“I just want to graduate, move as far away as I can, and not look back.”
The frustrated teenager said that and we all stood in Vatican silence.
I asked, “How’re the grades looking?”
“I got a C in English, a B in social studies; the rest are strong As.”
I said, “Talk to the English teacher and ask what you have to do to bring your grade up to a B.”
“Already did that. Working on a short story as extra credit. It can get me up to a B.”
I asked, “You still shooting b-ball?”
“Naw. Tendinitis won’t let me jump. Just exercising my mind to make sure I’ll be able get into college somewhere. I have to learn to do for myself and depend on myself and take care of myself.”
He’d calmed down a bit.
I asked, “Nephew, can you ride to the store with me?”
“I can’t leave the house.”
“Won’t take but twenty minutes.”
“Nope. Not leaving.”
“Not even to get food?”
“She’ll be mad. I have to live with her. You don’t. It’s hard enough as it is.”
“Don’t you have friends you can kick it with?”
“People tease you when you don’t have food or money. I can’t ask people to feed me and not get talked about. So, I just don’t do anything but go to school and come back home and do my homework.”
CHAPTER 17
BRICK
I WENT TO the Mexican grocery on La Brea near Florence and bought five bags of food and a case of bottled water. Penny picked what to buy, most of it nonperishable, and nothing that had to be cooked. When we returned, Nephew smelled the roasted chicken in the bag and his eyes screamed that he was ready to eat. I didn’t go past the front door, just handed him the bags and water and told him to find out how much it would be to get their power and water turned back on, told him to have Frenchie message me as soon as she could, since he didn’t have a phone. She’d taken it from him as punishment.
I asked, “You have some WAM?”
“What’s WAM?”
“Walking-around money.”
“No WAM. Your nephew is WAB. Walking around broke.”
I handed him a twenty. He took it and looked at that paper like it was gold bullion.
We hugged, kissed cheeks. I loved Fela like he was my own son. He’s the son I’d love to have.
On the way out, I snooped in their mailbox. The postman had just dropped off Frenchie’s past-due bills. I committed a federal crime and took them. I sent Dwayne a text, told him I had seen Nephew and had dropped off food.
When we got in the car and started driving away, Penny was crying.
She shook her head nonstop. “That’s the life I don’t want. I’ll do anything to not have that life.”
“That was too much for you.”
“Who wants to have kids only to have them suffer?”
“Dwayne is the one keeping them afloat. Has since Nephew was born.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Depending on some man to send a check on time. A nigga doesn’t feel like sending a check that month, or stops sending a check because he has a new car note, or has moved on to some new pussy and he’d rather finance some new ass than pay for his own child. Nah to being a single mom. We made a baby together, we stay together. Get me pregnant, and where you go, I’m the fuck going. Where you live, I’m the fuck living. Married or not. And you can get married, but know I’ll be living with you and that bitch, and me and the baby will be in the same bed sleeping between both of you. If we have a baby, then we’re family. If people made a baby and stayed together . . . lived under one roof . . . combined incomes . . . everybody could do better . . . instead of everybody pulling everybody down . . . paying lawyers . . . making them rich . . . half of your money over here, half over there . . .”
I said, “And losing everything you’ve worked hard to get along the way.”
“Your nephew looked so weak. He’d probably had some water, and that fooled his stomach for a minute, but the need to eat is real and the throbbing will come back twice as hard. You try to sleep it away and sometimes it lets you. You catnap to conserve energy, but you wake up in unbearable agony, and once you do, you will not be able to sleep again. Not for a long while. Time seems to move in super slow motion. Your head aches. Your brain tells you to find a way to eat. Steal. Kill. Sell pussy. Eat, then deal with the consequences on a full stomach.”
When she ended her rant, I said, “I had no idea it had been that bad for you.”
“I came from nothing.”
“I know. We’re black in America. We all did.”
“You’ve been middle class for at least a generation, not me. We were Section 8 and government cheese.”
“Okay. I stand corrected.”
“It’s not fair. Two things you can’t find in Los Angeles; bookstores and justice.”
“That part.”
“The inside of Frenchie’s house looked like it’s been on the decline for a while.”
“Yeah. I could tell the maid ran away with the gardener a long time ago.”
“I hate men who can’t at least take care of their financial responsibilities.”
“I hate a woman who can’t keep a clean house.”
“Men walk away and force women to become superwomen.”
“Checkmate.”
“Eat a dick. Checkmate that, Brick. Your rude ass. Dwayne is all over the world and his son is here, starving to death. If everybody was under one roof . . . If Dwayne could work it out with Frenchie . . .”
“That would help Nephew, but Dwayne and Frenchie would kill each other. I hate double funerals.”
She said, “Couldn’t you take Nephew with you? Let him kick it at your apartment?”
“Yeah, and the cops would be at my door in an hour and I’d get locked up for kidnapping.”
“Frenchie like that?”
