MY BABY was always finding something to play with, didn’t seem to matter to her that it wasn’t a toy. Her baby hands slapped up against the fragile wall and it rewarded her with bits of plaster and flecks of paint. White layers on yellow on white. She watched it rain down like it was just for her. I prayed she wouldn’t think to put any of it in her mouth but she started to squat and I forgot all about the blood-stained shirt. Cold water they say will take out anything if you soak it long enough. I was just going to have to wait and see.
“No, no, baby.”
She was a bit on the chubby side, even for two years old, so I always felt bad that we ain’t have money to get her more clothes as she grew. Her dresses came too short and shirts fell too high. It was a good thing she was too young to realize. Even my clothes were faded and outdated. I saw girls my age strutting down the street in bell bottoms and those shirts that barely came to their navels. Tried to imagine myself in one of those outfits, my hair kinky all the way to the end. Ricky said those girls were working their way around to being dikes. Said that girls like me, innocent and all from the South, new to the big city, said we had to be extra careful because they preyed on girls like us. I ain’t tell him that I kinda liked most of the things they said. About doing for yourself and having a voice...yeah sounded real good to me right about then. But I ain’t say anything.
I took Nikki on my lap and we sat on the window sill, looking down on the folks as they passed under the train tracks. I swear Nikki looked at me like I was wearing some scary kinda mask. Like I used to be her mama but had turned into something else. When she got a little excited and started banging on the window I was relieved. As long as she was focused on something else, we were good. Until one of the guys on the ground looked up. We were only on the second floor. He could see us, see me. My hands started to shake and by the time I looked back out the window he was gone. I told myself he didn’t see anything, wasn’t anything to see really. He was probably looking at the baby, not me. The only mirror we had came with the apartment. It was old and foggy, blurring most of what I didn’t want to see anyway. The bruises and swelling. But the cut that ran straight down the middle of my bottom lip, damn near split it in two. Ricky said I ain’t need stitches and I believed him because I didn’t wanna explain it to no doctor. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to leave the apartment until my face went back to normal. But none of that stopped Ricky from having his fun.
I heard him singing before he was even at the door. Ricky was like that. One minute the world was his enemy, the next they were all his friends. He danced through the doorway, bringing at least three inches of snow with him. “Can you dig it? Guess what!” I didn’t even get a chance to answer before...“I got a fight!” He shed everything in a matter of seconds and lifted Nikki above his head, teasing her until she giggled. “Daddy’s got a fight!”
“What kind of fight?”
“The kind that’s gone put me on the map, baby. Ain’t you happy for me? Huh? Baby here’s happy for me. Ain’t you happy for daddy? No more living in this shit hole. We gonna have real food and a real roof over our heads. Pecan, why you ain’t saying anything?”
“You doing all the talking. I thought I’d let the two of you work it out. You hungry?” I knew he was. He was always hungry. So I ain’t need to wait for an answer before heading toward the cabinet that kept all our food.
“Hold on, hold on.”
“I’ll make you something.”
“Hold on. Let me look at you.” Ricky plopped Nikki down on the bed and she scooted around, kicking her feet against the bed covers. He had both hands against my face, kneading my cheeks with his thumbs. “You got such pretty skin. You know that?”
I did. Or at least I knew it the day before. When I looked like me. A piece of his hair was sticking up over the middle of his head and it kinda waved in the draft from the door. Stole my attention for just a second but then I was back to knowing him better than I wanted. Last thing I wanted was Ricky’s hands on me.
“It’ll heal,” he said like it was no big deal.
“I know.”
“You still pretty. Ain’t nobody pretty like my girl. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“You believe me?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Because I got a surprise for you.” Ricky ducked out into the hall and came back with a flat white box stretched across his arms. He held it out level with his chest and refused to give it up until I sat down on the bed. “It’s for the fight,” he said.
I wanted to ask him which fight. The one between me and him or the one he was so excited about. But I ain’t say none of that and he laid it gently on my lap.
“Open it.”
It was a dress. Blue. With a turtleneck and long sleeves. I held it up and could tell right away that it was shorter than he probably thought.
“Put it on.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, yeah, put it on. Come on, baby.”
