In the other refrigerator is a big box of grits, a can of look like grease, five, no six more packages of bacon, and a giant jar of grape jelly, a sick-looking head of cabbage, and some looks like water in a pitcher and a liter of orange soda. I grab the soda, I could just go with the jelly and have peanut butter and jelly. But I’m gonna go with the bacon, I think, looking around for a knife as I close the refrigerator door.
There’s one in the sink. I rinse it off, the only towel I see is dirty-looking. I shake water from the blade, causing the light from the bulb overhead to dance off the blade and make it sparkle. I was a kid standing by the bathroom door looking in at my mother staring at herself in the mirror, a knife in her hand, the light dancing off the blade and making it sparkle. What she doing? Quiet, no breathing. She raises her wrist to the hand holding the knife. Slice. Blood dribbles down the white sink. I SCREAM.
“What you doin’! What you doin’!”
The sound of the knife clattering to the bathroom floor, her screaming back, “Get out of here! You spozed to be in bed!”
Bap! Not hard, but she never hit me before. I hate her.
“Stop crying, silly rabbit. Mommy’s sorry. Mommy’s so sorry.” She’s kissing me now, wrapping a towel around her wrist.
“What you was doing?”
“Nothing, nothing. I was just tired. Go back to bed unless you
don’t
want to go to the movies Friday.”
“I wanna.”
“Well, then get back in bed and go to sleep.”
Hmm, weird shit to be remembering now. I walk back over to the table. I don’t want to put the bread on the table, got little roach shits here and there. I end up taking the bread out the bag and open the inner cellophane, take out four slices and lay them on the bread wrapper, spread the peanut butter and then lay the bacon on top the peanut butter. Cool, lunch and dinner. Shit, it tastes great! I drink the pop out the bottle. Good, I love orange pop.
Now what? Homework? TV? Bed? I look at the stove, little roaches crawling out the stove door, the greasy blue wall, clock over the table, five o’clock. Read a book? What I got? No TV, nobody to play with. Practice my dancing, stretch out? Jaime always thinks of things to do. I touch my face, feel the scab starting to form on the side of it, my fingers want it. I look in the bathroom mirror, squinch my mouth to one side, which draws the skin tight around the other side of my face where the scab is, and start pulling and picking the scab off. Little beads of blood pop like red pearls as I pull. What’s a scab? Blood and dead skin cells? I forgot; what I remember looking at my blood is sliding into Jaime, him calling me Papi, Papi! But quiet real quiet so don’t nobody wake up. I don’t like it here. Alone. Till? This can’t go on forever, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, roaches. The earth, fuck the earth and Brother John’s stupid class, what was all that shit for? The Great Wall of China, crop rotation, erosion—the gradual wearing away of the earth’s surface, killing the earth is what they mean! Where I pulled the scab off, the line of little sparkling rubies is starting to drip down my face in red lines. Like tears. If I was good in art—I’m not, I suck—I would draw a black boy’s face, the skin crying crying. Our skin do make us fucking cry. I would make it like a Frida Kahlo. When Brother John took us to see her at the Met, Jaime didn’t like her. I did. She excite you, gets your freak on. I wish I had a book on her. Jaime said all she paints is pain, who needs it?
I think about what I’m going to miss, but maybe not, maybe things will still work out. I never even got to do computers, French either. Spanish, what for? Brother John said, learn Italian, you can’t use Spanish as your second language in college. Is that true? But anyway, who you gonna talk to? The ones that hip speak English. Jaime speak English. He don’t even speak Spanish. In the bathroom mirror, I see the city lights starting to glitter outside in the twilight. Beautiful. I turn to the window, the lights look like little seeds growing brighter as it gets darker; make me feel small, lonely, and mad horny. I unzip my pants, squeeze myself, I love me, start jacking off, while my hand is working, I feel no pain, fuck Jaime that lame! I see myself pulling a razor across my chest while I’m riding; my blood sprays red in the wind. The other warriors know I am the one! I cut myself to show courage, yeah ooh, ooh. Motherfuckers, Custer included, will know I mean business, know I’m not playing, know ooh oh ohh! Shit! Ump humph! Goddamn fuck! I shake myself, run my hands down my dick, take the semen, sperms—sperm or sperms?—not sure, rub it on my hands, rub my hands together like it’s lotion, power potion, Brother John says.
