The Best of Electric Velocipede

by John Klima

  I opened my mouth real wide and spoke slow. “May. I. Get. Some. More. Mashed. Po. Ta. Toes?”

  “I still see that liver,” Momma said.

  I picked up the piece she cut off for me with my fingers and swallowed it whole.

  “Keisha . . .” Momma said.

  “I ate it!”

  “Everything else was very sweet. They took communion together, and I really do prefer string quartets to the organ, but it was weird not seeing that chocolate or olive green polyester suit in the back.”

  “Womanizing antics,” Grandmommy mumbled. “They’ll survive Sugar Daddy not attending. I’m surprised he never hit on her.”

  “Mom, you know she’s too classy for him.”

  “Sugar Daddy?” I said.

  “I remember when he came to my wedding. I remember the gift.”

  “Went to mine, too,” Grandmommy said.

  Grandmommy always brought up something else whenever Momma mentioned anything to do with Daddy. Daddy had moved down to Alabama, so Grandmommy couldn’t keep an eye on him. But it was my fault I said I didn’t know I could walk five miles without gettin tired. That happened last summer, when Daddy still didn’t have enough for a car. I didn’t hear everything Grandmommy said over the phone, but she did tell Daddy she’d come down there after him with a shotgun if he dragged me across Mobile again.

  So, this summer I didn’t get to see him at all, and I was stuck here with Grandmommy making me speak proper.

  “May I be excused? I’ll be back before the light’s gone.”

  “You watch yourself with Tey and Marcus,” Momma said.

  Momma and Grandmommy don’t like Tey and Marcus much cuz of their father. Grandmommy swears their daddy sold coke or smack or one of them really bad drugs. He been in and out of jail so many times—he gotta be doin sumthin, Grandmommy said. Tey and Marcus’s grandmother lived next door to Grandmommy for years, and she couldn’t believe that woman would let her son turn into such a mess. (But at least she trusted their grandmother, which was the only reason I could play with Marcus and Tey.) I didn’t see their father all that much. When he did come around, he’d drive his blue Pinto up and down Jefferson Street at 70 MPH. Late at night, if I heard gears shift three or four times, then a loud screech, I knew he was back in town, back from wherever he was hangin out, at least. Bein in jail was bad, but Marcus and Tey weren’t too bad, so their own father couldna been, neither. I wonder if he was like Daddy. Daddy was fine til he got laid off. He spent all last summer lookin for a new job, but nobody bothered to hire him. He couldn’t pay for the water for a while, so I had to pee in a bucket (I still ain’t told Momma and Grandmommy bout that, and I ain’t gonna), but he got a job now. He probably had enough to get a new car. I coulda spent the summer with him, like I’m supposed to. If I just kept my dumb mouth shut.

  So, maybe Tey and Marcus’s father wasn’t so different. Maybe he lost his job and turned to dealin to take care of his two kids. Grandmommy figured he left em next door when he didn’t have enough to support em. They showed up at the weirdest times durin the school year and summer and left again sometimes before I could say bye. But they’re not bad kids. Not at all. The worst thing they did was sell bootlegs out the back of some dude’s car. They thought it was cool cuz they got connections to the music business. I could care less. Those CDs weren’t from no real rappers.

  “Oooooo, Keisha back in her girlie braids!”

  “Shut up, Tey!” Wasn’t my fault Momma did my hair right after the weddin. “It looked good. You wish your nappy head could!”

  “Your head nappier than mine,” Tey said. “Probably why you gotta hide them naps under braids.”

  I rolled my eyes and watched Marcus light a pagoda. He’d been waitin a while for some to arrive. We were all bored of firecrackers and rockets after the 4th. The pagoda didn’t get here in time. Tey smiled at me. I cut my eyes at him and folded my arms. The five stories spun in blues and reds and greens and yellows and whites. Like a water fountain should be, but all on fire and burnin bright. We could shoot fireworks all night if we wanted. Not too many cars came down our street.

  “Granny went to a funeral today,” Tey said. “How come there’re so many weddings and funerals in the summer? Weddings are good, right? Why you wanna celebrate a good thing when everybody dies?”

  “Marriage is only good at first. It don’t end up that way,” Marcus said.

  “That still don’t tell me nuthin. Why so many people die in the summer anyway? Do heat just fry old people?”

