Leaving: A Novel Page 9

  Love shook his head. “You ain’t got to prove you hard to me.”

  “I ain’t tryin to prove nothin. I just is.”

  “Course you is, you my blood.”

  They watched the flame lick the edge of the crib’s post and then die away. Li’l Pit picked up the candle and walked over to the post. He held it under the wood until the white paint crackled and caught fire.

  “Now!” Li’l Pit said triumphantly.

  “That’s a shame.”

  “What’s a shame?”

  “It gets out a some big ole fire way back, and now you go and light it up.”

  “Yeah, well, some things was meant to burn up.” He held his arms out and warmed them over the small fire. Beige moths raced between the shadows flickering on the walls.

  “Some moths look like bees and wasps,” Love said. “So they won’t be eaten in the day. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I think you one of them funny niggahs,” Li’l Pit said.

  “Just cause I got some learnin don’t mean I can’t beat your ass.”

  “Here it is, then.” He stood up and bent his butt toward Love. “Come on an beat on it.”

  “I’m gonna get them blankets before you set your own nappy lice head on fire to keep warm.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Li’l Pit lowered his behind.

  Love climbed over the fallen railing of the stairway and out through a hole in the wall. He crossed Cranston, unhooked the fence, and climbed the stairs of the red Victorian.

  Ruby sat in the rocking chair in the living room, looking out the front window. She wore her suede cowgirl outfit, light brown chaps and matching jacket with long leather fringes. She held a black hat in her lap. The room was quiet and the curtains still open. Love met her eyes when he came in but turned around quickly, closing the door and locking it. He walked by her to the stairs, his hands in the pockets of his white jeans. He climbed the first step, then turned to her.

  “Ain’t you gonna ask where I been?”

  “Will it stop you from going?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should I waste my breath?”

  Love turned and jogged up the stairs, then stopped again halfway. “You got another blanket I could have?”

  Ruby rocked back and forth a few times then let out a sigh. “You know your mama ain’t gonna do nothin but sell it.”

  “It ain’t for my mama.”

  “I try to get her to a program. Long time ago.” Ruby looked at the coffee table. “She lower than low. She ran away from me, you know. But I won’t have her in this house till she clean.”

  “I told you it ain’t for her.”

  “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Everyone else been pulled away from me. You what family I got. But you gonna do what you have to do. I know that. She your mama.” Ruby put her hat on the table and stood up. “I’d rather give it to you than have you steal it.” She went into her room and came out with a green blanket, satiny on the edges. Love came back down the stairs and took it.

  “Just don’t you steal from me. That’s the one thing I won’t stand for—that’s what your papa done. Remember, you asked me and I gave it to you.” Ruby sat back down in the rocking chair.

  “An where your shoes?”

  Love looked down at his feet as though he hadn’t noticed. “I lost them.”

  “You what?”

  “I lost them.”

  Ruby shook her head. “How you gone lose your shoes right off your feet? We can’t afford to be given everything away.” Love opened the front door.

  Ruby yelled after him, “Now don’t you give her those loafers, you hear. Those shoes ain’t yours.”

  Love took the blanket back across the street. The crib was still burning in low blue flames.

  “Look at this,” Li’l Pit said. “I found myself a bed.” He lay curled up in an open cardboard box the size of a desk turned on its side, his feet sticking out of the bottom. Love laid the blanket over him.

  “I’ll tell her tomorrow. Then we can get your head cleaned up and we can stay in the same room.”

  “That’s awright. I don’t mind. I got myself a room here.”

  “I’ll come get you in the morning.” Love climbed through the wall and over the stairwell again. He stopped in the darkness outside on the street and listened. He could see the crew under a streetlight at the corner liquor store. The guy with the braid and his wheelchair-bound homie with the snake were laughing next to a woman in tight red satin shorts and fishnet stockings. He watched them from a distance until the wind blew and chilled him.

