Mitchell Jackson: The Residue Years

Stops later, a bad wind blows a familiar face on board — Michael. Well, well, well, I’ll be gotdamned, he says, swaggering my way. Ms. Corporate America in the flesh. Fuck a month, ain’t seen you in a year of Sundays.

Hello, Michael, I say. Please call me Grace. Those jobs were years ago.

Once in corporate America, always a corporate American, Michael says. You know how it is, most times it ain’t where you at, but where you been and with who. Michael smiles, unveiling missing teeth and a wrong-colored tongue. He rubs an unshaven cheek and stabs his cake cutter deeper into his kinky afro. The man smells as if he should bathe in hot bleach.

Say, where you been hiding? he says.

Hiding, I say. Haven’t been hiding nowhere. More like laying low.

Sheeit, ain’t nothing wrong with that, he says. Come to think of it, somebody tell me, I forget who, that you was in diversion. Judge sent my black ass there when I caught my first possession. But after living a coupla months with all them rules and regulations, I told em, fuck it, send me to the penitentiary. He picks something out of his teeth and flicks it on to the floor. He plops in the seat next to mine.

Now, they cuisine, he says. From what I recall, they cuisine wasn’t all that bad. Indeed it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi, but every blue moon you’d close your eyes and that shit was damn near fine dining. Michael chuckles and scratches his head and checks the bed of black gunk under his jagged nails. You finish all them phases, or they still got you leashed on that paper? he says.

I give him my back and watch the blocks scroll — the apartments, the duplexes, the record store, Check Mart, a black-suited Muslim hocking papers outside the beauty supply.

Oh, oh, I got it, Michael says. Cool, didn’t mean no harm. You know me. Might get it fucked up every now and then, but a brother mostly means well.

There’s a spotted run of days between this man and me. So many times of us stumbling into a plasma center at the end of a week run, and blowing, with no qualms whatsoever, the few dollars they paid, plus whatever change we had in our pockets, of us striking with smirks, buying from the nearest dealer, and racing to get loaded: in an alley or abandoned building or, in a bind sometimes, the unisex bathroom of a resturant in Old Town.

Michael looks at me and I look at him and we trade blame, pit against each other our past, strength, will, pride, faith.

By the way you looking, I say, about now, an in-patient program would do you good.

Cool, cool, I see you up there on your stallion, Michael says. But check it: make sure you hold them reins real, real tight.

He don’t hazard my way again. He opens his window, and fake busies himself with emptying his pockets of junk. He gets off on Skidmore and waves good-bye at half-mast.

Stops later, when I get off, it seems as if I’ve stepped into a movie on pause the whole last year. I tug my things past a totaled car and yards of ankle-length grass, past a bent street pole and a pair of tagged stop signs, tug it up to the front gate of the Piedmonts, a weathered apartment complex enclosed by a tall wrought-iron fence. I buzz and smoke the next-to-last cig in my pack while I wait. The lady that shows clasps my hand in hers with strength. She leads me to a building in the back that houses an office furnished with an oak desk, lawn chairs, and a rack of color-coded keys. She hands me a sheet and tells me to read it with care. It’s our rules, she says. Rules beyond your program contract. She tells me the complex is a drug-free zone, that any tenant caught on the premises with drugs or paraphernalia will be reported to the police and put out.

She leads me to my unit, offers a canned script of assurances, and skirts off the moment I turn the bolt. I drop my bags and kick my heels off by the front door. Someone has slapped fresh paint on the walls, shampooed streaks in the carpet, nice touches, but a front room won’t tell you whether you can stand a place. To know that, you best get to checking the bathroom. How wide this bathroom is, if you stretch out your arms you can palm both walls, and how high, if I hadn’t kicked off my heels, I could almost touch the fan.. The tile is mismatched and curls where it should lie down. The tub and toilet are scrubbed to off white. When I trust the faucet, it spits rusted water that takes a moment to stream clear.

You’ve been here before, I tell myself. Weaker and with less to lose.

I take a long breath in.

Let a big breath out.

Take a long breath in.

Exhale — enormous.

Air sucks through the fan. Cold tile bites through a hole in my stockings. I take out the picture of my boys and wedge it in a corner of the mirror and hit the light switch. The bulb flickers to a soft glow and I finger the photo’s curled edges — see my three boys, my precious loves, in all the light there is.

Back when we were straight. When we were living with my great-grands in the house on Sixth, home, back when Mom’s checks kept me and KJ laced in new shirts and laden with toys, back when she kept a corporate job that paid a bonus, back then Mom came home at the same time day in, day out. I’d sit at my window and watch her pull up (we kept a new ride back then), and would book to the top of the steps and damn near implode waiting for her to sway through the door dressed to impress the world in wool-blend pants and silk blouse or a skirt suit with a broach pinned to her lapel, plus jewels you could hock for a new self on her fingers and wrists. The routine. Mom would say my name the way only she could, the way only she can, and flash a smile that never seemed even infinitesimally fake. Then she’d call me down, doff the tenny shoes she wore to and from work but never anywhere else, bright white shoes she kept stitched with sparkling double-knotted laces yanked so tight it’s a wonder her feet never fell off from lack of blood. My mother would grip me in one of her spine-bending-breath-stopping hugs, set me free, and, while I was working to catch my wind, would shuffle off towards the kitchen where my great-grandparents, Mama Liza and Bubba, were waiting to hear of her day. My M.O. was I’d lag, wait till Mom was well out of sight, snatch up her tennies, untie her tight-ass knots, loosen the laces so she could slip them on the next morning no hassles. Set them side by side, and vanish before anyone in the house witnessed. It was the most I could do for her back then and may be the most I have done for her since.

Mom is outside the gates glancing.

She’s smoking a nasty-ass cigarette and wearing clothes that might be secondhand. This is the first time she’s seen my ride, which is probably why, right off, she don’t move, not until I tap the horn and pull up close.

She climbs in and the first thing out her mouth is, Whose car is it?

How about hello? I say, but already Mom’s shimmying in her seat, running her hands along the dash, opening vents, and saying, Wow, wow, the whole time.

No, Champ, serious, whose car is this? she says.

Mom, I say. C’mon.

Mom what? she says. This cost, what? What did this cost?

Nothing, Nothing, I say. No worries.

She twists to give me the side of her face and lets her window down. Okay, I’ll let it be, she says. But for now.

I ask why she didn’t call me the day she got out. Tell her I would’ve picked her up.

Some things you should do on your own, she says. Some days it’s best to be by yourself. Mom touches the door handle, and smiles at me, the way she might’ve half my life ago. Look at you, she says. Look at you. She can’t decide on where to eat, so I drive us to the diner where my high school coach would take our hoop team during state tournament time, a spot with a waffle breakfast that could bring a nigger to tears of joy. The hostess seats us in a booth near a window and gives us menus and ice waters. Our waiter appears, asks if we need time to decide. Mom does, so I busy watching cars wheel Broadway while she over-thinks her choice. She closes the menu and our waiter reappears pad in hand.