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Authors: Coe Booth

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BOOK: Bronxwood
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MONDAY, AUGUST 4
THIRTEEN

My pops get me up mad early again and make me meet
him downstairs. It’s crazy the time he be waking me up since he been back. He probably still on prison time or something.

Me and him still don’t say a word to each other in the van. Nothin’. This time, though, I’m the one that put the radio on.

Two of my pops friends is waiting for us at the storage place. I don’t know where my moms is at, if she gonna do anything to help out with the move, but she don’t never do nothing, so why she gonna start now?

The four of us get to work, loading as much of our furniture and shit in the van that can fit at one time. There ain’t no room for all four of us in there too, so I’m the one my pops make stay behind and wait, like them other guys is stronger than me or something. I’m bored out my mind standing there, but least I don’t gotta spend more time with my pops.

Since I gotta be here anyway, I start looking through a lot of the stuff we got in here. It take me a while, but finally I find the stuff that used to be in my room. Not only my clothes but my TV, laundry basket, alarm clock, DVDs, and fan. And I find a box of stuff I used to have on top of my dresser, shit I forgot ’bout. A bullet I found behind my building when I was, like, ten. My ashtray, a folded-up two-dollar bill, my incense. Then I see this strip of photos me and Novisha took last summer at Rye Playland. After we got on practically all the rides a couple times, we was walking ’round for a while and found one of them old-skool photo booths. We went in there and kissed and acted stupid and had fun wasting money. The pictures came out real funny. She took some and I took some. That was a year ago, back when my family still had a apartment and we was all still together. But everything is different now.

The day we was evicted from that apartment, man, I ain’t never gonna forget that feeling I got when I came home from school and seen my moms and Troy standing in the hall outside our apartment. Troy was crying and my moms was cursing and going off on how they threw us out our place. That’s when I seen it, that big, giant padlock on our front door, and the sign that was stuck on the door by the marshals, telling us we was evicted and all our property was in storage.

First person I called was Novisha. And even though she never been through nothing like that herself, she was always
by my side through the whole thing, making sure I was okay and not getting too depressed while we was going through the shelter system. What me and her had back then was good. I ain’t gonna say it’s messed up we not together no more ’cause things happen for a reason. I just ain’t think it was gonna end.

I take out my cell and text Adonna. All I say is: hi.

She text me back a minute later: getting in the shower. dont peek!!!

That girl is trying to kill me, I swear. I don’t need to be thinking ’bout her all naked and soaped up right now.

While I’m waiting, my pops and his friends come back, get more stuff, and leave again. Only thing left now is the living room furniture and four boxes of pots and pans and dishes and shit.

It take a long time for Adonna to text me back: did u keep ur eyes closed or were u a bad boy?

i seen everything. i need a spanking.

omg!!!

Even when she text, I can see her pretty face smiling and laughing.

Me and her text back and forth ’til she say: gotta go 2 school. last week!!!!!!!

I text her back telling her I’ma call her later, then my pops come through the door by hisself this time. Me and him carry the rest of the stuff outta there. Only thing we leave is the DJ equipment ’cause them speakers is too big
for the apartment and ’cause my pops got a regular system to listen to his music at home.

Me and my pops drive to the new apartment, which is on the other side of the Bronx from where Bronxwood is at. Jasmine don’t live all that far from here. I mean, she ain’t ’round the corner or nothing, but I could walk to her place from here if I felt like it. I need to talk to her anyway, find out how she doing, if she got to talk to Reyna and if everything alright. It don’t matter that I’m trying to get with Adonna. I’ma always gonna look out for Jasmine.

I gotta admit, this part of the Bronx is kinda okay. I mean, for the Bronx. The place where the new apartment at got, like, four buildings that all look the same, with grass and shit. Regg don’t live too far from here neither. He over in Riverdale. This place ain’t as cool as Regg place, but it’s way better than where we was living before. When we get Troy back, he ain’t gonna believe this is where he gonna be living now.

The apartment is on the eleventh floor and, even though it’s a mess right now with boxes and furniture and stuff all over the place, I can tell it’s gonna look nice when it’s hooked up. My family ain’t never lived like this before. It got a big kitchen and living room, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms. Me, I don’t know why they need all them rooms if I ain’t gonna be living here. I don’t even know what I’m doing here now, helping them move in this place.

But I am here, and so is my stuff from the storage room. My moms is in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, looking bored.

“Lisa,” my pops say to her. “Put away the kitchen stuff.”

“I don’t have no way to open them boxes.”

He grab a box cutter from the kitchen table, like a foot away from where she standing, and open up two boxes for her. “Go on. Start.”