  Before he stepped off the curb, he heard Li’l Pit calling to him from inside the burnt house, or maybe singing again. He went back to check on him, and through the hole in the stairs he saw Li’l Pit lying on his stomach inside his box, banging his forehead against his arm and grunting in a monotonous drone, like a car engine struggling to turn over: “Nuh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING Love took his usual hour to fix himself up after showering, just as he had at Los Aspirantes. He applied lotion to every inch of his body, rubbing circularly from his wrist to his shoulder, his ankle to his waist, and then carefully greasing the grooves between each finger and each toe. He doused himself in cologne, tipping the bottle against his neck, his chest, and his underarms. He cleaned out his ears with Q-Tips, brushed and flossed his teeth, and then began to dress, laying out each T-shirt on his bed above his white jeans until he narrowed his choice down to two outfits. Then he tried on each shirt twice before coming to a final decision, a red Bull’s jersey. He slipped on his loafers and then went back to the bathroom to fix his hair. He picked it out and sprayed on conditioner until it glowed.

  He had to wait for Ruby to leave for her cleaning job. Love was supposed to get himself to school. After breakfast and another expedition to the bathroom to wash his hands, brush his teeth again, and reconsider his hair, he put on Easton’s leather jacket, which he’d found going through the closets. Then he went outside to check on Li’l Pit in the burnt house across the street.

  Li’l Pit sat in his cardboard box, the blanket over his legs, playing steamroller on his lap with two empty cigarette boxes. Love stood by the hole under the stairs and gestured to him with a flick of his head.

  “Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ve got to get ready.”

  “For what?”

  “For school.”

  “I ain’t going to school.”

  “Well, you want something to eat, don’t you?”

  Li’l Pit nodded.

  “Well, come on then.”

  Li’l Pit stood up and threw the boxes onto the ground.

  The inside of Ruby’s house stunned Li’l Pit. The living room was clean and spacious under its high ceiling. The light through the curtains made the room glow softly, as if gold were hidden under the surface of all the wood. He stood silently and put his hands on the blue quilt tucked around the top of the couch. Everywhere were items of comfort and value, soft things to lie on, exotic things to steal.

  “I’ll fix us something to eat,” Love said and went into the kitchen. Li’l Pit felt drawn around the room like a magnet. He studied the seashells around the base of the potted plant on the coffee table and the black stone elephants sitting by the record player. When Love came back in the room with two bowls of cereal, Li’l Pit was standing at the far wall, looking at the black-and-white photographs of Corbet and Elise, sliding his hand along the wood frames.

  “Sit down here.” Love spread red-knit place mats on the table, and his brother sat in one of the tall-backed chairs. He grabbed one bowl and started shoveling the food into his mouth. Love pulled the bowl away.

  “I’ll let you say grace,” Love said. Li’l Pit shook his head and stared at the bowl. “All right. Close your eyes. Thank you for this food we are about to eat and for taking care of us and taking care of our grandmother and the rest of the people in ou
r family. Amen. Say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “I mixed the Frosted Flakes with the cornflakes so you get some of the good stuff with the healthy stuff.” Li’l Pit pulled the bowl back and ate without looking up.

  “Now, you’ve got to chew with your mouth closed. And don’t drink the milk out of the bottom. And when you’re done, you’ve got to brush your teeth so they don’t fall out.”

  Li’l Pit finished the cereal, picked up the bowl, and drank the rest of the milk. “I ain’t brushing my teeth,” he said.

  “You’ve got to.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Then you got to use your finger and some toothpaste and rub it all around.”

  Love took his brother into the bathroom and squeezed toothpaste onto his finger. “See. Don’t use too much. Now just stick your finger all around in there.”

  When they were done in the bathroom, Love made sure Li’l Pit washed his dish and put it on the drying rack, the way the counselors had him do it at Los Aspirantes.

  “Now you’re ready for school.”

