Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

Ray was dipping through his clothes for the fourth time, in case he’d just misplaced his rubbers, but all he found were breath mints and three D-cell batteries. He was always bringing things home from Radio Shack by mistake. Once it was a battery tester, for cars, handheld; he’d gone through the apartment, putting the two little tongs to anything and testing for a current. He even tried the living. A cat from next door had none. I’d told him it was stupid, but in bed with Keisha one day I had her attach them to my pointer fingers, just to see if it would register a charge.

— Why Lianne? Ray asked.

— We used to always use something, but it was more because I didn’t want any babies with her. I don’t know how, but she shot out one ugly-ass kid.

— True. He tossed a broken red pen against a fire hydrant.

— I can’t take any chances, I told him. She takes the pill. I can’t have some ugly kids.

— That is important, he agreed.

At the doorway to Lianne’s building we stopped and stared at each other. I pressed the buzzer. — Who? Lianne asked over the intercom.

— It’s me, I screamed loud so she could hear. The door buzzed and Ray grabbed it. Everything around us was electric, powerful. No one could have told me that we weren’t divine. I’m coming for you, I promised into the speaker.

— Get your ass upstairs, she said. We dying up here.

She gave me an idea. I shut my eyes.

Move anywhere, when you’re from the Bronx, you’re of the Bronx, it doesn’t shed. The buildings are medium height: schools, factories, projects. It’s not Manhattan, where everything’s so tall you can’t forget you’re in a city; in the Bronx you can see the sky, it’s not blotted out. The place isn’t standing or on its back, the whole borough lies on its side. And when the wind goes through there, you can’t kid yourself — there are voices.

I was at war and I was in love. Of both, the second was harder to hide, there was evidence. Like beside my bed, a three-liter bottle, almost full. I rolled from under my covers, spun off the cap, pulled down my pants, held myself to the hole and let go.

Besides me and the bottle, my room had a bed, some clothes hanging in the closet, books spread out across the floor. Somewhere in that pile of texts and manifestos were two papers I had to turn in if I ever wanted to be a college graduate.

Cocoa was in the next room, snoring and farting. I listened to him, all his sounds were music.

I finished, pulled up my sweatpants and closed the bottle; inside, the stuff was so clear you could hold it to one eye and read a message magnified on the other side. I religiously removed the label from this one like I had all the others, so when I put it at the bottom of the closet with them, in formation (two rows of three), I could check how they went from dark to lighter to this one, sheer as a pane of glass; each was like a revision — with the new incarnation you’re getting closer and closer to that uncluttered truth you might be hunting privately. I would show them all to a woman I loved, one I could trust; that had been tried three times already — the two stupid ones had asked me to empty them and change my life, the smart one had dressed right then and walked out. This was my proof, their intolerance, that people hate the body. But me, I was in love.

Cocoa and I had grown up poor and I was the stupid one; I believed that’s how we were supposed to stay. That’s why, when I saw him on the train two months before, with his girl, Helena, her stomach all fat with his seed, I didn’t leave him alone. I walked right over. I was at war too, and needed the help.

She’d looked up before he did; the express cut corners and I fooled myself into thinking she was glad to see me. — Hey Sammy, she forced out. Cocoa was working, I was sure of that; she was rocking three new gold fronts on her bottom teeth.

I asked, — You going to be a mommy?

Started telling me how many months along she was but I’d stopped listening; soon she wasn’t talking. Her jewelry disappeared behind her closed mouth. Cocoa hugged me tight like when we were fourteen: me and him coming out of the crap church on the corner of 163rd, the one with neon-bright red bricks, the painted sign on the door, misspelling the most important word (“cherch”). It was when his mother died, quick, and we were leaving the ceremony, behind us the thirty more people who’d cared to come. It had been a nice day so fellas were hanging out in crews everywhere and despite them Cocoa hadn’t been able to hide his crying like his father and uncles had. I put my hand on his shoulder, patted it hard like men do, but it wasn’t enough. So I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged, on the corner, like even his pops would never care: publicly. When Dorice walked by I didn’t stop and she probably thought we looked gay; still, I didn’t force him back and try to catch up to her. And Cocoa? He didn’t push me away, he leaned closer. He hugged me like that when I saw him on the train, like there was a death nearby. He looked right at me.

— We need to chill again, I said.

The way Cocoa grinned, it was like I’d given him cash. He was small, but he had the kind of smile it takes two or three generations of good breeding to grow; the one descendants of the Mayflower had after four centuries of feeding themselves fruit I’d never get my lips around (the kind where fresh means just picked, not just brought out for display). It was a good smile that made people trust him, think he was going places. Helena touched his leg, but he brushed her back, saying, — I’m just getting his number.

I watched Helena’s back curl like it would when the stomach got grander, the baby inside pushing out its little legs like it might kick a hole; as she sank I told Cocoa my number and he gave me his; he was living with Helena and her family, back in the Bronx.

— Wake up! I yelled out to the living room.

There was a class today. Physics, I think, but me passing that now was like a dude trying to be monogamous — impossible. Cocoa hadn’t missed a lecture or seminar all year, he’d bragged about it, so the last three days he’d been with me were only getting him in trouble with the mother-to-be. When she beeped him, every few hours, and he called back, she’d say she needed errands run, but her cousin Zulma was around, and her aunt; she was just on that ultrahorny pregnant-woman program and Cocoa knew. He would say, over the phone, — You know I can’t sleep with you when you’re pregnant, that would be wrong. I might give the baby a dent in its head. He laughed with me when he hung up, but while they were talking I said nothing; I listened from the kitchen to every syllable; if I’d had a pen and paper nearby I would have written it all down.

He stood in my doorway. He was slim as well as short but still seemed to take up all the space. Cocoa said, — You’re messing me up. That stuff from last night is still bothering me. What did we drink?

— I had a bugged dream, I muttered.

— I’d hate to hear it, Cocoa said. I’m going to make some breakfast.

My hand, I placed it against the window to see how cold it was out. It wasn’t a snowy winter. When I’d enrolled at City College it had been a big deal. I’d be getting my own place. My mother and sister were against it, but when you hit eighteen they call that adulthood and a lot more decisions are yours to make. Plus, you know how it is with boys in a family of women, they won’t let go. When I’d first moved in, Mom and Karen were coming by once a week to check on me, but after two years of staying on top of things, schedules, they had no choice, they let me be.

Three nights ago, when Cocoa had come to hang out, I’d made him wait outside while I got things in place: threw my pillows and sheets back on my bed, plugged everything in. I kept up with news, they were doing renovations all over the Bronx: new buildings, the parks reseeded with grass and imported trees, you could almost pretend there wasn’t a past.