You Don't Even Know Me (4 page)

“You go where I send you. Or get locked up—which is most likely to happen anyway.”

I slam the door, almost catching Malcolm's tail when he walks in. “I'm not living with her.” I kick hangers out my way. Pick up the lamp she bought at Macy's on sale for a hundred fifty bucks and aim it at the wall. If I could remember one phone number, get to just one of them.

I put it down. Sit back on my bed. Try as hard as I can to remember a number. Only I can't. It wouldn't matter anyway. I owe a few of 'em money. And they want it. Auntie told me she was gonna open an account for me. “Putting five thousand bucks in it for starters.” She wanted me to learn to manage money. Big money. “ 'Cause one day it's all gonna be yours anyhow.”

I pick up the picture frames, wrapping them in between my shorts and shirts. Leaving the one with her and me dressed in cowboy clothes right where it is. But I take the one we took at the mall. It was after church. We was eating someplace special. One of my boys saw us in the window and came in to say hello. Auntie doesn't understand. My boys are not like me. Old people are just old people to them—nothing special. So when she gave him a piece of her mind, like she was packing or something, he told me about it later. Said he would hurt her, and still might. “ 'Cause you gonna get the money anyhow, so why should we wait?”

I think that's why they lent to me. Why they let the debt build up so high. “I'm good for it,” I always said, when I lost at craps.

“Malcolm, come.” I let him get in my bed. Then I lay across it, too, patting him. Remembering how Auntie would come and find me when I stayed out too late, or all night long, even. I don't know how she did it, but she'd show up wherever I was. She'd tell my boys to keep quiet and for me to come home. Not leave when they'd say she'd better get gone or else. She grew up with six brothers. Two got killed in the war. One died of lung cancer and two more was shot on the street. “Bad boys run in our family like cancer,” she'd say to them. “Dying don't scare me, so don't mess with me.”

I couldn't figure out if they was joking or not when they'd say, “Let's just off her. Tie her up. Burn her up. Get all that dough.”

But I would always tell 'em straight up, “No. She my auntie. Y'all nuts?”

Now I'm here wishing I'd listened to them. The money. The house. It would all be mine.

I go to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Tiptoe up the hall and listen for Auntie, who is downstairs frying bacon and praising God. Her bedroom door creaks when I push it open. Perfume and pink are everywhere. I open the closet door slow so the creak don't give me away. The crystal clock on her dresser says I'd better hurry. The first drawer I open says I'm wasting my time. Her jewelry box plays music, so I stay away from it. The drawers with underwear and shirts, stockings and scarves don't even have any change in them.

“Jeffrey!”

She's at the bottom of the stairs, so I can't answer or she'll know where I am.

“You gonna miss that plane if we don't get moving.”

She makes the best bacon. Coffee too. It's like her, I'm thinking, to give me a last meal—like they give prisoners in jail before they kill 'em.

I go into the third bedroom. Once I found a hundred bucks in a drawer. Nothing this time. Her emergency money ain't here. She's gonna make me leave broke. That's like her, too.

“Jeffrey!”

I lean over the railing. “Okay. I'm coming.”

I take a quick shower, then get dressed and take one last look at my room. I never had one so nice; so big. I picked out the furniture. Painted the room myself. Got the most expensive bedding in the store, just about.

I sit, trying to get myself together, wondering why I can't never seem to get it right.

The front door downstairs opens. Auntie's speaking to a woman across the street, the jogger who starts out in the dark and is home before most people have their breakfast. Neighbors here ain't like the ones where I come from. They talk too much. Tell everything they see—me and my boys out front having a little smoke; me and my boys sitting 'round back on my own property drinking a forty, which ain't nobody's business but ours. Next thing I know Auntie knows about it. And I'm on restriction and my boys can't come visit, which is crazy because I am sixteen not six.

Did someone snitch? Did they say I was there with my boys when that thing with that kid went down?

Auntie talks to her about the weather. She asks how her husband's business is going. She mentions how the gardener is killing our trees and how she is going to Savannah in a few weeks—which she never told me.

