“May, ya mama said give me that half a bag of ice out the top of the box,” Uncle Doug says pushing his thin, straight black hair back out of his eyes. Mama says he uses a soup bowl to cut his hair. He puts the bowl on his head and cuts every hair that hangs past the bowl, and I can see that looking at his head.
The back doorbell rings as Uncle Doug is asking me for the ice. Without me asking him, Walter stands and goes over to the refrigerator. He opens the freezer compartment and pulls out the bag of ice while I go to the back door. Uncle Doug comes and gets the ice, and does a dance step right back out the door, pulling it closed and muffling the blues again.
At the back door are two regular customers. One wants a fifth of red Richards Wild Irish Rose, and the other wants a forty ounce of Olde English malt liquor. Walter opens the bottom half of the refrigerator and pulls out both orders. He hands them to me, and I walk back over to the door and serve the customers. I lock the door and turn around to see a curious look on Michelle’s face.
“Yeah?” I query.
“Where is your food kept, if the refrigerator is filled with drinks and ice?”
Sitting back at the table I ask, “Girl, with everything you dealing with tonight that’s what you got on your mind?”
“Yes. I know, but I have always been eccentric with the timing of my questions. I get that from my mama. So, where is your food?”
“We have a refrigerator and deep freezer in the basement.”
“Oh,” she says and then goes silent.
To my best friend I say, “You want me to call your mama? Sometimes she listens to me more than you.”
Looking at Michelle but talking to me he answers, “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Either you or your mama.”
“My mama?” Dang, the boy really is mixed up in the head.
“Yeah, you right, not your mama. You better call her.”
My friend is in a peculiar state. Seldom are his statements useless or pointless, and I can count the times on one hand when his head has been lowered as it is now. Michelle is not the girl for him. She is putting him through too much already.
“Maybe you could call my mama too. No, not my mama. My father. Call my house and ask for my father. If you can speak to him, he will talk to my mama and get her straight.” Michelle’s face brightens some. “Matter of fact, I am sure that’s what you should do. No, not you. I will call.”
I’m glad she corrected that because there is no way I am calling her family’s house this time of morning. The back doorbell rings again. Walter and I stand up at the same time.
“I got it,” I say.
He sits back down but keeps his eyes on me as I walk to the door. Looking out the peephole, I see Ms. Carol.
“Dang, it’s your mama,” I say to Carlos, and I open the door without hesitation.
She walks right in. She has on a pink housecoat and a pair of Carlos’s gym shoes. She had to be freezing out there. Ms. Carol is a tall woman, but she is very thin. She has no meat to protect her against the cold.
“Damn!” Ms. Carol has a big, dog-barking voice like Carlos’s. “I don’t know what was on my mind coming over here without a coat,” she says and immediately closes the door behind her.
Everyone at the table stands when she enters. She rubs her hands together and does a blood-circulating dance for warmth. When she stops, her eyes are on Michelle.
“Your parents are on their way over here.” Looking at Carlos she says, “You two might as well sit back down. You are not to leave. And don’t even think about driving my car ever again. You will be thirty before I trust you with another car of mine.” To me, she says, “I need to speak to Gloria.”
Now, this could be a situation. I cannot remember Ms. Carol ever being in our house. “Wait here a moment please.”
Ms. Carol takes my seat at the table. Walter nods toward the door. I don’t blame him. If I could leave, I would.
“Carlos, would you lock the door behind Walter?”
Walking through the door into the dining room, I take a very large breath to get ready for what could be an explosion.
Chapter Five
Mama and Uncle Doug are sitting together on the sofa watching her other two guests dance. Stepping, they call it. I walk to Mama and bend to her ear and whisper, “Ms. Carol is in the kitchen, and she needs to explain something to you.”
I thank God that Mama isn’t drunk, her eyes are clear and focused, and she understands what I have said. She stands. “Excuse me for a minute, y’all.”
While walking through the dining room, Mama stops us by the cherry wood breakfront. “Now what’s going on in here? Doug told me you have company, too.”
