Who Asked You? (16 page)

H
i,” I say to my nephews and Miss Tammy as soon as I walk up the front steps. They’re peeking out from behind her. “Welcome home, Dexter,” she says without much enthusiasm. She used to like me, but I can tell I’m on her shit list now.

“Lee David is fine and the boys have been on their very best behavior, so I’ll see you later, BJ.”

Ma thanks her and holds the screen door open and she heads across the street. I can’t believe she’s still living in this neighborhood after all these years. But from what Ma has told me, a lot of the original folks haven’t left either. The boys run away and go sit down on the sofa. Then they both stare at me with a look of disdain, if I’m reading them right.

“Say hi to your uncle Dexter,” Ma says.

The oldest one lifts his hand up like it weighs a hundred pounds and, without looking at me, waves. The other one mimics his brother. I’m wondering what Ma might have told them. Maybe they’re scared of me. I hope not, so I say, “What grade are you fellas in?”

“I’m going into fourth even though I’m only supposed to be going into third,” Luther says.

“I’m almost in second,” Ricky says.

“Why you have to take my bed?” Luther asks, throwing me off guard.

“It might only be for a few weeks.”

“Then you leaving, I hope,” he says.

“Don’t talk like that to your uncle, Luther. And it’s not
your
bed,” Ma says. “It was Dexter’s bed when he was a little boy.”

“He not little now.”

“I can sleep on the couch,” I say.

“No, you won’t. We’ve already talked about this, haven’t we?”

They both nod.

“So let’s try to be more respectful. Your uncle’s been away for a long time and now he’s going to live in the little apartment over the garage, but he has to fix it up first. I told you this.”

“I wanna live on top of the garage,” Ricky says. “You can have my whole room, Uncle Dexter.”

“Thanks for the offer, Ricky, but it’s okay.”

“Why don’t you have no wife to go live with now that you home from jail?” This is Luther. He’s pissed because I am messing up his entire setup. I get it.

“Well, I made a big mistake a long time ago and I went to prison, and while I was in there, the lady I wanted to marry didn’t want to wait for me to get out, so that’s why I’m here.”

“Why can’t you go find her?”

“I think she married somebody else.”

“So, you a criminal, then,” Luther says, not asks.

“I was accused of committing a crime, so I guess that would be a yes.”

“Boys,” Ma says, ’cause I guess she can see how much I’m perspiring and looking like I might want to run and hide but I can’t. “Be nice to Uncle Dexter. I’ve already told you both that a lot of people make mistakes and then they get another chance to do right. Just like when I have to put you both in time-outs. Ring a bell?”

“Yeah, but good thing time-out don’t last as long as being in prison, huh, Grandma?” Ricky asks.

“Your uncle Dexter is going to be fixing up the space over the garage. How long do you think it might take you, Dexter?”

“It depends.”

“Nobody’s been up there in years, since your uncle Monroe spent a month up there after his wife chased him out of Shreveport—remember that?”

I shake my head no.

“That was about twelve or thirteen years ago, before your daddy started getting sick, and for a while we tried to keep it clean but then we just started using it for storage. We had it insulated but it might have a few leaks in the roof, and the floor might need to be secured, and you know there’s no air-conditioning or heat up there. We did put in a tiny bathroom, but when you want to eat you have to come down here. It’s livable.”

“I’ll go up there in the morning and check it out.”

“I know how to measure,” Luther says. “I can help you.”

“I can hammer,” Ricky says. “And I know how to carry stuff.”

“Thank you, boys,” I say. “I’m sure I can use your help.”

“Go peek in at your daddy,” Ma says, and I do.

He doesn’t recognize me, and I don’t recognize him either. He’s shriveled up. Sunk inside that pillow. He looks like he’s in a casket, and I don’t like seeing him like this so I know I’m going to avoid coming in here. “How long can he live like this?”

“Like what?”

I just point.

“As long as he can breathe,” she says.

