I swooned and stepped back to lean against the wall when they moved from the vestibule, walking as one instead of two to the couch and falling down onto its cushions. I did not want to listen but was unable to move. I heard Delia’s voice call out his name and Hy-Lo responded with a heavy shuddered breath.
My stomach turned and allowed the bile to rise and clog my throat, my hands went to my mouth, and then darkness overtook me.
They found me sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall, my chin resting in the puke on my chest. “Kenzie, Kenzie.” Someone’s fingers ran across my cheeks and brushed against my forehead. “Kenzie?”
My eyes fluttered open and stared into those of my mother.
“C’mon,” she said, her voice a calm wave. The stench of vomit hit my nose and burned the insides of my nostrils like ammonia and I lifted my head and gulped for air. “Get up, c’mon,” she urged again.
With Delia’s help I pulled myself to my feet and let her take me to the bathroom.
“Oh,” she muttered in surprise. I looked up at her and then followed her eyes. She was staring at the back of my gown. A blotchy red stain covered the thin green nylon. “Well, welcome to womanhood,” Delia said with a nervous smile.
Later that day, Malcolm and I sat in the living room; our small overnight bags, busting at the seams, rested against our feet. We pretended to watch television, but our ears were tuned to the conversation that took place a few feet away.
Hy-Lo had come for us. It was almost three when he got there. His eyes were bloodshot and his face unshaven. He’d lost some weight and his clothes clung desperately to his withering frame. He was a pitiful sight.
He smiled at us and patted Malcolm on his back. “Hello, son,” he said in a voice that belonged to someone else’s father.
Son
was not a term I’d ever heard him use.
Meathead,
stupid, idiot,
those were his pet names for Malcolm.
My brother nodded his head and shook Hy-Lo’s outstretched hand.
“Kenzie?” It was not a greeting but a question for me to grant his permission to greet me. I rolled my eyes and turned my head away.
Delia laid her sad eyes on me; they asked me to try, to please just try. I ignored them.
They did not sit, Delia and Hy-Lo, but stood like young children being scolded as Mable slammed her fist on the table in between the threats she flung at them.
She waved my acceptance letter in their faces. “She will attend this school, Hyman. If you don’t allow it, I swear to God I will go straight to Child Welfare Services!”
I saw Hy-Lo’s head bob up and down in agreement. His eyes met Mable’s for one brief moment and then settled back on his shoes. Delia stood in the background, quiet as a mouse.
It was done and over. Mable squeezed us tight before we loaded ourselves into the car. “Kids, call me if you need me,”
she yelled as we pulled away from the house.
I clutched the letter tightly as Hy-Lo barreled down the highway. It was my ticket to freedom.
W
e walked into the apartment; it was dark and dreary and smelled like cigarettes and fried chicken TV dinners. Hy-Lo had made a makeshift clothesline by stretching a rope from the curtain rod of the living room window to the floor lamp directly across. His shorts and T-shirts hung there drying.
The refrigerator was stacked with TV dinners and bottles of apple juice. A carton of Camels sat on the table next to the ceramic ashtray overflowing with butts and gray matchsticks.
Delia started cleaning even before she removed her coat. “Help me untie this,” she said to Malcolm after she removed the wet clothes from the line. I walked straight to my room and closed the door.
My stomach cramped as my anger began to well up inside of me. I threw myself across my bed and cried into my pillow. I hated being back in that place, under that roof where so much hate and pain lived.
I wanted to stay with Mable. “Can I stay here?” I’d boldly asked when Hy-Lo picked up my satchel and started toward the door.
“Of course—” Mable had started to answer but was cut off by Delia.
“No, Kenzie, you cannot. You come home where you belong.” I saw the fear that passed across her face. She needed me there; I was her strength and without me she would crumble and he would win. “You come home, Kenzie, you’re my responsibility not your grandmother’s.”
“She’s old enough to decide where she wants to live,” Mable responded.
Hy-Lo said nothing; his eyes traveled between Delia, Mable, and me. For a moment he resembled a trapped animal, but then Delia rescued him.
