Читать книгу Two The Hard Way - Travis Hunter - Страница 9

“Nana,” I called out the second I crossed the threshold into our small, two-bedroom apartment.

“Boy, please hush all that fuss,” Nana said with a frown. Beatrice “Nana” Braxton was as beautiful as the day was long. Heavyset, with gray hair that came down to the small of her back and sweet as a peach cobbler. The woman we all called Nana was sitting at her sewing machine making a quilt when she stopped what she was doing to chastise me.

I took a whiff of the air and knew right away that we had company. An old green army jacket was draped over the arm of the sofa. My eyes darted around the room, looking for the one person I could go the rest of my life without seeing. I found her walking out of the bathroom, rubbing her hands on a pair of dirty cargo pants.

“Hey, Romeo,” she said, brushing imaginary lint from an equally dirty denim shirt.

I nodded but didn’t utter a word.

“You can’t speak to your momma?” Nana said, pulling herself to her feet with a grunt. She walked over to me and placed a hand on the small of my back. “Go on and give your momma a hug,” she said with a nudge.

“I spoke,” I said, not moving toward the haggard-looking woman with whom I shared my big brown eyes, pointy nose, and full lips.

“I know I’m old, but I didn’t know I was hard of hearing,” Nana said.

Reluctantly, I walked over to my scraggly-looking mother and gave her a halfhearted hug. The stench coming from her body almost choked the life out of me. She smelled like something had crawled up inside of her and died.

“How you doing, Pearl?” I said. I had abandoned the “Mommy” tag shortly after she abandoned us.

“I’m doing good. I got a job.” She smiled her lie with stained and plaque-caked teeth. “Things are about to change for me, Romeo. But I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

“Um-huh,” I grunted.

Seeing my mother broke my heart all over again. It also brought back memories of how I felt ten years ago when I was teased relentlessly by the neighborhood kids when they saw her storming up and down the street in a drug-induced high, screaming, “Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry. I’ma get you. Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry, I’ma get you.” She would yell this at the top of her lungs, over and over, at her imaginary enemies. The police would arrest her for disorderly conduct or harassment, but a few days later, she would be out of jail and right back at it again with her Dirty Harry rant.

“You look so good,” she said, eyeing me from my head to my toes. She reached out to touch me, but I pulled away. She seemed to think better of it, anyway, and pulled her hand back. I gave her a once-over to let her know that I couldn’t say the same about her.

“I bet you driving those little girls crazy round here. That’s one thing about me—I don’t make no ugly babies. Where’s Kwame?”

I turned to Nana, asking with my eyes how much longer I had to endure this foolishness. She nodded her head that I had been respectful long enough.

“Nana, did you eat anything today?” I asked, turning away from my mother as if she had disappeared.

“Boy, you know ain’t nothing in that icebox. My check didn’t come today—maybe it’ll show up tomorrow—so if you’re hungry, you gonna have to make do with what’s in the cabinets.”

“I asked you if you ate.”

“And I told you ain’t nothing in the icebox. I had some soup.”

I walked back toward my bedroom but kept my eye on my mother. “I got some money. You can go to the grocery store if you feel like it.”

Pearl cleared her throat at the mention of money.

“No, I don’t feel like doing much of anything. I tried to call Dr. James, but her secretary or somebody put me on hold,” Nana said. “I guess she forgot about me, ’cause she sho never came back to the phone. You think you can call her?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, walking back out to the living room. “You said they put you on hold and never came back?”

She fanned away my concern. “Nothing to worry about. Just been feeling tired lately.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Nana was everything to me, and I didn’t know what I would do if something happened to her.

“Momma, you been taking your medication?” Pearl asked only after reading my concern. “Your blood pressure still high?”

“I’m fine.” Nana wrinkled up her nose. “Pearl, why don’t you go in that bathroom and clean yourself up? Take you a shower and let me wash those clothes for you.”

“I can’t. I gotta run. I told you I was working, and I don’t want to be late. I just came by to check in on y’all.” She smiled, showing those pathetic-looking teeth that made me want to throw up.

“Do you have time to brush your teeth?” I asked.

She quickly closed her mouth and looked at the floor. I could see the hurt that I caused written all over her face.

Every time I saw my mother, I couldn’t help but remember the days when she took pride in her appearance and took even more pride in being a mother.

Kwame and I would almost attack her the minute she walked through the door from a hard day of work at the construction site where she labored side by side with men twice her size. We would shove a football, a basketball, or a baseball in her face and beg her to play with us. We thought we had the coolest mom in the world. She played basketball, had run track in high school, and had lots of newspaper articles covering her accomplishments.

Back in those early days, she would never complain about being tired. She would put her tool bag down and come outside and play with her boys. After about an hour with us, she would throw up her hands and head into the house to cook a fabulous meal. Once the streetlights came on, she would expect to hear us walk through the door and wash up for dinner. Then one day, out of the blue, Nana came and picked us up. We moved in with her, and it was as if Pearl had just disappeared. A few months later, she showed up looking like death itself. After that, she would pop up once or twice a year looking worse than she did the last time we saw her. I used to ask Nana all the time what was going on with her, but all she would do was shake her head and fight off the tears, so eventually I stopped asking.

“When will we know something about Kwame?” Nana asked me.

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “What’s he up to?”

I ignored her and turned to Nana. “He said the counselors said his chances are good. So we’ll see. I’m headed up to talk to his lawyer in a few.”

