The Best of Electric Velocipede

by John Klima

  “What you waitin for?”

  He shushed me.

  “C’mon, man,” Tey said.

  The sparrow flew away. Marcus threw his gun-free hand in the air, rolled his head up towards the sky, and closed his eyes. “What did I tell you bout shuttin the hell up?”

  “You took too damn long,” Tey said.

  “Y’all didn’t see that car? Silver Buick sedan? It’s only passed by here four or five times.”

  “No,” we said.

  “Why are those niggas spyin on us?” Marcus said.

  “Why you think they want anythin to do with us? Paranoid,” Tey said.

  “Maybe cuz every time they come by, they stare right at us.”

  Marcus was right. The sedan passed, and maybe it was gone for two or three minutes. Then we’d see it on the other side of the street, and it’d turn back around. They eventually parked at Discount 4 Less. A woman with a long weave curled in spirals all over her head got outta the car. A strand of hair fell in her face, and she pushed it back with a six-inch-long acrylic nail. She didn’t buy nuthin and came right back out. They turned down the alley and come straight at us.

  Spiral Head rolled down her window. Another girl sat in the passenger’s seat. Her head was covered in very neat micro braids. Momma wouldn’t even let me get braids like that.

  “Y’all know where we can find Mona’s Beauty Salon?” Spiral Head sounded real country.

  Marcus snorted. He and Tey looked at me. I shrugged and shook my head. “Sorry, never heard of it.”

  The girls raised their eyebrows. “My cousin told me Mona’s was in the shopping center across from the Discount 4 Less and behind the Elks Lodge,” Spiral Head said. “We been up and down Jefferson, but we haven’t seen a shopping center.”

  “Your cousin from around here?” Marcus asked.

  “Naw. She goes to State. We’ll be attendin in the fall. Just checkin out the area. Y’all sure Mona’s not around here? She said it was next to a convenience store in the shopping center.”

  “Sorry, lady,” Tey said.

  “Got any idea where it is?”

  We shook our heads. They looked at each other a little confused and upset, but they thanked us and went on down the alley.

  “What we know bout a beauty salon?” Tey said under his breath.

  Actually, I could sympathize. Sorta. Not that Momma’d ever let me get my hair done in a beauty salon at my age, but one of my grandfathers used to own a barber shop. I couldn’t remember which grandfather, though. Grandmommy never talked about her ex-husband, and I’d only met him once when me and Daddy ran into him at Farmer’s Market. Nobody really discussed Daddy’s family either. All I knew about his father was he had water-wave hair, and he didn’t have no grays when he died. One of my grandfathers was a postman, and one owned the barber shop. I get them mixed up. Actually, I’m not sure about the postman thing, neither. I think I remembered hearin it one time.

  My grandfather had the barber shop back durin the 40s or 50s. It was so long ago, it didn’t matter which decade. It used to be where the interstate is now. His barber shop and a bunch of other businesses. I had no idea what all those buildings used to look like. So, I could get why those girls were upset. Maybe Mona did hair real good, like my grandfather probably did. Maybe back then, after they tore down everythin, some country cat was comin to see the big city, and said he needed a good cut while he was here. It was startin to get a little scruffy up top. His cousin, or his best friend, or his brother who used to live here, told him to go see my grandfather. So, he’s lookin forward to his hair cut, and all he found when he got here was lots of construction—or maybe the completed interstate by then. That would have pissed me off too.

  “You heard a Mona’s?” I asked Grandmommy when I got home. We got out the collard greens for dinner and started trimmin them since Momma wasn’t off work yet.

  “Have I heard of Mona’s? No. Should I have?”

  “I don’t know . . . .Where was my grandfather’s barber shop?” I figured I should ask her instead of Daddy. If she picked up the line while I was talkin to him, she might think he called me. I didn’t want her threatenin him with a shotgun again. “Did Daddy’s father have the barber shop?”

  Grandmommy blinked and put down the leaf she worked on. “Barber shop? Oh, yes! That was your other grandfather’s. Why’d you drag that up?”

  “I wanna know where it was. I never known, I never have known where it was.”

