The Residue Years (35 page)

Who is it? I say.

The voice is garbled. I crack the door and here she is, my mother, rancid, her eyes glassy, charred lips slopped with gloss.

Son, I don't know what I wanna be when I'm all grown up, she says. And I'm all grown up.

What? I say.

What do you want me to say? she says. Can't you see? She has as much chance as earth does of keeping still.

You bringing this here? Where I lay my head? I say, like I can. I look to see who else in the hall.

No lectures, please. Just give it to me. I need it. Let me have it.

Have what? I say.

Champ, don't make me go through changes, she says. Okay, I can't right now.

You come to my door at the crack of dawn.

She fixes her shirt. Please, Champ. Give it to me and let me go.

Give you what? To do what?

The water splashes out of the pot in hi-fi. Much longer, and I'll lose grams, longer than that it might cook down to paste and come back at almost naught.

Do you know what tomorrow is? I say. I know you know what tomorrow is.

Yes, yes, yes, I do. I'll get it together. I swear. Just give this to me, Champ. Don't make me beg.

Leave! I say, and shut the door. Shut it so it doesn't slam. I stomp into the kitchen, see my work cooked down to a loss. I take it off the eye and drain it. I look up and see Kim, tumescent, standing in the kitchen entrance. Who, she says, was that? And what, she says, is this?

Go back to sleep, I say.

This is what you do and where you do it now? she says. This is what you feel for us.

Grace shouts again from the hall, and I creep over and watch her through the peephole. She bangs the door with her fist and winces. She takes off her shoe and blams the door with her heel.

Honor thy father and thy mother. That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee
. She bangs her shoe once more.
Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or mother
.

Are you fucking serious, I say. Leave, I say. Go now, before one of them calls the police.

Grace holds her heel. Her hand is bleeding. Let them call and let them come, she says. Let them call and let them come. And when they do, let's tell them how you won't give your mama a few dollars to keep her from dying.

My neighbor, the nosy-ass schoolteacher, cranes his head out of his apartment and ask if everything's okay?

It's fine, I say.

No sir, Grace says. It's
not
fine. My son, here, do you know him? Do you happen to know how he makes his living?

This snoopy mother fucker's face is a fireworks show. He gaps his mouth as if to speak, but I snatch Grace inside, slam the door, press my chin into the top of her head. I fleece my pockets, give her what's in them, not much, and tell her to go and don't come back. She stuffs the cash in her bra and drops her heel on
the floor and slips it on her foot. She hobbles off, the click of her heel an echo.

I walk to the window to see if I can see her leave and when I come back Kim is standing near the stove. She asks again what I'm doing. I grab the pot and utensils and dump them in the sink and run a sink of water. She gapes while I set up: the scale, baggles, paper towels. Her eyes, those eyes, brimming with tears. You said you wouldn't, she says. What good is your word? I stab cracks in the work and lay it on the paper towel to air-dry. Why, Champ? Why? I have a right to know, she says.

You have a right to know? A right. People's rights are violated every day, I say. What the fuck's so special about yours?

She shakes her head and touches her belly and slumps off for the room.

My lick pages me again, adds 911, and I chop the work, weigh out oz's, tie them off in plastic. Kim wobbles out about the time I finish weighing. She's dressed and tugging a messily packed suitcase.

Oh, here we go with this, I say.

She yanks open the closet packed with things for the baby, snatches a jacket off a hanger, struggles into the sleeves.

Miss me with this bullshit, I say. Where're you supposed to be going?

I dump the work in a sack and fold the sack down to a grip.

You promised, she says. But you won't stop unless they stop you. You won't, and we won't be here when they do.

You wanna go? Then go! I say.

That's all you got left?
—Grace

Michael has the car running when I limp out, a deep throb in my fist. He tinkers with knobs and opens and searches and shuts the glovebox. He gazes at me. He's never seen the heart of what's wrong, or else maybe he's checking for the wrong hurts. I rest my busted hand on the dash, see blood on my knuckles, new bruises. He asks if I'm ready, and I lift what Champ gave me into view.

Say no more, Michael says.

