by Hannah Weyer
AnnMarie heard the knock and let him in. Darius stood in the doorway, smelling like Irish Spring. She leaned against the frame, smiling, seeing the flowers in his hand. She took the bouquet wrapped in clear plastic. For your moms, he said, his hand moving to her belly where the baby was forming.
Blessed had sent AnnMarie to borrow a card table from across the hall and they all sat down, Darius’ hands folded loosely in his lap. But AnnMarie felt the flutterflies bouncing around. What she got to be nervous for. What the fuck I care my mother like him. I love him and he loves me.
Are you in school, Darius?
Ma, let him eat.
No, I finished off with that. I’m interested in business opportunities and whatnot.
Oh, really …
Ma.
Shh, we’re talking, AnnMarie.
Yeah, I’d like to own my own business. A recording business.
Oh, that’s nice. AnnMarie says you have a music studio at your house, you making a living with that?
Little here and there but I got a fee schedule planned out, charge the artist for they recording time, and if I produce, I add on top a that.
A fee schedule?
You know, like money for my time.
Oh, that’s smart …
Blah blah blah blah blah … AnnMarie wanted to tell her to please shut up. What she know about money anyway. Hadn’t earned a dollar in her life.
But Blessed leaned back all of a sudden and went quiet, looking at Darius, like she takin’ him in. Soaking him up with her eyes.
Finally she said, Well, AnnMarie, looks like you got yourself a good thing.
Ma, please.
Please, Ma, AnnMarie said, jumping up. ’Cause Blessed had started to cry. Tears coming out her eyes, running down her face, shaky fingers brushing them aside.
No, AnnMarie. I’m happy for you. You a sweet couple and I wish you the best in life, I do. I bless you both. You’re blessed and I’m gonna help with the baby any way I can.
Thank you, Miss Blessed, Darius said. We appreciate it.
Go on, sit down AnnMarie and eat. Eat now.
Darius leaned over his plate then, and began to eat. Didn’t matter the food mad nasty, salt for sugar, sugar for allspice—he dug in and ate. AnnMarie looked at him sideways and he glanced at her and smiled.
Blessed had a boyfriend once, before the stroke when AnnMarie was ten years old. His name was Prince. He had a table set up on Mott Avenue where he sold incense and statuettes and dolls the size of a grown child. Beautiful dolls with brown skin and long, cascading ringlets and eyelids that flipped open and closed. Blessed would pick AnnMarie up from school and they’d wander home, buy a thing or two from the fruit stand then stop to talk to Prince who wore a Muslim cap he called a kufi. AnnMarie’d peel back the mango skin and suck the juice, watching her mother and Prince talking. Blessed would tilt her head to the side, smiling, then laugh outright at something he said. Then Prince was Blessed’s boyfriend, coming around the apartment, staying after supper to watch the TV. He went with them to church. For walks on the boardwalk. Sometimes he brought bags a groceries. He’d lean down, cup her chin in his big hand. He’d say, Hello AnnMarie, how’s you. Her mother’d laugh and say, She growin’ what she is. Eating me out of house and home. And in these moments, AnnMarie’d lean against her mother feeling shy but happy, and Blessed would pull her into an embrace, like she was something special.
He had a house with black bars on the windows down by the water there on Healy Avenue. It had a big living room with a gigantic TV set on the carpet. Shiny clean kitchen, perfume soaps in the bathroom. Looks like you got a feminine touch, Blessed said, looking at him. Prince rocked back and forth on his heels and laughed. I like a clean house, it’s true. He showed AnnMarie the room where he kept the dolls, opened up a big box and peeled away the sheet of plastic. Dolls the size of AnnMarie herself, laying faceup like soldiers in a row, their eyes open, staring at her. AnnMarie gasped. They so pretty, she said. Go on, you can take one. She’d never had a doll before, not even a stuffed animal. Grandma Mason didn’t allow it. Thought it made them spoiled. She knew she was too old to be carrying a doll around, but AnnMarie couldn’t resist. They was too beautiful.
Prince turned on the TV and the room lit up all at once. Blessed said, Go on, sit down and watch. We goin’ to talk. Then they went down the hall and disappeared into the room at the end. AnnMarie stood at the closed door and listened. She heard murmurs, then it went quiet.
