The Coldest Winter Ever (16 page)

“No.”

“No? Why not? I’m not saying I have to be your girl. I’m just asking if I could roll with you. You might think I’m dumb but I’m not. I know a lot of shit. I understand. We can put whatever little money we got together and make something out of it. I am seventeen now you know. I’m not as young as you think.”

“None of that has nothing to do with it,” he said.

“Then what is it? What is it?” I asked over and over again. “Let me in on the big secret why you never wanted me. Why is the answer always no with you. Let me know why you would leave me in Brooklyn knowing what’s happening with my family. Everybody’s gonna find out and you just bouncing out like it’s cool.”

“I already told you. I gotta do what I gotta do. What happened to your family ain’t no secret. Everybody already knows. You hiding from Natalie and all those silly bitches and they already know.” He grabbed the leftover newspapers from the table beside us. He balled them in his fist and pushed them into my face. “Can’t you read? Santiaga been in the newspaper every day. Page two, page three, page four. You see? That’s what I’m talking about— dumb women! You don’t even know what’s going on around you. If it ain’t on the front page you don’t know it. But you know the name of every designer in Bloomingdale’s. Hell no, you can’t come with me. Your dumb ass ain’t bringing me down, not me.”

Midnight walked away. I stood on the steps crying mad. He drove right past me. I ripped open the envelope and couldn’t believe I was
flipping through tens, twenties and fifties. The grand total was three thousand dollars. Three thousand measly dollars. What the hell was I supposed to do with that? In the envelope was a business card turned backwards. Scrawled across the back of the card, in neat handwriting, it read:
I know you don’t like her, but she can help you get your head together.
I flipped it to the front and Sister Souljah’s name was on it with an address and phone number. I sucked my teeth and put the envelope in my pocketbook.

I walked until I saw a cute little coffee shop. I bought a newspaper from the stand and ducked inside. Inside I flipped to the section with apartments for rent. I took a jar of nail polish out of my pocket book and splashed a red dot on all the listings I was gonna check out. I had already decided I wasn’t going back to Brooklyn with everybody feeling sorry for me. I wasn’t gonna give Natalie the pleasure of feeling like me and her were on the same level. I’d find a decent place to stay while I put my survival plan together.

I put the money for the tea and fries on the table plus a dollar tip. After walking halfway through the coffee shop door, I turned around, and grabbed my tip off the table, realizing I had to save my dough. I hit the pavement, heading for an available advertised apartment in Harlem.

The building was a brownstone, on a block of brownstones. This particular one was real nice and neat with a decorative iron gate on it and flowerpots on the left and right sides of the entrance. The land lady came to the door and peeked out the curtain. She was only about five-foot-two, real dark-skinned with a colorful scarf on her head, a dress, and house slippers. After opening the outside door, she stood behind the locked gate, looking me over from head to toe. She spoke with a thick West Indian accent, “Good afternoon chile, what can I do for you?”

“I’m interested in the apartment you have for rent.” I was confident, I looked good, expensively dressed, with a fresh hairdo.

“Are you alone?” she asked, as if she couldn’t tell I was standing on the step by myself.

“Yes I am,” I replied, trying not to be snotty. She went into her front pocket on her multicolored dress, pulled out a small key, and unlocked the gate.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Winter Shulman,” I said proudly.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No I’m not.”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Oh,” she said, “because we have working people in this building and little babies are wonderful but they can be a loud disturbance in the middle of the night.”

“No, I don’t have any children,” I reassured the suspicious little lady. “What floor is the apartment on?” I asked, trying to hurry her along.

“Oh, it’s on the second floor. We’ll go up in a minute. So how did you hear about the apartment?”

“I read about it in the paper,” I said, wondering why she put an ad in the paper if it was supposed to be a secret.

“Oh,” she said. “How old are you?” she asked, still digging.

“I’m twenty-two.”

“Oh, are you a student?”

“Yes, I am,” I lied. I figured that must be what she wanted to hear.

“Oh, that’s nice. What are you studying?”

