I nodded at the women I knew and then began my search, which took me to five dryers before I stumbled upon Little Eric’s football jerseys, jeans, and T-shirts in the sixth one.
Now I just had to find my sheets, towels, and washcloths.
I rounded the corner and was ready to inspect the second line of dryers when I spotted blue ducks and yellow daffodils lying in the middle of the floor in a wet heap.
Someone had tossed my shit out of the washing machine and onto the floor!
“Ten, nine, eight—” I counted.
Doing laundry on Saturday was like going to war.
I propped my hands on my hips and heard the music from Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in my ears.
“Seven, six, five—”
I snatched at a black Hefty bag that rested on top of one of the washing machines. It wasn’t mine, but in the laundry room, all was fair in washing and drying.
I slowly picked up my linens and noticed that one or more people had actually trampled across my sheets. How foul is that?
My rage flared.
“Four, three, two, one.”
By the time I got back to my apartment, I’d counted backwards from ten at least five times.
I have something for Little Eric’s sorry ass, I thought as I went to the clothesline that extended from the kitchen window to the bathroom window and hung the filthiest sheet, pillowcase, towel, and washcloth on the line.
Still not satisfied, still boiling with anger, I stormed back out of the apartment, determined to find my son and commit murder.
I marched up 90th Street and past Crystal’s building, across Central Park West Drive, and straight into the park.
Forgetting that I had my Saturday-morning cleaning clothes on, I charged ahead, oblivious to the heat and the swinging of my large breasts that were practically visible through the thin material of my T-shirt.
After about ten minutes, the sun beaming on my neck, I moved to the grassy, tree-lined edges along the concrete pathway.
The heat made my scalp feel as if a million fleas were attacking it, and I became even angrier.
Bill Cosby was right; children drive you crazy.
I gave some people evil looks and yelled, “And what?” when they stared too long. I knew I looked homeless.
I almost laughed in spite of my anger when I imagined what it was they must have been seeing.
“This is what teenagers turn you into!” I screamed and made a face at an Asian woman struggling to get out of my path.
After about twenty minutes, I was out of breath and dehydrated, and so I staggered into the children’s park and sat as close to the sprinkler as I could without actually stepping into it. Even though I really, really wanted to. I wiped at my sweat, thinking that it must be the hottest spring on record.
Nearby, a mother tended to her daughter’s bruised knee, lovingly placing a Band-Aid over the child’s scrape.
I smiled, reminiscing on those carefree, innocent days when my biggest worry with Little Eric was a bruised knee, runny nose, or fever. Those times seemed very far away now.
The woman sat back, sensed me staring, and turned toward me, and the smile she was wearing froze before cracking and falling away. She could not scoot her behind across the bench fast enough before snatching her daughter’s hand and declaring, “Come on, Chelsea. It’s time to go.”
Fuck you too, I thought as I watched them rush off.
Suddenly I felt beaten and was reminded just how hard my life was. Shit, I didn’t have a chance to grow up and here I was trying to raise a man.
If I had money, things would be different. I’d be living in a house in the suburbs somewhere and my son wouldn’t have to go to the building laundry because we’d have our own washer and dryer right inside the house!
I was doing the best I could, but it was times like this that I didn’t think my best was good enough.
I slowly raised myself off the bench and started toward home, and suddenly I was reminded that I had to have been doing a halfway decent job, because my baby ain’t ever been profiled on any news station’s breaking bulletin—knock on wood.
The sound of a bouncing basketball snatched my attention; suddenly reenergized, I turned around and followed the sound eagerly, like a hound dog sniffing out a fox.
I prayed for my son as I rounded the fence and headed toward the swarm of young black men. I prayed that he wasn’t there, because if he was, I could already picture the headline:
Mother Pummels Son to Death with Basketball in Fit of Rage over Abandoned Laundry
It wasn’t him. Just a whole bunch of young black males who could have been him and probably had mamas looking much like myself out hunting them down too.
Back at the apartment door, I heard the last few rings of the telephone, but whoever it was would have to call back, because I couldn’t get the key in the lock good.
Walking back into the apartment was like entering a sauna. The afternoon sun radiated through the windows, and I could swear I saw smoke rising off the coffee table.
The linens I’d hung on the line were already dry, and I retrieved them and started toward Eric’s room.
“I got something for his trifling ass,” I muttered fitted the filthy sheet onto Eric’s bed. “Since he couldn’t see fit to do what I wanted”—I shoved his pillow into the dirty case—“then he can sleep on this filth!” I laughed wickedly. “Let’s see how he likes this!”
I smelled to high heaven, and so went into my room and stripped out of my clothes. On the way to the bathroom, I caught sight of my body in my bureau mirror. “Ugh!” I sounded as I took a long gander at my flabby stomach and cellulite-packed thighs. I moaned and quickly streaked to the bathroom to further disgust myself by stepping on the scale.
The needle shook at two hundred and thirty pounds.
