White Lines (44 page)

Ingrid shook her head, wishing she had known how inevitable it was
for Leo’s promise to stay clean to come crashing down. “Leo came home, and went right back to his old ways. People saw him around the other buildings, looking a mess, spaced out. He wouldn’t do his dirt in our building, because it would get right back to me. So he went to the other buildings to get his shit. I knew about it. I just kept on going. Just kept trying to keep it all together. For you.”

Born listened to his mother. “How did you handle it?”

Ingrid shook her head, dismayed. “I didn’t handle it at all. I ignored it. When Leo did come around, I would pretend I didn’t know. I would act like everything was okay.” Born watched his mother pause, appearing to fight back tears. “I was so impressed by your father, Marquis. He taught me so much. I learned more from him than from anybody else in my lifetime. He showed me how to read people, how to see through bullshit. I felt like he was the smartest man I had ever met, like he was invincible. I knew him so well that I could complete his sentences. I loved him. I watched him. So when he started slipping, I saw it right away. He thought he had his addiction under control, kept telling me it was alright. It was no big deal. And I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe that he would pull himself together and get right back on track. He was still making money. But he was smoking it now. After a while, Leo was no longer respected like he used to be. But by then, I didn’t have the heart to put him out, or to leave him. It got to the point where I really didn’t care anymore. I was past all that.” She stopped talking. Thoughts ran through her mind about how she would have done things differently if she could have. How she wished that she could have those days back once more, so that she could pull her husband back from the clutches of his addiction. Deep inside Ingrid wished she could have reached Leo before it was too late.

Born remembered his father being strung out. He remembered the point in time when Leo began to lose the respect of all the folks who once had bowed to him.

“We never really talked about all this before,” Ingrid continued. “I guess it was so much a part of our life that we didn’t address it at the time.” She looked at her son, thought about the twists and turns his life
had undergone after being exposed to all the activities within the four walls they called home. She wanted to help him deal with the devastating news he’d just found out about the woman he loved.

“You need to talk to her, Marquis. You need to find her some help—”

“Nah, Ma. She has to go! I can’t be with her for one more night. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want her in my house—”

“You can’t put the child out in the street!”

“Why not? She knew! She knew about Pop and how I felt about him using it. She swore she wouldn’t use that shit again. Yo, she
stole
from me. She stood there and watched me beat a nigga’s ass for stealing, when she knew all along it was her that stole from me!”

Ingrid shook her head, knowing there’s no low too low for a crack addict.

Born shook his head, and stared at the floor. “I can’t trust her. I got niggas laughing at me.” Born sat and shook his head, in internal agony. He sat like that for a long while, and Ingrid searched for the right words to comfort him.

She sighed, bringing Born out of his reverie, and back to their conversation. “Ma, I’m so mad at her that if I see her, I might hurt her.”

Ingrid nodded. She understood. But she also understood something else that her son seemed to be missing. “I know you’re angry with Jada,” Ingrid said. “But I think a big part of what you’re feeling right now is anger toward your father that you never let go of.” After she said it, her words hung in the air, resounding with truth.

Born shrugged his shoulders, as if to dismiss what she was saying. But as silence enveloped them, he thought about it, and realized that there might be some logic in Ingrid’s statement. He looked at her, and he realized she was right. Born had never been good at talking about his emotions. Even now, with his own mother and the eyes of the world averted, he got choked up at the thought of discussing what he had kept bottled up for so long. Looking at his mother’s calm eyes and warm expression, he was comforted. And he said, “I got a lot of questions for him, Ma. You know what I’m saying?”

Ingrid nodded, and Born pressed on. “I just been thinking about him
a lot. Thinking about how he died, and all that. I miss him.” Born looked away from his mother. “But I’m still a little mad at him, too.” Having said that, he felt like a weight was lifted off of him for the first time. He wondered what it would feel like to unburden everything. “Word. I think a big part of me feels like he let us down. He gave up too easy. Gangstas don’t go out like that.”

