“I already told you, don’t worry about the pizza.”
“Not for the pizza, bruh. For that stuff with Alicia. I would have said something stupid, something I couldn’t unsay. You’re right.”
Tiger shrugged. “I just think it’s rare what y’all have, that’s all. I ain’t never had nothing like it, but if I did, I wouldn’t fuck around with it. I would treat it with respect, you feel me?”
Over the next few weeks, T.C. spent at least a few hours at Tiger’s every day, feeding the plants, changing their water, testing the pH, applying the chemical adjuster. Meanwhile Tiger started his marketing campaign. T.C. told him the plants wouldn’t finish flowering for at least a month, but he’d come in every day bragging about how perfect the middleman he’d found was going to be: “He got as much ambition as a NBA wife, nigga.” Or how many people were begging him for T.C.’s Blueberry: “They know it’s gon’ be another month, but they still asking about it. That’s the key, to have niggas waiting, hungry on the verge of an attack if they can’t taste your bud so the first week that shit gon’ be sold out from the sheer momentum.”
One day, the door opened, and T.C. heard Alicia’s voice behind Tiger’s. “What the hell y’all got going on in here, Tiger? You can smell the gas from outside.”
She stopped in her tracks when she saw T.C. though.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” she said. “Tiger said he had something to show me. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
T.C. and Alicia both looked at their friend.
“What?” Tiger asked. “Y’all need to fix this mess, bruh. I’m tired of watching y’all both suffer.”
T.C. hadn’t realized he had been suffering. Of course Alicia was always on his mind, she was his life, but he hadn’t known how very much he missed her until she walked in, his seed pressing on her belly so hard he thought there was a real chance she might deliver the child right there.
“What the hell y’all got going on in here?” she repeated.
He ignored the question, told himself to calm down. She didn’t seem happy to see him, so he clipped his own joy out of habit; he wouldn’t have it going out into territory it couldn’t see its way out of.
He looked her up and down though. He couldn’t help that. “You look good,” he said.
“She big, huh, T?” Tiger shot in.
Alicia play-slapped him in his chest. “I ain’t big, boy. I’m pregnant.”
“That’s what I meant,” Tiger said.
“Then that’s what you say next time,” Alicia went on.
In all the squabble T.C. wasn’t sure if Alicia would hear his compliment, so he repeated himself.
“You’re beautiful,” he lightweight whispered, and she looked up at him and smiled.
Once Tiger left, they went outside and sat on his stoop.
“I can’t be in that house too long,” Alicia said. “I’d wind up getting some contact high or some shit.”
T.C. laughed. He had missed her candor. “I feel you.”
“So when you got out?” she asked.
“A month ago.”
She nodded. “I knew it was a month, I was just making conversation,” she said.
“I was gonna come see you.”
“Don’t even start, T.C.,” she shrugged, and waved her hand at him. “I’ve heard it all before and I don’t have the energy for it, not today.”
He didn’t say anything to that. What was there to say? They watched kids jump Double Dutch across the street. T.C. didn’t know where they could possibly be living.
Banana, banana, banana split,
What you got in arithmetic?
Banana, banana, banana for free,
What you got in geometry?
“How’s your mama and them?” Alicia asked.
“My mama? Crazy as ever. You already know.”
Alicia laughed. “I ran into her the other day at Castnet. She made the owner give me my sandwich for free, said her grandbaby was going to be eating it.” Alicia shook her head, laughing.
“I didn’t know she knew the owner like that.”
“She doesn’t, but I think they just didn’t want to cross her.”
Their laughter was so much a habit only part of them knew they were doing it.
“So how has it been? The pregnancy and all that?”
“Easy breezy. My mama was sick the whole first two trimesters with me, and you know she had a miscarriage between me and my sister.”
T.C. shook his head.
“Yeah, so I was nervous you know, I was real nervous in the beginning, but now, I’m just ready to go.”
“You due, what, in a week or two?”
“Boy, I got about four weeks left. I wish it was a week or two. Nah, lemme stop, I just want him to be healthy. Sometimes if they come too early, they gotta stay in NICU and shit.”
“Aww, no, not our lil’ dude.” He put his hand around her shoulder out of habit, and she didn’t move. “You thought about names already?”
She nodded, smiling. “I got a couple. Why, you wanna hear them?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“One is Malcolm Darrell, Darrell after Daryl, may he rest in peace.” She made the sign of the cross.
T.C. could feel the emotion rushing to his face and he put his head down.
“And you know I just love Malcolm X.”
“You still tryin’ to be a Black Panther, huh?” he said, glad to change the mood.
“Boy, whatever,” but she smiled. “The other one is Malik.” She looked up at him to gauge his reaction. “I just like the name Malik.” She shrugged. “Always have. What you think?”
“Those sound good,” he said. “Those sound real good.”
“You got a favorite?”
“Probably Malik,” he said. “That just sound real cool to me, and unique. Malik Darrell. MD. Maybe he’ll be a doctor or something like that.”
“I didn’t even think about that,” she said, her face lighting up.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then Lewis of course.”
He was too caught off guard to play it cool. He looked up at her with impossible gratitude. He had long since given up on having the last name, being locked up half his girl’s pregnancy, and then he had gone and let the shame over that keep him from being there the rest of the time too. If it hadn’t been for Tiger, who knew when he would have shown up? Kindergarten? High school graduation? But she was going to give him the name anyway.
“You serious, Licia? You really thinking about naming him Lewis?”
“It’s your baby, ain’t it?”
“Of course it’s mine”—he sat up straight on the porch chair—“but I haven’t done right by you. I know that. I’ma do better, but I let so much time pass; sometimes I worry it’s too late.”
Alicia sighed. “That’s why you didn’t call? You thought it was too late?”