Did Kenneth know you were coming? she says. She looks past me, and it’s no telling what she sees.
Kenneth, I say. Who’s Kenneth?
Wait, she says, and slams the door shut.
But I won’t let her do it; won’t let her wreck my day. I take out my cigarettes and count what’s left in the pack.
Kenny comes to the door dressed in a starched white shirt and creased khakis as if he just might be other than who and what he is. Well, well, well, he says. Look who finally dropped in.
Needed time, I say. Don’t start.
Don’t we all, he says. How’d you get here?
A spaceship, I say. A hot air balloon.
Still got jokes, huh, I see. But check this out, all jokes aside, call ahead next time, he says. Helen ain’t too fond of surprise guests.
You got my boys a few days and now all of a sudden you calling shots, I say. Trying to tell me when and where?
They’re our boys, he says. Canaan and Kenneth Jr. And how all this time add up to a few days? C’mon, now, Grace. We’re too old for new math.
You wouldn’t put it past this man to have been feeding my boys a bad script about me, but my boys are bright; they’ll see for themselves.
My youngest comes up, calling Kenny. He spots me and yells and almost falls over himself trying to make it outside. He pulls me tight, shoots something out of me, shoots something into me. I missed you, I missed you, I say, and stand back to have a look at him. His father, if that’s what he is, struts off. My baby leads me inside and asks if I want to see the rest of the house, and I don’t have the heart to say no. He shows me a crystal chandelier in the front room, a kitchen fixed with granite counters and oak cabinets, bedrooms posterized with basketball gods. He tugs me into the basement where my middle boy is sitting in the semidark, eyes locked on the giant screen, thumbs drumming a game controller.
Ta-da! I say.
He looks at me, a glimpse, says, Hey mom, and goes right back to his game.
Wait a sec, that’s it? I say. That’s all you got for your mama after all this time, after I hiked across the world for you?
He pauses his game and slogs over and presses his head to my chest for a thump, that’s it.
You would think it was this middle boy and not my baby that marks time but it isn’t. It’s Canaan I was pregnant with the night I caught Kenny, the night he called one time too many and said he wouldn’t be home. It was my youngest kicking in my belly the late night I broke a phone, threw on clothes, and blew red lights all the way to her apartment. By then I’d steamed outside her place many a night, had busted car windows, knifed tires, had keyed curses onto the hood of her car, but of all the times that was the first time I’d ever had the gall to knock on her door. She answered in a robe that was a match of one he’d bought for me, and it must’ve been a reflex how fast she tried to shut me outside. So quick, but I jammed the door, pushed through, and stalked her into the bedroom where I caught Kenny—he seemed the gift of my life to that point—lying butt naked in bunched sheets. He didn’t say a word, didn’t stir when I turned and fled.
That night, I drove home and butchered his suits and dumped them in a tub of bleach. The truth is, though, it was as if I’d done nothing—nothing at all to heal.
He and she bicker above us and it’s a boon for me.
The boys open their gifts and precious hours go on.
They are priceless, my sons; they’re all I need, or else they’re not enough and I hope to never know.
Chapter 12
But that’s how it is for us.
—Champ
There’s a bucket up ahead spitting a big-ass plume of dirty white clouds. Cars ahead, cars behind, car across. Shit, you could start a squad—hoop, football, soccer (though we don’t play no soccer in these parts)—with the fools waiting for the shop clerk to flip the sign, and let us in, and scrawl our names on a list nobody but nobody but her can touch. Niggers ready to Olympic-joust for first in the chair. When the clippers are cold, sharp, precise, before a showing late can mean a whole afternoon on ice. Believe me when I tell you, fresh cuts are serious business, especially at The Cut Above, which is damn near an institution. Soon as the sign flips we (the we being me, KJ, and Canaan) surge across the street with the rest. The barbers in prep mode, zipping their smocks, oiling their clippers, tooling their stations. The clerk puts us down on the list and sends my bros searching for seats.
The shop meanwhile fills.
See you got your nappy-headed brothers with you, one barber says, the resident shop funnyman.
