Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
“Where are you, at the gym?” I asked Crystal as I haphazardly cradled the phone between my face and my shoulder.
“Naw, girl, I could not get with that waiting-on-line-for-a-machine shit, so I just bought me a treadmill. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. Well, I called to invite you over for a girls’ thing tonight. I meant to mention it at work yesterday, but I got so busy I forgot to. I know you don’t have any hot plans. Or do you?”
“Maybe. Let me just go get my planner out and see,” I said as I snatched up the TV Guide and loudly flipped through the pages.
“Oh dear, it looks like I was supposed to have dinner with Denzel Washington this evening. Well, it would be the third time this week. I guess I could cancel for you,” I said in my best Elizabeth Taylor voice.
“Yeah, well, you do that.” Crystal laughed. “Let’s say about eight.”
“That should be fine.”
“Um, do you know where Little Eric is?”
“He said he was going to play basketball, why?”
“Where?”
“The court right downstairs.”
“Really?”
“Why?”
“Well, you ain’t heard it from me, but I saw him headed over to the park.”
“What park?”
“Central Park.”
“When was this?” I asked, already feeling my good mood changing for the worse.
“Just a few minutes before I called. In fact, seeing him is what reminded me to call you.”
“Was he by himself?”
“No, he had some little light-skinned chick with him who had on a pair of shorts that was so small her butt cheeks was playing peek-a-boo.”
I sucked air and bit down hard on the inside of my cheeks.
“Geneva?”
“His ass was supposed to be keeping an eye on the damn laundry!” I screamed. “I gotta go,” I barked and slammed the phone down.
—
I grabbed my keys off the kitchen table. Too angry to wait for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time down to the basement of the tenement where the laundry room was.
It was Saturday, the big wash and dry day, and the laundry room stayed packed until at least four or five in the afternoon.
If you had sense, you didn’t leave your clothes, not even for a minute, because you could return and find them removed from the washer or the dryer and thrown onto the floor or, worse yet, gone.
I walked into the laundry room and came face-to-face with at least twenty other women who practically mirrored myself. Rags tied around their heads, breasts swaying lazily beneath the yellowed and thin material of the old clothes they wore.
I nodded at the women I knew and then began my search, which took me to five dryers before I stumbled upon Little Eric’s football jerseys, jeans, and T-shirts in the sixth one.
Now I just had to find my sheets, towels, and washcloths.
I rounded the corner and was ready to inspect the second line of dryers when I spotted blue ducks and yellow daffodils lying in the middle of the floor in a wet heap.
Someone had tossed my shit out of the washing machine and onto the floor!
“Ten, nine, eight—” I counted.
Doing laundry on Saturday was like going to war.
I propped my hands on my hips and heard the music from Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in my ears.
“Seven, six, five—”
I snatched at a black Hefty bag that rested on top of one of the washing machines. It wasn’t mine, but in the laundry room, all was fair in washing and drying.
I slowly picked up my linens and noticed that one or more people had actually trampled across my sheets. How foul is that?
My rage flared.
“Four, three, two, one.”
By the time I got back to my apartment, I’d counted backward from ten at least five times.
I have something for Little Eric’s sorry ass, I thought as I went to the clothesline that extended from the kitchen window to the bathroom window and hung the filthiest sheet, pillowcase, towel, and washcloth on the line.
Still not satisfied, still boiling with anger, I stormed back out of the apartment, determined to find my son and commit murder.
—
I marched up 90th Street and past Crystal’s building, across Central Park West Drive, and straight into the park.
Forgetting that I had my Saturday morning cleaning clothes on, I charged ahead, oblivious to the heat and the swinging of my large breasts that were practically visible through the thin material of my T-shirt.
After about ten minutes, the sun beaming on my neck, I moved to the grassy, tree-lined edges along the concrete pathway.
The heat made my scalp feel as if a million fleas were attacking it, and I became even angrier.
My mama was right; children drive you crazy.
I gave some people evil looks and yelled, “And what?” when they stared too long. I knew I looked homeless.
I almost laughed in spite of my anger when I imagined what it was they must have been seeing.
“This is what teenagers turn you into!” I screamed and made a face at an Asian woman struggling to get out of my path.
After about twenty minutes, I was out of breath and dehydrated, and so I staggered into the children’s park and sat as close to the sprinkler as I could without actually stepping into it.
Even though I really, really wanted to. I wiped at my sweat, thinking that it must be the hottest spring on record.
Nearby, a mother tended to her daughter’s bruised knee, lovingly placing a Band-Aid over the child’s scrape.
I smiled, reminiscing on those carefree, innocent days when my biggest worry with Little Eric was a bruised knee, runny nose, or fever. Those times seemed very far away now.
The woman sat back, sensed me staring, and turned toward me, and the smile she was wearing froze before cracking and falling away. She could not scoot her behind across the bench fast enough before snatching her daughter’s hand and declaring, “Come on, Chelsea. It’s time to go.”
Fuck you too, I thought as I watched them rush off.
Suddenly I felt beaten and was reminded just how hard my life was. Shit, I didn’t have a chance to grow up and here I was trying to raise a man.
If I had money, things would be different. I’d be living in a house in the suburbs somewhere and my son wouldn’t have to go to the building laundry because we’d have our own washer and dryer right inside the house!
I was doing the best I could, but it was times like this that I didn’t think my best was good enough.
I slowly raised myself off the bench and started toward home, and suddenly I was reminded that I had to have been doing a halfway decent job, because my baby ain’t ever been profiled on any news station’s breaking bulletin—knock on wood.
The sound of a bouncing basketball snatched my attention; suddenly reenergized, I turned around and followed the sound eagerly, like a hound dog sniffing out a fox.
I prayed for my son as I rounded the fence and headed toward the swarm of young black men. I prayed that he wasn’t there, because if he was, I could already picture the headline:
Mother Pummels Son to Death with Basketball in Fit of Rage over Abandoned Laundry
It wasn’t him. Just a whole bunch of young black males who could have been him and probably had mamas looking much like myself out hunting them down too.
Back at the apartment door, I heard the last few rings of the telephone, but whoever it was would have to call back, because I couldn’t get the key in the lock good.
Walking back into the apartment was like entering a sauna. The afternoon sun radiated through the windows, and I could swear I saw smoke rising off the coffee table.
The linens I’d hung on the line were already dry, and I retrieved them and started toward Eric’s room.
“I got something for his trifling ass,” I muttered as I fitted the filthy sheet onto Eric’s bed. “Since he couldn’t see fit to do what I wanted”—I shoved his pillow into the dirty case—“then he can sleep on this filth!” I laughed wickedly. “Let’s see how he likes this!”
I smelled to high heaven, and so went into my room and stripped out of my clothes.
On the way to the bathroom, I caught sight of my body in my bureau mirror.
“Ugh!” I said as I took a long gander at my flabby stomach and cellulite-packed thighs.
I moaned and quickly streaked to the bathroom to further disgust myself by stepping on the scale.
The needle shook at two hundred and thirty pounds.
“Why, why, why!” I cried and pinched at the tire around my waist. “Go away!” I screamed. “Abracadabra, be gone!” I closed my eyes and demanded. But when I opened them again, the tire was still there.
“Shit,” I muttered, “it never works.”