On the Come Up (9 page)

AnnMarie had been skipping school all week when it happened. Lazing around at Darius’ house, his mother at work, they’d been getting high and watching TV. AnnMarie felt moody and depressed. Bored out of her mind. Even with Darius, all the little dramas in the studio room. Tempers flaring over stupid shit. AnnMarie’d been flipping channels and found Oprah talking. Some doctor-type person up there on stage, the two a them talking about how to make a baby. A white lady from the audience start to tell her story, how she trying and trying with her man, how all she want in life is a child and a family and how that be the key to happiness. Then she start to cry. AnnMarie felt sorry for that lady, pouring out her soul for everyone in America to see, and later, when she and Darius made love in the walk-in, AnnMarie felt the rhythm of his thrusts like a promise and she whispered in his ear, I wanna make a family with you. Darius said, Word. Just before he grunted and came.

Afterward she stayed on her back, like the Oprah doctor had said, raising her legs up in the air, to catch the sperm inside. What you doing? Darius asked. She folded her knees over her chest. Wrapped her arms around her shins and cradled herself, not stirring. She said, I’m making us a family.

Blessed crept across the room with her cane and sat down next to AnnMarie on the couch. She reached for her, pulling her into an embrace but AnnMarie felt the panic rising like walls snapping up around her. She shook Blessed off, crying, No Ma, don’t … Stop touching me.

But Blessed held on, her arms tight around AnnMarie who struggled to pull away. God don’t like ugly, AnnMarie, God don’t like ugly.

But
Ma
 … I got my singing, how’m I supposed to go to school. I ain’t doing it!

You will. You’ll go to school and have the baby. I’m gon help you. And I tell you this—if you kill me grandchild, I put you back in foster care and you’ll burn up in hell.

Carlton walked in and stared at them.

What happened now, Carlton said.

AnnMarie felt a sudden rage and helplessness. Why you gotta be here, she screamed. Why don’t you get the fuck outta my house.

But it was AnnMarie who left.

Walking mad slow over to Nameoke where Darius lived. She didn’t know what he gonna say. Her eyes swollen, face blotchy. What he gonna say.

She’d seen him fly into a rage before. Seen him knock his mother down a flight of stairs. His mother, Darla, grabbing on to his arm to keep her balance, but he’d wrenched free and back she fell. Up in his sister’s face. Beefing. Watched him clock some fella in the head, just a little thing set it off, and when the boy fell, he beat him bloody.

He was sitting up on the front porch with Raymel and Jason. Raymel glancing at her, then away as she approached.

Darius stood up and frowned. What happened, he said.

Inside the kitchen, away from the others, she whispered it, afraid of his reaction, even though he’d seen her do it, hold her legs in the air. Even though he never used protection, not once in the entire time they was together. Still she was afraid. But before she could look up, she heard him whoop, felt his arms go around her waist and he was swinging her around. AnnMarie’s legs dangling off the floor, her arms around his shoulders, heart pounding.

They went over to the liquor store and bought a bottle of Hennessy to celebrate.

Darius telling everybody—we got Trinidad, we got Jamaican, we got Indian blood. Laughing and cheering. That gonna be one beautiful baby. And AnnMarie sat back on the porch, hearing the
clink-clink
of glass, and told herself to chill, feeling certain now it wasn’t something she dreamed up on her own. He’d claimed it. They doing it together—making a family, a true family together.

And later, after he got drunk and told her he was wild with love for her, she didn’t go home, she stayed all night with him in the walk-in. Fourteen years old, with her own man and a baby on the way. Right before he fell asleep she said, You gonna marry me, Darius, and he said, ’Course I marry you. You turn eighteen, we getting married.

He fell asleep but she didn’t. She lay there looking up at the small cut of window, watching a patch of light move across the wall then disappear. She felt his arm over her waist and thought about the room her mother once had in the shelter.

It was a small little room. Very small with a twin bed and a chair. AnnMarie was living with Grandma Mason. In the beginning, her mother would come sometimes on the weekend and take her out of there. They’d go to the park, to McDonald’s, sometimes to church. They held hands. In the evening, she’d take AnnMarie back to the shelter. But there was no childs allowed in the bedrooms after lights out, so Blessed would have to sneak her in. In the shower room, she’d set her inside a laundry bag she kept in a cart, pull the cart down the hall to her room.