“She’d blame my brother, have him locked up too.” I sighed. “My brother had the cops go over there to make sure his son was okay. Cops saw what we saw and said it was okay by them.”
“Not having water and not having power is okay? My bad. I guess it is for black people.”
“A black kid.”
“If she has a black kid, in my book, she’s officially black people now.”
“At least Negro adjacent.”
Penny hesitated. “What are you going to do about it, Brick?”
“Penny. Dwayne and Frenchie have to work that out. They’re due in family court soon.”
“I needed to see that. I was studying, wasn’t going to stop and go with you when you called and asked, but God spoke to me. God knew I needed to see that with my own eyes to keep me motivated.”
“You okay over there? You’re a simmering volcano trying not to erupt.”
She wiped her eyes, her smile as ugly as a frown. “I’m fine. Just paying a fat bill my ex left behind with nobody to hug at night. Just out here on my own. Hard coming from the family I come from. You don’t know who you can trust or who will be your friend tomorrow. So, yeah, Brick, I’m okay over here. Everything is hunky-dory.”
“What’s going on, Penny?”
She twisted her mouth. “My ex called me this morning.”
“Recidivism in progress?”
“Said he misses me. Said the other girl was a mistake. Cried and said marrying her was a mistake.”
I softened my tone. “How you feel about that?”
“I don’t know. Right now, he’s flying around my head like a bunch of bats.”
“Cauldron of bats.”
She made a face of hurt and anger. “I see things a lot clearer now that he’s gone. I was looking for a soul mate and he just needed a place to live. All he needed was a place to stay and a warm orific
e to deposit an orgasm in a few times a week. He’s gone and each month I’m getting bills to remind me how I fucked up by falling in love.”
“He owes you enough money to fix the water problem in Flint.”
“He owes me a lot of money. Jesus, I’m glad we don’t have a kid. I can take the L and walk away. I can delete his photos from the cloud, block him on Twitter and Facebook, and pretend I never met him. I can remove his name from my vocabulary and make him cease to exist in my world. He can become the boyfriend I dated that no one I meet and date moving forward will ever know about.”
I said, “I never would have thought you two would break up, not like that.”
She retorted, “You and Coretta. I thought you two were the happiest couple on earth.”
“Yeah. Everybody is happy until they aren’t. Some pretend to be happy for a while.”
“I didn’t pretend. I was happy. Then all of a sudden I wasn’t.”
“Nothing happens suddenly. You pretended. You posted happy pictures on social media.”
“Yeah. I guess I did. Mailed out Christmas cards. Posted a picture when we were on vacation last year in Cabo, smiling, but the rest of the time we were arguing. We did shit to look happy to the rest of the world. I kept our problems off social media . . . until we broke up. Then I had a moment and blasted his ass out.”
“I never would have known. But there had to be signs. There were signs with Coretta.”
“I feel like it’s my fault, like I did something wrong. He cheated, left me for that bitch he married, and that made me feel so insecure. Still makes me feel like I’m not woman enough. It really fucked with my head, Brick.”
“You came to me.”
“I called you over. My neighbor. My friend. I needed to be comforted. I needed to be fucked by someone who wasn’t him. I needed to suck a dick that wasn’t his. I needed to let you fuck my pussy, let you fuck my ass, and do whatever it took. I needed to be a woman to a man and not feel insecure. That’s why I answered the door naked.”
“You had a towel on.”
“I didn’t want you to come over and we sit around talking. I didn’t want any games, needed you to look at me and know what it was all about. I needed you. I needed to prove to him that I was more woman than the bitch he left me for. Yeah, he cheated and messed me up in the head. I needed you to look at me and find me desirable.”
“I did.”
She said, “And now he calls and says he misses me.”
“Do you miss him?”
“A lot of men have made me come, and some have fucked my brains out, like you did, but not one single man has ever made me come hard enough to end up being a goddamn fool, except him. I let him ruin my fuckin’ life.”
“You miss him.”
Penny took a breath and used the heels of her hands to move a mountain of tears. “My period must be coming, because I’m feeling superemotional and hypersensitive to everything right now.”
I asked, “Need anything?”
“Wine and popcorn. All I need is wine and popcorn and reruns of Scandal.”
Penny turned on the radio, found a song from the album Urban Flora, and cranked it up.
Our relationship, this friendship, had always been awkward, uneven, and undefinable.
Once upon a time, Penny had a client who didn’t pay her. She came home that night and told me she was an escort. She had been scared to tell me, but she was more scared of the guy who had shorted her, and she needed that money to cover her rent and food. She was desperate for help. I took my daddy’s snub-nose and we went and got what she was due, plus a tip for her inconvenience. I’m not sure if she asked me to or if I had volunteered, but I started driving her after that. Men didn’t hesitate to rob women but conceded to other men.
Especially if he carried his daddy’s snub-nose and cared about the woman in question.