  “It was somewhere along the path of the interstate. Somewhere near a dime store . . . I think.”

  “But where?” I said.

  “Keisha, I can’t remember . . . .You’re leaving too much of the leaf on the stem. Watch what you’re doing.”

  “He didn’t start a new one?”

  “Where was he going to put it? The white part of town?”

  “So he didn’t get a new one? Did they pay him for it?”

  “Who? The government? You know the government never paid us for anything.”

  “So everybody lost their business and didn’t get nuthin back? That ain’t fair!”

  “It ain’t?” Grandmommy said. “There was no sense in reasoning out fair and unfair. It was always unfair—”

  “Well, it ain’t fair,” I said rippin at the leaves. My fingers throbbed. My arm itched from my wrist all the way past my elbow. It wasn’t fair, and I’d never know where his business was, and nobody seemed to care, neither.

  The cryin started a few days after that. Don’t know where it come from. I just know it wouldn’t stop. I thought maybe I cried so much cuz the government took my grandfather’s barber shop and never paid him back. But I couldna been that mad to cry so long and hard about it, and Tey started cryin too. Marcus wouldn’t have nuthin to do with us no more, puttin up with us dumbass sissies.

  At first Momma believed I got all weepy cuz I wasn’t gettin enough sleep. The Department of Transportation did emergency work all day and all night to repair the overpass crossin Jefferson. Nobody knew what really happened. Not an earthquake or a freak electrical storm or a meteor or chunk of sumthin else fallen from the sky. Part of the overpass just wasn’t there no more. When you looked at it from the street, part of the green siding and railing was gone. One lane looked like somebody took an eraser and scrubbed it a little bit thinner, and then the hand got shaky and scratched out most of the other lane. But it didn’t look like nuthin was broken, only made that way to begin with.

  Me and Tey weren’t the only two cryin though. Sometimes we’d catch other kids in the neighborhood snifflin or wipin their eyes with the backs of their hands. Adults tried to make us explain it, but why? Sometimes sadness is all it is, and it comes from a deep hole nobody sees, and sometimes that hole can close up as soon as it opened. That’s what it felt like. There was some huge hole somewhere—huger than a black hole—and it was so big and wide all we could do was cry because that’s how deep and empty it felt. Like I could fall in that black hole and keep sinkin on forever. Try tellin a grownup any of that.

  Tey and I sat on the curb in front of his grandmother’s house and got all our cryin out for the day. We didn’t look at each other or try to make one another feel better. We just wailed away with our eyes shut tight and our faces up to the sky. We didn’t stop to blow our noses or keep our heads from achin. I had to wear long sleeves now, and that made it worse. I was sweaty, my hair got all poofy, and I ended up with snot and tears on my clothes. We always felt numb when we were done, like we could just pass out.

  Tey wiped his face in his shirt and whined a little. I thought he might start up again, but he coughed, and that was the end of it. I was lightheaded. I rested against my knees and closed my eyes.

  “Granny’s got that itchin,” Tey said. “She put everythin on it she can think of, but it don’t go away. She said it don’t bother her, but she always scratchin her chest.”

  He was gonna make me cry again. “Tey . . .” I pulled back my sleeve. He poked at my arm. A large splotch of
white, paper-white white, trailed up from my wrist to my elbow. All along my arm, there were these spots, like somebody beat it with a handful of pebbles.

  “Will that happen to Granny?”

  I put my finger to my mouth, and now the tears were comin. “I don’t know.”

  He whispered in my ear, “What the hell is that, Keisha?”

  I shook my head. He looked back at his grandmother’s house, then back at me.

  “I’m sure it’ll go away,” he said.

  But he knew we both couldn’t know that. We’d never seen anythin like this before.

  *

  COMMUNITY NEWS

  Alger MacAdams will be turning over the everyday responsibilities of his store to his only daughter, Ms. Marla MacAdams. Mr. MacAdams has been a regular, friendly face at Alger’s Market since he opened the store in 1974. He had been considering handing over the reigns to his daughter since his wife Diana died early last February. “Marla’s been observing and helping me the last twenty-three years. She knows what to do, and I know she can do it on her own.” MacAdams intends to remain active. He will still coordinate Second Avenue Baptist’s food drives and tutor math at Hadley Park’s Community Center. Alger’s Market is located at 1507 B on Jefferson Street, next door to Mona’s Beauty Salon behind Elks Lodge #41.

