Slow Way Home (28 page)

“But the man manages Sears,” Kane repeated to Mama. “He can give our names to everybody that buys a TV in that place.” As Kane zipped up the navy jumper with his name stitched on the pocket, Mama stomped her foot.

“One damn night, Kane. Just one night we need you. You know, just forget it. Go. Go on and leave us. I don’t even want to see your face.” Before Kane could take a step towards her, she ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He sighed and thumped the ring of keys on his belt, the ring holding the key to the new van. The jingle of keys faded as he made his way out the door.

Even without Kane the usual crowd flowed into the duplex, and music began to jar the walls. Tony showed up with a bottle wrapped in a paper bag and kissed Cheyenne right on the lips. He ran his hand through his long black hair, and from the back anyone would have guessed that it belong to a witch.

Mama weaved through the guests sipping a beer. Her hair was teased up extra high, and she wore a purple choker necklace that kept sliding down. When she found me sitting on the edge of the sofa staring at the beer bottle, she rolled her eyes. “Damn, it’s just beer. There’s hardly any alcohol in this thing.” Spinning around, she landed right up against Tony.

“Look at you, Miss Thing.” She never pulled his hand away when he grabbed her thigh.

Everybody laughed when Tony stuck his finger in the cake that Kane had made for the party. I watched Tony take his slice and wipe it on the face of a guy with a peace symbol hanging from his neck. In the corner, I took a plate of cake and spat on it. Smearing the spat on the cake, I walked it over to Tony. “Here, Tony. Hurry up and eat it before he gets you back.”

“Thanks, man.” Tony took his finger and ran it through the icing.

He never noticed that my shoulders rose a little higher.

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When Cheyenne brought out the long pipe that looked like a pilgrim gun, a group of people headed back to my bedroom. Cheyenne pulled her baby from the room and sat her in front of me. “Keep an eye on her, kiddo.”

The TV showed us the ballroom of a fancy hotel in New York.

Guy Lombardo kept his band in line with the small white stick. Turning to look for Mama, I remembered that she was not with the group that followed Cheyenne into my bedroom. Nor was she standing in the kitchen passing a funnel of beer. I took Cheyenne’s daughter by the hand, and we followed a trail of ashes down the hall to Mama’s bedroom. There in the darkness, I saw their silhouette framed in the glow of the hall night-light. Tony was facing us with his arms wrapped around Mama. They were kissing as big as Dallas right in front of us.

Before I could cover the eyes of the baby I was supposed to protect, Tony used his foot to slam the bedroom door.

Running to the living room, I threw a bowl of potato chips back into the bag.

“Hey, I’m munching on these things,” a guy with kinky blond hair said.

“Time to go,” I yelled.

They kept laughing as I yanked bowls from the table. A stack of napkins fell to the floor as paper plates were tossed into the pantry.

“Get out! Get out or I’ll call the cops!”

I began shoving stomachs and arms in all sizes until their owners’

laughter rang in my ears. When I felt myself being lifted from the floor, I kicked over the lamp. The guy with kinky hair kept looking back at the group in the kitchen. His arms gripped my elbows and ankles as he held me up over his head as if I was a sacrificial joke. I spat and jerked, but that only made him spin me faster. The people standing in my kitchen began to swim around, and a burning sensation crept up my chest.

“Put him down, asshole!” Kane’s voice clipped the laughter of our guests. The guy tossed me on the sofa and brushed hair from his eyes.

“It’s cool. Just having a little fun.”

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Kane only glanced at me before he knocked the kink right out of the guy’s hair. The guy lay on the floor with a trickle of blood coming from his nose. The group in the kitchen moved closer to the back door when Kane slammed the ring of keys on the table. “Where the hell is Sophie?”

“She got one of those bad headaches and had to go lay down,” I said.

Kane’s jaw tightened, and I tried to hold his leg as he walked down the hall. “She’s sleeping. Just sleeping.”

Before I could pull his hand away from the bedroom door, he jerked it open. Screams pierced through the walls and in an instant slit a hole right into our future.

When it was all over, Tony ran out of the duplex with nothing more than his underwear on and blood running down his mouth.