It don't make sense, but I lay back down underneath the covers, thinking about her. How she always tried to make me something I wasn't. At home, my dad and I drank soda out the can. Auntie said people don't do things like that 'round here. I didn't like it at first, pouring root beer into a glass every time I drank one. But I got used to it. And after a while I didn't even mind not watching television while we ate. Sitting in the dining room was cool too. I never told my boys about the cloth napkins on my lap, or how she once had a friend of hers teach us how to set a proper table and which forks to use. Watching
The Simpsons
and
South Park
was a no-no. And BET was out of the question. Those were Auntie's rules. I followed 'em, too. My mother . . . my mother is different. At her place in Arizona I will be sleeping with three little boys—like before. And trouble will follow me like hot air.

I ask myself again, how did I blow this? What did I do?

The door shuts. Auntie's yelling up the stairs for me to come on. “Now.”

But I'm not leaving. Not going empty-handed; broke. And she won't just give me the money, so . . . “I'm coming,” I say, sitting my suitcases outside the door and locking Malcolm inside my room.

I take my time walking down the steps with them suitcases. Going back up and coming down with more.

“Jeffrey. Don't miss that plane, boy.”

She's out the door and clearing more things from her car. I pick up a biscuit filled with bacon, eggs, and cheese and chew and swallow it quick. I down the glass of strawberry milk Auntie left sitting out for me. Then I pick up a knife. It caught my eye sitting in the silverware drawer with cake icing still stuck to it. I'm thinking I might need it.

She yells from outside for me to get myself moving.

It wasn't there when I first came downstairs. Or maybe it was and I didn't notice. But on my way to the powder room, I see the chain with the medallion she gave me, sitting on the dining room table. It's real gold. She paid seven hundred and sixty bucks for it, on sale.
Great Men Look Like You
, it says on the back.

It's in my right hand. The knife's in my left hand when Auntie walks up behind me. I hold on to my medallion, feeling it dig into my palm. The chain broke three months ago. I asked her to get it fixed a million times. It's like her, to have it all perfect now. She backs up when she sees the knife.

I wait for her to go nuts. She's waiting for me to make a move.

My fingers squeeze the knife hard.

She says I already broke her heart so I might as well stab her in it too.

Auntie's old, but her back's straight. She's scared, I bet, but she'd never show it. So we stand there. Me, Zeus. Her, Hestia—goddess of goddesses. Her finger shakes when she reaches for my lips and wipes crumbs off. Then she pats my cheek and says, “It shoulda worked out.”

She and me was good for each other, most times anyway. Maybe if I ask to stay. Tell her it will be different this time, she might change her mind.

I throw the knife into the corkboard behind the kitchen sink. It sticks. Her fingers find more crumbs. “Auntie . . . can I . . . sta—”

“No more chances,” she tells me. Then she asks why I can't do right. Why don't I want to be good?

She ruins everything with that big mouth of hers.

The next thing I know, I've got suitcases in my hands and I'm walking out the door.

I climb into the backseat. Auntie gets behind the wheel. She looks nervous, talks a little too loud about the weather. “Wait a minute,” she says, getting out the car and going back inside. When she comes back, there's a baseball bat in her hand. She puts the car in reverse and pulls into the street. The sign says stop; she keeps rolling. It might as well say do whatever you want. She flies through two more stop signs anyhow.

We pass the lawns that I mowed and the houses where people gave me iced tea or lemonade to fight the heat. Before we leave the complex, I look at the medallion again.
“Great Men Look Like You.”
I read it out loud and sit back. She smiles, and relaxes a little.

But not for long.

Her eyes bug when she sees my colors. My eyes dare her to say something, anything, 'cause this is just the way things are. Doing right comes out wrong no matter where I go. And grown-ups get just as tired as I do of trying to make things work. But when I get to wherever I'm going, I don't have to be all by myself. They'll be there. Not my father. Not her. Them—my crew.

I finish tying up my head, checking out my colors in her mirror, laughing at the look on her face. Then I sit back, feeling taller, stronger than I have all morning.

The chain breaks when I try to put it around my neck. The medallion hits my knee, then jumps under her seat, like it wants to get away from me too. “Fake,” I say, sending the chain after it; leaning back and wondering where to next.