“I mean, how long can he live like this at home?”

“I have an attendant who cares for him when I’m at work. Nurse Kim. Be nice to her and don’t even think about trying to hit on her because she’s pretty.”

“She’s fine!” Luther yells from the living room. “And she’s mine!” he says.

I crack up. Nothing like your first crush. It feels good to laugh out loud. I can’t even remember the last time I did. I pick up my small suitcase and take it to my old room. It’s still light blue, and the paint is chipped in some spots, showing a different shade of blue underneath. The twin bed is still in here, and it almost looks like the same bedspread, too. I don’t care. Pictures of me swinging a bat when I was seven on up to about eleven fill one whole wall. I feel weird being here, in the house I grew up in. It’s much smaller. And I don’t know how five people lived here for so many years. I’m not complaining. It’s just striking how physical space stays the same and your perspective changes. I’ll take this room and the one above the garage over a prison cell any day.

As I walk back out—and nobody has to use a key, so I can—I feel small and now the house feels like a mansion. “Everything looks the same,” I say to Ma.

“That’s the problem,” she says. “Let’s eat.”

After we eat her famous spaghetti and meatballs and a real salad with real sourdough rolls, she surprises me with her famous peach cobbler. She has always gone overboard to make us happy, and I can see that hasn’t changed, and now she’s doing the same thing for these boys. After they’re in bed, we go into the living room. Ma sits in her chair and I sit on the couch.

“So,” she says. “Welcome home.”

I know she’s waiting for me to say something about how good it feels to be out of prison after nine years and how I’m going to do right by the law and by her and how I will not disappoint her and she doesn’t have to worry about me bringing any riff-raff anywhere near this house, but it’ll probably just sound like somebody who just got out of prison, who is grateful to be out and who has all kinds of big plans that I exaggerated to the parole board, but the truth is I don’t really have any concrete plans because I don’t have a clue about what I want to do because I don’t know what I can do. I don’t have any dreams about my future. I only know how to live from one day to the next. I don’t want my mother to know any of this, because I don’t want to scare her. So what I do say is this: “Thank you for letting me stay here, Ma. And I promise not to disappoint you.”

“It’s fine, Dexter. You should be feeling a little overwhelmed right now, so don’t feel like you need to sit here making me all kinds of promises you don’t know if you can even keep. Plus, you’ll be here for a while. We have plenty of time to talk. Get some rest.”

“Thank you, Ma.” I walk over and kiss her on the cheek. She squeezes my hand and kisses it.

“Good night, Dexter,” she says, and then picks up a book.

The first few nights, it’s hard to get to sleep. When I roll over I’m not up against a concrete wall. I’m not on the top bunk. Nobody is farting or snoring. I don’t hear anybody pissing, whispering, jerking off, or having sex. I’m not scared to walk down the hall to the bathroom. Nobody wakes me up. I get to stand in the kitchen and choose what I want to eat for breakfast. When I walk out onto the screened-in sunporch, I feel comfortable, like it’s a shield that’s protecting me from whatever is on the other side. I look out at the shrubs and trees and flowers and grass, even the sidewalks, and realize I can just open that aluminum door and walk outside, down the sidewalk in any direction I want to. But I don’t know which direction to go. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t have anywhere to go. Nobody to see. I don’t know what to do with so much freedom.

I go see my parole officer and tell him I’m going to start looking for work the next day. He warns me not to be picky. He repeats what I was told before I was released. That with my record it’s going to be hard to find a decent job. Be patient. Don’t give up. Be glad I have family who’s putting a roof over my head. He makes his visit to Ma’s house and goes over all of the rules, which she understands, and he approves. I have to report to him once a month.

I wish I could say it takes me only a few days of pounding the pavement to find a job, but that is not the case. I am not allowed to drive and have taken at least sixty-three buses and gotten seventy-six “No”s after background checks or just being asked, “Have you ever been arrested? In prison?” And when I said yes to both, they didn’t care for what or for how long; they just shook their heads.

