“I don’t see how in the world I got pregnant,” Natasha whined. “I don’t even like pregnant stomachs.”
Natasha and Malik had been dating for about a year. They had met at Cousins Subs, where Malik worked with Patrice. He was shorter and darker than Natasha, with cornrows and a strong face. He had a gentle way about him, and although he was thirty-three, this would be his first child. Natasha liked him okay. But her heart still belonged to Taye, gunned down in a botched robbery two years earlier, when he was seventeen. In her purse, she still carried his funeral program, which listed Natasha as “a special lady friend” among his survivors. Ruby was crazy about that boy too, and sometimes with Natasha’s prodding she would tell Taye stories. As Natasha listened quietly, she would smile like older people do when they’ve put some distance between themselves and the pain. In those moments it was as if some cruel force had wedged a vise between the sisters and sprung the crank, propelling Natasha beyond her years.18
Per Hinkston family tradition, Patrice would be the one to name the baby. Malik had other plans. When Natasha told Doreen and Patrice that Malik wanted the name to be Malik Jr. if it was a boy, they scoffed. “We don’t do juniors,” Doreen said. “We messed up once. I hate that I did that.” C.J. was named after his father, but so the family wouldn’t have to utter that man’s name, they shortened Caleb Jr. to C.J.
If Natasha had to be a mother, she knew this much: she was not going to bring her baby into that house. Now that she was pregnant, she worried more about the apartment and about where they would go if Sherrena decided to evict them. But Doreen had carried the family on her back before, and Natasha believed she would do it again. “My momma, she strong,” Natasha said. “And she’s got us out of way worse situations than this. I mean, from shelters, livin’ on the street, churches, cars. I got a lot of faith in my momma. Yeah, we’ve been on the street a few times, but my momma, she always had it.” Only this time, Natasha didn’t like her momma’s plan. Ever since learning about an upcoming family reunion in Brownsville, Tennessee, Doreen had been thinking about moving the family down there. Patrice liked the idea; she was done with Milwaukee. “This a dead city,” she said, “full of crackheads and prostitutes.” But Natasha didn’t want to take her baby away from its father.
Doreen and Patrice didn’t think this was a legitimate concern. “He’s not dependable,” Doreen said. But Malik had been acting extra-dependable since learning he was going to be a dad, pulling double shifts, saving money, bringing Natasha food, and looking for an apartment for the three of them. The truth was that Doreen and Patrice didn’t expect much from Malik, not because of anything he had done, but because of their own experiences with men. Patrice’s and Natasha’s fathers had left Doreen; Ruby and C.J.’s daddy was in prison. The fathers of Patrice’s children played a negligible role in their lives, and her current boyfriend had recently put her through the dining-room table.19 Doreen and Patrice did not see why a man needed to be involved in family decisions about where to raise a child, let alone what to name it. Said Doreen to Natasha, “There was no one around to rub my stomach when you were kicking me.” Said Patrice, “We didn’t have a daddy. My kids don’t have no daddy. And your kids don’t need no daddy.”
Someone from the doctor’s office called. “I gotta come back in for another ultrasound,” Natasha told Doreen, getting off the phone. “They said they found somethin’ hidin’.”
“What do you mean they found somethin’ hidin’?”
“Hidin’. Hidin’, like behind the other baby.”
Doreen gasped. “Natasha, are you going to have twins?”
“But I don’t want no babies!” Natasha stomped her foot.
“Too late to say that now!” Doreen laughed.
“That’s too much.” Natasha slunk down on the couch and Coco jumped on her lap. “Coco, come here. Momma’s havin’ a bad day.”
Doreen tried to cheer her up. “I’m gonna make sure you get a very big room when we move,” she said. “Down the hall from me. Maybe downstairs. Yeah, I hope we get a house like we had on Thirty-Second.”
“That would be a blessing,” Natasha said, stroking Coco.
“Yes, it would.” Doreen turned to Ruby, who had been sitting quietly on the floor, holding her knees to her chest. “What you think, Ruby girl, wanna move?”
“Of course,” Ruby said. “I hate this house.”
7.
THE SICK
Scott worked for cash here and there, but his main job was taking care of Teddy. He did the cooking, cleaning, and shopping. In the morning, he helped Teddy out of bed and the shower. Scott felt he had a calling for that sort of thing. It was why he had become a nurse. Thirty-eight and bald, with a ruddy complexion, dimples, and eyes that matched the blue flames of a gas-stove burner, Scott had a gentle, broken spirit. As for Teddy, he was a small man, bone thin, with scabbed-over arms displaying shriveled tattoos. He could hardly walk. Scott made him anyway, and Teddy would shuffle slowly around the trailer park, dragging his left leg behind him and looking much older than fifty-two.
Pam and Ned had left to go stay in a cheap motel for a few days, but Tobin was still moving forward with Teddy and Scott’s eviction. They had fallen behind two months ago, when a neck X-ray and brain scan set Teddy back $507. Teddy’s health problems began a year earlier, when he woke up in the hospital after tumbling down some steps around the Sixteenth Street Viaduct. The space beneath the viaduct was one of his favorite drinking spots, the cars zooming overhead and the valley floor below. He had gone there with a bottle and some men from the rescue mission. In the hospital, Teddy was told that he was partially paralyzed on his left side, that the doctors had had to fuse his neck back together, and that all the pins and screws were there to hold everything in place.
Scott put the eviction notice on their cluttered table, next to bills, beer cans, an old Polaroid camera, and a large ashtray. It was late morning, and the two men sat drinking cans of Milwaukee’s Best. Teddy poked the eviction notice. “I suppose he wants to get a little more in his pot. His pot is a lot bigger than my pot.”
Teddy had looked straight ahead when he said it, his back perfectly flat against the chair. Sometimes Scott would walk in and find Teddy sitting on the couch, motionless, arms limp at his sides, not watching television or flipping through a magazine, just sitting. The first couple times this happened, Scott leaned in to make sure Teddy wasn’t dead.
“Maybe,” Scott answered. “But what did Tobin do wrong?”
“He is purely an asshole. If you like him, that’s your business….If I was in the shape I used to be, I’d already have gone up there and punched him in the nose.”
“That’s effective,” Scott said sarcastically.
“I’m a hillbilly. You can take the boy outta the country but you can’t take the country outta the boy.”
Teddy went on—he could talk when he wanted to—and Scott sat quietly listening. He didn’t interrupt the old man when he launched into one of his monologues, drawn out long and syrupy, like his Tennessee accent. Scott stared into the living room. There was nothing on the wood-paneled walls except a large painting left behind by the previous tenants: Jesus and the two thieves hung on crosses, all reds and purples. A year ago, the men had moved in with little and had acquired little since. Teddy’s prized possessions were his fishing rods and tackle. Scott’s was a large plastic container filled with photographs, certifications, and mementos from his old life.