Numbers (5 page)

Numbers looked over the problems for a moment before glancing up toward the ceiling. He went into a daze for about thirty seconds, something he did when he was in deep thought. Then, with a slight smirk, he began writing. Sixty seconds later he was finished, and he handed the book and the sheet of paper back to Mr. Greenstein.

Mr. Greenstein looked over the problems for five minutes or so, mumbling to himself.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Greenstein?” the principal inquired.

“Well, no, I mean, yes,” Mr. Greenstein replied with his forehead scrunched up, looking through his bifocals intently at the paper.

“So I guess someone wasn’t telling the truth after all,” Mr. Mathews said matter-of-factly, giving Numbers a stern stare.

“No, Gordon, that’s not the problem. The answers are all correct.” Mr. Greenstein was baffled.

Jenny smiled at her son proudly.

“Well then?” Mr. Mathews asked again. “What?”

“Uh, well, uh,” Mr. Greenstein stammered, “they are correct, but I don’t know how he figured them out. He didn’t write anything on the paper. It’s like he figured the answers out in his head. I can’t even do that!” he confessed.

The principal and teacher apologized profusely to Ms. Jenny and would later make arrangements for Numbers to be placed in an advanced program in junior high school.

Over the years of running numbers and errands to the stores for people, Numbers had always been able to keep everyone’s money accounted for in his head without writing it down. It was a knack he’d acquired, and somehow it had carried over into his schoolwork. He didn’t understand where his gift for numbers had come from, but Jenny did. She had encountered this uncanny talent for numbers once before. Jenny had thought that other than
donating his sperm and his coarse mane, Numbers’s father hadn’t given him anything, but happily, she realized now she was wrong.

When Jenny told her son of his father’s abilities with numbers, Numbers grew curious to meet him. He had only seen his father in a picture his mother had of them when they both attended Sumter High School in South Carolina. He’d always wondered about the man in that picture.

Jenny was downtown meeting with her social worker, and then she was going to look for work. She was tired of collecting welfare and working odd jobs off the books at the dry cleaners, the local bar, and at the supermarket. None of them paid much, nor did they offer any benefits. She was determined to find something substantial.

Numbers was now twelve years old, and Jenny left him in charge of babysitting his sisters. He would’ve had Jarvis come down and keep him company today, but his friend was on punishment again, for fighting. Jarvis was more of a reactor than a thinker; for that reason he always got into scuffles.

Numbers decided he would pull out a deck of cards and
play a game of solitaire. His sisters were in the back, as usual, playing, and he hoped they would stay there. He loved them, but sometimes they could be real pests.

Sitting at the table in his usual seat with his back to the refrigerator, Numbers started shuffling and flipping over cards. He’d developed an uncanny ability to predict what the next card in the deck would be before he turned it up. It was like he had a sixth sense when it came to cards and numbers in general. When he was focused, he could foretell the correct card 80 to 90 percent of the time. As he sat there calling out numbers to himself, then flipping up the exact card he’d called, his rhythm was interrupted by his sister’s voice.

“When is Mommy coming back?” Takeisha asked.

“Can I have some juice?” Lakeisha followed.

“I don’t know, okay,” he answered both of them in one breath.

“What are you doing?” Takeisha asked, holding a doll.

“What does it look like I’m doing? Playing cards,” he snapped, as if she had interrupted him from doing something very important.

“Can we play?” Lakeisha asked, getting her juice out of the refrigerator.

At first Numbers thought to say no, but his annoyance dissolved when he looked at them. He loved them dearly.

“Okay, the game is—”

“Go Fish!” the girls interjected before he could finish his statement.

“Go Fish it is.”

Jenny sat in the waiting area in a long-sleeved, white ruffled blouse with a brown knee-length skirt and a pair of brown shoes, her coat draped across her legs. She wore her hair in an Afro and had on little makeup. Though she wasn’t a supermodel, she was an attractive female.

The waiting area was packed with single mothers and their screaming children. It was a madhouse. It took all of Jenny’s strength not to pull her hair out; she hated coming to this godforsaken place. It smelled like dirty diapers and cigarette smoke. Still, it was better than the social worker coming to her house trying to account for every nickel and dime she spent.

“Brian, get over here,” a mother yelled at her kid. “You’re just like your father. His dumb ass never listened either, that’s why the fool is in prison now. You remind me of him so much it makes me sick to look at you. Now, get your ass over here.” The boy paid her no attention and continued romping around the room along with the other bad-ass kids.

“Ms. Johnson,” the caseworker called out as she walked from behind the glass. The young girl who was just screaming at her son stood up.

“Brian, get your ass over here right now!” she yelled. When the boy ignored her she got infuriated, marched over to him, and snatched the six-year-old up by his armpit. “I’m Johnson,” she replied, dragging her son toward the caseworker.

Thank God!
Jenny thought, glad the loudmouth girl was leaving the area. Jenny had been coming to this social services office for the last nine years. It wasn’t what she’d planned for her life; none of this had been in her plans. She hadn’t planned on getting pregnant and having to move to New York City. Nor had she planned to move out of her brother’s place abruptly and have to get on welfare.

Even after her sister practically disowned her for getting pregnant at seventeen, Jenny still hadn’t believed her situation was as grave as it was. Indignantly she lashed out as if none of what had happened to her was her doing. “You’ve always been jealous of me. You never loved me. You just put up with me ’cuz you had to,” she raged at her sister Anna Beth.

Anna Beth was fifteen years Jenny’s senior, the oldest of the seven siblings. Since their mother and father had died seventeen years earlier, Anna Beth had taken on the role of head of the household. And as the head, she made one of the hardest decisions she ever had to make in her life: she put her youngest sister out the family house.

