The Corner (71 page)

Instead, she tries to scrounge a job. Beginning at Westside and working her way east to Mt. Clare, Fran fills out applications at a dozen stores—most of which have barred her for shoplifting. When no calls come back immediately, she tries the want ads, circling everything from route driver to telemarketer. A company in Woodlawn gives her an interview, but it’s sales work on commission only. A store manager at Westside calls, then realizes that Fran is barred for thieving and cancels the interview. Finally, she lands an interview with a company out in Hunt Valley, miles north of the city. On a Thursday morning she spends two hours fixing her hair and makeup and dressing in a pants suit, eager to make the best first impression.

That afternoon, she’s sitting at the kitchen table when DeAndre comes in. Taking in a Newport, she looks completely at ease.

“Got a job,” she tells him.

DeAndre doesn’t miss a beat. “Ma,” he says, “I need new shoes.”

“Got-damn, Dre. I don’t even start ’til Monday.”

He laughs.

But nothing comes easy for Fran Boyd. The work isn’t clerical, like all of her previous jobs had been; instead, it’s factory floor work for Revlon. Come Monday morning, Fran spends two hours catching bus transfers from West Baltimore out to northern Baltimore County before she arrives at her place on an assembly line in the bowels of a Hunt Valley industrial park. Then, for six hours, she and about forty other laborers cramp their fingers by snapping small disks of eyeshadow into plastic compacts. The next day, the alarm rings and she turns it off,
sleeping until noon. That night she watches television until three in the morning.

There are better jobs, she tells herself. And when Marvin Parker comes calling, she’s done with the want ads for good. They had met in recovery in September, taking to each other in that first rush of freedom. Marvin was thirty-five, with more than a decade on the corners, but lately he had become a regular at the St. James NA meetings. Fran, who had neither the time nor the patience for romance when she was chasing dope, suddenly found herself interested again. It seemed right somehow—both of them rediscovering themselves, both of them trying to do something with their lives. And it might have stayed right, save for the fact that by the middle of October, when he finally gathers his things together and moves into Boyd Street with Fran and her sons, Marvin Parker is once again slinging vials at Franklintown and Baltimore.

Fran knows it when she lets him in the door, yet allows it anyway on the argument that the man isn’t getting high, that he might as well work out on a corner and bring some dollars home. Marvin had teamed with an old-school dealer and stickup artist by the name of Shorty Boyd, who was no relation to Fran though they had known each other for years.

Shorty had done pretty much everything on a corner and lived to tell about it. He was hardcore and famous for using a gun to take packages off weaker and younger dealers, then selling their wares himself. Shorty was a survivor and a user; in time, Marvin Parker would get used.

By the last of October, Fran’s new boyfriend is getting high, using as much as he sells and behind the eight ball when it’s time to pay off a piece of Shorty’s package. Soon enough, there isn’t a dollar coming back home from Franklintown and Baltimore. Only Marvin, high and useless.

Fran knows that DeAndre hates Marvin for his drugging, and day by day, the tension in the house grows. Outside of Fran’s earshot, Marvin is belligerent with the others, ordering Tyreeka and DeRodd around. On occasion, DeAndre challenges him, angrily declaring that if Marvin wants to make the rules, then he can damn sure pay some rent or put something in the refrigerator. But Marvin plays it off, or worse, brings the problem back to Fran, who asserts his rights for him. Then things start disappearing. Cash from DeAndre’s denim pockets. Cassette tapes. DeRodd’s Sega Genesis cartridges.

“Ma,” says DeAndre, “he stealin’ from us.”

“Andre, you don’t know what you talkin’ about.”

But Fran knows, and she knows DeAndre knows. Her son is soon looking at her in a different way, scoping for signs that she’s slipping as well. Once, when she’s in the bedroom, telling Marvin that if he’s got to have his blast, he’s got to do it out of sight of her, DeAndre comes up the stairs. Fran sees him, listening intently on the stairwell landing, and she feels good for having reassured her son that she is still trying for clean. Still, she knows that there is a progression here, a backward movement that can’t be denied much longer.

