Everyday People Read online

  What would Moms say? I ask myself. What would Blood do? I ask myself, scramble upright, cock my head, and wrap the towel around my fist.

  What you need to do is wash the shit yourself!

  Dude retreats a step, goes rictus. Uh, excuse me? You’re going to regret that, he says, and doublegumps for the office calling for the manager.

  How am I gone explain to Moms that I lost my job? And where, now, will I get the bread to buy the Deuce and a Quarter I’ve had my heart set on buying and restoring since, shit, let there be light. Shit, how I’m supposed to live day to day when I got a grand sum of not one red cent saved?

  Dude stomps out stabbing a finger at me, my punk manager devil-smirking behind him. But I can’t give neither one of them the pleasure, so I yank off this cornyass workshirt and tell them both what they can kiss.

  • • •

  Sis’s crib is a hike and a half from the carwash, but since bus fare at present seems a small ransom, I slink side streets past neighborhood girls doubledutching and hopscotching, an ashy-legged boy taking a wrench to a raggedy go-kart, a clique of grade-schoolers catching wheelies on ten-speeds, an oldhead ducked under the hood of a Glasshouse, Crazy Johnny dragging his frail Rottweiler—or maybe the dog’s tugging him—on a leash made of clothes tied together.

  Sis answers cradling her baby boy, my firstborn nephew.

  Surprise, I say.

  Surprise is right, she says. What brings you by?

  Do I, I say, need a reason?

  No, she says, you don’t. But you almost always got one.

  True, and I’m lookin at him right now, I say. Hey, nephew. It’s your uncle. The handsome one.

  My nephew makes a face as if he might agree. As if this young he knows how to speak with his eyes. His eyes are wonders like ours, though I hope they know more triumph than mine.

  Sis leads me into the living room. She sits in the velvet love seat and kicks up her feet on a low table. Since there ain’t another seat, I plunk on the floor beside a carpet stain the size of a toddler— it makes me feel poorer to see it—that wasn’t here the last time I came by. Sis asks if I’m thirsty, hands me my nephew, shuffles into the kitchen, and returns with Big Gulp cups filled with something iced. I’d offer you somethin else, but all’s I got is this and the baby’s formula, she says.

  Here, she says, and reaches for my nephew. Got to put him down or he’ll be a terror tonight. She lowers Nephew in the bassinet I bought her for her baby shower. She forsakes the chair in favor of sitting cross-legged beside me. My nephew whimpers a bit and then goes quiet, and neither Sis nor I bother his gift for a good while. One thing about Sis, she knows how and when to let things be. The crumpled few dollars in tips I made I fish out my pocket, smooth them on the carpet, roll them into a tube, and hold the tube in my fist.

  Look like somebody had a good work day, she says.

  That what this look like? I say.

  Moms kicked Sis out the day she told her she was pregnant. It was a Sunday, and Sis must’ve thought that the Sabbath was her best shot at grace. But Moms said, You won’t be having no out-of-wedlock baby in this house, and made her hand a wall that ceased all talk. Sis had little choice but to move in with her boyfriend—a finger wave–sporting nigga who was an averageass hooper for my high school’s archrival—and his mama until she finagled a way into this place.

  Where’s that wavy-headed man of yours? I ask.

  Ain’t seen him, she says. Since he came home loaded, claimed I tried to trap him with the baby, packed his stuff, and bounced.

  Damn, I ain’t even know. How come you didn’t call me? I say, and in a blink, my troubles, by contrast, feel no bigger than a mustard seed.

  Call who for what? she says. Boy, don’t you stress over us. We gone be good. Got an appointment with the welfare folks this week and problem’s solved.

  Just like that? I say.

  That’s what they say, she says.

  Sis, who’s cordial with my ex, asks if I’ve seen her, if she and I are working on rekindling.

  Not yet, I say.

  But not yet is not never, she says.

  Look at us, I say, and nod at the framed black-and-white picture of her, Blood, and me Easter before Pops caught his case. Yeah, better days, she says, and announces she heard Blood knocked one of her friends and has been ferrying her up to Sea-Tac to work a track. And I hope you got sense enough not to go that route, she says.

  Sis, I say. Oh, how I wish I could tell as easy as you what make sense and what don’t.

