Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

“Nuthin’ felt right since Daddy died, sis. But we got to keep on movin’ though, got to.”

Theon came to me on the ride from South-Central back to my Pasadena home — not a ghost or apparition, not a hallucination or even a vision. I couldn’t see him and I knew he was dead, but still, he was in that car with me giving me the only thing he had in abundance: fear of life and suspicion of potential danger.

“Family seems like a good thing but in the end it’s always the family that brings you down,” he said, a repetition of a platitude he’d mouthed many times in life.

“My mother loves me,” I’d told him once.

“Many men have told you they loved you,” he’d said. “They thought they really meant it too.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“They say it,” he said, holding up one finger, “they mean it” — he produced another large digit — “but in the end they will cheat on you, lie to you, and rob you blind. And that’s just the momentary kind of love, where there’s no blood involved.”

“Some man think he love me ’cause he want my ass,” I said, disdaining the made-up lover and the remembered husband. “My mother love my soul.”

“So did your father,” Theon had once said. He’d been drinking and, as always when he was high, he went too far.

“Don’t you talk about my father, Theon Pinkney.”

“It’s the strongest love that makes the greatest treachery,” Theon said, instead of backing down like he should have done. I remember being surprised that he even knew how to use the word treachery . “The worst thing you can say to somebody is that you will be there no matter what and then fail to show.”

I felt the pain in that car the same as I had felt when Theon first said those words.

My daddy was always supposed to be there. Why was he out that night instead of at home with us? Why did he have to catch that bullet, live that life, make it so that my mother cried for an entire year?

“Love makes you blind to your own survival,” Theon went on when I was too hurt to fight him. “And if it doesn’t then it’s not love at all.”

I pulled into my driveway after returning from the bosom of my mother’s home. I should have been happy about the love of my son, but instead Theon’s words were in my head.

The man grabbed me when I was closing the door to my car. As I was being slammed against the garage door I wondered if Theon was trying to warn me on the drive. Was he trying to tell me that the love of my family might blind me to danger?

“Bitch,” Coco Manetti said. “You think you could disrespect me like that?”

He hit me in the midsection and I threw up the butter-basted chicken and canned cranberries.

“Fuck!” he shouted when the vomit hit the left knee of his trousers.

As the backhand slap connected with my face I tried to figure out where my handbag had gone. I was no longer holding it.

“Mothahfuckin’ bitch,” the white mobster said, mouthing words he’d learned from the part of town I’d just come from.

I took a breath but he hit me in the stomach again and so I lost it. I fell to the concrete and rolled up into a ball. He kicked me and I inhaled while looking around for my purse. He kicked me again and I saw the bag but it was well beyond my reach.

Then Coco Manetti made a mistake. Instead of kicking me more he reached down to lift me up by my arm. I don’t know why he did that. Maybe he wasn’t getting enough satisfaction from kicking my legs and sides.

I didn’t resist the pull.

One thing about my business was that we had to stay in good shape. Our thighs and calves, butts and abdominals had to be strong to keep up those pulsing, derricklike beats hour after hour.

I kicked Coco in the knee and hollered for all I was worth.

Someone shouted, “Who’s out there?”

Coco’s fist slammed into the side of my head. There was a very bright light in my eyes as a murmuring of fear whispered in the air around my head.

“Over here,” a voice called. It was a familiar voice — the one that cried out when I screamed.

Time skipped forward then. I suppose I went unconscious but it didn’t feel like that in my head. I thought I had fallen to the ground, heard the various sounds and calls, and almost immediately opened my eyes. But instead of being on the driveway pavement I was lying on a couch in an all-white room with people moving around me. I was in the middle of a conversation with someone but had no idea what we were talking about as I came to awareness within a kind of semiconsciousness.

“Was this the man who attacked you?” Lieutenant Perry Mendelson was asking.

It was hard to concentrate on the kindhearted cop. My vision wasn’t blurred but fragmented, like looking through a broken crystal. I turned in the direction that the policeman was pointing. There I saw two discrete images of Jude Lyon standing with his hands bound behind his back.

“Jude?” I said.

“Hey, Deb.”

“Is this the man?” Perry asked again.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t get a good look at the guy but he was much taller and... I know Jude. I’d know if it was him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“We have him in custody, Mrs. Pinkney. He can’t hurt you now.”

I was reminded of the cops trying to reassure Theon’s mother about me.

I forced myself to sit up. There was the smell of vomit rising from my ruined Sunday dress suit.

Four paramedics and three uniformed policemen were moving around the polar bear room. One cop released Jude, who came immediately to my side. I was embarrassed by the way I smelled but grateful to be alive and comparatively unharmed.

“What happened?” Jude asked. His countenance was serious and very masculine. Usually Jude was shy and withdrawn, sometimes petulant, but at that moment he was protective and even a little aggressive.

“Some dude,” I said. “He grabbed me from behind and started whalin’ on me. I couldn’t really see his face.”

“Did you hear him saying anything?” Jude asked. “Did you know his voice?”

“No.”

“Move aside,” Perry Mendelson said to my dead husband’s friend.

Jude looked up in anger and defiance. Even in my fractured state of mind I was surprised by his strength and courage in the face of the police.

Finally, after a full five-second stare-down, Jude rose and moved to a sheepskin chair across from the couch.

“Same question, Mrs. Pinkney,” Perry said. “Did you recognize anything about your attacker?”

I pretended to think before shaking my head.

“No.”

“How about that Richard Ness?”

“He wasn’t that big.”

“Can you tell us anything at all?”

“What happened?” I asked. “How did you get here?”

“Your neighbor, Miss Alison, called nine-one-one after hearing a scream. When we got here we found Mr. Lyon kneeling over you. He told us that he’d come up and found you on the ground, that he’d already called for help, but we thought that he might have been your attacker.”

“I came over to visit, Deb,” Jude said, once again in the guise of his mild demeanor. “I was just worried that you might be sad.”

“We’d like to take you to the hospital,” a paramedic said. “It would be best if a doctor took a look at you, maybe take some X-rays.”

“I have my own doctor,” I told the sandy-haired, blue-eyed young man.

“I don’t know,” he said, doubting my decision.

“I’ll make sure she gets there,” Jude told him.

“I’ll need to know where you are,” Perry said.

The conversation felt unwieldy, like a juggling act with one too many balls in the air.

“Okay,” I said.

“You’ll have to sign a release if we don’t take you to the hospital,” the paramedic said.