In case somebody shoots me,

In case someone does me in,

Here's what you should know about me.

I am a loyal, dependable friend.

I eat ice cream with a fork.

I love bacon, but I'm allergic to pork.

Cookies with sprinkles are my favorite treat.

I know it's gross, but I like to smell my own feet.

In sixth grade I made all A's,

By eighth grade I was more into babes.

There's a secret only my mother knows.

Every Mother's Day I polish her toes.

There are lots of things I plan to do.

Spend a summer working at the Louvre,

Take my sister to New York on the train,

Convince my dad to ride in an airplane,

Show my brother how to have a good time
playing chess instead of drinking wine.

Only some things end sooner than you want,

Like your first kiss and fourth-period lunch.

So if I die before I'm done,

Don't let 'em forget

While I was here, I had me some fun.

My ride

My boys

My game

My girl

My world.

HE STOPS, SO I STOP.

Sweat is running down the left side of his face. The front of his shirt is soaked and we've only walked two blocks. I hold on to his arm. It's hot, like the sun is trapped inside him. “You okay?”

He's leaning on a parking meter. It looks so small standing beside him. Like a celery stick next to a watermelon.

A car stops at the light. The window rolls down.

“They staring,” I say to my father.

“I know.”

“I hate that.”

“Let's keep walking,” he says, not moving. “They ignorant, that's all.”

Everyone in that car starts laughing. Before I know it, a stone has left my hand and is headed for the guy who's asking my dad if he wants his empty pizza box— “Because I can see you don't waste a thing when you eat.”

The stone hits the car. Dad tries to stop me from picking up more. “Harvey, quit it.”

It's too late. The stone hit the hood and the windshield, too. The driver is out of his car, asking if I wanna get hurt this morning. “ 'Cause the last person who touched my ride is six feet under.”

“Stop making fun of my father.”

Pops apologizes to the driver, then says, “An eleven-and-a-half-year-old shrimp who loves his daddy. What can I do?” He's got his arm over my shoulder, his sweaty rolls sticking to my neck. Then he smiles. “No harm done, right?”

The guy doesn't mind holding up traffic while he rubs the top of his car with a dry cloth. “I'm just saying . . . you better tell him . . . somebody gonna hurt him . . . and I don't mind it being me.”

We start walking, with me staring back over my shoulder at that guy, just in case. We don't get far, only a few steps. “Now, Harvey, you've got . . . you can't. . . . Lord,” Pops, says, trying to catch his breath, “it sure is hot.”

“Sure is.”

He pats his stomach with both hands. I lean on the black Jeep parked at the curb. He holds on to another meter. Pops weighs so much—five-twenty last time he hit the scale—that even walking twenty steps can take his breath away. We couldn't find a parking space close to the store because of all the construction, and everyone out here shopping for back-to-school stuff. Today will be doubly worse for me, because my friends will all be out here. They know Dad is fat. But they don't hardly ever see him walking, except from the door to the front porch, or from the living room to the kitchen. So when they do see him out, their eyes bug. Their words are respectful, but you can see what they think on their faces:
Dag, your pops is big. Man, what a whopper. Wow, Harvey, glad he ain't my dad.

We walk half a block. The back of his shirt is wet now too. “We can go back home. The car's not that far away,” I say.

He wipes his neck and forehead dry. “All summer we been sacrificing for these, right?” He pats his pocket, the one with the coupon in it. The sneakers are on sale. Everyone's gonna have 'em when school starts in two weeks. Me too, now. They still cost a hundred eighty bucks, but Dad said he'd do what he had to do to make sure I got 'em. And he did. He didn't buy no Pepsi all summer. Hardly ever put the air conditioner on either. And he did something I figured no man would ever do—take in laundry. “Ain't no Laundromat around here. People take a jitney or bus to get to one. Then they pay three-fifty to wash, and almost that to dry.” He was saving them money, and making some too.