Damn, homie, I say. Hatetrocity at the crack of dawn? Let us live.
You know me, he says.
Yep, I say. Your hate runneth over.
My bad, he says, twisting the top off a bottled juice. But I wouldn’t have to say it if you brought them in here more often. Your bros be lookin like Nigerians by the head by the time you think they need a cut.
Gimme me six feet, I say, and ask Famous, the shop’s manager, to get a handle on his workers. Famous, by the way, is this type of guy: a being-caught-without-a-fresh-fade-is-a-crime type of guy. A man after my grooming heart.
Mr. Funnyman asks about his first client and the clerk says it’s baby bro.
C’mon, young Kunta. Hope you don’t break no teeth on my clippers.
The clerk unmutes the TV in the lounge and teases the shop with a commercial of kids singing. The rest of the lounge, a couple dudes haranguing who’s the best high school hooper in the state. Near them this tight-jawed quasi-mute, a dude they say got a bad habit of taking stuff that ain’t his. A handful of unmentionables. And it’s one of them (thought I was the only one who caught it) glimpses a white girl jogging past the shop. Look at that shit, he says. Got pork Prefontaine-ing in the hood now.
Big deal, someone says.
Damn right, dig deal, someone says. It’ll be marathons next. Million-man dog walk after that.
Why ya’ll mad? someone says. Make it easier to knock the pork.
Pork, what’s pork?
White meat, fool.
Who wants that?
All the smart niggers, that’s who. Trust the porkologist. You ain’t lived till you had a taste.
Man, you silly.
Sheeit. Knocking a white broad is a black man’s civil right. Even Malcolm approved.
Malcolm approved, my ass.
Real talk, boss. Check the history books.
The clerk stomps into the lounge. She’s the girth of an NFL lineman (a few pounds off, no more). She don’t need to do more than wrench her lips for fools to quiet right the fuck down.
It don’t matter why they’re here, they’re here, Famous says. You see them coffee shops and boutiques and bookstores down the block. Who you think they built them for?
Famous got his nickname cause someone said he lived life like a movie. Most people would say that’s extra, but I say, a life with no stories, what’s the point?
KJ’s ambivalent about his cut. Looks to me, with his shoulders hiked. My bro is always demurring, always deferring. But since it’s a 0.00 percent of reclaiming a vacated seat, it won’t be no assurance from intimate distance today. Give him a low one-lengther, I say from my perch. Dude’s averse to cuts, I say.
Averse? the barber says. Averse! There you go with those SAT words. Man, don’t you know the shop got rules against that smart boy vocab?
Funnyman’s got jokes, but maybe it ain’t knee-slap. How else to explain dude on the other side who used to go to grade school with me, who used to get teased something terrible about his droopy eye, who spent recesses befuddled by chapter books, needed extra time on tests, and slogged the halls past the last bell with low ambition pinned to his chest like a Cub Scout badge? How else to explain, how now, like most of us other frauds, he plays like he’s too tough for TV, a muthafuckin man of steel. But hold up before you knock it. That’s how it is for us. How they made it. How it must be if we are at all to be. Cause how it is where you’re from, who knows, but
around here, you’re either a soldier or a sanguine sucker.
Check it, though, deep down in the place sealed off from the world, what I know is, no civilian should have to be that tough.
Someone mentions white broads again. Calls up a snicker.
I was just talkin to my grandmama about it, Famous says. She said it used to be nothing but white folks living here. Said we used to be out there by where Delta Park is. Then, after the flood, we moved on this side and white folks moved out. So really they’re just reclaiming the neighborhood. Don’t y’all watch the news? Didn’t ya’ll see the big story on gentrification?
Gentrifi-what? Famous. Not you too with SATs. We thought you was from the streets.
You fools can joke if you like, Famous says. But when ya’ll livin on the outskirts cause you can’t afford rent, see who’s haha’ing then.
Shit, send me to the burbs. That’s loose pork central.
You fools keep on, Famous says. And when they got Northeast under sovereign lock, watch how fast us niggers are extraterrestrials.
