Normally, Adrienne’s voice was low and husky, but right now it had a shrill quality to it.
“I’m sorry, baby. I laid down and fell back to sleep. Debra just woke me up.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Naw, baby.”
“Look, Mel, if you’re not going to meet me halfway, then this is not going to work,” Adrienne said angrily.
“Come on, Adrienne. I’m sorry. Don’t be like that.”
“Dan and Charlene haven’t said anything, but I know they must be tired of me pulling out their sofa bed to sleep on every night. I’ve been here for six months and it’s time to move.”
Mel knew that Dan’s living room was crammed with Adrienne’s clothes, books, and toiletries. Everything was stuffed into supermarket crates because there was no extra closet to hold them.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Do you have any more appointments set up?”
It was amazing how quickly time had passed. Two weeks after Delilah’s funeral, Adrienne had sunk into a severe depression. Her grief and anger had been almost palpable, and she had had trouble eating and sleeping. It was three months before she could bring herself to talk to anyone, especially Mel.
“Yes, there’s a two-bedroom apartment available on West Thirty-ninth Street. The rent is only fifteen hundred a month.”
Mel understood why Adrienne wanted to stay in Manhattan, far away from the tragedy, but now they would be paying twice as much as they had in the old apartment. New York City was becoming more expensive each year. Neither one of them would be able to pay $1,500 alone since neither made more than $30,000 per year. Mel sighed. What if one of them got laid off? Surely Adrienne could find less room for less money.
A lump formed in Mel’s throat. “Why do we need two bedrooms?”
“I thought maybe . . .” she hesitated.
“Thought what?” he asked gruffly.
“Nothing,” she said quickly.
Mel switched the phone to his other ear. If Adrienne was going to look at two-bedroom apartments, it meant she was thinking about getting pregnant. That scared him.
“Are you working tomorrow?” Adrienne asked.
“No. Why?”
“I’m looking at the apartment on my lunch hour. Meet me outside my job at twelve.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mel.”
He hung up and turned around. Everybody was looking at him. Debra had a grin on her face. She started clapping.
“My brother, the actor.”
Everybody in the circle laughed and clapped along with her. Mel couldn’t help grinning. Debra and her friends always acted so stupid. He dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the circle.
“I’m playin’.”
Big Boy poured half a glass of straight rum and took a gulp. “Let’s see your money, muthafucka.”
Mel took out his last five dollars and threw it on the pile on the coffee table.
“Adrienne think she so cute,” Debra started. “Just cuz she light-skinned. Hell, she tall, skinny, and got a flat ass like a white girl.” She shook her head from side to side, then gave her brother a teasing smile. “And Melvin ain’t no bargain in the looks department either!”
“Sheee-it, I’m the finest brother out here.” He punched her playfully on the arm.
“That’s a damn lie,” Debra chuckled.
“Debra, if I wasn’t your brother, you’d be callin’ me all the time, too. In fact, you woulda just hung up and jumped on in a cab to come see me.”
Debra was shaking with laughter along with everyone else.
“I doan know your sister-in-law,” said Ann.
“That’s cuz she never visits me,” Debra said tartly.
“Isn’t she that yella girl that Mel left Rose for?” asked Belle.
“Yeah,” said Debra, after taking a long pull from the beer bottle on the floor beside her. “That’s Adrienne, all right.”
Melvin stole a glance at Hot Pink. She was hanging on to his sister’s every word.
“Debra, find somethin’ else to talk about,” he said tightly.
“Don’t tell Debra what to talk about. This is her apartment,” shouted Big Boy.
Debra slapped hands in agreement with the giant and continued.
“Adrienne’s brother is even worse. Think he hot stuff cuz he live in Midtown instead of up here in Harlem. Hell, it’s just a goddamned tenement.”
Mel laughed this time also.
“He got a nice place?” asked Ann.
“I only bin there once for a birthday party before he got married. Dan had a nice dining room table, but he prob’ly got the rest of that shit from the Salvation Army. Plus, the living room window opens on a back alley full of stray cats. It stunk like hell in there when he opened the window. And those cats was makin’ all kinds of noise. Screaming, mewing, fighting, screwing.”
