Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

— You going to make me dress up? I acted indignant; she could have outfitted me in a clown suit if it meant we’d share some time. My mom was much prettier without the wig, her real hair pulled into braids that rose in differing directions when she scratched her scalp, looking to me like thirty-two separate strokes of genius.

— You don’t have to dress up, she said. We’re meeting him at Burger King.

On Wednesday (or, as I pronounced it, Wed-nes-day) we walked into the Burger King closest to our building. Fifteen blocks, less, five hundred yards from Woolworth’s, right next to the Wiz. Mom pulled open the door, said, — Be nice to his man. He has my money and might not give it back.

Burger King was a divided city, two halves, one for teenagers — their bags piled under the tables, hands holding hands or swirling milkshakes, mouths full of curses — the other for adults and, this day, me.

Mr. Law, Mr. Crook, formally known as Cleveland Morris, looked a lot like Lando Calrissian without the perm. He knew his smile worked, it made you forget his shortness, only one word entered my mind: trust. He shook hands correctly, the way my grandmother had already taught me, all firm.

Me and Mom slid together into a booth with a cool orange tabletop. Mr. Morris sat across from us. My hands found the off-white salt shaker, the brown one for pepper; I brought them toward each other at high speed. Crash. And again.

— Stop that. Mom dropped one arm over both of mine.

— So, Miss J—, said her lawyer. What was so urgent?

She dropped her shoulders. — What? I’ve told you on the phone, in letters, I wanted some kind of report. Progress. She was incredulous.

— I told you it was a long process. These things have many channels. You can’t just tell the government to patent an invention and it’s done.

My mother had made something worth selling. She had invented it. She was already almost yelling, — I’ve been working with you for eleven months. I’ve given you a lot of money. My money. She opened her purse.

He put up his hands. — Now let’s try and keep our heads level here.

Mom was not having it; she read to him from a spiral notepad: five hundred dollars on September 18 to retain his services; three hundred dollars on November 11 for a title search; one thousand dollars for a processing fee and hours worked, December 6; one week later, four hundred more for a draftsman to render the product in all its forms and applications, from all angles; just three weeks before this meeting three hundred more for hours logged. She read all this to him, though at each pause for breath he tried to interject an excuse. I listened and thought our family must be rich.

She had a terrible memory; she took diet pills, pink amphetamines with medical names. They worked, so to her the damage they caused was negligible, anything was worth shaving off those pounds that curved out her hips and stomach in a way so American antithetical, like The Age of Reason would read to a pope. Her mind was left a mess. It had holes. She might remember a grade she got in school twenty years ago, but not the doctor’s appointment next week, not even the doctor’s name. It was good she was a secretary, trained to take notes. For appointments, technical things, the birthdays of her son and mother, she kept files, transcripts, memos — meticulous and copious. I often watched her, at night, transcribing the day’s jottings from a small notepad to a larger binder she kept beside the couch in the living room.

Mr. Morris smiled. — Your list sounds right.

— My list sounds expensive.

I nodded. Tried to add the figures in my head, but kept losing my place as I enviously spied french fries. I was going to ask Mom for a few dollars but her face was a mixture of concentration and consternation so I made the smart move and kept shut.

— So what did you want to do about things now?

Mom said, — Well, you say you haven’t sent in the application yet, right?

— Yes, there are a few more things I want to add. Unless we make it totally specific as to its uses and how it will be packaged, the Patent Office will probably reject it. They demand precision. I don’t want to charge you for reapplication, so I’m making sure this one shot has everything they’ll need. Then we’ll be ready to go.

— Well, that’s what I’m thinking about. You told me that if I was ever dissatisfied with how the process was going I could ask you to stop and you’d refund all my money minus the original consultation fee. One hundred forty dollars.

— I said that? He laughed. Are you sure? He pointed at Mom, looked at me. Is your mother playing a joke on me?

I shrugged. Mom leafed to another page in her notebook. — Yes, you said I’d get back all the money except the consultation fee. Would you like to know the date?

— Miss J—, none of this is necessary. What have I done to make you unhappy?

— You took my money and you haven’t done your job.

He clicked his teeth, watched my mother, puffed out his cheeks, flickered his fingers over the tabletop. Smiled.

Not working.

— Well, obviously I don’t have the money for you now. I wouldn’t walk around with that kind of cash.

She sighed. — I wasn’t expecting you to. You can mail me a company check or a money order.

— Yes. We could handle the situation that way. But what if I told you I’d work overtime over the next few days and get your application out by the middle of next week and from there I’d have done my job?

— If you could do that now, why couldn’t you do that months ago?

— Well, I mean, I didn’t know I had such a dissatisfied customer (smile). It was still going to be ready soon, but now I’ll put all my other cases aside and work just for you. What do you think of that?

I got to Mom’s bag and plugged my hands into it, found her money purse, clicked it open, dropped all the change on the table, started counting.

— It’s too late for that. We’re going to have to end this business.

He seemed unfazed; had this been me, I would have had the ache of losing all that money bursting from my forehead and over my eyes, down into my mouth, but he was showing none of that and I was thinking maybe this was why he was an adult. He agreed to meet us there again in a few days; my mother suggested we make it two. He slid out, left without looking backward.

Mom gave me bills to replace the three dollars I’d amassed from her coin vault. I bought some fries, knew without being told to bring her a coffee and three packets of Sweet ’n Low, a spoon. I sat across from her. She looked around. — Do you come here sometimes?

— Nah. Who comes in here?

She shrugged. — There are teenagers right over there.

— They’re like fourteen, fifteen. They’d kick my ass.

— What was that?

— Butt.

— Right. She looked. Any of those boys over there?

— What?

— The ones who bother you.

I laughed the way a native speaker does when a foreigner clumsily attempts his language. — They don’t do anything. I’m just saying, if I came in here they would.

She nodded but had no idea. — You sure you’re not embarrassed to be seen out with your Mum?

You can’t tell your parents when they’ve made you happy. I faked a weary tone. — I guess I don’t mind.

She sipped her coffee after she had added the chemicals to make it palatable; she drank even with the steam rushing up. — I know you’re eleven and all, so I thought you might feel too grown for this. With me.

Mom liked to put herself in a historical context, to teach me something. She felt awful being absent often and hoped in some way that knowledge might take her place. She compared having me to taming the Wild West. When she and my dad divorced (I was one)? The fight for separation of church and state. And now, battling this lawyer? The fight with the U.S. Government for control of the Black Hills. (I had to do the research myself each time, come home and try to explain my mother’s logic — the last, Black Hills, went like this: the money, her invention, they were hers by all natural rights but through chicanery and loopholes it was being kept somewhere just out of reach; she could see the distant mountain ranges, but it seemed impossible again to climb that glorious terrain.)