Chapter 14 #2
He drops his hand, shrugging in that disinterested way that older people do. “Depends on what the other man look like.”
Teddy Pendergrass’ crooning grows louder as if he knows about that queasy feeling sitting in the bottom of my stomach.
“You ain’t gon’ tell me what the man look like?” Senior utters.
“He’s big—bigger than Rich. Not his muscles, but he weighs more.”
I know Senior knows Wendell. He has to because he lives in Beatrice’s house, but I keep Wendell’s name buried in the back of my throat for some reason.
He shrugs. “He might get his ass whooped…and he might not.”
I gulp.
“You alright?” he asks.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Ain’t nothing to be scared of around here. Somebody’ll pick him up if he loses. You in a house full of fighters. Beatrice loves fighters.”
“I see.” I snort to myself, trying to singe the memories of her scraping her fingers across the pendant on Rich’s chest out of my head.
Senior taps his fingers against the arm of his wheelchair to the beat floating into his room.
“You like this song?” I ask.
“Shit, ain’t got a choice but to like it.” He chuckles. “That’s Calvin playing it. He stopped coming out of his room a few weeks ago. His ole’ lady left him.”
“Left him? Like broke up with him?”
“Yup. Said she needed a man who had all his wits about him. She ain’t wanna be visiting her man in no old folks’ home. She said she was too young for that. Ain’t that some shit?”
I hunch my shoulders up. “I guess it depends on how you look at the situation. Having a sick spouse is hard.”
“Tuh. This life is hard. That’s why when them young fightin niggas come asking me for advice on how to make it easier, I tell ‘em the smartest thing they can do is not promise a lifetime to a woman unless they got one that can stomach violence, sickness and death. Most of ‘em don’t, and if they do, I always ask, can they stomach the fact that their woman will have to experience those atrocities for the sake of love?”
His words mirror Aunt Faye’s in a way that makes goosebumps prickle my arms—the violence, sickness, and death.
He scoffs. “We ain’t the type of men you bring home to meet mama and daddy.”
“You talk about love like it’s some mundane emotion.
Maybe it’s not the fact that Calvin’s wife can’t stomach sickness and death.
Maybe she loves him so much she just needs some time away for a bit, and she’ll come back around.
It’s hard to see the person you love in pain. Love is powerful and complicated.”
He belts out a loud cackle. “Boy, I bet them teachers at them schools loved you. Cute as a button and idealistic.”
My face heats.
“Calvin should be sleep by now. Rich usually turns the music off for him and leave him a lil’ roach to smoke for when he wakes up in the morning, even though Beatrice throws a fit about it.”
I smile grimly, glancing around his room. “So what else does Rich do around here?”
He points up at the wall. “Count the days for me.”
I follow his trembling pointer finger to his Harley-Davidson calendar tacked to the wall where there’s a perfect slash through each day that I didn’t notice before.
“What are you counting down to?”
He rests his hand under his chin. “Shit, I don’t know—for my gal to come sit up in here with me and talk my ear off about how she gon’ fix this problem she thinks I got, for Arnez to stop fucking around and crying over that ex-boyfriend of hers, for Pup or Smit to swing by. I’m just here, counting and waiting.”
I bite my lip. “That’s a terrible habit.”
“Yeah, that’s what Pup says.”
It’s Mama.
She’s talking to me through people again. Why else would Rich’s dad admit to having the same bad habit I had in New York, and why else would I have heard her name outside Yesenia’s cubicle the day I left there?
“I guess counting the days makes you feel in control of something,” I mutter, pushing up from the chair and walking toward the calendar. “Until you realize you’re not actually in control at all, and good, bad, or terrible things are going to happen, regardless.”
I stop in front of the calendar and study it while he grunts from behind me. “How you come up with that?”
“Experience.”
The handwriting on the calendar is swirly and neat. I don’t think it’s Rich’s. Whoever it belonged to was careful to keep their updates contained to the single box designated for each day—nothing bled over to the next. It was probably Beatrice’s.
“You just a baby. What kind of experience you got that made you come up with that?” he asks.
“Plenty of it. Aunt Faye says I’ve lived a lot of lives.”
“Hm. Really?”
“Yup.”
“Well, which one was your best?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve lived that one yet.”