  Caption: Alger MacAdams and his daughter greet customers outside of Alger’s Market.

  *

  Sugar Daddy—July 20

  Everybody cried at Mrs. Probst’s funeral. Everybody. And hardly anybody liked Mrs. Probst, far as I could tell. She cheated on all three of her husbands, she controlled the United Methodist Women, and the pastor did whatever she said. When Mama didn’t think I was listenin, she called Mrs. Probst a bitch. I had my own beef with her. She changed the services and made church even longer. But Uncle David held me while I wept, and his tears drained through my hair. Momma had pressed my hair for the funeral and gotten it nice and straight, but the curls tightened and frizzed under Uncle David’s chin. Aunt Lil cried so hard she could barely conduct the choir. Over in the soprano section, Ryan leaned on Grandmommy, and Grandmommy did everythin she could to stay upright. Momma lay in the aisle. She didn’t even bother with appearin ladylike.

  We coulda blamed this on the Holy Spirit—He did people that way sometimes, but not everybody all at once. He might fall on one or two people, they’d shake and wail, and then they’d fall out. We wished we could do that now. All we could hear was our own shriekin and screamin. Water puddled at our feet. Our noses clogged up, and our stomachs hurt.

  Mr. Hughes didn’t come. He wasn’t at church last Sunday, neither. We didn’t look for Sugar Daddy. He hadn’t shown up to the last two weddings. We gave up on him comin here.

  We planned to go straight to Swett’s after the funeral, but we had to change our clothes first. None of us really talked while we ate. Momma said, “The old biddy didn’t deserve all that hollering,” and that was about it. We were too tired to talk, me and Momma, Grandmommy, Ryan, and Aunt Lil and Uncle David. We had a hard enough time gettin our forks to our mouths.

  *

  I can’t lie. I wanted summer to be over with. I wanted to get back to school. I wouldn’t have to answer so many questions from people who weren’t from around here, questions about their friends or family we swore never lived here, even though strangers insisted the opposite. I wouldn’t have to explain to em about some of the buildings in the area, why there was only half a building, or nuthin but a window or door hangin in space with no walls to hold it up. Maybe by the end of the summer, all this nonsense would go away, and I could go to sleep knowin Momma and Grandmommy hadn’t disappeared on me by the time I woke up in the mornin. The white marks on my arm would heal up, and so would Tey’s grandmother’s, and I’d never have to worry that Daddy might come lookin for me one day, and nobody’d know who he was talkin bout.

  I was lyin flat on my stomach with my arms at my sides. I hated sleepin in that position, but it was the only one that worked now. My stomach felt so hollow, like I hadn’t eaten in years, and that black hole might rise up within me and snatch me from the inside out. I started lyin like this to stretch my stomach out, quiet it down so it quit all the grumblin.

  Usually, Momma wouldn’t let me catnap durin the day, especially not durin the summer when I could be runnin around gettin exercise. Not much use for that now. Sometimes Momma didn’t feel like wakin me up after all of her cryin. I was happy when she did, though. Sometimes when I slept, I slipped down into that black hole. Didn’t know if I’d ever wake outta it. When I opened my eyes, I felt like it had puked me up.

  Momma knocked on my door and stuck her head in. “Tey wants to know if you can play.”

  I sighed and got up. He was worse off than me, so I couldn’t leave him alone. He knew if his daddy came and got him and Marcus, their grandmother might disappear on em before the next time they came to see her.

  We stood on my porch and stared at the street. We struggled for stuff to do. Sometimes we squished ants out on the sidewalk and watched other bugs carry them away, kinda like providin a bug Farmer’s Market. But we got tired of that. Without Marcus supervisin us, Tey’s grandmother wouldn’t let us set off fireworks. Marcus still wouldn’t put up with us, even though he tried to sneak his own tears by pullin his shirt collar up over his eyes. We couldn’t play with the BB gun. We wouldn’t play kick ball with the other kids in the neighborhood. We only made each other cry.

