The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  * * *

  —

  Mama swerve the station wagon onto the highway ramp. Your mower rattle in back. You want to bring it in the apartment for safekeeping because people be stealing anything that ain’t hidden from sight, but Mama say it’s too rusty. It’s Papa mower, but he let you use it. Mama say you too young to be cutting grass, but do you think she know what you too young for? No.

  “Say you proud of me,” Mama say.

  “You proud of me,” you say.

  Mama cover her mouth and laugh that chirpy laugh she got. Makes you laugh, too, even though you wasn’t trying to. This ain’t the first time she talk about cleaning up, ain’t the first mention of a paying gig. Last time, she lasted a week at the gas station before they fired her for drinking up the beer.

  “You going to get a job that pays a lot?” You chew your grape taffy, and like how it sticks to the roof of your mouth. You give Mama one. She like it, too.

  “It ain’t so much about the money.” Mama squint in the rearview mirror. “If you always fretting about money, that make you ugly inside.”

  Your heart beat in your cheek. What Mama know about anything anyway? It ain’t like you trying to buy Adidas tennis shoes. You doing what Papa say do. You making money like you supposed to. Doing what men do.

  “Where we going?” you say.

  “In town,” she say. “I’ll get me a job working at that sundry shop, the one by the Superdome. They sell your candy, too.”

  “The news people say things closing up in town.”

  “A little faith, son.”

  Poydras Street run down the middle of town. Mama and you ride in the shadow of the skyscrapers. Mama park by a brown-and-black building that look like a tall man in a suit.

  “We can’t park here,” you say.

  “Say who?”

  You point at the NO STOPPING sign.

  “Aw, boy, they ain’t going to mess with this car none.”

  Mama and you walk to the sundry shop a couple of blocks from where the car is parked. A bunch of cardboard boxes heaped on the sidewalk. Orange CLOSING signs all over the windows.

  You go in your pocket for more taffy, but you out. You start to tell Mama you told her so about the store, but you don’t like how she look. Most of the time, she look like she fixing to burst out laughing, even when nothing funny going on—even when she mad—but that look gone now.

  “I guess we too late for this one,” she say. She turn around and watch you digging in one of the cardboard boxes. They full of brand-new mugs that say World’s Fair. “Quit that.”

  You look up at her.

  “Boy, don’t you cut your eyes at me,” Mama say. “We don’t go through nobody trash.”

  “But this is all free stuff.” You get a mug and rub it like a genie lamp. “We could sell these to people and make some money.”

  “Put that down.” Mama clench your wrist. The mug crack on the curb. “We ain’t that hard up.”

  You shake her off and say “Lookit.” There’s a place across the street that got windows like mirrors. Mama and you look little in the reflection. You been there before—they give out jobs—but they didn’t help Mama out none. She bite her lip. You know we have to try them again, that that’s the only real option.

  The waiting room full of white folk, everybody in suit-and-tie, pantsuits and dresses. Mama glance down at her jean vest and pull the edges together to cover up her glittery blouse.

  “Did you bring a book for you to read?” she ask.

  “No,” you say. You used to read all the time. Mama call you her “college boy” or “little professor” because you read Ms. Zora Neale Hurston and Mr. Ernest Gaines, but you stop because she don’t deserve to congratulate you, the way she mess everything up.

  She fill out paper on a clipboard and leave it on the counter. When Mama turn away, the lady behind the counter wrinkle her face like she got palsy. After we wait a while, the lady in the back, who keeps tracks of the jobs and who keeps calling Mama “babe,” say she didn’t think Mama would be back so soon, babe, and that all the positions are filled for the day, babe.

  “There must be something out there,” Mama say.

  “Nope,” the lady say, “we don’t have nothing. Why don’t you come back in a month or so, babe?”

  “You think y’all have more jobs in a month?” Mama ask.

  “I don’t think nothing.”

  Mama thank the lady and take you by the hand. You know something ain’t right because Mama never pull you around by the hand since you ain’t a baby no more. She stop at the door and stare back at the lady like she want to say something, but she don’t.

