Outcast (10 page)

Tirrell slowly turned, his hazel eyes stained red with tears and embarrassment. He embraced his long-suffering grandmother. Her touch, her love, these were his lifelines. He wanted to be a better person just because she believed he could be.

Later, after Betty had gone off to bed and he'd put his room back in order, Tirrell slipped outside and sat on the front stoop to have a smoke. His thoughts glazed over with all the many things that he wanted to say to his grandmother and what was left unsaid between him and Tasha. Perhaps, now that his disposition from the Army was out in the open, he could make a fresh go of it. He thought maybe he would start with church—he knew Betty would like that.

His cell phone rang as he squashed the butt of the cigarette under his heel and flicked it out into the street. It was Bobby. He wiped his hand over his mouth, recalling the sensation that the cocaine had given him. His pulse quickened. Should he respond to the growing desire, or should he steer clear of temptation? The decision was made for him when the ringing stopped—there was no voice mail. He quickly dismissed the notion of calling Bobby back, and got up and went into the house. This was a call better left unanswered.

To his surprise, Tirrell had awakened before his grandmother. He found a nice pair of dark blue slacks and a complementary shirt to wear and went on to the bathroom. When he stepped out of the shower he heard Betty in the kitchen. Steam gushed out when he opened the bathroom door and he could smell coffee brewing. With his towel wrapped around him, he walked into kitchen—the soles of his feet leaving damp prints on the hardwood floor.

“Good morning,” he said enthusiastically, kissing her on the cheek.

“Good morning.” Betty smiled and turned away from the oven. “What are you doin' up so early?”

“It's Sunday, ain't it? I thought I'd go to church with my best girl.” Tirrell opened the cupboard and reached in for a Moon Pie. “I'm gonna go put my clothes on.”

“Well, now. Ain't that somethin'.” Betty couldn't keep from smiling. She didn't want to make too much of the gesture, but she was thrilled that he was making the effort.

Tirrell could hear her singing as he dressed. It made him happy that he could make her smile after he was sure he'd broken her heart the day before.

He could see the Crawl house from his bedroom window. He spotted Marquis's '95 Sedan de Ville De Ville and figured that he was escorting his mother, Anne, to church as well. With the exception of the requisite Christmas, Mother's Day, and Easter services, Tirrell hadn't been to church much since his grandfather died. He chuckled when he thought about how he and Marquis used to cut up as kids. He mischievously looked forward to what the day might bring.

As Betty dressed, Tirrell went to the kitchen and filled up on sausage, biscuits, gravy, and scrambled eggs. Marquis didn't attend church regularly either, but as he ate Tirrell called him to ensure he would be there.

 

 

Decked out in a lavender two-piece skirt suit, Betty sat near the front of the sanctuary next to Anne Crawl. Pat and Micah sat a row behind them; Kevin was conspicuously absent. Tirrell and Marquis, thick as thieves, hung near the back. Throughout the opening of the service Marquis childishly taunted Tirrell about his night with Tasha. It didn't sit well with him, especially since the night ended with his arrest.

“Did she give you that black eye?” Marquis teased.

Now was not the time or place for Tirrell to share all the sordid details.

Marquis spied a young woman across the aisle who he'd been intimate with, and brazenly whispered his conquest to Tirrell. They laughed out loud. An older woman sitting in front of them turned around and shushed them. Tirrell pressed his lips together to squelch his amusement. When they were asked to stand for prayer, an usher navigated up the aisle to help latecomers find seats; Tasha was among them. Marquis poked Tirrell in the side and pointed. Tirrell's demeanor changed. He slapped Marquis's hand away. Whether she had seen him he couldn't say; she didn't acknowledge him.

The choir sang. The preacher preached, but Tirrell remained focused on Tasha. After the benediction he quickly excused himself from Marquis and pressed through the throng of parishioners to get to her. When she spotted him she looked away and tried to go toward another exit.

“Tasha,” he yelled, pushing in the opposite direction of the flow of people. She had to have heard him.

“I smell trouble,” Marquis said from behind him.

Tirrell turned and scowled.

Betty and Anne made their way over to let them know that since neither of them had prepared anything for dinner, this would be a good time to go out to eat. Tirrell didn't argue. He would find a way to talk to Tasha later.

 

 

Pat walked in the house to find Kevin slouched on the sofa in front of the television, with his bare feet propped up on the coffee table, munching on potato chips. Unshaven and unwashed, he had on a pair of pajama bottoms and a loose-fitting T-shirt, which was an indication to her that he'd probably been in that same spot most of the morning.