AnnMarie sat scrunched up, clothes on top her head and she’d hear Blessed whisper. Quiet now. Shhhh. She’d sit in the bag, mad quiet, waiting ’til the lady check and leave. Then she’d feel her mother’s hands lifting her out and they’d sleep together in
that narrow bed. The wall on one side a her, Blessed on the other. Blessed’s arm around her waist and AnnMarie’d think, I’m in my mother’s bed, with my mother and everything fine. In the morning, Blessed put her back inside the laundry bag, pull the string, wheel the cart outta there. Take her down to the street, she’d go back to Grandma Mason house.

Like a thief in the night I was, running from your father. Like a thief in the night. Blessed leaned on her cane, giving AnnMarie one a her looks, like she mean business.

Except AnnMarie had heard it before. And it wasn’t night. It was daytime. He was at the sugarcane factory when Blessed left, shoving clothes into a bag, screen door slamming.

You don’t got something to say?

AnnMarie yawned. I heard you, Ma, I know the story.

Ever since Blessed had found out about the baby, it was like she was revived, on her feet asking AnnMarie how she feel, do she need something, asking where she going and when she coming back. And in between all the asking, she’d find a way to tell it, again and again—the story of her great escape. How he raped her. How he beat her with a pipe. A pipe used for plumbing.

You is a rape child, Blessed would say. But I kept you, you see how I kept you?

Like some kinda hero thief. Stealing past cornfields, past the houses made a concrete. Past the dirt yards and goats. Dogs barking, stray dogs so skinny they ribs show through. Snarling at any scrap a life that pass them by. AnnMarie pictured her without shoes on her feet, dress hem flapping, her neck twisted ’round, a look like fear turn to triumph in her eye.

’Cept she had shoes. Shoes and a bag full a clothes, AnnMarie remembered. A rainstorm had turned the dirt to mud, and there
was ants, millions of ants clawing their way to sunlight. Blessed walked five miles to St. Margaret, caught the bus to Port of Spain, her feet itching and burning, ants crawling out her shoes, up her thigh, hungry for blood. Traveling papers fixed by a lady named Miss Deacon for three hundred dollars. She’d spent a year saving. A year of broken ribs and fat lips and eyeballs hanging out their socket. Clinic man patch her up, send her on her way. If she stayed behind, she’d end up like Jahar, her firstborn. That baby got shook and banged by AnnMarie’s father. Shook and banged ’til he was dead.

You got his blood, Blessed said. But you see how I kept you.

Yeah, yeah. AnnMarie thought. ’Cept for all those years you didn’t.

She remembered the first time her mother spoke about her father. In that narrow bed at the homeless shelter when she was a child. Wrapped around Blessed in the stillness, AnnMarie hadn’t understood all the words. But she knew sadness. Felt it in her mother’s chest rising and falling, in her eyes that refused to open. AnnMarie had reached up and patted her cheek, tried to pry an eye open, wanting her mother back.

When had her love for Blessed changed? AnnMarie couldn’t remember.

Carlton and Carlotta had gone visiting, so AnnMarie went into her room to change. She could smell the food cooking. Her mother’d been a good cook once, before the stroke. Now she hardly cooked at all, fingers shaking, recipes turned inside out. Maybe that’s what AnnMarie’s father had liked about her. She’d cook up the rice and peas, macaroni pie, curry goat. There weren’t no picture of her father. No way a seeing his face in her mind. Just
a angry dude. She looked at herself in the mirror. Brown eyes staring. Was he in there?

AnnMarie heard the knock and let him in. Darius stood in the doorway, smelling like Irish Spring. She leaned against the frame, smiling, seeing the flowers in his hand. She took the bouquet wrapped in clear plastic. For your moms, he said, his hand moving to her belly where the baby was forming.

Blessed had sent AnnMarie to borrow a card table from across the hall and they all sat down, Darius’ hands folded loosely in his lap. But AnnMarie felt the flutterflies bouncing around. What she got to be nervous for. What the fuck I care my mother like him. I love him and he loves me.

Are you in school, Darius?

Ma, let him eat.

No, I finished off with that. I’m interested in business opportunities and whatnot.

Oh, really …

Ma.

