After Nothing (28 page)

‘What happened?’ I said, jiggling him against me and pressing my mouth to his head. ‘Are you hurt? Did you bite your tongue?’ I turned toward Kane. ‘I don’t know what happened.’ Kane was staring at Joey with a stricken expression on his face. ‘Did you see what happened?’ I said to him as Joey wailed loudly again.

He shook his head.

I pressed my lips to Joey’s head, made all the comforting noises I could think of, and then walked off a distance. I circled the Escalade, singing every lullaby I could think of. It didn’t help. He cried, and cried, and cried.

After a while I heard, over the top of Joey’s crying, a voice say, ‘Dude, kid’s giving us a headache.’

I came around the side of the Escalade to see the look on Kane’s face as he turned on the guy who was complaining about Joey.

‘Is this your business?’ Kane snapped.

‘Just saying –’

‘Say it somewhere else.’

‘Kid’s loud, K-man.’

‘Switch, I know you don’t want me taking an interest in
your
business. Go on, fuck off back to the shady-ass work you’re doing on that Nissan and we all be happy.’

Switch backed off, muttering, ‘You just an apprentice.’

But Kane wasn’t giving him any more time. His focus was on Joey and me.

‘I’ll go,’ I said.

I had no idea that such a small body could produce so much sound. When I put Joey back down in his stroller he screamed so loud he made my ears ring.

I picked him up again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Kane.

‘Give him here,’ said Kane. In Kane’s arms the frightened tenor of Joey’s sobs diminished, but was no less heartbroken.

‘It’s like he’s scared,’ I said. Joey had buried his face against Kane’s shoulder.

‘We can’t fight in front of him,’ said Kane shortly. Our eyes met.

Then Kane walked off with him. Gave him a tour of every car in the workshop. Finally, Joey’s cries lessened and then ceased; he’d fallen asleep in Kane’s arms.

When I met with Joey’s caseworker, Penny, a second time, she had another person, Ruth, with her.

Penny was friendly, and easy to talk to. The other woman, Ruth, was not. They watched me with Joey for an hour, even coming into Reverend Joey’s study when I put him down for a nap. Fortunately, Joey went straight to sleep. Then he was left in Aunt Sarah’s care, and the three of us, and Julie, went across to the apartment to discuss things further.

The apartment was light and airy. I’d made cinnamon rolls in its kitchen that morning. I served them with coffee.

Even though we weren’t staying there yet, Julie had put a basket of toys in the corner of the living area, and one of the bedrooms had been set up as a nursery. Some people from the church had packed up Bey and Reesey’s house, and most of the things from Joey’s old bedroom were now here, including his crib, and a dresser full of clothes. He’d also been reunited with his favorite blanket. It was edged in satin ribbon, which Joey like to suck on when he went to sleep. I think he was the most content he’d been since Reesey and Bey died when I put him down the first night it was returned to him.

All in all, it looked and smelt like a nice home for a little boy. The meeting went well too, until Penny and Ruth became aware I didn’t have a relationship with my mother, to the point where I didn’t even know where she lived.

They came back to it twice when I thought, both times, that we’d moved on. Thank goodness for Julie.

‘I met Natalie’s mother when Natalie’s father died,’ she said. ‘She is not a well woman. She used to attend this church, right from when she was a child, and from what I understand from other people that know her, she’s been unwell a long time. In fact Sarah will be able to provide you with more details. She’s known the family a long time. Her own parents were friends with Natalie’s grandparents.’

I nodded dumbly at this, pretending that I knew what Julie was talking about. Unwell? Sure thing. It was far easier than trying to explain why my mother hated me, when I couldn’t even say for sure myself.

Fear struck me at one point in the meeting when Penny casually asked if they could look at my phone.

‘You don’t have to show us, Natalie. But, I assume you have messages from Joey’s mother. Maybe his father? Would you mind if we read some of them?’

My mind went blank. For a moment I couldn’t remember what any of the messages said, and I just handed my phone over without question. I had a moment of relief when I recalled that Reesey had told me she loved me in one of her last texts. I was pretty sure most of Bey’s texts said ‘Is Reesey with you? She’s not answering,’ or something similar. All relief fled though when I remembered there was a photo of Kane and I having sex on my phone. There was also one he’d taken of his penis. He’d saved it as my screensaver, and found it a lot funnier than I did when I saw it for the first time. I’d changed my screensaver back to an image of him holding Tank, but I hadn’t deleted the photo. But both photos were over a year old: Penny and Ruth would have had to scroll through a thousand images to find them.

I could barely breathe, and my stomach was in knots as they leaned in to look at my phone. All I could think was that I was never going to get Joey now.

When they gave me my phone back, though, Ruth was the only one to comment. ‘You were obviously very close to Joey’s mother.’

‘She was amazing.’ I looked at Julie. ‘And she loved Joey more than anything.’

‘Do you think she’d want you to care for Joey?’

‘I know she trusted him with me. She never once left him with any of her other friends, but she left him with me.’

‘Is there anything you would like to add, Julie?’ asked Penny.

‘Just that I support Natalie,’ said Julie, smiling at me. ‘Also, we’ve now got Liyah …’

‘Serious behavioral issues,’ Penny explained to Ruth.

‘She’s targeting Joey. It can be managed during the day between kindergarten, Sarah and myself, but I couldn’t have them both if it was just Joe and I like it is in the evenings. Natalie’s been Joey’s main caregiver since his parents’ deaths. She’s exceptional with him, and great with the rest of the kids as well. As well as being a talented cook. We’ve never eaten so well since she’s been staying with us.’

Heat rose in my face.