“No, she’s not.” Delia’s voice came from deep within her. She would not let Mable win this one. Mable almost smiled in spite of herself. Perhaps Delia’s tone gave Mable hope that she still had some backbone left in her.
“You only got to hang in there for a few more months, Kenzie. September will be here before you know it.” Mable spoke to me but her eyes never left Delia’s, and the smile, although just a shadow, grew and spread across her face. “Just a few more months.”
Delia rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, Mama,” she said and took a step back so I could pass.
Back home nothing had changed and everything had changed. I had my Get Out of Jail Free Card hidden in an old sock and stuffed behind my dresser. I prayed that the next six months would pass quickly and without incident. That would be a big order for God to fill, but I hoped against hope.
The summer of ’79 would be a season of discovery for me and I would, during those eight sultry weeks, discover the sweet mouth and solid touch of a boy whose youth had abandoned him years before his sixteenth birthday.
I did not worry about the others being interested in him. He was not beautiful and sleek. He was long and lanky; his hands were clumsy and oversized, weighing down his already thin arms. His nose was bent at an angle that ruined any immediate attractive qualities his face held. You had to look long and deep to see the beauty of his brown eyes, the thick supple lids that shone smooth as copper beneath the sun, and the weighty lashes that curled upward eternally praising the sky.
There would be no contest between the Donnelly girls, Hillary, Glenna, and me; they did not have the patience or the maturity to consider him with such intensity. So they just dusted him with their gazes and decided right then and there that he was not anything they wanted.
He and his mother moved into the apartment building across the street from me beneath the backdrop of a Fourth of July evening while the sound of firecrackers and cherry bombs consumed the night and fireworks painted the sky in brilliant blues, reds, and yellows.
His name was Jonas and he was miles ahead of his sixteen years. A full-time student in the daytime and a gas station attendant at night. He had been thrust into adulthood when his father, a two-bit drug dealer, was found shot to death in Tompkins Square Park.
I kissed him the first time we met, because I had missed out on that small intimacy with Mousy and had longed for it ever since. It was a quick and easy kiss that reminded me of his smile and melted my insides and curled my toes around the edges of my sandals.
It was his smile that had turned me around the first day I met him. Not the baritone hello or the feel of his fingertips on my forearm as he reached out for me when I passed him. I didn’t even notice his eyes, the odd angled nose, or the beauty mark that sat on his left cheek like a speck of dirt. Just his smile, wide and bright.
Before I knew it I smelled the motor oil that was ground into the grooves of his hands and beneath his fingernails.
“Hi,” he said as he waved his hand back and forth in my face, fracturing the spell his lips had on me.
“Hi,” I responded. My experience with boys was minimal but I did not feel nervous speaking to him out in the open like that. Right on the corner of Montgomery and Nostrand avenues where everyone could see, including Hy-Lo, Delia, and the old man who owned the pharmacy on the corner.
He smiled and his words were soothing. They sounded as familiar as a bedtime story my mother had read over and over to me as a child.
I walked with him to his apartment building and even stepped inside its cream-colored halls. We remained there in the cool darkness, hidden from the eyes of our neighbors and the scorching rays of the sun, talking about anything and everything, and for moments, nothing at all.
“I can’t give you my number,” I said when he finally asked.
“Can I give you mine?”
“Yes.”
I wrote his number in red ink on my palm. The seven digits seemed to sear my hand and I made a fist to contain the fire.
A woman came down the marble staircase that led up to the apartments. She was singing to herself, loud and off-key. Her shoes clicked hard against the stone, running competition with her clamorous melody.
I made a face and snickered. Jonas said nothing. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and dropped his head.
The woman’s hair was cut so short you could see her scalp and the thin scraggly scars that covered the left side of her head above her ear. Her eyes bulged and the whites looked like aged parchment, yellow and dim. She was short, the color of pancake mix, with a belly that rounded out before her and jiggled beneath her T-shirt when she moved. To me she looked like a bullfrog, but I kept that thought to myself.
“J,” the woman said coming to stand before us. “J, listen, go on down to that liquor store, get me a pint of …” she slurred and lost her words.
