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  He hollers. My mother cries. I can’t move. And finally, my father helps me in the house. “Boy,” he says, pulling my dirty shirt over my head when we get upstairs, taking down my pants, and throwing my underwear in the trash. He walks me to the shower and stands me under the warm water. “Boy,” he whispers in my ear, “I can’t lose no more . . .”

  The water stings like alcohol when it hits the cuts on my fingers and legs. I open my mouth and drink it down like warm tea.

  My dad squeezes soap over my shoulders and cleans under my nails. “Boy, I can’t bury no more sons.”

  Chapter 12

  I SMELL NOW THAT Idon’tgotoschool. I stink, really. My mother asks how come that is. “You shower every morning. I hear the water.”

  I go in and sit down on the john and smoke weed out the window. But I don’t shower.

  “Comb your hair,” she says, picking lint out my ’fro. “That’s the style? Well, I don’t like it.” She hands me her deodorant and says to put some on in front of her so she can see me do it. “You’re changing out them clothes. Right in front of me.” She sits at the kitchen table and tells me to slow down. “Stuffing food in your mouth like you haven’t eaten in months, when late last night you ate everything in sight.”

  My mother and me sit and talk for a while. I’m high, but I can still tell she’s having a good day. She’s wearing her favorite dress—the light green one with the pink flowers. And she’s got her hair fixed nice, and lipstick on too. “You look pretty.”

  She spoons eggs into my mouth. “The closer we get to Jason’s birthday, the worse things get here.” She wipes my mouth with her napkin. “But I can’t let the whole house fall apart.” She breaks off bacon and sticks it in my mouth. “I gotta get back to who I was before: a good mother, a good wife.”

  My father walks into the room with his uniform on. He’s just a security guard—nobody important— but he walks so straight and tall, and his clothes are so neat and pressed, you’d think he was leaving home to run the world or something. “How come your eyes are red?”

  I lie. “I ain’t sleep good.”

  He sniffs my shirt. “You been smoking weed again? In my house?”

  My mother leans over and smells me too. She tells my dad that they have to do something about me. He says he tried two weeks ago when he made me clean up the lot. “You called it abuse. Happy now?”

  She walks over to the stove and cracks six eggs in a hot pan. “It was abuse.” She comes over to me and rubs my cheek. “He should be back in therapy. I’ll call somebody today. Anybody.” Her lips kiss my cheek. “We need help.”

  When the eggs are done, she goes and puts a cake sticker on the calendar. Jason’s birthday is in two weeks. She rubs the shiny paper like it’s his face she’s touching.

  My dad sits down. He says that our neighbor, Miss Lucille, saw me talking with Ace. He sells weed. Killed a few people too.

  I jump up out my seat. “I wasn’t with no Ace!” I reach across the table and get more bacon. “Can’t I just eat without y’all bothering me?” I grab four pieces of bacon, stick ’em in between a buttered biscuit, and shove half the sandwich in my mouth. Butter drips down my lips like blood.

  My father pulls me up from the table by my collar. Biscuit mixed with bacon falls out my mouth and onto the kitchen table. “I told you if I ever found out you was smoking in my house . . .”

  I laugh. I don’t mean to, but I do.

  My mother acts like she’s just figuring everything out. “That boy’s high.”

  My father pulls off his thick black belt and starts whupping me. My mother don’t stop him. She covers her mouth and bites down on her fingers like she’s watching a scary movie.

  When you getting beat, you gotta keep moving. So I’m running in circles. Jumping up and down. Ducking when the black strap swings at my head. Laughing because he’s hitting hisself right along with me. Then the belt buckle hits me in the lip. And while my father is apologizing to my mother, and I am holding my busted lip, I say, “That ain’t hurt.”

  My mother tells me to keep my big mouth shut. I don’t know why I keep talking, but I do. I tell my dad I’m calling Child Welfare. I sit down in the chair. Put my feet on the table and pick up that book he’s always reading now. “What kind of mess you reading?”

  Right then my dad tackles me. He knocks me to the floor. Drags me by one arm through the living and dining rooms and over to the front door. He opens it wide. Picks me up by my shirt and pants and throws me onto the front porch.

