by Kiki Swinson
“You already know,” I replied and handed her the white plastic bag with a white Styrofoam container in it.
“It smells good,” my grandmother said, and took the bag from my hands and set it down on her lap.
I took a seat on the edge of her bed. “The people that sold it to me said they just took it out of the grease.”
“Thank you, darling. So, how is everything?” she asked after she looked at me from head to toe.
“Everything is good,” I told her even though my life was spiraling out of control. I really wanted to tell her I was in debt up to my neck. And I couldn’t get it together to save my life. “I sense that you’re lying to me,” she said, pressing the issue. I don’t know how my grandmother does it, but she always knows when something is wrong with me and when I’m lying to her about it.
“Okay, well, I’m not fine. But the stuff I’ve got on my plate is manageable,” I told her, hoping she’d believe me.
“You’re not having any money issues, are you?” She looked straight into my eyes. It was almost like she could see through me. The shit was unreal.
“Who isn’t?” I commented.
“How much you need?” she pressed.
“Grandma, keep your money. I can handle it.” I tried reassuring her. But on some real shit, I wanted her to be like, Look, boy, take this twenty thousand dollars and pay off all your bills. Wishful thinking on my part.
“How are things going with Dawn? Has she been able to get pregnant yet?”
“No, and she’s stressing me out about it too.”
“That’s only because she wants to be a mother.”
“She can play mother with my kids.”
“That’s not the same, Reese. It’s a beautiful thing when a woman has a child that she carried in her stomach for nine months. It’s that connection we feel with the baby. It’s like we’re one body and one soul.”
“Yeah, all of that is cute. But it gets really expensive after that soul comes out of you,” I commented sarcastically. I didn’t come over here to talk about Dawn. I just wanted to drop the food off and head to work.
“Yes, it does. But try to see it from her perspective, Reese. They say happy wife, happy life,” my grandmother said and cracked a smile.
I played along and chuckled a bit and then I stood up from her bed. “I gotta get out of here and head to work.”
“You’re leaving so soon?” she said, obviously disappointed. I could tell that she wanted me to stay longer, but I couldn’t. I was fixed on getting to work so I could get this job under way that Edward had given us.
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll come see you the day after tomorrow. That’s two days from now.”
“Why in two days? You got somewhere to be?”
“Yeah, I’m working double shifts today and tomorrow. So I’ll see you after that,” I lied once again. Truth was I wasn’t in the mood to come around here and do a lot of smiling when I knew my life was fucked up. I just wanted to get my paper from this job so I could pull my head out from under some of this debt. After that, I could walk around with a smile.
I gave my grandmother a kiss and reassured her that she’d see me in two days. After that, I made my exit.
When I got back into my truck I sat there for a moment and thought about all the countless shit I’d done to fuck up my life. It seemed like no matter what avenues I took to make my life go in the right direction, something bad happened. Was I ever going to catch a break? Would I ever be the loving, caring, and responsible husband that Dawn wanted me to be? Would I ever get caught up on my bills or help her get pregnant? I didn’t have the answers now, but hopefully after this payday tonight, things would look up for the both of us.
8
DAWN
Having a smile on my face when I walked into the north business office at NIT made my supervisor, Mrs. Powell, take notice.
“So, what do we have here?” she said loud enough for everyone in the office to hear.
Our business office wasn’t that big. Seven others also reported to Mrs. Powell, but their cubicles were on the opposite side of the floor.
I blushed as I approached her with the balloons, the birthday crown, and a dozen vanilla cupcakes. “What I have are cupcakes for you so everybody in here can help wish you a happy birthday,” I told her as I set the cupcakes down on her desk.
“Now you know you didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“I know I didn’t. But guess what? I did. Now hold still so I can put this birthday crown on your head,” I instructed her while I set the crown on top of her head. “Now, look at you. You look so pretty!”
“Why, thank you, dear,” she replied as she inspected the cupcakes. “They look mighty good in that container.”
“I know. That’s what I said when I picked them up from the bakery this morning.” I opened the plastic container. “Hmmm, they smell good too.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m going to eat one of those cupcakes right now. Shucks, I just had a large cup of coffee.”
“Okay, well, can we at least sing happy birthday to you?” I asked.
“Right now?” She looked around the room at the employees sitting in their cubicles.
“Yes, now,” I told her. I turned around and faced the other employees. “Can y’all come over here for a minute so we can sing happy birthday to Mrs. Powell?” I yelled.
Mrs. Powell gave me a look of uncertainty. “Don’t you think we need to do this later? What if Mr. Donovan walks in here from the other business office and sees us standing around like we have nothing to do?” Mrs. Powell seemed nervous.
“Don’t worry about him, Mrs. Powell. But if he does come over to our office, then tell him to take the stick out of his butt.” I burst into laughter. She laughed too. By this time everyone had greeted us. Most of the employees here were white. We did have a Hispanic woman working in this office too, but she was very quiet and mild mannered. I hardly ever heard her talk.
