Hold Me in Contempt

by Wendy Williams

  “What?” I looked into the darkness of the cellar, where seven chipped concrete steps that I’d fallen down too many times as a child led to a storm door that had a trick lock only Kent, our parents, and I knew how to open. “She’s been down there?”

  My father and Kent looked toward the darkness.

  I didn’t wait for another word. I descended as if I didn’t know the harm that could come with one misstep. Something like an anvil was sitting on top of my heart. And although both Kent and Daddy said my mother wasn’t in that basement, there was no stopping my brain from constructing the image of her sitting in the middle of the closet of our stored memories, holding her hands out to me, smiling, asking me all about my bad day.

  I undid the lock with three shakes and a turn to the left, and a turn to the right, then I gave the door a kick. I could feel Kent right behind me just as he’d always been when we were younger in these situations involving our mother. Quickly, we were ten again. I looked at him when I put my hand on the light switch.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s fine.”

  The light illuminated a space that hadn’t changed ever. Old cribs and decorations. Cash registers and boxes of hangers from the store my grandparents once owned on St. Nicholas. A box of Kent’s old basketball trophies. The dusty Barbie Dreamhouse that had made its way from my bedroom floor to the backyard to the basement. Little islands of stories from everyone’s past.

  “It’s in the corner over there by that old mannequin from your granpap’s store,” my father said, coming into the basement behind Kent. “My proof.”

  I looked over to the withering white woman with the Kewpie-doll blue eyes and a permanent smile. There was an unraveled blanket and scraps of paper on the floor at her arched feet.

  “Been unusually cold these last few weeks,” my father said as I went over to the mess of out-of-place things. “I think she been down here resting.”

  I bent down and picked up the blanket. It was a ripple pattern crocheted in an ugly purple and black I always complained about. The anvil sank down.

  “That’s your old blanket,” Kent said.

  I nodded.

  “The one from your bed.”

  “It’s been down here in a box since you left for college. Thing got mildew and whatever else on it,” my father said. “Think I’ll wash it. Put it back down here with some canned food. Leave it by the steps where I put her old red sweatshirt she took from down here last spring.”

  “The one Mika saw her in on Jamaica Ave.,” I reminded him, knowing he liked it when he could confirm that he’d had some kind of contact with my mother.

  He went on, pretending he was unaffected. “Maybe I could put a refrigerator down here for her. Not one of those big ones. A little one,” he said.

  “That’s a great idea. Because then you could put a note on it telling her to knock on the front door?” Kent joked in a way that I’m sure our father found inappropriate, but it was what any other family who hadn’t been through what we’d been through together would ask. Why wouldn’t my mother just knock on the front door and come inside for a warm bed and a hot meal?

  “She don’t want us to see her. You know that, boy,” my father said. “Not the way she is. Not until she’s ready.”

  I looked down at what I’d thought were scraps of paper but that I could now see were little cut out squares from pictures. I handed the smelly blanket to my father.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  Kent rushed over to help me pick up the squares.

  One by one, I looked at the faces on the squares. Me. Me. Me. All of the faces in the little squares were of me. Me at seven with pigtails. Me at three still holding a bottle. Me at six crying because I didn’t want to go to church on Easter Sunday.

  “Where’d these come from?” I asked. “How’d they get down here?”

  My father walked over and looked at the pictures in my hand. “I thought you’d remember,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your ma was supposed to throw those out. You don’t remember?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “You took those pictures out of her photo album and cut them up. Said you had some project for school and needed pictures of yourself from every age,” my father said, laughing. “Think it was right before you went to high school.” His voice dropped. “Right before we left. You really don’t remember?”

  I shook my head no, and tears rolling down my cheeks sprinkled my face in the pictures.

  “Your ma called up to that school to see what the project was supposed to be about, and they told her you was supposed to have pictures of both you and your ma—some Mother’s Day art show. And y’all had a big fight about these pictures. She said she didn’t have copies, no film. Nothing. No way of replacing them. You got all mad and tried to stomp off with the little cutouts of your face. Said they was pictures of you and you could do what you wanted with them. Your ma ain’t like that. She jumped right on you. I guess she was about to give you some licks. But you about fought her back. Pushed her off of you and you called her a—” He paused. “Said you was embarrassed she was your mother. It was the first time you said it to her face, and it really hurt her. I know it. Next day y’all wasn’t speaking. You’d dropped out of the art show and your ma was set on throwing those little squares of your face away to teach you a lesson. Guess she kept them.” My father took the square of me crying before Easter Mass and laughed. “I remember this day. Lord, you showed your behind so bad, saying you didn’t want to go to church. I made you put on this here dress, and we was about to go out the door. Then your ma stopped and said maybe we shouldn’t go if you didn’t want to go. And we didn’t.”

  “We didn’t?” I looked at him. “What do you mean? I remember that. We went to church that day. It was Easter. I had on that dress.” I pointed at the picture.

  “No. It was Easter and your ma asked you what you wanted to do since you didn’t want to go to church,” my father said. “Ice cream. You wanted to go to get some ice cream and sit in Riverside Park. And that’s what we did. Pretty day. We ain’t take no pictures of that though. You remember that, Kent?”

