Tutored (8 page)

“I have a job. I’m a male babysitter.”

“No, I mean a paying job. One that earns a steady income, so that you don’t have to think about knocking little old ladies over the head for their purses.”

He shrugged. “Who the hell would hire me? I don’t even have a GED.”

Wendy looked Hakiam dead in the eye and said, “This is the United States of America. Trust me, Hakiam, McDonald’s is hiring.”

E
ven McDonald’s wanted references. So did Burger King, KFC, and Long John Silver’s. Hakiam found that out the hard way as he traipsed down Chestnut Street and up Market Street, then back down JFK Boulevard. He’d started out pretty early, eleven a.m. (early for him), amid the idled traffic and a smattering of shoppers. The city had a pulse, with its growling buses and honking horns, but every application he took was dead on arrival. They all wanted him to supply the same information, and there was no space on the form to explain that he didn’t have a last place worked because he had never worked anywhere formal, and he didn’t have anyone to vouch for his character, and he wasn’t in any organization that he’d like to mention. So besides his name, Leesa’s address, and the fact that he had finished grade school, he didn’t have any selling points.

Still, he hit up place after place in a time-murdering exercise called going through the motions.

He collected about seven applications, but he ended up crumpling them all up and tossing them to the wind. He was convinced that all that was going to happen if he did take the time and hand them back in was that he’d be discarded, dumped like shit off a shovel, or worse, left in the bottom of a stack of applications that just got taller and taller.

Why even try?

Hakiam had learned long ago that compassion and understanding were on the list of endangered species. The more you needed something, the less likely you were to get it. So who wanted a job anyway? It was just another hassle. Hakiam would hate having a boss and superiors. They would always check on him. They would come see what he was doing, then they’d walk back. That was what passed for supervision.

If he had a job, he’d hate never quite knowing what he could or couldn’t get away with. Should he turn to the window? Should he risk getting lost in thought? Could he take anything from the company refrigerator? Could he take home a stapler or two? Could he borrow that PC for the weekend?

The last place he swung by was a mom-and-pop-style dollar store that actually had a
HELP WANTED
sign in the window.

It was a cluttered, not-too-clean-looking place. Hakiam had to inch his way in sideways so as not to knock down anything. He asked the lady behind the counter, who had teeth like a beaver, what hours she needed to be covered. She called over her shoulder to
someone in the back, “Henry, somebody’s out here asking about the job.”

The man grunted from behind the curtain, “We don’t got any openings. Tell him to hit the road.”

His words hovered then settled on Hakiam like dust in the room.

Well, if that doesn’t beat all
. What kind of rejection was that? At least the man could come out and look Hakiam over before he overlooked him.

Hakiam turned and left with less care than he’d come in with. A box of greeting cards fell on the floor, but he kept moving.

Back outside, he passed more stores, but this go-round he didn’t inquire within.

Life just kept stacking up against him. He should have stayed in bed. Nobody was ever going to give him a break, and they had the nerve to call this the City of Brotherly Love. Where was the softness? Where was the compassion? He hated the class distinctions that he saw in Center City. He burned with envy for every rich person who strolled by him. They had their gall, especially the women with their good jobs and their flared trousers with the side zip, their cropped jackets with mandarin collars. Each one of them pecked at the pain, pushing him into deeper anger. There was Hakiam, near-broke, in his bobo sneakers.

Now he was really boxed into a corner. He couldn’t steal. He couldn’t get a job. What else was there to life?

There was nothing to do but go home to a home that really wasn’t his home. Go to his cousin’s home and
stare at the bumpy warts of ill-plastered walls and the mold spots on the ceiling. That big-eyed girl from the tutoring center was wrong. Real wrong. This wasn’t the land of opportunity or milk and honey or gold-paved streets. For him, anywhere he went in America would be the third world.

“Y
ou lied,” he told her as he plopped himself into the chair next to her.

“I did not,” she said, barely looking up from her tutoring log. She penciled in the notation:
One student present
.

“Nobody hired me.”

She tilted her head to the side. “That doesn’t mean I lied.”