At two o’clock that afternoon Jenny packed up what she was able to carry in a duffle bag and left. She was ordered by Anna Beth to be out of the house before her two nieces came home from school. Only her brother Greggor was home when she left, and he hated to see Jenny go; they were the closest of the seven, but he also knew that once the eldest made up her mind, that was that.

Anna Beth never looked up from washing clothes in the big tub in the kitchen when Jenny walked by to leave. She couldn’t bear to see her baby sister—she was afraid she might change her mind.

Jenny walked out into the brisk fall afternoon on Bradford Street with all of $18.34 to her name. She wore bell-bottom jeans, a wool tweed coat, brown shoes, and a brown knit cap that covered her ears. She was seventeen years old, homeless and pregnant. Any other time she would have thought it was a beautiful day to take a walk, but today the twenty-minute walk to Purdy Street where her boyfriend lived felt like a marathon. But she was certain that once she was there, Lewis—her future baby’s father—would know what to do.

Lewis lived with his mother and little sister. He wasn’t exceptionally handsome, but girls liked his flawless bronzed brown skin. He said that most girls thought his family was part Cherokee, but all that was needed to dispel that claim was to look at his coarse hair. It was plain ol’ nappy.

Given his five-foot-nine, slim build, it would be a safe bet to think Lewis was athletic, but it would’ve been a losing bet. What Lewis did have going for him was an uncanny way with digits. He could calculate numbers better than most high school teachers. It
was truly a gift. And it landed him a job at Coughlin’s General Store managing the books. It also gave him access to some of the prettier girls who needed help with their math.

His tutoring ability was how he got to meet and get close to Jenny. He was a year older, and she found him mildly attractive. At first it was just friendly, but that changed on the day Jenny was able to manipulate Lewis into cutting class with her. She liked the fact that he was older than she was, yet still a virgin. Now she was the teacher. She taught him everything he knew about sex—but now she wished she would have taught him to pull out.

Jenny slowly approached the two-bedroom, one-level house sitting on cinder blocks. The grass was cut, but the paint was peeling from years of wear. At first she thought to turn around and walk away, but she had nowhere to go. Jenny knocked on the door tentatively and waited. There was no answer.

She turned to leave, unsure what she would do next, when someone walked up.

“Jenny May, hey there, baby, what you doing here?” Lewis asked in his southern drawl as he came up the walkway. He seemed surprised but pleased to see her.

“I need to talk to you, Lewis.”

“What’s with the bag?” he asked, tugging at it playfully.

“Can we go in the house? I walked here all the way from my house. I’m thirsty.”

Lewis walked into the house, followed by Jenny.

Once inside, Jenny dropped her bag on the floor, thankful to be giving her shoulder a rest. She sat down in the living room on a couch covered with a light green floral sheet. Lewis was at the kitchen sink directly across from the couch fetching a glass of water.

They were in the house alone. Lewis’s mother was working at one of her two jobs, and his little sister was at Ms. Pearl’s house.
Ms. Pearl watched most of the single mothers’ kids in the neighborhood. It was as close to a day-care center as they could come to in this poor area of town.

“Here you go.” Lewis sat next to Jenny, handing her the glass of water.

She took a long sip, then stared down at the glass trying to figure out how she would break the news.

Lewis could tell she was somewhat uneasy. He placed his right arm around her shoulder and took the glass of water away with his left. “Don’t worry, my mother won’t be home for hours,” he said in his sexiest voice, placing the glass of water on the old wooden coffee table in front of the couch.

Jenny folded her arms and began to tremble slightly. Lewis used the opportunity to make his move, sliding his hand up her leg. “Stop,” Jenny said softly.

Lewis ignored her request and moved his other hand toward her breast, caressing her over the coat she wore.

“I didn’t come here for that,” Jenny erupted, standing up.

“So what you come here for?” he shot back. Tears welled up in Jenny’s eyes, and her trembling increased. Lewis was confused. “What? What? What did I do?” he pleaded, sitting on the couch with his palms in the air.

Jenny managed to get the words past the lump in her throat, “I’m pregnant.”

“Huh?”

“I’m pregnant.” The words made their way out more freely this time.

“So why you telling me?” he asked coldly, jumping up from his seat.

“You know why I’m telling you,” she retorted, trying with no luck to hold back the tears that were streaming effortlessly down her cheeks. “Please don’t be like that, Lewis.”

“I’m not being like nothing. How you gonna come up in here trying to pin a baby on me, knowing you’ve been having sex way before me,” he rationalized, avoiding eye contact.

It was true, Jenny wasn’t a virgin like Lewis when they got together, nor was she promiscuous like her sister Anna Beth and Lewis suggested. She had had sex with only one boy before Lewis. She’d thought she was in love with him but soon found out he was having sex with one of her so-called friends. She ended it right then and there.

“How dare you say that to me?” she cried. “You know I’m not like that, Lewis.”

“All I know is you better go find the father of that bastard you’re carrying,” Lewis spat.

Before Jenny knew what she had done, she hauled off and punched him square in the mouth. His mouth filled with blood instantly—Muhammad Ali would have been proud of her right cross.

Lewis stood there in shock and fear, holding his mouth. He saw the anger and hatred in her eyes and made the correct decision to not say another word. Jenny was ready to swing on him again, but when Lewis cowed she turned on her heels, grabbed her duffle bag, and stormed out.

When she moved in with her oldest brother, Samuel, and his wife and kids in New York, she thought it was her chance to start over. She lived with them for almost three years after Dupree was born but couldn’t endure the constant fighting in the household. She didn’t want her son raised in such a volatile environment. When Jenny left she wished she had the means to take her niece and nephew with her, but she could barely take care of Dupree and herself.