  “No I ain’t.” Li’l Pit backed up into the corner against the sink and the refrigerator. It was clear there would be a struggle if Love insisted.

  “Then what you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want to play hoops?”

  Li’l Pit shrugged, which was good enough. Love went upstairs and got the ball from the closet.

  “Where the hoops at?” Li’l Pit asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  They walked out onto the street and toward the train yard. At the end of the last block they rounded the corner into an alley, the backs of houses and garbage cans on one side and, on the other, a tall concrete wall hiding the train tracks. The hoop was a blue milk crate with the bottom cut out, nailed ten feet up on a telephone pole. Love looked up and down the alley, then, seeing no one else around, nodded and dribbled toward the pole, moving as best he could in his old loafers.

  “Yee-eh, boy,” he yelled. He jumped into the air, spun almost 360 degrees, and shot it in the crate, leaving the ball bouncing on the pavement.

  “Now!” he said, strutting back to Li’l Pit. “Can you say J-o-r-d-a-n?”

  Li’l Pit chased the ball down and dribbled it with both hands.

  “What’s up with that? That’s double dribble. Give me that.” But Li’l Pit kept dribbling, looking at the ball closely like he wasn’t sure if it would bounce straight back up. Love ran to him and swiped it away.

  “Do it like this.” He bounced the ball with one hand by his side, waist high, nice and basic. But then he couldn’t help show off: he bounced it between his legs faster and faster and then went in for a layup. Li’l Pit smiled and chased the ball again. He tried bouncing it with one hand but hit his foot and the ball rolled away.

  “I don’t want to play. I’m tired,” he said.

  “You sure is. You the most tired hoopster I ever seen. I’m gonna teach you something. Back in the day, I couldn’t do none of this.” Love shot the ball into the basket. “But now I’m all that. And I didn’t have anyone to show me, like you’ve got now, see. So you’ve got to take advantage.” He shot a three-pointer from behind a chalk line drawn on the pavement. When he turned around, Li’l Pit was pulling a box of Chinese food from a black garbage bag.

  “What you doing?”

  “It’s for later.”

  “Put that nasty stuff down. You don’t know what kinda AIDS that got.” Love snatched the box from him and threw it on the bag. “You’ve got to have some hygiene. You can’t just eat anything. We’ve got more food inside.”

  “Hey, hey, nice shoes, punk.” The crew from the corner liquor store was upon them without a moment to think, six guys, all bigger and older, including the guy in the wheelchair. A thin stick of a guy punched the ball out of Love’s arms and dribbled in for a layup.

  “What you doin with our ball and hoop?” said the man standing out in front of the crew. He towered above them with square shoulders and a brow that stuck out over his eyes by an inch, giving him a natural shade without sunglasses. Love recognized him from looking out the window on his first day at Ruby’s. He had a long braid of hair down his back, which, Love had heard, was because his father was Japanese.

  “Hey Freight Train,” the stick boy called to the man. “Watch this.” He shot from behind the three-point line but missed. “Man, you-know-what-I’m-sayin, this ball is junk.”

  The guy in the wheelchair with the boa constrictor around his shoulders rolled up to Love.

  “What’s up, niggah? You ain’t got no tongue?” Love still didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes level, staring forward into nothing, as though the crew weren’t even there.

  “Damn, bro,” Li’l Pit said, his body working from side to side as he walked up to the wheelchair. “That’s a tight snake.”

  “Shut up,” Love said flatly to his brother.

  “Listen here, niggah,” the man in the chair said to Love. “You ain’t got no bidness talking to a little brother that way.”

  “What kinda snake this is?” Li’l Pit asked.

  “This the kinda snake that eat bitches for lunch.”

  “Watch this, Curse,” the stick boy yelled to the man in the chair. He walked up behind Love and threw the basketball at his head. It hit Love in the ear. Love turned and glared at the boy.

  “What you lookin at, niggah?”