Micah climbed into his father's lap and reached his hand inside the greasy bag.

“Uh huh,” Pat chided. “You're gonna mess up your clothes and ruin your dinner.” She took the bag out of Kevin's hands. “Go on upstairs and change.”

Micah pouted and poked out his lips.

Kevin picked him up and sat him down on the floor, patting him on the rear. “Go on and do what your mother said. Come back down when you're done.”

Micah stuffed the chips in his hand into his mouth and darted up the stairs. Kevin snatched the potato chips back from Pat. She chuckled.

“I should make you go up there and change your clothes too.”

“How was church?”

“You'd know if you had gone,” she snapped.

“Did you see Noonie?”

“Yes, and I saw Tirrell, too.”

Kevin ignored her and turned up the television volume. Pat took the television remote from his hand and clicked it off.

“What are you doing? I was watching that.”

“Don't act like you didn't hear me, Kevin.”

“Give me back the remote.”

“No.”

“I'm serious, girl. Quit playin'.”

Pat laughed and ran toward the kitchen. “You want it, come and get it.”

Kevin smirked, jumped up from the sofa, and chased after her. He trapped her up against the sink and they playfully grappled for the remote. He tickled her until she surrendered.

“You've been smokin', haven't you?” Pat observed.

“I had one cigarette.”

“Kevin, you said you were gonna stop.”

“I just had one and I didn't smoke it in the house.”

“Kevin.”

“You know how I get when I'm stressed.”

“Stressed about what?”

“Tirrell. What else?” Kevin leaned on the island in the center of the room and folded his arms. “I found out why he's really here. He was booted out of the Army for fighting.”

“What? Did he tell you that?”

“No. I found out on my own.”

“How?”

“I knew he was hiding something, so I went over to Noonie's and looked through his stuff. I found his discharge papers.”

“Kevin, no, you didn't.”

“I feel pretty shitty about it.”

“Well, you should. You wouldn't want anyone scrounging through your personal stuff.”

“He lied, baby. He lied to all of us.”

“So, that gave you the right to do what you did?”

Kevin scratched his beard. “We had a fight—right in front of Noonie. I was just so damn mad. I just wanted to hurt him.”

“Kevin.”

“You should have seen the way Noonie looked at me. All this time I felt like he was the outcast. Maybe it was me all along.”

Pat sighed and stepped between Kevin's legs and hugged him. “Baby, you are not an outcast. But, you can afford to be the bigger man.”

“The bigger man would avoid the conflict all together and just stay away from him.”

“And what exactly will that solve? Are you just gonna stay away from Miss Betty, too?”

Kevin shook his head.

“You're bound to see each other, especially if he's stayin' in town. You may as well find a way to deal with him.”

“Maybe we should move to California. Micah could be closer to Mama.”

“I hope that's a joke. I like your mother, but having her on the other side of the country works just fine for me.”

Kevin buried his face in Pat's shoulder and held her tightly. “I'm never gonna do to you and Micah what my father did to me. I promise you that.”

“I know you won't.” Pat laughed as she pulled away and picked up a paring knife on the counter. “Because if you ever do I'm gonna cut your nuts off.”

Tirrell was eager to see Tasha. When he and Betty returned home he tried to convince her to let him borrow the car to go and see her. Given his DUI and pending court date she was naturally reticent.

“Please, Noonie, please. I promise I'll be careful. I'll go and I'll come right back.”

“You know I can't do that.”

“Then can you drive me over there?”

“Tirrell.”

“Please, Noonie. Please. I swear I'll be extra careful. I have to see her.”

After several minutes of seeing Tirrell sulk, Betty relented and handed him the keys. “No drinking. You go and you come straight back, you hear me?”

He heartily embraced her and dashed out the door. En route his cell phone rang—it was Bobby again.

“Man, I called you last night. I thought we were gonna hook up.”

“Yeah . . . sorry about that. Somethin' came up at the last minute.”

“Well, look . . . you want the stuff or not?”

Tirrell licked his lips and his jaws clenched as if he'd sucked on a lemon.

“T, you there, man?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you ridin' through or what?”

Tirrell blew a cleansing breath. “Naw, I think I'm gonna pass.”

“Man, you bullshittin'.”

“Sorry, Bobby. I gotta go.”

The security gate was up at Tasha's complex and Tirrell drove right through. He saw her car parked in front of the building, and thankfully Darnell's was not. With his eyes shielded behind a dark pair of sunglasses, he climbed the stairs to her apartment. He knocked and waited. He could hear her moving on the other side of the door, but she didn't answer.