After dinner was ate and the card table folded again, Blessed fell asleep sitting up on the couch. AnnMarie pulled Darius into the kitchen and pressed against his rock-solid body, locking lips, his tongue soft and spicy in her mouth and she felt herself go wet, hungry for him even with thoughts of Prince pushing their way to the surface. Prince who’d hoisted her onto his back to play piggyback, his fingers reaching under her dress, poking inside her underwear ’til she wriggled free. She ran into the other room where her mother was and told. AnnMarie couldn’t understand why Blessed slapped her silly, saying Look how you embarrassing Mr. Prince. No one wanna touch you, why you think everyone wanna touch you but it was too late, Prince never came around again, and Blessed never had no man since.
AnnMarie never knew why. Whether Blessed had chosen her over this man. But she caught her one time, days later, standing in the bathroom, face to the wall, weeping. Shoulders caved in, head bowed in prayer, making small little sounds, like sorrow. AnnMarie felt a stab of fear and ran to her, pressing herself against her mother’s big frame, afraid Blessed would disappear into that black hole of sadness and never return.
She felt Darius’ hands slide up her back, his arms engulfing her into a deep caress. She rested her head just under his chin and heard him sigh.
She said, We gonna have a baby.
Yeah … yeah, he said.
Ida B.
14
When the bus pulled up, she got on, walked down the aisle and took a seat, banging her knees against plastic, cramming herself in next to the window. Dang, she was uncomfortable. She sat up, unbuttoned her jeans which helped a little, she’d have to get some new jeans soon ’cause this just wasn’t working.
Out the window the icy rain came down in sheets but it was moist inside too and she felt warm and wet all over—forehead, back, pits dripping. She wanted to take off her down coat but the nausea was pushing its way around her stomach, knocking up into her throat, bus lurching through traffic just made the bad feeling worse. She leaned her head on the glass and tried to breathe.
By the time she walked into Ida B. eight minutes past nine, the hallway was empty. Still she took her time, wandering into Room 5 where three girls sat at the long metal table, their bellies big, seven, eight months along and another girl, a new girl she’d never seen before slumped at the far end of the table. Hello, AnnMarie, Miss Westwood said. We’re reading from Views of the City, page 68. Go on, Camille, keep reading.
… What do we look at
when we look out our windows?
Is it an expanse of skyline,
an array of rooftops,
a sliver of green …
AnnMarie’s view was of the new girl. Got her hand cupped under her chin, head tilted, eyes on the ceiling. Girl need to get her braids worked on. Wash her hair, something. Dandruff there in the part-line.
Her eyes drifted up to the clock on the wall. Heard the heat hissing through the radiator. Only ten fifteen. English, math, then lunch. Her stomach pitched and groaned. She leaned back and unzipped her pants. Hand on her belly, she counted seven girls today, the last two drifting in just before ten, the room quiet now as they sat, doing silent reading from a book called Desiree’s Star. AnnMarie brought the book up to her face and tried to focus, but her mind drifted to her stomach again and to her feet that felt too big for her shoes. Finally, she scraped back her chair and stood. Miss Westwood looked up, expectantly. I’m thirsty, AnnMarie whispered. Can I get a drink a water?
AnnMarie wandered down the
hall to the drinking fountain. She filled her mouth and swallowed, burped then drank some more. Outside Miss July’s office there was a bulletin board that AnnMarie liked to look at.
EAT RIGHT, LIVE RIGHT.
ARE YOU EXPECTING?
GYNECOLOGY AND YOU.
TEEN SUPPORT GROUP.
TUESDAYS 4:00 P.M. JOIN NOW.
When AnnMarie returned, Miss Westwood was setting a bag of Golden Delicious on the table. Go on, girls. Fuel up. Chairs pushed back, everyone stood, stretched, yawned, then reached over and took a apple. Did everyone make it to the end of the chapter? Miss Westwood asked. How many got to the end … A couple of hands went up. Let’s talk about what Desiree wants. Who is Desiree anyway? What makes her unique?
The new girl leaned over and whispered, They got a McDonald’s out here?