Mama sat in the bathroom crying like a kitten that was being weaned from its mother. The others had long scattered, and the stereo had already been knocked over. A crack ran down the cover that was supposed to protect the record player.

Kane had stopped on his way out the door long enough to shake his head at me and mumble, “Sorry.” Pieces of his clothes littered the hallway like bread crumbs on a one-way journey.

Outside, the cold air stung my bare arms enough to remind me that life was still going on. I found the gold box sitting right next to one of Kane’s shirts. The diamond ring looked less bright underneath the sparkle of the stars. Picking up the clothes, I tried to think of a plan to get him back. I’d get Mama to go over to his parents’ house and tell him she had really messed up by drinking beer. She could call him and tell him that we had his clothes. He would come back for his things. But then I remembered what he had told me about his family being rich, and no matter whether he had been talking to them or not, I knew they would welcome him back to where he belonged.

Kane didn’t need his clothes, or us either for that matter. He could buy more clothes, and he already had a family.

A smell that was stronger than the scent of spilled beer overtook
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me. When I looked up, Jesus stood right where Kane’s van had left tire tracks. He held up His tanned arms and the edges of His sleeves flapped until I wanted to run and hold on to Him for good. As if she had been standing on the roof, Sister Delores’s words fell down on me.

“The Lord will be your mama and your daddy. He won’t leave you and He
sure won’t forsake you.”
A tin can rolled with the wind down the street, and when I looked back, it was over. But this time the fresh smell that comes after a hard rain lingered, and the peace that had first found me at God’s Hospital poured over me once again.

After Kane left, Mama stayed in bed for eleven days. She’d sip the chicken soup I made straight from my thermos. Cheyenne brought over a bag of groceries, and I kept up with my schoolwork as if life was the same as usual. But it was not the same. The big boss down at Winn-Dixie got tired of Mama’s flu bug and laid her off on the eighth day. That’s the day I heard Cheyenne tell Mama that Tony said he wanted to come over.

Backfires from a motorcycle let me know when Tony had arrived.

From my bedroom I heard Mama speak broken words in that little-girl way that I thought she had forgotten. Tony kept coming over until soon Mama had learned the language all over again.

Life in the duplex with Tony made my nerves coil up like a spring ready to pop, but seven steps across the street, life at our new neighbors’, the Pickerings, made it all smooth again. Mr. Pickering was only slightly larger than Mrs. Pickering, and both made crinkling sounds when they walked. Mr. Pickering talked about playing baseball in high school while Mrs. Pickering kept pound cake as moist as Nana’s protected underneath tinfoil. The best part of being big for their daughters, Bethany and Destiny, was softball. They could knock a softball farther than any boy I had ever known. When Mr. Pickering took us down to the recreational park to sign up for the season, the 202

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coach first protested about having girls on a team designated for boys.

But then Mr. Pickering pitched Bethany a ball and the crack of her bat made it soar past the sign advertising cigarettes. “What’d you say your name was again?” the coach asked Bethany.

After softball practice, Mrs. Pickering would pick us up and then stop by McDonald’s for french fries. When we pulled up to our duplex, a woman dressed in white boots was walking away. “You have the most company,” Mrs. Pickering said. There was an edge to her voice that caused me to pull at the loose stitch in my glove.

“My mama sells Avon.” Mrs. Pickering smiled and nodded like it made all the sense in the world.

The sweet smell of the merchandise engulfed me when I walked through the door. Mama was standing with her leg propped up on the barstool painting her toenails. “How was practice,” she asked without looking up. I slammed my glove on the coffee table. A box of sandwich bags slid to the edge.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing.”

She motioned towards the table. “Go on and get you a drink. The money’s on the table.”

“Maybe I don’t want a drink.”

“Okay, then. Hey, I need you to stay in the back tonight. Tony said they’re bringing a shipment in and I don’t want you in . . .”

“I’m sick and tired of this! Sick of lying about you selling that stuff.”

“Well, I guess you hate this roof over your head and the clothes on your back too. How’s about that nice glove and that jersey I just had to pay for? You hate them too?”

I stared at the floor until her painted toes blurred into the color of the fiery hell I thought I’d face for lying.