“You said it would be easy.”

“No, I didn’t,” she told him. “Now you’re lying.”

“You don’t know nothing about nothing.”

She grinned. “That shows what you know. That sentence you just used was a double negative, so you essentially said ‘I do know something about something’!”

“Well, you don’t.”

“I was just trying to help you.”

He frowned. “Some help.”

“All right, then, I won’t help. Stay miserable and unemployed and uneducated.”

“I tried—”

“Try harder,” she interrupted. “Did you try the Gallery?”

“The what?”

“That mall that’s downtown by Independence Hall. It has about a hundred stores. Did you try your luck there?”

“I didn’t try it at all.”

“Well,” she said in a leading way.

“Well,” he mimicked her.

“Well,” she continued, not fazed by his taunting. “I suggest you apply there. Try one of the restaurants.”

“Restaurants?”

“I mean, burger joints, pretzel stands, any place where they serve food. You’ll never go hungry if you work at a place that serves food.”

He met her eyes, and his lip curled.

She sneered back at him.

They shared a few more moments of silence.

He hitched his chin at her. “You want to go out?”

“Out?” she asked.

“Yeah, out.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to go out for coffee again?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “You want to go out for coffee again?”

Wendy’s interior voice always jibed with her exterior one. “No,” she said.

He still stared her down. “Feel like coming over my place?”

“You have a place?”

“The place I’m staying at.”

“What’s there?” she asked.

“Me,” he said, and when that got no reaction from her, he added, “And Malikia.”

Wendy cocked her head to the side and asked, “What’s a Malikia?”

“The little girl I watch.”

“What’s her name again?”

“Malikia,” he repeated.

Wendy had never heard that name before, and she mulled it over in her mind. She wondered if it was culturally based or purely fabricated. Moreover, she considered its derivatives. Could it ever be turned into a nickname? “Hi, Mal” or “Good afternoon, Liki.” She supposed in a pinch it would go something like this: “Hey there, Maliky.”

“You want to see her?” he asked.

Wendy stood up. “I’d love to.”

H
akiam felt a pang of guilt using a three-month-old as bait to gain back Wendy’s interest. But then, he thought, there were worse things he could do. Plus, he wanted to chart her movements once he got her into the ghetto.

Call it a bad joke, but he always thought it was funny to see people out of their natural element. Wendy, as a fish tossed into a different pond, might faint at the smell of garbage or the sight of the urine stains in the corners of the hallways. Or she could trip trying to maneuver past the broken tiles of the flooring. As they hiked up to the third floor, he accidentally kicked a large chunk of peeling gray paint and left a thick black scuff mark in its place. It blended in with the others.

Leesa opened the door. She had on clumsy makeup, a cheap blouse, and spandex bicycle pants. Her chin dropped to the floor when she saw Wendy.

“Hello,” Wendy said, holding out her hand. “You must be Hakiam’s cousin.”

Leesa up-and-downed Wendy and left her extended hand unshaken.

Hakiam ushered Wendy past Leesa into the living room, where Malikia was. Wendy pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer out of her tote bag, murmuring something about guarding against RSV. She rubbed some of the liquid on, then asked to hold the baby. When Leesa shrugged, Wendy stretched out her arms and scooped up the baby.

Malikia took to her magically. It was like a Madonna-and-child reunion. Wendy managed to do more “Itsy Bitsy Spider’s” and “Hey, Diddle Diddle’s” with Malikia than the little girl had heard in her whole life. Malikia cooed and moved her arms in a herky-jerky motion. Then she snuggled in close to Wendy.

Pretty soon, Hakiam got to feeling like the T in a BLT sandwich: the last of the three. Malikia and Wendy threatened to squeeze him out altogether with their bonding exercises.

He moved to the edge of the room and stood as an onlooker, like his cousin. Leesa clicked her tongue and told Hakiam, “Malikia don’t know none of that nursery-rhyme junk. All that’s doing is going in one ear and out the other.”

Hakiam clucked back at her, “Then it ain’t doing no harm.”

