At-Risk (16 page)

My mother said, “Don't be on Tony all the time. You know he's special. We have to do what we can to help him. We have to make sacrifices.”

“Seem like that's all we do.”

When Tony was a baby, my mother took him from Ralph and his girlfriend, sacrificing her youth to raise him right. While he was studying for his battery of tests and interviews, I sacrificed for him, too, washing and ironing his clothes and taking out the garbage when it was his turn. Now that he'd won, I wanted him to do his share, but it seemed that I would spend the summer doing both his chores and mine.

“Don't be like that,” my mother said. “We can't stand in his way when he has a real chance to make it.”

“Make what?” On screen, Diahann Carroll and her children scrambled around their dingy apartment, trying to hide the small appliances James Earl Jones had brought them before the welfare lady arrived.

“Make it out of here,” she said. “He don't have to live like we do. He won't have to stay in nobody's projects. My baby's going to end up in the penthouse! And he'll be bringing us all along with him.”

“What if I don't want to live in a penthouse?” My mother looked at me as if I had grown another head. Maybe it was the way she called Tony her baby even though he was her nephew and not her real son at all. Maybe it was the way she pinned all of her hopes and dreams on his brain, leaving no room for me to have a chance at saving our family. Maybe it was the way she, like him, sneered at our life, talking about leaving the projects as if it were an easy thing to just pick up and leave the only life I'd ever known.

My mother said, “He deserves a chance to find some kind of happiness, you know.”

“Other than this?” I had thought we were happy.

She flicked a long line of ash into her ashtray and looked at me
the way teachers do when you fall behind the rest of the class. “Some other kind of happiness, baby.”

The next day, Teddy knocked on my grandmother's bedroom door while I was preparing her injection. Everyone knew I didn't like to be disturbed when giving the needle. Any distraction and I could miss an air bubble. “Hold on,” I shouted.

“Can't,” he moaned. “I can't hold on, you hear me?”

My grandmother said, “Let him in.”

“When I'm done.”

“Let my son in this room,” she commanded. “Now.”

I laid the insulin and syringe down and went to the door. “We're busy,” I said, standing between him and the entrance.

“I'm sick,” Teddy moaned. He stood at the door, his eyes vacant and hollowed.

He seemed as if he could barely stand. I couldn't see anything wrong with him, no cuts or bruises, and yet sickness radiated from him, a palpable thing. He looked past me to where my grandmother sat on the edge of the bed. “Mama!” He stumbled into the room and headed over to the bed. He shivered and wrapped his arms around his waist so tightly he looked as if he was wearing a straitjacket.

“Teddy, what is it?”

He crawled across the bed and wiggled his head onto her lap. He looked up at her with a look I had never seen before. She lowered her head to him and stroked his forehead and cheek. The two of them like that reminded me of something I'd once seen on a church's stained-glass window.

He gazed at her and pleaded, “Mama, I need some money real bad.”

“I ain't made of money, Teddy.”

“I know, Mama. I only need a real little bit.” He sniffed and wiped his runny nose.

“Ain't it enough that I let you stay in my home and give you a roof over your head even though you're a fully grown man and I don't ask you for a drop of rent money?”

“You always been good to me, Ma,” he said. “But I feel so bad.”

My grandmother faltered. “You need the money for medicine or something like that?” she asked.

“Yeah, Ma,” Teddy said, fidgeting beneath her steady hand. “Something like that.”

My grandmother helped him off her lap. She turned to her bureau and rummaged through the top drawer for her change purse where bills were folded into thick squares. She pulled two squares of money out and unfolded them, pressing them out on the bureau's counter. “Will this help?”

Teddy took the money without looking at it. “Yeah.”

After he'd gone, I resumed my preparations for the injection. I laid out the alcohol pads and the insulin, but the syringe I had placed on the bed had gone missing.

“Gram, do you see the needle anywhere?” I asked, warming the bottle of insulin in my hands. She checked the blanket to see if the syringe had rolled under a fold, but her search came up empty.