  Marcus sucked his teeth. “That cat Granny went to see wasn’t old.”

  “Old,” Tey said, “but not old old. Forty-something-or-other’s still up there.”

  “Can we do something else?” I said. Momma was somewhere round 40, and I had no idea how old Grandmommy was. It wasn’t never a good thing when a woman hid her age like that.

  Sometimes I forgot my wrist bothered me, like a quiet, annoyin sound I could get used to in a room. But it got to itchin before we passed Discount 4 Less. Momma and Grandmommy didn’t want me anywhere near the place. They’d be real pissed if they knew I was gettin candy right next door. Discount 4 Less on the corner used to be a Lee’s Chicken way back in the day. I loved Lee’s. Daddy used to get me a fish sandwich every Saturday at the one not far from where me and Daddy and Momma used to live. When Lee’s shut down, somebody tried to turn it into a fashion boutique. Then it was a Meat ’N Three. Didn’t nobody have success until these foreign cats started sellin beer and tobacco cheap.

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and clenched my teeth real tight. I held my hand hard against my leg and scratched and scratched and dug and dug. I breathed air through my teeth til I started makin hissy sounds. The skin burned, and I scraped some of it away. But underneath the hurt, it was still itchin. I put my wrist in my mouth and nibbled a bit.

  “Girl?” Marcus said.

  “What’s your problem?” Tey said.

  “It keep on botherin me.” I showed them where I clawed and the little red spots that popped up around it.

  “That’s what Vaseline’s for. If it help your crusty knees, I’m sure it’ll fix that.”

  I kicked at Tey. “Dumbass. I already done tried that.”

  Durin the summers, most of the teenagers didn’t have the students from Tennessee State to hang out with—the freshmen and sophomores who’d put up with them, at least. So all the teenagers could do was bum around like me and Marcus and Tey, cept they didn’t like lightin fireworks. All the teenagers round here sat around in cars at Hadley Parks blastin music or crowded outside of Alger’s Market at the mini-shopping center, right across from Discount 4 Less. The lady who owned Alger’s let them mill around as long as they bought sumthin from her first. Plenty of cops cruised by to make sure those knuckleheads didn’t cross over to the wrong side of the parkin lot for beer or smoke anythin worse than cigarettes.

  Marcus spotted her first. He was always spottin her, watchin her whenever she visited Grandmommy. Ryan could always be found with those girls who got their hair done at the beauty shop every week and got their nails done up with designs, and hand massages, and knew how to look like ladies instead of hos. Grandmommy woulda beat Ryan and my aunt if she ever caught Ryan flashin her cleavage crack or a thong. Marcus liked to stare at her long enough just to let her know. She was only a year older, but Marcus was too ghetto for her. He still hadn’t figured that out.

  “Hey, Ryan!” I yelled. Me and Tey and Marcus were standin in front of the Alger’s Market entrance, and Ryan was to our right, almost on top of us. Those girls weren’t talkin too loud. Ryan just liked to ignore me. I didn’t let her ignore me.

  “Ryan, you see me here, girl.”

  Ryan pretended to laugh with her girlfriends. They made a couple of “Naw, for real?!” faces and slapped each other on the shoulder. Ryan turned her back towards us, flashed her big ol’ booty in low-cut tight jeans. That’s one thing I never understood about black girls. They could be rea
l skinny like Ryan, but they had them round jello butts that stuck way out in the back. Grandmommy said the Lord had to make sumthin for a man to hold on to, but I couldn’t understand how anybody found that cute. I prayed God didn’t make my booty big like that.

  “Ryan.”

  She hesitated a second and then darted her eyes towards me. “Oh, hey, KeKe.” KeKe. KeKe! Didn’t nobody but Ryan call me KeKe no more. I guess she thought that was better than Keisha. She was so proud she didn’t have a name like LaShonda or DeVonaé or—Jesus, no!—Keisha. She had a nice white girl name. Ryan. And didn’t let me forget it. Sometimes I wished Aunt Lil’d named her LaRyan so she woulda had to gotten over herself.

  “I thought Auntie straightened your hair,” she said, plinkin one of my barrettes with her fake fingernail.

  “She did. It looked good, too!”

  “C’mon, Keisha,” Tey said.

