Flip Side of the Game (15 page)

“But I don't know how I feel about this.”

“About what? I know you're not thinking about an abortion. We're getting too old for that shit. Look, tell the man. Let the man be happy. Get fat and pregnant, and let Lee and Angie get jealous because I'm the godmother. Fuck it. We only live once.”

“Well, damn, I guess you have it all figured out.”

“No, not quite, but I do know when it's time to stop playing games, and if you got a man that you love and want to be with, then do the right thing.”

“You're right. I'm going out to buy the test now. Just to confirm it.”

After I hung up, I went to the CVS down the street and purchased the pregnancy test. When I came back home, I sat down on the couch and tore open the pack.

Just as I was going into the bathroom to piss on the stick, the doorbell rang. I looked out the peephole and saw Shannon, Lee, and Angie.

What the hell?
I thought.
What did they do, fly over here?

“May I help y'all?” I said, standing in the doorway.

“You pregnant, ho?” Angie said. “And you told Shannon that she was going to be the godmother. Just fuck me, huh?”

“Yeah,” Lee said.

“Fuck us, right?”

“I never told Shannon that.”

“Yeah, right,” Angie said. “I bet you didn't. Y'all some sneaky bitches! Every time I turn around, y'all got a buncha fuckin' secrets. This shit is being brought to end right here, though. Now, did you tell this ho that she was going to be the godmother?”

“First of all,” I said to the three of them, “you're standing on my front stoop, telling my neighbors all of my goddamn business. Second of all, I never said nothing about Shannon being the godmother. And thirdly, I don't even know if I'm pregnant.”

“Shannon,” Angie said, tight-lipped, “I thought you said the nigga did a pelvic exam.”

“Damn, you talk too much,” Shannon said to Angie, pushing me to the side so that she could come through the front door.

“Would you go and take the test?” Shannon said, rolling her eyes at Angie.

I took a deep breath and went into the bathroom. I wasn't sure how to feel, because I never thought about having a baby, at least until now. Every other time I was pregnant, I knew what I was going to do, but now, I was not so sure. I did know that Taj would never go for an abortion.

Damn, what the fuck? Aunt Cookie would lose her mind when she heard this, but wait a minute: I may not even be pregnant. It could have been stress that had my period missing in action.

Goddamn, who was I trying to fool? I hadn't seen my period in almost eight weeks. And what made it so bad was that I had been fuckin' all the time. Every chance I got, I was droppin' hot coochie moves like a fuckin' Luke dancer. I should've known that this was bound to happen. I stood over the toilet and started peeing over the stick. Too afraid to look, I closed my eyes and imagined that there would only be one line instead of two.

After I finished peeing, Shannon knocked on the door and said, “Did you just get finished peeing? Hurry up and tell us what the stick says.”

“You standing there listening to me pee? Y'all need a fuckin' life!”

I set the stick on the counter, cleaned myself, pulled up my pants, and flushed the toilet. I closed my eyes and then I eased them open so that I could look at the stick. I started with one eye open and left the other closed. I looked at it with the left eye first, and when I saw two lines, I swore that the left eye was wrong. I switched eyes, only to see the same thing.

Fuck! I picked up the stick and snatched the bathroom door open. Angie fell first, and then Shannon and Lee came tumbling behind her.

“It's positive,” I said, fighting back tears.

“What's wrong?” Shannon said, dusting herself off.

“I'm having a baby.”

“That's no reason to cry, Vera,” Shannon said.

“Yes, it is,” Angie insisted.

Shannon shot her ass a look and said, “No, it's not.”

“Why are you crying?” Lee asked.

“Because,” I said with tears falling and my words sounding muffled, “suppose I don't know how to be a good mother and my baby feels the same way about me that I feel about Rowanda?”

Shannon held me close and said, “We have already talked about this. You have to stop it. This is your baby. You will decide what type of mother you want to be. This is Vera's turn. Rowanda had hers.”

“Do you want to have the baby?” Angie asked.

