Bronxwood

by Coe Booth

  Ana probably don’t even see it yet. She don’t know she training Jasmine to take over as Emiliano girlfriend.

  Damn.

  The rest of the time I’m there, me, Emiliano, and Jasmine go over all the details of the party. Everything. They tell me shit I don’t even need to know as the DJ. But I get it. They wanna make sure I know how the whole thing gonna run. Then, before I’m ’bout to get up outta there, Emil give me a list of songs he say I’ma need to play at the party, and he even tell me when to play them. They got a song to play when Jasmine come into the party and a song to play when she opening her presents. Dude thought of everything. Course I ain’t never heard of none of this music. I got a lot to learn ’bout Spanish music. Fast.

  Soon as I leave outta there, I head straight back to Bronxwood, not to go home but to go see my friend Patrick who be bootlegging CDs and DVDs and selling them on the street and shit. He come with me to most of my parties and help me out, and I let him sell his stuff there too. I’m just hoping he got some of that Spanish music on Emiliano list.

  Patrick moms let me in, and for the first time in a long time, music don’t be blasting from Patrick room. They apartment ain’t never been this quiet. Never. “He here?” I ask.

  “He sure do be.” Patrick moms always look tired.

  “He dead or something?”

  “Maybe.” She shake her head. “Go on back and see.”

  I knock on Patrick room door, but he don’t answer so I go in anyway and hope he ain’t jacking off or something. He ain’t. He ’sleep. The room smell like weed and he got a empty box of Devil Dogs on the bed next to him. And all he got on is Batman boxers.

  This a sad scene.

  I can’t figure Patrick out. He ain’t ugly and, yeah, he kinda outta shape, but he ain’t really fat or nothing. Still, he the most non-life-havin’ dude I know. When he ain’t out on the street selling his CDs and DVDs, he in this room burning them. I don’t never see him going out with no females or nothing.

  Only time Patrick ever really go out is when he come to one of my parties. He do help me set up and keep the records straight, but the real reason I bring him is ’cause he need to have some fun. In my mind, I’m helping him more than he helping me.

  It take me a while to wake his ass up, and when he see me I know he kinda embarrassed. Which he should be. “Dude,” I tell him while he get up outta bed. “You can’t keep living like this.”

  He start putting on his sweatpants. “What you mean?”

  “Getting high by yourself, eating like this. C’mon. You need to hit the gym or something, tighten all that shit up. Then you need to start getting something going with girls. What’s wrong with you, man?”

  “You go to the gym?”

  “Nah. But I play ball and my body just stay this way. My pops is like this too. We don’t gotta work too hard.”

  Patrick grab a T-shirt from off the floor, smell the pits, make a face, then put it on anyway. I’ma hafta work with this brotha.

  After he go to the bathroom and come back in his room, I show him the list and he say he got most of them songs and a lot more new shit they gonna like too. Patrick my boy.

  While I’m there, he start playing some Spanish music from his deck and saving it on my flash drive. “When the party?” he ask me.

  “Next week. On Saturday.”

  “You need me, man? ’Cause I ain’t doing nothing that day.” Like I ain’t know that.

  “Nah, I don’t think so. It ain’t the kinda party you can sell shit at. This Jasmine Sweet Sixteen.”

  “I know, but I like them Puerto Rican girls.” “You ain’t gonna talk to none of them,” I say.

  “So what.”

  “You can come,” I say. “Could always use help.” And Patrick got a uncle with a truck that he don’t mind lending Patrick to carry the equipment. Another problem solved.

  Patrick on his computer looking for more music. “Listen to this. It’s reggaeton. Just came out, straight from San Juan.”

  He crank that shit and next thing I know he lighting up a blunt and we getting high. Good shit. He musta got it from Cal.

  Meanwhile the music seem like it’s getting louder. I don’t know if I’ma be able to get into this. Even when he change to salsa and merengue, it all sound the same to me, like a bunch of trumpets and bongos and words I don’t understand. And everything so fast. I’ma need to listen to a lot between now and Jasmine party and practice mixing this shit. Jasmine all excited ’bout this party. I don’t wanna mess nothing up for her.

