At-Risk (20 page)

He wanted to pull down their way of life. To say that he didn't want to live quietly like they did, without a sound. To say that he needed someone like Kiki to keep him sane enough to live with them. But he knew better than to open his mouth and talk back. He held her leathery feet in the flesh of his hands and rubbed them back and forth, her toes cracking under the heels of his hands.

“Now that boy Kikuyu—”

“Kiki.”

“Whoever. Does he work to feed you?”

“No, Gram. You know that.”

“He save his dollars to buy you things, sneakers for your feet and food for your stomach? Money for all these fancy haircuts you always need, or these video games that's like life and death to you?”

“No, Gram.”

“Then what is it? That boy don't never come over here or call on the phone like decent folks. He's always got to be sneaking around, hanging on street corners. What he do that you got to be out there all the time chasing after somebody that don't do nothing for you? Must be something.”

Mama may have
Papa may have
.

He couldn't tell her what Kiki did for him; he wasn't sure he understood it himself. Like today, Kiki did the things that he only thought of doing. Kiki made his thoughts real and put them into action. Kiki dared. And when he was with him, he dared, too.

“Well?” she prodded, but he knew better than to answer. She huffed in some air and told him to change the record.

“You just like your granddaddy,” she said. This made him look up. His grandfather was a subject wrapped in tissue paper. No matter how lightly you touched it, it would rustle.

“How come?” But she wasn't listening. She was shaking her head in time to the music.

“He thought he knew everything there was to know 'bout life. Made me believe it, too. He got me to move up here to New York—did you know that?—just knowing it was gonna be different. But one place ain't no different from no place else. People try and make it like everything's new only to find that the devil done followed you wherever you move and all you can do is hold him off a little while whiles you catch your breath.

“People'll tell you this used to be a nice block. Way back when. When we settled up here, there wasn't as many of us as it is now, but ain't nothing different. What we doing now, the Jews and Italians who moved off done already been through. It might've been different folk, but things don't change. And he couldn't realize that. Thought a place was gonna change something. But if something in you ain't reconciled and you go somewhere else or be with somebody new, is it gonna be healed?”

This time she seemed to really want an answer. Her dark eyes held him in place, waiting. “No, ma'am,” he mumbled, “I guess not.”

He waited for her to pull out the lesson from her story, to tell him to heed his mother, expecting her to bring it all back somehow and make him feel guilty. But she just rocked to the record, and when it ended, he put the needle back to the beginning again. She began to sing with the record, her voice throaty, a low rasp.

But god bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
.

He set her feet down and shook his hands out. He got up from his chair and walked over to her small window. The shade was pulled all the way down. He knew he didn't need to lift it to see what waited for him outside.

The old men lined the stoops, their long legs hanging over the blue, red, and orange crates and down a step or two. They wore their best slacks, with the creases ironed in, as if they were going to work. Their backs stooped and bent, their hands hung down in the space between their legs, thin brown fingers laced loosely together. Beneath their Sunday hats, their eyes were sad, and when they spoke quietly among themselves, their voices came out rusty.

His grandfather could have been any one of them if he had lived.

His father could have been any of them—one day—if he had stayed.

Stephen never wanted to be like those men. Just once, he wanted to pull that shade up and not see them sitting there like always. He wanted his mother not to have to worry about him, not to have to cry.

The record ended and his grandmother was still singing, her body bent and nodding toward the record player.

Part of him wanted to stay right there at his grandmother's feet, to keep that window shade pulled all the way down so that not even a crack of light from the outside could show through. But another part wanted to tug the threaded cord quickly, sending the shade snapping up to the top, where it would roll on itself, flap, and break the silence. Because beyond his stoop, over the heads of the old men and past the edge of his block, the park was not empty. Kiki was still out there even though it had grown dark, shooting skyrockets that zipped and exploded into myriad colors in the night dark sky. He was setting off Moon Whistlers, which flared and pierced the heavy stagnant air; he was lighting and tossing Ashcans, which resounded like claps of thunder. Stephen moved to replace the needle and replay the record. He passed the window and lingered, straining to hear.

David Walton,
Evening Out

Leigh Allison Wilson,
From the Bottom Up

Sandra Thompson,
Close-Ups

Susan Neville,
The Invention of Flight

Mary Hood,
How Far She Went

François Camoin,
Why Men Are Afraid of Women

Molly Giles,
Rough Translations

Daniel Curley,
Living with Snakes

Peter Meinke,
The Piano Tuner

Tony Ardizzone,
The Evening News

Salvatore La Puma,
The Boys of Bensonhurst

Melissa Pritchard,
Spirit Seizures

Philip F. Deaver,
Silent Retreats

Gail Galloway Adams,
The Purchase of Order

Carole L. Glickfeld,
Useful Gifts

Antonya Nelson,
The Expendables

Nancy Zafris,
The People I Know

Debra Monroe,
The Source of Trouble

Robert H. Abel,
Ghost Traps

T. M. McNally,
Low Flying Aircraft

Alfred DePew,
The Melancholy of Departure

Dennis Hathaway,
The Consequences of Desire

Rita Ciresi,
Mother Rocket

Dianne Nelson,
A Brief History of Male Nudes in America

Christopher McIlroy,
All My Relations

Alyce Miller,
The Nature of Longing

Carol Lee Lorenzo,
Nervous Dancer

C. M. Mayo,
Sky over El Nido

Wendy Brenner,
Large Animals in Everyday Life

Paul Rawlins,
No Lie Like Love

Harvey Grossinger,
The Quarry

Ha Jin,
Under the Red Flag

Andy Plattner,
Winter Money

Frank Soos,
Unified Field Theory

Mary Clyde,
Survival Rates

Hester Kaplan,
The Edge of Marriage

Darrell Spencer,
CAUTION Men in Trees

Robert Anderson,
Ice Age

Bill Roorbach,
Big Bend

Dana Johnson,
Break Any Woman Down

Gina Ochsner,
The Necessary Grace to Fall

Kellie Wells,
Compression Scars

Eric Shade,
Eyesores

Catherine Brady,
Curled in the Bed of Love

Ed Allen,
Ate It Anyway

Gary Fincke,
Sorry I Worried You

Barbara Sutton,
The Send-Away Girl

David Crouse,
Copy Cats

Randy F. Nelson,
The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men

Greg Downs,
Spit Baths

Peter LaSalle,
Tell Borges If You See Him:

Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism

Anne Panning,
Super America

Margot Singer,
The Pale of Settlement

Andrew Porter,
The Theory of Light and Matter

Peter Selgin,
Drowning Lessons

Geoffrey Becker,
Black Elvis

Lori Ostlund,
The Bigness of the World

Linda LeGarde Grover,
The Dance Boots

Jessica Treadway,
Please Come Back to Me

Amina Gautier,
At-Risk

Melinda Moustakis,
Bear Down, Bear North