In those first weeks of freedom, Fran had launched herself wholeheartedly into the after-care sessions at the recovery center and the NA meetings at St. James at Lexington and Monroe. Since discovering the twelve-step gospel at the detox center, she had devoutly attended these gatherings; the confessionals and testimony gave her a feeling of connection. And if one meeting wasn’t enough in those first days, Fran would find another, and another after that. There were nightly sessions at St. James, or at Almost Family at Saratoga and Fremont. There were afternoon meetings at James McHenry and morning meetings at a half-dozen places if you woke up feeling weak. Fran had not been to church for a long while, but what she remembered of the Christian faith could not rival the power she felt at a good meeting. Up at St. James she could go inside the basement doors and hear, not leaden homilies of prophets and saviors, but the simple truth of drug addicts, speaking not about life to come, but life as they had known it.

At first, Fran had felt energy and warmth in the crowd; strength itself seemed to follow her out the door with the last words of the serenity prayer. At many of the gatherings, she met people she knew, people who had been down on Fayette and Mount Street with her. Some were more lost and desperate than she had ever been, now using the meetings to reorder their lives. Many fell, but others seemed to be growing, getting stronger as they collected their thirty-day and sixty-day and six-month clean-and-sober key chains. On the evening when she had walked to front of the room at St. James to get her two-month keepsake—twentyeight days clean in detox and thirty-two more on the street—Fran was proud to the point of tears. Yet she balked at what should have been the next step: finding a sponsor, a fellow addict to rely on, to share her fears and hopes and frustrations.

From the beginning, Fran had resisted the idea that she was dependent on any process outside of herself. When pressed, she had argued that
she could manage her own recovery without having to share secrets with anyone else. She told the NA organizers that she would keep with the meetings, that she was on the right road whether or not she was sponsored.

For a time, she had kept that promise. Only after a good month of meetings did she begin to bridle at all the rules and requirements, at the repetition that was at the heart of every NA gathering. By degrees, she became bored with all the talk, all the stories that always ended the same way. She began skipping meetings. And when DeAndre noticed and said something, Fran explained that she was past it now, that all of those people up at St. James were just chasing meetings the same way they used to chase the blast. They weren’t doing anything with their time but being exaddicts, and she wanted something more than that, some of the new life that was supposed to be there when you leave the vials alone.

By the time Marvin Parker moves in, Fran has stopped going to the meetings at St. James, or to any of her after-care sessions down at BRC. With DeRodd in school, she sometimes stays away from Boyd Street for the entire day—either up the hill at Scoogie’s watching cable movies, or worse, down on Fayette with Bunchie and Stevie, hanging near the Mount Street corners just to get away from her empty house and see what the action is like.

For a long while, she is on her old perch as a spectator only, watching the familiar chaos from a place apart, sitting on the Dew Drop steps, living each day with the Mount Street regulars and squeezing a few last accolades for her victory.

“You lookin’ right, Fran,” someone would say.

“Feelin’ right,” she’d reply.

But it isn’t quite true. Once, in September, when she was still staying at Scoogie’s house, she gave in to the hunger, marching back down to Mount and Fayette—back past Buster and Little Roy and Ronnie Hughes, back into the Dew Drop and down the steps to find her sister hunkered in the usual corner.

“Hey, Fran.”

Bunchie said nothing more. It was enough.

Three lines were waiting when Bunchie passed her the mirror. Fran snorted one and waited for the rush; when it came, she surprised herself by feeling ashamed. She stood up, leaving the other two on the mirror.

“Where you goin’ at?”

“Out,” she said, leaving.

That afternoon, she found an NA meeting. That night, she went to bed angry at herself for slipping, for gratifying all those fiends down on Mount Street who were so damned happy to see her lose. She lay in bed remembering Bunchie, damn near smirking at her as she did the line.

She couldn’t go back there. She had sworn this to herself. Her old world was lethal to her, but the new one was proving so empty and desolate, and her journey into it would be a solitary one. From the beginning, from those first days out of detox, Fran had sensed this. She knew Fayette and Mount, but what else—who else—did she know? For a time, she tried hard to believe that scraps of the old world could be carried forward into the new. In fact, she tried for a time to use some of her newfound strength to salvage other souls. After all, she had done these things for herself. She could, by force of will, make the rest of the neighborhood do the same.