  While I’m waiting for him to finish putting the music on my flash drive, I ask Patrick when the last time was that he got a girl.

  “I don’t know,” he say. “A while.”

  “I ain’t never seen you with nobody. Why you don’t ask out none of the girls ’round here?”

  “Bronxwood girls?” He shake his head. Something ’bout the way he look make me think he scared.

  “You ever had a girl?” I ain’t trying to embarrass him or nothing, but it’s like I’m now seeing what I gotta work with here.

  He laugh, but it come out real fake.

  “Seriously,” I say. “If you ain’t never had a girl, that’s a’ight. You still only, what, sixteen, seventeen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  Damn. “You still got time, you know. But you ain’t gonna change nothing in here eating Devil Dogs.”

  He sigh. “C’mon, Ty. I ain’t—”

  “You gotta get some confidence, you know.”

  “It ain’t gonna matter. Females don’t like me.”

  “A’ight, look, I’ma help you out, man. But you gotta work on yourself. Tonight, you can do what you want, but tomorrow, no more of this shit.” I throw the Devil Dogs box over by him. “And starting tomorrow, me and you gonna start hitting the courts, a’ight?”

  “Seriously, it’s not gonna matter,” he go.

  “You gonna be looking good soon,” I say. “Trust me.”

  I don’t know why I’m doing this. I mean, what, I need somebody else to take care of?

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6

  FIFTEEN

  I’m Kinda pissed at myself for showing up at the foster care agency on Wednesday afternoon. Not ’cause I don’t wanna see Troy but ’cause I don’t want my pops thinking he can tell me what to do and I’ma just do it like a child s’posed to. I don’t even know what I’m here for.

  I can’t stand anything ’bout this agency. The people that work here, them social workers and shit, all of them don’t care nothing ’bout the kids. Like my pops said, the agency is all ’bout getting paid. Them caseworkers act like they care and write down that they checked up on the kids and everything okay. But course everything okay when you don’t ask nobody enough questions to find out that nothing, not one thing, actually okay.

  My moms and pops is already at the agency when I get there. They sitting real close, holding hands. Our visit s’posed to start at 5:30 and I get there, like, a minute early so I don’t hafta spend more time with my pops than I need to. They in the waiting room with a whole bunch of other people, and before I can even sit down, my pops say to me real quiet but real threatening, “Don’t forget what we trying to do here, Ty. We trying to show these people that we back to being a family. A strong family.” Why he think I’m here for?

  “What, you don’t know how to say hi to your moms?” he ask.

  “Hi,” I say to her. She look nice, all fixed up and shit. Before my pops got out, she wasn’t walking ’round looking like this.

  My moms kinda smile at me and say, “Hi, Ty. How you doing?”

  “A’ight.” I wanna ask her how long it’s been since she came to one of these visits. The courts said she could have a supervised visit every Wednesday, but it was up to her to call Ms. Thomas and set it up. She did it for a while after Troy was took from her, but then she would set up the visit and not show up. She did that a lot and Troy would be so mad. And Troy old foster mother too. She used to hafta leave work early to pick
up Troy at his after-school to get here on time, only to find that my moms couldn’t bother to show up. Shit got old real fast.

  But I don’t bring up nothing ’cause my pops right ’bout something. This ain’t the time or place to start no fight. And knowing him, he just gonna take her side and tell me I’m wrong for saying anything even if it is the truth and we all know it.

  When Troy and his foster mother, Ms. Woods, get there, man, the look on Troy face when he see my pops, that shit is for real. It’s like he can’t believe what he seeing. He see my pops and then look to me like he want me to tell him what he seeing ain’t something he dreaming. I just nod and then he run over to my pops like he still a two-year-old or something. My pops snatch him up in the biggest hug and I’m like, good to know my pops got it in him to be happy to see one of his kids. My pops is laughing and shit, and Troy is just going, over and over, “Daddy, you back. You back!”