Ingrid understood this. She knew that Born had been carrying around more pain and resentment than he should. Knowing that he was a proud young man, who liked to believe that he had everything under control, she had allowed him to try and shoulder that burden for as long as he was able. Now, she realized, he was ready to let her help him. She smiled, happy he was letting her do that. “Tell me what you haven’t been saying,” she said. “You gotta let this go, once and for all.”

Born looked at his mother for a long time, unsure where to begin. Her round brown face was as familiar to him as his own voice. She had always been the yin to his father’s yang, the other half of the whole. And now, just as it had always been, all they had was each other.

He began to talk to his mother—about everything. He told her how hurt he’d been watching his father kill himself with drugs. He talked about the pain he was feeling after finding out that Jada had succumbed to the same weakness. They talked for hours that afternoon. Hours that would normally have been spent going about the daily routine of life were instead spent putting a salve on old wounds that had been left on their own for too long. But perhaps most surprising to Born was the fact that he found himself getting a little choked up when some memories came flooding back. Seeing her son still too tough to cry broke her heart into a thousand pieces. When Leo died, Born had never shed a tear—not at the funeral, or in the days and months following it. He had found it impossible to cry for his dad. And even now, he didn’t want to cry. But Ingrid and her son talked some more. They reminisced about the old times—both good and bad. And sitting there in his father’s chair, talking to his favorite girl, Born cried for Leo Graham at last. And he faced the fact that, despite all the many roles he played in the lives of so many people, in reality, at his core Born was still just a scared little boy who missed his father.

Ingrid watched Born, understanding just what he was feeling. And she wished there was some way she could take all his pain away. She saw that her son’s heart was broken, and knew he was finished with Jada. When they finished talking, and pulled themselves together, she tried to say something more in Jada’s defense, but Born wouldn’t hear it. He felt like he had been made to look like a clown, and he didn’t like it. He wouldn’t stand for it. Ingrid wasn’t defending Jada’s actions. But she knew that Born loved her. And she knew that Jada needed help. But looking at Born, she realized that he also needed help. Her heart broke for him, and she sighed. “What can I do to help you, Marquis?”

Born looked at his mother, and felt a little twinge of hope at last. She listened as he told her what he had in mind.

After talking with Ingrid for a little while longer, he left her house, knowing that he wasn’t going home. He didn’t want to see Jada. Not now, that’s for sure. Born walked through the apartment complex, headed for his truck, parked in the lot. He felt like a whole ton had been lifted from his shoulders since his conversation with his mother. He missed Leo Graham, missed the man that he was before the drugs got ahold of him.

He climbed into his ride and sat back, the keys still in his hand and not in the ignition. He sat like that for a long time, once again thinking of his father and the days he’d smoked his life away. He started his car, and drove off down Richmond Terrace. His father’s voice was as clear as a bell in his ears:
“Do what you can, young man,
“Leo used to always tell his son. It was a phrase that Born had never been able to forget, something his father always used to tell him. But he felt that Leo had never done all that he could have to be the father that Born had needed, the father that he still needed now. Born was sick of feeling the disappointment, sick of holding in his anger. Without thinking about it, he drove toward the expressway, and headed for the cemetery where Leo had been interred years prior. It was time for him to have a conversation with his father.

He pulled up outside of Frederick Douglass cemetery, and parked his car. The weather was unusually warm for a late March afternoon. The
sky was clear, and a warm breeze blew, gently. He felt the sun on his face, and enjoyed it as he walked through the winding pathways of the cemetery toward Leo’s final resting place. He looked around at some of the names on the other tombstones. He quickly calculated some of the ages. A woman, thirty-nine years old. A man, sixty-four. Another woman, fifty-two. A young boy, seventeen. Born wondered how many of these people had been drug addicts. How many of their families had suffered the way his had?

He approached Leo’s grave slowly, staring at his father’s name etched for eternity in cold stone. Coming here was always emotional for him. When he stood before his father’s grave, he was never Born anymore. He was Marquis Graham, a young man at his father’s side, wanting to grow up and be just like him. Whenever he came here, he was a child once more, standing in front of his parent, with so many unanswered questions.

He walked closer and stood there, directly in front of where his father lay. He read the inscription bearing the name Leonard Albert Graham and the words
Free at last.
How fitting, Born thought. He hoped his father was indeed free.

