August and Then Some (6 page)

She knocked again.

“Whudda you want?”

She looked at me like
what the hell do you think I want
. Well, I didn't know so she knocked again.

“Stop, you're gonna wake them up.”

She knocked again.

“Whudda you want already?”

One more knock.

I sat down on the couch next to her. “Tell me.”

One slow knock.

“Dani, talk.”

In her little whisper of a voice with her sweatshirt covering her mouth she said, “Mut's that mean?”

“The knock?”

“Uh huh.”

“It means, ‘come in' but I'm already here.”

Then she rolled her eyes like I was being dense.

“Whaaat?”

“I mant you to come here.”

“You
mant
me?”

She pulled the sweatshirt away from her mouth. “I
want
you to come here.”

“I
am
here.”

Then she wrestled her other arm from under the blankets and held them both out to me. “I mean
here
, here.”

Then I understood.

It wasn't a simple goodnight hug she wanted. She asked for it the way people do when they have to go away for a while,
or if they're about to do something they're scared of. It wasn't something she asked of me often. And I know it wasn't something I'd seen her ask of my parents in a long time. We held the hug longer than I think either of us expected. I wanted to keep it going but the air made my back cold. “I have to go inside now,” I said with my face next to her ear. “Is that OK?”

She nodded her head and we let go.

I stood up and the heat of her disappeared from my chest in a second. She tied up her sweatshirt around her face again, made her arms disappear beneath the layers of her blankets and closed her eyes, not knowing the temperature would dip into the twenties overnight.

In the morning I heard Mom go into Dani's room and all exasperated and panicked say, “Jesus, Danielle,” then run down the stairs. I threw my covers off and followed her to the porch. Dani was shivering and crying, balled up in the fetal position. Her hands tucked under her chin, my gloves lying on the floor. Mom tried to lift her up and yelled, “Are you crazy? Get inside.” Dani just curled herself up even more. Mom pried one of Dani's hands free and said, “Danielle, squeeze my hand.” She could barely move her fingers let alone make a fist, so Mom yanked her off the couch and pulled her into the kitchen. She ran the water, tested the temperature then put Dani's hands under it. As soon as her first finger touched it she let out a distorted scream, then squirmed away and fell on the floor. Mom tried to lift her up but Dani wasn't having it and rolled away. Mom yelled for her to stand up but she was thrashing around, yelling and impossible to get hold of.

“That's it. I'm taking you to the hospital.”

Dani screamed, “NO,” and stretched the word out for a good ten seconds, kicking the shit out of every snooze button in the neighborhood. She hated hospitals with a fear that seemed like it came from lifetimes ago. Wouldn't even go there with my
mom for bring-your-kid-to-work-day. Indiana Jones had snakes, Superman had kryptonite, and Danielle Savage had hospitals. Why? Maybe she was scared of sickness or death. Maybe staying away from them convinced her she wouldn't turn into her mother. Maybe she just didn't like the slew of fading people laid out alone at a time when they shouldn't be. The kid's insides were a mystery to us all.

Mom tried to grab her again. “Danielle, get up.”

Dani shook her head back and forth like she was shaking water out of her hair. Mom went into full force nurse mode; she wrestled Dani's hands out from under her arms and held her fingers right up to her face and said, “You see this?” Dani slammed her eyes shut and jerked her head away. “Look at this.” Mom held her by her hair and made her look. “See that color around your nails? Your fingers are grey. You know what that means?” Dani tried to yank her head away again, Mom pulled it back. “It means they'll have to cut your fingers off if you don't get the circulation back. You need thermal pads and a tetanus shot and I don't have any of that here so you're going to the hospital. Now.”

Dani said, “No.”

Then Mom slapped her in the face, and that stopped the screaming.

“Get off this floor right now,” Mom said, and schlepped Dani, now in a viciously quiet rage, to the car while I trailed them. Mom threw her in the front seat; I got in the back, still wearing my friggin pajamas. As soon as she pulled away from the curb Dani opened the door and jumped out. We had only got up to four miles an hour by that time so she didn't get hurt—just rolled over once on the street then got up and ran. Mom jammed on the brake, I slammed into the back of the front seat. We both jumped out and chased Dani down the block. Mom caught up and grabbed her by the hood of her sweatshirt so hard Dani's
feet came off the ground mid-stride. Mom yelled, “ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF?” She slapped her in her ass a few times. “ARE YOU?” It got me wondering. Dani screamed again that she wasn't going to the hospital. Mom tucked her under her arm like a squirming football and carried her all the way to the car, which was stopped in the middle of the street. She opened the driver's-side door, threw her in and drove with one hand on the wheel, one on the hood of Dani's sweatshirt. At the hospital there was more screaming and wrestling from the car to the emergency entrance.