  She draws a heart on my chest. You do, she says. Trust it.

  We, per our usual, get around to chatting about Moms and Pops. Sis confesses she ain’t sure ifwhen she’ll let Nephew visit our father behind the walls, that she and Moms ain’t spoke since the day she kicked her out. And I tell her how, mealtimes now, Moms is liable to recite the Ten Commandments, has also conceived of even more incontrovertible laws and Lords against me transgressing them, her having to boot her last child out the house and/or the specter of me worrying her into another stroke and/or my condemnation to hell on earth or eternal hellfire.

  That woman gone keep believin life’s a Bible till the rapture, Sis says, and snickers, but I remind her, in so many words, that Pops’ case ordained Moms a zealot. No doubt, she be downright wrong sometimes, I say. But we’ve also doled her a fair share of disappointments. And who’s to say what’s her threshold?

  Sis pulls at the nap of her carpet, recrosses her legs.

  Enough about that for now. How about you tell me what’s what with you? she says, and plies me with the eyes that, when I was young, when she was the one scooping me from grade school and quizzing me on my times tables and spelling words, would tug the truth right out of me.

  Ain’t nothin to spill, I say, flatten the little bit of nothing in my palm, consider giving it to Sis, think better of it, think better of my second mind, hand her most of it, feel richer for it.

  What’s this for? she says.

  Wrong question, I say. Not for what. For who?

  My nephew—the boy got lungs—rustles and starts wailing. Sis rises, fetches him, rests him on her shoulder, and strolls around the living room humming and patting him into a coo.

  • • •

  The invite said BYOB and smoke, and damn near everybody in this joint is rose-eyed saucy. Me and my greedy patnas post near a corner table loaded with near-empty bowls of chips and pretzels and a scant tray of crackers and cheese, and pass a jug of rotgut liquor. The DJ spins one funk jam, one disco. Songs later, my patnas cut out on prospecting missions, and I stagger through a touch-and-feel festival on a hunt for the toilet. Well, I’ll be good and gotdamed, I see some sucka in a sharkskin sportcoat macking in the ear of my ex, my one love, as she leans against a wall wearing a dress so tight she might as well be buttass naked. Closer, I see he’s the cat new to the neighborhood that my patnas have been envying for his rides: a ragtop Impala, a Cougar with a racing stripe, a Mustang with glass-packed dual exhausts. Call it the weed or the wine or wanting to save her—or wanting to save me, or wanting to save us, or—but, whatever it is, it throbs my heart near my headed-for-rot liver.

  He fondles her hair—her natural hair, too, which is pulled into a bun—and her hand, and she titters and bats her eyes at him. It’s how, moons ago, she’d fawn at me, a boon no other fool on earth but me should reap. He swanks off through the crowd, peeking once over his shoulder with the hubris of a nigga who’s got more than a pittance in his pocket. Then, steady as the liquor will let me, I bumble over and catch her by the wrist.

  Say. Let me holler at you.

  Holler at me about what? she says.

  About us, I say.

  What don’t you get? she says, and jerks free. There ain’t no us. There ain’t been no us.

  But it could be, I say. Let me make it right.

  What you gone do for me that I can’t do for me? she says. What you gone do for me that the next man won’t do for me? she says. Shit, what you do for
yourself?

  The sharksuited sucker flaunts beside us holding a vodka bottle by the neck and foam cups. He looks me a once over and smirks as if, in an instant, he’s done the math and figured he’d tip a scale.

  Say, Baby Girl, who this? he says.

  Who him? she says, and hooks her arm through his. Nobody. Not no one we need to know.

  • • •

  Blood parks his newish Caddie off Grand Ave, and we foot it halfway across the bridge and stop close enough to the Made in Oregon sign to hear it buzzing, to see where some of the bulbs have burned black. Called Blood and bummed a few bucks because the peckerwoods at the carwash been playing games with cutting my last check, and I can’t—not now or maybe ever—admit to Moms that I’ve lost my gig—a confession sure to spike her systolic and have her on my neck something terrible about my part of the bills. But we’re here even more so because, of late, I’ve been feeling like I’ve had enough, like I’m past that point—in plural.

  Blood sweeps out his arm as if offering me the Willamette on bargain. Look, he says. What you see?