Lunch bell rang, they left the building, walked down Liberty Avenue, the new girl taking her time, walking mad slow even though it was bitter cold outside. The streets frozen, heaps of snow crusted black with dirt and exhaust, refusing to melt. AnnMarie asked her name, where she from, how old she was and the girl said, My name Crystal.
AnnMarie’s eyes went wide. She said, Shoot, tha’s my homegirl’s name.
Word?
We was gonna go to high school together, over there in Springfield but then she moved again and I was out there by myself. You know Springfield Gardens?
The girl didn’t answer, shuffling along, her gaze on her feet.
Yeah, it was fucked-up, AnnMarie went on. I hated it out there.
Tha’s too bad, the other Crystal said.
They stood in line, the girl playing with her lip, looking up at the menu board.
How many weeks are you?
Huh?
How far along are you?
Crystal looked at AnnMarie like she don’t understand the question.
AnnMarie said, You pregnant, ain’t you?
Huh-uh, noooo …
AnnMarie frowned. How come you at Ida B. then?
Crystal tsked. They made me go.
Tha’s crazy, AnnMarie said. So you ain’t pregnant?
My mother told me I got to go the doctor.
You do a pregnancy test?
I was supposed to go but I missed my appointment. I don’t want nobody touching me down there. Huh-uh.
AnnMarie frowned, looking at her belly. Girl, let me see you.
Crystal pushed her jacket aside and lifted her tee. AnnMarie saw the skin tight around a melon-size bump. Oh, yeah. She definitely pregnant.
Can I help you? the boy in uniform asked.
I only got a dolla, Crystal said out loud.
AnnMarie glanced at her. Why she want to go to Mac Donald she only got a dollar.
What can I get for a dolla, Crystal asked the boy.
The boy swung around, looking up at the board. You can get a hamburger. Seventy-nine cent, but a cheeseburger put you over. That’s a dolla five with tax.
Ummmm, the girl said, pulling on her lip.
Dang, AnnMarie thought. This girl got to be slow.
Go on, AnnMarie said. I got you. Get something to eat.
When she got home that afternoon, she sat on the bed and cried. Why she acting so nice. Spending cash money Darius had given her on this stranger. Only thing that girl got in common with Crystal was her name. She missed her friends. Niki spending all her time over in Jamaica with the plump girl, Latania. Nadette dancing nights. They’d stopped practicing almost completely. Last time she was over there, the nausea hit her like a Mack truck. She didn’t even make it home, puking her guts up right there at the curb.
AnnMarie let out a moan.
Her mother came to the door, asked her what’s wrong but AnnMarie didn’t answer, just pulled the covers over her head and cried some more, the tears pouring down her face like she Niagara Falls. Her mother hobbled in, sat on the bed. Don’t worry, Blessed chuckled, those your hormones talking. She pushed a tissue into her hand and told her to blow.
Blessed been doing that lately. Acting nice. Awake and on her feet. Acting like a mother to her again. Three weeks ago, she’d told Carlton and Carlotta they had to go. AnnMarie couldn’t believe it. Pinky’d returned from Trinidad and Blessed told her, I’m gonna be a grandmother, Praise be. AnnMarie moved back into her bedroom. Got to sleep in her own bed again, close the door if she want to.
Around dinnertime, AnnMarie got a craving for oranges and ate two before her mother fed her curried chicken and rice, heaped the plate full and brought it to her on a tray. AnnMarie pulled out her homework, did two math questions then fell asleep in front of the TV. Woke with the fat feeling in her stomach so she walked over to Darius’ house for some exercise.
He’s out, AnnMarie, his mother Darla said, but come on in.
She waited in his studio room. After a while, she fell asleep on the couch and when she woke again, she lay there listening to the far-off sounds of the street, feeling warm and heavy all over. Darius’ sister voice came through the floorboards. She was yelling something about a robe, where her robe at, something. Vanessa pregnant too except her baby daddy live in Averne, met him at a house party six months back. You lucky, she’d said to AnnMarie. Darius loves you.
Upstairs, Darla was in the kitchen.
She said, Where you going, AnnMarie, sit for a minute.