“It must've fallen,” my grandmother said. She handed me another one from the box. I filled the syringe and flicked a finger against it to release the air bubbles. I took her flesh between my fingers and swabbed it with the alcohol pad, eager, wanting to pierce the too-trusting part of her the way needle pierced skin.

“This won't hurt,” I whispered to the skin I knew.

She braced herself and I injected the needle. After I pulled it out, a single drop of blood surfaced on her skin. A small and perfect bubble, trembling between us two.

Kim knew better than to ask for a favor while her mother's shows were on. Her mother sat on the love seat, positioned directly in front of the
TV
, with newspaper spread out across her lap. She was peeling potatoes to make french fries, routinely dropping peelings onto the newspaper without ever looking at her hands or the knife. She kept her eyes glued on the television, watching
Hawaii Five-O
. She ignored Kim. When Kim crossed in front of the
TV
, her mother didn't even blink. All she said was, “You not made of glass.”

“Ma, please?” Kim whined. “She's your only granddaughter.”

Kim's mother turned to face her. She was still young. Thirty-five. But she was the mother of three and her face showed it. “Don't even look at me like that,” her mother said. “I already told you no. Don't make me repeat myself.”

Ever since she'd had the baby, Kim had been expecting something different from her own mother. Something more along the lines of guidance and advice. She expected her mother to give her pointers and tips, to provide free babysitting, to help her along as if she was
an apprentice learning under a master. She hadn't expected the quiet censure her mother gave off without trying, the way she prefaced everything she said to Kim with “Now that you're a mother” or “Now that you think you grown.” That was before she realized that her mother was most likely just jealous of her. After all, she had gotten her figure back quickly and naturally without having to exercise. She had rubbed cocoa butter onto her swollen belly every day of her pregnancy once her friend told her about it, and now she had no stretch marks. Kim had seen her mother walking around the house in a bra and slip, had seen the light brown streaks across her stomach stretching like a hand upwards towards her breasts. No wonder she was jealous.

A loud cry came from the bedroom Kim shared with her younger sister.

Her mother looked past her to the television and said, “You better go see to the baby. I don't know why you left her alone in there with only Asha anyway.”

Kim didn't run; the baby was always crying and it was never over anything important. She crossed the crowded bedroom, walking past the two twin beds and toward the baby's crib, stepping over Asha, who was lying on the floor reading comic books, oblivious. “What happened?” Kim asked her. “What'd you do?”

“Nothing.” Asha looked up from her comic book. She had the look of her father about her, deep brown skin and owlish eyes. “What did Ma say?”

“What you think?”

“Told you.”

“Shut up.” Kim looked down at the baby. She was lying on her back, staring up at Kim as she cried, naked except for her diaper.

“When are you gonna do my hair?” Asha asked. Her thick hair was wild around her head, making her look like she'd just woken up.

“Later.”

“You already said that twice today.”

“I'm saying it again,” Kim said, looking down at the baby without really seeing her, her eyes blurring with tears. Let either of her two sisters need something, and her mother would no doubt break her neck falling all over herself. But let Kim ask for one little thing, and all of a sudden it was a federal case. “Why she gotta be like that?” she whispered.

“Who?” Asha asked. “Be like what?”

“Mind your business,” Kim said. “Does she need to be changed?”

Asha shrugged, turning the page. “Do I look like her nanny?”

“Don't get smart.” Kim rolled her eyes. She couldn't figure out how such a small infant could be so loud. She reached into the crib and tugged gently on the baby's fat brown leg. “Come on, now. Stop crying,” she begged the infant. “Shush, baby. Hush now for Mommy?”

“I'm trying to read here,” Asha said.

“Shut up,” Kim snapped, checking the baby to see if maybe she was wet. The baby was dry and well fed. Kim didn't know why she got like this, why she cried for no reason. And she didn't know what to do to make her stop.

“What's the matter with Mommy's baby?” she asked, annoyed at how babies seemed to cry for no reason at all. There were many nights when the baby cried and Kim didn't go to her. She would just lie on the bottom of the bunk, listening to Asha snore and the baby cry. If Asha didn't wake up and complain, then Kim would let the baby go on until she got tired of crying and her breath got all huffed out like crying was a hard day's work. Asha would usually wake up by then. She would kick her foot against the mattress over Kim's head and say, “Can't you hear? You better get up.”