  From up here, the river’s a blue-black sheet twinkling the lights of the cityscape. Water, I say. What else is there?

  Nah, Maine, he says. Blood explains how the river begins as streams in the mountains near Eugene and Springfield, how the stream cuts sharp around Newberg before splitting into channels around Sauvie Island, how the main stream flows into the Columbia and makes its way to a mouth of the Pacific.

  Look again, he says.

  And I shrug.

  Current, Maine, he says. We got to stay in motion, you dig. ’Cause either we movin or we standin still. And if we standin still, well, shit, we may as well be at the bottom of that muthafucka. A car rumbles over the bridge, casts Blood in a halo, and flutters his silk. Say, check this out, he says. I don’t mind spottin you a couple bucks every blue moon, but that ain’t gone keep your head up day to day. So you gone hafta make a serious move.

  Another car shakes the bridge underfoot, and I receive it as Godspeak.

  For years I’ve dreamed of cruising a pristine Deuce and a Quarter up Union Ave with my windows dropped and an arm flung out, of wheeling by my old slave, ordering a deluxe in-and-out wash, and catching rubber on the favored white boys as I leave; of strolling into the park during the championship of a summer hoop tournament in a mean designer short set, gator loafers, and a watch and bracelet made of Pharaoh’s gold; of catching my ex, the truest love, at an all-white affair and flashing a knot that would make her contrite. For years I’ve dreamed of being more than just another one of us.

  Sometimes we got time, and sometimes we got to get to it while the getting’s within reach, he says.

  We tramp back to his ride, climb in, and bend corners. We stop in the Burger Barn, where a couple of old heads in zoot suits chomp jumbo chicken wings in a corner booth. We pop in the Social Club, where somebody’s auntie grooves beside the jukebox. Blood wheels to an afterhours spot housed in somebody’s basement—dice, spades, and poker games going full fledge. Everywhere we go, Blood greets the doorman like a long-lost patna, glides inside, knocks fists and slaps palms with the flashiest dudes in the site, chitchats with a couple of prime ones, and, just as suave as he came, gets ghost. He calls it campaigning.

  Trust, they got to see you to feel you, he says.

  We end up on the stroll in the wee hours. Blood points to a mile-legged white girl fretting the hem of a miniskirt. Over there. That one, he says. Knocked baby girl comin out a shelter. He drops his window, shouts and motions, and the white girl flits over. She leans inside the car on arms no more than nothing nothings. Hey, Daddy, she says. She’s painted her face till the shit looks tribal and reeks of a discount scent.

  What it look like? he says.

  Slow, she says. But I’ll hit my number before the night’s up.

  Correction, he says. We’ll hit our number before the night’s up. How many times I got to tell you, it ain’t no me nor no you. It’s us. It’s us and us only—always.

  He leans in his seat, regards the sparse traffic crawling the boulevard, the lot across the street that sells hoopties with a suspect warranty. In the distance, a pair of waifs totter into an all-night mini-mart advertised in flagrant neon. Closer, a squat broad in leggings parades past a ramshackle X-rated video store. Blood makes his hands into a pose that looks almost holy, and the white girl digs a fold of bills from the waist of her skirt and lays them in it.

  He tosses the ends to me and asks me to count them, and I tab them once, twice, and call a figure that’s less than I expected.

  Blood frowns. What, you out here stashin or lettin somebody else outwork you? he says.

  No, Daddy, that’s all of it, she says. All of it for now. But don’t worry, I’ll have the rest by night’s end.

  Oh, I know you will, he says. ’Cause you got to. We don’t fall short. We exceed.

  Blood drives me home, hazards into the driveway, lowers an 8-track of Lenny wailing ’Cause I looooooove you to a shush. Let’s check your math, he says, and I hand him his slight harvest. He turns the bills same side up and smooths them on the dash. Say, Maine, he says, eyes unmoved from his task. We’re born. That’s a natural fact. So whatever’s in me liable to be in you too. He folds the bills and stuffs them under his visor. He turns the ignition, and the Caddie sings a lullaby. He clamps my shoulder—what might be another revelation—and I get out and bop up the steps. From the porch, I watch Blood back onto the street, our street, behold his beams illume the dark, and turn most lucid the truth that, for all my days on earth, he’s been out ahead of me—the beacon.