“Why, why, why!” I cried and pinched at the tire around my waist. “Go away!” I screamed. “Abracadabra, be gone!” I closed my eyes and demanded. But when I opened them again, the tire was still there.
“Shit,” I muttered, “it never works.”
Fourteen
I stood staring out the window and thought that I saw a woman who looked suspiciously like Geneva dashing into the park, but I couldn’t be sure. But I was more than positive that Geneva wouldn’t leave the house looking like that.
I busied myself with things around the apartment, keeping a close eye on the park’s entrance, and when an hour had passed, I called Geneva’s number. After I’d let it ring for some time, I decided to go into the park in search of Little Eric myself. I gathered my keys and cell phone and headed out the door.
I jogged down to the park and headed toward the basketball court. Halfway there, I saw a face that looked a bit familiar. A young golden-looking boy emerged from a cluster of trembling bushes.
Trembling?
His eyes were bloodshot and he had a stupid-looking grin on his face.
“Hey, Miss Crystal,” he said and gave me a wave before walking a crooked line past me. My feet slowed to a stop and I stared at his back before a name attached itself to his face and I lifted a slow hand and said, “Hey, Andrew.”
The heavy scent of marijuana trailed behind him and hit me square in the face. I looked at the bushes and then at the cop on horseback, who was smiling down at me.
Somehow I knew Eric was behind those bushes, so I smiled sweetly and bent down to adjust the laces of my sneakers, which were perfectly tied and knotted. Once the officer was far enough away, I gingerly rounded the bushes.
It was dark there beneath that cluster of green, but I had no problem making out the red T-shirt Eric had on, or the bared breasts of the young woman his hands were happily kneading.
“Touch my dick,” I heard my sixteen-year-old godson demand, and was stunned stupid by the request. My lips froze up and my tongue was left wagging behind my teeth.
“Okay, Daddy, like this?” the heffa crooned.
Daddy?
I cou
ldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I leaped under the bushes like some type of ninja teen sex averter. “You nasty little ho!” I screeched, grabbing Eric’s hand and tugging him toward me.
“What the—” Eric started and snatched his hand away from me before he turned his head, looked me full in the face, and said unbelievingly, “Auntie Crystal?”
His face immediately swam with a mixture of surprise and embarrassment as he hurriedly tried to shove his stiff penis back down into his basketball shorts.
“Auntie who?” the girl hooted like an owl as she casually pulled the bright pink cami top down over her taut breasts.
“Crystal. Auntie Crystal,” I said, using every bit of my director’s voice. “You, young lady, should be ashamed of yourself.”
The girl just smirked. I didn’t faze her one bit.
“I—” Eric started, and I snapped, “Shut up and let’s go.”
The girl didn’t move; she just sat there throwing me dirty looks.
“Ain’t you got somebody else to do?” I used my street voice now and saw from the change in her expression that I was finally speaking her language.
The little ho swung her eyes between Eric and me, and then she pursed her lips and said, “You got my number. You call me when you ready for some of this.” And with that she tapped her crotch.
My mouth fell right open.
“What, what-what . . .” I sounded like an idiot, I know, but that’s all I could say.
This new generation was bold and brash and didn’t have a problem expressing their sexuality. Unlike mine—we took the safe route and got mind-fucked by reading the dirty parts in Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins novels over and over again, putting ourselves in the vixens’ place and fantasizing that we were the ones being seduced.
Today, these kids didn’t need dirty novels: they had cable television, condom drives at school, and free rein of their residences, because the nine-to-five working hours were a thing of the past. And realistically, if you included travel time, a parent could be out of the home eleven to twelve hours a day.
That’s a lot of time for a teenager with raging hormones and nothing constructive to do.
This was the case with my godson.
“What you want with that?” I asked, pointing at the girl’s retreating back, even though I knew full well what the answer was.
Eric just shrugged his shoulders and kicked at the dirt.
“I hope you’re protecting yourself. You know, there are a lot worse things out here than getting a girl pregnant.”
Eric stared at the ground.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he mumbled.
“Do you know that your mother is somewhere out here looking for you?” I said sternly and folded my hands across my chest. “You were supposed to be in the courtyard, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, still not making eye contact.
“Well, c’mon.” I finally brought my tirade to an end and trudged off. “No telling what she’s going to do when she gets ahold of you.”
Eric strolled behind me but kept quiet.
“It’s so easy just to do what your mother asks of you,” I said over my shoulder. “Why do you give her such a hard time?” I said, coming to halt and turning on him.
Once again, Eric just shrugged and stared at the ground.
I eyed him for a moment and then moved toward him, patting him on the back. “Okay, okay,” I cooed. “I know being a teenager is hard. I was one too once upon a time, if you can believe that.” I laughed as we moved toward the park entrance.
Once we were upstairs, I wasted no time calling Geneva.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, Geneva, just wanted you to know that Little Eric is here with me,” I said as I swung the door to the freezer open and peered inside.
“Really,” Geneva said with an air of calmness that was chilling. “Um, yeah.”