I paused, couldn’t think of anything. I looked down at my shoes and quickly said, “Fashion.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Well you look good chile. I hear dem models make a good living. But that means you’ll keep irregular hours?”

Not understanding her, I said, “What? I mean, excuse me?”

“Well like I said, people in this building, we’re all working people so most of us are out during the day. So my husband and I turn the heat down during the day because nobody’s here. Around 6 or 7 P.M. we turn it back on. It’s a way to conserve and save money.”

“Yes, but in a few months spring will be here,” I told her.

“Oh, you are planning to be here in the fall, aren’t you?” she asked in a threatening tone. “I don’t rent by the week. This is not a hotel. If you want to live here you’ll have to sign a lease agreement for a minimum of one year,” she said. “Stay right here I’ll be right back.” She slid behind the closed door of her apartment and came back with a clipboard.

Who is she fooling?
I thought to myself. What difference does it make if I sign a lease? When I’m ready to bounce, I bounce. What is she gonna do, call the rent police? There were twenty million people in New York.

“Come on,” she said, signaling me to follow her up the stairs. She pulled out a large circular key ring with a whole bunch of keys on it. One bedroom apartment with a little kitchen, fully carpeted. The place looked like a Barbie doll was supposed to live in it, that’s how cute and compact it was. For me it was perfect. I pictured maybe a leather love seat, a cable-ready big-screen TV, and a fancy designer phone. I pictured myself walking around the apartment barefoot with my pretty pedicure toes sinking into the thick carpet.

The living room was more than a little smaller than my bedroom on Long Island, but it was cool. I could definitely deal with it. “I’ll take it,” I said, smiling, looking at the lady, and grabbing my envelope with the cash. I began counting out the dough.

“First things first, chile,” she said, looking at my cash suspiciously. This was the first time I had ever seen anybody turn their nose up at cash. “You’ll have to fill out this application.”

“Why?” I asked nicely. “I’ve already told you everything.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s just the way we do things around here. I need this for my records.” She handed me a form, asking for my name, address, place of employment, education … “You know I’m the president of the block association,” she mentioned. “It’s small. We’re just getting started. Most of the responsible people on the block participate. But you know there are always those few … We’re trying to clean the block up, get rid of the drugs, make it better for everybody. We’re real careful because a lot of drug dealers have cash. They’ve got the money to spend. They send a pretty little thing like you in here. But you don’t know anything about that filthy way of living.” She smiled and added, “I can tell. Such a lovely face. Do you have a check?”

“No, I don’t.” I responded hesitantly.

“Oh. Here you must need a pen,” she handed me a ballpoint, stood close over me and the application. I filled it out, making stuff up as I went along, figuring I’d play along with her inspection, get my new keys, close my door, and never speak to her again except on rent day. I was Winter Shulman, I attended Brooklyn College, I was twenty -three years old, I previously lived at 123 Green Street, etcetera, etcetera.

She looked over the application, glancing up at me after each section as if she thought I was stupid enough to tell on myself. I smiled politely.

“I thought you said you were twenty-two?” she quizzed.

“Oh yeah, I’m sorry. I just had a birthday. I haven’t gotten used to being twenty-three yet.” I laughed.

“Don’t worry chile, the older you get the more birthdays you forget. I’m twenty-three, too.” She laughed, getting a real kick out of herself. I pulled out my envelope, counted out six hundred fifty dollars, and handed it to her.

She cleared her throat, “You must have misunderstood. The total to pick up the keys and move in is nineteen hundred fifty dollars. One month’s rent and two months’ security.”

“Security for what?”

“It’s a normal procedure. It’s just to cover anything you leave broken in the apartment, damage to the rug, if you fall on hard times, and miss a payment. Don’t worry chile, it’s fully refundable at the end of your lease. If everything is in order, you get your two months’ security back in full. If you lose your keys, it’s a hundred dollars because we have special locks and we’ll have to have the whole lock removed and replaced.”

There was no need to be nice anymore. There was no way I was giving her all the money I had left. She looked at my screwed up face. “Every decent landlord around here is gonna ask for the same thing.”

“Sorry miss” I said, “you must be bugging. Didn’t you hear me say I was a student?”

