CHAPTER THREE
“You stupid little bastard! How many times have I told y’all not to play with the goddamned stove?”
“I wasn’t playin’, Mama. I was just--”
“Give me that.” Yanking the worn dish cloth from his hands, she slapped at the hazy air until the smoke detector ceased its shrieking. She grabbed the handle of the red hot fry pan and howled in pain as an angry red welt appeared on her hand. As the pan clattered into the sink, she turned to glare at him, her eyes still swollen with sleep.
“Look at this goddamned mess!”
Gray stared at the cracked linoleum beneath his bare toes, wishing she’d hit him and be done with it. He could bear anything except Mama’s
anger.
“Think I don’t have anything better to do than clean up after you?”
He lifted his gaze to the sink, where the fry pan hissed angrily beneath the leaky faucet. On the counter beside the stove lay a charcoaled lump of bread and melted cheese, his failed attempt at supper. He’d seen Joe Diamond, the cook at the diner, make the sandwiches a hundred times. He thought he knew how to do it.
“Look at you,” she said in a harsh whisper. He saw the familiar look of hatred come into her eyes and couldn’t bear it. He flinched when he felt her cold hand on his chin, jerking it upward to meet her icy gaze. “You’re just like him, aren’t you? You’ve got his eyes, stone cold gray. The same color as his soul.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“I could have done better, you hear me? I deserved a hellofa lot more than this.”
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she mocked. “Get out of my sight. I can’t stand to look at you.” Yanking him by the arm, she dragged him from the kitchen and pushed him out the front door. He heard it slam behind him, and then the sliding of the deadbolt, and sank down on the stoop, wondering how long Mama would stay angry this time.
Shadows fell, and then darkness. Children deserted the broken sidewalks and the fancy ladies in short skirts and high heeled sandals took up their positions on the corner of Fox and McAdams Streets as Dragonfly Court put on its night time face.
Across the river the Dragonfly Hotel sat like an angry god, casting its long, dark shadow over the grimy housing project. Gray watched as the hotel emblem flickered to life; a red and silver dragonfly, its barbed tail poised to strike. He shivered in the humid Alabama air.
Mama had forgotten about him, must be. His stomach ached with hunger and he had to go to the bathroom, but he dared not knock on the
door and reawaken Mama’s fury. Pressing his ear to the window, he listened intently to the silence. It’ll be all right, he told himself. The emblem was
lit. Mama would soon be going to work.
His gaze once again traveled to the old hotel where his mother worked the night shift as a call girl. His friend Jody said that made his mama a whore. He said call girl like it was something lowdown and dirty, but Gray couldn’t see the shame in it. He pictured his mama sitting behind the big desk in the lobby, answering the telephone and writing down reservations. It seemed to Gray that was at least as respectable as emptying waste baskets and scrubbing toilets, like Jody’s mama did down at the Super Seven.
He held his water until it hurt, then walked quickly toward Ho Chan’s Chinese Buffet. Barefoot, he was careful to avoid the broken glass and rat turds that littered the alley. Outside the back door of Ho Chan’s there was a big, red overflowing dumpster. Gray stepped behind it and lowered his zipper.
When he’d finished peeing he walked to the corner to investigate the pay phone where he and Jody once found two dollars in change. Maybe
he’d get lucky again and find enough to buy an egg roll at Ho Chan’s. His footsteps stopped short, all thoughts of egg rolls fleeing, when he spied a
dead cat in gutter. It was spooky black, its mouth open to reveal two rows of tiny fangs, as if it had died in the heat of battle. Fascinated, he poked at it with a stick. “Not so mean now, are ya boy?”
Hearing approaching footsteps, he ducked into the doorway of an abandoned dry cleaner’s, watching, wide-eyed, as a drunk ambled past. He counted twenty, then sprinted back up the alley toward home.
The sound of low, female voices carried to him from the corner. Glancing over, he saw the silhouettes of the fancy ladies, the tips of their cigarettes glowing red in the dark.
“Gray Baldwin, is that you?”
Recognizing Wynetta’s voice, he strode toward her. He liked Wynetta, liked the soft brown color of her skin and the deep, musical sound of her laughter. Of all the fancy ladies, she was his favorite.
“Hey Miz Wynetta,” he said shyly.
“Boy, what are y’all doin’ out here so late?”
He shrugged.
“Where’s your mama?”
“She’s home.”
Reaching in her pocket, she produced a pack of bubble gum. She removed a square and handed it to him. “Be a good boy and go on home now. This ain’t a safe place for a little boy at night.”
Savoring the gum’s sticky sweetness, he trudged homeward. When he reached the apartment he saw Mama on the stoop and his heart leapt.
“Mama?” he bleated. “Were y’all looking for me?”
“Well, there’s my baby. What are y’all doin’ out here?” Her voice was soft and far away and as she gathered him up in a hug he smelled her sweet scents of perfume and whiskey and he knew she loved him again.
What seemed all too soon she planted a kiss on his forehead and pushed him away. “Be a good boy now and go inside. Mama has to go to work.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t let anyone in, you hear?”
“I won’t, Mama,” he promised, but she was already gone from him, walking across the alley, black dress swaying and silver heels clicking as she went.
Gray watched TV until his eyes felt heavy. Curled up on the pull-out sofa, he drifted off to sleep until the sound of canned laughter blended with sirens and urgent screams in the alley outside, jarring him awake. Blue and red lights strobed across the paneled walls and he sleepily went to the window and peered out.