My parole officer misses our next meeting but he calls, and when I tell him how frustrating my job search has been he finally suggests I try the Salvation Army or Goodwill because they both hire felons. I start tomorrow at the Salvation Army. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing or how much I’m going to be making but it doesn’t really matter at this point. I’m employed.

It only took a few weeks to get what I call my apartment fixed up. The boys did their best to help. They were funny and great company. For the time being, I have to run an extension cord to have light up there, but it’s cool. It’s free and there are no bars on the windows or door. Ma doesn’t seem to mind my being here and I’m grateful for that. I try not to ask her for money but when I do, it’s mostly for bus fare. I gave up smoking since they cost a damn fortune. I haven’t asked Ma about Trinetta because it’s obvious things aren’t too cool or her kids wouldn’t still be here. I would pay good money to have that Nurse Kim resuscitate me. She’s even finer than I thought she would be but she treats me like an ex-con—with some amount of respect or maybe it’s just tolerance. She makes me think about sex, and since I don’t have any prospects or even old hookups, it’s a good thing she’s leaving. I know Luther is going to be heartbroken. And I’m definitely going to miss the way she makes this house smell, not to mention looking at her beautiful round ass.

W
hat do a traveling nurse do, Nurse Kim?”

She looks up from this thick book she been reading seem like every day for like two weeks. It got a picture of some little white boy wearing corny glasses riding a broom on the cover. I thought Nurse Kim was smart enough to read grown-up books. But: my bad. I still love her. And I’m glad I got sick with a cold and when my grandma heard me coughing and sneezing this morning and she felt my head and said it was too warm she took my temperature and gave me some medicine and asked Nurse Kim if she would mind watching me today, and when Nurse Kim said she did not mind, I was thinking, shit, if I woulda knew all I had to do was to cough loud and be sneezing, two of the easiest things to pretend, I coulda been out here on this couch under the covers watching Nurse Kim read in Grandma’s reading chair that go back way before my birthday and I coulda been looking at her legs crossed like I am right now and all I would have to do is cough and she would jump up and put her hand on my forehead to make sure I wasn’t burning up and probably say, “I’ma make you some hot tea and soup, would you like that, Luther?” And I would nod my head just a little bit so when she came back with it and pushed the pillows up behind me a little bit she would dip the spoon in the bowl and feed me, all ’cause I would act like I couldn’t pick it up by myself.

“A traveling nurse travels, Luther.”

“Then you already a traveling nurse. Don’t you gotta, I mean have to, travel to get over here?”

“I drive.”

“Ain’t that—I mean—isn’t that traveling?”

“You go much farther than California.”

“Give me some examples.”

“Don’t know yet. Maybe Florida.”

“That’s way on the other side of the United States next to the Atlantic Ocean.”

Her eyes get big like she just saw a spider.

“How do you know that?”

“’Cause I learned it. I’m almost in third grade, you know. But I might get to skip it and go right into fourth.”

“You are one smart little boy.”

“Why you reading a book that look like it’s for little kids, Nurse Kim?”

“If it was for little kids you think I’d be reading it?”

“Well, it’s got what look like a cartoon of a little white boy on the front of it and not no old man.”

“It’s about wizards and magic and witchcraft, but when you get right down to it it’s about a little boy whose parents get killed and he gets stuck living with his evil-ass relatives and then ends up going to a special school sorta like a college for kids to learn how to use their magical powers, which Harry didn’t even know he had, and at first he meets two friends who real cool but then he meets all kinds of fucked-up kids who bully him and are just jealous ’cause Harry come from good stock and they can’t stand his ass, and while they try to fuck little Harry up some of Harry’s friends try to help him out especially when the bullies try to steal this magical rock they ain’t got no business having. That’s where I am now. So, don’t bother me unless you can’t breathe, ’cause I’m almost finished and please don’t tell your grandma I said those bad words.”

