so it wasn’t like he and Lawrence had to make new friends or get used to a new school. But Wil wondered sometimes why they couldn’t own their own house. Da worked so hard at Dupree moving those coffee sacks. Mom taught math in the schools. How come they couldn’t own their home like other people and stop being chased all over the neighborhood?

  Someday, he told himself again and again, I’m going to own my own house.

  The kids in the neighborhood always brought their broken bikes and instruments around by Da because they knew he could fix anything. He’d reach in his drumstick bag and come up with wire, duct tape, tools—that bag was magic. As Da worked, he’d purr in this Mr. Cool Jazz voice—“Hey, little bro, how’s it shakin’”—that Wil hated because it sounded so fake. Sure Da played jazz with Miss Irma, but as far as Wil was concerned, the real Da was all business: What did you learn in school today? Where are your sneakers? Get in the car.

  Wil and Da were sitting on the porch after dinner one night, enjoying the music from across the street and the cool breeze off the river, when Wil felt his gut drop. Pimp-rolling up from Dauphine Street came Chicken. Wil got up to intercept him, lest Da overhear.

  “Hey, bra,” Chicken said. “Come help me sell some pies.”

  Wil glanced up at Da, who was looking down at them with no expression at all. Da knew Chicken.

  “No, I’m not doing that no more,” Wil told Chicken softly, hoping he’d vaporize before Da started asking questions. “I told you that.”

  “Bitch,” Chicken said loudly, and little as he was, he stepped inside Wil’s hands and gave him a hard shove. His eyes were shiny, his jaw tight. He’d been into his own cocaine.

  “What, you scared of me?” Chicken said, giving Wil another rough push. He pulled up his shirt and showed his tight tan belly. “I ain’t got nothing! I ain’t scared of you.”

  “Wil!” Da said, his voice rumbling down from the porch like thunder. “What is this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Son, don’t you give me that. I see something’s happening here.” Da was standing now, putting the eye thing on Wil, so there was nothing to do but offer up the most honest answer Wil could summon without pushing Da into taking action on his own with them hands.

  “This boy wants me to do something that I don’t want to do.”

  “Are you scared?” Da asked.

  “Yeah, I’m scared.”

  Chicken had heard enough. “Go back in your house, you old nigger!” he shouted at Da.

  Wil froze. He half expected Da to turn into a pillar of fire and come roaring down the front steps of the house to annihilate little Chicken on the spot. But Da didn’t move; he might not even have heard Chicken.

  “You heard me, you useless old nigger!” Chicken said again. “Get your ass in your house and leave me kick the ass of this punk-ass motherfucker my own self!”

  The guys in front of Schiro’s were watching now, the clarinets silent. Everybody on the street knew Da, knew you didn’t fuck with Wilbert Ra
wlins. Even the mockingbirds seemed to be holding their breath, the ships on the river frozen in place. Da stood with his arms folded, his chest and shoulders massive under his tight-fitting black sport shirt; the man was a slab of solid muscle from moving those hundred-pound sacks of coffee around the Dupree warehouse all day. Da didn’t move or change his blank expression.

  “What!” Chicken yelled up at Da, the cords in his neck standing out. The little guy was winding himself up to a frenzy in the deep shade of Da’s imposing silence. “What I tell you! Git!”

  “Wil,” Da finally rumbled. “What do I tell you about fighting?”

  “What?” Wil asked. Da’s calm had him thrown off balance.

  “What do I tell you about fighting?” Da asked again.

  “Don’t fight,” Wil said, numb with confusion.

  “That’s right,” Da said calmly. “You never have to fight. You can always walk away.”

  “Walk away!” Chicken shouted. “Walk your narrow nigger ass in the house and let me finish this punk-ass!”

  “Wil,” Da said, in that same flat, eerie calm. “You need to whip his ass.”

  Chicken and Wil both froze, and as they looked into each other’s eyes, they were, for a brief second, the childhood friends they used to be, allied against the parents. Had Da just told Wil to fight? Chicken recovered first, and smacked Wil in the chest. Wil looked up at Da, who hadn’t moved. Wil grabbed Chicken’s flailing arm and, having a good hundred pounds on him, spun him around like a doll. He started banging Chicken on the head and neck with his big open hand, and only now he started feeling himself get angry. Call my da a punk-ass nigger! Mouth off to my da! He had Chicken by the shirt with one hand, and his other arm was working like a piston on Chicken’s head. Get me mixed up with the police! Turn me into a thug! Chicken stopped fighting back; he had his hands up and was yelling, “Leggo!” like a ten-year-old. But Wil was just getting started. Chicken went down and Wil started kicking him with his big right leg, really hammering Chicken’s skinny little ribs. Chicken was scrabbling across the pavement like a crawfish, trying to get away. Wil grabbed him by the back of the shirt and threw him forward into a parked car. The bang of Chicken’s head against the fender reverberated up the street, and one of the guys in front of Schiro’s keened, “Oooo-ooo!” Wil looked up at Da, who hadn’t moved. Wil took Chicken by the shoulders and slammed his head into the car again. I’m a bandleader. I’m the best bandleader. I am Wilbert Rawlins Jr.