Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

Why did I mention the story? Right here, right now? Reason why is what happened at Todd’s was on my mind last week when I went to this super-hood hole-in-the-wall in Southeast, a spot where the chicks looked hella-weary, and every other dude wore a just-paroled-long-pinkie-nail, a spot where I ended up rapping to this chick I knew from jump I had no intent on pursuing. Macked her digits out of no more than habit, stuffed them in my pocket, and took my black ass home. But my luck, if it’s luck, you’ve got to love and hate it. Kim sleuthed the shred of paper out of my jeans (since a real player checks his pockets before stepping foot in his crib, what am I?) while I was in the bathroom and wouldn’t hear word one of my sorry-ass excuse. She cursed me into a salt pillar and cried and cried. You would’ve thought she’d cry till dawn, cry for a day, sob all the way till the new year. She’s got a bulging heart, my girl, one that stumbles outside her like a sixth sense, feeling. But the cold part, the part I know deep deep at the source, is that she’ll hurt for now and forgive. Can she hurt for now and forget? Tough guess, but against myself most times, I keep giving her chances to try.

Peoples, peoples, ladies especially, you few sentient gents. Tell the truth, you got to be tired of my vagina monologues. You’ve got to be tired of all this wannabe boss-mack-player talk of pussy and conquests and general female malice. Let me apologize in earnest to those who’ve had it up to here. For you, you, and you who’ve passed that point. Trust and believe, trust and motherfucking believe, I’m tired, so tired, of living this talk. It’s hard, maybe impossible to believe, but I’m not a bad guy. Maybe chickenshit beyond recourse but not mendacious. All my skirt-chasing and tough talk is no better and mostly worse than a flimsy shield. From more than you all will ever know. From more than I may ever know. From more for sure than I could ever call up the courage to speak on.

But what I will say is this: Who’s your first love? What happens when that first love warns you to save room for hurt and spends half your life applying the most harm? How do you protect what bleeds?

Forget that shit they preach on risk and reward. When it comes to a heart, my heart, being butt-naked and swollen in the world, it’s the greater the risk, the deeper the scar.

But weep for me not, though. I don’t want no parts of it.

That’s not why I said what I said. I said all I said to ask this: Can you do me a huge, huge solid and translate? Cause the times I’m talking pussy and conquest and general female abuse, what I’m really talking is wounds.

Wounds and salves.

Wounds and bows.

Wounds and deeper wounds.

I watch the news till the news goes off. I lie down and sit up. Lay down and sit up. I edge to the edge of the bed and half watch a late-night show. I lie back, force my eyes shut, and pray for a dream. Nothing, so I get up and throw on my robe and slink into the kitchen and fix a hot tea. I leave the mug to cool and take out my pack — it’s lasted all week — and light a cig on the stove. It flares orange and shivers in the slice between my fingers. The smoke pirouettes in my breast as I sit crossing and uncrossing my legs.

What about my boys? What about what I’ve missed of them? The one or two birthdays. The umpteen missed games — T-ball, football, basketball. The nights I blew school plays, recitals, parent-teacher conferences.

Thoughts like this can bring it on, and when you feel it building, you make a list of who to call. Of who will offer a haven. Of who will remind you how far you’ve come.

My God. I could call Champ, Pat if he’s out, my sponsor, but there’s a strength to be gained from fighting this urge alone. Get through this and I can escape them all. I smoke another cigarette too close to the brown, stub it out in a bowl, slink into the room, and lie across the bed wishing this time sleep finds me, but instead end up splashing in and out of sleep with these nerves, with my neighbors keeping up noise above my head. I take out the state letter and read it once more, remind myself to keep faith, that this will all work out in the end. It will all work out for us in the end. I drag out of bed and dress and tramp to Big Charles’s corner store. Big Charles is hunkered behind the counter and don’t look happy to see me. Don’t look surprised either. Let me guess, he says, and slants his mouth. So much for the last time being the last time. Look like you well on your way to puffin again like an old broke stove. He pulls my brand without me asking and tosses me a book of matches that he says are on the house. I pay and skitter out with my eyes cut to the floor. I stop and trash the packaging and light up and feel the first sweet pull knock the shake from my hands. I give the second pull time to do its work and flit down Williams for home. The block is wet and clear but for two bodies up ahead hard to make out. This late I should cross the street, I think, but I don’t. Closer, I drop my head and blow a wreath and judge the distance between us by the sound of their voices, the footfalls of a heavy boot. When I’m a step past them, she calls my name and frights me into a dead stop. I turn slow and Dawn and I are face-to-face. Knew I’d see you, she says. Knew it soon as I seen Champ. She steps closer and presses a cold bony cheek against mine and asks why I’m out and what I’ve been up to.

Working, I say. Just working and going to church. There ain’t much time for too much else.

I know that’s right, she says. I seen Michael the other night and he said ya’ll was out together not too long ago. She steps back and swings an arm over the man’s shoulder. This is Jerry, she says. Jerry drives trucks, but he’s off two days and wants to party.

She and I so many times out. The nights she coaxed me from bed while the boys were asleep with a promise, never kept, that I’d be home before they woke. The nights we crouched in a black corner and went rock for rock through every red cent of a state check. This woman was in the room when Champ was born, is the godmother of my baby boy.

What do you do with all of this?

We either are or we aren’t .

Where we go, there we are .

I am new .

I am strong .

Faith without works is dead .

No, thanks, I say. Not for me.

Oh, girl. Did I say? she says. It’s all-expense paid.

Makes me no difference, I say.

Come on, girl, she says. Just like old times, you’ll be back fore you know you was gone.

There’s strength to be earned in facing it alone. But how often can we beat the risk? Here I am — once more. Here we are. It — a tightness in your stomach and taste lying on your tongue — comes on in a flood and you can’t fight the tide.

Next thing, we flit almost single-file, Dawn at the head, Jerry bopping behind us — the brim of his trucker cap bent to a V, his long hair flopping underneath — and me fighting my steps, pills of sweat scrawling my side, something inside me a thunder in my ears. Our makeshift envoy stomping from block to block till we reach a street that’s not a street but a tunnel under arched trees. Dawn stops at a house with a spastic porch light and a hard fast dopehead standing inside a waist-high fence. He calls her name and tips up to the fence.

Dawn loops her arm through mine. These my friends, she says. We trying to see who got it.

Not a problem. Not a problem, he says. Long as you straighten me out on the back end.

Jerry shows the man what, in the wrong place, in a place like this, could get us robbed. He brags we came to party.