  I ain’t gonna front. I got a smile on my face too, ’cause, damn, I ain’t seen Troy this happy for a while. And I ain’t think I was ever gonna see him like this after all the shit he been through since my pops was sent up. Little dude is smiling so big his face ’bout to crack in half.

  Ms. Thomas finally come out and tell us a room ready for us. She not a bad-looking woman, kinda thick, but it’s her attitude that make her look so rough. She always look like she mad ’bout something, and that she don’t have no time for us. Like she just doing what she gotta do to get paid.

  But anyway, all of us ’cept for Ms. Woods go down the hall with her. And that’s when Troy really start to lose his mind. He running ’round and shit, acting like he ’bout to be free from foster care jail. It ain’t easy to watch, ’cause I know that by the end of this visit he gonna be going back home with Ms. Woods and ain’t nothing really gonna change for him right now.

  This how the whole visit go. The caseworker bring us to the broke-down room where they must put the oldest tables and chairs that nobody want no more or shit they find on the street. They got some old toys in the room too, a lot of dolls with dirty hair and plastic cars and a racetrack thing with three levels and a ramp, but shit so nasty looking even Troy don’t wanna touch it. But he don’t hafta ’cause my moms brung him a Hulk action figure, like he all that into the Hulk. He give her a big hug anyway and sit on the floor and try to get it outta the hard plastic shit they got it in. I don’t know who think to put toys in them things, ’less they just wanna make kids lose they minds or something.

  “Let me help you,” I say, getting up from where I’m sitting and going over to where he at.

  I’m ’bout to sit on the floor with him when he jump up. “Daddy can do it.” And he run over to my pops.

  I go back over to where I was sitting before, like it ain’t nothing.

  The visits only last thirty minutes, which ain’t shit when you got a eight-year-old that ain’t seen his pops in a year. Troy bouncing ’round for, like, fifteen minutes, and all my pops can do is try and calm him down even though it ain’t working.

  I try to talk to Troy too, ask him ’bout camp. But Troy ain’t hardly paying me no mind. He all ’bout my pops. And I get that. Still, though, I’m sitting thinking, knowing, that Troy gonna do it again, get all attached to our pops and all that. And then, a couple months or a year from now when my pops get locked up again, Troy gonna get let down.

  But what can I do to stop it? He still young, and when you that age, all you want is your pops.

  So what I do is act happy, like everything with our family gonna be okay. My moms is smiling while Troy show everybody what he can do with the Hulk. And we all talking and having fun with him, and basically we don’t say nothing ’bout nothing. That way, nothing could get used against my moms and pops in court when they go to try and get Troy back.

  ’Cause the other thing ’bout this visit is this. Ms. Thomas right there the whole time ’cause the judge said my moms gotta be supervised while she visit with her own kid. Ms. Thomas sit at this little table in the corner doing paperwork, trying to act like she ain’t listening to everything we saying, but meanwhile if anybody say anything wrong, she gonna write that shit down fast.

  Just like I knew was gonna happen, when Ms. Thomas tell us the visit is over, Troy lose his fucking mind. He start crying. “I wanna go with you,” he say, holding on to my pops arm. “I hate Ms. Woods. I wanna go home with you!”

  My pops take him to the corner of the room and tell him, “I need you to be a little man. And men, we don’t cry like little girls, you know’m saying?”

  Troy nod, tears still sliding down his face and shit.

  “I’m back now,” my pops say, “and I’ma do everything I can to get you back home. But you gotta try hard to be good to Ms. Woods, okay? Don’t worry ’bout nothing. You gonna be back with us soon as we can.”

  Troy hug my pops again real hard. I hate this. I hate the way Troy hanging on to him like that’s gonna stop my pops from fucking up again and having to go away. Troy can’t see it though. And he the one that’s gonna get hurt the most.

  Cal outside working, but what else is new? The whole situation at the agency pissed me off so much I don’t think I wanna chill with him tonight. I just wanna get upstairs and be by myself.

  But he get me to start talking anyway. “Problem with pops?” he go.