  “We can catch crayfish,” Tey said after a while.

  I yawned. Nobody wanted us playin in the creek water, but the last couple days of July had beat our ass. I didn’t care if I got polluted water on me or not. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Tey got us some Mason jars, and we climbed over the short bridge on the other side of our street. The creek was more like a wide, really long gutter, and most of the time, I took for granted it was there, since there were a few houses down here we never visited. I didn’t know if it ran into a lake, or a river, or whatever. I guess it was clean water once-upon-a-time. I never bothered askin when that was.

  Tey moved some rocks around and swished his hand in the water. I sat on the concrete bank and put my head in my hands. He scooped the Mason jar down, cussed to himself when he didn’t catch nuthin, and dumped the water out. He scooped the Mason jar down several times. I couldn’t figure out what he was tryin to fish since I didn’t see no life in that water.

  He screwed up his face and held the jar to the sunlight. “Unhhhh.”

  I stood up but didn’t get in the water with him so Momma wouldn’t know where I’d been. He jiggled the jar for me. Somthin feathery swirled.

  “What, you got some toilet paper?”

  “Ew, girl!”

  We looked at it again with our noses almost to the glass. It was paper, with a few larger chunks and thousands and thousands of smaller pieces spinnin round like dust.

  “Where’d it come from?” I said.

  Tey kicked at the water. He pulled a large rock away from the bank. A sliver of newspaper tore apart and washed down the creek. We went down the bank and found more newspaper. Some of it dried up on rocks and broken concrete in a shriveled mess. By the time we knew where we were, the creek had taken us past some apartment buildings and down a dirt alley behind a street cut short by a fence in front of some railroad tracks. I never been down that way before, and neither had Tey. The houses were small, and some had been abandoned. Most of the backyards were junky, cept for one that had no grass at all. It was hard clay converted to a basketball court, with the baskets nailed to trees. The people watchin and playin were too busy to notice us passin through.

  Tall weeds almost hid the back of the house at the end of the street. The air conditioner had been ripped out, and we could see it lyin in the high grass. There was a carport, but no car. The grass was high under there too. The backdoor was open just a little, and there was a bunch of paper thrown across the porch. Some of it had blown into the yard, down into the creek. Tey pulled the
weeds out of his way and started towards the house. I yanked at his arm, and he smacked my hand.

  “We gotta go back,” I said. “We can’t be trespassin.”

  “I bet nobody live here.”

  “Soooo? It’s still trespassin.”

  He grabbed me and pulled me into the yard. This time we wouldn’t have Marcus’s BB gun to protect us from snakes. Tey stuck his head in the hole where the air conditioner used to be. “I bet this is how they robbed the house.”

  “We can use the door,” I said, but Tey had already crawled in. He pulled me through, and we were in a kitchen. It reeked of old meat, the kind that gets forgotten at the back of the refrigerator. We pinched our noses with our shirts. Tey coughed, and I rubbed my eyes. Canisters and spices had been thrown on the floor. Our feet ground rice and pasta and salt into newspaper clippings.

  “Damn, it stinks,” I said.

  Tey picked a piece of paper off the floor. Some of the type was smudged, but we made out an article on the closin of some gas station.

  The table in the kitchen’d been flipped over, and it blocked our way into the dinin room. I brushed broken glass off the counter with my long sleeves, we hopped onto the counter, and jumped over the table. The china cabinet had been smashed open, and maybe a few plates were taken. We didn’t find any busted up on the floor. The smell got worse in the hallway. There were so many books and binders everywhere we couldn’t help but step on em. The basement door at the end of the hall was open. We peeked into the bedroom with more cutouts from newspapers and stacks of photo albums toppled over. Even without somebody sackin the place, there was hardly any room in there to move around or sleep.

  “I don’t think whoever robbed the place got anythin valuable,” Tey said through his shirt. “Do you wanna go in there?” It’s where the stink come from. I’d never seen a dead body before a mortician fixed it up nice, let alone reported I’d found one. I nodded.