“Damn real she wants to have the baby,” Lee said. “Right, Shannon?”

“Excuse me, but I'm the one pregnant. And yes, I will be having my baby.”

“Good,” Shannon said. “Now, Vera, I want you to get it together right now. You want to be a good mother, then start by not stressing yourself out. Do the right thing.”

The girls stayed for over an hour and tried to make me feel better, but nothing worked. I was scared as hell. How was I going to raise a child if I'd been grown all my life?

 

 

Taj worked a double shift, so he didn't come home that night at all. Instead, he called and told me to meet him at Uncle Boy's party.

Aretha Franklin's new tune was blasting out the windows and into the street as I parked my X5. Taj had beaten me there, as I noticed his black Escalade seemed to take up half the block.

“Do you have to go back to the hospital?” I asked him, feeling like I wanted to throw up.

“Why? Do you need to go?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Just sit down and don't move.”

Aunt Cookie strutted her stuff as she walked passed me smelling like violets. She wore a pair of white polyester bellbottoms, Payless platforms, and a black shirt with a white stitched collar.

“What it is! What it is!” she said, carrying a tray of Remy Red and dollar store flute glasses. “Show me whatcha workin' wit'!” she said to everybody in the room.

“That's my Cookie!” Uncle Boy said, already drunk and smelling like old rum. “Come on over here and gimme some o' that chocolate chip!”

Aunt Cookie's couch squeaked as I sat on it and tried hard not to move. The plastic on the cushions stuck to my skin and made it impossible for me to be able to sit in the same spot for long. I got up to go to the bathroom, and Aunt Cookie said, “Don't go too far, Babygirl”

I was trying desperately to tolerate her perfume, but it was only a matter of time before my tolerance would give out. “What's the problem, Aunt Cookie?”

“I dreamed up fried butter fish and rainbow trout.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I dreamed up fried fish. Big, pretty fried fish.”

“And your point?”

“My point? Oh, you being smart? Just watch yourself. Don't be around here gettin' pregnant. If you gonna be having babies, then make sure the nigga marry you, and I mean that. Don't be giving all the milk away.”

She really needed to mind her business, considering she'd been living with Uncle Boy damn near all my life, but I wouldn't dare tell her how I felt about her concerns.

She left me standing near the bathroom door and headed toward Uncle Boy. That's when I noticed that Rowanda had just come in the house. Taj kissed her on the cheek. She seemed a little out of place, but I could tell she was pretending to be okay.

“Hey, Vee,” she said, with droopy eyes, seemingly fighting off a nod. “How you?”

“Fine.”

“Good. Good. Yo' mama fine too.” She kept tooting her lips up, as if she were fighting off an itch, and making strange gestures with her face.

“Are you high?” I asked.

“What?”

“You heard me. Are you high?”

“Vee, I told you that I'm clean.”

“You're lying!” I snapped. “I can spot a fiend a thousand miles away, and yo' ass is high!”

“What you care for?”

“Quite frankly, I don't give a fuck, but the least you could have done was got your hit after you left here.”

“Vee, just go 'head and leave me alone.”

“Don't tell me what to do! You ain't nothin' but a damn crackhead! I can't stand you!”

“You can't stand me? Tell me somethin' I don't know.”

“What is goin' on over here?” Taj asked, squinting his eyes.

“Don't be looking at me like that! This trick is high!”

“Quiet down, Vera. This is not your show. Save that shit!” he said, waving his hands.

“Save what? That she's high? I knew she couldn't stay clean. Aunt Cookie was the only one fooled!”

“What is wrong wit' y'all niggas?” Aunt Cookie said, slightly drunk but trying to maintain her composure. “It's Boy's birthday. Be nice for once!”

“I'm leaving!”

“Vera, you better calm yo' ass down before Aunt Cookie step to yo' ass,” Aunt Cookie said. “This your Uncle Boy's birthday, and as far as he's concerned, he only got one child, and that's you. So, you leave his birthday party mad if you want to, and watch how me and you fall out! Humph, you know how I do it!” She walked away.