We have an extra-large washer and dryer because of him. He bought 'em two years ago when he gained so much he couldn't leave the house. Then he went on a diet with Oprah and lost weight. Then he gained seventy-five pounds back. He can't go to work no more. And disability doesn't pay enough. I told him not to do other people's clothes. He was already writing out Miss Naomi's bills— she's blind. And he was already tutoring the Simons' kids in math and teaching Jonquil Miller how to play piano. But laundry? Naw. Only after I got into six fights over kids teasing me about it, it didn't bother me that much. I won most of the time. And they shut up, especially after I started telling people about Ray Ray's drawers always having brown streaks up the middle; Parole's mom's bras being so yellow that bleach can't clean 'em; and Washington's pop's shirts being smeared with pink lipstick, on the collar and on his undershirts, too.

Dad's walking and sweating again. Me too. “Want something to drink?” I'm looking at the blue water cooler out front of Bernie's Bistro. Bottles stick up out of crushed ice, sweaty cold. “I'll pay,” I tell Dad. Before he can say anything, I'm pulling out three bucks and screwing off the tops and watching him lean against a car and gulp down the water, still half frozen in the bottle. A lady cuts her eyes at him, 'cause the left side of the car is leaning close to the ground.

He smacks his lips. “Now that's good. Ready?”

“Ready.”

He's limping by the time we get to the end of the block. It's that left foot, I bet. The one that had pressure sores on it all last year, big sores that ooze pus. I think they're back. He looks embarrassed. “Walking with me is like walking to Mars, huh? Take you forever to get where you going.”

“It's too hot to move fast.” I point across the street to a guy on Rollerblades flying past everyone. “Even if I had on skates, I'd be walking.” I pull out a handkerchief and wipe my face, then hand it to him—his own is too wet to use now. “Even skating makes you sweat in this weather.”

Pops wipes my forehead. “Skates are next. I haven't forgot what I promised you.”

“It's okay. School's starting soon; snow will be coming next. Can't skate on that.” I walk backward, closing one eye to block the sun, keeping the other on him.

Dixon Street isn't steep, but you'd think it was if you heard my father breathing. I said we didn't have to come today. Besides the heat, it's Saturday—the worst day to be on the avenue. But he said he was coming even if I didn't. That's how he is. Sometimes my friends ask if I like being adopted. Being adopted by him is the best, I tell them. Only I worry that something might happen to him one day.

When my dad asks me for the time, I tell him I don't know. It'll just upset him, knowing how long we've been at this. It'll be an hour and a half by the time we get there. Anyhow, what can he do? Lose weight? It just comes back like shingles. The lady next door has 'em, and she says they never go away for good.

“I'm sorry.” He leans on me this time, looking a little sick. “Shouldn'ta tried to do all this walking today.” Sweat runs over his forehead and into his eyes. He wipes it off his wet ears too. I pull up the back of his shirt.

“Don't . . . !”

I fan to give him a breeze.

“Boy, you something,” he says, reaching back and patting my arm. “That sure feels good.”

We take a few more steps and he frowns, closes his eyes tight, biting his bottom lip.

“Is it your legs, Dad?” They cramp sometimes. I rub them for him at night. Wrap 'em in hot rags, too. “I'll take care of 'em when we get back home.”

“Man, oh man. I'll be glad when I'm your size again.” He laughs, rubbing the back of my head. “Maybe we should get something to eat. What do you say?”

We see a guy at Leo's Pizzeria throwing dough in the air and catching it. Pans of pizza sit in the window— chicken, pepperoni, sausage, veggie, pineapple. Pops wants to go in. Not me. He doesn't need it. But I
am
hungry, and he needs to rest. Before I say okay, two women start to pass by us. The closest one sniffs, then leans his way and sniffs again. Dad pretends not to notice, but I do. And I know it's not the pizza she's sniffing. It happens whenever we go out—someone's just got to know if he stinks, 'cause naturally all fat people stink, don't they?

“Ready, Dad?”

He smiles at them. “Hey, ladies.”

I hate when he speaks to people who are rude to him.

“Hot day, isn't it?”

They give him fake smiles. And the one in the orange dress moves closer to her friend, like fat is contagious. “Too hot,” she says, sniffing then stopping in the middle of the pavement, fanning herself.

I can't hit girls or women. That's a house rule. But I wish I could, because sometimes they deserve it, especially when it comes to Pops.