She shot me a mean look. “When I was a student I had two jobs. You have to work to make it in this country. That’s how I got where I am now. I had to work to own this property. No kind of work was too good for me either. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.”

I handed her papers back and left. Sterling wasn’t that bad, I thought. I’d just tell him a new story. Something bigger and better. I’d stay at his place for a while until I figured everything out.

Sterling’s apartment was quiet from the outside, my key slid in the lock. Inside the door sat a suitcase. I pulled the case up onto the couch and opened it. My belongings were inside, carefully packed. I rummaged through my jeans, shirts, and dresses, checking to see if everything was there. The side pockets had my jewelry, and toiletries in a separate plastic bag. I laughed. Hmmm, too bad he wasn’t as neat with his own stuff!

Sterling startled me when he came out of the back room. I hadn’t
realized anybody was home. On the way over, I had practiced for this moment. It was time to put my act into action. “How are you feeling, baby? You must’ve got home early?”

“You look nice,” he said checking out my outfit, the same one that didn’t work on Midnight.

“You like?” I playfully spun around.

“I always have,” he said softly.

“So anyway Sterling, sit down. I’m gonna let you in on my idea.” He walked over, hesitant and suspicious. “We been cool roommates for the past couple of weeks and—”

“And tonight you’re leaving, right?” he interrupted in a voice that attempted to be authoritative. He started mouthing words but no sound was coming out. It was like he wanted me to read his lips or something. In a low, low voice, “Winter, I have company.”

“Company,” I said loudly, surprised. He put his long finger over his lips to sshh me.

“Remember when you called me to come and get you from Long Island? Remember I told you someone was here. Well, she’s in the back room and I don’t want no trouble Winter. You did say you were leaving tonight. It’s been two weeks.”

Sterling’s eyes were concerned. Just looking at his weak ass made me sick to my stomach. But I had nowhere else to go. I remained cool-headed, or at least I tried to give that appearance. “Oh, there’s no trouble Sterling, just get rid of her.” I laughed. He didn’t say a word. So I came up with a new suggestion. “OK, I’ll just stay in the living room tonight but I think—”

A girl came out of the back room. She was overweight with a big chubby face like one of those church ladies you see singing in the choir on the cable channel on Sundays. She had on a long shapeless floral dress—I guess it was supposed to hide her fat. I was sure Sterling wasn’t about to replace me with this cow. “Sterling,” the woman said in a tone that sounded more like a mother’s than a lover’s. “You said five minutes.”

“Oh. Winter, this is Judy.”

We both looked at each other but neither of us spoke. She came out and sat on a chair facing me. I could tell Sterling was uncomfortable with the silence. He kept playing with his fingers.

“So you live in Long Island?” Judy asked dryly.

“Yeah.”

“They have some really nice houses out there. The traffic must be really bad on a Friday night.”

“Yeah,” I rolled my eyes at Sterling.

“I packed your things up for you,” announced Judy. “You have some real nice taste.”

“Yeah,” I said, realizing the only way I could stay was to humiliate myself completely.

“So where do you plan on going to college next year? Sterling told me you were seventeen. You must have started thinking about it seriously.”

“Not really,” I said matter-of-factly; thinking to myself I hate these stuck-up college-type bitches. They think they too cute to get down and have a Brooklyn-style fight to keep they man. They want to do a lot of smart talking like they somehow better than somebody or at least they be thinking they can prove that they are.

“I had no choice except to go to college. My parents made that clear,” she added, as though I had asked her a question. She seemed fully prepared to have a conversation with herself. “What do your parents do, I mean for a living? They must be well off not to be stressed about whether or not you should go to college.”

Sterling interrupted, “Winter, I’ll help you carry your things downstairs.”

“But I don’t have a ride,” I begged. “Sterling, aren’t you going to drive me home?”

Judy cut in. “No, sorry, our movie starts at 8:05 P.M. Sterling already called your dad before you even got here. Your dad’s gonna pick you up downstairs at 7:30 P.M.”

What kind of game was this
two
-dollar nigga tryna run on me? And what in hell made this fat-ass girl think she was running things?