For the next couple hours I don’t think ’bout the fact that I ain’t gonna be living here. In my mind, only thing I’m thinking is that I want this apartment to look good for Troy. Just in case. So I just work hard, carrying furniture and putting it in right rooms, hooking up TVs to the cable boxes, and fixing bed frames and dresser drawers and everything else that need fixing.

Only furniture I don’t fix or set up is my shit, which we put in a room right next to Troy room. It’s bigger than my room at Cal apartment, and even bigger than my old room at our place on Pelham Parkway, the apartment we got threw outta. Every time my pops come outta jail, it seem like he always try and do better, try and get a bigger apartment and more stuff to put in it. Only thing, it never last. Then it just be harder for us to hold on to all that shit, keep paying for all of it, when he go and get hisself locked up again.

And that’s another reason why I ain’t even thinking
’bout getting my room together and moving back in here with them. ’Cause I know it ain’t gonna last. And when shit fall apart, it’s gonna be worse then, ’cause we gonna be losing a apartment that’s real nice this time, and that shit’s gonna hurt. Not me. It’s my moms and Troy that ain’t gonna get over it easy.

I put the last box in Troy room, a whole box of cars and fire trucks and Pokémon cards. I ain’t even sure if he still into that shit or not, but I know I want all his toys here when he get back. Troy got the smallest room, but it’s cool ’cause when he look out this window he gonna see the playground they got down there, and he gonna know if his friends is out there playing before he go out.

A few minutes later, I’m back in the living room fixing this little drawer on the coffee table when my moms come in. I don’t know what up with her today, but I can tell she ain’t really feeling this new apartment, not as much as my pops think she is. ’Cause when he ’round, she smiling and shit, but now that he working in they bedroom, she stand here, looking ’round and shaking her head. “I don’t know, Ty. This place. Why we gotta be in the apartment where the terrace don’t even face the street? Who gonna wanna look at a parking lot all day?”

I put down the screwdriver. “What, you don’t like the whole apartment ’cause of where the terrace is at?”

“Not only that,” she go. “I just don’t understand why your pops is putting me in a place that’s only just a little
better than the last apartment me and him lived in, you know, before. He put me through a lot of shit this year, had me worrying ’bout him being in that prison. When he got out, he should of at least found us a bigger—”

“Just be happy your man is back.”

“I am,” she say. “I’m not saying I don’t like this apartment. It’s better than where
you
had me living all this time, damn straight. That’s one thing about your father, Tyrell. He just got out, and look how fast he got us a new apartment. Just like that.” She snap her fingers. “That’s how he do. He ain’t perfect, but he know how to take care of his family.”

I know what she trying to do, but I ain’t gonna let it work on me. “Regg the one that got this apartment for y’all,” I tell her. “So he the one that took care of your family, and not just now neither. He the one that helped me get some of them parties to DJ at, he the one that brung me down to Atlanta to make money. How you think I was paying your bills all this time? Answer is Regg.”

“And Regg work for your father.”

“No, he don’t. He just help him out ’cause they friends. You think Regg need that little chump change he get from them parties?” I laugh. “You should see the house he getting built for him down in Atlanta. We could put ten of these apartments in that joint and still have room left over. He got a pool and a basketball court and inside he got a jacuzzi and shit. It ain’t no joke.”

Now my moms look real interested. “What Regg do to make that kinda money?”

I shrug, not only ’cause I don’t know but ’cause the look on her face tell me if she knew what Regg was up to, she would probably figure out a way to get my pops into it too. She look like she could already see herself swimming ’round in a pool like Regg got, spending his kinda money.

She go into the kitchen and I hear her complaining half under her breath ’bout the stove and how it ain’t electric like we had before, and how the refrigerator ain’t got no automatic ice maker. “I don’t know how long I gotta wait, what I gotta do to get me a dishwasher,” she say. “I don’t know why your father left it up to Regg to pick out a apartment for us when he coulda asked me to find the kinda place I’m gonna wanna live in. Don’t make no kinda sense to me.”

A few minutes later, my pops come down the hall and my moms cut that noise fast. He sit down at the kitchen table and, without him even saying a word, she get him a beer outta a bag of food she musta got somewhere. Then she take out the bread and cold cuts and make him a sandwich. She give it to him and give him a kiss, then ask him if he need anything else.

“I’m good,” he say, and start eating. My moms take some dishes outta one of them boxes and start washing them, smiling like she happy all of a sudden.

