Mitchell Jackson: The Residue Years

It’s years beyond the worst of it, and it’s your time, Mom, a time of head starts and new starts and starting and going and not stopping — of re-dos and fixes, of gazing at full moons and quarter-moons and seeing what before were phantasms for-reals. If this streak keeps up (it will; why not?), you’ve got the rest of your life, hell yeah it’s a life, minus fatmouthing no-accounts. You hope — no, we hope (you and your eldest) that this year, next year, and the years after are an age of heartbeats, steady breath, and a healing for your harms. Smart money says you and I are in for seasons and seasons of pewter sunups and cold-ass sunsets and rain. In this state, who can get away from the rain? Shit, you used to think maybe it was the rain. This will be a time of cruising rainy days by your old bus stops, unsoaked, semi-warm, and daydreaming. To be true, Mom, we’ll likely see days upon days of yearning. But hey, this might also be the time, after a long-long trial of bootsie-ass suitors, of your white gown and bouquet; it might be, but Mom, let’s keep it funky, if ain’t been in forty-plus years, there’s a helluva chance it won’t. You know I would take care of it all if I could but at present — enough said, so meantime, you’re on your own for new gear: for age-sanctioned tops and blouses; jeans and dresses; khakis and slacks, work suits; until they cut me loose, it’s on you to foot new heels and flats and sandals — yep, sandals, but closed sandals, please, for those sacrilegious toes! Plus, Mom, set aside enough to keep spruced, to make this year, next year, and all the ones to come, months of pedicures and manicures, of consistent appointments for weaves, of waxes and peels and scrubs and tweezing, but no foundation. It ain’t never, no matter what fly-by-night wannabe beauty expert claims it, the year for caked-on makeup. It’s also never, and I mean never-ever times count as high as you like, a moment for punkish men, no Old Joes, none of those grown-ass juveniles I wished far-far away from us when I was young; on the other hand, it’s the time for your young bastards — KJ, Canaan, and, despite my predicament, me too. Some say this is the time of love. The suckers always do. You give it and you get it, that’s what the suckers say. The born-agains preach we might be upon the Second Coming. We might be, but since we ain’t been for eons, best not hold our breath. What else? What else? This has been seasons of long letters, of kites that arrive with their seals broken, handwritten kites with words scratched out or underlined, kites approved and delivered, just a few kites declined.

This has been weeks and weeks of steady visits, of seizing every chance to taunt the superintendent’s bunk rules, a miraculous year of Grace and Champ, of mother and son reaching out.

My ex answers your call like shit is sweet, says, Good to hear from you, so fake you want to reach through the receiver. Next thing, she drops the phone minus nary a pardon and leaves you on an indefinite hold soundtracked by the blare of some rap video cranked beyond good sense. Meanwhile, you carry the noisy cordless into another room, crack the blinds, and watch a pair of baseheads, both thin as antennas, push a half-wrecked sedan down the street. The baseheads, they’ve got the sedan’s doors flung open, and seethe at each other across a scrappy ragtop roof. Farther, they jog their hooptie to a slow cruise, jump in on the run, and sputter off. It’s still plenty of lightweight action on the set. The old lady dressed in a who-gives-a-what-about-the-heat getup (down coat, snow boots, thick wool scarf) tugging a shopping cart full of thrashed cans. Down a ways, boys riding wheelies for distance on dirt bikes with mismatched rims.

Finally, our Princess, my baby girl, your grandbaby, picks up. She announces she’s doing well, offers up a story about school, and follows her report with a plea for ice cream — beseeching to which you concede. You assure our Princess you’ll be there soon, that she should get ready, and hang up hoping her mother, my spiteful ex, will for once keep her word.

Next thing, you search your bedroom closet for an outfit, pick Capri pants and a halter top, and iron them both on a burnt towel laid across your bed. You get the clothes nice and pressed, then model the getup in the same mirror where you keep posted a picture of your boys, my brothers, of which the baby is now a teenage bastard. You try on the clothes, only to decide the granny-still-got-it fit ain’t comfortable, not respectable for a day with our Princess, not even close, so you option look after look before settling on a cotton shirt and khakis, which is the best move, since the more skin you show, the more these recalcitrant good-for-nothings make you a show.

Dressed, you collect from under your mattress the fist-sized stash you’ve been saving for months and peel off a stack of bills. You dump the cash in your bag, grab your keys, and hike outside to where your raggedy Honda is parked too far from the curb for you to have owned a license for as long as you have. There’s a trick to starting the Honda, which you’ve learned after getting stranded beaucoup times: pumping the gas a few times but not so many it floods the engine.

Outside my ex’s crib, the Honda coughs and wheezes and goes mute as you pull the key. You hop out and shuffle into a yard strewn with a pink and purple Big Wheel, hula hoops, and a candy-cane jump rope, stroll up a set of unbanistered steps, and rap a door knocker the size of a prison guard’s key ring. You’d have to be blind to miss how they’ve let the place go, to miss the paint peeling eczema-like from the walls, windows dirtied to damn near dark as limo tint. How you doing? my ex says, with that supercilious smile that used to be a wellspring. She steps aside to let you in and vanishes, leaving you inside a living room packed with shit I bought: leather couches, big-screen, black lacquer coffee and end tables. It don’t take long to spot her punk-ass new boyfriend standing shirtless over the stove, a clown with one of those inverted builds: legs like arms and arms like legs, not to mention the sucker’s tatted as if he’s gangster, when it’s a good bet he’s weak as one-ply. But hey, who isn’t, or hasn’t been, at least, some kind of soft, so maybe I should cut him some slack.

Negatory!

Our Princess is all done up in a long dress, frilly socks, and matching pigtail ribbons, and flares her dress jumping the last few steps to a spot near you. You kiss her forehead and fix (relieved you and me both she didn’t inherit your sacrilegious toes) her wrong-footed sandals. She asks again for ice cream and you say sure, swelled up with the fact that, unlike the past, our Princess and all else can double-trust — no, overtrust — your word. Holding her at arm’s length, you ask who bought her gold bracelet and matching gold chain. She says his name, and when you repeat it, the punk dips out of sight as if your voice reminds him of his sensitive side, of all the ways he can’t measure.

Ain’t shit sensitive no more about my scandalous-ass ex. She don’t bother to see you off (should’ve seen it coming, what she’d become, but I was sprung); what she does is yell what time she’ll be back and instructs her tissue-tough boyfriend to escort you and our Princess to the door, a feckless half-ass gesture since you’re halfway to the car by the time the sucker peeks his tattooed neck outside, and by the time he reels in his paranormal-shaped dome you’re working the famous trick to starting the Honda.