Leesa picked up her cherry Slurpee and took a gulp.
“She’s pretty skinny, Hakiam. I didn’t know you liked them like that.”

“Who said I liked her?” he asked.

Leesa said, “Nobody.”

Hakiam nudged her. “You could offer her something.”

“Like what? This is my Slurpee.”

“We got water, don’t we?”

“
We
ain’t got nothing.
I
got some water.”

“Well, you gonna stand around being stingy with it? She gave your daughter a onesie. Be a hostess, damnit.”

Leesa’s face hardened, but she did make a move toward Wendy.

“You want some water?” she asked her.

Wendy was smiling when she said, “No thanks. I’m fine.” Then she went back to playing with Malikia.

Hakiam gave Wendy props for staying in the hood past sundown. The evening sky had gone from streaked pink to pitch-black by the time they left the apartment.

“What was that thing you said about ESP?” he asked as he walked her to her car.

“You mean RSV. It’s a respiratory tract infection that can be serious in infants born prematurely. It sends thousands of children under two to the hospital each year.”

She went on to say that babies like Malikia should always be in a sterile environment and avoid crowds. He thought about the parties Leesa had and wondered if maybe the kid was just naturally immune to this RSV
crap. He had certainly never thought to wash his hands before touching Malikia. He always did that afterward.

“You really know your stuff,” he told her.

“I’ve got a lot to learn in order to be a doctor. Even after that there’s a lot that’s unknowable. Medicine’s an art, not a science.”

As she reached for the door, he thought,
Okay, it’s sink or swim. Now is the time to do it. So start like you mean to finish, Hakiam
.

The streetlights shone down on them, and Leesa, from up above, peered out of a dingy window.

A couple of fellas on the corner twisted around to see.

Here goes nothing
. His hand searched up her back, then back down the curve of her spine, and he went in for a landing.

At first, she pushed him away.

He smirked at that. She was a quick one, always with her guard up.

Their eyes met and then she seemed to better understand his intentions. Her defenses melted.

This time she initiated it. She moved her lips closer to his.

They kissed for a few minutes, pressing their bodies together.

“Y
ou went where?” was her dad’s predictable response.

“Fifty-first and Ruby, Dad, and before you MapQuest it, yes, that is square in the slums.”

“You’re not in the least bit amusing, young lady. I know very well where that is. What did you go there for?”

Wendy told him that she had gone to see the young man she’d been tutoring.

He pointed a stiff finger at her and said, “You’re making house calls now? Don’t you ever, ever go there again.”

It was something Wendy, as the perennial good daughter, had thought she’d never hear. She was actually forbidden to do something! This was cause for celebration, or at the very least a diary entry.

What followed was all new to Wendy. Though her dad had always done a lot of spying on her, this time there was actually substance and not just shadows he was
chasing. That Wednesday, he hovered by the doorway of her room after he’d heard her phone go off.

“Is that Erin?” he asked, entering from the hallway.

“Is she the only person I know?” Wendy answered his question with a question.

“It better not be that boy,” he warned.

“I’ve got to go, talk to you later,” Wendy told Hakiam, and tried to hang up.

Her father grabbed the phone, saying, “Hello, hello!”

“He’s gone, Dad.”

“It was him!”

“Dad, you are a genius of detection.”

“This has got to stop, Wendy.”

“What has got to stop? Me having harmless conversations on the telephone?”

“Yes. I’m canceling this phone.”

Wendy sprang to her feet. “What?”

“You don’t need it.”

“I don’t need to communicate with the outside world, Dad?”

“Exactly!” he answered.

“Fine!”

“Wonderful!” he said even louder.

“
Fantastic!
” she screamed.

With that, her dad exited the room. She thought she was rid of him for the night, but he came back wagging his finger at her. “Let me tell you something else, young lady. Martin Luther King was a great man, but he basically died for nothing when you look at this current crop. His dream of black and white children holding hands—”

“Why are you giving a recitation on black history?”

He continued, “Who in his right mind would want to live next to those people, let alone hold hands with them?”