  “You can see I am having a con. ver. sa. tion,” and I rolled my eyes. Tey sucked his teeth and went into the store. Marcus smiled at my cousin and followed his brother. Ryan didn’t look at him.

  “What are you doing with those two hood rats, KeKe?”

  “We just gettin some candy. We goin straight back home. I promise.”

  “You know what Auntie and Grandma will do if they find out you were here with them.”

  “You know what Grandmommy’ll do if she find out you wearin lipstick.” If God gave a 14-year-old girl a jelly butt that attracted men, that was His business. But if she wore makeup to get attention, then she was askin for it.

  Ryan grinned and tugged one of my braids. “So, how was the wedding?”

  “Borin. Too many songs. Chants and stuff where we all had to follow. . . . It was like real church. Momma made a big deal about some guy named Sugar Daddy not bein there. How come they call him after a candy bar?”

  Ryan’s girlfriends laughed. Ryan said to herself, “Ohhhh my God.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a ’tard, KeKe.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, I gotta get home soon. Mom and Dad need me to housesit. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” She turned her back on me and started talkin to her girlfriends again.

  Tey and Marcus got a bag full of Rain Blo gum, Junior Mints, candy necklaces, Lemon Heads, Gobstoppers, gummy worms, and Atomic Fireballs. All I could get were Nerds and a couple pieces of banana Laffy Taffy (my favorite). I could stick em down in my pocket and sneak into my room before Grandmommy or Momma realized I’d been to the store.

  “You behavin now, baby?” Cashier Lady said when I put my candy up on the counter. That’s what she always said to us kids and the teenagers, too. She was real fat, but not jiggly fat. She didn’t have a lot of rolls. I remembered when she used to have bulges everywhere, hangin over her pants and shakin right over her elbows. Maybe I was six or seven then. She got smaller every year, sittin there behind the counter sweatin all over her stomach and armpits and listenin to the oldies AM station.

  “Yes, ma’am. I been good.”

  She turned to open the cash register, and I jumped. Splotches covered her cheek. One wider than my hand, but the others were tiny like somebody beat her with a handful of pebbles. It was like she had that disease where people were brown on the outside, but then they had bright pink dots all over their skin. Like somebody rubbed their black off, and they were really white underneath. Cept Cashier Lady’s spots weren’t quite like that. Her spots were white-white paper white, or gray like the papier-mâché we sometimes used in art, kinda rough and dirty. If I touched her face, I bet it would feel like that, all soggy newspaper.

  “You want a bag, baby?”

  I shook my head and shoved my candy in my shorts pockets.

  “Then you have a good one.”

  I nodded and looked away.

  When we left the store, Ryan and her girlfriends were walkin up the other side of the street, past the interstate on-ramp. Ryan said sumthin I couldn’t understand (Grandmommy’d get after her for talkin so loud), and then all the girls laughed. They were still laughin by the time they got under the overpass, and some boys honked at em as they cruised by. That made Ryan and her friends laugh even harder.

  “Damn, that lady’s face was wrecked.” Marcus was the first to say anythin. We’d already passed Discount 4 Less and headed round the corner. Tey didn’t say nuthin cuz he was suckin on a Gobstopper. He gave me a piece of Rain Blo, and I popped it in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say nuthin either.

  SweeTarts—July 12

  When Grandmommy, Ryan and Aunt Lil got back from the funeral, Momma had lunch waitin. I didn’t want to eat with em since Marcus finally got his BB gun. (I didn’t tell Momma bout that cuz she probably never woulda let me see the boys again.) We’d been huntin round the alley when Momma called me in and made me wipe a washcloth across my face. I had to be sociable, she said. Especially with family. We ate nuthin but salad—three-bean salad and another salad with Italian dressing, mixed greens, baby tomatoes, black olives, and endamame. Momma and Aunt Lil were really into healthy stuff like endamame.

  “Well, he didn’t show up today, either,” Grandmommy said. “Church’s too small for him to hide. Horny old buzzard. He always shows up in that brown suit and tired old hat. To a funeral.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have a black suit,” Ryan said. “It’s the sentiment that counts anyway, right? He doesn’t have to go to everyone’s funeral.” She was so much better at pretendin to be interested in adult conversations than me.

  “Honey, if he wanted to get himself a decent black suit, he certainly could. It’s not about sentiment or paying respects with him. He wants to be seen,” Grandmommy said.