For a second I think I heard something. Did I hear something? Maybe one of the doors? When I look behind me, the hall is still a dark tunnel of closed doors. I turn to the mirror, the lights, the lines of blood drying on my face, and then all of a sudden I’m mad, slam my fist in the mirror. It doesn’t shatter but cracks in a pattern like a spider’s web radiating out from where my fist struck. I feel so full and totally empty at the same time. My hand don’t even hurt. I wonder what kind of glass that old mirror is made from. I could tear up everything in here, but I don’t really feel like it. I just feel sleepy now. I go back to the room, I don’t even take off my clothes, just climb in bed with my leather pants on, without even wiping the blood from the side of my face. Yeah, go to sleep, that’s better than sitting up here going berserk.
WHAT I DO REMEMBER
is getting up to take my pants off. They’re too tight around the waist to sleep comfortable, no give. It’s too cold to be naked, so I look around and try to find my maroon and white stripes, but I don’t see ’em, I thought I left them on the bed. I open my suitcase, empty except for my books and manila envelope with my papers in it. Say what? Where’s my shit? I wheel around on my heels. The old wooden wardrobe is right in front of me. In there? But how? I open the doors, and the dry smell of dead roaches I’ve already gotten used to here hits me in the face with the smell of my own stuff. It’s all there, sure enough, everything, even my underwear and socks on a hanger. On the floor of the closet is my shoes, the Sunday black loafers we wear to Mass, sitting in a graveyard of roach bodies and droppings. Ugh! Who did this? Her, Slavery Days, of course. I pull one pair of pajamas, I got two, off the hanger and go back to bed.
That’s what I remember. I don’t remember walking down the hallway, opening up all the doors, talking about, “Hey, hey, it’s J.J.!” That’s what she said, fucking fossil. She woke up, and I was standing over her, buttnekkid, talkin’ ’bout, “Hey, hey, it’s J.J.!” Yes, you
was,
nekkid as the day you was born! Johnson hard as a rock talkin’ ’bout, “Hey, hey!” I tol’ you, you don’t git yo’ butt back in bed, you gonna wish you hadda. Then you sat down talkin’ ’bout, “Heinie, Heinie,” or some shit. I hit you good as I could with this damn lupus ’n all the other shit I got. Hittin’ you cost me! Boy, when I lay down even thinkin’ about gittin’ up damn near kill me. You pulled up my gown. Yes you did! I ain’ had a stitch on under it, nuthin’. That woke yo’ ass up, and you went on back down the hall—”
I don’t remember no stupid shit like that. Why is she even saying some crazy shit like that? What I do think is when I be dreaming I remember shit, but I know it is not a memory but a “dreaming,” which I can’t control. Memory you can control, at least I can, and I have decided not to remember nothing no more. Her shit included, I don’t even know her. It just gets in the way of everything, remembering. Like I don’t remember walking down the hall, I’m sure I didn’t unless it was to go to the bathroom. I know I’m not crazy. I don’t walk in my sleep, so someone is a liar. And it ain’t me. I ain’t got no cause to lie. I ain’t did nothin’ to nobody. Why would I go do some weird shit like that after all the trouble I’m in, you think I’m fucking crazy? Crazy? No, I’m not crazy, not at all, at all,
at all
. Sometimes I think, shit, I remember so much, even things that didn’t happen, why can’t I remember her? I want to remember her, that’s different from Brother John, Samuel, the fucking cops, lies, lies, lies! How come I can’t forget what I want to forget and remember what I want to remember?
I’M LAYING IN BED
trying to go back to sleep when the social worker comes. What’s she doing here so early? I was laying thinking about yesterday in the park, climbing up the concrete stairs, thinking about how the green grass can break through concrete and how the water can get in, freeze, crack it. I got ten dollars. On the way down pass the basketball court, one of the guys hold up the ball, do I wanna play? No, I like basketball and handball and all that OK. Yeah, I like it, but I don’t want to be bothered with it right now. Right now I’m scoping my environs, wino on the bench, bitches with baby carriages, trash, why people always throwing trash. Broke glass, dog shit. On top the hill, the college, City College. My mom used to go there? October, November, December, January I’ll be fourteen. What’s that? What the fuck is that! I’ll still be a kid. Fuck it.
I’m pulling the covers over my head, my eyes closed seeing all the trees in the park rustling, leaves fluttering in the wind, falling falling, when she came in my room. That still sounds so funny, my room. This ain’t none of mine, and if it is I don’t want it. But I can’t have St Ailanthus back, or my mother, or father?