They got her circulation back and she didn't lose her fingers. But this is a hospital we're talking about—it seems like if a kid comes in there who has willingly given herself frostbite, a nurse or a doctor, or even a friggin orderly, might suspect something is messed up in their home or their head, and that they might try to hurt themselves again. But this was my mother's job and these were my mother's people. I don't know exactly what went down there—who decided to mind their own business and who justified what—all I know is no one in our house ever said anything about it again and Dad changed the locks on the door so we needed a key to get outside. Until then I thought it was cool that she slept outside—it was this quirky thing she did and made her …
her
. But when a quirky thing puts you in the emergency room it's not cool anymore.

I weave through the happy hour crowd of the East Village to my building. Stephanie and boyfriend are sitting on the front stoop. She's on the stair below him between his knees. He's whispering something in her ear that gives her an embarrassed laugh and takes a few years off her face.

When I get close me and Stephanie look at each other knowing we're beyond the point where we can't not say hello anymore. She says it first. I say it back. Boyfriend nudges her back with his chest probably wondering why she's so friendly with the new guy all of a sudden. Stephanie looks away from me to the step below. As I pass them on the stairs she looks back up and smiles at me. Boyfriend slaps her in the back of the head.

“What was that for?” she says.

“What was
that
for?” he says about our exchange.

His slap goes right through her head up my spine and out my mouth: “I said hi. You gonna make a deal outta that?”

Boyfriend looks at me slightly happy that I've started with him, but more mad than anything. “You gonna make it a deal?”

Stephanie says, “Nelson, stop.”

“You stop,” he tells her.

“She didn't do anything,” I say. “Why you gotta hit her in the head?”

Nelson stands up. “Why you putting your business where it's not wanted?”

Now Stephanie stands up.

“I put it where I want to,” I say.

“Keep it the fuck outta my face.”

“Nelson, shut up.”

“Oh, now you got his back,” boyfriend says.

“I got nobody's back, I just don't want you fighting about stupid shit that ain't nothin.”

“That's what we're doing?” I ask him. “We're fighting?”

“We ain't doing shit yet, but we can change that.”

“Whenever you're ready.”

He flies down the stairs to the street, spreads his arms out and shrugs his shoulders. “Ah-ight. Get off them stairs and we see.”

“Nelson, stop that shit,” Stephanie says. She jumps off the stairs to the street and on her way over to him does something weird. She pulls on her own ponytail. Pulls it so hard that she snaps her head back. It takes all of a half second, but it makes her face turn to something madder and older than it was before. She stands in front of him and puts her hands on his chest. “Nelson, forget it, forget it. This shit ain't worth it. He's just some guy lives in the building, knows my uncle, that's it. That's the whole story. You makin up the rest. Leave it the fuck alone or I'm history tonight.”

“You wrong. I'm history tonight.” He backs off like he's leaving. To me: “Watch your ass.”

“Watch it for me.”

Stephanie turns around pissed at me now. “Damn, just let him go. You stupid?”

Nelson says, “I am watching it.” My final warning before he walks away.

“Why the fuck all you guys want to do is start throwing
down? Somebody look at you and you wanna throw. Fuck's wrong with you?”

“He started.”

“No, you didn't just say that. You didn't just say ‘he started it'.”

“I meant he started with you.”

“Oh, like I can't take care myself.”

“No you can, I just—”

“Guys are stupid, yo.”

“Only when a girl is involved,” I say with little to no thought.

“Ain't no girl involved.”

From above us we hear, “Estephanie, cómo estás?”

She and I both look up and see Ralphie standing on the fire escape. From three floors below I can see the face and hear the voice of the guy who has lived in this building way before this neighborhood was hip—when people were nodding out in his stairwells on a Tuesday, and when cops wrote it off as a wasteland. Standing on the fire escape is the guy who has kicked his share of derelicts off the stoop.