“Can I read it when you done?”

“Yep. But it might be a little hard for you.”

“I’m smarter than you think, Nurse Kim. I get A’s in reading and I just told you I might get to skip third grade.”

“Prove it,” she say, and get up out the chair and stand over me, and when she hand me the book the soft part of her breasts squeeze together. I pretend I don’t see neither one of them.

“What you want me to read?”

“Two sentences. Anywhere on this page.”

“Why, you don’t believe me?”

“I do, but I ain’t never heard no second grader read something even I struggle with.”

“
Harry couldn’t sleep, but the truth was that Harry kept being woken by his old nightmare, except that it was now worse than ever because there was a hooded figure dripping blood in it.
”
I want to keep reading ’cause I want to know who that hooded figure is dripping with blood, but Nurse Kim grabs the book outta my hands like she think I’m gon’ try to keep it or something.

“Damn. You wasn’t lying. Who taught you how to read so good?”

“At school, and my grandma was always reading to me and Ricky at night but then sometimes she be tired so I started reading to her and Ricky.”

“Good for you, Luther. Good for you.”

“My grandma say anything you do a lot you get better at it.”

“Not everything,” she say.

“Name one thing,” I say.

“Never mind. Let me ask you something. When is your mama coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“How does it make you feel knowing she just dropped you and your brother off and . . . Wait, have you talked to her?”

I shake my head no.

“Why not? You ain’t got her number or she haven’t even called?”

I shake my head no twice.

“I don’t like your mama, no offense. She trifling as hell, and see what them drugs do to your mind? Make you put your goddamn kids last or kick ’em to the curb. When you grow up, promise me you will say no to all drugs, not just some, ’cause they will fuck you up every time and make you do a lot of stupid shit and you won’t get nowhere in life except maybe prison, like your stupid-ass uncle Dexter, no offense. Anyway, you and your little brother better always listen to your grandma and show her respect and don’t get on her damn nerves, since she already old and this ain’t no time in her life to be raising no little kids no damn way. And let me just say this one last thing. These streets out here is rough and they can rob you of common damn sense so you and your brother better not fall for the okey-doke and get in no trouble, ’cause if you do, y’all little asses could end up in foster care, and believe me, you don’t want to live in no group home or with some fucked-up family who only doing it for the money, you understand what I’m saying, little dude?”

I nod my head and then correct her. “I ain’t . . . I mean I am not little.” I lift the quilt up to show her how long my legs is (are). “See how fast I’m growing?”

She just cover her mouth and laugh like she trying not to laugh at me, but I know it’s ’cause I’m not a man yet.

“I wish you didn’t have to be no . . . a traveling nurse, Nurse Kim, but I know it’s ’cause you need to expand your horizons and get more opportunities.”

Her eyes light up like she shocked, ’cause I know she didn’t know I pay attention when my teacher and Grandma talk to us and plus Grandma sometimes make me and Ricky watch
Oprah
with her and we put on our listening ears and I remember what I think might be useful in the future.

“Who in the world taught you to memorize that?”

“I didn’t memorize it.”

“So you laying there telling me you know what you just said to me means?”

“I just said it, didn’t I?”

“That you did.”

“Nurse Kim, I want you to find your horizons and everything, but who’s gon’, I mean going to take care of my grandpa when you leave?”

“I’m sure your grandma won’t have a problem finding somebody as nice as me to take good care of him.”

“I miss you already,” I say.

“That’s sweet. But don’t worry, I’ll come back and visit whenever I come home.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Me and Ricky or Ricky and I laying on top of the covers next to Grandpa eating nachos, watching
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
. This is his favoritest thing to watch on TV. He don’t like
Dora the Explorer
or cowboys no more. Even though Ricky and me don’t understand the questions, sometimes we just guess and whoever guess right get a extra big nacho. Grandpa got his thick glasses on and the TV is up loud. He kinda act like me and Ricky ain’t (aren’t) even there until we get ready to get up and that’s when he usually grab my leg and smile, so we put our head back on the pillows.