The bell sounds. A latecomer arrives. He gapes at the crush and walks right back out. Funnyman makes a show of snatching the cape off my brother.
The bell sounds. The hot-food-plate man strolls in and posts by the clerk’s desk. Good morning, my brothers, he says, and tips his brim. He reels off a menu: hash browns, grits, eggs, tuna melts, pancakes, French toast. Plates are five dollars, he says. But if you’re hungry and ain’t got it, get me back next go-round.
Damn, brotherman. You ain’t got no swine?
Now, now, now, my brother, he says. I do not encourage the black man’s consumption of the hog.
Brotherman scratches orders in a black pad and marches out to his truck. He whisks in with plates covered in foil and sweaty bottled juice. We appreciate the business, my brother, he says post every sale.
The clerk calls my turn for the chair. She stands up and stretches, and trust me, it’s a universe away from even a half-sexy sight. She calls my name for next in my barber’s chair, and I call KJ over to cover my seat.
What’s shaking with you, bro? says my barber.
Shit, I say.
Shit is right, he says, and swings me around. Look at that!
By that he means the girl in the threshold holding a little boy’s hand, the one dressed in spindly stilettos, a low-cut shirt, and jeans tight as a blood pressure cuff.
The off-duty stripper fit’s extra for my tastes, I say. But she might could on the late night.
True, true, he says.
He starts to prep. To say my barber works at his own speed would be a huge huge downplay. The homie’s slow as shit, but he’s also hella-skilled, which is mandate number one for me. Number two is, nothing I ever tell him gets retold.
Bro, I ain’t tryin to be in your business, he says, but I was ear-hustling and overheard some fools with your name in they mouth. And it wasn’t positive.
Forreal? I say.
Yeah, he says, somethin about you and a chick.
You catch a name? I say.
Nope, he says. Sure didn’t.
My barber used to live around the block from me when we lived in the house on Sixth. Back then he was cutting in his basement, shearing sharp-ass flattops in janky light. But I had to find a new barber for a sec when he moved. His people being one of the first in the neighborhood to sell off, to give up their place to white folks. This is why I mention to him my plan to buy the house.
You serious? he says.
Dead serious, I say.
Well, if that’s what you gone do, bro, he says, you best put the hurry-up on it. You seen the signs? These house prices is so high it’s disrespect.
The house on Sixth, home, ain’t even up for sale, but I leave that bit of info out. How I’d hustle enough money to buy it if it was—tis a question, a damn good question.
The bell sounds again. The bell is always sounding on Saturdays.
My barber swivels me towards the wall of fold-up chairs where Canaan and KJ share a seat and sit quiet and watchful, and oh what a difference a decent fade makes; we look as if we could be some kin.
Ding! There goes the bell. A white man strolls in—I’m talking the average white man, the everyman’s white man, as in there couldn’t be a whiter white man in all of America, as in the man has his Oxford shirt elbow-rolled, his collar flipped, and pennies in his penny loafers.
The clerk calls down to a barber, the only barber in the shop who takes appointments, and he motions at the white man. You should hear how fast the shop is overcome.
Well I’ll be goddamned! Look at this!
He’s my client
And what’s your client’s name?
My name is Jeff, Jeff says.
Jeff, okay, Jeff. If it’s not too much of us to ask, where do you live—close?
Yes. Moved a few blocks away a few weeks ago.
We see, we see. So how you likin it?
It’s a wonderful neighborhood!
WONDERFUL NEIGHBORHOOD! Ya’ll here this?
Jeff moseys down to his barber. The barber snaps on the cape, wets Jeff’s stark-blond strands, combs them over his eyes, plucks a pair of scissors from his supplies. He swivels Jeff to face us.
And this is how you spell mistake.
Jeff, if it’s not too much of us to ask, do you mind telling us if you’re buying or renting?
Buying, he says. Isn’t owning a home the American dream?
That’s what they say, Jeff. So, Jeff, the shop would like to know, did you have much trouble finding a bank to finance that dream?
What are you implying? he says.
Famous, tell him. Let him know.