  Weed makes you do stuff you shouldn’t do, like get your dad so mad he don’t care no more that you’re scared to touch the porch with your baby finger, let alone put your whole body on it.

  Soon as I hit the floor, I stop breathing. All the air in me dries up like the blood on our porch. “I can’t . . . breathe.” I’m pulling at the skin on my neck, trying to get air.

  My mother holds me. Whispers in my ear for me to calm down. “You’re all right. Just calm down. Just . . .” She stares at my dad. “Get him up.” She rubs my chest. “Mann. The blood’s all gone.” She’s talking to my dad again. “You don’t get my boy off this here porch right now, I’m gonna carry him off myself, and when I’m done, I’m coming back for you.”

  Air sneaks into my lungs. I take a long, deep breath, coughing hard and trying to get up. My father and mother carry me. “It’s okay,” they say, together. “You’ll be okay.”

  Mann!

  I turn to see who’s calling me.

  Play soldiers with me.

  My hands and feet get ice-cold. “Jason?”

  My father looks around. My mother does too.

  Catch me. Okay?

  I ask my parents if they hear Jason. If they see him.

  My dad looks at me. “See what happens when you smoke that dope?”

  I close my eyes tight. But I still see blood. And I still hear him laughing, just like that day when he got shot. Mann, he said, when I went for the hose. What you get when you cross a pickle with a pencil?

  Little-kid jokes ain’t never funny. So I told him I didn’t know, didn’t care. Then he walked over to the steps and sat down. You get, he said, laughing real hard like it was gonna be a really funny joke. You get . . .

  I didn’t hear the answer, because Journey was thirsty. She needed a drink. So I left Jason all by hisself. And that’s how come he got killed.

  Chapter 13

  FOR TWO WHOLE weeks, I didn’t go over to Kee-lee’s house. I didn’t smoke no weed or cut class. And when Jason’s birthday came, I didn’t even cry when my mother blew out the candles and my father told him he was always gonna be his son. I left right after the cake and ice cream and went to the stables to see Journey.

  The sign on the gate said the stables were closed until further notice. I climbed over the busted wooden fence anyhow. Walked through the chewed-up grass and hard dry dirt and down the long dirt path. I opened the stable door and got real sad when I saw her. She was skinnier than usual, and her eyes looked sad, like my mother’s. “He took off and left you, huh, girl?” I didn’t try not to step in her mess, ’cause mess was everywhere. So I kept walking—feeling poop squeeze up in the hole in the bottom of my sneaker and stick to the bottom of my pant legs like glue. I took carrots out my pocket and fed them to her. “Hungry?” I patted her face and fanned flies and gnats away.

  Journey was so hungry she bit my hand trying to eat the carrots. So I opened my backpack and took out more food—lettuce, corn on the cob, and zucchini. “You can’t carry me nowhere today, huh?” I said, tickling her chin. Telling Journey her teeth are whiter than Kee-lee’s, then going for the water hose to give her a drink. “Jason’s birthday’s today,” I said, pressing my finger over the hose and making Journey a fountain. “You remember Jason, right?”

  Journey moved her head. She remembered. I knew it. I dropped the hose. Held her face between my hands and stared into her eyes. “You still see what they done to him?” She tried to pull free. “I do.” She nei
ghed, just like she did that day at our house. “I see him all the time. Dead. Him and Moo Moo dead and gone.”

  Journey yanked her face away. Her big lips pulled back over her yellow teeth and wiggled back and forth like she was trying to talk to me.

  “Okay, girl,” I said, picking up the broom and shovel. “Let’s clean your stall and get you some more food.”

  Journey is like me: just regular. Nothing special. But she stands tall with her head up, like she’s one of them horses the Queen of England rides sometimes. Only today, standing tall don’t help her none, because you can still see her ribs, still not forget that she ain’t nothing but a five-buck-an-hour riding horse.