According to a proverb about hope, “There’s always a light at the end of” what? (A) the journey, (B) the day, (C) the tunnel, (D) E.T.’s finger
.

I yell out, “E.T.’s finger!”

Grandpa say, “The tunnel.”

Me and Ricky wait and we look at each other when the man says,
“C! The tunnel!”

Ricky pick up Grandpa’s hand and turn it so we both give him a high five and a nacho, and he smile.

Which of these gambling games requires a pair of dice? (A) craps, (B) roulette, (C) poker, (D) blackjack.

“
Craps!” me and Ricky yell out at the same time. Grandpa don’t (doesn’t) look too happy ’cause we got it right.

A person who “takes a backseat” to someone else is said to be playing what? (A) by the rules, (B) second fiddle, (C) dead, (D) hard to get.

“C. Dead!” I yell out.

“D. Hard to get!” Ricky yells louder.

“B,” Grandpa says, and it’s the right answer, and then he take his glasses off, which is how we know he’s going to sleep.

Grandpa know a lot of the answers on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
, and I don’t know why everybody think he can’t remember stuff. Me and Ricky like watching this show with him ’cause it’s making us smarter. And we both want to be smarter. And like our grandma always saying, “You can’t be too smart.”

While Ricky and me was taking our bath I remembered I had forgot to tell him what Nurse Kim told me to tell him and while we was putting on our pajamas he just said, “I ain’t going to no prison when I grow up.” After we clean out the tub and hang up our towels, Grandma go straight in to take her shower. “You boys did a nice job cleaning up after yourselves,” she says, and then give us a pat on the head. We about to read. And then Grandma will say our prayers with us.

Ricky sit on the couch and I sit in the big chair when the phone ring. I answer it. “Hello,” I say, like Grandma made me start saying instead of “Hi,” ’cause she said it was not polite.

“Hi, Luther.” I hear a lady’s voice that sound like my mama’s but I know it can’t be her.

My heart seem like it start beating really fast and the phone slide right out my hand on the carpet but I bend over and pick it back up real fast. “Who may I ask is calling?” I say, like Grandma told me to even though I know it’s our mama, but I just wanna hear her say it.

“It’s Trinetta. Your
mother
.”

“Who you want to speak to?”

“Why you acting like you don’t know who this is?”

“’Cause I thought you died.”

“Why in the hell would you think something stupid like that? Did anybody call and tell you I was dead?”

“No. But you have not called us.”

“When you start talking all proper?”

“All the time. Grandma won’t let us talk ghetto anymore.”

“Ghetto?”

“Who you want to speak to?”

“What?”

“I said, who you want to speak to?”

“This ain’t funny and please don’t get cute.”

“I’m not trying to be funny and—”

“Just tell me how you and Ricky been doing?”

“Fine.”

“Where’s Mama?”

“She’s taking her shower.”

“Well, how’s Mr. Butler?”

“Who?”

“Your grandpa?”

“He can answer a lot of questions.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. Where you calling us from?”

“I’m still in Atlanta. And watch your mouth, Luther. You ain’t grown.”

“You mean the capital of Georgia?”

“Well, well, well. You are smart for almost being in third grade.”

“Fourth grade. I get to skip third. What do you want?”

“You need to watch your mouth, Luther. That ain’t no way to talk to your own mama.”

“What do you want me to tell Grandma?”

“Tell her I just want to talk to her about something.”

“You ain’t . . . you aren’t coming back to get us, I hope?”

“What if I said I was?”

“Me and Ricky ain’t . . . are not going nowhere with you.”

“Oh yes you would, if I came back there.”

“We don’t want you to come back.”

“Where’s Ricky?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“How you know that?”

“’Cause he won’t get up to come over here to the phone.”

“Well, guess what?”

“I don’t feel like guessing.”

“You might have a little sister or brother sometime next year.”