The Kid (2 page)

“Um hm.”

“So let’s go get some breakfast and say good-bye.”

Rita put her Bible in her purse, she holding some pretty black beads. She look at me, nod at the beads. “It’s all good—rosary, Bible. Precious ever take you to church?”

“No.”

You ever gonna leave me, Mommy?
Well, I can’t really say, baby. What I can say is, I never wanna leave you.

Rita close the door, lock it. Guy next door peep his head out. “Y ’all outta here?”

“Yeah, we gonna get some breakfast then hit it.”

“Try Bennie’s. You know my brother-in-law into delivery.”

“Uh, no I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, all up and down here; say he deliver more often to Bennie’s than any other place, so that mean his shit is the freshest, right?”

“Hey, sound right to me.”

“And you, little man, be strong!” He give me handshake on the black side.

Lady across the hall open her door. “
Ay, Dios!
Poor baby!”

“They going to breakfast, then to el funeral.”

“You shoulda tell me, I gots coffee here,” she say.

“That’s OK,” Rita say, and we tell ’em bye and walk down the stairs.

It’s warm outside even though it’s November. I look up at the sign over the hotel, PARK AVENUE HOTEL. We walks down 125th Street past Bennie’s to Mofongo’s. I order bacon for breakfast, my mother usually don’t let me eat bacon. But the waitress ask me what do I want. Rita done already ordered sausage and scrambled eggs please. I say bacon and eggs over easy please, then say no, scrambled. Restaurants ain’t like my mother, I don’t want no runny eggs. Waitress ask, You said bacon, right? Right, I say, and nothing happens like my mother saying, Bacon ain’t good for you. I put strawberry jam on my toast. Taste good. My mother is dead. Rita say one espresso and one café con leche. Here put some sugar in it. Why milk?
’Cause kids need milk, makes bones grow.
Why?
Why what, Abdul? I don’t know why milk makes your bones grow. I just know it does! So would you please shut up and drink the damn milk. You gonna be the death of me yet!
The coffee taste good, sweet, like a kinda chocolate or something.

“Finished, little man?”

“Unh huh.”

“What ‘unh huh’ means?”

“Means yeah, what you think it means?”

She laughs, I smile. “Oh, we gots a smart one here,” she say, rubbing my head.

“Yeah.” I know I’m smart.

“It’s only a couple of blocks we can walk or take the bus then walk up Lenox, OK?”

Mommy, who’s that man?
A friend of Mommy’s. Why, don’t you like him?
No.
Why not, he’s a nice guy. Mommy likes your friends unless they get you in trouble like you know who! Don’t you want Mommy to be happy?
Yeah, with me!

“You thinking about your mami?”

Where was that train going? Beyond the subway, I been on all the subways almost. Metro-North, what’s upstate? I look down Park Avenue, tracks overhead as far as you can see. It’s busy underneath the tracks, people is getting they dope, ladies is standing around doing the wrong thing, and it ain’t even night yet. Across the street from the bus stop is a vacant lot surrounded by a high chain fence with dogs running around in it. The people at the bus stop with us is probably TGIF ’ing, as Rhonda would say.

Monday my favorite day, Abdul. I think I’m the only sistuh I know like Monday.
Why, Mom?
Jus’ do, maybe ’cause the weekends is so lonely.
I’m not lonely, Mommy.
Well, that’s good, honey.

“You thinking about your mami?” Rita ask.

I don’t say nothing. The crosstown bus is coming, so we get on instead of walk and then get off at Lenox Avenue. The Black Israelite brothers is standing on the corner, one of ’em is screaming in a microphone. All of’em got on headbands. They got big Bible pictures set up on the sidewalk.
They can stand up there and holler all day long, but the African merchants had to go.
Go where, Mom?
I don’t know where they went. I just know they went.
Why?
Cutting into the white and Korean merchants’ profits I guess. They complained to Giuliani, so he iced the Africans, Abdul.
He can do that? He can put the Africans out of Harlem and let them stay?
They vote, sweetie. We live here, but they own the property.
Ever gonna change?
Yeah, baby, that’s you and your little friends’ jobs. Do something beside throw water balloons and—
I did not!
I know, Ms Jackson just lyin’ on you
. Rita squeeze my hand. “I loved your mami, Abdul! She was a good woman. Come on now, it’s almost ten o’clock. Oops! Here, let’s get this uptown 102. We can walk home later if you want to walk.”