“Sounds like Big Boy’s house!” shouted Hot Pink.
Everyone laughed until they cried, and Melvin was relieved to find that his wife and brother-in-law had been forgotten.
“Debra, you need to stop lying,” Mel said while picking up his cards. He smiled across the table at Hot Pink. “My sister has left her manners in the kitchen tonight, pretty lady. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
“It’s Lillian, you rogue.”
Mel thought her laugh was pretty as she spoke.
“Tell me who brought you here tonight, Miss Lillian, so I can thank ’em properly.”
Debra groaned and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“I’m Big Boy’s cousin.”
Melvin was momentarily taken aback. Quickly regaining his composure, he showed Lillian his dimples before answering. “That’s not possible. The man is not even human.”
“Fuck you,” said Big Boy.
Mel slapped an ace on the table.
“Twenty-one!” he shouted.
He ignored the grumblings of those who had lost their money, and scooped up his winnings. About thirty dollars. Just one more win and he’d be able to go out and get high enough to forget about sad wives, dead babies, and his own heavy heart for a little while.
He had been a fool to think he could leave this seamy world and find happiness with a good woman on a quiet suburban street. There was that thing called karma, which he had not factored into his plan. Mel had hurt a lot of women before meeting Adrienne. As payback, God had given him a brief taste of happiness, then snatched it back. Mel knew when he was beaten. The gutter was beckoning, and who was he to fight God’s will?
Big Boy took out a cigarette and crumpled the empty pack in his gigantic hand. He leered across the table at Debra and then focused on Mel. “So, when you goin’ back with your wife, boy? When you movin’ out?” Big Boy gave Debra another meaningful leer.
Melvin looked at his sister, who was staring fixedly at the cards in her hand. So, she was fucking Big Boy now. He gave Big Boy a warning glance. Back off. The huge man grunted and let it go. He had made his point to Debra.
Mel won the next two games. After slowly counting out a profit of sixty-five single dollar bills under Big Boy’s malevolent stare, he rose and winked at Hot Pink. “I’ll see you soon, Lillian.”
In the 1980s Mel had sniffed coke just for fun, but then the drug scene started to bore him, and he gave it up for over a decade. In the dark days after Delilah’s death, when his wife would not speak to him, Mel had gone searching for the white powder again. The drug scene had changed. There was nothing fun about it now. Teenage dealers had replaced grown men. They didn’t chitchat while doing business, and most of them were tense and dangerous.
Mel grabbed his coat out of the hall closet, kissed Debra on the cheek, waved good-bye to the rest of the crowd, and left the apartment in a hurry.
There was a ten-minute wait for the only rattling, piss-stained elevator that was working, and Mel tapped his foot impatiently. As he rode down to the lobby, he felt a moment of panic. Suppose Little Jimmy had been arrested? Or worse
, what if there had just been a whole sweep of the area, and there was nothing left to buy? Mel left the building and walked quickly through the cold winter night until he reached 106th and Amsterdam. He turned the last corner and breathed a sigh of relief.
Little Jimmy was in his usual spot. Mel’s aunt had raised Mel and Debra in the same building where Little Jimmy’s parents used to live. Mel easily remembered the day the boy was born.
Little Jimmy’s father had just been arrested for armed robbery, and while his mother stood in front of the patrol car, begging the police to let her husband go, her water broke right there in the street. They placed Little Jimmy’s mother on her back in the front seat of the car, and she lay there moaning and groaning until an ambulance arrived. Her husband went off in one direction and the ambulance in another.
Both Little Jimmy’s parents were dead now, and he supported himself by selling drugs on the corner. The kid would have to be about eighteen years old, but Mel didn’t know for sure. Little Jimmy didn’t like to talk, and he never smiled. Mel pulled out fifty dollars of his winnings and palmed the bills into his fist.
“How many?” asked Little Jimmy.
“Half a gram.”
The transaction was completed in seconds.