“Tasha, please. Open the door. I know you're in there. I'm not drunk,” he teased. “C'mon, baby. Open the door. We need to talk. You heard the reverend this mornin'. Love your neighbor like you love yourself.” That was nowhere near what the pastor preached, but he wasn't really listening.

After what seemed like forever, the door opened. “No gas station flowers?” Tasha cracked.

“Can I come in? Please?”

She stepped away from the door. Tirrell apprehensively entered and closed it behind him.

“You looked really good this mornin'.” He smiled.

She pulled at her bathrobe uncomfortably and pushed her hair away from her eyes. “What do you want?”

“I want to apologize for the way things went down the other night. I'm sorry I ruined your birthday. I wanna make it up to you if you give me another chance.”

“I've given you a million chances, Tirrell. We're not gettin' anywhere. I don't wanna keep ridin' this merry-go-round. I messed up. God knows you messed up. I was tryin' to convince myself that someday . . . I finally woke the hell up and realized that this situation was not gonna get any better. I need what you can't give me, and I don't want to settle anymore.”

Tasha went to the bedroom, and when she returned she had a box of his things he'd left behind.

“Baby, c'mon, don't do this.”

“I should've done it a long time ago.”

“Okay . . . I love you,” he exclaimed. “I love you. Is that what you want me to say?”

“No. Don't you get it? If you don't mean it, saying the words isn't enough. Just take your stuff and go.”

Tirrell sneered and snatched the box. “When did it start?”

“What?”

“You and this other dude. When did it start?”

“There is no
other dude,
Tirrell.”

“Didn't seem that way to me.”

“What difference does it make now?”

“He's the real reason you wanna end this, right?”

“No, Tirrell. You are.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

Tasha sighed. “We met at the gym.”

“The gym? Did you screw here or at his place?”

“That's none of your business.”

“It is my business.”

Tasha turned toward the window and paused before answering. “It was just one time, that's all.”

Tirrell threw the box of his belongings on the floor. He violently yanked Tasha by the arms. She yelped.

“So, you been lyin' to me all this time, huh?”

“Let go,” she said through clenched teeth.

“No, not until we settle this.”

“It is settled. We're done.”

She tried to pull away. He held fast.

“You're hurtin' me.”

“You gotta listen to me.”

“What are you gonna do, Tirrell? Huh?”

He backed her up against the wall. His rage was palpable.

“See, this is why I didn't wanna . . .”

“You didn't wanna what, Tasha?”

“Nothing.”

“You didn't want to what?”

Tears burned hot in her eyes. Her lips trembled. It was time for the truth, no matter how painful.

“I didn't wanna have your baby.”

It was as if he'd been hit in the throat. The shock of what she said ripped through him like knives. He shook her. “What are you talkin' about? Tell me or I swear I'll—”

“You'll what, Tirrell? Hit me? Push me out the window? What?”

He shoved her away and sank down on the sofa. “Is this what you meant when you said you weren't givin' up any more of yourself? Are you pregnant?”

“No,” she whimpered.

He looked up at her. “Were you pregnant?”

She closed her eyes and cried, “You weren't any more ready to bring a baby into this madness than I was.”

He pressed his fingers to his eyes to keep from crying. “What did you do?”

“I found out I was pregnant when I came back from visiting you in January.”

“You got an abortion?”

“I wasn't sure what I was gonna do.”

“Did you get an abortion?”

“I was scared. I made a mistake.”

“Answer me, dammit!”

“Yes!”

“It was just that easy.”

“Hell no, it wasn't easy. But it was what I had to do.”

“You just made the decision all by yourself. You didn't think I needed to know. You didn't think I wanted to have a say?”

“Can you honestly tell me that you would have wanted to have a baby?”

“You didn't give me a chance, Tasha.”

“You were in the Army. You could have been deployed. You could have been killed. I may never have seen you again. You never wrote. You hardly called. What was I supposed to do?”

“You could have told me. You could have let me decide whether I wanted to be a father.” He sprang up and she shrank back. “How can you tell me that you love me after doin' some shit like that? And to top it off you messed around with some other dude.”

“You slept around too.”

“But I never said I loved you, and it's a damn good thing I didn't! How do I know it was even my baby?”

“Because you were the only one I was with when it happened.”

He laughed at the irony. “Damn.”

“Tirrell, I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, you sorry all right.”

“I didn't mean for—”

“You know what, fuck you, Tasha!”

With that he picked up the box of his stuff and stormed out. He jumped in the car and tore out of the parking lot.