Nana sighed heavily. “My heart can’t take sitting around waiting to see if some stranger who don’t know nothing about nothing is gonna give my boy what should be rightfully his in the first place.”

“Don’t worry about it, Nana,” I said. “He’ll be alright. Here’s some money in case you decide to go to the grocery store.”

“Where you get money from?” she asked with a skeptical look on her face.

“My football coach gave me a few dollars for tutoring his son,” I said, peeling off a twenty-dollar bill from the roll Wicked gave me. I hated lying to Nana, but she didn’t care too much for Wicked or his wicked ways.

“Good for you. You always was a smart boy.” She smiled proudly.

I glanced over and noticed Pearl hungrily eyeing my money. I slid the rest back into my pocket and walked to my bedroom.

I closed the door behind me and looked over at the empty bed by the window. Nana told me I could take it down after my brother was sent off to prison, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I guess I felt if I took it down, I was accepting that he wasn’t coming back for a while.

I hurried out of my warm-up suit with the words TUCKER FOOTBALL stenciled across the front. I went to the closet and pulled out the only suit I owned. I hoped it would still fit. The last time I wore it was over a year ago.

“Why you puttin’ on ya Sunday clothes?” Pearl asked as she eased into my bedroom. “Where are you going?”

“I gotta go and talk to Kwame’s lawyer.”

“Lawyer? What kind of lawyer Kwame got?”

“A criminal lawyer,” I snapped. “He’s in prison.”

“Prison.” Pearl frowned and placed a hand over her heart. “What did he do?”

“Nothing. He’s probably coming home soon,” I said, holding the pants up in front of me. They were a little bit short. I placed them back into the closet. Couldn’t do the Andre 3000 look today. I grabbed another pair of pants and slid into them.

“But,” she said with a sad face, “where is he?”

Part of me wanted to tell her everything. How our lives had been turned upside down when she left, but then I quickly decided against it. She wasn’t in any condition to talk about anything relevant.

“No place.”

“Where is no place? Every place is someplace. Do you want me to go with you?”

“Ah, no, thank you. Besides, we wouldn’t want you to be late for work,” I said, patronizing her.

I could tell she knew I knew she was lying. She also knew I was trying to be hurtful by exposing her, and for some strange reason, I regretted doing that.

“Yeah,” she said, forcing a smile. “You’re right.”

I slid my feet into a pair of shoes that were too tight. “I gotta game tomorrow night. You should try to make it,” I said, attempting to make up for my stab at her.

“Yeah,” she said, walking all the way into my room. She looked around a few times, then plopped her funky butt down on my bed. “That would be nice. Baseball, right?”

I jumped up and almost fell back down because my feet were killing me. I didn’t have another pair of shoes, and I didn’t want to show up at a place of business rocking my Air Forces, so I sucked it up. I maneuvered my feet as best I could in the tight loafers. Didn’t help, but I was going to have to deal with it.

“Nah, football, but I gotta get outta here,” I said. “I wear number one, just in case you make it.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she said, and for a second she reminded me of the mother I used to know. “Hey, Romeo.”

“Yeah,” I said, turning around to face her.

“You think you could…” She paused, seeming to search for the right words.

I knew what was coming next.

“You think you could let me hold a few dollars until I get paid? I get my check on Monday. I just need enough to get me something to eat and bus fare.”

“I got a bus pass you can have, and if you wanna walk with me, I can get you something to eat.”

Her smile turned upside down, and an incredible metamorphosis took place right before my eyes. Her eyes turned a deep bloodshot red and they narrowed into little slits. I could literally see the beast coming out of her.

“Just give me the damn money, boy,” she said in a low growl. Her hands were clenched at her sides.

“No,” I said flatly, although I was amazed at what I saw before me.

She reached for my pocket, and I grabbed her hand.

“I need this money, Romeo,” she said.

“I gotta go,” I said, tossing her hand away from my pockets. “You should get you some help. But if you’re hungry, my offer still stands.”

Her entire mood shifted. It was as if my kindness softened her.

“Romeo, your momma done come a long way, but I still got a long road to travel, you know. I need you to help me out a little bit. Just a few dollars would help me a lot. I’m trying to get it together, but these things take time. Just give me a few dollars. Please,” she begged.

“Sorry, Pearl,” I said, fighting myself to not give her the money. The part of me that refused to contribute to her demise won.

The beast came back. She huffed and puffed and looked like she wanted to blow my head off. She reached for me again, but I grabbed her hands and easily pried them away from me.

“Keep your hands off of me,” I said in a firm voice.

“I’m sorry, son. I…I…I am,” she said, blinking her eyes rapidly as if trying to shake the demons off.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the woman who had comforted me through my childhood aches and pains, and all I could do was shake my head. I left my room and went out to the living room where Nana was sitting on the sofa. I walked over and kissed her on the forehead. When I stood back up, I saw Pearl staring at me.

Something was definitely wrong with her, but I wasn’t qualified enough to figure it out, so I turned away and tried to forget her.

“Nana, don’t let her take anything from my room,” I said.

“I didn’t raise any thieves, Romeo,” Nana chastised me with a sharp look.

“Okay,” I said, my eyes on Pearl, who was standing by my door giving me the evil eye. “I’ll call you on my way back to see what you want to eat.”

“That’s fine,” Nana said, letting me know she was disappointed in me.

Pearl stormed toward us, grabbed her jacket, and walked out of the apartment without saying a word to me or Nana. I thought I saw a tear rolling down her face. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. After all, she was still my mother.