Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

I was kicking my feet forward and back in my chair; she was breathing heavy and close to tears. I barely noticed. I asked, — So did you ever make it to the airport? I smiled.

She made a noise, sucked her teeth in disgust, so loud that other people looked back, thinking she was commenting on the long wait. They nodded.

We were called into an office with a woman and three men, Mr. Morris among them. There was an air in the room not of apology, but attrition.

The woman wore small gold earrings but the lobes were long, they flapped as she reached for the folder and slid it forward. Mom flipped it open, leafed through sheets. — What is this?

— Everything, the woman said. All our paperwork, your initial information and your check. We have withdrawn your application for a patent. You may work with someone else.

A fan hung from the ceiling, three flat flower petals on the end of an upturned stem. Paint on the walls had been faded by sunlight into a diamond pattern. Behind these four a window was open, the other was closed, a blind drawn over it so that the wall seemed to be winking at us, telling Mom, You won.

— Is that it?

They all wore cheap clothes, suits, the woman in her dress. The money they made was not going to their wardrobes. One man with eyes that stuck out like a frog’s asked, — What else do you want? Should Mr. Morris have to shine you shoes?

They had given my mother the materials she wanted, but damn, this was some shit and even I knew it. These people knew how to cheat and who. They ran television commercials on Sundays during Like It Is . All these brown lawyers would get on the screen and make it sound progressive, political and positive: Black lawyers for Black clients, Latino lawyers for Latino clients; they had descended on us. It was a lesson many of these people were learning: we can’t even trust one another. She grinned at Cleveland Morris and waved her papers in the air. — This is mine.

In our apartment Grandma overjoyed loudly at her daughter’s triumph. We ate dinner together, laughed as Mom mimed Mr. Morris’s morose manner. Then, next day, Mom returned to overtime, back to our routine.

I spent the next three weeks trying to coax her into some shared action: shopping for clothes, getting Grandma a gift for her birthday five months away. Let’s just do something, was my mantra. She’d sit on the couch, appreciative but exhausted and tell me that the little time she had would be spent on the Tile Defender — recopying notes, sending packets out to other patent lawyers. She’d explain this to me and ask, — Do you understand?

I did. I hated her. Wistfully I remembered the Burger King lounge like it had been the site of some historic event. Somehow she needed to be persuaded to work with me again.

Visited the three spots in our home: beside the couch in the living room, the filing cabinet in our shared bedroom, the cupboard above the stove where she had a strongbox, never locked. I took the proper papers from all three: the lists of ingredients, all the legal notations Mr. Morris had made (he had done a little), even the script for the commercial that she’d typed up. Brought them to the stove while my grandmother was taking a furious shit.

The front right burner clicked then blew a blue flame out into a halo. I rolled all the sheets into a thick, uneven cone, held them over the fire. I don’t say this was all in the hopes of re-creating a partnership; I also thought jealously of the good things in Uganda: dry heat, families with the money for two cars, hilly green terrain and even Percy Sledge. To me, she’d only mentioned these things to make me envious, at the time it was all I’d heard. I thought she’d cheated me; not of money, but your family, your home; they’re also things to inherit.

As they burned I ran the blackening pages under tap water until a height of charred, soaking ash was left. I ran more water as the paper slowly drained down the sink. I opened a window. No one came into the kitchen for a while, Grandma was occupied, so the smell had time to leave, out the window, mingling with pigeons and pedestrians.

Mom was frantic that night. She ran into our room, where I lay on my bed reading a comic, my feet folded under me. She asked if I’d seen her papers, checked the orange filing cabinet someone had been throwing away at her office, the one she’d brought home on the 7 train, the one I’d cleaned and smoothed the dents out of for three dollars. Nothing. She turned, asked quietly, — Have you seen my papers?

— I saw them, I told her, dropped my comic.

— Where are they? Despite her volume, her face was not as angry as I thought it would be; there was desperation, there was sadness. I tried to think which reason she’d rather hear: the blame or the adoration. Grandma was in another room, asking in Luganda and English if anything had been found.

Mom and I sat on the edge of my bed; this is how we perched when she read me books as a little boy, Peter and the Wolf was my favorite. — This is what I was thinking, Mom. If you didn’t have those papers I could help you do the work again. We could choose another lawyer. I could help you buy the sheeting, cut it up, put on the adhesive. I could be your assistant.

— Where are the papers? She enunciated every word.

— And if we worked together you could tell me more stuff.

— The papers?

— I burned them.

She nodded; her next question seemed to come from genuine curiosity. — Do you hate me that much?

I watched her feet. — Yes.

— Kitchen, she commanded.

Grandma had gone off to her room, from where I could hear the vacuum cleaner going, high-power. Mom sat, then spoke, — Bread, marmalade, knife. I got each, brought them, forgot the plate but she didn’t notice. She twisted open the bag of bread and dropped every slice on the table.

The marmalade was half gone. Inside, the orange strings and clear jam coated the jar. She unscrewed the cap with one long twist strong enough for the top to bounce off, onto the table and down to the floor, it spun as it came to a stop.

She mashed the marmalade into the bread until the middle curved in, then she spread it as best she could. Small tears appeared and the fake wood beneath showed through. She ate sloppily, but didn’t make any noise. She still chewed with a closed mouth. Her back, as she breathed, bent into a ‘c,’ her head hanging somewhere near mine. I looked into her face, its burdens. When her hand came up I thought she was going to punch me, the walls seemed ready for it, but my mom wasn’t a violent person, even now; her fist didn’t know that and it waited there, near me, like it was making up its own mind. She said, — Maybe this really isn’t working out. Someone may have to come for you.

You should’ve seen our wallpaper. Not what had been there when we moved in, I don’t even remember that one, the new one, put up on an energetic Saturday when she had roped me and Grandma in, getting the boy to peel off and cut the right-size strips while the old lady sat near the oven with a pot of glue coming to a simmer for spreading. The bare walls had had blemishes, remainders of the families before. That they had gone on to something else was not the only interesting part. We also talked of the next tenants who might, while redecorating, press a palm to the surface and, in so doing, imagine our lives.

My father was eating pizza across from me, sucking in cheese and smiling like we were family. I was eleven and felt five. The fans overhead moved slow and uneven like drunks. If I was shorter I would have been swinging my feet.

— You’re good looking, my dad told me like he was surprised.

— I am?

— Sure, sure. You look like your mother.