The Boy in the Black Suit (16 page)

Daisy's Friggin' Fried Chicken, for Matty

Daisy's Sweet-ass Sautéed Spinach, for Matty Because He Needs His Vegetables

Daisy's Dirty Shrimp and Grits, for Matty

Daisy's Carolina BBQ, for Matty

Daisy's Pineapple Upside-down, Right-side Up Cake, for Matty (Relax, It's Just a Pound Cake, Son)

And on and on. I flipped page after page, reading her little notes to me, smiling to myself, a part of me aware that this was the first time seeing her handwriting didn't crush me. The first time I'd even wanted to cook anything. Did I feel sad? A little. But I also felt, I don't know, different. Like something about it all was kinda calming.

Ten minutes had passed and the smell of baking cookies had started to sneak from the oven door and float around the kitchen. It's a smell I've smelled a million times, but it never gets old. The oven dinged. I opened the door, and there they were, thirty-two perfect little pieces of chocolatey heaven. At that point, I knew for sure this was a better idea than just buying a bag of cookies from the store. Like my mom used to say, food is better when it's cooked
with love. Well, these were cooked with like, but
for
Love, so . . . pretty close. I slid the tray out, took a bite, and at that moment,
yeow
! Burned my tongue. But hadn't burned the cookies. I felt like Mom and I had done all this together.

I also hoped she was right about, y'know, cooking being a way to get girls.

I glanced at the clock—shoot! I needed to get dressed.
What to wear, what to wear.
I knew I couldn't wear my suit. That just would've been ridiculous, showing up in an all-black suit—the same black suit she met me in. The one, in fact, I wore to her grandmother's funeral. Not good. But when you wear a suit every single day, it's hard to
not
wear one. Like Mr. Ray. He was dressed up on a day off, not because he wanted to be, but because he probably doesn't know how to not be. As a matter of fact, I've never seen him in jeans. I bet he doesn't even own none.

I jumped in the shower, because even though I love the smell of baking cookies, I didn't want to smell like them. Reeking of sugar might've been a turn-off. After I washed up I looked through my closet at clothes I hadn't thought about in three months. I pulled out a few different things, colorful Polo shirts, blue jeans, khakis, sweaters, but I didn't feel comfortable in none of it. So I went with black jeans, a black T-shirt, a black jean jacket, and black sneakers. I looked in the mirror. Simple and comfortable, and close enough to my everyday uniform.

Then I noticed sharp lines running through my shirt, making it look more like paper than cotton. My jeans were stiff, and creased in weird places. And for the second time that day, I could
hear my mom loud and clear:
Take pride in the way you present yourself,
followed up by,
And ain't no pride in looking like a tumbleweed. Go run some heat over them clothes and knock them wrinkles out before people think I ain't trained you
.

Yeah. Mom was right, as usual. I was a mess. So I started over, this time ironing till everything was smooth and flat. I looked in the mirror again. No wrinkles. I looked ten times better. Present­able and trained.

I packed up the cookies, grabbed my coat, and headed out.

2:05. I texted Lovey.

On my way

Then I texted Chris.

On my way

Just as soon as I locked my front door, my phone buzzed.

1 TEXT MESSAGE

It was from Chris.

Good luck champ lol

Then another message came through.

1 TEXT MESSAGE

This time from Lovey.

Good
;)
I live on the first floor.

The ten blocks seemed like they lasted forever. I was walking fast enough to not be late, but slow enough so that I wouldn't start sweating. I didn't want to get there and not be fresh, especially after all that ironing. I also thought about how showing up with a plastic bodega bag didn't exactly match my whole look, so I trashed it and just carried the cookies in a Ziploc.

815 Greene. A three-floor brownstone, pretty much like every other house in the neighborhood. A seven-step stoop, an old-school buzzer box, and Christmas lights in one of the neighbor's windows that I could tell had been there all year long.

Lovey said she lived on the first floor, which is always buzzer number two, because buzzer number one would be the ground floor, basement apartment. At least that's what I hoped.

I pushed the button. It made that weird noise that sounded like someone being electrocuted.