  I slap my thigh. “Give me your foot.” I lift her foot. Scrape doo-doo and dry grass out from under her broken shoes with a hoof pick. I ask if she remembers the time Jason bit her. “I wanna see if she tastes like chicken,” he told my dad. He was three. We came to the stables once a week to ride then. My father figured five bucks an hour was a good deal, even for a horse with fleas. But when he started bringing us two and three times a week, my mother complained about the money. That’s when my father struck a deal with Mr. Zingerfeld, the owner, that we’d clean the stalls, keep Journey brushed and fed, and ride her as much as we wanted.

  After I got done cleaning Journey’s shoes and cleaning her stall, I went to check on the other horses. One horse got worms, I seen ’em in his stools. And his black coat was eaten away in some places. I gave him a drink and the last of the hay. He lay in the corner, too tired or hungry to stand. I sat down next to him in all that stink, and rubbed him. He lay his head in my lap. “Why everything around here die?” I asked. Then I got up and took a shovel and cleared the mess away.

  The third horse, Maiden Lucy, was the strongest. So I opened her stall and watched her run for the grass. She snatched it out the ground, swallowed it, then ate till she pooped.

  It was dark when I got home. I came in the back way, leaving my clothes and shoes in the basement. I showered and put on my pajama bottoms. My mother was in bed asleep. My father was sitting in the living room with the lights off, with a bottle of Scotch and no glass. I thought he’d be mad at me for being gone all day long. He wasn’t. “I figured this once,” he said, “you had a right to take off.”

  Him and me sat there, not talking, but listening just the same. Me, I was listening for Jason, because when I walked in the house I thought I heard him say, What you get me for my birthday? I pulled out a little green soldier from my pocket. It had been sitting on the washing machine this morning, right next to Jason’s favorite red shorts. I said good night to my dad, went to my room, and locked the door. I opened my drawer and took out the picture I had drawn late the night before when my mother wouldn’t stop crying. “Happy birthday, Jason,” I said, staring at a picture of him sitting on Journey, riding back home with a grin on his face.

  Chapter 14

  FIRST THING the next morning, I told my father about what I seen at the stables. He called the police. They said they would go over there right away. “If I had money, I’d buy that place,” he said. “Always wanted to own a horse. Always wanted to teach boys to ride and respect living things.”

  My dad said that on Tuesday. The County found a safe place for the horses to live by Friday, and another kid got shot round our way on Saturday. She was sitting in a car talking to a friend. A jet-black coupe pulled up. The window rolled down. Bullets went everywhere. I ain’t see it for myself, but it was all over the TV. The girl who died was sixteen—ready to graduate school and go down south to college. She won a full scholarship to Spelman and was gonna work in the mayor’s office for the summer. So when she got buried, seems like everybody in the whole city came to her funeral. The picture in the newspaper was real sad. But I didn’t cry. You can’t cry for everybody who gets shot—otherwise you’d cry your life away.

  Today’s the day after that girl’s funeral and my dad just said he was sending my mother away.

  “What?”

  He pours milk in my glass then puts the carton down before the glass is full. “Pour your own milk.”

  I pick up the carton of chocolate milk and drink out of it. He shakes his head. He says my mother needs a rest. I think she’s just getting on his nerves. Since he threw me on the porch, she’s been on his case. Telling him to watch how he talks to me. Sitting down with him at night and trying to get him to talk about Jason.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “Kentucky.”

  I wipe milk off my mouth. “Why she gotta go?”

  He looks at me like I’m nuts and says she has to go so she can stop making cakes, remaking Jason’s bed, and being sad all the time.

  I do not want to stay home alone with my dad. But he says my mother always comes back from Kentucky feeling better about things. He thinks if we let her know it’s okay to go, she’ll feel better about leaving. “And come back like her old self.”

  He packs tuna sandwiches and doughnuts in the red cooler, and unlocks the kitchen door. “Anyhow, while she’s gone, I’m gonna teach you some stuff.”

  “What kinda stuff?’

  “Stuff women can’t teach boys.”

  I rub my chin. “Like how to get a girl to—”

  When my father yells at you, it makes you feel like a dog that just messed the living-room rug. “There’s more to being a man than just getting into some girl’s pants!”

  I stare at the floor. “Sorry.”

  He slams the door. I look up. Twenty minutes to go before school starts, I think. I call Kee-lee to see if he has some weed.

  “Always,” he says.