I go back to the coffee table, but it ain’t easy watching the two of them sometimes. I mean, yeah, I know they love
each other, but I don’t get how my moms can just take him back like he wasn’t gone for a year. And not only that, how she just act like what her and Dante did never happened? What, she forget?

Even though I don’t wanna think ’bout Novisha, my mind go there. The whole time we was together it was like she forgot ’bout all the shit she did in the past, and when everything came out, it was like she expected me to forget too and get back with her, just like everything was okay. I ain’t never gonna be that kinda guy.

At the same time, I would be lying if I ain’t say watching my moms take care of my pops, the whole thing remind me of the way it used to be between me and Novisha. She was always feeding me when I was at her apartment, she used to braid my hair, and when her moms wasn’t ’round, she always knew how to get me off. I don’t miss Novisha, but I gotta say, I miss the way she treated me ’cause she did know how to take care of her man. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna find somebody that’s gonna make me feel as good as she did.

I mean, Adonna is a cool girl, but I don’t know. I ain’t sure she the kinda girl that’s gonna wanna take care of no man. From what I know ’bout her, she more ’bout what a man can do for her. But I don’t know her that good yet. What I do know is she fine enough to keep me interested for a while. Just to find out for myself.

FOURTEEN

When the table is fixed, I come into the kitchen to get
myself something to eat and drink. My moms don’t make nothing for me. She too busy talking to my pops, or actually listening to him. He through eating now, and he sitting there drinking another beer and going on and on ’bout his problems, number one being money.

Then, like, outta nowhere, he tell my moms, “Right now, while I’m thinking about it, call that fuckin’ caseworker and tell her you ready for them parenting classes, and you wanna start soon as you can.”

My moms look surprised. “What? Why I gotta call today when — look at all the work we gotta do around here. Why you want me to—?”

“Where your cell at?” he ask her.

She pick it up off the counter and hand it to him like a little kid who in trouble with her pops. “What that bitch caseworker name?”

My moms fold her arms in front of her. “Ms. Thomas,” she say, and suck her teeth.

He click ’round on her phone for a couple seconds and hand it back to her. “It’s ringing.”

Damn, he really know how to handle her.

While she stand there talking to the caseworker, I just sit at the table with a double ham and cheese sandwich and a Pepsi. It’s the first thing I’m eating all day, and it’s good.

Crazy thing is, sitting right ’cross from my pops, it’s weird that we not talking. I mean, the whole day. Nothing.

“Tonight?” my moms say to Ms. Thomas. “I told you, I’m moving today and … hold on.” She cover the phone with her hand and say to my pops, “They starting a class tonight, but I ain’t ready. And it’s for three times a week. I don’t know. That’s a lot of time and — what I’m supposed to tell her? I don’t think—”

“I’m back home now,” my pops say, not even looking up from his beer. “You don’t gotta think no more.”

Damn.

“Now get back on that phone,” he say, and don’t even raise his voice none, “and tell that bitch you gonna be there tonight.”

My moms sigh real loud, but then she do what she was told to do. She tell the caseworker to sign her up for them classes. When she hang up, she say to my pops, “Why you make me do that, sign up for them classes now
when you see how much work we gotta do around here? I need to go the store and buy some food for this apartment, and—”

“We can buy food tomorrow.”

“What if I’m not ready to start them classes?”

“You ready,” my pops say. “What I tell you when you came to see me at Rikers? I told you I wanna get things back to the way they was before I got locked up, right? That mean Troy need to be back home. And that mean you gotta take them classes, and you ain’t missing none of them.”

My moms don’t say nothing back. She mad, but she know better than to talk back too much and get him mad. She turn her back to us and keep washing the dishes.

It’s good my pops doing what he gotta do to get Troy back, but half of me, nah, not even half, is waiting to see what he gonna say ’bout me. I mean, Troy wasn’t the only one that was living with them before my pops got locked up. My pops don’t say shit and I try to keep my mind on the fact that Troy the one we need to think ’bout. Not me. All of us want the same thing.

Only thing, if Troy living here with them and I’m still over at Cal place, me and Troy still ain’t gonna be together. Nothing really gonna change, not for me.

I finish my sandwich and make another one. That’s when my pops try to explain to my moms how she gotta dress and talk and act at them parenting classes. “You gotta take this shit serious now,” he tell her. “They looking for a
reason to keep Troy ’cause that’s how them foster care agencies make money. They charge the state a whole lot of fuckin’ money for every kid they snatch. If you give them any reason to keep him there making money for them, they gonna use it against us.”

Then he turn to me and tell me that he want all us to go to the agency on Wednesday ’cause that’s when we s’posed to have our time to visit with Troy.