He closed his eyes and pictured his dad’s face. He could see it clearly still. His dark hair and mustache. His smiling eyes and his keen nose. Born squatted and looked at the words again. Damn, he missed him. “Hey, Pop.” He looked around and made sure no one was within earshot. “It’s been a while since I came out here to talk to you. That’s ‘cause it’s always so hard when I come to see you.” Born looked away briefly, and continued.

“But I got some things to say. I’m feeling a kinda way about how you left us. I’m not talking about when you died, either. You left us long before that. I’m talking about that cocaine, you know what I’m sayin’? That’s what made you leave. I gotta tell you I’m mad at you for that, man.”

Born paused, and thought about how Leo went from riches to rags, and how he had left Born’s mother to pick up the pieces. “You bailed out on us. You left us, and you knew how much we depended on you. You
used to be
that nigga;
the one who everybody respected. That dude with the fly cars and all the money. The man that all the ladies fell in love with. The one that never took a loss, never got took. The infamous Leo Graham. That’s who you were. But that cocaine got the best of you, Pop. That shit made you different. It changed you. And that ain’t how it was supposed to be. You were supposed to be an old man right now talking to your son about how to survive. How to deal with having his heart broken. Nigga, you was supposed to be here giving me advice, helping me figure out what to do next. But you
airit
here. You quit, Pop.” Born had tears falling down his face, but he no longer looked around to see if anyone saw him. He didn’t care.

“You quit. I told you that at your funeral. I meant that shit, too. Gangstas don’t go out like that, man. They don’t quit. You was supposed to fight that shit! You was supposed to beat that shit. But it beat you. And what about your wife? What about me?” Born wiped his eyes then, and bit his lower lip. “What about me?” Born cursed his father for what Leo had instilled in him. Leo had given him the blueprint for being a hustler, for being on top of his game. But he had not taught Born how to be a man. He had never taught him how to deal with a broken heart, the loss of a best friend, or the sting of humiliation. All he’d taught him was the game. But now Leo was nowhere around to guide Born out of it. And more than anything, that was what Born wanted at that moment. He wanted out. He wanted to let go of all the pain, the paranoia, the drama, the disappointment. But he had no idea how to do that.

He took a deep breath. Then another. He shook his head, overwhelmed by the flood of emotions. “I never got over that shit, Pop. I never really forgave you for leaving me all alone when I was too young to stand on my own. Ma needed you. She needed you more than you thought she did. She couldn’t show me how to be a man. That was your job. But you was so far gone that you couldn’t even see what was going on. I remember being a young shorty in the hood, and I was so glad that you were my dad. Everybody knew you. Everybody loved you. And you were
my
dad. That shit made me so proud. And then I remember years later seeing you and feeling embarrassed that you were my father.”

Born’s face was twisted into a grimace at the memory. “I remember being ashamed of you.” He remembered feeling so let down. That feeling had never completely gone away. “But I
always
loved you, Pop. I always loved you. When I was a little boy, and you were the man, I loved you. And even when you was just another fiend standing on the corner, I loved you. I love you now, still, Pop.”

A light rain had suddenly begun to fall, and Born didn’t care. He took it as a sign that maybe his father could hear him somehow. Maybe he was shedding tears from heaven. The entire day had been sunny and warm, without a cloud in the sky. And suddenly it had begun to rain, just as he was telling his father about his pain, and about his anger toward him. Born wondered if Leo was trying to tell his son that he was sorry, sending the rain as some sort of apology. Born remained there beside his father’s grave, the raindrops feeling like they were washing away his pain. He reached forward, and touched the tombstone. His fingertips brushed across the letters in his father’s name. Born kissed his fingers, and touched the tombstone once more. He cried for his father, and for the loss of his own childhood, and for the loss of a woman he loved more than she’d ever know—all of these things Born had lost to a drug he had never even used. He stood up, brushed off his jeans, and put his fitted cap back on his head. Born stuck his hands in the pocket of his jeans, and stared down at his father’s grave, with the rain falling harder now. “But you still quit.” He said it, and turned and walked back to his car. He felt better now that he had finally said the things to his father that he had been waiting to say.