“Get away from me,” I said, tight-lipped, to Rowanda. “I can't stand your crackhead-ass!”

“You can't stand me? You can't stand me?” she said, standing in my personal space. Her breath was stale as she spoke. “Let me tell you one motherfuckin' thing. I am your mother! You ain't had me! And another thing, I ain't one of your girlfriends, so you will respect me! Point blank, period.

“And no, I ain't never been the best mother, but I tried. I was fifteen years old when I had you, and soon as my mother brought you home from the trash dump, I knew that it was s'pose to be me and you.

“Now, I'm a little tired of the way you been treatin' me. And, by the way, I'm not a crackhead. I'm a dopefiend. Stop gettin' the shit confused. One thing's for sure, my dope is there for me, and it gets me to stop hearing you scream 'bout how much you hate me. I can get mama's blood offa me. I can get rid of Towanda's troubles, and I can leave Larry and his Coupe Deville on the corner, pimpin' me! To hell with you!” She stormed out the front door.

I went to say something to Aunt Cookie, but she just stared at me and said, “Don't say nothin', Babygirl. Don't open your mouth. You have done enough talkin' for the night!”

When we came home, Taj didn't want to talk about Rowanda.

“We have other things we need to discuss,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like, when are you going to tell me that you're pregnant?”

“What?”

“Vera, don't start. Come with it. Now, when is my baby due?”

“How do you know I'm having a baby?”

“Vera, I'm a doctor and I live with you. You haven't had a period in close to two months. Your breasts are swollen, your nipples are dark, plus, when you were trying to get a nut, I slipped your ass a pelvic exam.”

“Oh, so now you've taken it upon yourself to be my OB/ GYN?”

“Stop playin' me, Vera. When is my baby due?”

“I don't know when the baby is due.”

“Why not?”

“I haven't gone to the doctor. I just took the pregnancy test today.”

“Well, make the appointment so we can go to the doctor.”

“We? So, it's official?” I asked.

“What's official?”

“This?”

“What's
this
?”

“This baby and us.”

He smiled and softly pushed his head into the plushness of my chubby abdomen and said, “Li'l man, tell your mother it's official.”

 

 

 

 

The word on the street was that Rowanda died. A dopefiend named Queen said that she got a hold of some bad shit and passed out in the two-dollar side of the abandoned building. Queen said that she spent her dope money to get to my shop, money that she got from suckin' dick. And she said she would spend it on Rowanda again if she had to, 'cause Rowanda meant too much to her to just let her go out like that.

“Yo' mama has been there for me. We lived on the streets together. We went to rehab together, relapsed together, shot up together, and we even did time together. Wasn't no way I was just gonna watch her die. I called the cops 'fo I left. I couldn't stay. I got a warrant for solicitation.”

 

 

When I got there, I walked up the stairs of the boarded up house that was well occupied. People were on the porch and hanging out the windows. The breeze was filled with the scent of weed, the grass was spotted in-between dirt patches, and there were no trees. People of all shapes and sizes lined the porch and filled the hallways.

A li'l girl who was seemingly a woman sang a song into the tip of the crack pipe that her man snatched out her hand as he slapped the shit out of her for taking too long. The pregnant girl and the HIV chick shared the tip of a needle as they floated on cloud nine of a dopefiend's high. And, in the midst of it all, nobody gave a fuck. Everybody had their own set of issues, and the bitch laying across the kitchen floor passed out because she chose the wrong bag of dope was nobody's problem but her own.

“I thought you called the police!” I said to Queen.

“Nine-one-one is a joke. Ain't you heard? The po-po don't show up over here. You can call 'em, but they ain't gonna come. They figure it's just another nigga.”