‘You like to cook?’ said Ruth.

I nodded. ‘And bake. I want to have my own cafe one day.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do it, too,’ said Ruth, staring at me intently.

Penny said she’d call me in a few days. During that time she spoke to Leonie, my old boss, and Harold, and Melissa’s mom.

Melissa told me that her mom told them about the time I’d turned down some modeling work on the magazine she edited because I was already working that day scooping ice creams for minimum wage. According to Melissa she also said that she’d never met anyone more committed or hardworking than me.

Kane was the first person I called after I found out Joey and I could live in the apartment.

‘You fostered him already?’

‘I got, like, a special approval. I only got it because of living attached to the Drummonds. It’ll take at least three months till I’m his foster mom.’

‘How much rent do you have to pay?’

‘Reverend Joe said I don’t have to pay anything. That the church pays for the apartment.’

‘You can’t live there rent-free.’

‘I tried, Kane. He said no one who stays in the apartment pays anything.’

‘You ain’t a charity.’

‘Kane, we still have to pay rent for our place.’

‘I’m moving our shit out of there this weekend.’

‘Where are you going to stay?’

‘Wayne and Willa’s.’

‘Do you want to live there?’

‘What do you think?’

I paused a moment. ‘I’ll help with the move.’

‘Don’t need you.’

‘I’ve got stuff there.’

‘I’ll drop it off.’

‘Place will need to be cleaned.’

‘It was a dump when we moved in.’

‘I don’t care. I’m not leaving our mess for someone else.’

After a week living in the clean, airy space of the apartment, mine and Kane’s first home together seemed even worse than it had when we first moved in.

There were droppings everywhere, and when Kane and Wayne went to move the bed they discovered a rat had chewed through the mattress and down into the base as well. Kane called me into the bedroom to show it to me.

‘You think there’s a rat’s nest in there?’ I asked.

‘That’s fuckin’ nasty, man,’ said Wayne.

‘You’ve been sleeping on that, Kane.’ I said. ‘You didn’t hear or feel anything?’

‘I ain’t slept here since you have.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘At mine,’ said Wayne. ‘You tell her she can’t live with us?’

‘I told you, she got a place,’ said Kane.

‘Yeah, but if you get back together,’ said Wayne, staring at me, ‘You still ain’t welcome. We ain’t got room, and we definitely ain’t got room for another kid.’

I looked at Kane, but he was purposefully not looking at me.

‘What are we gonna do with the bed?’ said Kane.

‘Leave it here,’ replied Wayne.

‘We can’t leave a rat-infested bed,’ I said to Kane. ‘What if the next tenants use it?’

‘I’ll burn it through,’ said Kane.

I waited until Wayne had left the room, his arms stacked with drawers from our dresser.

‘I don’t remember us breaking up, Kane.’

‘I never said that. Wayne just thinks that ’cause you’ve left me.’

‘I haven’t left you.’

‘The fuck you haven’t,’ replied Kane, picking up the bags he’d stuffed full of clothes.

I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘You know, if you’re looking to cheat on me, don’t, because I’m not going to forgive you another time.’

‘Another time? You saying that is bullshit and you know it.’

I crossed my arms, but didn’t argue.

‘I ain’t looking at other women,’ said Kane. ‘I don’t want someone else, Nat. I want you back.’

‘I haven’t left. It’s like you don’t even get what this is about – but I know you do. Kane, the Drummonds want
us
to take him. What does that tell you? They don’t want him themselves. No one from Bey’s family is going to claim him, and all Reesey’s got is an alcoholic dad who lives on the streets. We’re all Joey’s got.’

‘Can we have one day where we don’t talk about him?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Yeah, it is.’

By the time I’d finished cleaning the place it was getting dark outside, and the temperature had dropped from mildly cold to freezing. I was alone in the house. Kane had gone to drop Wayne home with the last load of our possessions. It was surprising how much we had, given how little money we’d made for most the time we’d been living there.

It was a strange feeling being in that empty house. It no longer felt like ours, and it seemed smaller than when we’d had all our stuff in it. It was spotless, although that was probably temporary. One rat could make a lot of droppings. Six rats could make a whole lot more, and God knew how many were breeding beneath the house at that moment.

I rang Melissa while I waited, but the call went straight to her voice mail. Kane pulled up just as I finished leaving a message.

While Kane carried first the mattress and then the base of our bed out to the backyard, I took the cleaning supplies out to his car. It was the second to last day of fall, and my breath made puffs of cloud in the late evening light each time I exhaled.

I walked down the side of the house, crossing over the well-worn track Kane, Bey, Reesey and I had made.

Kane was squirting lighter fluid on our bed. I watched as he lit it, and then went and stood beside him as it burned.

‘It stinks,’ I said, drawing near to him.

‘Yeah, it’ll be poisonous. We should stand further back.’

We withdrew as far as the fence that ran between our yard and Reesey and Bey’s yard.

‘My first time was in that bed.’

Kane cast me a long look.

‘You remember it?’ I asked.

‘I remember everything.’

‘Yeah? Like what?’ I asked, crossing my arms over my chest in an effort to preserve some body heat.

‘Like, you getting undressed in front of me even though I hadn’t even touched you.’

‘You just watched.’

‘’Course I watched. Hottest thing I ever saw. But then you wouldn’t let me kiss you.’

‘I didn’t know how to kiss.’

‘I thought you were doing some striptease act or something.’

‘You sure didn’t get what you thought you were going to.’

Kane smiled. ‘We knew fuck all back then, huh, baby?’

‘Still don’t know that much.’

Kane held my gaze. ‘We know some things,’ he said softly.