I looked at Jonas. He had extended his hand out to retrieve the crumpled money. His head remained bent but I could see the shame in his eyes and the resemblance he bore to the woman.
“Ahhhhhhhh …” She was still struggling to find the words to finish her sentence. She snapped her fingers and looked to the cream-colored walls for the answer.
“Gin,” Jonas said quietly and slowly took the money from the woman’s hand.
“Yeah, uh-huh.” She patted him on the back, twice. “Good boy, my good boy.” She never acknowledged me; maybe she thought I was an impression on the wall or a shadow. Whatever the case, she turned and stumbled her way back up the staircase.
I looked at Jonas, this person I’d just met but felt like I’d known forever, and realized that we shared the same pain. I took his chin in my hand and tilted his head up and turned it toward me. I wanted to say something grown, something I’d seen in a movie or read in a book, but nothing would come to me. I pulled him to me and pressed my lips against his until I felt I had kissed that moment away, and then we walked, side by side, to the Beehive liquor store.
We spoke on the phone in the evenings when Hy-Lo was at work and Delia had closed herself behind her bedroom door. I stole time with him at the gas station in the small metal box he called his office. I was more than happy to sit surrounded by grease and grime, as long as I could be near him, hear him, touch him.
We shared stories, about our parents and their problems, as if we were both veterans of some long-ago battle now able to laugh.
I was never really able to talk about things like that, not even to Glenna, much less laugh about it. But now I did, we did, laughed until our sides ached and tears streamed down our faces. And then we held each other and kissed the pain away.
* * *
“Where you been, Kenzie?” Delia’s face was screwed up. She was standing over the stove scrubbing the chrome with Brillo. Her hair was relaxed now and hung long and black just touching her shoulders. The kitchen smelled of salmon cakes and french fries. Malcolm sat at the table greedily shoving food into his mouth, but he stopped to throw me a warning look when I walked in.
“I—I—” The words were stuck in my throat. Her question had taken me by surprise.
“Don’t come in here with a lie up your ass, Kenzie. Where were you?” It was obvious she had been ranting and raving for some time before I got in. I looked at the clock on the wall; it was after ten.
“I was at Glenna’s,” I said and dropped my eyes.
“You were
where?
” Delia took a step away from the stove.
“Glenna’s.” I repeated the lie and stepped backward. My back hit the wall.
“Kenzie.” My name sounded like shit in her mouth when she said it. “You lying little—” She stopped herself and reached for her pack of Newports. “You wanna come again?” she said as she lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.
“What?” I would have to stick to the lie; I was in too deep.
“Glenna called here looking for you not more than ten minutes ago. So where the hell were you!” She yelled so loud my ears rang and Malcolm got up from the table, leaving his half-eaten plate of food behind. He brushed past me and went to sit in the living room. It was just Delia and me now.
The cigarette smoke filled the kitchen and hung around us like a gray net. I wanted to move but I was afraid any movement I made would be interpreted as insolent. So I remained perfectly still, my head bowed, hands clasped behind my back, and the taste of Jonas on my tongue.
“Do I look like I have ‘stupid’ scratched across my forehead? Do I!” She was moving closer now. The cigarette smoke she exhaled tickled my nose and I stifled a sneeze. “Answer me, Kenzie, goddamnit!”
“No,” I almost yelled. “No, I don’t think you’re stupid,” I said lowering my voice.
“So where the hell were you?” She was in my face now. I could see the brown tops of her bare feet, the chipped polish on her toenails, and the corn on her pinky toe.
“I—I was—” I couldn’t say it. The words were there, but they were caught in my throat.
“I—I,” she mocked me and then turned and walked back into the kitchen.
I breathed a sigh of relief and slowly raised my eyes to meet hers when she turned around.
“I’ll tell you where the hell you was. Your ass was across the street in that building with that nappy-headed boy!” She crossed her arms across her chest in triumph and glared at me, daring me to deny it.
I said nothing. My body slumped.
“Let me tell you something. If you think you are going to screw up my life because you couldn’t keep your legs closed, you better think again, ’cause I’m raising my children, I ain’t raising no more than that!”