The mission. Back at the spot. This time I tell Michael to let me take the lead. You'd swear Bear's bigger than he was when we left. I order and he paws a dwindled plastic sack from his crotch. There's a cascade of sweat on his nose, disks of yellow in his pits.

That's all you got left? I say.

Not your worry, Bear says. Supplies is my business. Demand is yours.

We could whine about the size of what he gives us but who has the strength? Bear says there's a crowd downstairs, so sends us this round to the attic. There's a black tunnel leading upstairs. You wouldn't be surprised if you fell through a step. We make it up alive. Up here there's old wallpaper peeling in strips, dusty
plastic bins shoved in the corners, a stained-to-death fabric couch, a chipped wood table built too low for an adult.

Tiny windows filter morning, light, and in that light Michael is maimed. Or maybe it's how I look to him. Or maybe I'm seeing myself in him.

He proclaims we have to make this stretch.

We puff. Spell as long as we can between blasts. Sit and stand. Float to corners where the light doesn't reach. I press my face against a window, and see far, far up, something metallic twinking by.

Between my last blast and the one to come I may well lose a year of life.

But why stop now, though? How can you stop when you can keep on? When the strongest urge is to reach the end.

Here comes big trouble: a deep pull and no new feeling. Here's Michael silent, beyond words now, a distance into his next dream.

They say what you do is who you are, and is the only voice to heed, but sometimes, some days, who am I? The Grace I don't know stands and screams, WHO THE HELL GIVES THEM THE RIGHT? She climbs on the couch, loads a bowl, and strikes a flame. She squeezes her eyes into magic and sucks down her
and
his share. WHAT DO THEY KNOW? JUST WAIT, I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!

That's cool, MCA, but get down fore you fall down, Michael says.

He gropes for the pipe, hugs it against his chest, gazes into its black foot. I see, we being selfish, he says. He scrapes the resin and burns it and drops the hot pipe on the table. That's it, he says. The end of good things. The last dance. Show's over.

Or encore, I say, and flash the money I meant to keep for myself.

This time I go down alone.

Bear's eyes are red smears. They make you wonder how he sees, what he sees, if he sees at all. Back, he says. Where dude? Upstairs, I say. Bear this time serves me from a tiny sack in his sock. The pills are anemic. You think you could throw in extra.

We don't do no extras, he says.

After all we spent? I say.

After who spent what? he says.

That's how you treat people, I say. Why not be more kind? It wouldn't hurt to be more kind. You know God has a plan for your life.

What the fuck? he says. What? God ain't nowhere near this muthafucka. Take that dope and get the fuck out my face.

Bear shoos me and I backtrack with these scant pills cupped.

Michael frowns at my purchase and sighs. He tells me to have at it, hands me the lighter and pipe. The boys make a racket below. Bear's voice booms through the floor.

The lighter lashes a bright flame and I suck as slow as I can. What I have won't last as long anywhere near as I need.

What could go wrong? is what you ask yourself, and you could just imagine, or maybe you can't. The courthouse tomorrow, the Multnomah County Courthouse on Salmon, the same one where, on the first floor, you come to pay a traffic ticket or parking fine or start the process to reinstate your license, where in a second-, third-, fourth-floor room you might find someone crying innocent of theft or pleading guilty on assault, where you might see a
boy not much younger than my eldest begging a judge for probation, where in that building so many just like Michael or me, or so near us the difference can't be ranked, will have their distribution charges dropped to possession. A judge will sit in his chambers studying dockets and sipping plain black coffee while the building fills, while the checkpoint clogs with visitors wearing belt buckles and bracelets and rings and necklaces, stalls from screws in a foot or a pacemaker, while guards snatch others out of line for wand searches, and trash a small thing they huff is within the rules. Visitors will slide or eke by security and reach for papers and slips and copies they brought folded in their pockets or buried in a wallet or purse, stuffed in a legal envelope, notices and subpoenas and warrants and summonses and paternity test results and reccs from a teacher or a pastor or a boss; imagine them slogging into the building with, tucked under arm, probation files and police briefs and psych briefs and transcripts and community service contacts, carrying orders of protection and tax returns and pay stubs and bank slips and W2's and deeds and judgments and drug program intake and outtake papers and receipts and passports and licenses and SS cards and adoption papers and notarized letters of insurance; imagine them bearing deposition transcripts and affidavits and every other form or letter or printout or triplicate carbon copy you could think of, plus a whole slew you couldn't—any card or file or scrap they think will swing the law in their favor.