“Nada, tío Ralphie. We just talking. It's OK,” Stephanie says. In her voice I can hear the shrewd innocence of a girl who has talked herself out of many kinds of trouble more than once—like she's got an arsenal of escape tones in the back of her throat. But this is light work so she only has to bring the innocent tone up to about a level two.

Me, I probably look guilty. I wave. “Hi, Ralphie.” He gives us a nod that says he knows there was more going on besides talking. He looks down the block to see if boyfriend is still around. Nope. Ralphie shapes his face into a disapproving expression and makes sure Stephanie sees it before he ducks back in the window.

“I take it he doesn't like your boyfriend.”

“Not really.”

“Because he hits you?”

“He doesn't hit me.” And that, from her arsenal, is a defensive and very convincing tone along the lines of, you-didn't-understand-what-you-saw-and-you-need-to-start-thinking-much-more-of-me-you-idiot.

“OK.”

Stephanie feels the band at the back of her head that holds her ponytail. It's loose, so she separates and pulls a couple handfuls of hair to tighten it to her head.

“What you lookin at?”

“I'm just standing here.”

“Me too.” So we both do. Uncomfortably and for a while.

“Now what are you gonna do?” I ask.

“I'm not done standing here.”

“It's Wednesday night and you got nothing to do?”

“You think I got nothing to do just because I got no man around?”

“I didn't mean it like that, I just figured your plans have changed and you might not have made new ones yet.”

“So?”

“So?”

“So don't you got anything better to do?” she asks.

“I don't really like to make plans. They fuck me up.”

“What's that mean?”

“Nothing. Long story.”

We both just stand here for a little while brooding.

“Wanna go for a walk?” I finally ask.

She looks at me like I got problems. “A walk? Where?”

“I don't know. Around?”

“Around where?”

“Around New York.”

“Are you wacked?” she says like she's asking me what time it is.

“No,” I explain. Then I get skeptical of my answer. “Why?”

“You feel like you're a little off kinda.”

“Look, I'm having a really bad year and your day doesn't seem to be any better, so I'm going to get a beer and take a walk, you're welcome to come or not come.”

She looks at me like this makes no sense and therefore complete sense. “Ah-ight. I'ma go for a walk. Damn this guy is trippin.”

 

We've made our way into a vintage clothes shop on Avenue A. Stephanie liked a shirt in the window. I'm holding a beer in a bag and the saleswoman welcomed us in with a smile, but has been scoping me from behind the counter ever since.

“See now this can be all me.” Stephanie checks herself out in a three-way mirror wearing a white billowy shirt.

“Then buy it.”

“Naw, I don't just buy stuff.”

“Why not?”

“If I want it, I leave it.” She turns to get a side view. “I leave it for like two days then I come back just to make sure we still good together.”

“Who's still good?”

“Me and the shirt. Yo, pay attention.” She turns to face me. “Now, what you think?”

I crank up a little excitement and say, “I like it,” then take a sip of my beer.

“I hate that word. Like.
I like it
,” she says in a sarcastic high-pitched voice. And turns back to the mirror. “Don't you hate that word?”

“Not particularly.”

“I mean I like food, but that's cause I got no choice but to eat.
If I get to pick something I'ma love it. Why I wanna waste my time on shit I only like? I don't gots a lot of clothes, but I love everything I wear.”

“I guess I love pizza. But not with broccoli. Broccoli on pizza is a yuppie sacrilege.”

“Yo, shut up, yo and tell me what you think of the shirt already.”

“Why do you care what I think?”

“Cause your night sucks like mine.”

“That's a good enough reason. Turn around.” I take my time. “If we're talking about picking things cause we love them then get rid of that thing.”

“Why,” she says, all surprised and offended.

“Because it ain't for you. It looks good in some spots, you know like it's saying you look good right here …” I hold my hand in front of her boobs.

“But?” she says, leaning back.

“But at your waist it kind of puffs out and makes you look bigger than you are. And … let me see something.” I lift the tag that hangs off the sleeve and read a handwritten
$55
. “It's costing you way too much to not be in love with every part of you. Hang that shit back up.”

“Yo, don't you know shit? You not supposed to tell a girl she look fat.”

“I didn't say you looked fat.”

“Big, puffy, whatever you said, you ain't supposed to say it.”

“OK, then tell me when else I'm supposed to lie and I might.”