  I sit up on the kitchen counter.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” my mother says, right when I’m hanging up the phone.

  I want to tell her not to go to Kentucky. Then I hear my dad say in my head, Be a man. Not no baby sissy girl who needs his momma to wipe milk off his chin. So I keep my mouth shut. My mother opens the door wide and the sun comes through the bars and makes thick black lines on the floor. She’s singing. Whistling. Opening and closing kitchen cabinet doors and pulling out a box of noodles, tomato sauce, and Italian seasoning. “Gonna make lasagna for tonight.” She sits ground beef on the table. “Your dad’s favorite.”

  My mother used to sing all the time. Not no church songs neither. Songs from the sixties and seventies. “Your father tell you I’m taking a trip?”

  “Yeah.”

  She cuts the fire up under the frying pan and dumps bloody red hamburger meat in it. “He thinks I’m going to get away from Jason’s memory.” The ground beef turns gray and pieces of the meat wiggle in the pan like worms on a hot car. “But I’m going to find us a new place to live.”

  I jump to the floor. “I ain’t living in the country.”

  She scrambles the meat. “Rather die here?”

  Before I can answer, she’s singing, “‘Sugar Pie, honey bunch. You know that I love you.’”

  “Remember that song?” she says, shaking her hips. “‘I can’t help myself . . .’”

  She dances over to me, holding the white plastic spatula in the air. Letting hamburger juice drip down her arm and onto the floor she made me scrub two nights ago. “‘I love you and nobody else,’” she says, taking my arm.

  I don’t wanna dance with my mother. But she’s happy and singing and glad for the first time in a long while so I let her hold my hands. Let her dip me, and turn me in circles, and tell me stupid jokes that Jason used to tell us all the time.

  “They’re not taking any more boys from me. No, sir,” she says, squeezing me to her. “I’m going south. Gonna stay as long as I need to. And when I come back,” she turns my fingers loose and runs to the burning pan, “we’re gonna have a new place to live. A nice safe place where the stink of death ain’t in your nose all the time.” She sneezes and pinches her nose and wipes her hands on her apron. “Don’t tell your father nothing I said, hear?”

  Pouring garlic powder in the meat, stirring in dried
onions, she tells me about our land in Kentucky— fifteen acres she had since she was ten. My father doesn’t know she owns it. It was her secret stash, she says. Something for me and Jason when we were grown. She gives me this look, like she can see me never growing old. “I will take you from him— from here.”

  She reaches for the ketchup. “Your dad doesn’t see what he’s doing to you.” She sings while she squeezes. “But I do. And I’m gonna stop him. I have to.”

  Chapter 15

  MY FATHER’S people came by today. They don’t ever say they coming, they just show up—”Like rain,” my dad says. I like that. Not knowing and being surprised. My dad doesn’t always go for it, though. When they showed up, he started cussing. Saying he wished they would just leave us alone. My mother was glad though. “I get tired,” she said, “of being sad.”

  Soon as they stepped foot in the house, the music went on. The bass made the glasses shake.

  My father yelled, “Cut that down!”

  Ma Dear called him a grouch. She took out the playing cards. Aunt Sassy went to the basement and brought up the card table, and Cousin lit up the grill on the front porch. “After this,” Ma Dear said, “we’re going to the mall. There’s a new movie out.”

  My father sat down next to her. Ma Dear covered his hand with hers. “Tell me a good joke.”

  He said he didn’t know any.

  She watched Aunt Sassy wipe the table off. “I figured you’d say that, so I got one of my own.” Ma Dear dealt cards to my mother and father, Aunt Sassy, Cousin, his girlfriend, and me. “What do you get when you cross a man with a chicken?”

  Cousin laughed. “A man who can lay eggs?”

  I took a guess. So did my mother. Ma Dear said we were all wrong. When we asked her what you get when you cross them, she said she didn’t know. “Don’t remember. I’m seventy-four, you know. Can’t be expected to remember every itty-bitty thing.”

  I looked at Cousin’s girlfriend, Itah. She looked at my dad. My mother looked at her bare feet and we all started laughing at the same time. I told Ma Dear she don’t ever need to tell a joke. “Because you always mess them up.”