  Kent nodded and handed me the pictures he’d collected.

  Though there were only ten or twelve squares, the images in my hands felt like hundreds of memories. And I wondered what my mother thought when she saw them. Why she’d looked at them and if she ever thought of what I looked like now. If she cared. My heart started crumbling under the weight of the anvil, and I reached out for Kent to catch me, to keep me from falling to pieces with it.

  “It’s okay, Kiki Mimi,” he said when I fell into his arms. “It’s going to be okay. You know that. Right?”

  I sucked in my tears and laid my head on my baby brother’s shoulder. I agreed that everything would soon be all right, but none of us really knew that it would be and none of us really knew what “right” meant. The idea was just comfort. Just a word that signified an end coming someday.

  In the house, my father explained that he was removing the storm doors because he thought they were probably too heavy for my mother to hold up when she was coming in and out of the basement and he didn’t want one to fall on her and knock her down the stairs. He said it so passively, like he was simply making sure to shovel a sidewalk after a snowstorm to ensure his wife didn’t fall on her way into the house with groceries or laundry and not to create shelter for a drug-addicted wife he’d maybe seen a handful of times in fifteen years.

  Sometimes I wanted to just scream in his ear that she was gone and never coming back to him, not the way she was, but it wouldn’t be any use for a man like him. Loving my mother was all he knew. They got together at a time when men married the first girl they loved, made a home for her, gave her babies, came home every night—no matter what they did in the street—and prayed to die first to leave everything he had—even in death—to her. I knew my father felt he’d failed at most of that. And for men like him, even ones who got fucked
up using drugs, it made him feel like less of a man. His only chance at redemption was that she was still out there. It would break his heart more to give up on the idea that she’d come back to him.

  Daddy picked up his fifth in the brown paper bag and kissed me on the cheek good night.

  “Work in the morning,” he said, heading to the staircase.

  “Good night, Daddy,” Kent and I said.

  “You know, Kiki,” my father said, turning to look at me from the third step, and it was rare because he never said a thing else to us after he’d said good night and mentioned that there was “work in the morning” and also because I’d maybe heard him call me Kiki three times in my life, “I’ve always been sorry you had to grow up without your ma. You done a good job making yourself what you are, but I just know . . .  ​I know you always been missing and needing her. I’m sorry to you for that.”

  Daddy finished his thoughts and started climbing the steps again. Kent and I didn’t say anything. He almost never opened up to us like that, and when he did we both knew not to say too much afterward. A thank-you would just embarrass him. He needed the moment to come and go.

  “Thought you were going out,” I said to Kent when we heard Daddy’s bedroom door close.

  Kent had gone into the kitchen and come out with two Heinekens.

  “Why you say that?” he asked.

  “Because you always do . . .  ​you know, when something happens with Mommy.”

  “Can’t. Got too much on my mind.” Kent sat down at the table and placed both beers in front of himself.

  “Oh, no beer for me?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you need any beer,” he said. “I’ve been smelling liquor on you since we were in the backyard. Where were you when I called you?”

  “Some bar in Brooklyn,” I confessed. “A place Tamika and her girls took me to.”

  “You know you can’t be fucking with those hood rats in BK, right? Where’d you go?” He clipped the top off one of the Heinekens.

  “Damaged Goods.”

  “DG? The fuck you doing in there?” Kent looked at me strangely.

  “It’s a cool spot.”

  “Come on, Kim. You know better. I don’t even fuck with Brooklyn niggas, and I know about that spot. What the fuck were y’all there for?”

  “Five-dollar apple martinis and fried shrimp. And it wasn’t so bad. I went there today to relax a little bit. Take my mind off of some stuff happening at work,” I explained, and there was no way I was going to tell Kent about Paul sending me home. We’d be sitting up debating it for the rest of the night.

  “Stay outta there,” Kent said after taking a long, mannish gulp of his beer. “Ain’t shit for you in there.”

  “Jesus, Kent. You make it sound like I’m still sixteen and you can forbid me from dating that guy on the football team again.”

  “Nigga was a thug.”

  “He’s a congressman now,” I said.

  “Exactly. And he’s still a thug.” Kent finished his beer and moved on to the next.

  “A married thug. With two kids,” I quipped, laughing. “And I’m still freaking single. Listening to you.”

  “So, you don’t need that nigga. You don’t need no niggas. Just one nigga . . .  ​your bro. And I need you.”

  “Here we go again,” I said. “You can stop your speech right now, because I’m not trying to meet your Brazilian girlfriend, and I damn sure am not helping you bring her into the country. So let it go.”

  “I already have,” Kent replied unexpectedly.

  “Like days ago you were madly in love. Lydia was everything. What happened?”

  “Man, fucking Keisha and shit.” Kent sat back heatedly like he was back in high school and arguing with Keisha about smoking his weed.

  I had to stop myself from laughing. I could tell by the quick anger in his eyes and his furrowed brow that he knew about the butch-lover gossip.

  “I thought you two were done. Why do you care about Keisha?”

  “Man, she out in them streets, Sis. Fucking up,” he said. “I ain’t want to say nothing, but I’ll tell you, I think she playing for the other team. Got turned out and shit.”