Mel had barely slipped the envelope in his pocket when a young woman who had been leaning against a parked car started toward him. She smiled hesitantly, but when Mel gave her an impatient jerk of the head, her walk turned into a semi-jog. Mel was relieved. Ducking alone in doorways to blow was no fun at all. There was nobody to talk to, and every footstep sounded like that of a cop.
“My name is Juana,” she said.
Mel shrugged. “Where we goin’?”
“My girlfriend’s house down the block.”
“She home?” Mel asked.
The woman nodded. They passed under a streetlight, and Mel got a good look at her. Juana couldn’t have been more than twenty. At one time she had probably been a good-looking Puerto Rican girl, but now she was just a burnt-out crack whore. Mel felt in his pocket. Shit! He didn’t have any condoms. There was no way he was going to share his stuff without getting something in return. “We gotta stop and get some beer,” Mel said.
They ducked into the nearest bodega, which was surprisingly crowded for a Sunday night. It was a tiny store with four aisles, crammed with dusty cans of food and cleaning products. The young man behind the counter was selling loose cigarettes to a line of teenage boys who were rapping, roughhousing, and trying everything else they could think of to impress the baby-faced girls who hung on their arms.
Juana stood with them, never taking her eyes off Mel as he sped down an aisle and picked out four quarts of cold malt liquor. The teenagers pushed and shoved one another out of the store as Mel reached the counter. The clerk rang up the beer.
“Let me get four rubbers,” Mel said.
The man turned around and counted out the condoms from a huge box behind him. He threw the foil-wrapped packets on the counter and spoke rapid Spanish to Juana. Mel thought he heard the word negro but wasn’t sure.
“Mind your business,” Juana said to the counterman in English.
Juana’s face was red as they left the store. Mel carried the bag, and she fished around in her pocketbook until they reached a dilapidated four-story building half a block away. She pulled out a key and turned to face him. “You got cigarettes ?”
He nodded.
She opened the door and started running up the stairs. Mel closed the front door, waited for the lock to snap in place, and followed. Juana was unlocking the door to the second-floor rear apartment. When she put the key back in her pocketbook, Mel took out his knife and put a finger to his lips. Juana looked bored with the routine, but Mel didn’t care. He had not forgotten the rules. This could be a setup. He pressed his ear against the wooden door but there was no noise inside.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked.
Juana shrugged. “I guess she went out.”
“Open the door . . . slowly.”
Juana obeyed. He kept his knife out as they entered.
Mel found himself standing in a medium-size room with dirty white paint on the walls. A ragged red sofa stood against the left wall, and a TV with a hole in the screen was on the right. Juana locked the door and turned on a floor lamp. Mel sat down on the ragged sofa. There were used pipe screens on the coffee table and a shattered stem on the floor. Juana had been smoking and had run out of crack. With no more money to be had, she must have thrown the pipe down and hit the streets. Now she knelt on the floor in front of him. Her mouth hung open and he saw that her two front teeth were missing. Mel felt disgusted and threw the condoms he’d purchased on the floor among some other garbage. There was no way he was having sex with this broad. He would just get high and get out. Her brown eyes begged him to hurry. Mel felt a flash of sympathy and pulled out the envelope. He folded a matchbook cover and used it to scoop up enough coke to give her a snort in each nostril. He smiled at her and then took two blows himself.
“Pour me some beer,” he ordered.
By the time she got back, Mel had taken three more blows, and he was feeling real good.
CHAPTER TWO
It wa s Monday morning, and Adrienne sailed along Manhattan’s crowded streets on her way to work. She was wearing a navy blue linen suit with a matching cape and pumps. Her hair was combed into a smooth French roll that accented her slim face and hazel-colored eyes. Her signature pageboy had disappeared. Charlene did her hair these days, and she didn’t possess the skills to create any elaborate hairdos. Adrienne had tried to enter a beauty parlor once after the fire, and it had been a traumatic experience. Just standing in the doorway inhaling the intermingling scents and listening to the hum of several hair dryers had brought it all back. The hair salon had become a symbol of the selfishness that had cost her her baby. She had run from the doorway, hopped in a cab, and headed back to Dan’s house and his sofa, which had become her home.