There was no saving anyone who didn’t want salvation; Fran was not naive enough to think that she could drag Stevie, Bunchie, and every other family member in need down to detox and command their rehabilitation. But for those who asked for help, Fran had extended herself. Nor did she just give people Antoinette’s name and phone number and wish them well. Instead, Fran took them under her wing, guiding them through the process.

It began with Lynn, a girl she knew from over on Mount and Baltimore. A week or two after returning from detox, when Fran was leaving the Korean market on Baltimore Street, Lynn found the heart to speak up.

“Lookin’ good, girl.”

“Hey,” said Fran, smiling. “How you?”

“You think maybe I might be able to get in down there?”

Fran nodded. She could help. She would make calls. She would talk to Antoinette. She would help Lynn get herself together, encourage her, see that she didn’t slip when she came out.

After Lynn came Karen, her lifelong friend and her brother Scoogie’s lifelong love, who seemed to have found the bottom just as Fran had. Karen was chasing dope and coke down on Fulton, and Fran took her friend’s compliments about her recovery as evidence of desire. Karen said she would be willing to try, if only Fran could get her started. And then there was Gary, who made noises about calling for a detox bed, asking if Fran could get his name on the waiting list. Fran took the
mission to heart; she could save these people—all of them—and in doing so, she could claim a piece of the old world, dragging it with her into the lonely void of the new.

But Lynn lasted only a day or two after coming out of the recovery center; after that, Fran saw her on post as usual. And Karen caught a great break: admission to Tuerk House after only a handful of meetings. Yet within a week or so, Karen was back in the mix, chasing the same old thing. As for Gary, Fran made the calls, but it didn’t come as much of a surprise when she later found out that he didn’t follow up.

No, she was alone. For a brief time, she had hoped for Marvin Parker as a companion, but it was clear that he was useless. DeRodd was too young to provide real comfort and DeAndre, after losing his job at the Wendy’s, was once again little more than a child making demands. On check day this month, he even badgered her for $100 basketball shoes, telling her that he was broke, reminding her that he had stayed off the corners on the promise that straight life would put some money in his pocket. The implication was raw and obvious: Un-ass the dollars for some Air Jordans or I’m back playing gangster. So Fran bought the Nikes, feeling that after those years at the Dew Drop Inn, she couldn’t say no to her oldest son.

Now she is once again hovering at the Dew Drop, sitting on those familiar steps, waiting for God knows what. She is strong enough still to make it, she assures herself. The meetings, the process, the twelve steps—those things are for people without her inner power. Once the weather gets cold, she tells herself, she’ll stay indoors and do her classwork, get ready for her exams. She might even go back out for a job once the stores start hiring Christmas help.

She’s still there, waiting, on the fifteenth of October—her birthday—seventy-one days clean including detox, save for the one mistake with Bunchie. She is thirty-seven years old.

“You gonna celebrate?” Bunchie asks her.

“I might.”

That night, she sends Marvin to Baltimore and Franklintown with thirty dollars. She’s heard that Shorty Boyd’s package is a bomb. The rumor proves true.

The morning after, Fran takes her two-month keepsake off her key chain, reasoning that while a single line of dope with Bunchie can be excused, thirty dollars worth of heroin, scarfed up in a few hours, does not constitute clean time. She goes looking for a meeting, and finding
none, she heads home with no better plan than to slip back into bed and sleep through the fear. Marvin, thank God, isn’t around. He was chasing coke half the night and didn’t come in until early morning. Then, when she went out looking for her meeting, he left to chase some more.

Now she’s alone, or so she thinks until DeAndre comes out of the bathroom as she’s climbing the stairs to her room. He’s at the second-floor landing, wiping his face with a towel, looking at her closely.

“Ma.”

“What?”

“Marvin got to go.”

“Say what?”

“Marvin got to leave. He think he own this house and everything in it. He’s yellin’ at Reeka and cussin’ DeRodd, tellin’ him that he gonna kick his ass and all. He gone crazy if he thinks I’m gonna let him act like …”