Pops pats his left leg. I know what that means. He's gotta sit down or he'll fall down. “We have to go,” I say, almost pushing the one in purple out the way.

She looks down her nose at me and takes another whiff. “We're trying to find Eileen's. A hairdresser shop.”

She turns her head and sneezes. “Sinuses.” She blows into a Kleenex. “Pollen,” she and my dad both say. Then she's blowing, rubbing her nose like someone put itching power up it.

Sometimes people surprise me. She looked just the type to stick her nose in his business and tell him about a diet or some pill she heard works really well on super fat people. Dad and I say we don't know nothing about Eileen's. He jokes about his hair needing to be done, though. He doesn't have any, so the women both laugh.

“Ready?” He asks me this time.

“Sure.”

Some doorways are small, like the one at Leo's. So if you are too big, you have to kind of walk in a little sideways. I look straight ahead when he does that, because people are staring. They always do.

Pops takes the first seat he gets. Naturally it's made for a skinny guy. It's like me trying to sit on the tip of a pencil. I jump up. “I'ma ask them where the big chairs are.”

Pops says the seat's just fine. “An incentive for me to lose weight.”

I sit down and ask what he wants to eat. The guy looks over at Dad when I order two slices of pepperoni, thin crust. “That's it? You sure?”

“And two drinks—extra large.”

No one would believe it, but my pops takes forever to eat. So we are sitting there for twenty-five minutes. His one slice turns into two, though. Mine turns into three. “After the shoes, what next?” he asks, wiping sauce off of my chin.

I say we can go back home, but I don't really mean it. We hardly ever get to the avenue anymore. It's too hard on my pops. He doesn't even drive all that much—the steering wheel hurts his stomach. So I take the bus to the grocery store. And I drop off bill payments sometimes, too. I don't mind. Pops and I do stuff like that for each other.

“We're out,” he says, patting his foot. “Let's stay out.”

“There it is!”

We both stop and stare. The Sneaker People is about twelve stores up. People are walking in like the store is giving away free food with each pair of sneakers. “You got the coupon, right?”

Pops nods. It's the second time I asked him that in the last few minutes. “Hey.” He stops again, to catch is breath, I figure. “Isn't that Willie over there?”

Willie crosses the street, yelling my name at the same time. When he gets to us, he and I talk about the sneakers we're getting. We want the same kind. “Let's go. They're buying 'em all up. Jabril texted me.” He's walking too fast. And he wants me to hurry up. I can't. I got Pops.

“Go ahead,” Dad says.

“Naw. That's okay.”

“I didn't even wait for my mother,” Willie says, turning back to us. “It's taking her too long to park.”

Pops says it again. “Go on. I'm right behind you.”

People are walking out the store with two and three boxes. And Willie won't wait. “See y'all,” he says, taking off.

I look at Pops. “I won't try 'em on until you get there,” I say. And then I take off after Willie.

So many sneakers. That's all I think when I walk into the store. So many people, too. I look around for a seat for Pops. “Here they are.” Willie puts one in my hand. And for a while that's all I can think about—the sneakers everybody wants. The most expensive ones I've ever owned.

The salesmen are busy. We can't get their attention. Willie checks out more sneakers. I hold on to the one I got. Three boys from our school come in. I look at the door for Pops. But then we get to talking, trying on sunglasses and checking out sweatshirts. The salesman finally asks if he can help us. And Willie hands him three more sneakers he'd like to try on. I ask for them in my size, too. It's nice being able to afford things.

Maybe it's the fat woman who walks into the store and everyone staring at her like she shouldn't have. Or maybe it's the sneakers. Willie kept saying he looked better in his. I know what Pops would have said to me:

“Those sneakers were made for your feet.”

“I'll be back,” I tell Willie.

He knows why I have to go. But he says he wouldn't if he was me. “Your pops is probably eating something somewhere.”

Our friends laugh when he says that.

I leave the store, walking at first. Running when I don't see my dad. He's not where I left him. Not sitting at the table with the umbrella over it, or on the green bench in front of the jeans store, either. I look up the street. Down the block. I even go in the opposite direction. Then I'm back where I left him, standing on the curb—thinking the worst.