“It’s just Walter, Carlos, and his new girlfriend, Michelle.” I totally understand the stern look she gives me. Three people is not “just.” “Just” would have been only Walter, or only Carlos. “Well, it was just Walter, but Carlos and Michelle came over unexpected.”
“And why is Carol in my house?”
“Carlos and Michelle got in trouble with Michelle’s mama and Ms. Carol. They came over here to sort things out. Ms. Carol must have seen her car parked in front of our house and guessed that Carlos was here. She came over to make sure they didn’t leave before Michelle’s parents come over.”
Mama presses her thin lips together and says, “This sounds like a situation that should be handled at her house, not mine.”
She’s right. “I know, Mama, but this is where it all came together. I think Ms. Carol was afraid Carlos and Michelle wouldn’t stay put long enough for her parents to get here.”
Mama sucks her teeth. “That’s a lot of nerve. The woman knows what is going on at my house this time of night. I bet she wouldn’t have this going on at her house during one of her crap games. And we don’t even know what type of people the girl’s parents are. One of them could be the police for all we know. No, they’re going to have deal with this at her house.”
Mama has been bootlegging for so long that most times I forget it’s illegal to sell liquor after hours from a home without a license. It’s second nature to me. I sell beer and icy cups just the same.
“How soon will the girl’s parents be here?”
“I don’t know, Mama.”
She walks ahead of me into the kitchen. When we enter and we hear, “That’s a brand-new Cadillac, and you disappear in it for over sixteen hours, and the only explanation you have is ‘you didn’t know what to do’? What you should have done is kept your little prick in your pants and brought my damn car home.”
“Ma!” Carlos barks.
“Don’t ‘Ma’ me! Shit, you wrong, boy!”
Speaking at a level only I can hear, my mama says, “Okay, for Carlos’s sake we will do it here.” Louder, she says, “Hey, Carol, it’s good to see you, girl. Now you know better than to let these kids stress you out. What’s going on here?” She sits in the seat Walter left empty, and that leaves me standing.
“Girl, this boy done went and did it to that child over there,” Ms. Carol answers pointing to Michelle. “And now her mama says he raped her, and she’s threatening to call the police, but the child don’t look traumatized to me. What happened was they just got caught trying to be grown. They went somewhere and stayed gone long enough to have her parents and me walking the floors with worry, and all the boy can say is ‘he didn’t know what to do.’ But they both knew what to do hours ago when they were doing the bump-nasty. And y’all bet’ not have been doing it my new Cadillac. It better not smell like sex. Give me my damn keys!”
Carlos pulls the keys from his jacket pocket and hands them to her.
The back doorbell rings. I walk to it and look out the peephole. There are about four customers. I open the door and take their orders: three forty ounces and one fifth of White Rose. I serve them without turning to look at the table. The bootleg money is house spending money and my allowance. We are not going to stop selling.
When I close the back door, the front doorbell rings. Mama s
tands and walks through the dining room door.
Ms. Carol’s hard stare has forced both Carlos’s and Michelle’s heads down. To me, she says, “I hope you haven’t started acting grown, May. Believe me, life has plenty of time for sex once you are an adult. Right now is the time to be thinking about school and your future. All sex will do at this time in your life is get in the way. I been telling you and Carlos that for years. I hope you been listening more than him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” is my reply.
My mama comes back into the kitchen with Uncle Doug and her other two guests. “May, your uncle Doug is going to answer the back door while we all go up front and speak with Michelle’s father.”
Uncle Doug and the other two guests sit in the chairs we leave empty.
It’s Mama, Ms. Carol, Michelle, Carlos, Michelle’s daddy, and me all in the living room. Michelle’s daddy and Ms. Carol have taken the easy chairs. The rest of us—Carlos, Mama, Michelle, and I—are on the couch.
