This Side of Providence

by Rachel M. Harper

  There’s a backyard behind the building, a fenced-in square lot covered with picnic tables, but it’s been too cold to eat outside. After dinner most people stand by the door, smoking and talking shit about the food. One night when Mami and I are standing there this guy in a hooded parka comes up behind her, throws his arm around her neck and says, “Stop or I’ll shoot.” I’m about to kick the guy in the balls when Mami turns around and hugs him and says, “Hey asshole, what rock have you been hiding under?”

  When he unzips the parka and drops his hood, I’m shocked to see Charley staring at me. He looks equally surprised, though he hides it well.

  “Hey, I want you to meet my kid,” Mami says, pushing me in front of her. I shake Charley’s hand and we both pretend this is the first time we laid eyes on each other.

  They laugh for a while, talking about places and people I never heard of. Mami lowers her voice every time she says something she don’t want me to hear so I can’t quite follow the entire conversation. Bottom line, they broke a lot of laws together. It’s weird to think of Mami having her own life, completely separate from mine. And I can only imagine how pissed she’d be if she found out about the life I been living without her. I already know I can never tell her about the months I worked for Snowman, and now I know I have to add this to the list.

  Mami sends me inside to get dessert, and I come back with three pieces of cherry pie. They don’t see me in the doorway because I’m stuck behind a real fat guy who needs two people to help him walk. That’s when I hear Charley asking Mami about being in the joint.

  “It almost killed me,” she says. “But you wanna know what’s more fucked up? I miss it sometimes.”

  Charley laughs. “Try doing six months in the men’s unit,” he says, lighting another cigarette. “So, you still clean?”

  “So far,” she says. “What’s that shit they say, One day at a time? That’s where I’m at.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Charley says. He pulls on his beard and laughs. “So how’s that working out for you?”

  Mami blinks when a cloud of smoke covers her face. “Got no choice.”

  He shrugs. “Shit. You always got a choice.”

  Right then I come out from behind the fat guy and hand them each their pie.

  “We should go now,” I say to Mami. “Your meeting starts at seven, right?”

  “My little assistant,” she says to Charley.

  “Everybody needs one,” Charley says, staring right at me. He puts his cigarette out against the brick wall and gives Mami a kiss on the cheek. Then he pats me on the shoulder. “Hope to see you around, kid.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Mami says, forcing herself to smile.

  Charley throws the plastic fork I brought him into the garbage. “Well, sometimes you can’t.” Then he bites into the pie like it’s a slice of pizza.

  “Let’s go, Mami. I don’t want you to be late.”

  “Slow down, boy,” she says, as I pull her inside. “Who do you think you are, my mother?”

  I grab her hand and we walk through the crowded dining room together. A bunch of the men lift their heads to watch her pass them by. It’s been that way since I was a little kid, everyone staring at Mami like she’s famous. I know she’s pretty, but there’s gotta be something else that makes people stare like that. Even women can’t look away.

  She walks me back to the shelter and then heads off by herself to catch a bus to her meeting. I sneak down to the corner and hide behind a minivan to watch her as she waits at the bus stop. Just to make sure. A bus comes and goes, without her getting on it. She rubs her arms and hugs herself to keep warm. The air outside feels cold like a refrigerator and I wish both of us had on heavier coats. She walks in a circle looking at her feet, something Trini used to do all the time. From this far away Mami looks like a teenager, taking the bus home after basketball practice, or going to the mall to meet her girlfriends. She looks like she don’t have a problem in the world.

  Another bus comes by and this one she gets on. I wait for it to drive past me, so I can read the sign that says where it’s going. “Plainfield Ave—Johnston,” it reads, the opposite direction of her meeting. First thing I wonder is where she’s going. The second, when she stopped telling me the truth. Later, when I’m lying in bed at the shelter, on a mattress no thicker than cardboard and probably not as comfortable, I think maybe she’s not going anywhere at all. Maybe she spends her nights riding around on that bus, staring out at the dark city just beyond her reach and watching everything in the world pass her by.

  Snowman once told me there’s only one hour of the day when he can’t be interrupted: from 11 a.m. to noon weekday mornings, when he swims laps at the downtown YMCA. I know I should wait until school’s over, but sometimes he’s hard to find later on, so I sneak out of school early and take the bus to the Y. There’s a guard at the door who wants to see my pass, but when I tell him I’m lost and that my father’s inside, he lets me in.

  The pool is in the basement, in a room with a low ceiling and brightly colored flags hanging from the overhead beams. Even in the water he is easy to spot. His body’s long and thin like a dolphin bleached white from hours in the sun, and he’s the only person in the pool who swims without stopping. During one lap he crosses the entire length of the pool in one breath, which impresses the lifeguard so much he claps when Snowman lifts his head out of the water to finally breathe.

  When he gets out, he dries himself off with a stiff towel the size of a washcloth, and then wraps a beach towel around his waist. He’s halfway to the locker room when I call his name. The echo is loud and everyone in the room looks at me. He stops, but doesn’t turn around. He waits for me to catch up with him.