She flicks the light on. “Come on, git up. You ain’t hear me calling you?”
Yeah, I heard you,
I think, squeezing my eyes shut to see the green leaves, leaves turning to money. I hate her nasty-sounding voice.
“Come on, Abdul, yo’ caseworker here to see you.”
Caseworker? Caseworker! Shit, maybe I’m out of here. I throw the covers off and jump into my leather pants. I jump out of them just as fast when I see roach crawling out the leg. I turn them inside out and shake them motherfuckers good. One reason to hang up your clothes at night, even if ain’t no Mrs Lee or one of the brothers hollering at you to do it. OK, yeeow! Finally some help, some money, school, a way out of here back to St Ailanthus, maybe I’ll get adopted, I heard they got some movie stars who want to adopt black kids. Jaime said, no, Asian, most white people want to adopt Asian kids, not niggers, black or Spanish. In the bathroom I slide a stick of deodorant under my arms, splash some water on my face, and go meet social services as they say at St Ailanthus.
Smell of coffee and out the corner of my eye a pale-haired thin woman staring at the wall as I pad barefoot to the bathroom. While I’m hitting my face with water, eyes closed, I see the trees again, but this time the leaves are disappearing, gone. All gone. I dry my face, wipe my eyes. Yeah, all gone, dude—don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself, and head for the kitchen.
She has the coffee cup raised to her lips taking a sip, she almost spits it out when she sees me.
“J.J.?”
Like she don’t believe it.
I look at her like she’s stupid.
“Excuse me, you must think I’m crazy. It’s just I was expecting a much younger boy. And, my goodness, you look so much like my son—he’s eighteen, though. Well, sit down, sit down.”
Like it’s her crib or some shit.
“I’m Mrs Stanislowski from the Department of Social Services.” She’s skinny, got on jeans, not pretty.
“You’re, ah . . . well, Stanislowski is my married name. My husband is African and Jewish. So my son’s black, and that’s how come you could look like him, not that you couldn’t look like him if he wasn’t.”
It would be hard, I think.
“But you know what I mean. He’s in college, my son.”
Slavery Days is standing near the stove with her coffeepot. When I sit down, she advances like some kind of fog, coffeepot in one hand, cup in the other.
“I’m actually Irish,” Mrs Stanislowski says. “My son is Irish, Jewish, and African.”
She says this like she won Lotto.
Oh man, I sigh without making a sound. Good we got milk, I think as Slavery Days plops a carton of milk on the table. Whoop whoop-de-doo. I look at the carton: Marissa Samuels, four feet nine inches, last seen December 9, 19—, that’s over ten years ago. I look at Marissa’s pretty face, coal-black eyes, gold chain. She probably got kids herself now, ran off with her honey. The feeling I had yesterday climbing the corroded cement steps in the park that ended in a patch of dirt green with wine bottles and crack vials, sun blocked out by overhanging branches, the bushes smelling of urine. Marissa’s probably in some space like that by now, bones. I wanna snap Mrs Stanislowski’s stupid neck, that’s how I feel right now. My hand is shaking a little bit as I set the milk carton back down on the table.
You done got used to pushing people around. The world ain’t a bunch of little kids.
I wonder what she knows, thinks she knows.
“Well, J.J.—”
“My name ain’t
J.J.
!” I sneer.
“I didn’t mean anything J—Jamal.”
What’s gotten into me? I want to kill her. Crazy Horse, help me! I don’t want to hear all this crap about her son in college. Slap her down! But he wouldn’t do that. He’d say get out of this one alive.
“Well.”
She seems totally tripped out.
“It says here”—she nods at some papers in front of her coffee cup—“I’m to see a thirteen-year-old African American named Jamal Jones, who is referred to as J.J., that’s in parentheses, and his legal guardian, Toosie Johnston.”
“I don’t care what that bitch says.” I nod toward her papers. She turns red red. “My name ain’t no fucking Jamal, J.J.”
I never talked to the brothers like that, no matter what they did.
“Call me out of my name again . . .”
I stare her down, all this shit I been through for nothing. Shit, I may as well do something if I’m gonna be treated like a criminal. Bitch, I don’t say it but I kind of
breathe
it.
“Well, er . . . um . . . ah . . .” She clears her throat. “I thought J.J., Jamal Jones, was your name, so I called you that. Just so we’ll be clear from now on, what is your name?”