I wanted to let Rowanda die and remove myself of all the memories of her. I thought about how a dopefiend's funeral would be and what the pastor would say. Would he call my name in the eulogy? Would he think that she had it hard because of me? Would he say that Grandma was a testimony of strength because she raised three children with no daddy, all the while skin-poppin' dope? Would the pastor know that none of Grandma's kids made it past the seventh grade? Would he know that Rowanda was a dopefiend before she got her first period, and when she did get her period, it came nine months after she slept with a forty-year-old man who called himself Larry Turner? Larry Turner, who had a thing for little girls. Would the pastor talk about that? Or would he simply say, “God bless the child that has his own.”

I let her hang on my shoulder as I guided her limp body down the stairs. Her legs hit each step like wooden pegs, and I could hear her breathing in my ear.

“Come on, Rowanda,” is what Queen kept saying, sounding desperate, as if the time that she wasted catching the train from the Bronx to lower Manhattan would count for nothing.

“Come on, Rowanda!” Queen repeated, her voice elevating with every syllable. “Come on. Shit! What the fuck you tryin' to shut the light out for? What the fuck you tryin' to do!”

Queen's voice was like a drum beat, and Rowanda's breathing was like scratches in a rap song, and the dragging of Rowanda down the stairs, outside on the porch, and into my car was like a systematic rhythm that went “ba-boom, ba-boom, aahhhh.” All I could think of was Sarah Vaughn, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday. All I could hear was a jazz tune, a blues note. I could think of nothing else, nothing.

 

 

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurse seemed to have no respect for a used-up dopefiend.

“Name?”

“Rowanda Wright.”

“Spell it.”

“What?”

“Spell it.”

“Are you fuckin' crazy?” I screamed at the silly-ass triage nurse that kept tapping the tip of her ballpoint pen against the metal top her makeshift desk. “She is fuckin' dying and you asking me to spell her goddamn name!”

“Address?”

“I'ma slap the shit outta you if you keep askin' me these stupid fuckin' questions instead of getting her to a goddamn doctor!”

“And when she's done,” Queen added, “I'ma stomp on yo' ass. You ever been stomped?”

“Security!” the triage nurse called. “Security!”

The security guard took his time strolling over to where we were. Apparently he was used to this nurse being threatened with ass kickings. He simply said, “Y'all gonna have to leave if you keep talkin' shit. Y'all gonna have to go.”

“Fuck you!” Queen shouted. “Fuck you! This ain't no everyday dopefiend. This my damn friend. Ain't nobody seen my life like she seen my life. Don't nobody know. Don't nobody know!”

“Calm down,” Taj said, standing behind me, breathing on my neck.

My shoulders relaxed, although I was surprised. Taj? I couldn't remember if this was the hospital he talked about this morning or not.

“Nurse,” he said, sounding soft but firm, “please admit this patient to the E.R. immediately. All the other information can be collected at another time.”

“What are you doing here?” I said to him.

“I work here on the weekends now, or did you forget? This situation with Rowanda, we need to deal with this. This is no good for the baby, this is no good for you, and it's starting to take over our life. But right now, your mother needs you. You should go inside so that you can be with her.”

“My mother? That chick is not my mother!”

“What?”

“I'm not staying here to be by this bitch's side! Fuck her! What she ever do for me but put me in a trash dump and hide out on the corner 'til the garbage man heard me cry? I gotta go!”

“You keep on runnin'!” Queen shouted at me, while I was going through the hospital's roundabout. “You keep on runnin'! She don't need you. She got me! She ain't no everyday dopefiend. She my friend, goddamnit! My friend! Fuck you!”

Taj watched me rev my X5 out of the parking lot and haul ass.
Fuck them
, I thought. I didn't need not even one of them. Not Taj, not Queen, and damn sure not Rowanda.

By the time I tipped in the door to check on Aunt Cookie, the house seemed asleep. All the lights were out, and the only thing shining was the small wicker lamp that she kept on the end table. She usually left Marvin Gaye playing softly on the CD player, as she made her way up the stairs to sleep.

“Marvin was my nigga,” she used to say when I was little. “That was my man, and the day his daddy shot 'im straight fucked Cookie Turner up.