We get off the bus in front of Lenox Terrace.
I was raised up on this block. Right there, see that building, I used to live there.
She’s pointing across the street from Lenox Terrace at a raggedy brick building with a black door. I ever been there when I was a little boy?
No, thank God.
Leaves falling from the trees in front of Lenox Terrace, ain’t no trees on the side of the street my mother say she was raised up on.

Where
is
she? Rhonda say gone to glory, heaven, sitting at the feet of a king. Her crown is bought and paid for! All she gotta do is put it on! Mommy, a crown? I ask her one time why we ain’t had a princess like Diana?
We spozed to be a democracy, Abdul!
What’s that?
What’s that! You ain’t studied democracy and why we vote and all in school?
Nuh uh, I shake my head.

“‘Nuh uh’ what?” Rita ask.

“Nuh uh nothin,’” I say.

We cross Lenox Avenue at 134th Street. There’s a tall guy standing in front the laundrymat on the corner of 134th.

“That’s Hamid from Somalia, own the laundrymat. He knew your mami.”

“Sorry to hear she pass.” He nod at a bunch of people standing a couple of doors down on Lenox between 133rd and 132nd.

Rita squeeze my hand. “This her little son, Abdul.”

“You don’t say! How old is he?”

“Abdul?” Rita say, squeezing my hand. I don’t say nothing. “He’s nine,” she say. Somali guy reach in his pocket give me five dollars.

“What do you say, Abdul?”

“Thank you.”

Africans is where we come from, Abdul, remember that.
How come they don’t like us?
Whatchu mean?
The ones in the restaurant and stores and stuff.
Well, I didn’t say they liked us. I said it’s where we come from.
The funeral home gots a cover over the door out onto the sidewalk, like what McDonald’s got across the street. “Whatchu call that?” “Huh? Oh, the awning. Is that what you’re talking about?” “Yeah, the awning.” My mother’s friend Rhonda is standing by us now. “Honey,” she say, “that’s one thing his mother did teach him, to ask questions!” I don’t like Rhonda all that much even if she is my mother’s friend. God, God, God, that’s all she talk about. Bible this, Bible that! Rhonda go in her handbag and hand me something warm wrapped in foil paper. “Eat this before you go in.” Ummm, beef pattie! “Whatchu say?” “Thank you.” Rhonda not so bad. When I go to put the foil in the trash can, it falls onto the sidewalk ’cause the can is so full. Oh well, I tried.
You gotta do more than try! You gotta do it!
I pick the foil up and put it on top of the heap of trash in the can.

“I gotta go,” I whisper to Rita.

“Bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

We walk up to the door of the funeral place. Rita tells the guy at the front door, “He gotta use the bathroom.” The guy opens the front door for me and says, “Go straight down the center aisle, at the pulpit go right until you see the green doors, that’s the bathrooms.” I run down the red carpet, then stop. Mommy! There she is! In that black box. Grown-ups lie and lie. Why? My mother is not in heaven. My mother is right here in a box like dead people on TV. She look different. I never seen that dress before, shiny white, silver.
I see the moon and the moon sees me.
I gotta pee bad! Well, for heaven’s sake go pee! But that’s me. Say it to me, Mommy, talk inside my head. Talk! I turn down the aisle and run to the bathroom. Pee and pee, feels good, shake. Put my penis back in my pants.
Your private parts have names. Well, dick is one of ’em, but penis is another. Balls is testicles.
I laugh, that’s the funniest thing I ever heard, except for
buttocks.
Ha, ha!
Don’t worry about rememberin’ all those words, just remember your private parts are yours an’ no one is supposed to touch ’em ’less you say so, hear? Hear?
I stare up at the ceiling light, squeeze my eyes shut. The light is red-orange through my closed eyelids. I breathe try to smell something, maybe like the smell after Mommy comes out the bathroom sometimes or how her underwears smell. Also that stuff Aunt Rita gots. What’s that, Ma? Oh, cologne, you like it?