Mama’s newly painted ivory walls look dingy white to me with Ms. Carol and Mr. Pickens looking all around. Nothing in the living room seems up to par under their glance: the cocktail and end tables are dusty, the lamps are old-fashioned, the pattern of big flowers on the couch and easy chairs, which I originally thought comfortable and homey, now look country and backward, especially when I think about Ms. Carol’s leather living room furniture. Even Mama in her short blue jean skirt and lace-up halter top seem inappropriate with them here.
Looking at Michelle’s father, Mr. Pickens, I see he hasn’t changed too much from when Carlos and I were in his acting program. He’s still slim, and he still keeps his black wavy hair cut close. He has the blackest eyes that I have ever seen in my life. When I was a kid, I thought it was because the whites of his eyes were so bright, but both parts of his eyes are intense. The whites are as pure as a glass of milk, and the black part is as dark as one of Grandma’s cast-iron skillets.
Mr. Pickens is the first to speak. “Okay, before we get started, I want to say what a pleasant surprise it is to see you again, May, despite the circumstances. May, you were a very good actor. I hope you are still pursing the craft in some form. You brought the house down in The Lion King. Yes, it was a couple of years ago, but your performance is still remembered. I could use you as senior youth coach. The position pays, so think about,” he says staring right at me.
Acting was cool, but that was kid stuff. But he did say it paid. “Thank you, Mr. Pickens. Senior youth coach, huh? At Foster Park?” I ask.
“Yep, the program is housed there now. That is our central office. Are you interested?”
“I think I am,” I say smiling at him. And I am interested. Being at the theater earlier has me reminiscing about acting. Moving my eyes from Mr. Pickens to my mama, I see she is smiling, and that makes me happy. I like making my mama proud.
“Good. We need you there. Okay, that being said, back to the matter at hand. Young man, I have no plans to press any charges against you.” Mr. Pickens is looking real hard at Carlos. “My wife was worried to the point of being hysterical. You and my daughter were very inconsiderate in your actions today.”
He turns toward his daughter and says, “Michelle, due to what we all think occurred and has been occurring, you will take a pregnancy test, and this will put all the adult minds to rest. At this juncture, I personally don’t want to hear any comments from either of you. The situation speaks for itself.” His intense eyes go back and forth from Michelle to Carlos.
Dang, I think it’s a little extreme him not giving them an opportunity to say a thing in their defense, but it’s cool of him to say his wife was tripping, and that they are not pressing any charges against Carlos. I know Ms. Carol is glad to hear that.
To her, he says, “Carol, I will notify you of the results of the pregnancy test later this morning. I believe we can all use some—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because some dudes have busted through the dining room door. One has a pistol to Uncle Doug’s head. Two others are pushing Mama’s guests through the door. Uncle Doug and the other guests are slung to the floor at our feet.
The three dudes have on stocking-cap masks. Their faces are all smashed and contorted. But their clothes and builds are familiar. I think I know these dudes.
“Everybody empty dey pockets and remove all y’all jewelry.”
That sounds like Mooky. No one moves until he fires a shot up into the ceiling. Plaster dust is falling all around us. Ms. Carol screams, and so does Mama’s lady guest.
“I mean right now!”
That floor-creaking voice can only belong to Mooky. I’ll bet anything. Mama hasn’t budged. She is staring hard at Mooky too.
Dang, that gunshot has it smelling like firecrackers in here. The second dude comes around with an orange Aldi bag for us to start dumping our stuff in. It’s Blake with the bag. His blue and white North Carolina Hornets jacket is a dead giveaway. He was in the same class with Carlos, Edith, and me until the seventh grade, when he got shipped to a “bad boy” school down state.
The $300 I got from Samuel is in my bra. I have no plans of giving it to them. I pull off my two gold rings and the gold link chain from around my neck. Mr. Pickens removes his wallet from his hip pocket and removes a stack of twenties and dumps them into the bag.
Ms. Carol drops a gold chain and one ring, and Carlos pulls his wallet from his hip pocket. He has one ten-dollar bill, and from his front pants pocket he pulls some loose singles and change. Michelle gets her wallet from her purse, and she has a couple singles and a five.
