Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

She was about to place her key inside the lock of the front door, when she heard voices on the other side of the door. She stood quietly in the hall of the building and listened.

Now, I never minded yo playin guitar.

No, ma’am.

It kept you outta trouble and yo grades ain’t never suffer. I didn’t even mind yo going over this nigger’s house to practice, cause I thought them other musicians might improve yo sounds. But I ain’t gon let you play at no bar.

Please, Mamma. This my chance.

As God is my witness.

Please, Mamma. I’m beggin.

The only way you can go to that bar is by kickin my ass, and I don’t think you qualified to do the job.

Mrs. Wardell—

It’s Miss Wardell.

Miss Wardell, please allow me to interrupt. Salamanders is not a bar but a disco, and a prominent establishment, I might add. I can assure you that it is frequented by decent and well-educated individuals like yourself.

Please.

It is located in the East Shore area.

Mister, my son ain’t but fifteen.

Yes. I can see how that might trouble you. But let me stress that I’ve been in the music business for fifteen years and have encountered few problems. The owner of the disco is a close friend of mine. He is a professional man like myself.

I thought you drive a truck.

I do. A fourteen-wheeler, but … Anyway, the owner understands the situation. He understands my concept. That is—

Let me ask you one thing.

Ma’am?

What kind of an establishment opens its doors to teenagers?

Not to contradict you, ma’am, but it doesn’t open its doors to—

Hey.

Ma’am?

Let me ask you this.

But—

If you been in the music business fifteen years, how come you ain’t a star? Where’s yo video?

Ma’am, it’s like this—

Concept, please.

I’ve lacked marketability. Now, Sound Productions has just that. Give me a moment, ma’am. You see, all of the members of my band are youngsters like your son. My engineer is also an enterprising young man. My own son is the drummer. Ma’am, do you think that I’d take my own son into any establishment where his life would be in danger?

Mamma said nothing for a time. Then: I tell you what. Hatch can go. But let me say one thing. If anything happens to him, I’m coming for you.

Hatch. You grown now. You defy my word. From now on you save all the money you make from yo route, and the next time you need a flanger or a phase shifter or octave divider or synthesizer or ring modulator or wah-wah pedal, or fuzz box, you better not ask me.

Don’t do that, Mamma. At fifteen, Hatch was already taller than Sheila, equal in height to Chitlin Sandwich, equally thin, with big boyish ears and a hairless face.

Sheila. What you doin here?

Sheila smiled. They had not heard her key turn in the lock. She closed the door behind her. Oh, I’m jus droppin by.

Mamma watched her, unbelieving, perhaps. She was forty and gorgeous. Tall — a good five ten — she stood out in her nice dresses and clean stockings and decent pumps. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail to accentuate her large eyes and high cheekbones. Her smooth dark skin, full breasts, small waist, big butt, and shapely legs drew comment. She thanked anyone who complimented her, even scandalous men. Sheila thought to kiss her but decided against it. Never kiss her when she’s mad. Never.

I was jus talkin to yo brother here. Hardheaded.

No, I ain’t, Mamma.

He think he grown now.

No, I don’t.

Go on and be grown. She spoke into Hatch’s face. And spend yo grown money.

Mamma—

Sheila saved her money when she was yo age.

Both Mamma and Hatch looked at Sheila for support. Sheila said nothing.

Go on, Mr. Grown, with yo grown self.

Please, Mamma—

I said all I’m gon say. Come on, Sheila. Help me wit dinner.

I’ll be right there. She waited until Mamma went into the kitchen. Mamma on yo case, huh?

Word.

She’ll calm down.

I hope so. Crestfallen, doomed, Hatch watched the floor.

Cheer up. She’ll change her mind.

Hatch said nothing.

She was secretly satisfied with Mamma’s tough stand — was it enough, and would it halt what was already in motion? — but she was careful not to show it. Guess who I saw today?

Who?

Chitlin Sandwich.

Hatch continued to watch the floor.

And you know what else?

What?

He was riding your bike.

Hatch raised his head and looked her in the face with protesting eyes. It wasn’t my bike.

Looked like it.

Couldn be. My bike’s in there. Hatch pointed to the closed patio.

Sheila weighed his words. He was lying. She was sure of it. She could see it in his eyes.

A white Jaguar bounced and swayed through nervous traffic. Animate ill will. Chitlin’s wrath seemed to buoy him. Bent and cramped, he floated in the space between steering wheel and hood. A relic. His mouth wide, almost too broad for his skinny face.

Her rearview mirror drummed with the sight. Witness, her eyes recorded, vision hurrying like venom through her body. She gunned the engine with a hoarse roar, turned at the corner, turned again, made several more turns, until she was back where she had started. Car, boomerang. She curved to the curb. Engine running, she sat, quiet, behind the wheel. Her head was numb. Lost him. So now he’s following me? Okay, I got something for him. Wait and see. He’ll think twice about messin wit me.

Boy, what’s wrong wit you? Roused from sleep, in her yellow housecoat with white flowers, Mamma watched Hatch from her reclined position on the couch, the cords in her neck tense, as if straining to contain air bound blood. Her red-house-shoed feet crossed. Ashy ankles like gray fish eyes. Lips puckered from toothless gums. She’d lost her teeth as a child in the Sippi South, when a reckless car struck her on a lonely dirt road. Specialists fashioned her a new set, which she had a hard time keeping track of. Once she’d left them on a friend’s dashboard and dispatched an embarrassed Sheila to retrieve them. Speak up. She switched her gaze to Sheila for a moment, the eyes like stones, scraping Sheila’s skin.

Head down, Hatch cried without wiping his eyes, tears running. A swelling reddened his brow, a small red knob. He attempted to speak between sobs, bubbled words and saliva.

Boy, speak up.

Chitlin Sandwich bit me wit a sock.

What?

Chitlin Sandwich hit me wit a rock.

Mamma continued to look at him, letting the wet revelation soak in. Her eyes slowly found Sheila’s face. She had been put in charge of Hatch. They shared a two-bedroom apartment — she and Mamma, one bedroom; Hatch the other — on the top floor of a three-story brick courtyard building, broad high picture window overlooking the Stonewall Projects, a single playground the center of three seven-story steel high-rises that bloomed into city sky. Flecks of waste. Free-floating rage. It was Mamma’s desire to spirit out of the neighborhood first chance.

Mamma rose from the couch, shuffled into the kitchen, house shoes slapping the bare floor, and returned with two potsherds. She took Hatch’s hand and raised it, palm upward, beggar-fashion. Placed the potsherds inside. Don’t let the serpent of hatred rise in yo heart, she said, but I want you to go back out there and bust that Chitlin Sandwich side his head.

No, ma’am. Hatch was eight, and tall for his age — threatening, even — but he was clumsy (Mamma forbade him to handle delicate objects) and gentle, and would wrap crooked Band-Aids around the broken wings of dragonflies. He would thank Mamma when she whupped him — her blows and words synchronized, his body jerking to avoid the rhythmic belt — and promise to do better.