Chapter Eleven
Eleven
It was Saturday morning, barely eight o’clock, and I was up. Little Eric was in the living room, watching MTV, and Jay-Z was so loud, I thought that if I opened my eyes he would be rapping right over me.
I pulled the pillow over my head and told myself I was not really going to get up, walk out into the living room, and crack my child over his head with the remote.
“Eric!” I yelled at the top of my lungs so loud that my ears began to hurt.
He didn’t answer. I knew he heard me but ignored me just the same. “Eric!” I yelled again as I sat up in bed and placed my feet on the cold linoleum floor.
The sun was bright and there were already children in the playground below my window. The weather report called for temperatures in the high eighties. I sighed and looked at the broken air conditioner sitting in the window across the room.
I stood up and stretched. I had so much to do. The clothes needed to be washed, the kitchen floor needed to be scrubbed and waxed, and the refrigerator was desperately in need of a good cleaning-out and defrosting.
But none of that could happen until I’d had a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and my Saturday morning free of MTV. So I charged like a bull out of my bedroom and into the living room, where I stood glaring at Eric’s neck, hoping he would feel the darts my eyes were throwing there. But he was oblivious.
“Eric!”
My son jumped and whipped his head around on his long thick neck and grinned. “Hey, Mom.”
I released a heavy sigh before I spoke again. “Turn that mess down. Don’t you have any consideration?” I asked, knowing full well he didn’t.
“Sorry,” he said, and the volume on the television dropped two levels.
“Is that room of yours clean?” I asked as I walked into the kitchen.
There was a bowl sitting on the card table that served as a dining table. The bowl was half filled with cloudy milk, where four lone Cheerios floated at the top.
I snatched up bowl and all and deposited it into the sink.
“I asked a question, boy.”
He mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said I’m going to get to it in a minute.”
I gritted my teeth and felt for my pack of cigarettes on top of the refrigerator. Finding them, I flipped the top open and peered in.
I knew I had eight cigarettes left in the pack before I went to sleep; now there were five.
“You been stealing my cigarettes?”
“No, Mother.”
I knew he had. I wasn’t crazy. I loved him, but I’d sure been counting the days until I put his narrow ass on the bus to be rid of him for the summer.
I hurriedly slipped a cigarette between my lips. Leaning over the stove, I lit it on the burner, singeing my eyelashes. “Shit,” I mumbled as I batted my eyes with my hands.
I wanted a cup of coffee so bad, but I had none in the house. I didn’t have much of anything in the house. I would have to go food shopping today too.
I smoked for a while as I looked around the apartment and wondered why I didn’t hear the tornado that had come through and wrecked my place last night.
With that thought, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Geneva, it’s Nadine.”
I twisted my face up and thought that I really needed to pay the extra five dollars a month for caller ID.
“Oh, hello, Nadine,” I barely responded through gritted teeth.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for days now,” she sang in her birdlike soprano.
“Yeah, I been real busy,” I said and took a long drag of my cigarette.
“Well, you haven’t been to a meeting in almost a month.”
Like I didn’t know that. “Yeah, it’s been about that long.”
“Well, when do you think you’ll be coming back?”
“I really couldn’t say right now.”
“Well, in order for the program to work, you have to work the program, Geneva.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Have you at least been keeping up with the point system?”
“Uh-huh,” I said as I used my index finger to remove a piece of tobacco from the tip of my tongue.
“Well, that’s good.” Nadine sounded relieved. “So, can I look for you at the afternoon meeting today?”
“Sure.” She could look for me, but I wouldn’t be there.
“Oh, goody! Can’t wait to see you, Geneva!”
“Same here,” I said and hung up the phone.
I was going to have to change my number.
I looked down at my gut hanging over the waistband of the boxer shorts I slept in and was immediately angry and disgusted with myself.
“Turn that mess off and help me clean this place up,” I yelled at Eric as I snubbed the cigarette out into the green glass ashtray.
Well, I had to take it out on someone, didn’t I?
Eric just kept bopping his head and snapping his fingers, so I jumped up and marched over to the coffee table and grabbed the remote and clicked the television off.
“Get up and start cleaning, boy!”
Eric made a face and slowly lifted himself from the couch. “Dang. When I get rich, I’m gonna have a maid to do all of this!”
“And I want the bathroom spotless!” I yelled at his back as I began to remove the week’s debris from the coffee table.
In no time, Eric was back on the couch, surfing through channels.
I looked at him like he had four heads. “What are you doing?”
“What? I straightened up the room.”
“You did, that quick?” I laughed and looked at the closed door of the bedroom.
“Yep,” he spouted and tried to look around me.
“What about the bathroom?”
“I just cleaned it last week. How dirty could it really be?”
I felt the blood boiling in my head, and my heart began to run a race in my chest.
“Get your behind up and clean that goddamn bathroom before I put these size-tens up your ass!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Eric gave me a bored look and got up and headed toward the bathroom. He mumbled as he went and I had to remind him who was boss and say, “Don’t get your teeth knocked out, boy!”
The phone rang before I could say much more.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Geneva.” A voice came across the phone line in disconnected syllables.
“H-hello?”
“It’s Noah.”
“Noah?”
“The one and only.”
“Hey, how was your trip?”
“Very interesting,” he said.
“Where are you now?” I asked as I swung the refrigerator door open to see what was inside. Nothing.
“I’m on my way home from the airport. How’s Little Eric? I got his messages about his upcoming performance. Did I miss it? I’m all turned around with the dates.”
“No, you didn’t miss it. He’s going to be so thrilled that you’ll be able to be there.”
Noah sighed. “Oh, good. So, catch me up. What did I miss?”
“Oh, plenty!” I laughed, eased down into one of the kitchen chairs, and prepared myself to dish the dirt. “Chevy borrowed money from Crystal to get a boob job.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
“Noah, I am dead serious!”
“Ms.Drama is always up to her tricks.”
“She sure is.”
“Well, I guess I’ll get to see her new additions up close and personal when I get home.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“I meant to call her while I was in London, but you know Zhan had me tied up for the entire time.”
“Literally?” I laughed.
“Only some of the time!”
“Well, you wouldn’t have been able to reach her anyway.”
“Don’t tell me her phone is cut off again.”
“Yep.”
“That child is so trifling!”
“But yet you still trust her with your home and your fish. I see you still haven’t learned your lesson.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember the last time you went away and left her in charge? Didn’t she almost burn down the house?”
“Yeah, but, see, I went on after that and got that sprinkler system installed.”
“That damn Chevy, always costing us money.” I laughed and stood up again to look in the refrigerator.
“Baby, wasn’t nothing in there the first time you looked,” Noah said.
“What? How do you know I’m looking in the fridge?”
“Well, you ain’t chomping in my ear, so either you looking for something to chomp on or there ain’t nothing there!”
“Fuck you, Noah.”
“Wouldn’t you love to.”
We laughed until the signal went dead.