After everyone gathered in a circle we started singing happy birthday to Mrs. Powell. We skipped the how old are you? part and Mrs. Powell was okay with it. Before everyone headed back to their seat, they took a cupcake with them.
“Thank you for the balloons and cupcakes for my birthday.”
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Powell,” I said. Mrs. Powell was a sweet lady. She was like mother figure to me and I cherished her. Too bad she was not fond of Reese. I remembered some time ago when she told me that she was going to pray Reese out of my life. Now I wasn’t sure if she actually prayed that prayer, but I was sure that if she ever got on her knees and asked God to get rid of Reese, it would happen.
* * *
I texted Reese around ten thirty and instructed him to text me as soon as he got through the gate of the pier. So, when I got his text at eleven thirty, I took my lunch break so I could see him before he clocked in for his shift.
I got in my car and raced to the west side of the terminal. When I pulled up to the area where he was assigned to work, I parked my car and slid out of the driver seat. I walked like a couple hundred feet, and out popped Reese. He smiled as he approached me, and I smiled back. He started up the conversation. “What brings you over this side?”
“Well, first of all I wanted to thank you for fucking me real good earlier, and two, I wanted to tell you that I love you.”
Reese’s smile widened and then he pulled me into his arms. “I appreciate you saying that.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I told him. My smile got bigger. “What time do you get off tonight?”
“Probably ten or eleven o’clock. Maybe later. It all depends on the loads that’re coming in tonight.”
“Speaking of loads, baby, please be careful,” I pleaded with him as he held me tight in his arms.
He looked down at me and kissed me on my forehead. “Trust me, I will.”
I let out a long sigh. “Thank you.”
Reese and I talked for a total of ten minutes before he gave me the cue that he
had to clock in for his shift. “If you cook tonight, put my food in the microwave, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said while I watched him head in the direction of the cranes.
I stood there and watched him as he disappeared around a stack of containers. I had a bad feeling about this. We needed the money, but this was all wrong. I felt like we were being used as part of someone’s bigger, evil scheme. My only hope now was that everything worked out for him and he brought home that $15,000. With all the bills and things we had on our plates, an extra $10,000 on top of the $5,000 that Reese brought home would help tremendously. Stopping him from gambling would also do the trick. I would never understand this addiction that made people like my husband like to give their money away. I guess all I could do now was stand by him and hope that he didn’t get caught in the process.
9
REESE
For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how the hours in this particular day raced by so fast. The sun had just set, so this was the perfect time to do all the dirty deeds your heart desired. I tried to pretend like I wasn’t nervous in front of Edward and Todd, but I was scared shitless. I was so afraid of getting caught with the containers that I was very close to calling the whole thing off. I watched as Todd and Edward sat inside the cabs of their cranes, moving containers from the ship. Brian and Gene stood alongside me. The ship had been docked for a few hours now, so Todd and Edward were working very quickly to get both of the containers down from the ship. “How many more containers do Todd and Ed have to move before they get to ours?” I asked Gene.
“Ed just pulled one down,” Brian answered.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Brian pointed. “Todd stacked it on the blue container in the fifth row beside the orange Maersk container.”
I saw the container he was referring to, and turned my focus back on Edward and Todd in their cranes. “How many more containers we gotta pull down to get to the other one?”
Gene answered this time. “I think like ten.”
“Has the guys from Customs come by yet?”
“I saw them when they boarded the ship twenty minutes ago,” Brian interjected.
“Well, let’s get to work,” I said, and walked off. I headed to the straddle carrier so I could take both containers and put them on railroad cars. It didn’t take me long to crawl into the straddle carrier and wheel it over to where the first container was. I’d never been scared of stealing shit from the metal containers, but for some reason, I was scared shitless. I thought about so many different scenarios pertaining to us getting caught. Hearing Dawn tell me about the other niggas that got busted doing this job some years back kind of spooked me. I dared not admit it, though. She would’ve scolded my ass for sure. I just hoped that everything went right because I had a lot of things to take care of after we got paid. So, fucking up this job wasn’t an option.
Using the lift gauge on the straddle carrier, I secured a hold on all four sides of the first container and carried it over to the railroad cars. Once I had the container positioned right, I set it down on the third-to-the-last railroad car. It looked perfectly right, but then again something about it was off, so I turned off the machine so I could think clearly. The moment I powered off the machine I heard a faint cry and I immediately went into panic mode. I sat there in the seat of the straddle carrier, trying to figure out what to do.
“Fuck!” I said, barely audible. I grabbed the door handle to open the door, but then I decided against it. I couldn’t unsee what was in that container. “What the fuck am I doing?”
That’s when it hit me that I should call Edward. I pulled my cell phone from my pants pocket and called him. “Yo, Ed, I just dropped off the first can on the tracks and I heard somebody crying,” I explained as soon as Ed answered his cell.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Do you hear my machine running?” I asked sarcastically. It irritated me that he asked me that question. I knew what crying sounded like.
