Arleen didn’t mind Thirteenth Street. There was a bodega owned by Arabs on one end of her block and a bar for old men on the other. She could walk Jafaris to school. Arleen could have done without the hypes—crack addicts—who’d recently moved into the abandoned house next door, but a few more houses down a girl was learning to play the violin.
Her new apartment was coming along too. There was a time when the house was a stately thing. Built in Greek Revival style, it was two stories of sandstone block with twin columns supporting an awning over the front door. A pair of picture-frame windows, adorned with peaked pediments, faced the street, as did a larger second-story window whose pane opened on hinges. But over the years the house had deteriorated. One column base was settling, causing the overhead awning to slope sideways. The columns, porch, and window pediments had been painted ash-gray, and an imposing iron-barred outer door had been installed. Arleen didn’t like walking up the front steps, with their flaking paint and mismatched stair rails on either side, so she always used the side entrance.
Arleen had thrown herself into making the apartment a home. The previous tenants had left behind a large armoire, a bedroom dresser, a bed, and a refrigerator. There was even more in the basement: dishes, clothes, an upholstered chair. Arleen put it all to use, rearranging the furniture and stacking the dishes next to her nice porcelain plates, the ones she had been given years ago by a domestic-violence shelter. She claimed the front bedroom and gave the boys the one in the back, placing their twin mattresses on the ground and organizing clothes in dresser drawers. She unpacked a stereo and listened to old-school hip-hop tracks on burned CDs, her favorite being 2Pac’s “Keep Ya Head Up.” In the kitchen, she hung a humble drawing of black farmers hoeing a row. Over the bathroom door, she affixed a sign that she had found at a drugstore: TODAY WORRIED YOU YESTERDAY AND ALL IS WELL.
In the basement Arleen had also come across rollers, brushes, and a five-gallon bucket of white paint. She lugged everything upstairs, tied a wrap around her head, and gave the walls a fresh coat. She went ahead and painted the stairwell leading to the upstairs unit too. The job complete, she lit a stick of incense to mask the paint smell and looked around. She felt pleased with herself, content.
The days passed, and Arleen and her boys settled into their new home. After school, Jori sometimes challenged other neighborhood boys to a game of cans, Jafaris looking on. Using a basketball, Jori and his competitor tried to hit soda cans flattened on the sidewalk, earning more points for farther shots. He was a lanky boy, whose arms and fingers seemed to be growing faster than the rest of him, a condition he tried to conceal under oversized sweatshirts and coats. He wore his hair natural and had a relaxed, agreeable way about him. But Jori was fiercely loyal to his momma. If Arleen needed to smile, Jori would steal for her. If she was disrespected, he would fight for her. Some kids born into poverty set their sights on doing whatever it takes to get out. Jori wasn’t going anywhere, sensing he was put on this Earth to look after Arleen and Jafaris. He was, all fourteen years of him, the man of the house.
Jafaris was a big kid, the biggest in his kindergarten class. While Jori was all knees and elbows, Jafaris had a round chest and defined shoulders, with high cheekbones and cornrows that always needed redoing. When Jafaris grew bored, he would scavenge the basement or back alley for anything he could find—mop handles, rusted tools, dog leashes, pieces of plywood—and pretend they were tanks and helicopters locked in battle. After dinner, Arleen would watch reruns with the volume turned low, or read through Jafaris’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) evaluations, or flip through her prayer book. Some nights, she climbed the stairs and opened the upper unit’s unlocked door to give herself a little privacy. Arleen liked that the upstairs unit was vacant. She preferred things quiet.
One day, a friend gave Arleen a cat: a half-black, half-white thing. After Sherrena said they could keep it, Jori named him Little and began feeding him table scraps. Jori laughed when Little would spring at a loose shoelace or gulp down a ramen noodle. Jafaris would pick him up and press his nose against his ear. Both boys especially loved it when Little caught a mouse. He would drag the thing to the middle of the room and smack it around. The mouse would take different routes, trying to figure out what Little wanted. Bat! Bat! The mouse would tumble and roll with every swat. At some point, the pathetic creature would burrow under Little’s arm, hiding. Little would let the mouse rest and warm itself. Then he might reach down and grab the creature with his mouth and throw it into the air and, enjoying the effect, do it again and again. Eventually the mouse would just lie there motionless, and Little would look at it with cool disgust, wondering why the creature didn’t get back up.
—
Jori opened the door and called out, “He havin’ an asthma attack.” Jori had walked Jafaris home from school. Arleen stayed on the love seat waiting to see how bad it was. When it was a small attack, Jafaris’s mouth opened and closed like a caught fish. When it was a medium attack, he made an O with his mouth. When it was bad, his lips curled back, and he breathed through his nubby teeth.
Jafaris walked through the door making the O face. He shrugged off his backpack and leaned on the love seat like an old man after climbing a flight of stairs.
“Jafaris, go get me my bag,” Arleen said.
The boy nodded and went to the bedroom. When he came back, Arleen pulled out the albuterol and shook it. Jafaris put his mouth to the inhaler and breathed in. But their timing was off. “Blow it out! Don’t be playing with me,” Arleen snapped.
Jafaris missed the next try too, but the third filled his lungs. He held his breath, puffing out his cheeks the way children do before jumping into a pool. His mother counted: “One…two…three…” At ten, Jafaris exhaled, took a breath in, and smiled. Arleen smiled back.
She gave Jafaris albuterol every morning and every evening. Before bed, he got prednisone, a steroid, through a PARI Proneb Ultra nebulizer with plastic tubing and an airplane-cabin mask. Arleen called it “the breathing machine.” Jafaris’s asthma had been improving. Arleen remembered when she used to rush Jafaris to the hospital every week.
Jafaris’s father had given him his name, and lately Arleen had been worried he might have given him other things too. His father had “learning disabilities and anger issues,” and Jafaris was beginning to exhibit similar characteristics at school. He excelled at reading but struggled with other subjects, and he pushed his classmates around. He had been evaluated but didn’t qualify for additional help. Some teachers had suggested medications, which made Arleen bristle: “I don’t like medicine. I’m totally against Ritalin. I think he needs more one-on-one attention….I don’t want to medicate him until he’s seen a counselor and done gone through that.”
Arleen had met Jafaris’s father at the movie theater at the Mayfair Mall, when she was working the concession stand. “It just kind of happened,” Arleen recalled. “We weren’t in no real relationship.” They tried for one, but Arleen discovered he could be a violent man. He went to prison soon after she left him. He gave Jafaris little else beyond life.
It had been the same way with Arleen’s father. He had left after impregnating her mother, who was only sixteen when she had Arleen. Arleen’s grandmother served food in the cafeteria at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital, but her mother rarely worked outside the home. She received assistance and later married a man who held down a job. That man became a minister, which was the reason Arleen tried never to set foot in a church.