Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (2 page)

Through the fence I watched a buxomy Latino woman standing under one of the spots take her top off and dive in. Dokes didn’t even look that way.

But for Dokes playing Dr. Phil I’d have waited for her to emerge. “See ya, Dokes,” I said, and walked back to my apartment.

Chapter 2

Saturday night, no Doreen. Sunday morning, no Doreen. Sunday afternoon and I was losing my mind. Likely she was at her mother’s house.

Ten times I picked up the phone and put it down. A no-win situation. If I begged her forgiveness at some point she’d accept, but would come home and play the silent game, talking only to Lewis, cutting me cold looks. If she returned home on her own, she’d still play the silent game, though much longer, because I didn’t beg her back.

An hour later I called her mother’s house. Lewis picked up.

“Where’s your mama?”

As usual he was eating something. “She said she wasn’t here.”

“Tell her to get on the phone, Lewis.”

A long moment before Doreen said, “What?” Snappy.

“I miss you, baby. Come back home.”

“You need Jesus. I’m not coming back till you accept Jesus in your heart.”

“Okay, sure, just come back home.”

“I’m serious. That stunt you pulled yesterday? You could’ve hurt my son. I told your mother what happened, she said, ‘Ain’t nothing but the devil.’ You need Jesus.”

Considering the occasional blunt Doreen smoked with her girlfriends, I said, “Okay, baby, I’ll try Jesus. When are you coming home?”

“When are you turning your life over to Jesus?”

“As soon as you come home.”

“You’ll go to church, get baptized?”

A glance at the clock on the wall told me it was too late to go to church today. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Doreen said. “We’ll be there in an hour. We’ll go to church as a family and you’ll ask Reverend Wilson to baptize you. You promise?”

In six days she might forget about this. “Yes, I promise.”

“Good. I’ll call your mother, tell her we’ll pick her up. You don’t mind, wear your blue pinstripe suit. Lewis will wear--”

“Doreen, we got all week to plan for that.”

“No, we don’t. The evening service starts at eight.” She hung up the phone.

Now I regretted calling her, should’ve waited a few hours more.
Damn!

Twenty minutes later Doreen waltzed in. I tried to hug her and she said, “Why aren’t you ready?” Lewis came in and headed straight for the kitchen.

“Why not next Sunday?” I asked her. “Today…this late in the evening, and I gotta get up early, go to work? Next Sunday, I promise you.”

“No. Today, right now. You promised. Your mother is waiting on us.” Then, that fast, she got angry: “Don’t worry about it!” Lewis came out of the kitchen, a glass of chocolate milk in one hand, a Pop Tart in the other. “Lewis, go pack your clothes. We’ll be staying with Mama a little while longer.”

* * * * *

Mama walked up to the car pulling up white stockings under a blue-and-white dress with embroidered roses.

“Praise the Lord,” she said before getting into the back seat with Lewis, who was wearing the same blue pinstripe suit as mine.

Doreen said, “How’re you doing, Mama?”

“Fine, child, just fine.” Patting my shoulder, she said, “Son, ain’t this a glorious day? Your family all dressed up, looking good, going to praise the Lord. Amen.”

Alfred, my stepfather, was standing in the bay window looking at us. Why wasn’t he going to church?

Nearing Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church, a modest orange-stone building, Mama said, “Son, Doreen tells me you’re going to turn your life over to the Lord tonight, get baptized, is that right?”

“I guess,” I said, “if the spirit moves me.”

“It will,” Mama said. “You just open up your heart, invite Him in, and He will.”

Stopped in front of the church, I told Mama and Doreen to go inside while I parked the car. I needed time to think.
Do I really want to do this?
Doreen, reading my mind, told Lewis to go with me.

The jumping and shouting, that’s what got to me, always had. Holy Spirit or not, it unnerved me to see people, especially my mother, flopping around like fish out of water, wailing gibberish.

“Are we going in?” Lewis said.

He was the reason why I was in this situation. “Yeah, we’re going in.”

Inside, Mama and Doreen were sitting in the front pew, Doreen looking back, beckoning us to come sit with her and Mama. Uh-uh! I took a seat in back, thankful the congregation was small.