  I scratched the itch on my wrist. Sometimes it crawled up my arm, and I had learned to just live with it. Momma poked me in the side. I forgot to take my elbows off the table.

  “You know, Momma, I remember he showed up in that brown polyester suit at my wedding,” Aunt Lil said. “I can’t believe he’s recycled those same two suits all these years.”

  “He had the olive one at mine,” Momma said.

  “He seems to put a lot of money and effort into simply being seen. He doesn’t have to go to all those funerals. He doesn’t have to bring a present to every wedding,” Ryan said.

  “Sugar Daddy? What’s his real name?”

  Momma, Grandmommy, and Aunt Lil looked at me. Then they looked at each other and laughed.

  “That’s a shame,” Momma said. “I can’t remember. I probably could have recalled it if you hadn’t asked.”

  “The man always wanted status he couldn’t get. He’s not an educator or a doctor—I can tell you that for certain—but he always finds his way to our weddings, or our children’s weddings, or our grandchildren’s. How many hours does he have to spend perusing the newspaper only so he can make sure we all know he’s there? And if he could bring a present to every wedding, he certainly could have bought one decent black suit. Ryan, he’s never bothered to show up anywhere else—”

  “Aren’t weddings and funerals open to everybody if they’re in the paper?”

  “—He can’t find another way to fit in with all that running around he does,” Grandmommy said.

  “May not only be the weddings and funerals of doctors and teachers and lawyers he goes to. He could go to the janitors’ weddings too, Grandma. Have you ever seen him at a janitor’s wedding?” Ryan took a long drink of iced tea and hid her mouth down in the glass. Grandmommy looked at her funny and smirked, but didn’t say nuthin.

  “Did you have enough for the choir today?” Momma asked.

  “It was a good turnout, actually,” Aunt Lil said. “Not enough men, but you know how that is. Mr. Hughes didn’t show up, though.”

  “He’s the most reliable bass you’ve got,” Momma said. Old Mr. Hughes was always there when the choir sang. Sometimes he was the only man standin in the middle of all them sopranos and altos.

  Aunt Lil shrugged. “He’s never stood me up. He promised he’d be
there.”

  Once it was safe and Grandmommy started talkin bout song selection, Ryan put her glass down and went back to her three-bean salad. I’d put in my time bein sociable. Momma gave me a couple SweeTarts to kill the Italian dressing aftertaste in my mouth. I went back outside cuz I didn’t know the next time I’d get to see Marcus use his BB gun before his father stole him and Tey away again.

  Marcus said we’d try huntin in the vacant lot next to the Discount 4 Less. The trees across the alley and in front of the Elks Lodge hung over the open space. Easy to pick off sparrows and starlings. The grass came up a little higher than my elbows, and I kept crunchin on broken bottles.

  “We got any snakes, I’ll shoot em,” Marcus said. He added he was only kiddin bout the snakes, but I didn’t need snake bites to go along with the white spot on my wrist. Maybe I scratched it too much and got impetigo after all.

  Marcus told us to shut up and stand still. We couldn’t see the garbage under our feet, and if we stepped on the wrong things, we’d mess up his shot. He didn’t have great aim, I found out real quick, but he swore he was new at this. Each time he missed—truth be told—I was kinda relieved, but sad. I never saw nobody kill nuthin before, and I wanted to see as much in life as I could. (A person wasn’t worth much if they wasn’t well-rounded.) Watch sumthin flappin around one minute and then see it fall to the ground and never move again the next. One time while I waited for Daddy to pick me up for the weekend, the pit bull belongin to the boy up the street was just strollin through the neighborhood. I forgot sumthin and went to get it, and when I came back out on the porch, the pit bull was laid up on the sidewalk. Hardly any blood at all. It would kinda be like that, cept I’d finally know what it looked like when sumthin died. Bugs didn’t count. I wondered what happened when that boy found his dog. I wondered if the person who hit him cared at all. I wondered how Marcus would act if he ever shot anythin.

  He aimed at a sparrow perched on a limb across the alley. Its head poked out from a clump of leaves. Me and Tey leaned forward. Marcus waited. He looked at the sparrow. Then looked behind us back at Jefferson Street. Then he looked at the sparrow. Then back at Jefferson Street.