  Mama and you try a few other spots. You go into a jewelry shop with cases of sparkly rings and watches, but they don’t need nobody. By noontime, your stomach growl so loud you can both hear it. Mama look like she fall over if you push her with your pinky finger.

  You wish Mama and you could go to Auntie Rosamond’s, Mama’s great-aunt, for some red beans. She always had good beans and rice, but now she dead. Mama get sad whenever you bring Auntie Rosamond up, so you don’t anymore. She was into hoodoo and used to say something bad was coming. Guess she was right.

  “How about we go to McDonald’s?” you say.

  “That stuff ain’t hardly no good.”

  “We got to eat something.”

  “I know, son.”

  You back on Poydras, walking toward the river. A big ship, big as a skyscraper knocked flat, float by, hauling metal crates. Papa say those crates got anything you can think of inside: bikes, footballs, Atari games. You wonder if the crates got anything you want.

  “I thought we parked about right here?” Mama ask.

  “We did.” You nod up the street. A white tow truck pulling the station wagon away. It look like an old man with a sack of potatoes on his shoulder. Mama and you lock eyes, and the way she look make your stomach drop. You know she can’t afford to get it out from the pound, you know the car is long gone, and probably the cash money she offered earlier, too. You know that the ride downtown was the last ride in that car and you know you don’t get to say bye to it.

  “Don’t worry about it,” you say. “Sometimes these things happen for a reason.”

  “You starting to sound like me,” she say. “It’s not the car I’m worried about, though.” She shake her head.

  “My mower!” you suddenly realize. You run up the street, but that tow truck don’t slow none. You turn and look at Mama. She standing with one hand on her chest.

  “How we going to get it back?” you say.

  “I wish I knew,” she say, walking over to you. Mama try to put her arm around your shoulder, but you spin away before she wrap you tight.

  “How I’m going to cut people grass?” you ask.

  “We’ll get it back.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll work it out.”

  “No, you won’t,” you say, moving out of her embrace. You kick over a garbage can and a red mess spill out. Up and down the street, garbage cans everywhere. And you thinking they all filled with red messes.

  “You never work anything out,” you say. You cover your face with your fists.

  “It’s alright.”

  “No, it ain’t,” you yell. “Nothing’s ever alright. We broke, and now I can’t even make money.”

  “That ain’t hardly for you to worry about, son.”

  “One of us got to. You ran off the man who used to handle that kind of worrying.”

  Mama pull back like she surprised. You think most other mamas would slap you a good one for being too frisky, but your mama never been that type of mama. She root around in her purse, but don’t take anything out. She walk toward the French Quarter like she on a hunt. You follow.

  Nobody inside Patty Chan’s Great Wall Restau
rant but the people that work there. You don’t care because your stomach sounding like a bad dog. A paper dragon droop from the ceiling. A big water tank right inside the front door. The tank full of big, dark crawfish. They scramble over each other like they playing tackle football. All you smell is salt.

  “How much money you have?” Mama say. You feel bad about what you said to her, so you give her your money clip with no back talk. She check her purse and say you can split yaka mein and a couple egg rolls.

  A Chinese man curse at the water tank. The tank leaking. Water dribbling into a plastic bucket. No food on the buffet, just empty metal pans.

  “I guess we can sit anywhere we want,” Mama say. An old lady roll silverware into a cloth napkin. Mama pick a table by her. The menus already on the table, trapped under glass.

  “We should get one.” Mama nod at the tank.

  “Those big crawfish-looking things. You kidding?”

  “Those are lobsters,” she say, “and I’m so hungry I could eat anything bout now, but I don’t want anything. I want me something nice.”

  “Well, I don’t want nobody’s sea monster.”

  “I bet you’ll like it. They a delicacy, cost a lot.”

  “You had one?” She shake her head. You wish she would lie. You wish she would say that she had lobster one time, and it changed her life like a hoodoo spell.