“Hello?” Love's voice came crackling through the speaker, loud but sweet.

“Hey, it's Matt.”

“Okay. Be right down.”

Then, I got nervous. I was good all the way up to that moment, but once I knew the date was actually going down, robot face started to appear. My stomach got tight, and my palms started feeling slimy as I held the bag of cookies with both hands as if I were presenting a cake.

I heard her apartment door open inside. Then the footsteps to the front door. Then the turning and clicking of the locks and the wiggling of the doorknob.

“Hey,” she said with a big smile, swinging the door open. She was dressed in jeans, a sweater, and a light jacket. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her face was perfect, and I don't even think she was wearing makeup. She leaned toward me for a hug, wrapping one arm around me lightly. I did the same. The cookies pressed up against her stomach.

“What's this?”

“Well,” I started, nervous. “I didn't want to come empty-handed.”

Her eyes grew bright. “That's sweet.”

Instantly, I thanked God for Mr. Ray.

I didn't even get a chance to tell her they were homemade before she added, “The kids are gonna love these.”

Robot-mutant-infant-animal-face.

“Kids? You . . . you got kids?” My voice shot up to soprano.

“Ha! Boy, please. Picture that. I'm talking about the kids down at the shelter. That's where we going.”

I was confused. “Oh, I thought . . .” I started to say but got too embarrassed to finish.

“You thought what?” she asked. Then it came to her. “Oh, you thought we were eating here?” She started laughing, but not in a mean way. “I told you, you might be a killer. I mean, now you know where I live, but I ain't about to let you in!” she joked. “I'm kidding, I'm kidding. It's just that my grandma cared a lot about those folks in that shelter, especially the kids. I just feel like I need to do this. Y'know, keep her tradition alive. Plus, they're expecting me to handle the newspeople this year.”

“Newspeople?”

“Yeah. Every year, the news comes down and does a spot about what Thanksgiving is all about. They film a little bit, ask a few questions, and air it later tonight. It's no big deal, but it's cool.”

“Sounds like it,” I heard myself say, but my brain was thinking,
Shelter? Newspeople?

“Grams used to always talk to them, but now that she's gone, I guess it's on me,” she explained. I'm not sure if I looked disappointed—I can never tell—because Lovey added quickly, “But I totally get it, if you don't wanna come.”

“No, I'm down,” I said, recovering. I wasn't going to blow this. “I never been to a shelter, anyway. Something new.”

I wasn't mad about not having a private dinner with Lovey in her house. Just disappointed because I had worked myself up so much to be ready for it. But at the end of the day I was actually kind of happy we weren't eating there. Being around other people—even though they were homeless people—made it less like a date, less serious, which for me was a good thing, because I really didn't know what I was going to do or say once we got alone, other than offer her homemade chocolate chip cookies and hope she didn't say she didn't like them.

“Cool.” She took the cookies and tried to place them in a plastic bag on the floor in the hallway. Actually, there were a bunch of plastic bags. “Help me with these.”

She handed me a couple, filled with what I guessed was food wrapped in aluminum foil like big silver boulders. Whoa! They weighed a ton. We shuffled down the sidewalk to the bus stop. I did my best to pretend like the bags weren't heavy. But they were heavy as hell. Like, heavy enough to pull my shoulders right out the sockets.

On the way Love talked about how her grandma had turned the shelter around.

“You know how it is. People judge people. We all do it. But
homeless people get it the worst, 'cause they smell bad sometimes, and some of them have issues, but Grams treated them all like people,” she explained. “That's the difference with this place. You go to some shelters and they serve food but won't actually say a word to the people living there. Or they'll let them sleep there for a night but talk to them any kind of way.” She stopped for a second to rest, swapping bags from one hand to the other. I was so glad we took a break, because it felt like my arms were literally going to fall off. She flexed her fingers, trying to get the feeling back, I guessed, because I was doing the same thing. “But Grams got to know them. I mean, these people are like family to me. I've been around them basically my whole life. Honestly, if the shelter could pay me, I would've kicked the Bucket a long time ago,” she said, talking about Cluck Bucket.

