Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

We (Mom and me) have been how long out? Neither one of us have checked to see. She asks what I have planned for Kim.

Oaks Park, I say. Gone hit the rink.

Oooh, skate night, she says. Now that should be fun.

It should, I say. You wanna roll?

With these knees? No, you two enjoy. Enjoy yourselves just you two. You need that sometime. Mom turns to me and flashes a seismic smile. Soooo, what about you? How about you show me a spot or two?

What comes to mind first is MLK: the used car lots, the liquor store, the barbershops, the beauty supply, the car washes, Albina Bank, the precinct, the Job Corps office, the gas stations that sold that cut-rate low-octane ethanol shit that gave my ride the coughs.

Can’t let you off that easy, Mom says. Lets see them. Let’s go.

The first spot of mine we hit is the hand carwash on MLK. This is where, soon as there was a inkling of heat, the hustlers would gather with their old-schools: chameleon-painted Mustangs, Monte Carlo Super Sports, ’64 Impalas tricked with dual exhausts, El Caminos customed with trunks of big-ass woofers. You’d see the carwash packed with flossy rides, with dudes cooling against a fender or craned by the ear of a blushing young broad. What I don’t tell Mom is how I’d sputter by in my hooptie (a Buick Regal with a faulty alternator) and dream of being among the go-getters, of being posted beside a late-model four-door on pristine five-stars swathed in low-profile meat — how I longed to seize a place in the life.

I cruise a couple blocks up to Quickies, the brick convenient store where, after a long day of park balling, me and my hoop patnas would slog to (T-shirts drenched and feet on hell in high tops) intent on copping a sports drink or juice, and if we had the loot, a hot link or jo-jos or a flaky bean burrito. We’d hit the store and either tramp back to the park for the close-to-sunset runs or trek back home to wash our sweaty nut sacks. Then around the time I hit my growth spurt, about the time the old heads started letting me ball on the main court, niggers caught in that red and blue strife were turning Quickies’ lot into the Wild Wild West. Got to the point where you’d bop out carrying your half guzzled drink and sack of JoJos and get caught in ballistic funk. Quickies is where one of my homeboys from grade school got shot in the chest and lived, where the brother of a JV teammate got shot in the neck and died.

Where do we end up?

Where could we end up but the corner of Sixth and Mason.

I park across from the house and for a time the both of us sit quiet and gaze. The light is dying behind the clouds. Whatever was left of the season’s heat has been sucked out the air. We get out and walk to the fence. They’ve got the lawn cut and the porch painted, a new screen door. What I think of about then is this, I say, and sweep my arm.

Mom nods. She nods and smirks. Tell me what you remember most, she says.

When Mama Liza would keep us hostage for hours of prayer and devotion. Stealthing into Bubba’s fruit stash for a kiwi, plum, or mango. Oh yeah, and remember the year you bought me that rolltop desk and encyclopedia set? I say. The one I talked my boys into playing school all summer?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do, she says.

Mom, have you ever thought? I say. Sometimes I think, I say, how we spend all this time looking further and further, when what we need was behind us all along?

Yes, Champ, she says. It would be nice, it would, if we were all at some point sprinkled with light.

Mom asks how often I come by the old house.

That’s a good question, I say. Not that often and often, I say. Or whenever I feel the need.

* * *

Skate night. We (my girl and me) swank in late with our arms looped. Ain’t been in here in a hot minute, but ain’t much changed. Walls wood-paneled, raggedy carpet, a glass case filled with old skates and trophies, lockers with the paint rubbed to patterns. And it’s dim in here too, disco dim with a light machine playing colored swirls across the rink. We find a seat in the lobby and I help Kim pull off her boots and carry them to the counter, do that and ask the counter girl for new skates for my girl if they have them cause I should. You shouldn’t have, Kim says, and slips on the new wheels. She gets to her feet and scissors her stilts apart this way, then that. Then who walks in but this funnstyle super-skate dude who’s been a mainstay at the rink since my old summer program was coming here on field trips. He lopes in dressed in a field jacket and fatigue pants and carrying a metal box. He finds a seat close by and lifts a pair of calf-tall skates (black leather joints with zebra laces and neon rubber wheels) and small can out the box, drips oil on his axles, and gives each wheel a spin. He swanks on his custom skates, ties the zebra ropes in intricate-ass bows, locks his combat gear away, and rushes onto the floor.

That man means business, she says.

Can’t mean no more business than that, I say.

We laugh, and there isn’t anything in our laughs but truth.

Tonight the rink’s crackin; I’m talking a fusillade of couples, cliques, one or two drowsing in solo-dolo, a few dudes I balled against in grade school, a trio of chicks in flourescent leggings — one of whom I smashed too recent for me to be blithe about it. The chick gives me the eye, gives Kim the eye, and she’s modest about the shit like none, a sign hard to ignore but I hope my girl ain’t peeped it.

You know her? Kim says.

Yes and no, I say.

And that means? she says.

In passing, I say. Why, cause she’s mugging us? That ain’t nothing but hate.

Hate on who for what? Kim says.

Cause look at you, I say. Look at us.

Alright, Champ, she says. Whatever you say.

I slip on my skates and lock away our stuff. The next song muddles over the speakers. Slow-mo skaters lap the rink. Kim stands and pirouettes and faces me. What a great idea, Babe, she says. Why can’t we do stuff like this all the time? She puts out her hand and says, Come, let’s show them how to do it.

I tell her to give me a sec, but only so I can watch her make the rink alone. What’s better than watching your girl swoon through a crowd under strobes. Oneiric is right, damn near everywhere we go, my girl’s the girl, that dark skin, eyes always one color and then another, legs you could climb to heights. I love, love it. Love being out with her. No lie, when we’re out my nuts swell up from seeing (as long as that shit don’t approach disrespect) mortal niggers awed.

The DJ calls couple skate and plays a slow jam. Here comes Kim gliding off the floor, her hair floating behind her. Babe, come, she says, reaching out. Get up, will you.

Now? I say.

Yes! she says, and tugs me off the bench and onto the floor. We catch each other hand in tender hand and lock a tandem stride for laps. The DJ mixes one slow song into the next. The chick I hit rides by snickering with her bright-clothed crew. Superskate flies by in a backwards scrawl and nudges me into a stumble. My girl grips me tight, keeps me steady.

Look at us, she says.

Right, I say. Look.

It’s like lightning, like love, like the cure. And if you haven’t felt it you can’t judge — or at least shouldn’t. If you haven’t felt it, how could you ever really know what us addicts, us experts, are up against in this life of programs and counselors and sponsors, what we face because of or in spite of our earned expertise? Ask, and if any one of us is telling the truth we’ll admit that our kind of lying is like a religion.

This is why they say no one does this alone. Why they say once an addict equals always one. Why they say your program membership should be lifelong. Why they mandate ninety meetings your first ninety days. It’s tough to guess how many are here except to say that it’s more maybe than expected and never enough as it should be. Up front a new group leader — he’s a shaggy redhead with freckled arms — sits on a table and sips a steaming mug. He raises a hand and waits until the gabbing stops, until the members scrape their chairs into place; he waits and clears his throat and sets aside his drink and stands.