  “No,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Not Keisha.”

  “Yeah, man. Shit’s like a virus right about now. Mad bitches fucking bitches. Fuck niggas. Nobody want a nigga no more. Just get a nigga bitch.”

  “Right,” I said, trying to make sense of Kent’s puzzle of logic. I decided to point something out that was pretty clear, something most women had been wanting to ask men for a minute: “Why do you think that’s happening?”

  “Motherfucking gay indoctrination. Shit on television. Obama. Everywhere.”

  I let out my laugh then. I had to. “So what about before all of that? Why were women gay then?”

  “Maybe they was bored. I don’t know. And we ain’t talking about all women. We talking about Keisha. My baby mama. Your niece’s mother.” He looked at me, and I promise a little tear was floating on the rim of his eye.

  I pulled my laughter back in by biting the tip of my tongue. “Deep and contemplative Kent” was even more comical than “in-love Kent.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Kent went on. “It’s me. That’s why she riding plastic dicks. I fucked her up. Ain’t never treat her right. Go on and say it.” Kent looked at me.

  “Okay. Yeah. You aren’t the best choice of mate,” I said with all of the attitude I could just for Keisha.

  “I know! I know! I ain’t shit. I need to get my shit together. I done fucked too many hoes on Keisha. And I lied about Brazil. I did fuck mad hoes in Brazil.”

  “Not a surprise.”

  “That’s why I have to call this thing off with Lydia. Got to let her know I can’t marry her,” Kent said soberly. “I love Keisha and I want to get myself right for her.”

  I couldn’t hold my laugh in anymore again. “Make-a-change Kent” was more funny than any other version. Like that time he decided to join me at Morgan State and tried to move into the dorm. Within a week he was selling weed out of his dorm room window and fucking half the senior class—that was his freshman year.

  “What? Come on! Don’t laugh at me,” Kent said. “I’m being serious.”

  “Serious about what?” I asked. “I’ve heard this before. You get all upset about something Keisha did to get back at you for something you did, which usually involves a girl, and you promise to do right, and that works . . .  ​right up until you meet the next girl. Then you sleep with her and it starts again.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I have a problem. A sex problem,” Kent said. “I have an addiction. I’m a sex addict.”

  “I’m done,” I announced, standing up and looking for my purse. “You’ve lost your mind.”

  “No, don’t go.” Kent stood too. “Don’t. I’m serious. I have a problem. And I’m getting help.”

  “So, now you’re Tiger Woods and that’s why you can’t keep your dick to yourself?”

  “No,” Kent said, stepping to me. “I’m the son of two addicts, and so I recognize that there’s a strong chance I might have a problem, too.”

  “Where’s my purse?” I tried to leave Kent in the kitchen to go into the living room, but he grabbed me and held me tight. “Let me go,” I said, feeling tears welling up from nowhere. I didn’t know what they were for.

  “Stop it, Kim!” Kent ordered. “Listen to me.”

  “No! I’m going home.”

  “I’m getting help. And I want you to support me.”

  “Let me go!” I hollered.

  “No.” Kent kept his tight grip. “I need you.”

  “No. You need an excuse,” I argued. “Mommy and Daddy have nothing to do with your fucking up. That’s bullshit. And I’m tired of you saying that every time something is wrong in your life. So what they were addicts. That has nothing to do with us. I’m fine. I went to school. I’m successful. You chose what you are. You choose what you d
o every day.”

  “It ain’t that simple and you know it,” Kent barked back. “No I ain’t about to put no pipe in my mouth or no needle in my arm, but I still chose my drug of choice. We both have.”

  “Fuck off, Kent,” I said, peeling him off my arm by scratching the top of his hand with my nails.

  “Fuck!” He flinched when I drew blood. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I’m out!” I ran out of the kitchen and found my purse on the couch in the living room.

  “Kiki!” Kent came out after me. “I need to talk to you.”

  “No! Don’t touch me again!” I grabbed the purse and ran out of the house, down the steps and onto the street. Kent was screaming my name from the front porch, but I kept running. I had to get away from him and his excuses. I couldn’t be party to the lies he told himself to make up for all of his “am nots.” He always tried to do that to me. To pull me into his feelings and make them mine. There was nothing wrong with him or us or me. We were fine. We were what we wanted to be.

  “Miss! Miss! You need a ride?”

  In the street beside me were the bright lights from the dollar cab that had dropped me off.

  “What?” I looked at the driver. “Why are you still here?” I hadn’t told him to wait for me. He even refused to take my money when I got out.

  “I take you home. Right? Make sure you safe,” he said in an Arab accent.

  I got into the car after looking behind me to discover that Kent had gone back into the house.

  “Where you live?” the cabbie asked. “Where you go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, remembering King’s orders when I got into the back of that cab in Brooklyn.

  “Hello?” King answered the phone on the first ring.

  I tried to answer but I was crying too hard. All I got out was “I need . . . ” and then my voice went weak.

  “It’s you, Queen?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You all right?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to say anything else. Tell Baboo to bring you to the spot. Everything’s going to be okay. I got you.”