“What? You would leave your big-time job in the hood?” I teased, and hoped she got it. The worst thing that could happen was to flop a joke right now. Luckily, she started laughing.

“Yep. I'd let go of all the glitz and glamour of chicken grease to help people,” she said, dramatic. Awesome.

Before I knew it, we were there.
A HELPING HAND SHELTER
was painted on a wooden sign that was nailed to the door. The sign was old, and a lot of the paint had chipped and cracked. There were a few guys outside all huddled up. One was holding a handful of cigarette butts while the others sifted through, picking out the ones that still had a little tobacco left in them.

“Hey, boys,” Lovey said.

They all seemed excited to see her.

“Miss Lady.” A tip of the hat.

“Lovey, how you, sugar?” A nod.

And so on.

I pulled the door open and waited for Lovey to walk in. Mom said being a gentleman works.

“Just make sure those things don't spoil your appetite. It's Thanksgiving!” Lovey was saying to the men, like somebody's mama. Those guys were old enough to be her grandfathers, but they showed her respect. Then she went inside the building, thanking me for holding the door.

I expected the inside of a homeless shelter to look like the inside of a prison, even though I had never been inside either. But you know how prisons are on
TV
, all metal and gray and filled with angry people eating slop and sleeping on concrete slabs. It's embarrassing to say that, but it's true. I thought I was going to be walking into death's waiting room. But it wasn't like that all. The walls weren't gray. They were a light purple, with pictures of smiling people painted on them. Two girls with jump ropes, a boy doing a handstand, a man with long arms and legs spinning a basketball on his finger, a woman standing next to a younger girl stirring a pot.

“That's me and Grams,” Lovey said, catching me staring at the mural. “We had the kids paint pictures of people who inspired them. Pretty sweet, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said. She was gazing at the mural like it was her first time seeing it.

“Let me give you the tour.”

We walked down a soft pink hallway and popped into different bright-colored rooms. In most of them there wasn't much to see. A desk here, a file cabinet there. Then we got to the brightest room, the children's room.

“Here's all my kids,” Lovey joked.

I laughed at how shocked I was when I thought she was saying she had kids, back at her house.

“It's crazy how good you look after having”—I did a quick count—“eleven munchkins.”

Now Lovey busted out laughing and knocked her elbow against my arm.

We watched as the children acted like children, jumping around, laughing at everything, screaming at nothing. Being kids. I was amazed. It was almost like they didn't know they were in a shelter.

“Miss Lovey!” A little cinnamon girl with a million braids in her hair came up and wrapped her arms around Lovey's legs.

“Hi, Danielle.” She rubbed the little girl's back. “You being good?”

Danielle pulled away to look in Lovey's face. “Yes.” Then she looked over at me. “This your boyfriend?”

Lovey bugged her eyes and squatted down to look Danielle in the face. “What you know about boyfriends?” she teased, tickling the little girl under her arms. Danielle fell to her knees giggling. I just watched and smiled, happy to hear laughter, and happy Lovey didn't say no.

From there we hit the last spot on the tour, the dining room,
which was the biggest room of them all. It pretty much looked like my high-school cafeteria, with the floor that looked like a checker­board and the wobbly brown tables. There were a bunch of men and women in there, mopping and setting up chairs.

“This is where we're gonna eat,” Lovey said, walking through the room with her arms spread wide. “And over here's the kitchen.”

There were a few more volunteers washing out pots and pans and getting trays ready. We set all the bags down and Lovey introduced me to everyone. A tall, lanky, white guy named Carl. A short, Spanish woman (with the softest hands ever!) named Rita. An old lady named Maggie who reminded me of my sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Clayton.

“This is his first time, y'all,” she said, calling me out.

We unpacked all the stuff she brought, which really was leftover fried chicken and mashed potatoes from her grandmother's funeral. I noticed that there was tons of other food lined up on the counters, including a couple of already cooked turkeys, a few hams, and a whole bunch of pies and cakes. Lovey put the cookies on the counter.