  The old lady slide from her seat with a dip like she about to dance. Her red shirt ain’t got no collar. Her hair curl like smoke.

  “We’d like some yaka mein,” Mama say.

  “No, ma’am,” the old lady say. “No yaka mein.”

  “Egg rolls?”

  The old lady frown, and then she smile. “We have a limited menu. This is our last day.”

  “It seems like such a nice place to be closing,” Mama say.

  “It was.” The old lady look around. All you see is cracked paint and these dusty fake flowers on the table that make you want to ah-choo.

  “I tell myself thirty-five years, time for something else,” the old lady say. “Me and my husband are going to Alaska. I’ve never seen snow.”

  The man from the tank walk over and wipe his glasses on his T-shirt. “Did they order?” the man say.

  “We was trying,” you say, “but you ain’t got no food.”

  “Don’t be rude, Gene,” Mama say.

  “I like you,” the woman say to me.

  “I like me, too,” you say.

  “Pick what you want,” the woman say, “and I’ll give it to you free. I’m Patty. He’s John.”

  You grinning like crazy. Mama wink at you. Papa always say you never ever turn down free stuff because most of the time life give you less than you have coming to you. Catch what you can.

  “I want me a lobster,” you say.

  John glance back at the water tank. The lobsters just sitting there like they on break.

  “Pick one,” John say.

  You go to the tank, all four of you. Mama put her hand on the glass. One of the lobsters jump at her. She yell and jump back.

  “You better do it,” she say.

  Most of the lobsters hanging out in one corner, but one is all by himself on the side that’s leaking. He bigger than the others. Maybe they’re a family and he’s the man-of-the-house lobster.

  “That one,” you say.

  “Not that one,” John say. “He no good.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Mama say.

  “He look okay to me,” you say.

  “John is right.” Patty lean forward and tap the glass. “He injured his thorax.”

  The lobster creep backward. It got a hole in its neck.

  “Claw fight,” John say, “but the band on his claw came loose, so he won.” You say you want that one.

  John scoop the lobster out with his bare hand. Patty and John go into the back and a few minutes later, the lobster come out on a long platter with a cup full of melted butter and some noodles. The lobster is split right down the center so you can see all the pink-white meat. You wonder if this what a brain look like.

  But Mama don’t move, she looking off staring at nothing. You know she sad, probably thinking about what you said about Papa. Maybe she missing him. She ain’t eating so you don’t eat, until, after a while she say, “You not going to try any of that lobster?” she say. “They cooked it special for you and everything.”

  “I changed my mind,” you say. “I don’t want none.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t a said you made Papa go away.”

  Mama take your hand. “It ain’t your fault he gone, and it ain’t mine neither. We going to move on. Just you and me and not think about him.”

  “He ain’t coming back?”

  “I don’t know, but that ain’t for us to worry about, you hear? That’s on him.” Mama reach in her purse, pull out her flask but don’t drink. You missed one. The old lady in the corner looking at Mama.

  “But we family,” you say. “Family can’t forget family.”

  “Sometimes you got to roll with what you got,” Mama say. “Things will get better. You watch.”

  You guess her having a flask mean the deal is off, that you won’t be getting your five bucks a bottle. Are you looking surprised? No. You seeing what you thought you would see.

  “I don’t think so,” you say. You poke the lobster, and it stare back at you. You bet it taste like one of Mama’s nasty-ass, sour sardines.

  Mama cut a piece of lobster tail. She dip it in butter and pull it up to her mouth. But she don’t bite. She slide her plate over to you. Then she get up with her purse full of booze.

  “Where you going?” you ask.

  Bathroom, she say. She tell you to wait. Just wait for her.

  Steam float off that lobster back. You grab Mama fork. You bring the bite up to your nose. It ain’t like what you thought. It smell like honey.

  Zimmermann

  Some of the old houses too far gone. You only get by in this hustle by knowing when to work it and when to tear it down to studs. Got to have a good crew, too. That Zimmermann showed up one wet morning to the double I was working. I ain’t trust him. He was a scruffy little cat and smelled of whiskey. I left to check another job. But when I came back, he had trimmed out the whole living room. The crown molding so clean, it looked like a dollhouse.

