“Now you know you don’t go surprising people with heart conditions,” she said, and her smile lit up her face, the light brown eyes and pale skin. “Well,” she looked him over. “You’re certainly looking good.” She let out a loud laugh, sweet though, so sweet he wasn’t put off by her empty gums.
They walked to the sofa. The TV was on in the front center of the room, commanding as much attention as another person’s voice. She always kept it on now that PawPaw was dead.
“Your aunt Ruby just left,” she said. “I’m so glad,” she went on, though T.C. knew that wasn’t true. “I couldn’t handle another minute of her complaining. Another one of her grandkids moved in with her. I said, Ruby, if you didn’t want a big family, you shouldn’t have had seven kids.”
T.C. chuckled. There was a picture of MawMaw’s brother out on one of the TV trays and he picked it up.
“Ruby and I were just talking about Brother,” MawMaw said. “It was his birthday today. He would have been eighty.”
T.C. tried not to look at the photo too long; people always said he resembled his great-uncle; looking at him now, he could see the similarities around the eyes. The man had died at forty-two of a heroin overdose.
MawMaw snatched the picture from him, slipped it into one of her albums, and filed it away.
“What about you?” she asked. “Now that you’re out, you better stay out, you hear?” Then she looked away. “You might as well know, your MawMaw isn’t doing too well.”
He nodded. “You looking good though.”
“I look like hell, and you know it,” she said, rumpling up her shirt as if it were to blame.
“But that’s all right. That’s why you have kids. That’s the secret, you know. To everlasting life. Well, first there’s Jesus, but the other part they don’t tell you about is reproduction. I did my part, and through all of you all I intend to live forever.” She beamed saying this, and the light of her smile seemed to strengthen her whole body. Small and weak as she was, she sat straight up in her chair, and it seemed like if she wanted to, she could carry him into the kitchen for his supper. She leaned over and tapped him on the knee.
“The girlfriend? Your mama tells me she’s pregnant?”
He nodded, feeling blood heat his face. MawMaw was a high-end Creole woman. It would have been blasphemy for her to get pregnant before she was married. She had taught them the right way, but he had gone ahead and shamed her anyway.
MawMaw smiled at him though. “That’s your ticket out, you had a little fun, you lived a high life, but now it’s time to settle down, start a family. You love the girl right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s complicated MawMaw.”
“Is it? What complicates it? The money?” She stuck her hand down her shirt.
He raised his hand. “No, MawMaw. I’m straight.”
“Now don’t be too proud. I know they don’t make it easy for you young men, plopping you in jail by the dozens, and I notice it’s always right around election time. You noticed that? I got up and voted the morning after you went in. I went to church first, prayed the Rosary over your soul, but then I went to vote.”
“Aww, I wasn’t going to vote in those little elections anyway, MawMaw,” he said, trying to shut down her concern.
She sat up even higher in her chair. “I’d vote for the school bus driver if they let me.”
“Well, I do it when it’s important. Like for Obama.” He smiled. “Yeah. I was able to vote for Obama.”
“That’s it now though, huh?” She didn’t come right out and say what she meant, just kept going. “And now it’s going to be impossible to get a job too. Oprah was just saying something along those lines. How do they expect you to make ends meet? No wonder you don’t want to take on a wife—”
“It’s not about the money,” he said without thinking.
“Oh?” She leaned back in her chair.
He wished he hadn’t said anything.
“What’s it about then?” she asked, tapping the spot in her bra where her money had been.
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t know what to say. Why was it so unfathomable that he and Alicia would settle down, buy a house, raise their kid, in a few years add another to the brood? Part of it was that all that shit was expensive, but there was another piece too that he couldn’t quite wrap his fingers around.
“I wish you would have met your father,” she said with a sigh.
He waved the comment away. There had been a time when that was all he wanted. He begged anyone who’d seen the bastard cross a street for details about his stride. He went to bed praying that he would reappear, conjured him up in his dreams at night. But all that was over now.
“I didn’t need him.” He started the speech he gave whenever the man’s name came up.
MawMaw cut him off. “I know that, I’m the one who told you to say that. And it’s certainly true, but you don’t believe it. That’s the problem. If you had met him, maybe if you had met him as a grown man, you wouldn’t need to take my word for it.”
She stood up to fix his dinner. He didn’t want to burden her. He knew she had dialysis in the morning, and though she went to sleep late, she retired to bed around ten to watch the evening news. But, as always, she insisted, dished him a plate of hot white beans over rice, and a tomato salad. She’d picked him up from school every day when he was a kid, and he’d be starving, but when she got him, she’d fix him a double-stuffed sandwich, then set about stewing or boiling her own evening meal. When she was done, she’d feed him as many servings as he could stomach, trying to fill a hunger that was never satisfied.
Tonight, after he filed his plate away in the dishwasher, she walked him to the door and slipped a check into his back pocket. Her wig had tilted and the curls on the edges of her scalp were grey and sparse. In the bathroom he’d seen a pack of those undergarments they advertised on TV. The tender weight of all this tugged at his heart now. He hadn’t had anything to roll up before he left, but he’d need to find something fast. Maybe it was time to reup in general.
When he got home, the door was open, though he was sure he’d locked it. He rattled the knob to warn whomever he was coming. He stepped in and heard something shuffling inside.
He turned the hall light on, called out, “Who’s there?”
He had found his old pocketknife in his closet and he pulled it out now.
“I said, who’s there, nigga?” he called out again.
More shuffling. The noise was coming from the living room.
As he rounded the corner, he heard somebody scream out, “Whoa nigga.” Then laughing. T.C. turned on the living room light.
Tiger’s ass was bent down belly laughing in his mama’s chair.
“I got you,” Tiger said through laughs. “You was all like, ‘I said who’s here?’”
He looked at T.C.’s hand and started laughing even louder. “Boy, what you was gon’ do with that knife? Nothing! You know everybody out here is strapped now, right? With at least one.”
“How the fuck you get in here?” T.C. shouted.
“The same way I used to get in to see to yo’ plants, nigga. You don’t remember that summer I spent robbing houses? Too dangerous now though. Everybody got them alarms with the cameras. Anyway, you said we was gon’ meet up tonight.”