AnnMarie pulled out a chair and sat. Darla said, Are you hungry? I got these rice and peas over here. You want me to make you a plate?
AnnMarie said, No thank you, Miss Darla, I’m okay.
You sure? You look small to me. Darius’ mother had a soft way of talking, always with the soft voice. It was no surprise Darius never did nothing she said. Still, AnnMarie liked her. Always asking, How you, you hungry, you thirsty? What you need.
AnnMarie said, Birth class start up on Monday. I hope he go with me.
Birth class, what kind of birth class?
They told us about it at Ida B. Wells where I go to school. Like a Lamaze class or something, you know Lamaze? They teach you how to breathe, contracting, when to push … That’s what my teacher said.
When I had my babies, I never took a class. I just breathe on my own, she said chuckling. He gonna do that with you?
I got to talk to him about it.
Okay, then. Okay. Mrs. Greene slid a plate of rice and peas in front of her just as Darius walked in with Raymel. Raymel barely spoke to her these days. Ducking his head, looking the other way like he embarrassed. Upstaged and outshined.
AnnMarie turned in her seat, said, Hey baby.
Darius said, What up but kept going through the kitchen, down the stairs to the basement.
You goin’ to these classes with AnnMarie, his mother called with her soft voice. Darius didn’t answer. All AnnMarie heard was they shoes on the wood steps.
She wondered if she should follow him. She hadn’t told him she was coming but why should she’ve. She heard the thump thump thump of a bass line start up, lifting through the floor. Mrs. Greene didn’t seem to notice, sweeping crumbs into her hand. AnnMarie got up and went downstairs. Raymel was lighting a blunt, the weed smoke filling the air. AnnMarie crossed to the window and opened it.
Darius said, Blow that shit out the window. Raymel glanced at AnnMarie, then took a step, exhaling toward the window, saying, So what you gonna do?
Darius tsked. I ain’t gonna do shit. He want to trip like that, let him … He owes me.
AnnMarie sat on the couch and watched him hit the blunt. He said, Remember that night at the Palace. Those cuts was mine, he trying to take credit.
She wondered who they talking about. Probably Big Mike. Those two in some kinda rivalry. It bored her. Darius and his beefing. Who said what to who. Who down and who ain’t. Not enough room on the ladder for everybody. She stared at the posters up on the wall. Lil’ Kim with her skinny waist, squatting in that pose a hers. AnnMarie didn’t have a waist no more. Just blubber and a baby.
She stood up.
Darius said, Where you going? Glancing
at her now as she crossed to the door.
I’ma head home. She paused in the doorway, hoping he’d walk with her.
But he beckoned to her with his chin so she crossed the room and took the kiss he planted on her lips. She didn’t say nothing about Lamaze or the weed smoke she knew was bad for the baby.
15
All the bus rides back and forth, AnnMarie had time to think. Out to Jamaica where the school was. The Ida B. girls housed on the ground floor of a three-story cement building used by Rainbow Academy, a suspension site for violent offenders. All the last-chance kids no school wanted. The bus winding along Snake Road past the airport, planes hovering mad low in the icy sky, one after another, their bellies looming as they made their descent. AnnMarie would turn her face from the window. She thought about the little things. Like how she had to pee all the time, how she felt bloated like a whale—face, feet, hands, stomach, legs—but she couldn’t help herself. Pangs a hunger gnawing, she’d go through boxes of saltines with cheese spread, peanut butter out the jar, oranges, mangoes, cornflakes with milk. Song fragments drifted in. She’d try to piece them together, search for the words gone missing but was frustrated by her own fatigue.
She thought about the last time she got up on stage to sing. At the white school over in Cedarhurst. About Mr. Preston’s expression, that look of relief. All the white kids filing out. Principal Man never made no introductions. A whole school full of kids but they shared no conversation, not even a hello. AnnMarie puzzled over it.
What difference do it make anyway. Your feet get swelled, you gain some weight. You buy a slow girl some french fries.
On Wednesday, Crystal was the only girl sitting at the long metal table when she walked into Room 5 at half past nine.
Where is everybody? AnnMarie asked as she dumped her backpack on the floor.