  Still, Zimmermann came on the job wasted sometimes, and I made him sleep it off in his rusty pickup. On paydays, he went right to the closest liquor store as soon as I cashed him out.

  One day, he showed up straight, his hair combed and his eyes clear.

  “My girl’s back,” he said.

  There was always a girl.

  We was tightening up a ranch house in Lakeview when she rolled up in a hatchback. That chick, Stace—she was okay for a skinny, white girl. Still, I ain’t like having her around. A girl on a job bad news. Anyway, I can’t fault nobody for their love relations. She had Zimmermann’s heart in a box. I never saw him drunk again.

  Stace pulled up one morning in Zimmermann’s pickup. The doc told her that he’d seen it a thousand times: a drinker goes clean and his body can’t modulate without the stuff. The dry rot finally catch up. I asked Stace why she’d come to town for that Zimmermann anyway.

  Stace flipped her hair back and stared at the house behind me.

  “I couldn’t stand the thought of him killing himself slowly.”

  Glamour Work

  When I was on juvie probation, the judge made me work with a caterer named Johnson. Johnson wore a yellow flower in his suit pocket. I ain’t like peeling potatoes and hauling boxes of tomato sauce. But, real talk, it beat being locked up.

  Johnson was busy. We got sent to all kinds of functions. I did the same thing at all of them: washed out empty bowls, took out the garbage. Glamour w
ork.

  The biggest event of the year was for the mayor during Mardi Gras. All the politicians and money people would be there. I usually worked in back, but that night Johnson hooked me up with a tux.

  “I want you to go out there, Gene,” he said with a smirk. “Learn something.”

  I’d never seen anything like Gallier Hall. A thousand people in their best. The men as sharp as broken glass; the women wore dresses that tossed light all over the room.

  I was refilling a punch bowl when a white security man grabbed my shoulder and brought me to an office with a bunch of little TVs. They said I’d stolen some lady’s purse. The video showed me close to the scene, but not actually taking nothing. When he didn’t find anything on me in the kitchen, they let me go. Johnson said he had to fire me; he caught too much flak for having troublemakers around. He looked sad. I think he wanted to keep me.

  The next morning, I went to chill with my boys. Ain’t none of them around no more. They asked me if I was still working with that cook and I told them nah. I made up a story about how he’d fired me for joyriding in his delivery van, and they had a good laugh.

  I wish I could have told my boys the truth about everything I’d seen at that gala, all those people just living, but I knew they wouldn’t get it.

  Before I Let Go

  The paper’s edge slits Gailya’s thumb. It was six months ago when the first of the white envelopes appeared. In time, they showed up more often, multiplying as if carried by the magic owls in her daughter’s favorite childhood book. Now, they flutter through the door’s rusty mail slot every day, just after dark, landing like paper airplanes full of flat, angry passengers.

  Each envelope hides the same correspondence: a folded sheet of ruled yellow paper printed with text made to look like handwriting. The message is always a variation of I’m new to the neighborhood. Your house is great. I will buy it, I will pay your burden, and you won’t be sorry. Followed by a phone number. Followed by a printed signature made to look like handwriting. Followed by a laughing emoji. The address says the sender is only a few blocks away, but Gailya knows no one lives there. Short-term renters use the house, visitors like the tourist couple thumping the headboard on the other side of her double shotgun house at this very moment. Their rental SUV squats catty-corner by the lot where John Jackets lived until last year when his ten-year home repair ended with him sliding off the roof to the pavement, twenty feet below. Gailya watched it happen, saw the aftermath. The way he lay crumpled on the pavement like a puppet after the puppeteer goes to smoke a cigarette. John Jackets eyes bugged from the impact. Strings of blood strewn across the concrete. The letters are probably sent by a white man in Connecticut. Or a computer in Connecticut. Gailya sucks the iron flavor of her thumb.