—Grace
I watch the news till the news goes off. I lie down and sit up. Lay down and sit up. I edge to the edge of the bed and half watch a late-night show. I lie back, force my eyes shut, and pray for a dream. Nothing, so I get up and throw on my robe and slink into the kitchen and fix a hot tea. I leave the mug to cool and take out my pack—it’s lasted all week—and light a cig on the stove. It flares orange and shivers in the slice between my fingers. The smoke shakes in me as I sit crossing and uncrossing my legs.
What about my boys? What about all I’ve missed? The one or two birthdays. The umpteen missed games—T-ball, football, basketball. The nights I blew school plays, recitals, parent-teacher conferences.
Thoughts like this can bring it on, and when you feel it building, you make a list of who to call. Of who will offer a haven. Of who will remind you how far you’ve come.
My God. I could call Champ, Pat if he’s out, my sponsor, but there’s a strength to be gained from fighting this urge alone. Get through this and I can escape them all. I smoke another cigarette too close to the brown, stub it out in a bowl, slink into the room, and lie across the bed wishing this time sleep finds me, but instead end up splashing in and out of sleep with these nerves, with my neighbors keeping up noise above my head. I take out the state letter and read it once more, remind myself to keep faith, that this will all work out in the end. It will all work out for us in the end. I drag out of bed and dress and tramp to Big Charles’s corner store. Big Charles is hunkered behind the counter and don’t look happy to see me. Don’t look surprised either. Let me guess, he says, and slants his mouth. So much for the last time being the last time. Look like you well on your way to puffin again like an old broke stove. He pulls my brand without me asking and tosses me a book of matches that he says are on the house. I pay and skitter out with my eyes cut to the floor. I stop and trash the packaging and light up and feel the first sweet pull knock the shake from my hands. I give the second pull time to do its work and flit down Williams for home. The block is wet and clear but for two bodies up ahead hard to make out. This late I should cross the street, I think, but I don’t. Closer, I drop my head and blow a wreath and judge the distance between us by the sound of their voices, the footfalls of a heavy boot. When I’m a step past them, she calls my name and frights me into a dead stop. I turn slow and Dawn and I are face-to-face. Knew I’d see you, she says. Knew it soon as I seen Champ. She steps closer and presses a cold bony cheek against mine and asks why I’m out and what I’ve been up to.
Working, I say. Just working and going to church. There ain’t much time for too much else.
I know that’s right, she says. I seen Michael the other night and he said ya’ll was out together not too long ago. She steps back and swings an arm over the man’s shoulder. This is Jerry, she says. Jerry drives trucks, but he’s off two days and wants to party.
She and I so many times out. The nights she coaxed me from bed while the boys were asleep with a promise, never kept, that I’d be home before they woke. The nights we crouched in a black corner and went rock for rock through every red cent of a state check. This woman was in the room when Champ was born, is the godmother of my baby boy.
What do you do with all of this?
We either are or we aren’t.
Where we go, there we are.
I am new.
I am strong.
Faith without works is dead.
No, thanks, I say. Not for me.
Oh, girl. Did I say? she says. It’s all-expense paid.
Makes me no difference, I say.
Come on, girl, she says. Just like old times, you’ll be back fore you know you was gone.
There’s strength to be earned in facing it alone. But how often can we beat the risk? Here I am—once more. Here we are. It—a tightness in your stomach and taste lying on your tongue—comes on in a flood and you can’t fight the tide.
Next thing, we flit almost single-file, Dawn at the head, Jerry bopping behind us—the brim of his trucker cap bent to a V, his long hair flopping underneath—and me fighting my steps, pills of sweat scrawling my side, something inside me a thunder in my ears. Our makeshift envoy stomping from block to block till we reach a street that’s not a street but a tunnel under arched trees. Dawn stops at a house with a spastic porch light and a hard fast dopehead standing inside a waist-high fence. He calls her name and tips up to the fence.
Dawn loops her arm through mine. These my friends, she says. We trying to see who got it.
Not a problem. Not a problem, he says. Long as you straighten me out on the back end.