The police cars and rescue vehicles in front of the hotel filled him with a vague uneasiness. He didn’t like cops. Cops were bad people, mean. Mama told him time and time again if he saw one to look the other way. Cops would lock a person up for no good reason and throw away the key, like they’d done to his daddy.
Out in the street he saw a blue-clad cop talking with Jade Parma, the hotel owner. Jade gestured wildly, shaking her head as she pointed to his apartment building. Turning, the cop looked in his direction and an ice cold chill shuddered through Gray’s body. Snapping off the lights, he raced to his hiding place in the back of Mama’s closet. Stumbling over shoes and purses, he parted hangers filled with dresses and burrowed far into a back corner.
He heard the sound of thunderous pounding on the front door before
it splintered open. He sucked in a breath when heavy footsteps entered
the apartment.
“Gray Baldwin? Where you at, boy?”
His heart pounded ferociously as he squeezed himself farther back into the dark.
“Gotta be here somewhere,” a deep voice said. “Gray Baldwin? Come on out!”
Room by room, he heard them searching for him. Within moments the light snapped on and Gray saw the cop from the alley enter mama’s bedroom. Through the broken slats in the closet door he saw blue-clad legs and a holstered gun. He squeezed his eyes shut against his sudden terror.
“Gotta be in here somewhere,” the cop said. “We’ve looked everywhere else. Christ, would you look at this shit hole.”
The cop opened mama’s secret drawer and rifled through it, upsetting her underthings. Gray winced, knowing how mad his mama was going to be. She’d made him swear never to open that drawer, never even to look at it. He watched as a meaty hand pulled out mama’s cigarettes, her pipes and baggies. He watched, astonished, as the hand removed a large roll of money and shoved it into a blue pocket. His breath rushed out of him, despite himself. He’d never known his mama was rich.
Without warning the closet door burst open.
“Gray? I know y’all are in there, boy. There’s no use tryin’ to hide. Come on out now.”
As the cop pawed through mama’s clothes, Gray’s mind raced with plans for escape. If he could make it past the cop and out the back door he could disappear into the alley and wait until mama came to find him.
With this thought firmly in mind, he sprang from his hiding place and bolted out the door. Halfway across the room the other cop intercepted him.
“Woah there, little man. What’s your hurry?”
Finding himself wrapped in a pair of colossal arms, Gray shrieked with rage. Turning his head, he sank his teeth into one of the oversized biceps. Shouting obscenities, the cop threw him to the floor and slapped a pair of handcuffs on him.
“You’re cuffin’ him? Little bit of a thing like that?” the other cop asked.
“The little prick bit me. Lookit this. I’m bleedin’.”
The cop propelled him through the apartment and shoved him into the
back of the police car.
“You’re gonna be sorry,” Gray shrieked. “You never shoulda took my mama’s money.”
“You keep your mouth shut.”
“She’s gonna be madder than hell.”
“Listen here,” the cop said, his face inches from Gray’s. “I didn’t take nobody’s money, and even if I did, your mama ain’t gonna do a damned thing about it. She’s down at the county coroner’s office, dead as a doornail.”
Gray stared at the man in shocked silence, trying to picture his pretty mama grotesque and bloated like the cat in the gutter beside the dumpster. It was a lie. It had to be. Hot tears sprang to his eyes and he scrubbed at them with the back of his hand.
At the police station, an old, gray-haired cop with a shaggy white beard insisted they remove the handcuffs. He gave Gray a bottle of soda and a stale doughnut and sent him to a lumpy sofa in the corner to wait.
Gray stared at the barred windows and at the Wanted posters that lined the walls, and tried to fathom what he’d done wrong. He thought of
asking the old cop, who sat at a battered desk, eating a doughnut with one hand while he pecked at the keys of a typewriter with the other. But Gray had learned early on that when in trouble it was best to say nothing at all.
The heat of the room, coupled with the late hour and the hypnotic clacking of typewriter keys made him sleepy and he felt his eyelids droop.
The morning sun had just begun to streak the sky outside the window when an old woman hobbled into the station. Through half-closed lids, Gray studied her plum body and kindly face as she and the cop spoke in low, murmuring voices.
“Gladdy, I was hoping it’d be you they sent. Thanks for coming.”
“Glad to do it, Will. Is this him?”
“That’s him. A real wild cat. Ain’t but eight years old. Scratched the dickens out of Ben Jamison’s face when he was tryin’ to bring him in.”
“He was afraid, I’m sure, a big man like Ben coming at him. His mama’s dead, then?”
For the second time, Gray was overcome by a wave of shock. He
struggled to block out their whispered voices.
“Drug lords came down … Dragonfly Hotel…shot her dead. Just a
case of…wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Oh, the poor, sweet babe. Does he know?”
“Actually I was hoping, I’m not good with kids and, well, I was kind of hoping you’d break it to him, Gladdy.”
Gray heard shuffling footsteps and then felt a warm, rose-scented hand on his forehead. “Gray? Can you wake up, child?”
The kindness in her voice seemed genuine and he desperately wanted to respond, but couldn’t. He was paralyzed, overwhelmed with fear and grief and so he lay beneath the scratchy blanket, eyes sealed tight against the world as mama’s words whispered inside his head.
“Stupid bastard. Stupid little boy…”
COMING OCTOBER, 2008
From Black Lyon Publishing