* * *
—
WHEN I PARALLEL parked Miss Mini in front of my two-level building, Mocha Latte was running down Stocker, coming hard from the west, drenched in sweat. Penny went to her place and I waited on Mocha Latte. She was a block back; came to me walking, breathing hard, hands on her hips. She had on runner’s gear, shorts that hugged her butt, and a sports bra, so she was more than half-naked, the best parts under dark spandex. The sweat on her skin made her shine like she was the richest chocolate. She said she had just run to the beach and back.
I said, “Beach is ten miles away. Round trip would be twenty.”
She stretched. “Don’t forget. I need you around seven. I’ll be done by nine.”
“Sweat is making your skin shine. Your skin is beautiful. You look like black silk.”
She looked at me like my words had stunned her. “Thanks. I think.”
“Stunning like Aïssa Maïga. Calves to kill for. Solid thighs. Stomach flat. Ass popping. You are a marathon-running Nubian queen who looks like her church is a gym and you worship three times a day. Saw you running. Impressive as fuck. Your body is perfect, and your skin is amazing. I don’t think I’ve seen a prettier woman.”
She stood speechless for a moment, watched me ramble, then said, “Wow. And who is Aïssa Maïga?”
“French actress. Born in Dakar. Malian father, Senegalese mother. She’s so gorgeous it’s a shame. You’re magically delicious. Just like her. Maybe even more so because you’re superfit. Marathon Mama.”
She looked at me like she didn’t know what to make of my honesty. “Again, wow. And thanks.”
My phone buzzed with a number I didn’t recognize. It was Frenchie. She said hello like we had issues.
As I waved good-bye to Mocha Latte and headed to my crib, I asked Frenchie, “What’s going on?”
“Just wanted to thank you for the blessing.”
“Why didn’t you call somebody, Frenchie?”
“I’m calling to say thanks, not to start an argument.”
“We’re family.”
“You have my number. All of you have my number.”
“No matter what’s up between you and Dwayne, you and Nephew can reach out to me.”
“Don’t make me wish I didn’t call to thank you, Brick.”
“No need to thank me. Dwayne gave me the money to buy the food.”
Her animosity was so strong I felt her giving me the side-eye through the phone. “He’s back?”
“He’s back.”
“I’ll tell my attorney the absentee father who refers to this full-time mother as a gold digger is back.”
“If things are rough and you want to let Nephew come and stay with me a few days, I can—”
Frenchie kissed her teeth and ended the call.
CHAPTER 18
DWAYNE
BRICK DIDN’T ANSWER when I called to check in, neither did playboy André, so I put my phone away and got back into bed and continued the conversation we were having about show business and being part of a touring show.
As we lounged in the nude on a Murphy bed, I told the racially ambiguous brunette, “It’s not like you think. Very few five-star moments. Overall, it’s racist as hell. If I’m with a black cast or a white cast, I’m treated differently.”
She traced her finger along my skin, wiggled her ass, asked, “Like, how so?”
“A black cast gets the shitty rooms by the loud-ass ice machines or has to hike what feels like a route longer than the Trans Canada Trail to get to their rooms. Especially in the South. They still hate blacks in the South. They try to be slick and create a colored section away from everybody else in the hotel.”
“They treat white casts that much better? Like, people still do that?”
“I’ve been with both, same hotels, and it’s like night and day. They see a black cast and they’re all attitude behind the desk. You see it in their eyes, in their fake smiles, how they loathe your troupe for coming t
o their hotel. The Color Purple won’t get the same service and consideration as the cast of Waitress.”
“But you’re famous.”
“They see black first. Always see black skin first. If a black troupe shows up, they just see black people they don’t want to deal with. Just like they see white skin first and treat them all like stars.”
“You had a television show. I liked the other show you were in too, the cop one. It was canceled so fast.”
“Some places, if you’re black you’re never the right kind of famous to them. Ask Oprah.”
“So, between the black productions and the white productions, does one pay more than the other?”
“Depends on your role. But all things being equal, white tours, generally speaking, pay more.”
“I had no idea.”
“But you can feel alienated. I’m a black man.”
“Duh.”
“Not being around other black people can get lonely.”
“I can see that. Never thought about white plays paying more money than black plays.”
“Whites pay more to see theater.”
“Why?”
“Whites have a different level of disposable income. It costs twelve hundred dollars to see Hamilton. Costs five hundred to see The Book of Mormon. That’s rent money. Whites grow up on theater and black folks grow up on gospel plays, and half the time they’re watching a bootleg version of that second-rate production.”
“Dwayne.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I take a selfie while we, you know? Like, I really want a selfie with us.”
“No photos while we’re intimate. I have a kid.”
“It’ll be just for me. How about just my face? Won’t nobody but me know it’s you.”
“Nah, I have a kid. We can step outside and take all the selfies you want, but not with me with my shirt off or in your bed naked. It would make you a Kardashian and I’d get the Ray J treatment.”
She straddled me. I sucked her nipples. She raised up and put me in right away, took as much of me as she could stand. She moaned almost every vowel. She took it up and down, went in circles.
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