“I don’t need to go to the agency.” First thing I said to him all day. “I see Troy all the time, and he call me on my cell when he wanna talk to me.”

“That don’t matter,” he say. “The agency make a report to the judge when it come time for us to try and get him back. We need to start doing everything right.”

I can’t stand going to that agency and having to deal with Ms. Thomas. Back when ACS took Troy, that caseworker found me and tried to get me to go live in some kinda group home or something. She was like, “Your mother can’t take care of you. You’re not safe with her.” Meanwhile, the only shit my moms did was leave Troy alone at the shelter. But he was only seven. She could leave me alone all she want and nothing gonna happen to me. I don’t need her looking after me.

So I told the caseworker that if she tried to put me in a group home, I was gonna go AWOL like two minutes after she left me there. So she checked with the judge, then told me it was alright if I stood with my moms, but only if I
went to school and all that. And she had to come and check up on me every couple weeks.

Both us know I wasn’t never really living with my moms ’cause first of all, the place my moms was living at was too small for me and her. I mean, she only had one fold-out couch/bed. But for the past seven months me and Ms. Thomas and my moms been going through the motions just so Ms. Thomas could leave me alone and cover her ass at work. She would tell me when she was coming by my moms place so I could be there. Then she come over and make sure the place wasn’t too dirty and that my moms had food for me, and she would ask me a couple questions ’bout how me and my moms getting along and if she treating me good. All that kinda shit. Like she care ’bout me.

I would lie, she write it down, and then she tell me the next time she coming by. Then Ms. Thomas was gone, and I was gone outta my moms place right behind her. Whole thing was a waste of everybody time, ’specially mines, but least it got the agency off my back all this time.

But I tell my pops I’ma be there at the agency visit just so he can stop talking ’bout what we gotta do and how we all gotta work together to get Troy back and all that shit. My mind ain’t on that right now. I’m trying to solve my other problem.

So while they still talking, I get up from the table and go into the living room and pocket the key for the storage room.
I don’t got no other choice. I’m broke as a joke. I’ma hafta use my pops equipment next Saturday for Jasmine party.

Anyway, it ain’t like the man gonna miss that key. He too busy thinking ’bout Troy to worry ’bout the storage room or the equipment. Or me for that matter.

Since I ain’t too far from Jasmine apartment, I walk over there when I leave my moms and pops new place, just to see what Emiliano want from me and get this shit over with already. Jasmine live on Grand Concourse and it don’t take me more than fifteen minutes to get to her building. I stand in between the two front doors and press the intercom, then some female voice come through, but it ain’t Jasmine. Emil girlfriend probably. I ain’t never met her before, but I’m glad Emil getting it from somebody and don’t gotta try nothing with Jasmine.

I take the elevator upstairs and the second Jasmine open the door, she smile big and throw her arms ’round me. “Tyrell!”

I put my arms ’round her waist but only for, like, a second ’cause I can see into the apartment, and Emiliano is sitting on the couch, and I don’t want him thinking I’m into Jasmine or something. I don’t need no crazy Dominican bodybuilder after me.

I’m not even in the apartment yet and the smell of whatever cooking hit me. “It smell good in here,” I say to Jasmine. “I know you not cooking nothing that good.”

She slap me on the shoulder. “Yes, I am. Ana’s teaching me. Come in.”

I step inside. In the living room, Emiliano sitting there drinking a beer, watching the Yankee game on the big-screen TV on the wall. He don’t look up and say nothing to me, he too into the game, so I follow Jasmine into the kitchen. Ana standing at the stove, stirring something that look like tomato sauce. She alright-looking for somebody that’s probably in her thirties or something. Least Emiliano ain’t only into teenage girls.

Jasmine introduce me and Ana and we say hi. She seem okay. Nice.

“Sit down,” Jasmine tell me. “You want anything to drink?” She open the refrigerator. “We got Pepsi, but it’s flat, Sunny D, Malta, water, and that’s it.”

“I’ll take the flat Pepsi,” I say. Them choices is bad.

I sit there looking ’round, waiting. The thing ’bout Emiliano apartment is, dude got it hooked up. Not only do he got the big-screen TV, he got all the new sound equipment and a weight-lifting bench in the corner. I could see myself living like this one day.

Jasmine don’t only bring me the soda, she bring me a whole plate of chocolate chip cookies. Emiliano drive a truck that deliver some Spanish bread and all kinds of donuts and cookies to stores, and he always bring home extra shit. “Tell me, what did you do today?” Jasmine ask me, all up in my business as usual.