Mama has on three diamond rings, and she has made no move to remove them.
Mooky says, “Take off the rings, bitch.”
“Don’t talk to my mama like that, Mooky!”
“Ho, you don’t know me.”
“I do know you. Everybody in here knows it’s you. Y’all ain’t fooling nobody: Mooky, Blake, and Drake. Now what? We all know who you are. What, you going to rob us and then shoot us?”
He ignores me and to Mama says, “I ain’t tellin’ you again. Take off the rings.”
“I don’t think so,” Mama says. “Your friend has my cash box under his arm. It’s over two hundred dollars in there. That’s all you gettin’ from me.”
The third dude, Drake, does have our cash box, dang.
When Mooky steps toward Mama, Uncle Doug jumps up from the floor and punches him straight in the jaw. Carlos leaps from the couch and throws Grandma’s crystal lamp at the second dude, Blake, knocking him back. Carlos follows the lamp and starts beating Blake down. Then Drake tries to move toward Carlos, but Mr. Pickens trips him, and when he falls Mr. Pickens starts stomping him in the head.
Mama reaches under the couch cushion. I know she is feeling for one of her pistols. She gets it and shoots Mooky in the leg. He topples over and drops his gun. Uncle Doug picks it up and pulls the trigger, but the gun doesn’t fire.
Mama orders the other to dudes to stop moving. They try to, but Carlos and Mr. Pickens are beating them. She screams, “Carlos, Mr. Pickens, stop!”
Carlos stops, but Mr. Pickens stomps Drake in the head one more time and says, “Punk-ass motherfucker.”
Dang, Mr. Pickens went straight gangster.
Mama orders the other two dudes to lie down next to the one she shot. Once they crawl over here, I rip off their stocking-cap masks. I knew it was them: Drake, a buster who will follow anybody doing anything; Blake, the neighborhood crackhead; and the one Mama shot is Mooky, who used to be a big shot.
Uncle Doug has all their guns, and none of them have any shells except for the spent one in Mooky’s gun. They tried to rob us with one bullet. Mama goes through their pockets and gets seven dollars, total.
She picks her cash box up from the floor. The money is still in there. She adds the seven dollars and tells me, “Get them three bottles of Richards red. Doug and Carlos, put these broke-ass niggas out the back door.”
I hurry to the kitchen to get the three bottl
es of wine and to get the back door open, but the door is still open from when they forced their way in. I’m certain Mama isn’t going to call the police. She knows Blake’s and Mooky’s mamas, but the main reason she doesn’t call is because she doesn’t want the police in our house. Mama thinks if the police find out about her selling after-hours liquor she would have to give them a cut of what she takes in. Personally, I think the police already know and don’t care about our little store.
Uncle Doug and Mr. Pickens have Blake and Drake by their collars. When they pass me, I hand them each a bottle as they are being ushered out the door. Carlos has Mooky, who is limping and bleeding badly. I hand him his wine as Carlos assists him out the door. When he gets to the bottom of the steps, his buddies are there to help him.
Mooky is saying something about getting his guns back, but Carlos slams the door on him. If his guns work, Mama will be adding them to her collection of ten. She says a house with only women needs to be safe. She has at least one gun in every room including the bathrooms. When I was twelve, she took Carlos and me out to the gun range in Indiana and taught us how to shoot, load a gun, and clean it. I am a better shot than her and Carlos.
Standing in front of the closed back door Carlos asks, “Do you believe Mooky and them tried that? What were they thinking? Everybody in the hood knows your mama got more pistols than Kellogg’s got flakes. And when I saw his bum-ass gym shoes, I knew it was Blake’s thirsty ass, and soon as Mooky opened his mouth I knew it was him. What were they thinking? All of them must be smoking crack with Blake to try something that stupid.”
He’s probably right. The three of them must be on drugs. No one thinking right would try to rob people who can recognize them. “Hey, where are Mr. Pickens and Uncle Doug?”
“They walked them to the front gate. I guess they gonna come through the front door.”
Mama's Girl Page 6