“Look, I’m doing the best that I damn sure know how to do. And if you get to acting too uppity, I’ll stop you from hanging out with those fat asses. They’re probably making you think you’re some do-gooder or something.”

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“They’re nice people.”

“Oh yeah, and I’m just a piece of trash. I forgot.” Her blue eyes were lit brighter than the Christmas lights that still hung on the front porch.

“I didn’t even say nothing,” I said.

“You don’t have to. Look, if you want to live with them so bad, then go for it. End up weighing three hundred pounds like them too.

See if I care.”

Tony began talking the minute he stepped through the front door.

He pulled out the wacky weed from the grocery bag. “Okay, we gotta get moving here. Maurice is stopping by at eight to get everything moving. We need to call . . . Hey, get moving. You hearing me or not?”

Mama waved her hands in the air in such a way that I didn’t know if she was still drying her nails or wanted Tony to hush.

Tony kicked the edge of my cleat. “What the hell’s wrong with her? You talking back?”

I kept staring at his black cowboy boots. They were pointy at the ends and could corner a roach if he wanted to.

“I need her helping me tonight. Why don’t you go spend the night with your girlfriends, Rotunda and Bigass.”

Gripping the edge of the bat, I raised it over my shoulder. The steel was cold against the fire of my flesh. I aimed it right between his eyes and pictured the bat slamming into his slanted nose.

“Punk, you want some of me?” Tony pointed into his chest. “You want some of this?”

Mama stared from the kitchen and called my name three times before I breathed again. “Just go on over to the Pickerings, okay. Tell them I’m having one of my Avon parties.”

Easing my grip, I drug the bat to my bedroom. Tony was still laughing when I tucked it underneath the edge of my mattress, the same place where Poppy used to hide his pistol.

Eighteen

T
he Child Advocacy Network letterhead was stamped with December 9 across the top. Written on stationery with charcoal drawings of children running down the side were Nairobi’s words.

The letter was found by accident, folded in squares and tucked in the corner of Mama’s dresser. Nairobi’s precise voice rang in my ears as I read the last line: “Miss Willard, I urge you to think of the best thing for the sake of the child. Brandon needs to see his grandparents as much as they need to see him.”

The picture of Nana and Poppy alone and cold in a prison cell flashed through my mind as did the guilt in knowing that they probably thought I did not want to see them.

Mama came home smiling and showing off all the new clothes she had bought for me. “Tony did real good on that run down to Myrtle Beach. He even said we could go next time and stay at one of those big motels right on the beach. You don’t like this new shirt? Too bright?”

“I just had a bad day at practice. I don’t feel good.”

When she put her palm on my head, I fought the urge to bite a chunk of skin out of her hand. “You seem a little warm. Why don’t you go lay down for a little while? You want a chili dog from Dairy Queen? I’ll get us a milkshake too.”

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I tried to fake-yawn. “That’d be good.”

Watching her drive away through the cracks in my bedroom blinds, I realized how Nana must have felt the day my mama drove away from the farm.

Weeks went by and the letter or my grandparents were never mentioned. Life at the duplex was just as we had rehearsed. Mama helped to fix bags of wacky weed, Tony made the deals, and I went to school and to softball practice.

“You sure it’s okay to leave you here all by yourself?” the coach asked.

“Yes, sir. My mama knows about it. She’s on her way to pick me up.”

The coach pushed up the brim of his cap and then pulled away from the softball field with a load of my teammates in the back of his truck. The man from the recreational department nodded as he mowed the grass surrounding the bleachers. Nodding back like all of this was supposed to be happening, I climbed the steps to the highest point. Looking out over the tree limbs, I thought I could see the top of the big bank building. As high as I was, Mama was still nowhere in sight.

The letter kept pushing up to the front of my mind until I had scripted out every hateful thing I could say to her. She was unfit, just as a teacher had once whispered to my guidance counselor. The shrillness of her voice played out in my mind like it was coming from the loudspeaker overhead. Crickets began to sing, and soon the sun dipped away. Just when I had made it back down the bleachers and the vision of walking home seemed more like a reality, I heard the roar of her car. A cloud of gravel swept over it as she jumped out, pulling at her miniskirt. Biting my lip, I forced the anger to stay locked behind my eyes.