I took my time undressing, folding everything neatly on the bed, hoping he’d lose interest but those pretty eyes never left my body. A train rushed by and the entire apartment, walls and all, shook with it. The shades were still up since I was looking down on the folks below. Ricky marched over to the window and yanked the string until the shade fell to a good length. I started to relax a little after he did that. The dress zipped in the back so I stepped into it and waited for him to do the honors. He took his time.
“It’s shorter than I thought it was gonna be,” he said.
“All the girls are wearing their skirts here. It ain’t that bad. It’s fashionable.”
“Hmmm. Turn around. Let me see the front.” He could see I ain’t want to, but that just made him impatient. “Come on now. What you think I’ma do? If it don’t fit, I’ll just take it back and get another size.”
It wasn’t that it ain’t fit. I had always been a six, a perfect six. It was that the dress ain’t fit the way I knew he’d want it to.
“Damn. That...that looks real sexy on you.” Ricky scratched his head then wiggled his finger around inside his ear. “They had another one that...that had this V-shaped dip in the front. You know that kinda came together like...this.”
“A V neck?”
“Yeah that makes sense. That what it’s called? Anyway, I thought about that one. Good thing I ain’t get it. That would’ve been too much! I’d be trying to knock this fool out and get all distracted!”
He laughed and I smiled. The cut on my lip stretched thin so I didn’t hold the expression for too long. Just long enough to think that just maybe...things were starting to look up.
We had canned spaghetti for supper. Cold and slimy, it settled in my stomach and I swear I could feel it moving around in there. A few times, my fat lip got caught up in my hunger, standing between me and the noodles. I bit it once and that was all it took for me to lose my appetite. Ricky finished his meal no problem and started in on what was left of mine. Our bed was the supper table. He stretched out and half of him hung over the sides while he scraped the bottom of the can.
“When’s the fight?”
“Two weeks. I got two weeks to get in shape. They say this dude went up against Ali back when he was Clay.”
“Is that bad?”
“I look worried?”
“No.”
“Then n’all it ain’t bad. It just is.”
Sleep wasn’t too far off. I could feel it sneaking up on me. I eased Nikki off so I could slip into my nightgown and caught Ricky giving me that look. It was the second time I’d undressed in only an hour. It was all stuff he’d seen before but still he gave me that look. Like I was selling something he hadn’t had in a long while. I wasn’t. But as soon as the lights went down, he got up...straight up. Ricky never was one for no extras. He was an in-and-out kinda man, not that I knew the difference back then. I just thought that all men climbed on and worked theyselves into a tizzy before becoming sweaty pieces of dead weight. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. He ain’t try to kiss me so that was good. And my body responded the way he wanted so he was happy.
I know because he said, “Pecan, you make me happy. You know that?”
I did. And two weeks later I found out I was pregnant...again. I wanted to be happy about it. I did. But every time I thought about what was growing inside me I kept thinking that it wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be free. But I wasn’t. He had me. And he was growing inside me. Tried to make it go away by just thinking that maybe it was all a mistake. The test got it wrong. But that ain’t last too long since Ricky made me go up to the free clinic to get checked out. Said his trainer told him about how women need to be checked out a lot when they with chile.
He was so happy. That was the first thing he asked about when he came through the door. He wanna know how his baby was doing. He wasn’t worried that we couldn’t barely feed ourselves. Said it was a sign his boxing career was about to jump off. So, he spent longer days at the gym, training day and night for his big fight. My condition seemed to give him twice as much energy but made me stay in bed. By the time he’d get home the pillows would be soaked from my tears. Ricky chalked it up to woman stuff. Said it was because the baby made me delicate and it’d go away just like the morning sickness that never actually came. I just ate, slept, and cried. But he acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. Nikki would look at me all sad like. She wanted to play. She wanted me to talk to her, to do something anything, but all I could do was lie there. I’d lie there, thinking “How’d this happen to me?” I’d close my eyes, squeeze them real tight and try to go back in time. To the day I met Ricky. No, because then I wouldn’t have had Nikki. Back to the day I almost got away. If I had left ten minutes earlier...If I had gone in the other direction...If Ricky had stayed at the gym like he was supposed to...but then other things would come to mind. Money. I had none. Had no place to go, no friends, no family. How was I going to take care of myself let alone a baby...or two? I wasn’t going anywhere. I would’ve ended up right back where I started. Maybe a day, maybe an hour would pass but then I’d come to my senses. That was my life. I could’ve rolled over and died or I could’ve made the best of it. So, I made the best of it.