I take a pen out of a cup sitting on the console table beneath the calendar and pull the cap off, staring at today’s date: “October fifth—Pup’s 30th birthday .”
“You think Rich would mind if I gave him a hand and counted today?” I ask, reaching up and letting my hand hover over the day.
“You could put a gun to his head and he wouldn’t care none.”
I sputter out a laugh. “What?”
“You make him soft.”
“Don’t all the women in his life—like Rasheeda…and Beatrice?”
He laughs, making my face hot. “Me and you is talking about two different types of soft. You talking about that naive, jealous, girly soft, but the type I’m talking about got him bringing some gal to meet me.
It’s the type that’s gon’ have him fucked up…
or sittin around crying to Teddy Pendergrass at thirty. ”
That nasty feeling sinks further in my stomach. “That’s not my intention…I…I just—”
“Feel safe with him… and like him. Yeah. I know.”
I glance down at the pen in my hand, then back up at that date on the calendar. It’s the only one with a feminine heart drawn next to the note inside it.
“Do you…remember what today is?” I ask.
“Yup. It’s October fifth. LaTanya had my second baby on this day in 1994—a boy. He came six months after Denise had my daughter, Arnez. He had all his fingers, all his toes, and came out the womb with both his hands balled into fists. He was perfect…and most important wasn’t no fuckin girl.”
I stare at the date with that festering, sinking feeling in my stomach. “So did you tell Rich happy birthday today?”
He laughs. “You never loved a fighter before, huh?”
“I—”
“I ain’t talking about romantically—just in general.”
“I mean, my Uncle Kenny’s been a boxer all my life and I love him.”
“No…no…no. I’m talking about a fighter.”
There’s that distinction Uncle Kenny’s always obsessing over. Boxers vs. Fighters. Structure vs. Chaos. The Good Guys vs. Those guys—the bad ones—the ones who take but never give. The ones Aunt Faye said had darkness in their eyes.
“No,” I squeak, turning around. “I guess I haven’t.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. You know, boxers got a lot of structure—rules, sanctions, folks to answer to, illegal moves. I’m sure your Uncle Kenny can tell you about all the rules he’s always following.
” He chuckles, slowly lifting his finger and swaying it in the air along with the haunting beat playing. “Fighters don’t got shit but this.”
He balls his shaky hand into a fist, studying it with hard eyes.
“No gloves, no rules…just survival.”
“And what does any of that have to do with celebrating your son’s birthday?”
“Everything. I raised Pup just like my daddy raised me. So ain’t no room in his head for pussy shit like birthdays and love. The Bottoms eats soft boys, so I made sure I raised a man.”
He nods his head along to the music still drifting from Calvin’s room while I swallow to quell the disgusting feeling I can’t pinpoint.
“So you must be the one who taught him he shouldn’t have any friends too, huh? The concept of friendship must be too soft for you.”
He chuckles. “Oh, that’s what this is? You wanna be Pup’s friend?”
“No. I—”
“He found you in his kitchen last week…and now you sittin here with me asking about the women he’s fucking and tryna chastise me about some stuff you don’t know nothing about.”
“I…I…”
He laughs harder. “Lil’ Pup still craving that social interaction? Still flirting with them pussy problems, huh?”
“I’d like to think that craving social interaction is a good thing. It means he’s an actual human being—not a machine.”
He snorts. “You just like Faye-Baby.”
“What do you mean?”
“‘Oh, he’s just a boy, Senior,’” he mimics Aunt Faye’s high-pitched voice. “‘Let me love on him. Let me get him a cake from Copeland’s for his birthday and take him here and there.’”
He rolls his eyes.
There it goes again—that heavy feeling rolling across the pit of my stomach.
Aunt Faye is definitely a liar.
He points toward the doorway. “He checks on Cal first, and then he sweeps the hallway for Beatrice. After that, he checks in on her—fucks around with her in the kitchen before she fixes our food. I’m sure you don’t wanna do that, though, but you can do all the rest of it.”
The pen slides against my sweaty palm.
“Once you understand the life and heart of a fighter, you’ll see why you shouldn’t wanna befriend one. We’re all ugly, sweet pea. If I told you we were any good, I’d just be pouring sugar over shit.”