Up front I saw enough musical instruments for a concert. The commotion started when a heavyset woman tottered up to the microphone and starting bellowing
I’m Going Up Yonder
.

Her voice was loud, husky, almost drowning out the musical instruments. Before long she got most of the congregation up on their feet, some singing along, some clapping, and some jumping up and down, waving, getting cranked up for some serious flopping and wailing.

Up on the dais, Reverend Wilson appeared behind the pulpit and jumped on the song just as the big woman, drenched with sweat now, was tiring. His voice scratchy, hard on the ears, he cranked the commotion up several notches.

I noticed when he squealed, trying unsuccessfully to hit a high note, some of the women wailed even louder. They obviously felt his pain. And each time I thought he was bringing the song to a close, he cranked it up yet again.

I looked over to where Lewis was sitting. Gone. Probably walked up front to his mother. Time to go. Loud as the service was I could sit in the car and be able to give a play-by-play if Doreen asked what happened.

“The spirit told me to go outside and wait,” that’s what I’d say if she pushed the issue.

So intent on working my way past the people blocking the aisle I didn’t notice that Reverend Wilson had stepped down and was now standing before me.

“Excuse me,” I told him a split second before recognizing who he was.

Instead of moving out of my way he threw an arm around my shoulder, still singing, and started in the opposite direction I was headed. The cheap cologne he had on was overwhelming, smelled like castor oil.

Reverend Wilson, fifty-something, salt-and-pepper mini afro, pudgy in the middle, stopped every two steps and hollered the words to the song in that painful voice of his. Then he stopped, stopped singing, stopped walking, and that’s when I got shocked, got real nervous, felt sweat dripping down my armpit.

We were standing in front, in front of everybody, his arm around me like we were old buddies who decided to meet up in church.

Staring at my shoes, I heard him say, “Ain’t God all right!” Someone in back shouted Yes, He’s all right! “Young man, young man,” and then Reverend Wilson squeezed my shoulder. “Young man?”

Looking at a set of expensive dentures, the front four silver-capped, I almost said, “What?”

“We’re glad you came,” Reverend Wilson said. “Y’all, ain’t we glad he came?”

A hearty exclamation from the congregation that they were glad I came, and that’s when perspiration started itching my testicles.

“Your wife,” Reverend Wilson said, “she came to my office just a few hours ago, said she was concerned about her marriage, her family, her husband, and we prayed together, prayed for God to touch her husband’s heart, set him on the path of righteousness.” Nodding, he shouted, “Ain’t God all right! Ain’t He all right!” Again someone in the congregation affirmed that Yes, He’s all right!

Reverend Wilson said, “Not three hours later God answered her prayer, led you here…” He segued into a long story about what led him to preaching, something about going to buy a jug of Wild Irish Rose and ending up in church, something like that, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention, too angry and embarrassed.

Doreen had waylaid me. Another quick glance at the congregation I saw Mama standing up, tears of joy streaming down her face. No sight of Doreen, though.

Reverend Wilson couldn’t get off my standing up there with him, as if it were a true miracle instead of his incidentally catching me before going out the door.

Looking down I noticed Reverend Wilson was wearing black patented-leather shoes. To his left was a pair of off-white pumps connected to silk stockings under a white dress. Doreen stood there, not able to keep still, nervously clapping her hands, crying.

Face beaming, his arms wrapped around Doreen and me, Reverend Wilson waxed prophetically on and on and on…Then he asked Doreen if she wanted to try Jesus, get baptized.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Doreen said.

Scope, or mint Schnapps, on his breath, he turned to me and asked the same.

Silence fell over the church. This thing didn’t feel right to me, didn’t feel right at all. I wondered if the devil was working on me, preventing me from feeling whatever I was supposed to be feeling, tempting me to say Hell no, I’m going home.

Feeling her eyes on me I looked up into my mother’s face, her eyes pleading me to say yes. Still I hesitated.

Reverend Wilson asked me again.

That look on Mama’s face, worry lines in her brow now and half circles under her eyes, but the same look twenty years ago when I got off at the wrong bus stop, got lost, stayed with a nice white man who gave me apple juice…That same look when she came to the door, saw me, and started crying.