Hey, buddy, I’m not the bad guy here, Jeff says.
My barber snaps off my cape and I step out the chair and brush my sleeves. I look over at my bros both caught in shades of juvenile angst.
He’s right, I say to the shop. Right about it being a dream.
Oh boy, look who comes to his defense.
No defense. Just truth, I say.
Jeff’s barber twists him away from the crowd.
Got eyes on my back while I bop over and ask the shop clerk how much I owe and give my bros dollars for tip. These shop hawks caught for the moment in a rapture, but then a big mouth self-appointed hoopologist chirps about last night’s ticker and just that fast the shop is back to its chattering self. The doorbell sounds and in swanks a wicked ex Crip who’s grand among us for beating a racketeering beef. He and I nod at each other—a silent salute, before we (the we being me and my bros) push outside. Outside, I look far this way and far that way.
Would you believe me if I told you there ain’t a single pale-skinned-home-owning-dog-walking distance runner in sight?
Chapter 13
That’s it, just a month?
—Grace
Of all my boys, Champ was the most collickly. When he was a baby, he’d pitch fits, crying and flailing his fists to where you couldn’t do nothing to calm him. We were living with my grandmother Mama Liza then, and sometimes, to keep him from wailing the whole house awake, I’d strap him in the backseat and drive. After a few blocks with the radio low and the engine humming, instead of crying he’d be cooing and rubbing his booties together. It never took more than one side of a cassette and a smooth road to lull him to sleep. But after a while the rides were as much for me as they were for him. Whether he was crying or not, I’d steal out and venture to Laurelhurst or Lake Oswego or Gresham or Milwaukie or the spot on Marine Drive where I would sit and watch the planes take off. Most nights I was back before the last newscast, but some nights I wandered until the TV snowed off-air.
Champ shows late morning playing a slow song from the sixties.
Your music, I say. You act like you as old as me with this music.
Well, you about as old as me by tastes, he says. So don’t that make us even?
We wheel out to a lot on Division and park a few blocks away because my eldest has a theory about never letting a s
alesman see you pull up.
There’s a circle of salesmen near an office huffing cigs. One of them stamps out his smoke and hustles over. Welcome to Treasure Auto, he says. He pats the breast of a ragged wool coat and takes out a card and thumps it and offers it to Champ. He says his name, a name you forget, and asks if my eldest and I are siblings.
So who’s leaving here in a new car? he says.
He flashes a mended smile, shakes a finger scorched from days, months, years of smoking to nubs, and this is why, while he and Champ tour, I drag feet back.
Soon as you see what you want, you let me know, he says, his breath making wreaths in the cold. And I’ll make sure you leave here with it.
You could loll a day care of upset babies to sleep with how long it takes him to show us a car that’s worth our time. This one’s gray and boxy with a lightning-shaped crack in the windshield. Champ gets in and starts it up. The engine sounds like an engine should—I’ve heard enough sick ones to know—and the inside’s nice too, as if the old owners kept it covered in plastic. Champ revs the gas and tests the heat and checks the glove and flips the visors and twists on the wipers—high speed, low speed, intermittent, and it all checks out, plus the price falls within what Champ said we had to spend. But it’s a Dodge, and I can’t get past the thought of me wheeling by every person I’ve known in life, in a car meant for someone twice my age. The salesman asks if we wanna take it for a spin.
No, thank you, I say.
Not a good fit, eh? he says. Not to worry, we’ve got a car that’s right for you or I’m in the wrong business. We let him lead us farther and farther into a used car abyss: a Rabbit with a dented bumper, an Escort with stained cloth seats, a Pontiac built before power steering. Name your price, he says, and taps a hood. No reasonable offer will be refused. Unreasonable offers may be considered.
Champ stops him midway through another pitch. Thanks, he says. But we’re going to check a few more spots. He grabs me by the arm. He’s never had a tough time making choices, or not as tough a time as me.
Hey, don’t leave, he says. Wait a sec. Wait a sec. We have more.
But my eldest has already made up his mind.
The Residue Years Page 8