  “What time is it?” he asks me, looking down at the tiled floor and not at my face.

  “11:45.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  I do, but I don’t want to admit it. “I waited until you got out of the pool.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  I feel my face get hot. “No. It means that it’s still your time.”

  “When does my time end?”

  “Noon.”

  “Can you wait until then?”

  I look at the clock on the wall. The second hand doesn’t move, as if time is stopped. I nod.

  “Wait here,” he says, still not looking at me.

  He disappears into the locker room, his flip-flops smacking against the wet floor. I sit on the bleachers while I wait for him, watching a few people swim laps. The sound of laughter echoes throughout the room, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. At noon he’s back, sitting beside me on the aluminum bench. It smells like he used half a jar of cocoa butter to cover up the smell of the chlorine, but it didn’t work.

  “What’s up?”

  “We need a place to live, another apartment.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Mami and me, and my sisters. A two-bedroom at least, maybe three.”

  He looks up at the ceiling. “Three bedrooms ain’t cheap. And they ain’t plentiful.”

  “Okay, two’s fine.”

  “How soon?”

  “Now.”

  He looks at me.

  “We’re staying at a shelter,” I tell him.

  He looks confused. “Since when?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was using you.”

  “And now?”

  I shrug. “Now I’m desperate.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.” I rub my hands over my face.

  “You wouldn’t be here if it was nothing.”

  “It’s Mami,” I finally tell him, feeling my heart start to race. “We’re too close to everything bad at the shelter. Everything she needs to stay away from.”

  He nods, scratching his all-white goatee. “Did she slip?”

  “
Slip where?”

  “Never mind.”

  He looks hot suddenly, and his head starts to shine. He uses a small towel from his bag to wipe up the sweat.

  “I might have something open in the Armory,” he says. “Should be ready by March 1st. A nice two-bed near the park. How’s that sound?”

  “Good,” I say. “That sounds good. How much you want for it?”

  “Right now it goes for seven hundred.” He wipes his head again. “I could do it for five if you’re willing to shovel out the driveway and clip the trees or whatever.”

  “Yeah, I can do that. How much you need for a deposit?”

  “Five will do. Tell your mother she can bring it by the Laundromat next week.”

  I pull an old, worn envelope from the back pocket of my jeans and hand it to him. “There’s six hundred forty-two dollars in there. Consider it the deposit and some of the first month’s rent.”

  He looks down at the envelope but doesn’t take it. “I don’t want your money, Cristo.”

  “It’s your money now,” I say, offering it to him again.

  “Come on, kid. Put that away before the lifeguard sees it.”

  “Fine.” I tuck it back into my pocket. “I’ll give it to you outside.”

  His hands are still holding the towel, damp with sweat. I watch him squeeze it out, until the white part of his knuckles turns red. “You worked hard to save all that. It shouldn’t just go all at once.”

  “But this is what I was saving it for.”

  He spreads the towel onto the bench and relaxes his hands. In a few seconds the normal color returns, brown and white splotches like the marble cake I’ve seen Teacher eat in her classroom once all the other kids have gone home. I wonder how he feels looking so different from everybody else.

  “Listen,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder. “That’s not your job anymore. Paying rent, saving money, buying food. It’s your mother’s job. She’s the grownup.” He shakes his head and exhales. “I know she’s getting help from the state, and from that agency, so she should have enough to cover things for now.” He looks at me. “It needs to come from her, okay? Not from you.”

  A whistle blows and I hear the slap of bare skin against water. I try to imagine how the pool would look without any water, like the one in my old neighborhood.

  “You understand, kid?”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  “If she needs time to get on her feet with a job or whatever, it’s okay. I can give her that.”

  He stands up and pulls on a hooded sweatshirt, then zips himself into a black down jacket, doubling his size. I grab onto his puffy sleeve and watch my hand sink into the dark fabric. Under the soft feathers, I can feel the strength of his arm.

  “Thanks, Snowman.”

  “No problem,” he says, throwing his bag over his shoulder, “but next time you show up here, you’re doing laps.” I know he means it like a threat, but to me it sounds like a promise.

  When we pass the front desk, the guard calls out to us. “I guess you found your dad, huh?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I say, careful not to make eye contact with either one of them.

  Snowman shakes his head and laughs softly, holding the door open for me to pass through. The cold air shocks me like a slap in the face. I zip up my sweatshirt and pull the hood down over my eyes. Snowman steps in front of me, shielding me from the brutal wind. We walk several blocks like that, until he puts me on a bus and sends me back to school.

  When Valentine’s Day comes I use some of the money I saved from working to buy presents for the special females in my life. I get a huge chocolate heart for Teacher, a box of Sweethearts candy for Luz, a white teddy bear with a necklace that says “Forever” for Trini, and a dozen red roses for Mami, because since she’s been back she’s always talking about how much she missed flowers when she was gone. And I know she doesn’t have anyone else to give her any. I want to get Graciela something, too, but I can’t find a store around here that sells the kind of books she reads, so I end up sending her a card with a handwritten poem inside. I write it out in English, just to show her how my writing got better, but I don’t sign it because I figure the poem says enough and if she really cares she’ll figure it out.