Learning that Tasha took it upon herself to have an abortion was not what he needed to hear. If he had second thoughts about getting high they were gone. Betty called him, but he didn't answer. He couldn't talk to her now.

Tirrell circled the block a few times before finding a parking space outside Bobby's Midtown apartment. Once he got inside he discovered why it had been hard to find a parking spot. He could hear the music pumping—vibrating the walls.

“Yo, T. I thought you wasn't comin'.”

“Yeah, so did I.”

Bobby threw his beefy arm around Tirrell's neck—a glass of Patrón sloshed around in his free hand. “C'mon in. Join the party.”

Tirrell offered no resistance. He licked his lips and wiped his mouth with heady anticipation.

“Yo, dude, Crystal is here—somewhere.”

“Crystal?”

“You don't remember Crystal?” He held his hands out from his chest signifying her attributes.

Tirrell recalled the blonde he'd awakened next to when he and Bobby had gone out a few weeks earlier.

“Damn, what happened to your eye?”

“Nothin'.” Tirrell remembered the sunglasses in his shirt pocket and slipped them on.

“You gotta go into the kitchen and fix yourself a drink.” He tapped his index finger on the side of his nose. “And there's plenty of dust.”

Tirrell didn't feel like partying. “Look, Bobby. I just wanna get the stuff and go, a'ight?”

“C'mon, man. You can hang out for a minute.”

“No,” Tirrell insisted. “I'm serious. I can't stay.”

The man scratched his bald pate. “Okay, let's take care of business.”

Tirrell followed Bobby to his bedroom, where a couple of his guests sought privacy. A woman had her blouse off and the man she was with snorted cocaine from her exposed breasts. They were surprised by Bobby's abrupt entrance. The woman grabbed her blouse from the bed to cover herself and the man leapt to his feet, buttoning his shirt and zipping up his pants. Bobby nodded toward the door and they hastily exited the room.

He closed the door and locked it behind them, something the couple had forgotten to do. He then proceeded into a closet. Tirrell tried to see what he was doing. Bobby threw a sharp look over his shoulder and Tirrell turned around to face the opposite direction. This room, like the rest of the apartment, was decorated in such fashion to bring into question exactly what Bobby did to make a living. Selling drugs was the obvious answer, Tirrell surmised; after all, that's why he was there. He took note of the primitive African masks that adorned the walls, examining them as if he were in a museum.

“They're prosperity masks,” Bobby said as he stepped up beside Tirrell. “This one is from Nigeria.”

“Do they work?” Tirrell asked.

“Look around. You tell me.”

Bobby handed a packet to Tirrell, and Tirrell reached in his pocket for money.

“Is this all you want?”

“For now,” Tirrell replied. “Sorry I can't stay. Maybe next time.” Tirrell opened the door and headed for the exit, hoping to avoid Crystal altogether.

It had been a long day. He sat in the car in the driveway of his grandmother's house, staring at the powdered substance in his hand. He was beginning to feel the profound effect of the loss of a baby he didn't know he wanted. Tasha may have unburdened her soul, but this would be yet another weight he'd carry for the rest of his life. He opened the plastic pouch and tapped a bit of cocaine on his closed fist and snorted. A sudden and unexpected wave of emotion gushed forth from the pit of his stomach, causing him to cry out. He could feel the darkness closing in around him. After several minutes, emotionally depleted, he gathered himself and went into the house. He hadn't expected to find Betty still awake.

He quietly opened the door, slipped off his shoes, and tiptoed across the hardwood floor. He then slumped down on the sofa, set his box aside, and laid his head back. A light switched on from the back room.

“I thought I heard you come in,” Betty said.

“Noonie. I thought you'd be asleep.”

“And I thought you'd be back with my car hours ago.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't get stopped or nothin'. It's just that me and Tasha . . .”

“You and Tasha what?”

Tirrell wiped his hand over his face. “It's late. I'm tired and I really don't feel like talkin' about it right now, okay?”

Maternal instinct kicked in when Betty looked at the distress in his eyes. “Tirrell, what happened with Tasha?”

He shook his head and teared up.

Betty looked down at the box next to his feet. “What's all this?”

“Stuff I picked up from Tasha's. It's over. We're done. For good this time.”

Betty moved to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“She killed my baby.”

“What?”

“She was pregnant, and she had an abortion without tellin' me.”

“Oh, Lord no.”

“Yeah, your little
nice
girl turned out not to be so nice after all. And you were worried about me hurtin' her.”

Betty held on to him as he mourned. It was the first time she felt his heart break since his mother died, and it broke hers too.