“Yes,” I said.

“Amen!” Reverend Wilson said. A small number of the congregation stood up, applauded. Mama shouted in joy. Doreen fainted.

* * * * *

Monday morning I felt no more saved than before, though Doreen told me I was a new man now. Still she’d slept on the couch last night. She got Lewis ready for school and then got herself ready for work. I put on the same suit I wore yesterday.

When Doreen saw me she said, “Dress up day at the mill?”

“Not exactly. Going to apply for a new job.” She asked where and I told her about the bank job Dokes had mentioned.

Her face lit up. “Really?”

“Really.”

“See? You see? You put Jesus in your life good things are happening already.”

“Doreen, it’s not guaranteed I get the job.”

“You’ll get it. I can feel it.” She hugged me, kissed me on the cheek. “This is so wonderful. Wait till I tell Vida.
My
husband works at a bank. Honey, wear your other suit, more professional looking.”

Prying her arms loose I said, “Corduroy, Doreen? In the middle of August?”

Smiling. “I just think it looks better.” Humming a gospel tune she went into the bathroom.

She was a little too excited for my liking. I knocked on the bathroom door. “Doreen, let me ask you something.” She opened the door and sat back down on the commode. I quickly closed it. “You got a problem with my job at the mill?”

“No, honey, I don’t have a problem with it. I just think you can do better, a lot better. You want to move up, don’t you?” She answered for me. “Sure you do. Vida said…” She drifted off and then I heard the commode flush.

“What? What did Vida say?”

The door opened and Doreen came out brushing her hair. “She said the mill you work at pay schoolboy wages, employ illegal aliens and those work-release people.”

True, Goldenwood, where I worked, had an obsession with minimum wage, and there were a few Latinos there needing a green card, and a gray bus dropped off a group of work-release inmates every morning, but the way Doreen said it made my head hot.

In the bedroom she was putting on a dark-blue skirt. “What does Vida know?” I said. “Her husband drives a truck, so what?”

Doreen looked in the mirror above the dresser and applied scarlet-red lipstick. “He makes good money driving a truck, plus benefits. Four-o-one-K, too. Honey, you deserve more than what that dirty mill has to offer.”

I stared at her, not quite knowing how to respond, the words
dirty mill
and
schoolboy wages
clouding my thoughts. How the hell a mill not be dirty?

She noticed me staring at her. “Honey, don’t get upset. It’s in God’s hand now. I’m running late, gotta go.”

* * * * *

SouthFirst Bank was on Main Street, in the heart of downtown Little Rock, one of the five tallest buildings in the city, smoked-brownish-black tinted glass that reached thirty floors.

After dropping a nickel in the meter, I strolled up the black marble steps, crossed the red-carpet balcony to the elevators, and then, just when a bell rang and the door opened, realized I didn’t know where I was going.

Human Resources, a teller told me, fifth floor. Once there, a white woman with blond hair that looked sprayed on her head told me the bank only hired through the state employment office and other agencies. You couldn’t just walk in and fill out an application.

Driving to the employment office I thought the hell with this, go home, change, and go to the mill that paid schoolboy wages. Then I saw Doreen’s face, her eyes bright, grinning from ear to ear, excited at the prospect of my applying for a new job. Until this morning I didn’t know she held my job in such low regard.

Later, after telling the receptionist my intentions, I had an application with the bank’s letterhead in hand. An extensive application, five pages, one asking for a complete work history dating back to high school. Simple enough, but then it said explain periods of unemployment.

Other than I sat at home and watched television, how do you explain periods of unemployment? The next difficulty was providing the names and addresses of five non-family personal references. Off the top of my head I could only think of three, one being Vida Maines, Doreen’s friend, the skank who got Doreen riled up about my wages.

I returned the application and the receptionist flipped through it and told me the bank would call if interested. “Next.”

Within the hour I was at Goldenwood, in jeans and a flannel shirt, ear plugs in, goggles on, feeding ten-foot-long two-by-fours into a Wernig molding machine with six rotating heads that trimmed the wood into picture frame molding.