As I walked toward my old room, I heard the crushing of the orange speckled industrial carpet that Aunt Cookie got on sale at fourteen cents a square yard in 1972. She refused to change it, because she said that she hadn't gotten her money's worth out the shit, and the man she bought it from said that it was due to last a lifetime. She also kept the plastic on her red crushed velvet living room set, because she said that people were always touching her shit, and she didn't want them messing up her “bad-ass furniture” that she regarded as a classic.

The stream of the light from the wicker lamp reflected off the windowpane and led a valley of blue down the dark hallway.

Peeking in Aunt Cookie's room, I saw Uncle Boy's feet hanging off the side of their queen-sized bed. Aunt Cookie was sitting in the dark, staring out the window, with a silk scarf tied around her head, smoking a cigarette.

“Aunt Cookie, what you still doin' up?”

“Waiting to see what time you was gonna come tippin' in here.”

“How did you know I was coming here?”

“'Cause of what you did. How you showed yo' ass at that hospital. How you was up there cussin' like a mu'fuckin' fool.”

“How did you know that?”

“Taj.”

“I ain't have to be there! Queen came to get me. I didn't have to go. I could have let her die!”

“You could have let her die? You got some nerve playing God, Vera!”

“To hell wit' Rowanda! What she ever do for me?”

“What she ever do for you? Every goddamn hustle she ever had was because of you! She ain't have to take care of you for the little time she had you. She could've let you die, but she didn't, and when she lost you, she still fought for you. The day they took you, she walked all the way from Lincoln Street to my house. She said she saw you bangin' on the car windows hollering and screaming, but she kept walking, because she needed to do something, something to save you.”

“Really? That's interesting. I guess that in between her sessions of sniffin' dope, she placed me in a trash dump. That's sure to get her Mother of the Year.”

“Say another word and I'ma slap the shit outta you! Now, you shut the hell up and listen, and you listen good! Rowanda ain't never had nothing from the start. All she ever known was them drugs. Ain't no life like the one for a dopefiend.

“She came and she got me. She told me 'bout you, and I ain't wait. I came for you, and this the bitterness that you show my love. This is it?”

I just stood there. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

“You keep goin', Vera, and you keep killin' yo'self 'cause you hatin' yo' mama. Keep it up and you gonna die long before she does. You better wake up, 'cause everybody has got a story, Vera. Everybody.”

All night, I lay in the bed and fought off memories of dopefiends. The crack pipe played in my mind like an eight track, or a scratched-up record with a stuck needle. I could hear lingering clinks of silver belt buckles across porcelain sinks as I made my way outta the bed and to the face of the toilet.

I stared at the water going around and around as I flushed the routine evening sickness of my stomach down the drain. The circles of water raced through my mind, and each time I heard the faucet drip, I would jump. I refused to move and let anybody in, because nobody knew what it was like to have lived all your life feeling like a newborn in a trash dump.

The phone was ringing, and I refused to pick it up.

“Nothing is that bad, Vera,” Lee and Angie said on the answering machine. “Nothing.”

“I'ma just let myself in if you don't answer the phone,” Shannon insisted.

I didn't hear Taj when he came in. Seeing my hand on the side of the toilet, barely hanging on, he broke down and almost cried.

I slipped to the floor, weak and disoriented, wondering why I could never get over the heartache inside. Taj lay on floor, and there we were, face-to-face, with our cheeks resting on the cold porcelain, laying it all on the line.

“I always thought that I could live without Rowanda. I always thought I could be me by myself, but she never allowed me.”

Taj just listened.

“I love my Aunt Cookie, let me just say that, but she's not my mother. My mother is some crackhead dopefiend that has me trying to kick her drug habit.

“There are so many people I have seen in my life who didn't care about me. I had to learn to survive, and hustling men is what got me through, not knowing that it was that same hustle that would bring me full circle with myself.

“Until I met you, I didn't know what it was like to be in love, or how to truly love someone in love with you. I didn't know how to treat them, because I didn't know how I wanted to be treated. So, I used men and I played them, thinking that it would make up for me feeling like a crying newborn in a trash dump.