Although Adrienne looked as spectacular as she always did on her way to work, she was so busy watching the woman and child in front of her that she didn’t even notice the appreciative stares of the men who passed. The little boy was about two years old, and the woman was walking too rapidly for him to keep up. Adrienne watched his stubby little legs moving as fast as they could to avoid being dragged by the woman who clutched his hand. I would never have forced Delilah along the street like that, Adrienne thought. I’m going to tell that woman to slow down. Just as she was about to move forward and say something to the woman, an inner voice stopped her cold. Who are you to lecture anyone about mothering?
After the coroner’s wagon had pulled away, she and Mel had both been taken to Jamaica Hospital. Mel stayed a week being treated for smoke inhalation. Adrienne was there overnight, undergoing treatment for shock and hysteria.
A few days after the fire, she and Dan had returned to the scene to see if anything could be salvaged. Debris was all over the lawn. Delilah’s charred stuffed animals, some clothing, and lots of papers and sheets. The pink floral sheets that had been on the bed had been a present to them from Debra when they got married. The piggy bank and everything else on the dresser was covered with soot from the smoke. If Adrienne touched anything, her fingertips came away black. The top of the television, which was sitting on the chest, had melted, giving it an unusually lopsided shape. A lump caught in her throat as she remembered lying in bed watching her favorite programs on that same TV set while snuggled in Mel’s arms.
The kitchen had been the least destroyed, although everything in it was unusable because of the smoke and water damage.
Adrienne opened the refrigerator. The food was undisturbed; the violence had wreaked havoc only outside its frigid home.
The closet. Oh, heaven help her. All of her books were burned, wet, or covered with soot. Mel’s two crates of albums from the seventies were soggy and stuck together. The door was open, and the volumes spilled out into the narrow hallway. The floors wer
e covered with burned carpet and broken and burned items. Adrienne had to climb on and over everything in order to walk.
There were no living room windows, if “windows” meant panes of glass. The heat had blown them out and then the landlord had boarded them up. The sofa and love seat were burned down to the metal frames. The lamps were merely twisted wire without any fabric at all.
Adrienne had wept inconsolably until Dan insisted that they leave.
At the funeral, Mel had murmured, “It’s all my fault,” over and over while holding his head between his hands. Sitting beside him in stony silence, she had agreed with him as he repeated the phrase over and over again.
Afterward, she had taken refuge at Dan’s apartment, unable to get out of her fetal position and off the sofa bed except to wash up. She’d also refused phone calls from concerned coworkers, and, most drastically, refused to see or talk to her husband. Once, Charlene patted her on the shoulder and said, “Come on, Adrienne. Please talk to Mel; he’s going crazy because you’ve shut him out. The two of you should grieve together.” Adrienne had just balled herself up tighter on the sofa bed.
Weeks later, she saw that the fault was not his. The blame lay with a woman who had decided to escape motherhood for a day. She could never tell anyone that she had left the house to get away from Delilah.
Adrienne had been overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and remorse. She had no home, no furniture, no clothes. Everything, including all of Delilah’s pictures, had gone up in flames. That was the one loss that pained her more than any of the others. One day, when she could stand it, she would ask her family and Debra to let her see the photos they had taken of Delilah. Adrienne had sometimes felt that years had passed since she had driven her car down a pleasant Queens street and made that right turn into a scene from hell. Then time would suddenly shift, and it would seem as if the firemen had blocked off 147th Avenue only hours before. With her eyes closed tightly, Adrienne would replay the events of that dreadful day again and again. Each time, she wanted to die. Occasionally she felt the presence of her brother or Charlene. “I’ve made you a cup of tea,” one of them would say. Or, “I’m going to work; do you need anything while I’m out?” Adrienne tried to pry her lips open to say “Thank you” or “I’m all right,” but the words would form in her brain, travel down through her head, and get stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. It was the first time since she had decided to stop singing that Adrienne was glad she was voiceless. No matter how hard she tried, she just could not find the words. After a pause, she’d hear footsteps walking away. She lay in a long state of denial before she could accept the fact that Delilah was truly gone forever. Adrienne’s world was dark and silent.
A Mighty Love Page 3