Jerry shows the man what, in the wrong place, in a place like this, could get us robbed. He brags we came to party.
Well, say no more, the man says. He tours us a few doors down to a narrow house with every other window boarded and an old car raised on bricks in the yard. We wind a concrete path to a side door, where our guy tells us to let him do the talking and knocks a knock that must be a code. Dawn clasps my hand, but there’s no comfort in it. The boy that answers wears a folded blue bandanna around his head, a dress-long T-shirt, and pants that could fit him and someone else.
Bear in-pocket? our guy says. Brought him some business.
The boy glares and points us down a hall and we scoot past a clique of other boys still in age range for a good whooping, to a half-opened door with a hole punched though it. Our guy pushes inside. There’s a beasty hunk of a man hunkered at a table with a tiny TV playing shadows across his face. Speak, he says, without bothering to look up.
What it is, our guy says. Got some folks lookin to spend. Told em you was the one to spend with.
Dawn gives my hand another crush. It should be a sign to flee but it’s a sign to be still.
Jerry steps forward and tips his trucker cap. Howdy, he says. If you don’t mind, we’d like to start small, and if it’s prime, we’ll spend a whole heap witcha. He yanks a crisp twenty from a fat chain wallet.
What the fuck’s that? Bear says. He stabs his yellow eyes at us one by one. What, you ain’t told them we don’t fuck with no minor licks? he says. He waves a paw. Miss me with this nickel-and-dime shit. Sixteenth and up or no go.
It would be a blessing if Jerry takes offense and we leave. The perfect chance for me to admit I’ve made a mistake, that I’ve got no business here, that I should run home as fast as I can. The problem is, in this life, when you expect it most, no one takes offense enough. Jerry jerks a hundred from his wallet. Not a problem, he says.
We follow our guy downstairs. He tells us not to worry, that as long as we’re spending, it’s all good with Bear. He asks about his pay no sooner than we clear the last step and Jerry unsheathes a pocketknife and slices a generous chunk. Our guy bounds the stairs with his fee stashed in his cheek. This place is like so many others, gloom and dust. A chair with its fourth leg snapped off, a leather love seat ripped to flaps, hole-punched pop cans strewn on a low table. Jerry loads our first bowl, and we spark the blast we’ll chase the rest of the night. Then the circuit: we smoke one pill and another and burn time and who knows what else, and Jerry tramps to see Bear while Dawn and I sit far apart and silent. He buys more dope and returns with a face that, on a night like tonight, you might mistake for love. Jerry wipes his face and shakes his hair and refits his cap. He stands and belts a blues tune, belts two. A boy shuffles to midway on the steps. Ya’ll gone have to bounce with all the bullshit, he says.
Jerry apologizes and the boy disappears upstairs. For a time after, we talk in taps and touches. Jerry goes up and comes down with a face you might mistake—on a night like tonight—for faith. Then more of the same. We pop and sizzle for hours, a day, for what could last a life. We keep on till birds chirp outside and light pipes through the boards covering a busted-out window.
Dawn, poor Dawn, claws the pipe to her chest like the Lamb of God, but we coax it away and pass and pass until the dope is gone and Jerry’s wallet has thinned almost flat. I’m afraid it’s true, he says. What they say about all good things. He turns what’s left in his wallet into a flag and fans it. He plods upstairs a last time.
The end is always so sad, Dawn says. She hacks a cough and worries the cuff of her shirt.
What time is it? I say. What time you think it is?
Why? she says. Who got someplace to be?
I do, I say. Work.
Work will be there, she says. That’s how jobs is, just waiting around for somebody to do them. She stands and throws her arms up: Work, work, work, she says. Jerry floats down with a good-sized sixteenth. He lays it whole on the screen and we burn it down to a shard. We smoke the shard, and when it’s gone Jerry scrapes the resin with the tip of his knife—collects a tiny farewell bump.
That’s it, I say. No more.
Dawn’s face falls down. She turns to me. Maybe not, she says. We could barter.
Barter with what? I say.
With this, she says, and points. I’d do it myself, but I’m on my menstrual and you know how heavy it is. Messy ain’t worth as much.
What? I say. Who? Not me.