I’m hoping he’s fully recovered in the next week or so because we’ve got some twelve-year-olds to give a beatdown. He started making full sentences again on Sunday, two days after the incident, and explained what happened. Apparently, Trevor decided to sneak out while I was with Marsha and headed to the courts to bet the seventh grade’s best basketball player that he could beat him in a one-on-one. Boy said yes and a whole group of them gathered at the courts for the show.
When it began to look like Trevor was gonna win, the other boy got a little antsy, so he shoved Trevor and traveled with the ball all in one swoop. Trevor called foul and boy got upset, got his friends in on it. Trevor says it was all an excuse to end the game before he lost, but the boys were bigger and had numbers on their side and when it’s a quiet spring day and everyone gets bored, kids love a good fight. Wasn’t really a fight, though, because Trevor was on the floor getting kicked around without even throwing one punch. They left Trevor on the ground when some older boys came over and said they best get home. The older boys helped Trevor up, took him back to the apartment.
The whole time Trevor was reciting the story, my eyes filled with flashes of bright light, like what Daddy used to describe as cataracts, except these ones were painful and searing, full of rage. I told him that we were gonna find these boys, don’t care if I’m six years older, we gonna beat they asses the moment the grand jury is over and he’s all healed.
Trevor’s been asking what the grand jury is and why we got reporters outside all the time. I’ve been telling him that it’s about Marcus and getting him out of jail, which isn’t a lie, but it’s not true either. I know I don’t have any reason to be ashamed, it’s not like Trevor didn’t know I was out in the streets doing something I shouldn’t be just like he known his mama was high all the time even if he didn’t know what she was high on. Still, he doesn’t need another reason to be scared, another reason to not trust nobody. He’s got enough.
Trevor said he wanted to go out this morning, tried to stand up, but he was walking all lopsided and I put on my mama voice and told him he best lie down. I’ve been telling Trevor I got cameras set up around the apartment so I’ll know if he tries to move or watch a movie or something while I’m gone. I don’t know if he believes me or not, but it’s better he get used to being tracked with the amount of people we’ve got following us around for an interview. I can’t let the reporters see him looking like this anyway, so swollen that CPS would be here before dinner.
The apartment is darker than it’s ever been before and Trevor’s face lying in his own blood plays on repeat in my head, along with Chief Talbot and that smile. She’s right, though. Maybe I am making it all worse for him: taking away his only opportunity for bliss. This apartment doesn’t know how to hold a child like Trevor. I don’t know how to hold a child like Trevor.
Marsha won’t stop calling. I haven’t answered in days because what am I supposed to say? That I’m ready to testify and tell the truth, sign myself away to a cell, let them raid the apartment, grab Trevor up, and put him in some house where nobody gives a shit about how fast he dribbles or which songs make him shake like he ain’t never had a fear in his life? But, if I don’t tell the truth next week, Marcus isn’t getting out of Santa Rita. They’ll probably send him right to San Quentin and by the time I get to touch him again, my fingerprint will be wrinkled and sagging on his neck.
I’m sitting on the floor by the mattress when the noise comes, faint but persistent. It’s unmistakably Dee. The cackle, the way it trails out and then drifts into the next wave, next burst of air and laughter that is so distinctly her. I get up and slip out the door as quietly as I can, down the row of apartments.
Dee’s apartment door is flung open and she’s sitting in the center of the room, feet pressed together in the butterfly position, her head closer to her feet than to the ceiling. Her head stays where it is as I enter the room, but her eyes roll up to look at me, her hair matted onto the top of her head, shoulders jutting upward. Like she’s climbing outside of herself, or her skeleton is.
“You got my boy?” she asks through the bubbles, involuntary giggles coming from her mouth.
“He’s safe,” I tell her. “Look, Vern’s been looking for you, so are you gonna be back and paying the rent or not? I ain’t paid this month and he getting ready to evict you.”
She lets her eyes drop again, her giggles fading into an offbeat hum. Her head drifts lower, closer to her feet. I hear Dee say something unintelligible from where her mouth meets her body.
“What?”
Her neck snaps up. “Why you asking me, girl? I ain’t owe you shit.”
I almost forgot how Dee could do that. How she could oscillate so quickly from that giggly mania to this: the sharp.
I step closer to her, crouch down until my head is just slightly above hers and I’m staring down into her eyes, looking into her. She is fierce.
“You owe me everything,” I tell her, saliva flinging out, my lips parted just enough for her to see the edges of my teeth. “Owe me a whole goddamn life.” I spread my arms out and she looks around like she’s really seeing the place for the first time: empty, mattress sitting fully made, blankets folded, no traces of living.
Dee doesn’t look at me, looks at her feet, but something in her shifts. Some bundle of the woman who lay on that mattress mid-birth comes back.
“I wanna see him,” she says.
I shake my head and even if she don’t see me, I know she can feel it. “You don’t get to come back in here and have him whenever you want. What kind of mother leaves her baby alone for weeks? He could be dead if he didn’t have me, you understand?”
Her head rolls back up to look at me with that snarl, which then relaxes into a strange sort of pout.
“I tried.” Dee says it soft, like somebody might say I love you.
“This you trying?”
“I love my baby, but love don’t fix the other shit. It don’t make it all go away. Your mama knew that and I bet your daddy did too. That boy in there? He loves me.” She isn’t blinking. “He loves me just the way I am, but pretty soon he’ll decide that I should’ve been better. You ain’t know what it feels like to have yo baby know you fucked up and not be able to change none of it.”
Dee stands up and I see her fully, even thinner than Trevor. She walks past me and out the door. When we make it outside, she spits down off the railing and I hear it land somewhere below, somewhere beside the pool. She whips back around to look at me.
“I’m leaving, so you can have my boy all to yoself, aight? Just don’t forget that even he ain’t gonna forgive you for everything and you ain’t gonna be able to do nothing to change it.” Dee spits over the railing one more time and then shoves past me into her apartment, slamming the door shut so I’m left in the evening dark, unsure what’s real, what kind of mother can raise a child like Trevor and succeed.
I head back into my apartment and leave Trevor a note saying I’m going out before I even know what I’m doing, signing it with a K because I don’t even know which name is mine anymore. I pull on shoes and the black blazer from funeral day, checking the peephole one last time to make sure nobody’s there. Just streetlights and pool.