“Well, you better keep him there, because if he comes here, I’m going to have to kill him.”
Click.
I just stood staring at the phone. My heart was beating hard inside my chest, and something told me that at that very moment, Geneva might actually act on her threat.
I slowly placed the phone back onto its cradle and then turned and pulled a box of frozen turkey burgers from the freezer.
“What did she say?” Eric asked. His eyes told me that he feared the worst.
“Oh, she said good—she was worried,” I lied.
“Oh.” He looked meekly down at the floor. He knew his mother better than I did, so he knew that that wasn’t what she’d said at all.
Two turkey burgers later, Eric didn’t look close to full.
“Do you want me to make you another one?” I asked. I was amazed at how much his stomach was able to hold.
Eric’s mouth was full, so he just nodded his head yes.
So I plugged the cord of the George Foreman grill back into the wall socket and went to the freezer to pull out another burger.
He was lucky I even had turkey burgers. The only reason they were in the house was because Kendrick liked them.
The thought of him paralyzed me for a moment, and I just stood there staring at the ice trays.
“Auntie, you okay?” Eric’s voice floated from behind.
“Yeah, yeah, just lost in thought.” I laughed and pulled out the box of burgers.
After burger number three, Eric finally seemed to be full and pulled himself up from the table and strolled into the living room, leaving me staring at his empty plate and half-empty glass of soda. “S’cuse me, sir,” I yelled from the kitchen.
“Yeah?” His head peeked back around the doorway of the kitchen.
“You forgetting something?” I said and placed my hands on my hips.
“What?”
“You ain’t got no maids around here,” I said and nodded at the table.
“Oh.”
He blushed and came back in to retrieve his used wares. I playfully popped him upside his head as he passed.
Back in the living room, Eric snatched the remote control from the coffee table, flopped down hard onto the couch, and swung his leg over the arm.
My look said it all, and Eric cleared his throat and promptly removed his leg.
His eyes wandered around the room. “You got a phat crib, Auntie.”
“What?” I am always dumbfounded by the street lingo these kids speak today.
He laughed. “That means you got a nice place.”
“It’s ‘you have’ a nice place, not ‘you got,’ ” I corrected him. “What are they teaching you in school?”
Eric ignored the question. “I wish we could live in a place like this.” He sighed, standing up and perusing his surroundings. His face turned a little melancholy and then something began to brew beneath that.
“You know, we ain’t got nothing. She got that little piece of job, that you got for her—”
“She?” I said, flabbergasted at the loose term he was using for the woman who had brought him into the world.
“. . . answering phones for a living—huh, that’s only one step up from McDonald’s as far as I’m concerned . . .”
My eyes were bulging. Where is all of this coming from? I thought.
“. . . she can’t even get a decent-ass apartment for us. Here we are, living in the PJs, roaches walking around like they pay rent, fridge about to die, water always cold, elevators always broken—I gotta be looking over my shoulder every time I go in and out so’s I don’t get jumped!”
He slammed his fist into his open palm and I jumped at the loud smacking sound it made.
“All she say is, one day we gonna move. One day? I say what day, because I been hearing that line my entire life!”
I found my voice then and tried to defend my friend who’d given up everything so that her son could have the best life she knew how to give him. “Now wait a minute, Eric. You know your mother—”
“She is so whack, I swear! We were th
e only people in our building that ain’t have no CD player! She was still spinning albums on a turntable and shit.”
“All right now, watch your—”
“Until you gave her that CD player for Christmas. You wasted your money. That thing is collecting dust because she says that CDs are too expensive. But I tell you what, she got money for her damn beer and cigarettes—she got plenty of money for that!”
“Eric, I think you need to just calm down and—”
“I bet you don’t eat chicken five days out of the week. But you know who does? We do!”
Eric laughed, threw his head back, and hollered. I was convinced the boy was losing it.
“Eric, you don’t understand how diff—”
“Chicken and corned beef hash. You know, there’s probably a hundred different ways to make corned beef hash, but do you know how many ways she knows how to make it?”
Eric looked at me as if he actually expected me to guess the answer to his ridiculous question. I opened my mouth and he cut me off, like I knew he would.
“Two! She knows two recipes for corned beef hash!” Eric yelled, holding two long fingers up before me.
“ ‘I’m saving money for our future,’ that’s another line she likes to run. Well, damn, she’s been saving forever. I say can we dip into the savings, Ma, so that I can finally get a pair of sneakers that wasn’t played out the year before!”
“It’s not about the clothes—it’s about the person—”
“My mother ain’t shit, and my daddy worse than that!”
I don’t remember getting up, but all of a sudden I was in his face and my hand was pulling back from his cheek and Eric was standing there staring at me in utter amazement.
The fury that churned in his face exploded, and he lifted a balled fist into the air and aimed it at my mouth.
I braced myself for the blow by cringing and squeezing my eyes shut, but thankfully his fist ended up against the wall.
My eyes were still closed when I heard him rush out the front door.
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