Victor Lavalle - Slapboxing with Jesus

The time from her last breath to the moment when she tossed her head, trying to get back to fresh air, went quickly. She was twitching, still sleeping, kicking so quickly. I held my hand there until she almost woke up, eyelids threatening to open; then I took my hand away, watched her suck in angrily but more like thankfully. Safe again, she rolled left and fell quietly back to her dreams.

My mother and grandmother wouldn’t know until morning if tonight I killed her. Mom would be grateful really for no three A.M. feeding. When the sun rose she’d be one great smile, ready to handle delicately what I’d so easily destroyed. I returned my hand to her nose and mouth; as my sister’s legs kicked again I listened to the light sounds she made, like newborn animals calling out for assistance in the natural order of things.

— Hookers, Willy said. You know them. You love them.

He was trying to get us interested. What do you think? He was talking to three tenth-grade boys. Fifteen years old. Among all four we didn’t have half a brain. Willy, bullet-shaped head and all, was good at convincing and he wasn’t even working hard.

— We are hopping on that train, he continued, heading out to Manhattan and everyone here is getting his dick sucked. No arguments.

— Who’s going to put up a fight? I asked. We were each calculating how best to get some money, which parent often left a purse or wallet unguarded.

Carter asked, — How much we’ll need? He stood his tall ass up in front of me. When he stretched his arms over his head Carter could run his fingers around the lip of the visible universe.

Our building was budding with age groups, men and boys. Soon someone had beer; eventually it made the rounds from the eighteen-and-ups to us and after we’d taken our pulls from the tall brown bottles there were the boys we’d once been, ten or eleven, anticipating a first taste. We could all afford such open drinking until eight or nine at night because our adults were dying at jobs. Willy never left shit to settle, so before we went off he grabbed Carter, James and me, said, — This Friday. Get like thirty dollars.

Carter and I walked, no destination, just anywhere away from home. He was chattering about where he’d get his loot, not his mother or father, but that older brother who left his cash in his old shell-toed Adidas up on a shelf in his closet. Then he asked, — So what’s that woman of yours going to say about you checking out these hos?

I had forgotten about her. — Guess I won’t tell, I said.

He laughed, — Man, you know you can’t keep no secrets when you get drunk.

— I’ve never been drunk around Trisha.

Carter nodded. — Well then, maybe. He began telling me something else, he was almost whispering so it seemed like a secret. I was distracted but absently swore I heard my girl’s name. I wasn’t listening. It was evening in Flushing, Queens, and the buildings got glowing in that setting-sun red.

Friday, man, the whole day was full of explosive energy. During precalc a girl beside me dropped her book and in my head it sounded like a squad of soldiers battering through the door. When I saw any of the other guys we nodded conspiratorially. My girl made it easier on my conscience when she bowed out of school after third period. She clutched her belly and told me she was going home early, cramps were tearing up her insides. She had a big bag, full, and when I asked she reminded me of the trip she was taking to see her aunt, who lived in Massachusetts, some town near Boston. She’d be gone for days.

Then, in the evening, we rode the 7 out toward Manhattan. It was strange traveling with them; since about thirteen I had been coming out to wander alone. Most times I’d get off at Times Square where my ass would trip around for blocks trying to find something to kill me or make me laugh.

On the subway James scratched his balls, looked at an old asleep man, tortured in his wrinkled suit. He asked us, — What if I just punch that kid in the face? He pointed to the man. But we weren’t really like that. None of us. Talk shit, that was our game. Run fast, that was our game.

— Don’t start nothing, Willy said.

James sucked his teeth; the way his eyes were shaking in their sockets he seemed amped enough to hit this guy, but Willy talked him down until James sat back, sprawled out like he couldn’t on his mother’s couch. A year before, James got into it with an off-duty cop who was quick to show his badge and gun to James and me. The pistol was under his coat, outside his shirt, hanging on the rim of his jeans, the snubbed nose looking like a challenge. — So you’re a cop, James had said. So what?

The cop was black, so I was especially scared.

— You should watch your mouth son, the cop said, though he wasn’t very old himself.

James laughed that way he does, showing all his teeth; an expression that says, And?

Black Cop pressed the yellow strip to ring for his stop. In the back stairwell he said to me, — Your friend’s going to get you into trouble someday.

I wasn’t speaking; I nodded but my neck was soft with liquor, so I only managed a weak wobble of my head. He had made the mistake most people did, thought that because I was the quiet kid I was the one who should be saved.

——

At Times Square we discussed getting off, enjoying the flickering pleasures of video booths, but Willy was sure of his mission. He said, — Y’all will thank me when you have a mouth all on your knob.

We got off at Twenty-eighth Street, walked so quickly to the West Side Highway you’d have thought we were on wheels. A few blocks up, the Intrepid Museum was docked. I had been there three years before, with my mother and baby sister; I rode in the cockpit of a flight simulator imagining I could join the Air Force and float somewhere above the planet. James found sour balls in his jacket and sucked one.

— You keep making noises like that and some dude’s going to think you’re advertising, Carter said. We laughed, but then he pointed and silenced us all. There, forty feet away, was a hooker dressed all in tight silver. You can’t underestimate what this meant to us; imagine Plymouth Rock.

— You suck dick? James asked. She didn’t need to look up to know she should ignore us.

— Break out, she said, going through her tiny purse. She looked down the street, lit a cigarette, saw we had not left, said again, Break out.

Carter tried to make it clear. — My boy asked if you suck dick.

She whipped her red hair, real or fake, backward, elegantly. I frowned. Silver said, — You tell your boy I don’t fuck with little kids. The way she switched her weight from foot one to foot two made us forget any indignation and check out her lovely hips.

— I’m saying, James charmed. I got the loot and you got the mouth, right?

Silver lost her temper, cursed at us, screamed a man’s name. Then there he was, behind a rotten chainlink fence, amid these half-built homes of scavenged wood and sheets of plastic, all big shoulders and blond hair, like some übermensch , a fucking super-Nazi in an off-white overcoat.

Carter stayed behind to unload some more words at her; the rest of us were on the move. The expression on that guy, clearing the fence, crossing the street, was like he loved hurting people. Finally Carter appeared, stretching those long legs as he caught up to us. I looked over my shoulder, and the guy was still coming. My legs went faster. Soon I was whipping his Aryan ass like I was Jesse Owens.

The first time I held my girl’s hand I was shaking so deep I couldn’t control it. She looked at me. — You’re shaking.

It was a strange second and I didn’t say shit. This was six months before the night out with James, Willy and Carter.