“Abdul! Come out of there! Whatchu doin’?” That’s Rita outside the door. I smile. Ha, ha! Don’t move. “Abdul, are you finished? Don’t make me have to come in there.” I laugh. “Stop playing, silly rabbit!” Together we go, “Trix are for kids!” And I run out laughing. Rita’s standing there smiling, her black dress and red lips is pretty.
Marks? Oh, that’s acne, probably from when Rita was a teenager. It’s actually the scars, she don’t have it no more, but she must have had it pretty bad once. But Aunt Rita’s still pretty, ain’t she, ’Dule?
Rita hold out her hand. I take it, look up at her. “You’re pretty,” I say. She bend over kiss me. “And you’re just a sweet sweet little boy!” Tears from her eyes splash on my cheek. I smell her cologne, smell different from Mommy’s.

“Whatchu say?”

“Nothin’.”

“You said something about your mommy.”

“I can’t smell her no more.”

Rita look over at Mommy in the box. “Did you try?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t. You’re right, Papi, you can’t smell her ’cause it’s over. And if you touch her, it’s going to be different too. Precious is dead, Abdul, you understand what that means?”

“Yes.”

Rita takes my hand and we walk from the bathrooms back to where Mommy is. People coming in the church, down the aisles, sitting down.

“We gonna sit close to the stage?”

“Honey, that’s like a pulpit or altar.”

“And where Mommy’s box—”

“Don’t say ‘box.’ It’s called a casket, or some people say coffin.”

“I don’t understand what a funeral home is. This looks like a church to me.”

“This ain’t no church, it’s the chapel part of the funeral home. And we’re gonna sit right here.” A big old white lady in a green dress moves down so we can sit in the second row. The first row is empty. Who gonna sit there? No one. Rhonda is sitting behind us. I’m glad no one is in front of us, I can see Mommy better. The black box is long and shiny, curlicues on it, inside is a shiny white quilt. A little lamp is over her head. Everybody think she is dead. I mean
dead
dead. They don’t know she is talking to me all the time even though she is in the casket box not talking, not moving. Behind Mommy is a picture of Jesus. Black with curly hair. What’s lamb’s wool? She go get the comb out the bathroom, try to stick it in my hair.
That’s lamb’s wool, silly!
she says, pulling the comb through my nappy head. Jesus had hair like us?
I don’t know, I’m just showing you what the Bible say.
Is the Bible true?
I don’t know.
It’s kinda cold in the funeral home even if it ain’t cold outside. Flowers is all around Mommy, roses, lilies, flowers I don’t know the name of, maybe a thousand. I wonder what earrings she got on. I always like her earrings. I want earrings.
When you’re twelve.
I can get earrings?
A
earring.
Huh?
One.
I want both!
Stop screaming like you crazy! I tell you what, you can have one when you twelve, then if you still want two when you sixteen you can have two. How’s that?
OK, I guess.
Ha! You guess! Listen to you!
Mommy, you gonna stay like that?
Like what?
Like in a box?
Abdul, you know what Mommy being here means?
No, I don’t know. NO!

“Shhh!” Rita rocks my shoulder.

I look behind Mommy at Jesus hanging on the cross. Thorns is sticking in his head, drops of blood is coming down his face. He was that color?
What color?
Black like they got him up there?
I don’t know, Abdul!
Behind Mommy is the stage kinda, podium, like in school, where the preacher gonna stand, I guess, then to one side of the podium is a piano and a bench. I want to hear some music but not church music. My mother don’t like no church music either! A lady in a long black preacher robe get up on the stage.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Reverend Bellwether who gonna do the service.” A man follows behind Reverend Bellwether and sits down at the piano. Mommy’s casket is in front the stage on wheels like.

“Good morning, friends and family of Precious Jones. We’re gathered here together in sorrow for one who is no longer in sorrow, one whose pain has ended, one who has passed over to the other side.” The guy start playing the piano and singing: The storm is passing ovah, the storm is, the storm is, the storm is passing
ovah.

I don’t know that song, I don’t like it. It’s sad and stupid; ain’t no storm.

“Would the family and friends of the family, starting with the last row, one row at a time, please rise and come forward to view the deceased.” Reverend Bellwether wave her hand for people to get up, then she frown. I turn around to see what she’s looking at.

“Sit down!” Rita whisper, but she’s staring too.

“Is that the mother?” Rhonda ask.

“No, you’d know it if it was the mother. I seen her once, she take up the whole aisle.”

A old lady in a dirty orange dress is coming down the aisle moaning, “Oh Lawd, oh Lawd!” She got on a funny hat and her clothes is like from the olden days. She come up to where me and Rita are and reach over Rita and grab me. “Oh Lawdy Lawd, my baby.” Ugh! She smell terrible.