  It was clear now who they wanted him to take on. This chump in the alley was definitely just a punk who’d be nothing without the crew. He had to stand up for the OGs, but they might not stand up for him because he might still have to prove himself. Love saw no way to leave this alley without a beating. Either he fought and they beat him up but respected him, or he didn’t fight and they beat him up every time they saw him. It was going to come down anyway, so Love had to do it while he still had some dignity. He blocked out the pain in his head and ran at the guy.

  As he’d expected, the rest of the crew stood and watched while he and this stick boy went at it. They were both good with their hands and got in a few punches before it appeared Love would win, but then the stick boy pulled out a .22. He pointed it right at Love’s forehead.

  Love closed his eyes. He’d been in this situation before. Closing his eyes helped him keep calm; when he couldn’t see the gun and its hole of death, it was like it wasn’t there.

  “I guess you can’t take me with your hands,” Love said, loud enough for the crew to hear.

  “I could take you with my finger right now, niggah.”

  Love turned around and looked at Freight Train and the rest of the crew. They waited to see what their homie would do. He hit Love in the temple with the gun and knocked him to the ground. Love put his hand to his head and felt the blood. He spit on the ground as if this would somehow keep his poise, but he couldn’t stand up again.

  Freight walked over and put his hand out for the gun. The stick boy handed it over immediately. Freight aimed the gun back at him.

  “What you doin, Freight?”

  Freight didn’t answer.

  “I had to. You-know-what-I’m-sayin. I had to, ’cause he was dissin us, you-know-what-I’m-sayin.” He backed up, and when he’d gotten five feet away, he turned and ran up the alley. Freight shot at him and missed, but the boy fell to the ground and covered his head. He screamed out, practically crying.

  “Fuck, Freight, what you shoot at me for?”

  “Get up,” Freight said in an even tone.

  The boy slowly raised himself with his head turned away.

  “Come here.”

  Stick boy walked slowly toward Freight, who held the gun straight at him. Love watched from the ground and Li’l Pit watched from the side of Curse’s chair. Nothing moved in the alley but the snake’s black tongue, shooting out and quivering, silently smelling the air. The stick boy’s chest heaved, but he walked right up to the nose of the gun.

  “Would I ever hurt you?” Freight asked h
im.

  The boy shook his head but didn’t look convinced.

  “When’s the only time I’d ever hurt you?”

  The boy had a hard time making the sound come to his mouth, but after a few swallows, he said: “If I ever leave you.”

  “That’s right. That’s why I shot at you. I love you too much, man, to let your ass go. That would hurt my heart. I was testing you. And now you’ve come back. So you ain’t got nothing to fear.” He lowered the gun and grabbed the boy in a long, hard hug that seemed to take the breath out of him. When Freight stepped back, he held out the gun for the boy. “Take it.”

  He took it and put it back in his pants. Curse wheeled over to the basketball, picked it up and put it in his lap. He rolled very close to Love’s fingers and then back to Li’l Pit.

  “Here you go, little brother. You can play with our ball for a while.” Li’l Pit took the ball and nodded as if he’d been given a special assignment.

  Freight turned, and the rest of the crew followed him out of the alley and back up Cranston.

  * * *

  LOVE BROUGHT LI’L Pit inside for breakfast again the next day after Ruby had gone to work. When they’d cleaned up, Love took him outside and walked back around the block to get to San Pablo, instead of going up Cranston and passing the liquor store where the crew always hung out.

  “Now I know what we’ve got to do,” Love said.

  “Where we going?”

  “Prescott.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Li’l Pit stopped. “I ain’t, and you can’t make me.”

  “All right. You don’t have to.” Love turned around and walked past his brother. “Just thought you wanted to come live with us.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you’ve got to go to school. You gonna get Nanna put in jail if you’re not in school. And they feed you tacos in school and you get to draw and there are other kids you can hang with. But if you don’t want to, then we’ll just go on back to your cardboard box and see if there’s some more of that Chinese food left in the trash.”