  Man. How he know? I tell him ’bout the visit and how my pops told Troy he s’posed to man up when the kid only eight and don’t need to hide his feelings for nobody. “He used to pull the same shit with me,” I say. “When my moms used to take me to visit him in jail, when I was a little kid. All I wanted was for him to come home, and I would cry and shit, be like, why they ain’t letting you outta here? And he would tell me the same shit. ‘Be a little man, don’t cry.’ I wish I coulda told him back then to go fuck hisself. How he gonna tell me not to cry when he was the whole reason I was crying in the first place? If he woulda kept his ass outta jail …” I shake my head. “Cal, that visit was fucked up.”

  “I feel bad for the kid,” Cal say.

  For a while me and him don’t say nothing. ’Cause both of us been there where Troy at now. Cal pops been locked up forever. Dude a straight-up criminal. Probably never gonna walk free again for all the shit he did.

  When Cal go over to the curb to handle his business, I take out my cell and call Adonna to see if she could come out for a little while. Seeing her could change this whole fucked-up mood I’m in.

  She answer the phone. “Ty?”

  I’m already smiling. “Just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “What you doing?” she ask me.

  “Nothing. Bored. You could come outside?”

  “No, I’m actually studying. My final is tomorrow and we get the results on Friday. And if I don’t pass, my mother is gonna go off on me.”

  Damn. I wanted to see her. “Okay, I’ma let you go, then. We still going out on Friday though, right?”

  “If I pass.”

  “A’ight. Go back to studying, then. I don’t want nothing to get in the way of our date.” She giggle. “Okay.” “Bye.”

  Two days. I can wait.

  I go upstairs, grab a beer, and sit on the couch. And ’cause I can’t get the agency visit out my mind, I call Jasmine. “What you doing?” I ask her when she answer her cell.

  “I’m in bed, reading one of those books from the list. It’s called The Stranger, but it’s kinda slow and depressing so far. You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just that, I’m thinking, you know, ’bout Troy and—” “He okay?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I think so.” I tell her ’bout the visit, everything that happened, and how bad it got at the end.

  And just like I knew she would, she listen to me and try and say the right thing. “Troy knows you the one that’s always been there for him, Ty. You two are real close now and nothing’s gonna change that.”

  “I know, but …”

  “Listen to me, Ty,” she say, real serious. “He’s gonna be alright. Remember, he
got you as a big brother.”

  Jasmine always know the right thing to say to make me feel better. And she mean what she say too. Me and her talk for a little while, ’til she tell me she getting tired and gotta get up early for work. “I thought you was gonna try and read some more of that book,” I say.

  “I am. If I read a few more pages, I’ll be asleep in five minutes!” She laugh.

  “A’ight. I’ma let you go, then.”

  We say bye and hang up, and I sit there finishing my beer. Jasmine right. I don’t got nothing to worry ’bout, not when it come to Troy. He gonna be okay. I’ma make sure of that.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 7

  SIXTEEN

  Even though I seen Troy at the agency yesterday, I go by his camp on Thursday anyway so me and him can talk. That was the first time he seen our pops in a year and I wanna make sure he doing okay, that he understand what’s going on, how we all trying to get him back. Not only that, but I want some one-on-one time with the kid ’cause of the way he said he hate Ms. Woods. I wanna know if there was something more he wanted to say to us but couldn’t ’cause Ms. Thomas was right there in the room the whole time we was together.

  I mean, it mighta been nothing. Maybe he was just wilding out ’cause his whole family was there and all of us was acting weird and shit, putting on a show, and maybe Troy ain’t know what the fuck was going on.

  As usual, me and Troy play ’round for a while like we always do, but then I calm him down and ask him how he feel that our pops is out.

  He shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “’Cause it’s okay whatever you feel.”

  He quiet for a while, then he go, “How you feel?”

  Why he gotta ask me that? “I probably feel the same way you do,” I say. “But me and you is gonna be a’ight no matter if he stay out or if he get locked up again. Don’t worry ’bout nothing.”