Tomorrow AM who will be among them?

Andrew will arrive first, with his tie Windsor-knotted and shirt tucked perfect in his slacks he's owned for an age. Picture Champ not far behind, swanking inside in polished black shoes and a dress shirt buttoned at his throat. Picture the pastor floating
in. Picture Chris who said he'd show, keeping his word, and, just far enough behind to miss conflict, Kenny and his tramp traipsing in arm in arm with my boys, my babies, in tow. Picture their grinning lawyer toting a briefcase full of lies. Picture all of them filing into the courtroom and the judge taking his bench, and calling Kenny's name and my name. Picture them all—my babies, Champ, Andrew, the pastor, Chris that man, that woman, their smirking counselor, searching the room for who's missing: me!

Missions. You know you should stop, but … You end up downstairs, empty-handed, face-to-mask with Bear, and asking for a favor—or is it a blessing, or is it a curse? You end up downstairs and on your knees in every way that counts.

We don't do no extras and we don't do no favors, he says.

But I swear I'll pay you tomorrow, I say. Will give it to you with interest.

He bends the antenna on his tiny TV and turns a knob.

Don't make me go home, I say. I can't go home.

Well, you sho in the fuck can't stay here, he says. We accommodate paying clients.

Just one, I say. Please.

Hell, nah, he says. I let you slide, he says, mize well spot every muthafucka who come in here with a sob story. This ain't no nonprofit, he says. This a business. And if you ain't got no bread, we ain't got no further business.

The voice in the TV says good day to Oregon. Bear dumps a bottle cap of ashes on the floor and rakes me with his rheumy red smears—false spells. I can't feel my busted-up hand, can't feel my face. I turn to leave, but his bark stops me cold. He grunts out of his seat and undoes his belt and snorts. Check this out, he says.

We don't do no extras nor no credit. But what we do got one helluva motherfuckin payment plan.

He plucks a plump pill from a sack in his sock and gifts it into a sacrament.

This thing can't jack his TV to loud enough.

That's my mama, I say. My mama.
—Champ

This youngster that's out front don't know me and looks spooked when I ask for dude. He tells me to go around back, where a dude with a blue fitted cap dipped low points me past a group of young Crips camped by a TV. I got my pistol tucked (trust who?) in my waist and the sack of oz's stuffed in my drawls: reasons A and B, respective, of me stepping hesitant as shit down the hall towards a room at the end of the hall with a TV blasting inside.

When I get in the room, this sasquatch nigger is on the floor, pants dropped, his nasty hairy ass pounding a female body. It's one of those times I want to look away but can't. The female's got her head thrown to the side and is a corpse but for a twitch in her feet. And it's the feet that give her away. It's seeing those feet that cracks a fault line in me. He stabs her again with a deep grunt, and growls what I can't hear over the noise: over the TV, over the chatter inside my skull. I take out my pistol, trip the safety, and materialize at his side. I drop to my knees and jab the pistol with all my might into the meat that covers his ribs.

Get off of her, I say. Get off of her now.

Bear freezes, holds himself prone, keeps his eyes low.

My mother's eyes snap open and plead me in the face with a face that's three-fifths of a suicide.

Bear hefts to his feet, yanks at his pants, fumbles with his belt buckle. His white T-shirt's soaked with yellow sweat. I keep my pistol (I can feel it shaking, and hope he can't see) aimed where his heart should be.

That's my mama, I say. My mama, I say. Say it as a man, a boy, a child.

The woman who gave me life stands butt-naked, all bones, her pubic bush glistening wet. Well, here it is, no more secrets, she says. The truth, all truth. Now are you satisfied? She martyrs her arms out. Her eyes are wrung dark. One of her penciled eyebrows is swiped clean. Her hair's a spiked swarm.