“Is it loud?”
“No. But I can still hear it,” I told him.
“Look, Reese, that’s not our concern. Turn the machine back on and come back over here and wait for me to pull the other container down from the ship.”
“A’ight,” I said, and I ended the call. I sat there quietly for a second before I heard the faint cry again. I felt guilty as hell, but I couldn’t do anything about what had already happened to the people in that container. Edward made it perfectly clear that we couldn’t fuck this mission up. Therefore, I had to stuff my feelings in my pockets and keep moving.
“Let’s go, Reese, all you gotta do is move one more container,” I said to myself. I put the gears in drive and sped off back in the direction of the vessel. Timing could not have been better, because as soon as I pulled back into my spot on the pier, Ed was ready to hand over the last container. Anxious to get this job over and done with, I grabbed the container immediately after Ed placed it on the ground, and headed back over to the railroad cars.
I knew that there was a strong possibility I was going to hear that person crying again. And if I heard it long enough I’d probably do something about it. So I started prepping myself, en route to the cars, to tune out anything I heard that would cause me to fuck up this mission. “Reese, you can’t let that shit interfere with this operation. That shit that’s going on inside of that container does not concern you. Under no circumstances are you supposed to let anything come before that ten thousand dollars that you’re owed. So, do your job and then you’re home free.”
After my final pep talk, I carried the last container to the railroad cars and dropped it off on the designated car. I turned the straddle carrier around and then I drove out of there as fast as I could.
Edward saw me rolling back toward the pier and texted me: Good job. I smiled at the text and then I texted him back: We’re in this shit together! He sent me a thumbs-up emoji and that concluded our texting back and forth.
The rest of the night everything ran smooth. I continued to work until my shift was over, and after I clocked out, Edward, myself, and the rest of the guys huddled near Todd’s car and planned to meet the following day so we could break bread with one another.
“I’m picking the money up from the Asian guy around noon, so I’ll hit you guys up as soon as I get it in my hands,” Edward told us.
I said, “Damn, I can’t wait until I get the rest of the money.” And be done with this, I thought.
“Me too. I gotta get my car serviced ASAP,” Todd said.
“I’ve got a lot of shit to do with my portion of the money too,” Gene chimed in.
“Well, it looks like all of us got things we need to do with that money. We’re gonna all be ten thousand dollars richer tomorrow, so have your cell phones near you because I’m gonna be calling you,” Edward said.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m gonna have my cell phone in my pocket the whole time,” Todd said.
“I’m gonna have mine in my hands right after I hop out the bed,” Gene added.
“All right, cool. I’ll get with y’all tomorrow.” Ed gave all of us handshakes. Immediately after that, our circle broke and we got into our vehicles. While I drove away from the terminal, all I thought about was what I was going to do with the additional $10,000 I was going to have in my possession in less than twenty-four hours. I knew Dawn thought I was going to hand over the entire amount to her after I got it in my hands, but she would be sadly mistaken. I’d give her $5,000 so she could handle the past-due bills we got, but that was it. I could hear her yelling throughout the house, saying that the $5,000 wasn’t enough to catch up on our bills, but she was just going to have to deal with it. I had bookies that I owed money to, and if I didn’t satisfy my debts, I could get beat up really bad. But I couldn’t tell her that because she’d freak out about it.
When I got home, I went into the bedroom and noticed that Dawn was in bed asleep. Since her back was to me, I elected not to bother her and decided
to head back out of the room. But before I could cross the threshold, she opened her mouth and spoke.
“So, did everything go as planned?” Her voice was low.
Somewhat caught off guard, I turned around slightly and said, “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was until I heard you walk into the house. So how did everything go?”
“Everything went smooth. Ed said we should have the rest of our money before we go to work tomorrow.”
“Where are you going now?”
“I’m going to the living room to watch a little bit of TV.”
“All right,” she said and then silence filled the air.
Without saying another word, I turned back around and headed toward the living room. After I sat down on the sofa, I kicked off my work boots and stretched my entire body out across the cotton cushions. I grabbed the remote control and powered on the television, even though I had no plans to watch it. I eventually turned my back to it, closed my eyes, and went into deep thought about what I was going to do with the $10,000 payoff I had coming to me in a few hours. I even thought about the financial situation Dawn and I were in before I landed the this job. Her sister was right, if I was handling my business Dawn wouldn’t have ever had to go to her parents and ask for loans so she could help with our household bills. Hearing Alexia attack my manhood didn’t sit well with me. You can’t come in a man’s house and disrespect him in front of his wife because he ain’t carrying his weight with the bills. That kind of talk wounds a man’s ego, and I wasn’t having that. There had been a few times when Alexia made her remarks to me that I wanted to punch her in her damn mouth. I swear, when that bitch started running her mouth, she didn’t know how to stop. I knew one thing: If I was her man and she talked to me like that, she would’ve lost her teeth a long time ago.