  • • •

  Armed with every copper cent of my last check, I bop into a boutique in the mall where Pops used to shop. The joint is scarce of customers, the kind of sparse that would’ve been a telltale work hazard those days me and my surreptitious patnas called ourselves boosting. A saleslady with a freeze of brunette curls and tweed work suit appears at my side and asks if I need help.

  Yeah, that’d be nice, I say. I’m looking for a few dress shirts.

  Then you’ve come to the right place, she says. We’ve got the nicest shirts in the whole mall. Follow me, she says, and leads me to shelves and spinning rack of dress shirts. She asks if I happen to know my neck and sleeve size.

  Not off the top of my head, I say, and keep secret the fact that I ain’t owned a new dress shirt since Moms copped me one for Pops’ last parole hearing.

  Well, don’t you worry, she says. We’ll get you fitted. What’s the occasion? She picks a shirt off the rack and proffers it.

  The fabric feels downright rich, like the least I should own in this life or the next. But I came for something silk, celestial—what flutters in a night breeze.

  DO US PART

  Nelly Rosario

  ON THE THIRD night after our explosive fight, Tomás’s snores killed so many of my dreams that I gathered my pillows and climbed the spiral stairs to the attic, because lying beside a husband who could rest in peace after such a blowup made me want to strangle him.

  Him. The falsely modest man living inside my husband, the one always politicking in that quiet, humble way of his—a moon whose gravity had silently pulled at my sanity for decades. My blood reached high tide that Thursday, after he’d invited a crooked politician to our clinic for a photo op with the staff. And the staff. They were in deep waters with me, too, beginning with Negra the Pharmacist, who’d been secretly accepting samples from a Big Pharma rep in the face of our clinic’s holistic approach.

  Approaching Friday, I had the rest of the clinic household walking on eggshells—yes, the very ones, in fact, cracked by Amelia the Cook the moment I docked her a week’s pay for stealing two dozen eggs from our Friday delivery (she was running a cake-making side business).

  Busier still was Saturday, when I pounced wild-haired and red-eyed on staff talk about the sainthood of Tomás for putting up with a Gorgon wife like me, who “wants to turn Clínica Moya into a police state.”
I confiscated the doll a staff member had made from my own stockings, complete with red-button eyes and a shock of aluminum-foil hair. Pinned on its chest were new names for me: Doña Imbécil, the Warden, Lena la Leona, the Executioner.

  “Executing orders without mercy all day, your damned wife,” Berta the Nurse had been telling my husband when she looked up to see me, her superior, at the door of Tomás’s office. Her face turned to stone.

  Stone-cold, up in the attic. I was only able to sleep to a sixth dream (a snake digesting a staff) and was tossing and turning into a seventh (Tomás disrobed of his white coat), when a platinum light and an icy draft pricked me awake. The panes of the attic bay window shook. Sunrise? Impossible. The window faces west. And if this harsh light were true, my world was finally coming to its logical end. I wiped crust from my eyes. Then, slowly, it dawned on me: the new window of the building under repair across the street was reflecting the sun rising in the east.

  Eastern sunrise in a house-turned-clinic. I stared in wonder at the upper quadrant of the attic window. It shook. Had our carrier pigeons returned, now flying into glass after so much time away? Another thump, too heavy and deliberate to be a pigeon. Through the glass, I caught a glimpse of work boots, the duct-taped ones I’d told Tomás countless times were unbecoming of a respectable doctor—of anyone. By now I was fully out of bed, sleep and eighth dream be damned. I broke a thumbnail to the quick trying to pry open the attic window, which Pedro the Janitor had sealed shut years ago, after a patient had tried to jump. By pressing my cheek against the glass, I was able make out the soles of those horrid boots as they struggled to get a footing on the awning above the attic window.

  Win. Doe. I do, my dear husband. And right then, the platinum light blasting in my eyes eased up as the reflected sunrise drained from the windowpane across the street. The reflection was replaced by a vision that nearly ended my world a second time: the shadowy figure of my husband, balanced on the ledge of our brownstone. In the reflection of the bay window below his boots, I saw my own silhouette punctured by the gaze of Medusa.