  For a while I was doing better in school but lately I haven’t been turning in my homework and sometimes I fall asleep on the bus and miss my stop and don’t even get to school until second period. Mrs. Reed always asks me to stay after class to catch up but most days I sneak out the door before she can stop me. Sometimes I go to the library to pick up books for Snowman but sometimes I have to meet Mami at the Free Clinic to help her carry all those cans of Ensure back to the shelter. I don’t mind staying there, but it’s hard to sleep because the TV’s always on and everybody’s coughing and talking and getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s like trying to take a nap in a hospital waiting room.

  When Mami sticks around it’s okay, but when she’s gone I get bored and end up playing dominoes or checkers by myself with only half the pieces. I try to stay awake so I can say good night to her when she comes back, just to make sure she looks okay, but most nights I end up falling asleep in the rec room. When I wake up I’m on the cot in my room with my sneakers still on, and I never know if one of the staff people carried me there or if Mami did. When I get up to go to school, she’s still asleep, looking so peaceful I don’t want to bother her. Sometimes days go by before we actually see each other and it makes me remember old times.

  When I turn in the first draft of that book of poems I’m making for school, Mrs. Reed is shocked.

  “Wow, Cristo,” she says, flipping through it. “I’m impressed. You have a great breadth of experience represented here.”

  I look at her. “What’s that mean?”

  She laughs. “It means you’re doing a good job.”

  “Oh. Nice.”

  She points to the calendar. “The next project we have is a book report for Black History Month and a personal essay reflecting on cultural diversity. If this is any indication of what you’re capable of, you should do quite well.”

  I ask her what she means by cultural diversity.

  “You know, how people act, what they eat, how they dress. A lot of it has to do with where they’re from and how they grew up.”

  “And diversity means different, right?”

  She nods. “Some people refer to America as a melting pot, because it’s made up of people from all over the world. Sometimes we blend together like in a soup and it makes a new flavor, and sometimes we stay separate, distinct, each with our own taste. I want you to write an essay about why you think that is.”

  I tell her I think it sounds hard but then she says there’s really no right or wrong answer, so that makes me feel better. I look back at the calendar. “So wait, why do black people get a whole month, when we only get a week in April?”

  She looks confused. “Well, Puerto Rico is a small island, Cristo, whereas Africa is an entire continent.”

  “A friend of mine says they’re trying to make up for slavery. And for the fact that so many black people are in prison, in the ghetto, or dead.” I know friend isn’t the right word for Snowman, but I can’t think of anything else to call him.

  “Interesting theory,” Mrs. Reed says. “You know, you could celebrate Black History Month as well, if you want to. I’m sure a lot of your ancestors are from Africa.”

  She moves on to the next student, but I’m still thinking about what that means when the bell rings and it’s time to go home.

  I meet up with Teacher after school and she brings me to the library where they have a huge table covered with black history books. I read a story about a lady named Rosa Parks who starts some bus boycott in Alabama when she won’t give up her seat to a white person. I guess I learn some history by reading that book, but most of what I know about discrimination I learn in real life. In America, it’s all about skin color: the darker you are, the faster people
cross the street. That’s why Snowman trips people out. His skin’s white like rice but his nose and mouth look just like some African dude, and even though he reads a lot he sounds like he’s never once left the corners of South Providence. People don’t know where to put him and that makes them nervous because without a group they can’t figure out how good they should treat him. I don’t really care about race since everybody I know has the same thing in common: being poor. No matter what color your skin is, being broke don’t look good on nobody.

  When Teacher asks me what I’m gonna write my essay on I start telling her a story about being in Kennedy Plaza when I first moved to Providence and watching a white couple fight in the street. The guy pulled the lady onto the sidewalk by her hair and started slapping her hard across her face and the back of her neck. Instead of protecting herself, she flung her arms out and started wailing on him in the ribs. He kicked at her like she was a crazy dog and then she dove into him and held him around the waist. She looked like she was hugging him but I could tell she was just trying to keep herself from falling onto the ground.

  A group of teenagers, I tell her, all of them black, got off the bus from Hope High School and when they saw what was happening they ran over to the couple and started yelling at the guy and eventually pulled him off. The way they acted I thought they knew him, or maybe even knew her, but after a while it was clear they were strangers. Pretty soon the guy calmed down and left, but the teenagers stayed with the lady and asked her if she wanted them to call the cops or an ambulance or something. She fixed her ponytail and said, “No, thanks,” and spit a bloody chunk of snot onto the street, right next to the bus I was waiting for. I watched her pass a few white teenagers as she limped over to the bus and they all kept their eyes on the ground.

  When I’m done with the story Teacher asks me what I think it means. I tell her I don’t know, but she doesn’t like that type of answer so she keeps staring at me till I say more. I finally tell her all I can figure is that white people think it’s good to mind their own business, whereas black people figure if something shady’s going down then it is their business.