Shh, we’re talking, AnnMarie.

Yeah, I’d like to own my own business. A recording business.

Oh, that’s nice. AnnMarie says you have a music studio at your house, you making a living with that?

Little here and there but I got a fee schedule planned out, charge the artist for they recording time, and if I produce, I add on top a that.

A fee schedule?

You know, like money for my time.

Oh, that’s smart …

Blah blah blah blah blah
 … AnnMarie wanted to tell her to please shut up. What she know about money anyway. Hadn’t earned a dollar in her life.

But Blessed leaned back all of a sudden and went quiet, looking at Darius, like she takin’ him in. Soaking him up with her eyes.

Finally she said, Well, AnnMarie, looks like you got yourself a good thing.

Ma, please.

Please, Ma
, AnnMarie said, jumping up. ’Cause Blessed had started to cry. Tears coming out her eyes, running down her face, shaky fingers brushing them aside.

No, AnnMarie. I’m happy for you. You a sweet couple and I wish you the best in life, I do. I bless you both. You’re blessed and I’m gonna help with the baby any way I can.

Thank you, Miss Blessed, Darius said. We appreciate it.

Go on, sit down AnnMarie and eat. Eat now.

Darius leaned over his plate then, and began to eat. Didn’t matter the food mad nasty, salt for sugar, sugar for allspice—he dug in and ate. AnnMarie looked at him sideways and he glanced at her and smiled.

Blessed had a boyfriend once, before the stroke when AnnMarie was ten years old. His name was Prince. He had a table set up on Mott Avenue where he sold incense and statuettes and dolls the size of a grown child. Beautiful dolls with brown skin and long, cascading ringlets and eyelids that flipped open and closed. Blessed would pick AnnMarie up from school and they’d wander home, buy a thing or two from the fruit stand then stop to talk to Prince who wore a Muslim cap he called a kufi. AnnMarie’d peel back the mango skin and suck the juice, watching her mother and Prince talking. Blessed would tilt her head to the side, smiling, then laugh outright at something he said. Then Prince was Blessed’s boyfriend, coming around the apartment, staying after supper to watch the TV. He went with them to church. For walks on the boardwalk. Sometimes he brought bags a groceries. He’d lean down, cup her chin in his big hand. He’d say, Hello AnnMarie, how’s you. Her mother’d laugh and say, She growin’ what
she is. Eating me out of house and home. And in these moments, AnnMarie’d lean against her mother feeling shy but happy, and Blessed would pull her into an embrace, like she was something special.

He had a house with black bars on the windows down by the water there on Healy Avenue. It had a big living room with a gigantic TV set on the carpet. Shiny clean kitchen, perfume soaps in the bathroom. Looks like you got a feminine touch, Blessed said, looking at him. Prince rocked back and forth on his heels and laughed. I like a clean house, it’s true. He showed AnnMarie the room where he kept the dolls, opened up a big box and peeled away the sheet of plastic. Dolls the size of AnnMarie herself, laying faceup like soldiers in a row, their eyes open, staring at her. AnnMarie gasped. They so pretty, she said. Go on, you can take one. She’d never had a doll before, not even a stuffed animal. Grandma Mason didn’t allow it. Thought it made them spoiled. She knew she was too old to be carrying a doll around, but AnnMarie couldn’t resist. They was too beautiful.

Prince turned on the TV and the room lit up all at once. Blessed said, Go on, sit down and watch. We goin’ to talk. Then they went down the hall and disappeared into the room at the end. AnnMarie stood at the closed door and listened. She heard murmurs, then it went quiet.

After dinner was ate and the card table folded again, Blessed fell asleep sitting up on the couch. AnnMarie pulled Darius into the kitchen and pressed against his rock-solid body, locking lips, his tongue soft and spicy in her mouth and she felt herself go wet, hungry for him even with thoughts of Prince pushing their way to the surface. Prince who’d hoisted her onto his back to play piggyback, his fingers reaching under her dress, poking inside her underwear ’til she wriggled free. She ran into the other room where her
mother was and told. AnnMarie couldn’t understand why Blessed slapped her silly, saying
Look how you embarrassing Mr. Prince. No one wanna touch you, why you think everyone wanna touch you
but it was too late, Prince never came around again, and Blessed never had no man since.