She turns profile in the mirror, pinches the shirt at her belly button and pulls it away from her waist far as it goes, checking out what that does to her. Then she lets it go and tries to flatten it against her stomach with her palm. “Damn.”

“You gonna leave this one?”

“Yeah I'ma leave it. But maybe I'll come back in seven months.”

“Why seven months?”

“Why you think?” she says and peeks back at me to make sure I understand.

“Is that why you're still with that guy?”

“Nelson,” and she gives me a hard look.

“Sorry. Nelson. That why?”

“No.”

“Then why?” She shrugs. “Are you cock clocked?”

“Fuck's that?”

“You heard of pussy whipped?”

I see it click in her head, and she smiles. “Ah-ight, I get it.”

“That why you're with him?”

“Not uh.”

“Then why?”

Stephanie computes my question—her eyebrows pinch together, form two lines between them, and her lips tighten. She doesn't answer this question with the aggressive clip I've been hearing so far. She wraps her lips around her answer and speaks it slowly. “Cause I like him.”

 

Stephanie left the shirt. We stand on the street, I kill the last of my beer and throw it in a corner garbage can. “I wanna stop at that deli,” I say pointing across the street.

“You drink a lot.”

I shrug. “Probably.”

We wait at the corner of Avenue A for the light to change, and some chick hustles across the street on a
Don't Walk
sign in front of two speeding cars. Every gorgeous part of her is coming right towards me and Stephanie. She's red in the lips, blonde in the hair, firm and soft in all the right places. Twenty-sixish? Her jeans worn perfectly at her crotch; she's got tits that someone somewhere lost an entire college fund trying to replicate. She can uncover a
whole new layer of pretty by tucking her hair behind her ears, and probably hasn't paid for her own drink or lit her own cigarette since high school. Just before she reaches our side of the avenue, she literally stops traffic. The two cars slam on their brakes at the green light. Three guys poke their faces out their windows wrenching their necks in her direction, too stunned to scream or whistle. Some people laugh about how clinically insane those guys just went. This girl laughs too, feeling the familiar scene play out behind her. She's all grins as she steps onto the curb—loving the attention, walking like she's powerful and hot. And she is both. Stephanie's expression is all about envy—an envy that wants and hates this girl at the same time. She locks on this chick's face so carefully she could draw it. She keeps staring until this walking statue disappears into the Wednesday-night crowd.

Stephanie shakes her head, looks down the avenue. “You know what?” she says. “If you look at that girl's face, you can almost know for real what it's like to have anyone you want.” Now she looks at me. “And no one you don't.”

 

Two beers and two slices of pizza later we're calling it a night in the stairwell of our building. “Why were you carrying a piece of the sidewalk that day I seen you?”

“It was actually a piece of patio. I got it where I work. Now it's a table.”

“What kind of table?”

“My only table.”

“You eat from it?”

“Yeah. When I eat.” Now we stop on her floor.

“You eat off an old sidewalk?”

“Patio. And I cleaned it.”

“I wouldn't eat off no sidewalk.”

“It's a patio already.”

“Same thing.”

“Not even close. If you wanna keep climbing I'll show you.”

 

I open my door, flick on the light. “Welcome to the palace.”

She looks blankly in every direction then down at the table. “That's it?”

“Try not to be so impressed.”

“You put that thing on them crates and you call it a table?”

“You got a better name for it?”

“A big flat rock.”

“It's slate.”

“Big fat fuckin slate then.”

“Well I like it.”

“Boy is crazy. You're crazy.” In a New York second Stephanie snaps into some kind of crime dog and cases the joint. She opens and closes all my cabinets, finds a couple glasses, a few boxes of pasta, and a half-used pint of white paint left by the old tenants. “No wonder you such a skinny ass.” She opens the refrigerator: a plastic gallon of water, half a deli sandwich wrapped in paper, and a three-pack of Coors that used to be six. She closes the door with disgust.

“Can I see your search warrant, officer?”

She smiles, then pulls the bathroom curtain back. “No door?”

“Talk to your uncle.”

She runs one hand on the counter, then runs the other over the table, holds her palms next to each other and to her surprise the table is cleaner than the counter. She gives me a suspicious look of approval, still not completely convinced the stone is worthy to eat from. Whirling around the room she says, “Damn you need some pictures or something. Does that stove even work?” She picks up my notebook from the table and cracks it open. I yank it out of her hand.