And Kim would say, “Let her go on. She'll tire herself out.”

Then Asha would kick some more and say, “I'ma tell Ma.”

Kim would get up then because Asha was the youngest daughter, the baby of the family, and the apple of their mother's eye. Kim was only the middle child and not even the smart one—that was her older sister, Rashida.

Just when Kim's sleep would start getting good the baby would start crying to wake her up, uncaring that it was the middle of the night. The baby acted as if she was the only one that mattered. No one or nothing counted but her. Kim was sure she did it on purpose, just to prove she could.

On the nights when Kim did get up, the baby wouldn't even be wet or hungry. As soon as Kim peered over into the crib at her, the baby would stop and smile while her brown eyes were saying,
Look what I can make you do
. Neither Kim's mother nor her sisters had ever told her that babies were sneaky that way.

Kim rummaged around the crib and found the pacifier bundled up in the thin cotton blanket. She rubbed the lint off of it and tried to stick it in the baby's mouth, but she wouldn't take it. The baby cried with her mouth open so wide that Kim could see the back of her throat. Kim decided to be firm with her. “You gotta stop this noise right now,” she said, but the baby continued.

“I hope she get laryngitis,” Asha muttered, trying to turn her pages as loudly as possible.

“You be quiet,” Kim said. “Nobody asked you.”

Kim wondered if what Asha said was true, if the baby really could cry her voice away. “Please don't do that,” she whispered so that Asha wouldn't hear. “Just stop crying for a minute. Just one minute, okay, please?” She took her daughter out of the crib and bounced her on her knee to see if that would work. The child stopped for a moment, then began anew in another fresh bout of squalling.

Asha said, “Maybe she's hungry.”

“I already fed her. I did everything. Fed her. Burped her. Changed
her. It's like she don't never stop.” Kim looked at her daughter. “You don't never stop, do you?”

“If she answer you, I'm calling
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
” Asha said, no help at all to anyone.

Kim took the baby down the hallway and called to her mother.

“Ma! What am I supposed to do?”

Her mother shouted from the living room, “I know you not asking me nothing. You ain't want my advice this time last year, don't ask me nothing now.” Then she turned the volume of the
TV
up louder to drown out the crying. The show was ending. Kim heard McGarrett say, “Book 'em, Danno. Murder one.”

“Ma, can't you just watch her for two hours? Just this once? Please?”

“Two hours here, two hours there. Next thing you know I'll be running a day care center. I already raised my kids,” she said.

“Yeah. What a fine job,” Kim muttered.

“And don't think I can't hear you!” her mother shouted back.

“Dang. Don't have a heart attack,” Kim said softly, making sure her mother couldn't hear this time. Why did it always have to be a federal case when she asked her mother to watch the baby?

Kim brought the baby back into her bedroom and put her into the crib. She retrieved the pacifier and forced it into the baby's mouth. Then she curled her hair and changed her clothes for the third time, switching from her cutoff denim shorts to a tight skirt and a shirt that left her stomach bare, glad that her old clothes finally fit her right. She looked at her watch and wondered if she would ever be able to get out of the house today.

None of her girlfriends had this problem. Their mothers were always willing to help out. They were supportive. But no, she had to live with a bunch of selfish people. Ever since she had the baby she hardly ever went out. By the time she'd dressed the baby and
combed her hair just so, something would come up. Or if she actually made it out the door, little Danielle would cry or fuss or spit up before Kim could even get three blocks and she'd have to bring her right back. Kim's sister Asha was too young to watch the baby and Rashida was always too busy studying for her
CUNY
courses. And whenever someone did take the baby off her hands, they acted like they were doing her a favor. Like she should bow down and kiss the ground they walked on. They tried to make her feel bad every time she left the house, as if she was abandoning the baby. Like she was wrong to want to go and see Malik. Was she out of line to still want to go out and have some fun every now and then? They acted like she was dead and buried. No one wanted to help her. No one wanted her to have any fun. She was only sixteen.