The first thing I think is, what, do I stink or something? I mean I was doing a lot of heavy lifting and shit today. Probably shoulda went home and took a shower before coming over here.

But she sit down next to me so I must not be too funky. I tell her ’bout the move and the new place and all that. But it’s like she only paying half attention to me ’cause every couple minutes Ana call her back to the stove so she can show her something. Ana got Jasmine putting more spices and shit in the sauce and tasting everything. Then she got her cutting up some Italian bread and putting it in the oven.

Watching this whole scene make me mad, like, what Emiliano got going on in this apartment? Dude got two women cooking for him, making sure everything taste good, and all he doing is sitting on his ass.

But that ain’t the real problem, the way I see it. The thing that really piss me off is that it look like Ana teaching Jasmine how to be a wife or something. Why Jasmine gotta know how to cook like this at her age?

Jasmine come back over to the table and sit down next to me again. “I’m so excited about this party,” she say, giggling like a little girl. “I’m thinking about it, like, nonstop. I found a dress already and,
ay dios mio,
I can’t wait for you to see it. They’re altering it so it fits perfect and
tight!”
She laugh. “But let me tell you about it. It’s kinda purple but, like, between purple and lavender with little white lacy
edges. I mean, off-white. Whatever. It looks so good next to my skin, Tyrell. It costs a ton of money, but it’s the only time I’m gonna turn sixteen so it’s worth it, right? And—”

“God,” I say. “Take a breath.”

She laugh. “I can’t!”

“You making me tired.”

“You don’t understand, Tyrell. This is a big deal for a girl. You boys don’t understand nothing.”

Yeah, she talking my head off, but it’s good to see her happy like this, ’specially after what happened to Joanny. I thought she wasn’t never gonna get over that shit.

Finally, at a commercial, Emiliano get up off the couch and come over to the table to sit down ’cross from me. Without him even saying nothing, Jasmine take the empty beer bottle from his hand, and get up to get him a new one. Ana don’t do that. Jasmine do. Why she the one taking care of his old ass?

“Tyrell,” Emil go. He don’t hardly speak no English, but he try. “I want Jasmine to tell you to visit here because the party, it is—” He stop talking ’cause he trying to find the right word or something. Face look like he all confused and shit.

“He’s trying to say,” Jasmine tell me, sitting back down next to me, “that he wanted you to come over because the party is coming up real fast and he wants to make sure you know what to do and what to play.” Then she translate what she just said to Emil and he say something back. “He says he wants this party to be special because I’m special.”

I nod and look over at Ana real fast out the corner of my eye, just to see if she got a reaction to that, but she don’t. She just busy wiping off the counter. Probably, only reason Emiliano with Ana is ’cause Jasmine too young and he don’t wanna end up in jail. The same reason he got with Jasmine sister, Reyna. He was just using her while he waited for Jasmine to grow up.

Ana probably don’t even see it yet. She don’t know she training Jasmine to take over as Emiliano girlfriend.

Damn.

The rest of the time I’m there, me, Emiliano, and Jasmine go over all the details of the party. Everything. They tell me shit I don’t even need to know as the DJ. But I get it. They wanna make sure I know how the whole thing gonna run. Then, before I’m ’bout to get up outta there, Emil give me a list of songs he say I’ma need to play at the party, and he even tell me when to play them. They got a song to play when Jasmine come into the party and a song to play when she opening her presents. Dude thought of everything. Course I ain’t never heard of none of this music. I got a lot to learn ’bout Spanish music. Fast.

Soon as I leave outta there, I head straight back to Bronxwood, not to go home but to go see my friend Patrick who be bootlegging CDs and DVDs and selling them on the street and shit. He come with me to most of my parties and help me out, and I let him sell his stuff there too.
I’m just hoping he got some of that Spanish music on Emiliano list.

Patrick moms let me in, and for the first time in a long time, music don’t be blasting from Patrick room. They apartment ain’t never been this quiet. Never. “He here?” I ask.

“He sure do be.” Patrick moms always look tired.

“He dead or something?”

“Maybe.” She shake her head. “Go on back and see.”

I knock on Patrick room door, but he don’t answer so I go in anyway and hope he ain’t jacking off or something. He ain’t. He ’sleep. The room smell like weed and he got a empty box of Devil Dogs on the bed next to him. And all he got on is Batman boxers.

This a sad scene.

I can’t figure Patrick out. He ain’t ugly and, yeah, he kinda outta shape, but he ain’t really fat or nothing. Still, he the most non-life-havin’ dude I know. When he ain’t out on the street selling his CDs and DVDs, he in this room burning them. I don’t never see him going out with no females or nothing.

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